Recently attempts have been made to explain to English readers these systems of German philosophy, and in these attempts there are some points which may deserve our notice as to their bearing on the philosophy of science. I find some difficulty in discussing these attempts, for they deal much with phrases which appear to me to offer no grasp to man's power of reason. What, for instance, is the _Absolute_, which occupies a prominent place in these expositions? It is, as I have stated, in Schelling, the central basis of truth in which things and thoughts are united and identified. To attempt to reason about such an "Absolute" appears to me to be an entire misapprehension of the power of reason. Again; one of the most eminent of the expositors has spoken of each system of this kind as a _Philosophy of the Unconditioned_[300]. But what, we must ask, is the _Unconditioned_? That which is subject to no conditions, is subject to no conditions which distinguish it from any thing else, and so, cannot be a matter of thought. But again; this _Absolute_ or _Unconditioned_ is (if I rightly understand) said to be described also by various other names; _unity_, _identity_, _substance_, _absolute cause_, the _infinite_, _pure thought_, &c. As each of these terms expresses some condition on which the name fixes our thoughts, I cannot understand why they should any of them be called the _Unconditioned_; and as they express very different thoughts, I cannot understand why they should be called by the same name. From speculations starting from such a point, I can expect nothing but confusion and perplexity; nor can I find that anything else has come of them. They appear to me more barren, and more certain to be barren, of any results which have any place in our real knowledge, than the most barren speculations of the schoolmen of the middle ages: which indeed they much resemble in all their features--their acuteness, their learning, their ambitious aim, and their actual failure. 2. But leaving the Absolute and the Unconditioned, as notions which cannot be dealt with by our reason without being something entirely different from their definitions, we may turn for a moment to another notion which is combined with them by the expositors of whom I speak, and which has some bearing upon our positive science, because it enters into the reasonings of mathematics: I mean the notion of _Infinite_. Some of those who hold that we can know nothing concerning the Absolute and the Unconditioned, (which they pretend to prove, though concerning such words I do not conceive that anything can be true or false,) hold also that the Infinite is in the same condition;--that we can know nothing concerning what is Infinite;--therefore, I presume, nothing concerning infinite space, infinite time, infinite number, or infinite degrees.