THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. 95 



— " a belief " with which we are " inspired: " thus appar- 

 ently hinting that it is supernaturally at variance with the 

 laws of thought. Mr Mansel is betrayed into a like incon- 

 sistency. When he says that " we are compelled, by the 

 constitution of our minds, to believe in the existence of an 

 Absolute and Infinite Being, — a belief which appears forced 

 upon us, as the complement of our consciousness of the rela- 

 tive and the finite; " he clearly says by implication that 

 this consciousness is positive, and not negative. He tacitly 

 admits that we are obliged to regard the Absolute as some- 

 thing more than a negation — that our consciousness of it is 

 not " the mere absence of the conditions under which con- 

 sciousness is possible.' 7 



The supreme importance of this question must be my 

 apology for taxing the reader's attention a little further, in 

 the hope of clearing up the remaining difficulties. The ne- 

 cessarily positive character of our consciousness of the 

 Unconditioned, which, as we have seen, follows from an ulti- 

 mate law of thought, will be better understood on contem- 

 plating the process of thought. 



One of the arguments used to prove the relativity of 

 our knowledge, is, that we cannot conceive Space or Time as 

 either limited or unlimited. It is pointed out that when we 

 imagine a limit, there simultaneously arises the conscious- 

 ness of a space or time existing beyond the limit. This re- 

 moter space or time, though not contemplated as definite, is 

 yet contemplated as real. Though we do not form of it a 

 conception proper, since we do not bring it within bounds, 

 there is yet in our minds the unshaped material of a concep- 

 tion. Similarly with our consciousness of Cause. We are 

 no more able to form a circumscribed idea of Cause, than of 

 Space or Time; and we are consequently obliged to think 

 of the Cause which transcends the limits of our thought as 

 positive though indefinite. Just in the same manner that 

 on conceiving any bounded space, there arises a nascent 

 consciousness of space outside the bounds; so, when we 



