law of thought can no longer be conformed to; both because one term cannot be present, and because relation itself cannot be framed. That is to say, the law of thought that contradictories can be known only in relation to each other, no longer holds 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 connexion between this Ultimate Reality and its manifestations, as somehow allied to the connexions 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 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 {255} symbol of a process; and hence any predicament inferable from the law of thought cannot be asserted.