tions, are guaranteed to us,
therefore, on the warrant, not of sense, but of intellect."[315]

"We conclude, then, on reviewing these examples of Space, and Time, and
Causation, that ontological ideas introducing us to certain fixed
entities belong no less to our knowledge than scientific ideas of
phenomenal disposition and succession."[316] In these instances of
relation between a phenomenon given in perception and an entity as a
logical condition, the correlatives are on a perfect equality of
intellectual validity, and the relative character of human thought is
not an ontological disqualification, but a cognitive power.

[Footnote 314: "Essays," pp. 193,194.]

[Footnote 315: Ibid., p. 197.]

[Footnote 316: Ibid., p. 195.]

There is a thread of fallacy running through the whole of Hamilton's
reasonings, consequent upon a false definition of the Absolute at the
outset. The Absolute is defined as _that which exists in and by itself,
aloof from and out of all relation_. An absolute, as thus defined, does
not and can not exist; it is a pure abstraction, and, in fact, a pure
non-entity. "The Absolute expresses perfect independence both in being
and in action, and is applicable to God as self-existent."[317] It may
mean the absence of all _necessary_ relation, but it does not mean the
absence of _all_ relation. If God can not _voluntarily_ call a finite
existence into being, and thus stand in the relation of cause, He is
certainly under the severest limitation. But surely that is not a limit
which substitutes choice for necessity. To be unable to know God out of
all relation--that is, apart from his attributes, apart from his created
universe, is not felt by us to be any privation at all. A God without
attributes, and out of all relations, is for us no God at all. God as a
being of unlimited perfection, as infinitely wise and good, as the
unconditioned cause of all finite being, and, consequently, as
voluntarily related to nature and humanity, we can and do know; this is
the living and true God. The God of a false philosophy is not the true
God; the pure abstractions of Hegel and Hamilton are negations, and not
realities.

2. We proceed to consider the second fundamental principle of Hamilton's
philosophy of the conditioned, viz., that "conditional limitation is the
fundamental law of the possibility of thought," and that thought
necessarily imposes conditions on its object.

"Thought," says Hamilton, "can not transc