that a tree can be any thing else than a tree or not a tree.' This, I repeat, is Mr. Mill's sole answer – he will not
pretend to suggest another – and yet, by his own showing, his answer is clearly no answer at all; for has he not already required us to admit,
as an axiom, that ability or inability to conceive is
in no case to be taken as a criterion of axiomatic truth? Thus all – absolutely
all his argumentation is at sea without a rudder. Let it not be urged that an exception from the general rule is to be made, in cases where the 'impossibility to conceive' is so peculiarly great as when we are called upon to conceive a tree
both a tree and
not a tree. Let no attempt, I say, be made at urging this sotticism; for, in the first place, there are no
degrees of 'impossibility,' and thus no one impossible conception can be
more peculiarly impossible than another impossible conception – in the second place, Mr. Mill himself, no doubt after thorough deliberation, has most distinctly, and most rationally, excluded all opportunity for exception, by the emphasis of his proposition, that,
in no case, is ability or inability to conceive, to be taken as a criterion of axiomatic truth – in the third place, even were exceptions admissible at all, it remains to be shown how any exception is admissible
here. That a tree can be both a tree and not a tree, is an idea which the angels, or the devils,
may entertain, and which no doubt many an earthly Bedlamite, or Transcendentalist,
does.
"Now I do not quarrel with these ancients," continues the letter-writer, "so much on account of the transparent frivolity of their logic – which, to be plain, was baseless, worthless and fantastic altogether – as on account of their pompous and infatuate proscription of all other roads to Truth than the two narrow and crooked paths – the one of creeping and the other of crawling – to which, in their ignorant perversity, they have dared to confine the Soul – the Soul which loves nothing so well as to soar in those regions of illimitable intuition which are utterly incognizant of 'path.'
"By the bye, my dear friend, is it not an evidence of the mental slavery entailed upon those bigoted people by their Hogs and Rams, that in spite of the eternal prating of their savans about