iousness of my own finite personality. I therefore believe in the
coexistence of attributes in God, in some manner different from that in
which they coexist in me as limiting each other: and thus I believe in
the fact, though I am unable to conceive the manner. So, again, Kant
brings certain counter arguments, to prove, on the one side, that the
world has a beginning in time, and, on the other side, that it has not a
beginning. Now suppose I am unable to refute either of these courses of
argument, am I therefore compelled to have no belief at all? May I not
say, I believe, in spite of Kant, _that_ the world has a beginning in
time, though I am unable to conceive _how_ it can have so begun? What is
this, again, but a belief in an absolute reality beyond the sphere of my
relative knowledge?

"I am not now considering," says Mr. Mill, "what it is that, in our
author's opinion, we are bound to believe concerning the unknowable."
Why, this was the very thing he ought to have considered, before
pronouncing the position to be untenable, or to be irreconcilable with
something else. Meanwhile, it is instructive to observe that Mr. Mill
himself believes, or requires his readers to believe, something
concerning the unknown. He does not know, or at any rate he does not tell
his readers, what Hamilton requires them to believe concerning the
unknowable; but he himself believes, and requires them to believe, that
this unknown something is incompatible with the doctrine that knowledge
is relative. We cannot regard this as a very satisfactory mode of
refuting Hamilton's thesis.[AY]

[AY] In a subsequent chapter (p. 120), Mr. Mill endeavours to
overthrow this distinction between Knowledge and Belief,
by means of Hamilton's own theory of Consciousness.
Hamilton maintains that we cannot be conscious of a
mental operation without being conscious of its object.
On this Mr. Mill retorts that if, as Hamilton admits, we
are conscious of a belief in the Infinite and the
Absolute, we must be conscious of the Infinite and the
Absolute themselves; and such consciousness is
Knowledge. The fallacy of this retort is transparent.
The immediate object of Belief is a _proposition_ which
I hold to be true, not a _thing_ apprehended in an act
of conception. I believe in an infinite God; _i.e._, I
believe _that_ God is infinite: I believe that the
attribut