Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAPTER VIII: Of Consciousness, as Understood by Sir William Hamilton - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume IX - An Examination of William Hamilton's Philosophy

Return to Title Page for The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume IX - An Examination of William Hamilton’s Philosophy

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill
Subject Area: Philosophy

CHAPTER VIII: Of Consciousness, as Understood by Sir William Hamilton - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume IX - An Examination of William Hamilton’s Philosophy [1865]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume IX - An Examination of William Hamilton’s Philosophy and of The Principal Philosophical Questions Discussed in his Writings, ed. John M. Robson, Introduction by Alan Ryan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


CHAPTER VIII

Of Consciousness, as Understood by Sir William Hamilton

in the discussion of the Relativity of human knowledge and the Philosophy of the Conditioned, we have brought under consideration those of Sir W. Hamilton’s metaphysical doctrines which have the greatest share in giving to his philosophy the colour of individuality which it possesses, and the most important of those which can be regarded as belonging specially to himself. On a certain number of minor points, and on one of primary importance, Causation, we shall again have to examine opinions of his which are original. But on most of the subjects which remain to be discussed, at least in the psychological department (as distinguished from the logical), Sir W. Hamilton is merely an eminent representative of one of the two great schools of metaphysical thought; that which derives its popular appellation from Scotland, and of which the founder and most celebrated champion was a philosopher whom, on the whole, Sir W. Hamilton seems to prefer to any other, Dr. Reid. For the future, therefore, we shall be concerned less with Sir W. Hamilton’s philosophy as such, than with the general mode of thought to which it belongs. We shall be engaged in criticizing doctrines common to him with many other thinkers; but in doing so we shall take his writings as text-books, and deal with the opinions chiefly in the form in which he presented them. No other course would be so fair to the opinions themselves: not only because they have not, within the last half century, had so able a teacher, and never one so well acquainted with the teachings of others, but also because he had the great advantage of coming last. All theories, at their commencement, bear the burthen of mistakes and inadvertences not inherent in the theories themselves, but either personal to their authors, or arising from the imperfect state of philosophical thought at the time of their origin. At a later period, the errors which accidentally adhered to the theory are stript off, the most obvious objections to it are perceived, and more or less successfully met, and it is rendered, at least apparently, consistent with such admitted truths as it at first seemed to contradict. One of the unfairest, though commonest tricks of controversy, is that of directing the attack exclusively against the first crude form of a doctrine.* Whoever should judge Locke’s philosophy as it is in Locke, Berkeley’s philosophy as it is in Berkeley, or Reid’s as it is in Reid, would often condemn them on the ground of incidental misapprehensions, which form no essential part of their doctrine, and from which its later adherents and expositors are free. Sir W. Hamilton’s is the latest form of the Reidian theory; and by no other of its supporters has that theory been so well guarded, or expressed in such discriminating terms, and with such studious precision. Though there are a few points on which the earlier philosopher seems to me nearer the truth, on the whole it is impossible to pass from Reid to Sir W. Hamilton, or from Sir W. Hamilton back to Reid, and not be struck with the immense progress which their common philosophy has made in the interval between them.

All theories of the human mind profess to be interpretations of Consciousness: the conclusions of all of them are supposed to rest on that ultimate evidence, either immediately or remotely. What Consciousness directly reveals, together with what can be legitimately inferred from its revelations, composes, by universal admission, all that we know of the mind, or indeed of any other thing. When we know what any philosopher considers to be revealed in Consciousness, we have the key to the entire character of his metaphysical system.

There are some peculiarities requiring notice, in Sir W. Hamilton’s mode of conceiving and defining Consciousness. The words of his definition do not, of themselves, indicate those peculiarities. Consciousness, he says, is “the recognition by the mind or ego of its own acts or affections;” and in this, as he truly observes, “all philosophers are agreed.”† But all philosophers have not, by any means, meant the same thing by it. Most of them (including Reid and Stewart) have meant, as the words naturally mean, Self-consciousness. They have held, that we can be conscious only of some state of our own mind. The mind’s “own acts or affections” are in the mind itself, and not external to it: accordingly we have, in their opinion, the direct evidence of consciousness, only for the internal world. An external world is but an inference, which, according to most philosophers, is justified, or even, by our mental constitution, compelled: according to others, not justified.

Nothing, however, can be farther from Sir W. Hamilton’s mind than he declares this opinion to be. Though consciousness, according to him, is a recognition of the mind’s own acts and affections, we are nevertheless conscious of things outside the mind. Some of the mind’s acts are perceptions of outward objects; and we are, of course, conscious of those acts: now, to be conscious of a perception, necessarily implies being conscious of the thing perceived.

It is palpably impossible that we can be conscious of an act, without being conscious of the object to which that act is relative. This, however, is what Dr. Reid and Mr. Stewart maintain. They maintain that I can know that I know, without knowing what I know—or that I can know the knowledge without knowing what the knowledge is about: for example, that I am conscious of perceiving a book, without being conscious of the book perceived,—that I am conscious of remembering its contents without being conscious of these contents remembered—and so forth.*

An act of knowledge existing and being what it is only by relation to its object, it is manifest that the act can be known only through the object to which it is correlative; and Reid’s supposition that an operation can be known in consciousness to the exclusion of its object, is impossible. For example, I see the inkstand. How can I be conscious that my present modification exists,—that it is a perception and not another mental state,—that it is a perception of sight, to the exclusion of every other sense,—and finally, that it is a perception of the inkstand, and of the inkstand only,—unless my own consciousness comprehend within its sphere the object, which at once determines the existence of the act, qualifies its kind, and distinguishes its individuality? Annihilate the inkstand, you annihilate the perception; annihilate the consciousness of the object, you annihilate the consciousness of the operation. It undoubtedly sounds strange to say, I am conscious of the inkstand, instead of saying, I am conscious of the perception of the inkstand. This I admit, but the admission can avail nothing to Dr. Reid, for the apparent incongruity of the expression arises only from the prevalence of that doctrine of perception in the schools of philosophy, which it is his principal merit to have so vigorously assailed.†

This is Sir W. Hamilton’s first difference, on the subject of Consciousness, from his predecessor, Reid. In being conscious of those of our mental operations which regard external objects, we are, according to Sir W. Hamilton, conscious of the objects. Consciousness, therefore, is not solely of the ego and its modifications, but also of the non-ego.

This first difference is not the only one. Consciousness, according to Sir W. Hamilton, may be of things external to self, but it can only be of things actually present. In the first place, they must be present in time. We are not conscious of the past. Thus far Sir W. Hamilton agrees with Reid, who holds that memory is of the past, consciousness only of the present. Reid, however, is of opinion that memory is an “immediate knowledge of the past,”[*] exactly as consciousness is an immediate knowledge of the present. Sir W. Hamilton contends that this opinion of Reid is “not only false,” but “involves a contradiction in terms.” Memory is an act, and an act “exists only in the now:”‡ it can therefore be cognizant only of what now is. In the case of memory, what now is, is not the thing remembered, but a present representation of it in the mind, which representation is the sole object of consciousness. We are aware of the past, not immediately, but mediately, through the representation.

An act of memory, is merely a present state of mind, which we are conscious of, not as absolute, but as relative to, and representing, another state of mind, and accompanied with the belief that the state of mind, as now represented, has actually been. . . . All that is immediately known in the act of memory, is the present mental modification; that is, the representation and concomitant belief. . . . So far is memory from being an immediate knowledge of the past, that it is at best only a mediate knowledge of the past; while in philosophical propriety, it is not a knowledge of the past at all, but a knowledge of the present, and a belief of the past. . . . We may doubt, we may deny that the representation and belief are true. We may assert that they represent what never was, and that all beyond their present mental existence is a delusion:[*]

but it is impossible for us to doubt or deny that of which we have immediate knowledge.

Again, that of which we are conscious must not only be present in time, it must also, if external to our minds, be present in place. It must be in direct contact with our bodily organs. We do not immediately perceive a distant object.

To say, for example, that we perceive by sight the sun or moon, is a false or an elliptical expression. We perceive nothing but certain modifications of light, in immediate relation to our organ of vision; and so far from Dr. Reid being philosophically correct when he says that “when ten men look at the sun or moon, they all see the same individual object,” the truth is that each of these persons sees a different object, because each person sees a different complement of rays, in relation to his individual organ:*

to which, in another place, he adds, that each individual sees two different objects, with his right and with his left eye.

It is not by perception, but by a process of reasoning, that we connect the objects of sense with existences beyond the sphere of immediate knowledge. It is enough that perception affords us the knowledge of the non-ego at the point of sense. To arrogate to it the power of immediately informing us of external things which are only the causes of the object we immediately perceive, is either positively erroneous, or a confusion of language arising from an inadequate discrimination of the phænomena.†

There can, I think, be no doubt that these remarks on knowledge of the past and perception of the distant, are correct, and a great improvement upon Reid.

It appears, then, that the true definition of Consciousness in Sir W. Hamilton’s use of the term, would be Immediate Knowledge. And he expressly says, “Consciousness and immediate knowledge are thus terms universally convertible: and if there be an immediate knowledge of things external, there is consequently the Consciousness of an outer world.”* Immediate knowledge, again, he treats as universally convertible with Intuitive knowledge:† and the terms are really equivalent. We know intuitively, what we know by its own evidence—by direct apprehension of the fact, and not through the medium of a previous knowledge of something from which we infer it. Regarded in this light, our author’s difference with Reid as to our being conscious of outward objects, would appear, on his own showing, to be chiefly a dispute about words: for Reid also says that we have an immediate and intuitive knowledge of things without, aand (if Sir W. Hamilton understands him rightly) that it is immediate and intuitive in the same meaning and mode, as that claimed for us by Sir W. Hamiltona . Sir W. Hamilton stretches the word Consciousness so as to include this knowledge, while Reid, with greater regard for the origin and etymology of the word, restricts it to the cases in which the mind is “conscia sibi.”[*] Sir W. Hamilton has a right to his own use of the term; but care must be taken that it do not serve as a means of knowingly or unknowingly begging any question. One of the most disputed questions in psychology is exactly this—Have we, or not, an immediate intuition of material objects? and this question must not be prejudged by affirming that those objects are in our consciousness. On the contrary, it is only allowable to say that they are in our consciousness, after it bhadb been already proved that we cognise them intuitively.

It is a little startling, after so much has been said of the limitation of Consciousness to immediate knowledge, to find Sir W. Hamilton, in the “Dissertations on Reid,” maintaining that “consciousness comprehends every cognitive act; in other words, whatever we are not conscious of, that we do not know.”‡ If consciousness comprehends all our knowledge, but yet is limited to immediate knowledge, it follows that all our knowledge must be immediate, and that we have, therefore, no knowledge of the past or of the absent. Sir W. Hamilton might have cleared up this difficulty by saying, as he had already done, that our mediate cognitions—those of the past and the absent—though he never hesitates to call them knowledge, are in strict propriety Belief. We could then have understood his meaning. But the explanation he actually gives is quite different. It is, that “all our mediate cognitions are contained in our immediate.”[*] This is a manifest attempt to justify himself in calling them, not belief, but knowledge, like our immediate cognitions. But what is the meaning of “contained?” If it means that our mediate cognitions are part of our immediate, then they are themselves immediate, and we have no mediate cognitions. Sir W. Hamilton has told us, that in the case of a remembered fact, what we immediately cognise is but a present mental representation of it, “accompanied with the belief that the state of mind, as now represented, has actually been.”[†] Having said this, he also says that the past fact, which does not now exist, is “contained”[‡] in the representation and in the belief which do exist. But if it is contained in them, it must have a present existence too, and is not a past fact. Perhaps, however, by the word “contained,” all that is meant is, that it is implied in them; that it is a necessary or legitimate inference from them. But if it is only this, it remains absent in time; and what is absent in time, our author has said, is not a possible object of consciousness. If, therefore, a past fact is an object of knowledge, we can know what we are not conscious of; consciousness does not comprehend all our cognitions. To state the same thing in another manner; a remembered fact is either a part of our consciousness, or it is not. If it is, Sir W. Hamilton is wrong when he says that we are not conscious of the past. If not, he is wrong, either in saying that we can know the past, or in saying that what we are not conscious of, we do not know.

This inconsistency, which emerges only in the “Dissertations,” I shall not further dwell upon: it is chiefly important as showing that the most complicated and elaborate version of Sir W. Hamilton’s speculations is not always the freest from objection. The doctrine of his Lectures is, that a part of our knowledge—the knowledge of the past, the future, and the distant—is mediate and representative, but that such mediate knowledge is not Consciousness; consciousness and immediate knowledge being coextensive.

From our author’s different deliverances as above quoted, it appears that he gives two definitions of Consciousness. In the one, it is synonymous with direct, immediate, or intuitive knowledge; and we are conscious not only of ourselves but of outward objects, since, in our author’s opinion, we know these intuitively. According to the other definition, consciousness is the mind’s recognition of its own acts and affections. It is not at once obvious how these two definitions can be reconciled: for Sir W. Hamilton would have been the last person to say that the outward object is identical with the mental act or affection. He must have meant that consciousness is the mind’s recognition of its own acts and affections together with all that is therein implied, or as he would say, contained. But this involves him in a new inconsistency: for how can he then refuse the name of consciousness to our mediate knowledge—to our knowledge or belief (for instance) of the past? The past reality is certainly cimpliedc in the present recollection of which we are conscious: and our author has said that all our mediate knowledge is contained in our immediate, das he has elsewhere said thatd knowledge of the outward object is contained in our knowledge of the perception. If, then, we are conscious of the outward object, why not of the past sensation or impression?

From the definition of Consciousness as “the recognition by the mind or Ego of its own acts or affections,”[*] our author might be supposed to think (as has been actually thought by many philosophers) that consciousness is not the fact itself of knowing or feeling, but a subsequent operation by which we become aware of that fact. This however is not his opinion. By “the mind’s recognition of its acts and affections” he does not mean anything different from the acts and affections themselves. He denies that we have one faculty by which we know or feel, and another by which we know that we know, and by which we know that we feel. These are not, according to him, different facts, but the same fact seen under another point of view. And he takes this occasion for making a remark, of wide application in philosophy, which it would be of signal service to all students of metaphysics to keep constantly in mind; that difference of names often does not signify difference of things, but only difference in the particular easpecte under which a thing is considered.[†] On the real identity between our various mental states and our consciousness of them, he seems to be of the opinion which was maintained before him by Brown, and which is stated by Mr. James Mill, with his usual clearness and force, in the following passage:

Having a sensation, and having a feeling, are not two things. The thing is one, the names only are two. I am pricked by a pin. The sensation is one; but I may call it sensation, or a feeling, or a pain, as I please. Now, when, having the sensation, I say I feel the sensation, I only use a tautological expression; the sensation is not one thing, the feeling another; the sensation is the feeling. When instead of the word feeling, I use the word conscious, I do exactly the same thing—I merely use a tautological expression. To say I feel a sensation, is merely to say that I feel a feeling; which is an impropriety of speech. And to say I am conscious of a feeling, is merely to say that I feel it. To have a feeling is to be conscious; and to be conscious is to have a feeling. To be conscious of the prick of the pin, is merely to have the sensation. And though I have these various modes of naming my sensation, by saying, I feel the prick of a pin, I feel the pain of a prick, I have the sensation of a prick, I have the feeling of a prick, I am conscious of the feeling; the thing named in all these various ways is one and the same.

The same explanation will easily be seen to apply to ideas. Though at present I have not the sensation, called the prick of a pin, I have a distinct idea of it. The having an idea, and the not having it, are distinguished by the existence or nonexistence of a certain feeling. To have an idea, and the feeling of that idea, are not two things; they are one and the same thing. To feel an idea, and to be conscious of that feeling, are not two things; the feeling and the consciousness are but two names for the same thing. In the very word feeling, all that is implied in the word Consciousness is involved.

Those philosophers, therefore, who have spoken of Consciousness as a feeling distinct from all other feelings, committed a mistake, and one, the evil consequences of which have been most important; for, by combining a chimerical ingredient with the elements of thought, they involved their enquiries in confusion and mystery from the very commencement.

It is easy to see what is the nature of the terms Conscious and Consciousness, and what is the marking function which they are destined to perform. It was of great importance, for the purpose of naming, that we should not only have names to distinguish the different classes of our feelings, but also a name applicable equally to all those classes. This purpose is answered by the concrete term, Conscious, and the abstract of it, Consciousness. Thus, if we are in any way sentient; that is, have any of the feelings whatsoever of a living creature; the word Conscious is applicable to the feeler, and Consciousness to the feeling: that is to say, the words are Generical marks, under which all the names of the subordinate classes of the feelings of a sentient creature are included. When I smell a rose, I am conscious; when I have the idea of a fire, I am conscious; when I remember, I am conscious; when I reason, and when I believe, I am conscious; but believing and being conscious of belief, are not two things, they are the same thing: though this same thing I can name at one time without the aid of the generical mark, while at another time it suits me to employ the generical mark.*

Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrine is exactly this, except that he expresses the latter part of it in less perspicuous phraseology, saying that consciousness is “the fundamental form, the generic condition” of all the modes of our mental activity;† “in fact, the general condition of their existence.”‡ But, while holding the same theory with Brown andf Mill, he completes it by the addition that though our mental states and our consciousness of them are only the same fact, they are the same fact regarded in different relations. Considered in themselves, as acts and feelings, or considered in relation to the external object with which they are concerned, we do not call them consciousness. It is when these mental modifications are referred to a subject or ego, and looked at in relation to Self, that consciousness is the term used: consciousness being “the self-affirmation that certain modifications are known by me, and that these modifications are mine.” In this self-affirmation, however, no additional fact is introduced. It “is not to be viewed as anything different from” the “modifications themselves.”* There is but one mental phænomenon, the act of feeling: but as this implies an acting or feeling Self, we give it a name which connotes its relation to the Self, and that name is Consciousness. Thus, “consciousness and knowledge”—and I think he would have added feeling (the mind’s “affections”) as well as knowledge—

are not distinguished by different words as different things, but only as the same thing considered in different aspects. The verbal distinction is taken for the sake of brevity and precision, and its convenience warrants its establishment. . . . Though each term of a relation necessarily supposes the other, nevertheless one of these terms may be to us the more interesting, and we may consider that term as the principal, and view the other only as subordinate and correlative. Now, this is the case in the present instance. In an act of knowledge, my attention may be principally attracted either to the object known, or to myself, as the subject knowing; and in the latter case, although no new element be added to the act, the condition involved in it,—I know that I know, becomes the primary and permanent matter of consideration. And when, as in the philosophy of mind, the act of knowledge comes to be specially considered in relation to the knowing subject, it is, at last, in the progress of the science, found convenient, if not absolutely necessary, to possess a scientific word in which this point of view should be permanently and distinctively embodied.†

If any doubt could have existed, after this passage, of Sir W. Hamilton’s opinion on the question, it would have been removed by one of the fragments recently published by his editors, in continuation of the “Dissertations on Reid.” I extract the words:

Consciousness is not to be regarded as aught different from the mental modes or movements themselves. It is not to be viewed as an illuminated place within which objects coming are presented to, and passing beyond are withdrawn from, observation; nor is it to be considered even as an observer—the mental modes as phænomena observed. Consciousness is just the movements themselves, rising above a certain degree of intensity. . . . It is only a comprehensive word for those mental movements which rise at once above a certain degree of intension.‡

We now pass to a question which is of no little importance to the character of Sir W. Hamilton’s system of philosophy. We found, not long ago, that he makes between Knowledge and Belief a broad distinction, on which he lays great stress, and which plays a conspicuous part both in his own speculations and in those of some of his followers. Let us now look at this distinction in the light thrown upon it by those doctrines of Sir W. Hamilton which are the subject of the present chapter.

Though Sir W. Hamilton allows a mediate, or representative, knowledge of the past and the absent, he has told us that “in philosophical propriety” it ought not to be called knowledge, but belief. We do not, properly speaking, know a past event, but believe it, by reason of the present recollection which we immediately know. We do not, properly speaking, perceive or know the sun, but we perceive and know an image in contact with our organs, and believe the existence of the sun through “a process of reasoning,”[*] which connects the image that we directly perceive, with something else as its cause. Again, though we cannot know an Infinite or an Absolute Being, we may and ought to believe in the reality of such a Being. But in all these cases the belief itself, the conviction we feel of the existence of the sun, and of the reality of the past event, and which according to Sir W. Hamilton we ought to feel of the existence of ha Being who ish the Infinite and the Absolute—this belief is a fact present in time and in place—a phænomenon of our own mind; of this we are conscious; this we immediately know. Such, it is impossible to doubt, is Sir W. Hamilton’s opinion.

Let us now apply to this the general principle emphatically affirmed by him, and forming the basis of his argument against Reid and Stewart on the subject of Consciousness. “It is palpably impossible that we can be conscious of an act, without being conscious of the object to which that act is relative.”[†] “The knowledge of an operation necessarily involves the knowledge of its object.” “It is impossible to make consciousness conversant about the intellectual operations to the exclusion of their objects,”[‡] and therefore, since we are conscious of our perceptions, we must be conscious of the external objects perceived. Such is Sir W. Hamilton’s theory. But perceptions are not the only mental operations we are conscious of, which point to an external object. This is no less true of beliefs. We are conscious of belief in a past event, in the reality of a distant body, and (according to Sir W. Hamilton) in the existence of the Infinite and the Absolute. Consequently, on Sir W. Hamilton’s principle, we are conscious of the objects of those beliefs; conscious of the past event, conscious of the distant body, conscious of the Infinite and of the Absolute. To disclaim this conclusion would be to bring down upon himself the language in which he criticized Reid and Stewart; it would be to maintain “that I can know that I [believe] without knowing what I [believe]—or that I can know the [belief] without knowing what the [belief] is about: for example, that I am conscious of [remembering a past event] without being conscious of [the past event remembered]; that I am conscious of [believing in God], without being conscious of the [God believed in].”[§] If it be true that “an act of knowledge” exists, and is what it is, “only by relation to its object,” this must be equally true of an act of belief: and it must be as “manifest” of the one act as of the other, “that it can be known only through the object to which it is correlative.”[*] Therefore past events, distant objects, and the Absolute, inasmuch as they are believed, are as much objects of immediate knowledge as things finite and present: since they are presupposed and implicitly contained in the mental fact of belief, exactly as a present object is implicitly contained in the mental fact of perception. Either, therefore, Sir W. Hamilton was wrong in his doctrine that consciousness of our perceptions implies consciousness of their external object, or if he was right in this, the distinction between Belief and Knowledge collapses: all objects of Belief are objects of Knowledge: Belief and Knowledge are the same thing: and he was wrong in asserting that the Absolute ought to be believed, or wrong in maintaining against Cousin that it is incapable of being known.

Another reasoner might escape from this dilemma by saying that the knowledge of the object of belief, which is implied in knowledge of the belief itself, is not knowledge of the object as existing, but knowledge of it as believed—the mere knowledge what it is that we believe. And this is true; but it could not be said by Sir W. Hamilton; for he rejects the same reasonable explanation in the parallel case. He will not allow it to be said that when we have what we call a perception, and refer it to an external object, we are conscious not of the external object as existing, but of ourselves as inferring an external existence. He maintains that the actual outward existence of the object is a deliverance of consciousness, because “it is impossible that we can be conscious of an act without being conscious of the object to which that act is relative.”[†] He cannot, then, reject as applied to the act of Belief, a law which, when he has occasion for applying it to the acts of Perception and Knowledge, he affirms to be common to all our mental operations. If we can be conscious of an operation without being conscious of its object, the reality of an external world is not indeed subverted, but there is an end to Sir W. Hamilton’s theory of the mode in which it is known, and to his particular mode of proving it.

The difficulty in which Sir W. Hamilton is thus involved seems to have become, though very insufficiently, perceptible to himself. Towards the end of his Lectures on Logic, after saying that “we may be equally certain of what we believe as of what we know,” and that, “it has, not without ground, been maintained by many philosophers, both in ancient and modern times, that the certainty of all knowledge is, in its ultimate analysis, resolved into a certainty of belief,”* he adds, “But, on the other hand, the manifestation of this belief necessarily involves knowledge; for we cannot believe without some consciousness or knowledge of the belief, and consequently without some consciousness or knowledge of the object of the belief.” The remark which this tardy reflexion suggests to him is merely this: “The consideration, however, of the relation of Belief and Knowledge does not properly belong to Logic, except so far as it is necessary to explain the nature of Truth and Error. It is altogether a metaphysical discussion; and one of the most difficult problems of which Metaphysics attempts the solution.”* Accordingly, he takes the extremely unphilosophical liberty of leaving it unsolved. But when a thinker is compelled by one part of his philosophy to contradict another part, he cannot leave the conflicting assertions standing, and throw the responsibility of his scrape on the arduousness of the subject. A palpable self-contradiction is not one of the difficulties which can be adjourned, as belonging to a higher department of science. Though it may be a hard matter to find the truth, that is no reason for holding to what is self-convicted of error. If Sir W. Hamilton’s theory of consciousness is correct, it does not leave the difference between Belief and Knowledge in a state of obscurity, but abolishes that distinction entirely, and along with it a great part of his own philosophy. If his premises are true, we not only cannot believe what we do not know, but we cannot believe that of which we are not conscious; the distinction between our immediate and our mediate or representative cognitions, and the doctrine of things believable but not knowable, must both succumb; or if these can be saved, it must be by abandoning the proposition, which is at the root of so much of his philosophy, that consciousness of an operation is consciousness of the object of the operation.

But when Sir W. Hamilton began to perceive that if his theory is correct nothing can be believed except in so far as it is known, he did not therefore renounce the attempt to distinguish Belief from Knowledge. In the very same Lecture, he says, “Knowledge and Belief differ not only in degree but in kind. Knowledge is a certainty founded upon insight; Belief is a certainty founded upon feeling. The one is perspicuous and objective; the other is obscure and subjective. Each, however, supposes the other: and an assurance is said to be a knowledge or a belief, according as the one element or the other preponderates.”† If Sir W. Hamilton had bestowed any sufficient consideration on the difficulty, he would hardly have consented to pay himself with such mere words. If each of his two certainties supposes the other, it follows that whenever we have a certainty founded upon feeling, we have a parallel certainty founded upon insight. We therefore have always insight when we are certain; and we are never certain except to the extent to which we have insight. It is not a case in which we can talk of one or the other element preponderating. They must be equal and coextensive. The whole of what we know we must believe; and the whole of what we believe we must know: for we know that we believe it, and the act of belief “can only be known through the object to which it is correlative.” Our conviction is not divided, in varying proportions, between knowledge and belief: the two must always keep abreast of one another.

All this follows, whatever may be the meaning of the “insight” which forms the distinction in kind between belief and knowledge. But what is this insight? “The immediate consciousness of an object” (he goes on to say) “is called an intuition, an insight.”* So that if knowledge is distinguished from belief by being grounded on insight, it is distinguished by being grounded on immediate consciousness. But belief also supposes immediate consciousness, since “we cannot believe without some consciousness or knowledge of the belief, and consequently without some consciousness or knowledge of the object of the belief.” Not merely without some consciousness, but, if our author’s theory is correct, without a consciousness coextensive with the belief. As far as we believe, so far we are conscious of the belief, and so far, therefore, if the theory be true, we are conscious of the thing believed.

But though Sir W. Hamilton cannot extricate himself from this entanglement, having, by the premises he laid down, cut off his own retreat, other thinkers can find a way through it. For, in truth, what can be more absurd than the notion that belief of anything implies knowledge of the thing believed? Were this so, there could be no such thing as false belief. Every day’s experience shows that belief of the most peremptory kind—assurance founded on the most intense “feeling,” is compatible with total ignorance of the thing which is the object of belief; though of course not with ignorance of the belief itself. And this absurdity is a full refutation of the theory which leads to it—that consciousness of an operation involves consciousness of that about which the operation is conversant. The theory does not seem so absurd when affirmed of knowledge as of belief, because, (the term knowledge being only applied in common parlance to what is regarded as true, while belief may confessedly be false,) to say that if we are conscious of our knowledge, we must be conscious of that which we know, is not so manifestly ridiculous, as it is to affirm that if we are conscious of a mistaken belief, we must be conscious of a non-existent fact. Yet the one proposition must be equally true with the other, if consciousness of an act involves consciousness of the object of the act. It is over the ruins of this false theory that we must force our way out of the labyrinth in which Sir W. Hamilton has imprisoned us. It may be true, or it may not, that an external world is an object of immediate knowledge. But assuredly we cannot conclude that we have an immediate knowledge of external things, because we have an immediate knowledge of our cognitions of them; whether those cognitions are to be termed belief, with Reid, or knowledge, with Sir W. Hamilton.*

[* ]This, for example, is the secret of most of the apparent triumphs which are so frequently gained over the population theory of Malthus, and the political economy of Ricardo.

[† ]Lectures, Vol. I, pp. 193 and 201.

[* ]Ibid., p. 212.

[† ]Ibid., pp. 228-9.

[[*] ]On the Intellectual Powers, p. 339.

[‡ ]Lectures, Vol. I, pp. 218-19.

[[*] ]Ibid., pp. 219-21.

[* ]Ibid., Vol. II, p. 153. [Reid, On the Intellectual Powers, p. 284.]

[† ][Ibid., pp. 153-4 (i.e., “another place” is the sentence immediately following the passage previously quoted).] And elsewhere: “It is self-evident that if a thing is to be an object immediately known, it must be known as it exists. Now, a body must exist in some definite part of space, in a certain place; it cannot, therefore, be immediately known as existing, except it be known in its place. But this supposes the mind to be immediately present to it in space.” (Foot-note to Reid, p. 302n.)

I do not guarantee the conclusiveness of this reasoning; but it has been an error of philosophers in all times to flank their good arguments with bad ones.

[* ]Discussions, p. 51.

[† ]Lectures, Vol. I, p. 221n; and Vol. IV, p. 73.

[a-a]651, 652 though he does not call it a consciousness

[[*] ]See On the Intellectual Powers, pp. 258-60.

[b-b]651, 652 has

[‡ ]“Dissertations on Reid,” [Note B,] p. 810.

[[*] ]Ibid.

[[†] ]Lectures, Vol. I, p. 219.

[[‡] ]Ibid., p. 218.

[c-c]651implied

[d-d]651, 652 just as

[[*] ]Ibid., p. 193.

[e-e]651, 652 relation

[[†] ]See ibid., pp. 193-5.

[* ]James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, Vol. I, pp. 170-2.

[† ]Discussions, p. 48.

[‡ ]Lectures, Vol. I, p. 193.

[f]651, 652 Mr.

[* ]Ibid.

[† ]Ibid., pp. 194-5.

[‡ ]Supplement to Reid [i.e., “Dissertations on Reid,” Note H], p. 932. The qualification here first introduced, of “rising above a certain degree of intensity,” has reference to a doctrine of our author to be fully considered hereafter, that of latent mental states. It makes no abatement from the doctrine that consciousness of a feeling is the feeling; for mental states which are not intense enough to rise into consciousness, are, according to the same theory, not intense enough to be felt: and if felt, the feeling, and the consciousness of the feeling, are one and the same.

It was not without some difficulty, and after considerable study, that I was able to satisfy myself that Sir W. Hamilton held the sound and rational theory with which I have credited him in the text. For he often states and defends his doctrine in a manner which might lead one to think, that in saying that to know, and to know that we know, are but one fact, he does not mean one fact, but two facts which are inseparable. This misapprehension of his meaning is favoured by gtheg repeated use of (what we seldom meet with in his writings) a false illustration; that of the sides and angles of a triangle. “The sides suppose the angles—the angles suppose the sides,—and, in fact, the sides and angles are in themselves, in reality, one and indivisible.” (Lectures, Vol. I, p. 194.) “The sides and angles of a triangle (or trilateral) as mutually correlative—as together making up the same simple figure—and as, without destruction of that figure, actually inseparable from it, and from each other, are really one; but inasmuch as they have peculiar relations, which may, in thought, be considered severally and for themselves, they are logically twofold.” (“Dissertations on Reid,” [Note B,] p. 806n.) According to this, the sides are in reality the angles looked at in a particular point of view; and the angles the same thing as the sides, regarded in a particular relation to something else. When this was the illustration selected of the identity between Consciousness and Knowledge, it was natural to suppose that the writer regarded these two as no otherwise one than the sides and angles of a triangle are. But a closer examination has satisfied me that Sir W. Hamilton was only wrong respecting sides and angles, and not respecting Consciousness and Knowledge. On the former subject he has against him not only the reason of the case, but his own authority; for he says, when discoursing on another subject: “It is not more reasonable to identify sense with judgment, because the former cannot exist without an act of the latter, than it would be to identify the sides and angles of a mathematical figure, because sides and angles cannot exist apart from each other.” (Foot-note to Reid, p. 590n.) [A draft of the latter part of this note exists in manuscript; see Appendix A below.]

[[*] ]Lectures, Vol. II, p. 153.

[h-h]+67, 72

[[†] ]Ibid., Vol. I, p. 212.

[[‡] ]Ibid., p. 211.

[[§] ]Ibid., p. 212; the square brackets, which are Mill’s, contain his substitutions.

[[*] ]Ibid., p. 228.

[[†] ]Ibid., p. 212.

[* ]Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 70.

[* ]Ibid., p. 73.

[† ]Ibid., p. 62.

[* ]Ibid., p. 73.

[*]iMr. Mansel gets over this criticism on Sir W. Hamilton very easily. “Hamilton,” he says, “maintains that we cannot be conscious of a mental operation without being conscious of its object. On this Mr. Mill retorts, that if, as Hamilton admits, we are conscious of a belief in the Infinite and the Absolute, we must be conscious of the Infinite and the Absolute themselves; and such consciousness is knowledge. The fallacy of this retort is transparent. The immediate object of Belief is a proposition which I hold to be true, not a thing apprehended in an act of conception. I believe in an Infinite God; i.e., I believe that God is infinite. I believe that the attributes which I ascribe to God exist in him in an infinite degree. Now, to believe this proposition I must, of course, be conscious of its meaning; but I am not therefore conscious of the Infinite God as an object of conception; for this would require further an apprehension of the manner in which these infinite attributes coexist so as to form one object.” ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] p. 129n.)

A very simple explanation, if only it be a true one. Sir W. Hamilton had no need to feel embarrassed in applying his doctrine, that the knowledge of an operation involves the knowledge of its object, to the operation called Belief; for the object of Belief is but a proposition, and knowledge of the proposition is the only knowledge required. Strange, that when this explanation stood so obvious, Sir W. Hamilton should have missed it–should not only have felt that there was a difficulty, but remanded it to the abstruser Metaphysics, as part of “one of the most difficult problems of which Metaphysics attempts the solution.” [Lectures, Vol. IV, p. 73.] Sir W. Hamilton was often confused and inconsistent, but rarely, if ever, on subjects which he had studied, superficial. He would have brushed away Mr. Mansel’s distinction with the decisive stroke with which he so often levels a fallacy. The object of Belief is a proposition; but is not the object of Knowledge propositions? Is not all knowledge a series of judgments; and is not a judgment expressed in words, a proposition? It is true that knowledge is of things; but we know things only by their attributes: our knowledge of a thing is made up of our knowledge of a certain number of its attributes, every one of which may be expressed in a proposition. When we are said to know a Thing, the meaning is either that we know it as possessing some attribute, or that we know it and its attributes together as existing. So when we do not know the Thing, but have a belief respecting it, the belief is either that it possesses some attribute, or is a belief of its existence, which is called believing in it. When the question is one of attributes, the object of belief is a proposition, but so is the object of knowledge. When the question is one of existence, the object of knowledge is a Thing, but so is the object of belief.

The “Inquirer” (pp. 31-3), unlike Mr. Mansel, thinks that this is “a very intricate point;” that there is a real metaphysical difficulty, and that Sir W. Hamilton was aware of it; that he perceived two facts, both true, which he could not reconcile with one another, and that he died without having had time to find the reconciliation. On this I remark, first, that the difficulty is not in reconciling two facts, but two of Sir W. Hamilton’s opinions, and that the only solution would be to give up one of them. Secondly, that, whatever the solution might be, he had nearly the whole of his philosophical life to find it in; for the inconsistent opinions are two of the cardinal doctrines of his philosophy. The “Inquirer” thinks that we ought to look indulgently on inconsistencies, as being mere incidents of growth; as indeed they are in a learner, who, independently of his ignorance of Things, is not yet fully master of his own thoughts: but a teacher is supposed to be full grown. While admitting (p. 7) that I have proved against Sir W. Hamilton “continual inconsistencies and discrepancies,” the “Inquirer” maintains that all sound philosophy, while incomplete, must be liable to the objection of inconsistency. I confess I cannot see the necessity that our thoughts should be contradictory because our knowledge is incomplete; that because there is much that we do not know, we should not have sufficiently considered what we do know, to avoid holding in conjunction opinions which conflict with one another. The “Inquirer” probably confounds two different things: the belief in contradictories, and the recognition of positive truths which merely limit one another, but to what extent or at what points we cannot yet determine.i

[‡ ]Supplement to Reid [i.e., “Dissertations on Reid,” Note H], p. 932. The qualification here first introduced, of “rising above a certain degree of intensity,” has reference to a doctrine of our author to be fully considered hereafter, that of latent mental states. It makes no abatement from the doctrine that consciousness of a feeling is the feeling; for mental states which are not intense enough to rise into consciousness, are, according to the same theory, not intense enough to be felt: and if felt, the feeling, and the consciousness of the feeling, are one and the same.

It was not without some difficulty, and after considerable study, that I was able to satisfy myself that Sir W. Hamilton held the sound and rational theory with which I have credited him in the text. For he often states and defends his doctrine in a manner which might lead one to think, that in saying that to know, and to know that we know, are but one fact, he does not mean one fact, but two facts which are inseparable. This misapprehension of his meaning is favoured by gtheg repeated use of (what we seldom meet with in his writings) a false illustration; that of the sides and angles of a triangle. “The sides suppose the angles—the angles suppose the sides,—and, in fact, the sides and angles are in themselves, in reality, one and indivisible.” (Lectures, Vol. I, p. 194.) “The sides and angles of a triangle (or trilateral) as mutually correlative—as together making up the same simple figure—and as, without destruction of that figure, actually inseparable from it, and from each other, are really one; but inasmuch as they have peculiar relations, which may, in thought, be considered severally and for themselves, they are logically twofold.” (“Dissertations on Reid,” [Note B,] p. 806n.) According to this, the sides are in reality the angles looked at in a particular point of view; and the angles the same thing as the sides, regarded in a particular relation to something else. When this was the illustration selected of the identity between Consciousness and Knowledge, it was natural to suppose that the writer regarded these two as no otherwise one than the sides and angles of a triangle are. But a closer examination has satisfied me that Sir W. Hamilton was only wrong respecting sides and angles, and not respecting Consciousness and Knowledge. On the former subject he has against him not only the reason of the case, but his own authority; for he says, when discoursing on another subject: “It is not more reasonable to identify sense with judgment, because the former cannot exist without an act of the latter, than it would be to identify the sides and angles of a mathematical figure, because sides and angles cannot exist apart from each other.” (Foot-note to Reid, p. 590n.) [A draft of the latter part of this note exists in manuscript; see Appendix A below.]

[*]iMr. Mansel gets over this criticism on Sir W. Hamilton very easily. “Hamilton,” he says, “maintains that we cannot be conscious of a mental operation without being conscious of its object. On this Mr. Mill retorts, that if, as Hamilton admits, we are conscious of a belief in the Infinite and the Absolute, we must be conscious of the Infinite and the Absolute themselves; and such consciousness is knowledge. The fallacy of this retort is transparent. The immediate object of Belief is a proposition which I hold to be true, not a thing apprehended in an act of conception. I believe in an Infinite God; i.e., I believe that God is infinite. I believe that the attributes which I ascribe to God exist in him in an infinite degree. Now, to believe this proposition I must, of course, be conscious of its meaning; but I am not therefore conscious of the Infinite God as an object of conception; for this would require further an apprehension of the manner in which these infinite attributes coexist so as to form one object.” ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] p. 129n.)

A very simple explanation, if only it be a true one. Sir W. Hamilton had no need to feel embarrassed in applying his doctrine, that the knowledge of an operation involves the knowledge of its object, to the operation called Belief; for the object of Belief is but a proposition, and knowledge of the proposition is the only knowledge required. Strange, that when this explanation stood so obvious, Sir W. Hamilton should have missed it–should not only have felt that there was a difficulty, but remanded it to the abstruser Metaphysics, as part of “one of the most difficult problems of which Metaphysics attempts the solution.” [Lectures, Vol. IV, p. 73.] Sir W. Hamilton was often confused and inconsistent, but rarely, if ever, on subjects which he had studied, superficial. He would have brushed away Mr. Mansel’s distinction with the decisive stroke with which he so often levels a fallacy. The object of Belief is a proposition; but is not the object of Knowledge propositions? Is not all knowledge a series of judgments; and is not a judgment expressed in words, a proposition? It is true that knowledge is of things; but we know things only by their attributes: our knowledge of a thing is made up of our knowledge of a certain number of its attributes, every one of which may be expressed in a proposition. When we are said to know a Thing, the meaning is either that we know it as possessing some attribute, or that we know it and its attributes together as existing. So when we do not know the Thing, but have a belief respecting it, the belief is either that it possesses some attribute, or is a belief of its existence, which is called believing in it. When the question is one of attributes, the object of belief is a proposition, but so is the object of knowledge. When the question is one of existence, the object of knowledge is a Thing, but so is the object of belief.

The “Inquirer” (pp. 31-3), unlike Mr. Mansel, thinks that this is “a very intricate point;” that there is a real metaphysical difficulty, and that Sir W. Hamilton was aware of it; that he perceived two facts, both true, which he could not reconcile with one another, and that he died without having had time to find the reconciliation. On this I remark, first, that the difficulty is not in reconciling two facts, but two of Sir W. Hamilton’s opinions, and that the only solution would be to give up one of them. Secondly, that, whatever the solution might be, he had nearly the whole of his philosophical life to find it in; for the inconsistent opinions are two of the cardinal doctrines of his philosophy. The “Inquirer” thinks that we ought to look indulgently on inconsistencies, as being mere incidents of growth; as indeed they are in a learner, who, independently of his ignorance of Things, is not yet fully master of his own thoughts: but a teacher is supposed to be full grown. While admitting (p. 7) that I have proved against Sir W. Hamilton “continual inconsistencies and discrepancies,” the “Inquirer” maintains that all sound philosophy, while incomplete, must be liable to the objection of inconsistency. I confess I cannot see the necessity that our thoughts should be contradictory because our knowledge is incomplete; that because there is much that we do not know, we should not have sufficiently considered what we do know, to avoid holding in conjunction opinions which conflict with one another. The “Inquirer” probably confounds two different things: the belief in contradictories, and the recognition of positive truths which merely limit one another, but to what extent or at what points we cannot yet determine.i

[gtheg]651, 652, 67 his

[iMr. Mansel gets over this criticism on Sir W. Hamilton very easily. “Hamilton,” he says, “maintains that we cannot be conscious of a mental operation without being conscious of its object. On this Mr. Mill retorts, that if, as Hamilton admits, we are conscious of a belief in the Infinite and the Absolute, we must be conscious of the Infinite and the Absolute themselves; and such consciousness is knowledge. The fallacy of this retort is transparent. The immediate object of Belief is a proposition which I hold to be true, not a thing apprehended in an act of conception. I believe in an Infinite God; i.e., I believe that God is infinite. I believe that the attributes which I ascribe to God exist in him in an infinite degree. Now, to believe this proposition I must, of course, be conscious of its meaning; but I am not therefore conscious of the Infinite God as an object of conception; for this would require further an apprehension of the manner in which these infinite attributes coexist so as to form one object.” ([Philosophy of the Conditioned,] p. 129n.)]651, 652 In many parts of Sir W. Hamilton’s writings, it seems as if the distinction which he draws between knowledge and belief was meant to correspond to the difference between what we can explain by reference to something else, and those ultimate facts and principles which cannot be referred to anything higher. He often speaks of knowledge as resting ultimately on belief, and of ultimate principles as not known, but believed by a necessity of our nature. The distinction is real, but the employment of the words knowledge and belief to express it, is arbitrary and incongruous. To 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. Accordingly Sir W. Hamilton himself says, in one of the “Dissertations on Reid” ([Note A,] p. 763), that “the principles of our knowledge must be themselves knowledge.” And there are few who will not approve this use of language, and condemn the other.