gh the idea of Absolute is thus contrasted with finite, the one is equally fitted with the other to ted of God; but not in respect of the same

There is no incorrectness of speech in the inite Power: because the notion it expresses is Being who has the power of doing all things know or can conceive, and more. But in speakowledge, Absolute is the proper word, and not The highest degree of knowledge that can be with a meaning, only amounts to knowing all is to be known: when that point is reached, has attained its utmost limit. So of goodness they cannot be more than perfect. There are e degrees of right. The will is either entirely rong in different degrees."-(P. 35.)

y, whatever Divine power can do, knowledge can know as possible to be The one, therefore, must be as infinite ther. And what of Divine goodness? el or a glorified saint is absolutely Mr. Mill's sense of the term. His

in degree, between the goodness of God and that of one of His creatures? But, even supposing his statement to be true, how is it relevant to the matter under discussion? Can Mr. Mill possibly be ignorant that all these attributes are relations; that the Absolute in Hamilton's sense, "the unconditionally limited," is not predicable of God at all; and that when divines and philosophers speak of the absolute nature of God, they mean a nature in which there is no distinction of attributes at all?

Mr. Mill then proceeds to give a summary of Hamilton's arguments against Cousin, preparatory to refuting them. In the course

of this summary he says:

"Let me ask, en passant, where is the necessity for

that, if the Absolute, or, to speak plainly, if y known to us in the character of a cause, he Fore exist merely as a cause,' and be merely a

rds an end?' It is surely possible to maintain eity is known to us only as he who feeds the hout supposing that the Divine Intelligence exn order that the ravens may be fed."*-(P. 42.)

is we would remark, en passant, that precisely Hamilton's own doctrine, sphere of our belief is more ex

66

te to this passage, Mr. Mill makes some sarcastic comargument of Hamilton's against Cousin's theory that sarily determined to create. "On this hypothesis," n, "God, as necessarily determined to pass from absoto relative manifestation, is determined to pass either ter to the worse, or from the worse to the better." Mr. is argument a curiosity of dialectics," and answers, sdom would have begun to will the new state at the ent when it began to be better than the old." Hamileaking of states of things, but of states of the Divine eative or not creative; and Mr. Mill's argument, to ton, must suppose a time when the new nature of God better than the old! Mr. Mill would perhaps have amilton's argument with more respect had he known en from Plato.

purport of Hamilton's argument is to show that the Absolute, as conceived by Cousin, is not a true Absolute (Infinito-Absolute), and therefore does not represent the real nature of God. His argument is this: "Cousin's Absolute exists merely as a cause : God does not exist merely as a cause therefore Cousin's Absolute is not God." Mr. Mill actually mistakes the position which Hamilton is opposing for that which he is maintaining. Such an error does not lead us to expect much from his subsequent refutation.

His first criticism is a curious specimen of his reading in philosophy. He says:

"When the True or the Beautiful are spoken of, the phrase is meant to include all things whatever that are true, or all things whatever that are beautiful. If this

at there is some Being who is, or which is, the

e,

not something absolute, but the Absolute -the proposition can be understood in no other han that the supposed Being possesses in absolute eness all predicates; is absolutely good and absoad; absolutely wise and absolutely stupid; and so -(P. 43.)

to expressly distinguishes between "the iful" and " things that are beautiful," e One in contrast to the Many-the in contrast to the Apparent. It is, of e, quite possible that Plato may be

support of this position, Mr. Mill cites Hegel-" What an absolute Being is that which does not contain in itself is actual, even evil included ?" We are not concerned to Hegel's position; but he was not quite so absurd as to mean T. Mill supposes him to have meant. Does not Mr. Mill

at it was one of Hegel's fundamental positions, that the mature cannot be expressed by a plurality of predicates? public, book v., p. 479.