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all phenomena are modes of my mind, and that the substance of my mind is the only real existence. It is possible to adopt a system of Materialism, and to maintain that all phenomena are modes of matter, and that the material substance of the world is the only real existence. Or it is possible to adopt a system of Pantheism, and to maintain that all phenomena are modes of the Divine existence, and that God is the only reality. But the several notions are in themselves distinct, though one may ultimately be predicated of another. The general notion of the Unconditioned is the same in all these cases, and all must finally culminate in the last, the Unconditioned _par excellence_. The general notion is that of the One as distinguished from the Many, the substance from its accidents, the permanent reality from its variable modifications. Thought, will, sensation, are modes of my existence. What is the _I_ that is one and the same in all? Extension, figure, resistance, are attributes of matter. What is the one substance to which these attributes belong? But the generalisation cannot stop here. If matter differs from mind, the _non-ego_ from the _ego_, as one thing from another, there must be some special point of difference, which, is the condition of the existence of each in this or that particular manner. Unconditioned existence, therefore, in the highest sense of the term, cannot be the existence of _this_ as distinguished from _that_; it must be existence _per se_, the ground and principle of all conditioned or special existence. This is the Unconditioned, properly so called: the unconditioned in Schelling's sense, as the indifference of subject and object: and it is against this that Hamilton's arguments are directed. The question is this. Is this Unconditioned a mere abstraction, the product of our own minds; or can it be conceived as having a real existence _per se_, and, as such, can it be identified with God as the source of all existence? Hamilton maintains that it is a mere abstraction, and cannot be so identified; that, far from being "a name of God," it is a name of nothing at all. "By abstraction," he says, "we annihilate the object, and by abstraction we annihilate the subject of consciousness. But what remains? _Nothing._" When we attempt to conceive it as a reality, we "hypostatise the zero."[AM] [AM] _Discussions_, p. 21. In order to conceive the Unconditioned existing as a thing, we must conceive
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