[Footnote 316: Ibid., p. 195.] There is a thread of fallacy running through the whole of Hamilton's reasonings, consequent upon a false definition of the Absolute at the outset. The Absolute is defined as _that which exists in and by itself, aloof from and out of all relation_. An absolute, as thus defined, does not and can not exist; it is a pure abstraction, and, in fact, a pure non-entity. "The Absolute expresses perfect independence both in being and in action, and is applicable to God as self-existent."[317] It may mean the absence of all _necessary_ relation, but it does not mean the absence of _all_ relation. If God can not _voluntarily_ call a finite existence into being, and thus stand in the relation of cause, He is certainly under the severest limitation. But surely that is not a limit which substitutes choice for necessity. To be unable to know God out of all relation--that is, apart from his attributes, apart from his created universe, is not felt by us to be any privation at all. A God without attributes, and out of all relations, is for us no God at all. God as a being of unlimited perfection, as infinitely wise and good, as the unconditioned cause of all finite being, and, consequently, as voluntarily related to nature and humanity, we can and do know; this is the living and true God. The God of a false philosophy is not the true God; the pure abstractions of Hegel and Hamilton are negations, and not realities. 2. We proceed to consider the second fundamental principle of Hamilton's philosophy of the conditioned, viz., that "conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought," and that thought necessarily imposes conditions on its object. "Thought," says Hamilton, "can not transcend consciousness: consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and an object known only in correlation, and _mutually limiting each other_"[318] Thought necessarily supposes conditions; "to think is simply to condition," that is, to predicate limits; and as the infinite is the unlimited, it can not be thought. The very attempt to think the infinite renders it finite; therefore there can be no infinite _in thought_, and, consequently, the infinite can not be known. [Footnote 317: Calderwood's "Philosophy of the Infinite," p. 179.] [Footnote 318: "Discussions," p. 21.]