qualifying epithet, it becomes quite unexceptionable. For the process of conception being in all cases the process of establishing relations in thought, we may properly say, It is relatively more conceivable that a man should walk than that a man should fly, since it is _more easy_ to establish, the necessary relations in thought in the case of the former than in the case of the latter proposition. The only difference, then, between what I have called absolute inconceivability and what I have called relative inconceivability consists in this--that while the latter admits of _degrees_, the former does not.[33] With this distinction clearly understood, I may now proceed to observe that in everyday life we constantly apply the test of relative inconceivability as a test of truth. And in the vast majority of cases this test of relative inconceivability is, for all practical purposes, as valid a test of truth as is the test of absolute conceivability. For as every man is more or less in harmony with his environment, his habits of thought with regard to his environment are for the most part stereotyped correctly; so that the most ready and the most trustworthy gauge of probability that he has is an immediate appeal to consciousness as to whether he _feels_ the probability. Thus every man learns for himself to endow his own sense of probability with a certain undefined but massive weight of authority. Now it is this test of relative conceivability which all men apply in varying degrees to the question of Theism. For if, from education and organised habits of thought, the probability in this matter appears to a man to incline in a certain direction, when this probability is called in question, the whole body of this organised system of thought rises in opposition to the questioning, and being individually conscious of this strong feeling of subjective opposition, the man declares the sceptical propositions to be more inconceivable to him than are the counter-propositions. And in so saying he is, of course, perfectly right. Hence I conceive that the acceptance or the rejection of metaphysical teleology as probable will depend entirely upon individual habits of thought. The test of absolute inconceivability making equally for and against the doctrine of Theism, disputants are compelled to fall back on the test of relative inconceivability; and as the direction in which the more inconceivable proposition will here seem to lie will be determined by previous habits of thought, it follows that while to a theist metaphysical teleology will appear a probable argument, to an atheist it will appear an improbable one. Thus to a theist it will no doubt appear more conceivable that the Supreme Mind should be such that in some of its attributes it resembles the human mind, while in other of its attributes--among which he will place omnipresence, omnipotence, and directive agency--it transcends the human