Chapter 5

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 to metechein. tou henos kai tauta tauta polla to plethous au metechein; all' ei ho estin hen, auto touto polla apodeixei, kai au ta polla de hen, touto ede 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.