THE ABSOLUTE. aT1L 
it find any final resting-place. ‘The sages of India and China, of Persia and Egypt, of 
Greece and Rome, have all sought in vain to find out by unaided reason, the Infinite and 
Eternal One, who is ‘‘ without variableness or shadow of turning.” By successively re- 
jecting all the perceived relations which are felt to be the restraints or limits of imperfec- 
tion, they have arrived at a dim shadowy Idea, which is supposed to be devoid of all rela- 
tion, and of which nothing can be predicated except negations and a name. 
440. What is this ghostly Idea,—this idol of the finite Intelligence, but the highest or 
most abstract form of that inappreciable, and so far as the human Consciousness is con- 
cerned, non-existent relation, which we have designated as the Objective-Objective.* 
Reason, conscious of her own weakness, and yet confident in her instinctive belief that 
there must be some Greatest, regards the Objective under relation to herself, whether 
that relation be Objective-Subjective or Subjective-Objective, as limited by the relation, 
and therefore, imperfect and finite. But in the Objective-Objective, if there be any limi- 
tation, it can never be appreciable by human intelligence, and there, if anywhere, must 
exist that abstract, underlying Infinite, which is in itself devoid of all relation. The belief 
on which this deduction is based, so far as it is instinctive, is one of those primary revela- 
tions of faith, which is infallible, provided it is received in’ its primitive simplicity, and 
whatever error may be supposed to spring from it, must arise from the gloss of imperfect 
human apprehension. Let us examine a few of the formulas that have been devised for 
the expression of this almost universal creed of humanity, in order to ascertain, if possible, 
the precise extent of the truth that it represents. 
441. ANAXIMANDER. “The original essence which he assumed, and which he is said 
to have been the first to have named principle (4p77), he defined as the ‘ unlimited, eternal, 
and unconditioned,’ as that which embraced all things, and ruled all things, and which, 
since it lay at the basis of all determinations of the finite and the changeable, is itself in- 
finite and undeterminate.” > 
442, AristotLe. ‘ Hence the famed Aristotelian definition of the Absolute, that it is 
tion to any other Being. By the Infinite, is meant that which is free from all possible limitation ; that than which 
a greater is inconceivable; and which, consequently, can receive no additional attribute or mode of existence, 
which it had not from all eternity.” Mansel, p. 75. 
_ * “God, considered without relation with the world and humanity, undoubtedly still exists. He exists wholly 
in the depths of His essence, invisible, inaccessible, incomprehensible; but this is no longer the God of the world 
and the God of humanity; it is no longer a God who overlooks and superintends His work, the God whom men 
adore and bless under the name of Providence.” Cousin: Hist. of Mod. Phil., Vol. 1, p. 163. ‘The Bhagavad- 
Gita expressly teaches that, in the hierarchy of the human faculties, the soul is above sensibility, that above the 
soul is intelligence, and that there is something still above intelligence,—being.” 0., Vol. I, pp. 392-3. 
{ Schwegler, p. 22. 
