"4. As opposite extremes, they include everything conceivable between them." What the essayist in the North American says upon this point is so apt, and so accords with our own previous reflections, that we will not forbear making an extract. "The last of the four theses will best be re-stated in Hamilton's own words; the italics are his. 'The conditioned is the mean between two extremes--two inconditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of which _can be conceived as possible_, but of which, on the principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one _must be admitted as necessary_.' This sentence excites unmixed wonder. To mention in the same breath the law of excluded middle, and two contradictions with a mean between them, requires a hardihood unparalleled in the history of philosophy, except by Hegel. If the two contradictory extremes are themselves incogitable, yet include a cogitable mean, why insist upon the necessity of accepting either extreme? This necessity of accepting one of two contradictories is wholly based upon the supposed impossibility of a mean; if the mean exists, that may be true, and both the contradictories false. But if a mean between the two contradictories be both impossible and absurd, (and we have hitherto so interpreted the law of excluded middle,) Hamilton's conditioned entirely vanishes." Upon a system which, in whatever aspect one looks at it, is found to be but a bundle of contradictions and absurdities, further criticism would appear to be unnecessary. Having, impliedly at least, accepted as true Sir William Hamilton's psychological error,--the rejection of the Reason as the intellectual faculty of the spiritual person,--and having, with him, used the terms limit, condition, and the like, in such significations as are pertinent to the Sense and Understanding only, the Limitists proceed to present in a paradoxical light many questions which arise concerning "the Infinite." They take the ground that, to our view, he can be neither person, nor intellect, nor consciousness; for each of these implies limitation; and yet that it is impossible for us to know aught of him, except as such. Then having, as they think, completely confused the mind, they draw hence new support for their conclusion, that we can attain to no satisfactory knowledge on the subject. The following extracts selected from many will show this.