Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/158

146 Let us analyze this "authoritative expression." It contains several startling implications, the disclosure of which the reader will find not uninteresting. Consider, first, what is implied by framing the thought that "the properties of matter might have been such as to render a totally different set of laws axiomatic." I will not stop to make the inquiry whether matter, having properties fundamentally unlike its present ones, can be conceived; though such an inquiry, leading to the conclusion that no conception of the kind is possible, would show that the proposition is merely a verbal one. It will suffice if I examine the nature of this proposition that "the properties of matter might have been" other than they are. Does it express an experimentally ascertained truth? If so, I invite Prof. Tait to describe the experiments. Is it an intuition? If so, then, along with doubt of an intuitive belief concerning things as they are, there goes confidence in an intuitive belief concerning things as they are not. Is it an hypothesis? If so, the implication is that a cognition of which the negation is inconceivable (for an axiom is such) may be discredited by inference from that which is not a cognition at all, but simply a supposition. Does the reviewer admit that no conclusion can have a validity greater than is possessed by its premises? or will he say that the trustworthiness of cognitions increases in proportion as they are the more inferential? Be his answer what it may, I shall take it as unquestionable that nothing concluded can have a warrant higher than that from which it is concluded, though it may have a lower. Now, the elements of the proposition before us are these: As "the properties of matter might have been such as to render a totally different set of laws axiomatic" (therefore) "these laws [now in force] must be considered as resting.... not on intuitive perception:" that is, the intuitions in which these laws are recognized must not be held authoritative. Here the cognition posited as premiss is, that the properties of the matter might have been other than they are; and the conclusion is that our intuitions relative to existing properties are uncertain. Hence, if this conclusion is valid, it is valid because the cognition or intuition respecting what might have been is more trustworthy than the cognition or intuition respecting what is! Skepticism respecting the deliverances of consciousness about things as they are is based upon faith in a deliverance of consciousness about things as they are not!

I go on to remark that this "authoritative expression of disapproval" by which I am supposed to be silenced, even were its allegation as valid as it is fallacious, would leave wholly untouched the real issue. I pointed out how Prof. Tait's denial, that any physical truths could be reached a priori, was contradicted by his own statement respecting physical axioms. The question thus raised the reviewer evades, and substitutes another with which I have just dealt. Now I bring forward again the evaded question.

In the passage I quoted, Prof. Tait, besides speaking of physical