The Philosophy of the Infinite Author:Henry Calderwood Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. EXAMINATION OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S DOCTRINE OF A NEGATIVE NOTION OF THE INFINITE. In the previous Chapter, we have stated the grounds upon ... more »which we exclude from consideration the Absolute, which has been distinguished by Sir William Hamilton, as opposed to the Infinite. Our future discussion will, therefore, be entirely occupied with a consideration of the possibility of a knowledge of the Infinite, and we now proceed to direct attention to the theory of Sir William on this question. His doctrine is, that "the Unconditioned, (i.e., the Infinite,) is incognisable and inconceivable; its notion being only the negative of the Conditioned, (i.e., the finite,) which last can alone be positively known or. conceived." Sir William thus asserts that the Infinite is inconceivable, and yet, in the very next clause, he speaks of " its notion," and it seems considered enough to defend the rather glaring contradiction, that the notion is called a negative one. " A negative notion" is certainly a rather strange expression, and as to the thing intended to be indicated.we are sorry that we cannot coincide in its adoption. This so called negative notion is what is assigned by Sir William as the Philosophy of the Infinite, since, according to him, our notion of the Infinite is a negative notion. Whenever M. Cousin reasons that our notion of the finite implies a notion of the Infinite,—no such thing, says Sir William, there are no two such relative notions in the mind as the finite and the Infinite; our notion of the Infinite is obtained by the mere negation of the qualities of the finite,— it is a negative notion. Now, we maintain, with M. Cousin, that our notion of a finite object, implies also the notion of an Infinite object; that our notion of a finite being, implies the ...« less