Note 29 — Chapter VI

'In the adverse argument, conceivability is again made the unconditional test of truth, just as it was in the argument against the possibility of matter thinking. We reject the hypothesis of self-evolution, not because it is the more remote one, but simply because we experience a subjective incapacity adequately to frame the requisite generalisations in thought, or to frame them with as much clearness as we could wish. Yet our reason tells us as plainly as it tells us any general truth which is too large to be presented in detail, that there is nothing in the nature of things themselves, as far as we can see, antagonistic to the supposition of their having been self-evolved. Only on the ground, therefore, of our own intellectual deficiencies; only because as yet, by the self-evolutionary hypothesis, the inner order does not completely answer to the outer order; only because the number and complexity of subjective relations have not yet been able to rival those of the objective relations producing them; only on this ground do we refuse to assent to the obvious deductions of our reason.[29]