42

Logic 42

inconceivable.
But a definition is not a criterion. For a criterion is a method of experiment by which something is ascertained which is a sure indication of whether or not something different and less easy otherwise to find out is true.

This criterion is specially deceptive for the reason that in ordinary cases if we ever can do a thing we can already at least imagine some way in which it might be done. But if we cannot already imagine any way in which a proposition would be false neither can we yet imagine any way of imagining it to be false.
And but for all that the simplest little suggestion or information may at any moment put it into our power to imagine what no effort of thought could before enable us to imagine.
It is like the egg of Columbus.

I will now give a single example of the inconceivablities