sible for nothing whatever beyond the statement that these emotions will survive. If he shows this conclusion to be erroneous, then indeed he touches me. This, however, he does not attempt. Recognizing though he does that this is all I have asserted, and even exclaiming "is that all!" (p. 358), he nevertheless continues to father upon me a number of ideas quoted above, which I have neither expressed nor implied, and asks readers to observe how grotesque is the fabric formed of them.
I enter now on that portion of Mr. Harrison's last article to which is specially applicable its title "Agnostic Metaphysics." In this he recalls sundry of the insuperable difficulties set forth by Dean Mansel, in his "Bampton Lectures," as arising when we attempt to frame any conception of that which lies beyond the realm of sense. Accepting, as I did, Hamilton's general arguments which Mansel applied to theological conceptions, I contended in "First Principles" that their arguments are valid, only on condition that that which transcends the relative is regarded not as negative, but as positive; and that the relative itself becomes unthinkable as such in the absence of a postulated non-relative. Criticisms on my reasoning allied to those made by Mr. Harrison, have been made before, and have before been answered by me. To an able metaphysician, the Rev. James Martineau, I made a reply which I may be excused here for reproducing, as I can not improve upon it:
Always implying terms in relation, thought implies that both terms shall be more or less defined; and as fast as one of them becomes indefinite, the relation also becomes indefinite, and thought becomes indistinct. Take the case of magnitudes, I think of an inch; I think of a foot; and having tolerably definite ideas of the two, T have a tolerably definite idea of the relation between them. I substitute for the foot a mile; and being able to represent a mile much less definitely, I can not so definitely think of the relation between an inch and a mile—can not distinguish it in thought from the relation between an inch and two miles, as clearly as I can distinguish in thought the relation between an inch and one foot from the relation between an inch and two feet. And now if I endeavor to think of the relation between an inch and the 240,000 miles from here to the Moon, or the relation between an inch and the 92,000,000 miles from here to the Sun, I find that while these distances, practically inconceivable, have become little more than numbers to which I frame no answering ideas, so, too, has the relation between an inch and either of them become practically inconceivable. Now this partial failure in the process of forming thought-relations, which happens even with finite magnitudes when one of them is immense, passes into complete failure when one of them can not be brought within any limits. The relation itself becomes unrepresentable at the same time that one of its terms becomes unrepresentable. Nevertheless, in this case it is to be observed that the almost-blank form of relation preserves a certain qualitative character. It is still distinguishable as belonging to the consciousness of extensions, not to the consciousnesses of forces or durations; and in so far remains a vaguely-identifiable
relation. But now suppose we ask what happens when one term of the
