263 
bad, and indifferent, then, though we say it with very great 
deference, we must think that you merely speak nonsense. 
We can no doubt think and speak nonsense, only the less we 
do so the better, especially when we seem to mean to speak 
philosophy. What is called “the Unconditioned,” intending 
by the word to combine “ the Infinite and the Absolute,” de- 
serves our attention on a similar principle. The “Conditioned” 
and the “ Unconditioned,” as mere abstractions, are nothing. 
This must not be lost sight of. It is in what is called the con- 
crete that we see the positive absurdity of the notion. To be 
absolutely “ unconditioned ” is to be and yet not to be, for if 
one is, he is necessarily related to all else that is ; and if he is 
not, he cannot be “ unconditioned,” nor anything else ! In the 
sense of this term, as used by Sir William Hamilton and his 
followers, existence is just as impossible as it is that “yes” 
should be “ no.” For example, it must be existence without 
a mode of being; and yet it is asserted that its mode of being 
is this “ unconditioned ” one. Such a being cannot exist as a 
creator, for in this he must be relative to his creatures. But 
neither can he exist as necessarily not a creator, for this would 
imply his dependence on the absence of creative acts on his 
part ! Is not this very notion of the “ Unconditioned ” as a 
mode of being, when taken in this absolute sense, as pure a 
chimera as ever was imagined? A black that is perfectly 
black and yet perfectly white is just as rational as a being thus 
absolutely “ unconditioned.” A nothiug which is absolutely 
nothing, and yet is something, is just as real. Two and two 
that will always make five is a prince of an idea beside this 
“ unconditioned ” monstrosity. And yet it is under the spell 
of such follies that men are “ philosophically ” hindered from 
taking such views of God as are the groundwork of thought 
to the little child, who approaches Him with perfect confidence, 
that he shall not ask any good thing from his kind Heavenly 
Father in vain ! It is needful, however, to come to closer 
quarters in this part of our controversy. 
The three grand inconceivables of Mansel* are examples, and 
they are, I humbly think, only blunders. He says, “ By the 
First Cause is meant that which produces all things and is itself 
produced by none.” But a first cause which produces a cause 
cannot in the nature of the case produce “all things.” That 
which has been itself produced as an efficient cause, produces 
the things of which it is the cause, as really as the unproduced 
cause produces those of which He is the Cause. The man who 
sins, and so produces things such as sinning produces, is as 
* Limits of Religious Thought , page 90, edition 1858. 
u 
