is not B_; there is no _medium_."[354] Now, to mention the
law of Excluded Middle and two contradictories with a _mean_ between
them, in the same sentence, is really astounding. "If the two
contradictory extremes are equally incogitable, yet include a cogitable
mean, why insist upon the necessity of accepting either extreme? This
necessity of accepting one of the contradictories is wholly based upon
the supposed impossibility of a _mean_; if a mean exists, _that_ may be
true, and both contradictories together false. But if a mean between two
contradictories be both impossible and absurd, Hamilton's 'conditioned'
entirely vanishes."[355] If both contradictories are equally unknown and
equally unthinkable, we can not discover _why_, on his principles, we
are bound to believe _either_.

[Footnote 354: Hamilton's "Logic," pp. 58, 59; "Metaphysics," vol. ii.
p. 368.]

[Footnote 355: North British Review, October, 1864, pp. 415, 416.]

3. The whole of this confusion in thought and expression results from
the habit of confounding the sensuous imagination with the non-sensuous
reason, and the consequent co-ordination of an imageable conception with
an abstract idea. The objects of sense and the sensuous imagination may
be characterized as extension, limitation, figure, position, etc.; the
objects of the non-sensuous reason may be characterized as universality,
eternity, infinity. I can form an _image_ of an extended and figured
object, but I can not form an _image_ of space, time, or God; neither,
indeed, can I form an image of Goodness, Justice, or Truth. But I can
have a clear and precise idea of space, and time, and God, as I can of
Justice, Goodness, and Truth. There are many things which I can most
surely _know_ that I can not possibly _comprehend_, if to comprehend is
to form a mental image of a thing. There is nothing which I more
certainly know than that space is infinite, and eternity unbeginning and
endless; but I can not comprehend the infinity of space or the
illimitability of eternity. I know that God is, that he is a being of
infinite perfection, but I can not throw my thoughts around and
comprehend the infinity of God.

(iv.) We come, lastly, to consider the position of the _Dogmatic
Theologians_.[356] In their zeal to demonstrate the necessity of Divine
Revelation, and to vindicate for it the honor of supplying to us all our
knowledge of God, they assail every fundamental principle of reason,
often by the ve