[AO] In support of this position, Mr. Mill cites Hegel--"What kind of an absolute Being is that which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil included?" We are not concerned to defend Hegel's position; but he was not quite so absurd as to mean what Mr. Mill supposes him to have meant. Does not Mr. Mill know that it was one of Hegel's fundamental positions, that the Divine nature cannot be expressed by a plurality of predicates? Plato expressly distinguishes between "the beautiful" and "things that are beautiful," as the One in contrast to the Many--the Real in contrast to the Apparent.[AP] It is, of course, quite possible that Plato may be wrong, and Mr. Mill right; but the mere fact of their antagonism is sufficient to show that the meaning of "the phrase" need not be what Mr. Mill supposes it must be. In fact, "the Absolute" in philosophy always has meant the One as distinguished from the Many, not the One as including the Many. But, as applied to Sir W. Hamilton, Mr. Mill's remarks on "the Absolute," and his subsequent remarks on "the Infinite," not only misrepresent Hamilton's position, but exactly reverse it. Hamilton maintains that the terms "absolute" and "infinite" are perfectly intelligible as abstractions, as much so as "relative" and "finite;" for "correlatives suggest each other," and the "knowledge of contradictories is one;" but he denies that a concrete thing or object can be positively conceived as absolute or infinite. Mr. Mill represents him as only proving that the "unmeaning abstractions are unknowable,"--abstractions which Hamilton does not assert to be unmeaning; and which he regards as knowable in the only sense in which such abstractions can be known, viz., by understanding the meaning of their names.[AQ] [AP] _Republic_, book v., p. 479.