Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that metaphysical arguments often rely on abstract concepts that are difficult to understand.
H. L. Mencken highlights the idea that metaphysics frequently seeks to validate extraordinary claims through reasoning that is not easily comprehensible. This can imply that such arguments may lack solid grounding and can lead to skepticism about their validity, as they depend heavily on concepts that seem beyond human understanding.
In practice
In a discussion on the nature of reality, you might use this quote to emphasize the challenges of metaphysical arguments.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
I'm more than willing to go to places and talk to people who believe that I am an illegal alien who deserves to be jailed. I want to look them in the eye and say, 'What makes you think I'm any different from you?' I think for our generation, immigration rights is a civil rights issue.
despite all our desperate, eternal attempts to separate, contain and mend, categories always leak.
So, to say Barack Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president. That's not black progress. That's white progress.
The idea that we have the right to inflict suffering and death on other sentient beings for the trivial reasons of palate pleasure and fashion is, without doubt, one of the most arrogant and morally repugnant notions in the history of human thought.
Worthless is the nation that does not gladly stake its all on its honor.
The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.
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