in a super-scientific sphere it ought to be posited.  No doubt this hypothesis at first sight seems gratuitous, seeing that, so far as science can penetrate, there is no need of any such hypothesis at all—­cosmic harmony resulting as a physically necessary consequence from the combined action of natural laws, which in turn result as a physically necessary consequence of the persistence of force and the primary qualities of matter.  But although it is thus indisputably true that metaphysical teleology is wholly gratuitous if considered scientifically, it may not be true that it is wholly gratuitous if considered psychologically.  In other words, if it is more conceivable that Mind should be the ultimate cause of cosmic harmony than that the persistence of force should be so, then it is not irrational to accept the more conceivable hypothesis in preference to the less conceivable one, provided that the choice is made with the diffidence which is required by the considerations adduced in Chapter V [especially the Canon of probability laid down in the second paragraph of this section, Sec. 5].

’I conclude, therefore, that the hypothesis of metaphysical teleology, although in a physical sense gratuitous, may be in a psychological sense legitimate.  But as against the fundamental position on which alone this argument can rest—­viz. the position that the fundamental postulate of Atheism is more inconceivable than is the fundamental postulate of Theism—­we have seen two important objections to lie.

’For, in the first place, the sense in which the word “inconceivable” is here used is that of the impossibility of framing realizable relations in the thought; not that of the impossibility of framing abstract relations in thought.  In the same sense, though in a lower degree, it is true that the complexity of the human organization and its functions is inconceivable; but in this sense the word “inconceivable” has much less weight in an argument than it has in its true sense.  And, without waiting again to dispute (as we did in the case of the speculative standing of Materialism) how far even the genuine test of inconceivability ought to be allowed to make against an inference which there is a body of scientific evidence to substantiate, we went on to the second objection against this fundamental position of metaphysical teleology.  This objection, it will be remembered, was, that it is as impossible to conceive of cosmic harmony as an effect of Mind [i.e.  Mind being what we know it in experience to be], as it is to conceive of it as an effect of mindless evolution.  The argument from inconceivability, therefore, admits of being turned with quite as terrible an effect on Theism, as it can possibly be made to exert on Atheism.