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 argued from the unknowable, but disputed over the name and attributes of the inconceivable.  Huxley said he did not know, which was equivalent to the dogmatic assertion that he did; Gladstone said he did know, which was a confession of ignorance denser than that of agnosticism.

Those men who try not to think or reason concerning the infinite simply imprison themselves within the four walls of the cell they construct.  It is better to think and be wrong than not to think at all.  Any assumption is better than no assumption, any belief better than none.

Hypotheses enlarge the boundaries of knowledge.  With assumptions the intellectual prospector stakes out the infinite.  In life we may not verify our premises, but death is the proof of all things.

We stopped at Wright’s tavern, where patriots used to meet before the days of the revolution, and where Major Pitcairn is said—­ wrongfully in all probability—­to have made his boast on the morning of the 19th, as he stirred his toddy, that they would stir the rebels’ blood before night.