Reason and Faith [pp. 648-685]

Reason and Faith.
bring to the notice. of our readers, Mr. Mansel's attempted demonstration of the source and the necessity of these contradictoiy conceptions of things, as lying in the very nature of consciousness and personality.
"That man can be conscious of the Infinite is thus a supposition, which, in the very terms in which it is expressed, annihilates itself. Consciousness is essentially a limitation, for it is
the determination of the mind to one actual out of many possible modifications. But the Infinite, if it is to be conceived at
all, must be conceived as potentially everything and actually
nothing; (!!) for if there is anything in general which it cannot become, it is thereby limited; and if there is anything in
particular which it actually is, it is thereby excluded from being
any other thing. But again, it must be conceived as actually
everything, and potentially nothing: for an unrealized potentiality is likewise a limitation. If the infinite can be that
which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete and capable of a higher perfection. If it is actually
everything, it possesses no characteristic feature, by which it
can be distinguished from anything else, and discerned as an
object of consciousness.
"This contradiction, which is utterly inexplicable on the
supposition that the infinite is a positive object of human
thought, is at once accounted for, when it is regarded as the
mere negation of thought. If all thought is limitation-if,
whatever we conceive is, by the very act of conception regarded
as finite-the infinite, from a human point of view, is merely a
No composite thing can consist of simple parts, and there cannot exist in
the world any simple substance.
Third Antinomy.
Causality, according to the laws of nature, is not the only causality operating
to originate the phenomena of the world; to account for the phenomena we
must have the causality of freedom.
There is no such thing as freedom, but every thing in the world happens according to the laws of nature.
Fourth Antinomy.
There exists in the world, or in connection with it, as a part or as the cause
of it, an absolutely necessary being.
An absolutely necessary being does not exist, either in the world or out of it,
as the cause of the world.
1860.]
668