his writings,--"This elaborate parade
of argument is literally answered in two words--_Quis dubitavit?_"

But if the substitution of God for the Infinite be thus a perversion of
Hamilton's argument, what shall we say to a similar substitution in the
case of the Absolute? Hamilton distinctly tells us that there is one
sense of the term _absolute_ in which it is contradictory of the
infinite, and therefore is not predicable of God at all. Mr. Mill admits
that Hamilton, throughout the greater part of his arguments, employs the
term in this sense; and he then actually proceeds to "test" these
arguments "by substituting the concrete, God, for the abstract,
Absolute;" _i.e._, by substituting God for something which Hamilton
defines as contradictory to the nature of God. Can the force of confusion
go further? Is it possible for perverse criticism more utterly, we do not
say to misrepresent, but literally to invert an author's meaning?

The source of all these errors, and of a great many more, is simply this.
Mr. Mill is aware, from Hamilton's express assertion, that the word
_absolute_ may be used in two distinct and even contradictory senses; but
he is wholly unable to see what those senses are, or when Hamilton is
using the term in the one sense, and when in the other. Let us endeavour
to clear up some of this confusion.

Hamilton's article on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned is a criticism,
partly of Schelling, partly of Cousin; and Schelling and Cousin only
attempted in a new form, under the influence of the Kantian philosophy,
to solve the problem with which philosophy in all ages has attempted to
grapple,--the problem of the Unconditioned.

"The unconditioned" is a term which, while retaining the same general
meaning, admits of various applications, particular or universal. It may
be the unconditioned as regards some special relation, or the
unconditioned as regards all relations whatever. Thus there may be the
unconditioned in Psychology--the human soul considered as a substance;
the unconditioned in Cosmology--the world considered as a single whole;
the unconditioned in Theology--God in His own nature, as distinguished
from His manifestations to us; or, finally, the unconditioned _par
excellence_--the unconditioned in Ontology--the being on which all other
being depends. It is of course possible to identify any one of the three
first with the last. It is possible to adopt a system of Egoism, and to
maintain that