Note 295 — Chapter III

Reid (Essays on the Powers of the Mind, vol. i. p. 281) says, that necessary truths ‘cannot be the conclusions of the senses; for our senses testify only what is, and not what must necessarily be.’ See also vol. ii. pp. 53, 204, 239, 240, 281. The same distinction is peremptorily asserted in Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 8vo, 1847, vol. i. pp. 60–73, 140; and see Dugald Stewart's Philosophical Essays, pp. 123, 124. Sir W. Hamilton (Additions to Reid's Works, p. 754) says, that non-contingent truths ‘have their converse absolutely incogitable.’ But this learned writer does not mention how we are to know when anything is ‘absolutely incogitable.’ That we cannot cogitate an idea, is certainly no proof of its being incogitable; for it may be cogitated at some later period, when knowledge is more advanced.