The reader, if he require further illustrations, can easily follow out this line of thought. Enough has no doubt been said to convince him that our hypothesis of the survival of conscious activity apart from material conditions is not only utterly unsupported by any evidence that can be gathered from the world of which we have experience, but is utterly and hopelessly inconceivable. It is inconceivable BECAUSE it is entirely without foundation in experience. Our powers of conception are closely determined by the limits of our experience. When a proposition, or combination of ideas, is suggested, for which there has never been any precedent in human experience, we find it to be UNTHINKABLE,--the ideas will not combine. The proposition remains one which we may utter and defend, and perhaps vituperate our neighbours for not accepting, but it remains none the less an unthinkable proposition. It takes terms which severally have meanings and puts them together into a phrase which has no meaning. [11] Now when we try to combine the idea of the continuance of conscious activity with the idea of the entire cessation of material conditions, and thereby to assert the existence of a purely spiritual world, we find that we have made an unthinkable proposition. We may defend our hypothesis as passionately as we like, but when we strive coolly to realize it in thought we find ourselves baulked at every step. [11] See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. I. pp. 64-67. But now we have to ask, How much does this inconceivability signify? In most cases, when we say that a statement is inconceivable, we practically declare it to be untrue; when we say that a statement is without warrant in experience, we plainly indicate that we consider it unworthy of our acceptance. This is legitimate in the majority of cases with which we have to deal in the course of life, because experience, and the capacities of thought called out and limited by experience, are our only guides in the conduct of life. But every one will admit that our experience is not infinite, and that our capacity of conception is not coextensive with the possibilities of existence. It is not only possible, but in the very highest degree probable, that there are many things in heaven, if not on earth, which are undreamed of in our philosophy. Since our ability to conceive anything is limited by the extent of our experience, and since human experience is very far from being infinite, it follows that there may be, and in all probability is, an immense region of existence in every way as real as the region which we know, yet concerning which we cannot form the faintest rudiment of a conception. Any hypothesis relating to such a region of existence is not only not disproved by the total failure of evidence in its favour, but the total failure of evidence does not raise even the slightest prima facie presumption against its validity.