96 THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. 



think of any definite cause, there arises a nascent conscious- 

 ness of a cause behind it: and in the one case as in the 

 other, this nascent consciousness is in substance like that 

 which suggests it, though without form. The momentum 

 of thought inevitably carries us beyond conditioned exist- 

 ence to unconditioned existence ; and this ever persists in us 

 as the body of a thought to which we can give no shape. 



Hence our firm belief in objective reality — a belief 

 which metaphysical criticisms cannot for a moment shake. 

 When we are taught that a piece of matter, regarded by us 

 as existing externally, cannot be really known, but that we 

 can know only certain impressions produced on us, we are 

 yet, by the relativity of our thought, compelled to think of 

 these in relation to a positive cause — the notion of a real ex- 

 istence which generated these impressions becomes nascent. 

 If it be proved to us that every notion of a real existence 

 which we can frame, is utterly inconsistent with itself — that 

 matter, however conceived by us, cannot be matter as it 

 actually is, our conception, though transfigured, is not de- 

 stroyed: there remains the sense of reality, dissociated as 

 far as possible from those special forms under which it was 

 before represented in thought. Though Philosophy con- 

 demns successively each attempted conception of the Abso- 

 lute — though it proves to us that the Absolute is not this, 

 nor that, nor that — though in obedience to it we negative, 

 one after another, each idea as it arises; yet, as we cannot 

 expel the entire contents of consciousness, there ever re- 

 mains behind an element which passes into new shapes. The 

 continual negation of each particular form and limit, sim- 

 ply results in the more or less complete abstraction of all 

 forms and limits; and so ends in an indefinite consciousness 

 of the unformed and unlimited. 



And here we come face to face with the ultimate diffi- 

 culty — How can there possibly be constituted a conscious- 

 ness of the unformed and unlimited, when, by its very na- 

 ture, consciousness is possible only under forms and limits ? 



