It never formed any part of the plan of this work to give an extended examination of the logician's system of metaphysics, or even to notice it particularly. From the first, it was only proposed to attempt the refutation of that peculiar theory which he enounced in his celebrated essay, "The Philosophy of the Unconditioned," a monograph that has generally been received as a fair and sufficient presentation thereof; and which he supplemented, but never superseded. If the arguments adduced, and illustrations presented, in the first part, in behalf of the fact of the Pure Reason, are satisfactory, and the analysis and attempted refutation of the celebrated dictum based upon two extremes, an excluded middle and a mean, in the second part, are accepted as sufficient, as also the criticisms upon certain general corollaries, and the explanation of certain general questions, then, so far at least as Sir William Hamilton is concerned, but little, if any, further remark will be expected. A few subordinate passages in the essay above referred to may, however, it is believed, be touched with profit by the hand of criticism and explanation. To these, therefore, the reader's attention is now called. In remarking upon Cousin's philosophy, Hamilton says: "Now, it is manifest that the whole doctrine of M. Cousin is involved in the proposition, _that the Unconditioned, the Absolute, the Infinite, is immediately known in consciousness, and this by difference, plurality, and relation_." It is hardly necessary to repeat here the criticism, that the terms infinite, absolute, &c. are entirely out of place when used to express abstractions. As before, we ask, infinite--what? The fact of abstraction is one of the greatest of limitations, and vitiates every such utterance of the Limitists. The truth may be thus stated:--The infinite Person, or the necessary principle as inhering in that Person, is _immediately_ known in consciousness, and this, not by difference, plurality, and relation, but by a direct intuition of the Pure Reason. In this act the object seen--the idea--is held right in the Reason's eye; and so is seen by itself and in itself. Hence it is not known by difference, because there is no other object but the one before that eye, with which to compare it. Neither is it known by plurality, because it is seen by itself, and there is no other object contemplated, with which to join it. Nor is it known by relation, because it is seen to be what it is _in itself_, and as out of all relation. A little below, in the same paragraph, Hamilton again remarks upon Cousin, thus:--"The recognition of the absolute as a constitutive principle of intelligence, our author regards as at once the condition and the end of philosophy." The true idea, accurately stated, is as follows. The fact that, by a constituting law of intelligence, the Pure Reason immediately intuits absoluteness as the distinctive quality of _a priori_ first