Thus every man learns for himself to endow his own sense of probability
with a certain undefined but massive weight of authority. Now it is this
test of relative conceivability which all men apply in varying degrees to
the question of Theism. For if, from education and organised habits of
thought, the probability in this matter appears to a man to incline in a
certain direction, when this probability is called in question, the whole
body of this organised system of thought rises in opposition to the
questioning, and being individually conscious of this strong feeling of
subjective opposition, the man declares the sceptical propositions to be
more inconceivable to him than are the counter-propositions. And in so
saying he is, of course, perfectly right. Hence I conceive that the
acceptance or the rejection of metaphysical teleology as probable will
depend entirely upon individual habits of thought. The test of absolute
inconceivability making equally for and against the doctrine of Theism,
disputants are compelled to fall back on the test of relative
inconceivability; and as the direction in which the more inconceivable
proposition will here seem to lie will be determined by previous habits of
thought, it follows that while to a theist metaphysical teleology will
appear a probable argument, to an atheist it will appear an improbable one.
Thus to a theist it will no doubt appear more conceivable that the Supreme
Mind should be such that in some of its attributes it resembles the human
mind, while in other of its attributes--among which he will place
omnipresence, omnipotence, and directive agency--it transcends the human
mind as greatly as the latter "transcends mechanical motion;" and therefore
that although it is true, as a matter of logical terminology, that we ought
to designate such an entity "Not mind" or "Blank," still, as a matter of
psychology, we may come nearer to the truth by assimilating in thought this
entity with the nearest analogies which experience supplies, than by
assimilating it in thought with any other entity--such as force or
matter--which are felt to be in all likelihood still more remote from it in
nature. On the other hand, to an atheist it will no doubt appear more
conceivable, because more simple, to accept the dogma of an eternal
self-existence of something which we call force and matter, and with this
dogma to accept the implication of a necessary self-evolution of cosmic
harmony, than to resor