Note 88 — Chapter III

Professor Max Müller writes as follows.—"If philosophy has to explain what is, not what ought to be, there will be and can be no rest till we admit, what cannot be denied, that there is in man a (third) faculty, which I call simply the faculty of apprehending the Infinite, not only in religion, but in all things; a power independent of sense and reason, a power in a certain sense contradicted by sense and reason, but yet a very real power, which has held its own from the beginning of the world, neither sense nor reason being able to overcome it, while it alone is able to overcome both reason and sense." Max Muller's Lectures on the Science of Religion.—Lect. I. New Ed. p. 20. The use of the word faculty is defended in a note.

I quote this passage with pleasure, because one main objection brought against the possible existence of such a faculty is taken from the negative form of the word Infinite. The Professor maintains that, as a question of Philology, Infinite signifies an affirmative idea. In his Lectures on Language, second series, p. 576. he writes thus. "There is no Infinite, we are told, for as there is a Finite, the Infinite has its limit in the Finite, it cannot be Infinite. Now all this is mere playing on words without thoughts. Why is infinite a negative idea? Because infinite is derived from finite by means of the negative particle in! But this is a mere accident, it is a fact in the history of language, and no more. The same idea may be expressed by the Perfect, the Eternal, the Self-existing, which are positive terms, or contain at least no negative element. That negative words may express positive ideas was known perfectly to Greek philosophers such as Chrysippus, and they would as little have thought of calling immortal a negative idea as they would have considered blind positive. The true idea of the Infinite is neither a negation nor a modification of any other idea. The Finite, on the contrary, is in reality the limitation or modification of the Infinite, nor is it possible, if we reason in good earnest, to conceive of the Finite in any other sense than as the shadow of the Infinite. Even Language will confess to this, if we cross-examine her properly." He adds a happy quotation from Roger Bacon: "'et dicitur infinitum non per privationem terminorum quantitatis, sed per negationem corruptionis et non esse.' Oxford of the nineteenth century need not be ashamed, as far as metaphysics are concerned, of Oxford of the thirteenth." Coleridge's theory of the Intuitive reason is well known to most readers.