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+Project Gutenberg's The Philosophy of the Conditioned, by H. L. Mansel
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+Title: The Philosophy of the Conditioned
+
+Author: H. L. Mansel
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2009 [EBook #28484]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED ***
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+Produced by David Clarke, Tim Krajcar and the Online
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+
+                  THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
+
+      Reprinted, with Additions, from "The Contemporary Review."
+
+    _Comprising some Remarks on Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_
+       _and on Mr. J.S. Mill's Examination of that Philosophy_
+
+                        BY H.L. MANSEL, B.D.
+
+       WAYNFLETE PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY
+                     IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
+
+
+                     ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER
+                         LONDON AND NEW YORK
+                                 1866
+
+
+
+
+               MUIR AND PATERSON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The circumstance that the following remarks were originally published as
+an anonymous article in a Review, will best explain the style in which
+they are written. Absence from England prevented me from becoming
+acquainted with Mr. Mill's _Examination of Sir William Hamilton's
+Philosophy_ till some time after its publication; and when I was
+requested to undertake the task of reviewing it, I was still ignorant of
+its contents. On proceeding to fulfil my engagement, I soon discovered,
+not only that the character of the book was very different from what the
+author's reputation had led me to expect, but also that my task would be
+one, not merely of criticism, but, in some degree, of self-defence. The
+remarks on myself, coming from a writer of Mr. Mill's ability and
+reputation, were such as I could not pass over without notice; while, at
+the same time, I felt that my principal duty in this instance was the
+defence of one who was no longer living to defend himself. Under these
+circumstances, the best course appeared to be, to devote the greater
+portion of my article to an exposition and vindication of Sir W.
+Hamilton's teaching; and, in the additional remarks which it was
+necessary to make on the more personal part of the controversy, to speak
+of myself in the third person, as I should have spoken of any other
+writer. The form thus adopted has been retained in the present
+republication, though the article now appears with the name of its
+author.
+
+My original intention of writing a review of the entire book was
+necessarily abandoned as soon as I became acquainted with its contents.
+To have done justice to the whole subject, or to Mr. Mill's treatment of
+it, would have required a volume nearly as large as his own. I therefore
+determined to confine myself to the _Philosophy of the Conditioned_, both
+as the most original and important portion of Sir W. Hamilton's teaching,
+and as that which occupies the first place in Mr. Mill's _Examination_.
+
+
+
+
+THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
+
+
+The reader of Plato's _Republic_ will readily recall to mind that
+wonderful passage at the end of the sixth book, in which the philosopher,
+under the image of geometrical lines, exhibits the various relations of
+the intelligible to the sensible world; especially his lofty aspirations
+with regard to "that second segment of the intelligible world, which
+reason of itself grasps by the power of dialectic, employing hypotheses,
+not as principles, but as veritable hypotheses, that is to say, as steps
+and starting-points, in order that it may ascend _as far as the
+unconditioned_ ([Greek: mechri tou anypothetou]), to the first principle
+of the universe, and having grasped this, may then lay hold of the
+principles next adjacent to it, and so go down to the end, using no
+sensible aids whatever, but employing abstract forms throughout, and
+terminating in forms."
+
+This quotation is important for our present purpose in two ways. In the
+first place, it may serve, at the outset of our remarks, to propitiate
+those plain-spoken English critics who look upon new terms in philosophy
+with the same suspicion with which Jack Cade regarded "a noun and a verb,
+and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear," by
+showing that the head and front of our offending, "the Unconditioned," is
+no modern invention of Teutonic barbarism, but sanctioned even by the
+Attic elegance of a Plato. And in the second place, it contains almost a
+history in miniature of the highest speculations of philosophy, both in
+earlier and in later times, and points out, with a clearness and
+precision the more valuable because uninfluenced by recent controversies,
+the exact field on which the philosophies of the Conditioned and the
+Unconditioned come into collision, and the nature of the problem which
+they both approach from opposite sides.
+
+What is the meaning of this problem, the solution of which Plato proposes
+as the highest aim of philosophy--"to ascend to the unconditioned, and
+thence to deduce the universe of conditioned existence?" The problem has
+assumed different forms at different times: at present we must content
+ourselves with stating it in that in which it will most naturally suggest
+itself to a student of modern philosophy, and in which it has the most
+direct bearing on the subject of the present article.
+
+All consciousness must in the first instance present itself as a relation
+between two constituent parts, the person who is conscious, and the
+thing, whatever it may be, of which he is conscious. This contrast has
+been indicated, directly or indirectly, by various names--mind and
+matter; person and thing; subject and object; or, lastly, in the
+distinction, most convenient for philosophy, however uncouth in sound,
+between self and not self--the _ego_ and the _non-ego_. In order to be
+conscious at all, I must be conscious of something: consciousness thus
+presents itself as the product of two factors, _I_ and _something_. The
+problem of the unconditioned is, briefly stated, to reduce these two
+factors to one.
+
+For it is manifest that, so long as they remain two, we have no
+unconditioned, but a pair of conditioned existences. If the _something_
+of which I am conscious is a separate reality, having qualities and modes
+of action of its own, and thereby determining, or contributing to
+determine, the form which my consciousness of it shall take, my
+consciousness is thereby conditioned, or partly dependent on something
+beyond itself. It is no matter, in this respect, whether the influence is
+direct or indirect--whether, for instance, I see a material tree, or only
+the mental image of a tree. If the nature of the thing in any degree
+determines the character of the image--if the visible form of a tree is
+different from that of a house because the tree itself is different from
+the house, my consciousness is, however remotely, influenced by something
+different from itself, the _ego_ by the _non-ego_. And on the other hand,
+if I, who am conscious, am a real being, distinct from the things of
+which I am conscious--if the conscious mind has a constitution and laws
+of its own by which it acts, and if the mode of its consciousness is in
+any degree determined by those laws, the _non-ego_ is so far conditioned
+by the _ego_; the thing which I see is not seen absolutely and _per se_,
+but in a form partly dependent upon the laws of my vision.
+
+The first step towards the reduction of these two factors to one may
+obviously be made in three different ways. Either the _ego_ may be
+represented as a mode of the _non-ego_, or the _non-ego_ of the _ego_, or
+both of a _tertium quid_, distinct from either. In other words: it may be
+maintained, _first_, that matter is the only real existence; mind and all
+the phenomena of consciousness being really the result solely of material
+laws; the brain, for example, secreting thought as the liver secretes
+bile; and the distinct personal existence of which I am apparently
+conscious being only the result of some such secretion. This is
+_Materialism_, which has then to address itself to the further problem,
+to reduce the various phenomena of matter to some one absolutely first
+principle on which everything else depends. Or it may be maintained,
+_secondly_, that mind is the only real existence; the intercourse which
+we apparently have with a material world being really the result solely
+of the laws of our mental constitution. This is _Idealism_, which again
+has next to attempt to reduce the various phenomena to some one
+immaterial principle. Or it may be maintained, _thirdly_, that real
+existence is to be sought neither in mind as mind nor in matter as
+matter; that both classes of phenomena are but qualities or modes of
+operation of something distinct from both, and on which both alike are
+dependent. Hence arises a third form of philosophy, which, for want of a
+better name, we will call _Indifferentism_, as being a system in which
+the characteristic differences of mind and matter are supposed to
+disappear, being merged in something higher than both.
+
+In using the two former of these terms, we are not speaking of
+Materialism and Idealism as they have always actually manifested
+themselves, but only of the distinguishing principle of these systems
+when pushed to its extreme result. It is quite possible to be a
+materialist or an idealist with respect to the immediate phenomena of
+consciousness, without attempting a philosophy of the Unconditioned at
+all. But it is also possible, and in itself natural, when such a
+philosophy is attempted, to attempt it by means of the same method which
+has approved itself in relation to subordinate inquiries; to make the
+relation between the human mind and its objects the type and image of
+that between the universe and its first principle. And such attempts have
+actually been made, both on the side of Materialism and on that of
+Idealism; and probably would be made oftener, did not counteracting
+causes frequently hinder the logical development of speculative
+principles.
+
+In modern times, and under Christian influences, these several systems
+are almost necessarily identified with inquiries concerning the existence
+and nature of God. The influence of Christianity has been indirectly
+felt, even in speculations prosecuted in apparent independence of it; and
+the admission of an absolute first principle of all things distinct from
+God, or the acknowledgment of a God separate from or derived from the
+first principle of all things, is an absurdity which, since the
+prevalence of Christianity, has become almost impossible, even to
+antichristian systems of thought. In earlier times, indeed, this union of
+philosophy with theology was by no means so imperative. A philosophy like
+that of Greece, which inherited its speculations from a poetical
+theogony, would see no difficulty in attributing to the god or gods of
+its religious belief a secondary and derived existence, dependent on some
+higher and more original principle, and in separating that principle
+itself from all immediate connection with religion. It was possible to
+assume, with the Ionian, a material substance, or, with the Eleatic, an
+indifferent abstraction, as the first principle of things, without
+holding that principle to be God, or, as the only alternative, denying
+the existence of a God; and thus, as Aristotle[A] has observed,
+theologians endeavoured to evade the consequences of their abstract
+principles, by attributing to the chief good a later and derived
+existence, as the poets supposed the supreme God to be of younger birth
+than night and chaos and sea and sky. But to a Christian philosophy, or
+to a philosophy in any way influenced by Christianity, this method of
+evasion is no longer possible. If all conditioned existence is dependent
+on some one first and unconditioned principle, either that principle must
+be identified with God, or our philosophical speculations must fall into
+open and avowed atheism.
+
+  [A]  _Metaph._, xiv. 4.
+
+But at this point the philosophical inquiry comes in contact with another
+line of thought, suggested by a different class of the facts of
+consciousness. As a religious and moral being, man is conscious of a
+relation of a personal character, distinct from any suggested by the
+phenomena of the material world,--a relation to a supreme Personal Being,
+the object of his religious worship, and the source and judge of his
+moral obligations and conduct. To adopt the name of God in an abstract
+speculation merely as a conventional denomination for the highest link in
+the chain of thought, and to believe in Him for the practical purposes of
+worship and obedience, are two very different things; and for the latter,
+though not for the former, the conception of God as a Person is
+indispensable. Were man a being of pure intellect, the problem of the
+Unconditioned would be divested of its chief difficulty; but he is also a
+being of religious and moral faculties, and these also have a claim to be
+satisfied by any valid solution of the problem. Hence the question
+assumes another and a more complex form. How is the one absolute
+existence, to which philosophy aspires, to be identified with the
+personal God demanded by our religious feelings?
+
+Shall we boldly assume that the problem is already solved, and that the
+personal God is the very Unconditioned of which we were in search? This
+is to beg the question, not to answer it. Our conception of a personal
+being, derived as it is from the immediate consciousness of our own
+personality, seems, on examination, to involve conditions incompatible
+with the desired assumption. Personal agency, similar to our own, seems
+to point to something very different from an absolutely first link in a
+chain of phenomena. Our actions, if not determined, are at least
+influenced by motives; and the motive is a prior link in the chain, and a
+condition of the action. Our actions, moreover, take place in time; and
+time, as we conceive it, cannot be regarded as an absolute blank, but as
+a condition in which phenomena take place as past, present, and future.
+Every act taking place in time implies something antecedent to itself;
+and this something, be it what it may, hinders us from regarding the
+subsequent act as absolute and unconditioned. Nay, even time itself,
+apart from the phenomena which it implies, has the same character. If an
+act cannot take place except in time, time is the condition of its taking
+place. To conceive the unconditioned, as the first link in a chain of
+conditioned consequences, it seems necessary that we should conceive
+something out of time, yet followed by time; standing at the beginning of
+all duration and succession, having no antecedent, but followed by a
+series of consequents.
+
+Philosophical theologians have been conscious of this difficulty, almost
+from the earliest date at which philosophy and Christian theology came in
+contact with each other. From a number of testimonies of similar import,
+we select one or two of the most striking. Of the Divine Nature, Gregory
+Nyssen says: "It is neither in place nor in time, but before these and
+above these in an unspeakable manner, contemplated itself by itself,
+through faith alone; neither measured by ages, nor moving along with
+times."[B] "In the changes of things," says Augustine, "you will find a
+past and a future; in God you will find a present where past and future
+cannot be."[C] "Eternity," says Aquinas, "has no succession, but exists
+all together."[D] Among divines of the Church of England, we quote two
+names only, but those of the highest:--"The duration of eternity," says
+Bishop Pearson, "is completely indivisible and all at once; so that it is
+ever present, and excludes the other differences of time, past and
+future."[E] And Barrow enumerates among natural modes of being and
+operation far above our reach, "God's eternity without succession,"
+coupling it with "His prescience without necessitation of events."[F]
+But it is needless to multiply authorities for a doctrine so familiar to
+every student of theology.
+
+  [B]  _C. Eunom._, i., p. 98, Ed. Gretser.
+
+  [C]  _In Joann. Evang._, tract. xxxvii. 10.
+
+  [D]  _Summa_, pars. i., qu. x., art. 1.
+
+  [E]  _Minor Theol. Works_, vol. i., p. 105.
+
+  [F]  Sermon on the Unsearchableness of God's Judgments.
+
+Thus, then, our two lines of thought have led us to conclusions which, at
+first sight, appear to be contradictory of each other. To be conceived as
+unconditioned, God must be conceived as exempt from action in time: to be
+conceived as a person, if His personality resembles ours, He must be
+conceived as acting in time. Can these two conclusions be reconciled with
+each other; and if not, which of them is to be abandoned? The true answer
+to this question is, we believe, to be found in a distinction which some
+recent critics regard with very little favour,--the distinction between
+Reason and Faith; between the power of _conceiving_ and that of
+_believing_. We cannot, in our present state of knowledge, reconcile
+these two conclusions; yet we are not required to abandon either. We
+cannot conceive the manner in which the unconditioned and the personal
+are united in the Divine Nature; yet we may believe that, in some manner
+unknown to us, they are so united. To conceive the union of two
+attributes in one object of thought, I must be able to conceive them as
+united in some particular manner: when this cannot be done, I may
+nevertheless believe _that_ the union is possible, though I am unable to
+conceive _how_ it is possible. The problem is thus represented as one of
+those Divine mysteries, the character of which is clearly and well
+described in the language of Leibnitz:--"Il en est de m�me des autres
+myst�res, o� les esprits mod�r�s trouveront toujours une explication
+suffisante pour croire, et jamais autant qu'il en faut pour comprendre.
+Il nous suffit d'un certain _ce que c'est_ ([Greek: ti esti]) mais le
+_comment_ ([Greek: p�s]) nous passe, et ne nous est point
+n�cessaire."[G]
+
+  [G]  _Th�odic�e, Discours de la Conformit� de la Foi avec
+       la Raison, � 56._ Leibnitz, it will be observed, uses
+       the expression _pour comprendre_, for which, in the
+       preceding remarks, we have substituted _to conceive_.
+       The change has been made intentionally, on account of an
+       ambiguity in the former word. Sometimes it is used, as
+       Leibnitz here uses it, to denote an apprehension of the
+       manner in which certain attributes can coexist in an
+       object. But sometimes (to say nothing of other senses)
+       it is used to signify a complete knowledge of an object
+       in all its properties and their consequences, such as it
+       may be questioned whether we have of any object
+       whatever. This ambiguity, which has been the source of
+       much confusion and much captious criticism, is well
+       pointed out by Norris in his _Reason and Faith_ (written
+       in reply to Toland), p. 118, Ed. 1697: "When we say that
+       _above reason_ is when we do not comprehend or perceive
+       the truth of a thing, this must not be meant of not
+       comprehending the truth in its whole latitude and
+       extent, so that as many truths should be said to be
+       above reason as we cannot thus thoroughly comprehend and
+       pursue throughout all their consequences and relations
+       to other truths (for then almost everything would be
+       above reason), but only of not comprehending the union
+       or connection of those immediate ideas of which the
+       proposition supposed to be above reason consists."
+       _Comprehension_, as thus explained, answers exactly to
+       the ordinary logical use of the term _conception_, to
+       denote the combination of two or more attributes in an
+       unity of representation. In the same sense, M. Peisse,
+       in the preface to his translation of Hamilton's
+       _Fragments_, p. 98, says,--"Comprendre, c'est voir un
+       terme en rapport avec un autre; c'est voir comme un ce
+       qui est donn� comme multiple." This is exactly the
+       sense in which Hamilton himself uses the word
+       _conception_. (See _Reid's Works_, p. 377.)
+
+But this distinction involves a further consequence. If the mysteries of
+the Divine Nature are not apprehended by reason as existing in a
+particular manner (in which case they would be mysteries no longer), but
+are accepted by faith as existing in some manner unknown to us, it
+follows that we do not know God as He is in His absolute nature, but only
+as He is imperfectly represented by those qualities in His creatures
+which are analogous to, but not identical with, His own. If, for example,
+we had a knowledge of the Divine Personality as it is in itself, we
+should know it as existing in a certain manner compatible with
+unconditioned action; and this knowledge of the manner would at once
+transform our conviction from an act of faith to a conception of reason.
+If, on the other hand, the only personality of which we have a positive
+knowledge is our own, and if our own personality can only be conceived as
+conditioned in time, it follows that the Divine Personality, in so far as
+it is exempt from conditions, does not resemble the only personality
+which we directly know, and is not adequately represented by it. This
+necessitates a confession, which, like the distinction which gives rise
+to it, has been vehemently condemned by modern critics, but which has
+been concurred in with singular unanimity by earlier divines of various
+ages and countries,--the confession that the knowledge which man in this
+life can have of God is not a knowledge of the Divine Nature as it is in
+itself, but only of that nature as imperfectly represented through
+analogous qualities in the creature. Were it not that this doctrine has
+been frequently denounced of late as an heretical novelty, we should
+hardly have thought it necessary to cite authorities in proof of its
+antiquity and catholicity. As it is, we will venture to produce a few
+only out of many, selecting not always the most important, but those
+which can be best exhibited _verbatim_ in a short extract.
+
+  CHRYSOSTOM.--_De Incompr. Dei Natura_, Hom. i. 3: "_That_ God is
+  everywhere, I know; and _that_ He is wholly everywhere, I know; but
+  the _how_, I know not: _that_ He is without beginning, ungenerated
+  and eternal, I know; but the _how_, I know not."
+
+  BASIL.--Ep. ccxxxiv.: "That God is, I know; but what is His essence
+  I hold to be above reason. How then am I saved? By faith; and faith
+  is competent to know that God is, not what He is."
+
+  GREGORY NAZIANZEN.--Orat. xxxiv.: "A theologian among the Greeks
+  [Plato] has said in his philosophy, that to conceive God is
+  difficult, to express Him is impossible. ... But I say that it is
+  impossible to express Him, and more impossible to conceive Him."
+  [Compare Patrick, _Works_, vol. iii., p. 39.]
+
+  CYRIL OF JERUSALEM.--Catech. vi. 2: "We declare not what God is,
+  but candidly confess that we know not accurately concerning Him.
+  For in those things which concern God, it is great knowledge to
+  confess our ignorance."
+
+  AUGUSTINE.--Enarr. in Psalm, lxxxv. 8: "God is ineffable; we more
+  easily say what He is not than what He is." Serm, cccxli.: "I call
+  God just, because in human words I find nothing better; for He is
+  beyond justice.... What then is worthily said of God? Some one,
+  perhaps, may reply and say, _that He is just._ But another, with
+  better understanding, may say that even this word is surpassed by
+  His excellence, and that even this is said of Him unworthily,
+  though it be said fittingly according to human capacity."
+
+  CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA.--_In Joann. Evang_., 1. ii., c. 5: "For those
+  things which are spoken concerning it [the Divine Nature] are not
+  spoken as they are in very truth, but as the tongue of man can
+  interpret, and as man can hear; for he who sees in an enigma also
+  speaks in an enigma."
+
+  DAMASCENUS.--_De Fide Orthod_., i. 4: "That God is, is manifest;
+  but what He is in His essence and nature is utterly
+  incomprehensible and unknown."
+
+  AQUINAS.--_Summa_, pars. i., qu. xiii., art. 1: "We cannot so name
+  God that the name which denotes Him shall express the Divine
+  Essence as it is, in the same way as the name _man_ expresses in
+  its signification the essence of man as it is." _Ibid._, art. 5:
+  "When the name _wise_ is said of a man, it in a manner describes
+  and comprehends the thing signified: not so, however, when it is
+  said of God; but it leaves the thing signified as uncomprehended
+  and exceeding the signification of the name. Whence it is evident
+  that this name _wise_ is not said in the same manner of God and of
+  man. The same is the case with other names; whence no name can be
+  predicated univocally of God and of creatures; yet they are not
+  predicated merely equivocally.... We must say, then, that such
+  names are said of God and of creatures according to analogy, that
+  is, proportion."
+
+  HOOKER.--_Ecc. Pol._, I., ii. 2.--"Dangerous it were for the feeble
+  brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom
+  although to know be life, and joy to make mention of His name, yet
+  our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He
+  is, neither can know Him."
+
+  USHER.--_Body of Divinity_, p. 45, Ed. 1645: "Neither is it [the
+  wisdom of God] communicated to any creature, neither can be; for it
+  is unconceivable, as the very essence of God Himself is
+  unconceivable, and unspeakable as it is."
+
+  LEIGHTON.--Theol. Lect. XXI., _Works_, vol. iv., p. 327, Ed. 1830:
+  "Though in the schools they distinguish the Divine attributes or
+  excellences, and that by no means improperly, into communicable and
+  incommunicable; yet we ought so to guard this distinction, as
+  always to remember that those which are called communicable, when
+  applied to God, are not only to be understood in a manner
+  incommunicable and quite peculiar to Himself, but also, that in Him
+  they are in reality infinitely different [in the original, _aliud
+  omnino_, _immensum aliud_] from those virtues, or rather, in a
+  matter where the disparity of the subjects is so very great, those
+  shadows of virtues that go under the same name, either in men or
+  angels."
+
+  PEARSON.--_Minor Theol. Works_, vol. i., p. 13: "God in Himself is
+  an absolute being, without any relation to creatures, for He was
+  from eternity without any creature, and could, had He willed, be to
+  eternity without creature. But God cannot naturally be known by us
+  otherwise than by relation to creatures, as, for example, under the
+  aspect of dominion, or of cause, or in some other relation."[H]
+
+  BEVERIDGE.--_On the Thirty-nine Articles_, p. 16, Ed. 1846: "But
+  seeing the properties of God do not so much denote what God is, as
+  what we apprehend Him to be in Himself; when the properties of God
+  are predicated one of another, one thing in God is not predicated
+  of another, but our apprehensions of the same thing are predicated
+  one of another."
+
+  LESLIE.--_Method with the Deists_, p. 63, Ed. 1745: "What we call
+  _faculties_ in the soul, we call _Persons_ in the Godhead; because
+  there are personal actions attributed to each of them.... And we
+  have no other word whereby to express it; we speak it after the
+  manner of men; nor could we understand if we heard any of those
+  unspeakable words which express the Divine Nature in its proper
+  essence; therefore we must make allowances, and great ones, when we
+  apply words of our nature to the Infinite and Eternal Being."
+  _Ibid._, p. 64: "By the word _Person_, when applied to God (for
+  want of a proper word whereby to express it), we must mean
+  something infinitely different from personality among men."
+
+  [H]  Bishop Pearson's language is yet more explicit in
+       another passage of the same work, which we give in the
+       original Latin:--"Non dantur pro hoc statu nomina qu�
+       Deum significant quidditative. Patet; quia nomina sunt
+       conceptuum. Non autem dantur in hoc statu conceptus
+       quidditativi de Deo."--(P. 136.)
+
+The system of theology represented by these extracts may, as we think, be
+fairly summed up as follows: We believe that God in His own nature is
+absolute and unconditioned; but we can only positively conceive Him by
+means of relations and conditions suggested by created things. We believe
+that His own nature is simple and uniform, admitting of no distinction
+between various attributes, nor between any attribute and its subject;
+but we can conceive Him only by means of various attributes, distinct
+from the subject and from each other.[I] We believe that in verum, aut
+bonum esse, aut omnino ipsum esse. His own nature He is exempt from all
+relations of time; but we can conceive Him only by means of ideas and
+terms which imply temporal relations, a past, a present, and a
+future.[J] Our thought, then, must not be taken as the measure and
+limit of our belief: we think by means of relations and conditions
+derived from created things; we believe in an Absolute Being, in whose
+nature these conditions and relations, in some manner unknown to us,
+disappear in a simple and indivisible unity.
+
+  [I]  This will be found most distinctly stated in the context
+       of the extract from Beveridge, and in the citations from
+       St. Augustine given in his notes; to which may be added
+       the following from _De Trinitate_, vi. 7:--"Deus vero
+       multipliciter quidem dicitur magnus, bonus, sapiens,
+       beatus, verus, et quidquid aliud non indigne dici
+       videtur; sed eadem magnitudo ejus est qu� sapientia,
+       non enim mole magnus est, sed virtute; et eadem bonitas
+       qu� sapientia et magnitudo, et eadem veritas qu� illa
+       omnia: et non est ibi aliud beatum esse et aliud magnum,
+       aut sapientem, aut verum, aut bonum esse, aut omnino
+       ipsum esse."
+
+  [J]  Compare the remarkable words of Bishop Beveridge,
+       _l.c._, "And therefore, though I cannot apprehend His
+       mercy to Abel in the beginning of the world, and His
+       mercy to me now, but as two distinct expressions of His
+       mercy, yet as they are in God, they are but one and the
+       same act,--as they are in God, I say, who is not
+       measured by time, as our apprehensions of Him are, but
+       is Himself eternity; a centre without a circumference,
+       eternity without time."
+
+The most important feature of this philosophical theology, and the one
+which exhibits most clearly the practical difference between reason and
+faith, is that, in dealing with theoretical difficulties, it does not
+appeal to our knowledge, but to our ignorance: it does not profess to
+offer a definite solution; it only tells us that we might find one if we
+knew all. It does not profess, for example, to solve the apparent
+contradiction between God's foreknowledge and man's free will; it does
+not say, "This is the way in which God foreknows, and in this way His
+foreknowledge is reconcileable with human freedom;" it only says, "The
+contradiction is apparent, but need not be real. Freedom is incompatible
+with God's foreknowledge, only on the supposition that God's
+foreknowledge is like man's: if we knew exactly how the one differs from
+the other, we might be able to see that what is incompatible with the one
+is not so with the other. We cannot solve the difficulty, but we can
+believe that there is a solution."
+
+It is this open acknowledgment of our ignorance of the highest things
+which makes this system of philosophy distasteful to many minds: it is
+the absence of any similar acknowledgment which forms the attraction and
+the seductiveness of Pantheism in one way, and of Positivism in another.
+The pantheist is not troubled with the difficulty of reconciling the
+philosophy of the absolute with belief in a personal God; for belief in a
+personal God is no part of his creed. Like the Christian, he may profess
+to acknowledge a first principle, one, and simple, and indivisible, and
+unconditioned; but he has no need to give to this principle the name of
+God, or to invest it with such attributes as are necessary to satisfy
+man's religious wants. His God (so far as he acknowledges one at all) is
+not the first principle and cause of all things, but the aggregate of the
+whole--an universal substance underlying the world of phenomena, or an
+universal process, carried on in and by the changes of things. Hence, as
+Aristotle said of the Eleatics, that, by asserting all things to be one,
+they annihilated causation, which is the production of one thing from
+another, so it may be said of the various schools of Pantheism, that, by
+maintaining all things to be God, they evade rather than solve the great
+problem of philosophy, that of the relation between God and His
+creatures. The positivist, on the other hand, escapes the difficulty by
+an opposite course. He declines all inquiry into reality and causation,
+and maintains that the only office of philosophy is to observe and
+register the invariable relations of succession and similitude in
+phenomena. He does not necessarily deny the existence of God; but his
+personal belief, be it what it may, is a matter of utter indifference to
+his system. Religion and philosophy may perhaps go on side by side; but
+their provinces are wholly distinct, and therefore there is no need to
+attempt a reconciliation between them. God, as a first cause, lives like
+an Epicurean deity in undisturbed ease, apart from the world of
+phenomena, of which alone philosophy can take cognisance: philosophy, as
+the science of phenomena, contents itself with observing the actual state
+of things, without troubling itself to inquire how that state of things
+came into existence. Hence, neither Pantheism nor Positivism is troubled
+to explain the relation of the One to the Many; for the former
+acknowledges only the One, and the latter acknowledges only the Many.
+
+It is between these two systems, both seductive from their apparent
+simplicity, and both simple only by mutilation, that the Philosophy of
+the Conditioned, of which Sir William Hamilton is the representative,
+endeavours to steer a middle course, at the risk of sharing the fate of
+most mediators in a quarrel,--being repudiated and denounced by both
+combatants, because it declares them to be both in the wrong. Against
+Pantheism, which is the natural development of the principle of
+Indifferentism, it enters a solemn protest, by asserting that the
+Absolute must be accepted in philosophy, not as a problem to be solved by
+reason, but as a reality to be believed in, though above reason; and that
+the pseudo-absolute, which Pantheism professes to exhibit in a positive
+conception, is shown, by the very fact of its being so conceived, not to
+be the true Absolute. Against Positivism, which is virtually Materialism,
+it protests no less strongly, maintaining that the philosophy which
+professes to explain the whole of nature by the aid of material laws
+alone, proceeds upon an assumption which does not merely dispense with
+God as a scientific hypothesis, but logically involves consequences which
+lead to a denial of His very existence. Between both extremes, it holds
+an intermediate position, neither aspiring, with Pantheism, to solve the
+problems of the Absolute, nor neglecting them, with Positivism, as
+altogether remote from the field of philosophical inquiry; but
+maintaining that such problems must necessarily arise, and must
+necessarily be taken into account in every adequate survey of human
+nature and human thought, and that philosophy, if it cannot solve them,
+is bound to show why they are insoluble.
+
+Let us hear Hamilton's own words in relation to both the systems which he
+opposes. Against Pantheism, and the Philosophy of the Unconditioned in
+general, he says:--
+
+  "The Conditioned is the mean between two extremes,--two
+  inconditionates, exclusive of each other, _neither of which can be
+  conceived as possible_,[K] but of which, on the principles of
+  contradiction and excluded middle, _one must be admitted as
+  necessary_. On this opinion, therefore, our faculties are shown to
+  be weak, but not deceitful. The mind is not represented as
+  conceiving two propositions, subversive of each other, as equally
+  possible; but only as unable to understand as possible either of
+  the two extremes; one of which, however, on the ground of their
+  mutual repugnance, it is compelled to recognise as true. We are
+  thus taught the salutary lesson, that the capacity of thought is
+  not to be constituted into the measure of existence; and are warned
+  from recognising the domain of our knowledge as necessarily
+  co-extensive with the horizon of our faith. And by a wonderful
+  revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability
+  to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with a
+  belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the
+  sphere of all comprehensible reality."--_Discussions_, p. 15.
+
+  [K]  It must be remembered that, to conceive a thing as
+       possible, we must conceive the manner in which it is
+       possible, but that we may believe in the fact without
+       being able to conceive the manner. Had Hamilton
+       distinctly expressed this, he might have avoided some
+       very groundless criticisms, with which he has been
+       assailed for maintaining a distinction between the
+       provinces of conception and belief.
+
+Against Materialism, and virtually against Positivism in general, he
+says:--
+
+  "If in man, intelligence be a free power,--in so far as its liberty
+  extends, intelligence must be independent of necessity and matter;
+  and a power independent of matter necessarily implies the existence
+  of an immaterial subject--that is, a spirit. If, then, the original
+  independence of intelligence on matter in the human
+  constitution--in other words, if the spirituality of mind in man be
+  supposed a datum of observation, in this datum is also given both
+  the condition and the proof of a God. For we have only to infer,
+  what analogy entitles us to do, that intelligence holds the same
+  relative supremacy in the universe which it holds in us, and the
+  first positive condition of a Deity is established, in the
+  establishment of the absolute priority of a free creative
+  intelligence. On the other hand, let us suppose the result of our
+  study of man to be, that intelligence is only a product of matter,
+  only a reflex of organization, such a doctrine would not only not
+  afford no basis on which to rest any argument for a God, but, on
+  the contrary, would positively warrant the atheist in denying His
+  existence. For if, as the materialist maintains, the only
+  intelligence of which we have any experience be a consequent of
+  matter,--on this hypothesis, he not only cannot assume this order
+  to be reversed in the relations of an intelligence beyond his
+  observation, but, if he argue logically, he must positively
+  conclude that, as in man, so in the universe, the phenomena of
+  intelligence or design are only in their last analysis the products
+  of a brute necessity. Psychological Materialism, if carried out
+  fully and fairly to its conclusions, thus inevitably results in
+  theological Atheism; as it has been well expressed by Dr. Henry
+  More, _Nullus in microcosmo spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo Deus_. I
+  do not, of course, mean to assert that all materialists deny or
+  actually disbelieve a God. For, in very many cases, this would be
+  at once an unmerited compliment to their reasoning, and an
+  unmerited reproach to their faith."--_Lectures_, vol. i, p.
+  31.[L]
+
+  [L]  This part of Hamilton's teaching is altogether
+       repudiated by a recent writer, who, strangely enough,
+       professes to be his disciple, while rejecting all that
+       is really characteristic of his philosophy. Mr. Herbert
+       Spencer, in his work on _First Principles_, endeavours
+       to press Sir W. Hamilton into the service of Pantheism
+       and Positivism together, by adopting the negative
+       portion only of his philosophy--in which, in common with
+       many other writers, he declares the absolute to be
+       inconceivable by the mere intellect,--and rejecting the
+       positive portions, in which he most emphatically
+       maintains that the belief in a personal God is
+       imperatively demanded by the facts of our moral and
+       emotional consciousness. Mr. Spencer regards religion as
+       nothing more than a consciousness of natural facts as
+       being in their ultimate genesis unaccountable--a theory
+       which is simply a combination of the positivist
+       doctrine, that we know only the relations of phenomena,
+       with the pantheist assumption of the name of God to
+       denote the substance or power which lies beyond
+       phenomena. No theory can be more opposed to the
+       philosophy of the conditioned than this. Sir W.
+       Hamilton's fundamental principle is, that consciousness
+       must be accepted entire, and that the moral and
+       religious feelings, which are the primary source of our
+       belief in a personal God, are in no way invalidated by
+       the merely negative inferences which have deluded men
+       into the assumption of an impersonal absolute; the
+       latter not being legitimate deductions from
+       consciousness rightly interpreted. Mr. Spencer, on the
+       other hand, takes these negative inferences as the only
+       basis of religion, and abandons Hamilton's great
+       principle of the distinction between knowledge and
+       belief, by quietly dropping out of his system the facts
+       of consciousness which make such a distinction
+       necessary. His whole system is, in fact, a pertinent
+       illustration of Hamilton's remark, that "the phenomena
+       of matter" [and of mind, he might add, treated by
+       materialistic methods], "taken by themselves (you will
+       observe the qualification, taken by themselves), so far
+       from warranting any inference to the existence of a God,
+       would, on the contrary, ground even an argument to his
+       negation." Mr. Spencer, like Mr. Mill, denies the
+       freedom of the will; and this, according to Hamilton,
+       leads by logical consequence to Atheism.
+
+In the few places in which Hamilton speaks directly as a theologian, his
+language is in agreement with the general voice of Catholic theology down
+to the end of the seventeenth century, some specimens of which have been
+given on a previous page. Thus he says (_Discussions_, p. 15): "True,
+therefore, are the declarations of a pious philosophy,--'A God understood
+would be no God at all;' 'To think that God is, as we can think Him to
+be, is blasphemy.' The Divinity, in a certain sense, is revealed; in a
+certain sense is concealed: He is at once known and unknown. But the last
+and highest consecration of all true religion must be an altar [Greek:
+Agn�st� The�]--'_To the unknown and unknowable God._'" A little later
+(p. 20) he says: "We should not recoil to the opposite extreme; and
+though man be not identical with the Deity, still is he 'created in the
+image of God.' It is, indeed, only through an analogy of the human with
+the Divine nature, that we are percipient and recipient of Divinity." In
+the first of these passages we have an echo of the language of Basil, the
+two Cyrils, and John Damascene, and of our own Hooker and Usher; while in
+the second we find the counter truth, intimated by Augustine and other
+Fathers,[M] and clearly stated by Aquinas, and which in the last
+century was elaborately expounded in the _Divine Analogy_ of Bishop
+Browne,--namely, that though we know not God in His own nature, yet are
+we not wholly ignorant of Him, but may attain to an imperfect knowledge
+of Him through the analogy between human things and Divine.
+
+  [M]  As _e.g._, by Tertullian (_Adv. Marc._, l. ii., c. 16):
+       "Et h�c ergo imago censenda est Dei in homine, quod
+       eosdem motos et sensus habeat humanus animus quos et
+       Deus, licet non tales quales Deus: pro substantia enim,
+       et status eorum et exitus distant." And by Gregory
+       Nazianzen, Orat. xxxvii.: "[Greek: �nomasamen gar h�s
+       h�min ephikton ek t�n h�meter�n ta tou Theou]" And
+       by Hilary, _De Trin._, i. 19: "Comparatio enim
+       terrenorum ad Deum nulla est; sed infirmitas nostr�
+       intelligenti� cogit species quasdam ex inferioribus,
+       tanquam superiorum indices qu�rere; ut rerum
+       familiarium consuetudine admovente, ex sensus nostri
+       conscientia ad insoliti sensus opinionem educeremur."
+
+As regards theological results, therefore, there is nothing novel or
+peculiar in Hamilton's teaching; nor was he one who would have regarded
+novelty in theology as a recommendation. The peculiarity of his system,
+by which his reputation as a philosopher must ultimately stand or fall,
+is the manner in which he endeavoured to connect these theological
+conclusions with psychological principles; and thus to vindicate on
+philosophical grounds the position which Catholic divines had been
+compelled to take in the interests of dogmatic truth. That the absolute
+nature of God, as a supertemporal and yet personal Being, must be
+believed in as a fact, though inaccessible to reason as regards the
+manner of its possibility, is a position admitted, almost without
+exception, by divines who acknowledge the mystery of a personal
+Absolute--still more by those who acknowledge the yet deeper mystery of a
+Trinity in Unity. "We believe and know," says Bishop Sanderson of the
+mysteries of the Christian faith, "and that with fulness of assurance,
+that all these things are so as they are revealed in the Holy Scriptures,
+because the mouth of God, who is Truth itself, and cannot lie, hath
+spoken them; and our own reason upon this ground teacheth us to submit
+ourselves and it to _the obedience of faith_, for the [Greek: to hoti],
+that so it is. But then, for the [Greek: to p�s], Nicodemus his
+question, _How can these things be?_ it is no more possible for our weak
+understandings to comprehend that, than it is for the eyes of bats or
+owls to look steadfastly upon the body of the sun, when he shineth forth
+in his greatest strength."[N] This distinction Hamilton endeavoured to
+extend from the domain of Christian theology to that of philosophical
+speculation in general; to show that the unconditioned, as it is
+suggested in philosophy, no less than as it connects itself with revealed
+religion, is an object of belief, not of positive conception; and,
+consequently, that men cannot escape from mystery by rejecting
+revelation. "Above all," he says, "I am confirmed in my belief by the
+harmony between the doctrines of this philosophy, and those of revealed
+truth.... For this philosophy is professedly a scientific demonstration
+of the impossibility of that 'wisdom in high matters' which the Apostle
+prohibits us even to attempt; and it proposes, from the limitation of the
+human powers, from our impotence to comprehend what, however, we must
+admit, to show articulately why the 'secret things of God,' cannot but be
+to man 'past finding out.'"[O] Faith in the inconceivable must thus
+become the ultimate refuge, even of the pantheist and the atheist, no
+less than of the Christian; the difference being, that while the last
+takes his stand on a faith which is in agreement alike with the authority
+of Scripture and the needs of human nature, the two former are driven to
+one which is equally opposed to both, as well as to the pretensions of
+their own philosophy.
+
+  [N]  _Works_, vol. i., p, 233.
+
+  [O]  _Discussions_, p. 625.
+
+Deny the Trinity; deny the Personality of God: there yet remains that
+which no man can deny as the law of his own consciousness--_Time_.
+Conditioned existence is existence in time: to attain to a philosophy of
+the unconditioned, we must rise to the conception of existence out of
+time. The attempt may be made in two ways, and in two only. Either we
+may endeavour to conceive an absolutely first moment of time, beyond
+which is an existence having no duration and no succession; or we may
+endeavour to conceive time as an unlimited duration, containing an
+infinite series of successive antecedents and consequents, each
+conditioned in itself, but forming altogether an unconditioned whole. In
+other words, we may endeavour, with the Eleatics, to conceive pure
+existence apart and distinct from all phenomenal change; or we may
+endeavour, with Heraclitus, to conceive the universe as a system of
+incessant changes, immutable only in the law of its own mutability; for
+these two systems may be regarded as the type of all subsequent
+attempts. Both, however, alike aim at an object which is beyond positive
+conception, and which can be accepted only as something to be believed in
+spite of its inconceivability. To conceive an existence beyond the first
+moment of time, and to connect that existence as cause with the
+subsequent temporal succession of effects, we must conceive time itself
+as non-existent and then commencing to exist. But when we make the
+effort to conceive time as non-existent, we find it impossible to do
+so. Time, as the universal condition of human consciousness, clings round
+the very conception which strives to destroy it, clings round the
+language in which we speak of an existence _before_ time. Nor are we more
+successful when we attempt to conceive an infinite regress of time, and an
+infinite series of dependent existences in time. To say nothing of the
+direct contradiction involved in the notion of an unconditioned
+_whole_,--a something completed,--composed of infinite parts--of parts
+never completed,--even if we abandon the Whole, and with it the
+Unconditioned, and attempt merely to conceive an infinite succession
+of conditioned existences--conditioned, absurdly enough, by nothing
+beyond themselves,--we find, that in order to do so, we must add moment to
+moment for ever--a process which would require an eternity for its
+accomplishment.[P] Moreover, the chain of dependent existences in this
+infinite succession is not, like a mathematical series, composed of
+abstract and homogeneous units; it is made up of divers phenomena, of a
+regressive line of causes, each distinct from the other. Wherever,
+therefore, I stop in my addition, I do not positively conceive the terms
+which lie beyond. I apprehend them only as a series of unknown
+_somethings_, of which I may believe _that_ they are, but am unable to
+say _what_ they are.
+
+  [P]  See _Discussions_, p. 29. Of course by this is not meant
+       that no duration can be conceived except in a duration
+       equally long--that a thousand years, _e.g._, can only be
+       conceived in a thousand years. A thousand years may be
+       conceived as one unit: infinity cannot; for an unit is
+       something complete, and therefore limited. What is meant
+       is, that any period of time, however long, is conceived
+       as capable of further increase, and therefore as not
+       infinite. An infinite duration can have no time before
+       or after it; and thus cannot resemble any portion of
+       finite time, however great. When we dream of conceiving
+       an infinite regress of time, says Sir W. Hamilton, "we
+       only deceive ourselves by substituting the _indefinite_
+       for the infinite, than which no two notions can be more
+       opposed." This caution has not been attended to by some
+       later critics. Thus, Dr. Whewell (_Philosophy of
+       Discovery_, p. 324) says: "The definition of an infinite
+       number is not that it contains all possible unities; but
+       this--that the progress of numeration, being begun
+       according to a certain law, goes on without limit." This
+       is precisely Descartes' definition, not of the
+       _infinite_, but of the _indefinite_. _Principia_, i. 26:
+       "Nos autem illa omnia, in quibus sub aliqua
+       consideratione nullum finem poterimus invenire, non
+       quidem affirmabimus esse infinita, sed ut indefinita
+       spectabimus." An indefinite time is that which is
+       capable of perpetual addition: an infinite time is one
+       so great as to admit of no addition. Surely "no two
+       notions can be more opposed."
+
+The cardinal point, then, of Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy, expressly
+announced as such by himself, is the absolute necessity, under any system
+of philosophy whatever, of acknowledging the existence of a sphere of
+belief beyond the limits of the sphere of thought. "The main scope of my
+speculation,"[Q] he says, "is to show articulately that we _must
+believe_, as actual, much that we are unable (positively) _to conceive_
+as even possible." It is, of course, beyond the range of such a
+speculation, by itself, to enter on an examination of the positive
+evidences in support of one form of belief rather than another. So far as
+it aims only at exhibiting an universal law of the human mind, it is of
+course compatible with all special forms of belief which do not
+contradict that law; and none, whatever their pretensions, can really
+contradict it. Hence the service which such a philosophy can render to
+the Christian religion must necessarily, from the nature of the case, be
+of an indirect and negative character. It prepares the way for a fair
+examination of the proper evidences of Christianity, by showing that
+there is no ground for any _� priori_ prejudice against revelation, as
+appealing, for the acceptance of its highest truths, to faith rather than
+to reason; for that this appeal is common to all religions and to all
+philosophies, and cannot therefore be urged against one more than
+another. So far as certain difficulties are inherent in the constitution
+of the human mind itself, they must necessarily occupy the same position
+with respect to all religions alike. To exhibit the nature of these
+difficulties is a service to true religion; but it is the service of the
+pioneer, not of the builder; it does not prove the religion to be true;
+it only clears the ground for the production of the special evidences.
+
+  [Q]  Letter to Mr. Calderwood. See _Lectures_, vol. ii, p.
+       534.
+
+Where those evidences are to be found, Sir W. Hamilton has not failed to
+tell us. If mere intellectual speculations on the nature and origin of
+the material universe form a common ground in which the theist, the
+pantheist, and even the atheist, may alike expatiate, the moral and
+religious feelings of man--those facts of consciousness which have their
+direct source in the sense of personality and free will--plead with
+overwhelming evidence in behalf of a personal God, and of man's relation
+to Him, as a person to a person. We have seen, in a previous quotation,
+Hamilton's emphatic declaration that "psychological materialism, if
+carried out fully and fairly to its conclusions, inevitably results in
+theological atheism." In the same spirit he tells us that "it is only as
+man is a free intelligence, a moral power, that he is created after the
+image of God;"[R] that "with the proof of the moral nature of man,
+stands or falls the proof of the existence of a Deity;" that "the
+possibility of morality depends on the possibility of liberty;" that "if
+man be not a free agent, he is not the author of his actions, and has
+therefore no responsibility, no moral personality at all;"[S] and,
+finally, "that he who disbelieves the moral agency of man, must, in
+consistency with that opinion, disbelieve Christianity."[T] We have
+thus, in the positive and negative sides of this philosophy, both a
+reasonable ground of belief and a warning against presumption. By our
+immediate consciousness of a moral and personal nature, we are led to the
+belief in a moral and personal God: by our ignorance of the
+unconditioned, we are led to the further belief, that behind that moral
+and personal manifestation of God there lies concealed a mystery--the
+mystery of the Absolute and the Infinite; that our intellectual and moral
+qualities, though indicating the nearest approach to the Divine
+Perfections which we are capable of conceiving, yet indicate them as
+analogous, not as identical; that we may naturally expect to find points
+where this analogy will fail us, where the function of the Infinite Moral
+Governor will be distinct from that of the finite moral servant; and
+where, consequently, we shall be liable to error in judging by human
+rules of the ways of God, whether manifested in nature or in revelation.
+Such is the true lesson to be learnt from a philosophy which tells us of
+a God who is "in a certain sense revealed, in a certain sense
+concealed--at once known and unknown."
+
+  [R]  _Lectures_, vol. i., p. 30.
+
+  [S]  _Lectures_, vol. i, p. 33.
+
+  [T]  _Ibid._, p. 42.
+
+It is not surprising that this philosophy, when compared with that of a
+critic like Mr. Mill, should stand out in clear and sharp antagonism. Mr.
+Mill is one of the most distinguished representatives of that school of
+Materialism which Sir W. Hamilton denounces as virtual Atheism. We do not
+mean that he consciously adopts the grosser tenets of the materialists.
+We are not aware that he has ever positively denied the existence of a
+soul distinct from the body, or maintained that the brain secretes
+thought as the liver secretes bile. But he is the advocate of a
+philosophical method which makes the belief in the existence of an
+immaterial principle superfluous and incongruous; he not only
+acknowledges no such distinction between the phenomena of mind and those
+of matter as to require the hypothesis of a free intelligence to account
+for it; he not only regards the ascertained laws of coexistence and
+succession in material phenomena as the type and rule according to which
+all phenomena whatever--those of internal consciousness no less than of
+external observation--are to be tested; but he even expressly denies the
+existence of that free will which Sir W. Hamilton regards as the
+indispensable condition of all morality and all religion.[U] Thus,
+instead of recognising in the facts of intelligence "an order of
+existence diametrically in contrast to that displayed to us in the facts
+of the material universe,"[V] he regards both classes of facts as of
+the same kind, and explicable by the same laws; he abolishes the primary
+contrast of consciousness between the _ego_ and the _non-ego_--the person
+and the thing; he reduces man to a thing, instead of a person,--to one
+among the many phenomena of the universe, determined by the same laws of
+invariable antecedence and consequence, included under the same formul�
+of empirical generalization. He thus makes man the slave, and not the
+master of nature; passively carried along in the current of successive
+phenomena; unable, by any act of free will, to arrest a single wave in
+its course, or to divert it from its ordained direction.
+
+  [U]  That this is the real battle-ground between the two
+       philosophers is virtually admitted by Mr. Mill himself
+       at the end of his criticism. He says:--"The whole
+       philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton seems to have had its
+       character determined by the requirements of the doctrine
+       of Free-will; and to that doctrine he clung, because he
+       had persuaded himself that it afforded the only premises
+       from which human reason could deduce the doctrines of
+       natural religion. I believe that in this persuasion he
+       was thoroughly his own dupe, and that his speculations
+       have weakened the philosophical foundation of religion
+       fully as much as they have confirmed it."--P. 549. Mr.
+       Mill's whole philosophy, on the other hand, is
+       determined by the requirements of the doctrine of
+       Necessity; and to that doctrine he intrepidly adheres,
+       in utter defiance of consciousness, and sometimes of his
+       own consistency. Which of the two philosophers is really
+       "his own dupe," Mr. Mill in believing that morality and
+       religion can exist without free will--that a necessary
+       agent can be responsible for his acts--or Sir W.
+       Hamilton in maintaining the contrary, is a question
+       which the former has by no means satisfactorily settled
+       in his own favour.
+
+  [V]  Hamilton, _Lectures_, vol. i, p. 29.
+
+This diametrical antagonism between the two philosophers is not limited
+to their first principles, but extends, as might naturally be expected,
+to every subordinate science of which the immediate object is mental, and
+not material. Logic, instead of being, as Sir W. Hamilton regards it, an
+_� priori_ science of the necessary laws of thought, is with Mr. Mill a
+science of observation, investigating those operations of the
+understanding which are subservient to the estimation of evidence.[W]
+The axioms of Mathematics, which the former philosopher regards, with
+Kant, as necessary thoughts, based on the _� priori_ intuitions of space
+and time, the latter[X] declares to be "experimental truths;
+generalizations from observation." Psychology, which with Hamilton is
+especially the philosophy of man as a free and personal agent, is with
+Mill the science of "the uniformities of succession; the laws, whether
+ultimate or derivative, according to which one mental state succeeds
+another."[Y] And finally, in the place of Ethics, as the science of the
+_� priori_ laws of man's moral obligations, we are presented, in Mr.
+Mill's system, with Ethology, the "science which determines the kind of
+character produced, in conformity to the general laws of mind, by any set
+of circumstances, physical and moral."[Z]
+
+  [W]  Mill's _Logic_. Introduction, � 7.
+
+  [X]  _Ibid._, book ii. 5, � 4.
+
+  [Y]  Mill's _Logic_, book vi. 4, � 3.
+
+  [Z]  _Ibid._, book vi. 5, � 4.
+
+The contrast between the two philosophers being thus thoroughgoing, it
+was natural to expect beforehand that an _Examination of Sir William
+Hamilton's Philosophy_, by Mr. Mill, would contain a sharp and vigorous
+assault on the principal doctrines of that philosophy. And this
+expectation has been amply fulfilled. But there was also reason to
+expect, from the ability and critical power displayed in Mr. Mill's
+previous writings, that his assault, whether successful or not in
+overthrowing his enemy, would at least be guided by a clear knowledge of
+that enemy's position and purposes; that his dissent would be accompanied
+by an intelligent apprehension, and an accurate statement, of the
+doctrines dissented from. In this expectation, we regret to say, we have
+been disappointed. Not only is Mr. Mill's attack on Hamilton's
+philosophy, with the exception of some minor details, unsuccessful; but
+we are compelled to add, that with regard to the three fundamental
+doctrines of that philosophy--the Relativity of Knowledge, the
+Incognisability of the Absolute and Infinite, and the distinction between
+Reason and Faith--Mr. Mill has, throughout his criticism, altogether
+missed the meaning of the theories he is attempting to assail.
+
+This is a serious charge to bring against a writer of such eminence as
+Mr. Mill, and one which should not be advanced without ample proof.
+First, then, of the Relativity of Knowledge.
+
+The assertion that all our knowledge is relative,--in other words, that
+we know things only under such conditions as the laws of our cognitive
+faculties impose upon us,--is a statement which looks at first sight like
+a truism, but which really contains an answer to a very important
+question,--Have we reason to believe that the laws of our cognitive
+faculties impose any conditions at all?--that the mind in any way reacts
+on the objects affecting it, so as to produce a result different from
+that which would be produced were it merely a passive recipient? "The
+mind of man," says Bacon, "is far from the nature of a clear and equal
+glass, wherein the beams of things shall reflect according to their true
+incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of
+superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced." Can what
+Bacon says of the fallacies of the mind be also said of its proper
+cognitions? Does the mind, by its own action, in any way distort the
+appearance of the things presented to it; and if so, how far does the
+distortion extend, and in what manner is it to be rectified? To trace the
+course of this inquiry, from the day when Plato compared the objects
+perceived by the senses to the shadows thrown by fire on the wall of a
+cave, to the day when Kant declared that we know only phenomena, not
+things in themselves, would be to write the history of philosophy. We can
+only at present call attention to one movement in that history, which,
+was, in effect, a revolution in philosophy. The older philosophers in
+general distinguished between the senses and the intellect, regarding the
+former as deceptive and concerned with phenomena alone, the latter as
+trustworthy and conversant with the realities of things. Hence arose the
+distinction between the sensible and the intelligible world--between
+things as perceived by sense and things as apprehended by
+intellect--between Phenomenology and Ontology. Kant rejected this
+distinction, holding that the intellect, as well as the sense, imposes
+its own forms on the things presented to it, and is therefore cognisant
+only of phenomena, not of things in themselves. The logical result of
+this position would be the abolition of ontology as a science of things
+in themselves, and, _� fortiori_, of that highest branch of ontology
+which aims at a knowledge of the Absolute[AA] [Greek: kat' exoch�n],
+of the unconditioned first principle of all things. If the mind, in every
+act of thought, imposes its own forms on its objects, to think is to
+condition, and the unconditioned is the unthinkable. Such was the logical
+result of Kant's principles, but not the actual result. For Kant, by
+distinguishing between the Understanding and the Reason, and giving to
+the latter an indirect yet positive cognition of the Unconditioned as a
+regulative principle of thought, prepared the way for the systems of
+Schelling and Hegel, in which this indirect cognition is converted into a
+direct one, by investing the reason, thus distinguished as the special
+faculty of the unconditioned, with a power of intuition emancipated from
+the conditions of space and time, and even of subject and object, or a
+power of thought emancipated from the laws of identity and
+contradiction.
+
+ [AA]  The term _absolute_, in the sense of _free from
+       relation_, may be used in two applications;--1st, To
+       denote the nature of a thing as it is in itself, as
+       distinguished from its appearance to us. Here it is used
+       only in a subordinate sense, as meaning out of relation
+       to human knowledge. 2ndly, To denote the nature of a
+       thing as independent of all other things, as having no
+       relation to any other thing as the condition of its
+       existence. Here it is used in its highest sense, as
+       meaning out of relation to anything else.
+
+The theory of Hamilton is a modification of that of Kant, intended to
+obviate these consequences, and to relieve the Kantian doctrine itself
+from the inconsistency which gave rise to them. So long as the reason is
+regarded as a separate faculty from the understanding, and things in
+themselves as ideas of the reason, so long the apparent contradictions,
+which encumber the attempt to conceive the unconditioned, must be
+regarded as inherent in the constitution of the reason itself, and as the
+result of its legitimate exercise on its proper objects. This sceptical
+conclusion Hamilton endeavoured to avoid by rejecting the distinction
+between the understanding and the reason as separate faculties, regarding
+the one as the legitimate and positive, the other as the illegitimate and
+negative, exercise of one and the same faculty. He thus announces, in
+opposition to Kant, the fundamental doctrine of the Conditioned, as "the
+distinction between intelligence _within_ its legitimate sphere of
+operation, impeccable, and intelligence _beyond_ that sphere, affording
+(by abuse) the occasions of error."[AB] Hamilton, like Kant, maintained
+that all our cognitions are compounded of two elements, one contributed
+by the object known, and the other by the mind knowing. But the very
+conception of a relation implies the existence of things to be related;
+and the knowledge of an object, as in relation to our mind, necessarily
+implies its existence out of that relation. But as so existing, it is
+unknown: we believe _that_ it is; we know not _what_ it is. How far it
+resembles, or how far it does not resemble, the object apprehended by us,
+we cannot say, for we have no means of comparing the two together.
+
+ [AB]  _Discussions_, p. 633.
+
+Instead; therefore, of saying with Kant, that reason is subject to an
+inevitable delusion, by which, it mistakes the regulative principles of
+its own thoughts for the representations of real things, Hamilton would
+say that the reason, while compelled to believe in the existence of these
+real things, is not legitimately entitled to make any positive
+representation of them as of such or such a nature; and that the
+contradictions into which it falls when attempting to do so are due to an
+illegitimate attempt to transcend the proper boundaries of positive
+thought.
+
+This theory does not, in itself, contain any statement of the mode in
+which we perceive the material world, whether directly by presentation,
+or indirectly by representative images; and perhaps it might, without any
+great violence, be adapted to more than one of the current hypotheses on
+this point. But that to which it most easily adjusts itself is that
+maintained by Hamilton himself under the name of _Natural Realism_. To
+speak of perception as a _relation_ between mind and matter, naturally
+implies the presence of both correlatives; though each may be modified by
+its contact with the other. The acid may act on the alkali, and the
+alkali on the acid, in forming the neutral salt; but each of the
+ingredients is as truly present as the other, though each enters into the
+compound in a modified form. And this is equally the case in perception,
+even if we suppose various media to intervene between the ultimate object
+and the perceiving mind,--such, _e.g._, as the rays of light and the
+sensitive organism in vision,--so long as these media are material, like
+the ultimate object itself. Whether the object, properly so called, in
+vision, be the rays of light in contact with the organ, or the body
+emitting or reflecting those rays, is indifferent to the present
+question, so long as a material object of some kind or other is supposed
+to be perceived, and not merely an inmaterial representation of such an
+object. To speak of our perceptions as mere modifications of mind
+produced by an unknown cause, would be like maintaining that the acid is
+modified by the influence of the alkali without entering into combination
+with it. Such a view might perhaps be tolerated, in connection with the
+theory of relativity, by an indulgent interpretation of language, but it
+is certainly not that which the language of the theory most naturally
+suggests.
+
+All this Mr. Mill entirely misapprehends. He quotes a passage from
+Hamilton's Lectures, in which the above theory of Relativity is clearly
+stated as the mean between the extremes of Idealism and Materialism, and
+then proceeds to comment as follows:--
+
+  "The proposition, that our cognitions of objects are only in part
+  dependent on the objects themselves, and in part on elements
+  superadded by our organs or our minds, is not identical, nor _prima
+  facie_ absurd. It cannot, however, warrant the assertion that all
+  our knowledge, but only that the part so added, is relative. If our
+  author had gone as far as Kant, and had said that all which
+  constitutes knowledge is put in by the mind itself, he would have
+  really held, in one of its forms, the doctrine of the relativity of
+  our knowledge. But what he does say, far from implying that the
+  whole of our knowledge is relative, distinctly imports that all of
+  it which, is real and authentic is the reverse. If any part of what
+  we fancy that we perceive in the objects themselves, originates in
+  the perceiving organs or in the cognising mind, thus much is purely
+  relative; but since, by supposition, it does not all so originate,
+  the part that does not is as much absolute as if it were not liable
+  to be mixed up with, these delusive subjective impressions."--(P.
+  30.)
+
+Mr. Mill, therefore, supposes that _wholly relative_ must mean _wholly
+mental_; in other words, that to say that a thing is wholly due to a
+relation between mind and matter is equivalent to saying that it is
+wholly due to mind alone. On the contrary, we maintain that Sir W.
+Hamilton's language is far more accurate than Mr. Mill's, and that the
+above theory can with perfect correctness be described as one of _total
+relativity_; and this from two points of view. First, as opposed to the
+theory of partial relativity generally held by the pre-Kantian
+philosophers, according to which our sensitive cognitions are relative,
+our intellectual ones absolute. Secondly, as asserting that the object of
+perception, though composed of elements partly material, partly mental,
+yet exhibits both alike in a form modified by their relation to each
+other. The composition is not a mere mechanical juxtaposition, in which
+each part, though acting on the other, retains its own characteristics
+unchanged. It may be rather likened to a chemical fusion, in which both
+elements are present, but each of them is affected by the composition.
+The material part, therefore, is not "as much absolute as if it were not
+liable to be mixed up with subjective impressions."
+
+But we must hear the continuation of Mr. Mill's criticism:--
+
+  "The admixture of the relative element not only does not take away
+  the absolute character of the remainder, but does not even (if our
+  author is right) prevent us from recognising it. The confusion,
+  according to him, is not inextricable. It is for us to 'analyse and
+  distinguish what elements' in an 'act of knowledge' are contributed
+  by the object, and what by our organs, or by the mind. We may
+  neglect to do this, and as far as the mind's share is concerned, we
+  can only do it by the help of philosophy; but it is a task to
+  which, in his opinion, philosophy is equal. By thus stripping off
+  such of the elements in our apparent cognitions of things as are
+  but cognitions of something in us, and consequently relative, we
+  may succeed in uncovering the pure nucleus, the direct intuitions
+  of things in themselves; as we correct the observed positions of
+  the heavenly bodies by allowing for the error due to the refracting
+  influence of the atmospheric medium, an influence which does not
+  alter the facts, but only our perception of them."
+
+Surely Mr. Mill here demands much more of philosophy than Sir W. Hamilton
+deems it capable of accomplishing. Why may not Hamilton, like Kant,
+distinguish between the permanent and necessary, and the variable and
+contingent--in other words, between the subjective and the objective
+elements of consciousness, without therefore obtaining a "direct
+intuition of things in themselves?" Why may he not distinguish between
+space and time as the forms of our sensitive cognitions, and the things
+perceived in space and time, which constitute the matter of the same
+cognitions, without thereby having an intuition, on the one hand, of pure
+space and time with nothing in them, or on the other, of things in
+themselves out of space and time? If certain elements are always present
+in perception, while certain others change with every act, I may surely
+infer that the one is due to the permanent subject, the other to the
+variable object, without thereby knowing what each would be if it could
+be discerned apart from the other. "A direct intuition of things in
+themselves," according to Kant and Hamilton, is an intuition of things
+out of space and time. Does Mr. Mill suppose that any natural Realist
+professes to have such an intuition?
+
+The same error of supposing that a doctrine of relativity is necessarily
+a doctrine of Idealism, that "matter known only in relation to us" can
+mean nothing more than "matter known only through the mental impressions
+of which it is the unknown cause,"[AC] runs through the whole of Mr.
+Mill's argument against this portion of Sir W. Hamilton's teaching. That
+argument, though repeated in various forms, may be briefly summed up in
+one thesis; namely, that the doctrine that our knowledge of matter is
+wholly relative is incompatible with the distinction, which Hamilton
+expressly makes, between the primary and secondary qualities of body.
+
+ [AC]  The assumption that these two expressions are or ought
+       to be synonymous is tacitly made by Mr. Mill at the
+       opening of this chapter. He opens it with a passage from
+       the _Discussions_, in which Hamilton says that the
+       existence of _things in themselves_ is only indirectly
+       revealed to us "through certain qualities _related to
+       our faculties of knowledge_;" and then proceeds to show
+       that the author did not hold the doctrine which these
+       phrases "seem to convey in the only substantial meaning
+       capable of being attached to them;" namely, "that we
+       know nothing of _objects_ except their existence, and
+       the impressions produced by them upon the human mind."
+       Having thus quietly assumed that "things in themselves"
+       are identical with "objects," and "relations" with
+       "impressions on the human mind," Mr. Mill bases his
+       whole criticism on this tacit _petitio principii_. He is
+       not aware that though Reid sometimes uses the term
+       _relative_ in this inaccurate sense, Hamilton expressly
+       points out the inaccuracy and explains the proper
+       sense.--(See _Reid's Works_, pp. 313, 322.)
+
+The most curious circumstance about this criticism is, that, if not
+directly borrowed from, it has at least been carefully anticipated by,
+Hamilton himself. Of the distinction between primary and secondary
+qualities, as acknowledged by Descartes and Locke, whose theory of
+external perception is identical with that which Mr. Mill would force on
+Hamilton himself, Hamilton says: "On the general doctrine, however, of
+these philosophers, both classes of qualities, as known, are confessedly
+only states of our own minds; and while we have no right from a
+subjective affection to infer the existence, far less the corresponding
+character of the existence, of any objective reality, it is evident that
+their doctrine, if fairly evolved, would result in a dogmatic or in a
+sceptical negation of the primary no less than of the secondary qualities
+of body, as more than appearances in and for us."[AD] It is astonishing
+that Mr. Mill, who pounces eagerly on every imaginable instance of
+Hamilton's inconsistency, should have neglected to notice this, which, if
+his criticism be true, is the most glaring inconsistency of all.
+
+ [AD]  _Reid's Works_, p. 840.
+
+But Hamilton continues: "It is therefore manifest that the fundamental
+position of a consistent theory of dualistic realism is--that our
+cognitions of Extension and its modes are not wholly ideal--that although
+Space be a native, necessary, _� priori_ form of imagination, and so
+far, therefore, a mere subjective state, that there is, at the same time,
+competent to us, in an _immediate_ perception of external things, the
+_consciousness_ of a really existent, of a really objective, _extended_
+world." Here we have enunciated in one breath, first the subjectivity of
+space, which is the logical basis of the relative theory of perception;
+and secondly, the objectivity of the extended world, which is the logical
+basis of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. It is
+manifest, therefore, that Hamilton had not, as Mr. Mill supposes, ceased
+to hold the one theory when he adopted the other.[AE]
+
+ [AE]  See _Examination_, p. 28.
+
+The key to all this is not difficult to find. It is simply that
+_objective existence_ does not mean existence _per se_; and that a
+_phenomenon_ does not mean a mere mode of mind. Objective existence is
+existence _as an object_, in perception, and therefore in relation; and a
+phenomenon may be material, as well as mental. The thing _per se_ may be
+only the unknown cause of what we directly know; but what we directly
+know is something more than our own sensations. In other words, the
+phenomenal effect is material as well as the cause, and is, indeed, that
+from which our primary conceptions of matter are derived. Matter does not
+cease to be matter when modified by its contact with mind, as iron does
+not cease to be iron when smelted and forged. A horseshoe is something
+very different from a piece of iron ore; and a man may be acquainted with
+the former without ever having seen the latter, or knowing what it is
+like. But would Mr. Mill therefore say that the horseshoe is merely a
+subjective affection of the skill of the smith--that it is not iron
+modified by the workman, but the workman or his art impressed by iron?
+
+If, indeed, Hamilton had said with Locke, that the primary qualities are
+in the bodies themselves, whether we perceive them or no,[AF] he would
+have laid himself open to Mr. Mill's criticism. But he expressly rejects
+this statement, and contrasts it with the more cautions language of
+Descartes, "ut sunt, vel saltem esse possunt."[AG] The secondary
+qualities are mere affections of consciousness, which, cannot be
+conceived as existing except in a conscious subject. The primary
+qualities are qualities of body, as perceived in relation to the
+percipient mind, _i.e._, of the phenomenal body perceived as in space.
+How far they exist in the real body out of relation to us, Hamilton does
+not attempt to decide.[AH] They are inseparable from our conception of
+body, which, is derived exclusively from the phenomenon; they may or may
+not be separable from the thing as it is in itself.
+
+ [AF]  _Essay_, ii 8, � 23.
+
+ [AG]  _Reid's Works_, p. 839.
+
+ [AH]  We have been content to argue this question, as Mr.
+       Mill himself argues it, on the supposition that Sir W.
+       Hamilton held that we are directly percipient of primary
+       qualities in external bodies. Strictly speaking, however,
+       Hamilton held that the primary qualities are immediately
+       perceived only in our organism as extended, and
+       inferred to exist in extra-organic bodies. The external
+       world is immediately apprehended only in its
+       secundo-primary character, as resisting our locomotive
+       energy. But as the organism, in this theory, is a
+       material _non-ego_ equally with the rest of matter, and as
+       to press this distinction would only affect the verbal
+       accuracy, not the substantial justice, of Mr. Mill's
+       criticisms, we have preferred to meet him on the ground
+       he has himself chosen. The same error, of supposing that
+       "presentationism" is identical with "noumenalism," and
+       "phenomenalism" with "representationism," runs through
+       the whole of Mr. Stirling's recent criticism of Hamilton's
+       theory of perception. It is curious, however, that the
+       very passage (_Lectures_, i., p. 146) which Mr. Mill cites
+       as proving that Hamilton, in spite of his professed
+       phenomenalism, was an unconscious noumenalist, is
+       employed by Mr. Stirling to prove that, in spite of his
+       professed presentationism, he was an unconscious
+       representationist. The two critics tilt at Hamilton
+       from opposite quarters: he has only to stand aside and let
+       them run against each other.
+
+Under this explanation, it is manifest that the doctrine, that matter as
+a subject or substratum of attributes is unknown and unknowable, is
+totally different from that of cosmothetic idealism, with which Mr Mill
+confounds it;[AI] and that a philosopher may without inconsistency
+accept the former and reject the latter. The former, while it holds the
+material substance to be unknown, does not deny that some of the
+attributes of matter are perceived immediately as material, though, it
+may be, modified by contact with mind. The latter maintains that the
+attributes, as well as the substance, are not perceived immediately as
+material, but mediately through the intervention of immaterial
+representatives. It is also manifest that, in answer to Mr. Mill's
+question, which of Hamilton's two "cardinal doctrines," Relativity or
+Natural Realism, "is to be taken in a non-natural sense,"[AJ] we must
+say, neither. The two doctrines are quite compatible with each other, and
+neither requires a non-natural interpretation to reconcile it to its
+companion.
+
+ [AI]  _Examination_, p. 23.
+
+ [AJ]  _Examination_, p. 20.
+
+The doctrine of relativity derives its chief practical value from its
+connection with the next great doctrine of Hamilton's philosophy, the
+incognisability of the Absolute and the Infinite. For this doctrine
+brings Ontology into contact with Theology; and it is only in relation to
+theology that ontology acquires a practical importance. With respect to
+the other two "ideas of the pure reason," as Kant calls them, the human
+soul and the world, the question, whether we know them as realities or as
+phenomena, may assist us in dealing with certain metaphysical
+difficulties, but need not affect our practical conduct. For we have an
+immediate intuition of the attributes of mind and matter, at least as
+phenomenal objects, and by these intuitions may be tested the accuracy of
+the conceptions derived from them, sufficiently for all practical
+purposes. A man will equally avoid walking over a precipice, and is
+logically as consistent in avoiding it, whether he regard the precipice
+as a real thing, or as a mere phenomenon. But in the province of theology
+this is not the case. We have no immediate intuition of the Divine
+attributes, even as phenomena; we only infer their existence and nature
+from certain similar attributes of which we are immediately conscious in
+ourselves. And hence arises the question, How far does the similarity
+extend, and to what extent is the accuracy of our conceptions guaranteed
+by the intuition, not of the object to be conceived, but of something
+more or less nearly resembling it? But this is not all. Our knowledge of
+God, originally derived from personal consciousness, receives accession
+from two other sources--from the external world, as His work; and from
+revelation, as His word; and the conclusions derived from each have to be
+compared together. Should any discrepancy arise between them, are we at
+once warranted in rejecting one class of conclusions in favour of the
+other two, or two in favour of the third? or are we at liberty to say
+that our knowledge in respect of all alike is of such an imperfect and
+indirect character that we are warranted in believing that some
+reconciliation may exist, though our ignorance prevents us from
+discovering what it is? Here at least is a practical question of the very
+highest importance. In the early part of our previous remarks, we have
+endeavoured to show how this question has been answered by orthodox
+theologians of various ages, and how Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy
+supports that answer. We have now to consider Mr Mill's chapter of
+criticisms.
+
+It is always unfortunate to make a stumble on the threshold; and Mr.
+Mill's opening paragraph makes two. "The name of God," he says, "is
+veiled under two extremely abstract phrases, 'the Infinite and the
+Absolute.'... But it is one of the most unquestionable of all logical
+maxims, that the meaning of the abstract must be sought in the concrete,
+and not conversely."[AK]--Now, in the first place, "the Infinite" and
+"the Absolute," even in the sense in which they are both predicable of
+God, are no more names of God than "the creature" and "the finite" are
+names of man. They are the names of certain attributes, which further
+inquiry may, perhaps, show to belong to God and to no other being, but
+which do not in their signification express this, and do not constitute
+our primary idea of God, which is that of a Person. Men may believe in an
+absolute and infinite, without in any proper sense believing in God; and
+thousands upon thousands of pious men have prayed to a personal God, who
+have never heard of the absolute and the infinite, and who would not
+understand the expressions if they heard them. But, in the second place,
+"the absolute" and "the infinite," in Sir W. Hamilton's sense of the
+terms, cannot both be names of God, for the simple reason that they are
+contradictory of each other, and are proposed as alternatives which
+cannot both be accepted as predicates of the same subject. For Hamilton,
+whatever Mr. Mill may do, did not fall into the absurdity of maintaining
+that God in some of His attributes is absolute without being infinite,
+and in others is infinite without being absolute.[AL]
+
+ [AK]  _Examination_, p. 32.
+
+ [AL]  See _Examination_, p. 35.
+
+But we have not yet done with this single paragraph. After thus making
+two errors in his exposition of his opponent's doctrine, Mr. Mill
+immediately proceeds to a third, in his criticism of it. By following his
+"most unquestionable of all logical maxims," and substituting the name of
+God in the place of "the Infinite" and "the Absolute," he exactly
+reverses Sir W. Hamilton's argument, and makes his own attempted
+refutation of it a glaring _ignoratio elenchi_.
+
+One of the purposes of Hamilton's argument is to show that we have no
+positive conception of an Infinite Being; that when we attempt to form
+such a conception, we do but produce a distorted representation of the
+finite; and hence, that our so-called conception of the infinite is not
+the true infinite. Hence it is not to be wondered at--nay, it is a
+natural consequence of this doctrine,--that our positive conception of
+God as a Person cannot be included under this pseudo-concept of the
+Infinite. Whereas Mr. Mill, by laying down the maxim that the meaning of
+the abstract must be sought in the concrete, quietly assumes that this
+pseudo-infinite is a proper predicate of God, to be tested by its
+applicability to the subject, and that what Hamilton says of _this_
+infinite cannot be true unless it is also true of God. Of this
+refutation, Hamilton, were he living, might truly say, as he said of a
+former criticism on another part of his writings,--"This elaborate parade
+of argument is literally answered in two words--_Quis dubitavit?_"
+
+But if the substitution of God for the Infinite be thus a perversion of
+Hamilton's argument, what shall we say to a similar substitution in the
+case of the Absolute? Hamilton distinctly tells us that there is one
+sense of the term _absolute_ in which it is contradictory of the
+infinite, and therefore is not predicable of God at all. Mr. Mill admits
+that Hamilton, throughout the greater part of his arguments, employs the
+term in this sense; and he then actually proceeds to "test" these
+arguments "by substituting the concrete, God, for the abstract,
+Absolute;" _i.e._, by substituting God for something which Hamilton
+defines as contradictory to the nature of God. Can the force of confusion
+go further? Is it possible for perverse criticism more utterly, we do not
+say to misrepresent, but literally to invert an author's meaning?
+
+The source of all these errors, and of a great many more, is simply this.
+Mr. Mill is aware, from Hamilton's express assertion, that the word
+_absolute_ may be used in two distinct and even contradictory senses; but
+he is wholly unable to see what those senses are, or when Hamilton is
+using the term in the one sense, and when in the other. Let us endeavour
+to clear up some of this confusion.
+
+Hamilton's article on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned is a criticism,
+partly of Schelling, partly of Cousin; and Schelling and Cousin only
+attempted in a new form, under the influence of the Kantian philosophy,
+to solve the problem with which philosophy in all ages has attempted to
+grapple,--the problem of the Unconditioned.
+
+"The unconditioned" is a term which, while retaining the same general
+meaning, admits of various applications, particular or universal. It may
+be the unconditioned as regards some special relation, or the
+unconditioned as regards all relations whatever. Thus there may be the
+unconditioned in Psychology--the human soul considered as a substance;
+the unconditioned in Cosmology--the world considered as a single whole;
+the unconditioned in Theology--God in His own nature, as distinguished
+from His manifestations to us; or, finally, the unconditioned _par
+excellence_--the unconditioned in Ontology--the being on which all other
+being depends. It is of course possible to identify any one of the three
+first with the last. It is possible to adopt a system of Egoism, and to
+maintain that all phenomena are modes of my mind, and that the substance
+of my mind is the only real existence. It is possible to adopt a system
+of Materialism, and to maintain that all phenomena are modes of matter,
+and that the material substance of the world is the only real existence.
+Or it is possible to adopt a system of Pantheism, and to maintain that
+all phenomena are modes of the Divine existence, and that God is the only
+reality. But the several notions are in themselves distinct, though one
+may ultimately be predicated of another.
+
+The general notion of the Unconditioned is the same in all these cases,
+and all must finally culminate in the last, the Unconditioned _par
+excellence_. The general notion is that of the One as distinguished from
+the Many, the substance from its accidents, the permanent reality from
+its variable modifications. Thought, will, sensation, are modes of my
+existence. What is the _I_ that is one and the same in all? Extension,
+figure, resistance, are attributes of matter. What is the one substance
+to which these attributes belong? But the generalisation cannot stop
+here. If matter differs from mind, the _non-ego_ from the _ego_, as one
+thing from another, there must be some special point of difference,
+which, is the condition of the existence of each in this or that
+particular manner. Unconditioned existence, therefore, in the highest
+sense of the term, cannot be the existence of _this_ as distinguished
+from _that_; it must be existence _per se_, the ground and principle of
+all conditioned or special existence. This is the Unconditioned, properly
+so called: the unconditioned in Schelling's sense, as the indifference of
+subject and object: and it is against this that Hamilton's arguments are
+directed.
+
+The question is this. Is this Unconditioned a mere abstraction, the
+product of our own minds; or can it be conceived as having a real
+existence _per se_, and, as such, can it be identified with God as the
+source of all existence? Hamilton maintains that it is a mere
+abstraction, and cannot be so identified; that, far from being "a name of
+God," it is a name of nothing at all. "By abstraction," he says, "we
+annihilate the object, and by abstraction we annihilate the subject of
+consciousness. But what remains? _Nothing._" When we attempt to conceive
+it as a reality, we "hypostatise the zero."[AM]
+
+ [AM]  _Discussions_, p. 21.
+
+In order to conceive the Unconditioned existing as a thing, we must
+conceive it as existing out of relation to everything else. For if
+nothing beyond itself is necessary as a condition of its existence, it
+can exist separate from everything else; and its pure existence as the
+unconditioned is so separate. It must therefore be conceivable as the
+sole existence, having no plurality beyond itself; and as simple, having
+no plurality within itself. For if we cannot conceive it as existing
+apart from other things, we cannot conceive it as independent of them;
+and if we conceive it as a compound of parts, we have further to ask as
+before, what is the principle of unity which binds these parts into one
+whole? If there is such a principle, this is the true unconditioned; if
+there is no such principle, there is no unconditioned; for that which
+cannot exist except as a compound is dependent for its existence on that
+of its several constituents. The unconditioned must therefore be
+conceived as one, as simple, and as universal.
+
+Is such a conception possible, whether in ordinary consciousness, as
+Cousin says, or in an extraordinary intuition, as Schelling says? Let us
+try the former. Consciousness is subject to the law of Time. A phenomenon
+is presented to us in time, as dependent on some previous phenomenon or
+thing. I wish to pursue the chain in thought till I arrive at something
+independent. If I could reach in thought a beginning of time, and
+discover some first fact with nothing preceding it, I should conceive
+time as absolute--as completed,--and the unconditioned as the first thing
+in time, and therefore as completed also, for it may be considered by
+itself, apart from what depends upon it. Or if time be considered as
+having no beginning, thought would still be able to represent to itself
+that infinity, could it follow out the series of antecedents for ever.
+But is either of these alternatives possible to thought? If not, we must
+confess that the unconditioned is inconceivable by ordinary
+consciousness; and we must found philosophy, with Schelling, on the
+annihilation of consciousness.
+
+But though Hamilton himself distinguishes between the _unconditioned_ and
+the _absolute_, using the former term generally, for that which is out of
+all relation, and the latter specially, for that which is out of all
+relation as complete and finished, his opponent Cousin uses the latter
+term in a wider sense, as synonymous with the former, and the _infinite_
+as coextensive with both. This, however, does not affect the validity of
+Hamilton's argument. For if it can be shown that the absolute and the
+infinite (in Hamilton's sense) are both inconceivable, the unconditioned
+(or absolute in Cousin's sense), which must be conceived as one or the
+other, is inconceivable also. Or, conversely, if it can be shown that the
+unconditioned, the unrelated in general, is inconceivable, it follows
+that the absolute and the infinite, as both involving the unrelated, are
+inconceivable also.
+
+We may now proceed with Mr. Mill's criticism. He says:--
+
+  "Absolute, in the sense in which, it stands related to Infinite,
+  means (conformably to its etymology) that which is finished or
+  completed. There are some things of which the utmost ideal amount
+  is a limited quantity, though a quantity never actually reached....
+  We may speak of absolutely, but not of infinitely, pure water. The
+  purity of water is not a fact of which, whatever degree we suppose
+  attained, there remains a greater beyond. It has an absolute limit:
+  it is capable of being finished or complete, in thought, if not in
+  reality."--(P. 34.)
+
+This criticism is either incorrect or _nihil ad rem_. If meant as a
+statement of Hamilton's use of the term, it is incorrect: _absolute_, in
+Hamilton's philosophy, does not mean simply "completed," but "out of
+relation as completed;" _i.e._, self-existent in its completeness, and
+not implying the existence of anything else. If meant in any other sense
+than Hamilton's, it is irrelevant. Can Mr. Mill really have believed that
+Schelling thought it necessary to invent an intellectual intuition out of
+time and out of consciousness, in order to contemplate "an ideal limited
+quantity," such as the complete purity of water?
+
+Mr. Mill continues:--
+
+  "Though the idea of Absolute is thus contrasted with that of
+  Infinite, the one is equally fitted with the other to be predicated
+  of God; but not in respect of the same attributes. There is no
+  incorrectness of speech in the phrase Infinite Power: because the
+  notion it expresses is that of a Being who has the power of doing
+  all things which we know or can conceive, and more. But in speaking
+  of knowledge, Absolute is the proper word, and not Infinite. The
+  highest degree of knowledge that can be spoken of with a meaning,
+  only amounts to knowing all that there is to be known: when that
+  point is reached, knowledge has attained its utmost limit. So of
+  goodness or justice: they cannot be more than perfect. There are
+  not infinite degrees of right. The will is either entirely right,
+  or wrong in different degrees."--(P. 35.)
+
+Surely, whatever Divine power can do, Divine knowledge can know as
+possible to be done. The one, therefore, must be as infinite as the
+other. And what of Divine goodness? An angel or a glorified saint is
+absolutely good in Mr. Mill's sense of the term. His "will is entirely
+right." Does Mr. Mill mean to say that there is no difference, even in
+degree, between the goodness of God and that of one of His creatures?
+But, even supposing his statement to be true, how is it relevant to the
+matter under discussion? Can Mr. Mill possibly be ignorant that all these
+attributes are relations; that the Absolute in Hamilton's sense, "the
+unconditionally limited," is not predicable of God at all; and that when
+divines and philosophers speak of the absolute nature of God, they mean a
+nature in which there is no distinction of attributes at all?
+
+Mr. Mill then proceeds to give a summary of Hamilton's arguments against
+Cousin, preparatory to refuting them. In the course of this summary he
+says:--
+
+  "Let me ask, _en passant_, where is the necessity for supposing
+  that, if the Absolute, or, to speak plainly, if God, is only known
+  to us in the character of a cause, he must therefore 'exist merely
+  as a cause,' and be merely 'a mean towards an end?' It is surely
+  possible to maintain that the Deity is known to us only as he who
+  feeds the ravens, without supposing that the Divine Intelligence
+  exists solely in order that the ravens may be fed."[AN]--(P.
+  42.)
+
+ [AN]  In a note to this passage, Mr. Mill makes some sarcastic
+       comments on an argument of Hamilton's against Cousin's
+       theory that God is necessarily determined to create. "On
+       this hypothesis," says Hamilton, "God, as necessarily
+       determined to pass from absolute essence to relative
+       manifestation, is determined to pass either from the
+       better to the worse, or from the worse to the better."
+       Mr. Mill calls this argument "a curiosity of
+       dialectics," and answers, "Perfect wisdom would have
+       begun to will the new state at the precise moment when
+       it began to be better than the old." Hamilton is not
+       speaking of states of things, but of states of the
+       Divine nature, as creative or not creative; and Mr.
+       Mill's argument, to refute Hamilton, must suppose a time
+       when the new nature of God begins to be better than the
+       old! Mr. Mill would perhaps have spoken of Hamilton's
+       argument with more respect had he known that it is taken
+       from Plato.
+
+On this we would remark, _en passant_, that this is precisely
+Hamilton's own doctrine, that the sphere of our belief is more extensive
+than that of our knowledge. The purport of Hamilton's argument is to show
+that the Absolute, as conceived by Cousin, is not a true Absolute
+(_Infinito-Absolute_), and therefore does not represent the real nature
+of God. His argument is this: "Cousin's Absolute exists merely as a
+cause: God does not exist merely as a cause: therefore Cousin's Absolute
+is not God." Mr. Mill actually mistakes the position which Hamilton is
+opposing for that which he is maintaining. Such an error does not lead
+us to expect much from his subsequent refutation.
+
+His first criticism is a curious specimen of his reading in philosophy.
+He says:--
+
+  "When the True or the Beautiful are spoken of, the phrase is meant
+  to include all things whatever that are true, or all things
+  whatever that are beautiful. If this rule is good for other
+  abstractions, it is good for the Absolute. The word is devoid of
+  meaning unless in reference to predicates of some sort.... If we
+  are told, therefore, that there is some Being who is, or which is,
+  the Absolute,--not something absolute, but the Absolute
+  itself,--the proposition can be understood in no other sense than
+  that the supposed Being possesses in absolute completeness _all_
+  predicates; is absolutely good and absolutely bad; absolutely wise
+  and absolutely stupid; and so forth."[AO]--(P. 43.)
+
+ [AO]  In support of this position, Mr. Mill cites Hegel--"What
+       kind of an absolute Being is that which does not contain
+       in itself all that is actual, even evil included?" We
+       are not concerned to defend Hegel's position; but he was
+       not quite so absurd as to mean what Mr. Mill supposes
+       him to have meant. Does not Mr. Mill know that it was
+       one of Hegel's fundamental positions, that the Divine
+       nature cannot be expressed by a plurality of
+       predicates?
+
+Plato expressly distinguishes between "the beautiful" and "things that
+are beautiful," as the One in contrast to the Many--the Real in contrast
+to the Apparent.[AP] It is, of course, quite possible that Plato may be
+wrong, and Mr. Mill right; but the mere fact of their antagonism is
+sufficient to show that the meaning of "the phrase" need not be what Mr.
+Mill supposes it must be. In fact, "the Absolute" in philosophy always
+has meant the One as distinguished from the Many, not the One as
+including the Many. But, as applied to Sir W. Hamilton, Mr. Mill's
+remarks on "the Absolute," and his subsequent remarks on "the Infinite,"
+not only misrepresent Hamilton's position, but exactly reverse it.
+Hamilton maintains that the terms "absolute" and "infinite" are perfectly
+intelligible as abstractions, as much so as "relative" and "finite;" for
+"correlatives suggest each other," and the "knowledge of contradictories
+is one;" but he denies that a concrete thing or object can be positively
+conceived as absolute or infinite. Mr. Mill represents him as only
+proving that the "unmeaning abstractions are unknowable,"--abstractions
+which Hamilton does not assert to be unmeaning; and which he regards as
+knowable in the only sense in which such abstractions can be known, viz.,
+by understanding the meaning of their names.[AQ]
+
+ [AP]  _Republic_, book v., p. 479.
+
+ [AQ]  This confusion between conceiving a concrete thing and
+       knowing the meaning of abstract terms is as old as
+       Toland's _Christianity not Mysterious_, and, indeed, has
+       its germ, though not its development, in the teaching of
+       his assumed master, Locke. Locke taught that all our
+       knowledge is founded on simple ideas, and that a complex
+       idea is merely an accumulation of simple ones. Hence
+       Toland maintained that no object could be mysterious or
+       inconceivable if the terms in which its several
+       attributes are expressed have ideas corresponding to
+       them. But, in point of fact, no simple idea can be
+       conceived as an object by itself, though the word by
+       which it is signified has a perfectly intelligible
+       meaning. I cannot, _e.g._, conceive whiteness by itself,
+       though I can conceive a white wall, _i.e._, whiteness in
+       combination with other attributes in a concrete object.
+       To conceive attributes as coexisting, however, we must
+       conceive them as coexisting in a certain manner; for an
+       object of conception is not a mere heap of ideas, but an
+       organized whole, whose constituent ideas exist in a
+       particular combination with and relation to each other.
+       To conceive, therefore, we must not only be able to
+       apprehend each idea separately in the abstract, but also
+       the manner in which they may possibly exist in
+       combination with each other.
+
+  "Something infinite," says Mr. Mill, "is a conception which, like
+  most of our complex ideas, contains a negative element, but which
+  contains positive elements also. Infinite space, for instance; is
+  there nothing positive in that? The negative part of this
+  conception is the absence of bounds. The positive are, the idea of
+  space, and of space greater than any finite space."--(P. 45.)
+
+This definition of _infinite space_ is exactly that which Descartes
+gives us of _indefinite extension_,--"Ita quia non possumus imaginari
+extensionem tam magnam, quin intelligamus adhuc majorem esse posse,
+dicemus magnitudinem rerum possibilium esse indefinitam."[AR] So too,
+Cudworth,--"There appeareth no sufficient ground for this positive
+infinity of space; we being certain of no more than this, that be the
+world or any figurative body never so great, it is not impossible but that
+it might be still greater and greater without end. Which _indefinite
+increasableness_ of body and space seems to be mistaken for a _positive
+infinity_ thereof."[AS] And Locke, a philosopher for whom Mr. Mill
+will probably have more respect than for Descartes or Cudworth, writes
+more plainly: "To have actually in the mind the idea of a space infinite,
+is to suppose the mind already passed over, and actually to have a view
+of all those repeated ideas of space, which an endless repetition can
+never totally represent to it,--which carries in it a plain
+contradiction."[AT] Mr. Mill thus unwittingly illustrates, in his own
+person, the truth of Hamilton's remark, "If we dream of effecting this
+[conceiving the infinite in time or space], we only deceive ourselves by
+substituting the _indefinite_ for the infinite, than which no two notions
+can be more opposed." In fact, Mr. Mill does not seem to be aware that
+what the mathematician calls _infinite_, the metaphysician calls
+_indefinite_, and that arguments drawn from the mathematical use of the
+term _infinite_ are wholly irrelevant to the metaphysical. How, indeed,
+could it be otherwise? Can any man suppose that, when the Divine
+attributes are spoken of as infinite, it is meant that they are
+indefinitely increasable?[AU]
+
+ [AR]  _Principia_, i., 26.
+
+ [AS]  _Intellectual System_, ed. Harrison, vol. iii., p. 131.
+
+ [AT]  _Essay_, ii., 17, 7.
+
+ [AU]  One of the ablest mathematicians, and the most
+       persevering Hamiltono-mastix of the day, maintains the
+       applicability of the metaphysical notion of infinity to
+       mathematical magnitudes; but with an assumption which
+       unintentionally vindicates Hamilton's position more
+       fully than could have been done by a professed disciple.
+       "I shall assume," says Professor De Morgan, in a paper
+       recently printed among the _Transactions of the
+       Cambridge Philosophical Society_, "the notion of
+       infinity and of its reciprocal infinitesimal: that a
+       line can be conceived infinite, and therefore having
+       points at an infinite distance. Image apart, which we
+       cannot have, it seems to me clear that a line of
+       infinite length, without points at an infinite distance,
+       is a contradiction." Now it is easy to show, by mere
+       reasoning, without any image, that this assumption is
+       equally a contradiction. For if space is finite, every
+       line in space must be finite also; and if space is
+       infinite, every point in space must have infinite space
+       beyond it in every direction, and therefore cannot be at
+       the greatest possible distance from another point. Or
+       thus: Any two points in space are the extremities of the
+       line connecting them; but an infinite line has no
+       extremities; therefore no two points in space can be
+       connected together by an infinite line.
+
+In fact, it is the "concrete reality," the "something infinite," and not
+the mere abstraction of infinity, which is only conceivable as a
+negation. Every "something" that has ever been intuitively present to my
+consciousness is a something finite. When, therefore, I speak of a
+"something infinite," I mean a something existing in a different manner
+from all the "somethings" of which I have had experience in intuition.
+Thus it is apprehended, not positively, but negatively--not directly by
+what it is, but indirectly by what it is not. A negative idea is not
+negative because it is expressed by a negative term, but because it has
+never been realised in intuition. If infinity, as applied to space, means
+the same thing as being greater than any finite space, both conceptions
+are equally positive or equally negative. If it does not mean the same
+thing, then, in conceiving a space greater than any finite space, we do
+not conceive an infinite space.
+
+Mr. Mill's next string of criticisms may be very briefly dismissed.
+First, Hamilton does _not_, as Mr. Mill asserts, say that "the
+Unconditioned is inconceivable, because it includes both the Infinite and
+the Absolute, and these are contradictory of one another." His argument
+is a common disjunctive syllogism. The unconditioned, if conceivable at
+all, must be conceived _either_ as the absolute _or_ as the infinite;
+neither of these is possible; therefore the unconditioned is not
+conceivable at all. Nor, secondly, is Sir W. Hamilton guilty of the
+"strange confusion of ideas" which Mr. Mill ascribes to him, when he says
+that the Absolute, as being absolutely One, cannot be known under the
+conditions of plurality and difference. The absolute, as such, must be
+out of all relation, and consequently cannot be conceived in the relation
+of plurality. "The plurality required," says Mr. Mill, "is not within the
+thing itself, but is made up between itself and other things." It is, in
+fact, both; but even granting Mr. Mill's assumption, what is a "plurality
+between a thing and other things" but a relation between them? There is
+undoubtedly a "strange confusion of ideas" in this paragraph; but the
+confusion is not on the part of Sir W. Hamilton. "Again," continues Mr.
+Mill, "even if we concede that a thing cannot be known at all unless
+known as plural, does it follow that it cannot be known as plural because
+it is also One? Since when have the One and the Many been incompatible
+things, instead of different aspects of the same thing?... If there is
+any meaning in the words, must not Absolute Unity be Absolute Plurality
+likewise?" Mr. Mill's "since when?" may be answered in the words of
+Plato:--"[Greek: Ouden emoige atopon dokei heinai ei hen hapanta
+apophainei tis t� metechein� tou henos kai tauta tauta polla t�
+pl�thous au metechein; all' ei ho estin hen, auto touto polla apodeixei,
+kai au ta polla d� hen, touto �d� thaumasomai.]"[AV] Here we are
+expressly told that "absolute unity" cannot be "absolute plurality." Mr.
+Mill may say that Plato is wrong; but he will hardly go so far as to say
+that there is no meaning in his words. In point of fact, however, it is
+Mr. Mill who is in error, and not Plato. In different relations, no
+doubt, the same concrete object may be regarded as one or as many. The
+same measure is one foot or twelve inches; the same sum is one shilling
+or twelve pence; but it no more follows that "absolute unity must be
+absolute plurality likewise," than it follows from the above instances
+that one is equal to twelve. And, thirdly, when Mr. Mill accuses Sir W.
+Hamilton of departing from his own meaning of the term _absolute_, in
+maintaining that the Absolute cannot be a Cause, he only shows that he
+does not himself know what Hamilton's meaning is. "If Absolute," he says,
+"means finished, perfected, completed, may there not be a finished,
+perfected, and completed Cause?" Hamilton's Absolute is that which is
+"_out of relation_, as finished, perfect, complete;" and a Cause, as
+such, is both in relation and incomplete. It is in relation to its
+effect; and it is incomplete without its effect. Finally, when Mr. Mill
+charges Sir W. Hamilton with maintaining "that extension and figure are
+of the essence of matter, and perceived as such by intuition," we must
+briefly reply that Hamilton does no such thing. He is not speaking of the
+essence of matter _per se_, but only of matter as apprehended in relation
+to us.
+
+ [AV]  _Parmenides_, p. 129.
+
+Mr. Mill concludes this chapter with an attempt to discover the meaning
+of Hamilton's assertion, "to think is to condition." We have already
+explained what Hamilton meant by this expression; and we recur to the
+subject now, only to show the easy manner in which Mr. Mill manages to
+miss the point of an argument with the clue lying straight before him.
+"Did any," he says (of those who say that the Absolute is thinkable),
+"profess to think it in any other manner than by distinguishing it from
+other things?" Now this is the very thing which, according to Hamilton,
+Schelling actually did. Mr. Mill does not attempt to show that Hamilton
+is wrong in his interpretation of Schelling, nor, if he is right, what
+were the reasons which led Schelling to so paradoxical a position: he
+simply assumes that no man could hold Schelling's view, and there is an
+end of it.[AW] Hamilton's purpose is to reassert in substance the
+doctrine which Kant maintained, and which Schelling denied; and the
+natural way to ascertain his meaning would be by reference to these two
+philosophers. But this is not the method of Mr. Mill, here or elsewhere.
+He generally endeavours to ascertain Hamilton's meaning by ranging the
+wide field of possibilities. He tells us what a phrase means in certain
+authors of whom Hamilton is not thinking, or in reference to certain
+matters which Hamilton is not discussing; but he hardly ever attempts to
+trace the history of Hamilton's own view, or the train of thought by
+which it suggested itself to his mind. And the result of this is, that
+Mr. Mill's interpretations are generally in the potential mood. He wastes
+a good deal of conjecture in discovering what Hamilton might have meant,
+when a little attention in the right quarter would have shown what he did
+mean.
+
+ [AW]  Mr. Mill does not expressly name Schelling in this
+       sentence: but he does so shortly afterwards; and his
+       remark is of the same character with the previous one.
+       "Even Schelling," he says, "was not so gratuitously
+       absurd as to deny that the Absolute must be known
+       according to the capacities of that which knows
+       it--though he was forced to invent a special capacity
+       for the purpose." But if this capacity is an "invention"
+       of Schelling's, and if he was "forced" to invent it,
+       Hamilton's point is proved. To think, according to all
+       the real operations of thought which consciousness makes
+       known to us, is to condition. And the faculty of the
+       unconditioned is an invention of Schelling's, not known
+       to consciousness. In other words: all our real faculties
+       bear witness to the truth of Hamilton's statement; and
+       the only way of controverting it is to invent an
+       imaginary faculty for the purpose.
+
+The third feature of Hamilton's philosophy which we charged Mr. Mill with
+misunderstanding, is the distinction between Knowledge and Belief. In the
+early part of this article, we endeavoured to explain the true nature of
+this distinction; we have now only a very limited space to notice Mr.
+Mill's criticisms on it. Hamilton, he says, admitted "a second source of
+intellectual conviction called Belief." Now Belief is not a "source" of
+any conviction, but the conviction itself. No man would say that he is
+convinced of the truth of a proposition _because_ he believes it; his
+belief in its truth is the same thing as his conviction of its truth.
+Belief, then, is not a source of conviction, but a conviction having
+sources of its own. The question is, have we legitimate sources of
+conviction, distinct from those which constitute Knowledge properly so
+called? Now here it should be remembered that the distinction is not one
+invented by Hamilton to meet the exigencies of his own system. He
+enumerates as many as twenty-two authors, of the most various schools of
+philosophy, who all acknowledged it before him. Such a concurrence is no
+slight argument in favour of the reality of the distinction. We do not
+say that these writers, or Hamilton himself, have always expressed this
+distinction in the best language, or applied it in the best manner; but
+we say that it is a true distinction, and that it is valid for the
+principal purpose to which Hamilton applied it.
+
+We do not agree with all the details of Hamilton's application. We do not
+agree with him, though he is supported by very eminent authorities, in
+classifying our conviction of axiomatic principles as _belief_, and not
+as _knowledge_.[AX] But this question does not directly bear on Mr.
+Mill's criticism. The point of that criticism is, that Hamilton, by
+admitting a _belief_ in the infinite and unrelated, nullifies his own
+doctrine, that all _knowledge_ is of the finite and relative. Let us
+see.
+
+ [AX]  Hamilton's distinction is in principle the same as that
+       which we have given in our previous remarks (pp. 18,
+       19). He says, "A conviction is incomprehensible when
+       there is merely given to us in consciousness--_That its
+       object is_ ([Greek: hoti esti]), and when we are unable
+       to comprehend through a higher notion or belief _Why or
+       How it is_ ([Greek: dioti esti])."--(Reid's Works, p.
+       754.) We would distinguish between _why_ and _how_,
+       between [Greek: dioti], and [Greek: p�s]. We can give
+       no reason _why_ two straight lines cannot enclose a
+       space; but we can comprehend _how_ they cannot. We have
+       only to form the corresponding image, to see the manner
+       in which the two attributes coexist in one object. But
+       when I say that I believe in the existence of a
+       spiritual being who sees without eyes, I cannot conceive
+       the _manner_ in which seeing coexists with the absence
+       of the bodily organ of sight. We believe that the true
+       distinction between knowledge and belief may ultimately
+       be referred to the presence or absence of the
+       corresponding intuition; but to show this in the various
+       instances would require a longer dissertation than our
+       present limits will allow.
+
+We may believe _that_ a thing is, without being able to conceive _how_ it
+is. I believe _that_ God is a person, and also _that_ He is infinite;
+though I cannot conceive _how_ the attributes of personality and infinity
+exist together. All my knowledge of personality is derived from my
+consciousness of my own finite personality. I therefore believe in the
+coexistence of attributes in God, in some manner different from that in
+which they coexist in me as limiting each other: and thus I believe in
+the fact, though I am unable to conceive the manner. So, again, Kant
+brings certain counter arguments, to prove, on the one side, that the
+world has a beginning in time, and, on the other side, that it has not a
+beginning. Now suppose I am unable to refute either of these courses of
+argument, am I therefore compelled to have no belief at all? May I not
+say, I believe, in spite of Kant, _that_ the world has a beginning in
+time, though I am unable to conceive _how_ it can have so begun? What is
+this, again, but a belief in an absolute reality beyond the sphere of my
+relative knowledge?
+
+"I am not now considering," says Mr. Mill, "what it is that, in our
+author's opinion, we are bound to believe concerning the unknowable."
+Why, this was the very thing he ought to have considered, before
+pronouncing the position to be untenable, or to be irreconcilable with
+something else. Meanwhile, it is instructive to observe that Mr. Mill
+himself believes, or requires his readers to believe, something
+concerning the unknown. He does not know, or at any rate he does not tell
+his readers, what Hamilton requires them to believe concerning the
+unknowable; but he himself believes, and requires them to believe, that
+this unknown something is incompatible with the doctrine that knowledge
+is relative. We cannot regard this as a very satisfactory mode of
+refuting Hamilton's thesis.[AY]
+
+ [AY]  In a subsequent chapter (p. 120), Mr. Mill endeavours to
+       overthrow this distinction between Knowledge and Belief,
+       by means of Hamilton's own theory of Consciousness.
+       Hamilton maintains that we cannot be conscious of a
+       mental operation without being conscious of its object.
+       On this Mr. Mill retorts that if, as Hamilton admits, we
+       are conscious of a belief in the Infinite and the
+       Absolute, we must be conscious of the Infinite and the
+       Absolute themselves; and such consciousness is
+       Knowledge. The fallacy of this retort is transparent.
+       The immediate object of Belief is a _proposition_ which
+       I hold to be true, not a _thing_ apprehended in an act
+       of conception. I believe in an infinite God; _i.e._, I
+       believe _that_ God is infinite: I believe that the
+       attributes which I ascribe to God exist in Him in an
+       infinite degree. Now, to believe this proposition, I
+       must, of course, be conscious of its meaning; but I am
+       not therefore conscious of the Infinite God as an object
+       of conception; for this would require further an
+       apprehension of the manner in which these infinite
+       attributes coexist so as to form one object. The whole
+       argument of this eighth chapter is confused, owing to
+       Mr. Mill not having distinguished between those passages
+       in which Sir W. Hamilton is merely using an _argumentum
+       ad hominem_ in relation to Reid, and those in which he
+       is reasoning from general principles.
+
+But if Mr. Mill is unjust towards the distinction between Knowledge and
+Belief, as held by Sir W. Hamilton, he makes ample amends to the injured
+theory in the next chapter, by enlarging the province of credibility far
+beyond any extent which Hamilton would have dreamed of claiming for it.
+Conceivability or inconceivability, he tells us, are usually dependent on
+association; and it is quite possible that, under other associations, we
+might be able to conceive, and therefore to believe, anything short of
+the direct contradiction that the same thing is and is not. It is not in
+itself incredible, that a square may at the same time be round, that two
+straight lines may enclose a space, or even that two and two may make
+five.[AZ] But whatever concessions Mr. Mill may make on this point, he
+is at least fully determined that Sir W. Hamilton shall derive no benefit
+from them; for he forthwith proceeds to charge Sir William with confusing
+three distinct senses of the term _conception_--a confusion which exists
+solely in his own imagination,[BA]--and to assert that the Philosophy
+of the Conditioned is entirely founded on a mistake, inasmuch as infinite
+space on the one hand, and, on the other, both an absolute minimum and an
+infinite divisibility of space, are perfectly conceivable. With regard to
+the former of these two assertions, Mr. Mill's whole argument is
+vitiated, as we have already shown, by his confusion between _infinite_
+and _indefinite_; but it is worth while to quote one of his special
+instances in this chapter, as a specimen of the kind of reasoning which
+an eminent writer on logic can sometimes employ. In reference to Sir W.
+Hamilton's assertion, that infinite space would require infinite time to
+conceive it, he says, "Let us try the doctrine upon a complex whole,
+short of infinite, such as the number 695,788. Sir W. Hamilton would not,
+I suppose, have maintained that this number is inconceivable. How long
+did he think it would take to go over every separate unit of this whole,
+so as to obtain a perfect knowledge of the exact sum, as different from
+all other sums, either greater or less?"
+
+ [AZ]  In reference to this last paradox, Mr. Mill quotes from
+       _Essays by a Barrister_: "There is a world in which,
+       whenever two pairs of things are either placed in
+       proximity or are contemplated together, a fifth thing is
+       immediately created and brought within the contemplation
+       of the mind engaged in putting two and two together....
+       In such a world surely two and two would make five. That
+       is, the result to the mind of contemplating two twos
+       would be to count five." The answer to this reasoning
+       has been already given by Archdeacon Lee in his Essay on
+       Miracles. The "five" in this case is not the sum of two
+       and two, but of two and two _plus_ the new creature,
+       _i.e._, of two and two _plus_ one.
+
+ [BA]  The sense in which Sir W. Hamilton himself uses the word
+       _conception_ is explained in a note to _Reid's Works_,
+       p. 377--namely, the combination of two or more
+       attributes in a _unity of representation_. The second
+       sense which Mr. Mill imagines is simply a mistake of his
+       own. When Hamilton speaks of being "unable to conceive
+       as possible," he does not mean, as Mr. Mill supposes,
+       physically possible under the law of gravitation or some
+       other law of matter, but mentally possible as a
+       representation or image; and thus the supposed second
+       sense is identical with the first. The third sense may
+       also be reduced to the first; for to conceive two
+       attributes as combined in one representation is to form
+       a notion subordinate to those of each attribute
+       separately. We do not say that Sir W. Hamilton has been
+       uniformly accurate in his application of the test of
+       conceivability; but we say that his inaccuracies, such
+       as they are, do not affect the theory of the
+       conditioned, and that in all the long extracts which Mr.
+       Mill quotes, with footnotes, indicating "first sense,"
+       "second sense," "third sense," the author's meaning may
+       be more accurately explained in the first sense only.
+
+It is marvellous that it should not have occurred to Mr. Mill, while he
+was writing this passage, "How comes this large number to be a 'whole' at
+all; and how comes it that 'this whole,' with all its units, can be
+written down by means of six digits?" Simply because of a conventional
+arrangement, by which a single digit, according to its position, can
+express, by one mark, tens, hundreds, thousands, &c., of units; and thus
+can exhaust the sum by dealing with its items in large masses. But how
+can such a process exhaust the infinite? We should like to know how long
+Mr. Mill thinks it would take to work out the following problem:--"If two
+figures can represent ten, three a hundred, four a thousand, five ten
+thousand, &c., find the number of figures required to represent
+infinity."[BB]
+
+ [BB]  Precisely the same misconception of Hamilton's position
+       occurs in Professor De Morgan's paper in the _Cambridge
+       Transactions_, to which we have previously referred. He
+       speaks (p. 13) of the "notion, which runs through many
+       writers, from Descartes to Hamilton, that the mind must
+       be big enough to _hold_ all it can conceive." This
+       notion is certainly not maintained by Hamilton, nor yet
+       by Descartes in the paragraph quoted by Mr. De Morgan;
+       nor, as far as we are aware, in any other part of his
+       works.
+
+Infinite divisibility stands or falls with infinite extension. In both
+cases Mr. Mill confounds infinity with indefiniteness. But with regard to
+an absolute minimum of space, Mr. Mill's argument requires a separate
+notice.
+
+  "It is not denied," he says, "that there is a portion of extension
+  which to the naked eye appears an indivisible point; it has been
+  called by philosophers the _minimum visibile_. This minimum we can
+  indefinitely magnify by means of optical instruments, making
+  visible the still smaller parts which compose it. In each
+  successive experiment there is still a _minimum visibile_, anything
+  less than which cannot be discovered with that instrument, but can
+  with one of a higher power. Suppose, now, that as we increase the
+  magnifying power of our instruments, and before we have reached the
+  limit of possible increase, we arrive at a stage at which that
+  which seemed the smallest visible space under a given microscope,
+  does not appear larger under one which, by its mechanical
+  construction, is adapted to magnify more, but still remains
+  apparently indivisible. I say, that if this happened, we should
+  believe in a minimum of extension; or if some _� priori_
+  metaphysical prejudice prevented us from believing it, we should at
+  least be enabled to conceive it."--(P. 84.)
+
+The natural conclusion of most men under such circumstances would be,
+that there was some fault in the microscope. But even if this conclusion
+were rejected, we presume Mr. Mill would allow that, under the supposed
+circumstances, the exact magnitude of the minimum of extension would be
+calculable. We have only to measure the _minimum visibile_, and know what
+is the magnifying power of our microscope, to determine the exact
+dimensions. Suppose, then, that we assign to it some definite
+magnitude--say the ten billionth part of an inch,--should we then
+conclude that it is impossible to conceive the twenty billionth part of
+an inch?--in other words, that we have arrived at a definite magnitude
+which has no conceivable half? Surely this is a somewhat rash concession
+to be made by a writer who has just told us that numbers may be conceived
+up to infinity; and therefore, of course, down to infinitesimality.
+
+Mr. Mill concludes this chapter with an assertion which, even by itself,
+is sufficient to show how very little he has attended to or understood
+the philosophy which he is attempting to criticise. "The law of Excluded
+Middle," he says, "as well as that of Contradiction, is common to all
+phenomena. But it is a doctrine of our author that these laws are true,
+and cannot but be known to be true, of Noumena likewise. It is not merely
+Space as cognisable by our senses, but Space as it is in itself, which he
+affirms must be either of unlimited or of limited extent" (p. 86). At
+this sentence we fairly stand aghast. "Space as it is in itself!" the
+Noumenon Space! Has Mr. Mill been all this while "examining" Sir William
+Hamilton's philosophy, in utter ignorance that the object of that
+philosophy is the "Conditioned in Time and _Space_;" that he accepts
+Kant's analysis of time and space as formal necessities of thought, but
+pronounces no opinion whatever as to whether time and space can exist as
+Noumena or not? It is the phenomenal space, "space as cognisable by our
+senses," which Sir W. Hamilton says must be either limited or unlimited:
+concerning the Noumenon Space, he does not hazard an opinion whether such
+a thing exists or not. He says, indeed (and this is probably what has
+misled Mr. Mill), that the laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded
+Middle, are laws of things as well as laws of thought;[BC] but he says
+nothing about these laws as predicating infinite or finite extension. On
+the contrary, he expressly classifies Space under the law of Relativity,
+the violation of which indicates what may exist, but what we are unable
+to conceive as existing. Briefly, the law of Excluded Middle (to take
+this instance alone) is a law of things only in its abstract form,
+"Everything must be A or not A" (_extended_, if you please, or _not
+extended_); but in its subordinate form, "Everything extended must be
+extended infinitely or finitely," it is only applicable, and only
+intended by Hamilton to be applied, to those _phenomena_ which are
+already given as extended in some degree.
+
+ [BC]  _Discussions_, p. 603.
+
+We have now examined the first six chapters of Mr. Mill's book,
+containing his remarks on that portion of Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy
+which he justly regards as comprising the most important of the doctrines
+which specially belong to Hamilton himself. The next chapter is an
+episode, in which Mr. Mill turns aside from Sir W. Hamilton to criticise
+Mr. Mansel's _Bampton Lectures_. As our limits do not permit us to carry
+on the argument at present through the remainder of Mr. Mill's remarks on
+Hamilton himself, we shall conclude our notice with a few words on this
+chapter, as closing the properly metaphysical portion of Mr. Mill's book,
+and as affording ample proof that, in this department of philosophy at
+least, Mr. Mill's powers of misapprehension do not cease when Sir W.
+Hamilton is no longer their object.
+
+Mr. Mill's method of criticism makes it generally necessary to commence
+with a statement of the criticised theory as it really is, before
+proceeding to his exposition of it as it is not. The present instance
+offers no exception to this rule. Mr. Mansel's argument may be briefly
+stated as follows. The primary and essential conception of God,
+imperatively demanded by our moral and religious consciousness, is that
+of a _person_. But personality implies intellectual and moral attributes;
+and the only direct and immediate knowledge which we have of such
+attributes is derived from the testimony of self-consciousness, bearing
+witness to their existence in a certain manner in ourselves. But when we
+endeavour to transfer the conception of personality, thus obtained, to
+the domain of theology, we meet with certain difficulties, which, while
+they are not sufficient to hinder us from _believing_ in the Divine
+Personality as a fact, yet hinder us from _conceiving_ the manner of its
+existence, and prevent us from exhibiting our belief as a philosophical
+conclusion, proved by irrefragable reasoning and secured against all
+objections. These difficulties are occasioned, on the one hand, by the
+so-called Philosophy of the Unconditioned, which in all ages has shown a
+tendency towards Pantheism, and which, in one of its latest and most
+finished manifestations, announces itself as the exhibition of God as He
+is in His eternal nature before creation; and, on the other hand, by the
+limitations and conditions to which our own personality is subject, and
+which, as we have pointed out in the earlier part of this article, have,
+from the very beginning of Christian theology, prevented theologians from
+accepting the limited personality of man as an exact image and
+counterpart of the unlimited personality of God. These difficulties Mr.
+Mansel endeavours to meet in two ways. On the one side, he maintains, in
+common with Sir W. Hamilton, that the Philosophy of the Unconditioned, by
+reason of its own incongruities and self-contradictions, has no claim to
+be accepted as a competent witness in the matter; and on the other side,
+he maintains, in common with many theologians before him, that human
+personality cannot be assumed as an exact copy of the Divine, but only as
+that which is most nearly analogous to it among finite things. But these
+two positions, if admitted, involve a corresponding practical conclusion
+as regards the criterion of religious truth or falsehood. Were we
+capable, either, on the one hand, of a clear conception of the
+Unconditioned, or, on the other, of a direct intuition of the Divine
+Attributes as objects of consciousness, we might be able to construct,
+deductively or inductively, an exact science of Theology. As it is, we
+are compelled to reason by analogy; and analogy furnishes only
+probabilities, varying, it may be, from slight presumptions up to moral
+certainties, but whose weight, in any given case, can only be determined
+by comparison with other evidences. There are three distinct sources from
+which we may form a judgment about the ways of God--first, from our own
+moral and intellectual consciousness, by which we judge _� priori_ of
+what God ought to do in a given case, by determining what we should think
+it wise or right for ourselves to do in a similar case; secondly, from
+the constitution and course of nature, from which we may learn by
+experience what God's providence in certain cases actually is; and
+thirdly, from revelation, attested by its proper evidences. Where these
+three agree in their testimony (as in the great majority of cases they
+do) we have the moral certainty which results from the harmony of all
+accessible evidences: where they appear to differ, we have no right at
+once to conclude that the second or the third must give way to the first,
+and not _vice vers�_; because we have no right to assume that the first
+alone is infallible. In the author's own words: "The lesson to be learnt
+from an examination of the Limits of Religious Thought is not that man's
+judgments are _worthless_ in relation to Divine things, but that they are
+_fallible_: and the probability of error in any particular case can never
+be fairly estimated without giving their full weight to all collateral
+considerations. We are indeed bound to believe that a Revelation given by
+God can never contain anything that is really unwise or unrighteous; but
+we are not always capable of estimating exactly the wisdom or
+righteousness of particular doctrines or precepts. And we are bound to
+bear in mind that _exactly in proportion to the strength of the remaining
+evidence for the Divine origin of a religion, is the probability that we
+may be mistaken in supposing this or that portion of its contents to be
+unworthy of God._ Taken in conjunction, the two arguments may confirm or
+correct each other: taken singly and absolutely, each may vitiate the
+result which should follow from their joint application."[BD]
+
+ [BD]  _Bampton Lectures_, p. 156, 4th edition.
+
+In criticising the first part of this argument--that which is directed
+against the deductive philosophy of the Unconditioned--Mr. Mill manifests
+the same want of acquaintance with its meanings, and with the previous
+history of the question; which he had before exhibited in his attack on
+Sir W. Hamilton. He begins by finding fault with the definition of the
+Absolute, which Mr. Mansel (herein departing, and purposely departing,
+from Sir W. Hamilton's use of the term) defines as "that which exists in
+and by itself, having no necessary relation to any other Being." On this,
+Mr. Mill remarks: "The first words of his definition would serve for the
+description of a Noumenon; but Mr. Mansel's Absolute is only meant to
+denote one Being, identified with God, and God is not the only Noumenon."
+The description of a Noumenon! This is almost equal to the discovery of a
+Noumenon Space. Does Mr. Mill really suppose that all noumena are
+self-existent? A _noumenon_ (in the sense in which we suppose Mr. Mill to
+understand the term, for it has different meanings in different
+philosophies) implies an existence out of relation to the human
+mind.[BE] But is this the same as being out of all relation whatever,
+as existing "in and by itself?" Does Mr. Mill mean to say that a
+creature, whether perceived by us or not, has no relation to its Creator?
+But Mr. Mill, as we have seen before, is not much at home when he gets
+among "noumena." We must proceed to his criticism of the second part of
+the definition,--"having no necessary relation to any other being." Of
+these words he says, that "they admit of two constructions. The words in
+their natural sense only mean, _capable of existing out of relation to
+anything else_. The argument requires that they should mean _incapable of
+existing in relation with anything else_." And why is this non-natural
+sense to be forced upon very plain words? Because, says Mr. Mill,--
+
+ [BE]  Strictly speaking, the term _noumenon_, as meaning that
+       which can be apprehended only by the intellect, implies
+       a relation to the intellect apprehending it; and in this
+       sense [Greek: to nooumenon] is opposed by Plato to
+       [Greek: to hor�menon]--the object of intellect to the
+       object of sight. But as the intellect was supposed to
+       take cognisance of things as they are, in opposition to
+       the sensitive perception of things as they appear, the
+       term _noumenon_ became synonymous with _thing in itself_
+       ([Greek: to hon kath' hauto]). And this meaning is
+       retained in the Kantian philosophy, in which the
+       _noumenon_ is identical with the _Ding an sich_. But as
+       Kant denied to the human intellect any immediate
+       intuition of things as they are (though such an
+       intuition may be possible to a superhuman intellect),
+       hence the term _noumenon_ in the Kantian philosophy is
+       opposed to all of which the human intellect can take
+       positive cognisance. Hamilton, in this respect, agrees
+       with Kant. But neither Kant nor Hamilton, in opposing
+       the _thing in itself_ to the _phenomenon_, meant to
+       imply that the former is necessarily self-existent, and
+       therefore uncreated.
+
+  "In what manner is a possible existence out of all relation,
+  incompatible with the notion of a cause? Have not causes a possible
+  existence apart from their effects? Would the sun, for example, not
+  exist if there were no earth or planets for it to illuminate? Mr.
+  Mansel seems to think that what is capable of existing out of
+  relation, cannot possibly be conceived or known in relation. But
+  this is not so.... Freed from this confusion of ideas, Mr. Mansel's
+  argument resolves itself into this,--The same Being cannot be
+  thought by us both as Cause and as Absolute, because a Cause _as
+  such_ is not Absolute, and Absolute, as such, is not a Cause; which
+  is exactly as if he had said that Newton cannot be thought by us
+  both as an Englishman and as a mathematician, because an
+  Englishman, as such, is not a mathematician, nor a mathematician,
+  as such, an Englishman."--(P. 92.)
+
+The "confusion of ideas" is entirely of Mr. Mill's own making, and is
+owing to his having mutilated the argument before criticising it. The
+argument in its original form consists of two parts; the first intended
+to show that the Absolute is not conceived _as such_ in being conceived
+as a Cause; the second to show that the Absolute cannot be conceived
+under different aspects at different times--first as Absolute, and then
+as Cause. It was the impossibility of this latter alternative which drove
+Cousin to the hypothesis of a necessary causation from all eternity. Mr.
+Mill entirely omits the latter part of the argument, and treats the
+former part as if it were the whole. The part criticised by Mr. Mill is
+intended to prove exactly what it does prove, and no more; namely, that a
+cause _as such_ is not the absolute, and that to know a cause _as such_
+is not to know the absolute. We presume Mr. Mill himself will admit that
+to know Newton as a mathematician is not to know him as an Englishman.
+Whether he can be known separately as both, and whether the Absolute in
+this respect is a parallel case, depends on another consideration, which
+Mr. Mill has not noticed. The continuation of Mr. Mill's criticism is
+equally confused. He says:--
+
+  "The whole of Mr. Mansel's argument for the inconceivability of the
+  Infinite and of the Absolute is one long _ignoratio elenchi_. It
+  has been pointed out in a former chapter that the words Absolute
+  and Infinite have no real meaning, unless we understand by them
+  that which is absolute or infinite in some given attribute; as
+  space is called infinite, meaning that it is infinite in extension;
+  and as God is termed infinite, in the sense of possessing infinite
+  power, and absolute in the sense of absolute goodness or knowledge.
+  It has also been shown that Sir W. Hamilton's arguments for the
+  unknowableness of the Unconditioned do not prove that we cannot
+  know an object which is absolute or infinite in some specific
+  attribute, but only that we cannot know an abstraction called 'The
+  Absolute' or 'The Infinite,' which is supposed to have all
+  attributes at once."--(P. 93.)
+
+The fallacy of this criticism, as regards Sir W. Hamilton, has been
+already pointed out: as regards Mr. Mansel, it is still more glaring,
+inasmuch as that writer expressly states that he uses the term _absolute_
+in a different sense from that which Mr. Mill attributes to Sir W.
+Hamilton. When Mr. Mill charges Mr. Mansel with "undertaking to prove the
+impossibility" of conceiving "a Being _absolutely_ just or _absolutely_
+wise"[BF] (_i.e._, as he supposes, _perfectly_ just or wise), he
+actually forgets that he has just been criticising Mr. Hansel's
+definition of the Absolute, as something having a possible existence "out
+of all relation." Will Mr. Mill have the kindness to tell us what he
+means by goodness and knowledge "out of all relation;" _i.e._, a goodness
+and knowledge related to no object on which they can be exercised; a
+goodness which is good to nothing, a knowledge which knows nothing? Mr.
+Mill had better be cautious in talking about _ignoratio elenchi_.
+
+ [BF]  _Examination_, p. 95.
+
+From the Absolute, Mr. Mill proceeds to the Infinite; and here he commits
+the same mistake as before, treating a portion of an argument as if it
+were the whole, and citing a portion intended to prove one point as if it
+were intended to prove another. He cites a passage from Mr. Mansel, in
+which it is said that "the Infinite, if it is to be conceived at all,
+must be conceived as potentially everything and actually nothing; for if
+there is anything in general which it cannot become, it is thereby
+limited; and if there is anything in particular which it actually is, it
+is thereby excluded from being any other thing. But, again, it must also
+be conceived as actually everything and potentially nothing; for an
+unrealised potentiality is likewise a limitation. If the Infinite can be
+that which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as
+incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection. If it is actually
+everything, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be
+distinguished from anything else, and discerned as an object of
+consciousness." On this passage Mr. Mill remarks, "Can a writer be
+serious who bids us conjure up a conception of something which possesses
+infinitely all conflicting attributes, and because we cannot do this
+without contradiction, would have us believe that there is a
+contradiction in the idea of infinite goodness or infinite wisdom?" The
+answer to this criticism is very simple. The argument is not employed for
+the purpose which Mr. Mill supposes. It is employed to show that the
+metaphysical notion of the absolute-infinite, as the sum, potential or
+actual, of all possible existence, is inconceivable under the laws of
+human consciousness; and thus that the absolutely first existence,
+related to nothing and limited by nothing, the _ens realissimum_ of the
+older philosophers, the _pure being_ of the Hegelians, cannot be attained
+as a starting-point from which to deduce all relative and derived
+existence. How far the empirical conception of certain mental attributes,
+such as goodness or wisdom, derived in the first instance from our own
+personal consciousness, can be positively conceived as extended to
+infinity, is considered in a separate argument, which Mr. Mill does not
+notice.
+
+Mr. Mill continues, "Instead of 'the Infinite,' substitute 'an infinitely
+good Being' [_i.e._, substitute what is not intended], and Mr. Mansel's
+argument reads thus:--'If there is anything which an infinitely good
+Being cannot become--if he cannot become bad--that is a limitation, and
+the goodness cannot be infinite. If there is anything which an infinitely
+good Being actually is (namely, good), he is excluded from being any
+other thing, as being wise or powerful.'" To the first part of this
+objection we reply by simply asking, "Is becoming bad a 'higher
+perfection?'" To the second part we reply by Mr. Mill's favourite mode of
+reasoning--a parallel case. A writer asserts that a creature which is a
+horse is thereby excluded from being a dog; and that, in so far as it has
+the nature of a horse, it has not the nature of a dog. "What!" exclaims
+Mr. Mill, "is it not the nature of a dog to have four legs? and does the
+man mean to say that a horse has not four legs?" We venture respectfully
+to ask Mr. Mill whether he supposes that being wise is being "a thing,"
+and being good is being another "thing?"
+
+But, seriously, it is much to be wished that when a writer like Mr. Mill
+undertakes to discuss philosophical questions, he should acquire some
+slight acquaintance with the history of the questions discussed. Had this
+been done by our critic in the present case, it might possibly have
+occurred to him to doubt whether a doctrine supported by philosophers of
+such different schools of thought as Spinoza, Malebranche, Wolf, Kant,
+Schelling, could be quite such a piece of transparent nonsense as he
+supposes it to be. All these writers are cited in Mr. Mansel's note, as
+maintaining the theory that the Absolute is the _ens realissimum_, or sum
+of all existence; and their names might have saved Mr. Mill from the
+absurdity of supposing that by this expression was meant something
+"absolutely good and absolutely bad; absolutely wise and absolutely
+stupid; and so forth." The real meaning of the expression has been
+already sufficiently explained in our earlier remarks. The problem of the
+Philosophy of the Unconditioned, as sketched by Plato and generally
+adopted by subsequent philosophers, is, as we have seen, to ascend up to
+the first principle of all things, and thence to deduce, as from their
+cause, all dependent and derived existences. The Unconditioned, as the
+one first principle, must necessarily contain in itself, potentially or
+actually, all that is derived from it, and thus must comprehend, in
+embryo or in development, the sum of all existence. To reconcile this
+conclusion with the phenomenal existence of evil and imperfection, is the
+difficulty with which philosophy has had to struggle ever since
+philosophy began. The Manichean, by referring evil to an independent
+cause, denies the existence of an absolute first principle at all; the
+Leibnitzian, with his hypothesis of the best possible world, virtually
+sets bounds to the Divine omnipotence: the Pantheist identifies God with
+all actual existence, and either denies the real existence of evil at
+all, or merges the distinction between evil and good in some higher
+indifference. All these conclusions may be alike untenable, but all alike
+testify to the existence of the problem, and to the vast though
+unsuccessful efforts which man's reason has made to solve it.
+
+The reader may now, perhaps, understand the reason of an assertion which
+Mr. Mill regards as supremely absurd,--namely, that we must believe in
+the existence of an absolute and infinite Being, though unable to
+conceive the nature of such a Being. To believe in such a Being, is
+simply to believe that God made the world: to declare the nature of such
+a Being inconceivable, is simply to say that we do not know how the world
+was made. If we believe that God made the world, we must believe that
+there was a time when the world was not, and when God alone existed, out
+of relation to any other being. But the mode of that sole existence we
+are unable to conceive, nor in what manner the first act took place by
+which the absolute and self-existent gave existence to the relative and
+dependent. "The contradictions," says Mr. Mill, "which Mr. Mansel asserts
+to be involved in the notions, do not follow from an imperfect mode of
+apprehending the Infinite and the Absolute, but lie in the definitions of
+them, in the meaning of the words themselves." They do no such thing: the
+meaning of the words is perfectly intelligible, and is exactly what is
+expressed by their definitions: the contradictions arise from the attempt
+to combine the attributes expressed by the words in one representation
+with others, so as to form a positive object of consciousness. Where is
+the incongruity of saying, "I believe that a being exists possessing
+certain attributes, though I am unable in my present state of knowledge
+to conceive the manner of that existence?" Mr. Mill, at all events, is
+the last man in the world who has any right to complain of such a
+distinction--Mr. Mill, who considers it not incredible that in some part
+of the universe two straight lines may enclose a space, or two and two
+make five; though he is compelled to allow that under our present laws of
+thought, or, if he pleases, of association, we are unable to conceive how
+these things can be.
+
+It is wearisome work to wade through this mass of misconceptions; yet we
+must entreat the reader's patience a little longer, while we say a few
+words in conclusion on perhaps the greatest misconception of all--though
+that is bold language to use with regard to Mr. Mill's metaphysics,--at
+any rate, the one which he expresses in the most vehement language. Mr.
+Mansel, as we have said, asserts, as many others have asserted before
+him, that the relation between the communicable attributes of God and the
+corresponding attributes of man is one not of identity, but of analogy;
+that is to say, that the Divine attributes have the same relation to the
+Divine nature that the human attributes have to human nature. Thus, for
+example, there is a Divine justice and there is a human justice; but God
+is just as the Creator and Governor of the world, having unlimited
+authority over all His creatures and unlimited jurisdiction over all
+their acts; and man is just in certain special relations, as having
+authority over some persons and some acts only, so far as is required for
+the needs of human society. So, again, there is a Divine mercy and there
+is a human mercy; but God is merciful in such a manner as is fitting
+compatibly with the righteous government of the universe; and man is
+merciful in a certain limited range, the exercise of the attribute being
+guided by considerations affecting the welfare of society or of
+individuals. Or to take a more general case: Man has in himself a rule of
+right and wrong, implying subjection to the authority of a superior (for
+conscience has authority only as reflecting the law of God); while God
+has in Himself a rule of right and wrong, implying no higher authority,
+and determined absolutely by His own nature. The case is the same when we
+look at moral attributes, not externally, in their active manifestations,
+but internally, in their psychological constitution. If we do not
+attribute to God the same complex mental constitution of reason, passion,
+and will, the same relation to motives and inducements, the same
+deliberation and choice of alternatives, the same temporal succession of
+facts in consciousness, which we ascribe to man,--it will follow that
+those psychological relations between reason, will, and desire, which are
+implied in the conception of human action, cannot represent the Divine
+excellences in themselves, but can only illustrate them by analogies from
+finite things. And if man is liable to error in judging of the conduct of
+his fellow-men, in proportion as he is unable to place himself in their
+position, or to realise to himself their modes of thought and principles
+of action--if the child, for instance, is liable to error in judging the
+actions of the man,--or the savage of the civilised man,--surely there is
+far more room for error in men's judgment of the ways of God, in
+proportion as the difference between God and man is greater than the
+difference between a man and a child.
+
+This doctrine elicits from Mr. Mill the following extraordinary outburst
+of rhetoric:--
+
+  "If, instead of the glad tidings that there exists a Being in whom
+  all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive,
+  exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world
+  is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they
+  are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government,
+  except that 'the highest human morality which we are capable of
+  conceiving' does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will
+  bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this,
+  and at the same time call this being by the names which express and
+  affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will
+  not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one
+  thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him.
+  I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that
+  epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me
+  to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go."--(P. 103.)
+
+We will not pause to comment on the temper and taste of this declamation;
+we will simply ask whether Mr. Mill really supposes the word _good_ to
+lose all community of meaning, when it is applied, as it constantly is,
+to different persons among our "fellow-creatures," with express reference
+to their different duties and different qualifications for performing
+them? The duties of a father are not the same as those of a son; is the
+word therefore wholly equivocal when we speak of one person as a _good
+father_, and another as a _good son_? Nay, when we speak generally of a
+man as _good_, has not the epithet a tacit reference to human nature and
+human duties? and yet is there no community of meaning when the same
+epithet is applied to other Creatures? [Greek: H� aret� pros to ergon
+to oikeion]--the goodness of any being whatever has relation to the
+nature and office of that being. We may therefore test Mr. Mill's
+declamation by a parallel case. A wise and experienced father addresses a
+young and inexperienced son: "My son," he says, "there may be some of my
+actions which do not seem to you to be wise or good, or such as you would
+do in my place. Remember, however, that your duties are different from
+mine; that your knowledge of my duties is very imperfect; and that there
+may be things which you cannot now see to be wise and good, but which you
+may hereafter discover to be so." "Father," says the son, "your
+principles of action are not the same as mine; the highest morality which
+I can conceive at present does not sanction them; and as for believing
+that you are good in anything of which I do not plainly see the
+goodness,"--We will not repeat Mr. Mill's alternative; we will only ask
+whether it is not just possible that there may be as much difference
+between man and God as there is between a child and his father?
+
+This declamation is followed by a sneer, which is worth quoting, not on
+its own account, but as an evidence of the generosity with which Mr. Mill
+deals with the supposed motives of his antagonists, and of the accuracy
+of his acquaintance with the subject discussed. He says:--
+
+  "It is worthy of remark, that the doubt whether words applied to
+  God have their human signification, is only felt when the words
+  relate to his moral attributes; it is never heard of with regard to
+  his power. We are never told that God's omnipotence must not be
+  supposed to mean an infinite degree of the power we know in man and
+  nature, and that perhaps it does not mean that he is able to kill
+  us, or consign us to eternal flames. The Divine Power is always
+  interpreted in a completely human signification; but the Divine
+  Goodness and Justice must be understood to be such only in an
+  unintelligible sense. Is it unfair to surmise that this is because
+  those who speak in the name of God, have need of the human
+  conception of his power, since an idea which can overawe and
+  enforce obedience must address itself to real feelings; but are
+  content that his goodness should be conceived only as something
+  inconceivable, because they are so often required to teach
+  doctrines respecting him which conflict irreconcilably with all
+  goodness that we can conceive?"--(P. 104.)
+
+On the latter part of this paragraph we will not attempt to comment. But
+as regards the former part, we meet Mr. Mill's confident assertion with a
+direct denial, and take the opportunity of informing him that the
+conception of infinite Power has suggested the same difficulties; and has
+been discussed by philosophers and theologians in the same manner, as
+those of infinite Wisdom and infinite Goodness. Has Mr. Mill never heard
+of such questions as, Whether Omnipotence can reverse the past?--Whether
+God can do that which He does not will to do?--Whether God's perfect
+foreknowledge is compatible with his own perfect liberty?--Whether God
+could have made a better world than the existing one? Nay, has not our
+critic, in this very chapter, been arguing against Mr. Mansel on the
+question, whether the Absolute can be conceived as a Cause acting in
+time: and what is this but a form of the question, whether power, when
+predicated of God is exactly the same thing as power when predicated of
+man? Or why has it been said that creation _ex nihilo_--an absolutely
+first act of causation, is inconceivable by us, but from the
+impossibility of finding in human power an exact type of Divine power? To
+attribute discreditable motives to an opponent, even to account for
+unquestionable facts, is usually considered as an abuse of criticism.
+What shall we say when the facts are fictitious as well as the motives?
+With regard to Mr. Mansel, the only person who is included by name in
+this accusation, it is "worthy of remark," that the earliest mention of
+the obnoxious theory in his writings occurs in connection with a
+difficulty relating solely to the conception of infinite power, and not
+at all to the moral attributes of God.[BG]
+
+ [BG]  See _Prolegomena Logica_, p. 77 (2nd ed., p. 85.)
+
+Mr. Mill concludes this chapter with another instance of that _ignoratio
+elenchi_ which has been so abundantly manifested throughout his previous
+criticisms. His opponent, he allows, "would and does admit that the
+qualities as conceived by us bear _some likeness_ to the justice and
+goodness which belong to God, since man was made in God's image." But he
+considers that this "semi-concession" "destroys the whole fabric" of Mr.
+Mansel's argument. "The Divine goodness," he says, "which is said to be a
+different thing from human goodness, but of which the human conception of
+goodness is some imperfect reflexion or resemblance, does it agree with
+what men call goodness in the _essence_ of the quality--in what
+_constitutes_ it goodness? If it does, the 'Rationalists' are right; it
+is not illicit to reason from the one to the other. If not, the divine
+attribute, whatever else it may be, is not goodness, and ought not to be
+called by the name." Now the question really at issue is not whether the
+"Rationalist" argument is licit or illicit, but whether, in its lawful
+use, it is to be regarded as infallible or fallible. We have already
+quoted a portion of Mr. Mansel's language on this point; we will now
+quote two more passages, which, without any comment, will sufficiently
+show how utterly Mr. Mill has mistaken the purport of the argument which
+he has undertaken to examine.
+
+  "We do not certainly know the exact nature and operation of the
+  moral attributes of God: we can but infer and conjecture from what
+  we know of the moral attributes of man: and the analogy between the
+  Finite and the Infinite can never be so perfect as to preclude all
+  possibility of error in the process. But the possibility becomes
+  almost a certainty, when any one human faculty is elevated by
+  itself into an authoritative criterion of religious truth, without
+  regard to those collateral evidences by which its decisions may be
+  modified and corrected."[BH]... "Beyond question, every doubt
+  which our reason may suggest in matters of religion is entitled to
+  its due place in the examination of the evidences of religion; if
+  we will treat it as a part only, and not the whole; if we will not
+  insist on a positive solution of that which, it may be, is given us
+  for another purpose than to be solved. It is reasonable to believe
+  that, in matters of belief as well as of practice, God has not
+  thought fit to annihilate the free will of man, but has permitted
+  speculative difficulties to exist as the trial and the discipline
+  of sharp and subtle intellects, as He has permitted moral
+  temptations to form the trial and the discipline of strong and
+  eager passions.... We do not doubt that the conditions of our moral
+  trial tend towards good, and not towards evil; that human nature,
+  even in its fallen state, bears traces of the image of its Maker,
+  and is fitted to be an instrument in His moral government. And we
+  believe this, notwithstanding the existence of passions and
+  appetites which, isolated and uncontrolled, appear to lead in an
+  opposite direction. Is it then more reasonable to deny that a
+  system of revealed religion, whose unquestionable tendency as a
+  whole is to promote the glory of God and the welfare of mankind,
+  can have proceeded from the same Author, merely because we may be
+  unable to detect the same character in some of its minuter
+  features, viewed apart from the system to which they
+  belong?"[BI]
+
+ [BH]  _Bampton Lectures_, p. 157, Fourth Edition.
+
+ [BI]  _Bampton Lectures_, p. 166, Fourth Edition.
+
+Surely this is very different from denouncing all reasoning from human
+goodness to Divine as "illicit." To take a parallel case. The manufacture
+of gunpowder is a dangerous process, and, if carried on without due
+precautions, is very likely to lead to disastrous consequences. Surely it
+is one thing to point out what precautions are necessary, and what evils
+are to be apprehended from the neglect of them, and another to forbid the
+manufacture altogether. Mr. Mill does not seem to see the difference.
+
+We have now considered in detail all that part of Mr. Mill's book which
+is devoted to the examination of Sir W. Hamilton's chief and most
+characteristic doctrines--those which constitute the Philosophy of the
+Conditioned. The remainder of the work, which deals chiefly with
+subordinate questions of psychology and logic, contains much from which
+we widely dissent, but which we cannot at present submit to a special
+examination. Nor is it necessary, so far as Sir W. Hamilton's reputation
+is concerned, that we should do so. If the Philosophy of the Conditioned
+is really nothing better than the mass of crudities and blunders which
+Mr. Mill supposes it to be, the warmest admirers of Hamilton will do
+little in his behalf, even should they succeed in vindicating some of the
+minor details of his teaching. If, on the other hand, it can be shown, as
+we have attempted to show, that Mr. Mill is utterly incapable of dealing
+with Hamilton's philosophy in its higher branches, his readers may be
+left to judge for themselves whether he is implicitly to be trusted as
+regards the lower. In point of fact, they will do Mr. Mill no injustice,
+if they regard the above specimens as samples of his entire criticism. We
+gladly except, as of a far higher order, those chapters in which he is
+content with stating his own views; but in the perpetual baiting of Sir
+W. Hamilton, which occupies the greater part of the volume, we recognise,
+in general, the same captiousness and the same incompetence which we have
+so often had occasion to point out in the course of our previous
+remarks.
+
+It is, we confess, an unpleasant and an invidious task, to pick to
+pieces, bit by bit, the work of an author of high reputation. But Mr.
+Mill has chosen to put the question on this issue, and he has left those
+who dissent from him no alternative but to follow his example. He has
+tasked all the resources of minute criticism to destroy piece-meal the
+reputation of one who has hitherto borne an honoured name in philosophy:
+he has no right to complain if the same measure is meted to himself:--
+
+                  "Neque enim lex �quior ulla
+                Quam necis artifices arte perire sua."
+
+But it is not so much the justice as the necessity of the case which we
+would plead as our excuse. Mr. Mill's method of criticism has reduced the
+question to a very narrow compass. Either Sir W. Hamilton, instead of
+being a great philosopher, is the veriest blunderer that ever put pen to
+paper, or the blunders are Mr. Mill's own. To those who accept the first
+of these alternatives it must always remain a marvel how Sir W. Hamilton
+could ever have acquired that reputation which compels even his critic to
+admit that "he alone, of our metaphysicians of this and the preceding
+generation, has acquired, merely as such, an European celebrity;" how he
+could have been designated by his illustrious opponent, Cousin, as the
+"greatest critic of our age," or described by the learned Brandis as
+"almost unparalleled in the profound knowledge of ancient and modern
+philosophy." The marvel may perhaps disappear, should it be the case, as
+we believe it to be, that the second alternative is the true one.
+
+But even in this case, it should be borne in mind that the blow will by
+no means fall on Mr. Mill with the same weight with which he designed it
+to fall on the object of his criticism. Sir W. Hamilton had devoted his
+whole life to the study of metaphysics; he was probably more deeply read
+in that study than any of his contemporaries; and if all his reading
+could produce nothing better than the confusion and self-contradiction
+which Mr. Mill imputes to him, the result would be pitiable indeed. Mr.
+Mill, on the other hand, we strongly suspect, despises metaphysics too
+much to be at the pains of studying them at all, and seems to think that
+a critic is duly equipped for his task with that amount of knowledge
+which, like Dogberry's reading and writing, "comes by nature." His work
+has a superficial cleverness which, together with the author's previous
+reputation, will insure it a certain kind of popularity; but we venture
+to predict that its estimation by its readers will be in the inverse
+ratio to their knowledge of the subject. But Mr. Mill's general
+reputation rests on grounds quite distinct from his performances in
+metaphysics; and though we could hardly name one of his writings from
+whose main principles we do not dissent, there is hardly one which is not
+better fitted to sustain his character as a thinker than this last, in
+which the fatal charms of the goddess Necessity seem to have betrayed her
+champion into an unusual excess of polemical zeal, coupled, it must be
+added, with an unusual deficiency of philosophical knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+It was not till after the preceding pages had been sent to press that I
+became acquainted with a little work recently published under the title
+of _The Battle of the two Philosophies, by an Inquirer_. The author
+appears to have been a personal pupil of Sir W. Hamilton's, as well as a
+diligent student of his writings. At all events, he has "inquired" to
+some purpose, and obtained a far more intelligent knowledge of Hamilton's
+system than is exhibited by the majority of recent critics. It is
+gratifying to find many of my remarks confirmed by the concurrent
+testimony of so competent a witness. The following would have been
+noticed in their proper places had I been sooner acquainted with them.
+
+Of the popular confusion between the _infinite_ and the _indefinite_,
+noticed above, pp. 50, 112, "An Inquirer" observes:--
+
+"If we could realise in thought infinite space, that conception would be
+a perfectly definite one; but the notion that is here offered us in its
+place, though it may be real, is certainly not definite; it is merely the
+conception of an indefinite extension.... In truth, when we strive to
+think of infinite space, the nearest approach we can make to it is this
+notion of an indefinite space, which Mr. Mill has substituted for it. But
+these two conceptions are not only verbally, they are really wholly
+distinct. An indefinite space is a space of the extent of which we think
+vaguely, without knowing or without thinking where its boundaries are.
+Infinite space has certainly, and quite distinctly, no boundaries
+anywhere."--(Pp. 18-20.)
+
+On Mr. Mill's strange distinction between the Divine Attributes, as some
+infinite and others absolute, the author's remarks are substantially in
+agreement with what has been said above on pp. 105-6.
+
+"Mr. Mill argues that all the attributes of God cannot be infinite; but
+that some, as power, may be infinite; and some, as goodness and
+knowledge, must be absolute, because neither can knowledge be more than
+complete, nor goodness more than perfect. When we know all there is to be
+known, he says, knowledge has attained its utmost limit. But this is
+merely begging the whole question. If there be an Infinite Being, He
+cannot know all there is to be known unless He know Himself; and
+adequately to know what is infinite is to have infinite knowledge. The
+same thing would be true if there could be a Being whose power and
+duration only were infinite. 'The will,' he adds, 'is either entirely
+right, or wrong in different degrees: downwards there are as many
+gradations as we choose to distinguish; but upwards there is an ideal
+limit. Goodness can be imagined complete,--such that there can be no
+greater goodness beyond it,'... But a Being of infinite power and finite
+goodness would not be perfectly good, because His power would not be
+wholly, but only in part directed by His goodness. Nay, as that which is
+finite bears no proportion whatever to what is infinite: as, however
+great it be absolutely, it is still infinitely less than infinity, such a
+Being would be partly good and yet infinitely evil, which is absurd in
+reason and impossible in fact."--(Pp. 24, 25.)
+
+The following estimate of Mr. Mill's merits as a metaphysician coincides
+with that which, contrary to my expectation, I found forced upon myself
+after a careful examination of his book.--(See above, Pp. 62, 182.)
+
+"We cannot but think that Mr. Mill in this, his first work in pure
+metaphysics, has disappointed just expectation. In leaving the fields of
+practical philosophy, he seems to have left his genius behind him. Even
+the peculiar 'cunning of his right hand'--even his unexcelled logical
+power avails him little, so continually does he fail to see distinctly
+the conception with which he is fencing.... As long as he is applying
+given principles to the solution of practical questions; as long as he
+has to do with the process of an argument, he proves himself a most able
+instructor and guide. But when he has to grapple with a metaphysical
+problem, it almost invariably arrives that the central, the metaphysical
+difficulty, escapes him."--(Pp. 78-80.)
+
+
+
+
+               MUIR AND PATERSON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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