an object about which we think, and must, therefore, be positive--that is, it must embrace within itself the conception of certain qualities as belonging to the object."[336] [Footnote 335: "Logic," p. 55.] [Footnote 336: "Philosophy of the Infinite," p. 272.] The conclusion of Hamilton's reasoning in regard to "negative thinking" is, that we can form no notion of the Infinite Being. We have no positive idea of such a Being. We can think of him only by "the thinking away of every characteristic" which can be conceived, and thus "ceasing to think at all." We can only form a "negative concept," which, we are told, "is in fact no concept at all." We can form only a "negative notion," which, we are informed, "is only the negation of a notion." This is the impenetrable abyss of total gloom and emptiness into which the philosophy of the conditions leads us at last.[337] [Footnote 337: Whilst Spencer accepts the general doctrine of Hamilton, that the Ultimate Reality is inscrutable, he argues earnestly against his assertion that the Absolute is a "mere negation of thought." "Every one of the arguments by which the relativity of our knowledge is demonstrated distinctly postulates the _positive existence_ of something beyond the relative. To say we can not know the Absolute is, by implication, to affirm there _is_ an Absolute. In the very denial of our power to learn _what_ the Absolute is, there lies hidden the assumption _that_ it is; and the making of this assumption proves that the Absolute has been present to the mind, not as nothing, but as _something_. And so with every step in the reasoning by which the doctrine is upheld, the Noumenon, everywhere named as the antithesis of the Phenomenon, is throughout thought as actuality. It is rigorously impossible to conceive that our knowledge is a knowledge of appearances only, without, at the same time, conceiving a Reality of which these are appearances, for appearances without reality are unthinkable. "Truly to represent or realize in thought any one of the propositions of which the argument consists, the unconditioned must be represented as _positive_, and not negative. How, then, can it be a legitimate conclusion from the argument that our consciousness of it is negative? An argument, the very construction of which assigns to a certain term a certain meaning, but which ends in showing that this term has no meaning, is simply an elaborate suicide. Clearly, then, the very demonstration that a definite consciousness [comprehension] of the Absolute is impossible, unavoidably presupposes an indefinite consciousness of it [an apprehension]."--"First Principles," p. 88.]