The human mind, whenever it attempts to investigate the profoundest subjects which come before it, and which it is goaded to examine, finds itself in an inextricable maze of contradictions; and, after vainly struggling for a while to get out, becomes nonplussed, confused, confounded, dazed; and, falling down helpless and effortless in the maze, and with devout humility acknowledging its impotence, it finds that the "highest reason" is to pass beyond the sphere and out of the light of reason, into the sphere of a superrational and therefore dark, and therefore _blind_ faith. But it is to be stated, and here we strike to the centre of the errors of the Limitists, that a perception and confession of mental impotence is _not_ the logical deduction from their premises. Lustrous as may be their names in logic,--and Sir William Hamilton is esteemed a sun in the logical firmament,--no one of them ever saw, or else dared to acknowledge, the logical sequence from their principles. They have climbed upon the dizzy heights of thought, and out on their verge; and there they stand, hesitating and shivering, like naked men on Alpine precipices, with no eagle wings to spread and soar away towards the Eternal Truth; and not daring to take the awful plunge before them. Behold the gulf from which they shrink. Mr. Mansel says:-- "It is our duty, then, to think of God as personal; and it is our duty to believe that He is infinite. It is true that we cannot reconcile these two representations with each other, as our conception of personality involves attributes apparently contradictory to the notion of infinity. But it does not follow that this contradiction exists anywhere but in our own minds: it does not follow that it implies any impossibility in the absolute nature of God. The apparent contradiction, in this case, as in those previously noticed, is the necessary consequence of an attempt on the part of the human thinker to transcend the boundaries of his own consciousness. It proves that there are limits to man's power of thought; and it proves no more."--_Limits of Religious Thought_, p. 106. Or, to put it in sharp and accurate, plain and unmistakable English. "It is our duty to think of God as personal," when to think of Him as personal is to think a lie; "to believe that He is infinite," when so to believe is to believe the lie already thought; and when to believe a lie is to incur the penalty decreed by the Bible--God's book--upon all who believe lies. And this is the religious teaching of a professed Christian minister in one of the first Universities in the world. Not that Mr. Mansel meant to teach this. By no means. But it logically follows from his premises. In his philosophy the mind instinctively, necessarily, and with equal authority in each case, asserts That there must be an infinite Being; That that Being must be Self-conscious, Must be unlimited; and that Consciousness is a limitation.