e, at least, partially known; and
Hamilton can not consistently assert the relativity of _all_ knowledge.
Even if it be granted that our cognitions of objects are only in part
dependent on the objects themselves, and in part on elements superadded
by our organism, or by our minds, it can not warrant the assertion that
all our knowledge, but only the part so added, is relative. "The
admixture of the relative element not only does not take away the
absolute character of the remainder, but does not even (if our author is
right) prevent us from recognizing it. The confusion, according to him,
is not inextricable. It is for us 'to analyze and distinguish what
elements,' in an 'act of knowledge,' are contributed by the object, and
what by the organs or by the mind."[313]

[Footnote 310: "Lectures on Metaphysics," vol. ii. p. 129.]

[Footnote 311: Philosophy of Sir Wm. Hamilton, p. 357]

[Footnote 312: Ibid., pp. 377, 378.]

[Footnote 313: Mill's "Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy," vol. i. p.
44.]

Admitting the relative character of human thought as a psychological
fact, Mr. Martineau has conclusively shown that this law, instead of
visiting us with disability to transcend phenomena, _operates as a
revelation of what exists beyond_. "The finite body cut out before our
visual perception, or embraced by the hands, lies as an island in the
emptiness around, and without comparative reference to this can not be
represented: the same experience which gives us the definite object
gives us also the infinite space; and both terms--the limited appearance
and the unlimited ground--are apprehended with equal certitude and
clearness, and furnished with names equally susceptible of distinct use
in predication and reasoning. The transient successions, for instance,
the strokes of a clock, which we count, present themselves to us as
dotted out upon a line of permanent duration; of which, without them, we
should have no apprehension, but which as their condition, is
unreservedly known."[314]

"What we have said with regard to space and time applies equally to the
case of Causation. Here, too, the finite offered to perception
introduces to an Infinite supplied by thought. As a definite body
reveals also the space around, and an interrupted succession exhibits
the uniform time beneath, so does the passing phenomenon demand for
itself a power beneath. The space, and time, and power, not being part
of the thing perceived, but its condi