arily self-existent, and
therefore uncreated.

"In what manner is a possible existence out of all relation,
incompatible with the notion of a cause? Have not causes a possible
existence apart from their effects? Would the sun, for example, not
exist if there were no earth or planets for it to illuminate? Mr.
Mansel seems to think that what is capable of existing out of
relation, cannot possibly be conceived or known in relation. But
this is not so.... Freed from this confusion of ideas, Mr. Mansel's
argument resolves itself into this,--The same Being cannot be
thought by us both as Cause and as Absolute, because a Cause _as
such_ is not Absolute, and Absolute, as such, is not a Cause; which
is exactly as if he had said that Newton cannot be thought by us
both as an Englishman and as a mathematician, because an
Englishman, as such, is not a mathematician, nor a mathematician,
as such, an Englishman."--(P. 92.)

The "confusion of ideas" is entirely of Mr. Mill's own making, and is
owing to his having mutilated the argument before criticising it. The
argument in its original form consists of two parts; the first intended
to show that the Absolute is not conceived _as such_ in being conceived
as a Cause; the second to show that the Absolute cannot be conceived
under different aspects at different times--first as Absolute, and then
as Cause. It was the impossibility of this latter alternative which drove
Cousin to the hypothesis of a necessary causation from all eternity. Mr.
Mill entirely omits the latter part of the argument, and treats the
former part as if it were the whole. The part criticised by Mr. Mill is
intended to prove exactly what it does prove, and no more; namely, that a
cause _as such_ is not the absolute, and that to know a cause _as such_
is not to know the absolute. We presume Mr. Mill himself will admit that
to know Newton as a mathematician is not to know him as an Englishman.
Whether he can be known separately as both, and whether the Absolute in
this respect is a parallel case, depends on another consideration, which
Mr. Mill has not noticed. The continuation of Mr. Mill's criticism is
equally confused. He says:--

"The whole of Mr. Mansel's argument for the inconceivability of the
Infinite and of the Absolute is one long _ignoratio elenchi_. It
has been pointed out in a former chapter that the words Absolute
and Infinite have no real meaning, unless we und