Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/428

 the relations between an inch and either of them become practically inconceivable. Now, this partial failure in the process of forming thought-relations, which happens even with finite magnitudes when one of them becomes immense, becomes complete failure when one of the magnitudes cannot be brought within any limits. The relation itself becomes unrepresentable at the same time that one of its terms becomes unrepresentable. Nevertheless, in this case it is to be observed that the almost blank form of relation preserves a certain qualitative character. It is still distinguishable as belonging to the consciousness of extensions, not to the consciousnesses of forces or durations; and in so far remains a vaguely-identifiable relation. But now suppose we ask what happens when one term of the relation has not simply magnitude having no known limits, and duration of which neither beginning nor end is cognizable, but is also an existence not to be defined? In other words, what must happen if one term of the relation is not only quantitatively but also qualitatively unrepresentable? Clearly in this case the relation does not simply cease to be thinkable except as a relation of a certain class, but it lapses completely. When one of the terms becomes wholly unknowable, the law of thought can no longer be fulfilled; both because one term cannot be present, and because at the same time relation itself cannot be framed. That is to say, the law of thought, that contradictories can be known only in relation to each other, fails when thought attempts to transcend the Relative; and yet, when it attempts to transcend the Relative, it must make the attempt in conformity with its law—must in some dim mode of consciousness posit a Non-relative, and, in some similarly dim mode of consciousness, a relation between it and the Relative. In brief, then, to Mr. Martineau's objection I reply, that the insoluble difficulties he indicates arise here, as elsewhere, when thought is applied to that which transcends the sphere of thought; and that, just as, when we try to pass beyond phenomenal manifestations to the Ultimate Reality manifested, we have to symbolize it out of such materials as the phenomenal manifestations give us, so we have simultaneously to symbolize the connection between this Ultimate Reality and its manifestations as somehow allied to the connections among the phenomenal manifestations themselves. The truth Mr. Martineau's criticism adumbrates is, that the law of thought fails where the elements of thought fail; and this is a conclusion quite conformable to the general view I defend. Still holding the validity of my argument against Hamilton and Mansel, that in pursuance of their own principle the Relative is not at all thinkable as such, unless in contradistinction to some existence posited, however vaguely, as the other term of a relation conceived, however indefinitely, it is, I think, consistent on my part to hold that, in this effort which thought inevitably makes to pass beyond its sphere, not only does the product of thought become a dim symbol of a product, but the process of thought becomes a dim