MANSEL, HENRY LONGEVILLE. - English theologian and philosopher, b. at Casgrove (Northamptonshire) on 6 Oct. 1820, d. at Oxford on 31 July 1871, at whose University he had been professor of Church history.
A follower of the metaphysical agnosticism of Hamilton (v.), in the writings Limits of religions thought (1858) and Philosophy of the conditioned (1866), he rigidly develops the notion of the inconceivability of God as absolute and infinite. “The absolute cannot be conceived either as conscious or as unconscious; either as complex or as simple...; it cannot be identified with the universe, nor can it be distinguished from it” (Limits of r. th., p. 30). Nevertheless, the very constitution of our mind compels us to believe (and this belief is also founded upon Revelation) in the existence of an absolute and infinite Being. Reid (v.) Kant (v.) is evident, through Hamilton’s phenomenalist interpretation of Kantianism. Agnosticism, carried to this point, is scepticism of reason and pure fideism. Among his other writings, mention should be made of The limits of demonstrative science (1853).