ely Swift and the
Infinitely Slow--the infinite, in short, of any or all positive
attributes. It includes, doubtless, 'a farrago of contradictions;' but
so, also, does the Finite--and so, also, do the actual manifestations of
the real, concrete universe, which manifestations constitute a portion
of the Finite. Whoever attempts to give any philosophical account of the
generation of the universe, tracing its phenomena, as an aggregate, to
some ultra-phenomenal origin, must include in his scheme a _fundamentum_
for all those opposite and contradictory manifestations which experience
discloses in the universe. There always have been, and still are, many
philosophers who consider the Abstract and General to be prior both in
nature and time to the Concrete and Particular; and who hold further
that these two last are explained, when presented as determinate and
successive manifestations of the two first, which they conceive as
indeterminate and sempiternal. Now the Infinite (Ens Infinitum or Entia
Infinita, according to the point of view in which we look at it) is a
generic word, including all these supposed indeterminate antecedents;
and including therefore, of course, many contradictory agencies. But
this does not make it senseless or unmeaning; nor can we distinguish it
from 'the Infinite in some one or more given attributes,' by any other
character than by greater reach of abstraction. We cannot admit the
marked distinction which Mr Mill contends for--that the one is
unknowable and the other knowable.

It may be proper to add that the mode of philosophizing which we have
just described is not ours. We do not agree in this way either of
conceiving, or of solving, the problem of philosophy. But it is a mode
so prevalent that Trendelenberg speaks of it, justly enough, as 'the
ancient Hysteron-Proteron of Abstraction.' The doctrine of these
philosophers appears to us unfounded, but we cannot call it unmeaning.

In another point, also, we differ from Mr Mill respecting that inferior
abstraction which he calls 'the Infinite in some particular attribute.'
He speaks as if this could be known not only as an abstraction, a
conceivable, an ideal--but also as a concrete reality; as if 'we could
know a concrete reality as infinite or as absolute' (p. 45); as if there
really existed in actual nature 'concrete persons or things possessing
infinitely or absolutely certain specific attributes'--(pp. 55--93). To
this doctrine we cannot sub