hard.  Such concrete real objects appear to us not admissible, because experience not only has not certified their existence in any single case, but goes as far to disprove their existence as it can do to disprove anything.  All the real objects in nature known to us by observation are finite, and possess only in a finite measure their respective attributes.  Upon this is founded the process of Science, so comprehensively laid out by Mr Mill in his ’System of Logic ’—­Induction, Deduction from general facts attested by Induction, Verification by experience of the results obtained by Deduction.  The attributes, whiteness or hardness, in the abstract, are doubtless infinite; that is, the term will designate, alike and equally, any degree of whiteness or hardness which you may think of, and any unknown degree even whiter and harder than what you think of.  But when perceived as invested in a given mass of snow or granite before us, they are divested of that indeterminateness, and become restricted to a determinate measure and degree.

Having thus indicated the points on which we are compelled to dissent from Mr Mill’s refutation of Sir W. Hamilton in the pleading against M. Cousin, we shall pass to the seventh chapter, in which occurs his first controversy with Mr Mansel.  This passage has excited more interest, and will probably be remembered by a larger number of readers, than any portion of the book.  We shall give it in his own words (pp. 99—­103), since the energetic phraseology is quite as remarkable as the thought:—­

’There is but one way for Mr Mansel out of this difficulty, and he adopts it.  He must maintain, not merely that an Absolute Being is unknowable in himself, but that the Relative attributes of an Absolute Being are unknowable also.[5] He must say that we do not know what Wisdom, Justice, Benevolence, Mercy, &c., are, as they exist in God.  Accordingly, he does say so.  “It is a fact” (says Mr Mansel) “which experience forces upon us, and which it is useless, were it possible, to disguise, that the representation of God after the model of the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving, is not sufficient to account for all the phenomena exhibited by the course of his natural Providence.  The infliction of physical suffering, the permission of moral evil, the adversity of the good, the prosperity of the wicked, the crimes of the guilty involving the misery of the innocent, the tardy appearance and partial distribution of moral and religious knowledge in the world—­these are facts, which no doubt are reconcilable, we know not how, with the Infinite Goodness of God, but which certainly are not to be explained on the supposition that its sole and sufficient type is to be found in the finite goodness of man.”

‘In other words’ (continues Mr Mill commenting) ’it is necessary to suppose that the infinite goodness ascribed to God is not the goodness which we know and love in our