CONDITIONED (Law of the).—»I lay it down as a law which, though not generalised by philosophers, can be easily proved to be true by its application to the phenomena;—that all that is conceivable in thought lies between two extremes, which, as contradictory of each other, cannot both be true, but of which, as mutual contradictories, one must» (Hamilton’s Metaphysics, II. 368-9). «From this impotence of intellect, we are unable to think aught as absolute» (Reid’s Works, note D, p. 911). «The law of mind, that the conceivable is in every relation bounded by the inconceivable, I call the Law of the Conditioned» (Hamilton, Metaphysics, II. 373). On this law Hamilton founds in support of the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge.— V. RELATIVITY.
