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law that of excluded middle to admit that one and but one only is necessary." He then treats in the same way the minimum of space, the maximum and minimum of time, and proceeds, " The sum therefore of what I have now stated, is: that the conditioned is that which is alone conceivable, or cogitable. The unconditioned that which is inconceivable or incogitable. The conditioned or the thinkable lies between two extremes or poles." Later he says, "These poles are the absolute and the infinite; the term absolute expressing that which is finished or complete; the term infinite that which can not be terminated or concluded."

The doctrine of the law of the conditioned is the most characteristic feature of the philosophy of Hamilton, and is open to obvious and fatal objections. It does not explain (1) why the mind is thus embarrassed in its conception of the maximum and minimum of space and time; nor (2) why it is ever led to vex and torment itself with these impossibilities, forsaking the conditioned where traveling is comfortable and profitable, to scale cloud-heights which never give foothold to the foolhardy assailant; nor yet, most strange omission, (3) why of two impossible conceptions equally perplexing, we are called on to accept the one, that of infinite space, infinite time, in place of the other, that of bounded space and time. A better theory is able to offer an explanation of these difficulties. The mind is baffled in a conception of a maximum and minimum of space, because a faculty is set to the task which deals exclusively with the phenomenal, and it is no more curious or surprising that the imagination can not attain to the infinite, than that these limbs of ours can not mount a sunbeam, and so reach the heavens; or, more aptly, than that we can not see, hear, smell the infinite; since the senses are the analogues of the fancy, both covering in a different way the