436 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
with that of which we are not conscious; the comparison being an act of con- 
sciousness, and only possible through the consciousness of both its objects.” To 
escape this contradiction, Mr. Mansel has recourse to the same absurdity into 
which he fell in discussing the Infinite—that the Absolute is merely the negation of 
a conception. He writes: ‘‘The Absolute is a term expressing no object of 
thought, but a denial of the relation by which thought is constituted.” But this 
he holds ‘‘ does not imply that the Absolute cannot exist; but it implies, most 
certainly, that we cannot conceive it as existing.’”” Yet he holds that ‘‘ we are 
compelled, by the constitution of our minds, to believe in the existence of the 
absolute Being—a belief which appears forced upon us as the complement of our 
consciousness of the relative and the finite.” In this again he represents the mind 
as under the necessity of believing in the existence of that which his interpreta- 
tion of its laws shows that it must declare does not exist. 
Sir William Hamilton holds a like view, and falls into a like contradictory 
absurdity, which he expresses thus: ‘‘ The absolute is conceived merely by a 
negation of conceivability,” which represents the mind, as he did in discussing 
the Infinite, as acting without the conditions within which alone its action is pos- 
sible. 
Mr. Spencer apprehends an error in Mr. Mansel and Sir William Hamilton 
in the quotation he makes from them concerning the Absolute, and he seeks to 
correct it with an explanation of his own, more consistent in character but to the 
same effect. He holds, in opposition to them, that consciousness of the Absolute 
is positive and not negative, and that such a conception is _ constituted, 
not by any single mental act, but by many. He says: ‘‘In each concept 
there is an element which persists. * “** * The persistence of this element, 
under successive conditions, necessitates a sense of it as distinguished from the 
conditions, and independent of them.”” This sense of it he holds to be an in- 
definite consciousness, ‘‘ constituted by combining successive concepts deprived 
of their limits and conditions.” Were it possible for us thus to deprive our con- 
cepts of their limits and conditions, so as to combine them, it must be observed 
that, since concepts are constituted of limits and conditions, the process would 
deprive us of the concepts, and thus render such combination impossible. 
This doctrine of an indefinite consciousness upsets another of Mr. Spencer’s 
psychological doctrines, wherein he holds that consciousness is the product of defi- 
nite mental changes, without which it is impossible. Conflicting as this does with 
the nature of concepts, and with Mr. Spencer’s own doctrine concerning the 
character of consciousness, it comes close to a great truth, which he approaches 
still closer in comparing this notion of the conception of the Absolute to the notion 
of Time and Space beyond the limits of consciousness. He says: ‘‘ Though 
not contemplated as definite, it is yet contemplated as real,” and ‘‘ which, though 
we do not form of its concepts proper, since we do not bring it into bounds, it is 
yet in our minds the undeveloped material of a conception.” But instead of 
shaping this undeveloped material into a conception, he disappoints us by 
