with a thinker of his force and depth, is such as I can hardly overstate. But I also agree with him that the difference which exists in our premises is one of "profound importance, philosophically considered;" and not to be dismissed while any part of the case of either of us has not been fully examined and discussed.
In his present statement of the Universal Postulate, Mr. Spencer has exchanged his former expression, "beliefs which invariably exist," for the following: "cognitions of which the predicates invariably exist along with their subjects." And he says that "an abortive effort to conceive the negation of a proposition, shows that the cognition expressed is one of which the predicate invariably exists along with its subject; and the discovery that the predicate invariably exists along with its subject, is the discovery that this cognition is one we are compelled to accept." Both these premises of Mr. Spencer's syllogism I am able to assent to, but in different senses of the middle term. If the invariable existence of the predicate along with its subject, is to be understood in the most obvious meaning, as an existence in actual Nature, or in other words, in our objective, or sensational, experience, I of course admit that this, once ascertained, compels us to accept the proposition: but then I do not admit that the failure of an attempt to conceive the negative, proves the predicate to be always co-existent with the subject in actual Nature. If, on the other hand (which I believe to be Mr. Spencer's meaning) the invariable existence of the predicate along with the subject is to be understood only of our conceptive faculty, i.e., that the one is inseparable from the other in our thoughts; then, indeed, the inability to separate the two ideas proves their inseparable conjunction, here and now, in the mind which has failed in the attempt; but this inseparability in thought does not prove a corresponding inseparability in fact; nor even in the thoughts of other people, or of the same person in a possible future.
"That some propositions have been wrongly accepted as true, because their negations were supposed inconceivable when they were not," does not, in Mr. Spencer's opinion, "disprove the validity of the test;" not only because any test whatever "is liable to yield untrue results, either from incapacity or from carelessness in those who use it," but because the propositions in question "were complex propositions, not to be established by a test applicable to propositions no further decomposable." "A test legitimately applicable to a simple proposition, the subject and predicate of which are in direct relation, can not be legitimately applied to a complex proposition, the subject and predicate of which are indirectly related through the many simple propositions implied." "That things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, is a fact which can be known by direct comparison of actual or ideal relations. . . . . But that the square of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides, can not be known immediately by comparison of two states of consciousness: here the truth can be reached only mediately, through a series of simple judgments respecting the likenesses or unlikenesses of certain relations." Moreover, even when the proposition admits of being tested by immediate consciousness, people often neglect to do it. A school-boy, in adding up a column of figures, will say "35 and 9 are 46," though this is contrary to the verdict which consciousness gives when 35 and 9 are really called up before it; but this is not done. And not only school-boys, but men and thinkers, do not always "distinctly translate into their equivalent states of consciousness the words they use."
