ire
and like all things the more which they perceive to be concealed
under involved language, and determine things to be true which can
prettily tickle the ears and are varnished over with finely
sounding phrase," says Lucretius. We imagine we understand when we
do not; we do not really, truly, and wholly understand Emerson or
any other man; we do not understand ourselves.

We speak of the conceivable and of the inconceivable as if the
words had any clear and tangible meaning in our minds; whereas
they have not; at the best they are of but relative value. What is
conceivable to one man is inconceivable to another; what is beyond
the perception of one generation is matter of fact to the next.

The conceivable is and ever must be bounded by the inconceivable;
the domain of the former is finite, that of the latter is
infinite. It matters not how far we press our speculations, how
extravagant our hypotheses, how distant our vision, we reach at
length the confines of our thought and admit the inconceivable.
The inconceivable is a postulate as essential to reason as is the
conceivable. That the inconceivable exists is as certain as the
existence of the conceivable; it is in a sense more certain, since
we constantly find ourselves in error in our conclusions
concerning the existence of the things we know, while we can never
be in error concerning the existence of things we can never know,
being sure that beyond the confines of the finite there must
necessarily be the infinite.

We may indulge in assumptions concerning the infinite based upon
our knowledge of the finite, or, rather, based upon the inflexible
laws of our mental processes. We may say that there must be one
all-pervading soul, not because we can form any conception
whatsoever of the true nature of such a soul, but because the
alternative hypothesis of many individual souls is utterly
obnoxious to our reason.

To those who urge that it is idle to reason about what we cannot
conceive, it is sufficient answer to say that man cannot help it.
The scientist and the materialist in the ardent pursuit of
knowledge soon experience the necessity of indulging in
assumptions concerning force and matter, the hypothetical ether
and molecules, atoms and vortices, which are as purely
metaphysical as any assumptions concerning the soul. The
distinction between the realist and the idealist is a matter of
temperament. All that separated Huxley from Gladstone was a word;
each