Another of Mr. Mansel's positions involve conclusions which, we feel assured, he will utterly reject. He says, "If all thought is limitation,--if whatever we conceive is, by the very act of conception, regarded as finite,--the infinite, from a human point of view, is merely a name for the absence of those conditions under which thought is possible." "From a human point of view," and _we_, at least, can take no other, what follows? That the Deity _can have no thoughts_; cannot know what our thoughts are, or that we think. But three suppositions can be made. Either he has no thoughts, is destitute of an intellect; or his intellect is Universal Genius, and he sees all possible objects at once; or there is a faculty different in kind from and higher than the Reason, of which we have, can have, no knowledge. The first, though acknowledged by Hamilton in a passage elsewhere quoted, and logically following from the position taken by Mr. Mansel, is so abhorrent to the soul that it must be unhesitatingly rejected. The second is the position advocated in this treatise. The third is hinted at by Mr. Herbert Spencer. We reject this third, because the Reason affirms it to be impossible; and because, being unnecessary, by the law of parsimony it should not be allowed. To advocate a position of which, in the very terms of it, the intellect can have no possible shadow of knowledge, is, to say the least, no part of the work of a philosopher. "The condition of consciousness is" not "distinction" in the understanding-conception of that term. So consciousness is not a limitation, though all limits when cognized are seen in the light of consciousness. According to the philosophy we advocate, God is a particular being, and is so known; yet he is not known as "one thing out of many," but is known in himself, as being such and such, and yet being _unique_. When Mr. Mansel says, "In assuming the possibility of an infinite object of consciousness, I assume, therefore, that it is at the same time limited and unlimited," he evidently uses those terms with a signification pertinent only to the Understanding. He is thinking of _amount_ under the forms of Space and Time; and so his remark has no validity. He who thinks of God rightly, will think of him as the infinite and absolute spiritual Person; and will define infinity and absoluteness in accordance therewith.