The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Textual Introduction
• Preface to the Third Edition[*]
• Chapter I: Introductory Remarks
• Chapter II: The Relativity of Human Knowledge
• Chapter III: The Doctrine of the Relativity of Human Knowledge, As Held By Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter IV: In What Respect Sir William Hamilton Really Differs From the Philosophers of the Absolute
• Chapter V: What Is Rejected As Knowledge By Sir William Hamilton, Brought Back Under the Name of Belief
• Chapter VI: The Philosophy of the Conditioned
• Chapter VII: The Philosophy of the Conditioned, As Applied By Mr. Mansel to the Limits of Religious Thought
• Chapter VIII: Of Consciousness, As Understood By Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter IX: Of the Interpretation of Consciousness
• Chapter X: Sir William Hamilton’s View of the Different Theories Respecting the Belief In an External World
• Chapter XI: The Psychological Theory of the Belief In an External World
• Chapter XII: The Psychological Theory of the Belief In Matter, How Far Applicable to Mind
• Chapter XIII: The Psychological Theory of the Primary Qualities of Matter
• Chapter XIV: How Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel Dispose of the Law of Inseparable Association
• Chapter XV: Sir William Hamilton’s Doctrine of Unconscious Mental Modifications
• Chapter XVI: Sir William Hamilton’s Theory of Causation
• Chapter XVII: The Doctrine of Concepts, Or General Notions
• Chapter XVIII: Of Judgment
• Chapter XIX: Of Reasoning
• Chapter XX: On Sir William Hamilton’s Conception of Logic As a Science. Is Logic the Science of the Laws, Or Forms, of Thought?
• Chapter XXI: The Fundamental Laws of Thought According to Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter XXII: Of Sir William Hamilton’s Supposed Improvements In Formal Logic
• Chapter XXIII: Of Some Minor Peculiarities of Doctrine In Sir William Hamilton’s View of Formal Logic
• Chapter XXIV: Of Some Natural Prejudices Countenanced By Sir William Hamilton, and Some Fallacies Which He Considers Insoluble
• Chapter XXV: Sir William Hamilton’s Theory of Pleasure and Pain
• Chapter XXVI: On the Freedom of the Will
• Chapter XXVII: Sir William Hamilton’s Opinions On the Study of Mathematics
• Chapter XXVIII: Concluding Remarks
• Appendices
• Appendix A: Manuscript Fragments
• Appendix B: Textual Emendations
• Appendix C: Corrected References
• Appendix D: Bibliographic Index of Persons and Works Cited In the Examination, With Variants and Notes

CHAPTER V

What is Rejected as Knowledge by Sir William Hamilton, Brought Back Under the Name of Belief

we have found Sir W. Hamilton maintaining with great earnestness, and taking as the basis of his philosophy, an opinion respecting the limitation of human knowledge, which, if he did not mean so much by it as the language in which he often clothed it seemed to imply, meant at least this, that the Absolute, the Infinite, the Unconditioned, are necessarily unknowable by us. I have discussed this opinion as a serious philosophical dogma, expressing a definite view of the relation between the universe and human apprehension, and fitted to guide us in distinguishing the questions which it is of any avail to ask, from those which are altogether closed to our investigations.

But had the doctrine, in the mind of Sir W. Hamilton, meant ten times more than it did—had he upheld the relativity of human knowledge in the fullest, instead of the scantiest meaning of which the words are susceptible—the question would still have been reduced to naught, or to a mere verbal controversy, by his admission of a second ^akind^a of intellectual conviction called Belief; which is anterior to knowledge, is the foundation of it, and is not subject to its limitations; and through the medium of which we may have, and are justified in having, a full assurance of all the things which he has pronounced unknowable to us; and this not exclusively by revelation, that is, on the supposed testimony of a Being whom we have ground for trusting as veracious, but by our natural faculties.

From some philosophers, this distinction would have the appearance of a mere fetch—one of those transparent evasions which have sometimes been resorted to by the assailants of received opinions, that they might have an opportunity of ruining the rational foundations of a doctrine without exposing themselves to odium by its direct denial: as the writers against Christianity in the eighteenth century, after declaring some doctrine to be contradictory to reason, and exhibiting it in the absurdest possible light, were wont to add that this was not of the smallest consequence, religion being an affair of faith, not of reason. But Sir W. Hamilton evidently meant what he says; he was expressing a serious conviction, and one of the tenets of his philosophy: he really recognised ^bunder the name of^b Belief a substantive source, I was going to say, of knowledge; I may at all events say of trustworthy evidence. This appears in the following passages:

And in another part of the same Dissertation, (he is arguing that we do not believe, but know, the external world)—

It thus appears that, in Sir W. Hamilton’s opinion, Belief is a ^cconviction of higher authority^c than Knowledge; Belief is ultimate, knowledge only derivative; Knowledge itself finally rests on Belief; natural beliefs are the sole warrant for all our knowledge. Knowledge, therefore, is an inferior ground of assurance to natural Belief; and as we have beliefs which tell us that we know, and without which we could not be assured of the truth of our knowledge, so we have, and are warranted in having, beliefs beyond our knowledge; beliefs respecting the Unconditioned—respecting that which is in itself unknowable.

I am not now considering what it is that, in our author’s opinion, we are bound to believe concerning the unknowable. What here concerns us is, the nullity to which this doctrine reduces the position to which our author seemed to cling so firmly—viz., that our knowledge is relative to ourselves, and that we can have no knowledge of the infinite and absolute. In telling us that it is impossible to the human faculties to know anything about Things in themselves, we naturally suppose he intends to warn us off the ground—to bid us understand that this subject of enquiry is closed to us, and exhort us to turn our attention elsewhere. It appears that nothing of the kind was intended: we are to understand, on the contrary, that we may have the best grounded and most complete assurance of the things which were declared unknowable—an assurance not only equal or greater in degree, but the same in nature, as we have for the truth of our knowledge: and that the matter ^din^d dispute was only whether this assurance or conviction shall be called knowledge, or by another name. If this be all, I must say I think it not of the smallest consequence. If no more than this be intended by the “great axiom”^[*] and the elaborate argument against Cousin, a great deal of trouble has been taken to very little purpose; and the subject would have been better left where Reid left it, who did not trouble himself with nice distinctions between belief and knowledge, but was content to consider us as knowing that which, by the constitution of our nature, we are forced, with entire conviction, to believe. According to Sir W. Hamilton, we believe premises, but know the conclusions from them. The ultimate facts of consciousness are “given less in the form of cognitions than of beliefs:” “Consciousness in its last analysis, in other words our primary experience, is a faith.”^* But if we know the theorems of Euclid, and do not know the definitions and axioms on which they rest, the word knowledge, thus singularly applied, must be taken in a merely technical sense. ^eTo say that we believe the premises, but know the conclusion, would be understood by every one as meaning that we had other independent evidence of the conclusion. If we only know it through the premises, the same name ought in reason to be given to our assurance of both.^*e In common language, when Belief and Knowledge are distinguished, Knowledge is understood to mean complete conviction, Belief a conviction somewhat short of complete; or else we are said to believe when the evidence is probable (as that of testimony), but to know, when it is intuitive, or demonstrative from intuitive premises: we believe, for example, that there is a Continent of America, but know that we are alive, that two and two make four, and that the sum of any two sides of a triangle is greater than the third side. This is a distinction of practical value: but in Sir W. Hamilton’s use of the term, it is the intuitive convictions that are the Beliefs, and those which are dependent and contingent upon them, compose our knowledge. Whether a particular portion of our convictions, which are not more certain, but if anything less certain, than the remainder, and according to our author rest on the same ultimate basis, shall in opposition to the common usage of mankind, receive exclusively the appellation of knowledge, is at the most a question of terminology, and can only be made to appear philosophically important by confounding difference of name with difference of fact. That anything capable of being said on such a subject should pass for a fundamental principle of philosophy, and be ^fone of the chief sources^f of the reputation of a metaphysical system, is but an example how the mere forms of logic and metaphysics can blind mankind to the total absence of their substance.

^gIt must not be supposed, from anything which has been here said, that I wish to abolish the distinction between Knowledge and Belief (meaning True Belief) or maintain that it is necessarily a distinction without a difference. Those terms are employed to denote more than one real difference, and neither of them can conveniently be dispensed with in philosophy.^† What concerns us in the present chapter is not the rationale of the distinction between knowledge and belief, but whether that distinction is relevant to the question between Sir W. Hamilton and M. Cousin about the Infinite and the Absolute; and whether Sir W. Hamilton is warranted in giving back under the name of Belief, the assurance or conviction respecting these objects which he refuses under the name of knowledge. My position is, that the Infinite and Absolute which Sir W. Hamilton has been proving to be unknowable, being made up of contradictions, are as incapable of being believed as of being known; that the only attitude in reference to them, of any intellect which apprehends the meaning of language, is that of disbelief. On the other hand, there are Infinites and Absolutes which, not being self-contradictory, admit of being believed, namely, concrete realities supposed to be infinite or absolute in respect of certain attributes: but Sir W. Hamilton, as I maintain, has done nothing towards proving that such concrete realities cannot be known, in the way in which we know other things, namely, in their relations to us. When, therefore, he affirms that though the Infinite cannot by us be known, “by us it is, must, and ought to be believed,”^[*] I answer, that the Infinite which, as he has so laboriously proved, cannot be known, neither is, must, nor ought to be believed; not because it cannot be known, but because there exists no such thing for us to know; unless, with Hegel, we hold that the Absolute is not subject to the Law of Contradiction, but is at once a real existence and the synthesis of contradictories. And, on the other hand, the Infinite and Absolute which are really capable of being believed, are also, for anything Sir W. Hamilton has shown to the contrary, capable of being, in certain of their aspects, known.^g

[a-a]651, 652 source

[b-b]651, 652 in

[* ]Letter to Mr. Calderwood, in Appendix [iii], to Lectures, Vol. II, pp. 530-1.

[† ]“Dissertations on Reid,” [Note A,] p. 760. [For St. Augustine, see De Utilitate credendi ad Honoratum liber unus, in Opera Omnia, Vols. XXXII-XLVII of Jacques Paul Migné, ed., Patrologiæ cursus completus, Series latina (Paris: Migné, 1841-49), Vol. XLII, col. 83 (Cap. xi). The attribution of “Intellige ut credas” to Peter Abelard is mistaken. For St. Anselm, see Proslogion seu Alloquium de Dei Existentia, in Opera Omnia, Vols. CLVIII-CLIX of ibid. (1853-54), Vol. CLVIII, col. 227 (Cap. i).]

[‡ ][Note A,] p. 750.

[c-c]651, 652 higher source of evidence

[d-d]651, 652 of

[[*] ]Lectures, Vol. I, p. 136; cf. p. 16 above.

[* ]Discussions, p. 86.

[e-e]+67, 72

[* ][67] Accordingly Sir W. Hamilton himself, in one of the “Dissertations on Reid,” says that “the principles of our knowledge must be themselves knowledge.” ([Note A,] p. 763.) And there are few who will not approve this use of language, and condemn the other.

[f-f]651, 652 the chief source

[g-g]65+67, 72

[† ][67] There is much dispute among philosophers as to the difference between Knowledge and Belief; and the strife is not likely to terminate, until they perceive that the real question is, not what the distinction is, but what it shall be; what one among several differences already known and recognised, the words shall be employed to denote. “The word belief,” says Dr. M‘Cosh, in this more discerning than the generality, “is unfortunately a very vague one, and may stand for a number of very different mental affections. When I am speaking of first or intuitive principles, I use the term to signify our conviction of the existence of an object not now present, and thus I distinguish primitive faith from primitive knowledge, in which the object is present.” (Examination, pp. 36-7.) This distinction agrees well with usage in the cases to which Dr. M‘Cosh applies it: we know that which we perceive by the senses, and believe that which we only remember: we know that we ourselves, and (while we look at them) our house and garden, exist, and believe the existence of the Czar of Russia and the island of Ceylon. Every definition of Belief, as distinguished from Knowledge, must include these cases, because in them the conviction which receives the name of Belief falls short of the complete assurance implied in the word knowledge: our memory may deceive us; the Czar or the island may have been swallowed up by an earthquake. But if we attempt to carry out Dr. M‘Cosh’s distinction through the entire region of thought, the whole of what we call our scientific knowledge, except the primary facts or intuitions on which it is grounded, has to pass into the category of Belief; for the objects with which it is conversant are seldom present.

Mr. Mansel might be supposed to be adopting Dr. M‘Cosh’s distinction, when he says, “We believe that the true distinction between knowledge and belief may ultimately be referred to the presence or absence of the corresponding intuition.” ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] p. 126n.) But his criterion of the distinction, and, according to him, Sir W. Hamilton’s also, is the following: we believe that a thing is, but do not know even that it is, unless we can conceive how, or in what manner, it is. “When I say that I believe in the existence of a spiritual being who can see without eyes, I cannot conceive the manner in which seeing co-exists with the absence of the bodily organ of sight” (ibid.). “We cannot conceive the manner in which the unconditioned and the personal are united in the Divine Nature; yet we may believe that, in some manner unknown to us, they are so united. To conceive the union of two attributes in one object of thought, I must be able to conceive them as united in some particular manner: when this cannot be done, I may nevertheless believe that the union is possible, though I am unable to conceive how it is possible.” [Ibid., pp. 18-19.] This may be more briefly expressed by saying that we can believe what is inconceivable, but can know only what is conceivable; and undoubtedly both these contrasted propositions are maintained by Sir W. Hamilton. But to regard them as a clue to the distinction in his mind between knowledge and belief, would be to misunderstand his opinions: for the convictions which he most emphatically characterized as beliefs, in contradistinction to knowledge, are what he calls our natural and necessary beliefs, “the original data of reason,” [“Dissertations on Reid,” Note A, p. 760,] which, far from being inconceivable, are usually tested by being themselves conceivable while their negations are not. If knowledge were distinguished from belief by our being aware of the manner as well as the fact, we could not believe and know the same fact; our knowledge could not rest, as he says it does, on a belief that it is itself true.

But indeed, this notion of Sir W. Hamilton that we have two convictions on the same point, one guaranteeing the other—our knowledge of a truth, and a belief in the truth of that knowledge—seems to me a piece of false philosophy, resembling the doctrine he elsewhere rejects, that we have both a feeling and a consciousness of the feeling. We do not know a truth and believe it besides; the belief is the knowledge. Belief, altogether, is a genus which includes knowledge: according to the usage of language we believe whatever we assent to; but some of our beliefs are knowledge, others are only belief. The first requisite which, by universal admission, a belief must possess, to constitute it knowledge, is that it be true. The second is, that it be well grounded; for what we believe by accident, or on evidence not sufficient, we are not said to know. The grounds must, moreover, be sufficient for the very highest degree of assurance; for we do not consider ourselves to know, as long as we think there is any possibility (I mean any appreciable possibility) of our being mistaken. But when a belief is true, is held with the strongest conviction we ever have, and held on grounds sufficient to justify that strongest conviction, most people would think it worthy of the name of knowledge, whether it be grounded on our personal investigations, or on the appropriate testimony, and whether we know only the fact itself, or the manner of the fact. And I am inclined to think that the purposes of philosophy, as well as those of common life, are best answered by making this the line of demarcation.

[[*] ]Lectures, Vol. II, App. iii, p. 531; cf.p. 61 above.