The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Textual Introduction
• Preface to the Third Edition[*]
• Chapter I: Introductory Remarks
• Chapter II: The Relativity of Human Knowledge
• Chapter III: The Doctrine of the Relativity of Human Knowledge, As Held By Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter IV: In What Respect Sir William Hamilton Really Differs From the Philosophers of the Absolute
• Chapter V: What Is Rejected As Knowledge By Sir William Hamilton, Brought Back Under the Name of Belief
• Chapter VI: The Philosophy of the Conditioned
• Chapter VII: The Philosophy of the Conditioned, As Applied By Mr. Mansel to the Limits of Religious Thought
• Chapter VIII: Of Consciousness, As Understood By Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter IX: Of the Interpretation of Consciousness
• Chapter X: Sir William Hamilton’s View of the Different Theories Respecting the Belief In an External World
• Chapter XI: The Psychological Theory of the Belief In an External World
• Chapter XII: The Psychological Theory of the Belief In Matter, How Far Applicable to Mind
• Chapter XIII: The Psychological Theory of the Primary Qualities of Matter
• Chapter XIV: How Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel Dispose of the Law of Inseparable Association
• Chapter XV: Sir William Hamilton’s Doctrine of Unconscious Mental Modifications
• Chapter XVI: Sir William Hamilton’s Theory of Causation
• Chapter XVII: The Doctrine of Concepts, Or General Notions
• Chapter XVIII: Of Judgment
• Chapter XIX: Of Reasoning
• Chapter XX: On Sir William Hamilton’s Conception of Logic As a Science. Is Logic the Science of the Laws, Or Forms, of Thought?
• Chapter XXI: The Fundamental Laws of Thought According to Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter XXII: Of Sir William Hamilton’s Supposed Improvements In Formal Logic
• Chapter XXIII: Of Some Minor Peculiarities of Doctrine In Sir William Hamilton’s View of Formal Logic
• Chapter XXIV: Of Some Natural Prejudices Countenanced By Sir William Hamilton, and Some Fallacies Which He Considers Insoluble
• Chapter XXV: Sir William Hamilton’s Theory of Pleasure and Pain
• Chapter XXVI: On the Freedom of the Will
• Chapter XXVII: Sir William Hamilton’s Opinions On the Study of Mathematics
• Chapter XXVIII: Concluding Remarks
• Appendices
• Appendix A: Manuscript Fragments
• Appendix B: Textual Emendations
• Appendix C: Corrected References
• Appendix D: Bibliographic Index of Persons and Works Cited In the Examination, With Variants and Notes

CHAPTER VII

The Philosophy of the Conditioned, as Applied by Mr. Mansel to the Limits of Religious Thought

mr. mansel may be affirmed, by a fair application of the term, to be, in metaphysics, a pupil of Sir W. Hamilton. I do not mean that he agrees with him in all his opinions; for he avowedly dissents from the peculiar Hamiltonian theory of Cause: still less that he has learnt nothing from any other teacher, or from his own independent speculations. On the contrary, he has shown considerable power of original thought, both of a good and of what seems to me ^anot a good^a quality. But he is the admiring editor of Sir W. Hamilton’s Lectures; he invariably speaks of him with a deference which he pays to no other philosopher; he expressly accepts, in language identical with Sir W. Hamilton’s own, the doctrines regarded as specially characteristic of the Hamiltonian philosophy, and may with reason be considered as a representative of the same general mode of thought. Mr. Mansel has bestowed especial cultivation upon a province but slightly touched by his master—the application of the Philosophy of the Conditioned to the theological department of thought; the deduction of such of its corollaries and consequences as directly concern religion.

The premises from which Mr. Mansel reasons are those of Sir W. Hamilton. He maintains the necessary relativity of all our knowledge. He holds that the Absolute and the Infinite, or, to use a more significant expression, an Absolute and an Infinite Being, are inconceivable by us; and that when we strive to conceive what is thus inaccessible to our faculties, we fall into self-contradiction. That we are, nevertheless, warranted in believing, and bound to believe, the real existence of an absolute and infinite being, and that this being is God. God, therefore, is inconceivable and unknowable by us, and cannot even be thought of without self-contradiction; that is (for Mr. Mansel is careful thus to qualify the assertion), thought of as Absolute, and as Infinite. Through this inherent imposibility of our conceiving or knowing God’s essential attributes, we are disqualified from judging what is or is not consistent with them. If, then, a religion is presented to us, containing any particular doctrine respecting the Deity, our belief or rejection of the doctrine ought to depend exclusively upon the evidences which can be produced for the divine origin of the religion; and no argument grounded on the incredibility of the doctrine, as involving an intellectual absurdity, or on its moral badness as unworthy of a good or wise being, ought to have any weight, since of these things we are incompetent to judge. This, at least, is the drift of Mr. Mansel’s argument; but I am bound to admit that he affirms the conclusion with a certain limitation; for he acknowledges, that the moral character of the doctrines of a religion ought to count for something among the reasons for accepting or rejecting, as of divine origin, the religion as a whole. That it ought also to count for something in the interpretation of the religion when accepted, he neglects to say; but we must in fairness suppose that he would admit it. These concessions, however, to the moral feelings of mankind, are made at the expense of Mr. Mansel’s logic. If his theory is correct, he has no right to make either of them.

There is nothing new in this line of argument as applied to theology. That we cannot understand God; that his ways are not our ways; that we cannot scrutinize or judge his counsels—propositions which, in a reasonable sense of the terms, could not be denied by any Theist—have often before been tendered as reasons why we may assert any absurdities and any moral monstrosities concerning God, and miscall them Goodness and Wisdom. The novelty is in presenting this conclusion as a corollary from the most advanced doctrines of modern philosophy—from the true theory of the powers and limitations of the human mind, on religious and on all other subjects.

My opinion of this doctrine, in whatever way presented, is, that it is simply the most morally pernicious doctrine now current; and that the question it involves is, beyond all others which now engage speculative minds, the decisive one between moral good and evil for the Christian world. It is a momentous matter, therefore, to consider whether we are obliged to adopt it. Without holding Mr. Mansel accountable for the moral consequences of the doctrine, further than he himself accepts them, I think it supremely important to examine whether the doctrine itself is really the verdict of a sound metaphysic; and essential to a true estimation of Sir W. Hamilton’s philosophy to enquire, whether the conclusion thus drawn from his principal doctrine, is justly affiliated on it. I think it will appear that the conclusion not only does not follow from a true theory of the human faculties, but is not even correctly drawn from the premises from which Mr. Mansel infers it.

We must have the premises distinctly before us as conceived by Mr. Mansel, since we have hitherto seen them only as taught by Sir W. Hamilton. Clearness and explicitness of statement being in the number of Mr. Mansel’s merits, it is easier to perceive the flaws in his arguments than in those of his master, because he often leaves us less in doubt what he means by his words.

To have “such a knowledge of the Divine Nature” as would enable human reason to judge of theology, would be, according to Mr. Mansel, “to conceive the Deity as he is.” This would be to “conceive him as First Cause, as Absolute, and as Infinite.”^* The First Cause Mr. Mansel defines in the usual manner. About the meaning of Infinite there is no difficulty. But when we come to the Absolute we are on more slippery ground. Mr. Mansel, however, tells us his meaning plainly. By the Absolute, he does not mean what Sir W. Hamilton ^bprofesses always to mean by it, something which includes the idea of completed or finished. He adopts the other meaning, which Sir W. Hamilton mentions, but disclaims—^b the opposite of Relative. “By the Absolute is meant that which exists in and by itself, having no necessary relation to any other Being.”^[*]

This explanation by Mr. Mansel of Absolute in the sense in which it is opposed to Relative, is more definite in its terms than that which Sir W. Hamilton gives when attempting the same thing. For Sir W. Hamilton recognises (as already remarked) this second meaning of Absolute, and this is the account he gives of it: “Absolutum means what is freed or loosed; in which sense the Absolute will be what is aloof from relation, comparison, limitation, condition, dependence, &c., and thus is tantamount to τὸ ἀπόλυτον of the lower Greeks.”^† May it not be surmised that the vagueness in which the master here leaves the conception, was for the purpose of avoiding difficulties upon which the pupil, in his desire of greater precision, has unwarily run? Mr. Mansel certainly gains nothing by the more definite character of his language. The ^cwords, “having no necessary relation to any other Being,”^c admit of two constructions. The words, in their natural sense, only mean, capable of existing out of relation to anything else. The argument requires that they should mean, incapable of existing in relation with anything else. Mr. Mansel cannot intend the latter. He cannot mean that the Absolute is incapable of entering into relation with any other being; for he would not affirm this of God; on the contrary, he is continually speaking of God’s relations to the world and to us. Moreover, he accepts, from ^dDr.^d Calderwood, an interpretation inconsistent with this.^* This, however, is the meaning necessary to support his case. For what is his first argument? That God cannot be known by us as Cause, as Absolute, and as Infinite, because these attributes are, to our conception, incompatible with one another. And why incompatible? Because “a Cause cannot, as such, be absolute; the Absolute cannot, as such, be a cause. The cause, as such, exists only in relation to its effect: the cause is a cause of the effect; the effect is an effect of the cause. On the other hand, the conception of the Absolute involves a possible existence out of all relation.”^† But in what manner is a possible existence out of all relation, incompatible with the notion of a cause? Have not causes a possible existence apart from their effects? Would the sun (for example) not exist if there were no earth or planets for it to illuminate? Mr. Mansel seems to think that what is capable of existing out of relation, cannot possibly be conceived or known in relation. But this is not so. Anything which is capable of existing in relation, is capable of being conceived or known in relation. If the Absolute Being cannot be conceived as Cause, it must be that he cannot exist as Cause; he must be incapable of causing. If he can be in any relation whatever to any finite thing, he is conceivable and knowable in that relation, if no otherwise. Freed from this confusion of ideas, Mr. Mansel’s argument resolves itself into this—The same Being cannot be thought by us both as Cause and as Absolute, because a Cause as such is not Absolute, and Absolute as such is not a Cause; which is exactly as if he had said that Newton cannot be thought by us both as an Englishman and as a mathematician, because an Englishman, as such, is not a mathematician, nor a mathematician, as such, an Englishman.^‡

Again, Mr. Mansel argues, that, “supposing the Absolute to become a cause,” since ex vi termini it is not necessitated to do so, it must be a voluntary agent, and therefore conscious; for “volition is only possible in a conscious being.”^* But consciousness, again, is only conceivable as a relation; and any relation conflicts with the notion of the Absolute, since relatives are mutually dependent on one another. Here it comes out distinctly as a premise in the reasoning, that to be in a relation at all, even if only a relation to itself, the relation of being “conscious of itself,” is inconsistent with being the Absolute.^†

Mr. Mansel, therefore, must alter his definition of the Absolute if he would maintain his argument. He must either fall back on the happy ambiguity of Sir W. Hamilton’s definition, “what is aloof from relation,” which does not decide whether the meaning is merely that it can exist out of relation, or that it is incapable of existing in it; or he must take courage, and affirm that an Absolute Being is incapable of all relation. But as he will certainly refuse to predicate this of God, the consequence follows, that God is not an Absolute Being.

The whole of Mr. Mansel’s argument for the inconceivability of the Infinite and of the Absolute is one long ignoratio elenchi. It has been pointed out in a former chapter that the words Absolute and Infinite have no real meaning, unless we understand by them that which is absolute or infinite in some given attribute; as space is called infinite, meaning that it is infinite in extension; and as God is termed infinite in the sense of possessing infinite power, and absolute in the sense of absolute goodness, or knowledge.^[*] It has also been shown that Sir W. Hamilton’s arguments for the unknowableness of the Unconditioned, do not prove that we cannot know an object which is absolute or infinite in some specific attribute, but only that we cannot know an abstraction called “The Absolute” or “The Infinite,” which is supposed to have all attributes at once. The same remark is applicable to Mr. Mansel,^* with only this difference, that he, with the laudable ambition I have already noticed of stating everything explicitly, draws this important distinction himself, and says, of his own motion, that the Absolute he means is the abstraction. He says, that the Absolute ^gand Infinite^g can be “nothing less than the sum of all reality,” the complex of all positive predicates, even those which are exclusive of one another: and expressly identifies it with Hegel’s Absolute Being, which contains in itself “all that is actual, even evil included.”^* “That which is conceived as absolute and infinite,” says Mr. Mansel, “must be conceived as containing within itself the sum not only of all actual, but of all possible modes of being.”^† One may well agree with Mr. Mansel that this farrago of contradictory attributes cannot be conceived: but what shall we say of his equally positive averment that it must be believed? If this be what the Absolute is, what does he mean by saying that we must believe God to be the Absolute?

The remainder of Mr. Mansel’s argumentation is suitable to this commencement. The Absolute, as conceived, that is, as he defines it, cannot be “a whole composed of parts,” or “a substance consisting of attributes,” or

It will be noticed that the Absolute, which was just before defined as having all attributes, is here declared to have none: but this, Mr. Mansel would say, is merely one of the contradictions inherent in the attempt to conceive what is inconceivable.

Is this chimerical abstraction the Absolute Being whom anybody need be concerned about, either as knowable or as unknowable? Is the inconceivableness of this impossible fiction any argument against the possibility of conceiving God, who is neither supposed to have no attributes nor to have all attributes, but to have good attributes? Is it any hindrance to our being able to conceive a Being absolutely just, for example, or absolutely wise? Yet it is of this that Mr. Mansel undertook to prove the impossibility.

Again, of the Infinite: according to Mr. Mansel, being “that than which a greater is inconceivable,” it “consequently can receive no additional attribute or mode of existence which it had not from all eternity.” It must therefore be the same complex of all possible predicates which the Absolute is, and all of them infinite in degree. It “cannot be regarded as consisting of a limited number of attributes, each unlimited in its kind. It cannot be conceived, for example, after the analogy of a line, infinite in length, but not in breadth; or of a surface, infinite in two dimensions of space, but bounded in the third; or of an intelligent being, possessing some one or more modes of consciousness in an infinite degree, but devoid of others.”^† This Infinite, which is infinite in all attributes, and not solely in those which it would be thought decent to predicate of God, cannot, as Mr. Mansel very truly says, be conceived. For

Here certainly is an Infinite whose infinity does not seem to be of much use to it. But can a writer be serious who bids us conjure up a conception of something which possesses infinitely all conflicting attributes, and because we cannot do this without contradiction, would have us believe that there is a contradiction in the idea of infinite goodness, or infinite wisdom? Instead of “the Infinite,” substitute “an infinitely good Being,” and Mr. Mansel’s argument reads thus: If there is anything which an infinitely good Being cannot become—if he cannot become bad—that is a limitation, and the goodness cannot be infinite. If there is anything which an infinitely good Being actually is (namely good), he is excluded from being any other thing, as from being wise or powerful. I hardly think that Sir W. Hamilton would patronize this logic, learnt though it be in his school.^*

It cannot be necessary to follow up Mr. Mansel’s metaphysical dissertation any farther. It is all, as I have said, the same ignoratio elenchi. I have been able to find only one short passage in which he attempts to show that we are unable to represent in thought a particular attribute carried to the infinite. For the sake of fairness, I cite it in a note.^† All the argument that I can discover in it, I conceive that I have already answered, as stated much better by Sir W. Hamilton.

Mr. Mansel thinks it necessary to declare that the contradictions are not in “the nature of the Absolute” or Infinite “in itself, but only” in “our own conception of that nature.”^* He did not mean to say that the Divine Nature is itself contradictory. But he says “We are compelled by the constitution of our minds, to believe in the existence of an Absolute and Infinite Being.”^† Such being the case, I ask, is the Being, whom we must believe to be infinite and absolute, infinite and absolute in the meaning which those terms bear in Mr. Mansel’s ^hdefinition^h of them? If not, he is bound to tell us in what other meaning. Believing God to be infinite and absolute must be believing something, and it must be possible to say what. If Mr. Mansel means that we must believe the reality of an Infinite and Absolute Being in some other sense than that in which he has proved such a Being to be inconceivable, his point is not made out, since he undertook to prove the inconceivability of the very Being in whose reality we are required to believe. But the truth is that the Infinite and Absolute which he says we must believe in, are the very Infinite and Absolute of his definitions. The Infinite is that which is opposed to the Finite; the Absolute, that which is opposed to the Relative. He has therefore either proved nothing, or vastly more than he intended. For the contradictions which he asserts to be involved in the notions, do not follow from an imperfect mode of apprehending the Infinite and Absolute, but lie in the definitions of them; in the meaning of the ⁱphrasesⁱ themselves. The contradictions are in the very object which we are called upon to believe. If, therefore, Mr. Mansel would escape from the conclusion that an Infinite and Absolute Being is intrinsically impossible, it must be by affirming, with Hegel, that the law of Contradiction does not apply to the Absolute; that, respecting the Absolute, contradictory propositions may both be true.^‡

Let us now pass from Mr. Mansel’s metaphysical argumentation on an irrelevant issue, to ^ja^j much more important subject^k, that^k of his practical conclusion, namely, that we cannot know the divine attributes in such a manner, as can entitle us to reject any statement respecting the Deity on the ground of its being inconsistent with his character. Let us examine whether this assertion is a legitimate corollary from the relativity of human knowledge, either as it really is, or as it is understood to be by Sir W. Hamilton and by Mr. Mansel.

The fundamental property of our knowledge of God, Mr. Mansel says, is that we do not and cannot know him as he is in himself: certain persons, therefore, whom he calls Rationalists, he condemns as unphilosophical, when they reject any statement as inconsistent with the character of God.^[*] This is a valid answer, as far as words go, to some of the later Transcendentalists—to those who think that we have an intuition of the Divine Nature; though even as to them it would not be difficult to show that the answer is but skin-deep. But those “Rationalists” who hold, with Mr. Mansel himself, the relativity of human knowledge, are not touched by his reasoning. We cannot know God as he is in himself (they reply); granted: and what then? Can we know man as he is in himself, or matter as it is in itself? We do not claim any other knowledge of God than such as we have of man or of matter. Because I do not know my fellow-men, nor any of the powers of nature, as they are in themselves, am I therefore not at liberty to disbelieve anything I hear respecting them as being inconsistent with their character? I know something of Man and Nature, not as they are in themselves, but as they are relatively to us; and it is as relative to us, and not as he is in himself, that I suppose myself to know anything of God. The attributes which I ascribe to him, as goodness, knowledge, power, are all relative. They are attributes (says the rationalist) which my experience enables me to conceive, and which I consider as proved, not absolutely, by an intuition of God, but phænomenally, by his action on the creation, as known through my senses and my rational faculty. These relative attributes, each of them in an infinite degree, are all I pretend to predicate of God. When I reject a doctrine as inconsistent with God’s nature, it is not as being inconsistent with what God is in himself, but with what he is as manifested to us. If my knowledge of him is only phænomenal, the assertions which I reject are phænomenal too. If those assertions are inconsistent with my relative knowledge of him, it is no answer to say that all my knowledge of him is relative. That is no more a reason against disbelieving an alleged fact as unworthy of God, than against disbelieving another alleged fact as unworthy of Turgot, or of Washington, whom also I do not know as Noumena, but only as Phænomena.

There is but one way for Mr. Mansel out of this difficulty, and he adopts it. He must maintain, not merely that an Absolute Being is unknowable in himself, but that the Relative attributes of an Absolute Being are unknowable likewise. He must say that we do not know what Wisdom, Justice, Benevolence, Mercy, are, as they exist in God. Accordingly he does say so. The following are his direct utterances on the subject: as an implied doctrine, it pervades his whole argument.

In other words, it is necessary to suppose that the infinite goodness ascribed to God is not the goodness which we know and love in our fellow-creatures, distinguished only as infinite in degree, but is different in kind, and another quality altogether. When we call the one finite goodness and the other infinite goodness, we do not mean what the words assert, but something else: we intentionally apply the same name to things which we regard as different.

Accordingly Mr. Mansel combats, as a heresy of his opponents, the opinion that infinite goodness differs only in degree from finite goodness. The notion “that the attributes of God differ from those of man in degree only, not in kind, and hence that certain mental and moral qualities of which we are immediately conscious in ourselves, furnish at the same time a true and adequate image of the infinite perfections of God,” (the word adequate must have slipped in by inadvertence, since otherwise it would be an inexcusable misrepresentation) he identifies with “the vulgar Rationalism which regards the reason of man, in its ordinary and normal operation, as the supreme criterion of religious truth.”^† And in characterizing the mode of arguing of this vulgar Rationalism, he declares its principles to be, that “all the excellences of which we are conscious in the creature, must necessarily exist in the same manner, though in a higher degree, in the Creator. God is indeed more wise, more just, more merciful, than man; but for that very reason, his wisdom and justice and mercy must contain nothing that is incompatible with the corresponding attributes in their human character.”^‡ It is against this doctrine that Mr. Mansel feels called on to make an emphatic protest.

Here, then, I take my stand on the acknowledged principle of logic and of morality, that when we mean different things we have no right to call them by the same name, and to apply to them the same predicates, moral and intellectual. Language has no meaning for the words Just, Merciful, Benevolent, save that in which we predicate them of our fellow-creatures; and unless that is what we intend to express by them, we have no business to employ the words. If in affirming them of God we do not mean to affirm these very qualities, differing only as greater in degree, we are neither philosophically nor morally entitled to affirm them at all. If it be said that the qualities are the same, but that we cannot conceive them as they are when raised to the infinite, I grant that we cannot adequately conceive them in one of their elements, their infinity. But we can conceive them in their other elements, which are the very same in the infinite as in the finite development. Anything carried to the infinite must have all the properties of the same thing as finite, except those which depend upon the finiteness. Among the many who have said that we cannot conceive infinite space, did any one ever suppose that it is not space? that it does not possess all the properties by which space is characterized? Infinite Space cannot be cubical or spherical, because these are modes of being bounded: but does any one imagine that in ranging through it we might arrive at some region which was not extended; of which one part was not outside another; where, though no Body intervened, motion was impossible; or where the sum of two sides of a triangle was less than the third side? The parallel assertion may be made respecting infinite goodness. What belongs to it ^leither as Infinite or as Absolute^l I do not pretend to know; but I know that infinite goodness must be goodness, and that what is not consistent with goodness, is not consistent with infinite goodness. If in ascribing goodness to God I do not mean what I mean by goodness; if I do not mean the goodness of which I have some knowledge, but an incomprehensible attribute of an incomprehensible substance, which for aught I know may be a totally different quality from that which I love and venerate—and even must, if Mr. Mansel is to be believed,^[*] be in some important particulars opposed to this—what do I mean by calling it goodness? and what reason have I for venerating it? If I know nothing about what the attribute is, I cannot tell that it is a proper object of veneration. To say that God’s goodness may be different in kind from man’s goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good? To assert in words what we do not think in meaning, is as suitable a definition as can be given of a moral falsehood. Besides, suppose that certain unknown attributes are ascribed to the Deity in a religion the external evidences of which are so conclusive to my mind, as effectually to convince me that it comes from God. Unless I believe God to possess the same moral attributes which I find, in however inferior a degree, in a good man, what ground of assurance have I of God’s veracity? All trust in a Revelation presupposes a conviction that God’s attributes are the same, in all but degree, with the best human attributes.

If, instead of the “glad tidings” that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, not what are the principles of his government, except that “the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving”^[*] does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures;^* and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.^[†]

Neither is this to set up my own limited intellect as a criterion of divine or of any other wisdom. If a person is wiser and better than myself, not in some unknown and unknowable meaning of the terms, but in their known human acceptation, I am ready to believe that what this person thinks may be true, and that what he does may be right, when, but for the opinion I have of him, I should think otherwise. But this is because I believe that he and I have at bottom the same standard of truth and rule of right, and that he probably understands better than I the facts of the particular case. If I thought it not improbable that his notion of right might be my notion of wrong, I should not defer to his judgment. In like manner, one who sincerely believes in an absolutely good ruler of the world, is not warranted in disbelieving any act ascribed to him, merely because the very small part of its circumstances which we can possibly know does not sufficiently justify it. But if what I am told respecting him is of a kind which no facts that can be supposed added to my knowledge could make me perceive to be right; if his alleged ways of dealing with the world are such as no imaginable hypothesis respecting things known to him and unknown to me, could make consistent with the goodness and wisdom which I mean when I use the terms, but are in direct contradiction to their signification; then, if the law of contradiction is a law of human thought, I cannot both believe these things, and believe that God is a good and wise being. If I call any being wise or good, not meaning the only qualities which the words import, I am speaking insincerely; I am flattering him by epithets which I fancy that he likes to hear, in the hope of winning him over to my own objects. For it is worthy of remark that the doubt whether words applied to God have their human signification, is only felt when the words relate to his moral attributes; it is never heard of in regard to his power. We are never told that God’s omnipotence must not be supposed to mean an infinite degree of the power we know in man and nature, and that perhaps it does not mean that he is able to kill us, or consign us to eternal flames. The Divine Power is always interpreted in a completely human signification, but the Divine Goodness and Justice must be understood to be such only in an unintelligible sense. Is it unfair to surmise that this is because those who speak in the name of God, have need of the human conception of his power, since an idea which can overawe and enforce obedience must address itself to real feelings; but are content that his goodness should be conceived only as something inconceivable, because they are so often required to teach doctrines respecting him which conflict irreconcilably with all goodness that we can conceive?^*

I am anxious to say once more, that Mr. Mansel’s conclusions do not go the whole length of his arguments, and that he disavows the doctrine that God’s justice and goodness are wholly different from what human beings understand by the terms. He would, and does, admit that the qualities as conceived by us bear some likeness to the justice and goodness which belong to God, since man was made in God’s image. But such a semiconcession, which no Christian could avoid making, since without it the whole Christian scheme would be subverted, cannot save him; he is not relieved by it from any difficulties, while it destroys the whole fabric of his argument. The Divine goodness, which is said to be a different thing from human goodness, but of which the human conception of goodness is some imperfect reflexion or resemblance, does it agree with what men call goodness in the essence of the quality—in what constitutes it goodness? If it does, the “Rationalists” are right; it is not illicit to reason from the one to the other. If not, the divine attribute, whatever else it may be, is not goodness, and ought not to be called by the name. Unless there be some human conception which agrees with it, no human name can properly be applied to it; it is simply the unknown attribute of a thing unknown; it has no existence in relation to us, we can affirm nothing of it, and owe it no worship. Such is the inevitable alternative.^*

To conclude: Mr. Mansel has not made out any connexion between his philosophical premises and his theological conclusion. The relativity of human knowledge, the uncognoscibility of the Absolute, and the contradictions which follow the attempt to conceive a Being with all or without any attributes, are no obstacles to our having the same kind of knowledge of God which we have of other things, namely not as they exist absolutely, but relatively. The proposition, that we cannot conceive the moral attributes of God in such a manner as to be able to affirm of any doctrine or assertion that it is inconsistent with them, has no foundation in the laws of the human mind: while, if admitted, it would not prove that we should ascribe to God attributes bearing the same name as human qualities, but not to be understood in the same sense; it would prove that we ought not to ascribe any moral attributes to God at all, inasmuch as no moral attributes known or conceivable by us are true of him, and we are condemned to absolute ignorance of him as a moral being.

[a-a]651, 652 a bad

[* ]Limits of Religious Thought, 4th edition, pp. 29-30.

[b-b]651, 652 means in the greater part of his argument against Cousin, that which is completed or finished. He means what Sir W. Hamilton means only once (as we have already seen)

[[*] ]Ibid., p. 30.

[† ]Discussions, p. 14n. [Cf. pp. 39-40 above.]

[c-c]651, 652 first words of his definition, “that which exists in and by itself,” would serve for the description of a Noumenon: but Mr. Mansel’s Absolute is only meant to denote one Being, identified with God, and God is not the only Noumenon. This, however, I will not dwell upon. But the remaining words, “having no necessary relation to any other Being,” bring him into a much greater difficulty. For they

[d-d]651, 652 Mr.

[* ]Limits of Religious Thought, p. 200. [See Henry Calderwood, The Philosophy of the Infinite (Edinburgh: Constable; London: Hamilton and Adams, 1854), pp. 18-38.]

[† ]Limits of Religious Thought, p. 31.

[‡ ][67] Mr. Mansel, in his reply accuses me of mutilating his argument. ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] p. 151.) I therefore add the remainder of it. “We attempt to escape from this apparent contradiction by introducing the idea of succession in time. The Absolute exists first by itself, and afterwards becomes a Cause. But here we are checked by the third conception, that of the Infinite. How can the Infinite become that which it was not from the first? If Causation is a possible mode of existence, that which exists without causing is not infinite; that which becomes a cause has passed beyond its former limits.” (Limits of Religious Thought, pp. 31-2.)

This alleged inconsistency of thought in supposing the Infinite to become a cause, because to do so would be to become something which it was not from the first, applies, like nearly all the rest of Mr. Mansel’s argumentation, only to the self-contradictory fiction, “The Infinite,” which is supposed either infinite without reference to any attributes, or infinite in all possible attributes. Substitute for this the notion of a Being infinite in given attributes, and the incompatibility disappears. Surely the most familiar form of the notion of an infinite being, is that of a Being infinite in power. Power is not only compatible with, but actually means, capability of causing. Can we be told that a Being infinite in its capability of causing, cannot to our conceptions, consistently with its infinity, actually cause anything, but the power, because infinite, must remain dormant through eternity? or, as the opposite alternative, that this Being must be conceived as having exercised from all eternity the whole of its infinite power of causing, because any later exercise of that power would be passing into causation? Either hypothesis Mr. Mansel affirms (Limits of Religious Thought, p. 204) to be inconceivable of an Infinite Being. But if an Infinite Being means a Being of infinite wisdom and goodness as well as power, the conception of that infinite power as only partly exercised is so far from being a contradiction, that it is not even a paradox.

[* ]Limits of Religious Thought, p. 32.

[† ][67] How does Mr. Mansel reconcile this argument with the definition of the Absolute which he himself accepts from Dr. Calderwood [The Philosophy of the Infinite, pp. 18-38]? “The Absolute is that which is free from all necessary relation, that is, which is free from every relation as a condition of existence; but it may exist in relation, provided that relation be not a necessary condition of its existence, that is, provided the relation may be removed without affecting its existence.” (Mansel, Limits of Religious Thought, p. 200.) A better definition of an Absolute Being could scarcely be devised; and that Mr. Mansel should borrow it, and then deny the latter half of it, proves him to be greatly inferior to Dr. Calderwood in the important accomplishment of understanding his own meaning. For before it can be maintained that to be a conscious being contradicts the notion of the Absolute, because consciousness is a relation, the power just admitted in the Absolute of existing in relation provided it is not bound to any relation, must be either denied or forgotten.

eMr. Mansel, in his rejoinder [“Supplementary Remarks,” p. 28n], says that he did not mean to admit the second half of Dr. Calderwood’s definition; and he holds to the doctrinee “The absolute, as such,f must be out of all relation” (not merely capable of existing out of relation) “and consequently cannot be conceived in the relation of plurality.” (Philosophy of the Conditioned, p. 117.)

[[*] ]See pp. 47ff. above

[* ][67] Mr. Mansel protests against this passage, as attributing to him the use of the word “Absolute” in the sense attached to it by Sir W. Hamilton, which includes perfection, though he had expressly stated that he used the term in a different sense. “When Mr. Mill charges Mr. Mansel with undertaking to prove the impossibility of conceiving a Being absolutely just or absolutely wise (i.e. as he supposes, perfectly just or wise) he actually forgets that he has just been criticising Mr. Mansel’s definition of the Absolute, as something having a possible existence out of relation.” ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] pp. 153-4.) And he asks what I can mean by goodness or knowledge “out of all relation.” If I have, in this passage, exchanged Mr. Mansel’s definition of the Absolute for Sir W. Hamilton’s, by including in it the notion of “finished, perfected, completed,” [Discussions, p. 14n,] Mr. Mansel had set me the example. As long as he kept to his own definition, I did the same: I only followed him when he himself imported the idea of perfection from the other meaning of the term, and reasoned from it as one of the characteristics of the Absolute. Does the reader doubt this? He shall see. We cannot, says Mr. Mansel, reconcile the idea of the Absolute with that of a Cause, because “if the condition of causal activity is a higher state than that of quiescence, the Absolute, whether acting voluntarily or involuntarily, has passed from a condition of comparative imperfection to one of comparative perfection, and therefore was not originally perfect. If the state of activity is an inferior state to that of quiescence, the Absolute, in becoming a cause, has lost its original perfection.” (Limits of Religious Thought, pp. 34-5. The italics are my own.) Again “While it is impossible to represent in thought any object except as finite, it is equally impossible to represent any finite object, or any aggregate of finite objects, as exhausting the universe of being. Thus the hypothesis which would annihilate the Infinite is itself shattered to pieces against the rock of the Absolute.” (Ibid., p. 38.) In spite, therefore, of his own definition, Mr. Mansel thinks it part of the notion of the Absolute that it is the Perfect, and that it exhausts the universe of being, i.e., is the completed whole of existence.

It thus appears that if I am chargeable with anything, it is with having neglected to point out one confusion of ideas the more in Mr. Mansel, and, this time, a confusion between two ideas which he had expressly discriminated. But even if I had really committed the blunder he imputes to me, it would not have affected the question between us: for he always (and, as I think, rightly) assumes that the Being whose conceivability by us is the subject of discussion, has to be conceived both as absolute and as infinite (the Infinito-Absolute of Sir W. Hamilton); and if he had escaped untouched from my criticism of Sir W. Hamilton in respect of the Absolute, he would still have been inextricably involved in it as regards the Infinite.

[g-g]+67, 72

[* ]Limits of Religious Thought, p. 30.

[† ]Ibid., p. 31.

[* ]Ibid., p. 33.

[[*] ]Ibid.

[† ]Ibid., p. 30.

[‡ ]Ibid., p. 48.

[* ][67] By the time Mr. Mansel gets to this place, he grows tired of giving relevant answers, and thinks that any verbal repartee will suffice. To the first half of my statement, his answer is this: “Is becoming bad a higher perfection?” ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] p. 158.) I reply, that Mr. Mansel seems to think so; inasmuch as he says “If the infinite can be that which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection.” [Ibid., p. 155.] If the infinite is God, and, as such, good, to become bad would be to become what it is not, and consequently, according to Mr. Mansel, to attain a higher perfection. To the second half he replies by identifying the manner in which the Infinite, by being anything in particular, is excluded from being any other thing, with the manner in which a thing, by being a horse, is excluded from being a dog. Let me remind him that a horse and a dog are substances, and that we are talking about attributes. A substance cannot become another substance, but it may put on any number of additional attributes. Does not the whole of the discussion turn upon attributes? Does the question, what the Infinite can or cannot be or become, mean anything but what attributes it can have or acquire? As a Substance the Infinite is the Infinite, and cannot become anything else. Does it follow from this that by possessing one attribute, it is excluded from possessing any other? Or is it possible that Mr. Mansel means, that the “Infinite, if it is to be conceived at all,” must be conceived as capable of changing its substance, and becoming a finite dog, thereby excluding itself from being a horse? That would indeed be a stretch beyond anything I have charged him with.

[† ]“A thing—an object—an attribute—a person—or any other term signifying one out of many possible objects of consciousness, is by that very relation necessarily declared to be finite. An infinite thing, or object, or attribute, or person, is therefore in the same moment declared to be both finite and infinite. . . . And on the other hand, if all human attributes are conceived under the conditions of difference, and relation, and time, and personality, we cannot represent in thought any such attribute magnified to infinity; for this again is to conceive it as finite and infinite at the same time. We can conceive such attributes, at the utmost, only indefinitely; that is to say, we may withdraw our thoughts, for the moment, from the fact of their being limited; but we cannot conceive them as infinite; that is to say, we cannot positively think of the absence of the limit; for, the instant we attempt to do so, the antagonist elements of the conception exclude one another, and annihilate the whole.” (Limits of Religious Thought, p. 60.)

[* ]Ibid., p. 39.

[† ]Ibid., p. 45.

[h-h]651, 652 definitions

[i-i]651, 652 words

[‡ ][67] Mr. Mansel’s summary of his reply on this portion of the case is as follows: “The reader may now, perhaps, understand the reason of an assertion which Mr. Mill regards as supremely absurd, namely, that we must believe in the existence of an absolute and infinite Being, though unable to conceive the nature of such a Being. To believe in such a Being is simply to believe that God made the world: to declare the nature of such a Being inconceivable, is simply to say that we do not know how the world was made. If we believe that God made the world, we must believe that there was a time when the world was not, and when God alone existed, out of relation to any other being. But the mode of that sole existence we are unable to conceive, nor in what manner the first act took place by which the absolute and self-existent gave existence to the relative and dependent.” ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] pp. 161-2.)

I know not how Mr. Mansel discovers that I regard as supremely absurd the notion that we may believe, and may have good grounds for believing, things which are inconceivable to us. As he most truly says, there is no one with whose mode of thinking such an opinion would more flagrantly conflict. But I venture to think that one may deem it possible to have a real and positive, though inadequate, conception of an infinite Being, without supposing oneself to know how God made the world. Mr. Mansel resumes “Where is the incongruity of saying, I believe that a being exists possessing certain attributes, though I am unable in my present state of knowledge to conceive the manner of that existence?” ([Ibid.,] p. 163.) Assuredly, nowhere: provided that you do not invest the object of your belief with contradictory attributes; for my admission of the believability of what is inconceivable, stops at the self-contradictory: consequently I do not admit the believability of such an Absolute and Infinite as Mr. Mansel has been mystifying us with. The sum of what I am maintaining against him is, that the Absolute and Infinite which are believable, and the Absolute and Infinite which are inconceivable, are different things: That the Absolute and Infinite of which, as he has shown, the conception annihilates itself by the contradictions it involves, is that which possesses absolutely and infinitely all attributes, and that this is as unbelievable as it is inconceivable: That the Absolute and Infinite which is believable is that which possesses absolutely and infinitely some given attributes, which in their finite degrees are known to us, and is therefore conceivable; and involves no contradiction, unless we include amongthe attributes some that contradict one another, in which case it is indeed inconceivable, but also unbelievable.

When Mr. Mansel maintains ([ibid.,] pp. 14-18, and 142) that being infinite is, to our conceptive faculty, inconsistent with being a Person, I answer, that it is being “The Infinite” which is so. When he insists (if he does insist) that the Creator must, in some manner inconceivable to us, be this non-entity; when he identifies the Creator with something which we must believe to be “the sole existence, having no plurality beyond itself,” and “simple, having no plurality within itself,” ([ibid.,] p. 100,) thus literally annihilating all plurality in the universe; when he says “we believe that” God’s “own nature is simple and uniform, admitting of no distinction between various attributes, nor between any attribute and its subject,” but yet conceivable by us “only by means of various attributes, distinct from the subject and from each other,” ([ibid.,] p. 28,) i.e. conceived by us as he is not; it appears to me that in thus following the old theologians in the mystical metaphysics which is always at the service of mystical theology, he encumbers Theism and Christianity with (to say the least) very unnecessary difficulties.

[j-j]651, 652 the

[k-k]+67, 72

[[*] ]See Limits of Religious Thought, Lecture iii, pp. 45-66, esp. 55-6.

[* ]Ibid., Preface to the fourth edition, p. xiii.

[† ]Ibid., p. 26.

[‡ ]Ibid., p. 28.

[l-l]651, 652 as Infinite (or more properly as Absolute)

[[*] ]See ibid., Preface to the 4th ed., pp. xiii-xvi.

[[*] ]Ibid., p. xiii.

[* ][72] Mr. Mansel, in his rejoinder, says that this means that I will call no being good “the phenomena of whose action in any way differ from those of a good man.” [“Supplementary Remarks,” p. 30.] This is a misconstruction; he should have said “no being, the principle or rule of whose action is different from that by which a good man endeavours to regulate his actions.”

[[†] ]Cf. Samuel Johnson, London, A Poem, in Works, 14 vols. (London: Buckland, Rivington, et al., 1787-88), Vol. XI, p. 324 (l. 116).

[* ][67] I quote in Mr. Mansel’s words nearly the whole of his answer to the preceding remarks.

“Mr. Mansel asserts, as many others have asserted before him, that the relation between the communicable attributes of God and the corresponding attributes of man is one not of identity but of analogy; that is to say, that the Divine attributes have the same relation to the Divine nature that the human attributes have to human nature. Thus, for example, there is a Divine justice and there is a human justice; but God is just as the Creator and Governor of the world, having unlimited authority over all his creatures, and unlimited jurisdiction over all their acts; and man is just in certain special relations, as having authority over some persons and some acts only, so far as is required for the needs of human society. So, again, there is a Divine mercy and there is a human mercy; but God is merciful in such a manner as if fitting compatibly with the righteous government of the universe; and man is merciful in a certain limited range, the exercise of the attribute being guided by considerations affecting the welfare of society or of individuals. Or to take a more general case: Man has in himself a rule of right and wrong implying subjection to the authority of a superior (for conscience has authority only as reflecting the law of God); while God has in himself a rule of right and wrong, implying no higher authority, and determined absolutely by his own nature. The case is the same when we look at moral attributes not externally in their active manifestations, but internally, in their psychological constitution. If we do not attribute to God the same complex mental constitution of reason, passion, and will, the same relation to motives and inducements, the same deliberation and choice of alternatives, the same temporal succession of facts in consciousness, which we ascribe to man,—it will follow that those psychological relations between reason, will, and desire, which are implied in the conception of human action, cannot represent the Divine excellences in themselves, but can only illustrate them by analogies from finite things. And if man is liable to error in judging of the conduct of his fellow-men, in proportion as he is unable to place himself in their position, or to realize to himself their modes of thought and principles of action—if the child, for instance, is liable to error in judging the actions of the man, or the savage of the civilised man—surely there is far more room for error in men’s judgment of the ways of God, in proportion as the difference between God and man is greater than the difference between a man and a child. . . . We will simply ask, whether Mr. Mill really supposes the word good to lose all community of meaning when it is applied, as it certainly is, to different persons among our fellow creatures with express reference to their different duties and different qualifications for performing them? The duties of a father are not the same as those of a son; is the word therefore wholly equivocal when we speak of one person as a good father, and another as a good son? Nay, when we speak generally of a man as good, has not the epithet a tacit reference to human nature and human duties? and yet is there no community of meaning when the same epithet is applied to other creatures? Ἡ ἀρετὴ πρὸς τὸ ἔργον τὸ οἰκει̑ον [Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics (Greek and English), trans. H. Rackham (London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1926), p. 326 (VI, i, 1139a18)],—the goodness of any being whatever has relation to the nature and office of that being. We may therefore test Mr. Mill’s declamation by a parallel case. A wise and experienced father addresses a young and inexperienced son: “My son,” he says, “there may be some of my actions which do not seem to you to be wise or good, or such as you would do in my place. Remember, however, that your duties are different from mine; that your knowledge of my duties is very imperfect; and that there may be things which you cannot now see to be wise and good, but which you may hereafter discover to be so.” “Father,” says the son, “your principles of action are not the same as mine; the highest morality which I can conceive at present does not sanction them; and as for believing that you are good in anything of which I do not plainly see the goodness”—we will not repeat Mr. Mill’s alternative; we will only ask whether it is not just possible that there may be as much difference between man and God as there is between a child and his father?” ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] pp. 164-70.)

There is a mode of controversy which I do not remember to have seen in any enumeration of Fallacies, but which will some day find a place there, under some such name as the Inversion of Parts. It consists in indignantly vindicating as against your adversary the very principle which he is asserting against yourself. Would not any reader of the above passage suppose that it is Mr. Mansel who is contending against me for the “community of meaning” of the word good, to whatever being it is applied; instead of me against him? It is I who say that as goodness in a good father is the very same quality with goodness in a good son, so goodness in a good God must be, in all but degree, the same quality as goodness in a good man, or we are not entitled to call it goodness. It is Mr. Mansel who denies this, affirming that there is more than a difference of degree. And unless he is to be understood as surrendering this point by the illustrations he now employs, his defence is no defence at all; for it confounds a difference in the outward circumstances in which a moral quality has to be exercised, with a difference in the quality itself. In his imaginary dialogue between a son and a father, does the son really think the father’s conduct inconsistent with such goodness as, under the father’s teaching, he has realized in himself, or learnt to recognise in others? Does he not think that it is the same goodness, but acting under a knowledge of facts, and an appreciation of means, such as he does not himself possess? Does the son think that the father’s conduct is not justifiable by the same moral law which he prescribes to the son, and that in order to justify the father it is necessary to suppose him actuated by another kind of morality, not the same, but merely having the same relation to the father’s nature that the other goodness has to the son’s nature? If the son has implicit confidence in the father, he will not answer, in the words put into his mouth by Mr. Mansel, “your principles of action are not the same as mine.” He will say, “your principles of action I well know: they are those which you have taught to me—those by which, in my best moments, I endeavour, though with inferior strength, to guide my conduct. You are incapable of acting on any others. Knowing your principles, and not knowing what conduct, in your different position, the principles require, but being convinced that you do know, I am certain that you act on those principles.” All the allowance for human ignorance which can be demanded on similar grounds in judging of what is ascribed to God, I have amply granted.

On the latter part of the paragraph in the text, Mr. Mansel makes some further remarks. To the statement that “the doubt whether words applied to God have their human signification, is only felt when the words relate to his moral attributes—it is never heard of in regard to his power,” Mr. Mansel makes answer, “We meet Mr. Mill’s confident assertion with a direct denial, and take the opportunity of informing him that the conception of infinite Power has suggested the same difficulties, and has been discussed by philosophers and theologians in the same manner, as those of infinite Wisdom and infinite Goodness. Has Mr Mill never heard of such questions as, Whether Omnipotence can reverse the past?—Whether God can do that which he does not will to do?—Whether God’s perfect foreknowledge is compatible with his own perfect liberty?—Whether God could have made a better world than the existing one?” ([Ibid.,] p. 172.) In return for the information thus liberally bestowed, I humbly reply, that I have “heard of such questions:” but I see in them (with the exception of the second, which relates to the meaning of Power, not of Infinite power) only enquiries, mostly frivolous, how much more power God has than man. There is no difference in the conception of the power itself, which is in both cases the same, namely, the conformity of the event to the volition. The divine omnipotence is always supposed to mean an infinite degree of this, and not of anything else. But infinite goodness, according to Mr. Mansel, means not an infinite degree, but a different kind, not admitting of any common definition with human goodness.

mMr. Mansel’s answer to this is a curious one. He says that “if power, as predicated of man, means the conformity of the event to the volition, man assuredly can do no more than he actually wills to do; for there can be no conformity except where there is a volition and an event.” [“Supplementary Remarks,” p. 30n.] We may know that the event would conform to our volition although it has not actually taken place. Most people, I believe, if they said that they had the power of throwing themselves into a well, would mean that if they willed so to throw themselves, the effect would follow. And if it were asked whether there are any limits to God’s power, the question would mean, Is there anything which if willed by him, nevertheless would not take place. What else can be meant when we speak of a living being as having power, I cannot divine.m

The concluding sentence Mr. Mansel censures as attributing discreditable motives to opponents. Had it not been for this proof, I should have thought it unnecessary to say, that no imputation was intended on the sincerity either of classes or of individuals. But the effect of men’s necessities of position on their opinions as well as on their conduct, is far too widely reaching and influential an element in human affairs, to be always passed over in silence for fear of offending personal susceptibilities.

[* ][67] Mr. Mansel says, “The question really at issue is not whether the Rationalist argument is licit or illicit, but whether, in its lawful use, it is to be regarded as infallible or fallible.” ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] p. 175.) If this were all, there would be nothing for him and the Rationalists to quarrel about; for who ever asserted, of any human reasoning, that it is infallible? Neither, I believe, would any “Rationalist” dissent from Mr. Mansel’s view of the “lawful use” of the argument, which he declares throughout his Eighth Lecture [Limits of Religious Thought, pp. 152-75] to be only admissible (as one argument among others) on the question of the authenticity of a Revelation. No Rationalists, I should suppose, believe that what they reject as inconsistent with the Divine Goodness was really revealed by God. They do not both admit it to be revealed and believe it to be false. They believe that it is either a mistaken interpretation, or found its way by human means into documents which they may nevertheless consider as the records of a Revelation. They concede, therefore, to Mr. Mansel (and unless the hypothesis were admitted of a God who is not good, they cannot help conceding) that the moral objections to a religious doctrine are only valid nagainst its truthn if they are strong enough to outweigh whatever external evidences there may be of its having been divinely revealed. But when the question is, how much weight is to be allowed to moral objections, the difference will be radical between those who think that the Divine Goodness is the same thing with human goodness carried to the infinite, and Mr. Mansel, who thinks that it is a different quality, only having some analogy to the human. Indeed it is hard to see how any one, who holds the latter opinion, can give more than a nominal weight to any such argument against a religious doctrine. For, if things may be right according to divine goodness which would be wrong according to even an infinite degree of the human, and if all that is known is that there is some analogy between the two, while no one pretends to have any knowledge how far the analogy reaches, and it may be presumed to be as distant as the remainder of the Divine Nature is from the human, it is impossible to assign any determinate weight to an argument grounded on contradiction of such an analogy. It becomes a mere dialectical locus communis: an argument to be taken up and laid down as suits convenience, and which different men will hold valid in different cases, according to their fancies or prepossessions.

[† ][67] How does Mr. Mansel reconcile this argument with the definition of the Absolute which he himself accepts from Dr. Calderwood [The Philosophy of the Infinite, pp. 18-38]? “The Absolute is that which is free from all necessary relation, that is, which is free from every relation as a condition of existence; but it may exist in relation, provided that relation be not a necessary condition of its existence, that is, provided the relation may be removed without affecting its existence.” (Mansel, Limits of Religious Thought, p. 200.) A better definition of an Absolute Being could scarcely be devised; and that Mr. Mansel should borrow it, and then deny the latter half of it, proves him to be greatly inferior to Dr. Calderwood in the important accomplishment of understanding his own meaning. For before it can be maintained that to be a conscious being contradicts the notion of the Absolute, because consciousness is a relation, the power just admitted in the Absolute of existing in relation provided it is not bound to any relation, must be either denied or forgotten.

eMr. Mansel, in his rejoinder [“Supplementary Remarks,” p. 28n], says that he did not mean to admit the second half of Dr. Calderwood’s definition; and he holds to the doctrinee “The absolute, as such,f must be out of all relation” (not merely capable of existing out of relation) “and consequently cannot be conceived in the relation of plurality.” (Philosophy of the Conditioned, p. 117.)

[* ][67] I quote in Mr. Mansel’s words nearly the whole of his answer to the preceding remarks.

“Mr. Mansel asserts, as many others have asserted before him, that the relation between the communicable attributes of God and the corresponding attributes of man is one not of identity but of analogy; that is to say, that the Divine attributes have the same relation to the Divine nature that the human attributes have to human nature. Thus, for example, there is a Divine justice and there is a human justice; but God is just as the Creator and Governor of the world, having unlimited authority over all his creatures, and unlimited jurisdiction over all their acts; and man is just in certain special relations, as having authority over some persons and some acts only, so far as is required for the needs of human society. So, again, there is a Divine mercy and there is a human mercy; but God is merciful in such a manner as if fitting compatibly with the righteous government of the universe; and man is merciful in a certain limited range, the exercise of the attribute being guided by considerations affecting the welfare of society or of individuals. Or to take a more general case: Man has in himself a rule of right and wrong implying subjection to the authority of a superior (for conscience has authority only as reflecting the law of God); while God has in himself a rule of right and wrong, implying no higher authority, and determined absolutely by his own nature. The case is the same when we look at moral attributes not externally in their active manifestations, but internally, in their psychological constitution. If we do not attribute to God the same complex mental constitution of reason, passion, and will, the same relation to motives and inducements, the same deliberation and choice of alternatives, the same temporal succession of facts in consciousness, which we ascribe to man,—it will follow that those psychological relations between reason, will, and desire, which are implied in the conception of human action, cannot represent the Divine excellences in themselves, but can only illustrate them by analogies from finite things. And if man is liable to error in judging of the conduct of his fellow-men, in proportion as he is unable to place himself in their position, or to realize to himself their modes of thought and principles of action—if the child, for instance, is liable to error in judging the actions of the man, or the savage of the civilised man—surely there is far more room for error in men’s judgment of the ways of God, in proportion as the difference between God and man is greater than the difference between a man and a child. . . . We will simply ask, whether Mr. Mill really supposes the word good to lose all community of meaning when it is applied, as it certainly is, to different persons among our fellow creatures with express reference to their different duties and different qualifications for performing them? The duties of a father are not the same as those of a son; is the word therefore wholly equivocal when we speak of one person as a good father, and another as a good son? Nay, when we speak generally of a man as good, has not the epithet a tacit reference to human nature and human duties? and yet is there no community of meaning when the same epithet is applied to other creatures? Ἡ ἀρετὴ πρὸς τὸ ἔργον τὸ οἰκει̑ον [Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics (Greek and English), trans. H. Rackham (London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1926), p. 326 (VI, i, 1139a18)],—the goodness of any being whatever has relation to the nature and office of that being. We may therefore test Mr. Mill’s declamation by a parallel case. A wise and experienced father addresses a young and inexperienced son: “My son,” he says, “there may be some of my actions which do not seem to you to be wise or good, or such as you would do in my place. Remember, however, that your duties are different from mine; that your knowledge of my duties is very imperfect; and that there may be things which you cannot now see to be wise and good, but which you may hereafter discover to be so.” “Father,” says the son, “your principles of action are not the same as mine; the highest morality which I can conceive at present does not sanction them; and as for believing that you are good in anything of which I do not plainly see the goodness”—we will not repeat Mr. Mill’s alternative; we will only ask whether it is not just possible that there may be as much difference between man and God as there is between a child and his father?” ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] pp. 164-70.)

There is a mode of controversy which I do not remember to have seen in any enumeration of Fallacies, but which will some day find a place there, under some such name as the Inversion of Parts. It consists in indignantly vindicating as against your adversary the very principle which he is asserting against yourself. Would not any reader of the above passage suppose that it is Mr. Mansel who is contending against me for the “community of meaning” of the word good, to whatever being it is applied; instead of me against him? It is I who say that as goodness in a good father is the very same quality with goodness in a good son, so goodness in a good God must be, in all but degree, the same quality as goodness in a good man, or we are not entitled to call it goodness. It is Mr. Mansel who denies this, affirming that there is more than a difference of degree. And unless he is to be understood as surrendering this point by the illustrations he now employs, his defence is no defence at all; for it confounds a difference in the outward circumstances in which a moral quality has to be exercised, with a difference in the quality itself. In his imaginary dialogue between a son and a father, does the son really think the father’s conduct inconsistent with such goodness as, under the father’s teaching, he has realized in himself, or learnt to recognise in others? Does he not think that it is the same goodness, but acting under a knowledge of facts, and an appreciation of means, such as he does not himself possess? Does the son think that the father’s conduct is not justifiable by the same moral law which he prescribes to the son, and that in order to justify the father it is necessary to suppose him actuated by another kind of morality, not the same, but merely having the same relation to the father’s nature that the other goodness has to the son’s nature? If the son has implicit confidence in the father, he will not answer, in the words put into his mouth by Mr. Mansel, “your principles of action are not the same as mine.” He will say, “your principles of action I well know: they are those which you have taught to me—those by which, in my best moments, I endeavour, though with inferior strength, to guide my conduct. You are incapable of acting on any others. Knowing your principles, and not knowing what conduct, in your different position, the principles require, but being convinced that you do know, I am certain that you act on those principles.” All the allowance for human ignorance which can be demanded on similar grounds in judging of what is ascribed to God, I have amply granted.

On the latter part of the paragraph in the text, Mr. Mansel makes some further remarks. To the statement that “the doubt whether words applied to God have their human signification, is only felt when the words relate to his moral attributes—it is never heard of in regard to his power,” Mr. Mansel makes answer, “We meet Mr. Mill’s confident assertion with a direct denial, and take the opportunity of informing him that the conception of infinite Power has suggested the same difficulties, and has been discussed by philosophers and theologians in the same manner, as those of infinite Wisdom and infinite Goodness. Has Mr Mill never heard of such questions as, Whether Omnipotence can reverse the past?—Whether God can do that which he does not will to do?—Whether God’s perfect foreknowledge is compatible with his own perfect liberty?—Whether God could have made a better world than the existing one?” ([Ibid.,] p. 172.) In return for the information thus liberally bestowed, I humbly reply, that I have “heard of such questions:” but I see in them (with the exception of the second, which relates to the meaning of Power, not of Infinite power) only enquiries, mostly frivolous, how much more power God has than man. There is no difference in the conception of the power itself, which is in both cases the same, namely, the conformity of the event to the volition. The divine omnipotence is always supposed to mean an infinite degree of this, and not of anything else. But infinite goodness, according to Mr. Mansel, means not an infinite degree, but a different kind, not admitting of any common definition with human goodness.

mMr. Mansel’s answer to this is a curious one. He says that “if power, as predicated of man, means the conformity of the event to the volition, man assuredly can do no more than he actually wills to do; for there can be no conformity except where there is a volition and an event.” [“Supplementary Remarks,” p. 30n.] We may know that the event would conform to our volition although it has not actually taken place. Most people, I believe, if they said that they had the power of throwing themselves into a well, would mean that if they willed so to throw themselves, the effect would follow. And if it were asked whether there are any limits to God’s power, the question would mean, Is there anything which if willed by him, nevertheless would not take place. What else can be meant when we speak of a living being as having power, I cannot divine.m

The concluding sentence Mr. Mansel censures as attributing discreditable motives to opponents. Had it not been for this proof, I should have thought it unnecessary to say, that no imputation was intended on the sincerity either of classes or of individuals. But the effect of men’s necessities of position on their opinions as well as on their conduct, is far too widely reaching and influential an element in human affairs, to be always passed over in silence for fear of offending personal susceptibilities.

[* ][67] Mr. Mansel says, “The question really at issue is not whether the Rationalist argument is licit or illicit, but whether, in its lawful use, it is to be regarded as infallible or fallible.” ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] p. 175.) If this were all, there would be nothing for him and the Rationalists to quarrel about; for who ever asserted, of any human reasoning, that it is infallible? Neither, I believe, would any “Rationalist” dissent from Mr. Mansel’s view of the “lawful use” of the argument, which he declares throughout his Eighth Lecture [Limits of Religious Thought, pp. 152-75] to be only admissible (as one argument among others) on the question of the authenticity of a Revelation. No Rationalists, I should suppose, believe that what they reject as inconsistent with the Divine Goodness was really revealed by God. They do not both admit it to be revealed and believe it to be false. They believe that it is either a mistaken interpretation, or found its way by human means into documents which they may nevertheless consider as the records of a Revelation. They concede, therefore, to Mr. Mansel (and unless the hypothesis were admitted of a God who is not good, they cannot help conceding) that the moral objections to a religious doctrine are only valid nagainst its truthn if they are strong enough to outweigh whatever external evidences there may be of its having been divinely revealed. But when the question is, how much weight is to be allowed to moral objections, the difference will be radical between those who think that the Divine Goodness is the same thing with human goodness carried to the infinite, and Mr. Mansel, who thinks that it is a different quality, only having some analogy to the human. Indeed it is hard to see how any one, who holds the latter opinion, can give more than a nominal weight to any such argument against a religious doctrine. For, if things may be right according to divine goodness which would be wrong according to even an infinite degree of the human, and if all that is known is that there is some analogy between the two, while no one pretends to have any knowledge how far the analogy reaches, and it may be presumed to be as distant as the remainder of the Divine Nature is from the human, it is impossible to assign any determinate weight to an argument grounded on contradiction of such an analogy. It becomes a mere dialectical locus communis: an argument to be taken up and laid down as suits convenience, and which different men will hold valid in different cases, according to their fancies or prepossessions.

[eMr. Mansel, in his rejoinder [“Supplementary Remarks,” p. 28n], says that he did not mean to admit the second half of Dr. Calderwood’s definition; and he holds to the doctrinee]67 In Mr. Mansel’s reply, the denial or forgetfulness still continues.

[f]67 ” he says, “

[mMr. Mansel’s answer to this is a curious one. He says that “if power, as predicated of man, means the conformity of the event to the volition, man assuredly can do no more than he actually wills to do; for there can be no conformity except where there is a volition and an event.” [“Supplementary Remarks,” p. 30n.] We may know that the event would conform to our volition although it has not actually taken place. Most people, I believe, if they said that they had the power of throwing themselves into a well, would mean that if they willed so to throw themselves, the effect would follow. And if it were asked whether there are any limits to God’s power, the question would mean, Is there anything which if willed by him, nevertheless would not take place. What else can be meant when we speak of a living being as having power, I cannot divine.m]+72

[nagainst its truthn]+72