ons concerning the incomprehensibility of God. The
inconsequence of all such arguments is absolute; and if philosophy
tolerates the transference of spatial or temporal analogies to the
nature of God, she must reconcile herself to the negation of his
personality and spirituality."[325] An Infinite Being, quite remote from
the notion of _quantity_, may and does exist; which, on the one hand,
does not include finite existence, and, on the other hand, does not
render the finite impossible to thought. Without contradiction they may
coexist, and be correlated.

The thought will have already suggested itself to the mind of the reader
that for Hamilton to assert that the Infinite, as thus defined (the One
and the All), is absolutely unknown, is certainly the greatest
absurdity, for in that case nothing can be known. This Infinite must be
at least partially known, or all human knowledge is reduced to zero. To
the all-inclusive Infinite every thing affirmative belongs, not only to
be, but to be known. To claim it for being, yet deny it to thought, is
thus impossible. The Infinite, which includes all real existence, is
certainly possible to cognition.

The whole argument as regards the conditionating nature of all thought
is condensed into four words by Spinoza--"_Omnis determinatio est
negatio_;" all determination is negation. Nothing can be more arbitrary
or more fallacious than this principle. It arises from the confusion of
two things essentially different--_the limits of a being_, and _its
determinate and distinguishing characteristics_. The limit of a being is
its imperfection; the determination of a being is its perfection. The
less a thing is determined, the more it sinks in the scale of being; the
most determinate being is the most perfect being. "In this sense God is
the only being absolutely determined. For there must be something
indetermined in all finite beings, since they have all imperfect powers
which tend towards their development after an indefinite manner. God
alone, the complete Being in whom all powers are actualized, escapes by
His own perfection from all progress, and development, and
indetermination."[326]

[Footnote 325: North American Review, October, 1864, article, "The
Conditioned and the Unconditioned," pp. 422, 423. See also Young's
"Province of Reason," p. 72; and Calderwood's "Philosophy of the
Infinite," p. 183.]

[Footnote 326: Saisset, "Modern Pantheism," vol. ii. p. 71.]

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