The "confusion of ideas" is entirely of Mr. Mill's own making, and is owing to his having mutilated the argument before criticising it. The argument in its original form consists of two parts; the first intended to show that the Absolute is not conceived _as such_ in being conceived as a Cause; the second to show that the Absolute cannot be conceived under different aspects at different times--first as Absolute, and then as Cause. It was the impossibility of this latter alternative which drove Cousin to the hypothesis of a necessary causation from all eternity. Mr. Mill entirely omits the latter part of the argument, and treats the former part as if it were the whole. The part criticised by Mr. Mill is intended to prove exactly what it does prove, and no more; namely, that a cause _as such_ is not the absolute, and that to know a cause _as such_ is not to know the absolute. We presume Mr. Mill himself will admit that to know Newton as a mathematician is not to know him as an Englishman. Whether he can be known separately as both, and whether the Absolute in this respect is a parallel case, depends on another consideration, which Mr. Mill has not noticed. The continuation of Mr. Mill's criticism is equally confused. He says:-- "The whole of Mr. Mansel's argument for the inconceivability of the Infinite and of the Absolute is one long _ignoratio elenchi_. It has been pointed out in a former chapter that the words Absolute and Infinite have no real meaning, unless we understand by them that which is absolute or infinite in some given attribute; as space is called infinite, meaning that it is infinite in extension; and as God is termed infinite, in the sense of possessing infinite power, and absolute in the sense of absolute goodness or knowledge. It has also been shown that Sir W. Hamilton's arguments for the unknowableness of the Unconditioned do not prove that we cannot know an object which is absolute or infinite in some specific attribute, but only that we cannot know an abstraction called 'The Absolute' or 'The Infinite,' which is supposed to have all attributes at once."--(P. 93.)