[AN] In a note to this passage, Mr. Mill makes some sarcastic comments on an argument of Hamilton's against Cousin's theory that God is necessarily determined to create. "On this hypothesis," says Hamilton, "God, as necessarily determined to pass from absolute essence to relative manifestation, is determined to pass either from the better to the worse, or from the worse to the better." Mr. Mill calls this argument "a curiosity of dialectics," and answers, "Perfect wisdom would have begun to will the new state at the precise moment when it began to be better than the old." Hamilton is not speaking of states of things, but of states of the Divine nature, as creative or not creative; and Mr. Mill's argument, to refute Hamilton, must suppose a time when the new nature of God begins to be better than the old! Mr. Mill would perhaps have spoken of Hamilton's argument with more respect had he known that it is taken from Plato. On this we would remark, _en passant_, that this is precisely Hamilton's own doctrine, that the sphere of our belief is more extensive than that of our knowledge. The purport of Hamilton's argument is to show that the Absolute, as conceived by Cousin, is not a true Absolute (_Infinito-Absolute_), and therefore does not represent the real nature of God. His argument is this: "Cousin's Absolute exists merely as a cause: God does not exist merely as a cause: therefore Cousin's Absolute is not God." Mr. Mill actually mistakes the position which Hamilton is opposing for that which he is maintaining. Such an error does not lead us to expect much from his subsequent refutation. His first criticism is a curious specimen of his reading in philosophy. He says:-- "When the True or the Beautiful are spoken of, the phrase is meant to include all things whatever that are true, or all things whatever that are beautiful. If this rule is good for other abstractions, it is good for the Absolute. The word is devoid of meaning unless in reference to predicates of some sort.... If we are told, therefore, that there is some Being who is, or which is, the Absolute,--not something absolute, but the Absolute itself,--the proposition can be understood in no other sense than that the supposed Being possesses in absolute completeness _all_ predicates; is absolutely good and absolutely bad; absolutely wise and absolutely stupid; and so forth."[AO]--(P. 43.)