their apparent
simplicity, and both simple only by mutilation, that the Philosophy of
the Conditioned, of which Sir William Hamilton is the representative,
endeavours to steer a middle course, at the risk of sharing the fate of
most mediators in a quarrel,--being repudiated and denounced by both
combatants, because it declares them to be both in the wrong. Against
Pantheism, which is the natural development of the principle of
Indifferentism, it enters a solemn protest, by asserting that the
Absolute must be accepted in philosophy, not as a problem to be solved by
reason, but as a reality to be believed in, though above reason; and that
the pseudo-absolute, which Pantheism professes to exhibit in a positive
conception, is shown, by the very fact of its being so conceived, not to
be the true Absolute. Against Positivism, which is virtually Materialism,
it protests no less strongly, maintaining that the philosophy which
professes to explain the whole of nature by the aid of material laws
alone, proceeds upon an assumption which does not merely dispense with
God as a scientific hypothesis, but logically involves consequences which
lead to a denial of His very existence. Between both extremes, it holds
an intermediate position, neither aspiring, with Pantheism, to solve the
problems of the Absolute, nor neglecting them, with Positivism, as
altogether remote from the field of philosophical inquiry; but
maintaining that such problems must necessarily arise, and must
necessarily be taken into account in every adequate survey of human
nature and human thought, and that philosophy, if it cannot solve them,
is bound to show why they are insoluble.

Let us hear Hamilton's own words in relation to both the systems which he
opposes. Against Pantheism, and the Philosophy of the Unconditioned in
general, he says:--

"The Conditioned is the mean between two extremes,--two
inconditionates, exclusive of each other, _neither of which can be
conceived as possible_,[K] but of which, on the principles of
contradiction and excluded middle, _one must be admitted as
necessary_. On this opinion, therefore, our faculties are shown to
be weak, but not deceitful. The mind is not represented as
conceiving two propositions, subversive of each other, as equally
possible; but only as unable to understand as possible either of
the two extremes; one of which, however, on the ground of their
mutual repugnance, it is compelled to rec