ON LIFE AND ORGANISATION. 301 



attempts which have been made by philosophers to explain the 

 derivation of created things, and even to unveil the nature of the 

 Deity, by assuming to contemplate them from the centre of 

 Absolute Being. But as human intelligence can neither reach that 

 centre from the periphery, nor assume it at will, and is unable, 

 therefore, to view the whole from a central position, human know- 

 ledge must ever remain only fragmentary. It can only amount to 

 as much as has been immediately revealed to man, together with 

 the continually-increasing but finite acquisitions made by the 

 exercise of his definitely limited faculties. 



Knowledge is augmented by a twofold process. It is the result 

 of the exercise of the active faculties, conditioned by the laws of the 

 consciousness. In as far as it results from the exercise of the former, 

 it may be conceived to be approached from the periphery ; as con- 

 ditioned by the latter, it may be conceived as related to the centre. 

 But as the active faculties are limited, and the consciousness strictly 

 conditioned, it is evident that at no time can acquired knowledge 

 be other than fragmentary. 



Each department of acquired knowledge will therefore, at any 

 given epoch, have reached its permitted position in the mass ; that 

 is to say, such a position in relation to the centre, as the conditions 

 under which the human faculties are limited permit it to assume. 

 " Conscious only of — conscious only in and through limitation, we 

 think to comprehend the Iniinite, and dream even of establishing 

 the science, the nescience of man, on an identity with the omni- 

 science of God. It is this powerful tendency of the most vigorous 

 minds to transcend the sphere of our faculties, which makes a 

 ' learned ignorance' the most difficult acquirement, perhaps, indeed, 

 the consummation of knowledge." " There are two sorts of 

 ignorance ; we philosophise to escape ignorance, and the consum- 

 mation of our philosophy is ignorance ; we start from the one, we 

 repose in the other ; they are the goals from which and to which 

 we tend ; and the pursuit of knowledge is but a course between two 

 ignorances, as human life is itself only a travelling from grave to 

 grave." — (Sir William Hamilton's Discussions on Philosophy, etc,, 

 pp. 36 and COl.) 



