THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. 77 



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

 tional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of 

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

 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- 

 foundest 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 

 phsenomenal. 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 be conceived as possible, but of which, on the 

 principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one must 



