tions from
consciousness rightly interpreted. Mr. Spencer, on the
other hand, takes these negative inferences as the only
basis of religion, and abandons Hamilton's great
principle of the distinction between knowledge and
belief, by quietly dropping out of his system the facts
of consciousness which make such a distinction
necessary. His whole system is, in fact, a pertinent
illustration of Hamilton's remark, that "the phenomena
of matter" [and of mind, he might add, treated by
materialistic methods], "taken by themselves (you will
observe the qualification, taken by themselves), so far
from warranting any inference to the existence of a God,
would, on the contrary, ground even an argument to his
negation." Mr. Spencer, like Mr. Mill, denies the
freedom of the will; and this, according to Hamilton,
leads by logical consequence to Atheism.

In the few places in which Hamilton speaks directly as a theologian, his
language is in agreement with the general voice of Catholic theology down
to the end of the seventeenth century, some specimens of which have been
given on a previous page. Thus he says (_Discussions_, p. 15): "True,
therefore, are the declarations of a pious philosophy,--'A God understood
would be no God at all;' 'To think that God is, as we can think Him to
be, is blasphemy.' The Divinity, in a certain sense, is revealed; in a
certain sense is concealed: He is at once known and unknown. But the last
and highest consecration of all true religion must be an altar [Greek:
Agnosto Theo]--'_To the unknown and unknowable God._'" A little later
(p. 20) he says: "We should not recoil to the opposite extreme; and
though man be not identical with the Deity, still is he 'created in the
image of God.' It is, indeed, only through an analogy of the human with
the Divine nature, that we are percipient and recipient of Divinity." In
the first of these passages we have an echo of the language of Basil, the
two Cyrils, and John Damascene, and of our own Hooker and Usher; while in
the second we find the counter truth, intimated by Augustine and other
Fathers,[M] and clearly stated by Aquinas, and which in the last
century was elaborately expounded in the _Divine Analogy_ of Bishop
Browne,--namely, that though we know not God in His own nature, yet are
we not wholly ignorant of Him, but may attain to an imperfect knowle