arily bound up with the constitution of the human mind.
Or, as Mill puts it, "One man cannot by proclaiming with ever so much
confidence that _he_ perceives an object, convince other people that they
see it too.... When no claim is set up to any peculiar gift, but we are
told that all of us are as capable of seeing what he sees, feeling what he
feels, nay, that we actually do so, and when the utmost effort of which we
are capable fails to make us aware of what we are told, we perceive this
supposed universal faculty of intuition is but

'The Dark Lantern of the Spirit
Which none see by but those who bear it.'"

It is thus, I think, abundantly certain that the present argument must,
from its very nature, be powerless as an argument to anyone save its
assertor; as a matter of fact, the alleged necessity of thought is not
universal; it is peculiar to those who employ the argument.

And now, it is but just to go one step further and to question whether the
alleged necessity of thought is, in any case and properly speaking, a
_real_ necessity. Unless those who advance the present argument are the
victims of some mental aberration, it is overwhelmingly improbable that
their minds should differ in a fundamental and important attribute from the
minds of the vast majority of their species. Or, to continue the above
quotation, "They may fairly be asked to consider, whether it is not more
likely that they are mistaken as to the origin of an impression in their
minds, than that others are ignorant of the very existence of an impression
in theirs." No doubt it is true that education and habits of thought may so
stereotype the intellectual faculties, that at last what is conceivable to
one man or generation may not be so to another;[2] but to adduce this
consideration in this place would clearly be but to destroy the argument
from the _intuitive_ necessity of believing in a God.

Lastly, although superfluous, it may be well to point out that even if the
impossibility of conceiving the negation of God were an universal law of
human mind--which it certainly is not--the fact of his existence could not
be thus proved. Doubtless it would be felt to be much more probable than it
now is--as probable, for instance, if not more probable, than is the
existence of an external world;--but still it would not be necessarily
true.

Sec. 7. The argument from the general consent of mankind is so clearly
fallacious, both as to facts and princi