"If the infinite can be that which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection. If it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else, and discerned as an object of consciousness." The presence in language of the word infinite and its cognates is decisive evidence of the presence of a faculty capable of entertaining it as a subject for investigation. This faculty, the Reason having presented the subject for consideration, the Understanding seizes upon it and drags it down into her den, and says, "can be that which it is not." This she says, because she cannot act, except to conceive, and cannot conceive, except to distinguish this from something else; and so cannot perceive that the very utterance of the word "infinite" excludes the word "else." The Understanding conceives the finite as one and independent, and the infinite as one and independent. Then the Reason steps in, and says the infinite is all-comprehending. This conflicts with the Understanding's _conception_, and so the puzzle comes. In laboring for a solution, the Reason's affirmation is expressed hypothetically: "If it (the infinite) is actually everything;" and thereupon the Understanding puts in its blind, impertinent assertion, "it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else." _There is nothing else from which to distinguish it._ The perception of the Reason is as follows. The infinite Person comprehends intellectually, and is ground for potentially and actually, all that is possible and real; and so there can be no else with which to compare him. Because, possessing all fulness, he is actually everything, by this characteristic feature of completeness he distinguishes himself from nothing, which is all there is, (if no-thing--void--can be said to _be_,) beside him; and from any part, which there is within him. Thus is he object to himself in his own consciousness.