§ 6. The first of the two arguments in support of the theory that axioms are _a priori_ truths, having, I think, been sufficiently answered; I proceed to the second, which is usually the most relied on. Axioms (it is asserted) are conceived by us not only as true, but as universally and necessarily true. Now, experience can not possibly give to any proposition this character. I may have seen snow a hundred times, and may have seen that it was white, but this can not give me entire assurance even that all snow is white; much less that snow _must_ be white. “However many instances we may have observed of the truth of a proposition, there is nothing to assure us that the next case shall not be an exception to the rule. If it be strictly true that every ruminant animal yet known has cloven hoofs, we still can not be sure that some creature will not hereafter be discovered which has the first of these attributes, without having the other.... Experience must always consist of a limited number of observations; and, however numerous these may be, they can show nothing with regard to the infinite number of cases in which the experiment has not been made.” Besides, Axioms are not only universal, they are also necessary. Now “experience can not offer the smallest ground for the necessity of a proposition. She can observe and record what has happened; but she can not find, in any case, or in any accumulation of cases, any reason for what _must_ happen. She may see objects side by side; but she can not see a reason why they must ever be side by side. She finds certain events to occur in succession; but the succession supplies, in its occurrence, no reason for its recurrence. She contemplates external objects; but she can not detect any internal bond, which indissolubly connects the future with the past, the possible with the real. To learn a proposition by experience, and to see it to be necessarily true, are two altogether different processes of thought.”(76) And Dr. Whewell adds, “If any one does not clearly comprehend this distinction of necessary and contingent truths, he will not be able to go along with us in our researches into the foundations of human knowledge; nor, indeed, to pursue with success any speculation on the subject.”(77) In the following passage, we are told what the distinction is, the non-recognition of which incurs this denunciation. “Necessary truths are those in which we not only learn that the proposition _is_ true, but see that it _must be_ true; in which the negation of the truth is not only false, but impossible; in which we can not, even by an effort of imagination, or in a supposition, conceive the reverse of that which is asserted. That there are such truths can not be doubted. We may take, for example, all relations of number. Three and Two added together make Five. We can not conceive it to be otherwise. We can not, by any freak of thought, imagine Three and Two to make Seven.”(78)