In his second chapter, entitled “First Truths,” Dr. Mivart lays down the following proposition:
“Knowledge must be based on the study of mental facts and on undemonstrable truths which declare their own absolute certainty and are seen by the mind to be positively and necessarily true.” This proposition finds its counterpart in every text-book of scholastic philosophy from Bouvier to Liberatore and Ton Giorgi, so that there is no need to follow the learned author through his very excellent series of proofs in support of it. The main points of interest in the chapter are his arraignment of Herbert Spencer’s faulty basis of certainty, and the disproof of Mr. Lewes’ theory of reasoning.
Mr. Spencer says (Psychology, vol. ii. p. 450):
“A discussion in consciousness proves to be simply a trial of strength between different connections in consciousness—a systematized struggle serving to determine which are the least coherent states of consciousness. And the result of the struggle is that the least coherent states of consciousness separate, while the most coherent remain together; forming a proposition of which the predicate persists in the mind along with its subject.… If there are any indissoluble connections, he is compelled to accept them.
If certain states of consciousness absolutely cohere in certain ways, he is obliged to think them in those ways.… Here, then, the inquirer comes down to an ultimate uniformity—a universal law of thinking.”
We have quoted this passage of Mr. Spencer’s at some length, both for the purpose of exhibiting the misty, Germanic manner of his expression, and of calling attention to Dr. Mivart’s neat and effectual unfolding of the fallacy which it contains. We presume that Mr. Spencer means by “least coherent states of consciousness” those propositions in which the subject and predicate mutually repel each other, or, in other words, those which involve a physical or a metaphysical impossibility. Had he, indeed, stated his conception in those terms, he might have avoided Dr. Mivart’s well-aimed shafts, to which his cloudiness of expression alone exposed him. A cannon-ball fired from England to America is the typical proposition which he offers of “least cohering states of consciousness.” But every one perceives that the terms of this proposition involve a mere repugnance to actual and not to imagined facts, causing it to differ in an essential manner, accordingly, from such a proposition as 2×2 = 5, against the truth of which there exists a metaphysical impossibility. The importance of the distinction may be realized when we reflect that there can be no absolute truth so long as we make the test thereof a mere non-cohering state of consciousness; for if the terms of a physically non-possible proposition do not cohere in consciousness, and if such non-coherence be the absolute test of non-truth, that same non-truth must end with such non-coherence. This makes truth purely relative, and is
the legitimate goal of such philosophic speculations as those of Mr. Spencer, which would make all knowledge purely relative.
Dr. Mivart distinguishes four sorts of propositions: “1. Those which can be both imagined and believed. 2. Those which can be imagined, but cannot be believed. 3. Those which cannot be imagined, but can be believed. 4. Those which cannot be imagined and are not believed, because they are positively known to be absolutely impossible.”
The third of these propositions finds no place in Mr. Spencer’s enumeration, since, according to him, it involves “a non-cohering state of consciousness,” or, as he elsewhere expresses it, is “inconceivable.” That there are numberless propositions of the third class described by Dr. Mivart the intelligent reader may perceive at a glance, and so infer the absurdity of Herbert Spencer’s “non-cohering states of consciousness” viewed as a “universal law of thinking.”
Thus there is no absolute impossibility in accepting the doctrine of the multilocation of bodies or of their compenetrability, though no effort of the imagination can enable us to picture such a thing to the mind. The common belief that the soul is whole and entire in every part of the body is “unimaginable,” but certainly not “inconceivable,” since many vigorous and enlightened minds hold the doctrine with implicit confidence.