'Now I cannot but wonder that so much stress should be laid upon the circumstance of inconceivableness, when there is such ample experience to show that our capacity or incapacity of conceiving a thing has very little to do with a possibility of the thing in itself; but is in truth very much an affair of accident, and depends upon the past history and habits of our own minds. There is no more generally acknowledged fact in human nature, than the extreme difficulty at first felt in conceiving anything as possible, which is in contradiction to long established and familiar experience; or even to old and familiar habits of thought. And this difficulty is a necessary result of the fundamental laws of the human mind. When we have often seen and thought of two things together, and have never in any one instance either seen or thought of them separately, there is by the primary law of association an increasing difficulty, which in the end becomes insuperable, of conceiving the two things apart. This is most of all conspicuous in uneducated persons, who are in general utterly unable to separate any two ideas which have once become firmly associated in their minds; and if persons of cultivated intellect have any advantage on the point, it is only because, having seen and heard and read more, and been more accustomed to exercise their imagination, they have experienced their sensations and thoughts in more varied combinations, and have been prevented from forming these inseparable associations. But this advantage has necessarily its limits. The man of the most practised intellect is not exempt from the universal laws of our conceptive faculty. If daily habit presents to him for a long period two facts in combination, and if he is not led during that period either by accident or intention to think of them apart, he will in time become incapable of doing so even by the strongest effort; and the supposition that the two facts can be separated in nature, will at last present itself to his mind with all the characters of an inconceivable phenomenon. There are remarkable instances of this in the history of science: instances, in which the wisest men rejected as impossible, because inconceivable, things which their posterity, by earlier practice and longer perseverance in the attempt, found it quite easy to conceive, and which everybody knows to be true. 'If, then, it be so natural to the human mind, even in its highest state of culture, to be incapable of conceiving, and on that ground to believe impossible, what is afterwards not only found to be conceivable but proved to be true; what wonder if in cases where the association is still older, more confirmed, and more familiar, and in which nothing ever occurs to shake our conviction, or even suggest to us any conception at variance with the association, the acquired incapacity should continue, and be mistaken for a natural incapacity? It is true our experience of the varieties in nature enables us, within certain limits, to conceive other varieties analogous to them. We can conceive the sun or moon falling; for although we never saw them fall, nor ever perhaps, imagined them falling, we have seen so many other things fall, that we have innumerable familiar analogies to assist the conception; which after all, we should probably have some difficulty in framing, were we not well accustomed to see the sun and moon move, (or appear to move,) so that we are only called upon to conceive a slight change in the direction of motion, a circumstance familiar to our experience. But when experience affords no model on which to shape the new conception, how is it possible for us to form it? How, for example, can we imagine an end to space or time? We never saw any object without something beyond it, nor experienced any feeling without something following it. When, therefore, we attempt to conceive the last point of space, we have the idea irresistibly raised of other points beyond it. When we try to imagine the last instant of time, we cannot help conceiving another instant after it Nor is there any necessity to assume, as is done by a modern school of metaphysicians, a peculiar fundamental law of the mind to account for the feeling of infinity inherent in our conceptions of space and time; that apparent infinity is sufficiently accounted for by simpler and universally acknowledged laws.'*
* Mill's Logic, vol. 1, pp. 313-17.
Thus we stand on the verge of boundless possibility. What truths may yet be discovered in that great and untrodden field, which lies without our experience, no man can tell. All we have yet brought between assertion and proof, is all we have yet conquered, is all that we as yet know, is all that we can yet rely upon. The search after the untried is the highest and apparently the inherent aspiration of roan. The revelation of new worlds continually rewards his noble ambition. At once arrested and allured by the magnificence of nature—we wonder, we work, we wait.
CHAPTER V. FACTS
We must never forget that accurate and multiplied
quantitative facts form the only substantial basis of
science.—Parker.
As clear fountains send forth pellucid streams, so do clear truths give accurate sciences. The more definite the facts, the more perfect the science; it is therefore of importance that all facts should be capable of being tested by the standard of physical certainty. Dr. Reid says, that 'the inquirer after truth must take only facts for his guide.' It is then of moment that he takes true and not false guides. A writer in the 'Monthly Repository' observes, that 'the basis of all knowledge is such an extensive induction from particular facts, as leads to general conclusions and fundamental axioms'—and if the facts are erroneous, evidently the conclusions will be also erroneous. He also remarks, that 'in reasoning, all sciences are the same, being founded on an examination of facts—comparison of ideas.' But If the examination is incomplete, or the facts admitted incorrect, the comparison will be alike defective and the reasoning vitiated. If suppositions or conjectures are mixed up with facts, the inductions from them will be suppositions, and the conclusions but conjectures.
There are three words—consciousness, conscience, and conscientiousness—very much alike to the ear but very different in signification. Consciousness, is feeling—conscience, the sense of right and wrong—-conscientiousness, the practice of what is believed to be right. Conscience and conscientiousness are often confounded. We say, lawyers have no conscience, we mean no conscientiousness. They know right from wrong as men, but not professionally. It is with consciousness that the logician has to deal. Consciousness is the primary source of knowledge. Consciousness and the 'Evidences of the Senses' are synonymous terms. Facts referable to consciousness are said to be physically certain. The evidence of the senses is the highest standard of certainty.
The intuitive principles of belief are—
1st. A conviction of our own existence.
2nd. A confidence in the evidences of our senses.
3rd. In our mental operations.
4th. In our mental identity.
5th. In the conformity of the operations of nature.