ime, the _correlative consciousness_ of its
negation. Now the one consciousness is a positive, the other
consciousness is a negative notion; and as all language is the reflex of
thought, the positive and negative notions are expressed by positive and
negative names. Thus it is with the Infinite.[338] Now let us carefully
scrutinize the above deliverance. We are told that "relatives are known
only in and through each other;" that is, such relatives as _finite_ and
_infinite_ are known necessarily in the same act of thought. The
knowledge of one is as necessary as the knowledge of the other. We can
not have a consciousness of the one without the correlative
consciousness of the other. "For," says Hamilton, "a relation is, in
truth, a thought, one and indivisible; and while the thinking a relation
_necessarily involves the thought of its two terms,_, so it is, with
equal necessity, itself involved in the thought of either." If, then, we
are _conscious_ of the two terms of the relation in the same "one and
indivisible" mental act--if we can not have "the consciousness of the
one without the consciousness of the other"--if space and position, time
and succession, substance and quality, infinite and finite, are given to
us in pairs, then 'the _knowledge of one is as necessary as the
knowledge of the other,_' and they must stand or fall together. The
finite is known no more positively than the infinite; the infinite is
known as positively as the finite. The one can not be taken and the
other left. The infinite, discharged from all relation to the finite,
could never come into apprehension; and the finite, discharged of all
relation to the infinite, is incognizable too. "There can be no
objection to call the one 'positive' and the other 'negative,' provided
it be understood that _each_ is so with regard to the other, and that
the relation is convertible; the finite, for instance, being the
negative of the infinite, not less than the infinite of the
finite."[339]

[Footnote 338: _Logic,_ p. 73.]

[Footnote 339: Martineau's "Essays," p. 237.]

To say that the finite is comprehensible in and by itself, and the
infinite is incomprehensible in and by itself, is to make an assertion
utterly at variance both with psychology and logic. The finite is no
more comprehensible _in itself_ than the infinite. "Relatives are known
only in and through each other."[340] "The conception of one term of a
relation necessarily implies that of the