90 THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. 



form presented by Sir William Hamilton and Mr Hansel, is 

 not strictly true. Though, in the foregoing pages, the argu- 

 ments used by these writers to show that the Absolute is un- 

 knowable, have been approvingly quoted; and though these 

 arguments have been enforced by others equally thorough- 

 going; yet there remains to be stated a qualification, which 

 saves us from that scepticism otherwise necessitated. It is 

 not to be denied that so long as we confine ourselves to the 

 purely logical aspect of the question, the propositions quoted 

 above must be accepted in their entirety; but when we con- 

 template its more general, or psychological, aspect, we find 

 that these propositions are imperfect statements of the 

 truth: omitting, or rather excluding, as they do, an all-im- 

 portant fact. To speak specifically: Besides that definite 

 consciousness of which Logic formulates the laws, there is 

 also an indefinite consciousness which cannot be formulated. 

 Besides complete thoughts, and besides the thoughts which 

 though incomplete admit of completion, there are thoughts 

 which it is impossible to complete; and yet which are still 

 real, in the sense that they are normal affections of the 

 intellect. 



Observe in the first place, that every one of the argu- 

 ments by which the relativity of our knowledge is demon- 

 strated, distinctly postulates the positive existence of some- 

 thing beyond the relative. To say that we cannot know the 

 Absolute, is, by implication, to affirm that there is an Abso- 

 lute. In the very denial of our power to learn what the Ab- 

 solute is, there lies hidden the assumption that it is ; and the 

 making of this assumption proves that the Absolute has been 

 present to the mind, not as a nothing, but as a something. 

 Similarly with every step in the reasoning by which this doc- 

 trine is upheld. The Noumenon, everywhere named as the 

 antithesis of the Phenomenon, is throughout necessarily 

 thought of as an actuality. It is rigorously impossible to 

 conceive that our knowledge is a knowledge of Appearances 

 only, without at the same time conceiving a Reality of which 



