"Thought cannot transcend consciousness; consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and object of thought; known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other; while, independently of this, all that we know either of subject or object, either of mind or matter, is only a knowledge in each of the particular, of the plural, of the different, of the modified, of the phenomenal. We admit that the consequence of this doctrine is--that philosophy, if viewed as more than a science of the conditioned, is impossible. Departing from the particular, we admit that we can never, in out highest generalizations, rise above the finite; that our knowledge, whether of mind or matter, can be nothing more than a knowledge of the relative manifestations of an existence, which in itself it is our highest wisdom to recognize as beyond the reach of philosophy." "In all this, so far as human intelligence is concerned, we cordially agree; for a more complete admission could not be imagined, not only that a knowledge, and even a notion, of the absolute is impossible for man, but that we are unable to conceive the possibility of such a knowledge even in the Deity himself, without contradicting our human conceptions of the possibility of intelligence itself."--_Sir William Hamilton's Essays_, pp. 21, 22, 38. "The various mental attributes which we ascribe to God--Benevolence, Holiness, Justice, Wisdom, for example--can be conceived by us only as existing in a benevolent and holy and just and wise Being, who is not identical with any one of his attributes, but the common subject of them all; in one word, a _Person_. But Personality, as we conceive it, is essentially a limitation and relation. Our own personality is presented to us as relative and limited; and it is from that presentation that all our representative notions of personality are derived. Personality is presented to us as a relation between the conscious self and the various modes of his consciousness. There is no personality in abstract thought without a thinker: there is no thinker unless he exercises some mode of thought. Personality is also a limitation; for the thought and the thinker are distinguished from and limit each other; and the various modes of thought are distinguished each from each by limitation likewise...."--_Limits of Religious Thought_, p. 102.