Mansel, Henry Longueville [key], 1820–71, English philosopher and theologian. A disciple of Sir William Hamilton, he systematized his teacher's conception of the relativity of knowledge, and in his famous Bampton Lectures, The Limits of Religious Thought Examined (1858), he applied the conception to religion, denying the possibility of any knowledge of the absolute and asserting the necessity of faith. Other works include Prolegomena Logica (1851), Metaphysics (1860), and Philosophy of the Conditioned (1866).
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