Note 92 — Chapter III
Reading edition
"Conceivable" and other like expressions are always relative to conceiving minds; and what appears either conceivable or inconceivable to one mind, may be the contrary to another. A painter not only conceives,—but draws a Centaur, and places him feeding on a wide plain or sloping hill side. But, can the Physiologist conceive such a monstrosity? The solution is easy; the painter thinks of his figure, the physiologist of the structure; and this example furnishes a good caution as to the use of similar words.
From words we may pass to ideas. Take any conception involving the condition of Time or Space,—(those two optical tubes of our mind's perceiving eye),—and place it before the understanding; first as a Finite and next as an Infinite. The result is a conflict of arguments, ending in a contradiction of all possibility that either way the conception can be true. Any one moderately acquainted with Kant's best-known work, is aware that, by thus treating the world's existence, he raises overwhelming difficulties against its being either limited or unlimited in extent;—eternal or having a commencement in duration;—(p. 338. Ed. Rosenkranz) yet, the world does exist in fact. Kant goes on to subject other cosmological ideas to the same enigmatical reasoning, with the same consequences.
Some readers of purely modern science, may illustrate this question of the "conceivable" by what has been written on that extraordinary riddle, the "four dimensions of space." They will see opinions pro and con in an article by Professor Sylvester in Nature vol. 1. A note (p. 238) contains one conclusion of the Professor's, interesting as his answer to a question asked by us a few paragraphs back. He says, "If an Aristotle, or Descartes, or Kant assures me that he recognises God in the conscience, I accuse my own blindness if I fail to see with him.... I acknowledge two separate sources of authority,—the collective sense of mankind, and the illumination of privileged intellects." Plato then may have really seen more than Lucretius—Coleridge more than Comte or Littré.