y the process of assimilation. This,
however, is merely a contingent truth, because it is in our power to
conceive of organized beings whose substance shall not wear away, and
consequently shall not need perpetual restoration. But what faculty
of the mind is unemployed here that is engaged in perceiving the
property of a triangle, that _as_ triangle, it must have two sides
greater than the third? The truths elicited in the two cases have a
difference, inasmuch as a triangle differs from an animal in this,
that it is impossible to conceive other triangles than those to which
your truth is applicable, and therefore the proposition relating to
the triangle is called a necessary truth. But surely this difference
lies in the subject-matter, not in the nature of our mental
faculties.

But we had not intended to interpose our own lucubrations in the place
of those of Mr Mill.

"Although Mr Whewell," says our author, "has naturally
and properly employed a variety of phrases to bring his
meaning more forcibly home, he will, I presume, allow
that they are all equivalent; and that what he means by
a necessary truth, would be sufficiently defined, a
proposition the negation of which is not only false, but
inconceivable. I am unable to find in any of Mr
Whewell's expressions, turn them what way you will, a
meaning beyond this, and I do not believe he would
contend that they mean any thing more.

"This, therefore, is the principle asserted: that
propositions, the negation of which is inconceivable, or
in other words, which we cannot figure to ourselves as
being false, must rest upon evidence of higher and more
cogent description than any which experience can afford.
And we have next to consider whether there is any ground
for this assertion.

"Now, I cannot but wonder that so much stress should be
laid upon the circumstance of inconceivableness, when
there is such ample experience to show that our capacity
or incapacity for conceiving a thing has very little to
do with the possibility of the thing in itself; but is
in truth very much an affair of accident, and depends
upon the past habits and history of our own minds. There
is no more generally acknowledged fact in human nature,
than the extreme difficulty at first felt in conceiving
any thing as possible, which is in contradiction to
long-established and familiar