we predicate of him a negation. And, as infinitude is the characteristic of Deity in contrast with the finite, we have nothing by which to contrast Him; we have no ideas by which we can define or describe God in distinction from what exists in time and space.

If this be not the sense of the position, that our idea of the Infinite is negative, is it, perhaps, meant, that we cannot conceive of the Infinite, in the same way that we conceive of what is finite and limited? That, of course we grant; for so to conceive of it is to limit it; and to limit is to annul it. But what warrant have we for the implication that only our ideas of the finite are positive? What does positive mean? Does it mean limited? Not at all. It means, rather, that to which we are compelled to attribute real being-that which in thought we affirm to be. Under this aspect the idea of the Infinite is even more positive than that of the finite. So far is it from being true, that that which is limited is alone positive; that, on the contrary, (as the profoundest thinkers have confessed,) limitation involves negation; and the unlimited alone is positive in the highest sense. As Descartes well said, in his

Réponse aux Objections (to his Meditations:) "It is not true that we conceive of the Infinite by the negation of the finite, seeing that, on the contrary, all limitation contains in itself the negation of the Infinite."

Is it said, that the idea of the Infinite is negative, because we define it by negations, in contrast with that which is finite? as when we say it is not-finite, not-limited? But we can define a positive conception by negations and contrasts, without viewing it as negative. The negation here implies and solely means, that the limits of the finite can not be predicated of the Infinite, and the denial of these limitations involves the positive affirmation that it is above and superior to them.

Or, is it meant, that the ideas of the Infinite and Absolute merely express the impotence of thought; are but "names for the absence of those conditions under which thought is possible"? And what does this mean? Who can attach any "conception" to such affirmations? The Infinite a name for the impotence of thought! What is the impotence of

thought? It is at the utmost a consciousness of inability to think something. What is that something which we cannot think? Is it the impotence itself? Certainly not; for the impotence is in relation to that; and the impotence and the object of the impotence cannot be one and the same thing. And yet Mr. Mansel says, that the Infinite expresses merely the impotence of thought! The assertion is an example of one case of such impotence, even if it does not prove that the idea of the Infinite is that impotence. Just so it is, too, about the further statement, that it "is but a name for the absence of those conditions under which thought is possible." What does this mean? Thought is possible under certain conditions; those conditions are absent; and that absence is-our idea of the Infinite. What possible logic is there here? This position leaves us, we are free to acknowledge, in the precise state described the total "absence of those conditions under which thought is possible;" but we should never think of adding, that that was an equivalent to the idea of the Infinite and Absolute. The Infinite is not a negative idea; but this statement about it corresponds precisely with Mr. Mansel's definition of a negative idea, "an attempt to think, and a failure in accomplishing that attempt."

But, perhaps, after all, the sense of the "philosophy of nescience" is to be taken less strictly on a subject on which its advocates profess absolute ignorance. What they really mean may after all be, not, that we have no ideas of the Infinite and Absolute; nor that these ideas express mere impotencies; but that we cannot construct out of and by them alone, a final and complete system of philosophy and theology. They may mean only, that we cannot handle these ideas as we do the conceptions of finite objects. They may mean, that we can not exhibit the relations between the Infinite and Finite, the Absolute and the Relative: We rather think this must be what they mean; for their object is to rebut and refute the pretensions of the absolute philosophy. But if this be what is meant, they have taken a very infelicitous and hazardous way of expressing their doctrines. To say that we are impotent to develop the finite out of the Infinite is a very different thing

from the assertion that the Infinite itself is a name for that impotence. The former position is the true one as against the arrogant pretensions of absolutism in philosophy; the latter position only exposes the advocates of a revelation to a defeat in this high argument.

One other singular point deserves a passing notice in relation to this position of the negativity of these ideas. Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel both define the Infinite and the Absolute; they define them in clear, distinct language; they discriminate them, the one from the other; and then they say and add, that both of these defined and distinguishable ideas are incognizable and inconceivable, that they both equally express solely the absence of all thought. If any body can find in the history of speculation a greater logical and philosophical anomaly, we should be curious to see it. Mansel says, the "Absolute is that which exists in and by itself, having no necessary relation to any other being;" and the "Infinite is that which is free from all possible limitations," etc. Sir William subsumes both under the general idea of the Unconditioned, and in one place says that the Infinite is "the uncon ditional negation of limitation," and that the Absolute is "the unconditional affirmation of limitation;" that is, he uses the terms as contradictory of each other, diametrical opposites; so that if we apply one to a being, we could not apply the other; God, for example, could not be said to be Infinite and Absolute both. This use of the word Absolute is peculiar to Sir William Hamilton. The Absolute is properly that which is complete in itself; the Infinite is that which is not restricted by the finite, that which cannot in thought be supposed to be completed or made up by finite increments or additions. But our object here is not so much to discuss the question of the proper definitions, as to exhibit the inconsistency between giving such definitions and distinctions, and the affirmation that no positive idea can be attached to them. The definitions imply, what the philosophers deny.

And the fact is, so fundamental and necessary is the conviction that there is a Being, Absolute and Unlimited, that it is well nigh impossible for human language to express the posi

tion, that this Absolute and this Infinite are merely negations. You may make the word negation the predicate of your sentence, but still the subject remains to testify against it. Nobody can "conceive" the position that the Infinite is negative. Thought is baffled in the attempt; so indefeasible is our native and necessary conviction of the real being of that which correspond with these ideas; and these ideas, like all the ideas of reason, express that which is real and necessary, that which has objective and universal validity: and this is positive, if any thing is.

In affirming the positive nature of the ideas, we do not imply that human reason is itself Infinite or Absolute; nor that man is of the same substance with God; nor that man can fully know, what he knows to be; nor that the human intelligence can comprehend, fully, what it holds to be positive and real. No pantheistic views, nor pretensions to absolute wis dom are involved in the position. But we mean to affirm, that an Infinite and Absolute Being really is; a Being, to whom no limits can be ascribed; a Being, positively contrasted with the finite by these characteristics. And herein is the wonder and the glory of the human intelligence. It has the idea of such a Being, and bows in reverence and awe before Him, as the most real of all that is. What it knows to be it cannot fathom; but this very knowledge gives the profoundest sense of the dignity and pricelessness of that finite nature, which is ever uplifted and upheld by the Infinite One.

We cannot follow Mr. Mansel through the other Lectures of this volume; though in them there is very much in which we heartily concur. When he comes to particular doctrines and truths, as of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement, and shows that there are no other or greater difficulties attending them than are found in philosophy itself on kindred points, he is able and successful in his exposition. With all this we have no dispute. Though, at the same time, there are several incidental positions, resulting from his main theory of knowledge, from which we are compelled to dissent. Thus, in the fourth and seventh Lecture, he denies an absolute morality; he will not save his general system, by the method which saved Kant's; he will

be a Kantian even where Kant is superior to his own theory. He also talks of "the fiction of a moral law, binding in a particular form on all possible intelligencies." In the fifth Lecture, he repeats his position about Personality and the Infinite, as in apparently irreconcilable antagonism, and says, that the "recognition of the one in a religious system, almost inevitably involves the sacrifice of the other." To this we need only oppose the consent of almost all the great Christian theologians. We hardly know what to make of such unqualified assertions. These and similar positions, which we might cite, show that our author's underlying theory of knowledge is consistently carried out. Not only the Infinite and Absolute, but also Causality, Substance, Absolute Morality, are held to be ideas, which we cannot conceive as positive; all ultimate, intuitional knowledge, must consistently be denied. All we know is of the relative and finite; in the last analysis, all we know is relations. How we can know relations, without some positive idea about that which is related, he does not undertake to tell us. And, after all this, of what avail is it to be told that "Reason does not deceive us, if we will only read her witness aright; and Reason herself gives us warning, when we are in danger of reading it wrong." If Reason leaves us in utter contradictions about our highest ideas, how can it help us elsewhere; how can we find out what her witness really is?

This work, with all its ability and with much of sound sense and reason on particular points and questions, when considered as an argument upon the high question between Christianity and rationalism, has fatal defects in its exposition of the relation of reason to revelation or of revelation to rationalism.

As to the relation of reason to revelation, it is a suicidal policy on the part of the advocates of revelation to concede, that the unbelieving rationalist has on his side the authentic utterances of human reason. If we concede to the pantheist that his ideas of the Absolute and the Infinite are the only positive ideas we can have about them, we do not make him a convert to the position that we have only negative conceptions of these ideas, while we do give him the vantage-ground in the con