There is a lurking sophism in the whole phraseology of Hamilton in regard to this subject. He is perpetually talking about "thinking a thing"--"thinking the Infinite." Now we do not think a thing, but we think _of_ or _concerning_ a thing. We do not think a man, neither does our thought impose any conditions upon the man, so that he must be as our thought conceives or represents him; but our thought is of the man, concerning or about the man, and is only so far true and valid as it conforms to the objective reality. And so we do not "think the Infinite;" that is, our thought neither contains nor conditions the Infinite Being, but our thoughts are _about_ the Infinite One; and if we do not think of Him as a being of infinite perfection, our thought is neither worthy, nor just, nor true.[321] [Footnote 321: Calderwood's "Philosophy of the Infinite," pp. 255, 256.] But we are told the law of all thought and of all being is determination; consequently, negation of some quality or some potentiality; whereas the Infinite is "_the One and the All_" (τὸ Ἕν καὶ Πῦν),[322] or, as Dr. Mansel, the disciple and annotator of Hamilton, affirms, "the sum of all reality," and "the sum of all possible modes of being."[323] The Infinite, as thus defined, must include in itself all being, and all modes of being, actual and possible, not even excepting evil. And this, let it be observed, Dr. Mansel has the hardihood to affirm. "If the Absolute and the Infinite is an object of human conception at all, this, and none other, is the conception required."[324] "The Infinite Whole," as thus defined, can not be thought, and therefore it is argued the Infinite God can not be known. Such a doctrine shocks our moral sense, and we shrink from the thought of an Infinite which includes evil. There is certainly a moral impropriety, if not a logical impossibility, in such a conception of God. [Footnote 322: Hamilton's "Lectures on Metaphysics," Appendix, vol. ii. p. 531.] [Footnote 323: "Limits of Religious Thought," p. 76.] [Footnote 324: Ibid.]