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Essays Eng Ireland Empire (Mill, John Stuart//Collected Works of John Stuart Mill)
Essays Eng Ireland Empire - Mill, John Stuart//Collected Works of John Stuart Mill Author:John Stuart Mill 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 IV. IN WHAT RESPECT SIR W. HAMILTON REALLT DIFFERS FROM THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE ABSOLUTE. The question really at issue in Sir W. Hamilton's celebra... more »ted and striking review of Cousin's philosophy, is this : Have we,orjiaxejve not, an immediate intuition of God? The name of God is veiled under two extremely abstract phrases, "The Infinite" and "The Absolute," perhaps from a reverential feeling: such, at least, is the reason given by Sir W. Hamilton's disciple, Mr. Mansel, for preferring the more vague expressions. But it is one of the most unquestionable of all logical maxims, that the meaning of the abstract must be sought for in the concrete, and not conversely; and we shall see, both in the case of Sir W. Hamilton and of Mr. Mansel, that the process cannot be reversed with impunity. I proceed to state, chiefly in the words of Sir W. Hamilton, the opinions of the two parties to the controversy. Both undertake to decide what are the facts which (in their own phraseology) are given jnjjoji- sciousness ; or, as others say, of which we have intuitive knowledge. According to Cousin, there are, in every act oTconsclousness, three elements; three things of which we are intuitively aware. There is a finite ele- Bampton Lectures. (The Limits of Religious Thought.) Fourth edition, p. 42. ment; an element of plurality, compounded of a Self orTCgp, :md something different from Self, or Non-ego. There is also an infinite element; a consciousness of something infinite. " At the same instant when we are conscious of these [finite] existences, plural, relative, and contingent, we are conscious likewise of a superior unity in which they are contained, and by which they are explained; a unity absolute as they are conditioned, substantive as they are phenomenal, and an infini...« less