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to all tliat may yet be His will., as it has been equal to all that 
is past ? 
Mr. Mansel is here in astonishing harmony with those who 
were, we must think, very different men. Thomas Hobbes 
and David Hume are remarkably at one with him in this 
matter.* 
Mr. Mansel says : — "We are compelled, by the constitution 
of our minds, to believe in the existence of an Absolute and 
Infinite Being — a belief which seems forced upon us, as the 
complement of the relative and the finite. But the instant 
we attempt to analyse the ideas thus suggested to us, in the 
hope of attaining to an intelligible conception of them, we 
are on every side involved in inextricable confusion and con- 
tradiction.” f This is not very promising, certainly. But is 
the case as Mr. Mansel represents it? We have not to go far 
with his strange argument till we see that the confusion is his 
simply, and not that of the truth regarding what he calls the 
Absolute and Infinite One. His first proof of the amazing 
statement which we have just quoted is that — (( Distinction is 
necessarily limitation;” which we instantly deny. We dis- 
tinguish an infinite object from a finite object, as we distinguish 
the abstract idea of infinity from that of limitation ; but what 
ground is there for saying that by such a distinction we limit 
the one, any more than for saying that by the same distinction 
we render the other boundless ? He says, “ the Infinite cannot 
be distinguished as such from the Finite by the absence of 
any quality which the Finite possesses.” That is, an infinite 
object cannot be distinguished as such from a finite object 
by the absence of limits in the one which are present in the 
other. Yet this is just how it is and must be distinguished. 
The Infinite object has no limits, which the Finite has. It is 
puerile to say that the infinite is a mere negative. It is 
negative only of the element of limitation. It affirms all the 
finite and infinitely more. It is Infinite only because of this 
negation of limit, and not because of the negation of anything 
else. Why may we not distinguish it as such by this very 
absence, which is its distinction, whether Mr. Mansel so dis- 
tinguish it or not ? Then he says that the Infinite “ cannot be 
distinguished by any attribute which the Finite has not ! ” 
That is, an infinite object has no attributes which a finite 
object has not ! Surely that whose mode of being is to be 
within bounds has not all the modes of being which that has 
* See Hume’s Essays , Yol. II., page 136, as to Faiih and j Reason. Also 
Hobbes’s Works. Molesworth’s edition of 1841, Yol. II., pp. 212, 216, &c. 
t Limits of Religious Thought , page 45, edition 1859. 
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