3i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sible for nothing whatever beyond the statement that these emotions 

 will survive. If he shows this conclusion to be erroneous, then indeed 

 he touches rae. This, however, he does not attempt. Recognizino- 

 though he does that this is all I have asserted, and even exclaiming 

 " is that all ! " (p. 358), he nevertheless continues to father upon me a 

 number of ideas quoted above, which I have neither expressed nor im- 

 plied, and asks readers to observe how grotesque is the fabric formed 

 of them. 



I enter now on that portion of Mr. Harrison's last article to which 

 is specially applicable its title " Agnostic Metaphysics." In this he re- 

 calls sundry of the insuperable difficulties set forth by Dean Mansel, 

 in his " Bampton Lectures," as arising when we attempt to frame any 

 conception of that which lies beyond the realm of sense. Accepting, 

 as I did, Hamilton's general arguments which Mansel applied to theo- 

 logical conceptions, I contended in " First Principles " that their argu- 

 ments are valid, only on condition that that which transcends the 

 relative is regarded not as negative, but as positive ; and that the 

 relative itself becomes unthinkable as such in the absence of a postu- 

 lated non-relative. Criticisms on my reasoning allied to those made 

 by Mr. Harrison, have been made before, and have before been an- 

 swered by me. To an able raetaphj^sician, the Rev. James Martineau, 

 I made a reply which I may be excused here for reproducing, as I can 

 not improve upon it : 



Always implying terms in relation, thought implies that both terms shall be 

 more or less defined ; and as fast as one of them becomes indefinite, the relation 

 also becomes indefinite, and thought becomes indistinct. Take the case of mag- 

 nitudes. I think of an inch; I think of a foot; and having tolerably definite 

 ideas of the two, I have a tolerably definite idea of the relation between them. 

 I substitute for the foot a mile ; and being able to represent a mile much less 

 definitely, I can not so definitely think of the relation between an inch and a 

 mile — can not distinguish it in thought from the relation between an inch and 

 two miles, as clearly as I can distinguish in thought the relation between an inch 

 and one foot from the relation between an inch and two feet. And now if I 

 endeavor to think of the relation between an inch and the 240,000 miles from 

 here to the Moon, or the relation between an inch and the 92,000,000 miles from 

 here to the Sun, I find that while these distances, practically inconceivable, have 

 become little more than numbers to which I frame no answering ideas, so, too, 

 has the relation between an inch and either of them become practically incon- 

 ceivable. Now this partial failure in the process of forming thought-relations, 

 which happens even with finite magnitudes when one of them is immense, passes 

 into complete failure when one of them can not be brought within any limits. 

 The relation itself becomes unrepresentable at the same time that one of its 

 terms becomes unrepresentable. Nevertheless, in this case it is to be observed 

 that the almost-blank form of relation preserves a certain qualitative character. 

 It is still distinguishable as belonging to the consciousness of extensions, not to 

 the consciousnesses of forces or durations ; and in so far remains a vaguely-identi- 

 fiable relation. But now suppose we ask what happens when one term of the 



