ls. If the difference here noted were all
which Sir W. Hamilton has in view when he declares the Infinite to be
unknowable and incogitable, we should accede to his opinion; but we
apprehend that he means much more, and he certainly requires more to
justify the marked antithesis in which he places himself against M.
Cousin and Hegel. Indeed, the facility with which he declares matters to
be incogitable, which these two and other philosophers not only cogitate
but maintain as truth, is to us truly surprising. The only question
which appears to us important is, whether we can understand and reason
upon the meaning of the terms and propositions addressed to us. If we
can, the subjects propounded must be cogitable and conceivable, whether
we admit the propositions affirmed concerning them or not; if we cannot,
then these subjects are indeed incogitable by ourselves in the present
state of our knowledge, but they may not be so to our opponent who
employs the terms.

In criticising the arguments of Sir W. Hamilton against M. Cousin, Mr
Mill insists much on a distinction between (1) the Infinite, and (2) the
Infinite in any one or more positive attributes, such as infinite
wisdom, goodness, redness, hardness, &c.[4] He thinks that Sir W.
Hamilton has made out his case against the first, but not against the
last; that the first is really 'an unmeaning and senseless abstraction,'
a fasciculus of negations, unknowable and inconceivable, but not the
last. We think that Mr Mill makes more of this distinction than the
case warrants; that the first is not unmeaning, but an intelligible
abstraction, only a higher reach of abstraction than the last; that it
is knowable inadequately, in the same way as the last--though more
inadequately, because of its higher abstraction.

As the finite is intelligible, so also is its negation--the Infinite: we
do not say (with M. Cousin) that the two are conjointly given in
consciousness--but the two are understood and partially apprehended by
the mind conjointly and in contrast. Though the Infinite is doubtless
negative as to a degree, it is not wholly or exclusively negative, since
it includes a necessary reference to some positive attribute, to which
the degree belongs; the positive element is not eliminated, but merely
left undetermined. The Infinite (like the Finite, [Greek: to
peperasmhenon--to hapeiron]) is a genus; it comprehends under it the
Infinitely Hard and the Infinitely Soft, the Infinit