The fallacy of this criticism, as regards Sir W. Hamilton, has been already pointed out: as regards Mr. Mansel, it is still more glaring, inasmuch as that writer expressly states that he uses the term _absolute_ in a different sense from that which Mr. Mill attributes to Sir W. Hamilton. When Mr. Mill charges Mr. Mansel with "undertaking to prove the impossibility" of conceiving "a Being _absolutely_ just or _absolutely_ wise"[BF] (_i.e._, as he supposes, _perfectly_ just or wise), he actually forgets that he has just been criticising Mr. Hansel's definition of the Absolute, as something having a possible existence "out of all relation." Will Mr. Mill have the kindness to tell us what he means by goodness and knowledge "out of all relation;" _i.e._, a goodness and knowledge related to no object on which they can be exercised; a goodness which is good to nothing, a knowledge which knows nothing? Mr. Mill had better be cautious in talking about _ignoratio elenchi_. [BF] _Examination_, p. 95. From the Absolute, Mr. Mill proceeds to the Infinite; and here he commits the same mistake as before, treating a portion of an argument as if it were the whole, and citing a portion intended to prove one point as if it were intended to prove another. He cites a passage from Mr. Mansel, in which it is said that "the Infinite, if it is to be conceived at all, must be conceived as potentially everything and actually nothing; for if there is anything in general which it cannot become, it is thereby limited; and if there is anything in particular which it actually is, it is thereby excluded from being any other thing. But, again, it must also be conceived as actually everything and potentially nothing; for an unrealised potentiality is likewise a limitation. If the Infinite can be that which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection. If it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else, and discerned as an object of consciousness." On this passage Mr. Mill remarks, "Can a writer be serious who bids us conjure up a conception of something which possesses infinitely all conflicting attributes, and because we cannot do this without contradiction, would have us believe that there is a contradiction in the idea of infinite goodness or infinite wisdom?" The answer to this criticism is very simple. The argument is not employed for the purpose which Mr. Mill supposes. It is employed to show that the metaphysical notion of the absolute-infinite, as the sum, potential or actual, of all possible existence, is inconceivable under the laws of human consciousness; and thus that the absolutely first existence, related to nothing and limited by nothing, the _ens realissimum_ of the older philosophers, the _pure being_ of the Hegelians, cannot be attained as a starting-point from which to deduce all relative and derived existence.