not eliminated, but merely left undetermined.  The Infinite (like the Finite, [Greek:  to peperasmhenon—­to hapeiron]) is a genus; it comprehends under it the Infinitely Hard and the Infinitely Soft, the Infinitely Swift and the Infinitely Slow—­the infinite, in short, of any or all positive attributes.  It includes, doubtless, ‘a farrago of contradictions;’ but so, also, does the Finite—­and so, also, do the actual manifestations of the real, concrete universe, which manifestations constitute a portion of the Finite.  Whoever attempts to give any philosophical account of the generation of the universe, tracing its phenomena, as an aggregate, to some ultra-phenomenal origin, must include in his scheme a fundamentum for all those opposite and contradictory manifestations which experience discloses in the universe.  There always have been, and still are, many philosophers who consider the Abstract and General to be prior both in nature and time to the Concrete and Particular; and who hold further that these two last are explained, when presented as determinate and successive manifestations of the two first, which they conceive as indeterminate and sempiternal.  Now the Infinite (Ens Infinitum or Entia Infinita, according to the point of view in which we look at it) is a generic word, including all these supposed indeterminate antecedents; and including therefore, of course, many contradictory agencies.  But this does not make it senseless or unmeaning; nor can we distinguish it from ‘the Infinite in some one or more given attributes,’ by any other character than by greater reach of abstraction.  We cannot admit the marked distinction which Mr Mill contends for—­that the one is unknowable and the other knowable.

It may be proper to add that the mode of philosophizing which we have just described is not ours.  We do not agree in this way either of conceiving, or of solving, the problem of philosophy.  But it is a mode so prevalent that Trendelenberg speaks of it, justly enough, as ’the ancient Hysteron-Proteron of Abstraction.’  The doctrine of these philosophers appears to us unfounded, but we cannot call it unmeaning.

In another point, also, we differ from Mr Mill respecting that inferior abstraction which he calls ‘the Infinite in some particular attribute.’  He speaks as if this could be known not only as an abstraction, a conceivable, an ideal—­but also as a concrete reality; as if ’we could know a concrete reality as infinite or as absolute’ (p. 45); as if there really existed in actual nature ’concrete persons or things possessing infinitely or absolutely certain specific attributes’—­(pp. 55—­93).  To this doctrine we cannot subscribe.  As we understand concrete reality, we find no evidence to believe that there exist in nature any real concrete persons or things, possessing to an infinite degree such attributes as they do possess:  e.g. any men infinitely wise or infinitely strong, any horses infinitely swift, any stones infinitely