Page:On an Evolutionist Theory of Axioms.djvu/17

10 To some this will appear a sufficient reductio ad absurdum, but I do not propose to take that line of argument.

Let us rather imagine that such a condition of the mind is possible.

It will follow that our minds have been deprived of half their powers beyond recovery. The geometrician, for instance, is cut off from a field of thought as large as the present science—a field in which among many other things he would have developed the properties of those straight lines which are not the shortest distance between any two points upon themselves. In fact, in respect of all that is axiomatic, that is, of all that appears self-evident, the whole human race is in the position of that part of it which has lost or never had the use of a particular sense—the deaf, the blind, or the colour-blind, or those who have no ear for music. We are like the Proteus which in dark caves has gradually lost the eyes which would be useless to it: except that we are worse off, for though an object for our lost faculties may never come into our experience, we should obviously have plenty of employment for them.

The same process has woven a falsehood into our nervous tissues and so into our minds: for the confidence we have in axioms is made to come from our conviction that their contradictories are not even thinkable, and yet it is shewn at the same time that this is an utter mistake, inasmuch as thought in itself, though not as developed in us, is capable of thinking these contradictories. The individual then at best has got a true belief at the expense of entertaining a false belief, and at the expense of the loss of half his mental powers.

Is this a result to be contemplated with satisfaction?

May one not look for sympathy if one confesses to the hope that it is not true? Surely it would be one of those things for which we could not honestly say we were thankful.