mains a greater beyond. It has an absolute limit: it is capable of being finished or complete, in thought, if not in reality. The extraneous substances existing in any vessel of water cannot be of more than finite amount, and if we suppose them all withdrawn, the purity of the water cannot, even in idea, admit of further increase.

The idea of Absolute, in this sense of the term, being thus contrasted with that of Infinite, they cannot, both of them, be truly predicated of God; or, if truly, not in respect of the same attributes. But the word Absolute, without losing the signification of perfect or complete, may drop that of limited. It may continue to mean the whole of that to which it is applied; but without requiring that this whole should be finite. Granted (for instance) a being of infinite power, that Being's knowledge, if supposed perfect, must be infinite; and may therefore, in an admissible sense of the term, be said to be both absolute and infinite. In this acceptation there is no inconsistency or incongruity in predicating both these words of God.

In the first edition of this work it was maintained, that though Power admits of being regarded as Infinite, Knowledge does not; because "the "highest degree of knowledge that can be spoken of with a meaning, only "amounts to knowing all that there is to be known." But Mr. Mansel and the "Inquirer" (author of "The Battle of the Two Philosophies") have justly remarked, that on the supposition of an Infinite Being, "all that there is to be known" includes all which a Being of infinite power can think or create; consequently, the power being infinite, the knowledge, if supposed complete, must be infinite too. In regard to the moral attributes, it was said in the first edition, that Absolute is the proper word for them, and not Infinite, since those attributes" cannot be more "than perfect. There are not infinite degrees of right. The will is "either entirely right, or wrong in different degrees." In this I did not properly distinguish between moral rightness or justice as predicated of acts or mental states, and the same regarded as attributes of a person. Conformity to the standard of right has a positive limit, which can only be reached, not surpassed; but persons, though all exactly conforming to the standard, may differ in the strength of their adherence to it: influences (temptations for example) might detach one of them from it, which would have no effect upon another. There are thus, consistently with complete observance of the rule of right, innumerable gradations of the attribute considered as in a person. But, on the other hand, there is an extreme limit to these gradations-the idea of a Person whom no influences or causes, either in or out of himself, can deflect in the minutest degree from the law of right. This I apprehend to be a conception of absolute, not of infinite, righteousness. The doctrine, therefore, of the first edition,

D

The word Absolute, however, has other meanings, which have nothing to do with perfection or completeness, though often mixed and confounded with it; the more readily as they are all habitually predicated of the Deity. By Absolute is often meant the opposite of Relative; and this is rather many meanings than one; for Relative also is a term used very indefinitely, and wherever it is employed, the word Absolute always accompanies it as its negative. In another of its senses, Absolute means that which is independent of anything else which exists, and is what it is, by its own nature, and not because of any other thing. In this fourth sense as in the third, Absolute stands for the negation of a relation; not now of Relation in general, but of the specific relation expressed by the term Effect. In this signification it is synonymous with uncaused, and is therefore most naturally identified with the First Cause. The meaning of a First Cause is, that all other things exist, and are what they are, by reason of it and of its properties, but that it is not itself made to exist, nor to be what it is, by anything else. It does not depend, for its existence or attributes, on other things: there is nothing upon the existence of which its own is conditional it exists absolutely.

In which of these meanings is the term used in the polemic with M. Cousin? M. Cousin makes no distinction at all between the Infinite and the Absolute. Sir W. Hamilton distinguishes them as two species of a higher genus, the Unconditioned; and defines the Infinite as "the unconditionally unlimited," the Absolute as "the unconditionally limited."* Here is a new word introduced, the word "unconditionally;" of which we look in vain for any direct explanation, but which needs it as much as either of the words which it is employed to explain. In the Essay itself, this is the only that an Infinite being may have attributes which are absolute, but not infinite, still appears to me maintainable. But as it is immaterial to my argument, and was only the illustration nearest at hand of the meaning of the terms, I withdraw it from the discussion.

* Discussions, p. 13.

attempt made to define the Absolute: but in the reprint Sir W. Hamilton appends the following note:

*

"The term Absolute is of a twofold (if not threefold) "ambiguity, corresponding to the double (or treble) sig"nification of the word in Latin." The third application he, with reason, dismisses, as here irrelevant. The other two as are follows:

"1. Absolutum means what is freed or loosed: in "which sense the Absolute will be what is aloof from "relation, comparison, limitation, condition, depend"ence, &c., and thus is tantamount to Tò àπóλUTоv of "the lower Greeks. In this meaning the Absolute is "not opposed to the Infinite." This is an amplification of my third meaning.

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"2. Absolutum means finished, perfected, completed ; "in which sense the Absolute will be what is out of "relation, &c., as finished, perfect, complete, total, and "thus corresponds to rò oλov and Tò Téλetov of Aristotle. "In this acceptation-and it is that in which for myself "I exclusively use it, the Absolute is diametrically opposed to, is contradictory of, the Infinite." This second meaning of Sir W. Hamilton, which I, in the first edition, by a blameable inadvertence, confounded with my own first meaning,t must be reckoned as a fifth, compounded of the first and third-of the idea of finished or completed, and the idea of being out of relation. How to make an intelligible meaning out of the two combined, is the question. One can, with some difficulty, find a meaning in being "aloof from relation, "comparison, limitation, condition, dependence;" but what is meant by being all this "as finished, perfect, complete, total"? Does it mean, being both out o. relation and also complete? and must the Absolute in

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*Discussions, p. 14, note.

† And, in consequence, erroneously charged Sir W. Hamilton with having, in one of his arguments against Cousin, departed from his own meaning of the term. I have freed the text from everything which de pended on this error, the only serious misrepresentation of Sir W. Hamilton which has been established against me.

Sir W. Hamilton's second sense be also Absolute in his first, and be out of all relation whatever? or does the particle "as" signify that it is out of relation only in respect of its completeness, which (I suppose) means that it does not depend for its completeness on anything but itself? Mr. Mansel's comment, which otherwise does not help us much, decides for the latter. "Out of "relation as completed " means (he says)*"self-existent "in its completeness, and not implying the existence of 'anything else." Without further attempt to clear up the obscurity, let it suffice that Sir W. Hamilton's Absolute, though not synonymous with a "finished, perfected, completed," but limited, whole, includes that idea, and is therefore incompatible with Infinite.‡—

Having premised these verbal explanations, I proceed to state, as far as possible in Sir W. Hamilton's own words, the heads of his argumentation to prove that the Absolute and Infinite are unknowable. His first summary statement of the doctrine is as follows: §

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"The unconditionally unlimited, or the Infinite, the "unconditionally limited, or the Absolute, cannot positively be construed to the mind: they can be conceived only by a thinking away from, or abstraction of, those 'very conditions under which thought itself is realised ; consequently, the notion of the Unconditioned is only "negative; negative of the conceivable itself. For example: On the one hand, we can positively conceive

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* Mansel, p. 104.

+ But the assimilation with 7ò 8Xov and Tò Téλelov again throws us out; for Tò olov, with all Greek thinkers, meant either the completed aggregate of all that exists, or an abstract entity which they conceived as the Principle of Wholeness-in virtue of which, and by participation in which, that universal aggregate and all other wholes are wholes. Either of these would be an additional meaning for the word Absolute, different from all which have yet been mentioned.

I demur, however, to Sir W. Hamilton's assertion, that for himself he exclusively uses the term in this meaning. In the whole of the discussion respecting the relativity of our knowledge, Absolute, with Sir W. Hamilton, is simply the opposite of relative, and contains no implication of “finished, perfected, completed." Moreover, in this very Essay, when arguing against M. Cousin, who uses Absolute in a sense compatible with Infinite, Sir W. Hamilton continually falls into M. Cousin's sense.

§ Discussions, p. 13.

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"neither an absolute whole, that is, a whole so great "that we cannot also conceive it as a relative part of a 'still greater whole; nor an absolute part, that is, a part Iso small that we cannot also conceive it as a relative "whole divisible into smaller parts. On the other hand, we cannot positively represent, or realise, or construe "to the mind (as here Understanding and Imagination "coincide) an infinite whole, for this could only be done "by the infinite synthesis in thought of finite wholes, "which would itself require an infinite time for its "accomplishment; nor, for the same reason, can we "follow out in thought an infinite divisibility of parts. "The result is the same, whether we apply the process "to limitation in space, in time, or in degree. The un"conditional negation, and the unconditional affirmation "of limitation; in other words, the Infinite and the "Absolute properly so called, are thus equally incon"ceivable to us."

This argument, that the Infinite and the Absolute are unknowable by us because the only conceptions we are able to form of them are negative, is stated still more emphatically a few pages later. * "Kant has clearly

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shown, that the Idea of the Unconditioned can have "no objective reality,-that it conveys no knowledge,"and that it involves the most insoluble contradictions. "But he ought to have shown that the Unconditioned "had no objective application, because it had, in fact, no subjective affirmation; that it afforded no real know"ledge, because it contained nothing even conceivable; "and that it is self-contradictory, because it is not a "notion, either simple or positive, but only a fasciculus 'of negations-negations of the Conditioned in its oppo"site extremes, and bound together merely by the aid "of language, and their common character of incom"prehensibility."

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Let us note, then, as the first and most fundamental of Sir W. Hamilton's arguments, that our ideas of the Infinite and the Absolute are purely negative, and the *Discussions, p. 17.