ill whether he supposes that being wise is being "a thing,"
and being good is being another "thing?"

But, seriously, it is much to be wished that when a writer like Mr. Mill
undertakes to discuss philosophical questions, he should acquire some
slight acquaintance with the history of the questions discussed. Had this
been done by our critic in the present case, it might possibly have
occurred to him to doubt whether a doctrine supported by philosophers of
such different schools of thought as Spinoza, Malebranche, Wolf, Kant,
Schelling, could be quite such a piece of transparent nonsense as he
supposes it to be. All these writers are cited in Mr. Mansel's note, as
maintaining the theory that the Absolute is the _ens realissimum_, or sum
of all existence; and their names might have saved Mr. Mill from the
absurdity of supposing that by this expression was meant something
"absolutely good and absolutely bad; absolutely wise and absolutely
stupid; and so forth." The real meaning of the expression has been
already sufficiently explained in our earlier remarks. The problem of the
Philosophy of the Unconditioned, as sketched by Plato and generally
adopted by subsequent philosophers, is, as we have seen, to ascend up to
the first principle of all things, and thence to deduce, as from their
cause, all dependent and derived existences. The Unconditioned, as the
one first principle, must necessarily contain in itself, potentially or
actually, all that is derived from it, and thus must comprehend, in
embryo or in development, the sum of all existence. To reconcile this
conclusion with the phenomenal existence of evil and imperfection, is the
difficulty with which philosophy has had to struggle ever since
philosophy began. The Manichean, by referring evil to an independent
cause, denies the existence of an absolute first principle at all; the
Leibnitzian, with his hypothesis of the best possible world, virtually
sets bounds to the Divine omnipotence: the Pantheist identifies God with
all actual existence, and either denies the real existence of evil at
all, or merges the distinction between evil and good in some higher
indifference. All these conclusions may be alike untenable, but all alike
testify to the existence of the problem, and to the vast though
unsuccessful efforts which man's reason has made to solve it.

The reader may now, perhaps, understand the reason of an assertion which
Mr. Mill regards as supremely absurd,--namely