f their antagonism is
sufficient to show that the meaning of "the phrase" need not be what Mr.
Mill supposes it must be. In fact, "the Absolute" in philosophy always
has meant the One as distinguished from the Many, not the One as
including the Many. But, as applied to Sir W. Hamilton, Mr. Mill's
remarks on "the Absolute," and his subsequent remarks on "the Infinite,"
not only misrepresent Hamilton's position, but exactly reverse it.
Hamilton maintains that the terms "absolute" and "infinite" are perfectly
intelligible as abstractions, as much so as "relative" and "finite;" for
"correlatives suggest each other," and the "knowledge of contradictories
is one;" but he denies that a concrete thing or object can be positively
conceived as absolute or infinite. Mr. Mill represents him as only
proving that the "unmeaning abstractions are unknowable,"--abstractions
which Hamilton does not assert to be unmeaning; and which he regards as
knowable in the only sense in which such abstractions can be known, viz.,
by understanding the meaning of their names.[AQ]

[AP] _Republic_, book v., p. 479.

[AQ] This confusion between conceiving a concrete thing and
knowing the meaning of abstract terms is as old as
Toland's _Christianity not Mysterious_, and, indeed, has
its germ, though not its development, in the teaching of
his assumed master, Locke. Locke taught that all our
knowledge is founded on simple ideas, and that a complex
idea is merely an accumulation of simple ones. Hence
Toland maintained that no object could be mysterious or
inconceivable if the terms in which its several
attributes are expressed have ideas corresponding to
them. But, in point of fact, no simple idea can be
conceived as an object by itself, though the word by
which it is signified has a perfectly intelligible
meaning. I cannot, _e.g._, conceive whiteness by itself,
though I can conceive a white wall, _i.e._, whiteness in
combination with other attributes in a concrete object.
To conceive attributes as coexisting, however, we must
conceive them as coexisting in a certain manner; for an
object of conception is not a mere heap of ideas, but an
organized whole, whose constituent ideas exist in a
particular combination with and relation to each other.
To conceive, therefore, we must not only be able to
ap