Page:On an Evolutionist Theory of Axioms.djvu/19

12 'Hence the inconceivableness of its negation is that which shows a cognition to possess the highest rank—is the criterion by which its unsurpassable validity is known. If the negation of a cognition is conceivable, the discovery of this amounts to the discovery that we may or may not accept it. If its negation is inconceivable, the discovery of this is the discovery that we are obliged to accept it. And a cognition which we are thus obliged to accept, is one which we class as having the highest possible certainty. To assert the inconceivableness of its negation, is at the same time to assert the psychological necessity we are under of thinking it, and to give our logical justification for holding it to be unquestionable.'

Other passages to the same effect might be quoted.

I begin with an objection, relating to a matter already referred to, which perhaps concerns the form of the theory rather than its essence. The evolutionist does not seem sufficiently to notice that, while seeming to make inconceivability an ultimate test or criterion, he is really throwing entire discredit on the mind's power to conceive or not conceive as such.

Men do indeed believe firmly when they think the contradictory of their belief inconceivable; not as being merely inconceivable for them, but as being inconceivable for thought as such. For the moment a man is convinced that some one else can conceive what he cannot, he ceases to suppose that his own state of mind can determine the truth in the particular case. Thus a man without a musical ear nevertheless may believe that there is such a thing as a musical order. But the supposed history of the mind's modification implies that though we cannot conceive the contradictory of an axiom we might have been able, and our ancestors perhaps were able: and thus the mind's limitation in respect of the conceivable becomes as such entirely indifferent.