574 INTELLECTUAL SYMBOLISM. 
Unlimited if it be not the Finite or Limited? ‘The limited must be conditioned by its 
limits,—therefore the unconditionally limited is an absurdity. On the other hand, the 
unconditioned is necessarily unlimited, or infinite. 
450. To the doctrine of Cousin, that the idea of the infinite, or absolute, and the idea 
of the finite, or relative, are equally real, because the notion of the one necessarily sug- 
gests the notion of the other, Hamilton replies: 
451. “Correlations certainly suggest each other, but correlations may, or may not be 
equally real and positive. In thought, contradictories necessarily imply each other, for 
the knowledge of contradictories is one. But the reality of one contradictory, so far from 
guaranteeing the reality of the other, is nothing else than its negation. ... . It therefore 
behooved M. Cousin, instead of assuming the objective cotreality of his two elements on 
the fact of their subjective correlation, to have suspected, on this very ground, that the 
reality of the one was inconsistent with the reality of the other.”* 
452. No one ever claimed that the finite mind could fully comprehend or understand 
the Infinite, but we certainly have so far the power of conceiving it, as to positively assert 
its existence. If of the two correlations, the finite and infinite, either is unknown, is it 
not the finite? The infinite is wholly independent of any subjective relation or coloring, 
but the finite is apprehended only under the subjective relations which we assign it, and 
it may plausibly be regarded as merely a subjective notion, destitute of any objective reality. 
The Infinite and Unconditioned are certainly objects of thought, and though we may know 
nothing more of them (as we know nothing more of mind and matter), than their relative 
manifestations, we may know that there is something more im them. Though we cannot 
identity ourselves with the Absolute in reality, may we not cognize it under ideal rela- 
tions? When we think of our own subjectivity, how is the “subject contradistinguished 
from the object of thought,”+ except in idea? 
453. A recent writer on “the philosophy of the Infinite,” thus notices Hamilton’s ar- 
gument,—that if, in any instance, we imagine that we obtain a knowledge of the Infinite, 
we only deceive ourselves by substituting the indefinite for the infinite.t 
454, “ While we endeavor to answer this argument, let it be remembered that both Sir 
William and we have this common ground,—that the Indefinite is only a characteristic 
* Discussions, p. 34. 
+ “The mind knows nothing, except in parts, by quality, and difference, and relation; consciousness supposes 
the subject contradistinguished from the object of thought ; the abstraction of this contrast is a negation of con- 
sciousness; and the negation of consciousness is the annihilation of thought itself.”’ Discussions, p. 26. 
{ “Condillac denies the infinite, unity, substance, etc., and reduces everything to the indefinite, to the finite 
multiplied by itself, to a simple collection of quantities and accidents, ete.” Cousin: Hist. of Mod. Phil., Vol. 
I, p. 178. 
