THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. 77 



supposes conditions. To think is to condition / and condi- 

 tional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of 

 thought. For, as the greyhound cannot outstrip his shadow, 

 nor (by a more appropriate simile) the eagle outsoar the at- 

 mosphere in which he floats, and by which alone he may 

 be supported; so the mind cannot transcend that sphere 

 of limitation, within and through which exclusively the 

 possibility of thought is realized. Thought is only of 

 the conditioned; because, as we have said, to think is sim- 

 ply to condition. The absolute is conceived merely by a 

 negation of conceivability; and all that we know, is only 

 known as 



' won from the void and formless infinite? 



How, indeed, it could ever be doubted that thought is only 

 of the conditioned, may well be deemed a matter of the pro- 

 f oundest admiration. Thought cannot transcend conscious- 

 ness; consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of 

 a subject and object of thought, known only in correlation, 

 and mutually limiting each other; while, independently of 

 this, all that we know either of subject or object, either 

 of mind or matter, is only a knowledge in each of the par- 

 ticular, of the plural, of the different, of the modified, of the 

 phenomenal. We admit that the consequence of this doc- 

 trine is, — that philosophy, if viewed as more than a science 

 of the conditioned, is impossible. Departing from the par- 

 ticular, we admit, that we can never, in our highest general- 

 izations, rise above the finite; that our knowledge, whether 

 of mind or matter, can be nothing more than a knowledge of 

 the relative manifestations of an existence, which in itself it 

 is our highest wisdom to recognize as beyond the reach of 

 philosophy, — in the language of St Austin, — ' cognoscendo 

 ignorari, et ignorando cognosci.' 



" The conditioned is the mean between two extremes, — 

 two inconditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of 

 which can he conceived as possible, but of which, on the 

 principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one must 



