d is
modified by the influence of the alkali without entering into combination
with it. Such a view might perhaps be tolerated, in connection with the
theory of relativity, by an indulgent interpretation of language, but it
is certainly not that which the language of the theory most naturally
suggests.

All this Mr. Mill entirely misapprehends. He quotes a passage from
Hamilton's Lectures, in which the above theory of Relativity is clearly
stated as the mean between the extremes of Idealism and Materialism, and
then proceeds to comment as follows:--

"The proposition, that our cognitions of objects are only in part
dependent on the objects themselves, and in part on elements
superadded by our organs or our minds, is not identical, nor _prima
facie_ absurd. It cannot, however, warrant the assertion that all
our knowledge, but only that the part so added, is relative. If our
author had gone as far as Kant, and had said that all which
constitutes knowledge is put in by the mind itself, he would have
really held, in one of its forms, the doctrine of the relativity of
our knowledge. But what he does say, far from implying that the
whole of our knowledge is relative, distinctly imports that all of
it which, is real and authentic is the reverse. If any part of what
we fancy that we perceive in the objects themselves, originates in
the perceiving organs or in the cognising mind, thus much is purely
relative; but since, by supposition, it does not all so originate,
the part that does not is as much absolute as if it were not liable
to be mixed up with, these delusive subjective impressions."--(P.
30.)

Mr. Mill, therefore, supposes that _wholly relative_ must mean _wholly
mental_; in other words, that to say that a thing is wholly due to a
relation between mind and matter is equivalent to saying that it is
wholly due to mind alone. On the contrary, we maintain that Sir W.
Hamilton's language is far more accurate than Mr. Mill's, and that the
above theory can with perfect correctness be described as one of _total
relativity_; and this from two points of view. First, as opposed to the
theory of partial relativity generally held by the pre-Kantian
philosophers, according to which our sensitive cognitions are relative,
our intellectual ones absolute. Secondly, as asserting that the object of
perception, though composed of elements partly material, partly mental,
yet exhibits both alike in a form