14 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. i. 



ally limiting each other, would become finite, and thus 

 destroy each other. And likewise the Absolute cannot, 

 without a manifest contradiction in terms, be regarded as 

 sustaining a relation of likeness to anything else. For by the 

 definition of the Absolute, it is that which exists out of all 

 relation. Thus by the very constitution of the knoTvdng pro- 

 cess, we are for ever debarred from knowing anything save 

 that which is caused, which is finite, and which is relative. 



If we start from another point of view, and contemplate 

 the process of knowing under a different but correlative 

 aspect, we shall be driven to the same inevitable conclusion. 

 In order to know anything, we must not only recognize it as 

 like certain other things, but we must recognize it also as 

 different from certain other things. We cognize whiteness, 

 not only by its likeness to the whiteness previously presented 

 to our consciousness, but also by its difference from redness, 

 blueness, or blackness. If all things were white we should 

 have no knowledge of whiteness. To constitute an act of 

 cognition, distinction is as necessary as assimilation. As 

 Mr. Mansel has ably shown, "The very conception of con- 

 sciousness necessarily implies distinction between one object 

 and another. To be conscious, we must be conscious of 

 something ; and that something can only be known as that 

 which it is, by being distinguished from that which it is not. 

 But distinction is necessarily limitation ; for if one object 

 is to be distinguished from another, it must possess some 

 form of existence which the other has not, or it must not 

 possess some form which the other has." Accordingly, if we 

 are to conceive the First Cause at all, we must conceive it 

 as limited ; in which case it cannot be infinite : and we must 

 conceive it as different from other objects of cognition; in 

 which case it is relative, and cannot be absolute. 



Finally, we cannot know the Absolute, because all know- 

 ledge is possible only in the form of a relation. There must 

 be a Subject which cognizes and an Object which is cognized. 



