Note (return) — Chapter VII

But we are told the law of all thought and of all being is determination; consequently, negation of some quality or some potentiality; whereas the Infinite is "the One and the All" (τὸ Ἕν καὶ Πῦν), 322 or, as Dr. Mansel, the disciple and annotator of Hamilton, affirms, "the sum of all reality," and "the sum of all possible modes of being." 323 The Infinite, as thus defined, must include in itself all being, and all modes of being, actual and possible, not even excepting evil. And this, let it be observed, Dr. Mansel has the hardihood to affirm. "If the Absolute and the Infinite is an object of human conception at all, this, and none other, is the conception required." 324 "The Infinite Whole," as thus defined, can not be thought, and therefore it is argued the Infinite God can not be known. Such a doctrine shocks our moral sense, and we shrink from the thought of an Infinite which includes evil. There is certainly a moral impropriety, if not a logical impossibility, in such a conception of God.