92 THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. 



dictories is one. But the reality of one contradictory, so 

 far from guaranteeing the reality of the other, is nothing 

 else than its negation. Thus every positive notion (the con- 

 cept of a thing by what it is) suggests a negative notion 

 (the concept of a thing by what it is .not) ; and the highest 

 positive notion, the notion of the conceivable, is not with- 

 out its corresponding negative in the notion of the incon- 

 ceivable. But though these mutually suggest each other, 

 the positive alone is real; the negative is only an abstrac- 

 tion of the other, and in the highest generality, even an ab- 

 straction of thought itself." Now the assertion that 

 of such contradictories " the negative is only an abstrac- 

 tion of the other " " is nothing else than its negation, "- 

 is not true. In such correlatives as Equal and Unequal, it 

 is obvious enough that the negative concept contains some- 

 thing besides the negation of the positive one; for the 

 things of which equality is denied are not abolished from 

 consciousness by the denial. And the fact overlooked by 

 Sir William Hamilton, is, that the like holds even with 

 those correlatives of which the negative is inconceivable, in 

 the strict sense of the word. Take for example the Limited 

 and the Unlimited. Our notion of the Limited is composed, 

 firstly of a consciousness of some kind of being, and second- 

 ly of a consciousness of the limits under which it is known. 

 In the antithetical notion of the Unlimited, the conscious- 

 ness of limits is abolished ; but not the consciousness of some 

 kind of being. It is quite true that in the absence of con- 

 ceived limits, this consciousness ceases to be a concept prop- 

 erly so called ; but it is none the less true that it remains as a 

 mode of consciousness. If, in such cases, the negative contra- 

 dictory were, as alleged, " nothing else " than the negation 

 of the other, and therefore a mere nonentity, then it would 

 clearly follow that negative contradictories could be used in- 

 terchangeably : the Unlimited might be thought of as anti- 

 thetical to the Divisible ; and the Indivisible as antithetical 

 to the Limited. While the fact that they cannot be so used. 



