The theory of Hamilton is a modification of that of Kant, intended to obviate these consequences, and to relieve the Kantian doctrine itself from the inconsistency which gave rise to them. So long as the reason is regarded as a separate faculty from the understanding, and things in themselves as ideas of the reason, so long the apparent contradictions, which encumber the attempt to conceive the unconditioned, must be regarded as inherent in the constitution of the reason itself, and as the result of its legitimate exercise on its proper objects. This sceptical conclusion Hamilton endeavoured to avoid by rejecting the distinction between the understanding and the reason as separate faculties, regarding the one as the legitimate and positive, the other as the illegitimate and negative, exercise of one and the same faculty. He thus announces, in opposition to Kant, the fundamental doctrine of the Conditioned, as "the distinction between intelligence _within_ its legitimate sphere of operation, impeccable, and intelligence _beyond_ that sphere, affording (by abuse) the occasions of error."[AB] Hamilton, like Kant, maintained that all our cognitions are compounded of two elements, one contributed by the object known, and the other by the mind knowing. But the very conception of a relation implies the existence of things to be related; and the knowledge of an object, as in relation to our mind, necessarily implies its existence out of that relation. But as so existing, it is unknown: we believe _that_ it is; we know not _what_ it is. How far it resembles, or how far it does not resemble, the object apprehended by us, we cannot say, for we have no means of comparing the two together. [AB] _Discussions_, p. 633. Instead; therefore, of saying with Kant, that reason is subject to an inevitable delusion, by which, it mistakes the regulative principles of its own thoughts for the representations of real things, Hamilton would say that the reason, while compelled to believe in the existence of these real things, is not legitimately entitled to make any positive representation of them as of such or such a nature; and that the contradictions into which it falls when attempting to do so are due to an illegitimate attempt to transcend the proper boundaries of positive thought.