ut Sir W. Hamilton goes further, and affirms that
we have no faculties capable of apprehending the Infinite and the
Absolute--that both of them are inconceivable to us, and by consequence
unknowable. Herein Mr Mill is opposed to him, and controverts his
doctrine in an elaborate argument.

Of this argument, able and ingenious, like all those in the present
volume, our limits only enable us to give a brief appreciation. In so
far as Mr Mill controverts Sir W. Hamilton, we think him perfectly
successful, though there are some points in his reasoning in which we do
not fully concur.

In our opinion, as in his, the Absolute alone (in its sense as opposed
to relative) can be necessarily unknowable, inconceivable, incogitable.
Nothing which falls under the condition of relativity can be declared to
be so. The structure of our minds renders us capable of knowing
everything which is relative, though there are many such things which we
have no evidence, nor shall ever get evidence, to enable us to know. Now
the Infinite falls within the conditions of relativity, as indeed Sir W.
Hamilton himself admits, when he intimates (p. 58) that though it cannot
be known, it is, must be, and ought to be, _believed_ by us, according
to the marked distinction which he draws between belief and knowledge.
We agree with Mr Mill in the opinion that it is thinkable, conceivable,
knowable. Doubtless we do not conceive it adequately, but we conceive it
sufficiently to discuss and reason upon it intelligibly to ourselves and
others. That we conceive the Infinite inadequately, is not to be held as
proof that we do not conceive it at all; for in regard to finite things
also, we conceive the greater number of them only inadequately.

We cannot construe to the imagination a polygon with an infinite number
of sides (i.e. with a number of sides greater than any given number),
but neither can we construe to the imagination a polygon with a million
of sides; nevertheless, we understand what is meant by the first
description as well as by the second, and can reason upon both. There
is, indeed, this difference between the two: That the terms used in
describing the first, proclaim at once in their direct meaning that we
should in vain attempt to construe it to the imagination; whereas the
terms used in describing the second do not intimate that fact. We know
the fact only by trial, or by an estimate of our own mental force which
is the result of many past tria