CHAPTER I: Introductory Remarks

among the philosophical writers of the present century in these islands, no one occupies a higher position than Sir William Hamilton. He alone, of our metaphysicians of this and the preceding generation, has acquired, merely as such, an European celebrity: while, in our own country, he has not only had power to produce a revival of interest in a study which had ceased to be popular, but has made himself, in some sense, the founder of a school of thought. The school, indeed, is not essentially new; for its fundamental doctrines are those of the philosophy which has everywhere been in the ascendant since the setting in of the reaction against Locke and Hume, which dates from Reid among ourselves and from Kant for the rest of Europe. But that general scheme of philosophy is split into many divisions, and the Hamiltonian form of it is distinguished by as marked peculiarities as belong to any other of its acknowledged varieties. From the later German and French developments of the common doctrine, it is separated by differences great in reality, and still greater in appearance; while it stands superior to the earlier Scottish and English forms by the whole difference of level which has been gained to philosophy through the powerful negative criticism of Kant. It thus unites to the prestige of independent originality, the recommendation of a general harmony with the prevailing tone of thought. These advantages, combined with an intellect highly trained and in many respects highly fitted for the subject, and a knowledge probably never equalled in extent and accuracy of whatever had been previously thought and written in his department, have caused Sir William Hamilton to be justly recognised as, in the province of abstract speculation, one of the important figures of the age.

The acknowledged position of Sir W. Hamilton at the head, so far as regards this country, of the school of philosophy to which he belongs, has principally determined me to connect with his name and writings the speculations and criticisms contained in the present work. The justification of the work itself lies in the importance of the questions, to the discussion of which it is a contribution. England is often reproached by Continental thinkers, with indifference to the higher philosophy. But England did not always deserve this reproach, and is already showing, by no doubtful Edition: current; Page: [2] symptoms, that she will not deserve it much longer. Her thinkers are again beginning to see, what they had only temporarily forgotten, that a true Psychology is the indispensable scientific basis of Morals, of Politics, of the science and art of Education; that the difficulties of Metaphysics lie at the root of all science; that those difficulties can only be quieted by being resolved, and that until they are resolved, positively awhenevera possible, but at any rate negatively, we are never assured that any human knowledge, even physical, stands on solid foundations.

My subject, therefore, is blessb Sir W. Hamilton, cthanc the questions which Sir W. Hamilton discussed. It is, however, impossible to write on those questions in our own country and in our own time, without incessant reference, express or tacit, to his treatment of them. On all the subjects on which he touched, he is either one of the most powerful allies of what I deem a sound philosophy, or (more frequently) by far its most formidable antagonist; both because he came the latest, and wrote with a full knowledge of the flaws which had been detected in his predecessors, and because he was one of the ablest, the most dfar-sightedd, and the most candid. Whenever any opinion which he deliberately expressed, is contended against, his form of the opinion, and his arguments for it, are those which especially require to be faced and carefully appreciated: and it being thus impossible that any fit discussion of his topics should not involve an estimate of his doctrines, it seems worth while that the estimate should be rendered as complete as practicable, by being extended to all the subjects on which he has made, or on which he is believed to have made, any important contribution to thought.

In thus attempting to anticipate, as far as is yet possible, the judgment of posterity on Sir W. Hamilton’s labours, I sincerely lament that on the many points on which I am at issue with him, I have the unfair advantage possessed by one whose opponent is no longer in a condition to reply. Personally I might have had small cause to congratulate myself on the reply which I might have received, for though a strictly honourable, he was a most unsparing controversialist, and whoever assailed even the most unimportant of his opinions, might look for hard blows in return. But it would have been worth far more, even to myself, than any polemical success, to have known with certainty in what manner he would have met the objections raised in the present volume. I feel keenly, with Plato, how much more is to be learnt by discussing with a man, who can question and Edition: current; Page: [3] answer, than with a book, which cannot.[*] But it was not possible to take a general review of Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrines while they were only known to the world in the fragmentary state in which they were published during his life. His Lectures, the fullest and the only consecutive exposition e(as far as it goes)e of his philosophy, are a posthumous publication; while the latest and most matured expression of many of his opinions, the “Dissertations on Reid,”[†] left off, scarcely half finished, in the middle of a sentence; and so long as he lived, his readers were still hoping for the remainder. The Lectures, it is true, have added less than might have been expected to the knowledge we already possessed of the author’s doctrines; but it is something to know that we have now all that is to be had; and though we should have been glad to have his opinions on more subjects, we could scarcely have known more thoroughly than we are now at last enabled to do, what his thoughts were on the points to which he attached the greatest importance, and which are most identified with his name and fame.

CHAPTER II: The Relativity of Human Knowledge

the doctrine which is thought to belong in the most especial manner to Sir W. Hamilton, and which was the ground of his opposition to the transcendentalism of the later French and German metaphysicians, is that which he and others have called the Relativity of Human Knowledge. It is the subject of the most generally known, and most impressive, of all his writings,[*] the one which first revealed to the English metaphysical reader that a new power had arisen in philosophy; and, together with its developments, it composes the “Philosophy of the Conditioned,” which he opposed to the German and French philosophies of the Absolute, and which is regarded by most of his admirers as the greatest of his titles to a permanent place in the history of metaphysical thought.

But the “relativity of human knowledge,” like most other phrases into which the words relative or relation enter, is vague, and admits of a great variety of meanings. In one of its senses, it stands for a proposition respecting the nature and limits of our knowledge, in my judgment true, fundamental, and full of important consequences in philosophy. From this amplitude of meaning its significance shades down through a number of gradations, successively more thin and unsubstantial, till it fades into a truism leading to no consequences, and hardly worth enunciating in words. When, therefore, a philosopher lays great stress upon the relativity of our knowledge, it is necessary to cross-examine his writings, and compel them to disclose in which of its many degrees of meaning he understands the phrase.

There is one of its acceptations, which, for the purpose now in view, may be put aside, though in itself defensible, and though, when thus employed, it expresses a real and important law of our mental nature. This is, that we only know anything, by knowing it as distinguished from something else; that all consciousness is of difference; that two objects are the smallest number required to constitute consciousness; that a thing is only seen to be what it is, by contrast with what it is not. The employment of the proposition, Edition: current; Page: [5] that all human knowledge is relative, to express this meaning, is sanctioned by high authorities,* and I have no fault to find with that use of the phrase. But we are not concerned with it in the present case; for it is not in this sense, that the expression is ordinarily or intentionally used by Sir W. Hamilton; though he fully recognises the truth which, when thus used, it serves to express. In general, when he says that all our knowledge is relative, the relation he has in view is not between the thing known and other objects compared with it, but between the thing known and the mind knowing.

All language recognises a distinction between myself—the Ego—and a world, either material, or spiritual, or both, external to me, but of which I can, in some mode and measure, take cognizance. The most fundamental questions in philosophy are those which seek to determine what we are able to know of these external objects, and by what evidence we know it.

In examining the different opinions which are or may be entertained on this subject, it will simplify the exposition very much, if we at first limit ourselves to the case of physical, or what are commonly called material objects. These objects are of course known to us through the senses. By those channels and no otherwise do we learn whatever we do learn concerning them. Without the senses we should not know nor suspect that such things existed. We know no more of what they are, than the senses tell us, nor does nature afford us any means of knowing more. Thus much, in the obvious meaning of the terms, is denied by no one, though there are thinkers who prefer to express the meaning in other language.

There are, however, conflicting opinions as to what it is that the senses tell us concerning objects. About one part of the information they give, there is no dispute. They tell us our sensations. The objects excite, or awaken in us, certain states of feeling. A part, at least, of what we know of the objects, is the feelings to which they give rise. What we term the properties of an object, are the powers it exerts of producing sensations in our consciousness. Take any familiar object, such as an orange. It is yellow; that is, it affects us, through our sense of sight, with a particular sensation of colour. It is soft; in other words it produces a sensation, through our muscular feelings, of resistance overcome by a slight effort. It is sweet; for it causes a peculiar kind of pleasurable sensation through our organ of taste. It is of a globular figure, somewhat flattened at the ends: we affirm this on account of sensations that it causes in us, respecting which it is still in dispute among psychologists whether they originally came to us solely through touch and the muscles, or also through the organ of sight. Edition: current; Page: [6] When it is cut open, we discover a certain arrangement of parts, distinguishable as being, in certain respects, unlike one another; but of their unlikeness we have no measure or proof except that they give us different sensations. The rind, the pulp, the juice, differ from one another in colour, in taste, in smell, in degree of consistency (that is, of resistance to pressure) all of which are differences in our feelings. The parts are, moreover, aoutsidea one another, occupying different portions of space: and even this distinction, it is maintained (though the doctrine is vehemently protested against by some) may be resolved into a difference in our sensations. When thus analysed, it is affirmed that all the attributes which we ascribe to objects, consist in their having the power of exciting one or another variety of sensation in our minds; that to us the properties of an object have this and no other meaning; that an object is to us nothing else than that which affects our senses in a certain manner; that we are incapable of attaching to the word object, any other meaning; that even an imaginary object is but a conception, such as we are able to form, of something which would affect our senses in some new way; so that our knowledge of objects, and even our fancies about objects, consist of nothing but the sensations which they excite, or which we imagine them exciting, in ourselves.

This is the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge to the knowing mind, in the simplest, purest, and, as I think, the most proper acceptation of the words. There are, however, two forms of this doctrine, which differ materially from one another.

According to one of the forms, the sensations which, in common parlance, we are said to receive from objects, are not only all that we can possibly know of the objects, but are all that we have any ground for believing to exist. What we term an object is but a complex conception made up by the laws of association, out of the ideas of various sensations which we are accustomed to receive simultaneously. There is nothing real in the process but these sensations. They do not, indeed, accompany or succeed one another at random; they are held together by a law, that is, they occur in fixed groups, and a fixed order of succession: but we have no evidence of anything which, not being itself a sensation, is a substratum or hidden cause of sensations. The idea of such a substratum is a purely mental creation, to which we have no reason to think that there is any corresponding reality exterior to our minds. Those who hold this opinion are said to doubt or deny the existence of matter. They are sometimes called by the name Idealists, sometimes by that of Sceptics, according to the other opinions which they hold. They include the followers of Berkeley and those of Hume. Among recent thinkers, the acute and accomplished Edition: current; Page: [7] Professor Ferrier, though by a circuitous path, and expressing himself in a very different phraseology, seems to have arrived at essentially the same point of view. These philosophers maintain the Relativity of our knowledge in the most extreme form in which the doctrine can be understood, since they contend, not merely that all we can possibly know of anything is the manner in which it affects the human faculties, but that there is nothing else to be known; that affections of human or of some other minds are all that we can know to exist.

This, however, is far from being the shape in which the doctrine of the Relativity of our knowledge is usually held. To most of those who hold it, the difference between the Ego and the Non-Ego is not one of language only, nor a formal distinction between two aspects of the same reality, but denotes two realities, each bhaving a separate existenceb, and neither dependent on the other. In the phraseology borrowed from the Schoolmen by the German Transcendentalists, they regard the Noumenon as in itself a different thing from the Phænomenon, and equally real; many of them would say, much more real, being the permanent Reality, of which the other is but the passing manifestation. They believe that there is a real universe of “Things in Themselves,” and that whenever there is an impression on our senses, there is a “Thing in itself,” which is behind the phænomenon, and is the cause of it. But as to what this Thing is “in itself,” we, having no corgansc except our senses for communicating with it, can only know what our senses tell us; and as they tell us nothing but the impression which the thing makes upon us, we do not know what it is in itself at all. We suppose (at least these philosophers suppose) that it must be dsomethingd “in itself,” but all that we know it to be is merely relative to us, consisting in the power of affecting us in certain ways, or, as it is technically called, of producing Phænomena. External things exist, and have an inmost nature, but their inmost nature is inaccessible to our faculties. We know it not, and can assert nothing of it with a meaning. Of the ultimate Realities, as such, we know the existence, and nothing more. But the impressions which these Realities make on us—the sensations they excite, the similitudes, groupings, and successions of those sensations, or, to sum up all this in a common though improper expression, the representations generated in our minds by the action of the Things themselves—these we may know, and these are all that we can know respecting them. In some future state of existence it is conceivable that we may know more, and more may be known by intelligences superior to us. Yet even this can only be true in the same sense in which a person with the use of his eyes knows more than is Edition: current; Page: [8] known to one born blind, or in which we should know more than we do if we were endowed with two or three additional senses. We should have more sensations; phænomena would exist to us of which we have at present no conception; and we emighte know better than we now do, many of those which are within our present experience; for fiff the new impressions gwereg linked with the old, as the old are with one another, by uniformities of succession and coexistence, we should now have new marks indicating to us known phænomena in cases in which we should otherwise have been unaware of them. But all this additional knowledge would be, like that which we now possess, merely phænomenal. We should not, any more than at present, know things as they are in themselves, but merely an increased number of relations between them and us. And in the only meaning which we are able to attach to the term, all knowledge, by however exalted an Intelligence, can only be relative to the knowing Mind. If Things have an inmost nature, apart not only from the impressions which they produce, but from all those which they are fitted to produce, on any sentient being, this inmost nature is unknowable, inscrutable, and inconceivable, not to us merely, but to every other creature. To say that even the Creator could know it, is to use language which to us has no meaning, because we have no faculties by which to apprehend that there is any such thing for him to know.

It is in this form that the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge is held by the greater number of those who profess to hold it, attaching any definite idea to the term. These again are divided into several distinct schools of thinkers, by some of whom the doctrine is held with a modification of considerable importance.

Agreeing in the opinion that what we know of Noumena, or Things in themselves, is but their bare existence, all our other knowledge of Things being but a knowledge of something in ourselves which derives its origin from them; there is a class of thinkers who hold that our mere sensations, and an outward cause which produces them, do not compose the whole of this relative knowledge. The Attributes which we ascribe to outward things, or such at least as are inseparable from them in thought, contain, it is affirmed, other elements, over and above sensations plus an unknowable cause. These additional elements are still only relative, for they are not in the objects themselves, nor have we evidence of anything in the objects that answers to them. They are added by the mind itself, and belong, not to the Things, but to our perceptions and conceptions of them. Such properties as the objects can be conceived divested of, such as sweetness or Edition: current; Page: [9] sourness, hardness or softness, hotness or coldness, whiteness, redness, or blackness—these, it is sometimes admitted, exist in our sensations only. But the attributes of filling space, and occupying a portion of time, are not properties of our sensations in their crude state, neither, again, are they properties of the objects, nor is there in the objects any prototype of them. They result from the nature and structure of the Mind itself: which is so constituted that it cannot take any impressions from objects except in those particular modes. We see a thing in a place, not because the Noumenon, the Thing in itself, is in any place, but because it is the law of our perceptive faculty that we must see as in some place, whatever we see at all. Place is not a property of the Thing, but a mode in which the mind is compelled to represent it. Time and Space are only modes of our perceptions, not modes of existence, and higher Intelligences are possibly not bound by them. Things, in themselves, are neither in time nor in space, though we cannot represent them to ourselves except under that twofold condition. Again, when we predicate of a thing that it is one or many, a whole or a part of a whole, a Substance possessing Accidents, or an Accident inhering in a Substance—when we think of it as producing Effects, or as produced by a Cause, (I omit other attributes not necessary to be here enumerated,) we are ascribing to it properties which do not exist in the Thing itself, but with which it is clothed by the laws of our conceptive faculty—properties not of the Things, but of our mode of conceiving them. We are compelled by our nature to construe things to ourselves under these forms, but they are not forms of the Things. The attributes exist only in relation to us, and as inherent laws of the human faculties; but differ from Succession and Duration in being laws of our intellectual, not our sensitive faculty; technically termed Categories of the Understanding. This is the doctrine of the Relativity of our knowledge as held by Kant, who has been followed in it by many subsequent thinkers, German, English, and French.

By the side of this there is another philosophy, older in date, which, though temporarily eclipsed and often contemptuously treated by it, is, according to present appearances, likely to survive it. Taking the same view with Kant of the unknowableness of Things in themselves, and also agreeing with him that we mentally invest the objects of our perceptions with attributes which do not all point, like whiteness and sweetness, to specific sensations, but are in some cases constructed by the mind’s own laws; this philosophy, however, does not think it necessary to ascribe to the mind certain innate forms, in which the objects are (as it were) moulded into these appearances, but holds that Place, Extension, Substance, Cause, and the rest, are conceptions put together out of ideas of sensation by the known laws of association. This, the doctrine of Hartley, of James Mill, of Professor Bain, and other eminent thinkers, and which is compatible with Edition: current; Page: [10] either the acceptance or the rejection of the Berkeleian theory, is the extreme form of one mode of the doctrine of Relativity, as Kant’s is of another. Both schemes accept the doctrine in its widest sense—the entire inaccessibility to our faculties of any other knowledge of Things than that of the impressions which they produce in our mental consciousness.

Between these there are many intermediate systems, according as different thinkers have assigned more or less to the original furniture of the mind on the one hand, or to the associations generated by experience on the other. Brown, for example, regards our notion of Space or Extension as a product of association, while many of our intellectual ideas are regarded by him as ultimate and undecomposable facts. But he accepts, in its full extent, the doctrine of the Relativity of our knowledge, being of opinion that though we are assured of the objective existence of a world external to the mind, our knowledge of that world is absolutely limited to the modes in which we are affected by it. The same doctrine is very impressively taught by one of the acutest metaphysicians of recent times, Mr. Herbert Spencer, who, in his First Principles, insists with equal force upon the certainty of the existence of Things in Themselves, and upon their absolute and eternal relegation to the region of the Unknowable.* This is also, apparently, the doctrine of Auguste Comte: though while maintaining with great emphasis the unknowableness of Noumena by our faculties, his aversion to metaphysics prevented him from giving any definite opinion as to their real existence, which, however, his language always by implication assumes.[*]

It is obvious that what has been said respecting the unknowableness of Things “in themselves,” forms no obstacle to our ascribing attributes or properties to them, provided these are always conceived as relative to us. If a thing produces effects of which our sight, hearing, or touch can take cognizance, it follows, and indeed is but the same statement in other words, that the thing has power to produce those effects. These various powers are its properties, and of such, an indefinite multitude is open to our knowledge. But this knowledge is merely phænomenal. The object is known to us only in one special relation, namely, as that which produces, or is capable of producing, certain impressions on our senses; and all that we really know is these impressions. This negative meaning is all that should be understood by the assertion, that we cannot know the Thing in itself; that we cannot know its inmost nature or essence. The inmost nature or essence of a Thing is apt to be regarded as something unknown, which, if we knew it, would Edition: current; Page: [11] explain and account for all the phænomena which the thing exhibits to us. But this unknown something is a supposition without evidence. We have no ground for supposing that there is anything which if known to us would afford to our intellect this satisfaction; would sum up, as it were, the knowable attributes of the object in a single sentence. Moreover, if there were such a central property, it would not answer to the idea of an “inmost nature;” for if knowable by any intelligence, it must, like other properties, be relative to the intelligence which knows it, that is, it must hsolelyh consist in iproducing in that intelligence some specifically definite state of consciousnessi; for this is the only idea we have of knowing; the only sense in which the verb “to know” means anything.

It would, no doubt, be absurd to assume that our words exhaust the possibilities of Being. There may be innumerable modes of it which are inaccessible to our faculties, and which consequently we are unable to name. But we ought not to speak of these modes of Being by any of the names we possess. These are all inapplicable, because they all stand for known modes of Being. We might invent new names for jsuchj unknown modes; but the new names would have no more meaning than the x, y, z, of Algebra. The only name we can give them which really expresses an attribute, is the word Unknowable.

The doctrine of the Relativity of our knowledge, in the sense which has now been explained, is one of great weight and significance, which impresses a character on the whole mode of philosophical thinking of whoever receives it, and is the key-stone of one of the only two possible systems of Metaphysics and Psychology. But the doctrine is capable of being, and is, understood in at least two other senses. In one of them, instead of a definite and important tenet, it means something quite insignificant, which no one ever did or could call in question. Suppose a philosopher to maintain that certain properties of objects are in the Thing, and not in our senses; in the thing itself, not as whiteness may be said to be in the thing (namely, that there is in the thing a power whereby it produces in us the sensation of white), but in quite another manner; and are known to us not indirectly, as the inferred causes of our sensations, but by direct perception of them in the outward object. Suppose the same philosopher nevertheless to affirm strenuously that all our knowledge is merely phænomenal, and relative to ourselves; that we do not and cannot know anything of outward objects, except relatively to our own faculties. I think our first feeling respecting a thinker who professed both these doctrines, would be to wonder what he could possibly mean by the latter of them. It would seem Edition: current; Page: [12] that he must mean one of two trivialities; either that we can only know what we have the power of knowing, or else that all our knowledge is relative to us inasmuch as it is we that know it.

There is another mode of understanding the doctrine of Relativity, intermediate between these insignificant truisms and the substantial doctrine previously expounded. The position taken may be, that perception of Things as they are in themselves is not entirely denied to us, but is so mixed and kconfoundedk with impressions derived from their action on us, as to give a relative character to the whole aggregate. Our absolute knowledge may be vitiated and disguised by the presence of a relative element. Our faculty (it may be said) of perceiving things as they are in themselves, though real, has its own laws, its own conditions, and necessary mode of operation: our cognitions consequently depend, not solely on the nature of the things to be known, but also on that of the knowing faculty, as our sight depends not solely upon the object seen, but upon that together with the structure of the eye. If the eye were not achromatic, we should see all visible objects with colours derived from the organ, as well as with those truly emanating from the object. Supposing, therefore, that Things in themselves are the natural and proper object of our knowing faculty, and that this faculty carries to the mind a report of what is in the Thing itself, apart from its effects on us, there would still be a portion of uncertainty in these reports, inasmuch as we could not be sure that the eye of our mind is achromatic, and that the message it brings from the Noumenon does not arrive tinged and falsified, in an unknown degree, through an influence arising from the necessary conditions of the mind’s action. We may, in short, be looking at Things in themselves, but through imperfect glasses: what we see may be the very Thing, but the colours and forms which the glass conveys to us may be partly an optical illusion. This is a possible opinion: and one who, holding this opinion, should speak of the Relativity of our knowledge, would not use the term wholly without meaning. But he could not, consistently, assert that all our knowledge is relative; since his opinion would be that we have a capacity of Absolute knowledge, but that we are liable to mistake relative knowledge for it.

In which, if in any, of these various meanings, was the doctrine of Relativity held by Sir W. Hamilton? To this question, a more puzzling one than might have been expected, we shall endeavour in the succeeding chapter to find an answer.

CHAPTER III: The Doctrine of the Relativity of Human Knowledge, as Held by Sir William Hamilton

it is hardly possible to affirm more strongly or more explicitly than Sir W. Hamilton has done, that Things in themselves are to us altogether unknowable, and that all we can know of anything is its relation to us, composed of, and limited to, the Phænomena which it exhibits to our organs. Let me cite a passage from one of the Appendices to the Discussions.

This passage might be matched by many others, equally emphatic, and in appearance equally decisive; several of which I shall have occasion to quote. Yet in the sense which the author’s phrases seem to convey—in the only aimportanta meaning capable of being attached to them—the doctrine they assert was certainly not held by Sir W. Hamilton. He by no means admits that we know nothing of objects except their existence, and the impressions produced by them upon the human mind. He affirms this in regard to what have been called by metaphysicians the Secondary Qualities of Matter, but denies it of the Primary.

On this point his declarations are very explicit. One of the most elaborate of his “Dissertations on Reid” is devoted to expounding the distinction. The “Dissertation” begins thus:

Further on, he states, in additional development of so-called Natural Realism,

Not only, in Sir W. Hamilton’s opinion, do we know, by direct consciousness or perception, certain properties of Things as they exist in the Things themselves, but we may also know those properties as in the Things, by demonstration à priori. “The notion of body being given, every primary quality is to be evolved out of that notion, as necessarily involved in it, independently altogether of any experience of sense.”§ “The Primary Qualities may be deduced à priori, the bare notion of matter being given; they being, in fact, only evolutions of the conditions which that notion necessarily implies.”¶ He goes so far as to say, that our belief of the Primary Qualities is, not merely necessary as involved in a fact of which we have a direct perception, but necessary in itself, by our mental constitution. He speaks of “that absolute or insuperable resistance which we are compelled, independently of experience, to think that every part of matter would oppose to any attempt to deprive it of its space, by compressing it into an inextended.”∥

The following is still more specific. “The Primary” Qualities “are apprehended as they are in bodies; the Secondary, as they are in us: the Edition: current; Page: [15] Secundo-primary” (a third class created by himself, comprising the mechanical as distinguished from the geometrical properties of Body)

There is nothing wonderful in Sir W. Hamilton’s entertaining these opinions; they are held by perhaps a majority of metaphysicians. But it is surprising that, entertaining them, he should have believed himself, and been believed by others, to maintain the Relativity of all our knowledge. What he deems to be relative, in any sense of the term that is not insignificant, is only our knowledge of the Secondary Qualities of objects. Extension and the other Primary Qualities he positively asserts that we have an immediate intuition of, “as they are in bodies”—“as modes of a not-self;” in express contradistinction to being known merely as causes of certain impressions on our senses or on our minds. As there cannot have been, in his own thoughts, a flat contradiction between what he would have admitted to be the two cardinal doctrines of his philosophy, the only question that can arise is, which of the two is to be taken in a non-natural sense. Is it the doctrine that we know certain properties as they are in the Things? Were we to judge from a foot-note to the same Dissertation, we might suppose so. He there observes—“In saying that a thing is known in itself, I do not mean that this object is known in its absolute existence, that is, out of relation to us. This is impossible: for our knowledge is only of the relative. To know a thing in itself or immediately, is an expression I use merely in contrast to the knowledge of a thing in a representation, or mediately:”† in other words, he merely means that we perceive objects directly, and not through the species sensibiles of Lucretius,[*] the Ideas of bLockeb, or the Mental Modifications of Brown.[†] Let us suppose this Edition: current; Page: [16] granted, and that the knowledge we have of objects is gained by direct perception. Still, the question has to be answered whether the knowledge so acquired is of the objects as they are in themselves, or only as they are relatively to us. Now what, according to Sir W. Hamilton, is this knowledge? Is it a knowledge of the Thing, merely in its effects on us, or is it a knowledge of somewhat in the Thing, ulterior to any effect on us? He asserts in the plainest terms that it is the latter. Then it is not a knowledge wholly relative to us. If what we perceive in the Thing is something of which we are only aware as existing, and as causing impressions on us, our knowledge of the Thing is only relative. But if what we perceive and cognise is not merely a cause of our subjective impressions, but a Thing possessing, in its own nature and essence, a long list of properties, Extension, Impenetrability, Number, Magnitude, Figure, Mobility, Position, all perceived as “essential attributes” of the Thing as “objectively existing”—all as “Modes of a Not-Self” and by no means as an occult cause or causes of any Modes of Self—(and that such is the case Sir W. Hamilton asserts in every form of language, leaving no stone unturned to make us apprehend the breadth of the distinction) then I am willing to believe that in affirming this knowledge to be entirely relative to Self, such a thinker as Sir W. Hamilton had a meaning, but I have no small difficulty in discovering what it is.

The place where we should expect to find this difficulty cleared up, is the formal exposition of the Relativity of Human Knowledge, in the first volume of the Lectures. He declares his intention of

Here is an exposition of the nature and limits of our knowledge, which would have satisfied Hartley, Brown, and even Comte. It cannot be more explicitly laid down, that Matter, as known to us, is but the incomprehensible and incognisable basis or substratum of a bundle of sensible qualities, appearances, phænomena; that we know it “only in its effects;” that its very existence is “only an inference we are compelled to make” from those sensible appearancesd. On the subject of Mind, again, could it have been more explicitly affirmed, that all we know of Mind is its successive states “of knowing, willing, feeling, desiring, &c.,” and that Mind, considered as “something behind or under these phænomena,” is to us unknowable?

Subsequently he says, that not only all the knowledge we have of anything, but all which we could have if we were a thousandfold better endowed than we are, would still be only knowledge of the mode in which the thing would affect us. Had we as many senses (the illustration is his Edition: current; Page: [18] own) as the inhabitants of Sirius, in the Micromegas of Voltaire;[*] were there, as there may well be, a thousand modes of real existence as definitely distinguished from one another as are those which manifest themselves to our present senses, and “had we, for each of these thousand modes, a separate organ competent to make it known to us,—still would our whole knowledge be, as it is at present, only of the relative. Of existence, absolutely and in itself, we should then be as ignorant as we are now. We should still apprehend existence only in certain special modes—only in certain relations to our faculties of knowledge.”*

Nothing can be truer or more clearly stated than all this: but the clearer it is, the more irreconcileable does it appear with our author’s doctrine of the direct cognoscibility of the Primary Qualities. If it be true that Extension, Figure, and the other qualities enumerated, are known “immediately in themselves,” and not, like Secondary qualities, “in their effects on us;” if the former are “apprehended as they are in bodies,” and not, like the Secondary, “as they are in us;” if it is these last exclusively that are “unknown in themselves, and only inferred as causes to account for certain subjective affections in ourselves:” while, of the former, we are immediately conscious as “attributes of matter objectively existing;” and if it is not to be endured that matter should “sink into something unknown and problematical,” whose existence “can be only precariously affirmed as the occult cause or incomprehensible occasion of certain subjective affections we experience in the form either of a sensation of the secondary quality or of a perception of the primary” (being precisely what Sir W. Hamilton, in the preceding quotations, appeared to say that it is); if these things be so, our faculties, as far as the Primary Qualities are concerned, do cognise and know Matter as it is in itself, and not merely as an unknowable and incomprehensible substratum; they do cognise and know it as it exists absolutely, and not merely in relation to us; it is known to us directly, and not as a mere “inference” from Phænomena.

Will it be said that the attributes of extension, figure, number, magnitude, and the rest, though known as in the Things themselves, are yet known only relatively to us, because it is by our faculties that we know them, and because appropriate faculties are the necessary condition of knowledge? If so, the “great axiom” of Relativity is reduced to this, that we can know Things as they are in themselves, but can know no more of them than our faculties are competent to inform us of. If such be the meaning of Relativity, our author might well maintain that it is a truth “harmoniously reechoed by every philosopher of every school;” nor need he have added Edition: current; Page: [19] “with the exception of a few late Absolute theorizers in Germany;”* for certainly neither Schelling nor Hegel claims for us any other knowledge than such as our faculties are, in their opinion, competent to give.

Is it possible, that by knowledge of qualities “as they are in Bodies,” no more was meant than knowing that the Body must have qualities whereby it produces the affection of which we are conscious in ourselves? But this is the very knowledge which our author predicates of Secondary Qualities, as contradistinguished from the Primary. Secondary he frankly acknowledges to be occult qualities: we really, in his opinion, have no knowledge, and no conception, what that is in an object, by virtue of which it has its specific smell or taste. But Primary qualities, according to him, we know all about: there is nothing occult or mysterious to us in these; we perceive and conceive them as they are in themselves, and as they are in the body they belong to. They are manifested to us, not, like the Secondary qualities, only in their effects, in the sensations they excite in us, but in their own nature and essence.

Perhaps it may be surmised, that in calling knowledge of this sort by the epithet Relative, Sir W. Hamilton meant that though we know those qualities as they are in themselves, we only discover them through their relation to certain effects in us; that in order that there may be Perception there must also be Sensation; and we thus know the Primary Qualities, in their effects on us and also in themselves. But neither will this explanation serve. This theory of Primary Qualities does not clash with the Secondary, but it runs against the Secundo-primary. It is this third class, which, as he told us, are known “both immediately in themselves and mediately in their effects on us.” The Primary are only known “immediately in themselves.” He has thus with his own hands deliberately extruded from our knowledge of the Primary qualities the element of relativity to us:—except, to be sure, in the acceptation in which knowing is itself a relation, inasmuch as it implies a knower; whereby instead of the doctrine that Things in themselves are not possible objects of knowledge, we obtain the “great axiom” that they cannot be known unless there is somebody to know them.e

Can any light be derived from the statement that we do not know any qualities of things except those which are in connexion with our faculties, or, as our author expresses it (surely by a very strained use of language), which are “analogous to our faculties?”* If, by “our faculties,” is to be understood our knowing faculty, this proposition is but the trivial one already noticed, that we can know only what we can know. And this is what the author actually seems to mean; for in a sentence immediately following, he paraphrases the expression “analogous to our faculties,” by the phrase that we must “possess faculties accommodated to their apprehension.”† To be able to see, we must have a faculty accommodated to seeing. Is this what we are intended to understand by the “great axiom?”f But if “our faculties” does not here mean our knowing faculty, it must mean our sensitive faculties; and the statement is, that, to be known by us, a quality must be “analogous” (meaning, I suppose, related) to our senses. But what is meant by being related to our senses? That it must be fitted to give us sensations. We thus return as before to an identical proposition.

gThere is still another possible supposition; that, in calling our knowledge relative in contradistinction to absolute, Sir W. Hamilton was not thinking of our knowledge of qualities, but of substances—of Matter and Mind; and meant that qualities might be cognised absolutely, or as they are in themselves, but that, since substances are only known through their qualities, the knowledge of substances is not knowledge of them as they are in themselves, but is merely relative. According to this interpretation, the relativity which Sir W. Hamilton ascribes to our knowledge of substances is relativity not to us, but to their attributes: we “become aware of their incomprehensible existence only as this is revealed to us through certain qualities.” And when he adds, “which qualities, again, we cannot think as unconditioned, irrelative, existent in and of themselves,”[*] thus predicating relativity of attributes also (considered as known or conceived by us), he means relativity to a substance. We can only know a substance through its qualities, but also, we can only know qualities as inhering in a substance. Substance and attribute are correlative, and can only be thought together: the knowledge of each, therefore, is relative to the other; but need not be, Edition: current; Page: [21] and indeed is not, relative to us. For we know attributes as they are in themselves, and our knowledge of them is only relative inasmuch as attributes have only a relative existence. It is relative knowledge in a sense not contradictory to absolute. It is an absolute knowledge, though of things which only exist in a necessary relation to another thing called a substance.*

I am not disposed to deny that this interpretation of Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrine is, to a certain point, correct. He did draw a distinction between our manner of knowing attributes and our manner of knowing substances; and did regard certain attributes (the primary qualities) as objects of direct and immediate knowledge; which, in his opinion, substances are not, but are merely assumed or inferred from phænomena, by a law of our nature which compels us to think phænomena as attributes of something beyond themselves. I do not doubt that when he said that our knowledge of attributes is relative, the necessity of thinking every attribute as an attribute of a substance was present to his mind, and formed a part of his meaning. hThere is, however, abundant evidence that the relativity which Sir W. Hamilton ascribed to our knowledge of attributes was not merely relativity to their substances, but also relativity to us. He affirms of attributes as positively as of substances, that all our knowledge of them is relative to us. The passages already quoted apply as much to attributes as to substances. “In saying that we know only the relative, I virtually assert that we know nothing absolute—nothing existing absolutely, that is, in and for itself, and without relation to us and our faculties.”† “In saying that a thing is known in itself, I do not mean that this object is known in its absolute existence, that is, out of relation to us. This is impossible, for our knowledge is only of the relative.”‡ In the following passages he is speaking solely of attributes. “By the expression what they are in themselves, in reference to the primary qualities, and of relative notion in reference to the secondary, Reid cannot mean that the former are known to us absolutely and in themselves, that is, out of relation to our cognitive faculties; for he elsewhere admits that all our knowledge is relative.”§ “We can know, we can conceive, only what is relative. Our knowledge of qualities or phænomena is necessarily relative; for these exist only as they exist in Edition: current; Page: [22] relation to our faculties.”* The distinction, therefore, which Sir W. Hamilton recognises between our knowledge of substances and that of attributes, though authentically a part of his philosophy, is quite irrelevant here.h He affirms without reservation, that certain attributes (extension, figure, &c.) are known to us as they really exist out of ourselves; and also that all our knowledge of them is relative to us. And these two assertions are only reconcileable, if relativity to us is understood in the altogether trivial sense, that we know them only so far as our faculties permit.†g

The conclusion I cannot help drawing from this collation of passages is, that Sir W. Hamilton either never held, or when he wrote the “Dissertations” had ceased to hold i(for his theory respecting knowledge of the Primary Qualities does not occur in the Lectures)i the doctrine for which he has been so often praised and nearly as often attacked—the Relativity of Human Knowledge. He certainly did sincerely believe that he held it. But he repudiated it in every sense which makes it other than a barren truism. In the only meaning in which he really maintained it, there is nothing to maintain. It is an identical proposition, and nothing more.

And to this, or something next to this, hej reduces it in kthe first portion ofk the summary with which he concludes its exposition. “From what has been said,” he observes, “you will be able, I hope, to understand what is meant by the proposition, that all our knowledge is only relative. It is relative, 1st. Because existence is not cognisable absolutely in itself, but only in special modes; 2nd. Because these modes can be known only if they stand in a certain relation to our faculties.” Whoever can find anything more in these two statements, than that we do not know all about a Thing, but only as much about it as we are capable of knowing, is more ingenious or more fortunate than myself.

He adds, however, to these reasons why our knowledge is only relative, a third reason. “3rd. Because the modes, thus relative to our faculties, are assented to, and known by, the mind only under modifications determined by those faculties themselves.”‡ Of this addition to the theory we took Edition: current; Page: [23] notice near the conclusion of the preceding chapter.[*] It shall have the advantage of a fuller explanation in Sir W. Hamilton’s words.

The proposition, that our cognitions of objects are only in part dependent on the objects themselves, and in part on elements superadded by our organs or by our minds, is not identical, nor primâ facie absurd. It cannot, however, warrant the assertion that all our knowledge, but only that the part so added, is relative. If our author had gone as far as Kant, and had said that all lthe primary qualities which we think we perceive in bodies, arel put in by the mind itself, he would have really held, in one of its forms, the doctrine of the Relativity of our knowledge. But what he does say, far from Edition: current; Page: [24] implying that the whole of our knowledge is relative, distinctly imports that all of it which is real and authentic is the reverse. If any part of what we fancy that we perceive in the objects themselves, originates in the perceiving organs or in the cognising mind, thus much is purely relative; but since, by supposition, it does not all so originate, the part that does not, is as much absolute as if it were not liable to be mixed up with these delusive subjective impressions. The admixture of the relative element not only does not take away the absolute character of the remainder, but does not even (if our author is right) prevent us from recognising it. The confusion, according to him, is not inextricable. It is for us to “analyze and distinguish what elements” in an “act of knowledge” are contributed by the object, and what by our organs, or by the mind. We may neglect to do this, and as far as the mind’s share is concerned, can only do it by the help of philosophy; but it is a task to which in his opinion philosophy is equal. By thus stripping off such of the elements in our apparent cognitions of Things as are but cognitions of something in us, and consequently relative, we may succeed in uncovering the pure nucleus, the direct intuitions of Things in themselves; as we correct the observed positions of the heavenly bodies by allowing for the error due to the refracting influence of the atmospheric medium, an influence which does not alter the facts, but only our perception of them.

mThis last doctrine, however,—that the mind’s own constitution contributes along with the outward object, to make up what is called our knowledge of the object,—is what Mr. Mansel maintains Sir W. Hamilton to have meant by the assertion that our whole knowledge of the object is relative. And this is the foundation of all that Mr. Mansel presents as a refutation of the present chapter.

If it be true (to use Mr. Mansel’s words) that, in the constitution of our knowledge, the mind “reacts on the objects affecting it, so as to produce a result different from that which would be produced, were it merely a passive recipient,”* this modifying action of the mind must consist, as is affirmed by Kant and by all others who profess the doctrine, in making us ascribe to the object, and apprehend as in the object, properties which are not really in the object, but are merely lent to it by the constitution of our mental nature. Now, if the attributes which we perceive, or think we perceive, in objects, are partly given by the mind, but not wholly, being also partly given by the nature of the object itself (which is admitted to be Sir W. Hamilton’s opinion); this joint agency of the object and of the mind’s own laws in generating what we call our knowledge of the object, may be conceived in two ways.

First: The two factors may be jointly operative in every part of the effect. Every attribute with which we perceive the thing as invested, may be a joint product of the thing itself and of the modifying action of the mind. If this be the case, we do not really know any property as it is in the object: we have no reason to think that the object as we apprehend it, and as we figure to ourselves that we perceive and know it, agrees in any respect with the object that exists without us; but only that it depends upon that outward object, as one of its joint causes. Such was the opinion of Kant; and whoever is of this opinion, holds, in one of its forms, as I have expressly admitted, the genuine doctrine of the Relativity of our knowledge. For all must agree with Mr. Mansel when he says, that an object of thought, into which the mind puts a positive element of its own, thereby making it different from what it otherwise would be, is that which it is, only relatively to the mind. This seems to be Mr. Mansel’s own mode of representing to himself the combined action of the mind and the object in perception. For he compares it to the action of an acid and an alkali in forming a neutral salt;* and to a chemical fusion together of two elements, in contradistinction to a mere mechanical juxtaposition.† If we had never seen, and could not get at, the acid or the alkali except as united in the salt, Mr. Mansel could not think that our knowledge of the salt gave us any knowledge of the acid or the alkali themselves.

But, secondly: There is another mode in which the co-operation of the object and the mind’s own properties in producing our cognition of the object, may be conceived as taking place. Instead of their being joint agents in producing our cognitions of all the attributes with which we mentally clothe the object, some of the attributes as cognised by us may come from the object only, and some from the mind only, or from both. Now it is not open to a holder of this second opinion, as it is to one of the first, to affirm that all the attributes are only known relatively to us. Such of them, indeed, as are made to be that which they are by what the mind puts into them, are, on this theory, only known relatively to the mind: they have even no existence except relatively to the mind. But those into which no positive element is introduced by the mind’s laws (I say no positive element, because a mere negative limitation by the mind’s capacities is nothing to the purpose), these, as their cognition contains nothing but what is presented in the external object, must be held to be known not relatively, but absolutely. The doubt how much of what we apprehend in them is due to our own constitution, and how much to the external world, has no place here: they are, by supposition, wholly perceptions of something in the external world.

Now, this second view of the joint action of the mind and the outward thing, as the two factors in our cognition of the thing, is Sir W. Hamilton’s. The passages in which he characterizes our knowledge of the Primary Qualities place this beyond question. He affirms clearly and consistently that extension, figure, and the other Primary Qualities are known by us “as they are in bodies,” and not “as they are in us;” that they are known as “essential attributes of matter objectively existing;” as “modes of a notself,” not even combined, as in the Secundo-primary, with any “modes of self;”[*] so that no element originating in our subjective constitution interferes with the purity of the apperception. In this respect the physical phenomena which Mr. Mansel calls in as illustrations afford no parallel. No one would say that the acid in a neutral salt is perceived and known by us in the salt as what it is as an acid. Indeed, the ndiscrimination whichn Sir W. Hamilton thinks it possible for philosophy to omake,o between that in our knowledge which the object contributes and that which the mind contributes, palmost requires as its condition that some attributes should bep wholly contributed by the one and some by the other: for if every attribute was the joint product of both, qit is difficult to see what means the case could affordq of making the discrimination, any more than of discriminating between the acid and the alkali in Mr. Mansel’s salt. The question, how much of the salt is due to the acid and how much to the alkali, is not merely unresolvable, but intrinsically absurd.*

Mr. Mansel’s mode of reconciling Sir W. Hamilton’s emphatic declaration, that we know the Primary Qualities as they are in objects, with his assertion of the entire incognoscibility of Things in themselves, is by saying that “objects” are not identical with “things in themselves.”* “Objective existence,” he says,

Now, this is a possible opinion; it was really the opinion of Kant. That philosopher did recognise a direct object of our perceptions, different from the thing itself, and intermediate between it and the perceiving mind. And it was open to Kant to do so; because he held what Sir W. Hamilton calls a representative theory of perception. He maintained that the object of our perception, and of our knowledge, is a representation in our own minds. In his philosophy, both object and subject are accommodated within the mind itself—the object within the subject. The mind has no perception of the external thing, nor comes into any contact with it in the act of perception.‡ Was this Sir W. Hamilton’s opinion? On the contrary, if there be a doctrine of his philosophy which he has laboured at beyond any other, against, as he Edition: current; Page: [28] affirms, nearly all philosophers, it is, that the thing we perceive is the real thing which exists outside us, and that the perceiving mind is in direct contact with it, without any intermediate link whatever. We never hear from Sir W. Hamilton of three elements in our cognition of the outward world, but of two only, the mind, and the real object; which he sometimes calls the external object, sometimes Body, sometimes Matter, sometimes a Non-ego. Yet, according to Mr. Mansel, he must have believed that this object, which he so strenuously contended to be the very thing itself, is not the very thing in itself, but that behind it there is another Thing in itself, the unknown cause of it. I can discover no trace in Sir W. Hamilton’s writings of any such entity. The outward things which he believed to exist, he believed that we perceive and know: not, indeed, “absolutely or in themselves,” because only in such of their attributes as we have senses to reveal to us; but yet as they really are. He did not believe in, or recognise, a Thing per se, itself unknowable, but engendering another material object called a phænomenon, which is knowable. The only distinction he recognised between a phænomenon and a Thing per se, was that between attributes and a substance. But he believed the primary attributes to be known by us as they exist in the substance, and not in some intermediate object.*

The mark by which Mr. Mansel distinguishes between the object and the Thing in itself, is that the object is in space and time, but the Thing out of space and time; space and time having merely a subjective existence, in us, not in external nature. This is Kantism, but it is not Hamiltonism. I do not believe that the expression “out of space and time” is to be found once in all Sir W. Hamilton’s writings. It belongs to the Kantian, not to the Hamiltonian philosophy. Sir W. Hamilton does indeed hold with Kant, and on Edition: current; Page: [30] Kant’s shewing, that space and time are à priori forms of the mind, but he believes that they are also external realities, known empirically.* And it is worth notice, that he grounds the outward reality of Space, not on his favourite evidence, that of our Natural Beliefs, but on the specific reason, that (Extension being only another name for Space), if Space was not an outward thing cognizable à posteriori, we could not, as he affirms that we do, cognize Extension as an external reality. He must therefore have thought, not that Space is a mere form in which our perceptions of objects are clothed by the laws of our perceiving faculty, but that we perceive real things in real space.†

Mr. Mansel is not the only one of my critics who has interpreted Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrine of our direct knowledge of outward objects, as if those outward objects were a tertium quid, between the mind and the real outward, or if the expression may be permitted, the outer outward object. For, irreconcilable as this supposition is with the evidence of his writings, it is the only one which can be thought of to give a substantial meaning to his doctrine of Relativity, consistent with the external reality of the Primary Qualities. Professor Masson consequently had already taken refuge in the same interpretation as Mr. Mansel; but propounded it in the modest form of Edition: current; Page: [31] an hypothesis, not a dogmatical assertion. The North American Reviewer in like manner says:

This explanation might pass, if Sir W. Hamilton’s assertion of the relativity of our knowledge to our mind were all contained in the word phænomenal, and could be explained away by supposing that word to mean relativity not to us, but to an unknown cause. But I need not requote his declaration that our knowledge of Qualities is all relative to us, nor his assertion that nevertheless certain qualities are in the object, and are perceived and known in the object, and that the object perceived and known is no other than the real Thing itself. Nowhere in his works do I find any recognition of another real Thing, which is not the Thing perceived by us through its attributes. He does not tell us of a Body perceived, and an unperceived Substance in the background: the Body is the Substance. He does indeed say that the Substance is only an inference from the Attributes; but he also says that certain attributes are perceived as in the real external Thing; and he never drops the smallest hint of any real external thing in which the attributes can be, except the Substance itself, which he expressly defines as “that which manifests its qualities,” that in which the “phænomena or qualities are supposed to inhere.”[*]

Professor Fraser, in the (in many respects) profound Essay of which he has done this work the honour of making it the occasion, vindicates at once the consistency of Sir W. Hamilton, and the substantial significance of his doctrine of Relativity, by ascribing to him, in opposition to his incessant declarations, Mr. Fraser’s own far clearer views of the subject. Mr. Fraser, like myself, believes the Primary Qualities to have no more existence out of our own or other minds, than the Secondary Qualities have, or than our pains and pleasures have; and he asks, “Where does he” (Sir W. Hamilton) “say that we have an absolute knowledge of the primary qualities of matter, in any other sense than that in which he says that we have a like knowledge of a feeling of pain or pleasure in our minds while it is being felt, or of an act Edition: current; Page: [32] of consciousness while it is being acted?”* To this “where,” I answer, in every place where he says that we know the Primary Qualities not as they are in us, but as they are in the Body. That is asserting an absolute knowledge of them, as distinguished from relativity to us: and he would not have made a similar assertion of our pains and pleasures, or of our acts of internal consciousness. Again, asks Mr. Fraser, “How does the assertion that we are percipient directly, and not through a medium, of phenomena of solidity and extension, contradict the principle that all our knowledge is relative, when the assertion that we are percipient, directly and not through a medium, of the phenomena of sensation or emotion or intelligence does not?”† Because the phænomena of sensation or emotion or intelligence are admitted to be perceived or felt as facts that have no reality out of us, and the facts being only relative to us, the knowledge of the facts partakes of the same relativity: but the phænomena of solidity and extension are alleged by Sir W. Hamilton to be perceived as facts whose reality is out of our minds, and in the material object: which is indeed knowing them relatively to the outward object, but is the diametrical opposite of knowing them relatively to us.‡m

It has vnowv been shown, by accumulated proof, that Sir W. Hamilton did not hold any opinion in virtue of which it could rationally be asserted that all human knowledge is relative; but did hold, as one of the main elements of his philosophical creed, the opposite doctrine, of the cognoscibility of external Things, in certain of their aspects, as they are in themselves, absolutely.

But if this be true, what becomes of his dispute with Cousin, and with Cousin’s German predecessors and teachers? That celebrated controversy surely meant something. Where there was so much smoke there must have been some fire. Some difference of opinion must really have existed between Sir W. Hamilton and his antagonists.

Assuredly there was a difference, and one of great importance from the point of view of either disputant; not unimportant in the view of those who dissent from them both. In the succeeding chapter I shall endeavour to point out what the difference was.

CHAPTER IV: In What Respect Sir William Hamilton Really Differs from the Philosophers of the Absolute

the question really at issue in Sir W. Hamilton’s celebrated and striking review of Cousin’s philosophy,[*] is this: Have we, or have we not, an immediate intuition of God. The name of God is veiled under two extremely abstract phrases, “The Infinite” and “The Absolute,” perhaps from a reverential feeling: such, at least, is the reason given by Sir W. Hamilton’s disciple, Mr. Mansel,* for preferring the more vague expressions. But it is one of the most unquestionable of all logical maxims, that the meaning of the abstract must be sought for in the concrete, and not conversely; and we shall see, both in the case of Sir W. Hamilton and of Mr. Mansel, that the process cannot be reversed with impunity.†

I proceed to state, chiefly in the words of Sir W. Hamilton, the opinions of the two parties to the controversy. Both undertake to decide what are the facts which (in their own phraseology) are given in Consciousness; or, as others say, of which we have intuitive knowledge. According to Cousin, there are, in every act of consciousness, three elements; three things of which we are intuitively aware. There is a finite element; an element of plurality, compounded of a Self or Ego, and something different from Self, or Non-ego. There is also an infinite element; a consciousness of something infinite. “At the same instant when we are conscious of these [finite] existences, plural, relative, and contingent, we are conscious likewise of a Edition: current; Page: [36] superior unity in which they are contained, and by which they are explained; a unity absolute as they are conditioned, substantive as they are phænomenal, and an infinite cause as they are finite causes. This unity is God.”* The first two elements being the Finite and God, the third element is the relation between the Finite and God, which is that of cause and effect. These three things are immediately given in every act of consciousness, and are, therefore, apprehended as real existences by direct intuition.

Of these alleged elements of Consciousness, Sir W. Hamilton only admits the first; the Finite element, compounded of Self and a Not-self, “limiting and conditioning one another.”[*] He denies that God is given in immediate consciousness—is apprehended by direct intuition. It is in no such way as this that God, according to him, is known to us: and as an Infinite and Absolute Being he is not, and cannot be, known to us at all; for we have no faculties capable of apprehending the Infinite or the Absolute. The second of M. Cousin’s elements being thus excluded, the third (the Relation between the first and second) falls with it; and Consciousness remains limited to the finite element, compounded of an Ego and a Non-ego.

In this contest it is almost superfluous for me to say, that I am entirely with Sir W. Hamilton. The doctrine, that we have an immediate or intuitive knowledge of God, I consider to be bad metaphysics, involving a false conception of the nature and limits of the human faculties, and grounded on a superficial and erroneous psychology. Whatever relates to God I holdc to be matter of inference; I would add, of inference à posteriori. And in so far as Sir W. Hamilton has contributed, which he has done very materially, towards discrediting the opposite doctrine, he has rendered, in my estimation, a dvaluabled service to philosophy. But though I assent to his conclusion, his arguments seem to me very far from inexpugnable: a sufficient answer, I conceive, might without difficulty be given to emoste of them, though I do not say that it was always competent to M. Cousin to give it. And the arguments, in the present case, are of as much importance as the conclusion: not only because they are quite as essential a part of Sir W. Hamilton’s philosophy, but because they afford the premises from which some of his followers, if not himself, have drawn inferences which I venture to think extremely mischievous. While, therefore, I sincerely applaud the scope and purpose of this celebrated piece of philosophical criticism, I think it important to sift with some minuteness the reasonings it employs, and the general mode of thought which it exemplifies.

The question is, as already remarked, whether we have a direct intuition of “the Infinite” and “the Absolute:” M. Cousin maintaining that we have—Sir W. Hamilton that we have not; that the Infinite and the Absolute are inconceivable to us, and, by consequence, unknowable.

It is proper to explain to any reader not familiar with these controversies, the meaning of the terms. Infinite requires no explanation. It is universally understood to signify that, to the magnitude of which there is no limit. If we speak of infinite duration, or infinite space, we are supposed to mean duration which never ceases, and extension which nowhere comes to an end. Absolute is much more obscure, being a word of several meanings; but, in the sense in which it stands related to Infinite, it means (conformably to its etymology) that which is finished or completed. There are some things of which the utmost ideal amount is a limited quantity, though a quantity never actually reached. In this sense, the relation between the Absolute and the Infinite is (as Bentham would have said) a tolerably close one, namely a relation of contrariety. For example, to assert an absolute minimum of matter, is to deny its infinite divisibility. Again, we may speak of absolutely, but not of infinitely, pure water. The purity of water is not a fact of which, whatever degree we suppose attained, there remains a greater beyond. It has an absolute limit: it is capable of being finished or complete, in thought, if not in reality. The extraneous substances existing in any vessel of water cannot be of more than finite amount, and if we suppose them all withdrawn, the purity of the water cannot, even in idea, admit of further increase.

fThe idea of Absolute, in this sense of the term, being thus contrasted with that of Infinite, they cannot, both of them, be truly predicated of God; or, if truly, not in respect of the same attributes. But the word Absolute, without losing the signification of perfect or complete, may drop that of limited. It may continue to mean the whole of that to which it is applied; but without requiring that this whole should be finite. Granted (for instance) a being of infinite power, that Being’s knowledge, if supposed perfect, must be infinite; and may therefore, in an admissible sense of the term, be said to Edition: current; Page: [38] be both absolute and infinite.* In this acceptation there is no inconsistency or incongruity in predicating both these words of God.

The word Absolute, however, has other meanings, which have nothing to do with perfection or completenessf, though often mixed and confounded with hith; the more readily as they are all ihabitually predicated of the Deityi. By Absolute is often meant the opposite of Relative; and this is rather many meanings than one; for Relative also is a term used very indefinitely, and wherever it is employed, the word Absolute always accompanies it as its negative. In another of its senses, Absolute means that which is independent of anything else: which exists, and is what it is, by its own nature, and not because of any other thing. In this jfourth sense as in the thirdj, Absolute stands for the negation of a relation; not now of Relation in general, but of the specific relation expressed by the term Effect. In this signification it is synonymous with kuncaused, and is therefore most naturally identified with thek First Cause. The meaning of a First Edition: current; Page: [39] Cause is, that all other things exist, and are what they are, by reason of it and of its properties, but that it is not itself made to exist, nor to be what it is, by anything else. It does not depend, for its existence or attributes, on other things: there is nothing upon the existence of which its own is conditional: it exists absolutely.l

mIn which of these meanings is the term used in the polemic with M. Cousin? M. Cousin makes no distinction at all between the Infinite and the Absolute. Sir W. Hamilton distinguishes them as two species of a higher genus, the Unconditioned; andm defines the Infinite as “the unconditionally unlimited,” the Absolute as “the unconditionally limited.”* Here is a new word introduced, the word “unconditionally;” of which we look in vain for any direct explanation, nbut which needs it as much as either of the words which it is employed to explain. In the Essay itself, this is the only attempt made to define the Absolute: but in the reprint Sir W. Hamilton appends the following note:

“The term Absolute is of a twofold (if not threefold) ambiguity, corresponding to the double (or treble) signification of the word in Latin.” The third application he, with reason, dismisses, as here irrelevant. The other two are as follows:

“1. Absolutum means what is freed or loosed: in which sense the Absolute will be what is aloof from relation, comparison, limitation, condition, dependence, &c., and thus is tantamount to τὸ ὰπόλυτον of the lower Edition: current; Page: [40] Greeks.[*] In this meaning the Absolute is not opposed to the Infinite.” This is an amplification of my third meaning.

“2. Absolutum means finished, perfected, completed; in which sense the Absolute will be what is out of relation, &c. as finished, perfect, complete, total, and thus corresponds to τὸ ὅλον and τὸ τέλειον of Aristotle.[†] In this acceptation—and it is that in which for myself I exclusively use it,—the Absolute is diametrically opposed to, is contradictory of, the Infinite.”* This second meaning of Sir W. Hamilton, which I, in the first edition, by a blameable inadvertence, confounded with my own first meaning,† must be reckoned as a fifth, compounded of the first and third—of the idea of finished or completed, and the idea of being out of relation. How to make an intelligible meaning out of the two combined, is the question. One can, with some difficulty, find a meaning in being “aloof from relation, comparison, limitation, condition, dependence;” but what is meant by being all this “as finished, perfect, complete, total?” Does it mean, being both out of relation and also complete? and must the Absolute in Sir W. Hamilton’s second sense be also Absolute in his first, and be out of all relation whatever? or does the particle “as” signify that it is out of relation only in respect of its completeness, which (I suppose) means that it does not depend for its completeness on anything but itself? Mr. Mansel’s comment, which otherwise does not help us much, decides for the latter. “Out of relation as completed” means (he says)‡ “self-existent in its completeness, and not implying the existence of anything else.”§ Without further attempt to clear Edition: current; Page: [41] up the obscurity, let it suffice that Sir W. Hamilton’s Absolute, though not synonymous with a “finished, perfected, completed,” but limited, whole, includes that idea, and is therefore incompatible with Infinite.*n

Having premised these verbal explanations, I proceed to state, as far as possible in Sir W. Hamilton’s own words, the heads of his argumentation to prove that the oAbsolute and Infinite areo unknowable. His first summary statement of the doctrine is as follows:

This argument, that the Infinite and the Absolute are unknowable by us because the only conceptions we are able to form of them are negative, is stated still more emphatically a few pages later.

Let us note, then, as the first and most fundamental of Sir W. Hamilton’s arguments, that our ideas of the Infinite and the Absolute are ppurely negative, and the Unconditioned which combines the two, “ap fasciculus of negations.” I reserve consideration of the validity of this and every other part of the argumentation, until we have the whole before us. He proceeds:

The dictum that “to think is to condition” r(the meaning of which will be examined hereafter)r may be noted as our author’s second argument. And here ends the positive part of his argumentation. There remains his refutation of opponents. After an examination of Schelling’s opinion, into which I need not follow him, he grapples with M. Cousin, against whom he undertakes to show, that “his argument to prove the correality of his three Ideas proves directly the reverse;” “that the conditions under which alone he allows intelligence to be possible, necessarily exclude the possibility of a knowledge, not to say a conception, of the Absolute;” and “that the Absolute, Edition: current; Page: [43] as defined by him, is only a relative and a conditioned.”* Of this argument in three parts, if we pass over (or, as our author would say, discount) as much as is only ad hominem, what is of general application is as follows:

sFirst:s M. Cousin and our author are agreed that there can be no knowledge except “where there exists a plurality of terms;”[*] there are at least a perceived and a perceiver, a knower and a known. But this necessity of “difference and plurality” as a condition of knowledge, is inconsistent with the meaning of the Absolute, which

tSecondly:t In order to make the Absolute knowable by us, M. Cousin, says the author, is obliged to present it in the light of an absolute cause: now causation is a relation; therefore M. Cousin’s Absolute is but a relative. Moreover, “what exists merely as a cause, exists merely for the sake of something else—is not final in itself, but simply a mean towards an end. . . . Abstractly considered, the effect is therefore superior to the cause.” Hence an absolute cause “is dependent on the effect for its perfection;” and, indeed,

Let me ask, en passant, vwhy M. Cousin is under an obligation to thinkv that if the Absolute, or, to speak plainly, if God, is only known to us in the character of a cause, he must therefore “exist merely as a cause,” and be merely “a mean towards an end?” It is surely possible to maintain that the Deity is known to us only as he who feeds the ravens, without supposing that the Divine Intelligence exists solely in order that the ravens may be fed.†

In reviewing the series of arguments adduced by Sir W. Hamilton for the incognoscibility and inconceivability of the Absolute, the first remark that Edition: current; Page: [45] occurs is, that most of them lose their application by simply substituting for the metaphysical abstraction “The Absolute,” the more intelligible concrete expression “Something Absolute.” If the first phrase has any meaning, it must be capable of being expressed in terms of the other. When we are told of an “Absolute” in the abstract, or of an Absolute Being, even though called God, we are entitled, and if we would know what we are talking about, are bound to ask, absolute in what? Do you mean, for example, absolute in goodness, or absolute in knowledge? or do you, perchance, mean absolute in ignorance, or absolute in wickedness? for any Edition: current; Page: [46] one of these is as much an Absolute as any other. And when you talk of something in the abstract which is called the Absolute, does it means one, or more than one, of these? or does it, peradventure, mean all of them? When (descending to a less lofty height of abstraction) we speak of The Horse, we mean to include every object of which the name horse can be predicated. Or, to take our examples from the same region of thought to which the controversy belongs—when The True or The Beautiful are spoken of, the phrase is meant to include all things whatever that are true, or all things whatever that are beautiful.* If this rule is good for other abstractions, it is good for the Absolute. The word is devoid of meaning unless in reference to predicates of some sort. What is absolute must be absolutely something; absolutely this or absolutely that. The Absolute, then, ought to be a genus comprehending whatever is absolutely anything—whatever possesses any predicate in finished completeness. If we are told therefore that there is some one Being who is, or which is, The Absolute—not something absolute, but the Absolute itself,—the proposition can be understood in no other sense than that the supposed Being possesses in absolute completeness all predicates; is absolutely good, and absolutely bad; absolutely wise, and absolutely stupid; and so forth.† The conception of such a being, I will not say of such a God, is worse than a “fasciculus of negations;” it is a fasciculus of contradictions: and our author might have spared himself the Edition: current; Page: [47] trouble of proving a thing to be unknowable, which cannot be spoken of but in words implying the impossibility of its existence. To insist on such a truism is not superfluous, for there have been philosophers who saw that this must be the meaning of “The Absolute,” and yet accepted it as a reality. “What kind of an Absolute Being is that,” asked Hegel, “which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil included?”* Undoubtedly: and it is therefore necessary to admit, either that there is no Absolute Being, or that the law, that contradictory propositions cannot both be true, does not apply to the Absolute. Hegel chose the latter side of the alternative; and by this, among other things, has fairly earned the honour which will probably be awarded to him by posterity, of having logically extinguished transcendental metaphysics by a series of reductiones ad absurdissimum.

What I have said of the Absolute is true, mutatis mutandis, of the Infinite. This also is a phrase of no meaning, except in reference to some particular predicate; it must mean the infinite in something—as in size, in duration, or in power. These are intelligible conceptions. But an abstract Infinite, a Being not merely infinite in one or in several attributes, but which is “The Infinite” itself, must be not only infinite in greatness, but also in littleness; its duration is not only infinitely long, but infinitely short; it is not only infinitely awful, but infinitely contemptible; it is the same mass of contradictions as its companion the Absolute. There is no need to prove that neither of them is knowable, since, if the universal law of Belief is of objective validity, neither of them exists.

It is these unmeaning abstractions, however, these muddles of self-contradiction, which alone our author has proved, against Cousin and others, to be unknowable. He has shown, without difficulty, that we cannot know The Infinite or The Absolute. He has not shown that we cannot know a concrete reality as infinite or as absolute. Applied to this latter thesis, his reasoning breaks down.

We have seen his principal argument, the one on which he substantially relies. It is, that the Infinite and the Absolute are unknowable because inconceivable, and inconceivable because the only notions we can have of them are purely negative. If he is right in his antecedent, the consequent Edition: current; Page: [48] follows. A conception made up of negations is a conception of Nothing. It is not a conception at all.

But is a conception, by the fact of its being a conception of something infinite, reduced to a negation? This is quite true of the senseless abstraction “The Infinite.” That indeed is purely negative, being formed by excluding from the concrete conceptions classed under it, all their positive elements. But in place of “the Infinite,” put the idea of Something infinite, and the argument collapses at once. “Something infinite” is a conception which, like most of our complex ideas, contains a negative element, but which contains positive elements also. Infinite space, for instance: is there nothing positive in that? The negative part of this conception is the absence of bounds. The positive are, the idea of space, and of space greater than any finite space. So of infinite duration: so far as it signifies “without end” it is only known or conceived negatively; but in so far as it means time, and time longer than any given time, the conception is positive. The existence of a negative element in a conception does not make the conception itself negative, and a non-entity. It would surprise most people to be told that “the life eternal” is a purely negative conception; that immortality is inconceivable. Those who hope for it for themselves have a very positive conception of what they hope for. True, we cannot have an adequate conception of space or duration as infinite; but between a conception which though inadequate is real, and correct as far as it goes, and the impossibility of any conception, there is a wide difference. Sir W. Hamilton does not admit this difference. He thinks the distinction without meaning. “To say that the infinite can be thought, but only inadequately thought, is a contradiction in adjecto; it is the same as saying that the infinite can be known, but only known as finite.”* I answer, that to know it as greater than anything finite is not to know it as finite. The conception of Infinite as that which is greater than any given quantity, is a conception we all possess, sufficient for all human purposes, and as genuine and good a positive conception as one need wish to have. It is not adequate; our conception of a reality never is. But it is positive; and the assertion that there is nothing positive in the idea of infinity can only be maintained by leaving out and ignoring, as Sir W. Hamilton invariably does, the very element which constitutes the idea. Considering how many recondite laws of physical nature, afterwards verified by experience, have been arrived at by trains of mathematical reasoning grounded on what, if Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrine be correct, is a non-existent conception, one would be obliged to suppose that conjuring is a highly successful mode of the investigation of nature. If, indeed, we trifle by setting up an imaginary Infinite which is infinite in Edition: current; Page: [49] nothing in particular, our notion of it is truly nothing, and a “fasciculus of negations.” But this is a good example of the bewildering effect of putting nonsensical abstractions in the place of concrete realities. Would Sir W. Hamilton have said that the idea of God is but a xnegation, or a fasciculus of negations?x As having nothing greater than himself, he is indeed conceived negatively. But as himself greater than all other real or imaginable existences, the conception of him is positive.

Put Absolute instead of Infinite, and we come to the same result. “The Absolute,” as already shown, is a heap of contradictions, but “absolute” in reference to any given attribute, signifies the possession of that attribute in finished perfection and completeness. A Being absolute in knowledge, for example, is one who knows, in the literal meaning of the term, everything. Who will pretend that this conception is negative, or unmeaning to us? We cannot, indeed, form an adequate conception of a being as knowing everything, since to do this we must have a conception, or mental representation, of all that he knows. But neither have we an adequate conception of any person’s finite knowledge. I have no adequate conception of a shoemaker’s knowledge, since I do not know how to make shoes: but my conception of a shoemaker and of his knowledge is a real conception; it is not a fasciculus of negations. If I talk of an Absolute Being (in the sense in which we are now employing the term) I use words without meaning; but if I talk of a Being who is absolute in wisdom and goodness, that is, who knows everything, and at all times intends what is best for every sentient creature, I understand perfectly what I mean: and however much the fact may transcend my conception, the shortcoming can only consist in my being ignorant of the details of which the reality is composed: as I have a positive, and may have a correct conception of the empire of China, though I know not the aspect of any of the places, nor the physiognomy of any of the human beings, comprehended therein.

It appears, then, that the leading argument of Sir W. Hamilton to prove the inconceivability and consequent unknowability of the Unconditioned, namely, that our conception of it is merely negative, holds good only of an abstract Unconditioned which cannot possibly exist, and not of a concrete Being, supposed infinite and absolute in certain definite attributes.* Let us now see if there be any greater value in his other arguments.

The first of them is,z that all knowledge is of things plural and different; that a thing is only known to us by being known as different from something else; from ourselves as knowing it, and also from other known things which Edition: current; Page: [51] are not it. Here we have at length something which the mind can rest on as a fundamental truth. It is one of the profound psychological observations which the world owes to Hobbes;[*] it is fully recognised both by M. Cousin and by Sir W. Hamilton; and it has, more recently, been admirably illustrated and applied by Mr. Bain and by Mr. Herbert Spencer. That to know a thing is to distinguish it from other things, is, as I formerly remarked, one of the truths which the very ambiguous expression “the relativity of human knowledge” has been employed to denotea. With this doctrine I have no quarrel. But Sir W. Hamilton proceeds to argue that the Absolute, being “absolutely One,” cannot be known under the conditions of plurality and difference, and as these are the acknowledged conditions of all our knowledge, cannot, therefore, be known at all. There is here, as it seems to me, a strange confusion of ideas. Sir W. Hamilton seems to mean that, being absolutely One, it cannot be known as plural. But the proposition that plurality is a condition of knowledge, does not mean that the thing known must be known as itself plural. It means, that a thing is only known, by being known as distinguished from something else. The plurality required is not within the thing itself, but is made up between itself and other things. Again, even if we concede that a thing cannot be known at all unless known as plural, does it follow that it cannot be known as plural because it is also One? bAre the One and the Many, then,b incompatible things, instead of different aspects of the same thing? Sir W. Hamilton surely does not mean by Absolute Unity, an indivisible Unit; the minimum, instead of the maximum of Being. He must mean, as M. Cousin certainly means, an absolute Whole; the Whole which comprehends all things. If this be so, does not this Whole not only admit of, but necessitate, the supposition of parts? Is not an Unity which comprehends everything, ex vi termini known as a plurality, and the most plural of all pluralities, plural in an unsurpassable degree? If there is any meaning in the words, must not Absolute Unity be Absolute cTotality, which is the highest degree of Pluralityc? There is no escape from the alternative: dthe Absoluted either means a single atom or monad, or it means Plurality in the extreme degree.

Though it is hardly needful, we will try this argument by the test we Edition: current; Page: [52] applied to a previous one; by substituting the concrete, God, for the abstract Absolute. Would Sir W. Hamilton have said that God is not cognizable under the condition of Plurality—is not known as distinguished from ourselves, and from the objects in nature? Call any positive Thing by a name which expresses only its negative predicates, and you may easily prove it under that name to be incognizable and a non-entity. Give it back its full name (if Mr. Mansel’s reverential feelings will permit), its positive attributes reappear, and you find, to your surprise, that what is a reality can be known as one.*

The next argument is chiefly directed against the doctrine of M. Cousin, that we know the Absolute as Absolute Cause.[*] This doctrine, says Sir W. Hamilton, destroys itself. The idea of a Cause is irreconcilable with the Absolute, for a Cause is relative, and implies an Effect: this Absolute, therefore, is not an Absolute at all. efThis would be unanswerable, if by the Edition: current; Page: [53] Absolute we were obliged to understand something which is not only “out of” all relation, but incapable of ever passing into relation. But is this what any one can possibly mean by the Absolute, who identifies it with the Creator? Granting that the Absolute implies an existence in itself, standing in no relation to anything: the only Absolute with which we are concerned, or in which anybody believes, must not only be capable of entering into relation with things, but must be capable of entering into any relation whatever, except that of dependence, with anything. May it not be known in some, at least, of those relations, and particularly in the relation of a Cause? And if it is a “finished, perfected, completed”[*] Cause, i.e. the most a cause that it is possible to be—the cause of everything except itself—then, if known as such, it is known as an Absolute Cause.e Has Sir W. Hamilton shown that an Absolute Cause, thus understood, is inconceivable, or unknowable? No: all he shows is, that, though gcapable of being known, itgf is known relatively to something else, namely, to its effects; and that such knowledge of God is not of God in himself, but of God in relation to his works. The truth is, M. Cousin’s doctrine is too legitimate a product of the metaphysics common to them both, to be capable of being refuted by Sir W. Hamilton. For this knowledge of God in and by his effects, according to M. Cousin, is knowing him as he is in himself: because the creative power whereby he causes, is in himself, is inseparable from him, and belongs to his essence.[†] And as far as I can see, the principles common to the two philosophers are as good a warrant to M. Cousin for saying this, as to Sir W. Hamilton for maintaining that extension and figure are h“essential attributes”h of matter, and perceived as such by intuition.

I have now examined, with one exception, every argument (which is not merely ad hominem) advanced by Sir W. Hamilton to prove against M. Cousin the unknowableness of the Unconditioned. The argument which I have reserved, is the emphatic and oracular one, that the Unconditioned must be unthinkable, because “to think is to condition.”[‡] I have kept this Edition: current; Page: [54] for the last, because it will occupy us the longest time: for we must begin by finding the meaning of the proposition; which cannot be done very briefly, so little help is afforded us by the author.

According to the best notion I can form of the meaning of “condition,” either as a term of philosophy or of common life, it means that on which something else is contingent, or (more definitely) which being given, something else exists, or takes place. I promise to do something on condition that you do something else: that is, if you do this, I will do that; if not, I will do as I please. A Conditional Proposition, in logic, is an assertion in this form: “If so and so, then so and so.” The conditions of a phænomenon are the various antecedent circumstances which, when they exist simultaneously, are followed by its occurrence. As all these antecedent circumstances must coexist, each of them in relation to the others is a conditio sine quâ non; i.e. without it the phænomenon will not follow from the remaining conditions, though it perhaps may from some set of conditions totally different.

If this be the meaning of Condition, the Unconditioned should mean, that which does not depend for its existence or its qualities on any antecedent; in other words, it should be synonymous with iUncausedi. This, however, cannot be the meaning intended by Sir W. Hamilton: for, in a passage already quoted from his argument against Cousin, he speaks of the effect as a condition of its cause. The condition, therefore, as he understands it, needs not be an antecedent, and may be a subsequent fact to that which it conditions.

He appears, indeed, in his writings generally, to reckon as a condition of a thing, anything necessarily implied by it: and uses the word Conditioned almost interchangeably with Relative. For relatives are always in pairs: a term of relation implies the existence of two things, the one which it is affirmed of, and another: parent implies child, greater implies less, like implies another like, and vice versâ. Relation is an abstract name for all concrete facts which concern more than one object. Wherever, therefore, a relation is affirmed, or anything is spoken of under a relative name, the existence of the correlative may be called a condition of the relation, as well as of the truth of the assertion. When, accordingly, Sir W. Hamilton calls an effect a condition of its cause, he speaks intelligibly, and the received use of the term affords him a certain amount of justification for thus speaking.

But, if the Conditioned means the Relative, the Unconditioned must mean its opposite; and in this acceptation, the Unconditioned would mean all Noumena; Things in themselves, considered without reference to the effects they produce in us, which are called their phænomenal agencies or Edition: current; Page: [55] properties. Sir W. Hamilton does, very frequently, seem to use the term in this sense. In denying all knowledge of the Unconditioned, he often seems to be denying any other than phænomenal knowledge of Matter or of Mind. Not only, however, he does not consistently adhere to this meaning, but it directly conflicts with the only approach he ever makes to a definition or an explanation of the term. We have seen him declaring that the Unconditioned is the genus of which the Infinite and the Absolute are the two species. But Things in themselves are not all of them infinite and absolute. Matter and Mind, as such, are neither the one nor the other. It is evident that Sir W. Hamilton had never decided what extent he intended giving to the term Unconditioned. Sometimes he gives it one degree of amplitude, sometimes another. Between the meanings in which he uses it there is undoubtedly a link of connexion; but this only makes the matter still worse than if there were none. The phrase has that most dangerous kind of ambiguity, in which the meanings, though essentially different, are so nearly allied that the thinker unconsciously interchanges them one with another.*

jThe probability is that when our author asserts that “to think is to Edition: current; Page: [56] condition,” he uses the word Condition in neither of these senses, but in a third meaning, equally familiar to him, and recurring constantly in such phrases as “the conditions of our thinking faculty,” “conditions of thought,” and the like. He means by Conditions something similar to Kant’s Forms of Sense and Categories of Understanding; a meaning more correctly expressed by another of his phrases, “Necessary Laws of Thought.” He is applying to the mind the scholastic maxim, “Quicquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis.” He means that our perceptive and conceptive faculties have their own laws, which not only determine what we are capable of perceiving and conceiving, but put into our perceptions and conceptions elements not derived from the thing perceived or conceived, but from the mind itself: That, therefore, we cannot at once infer that whatever we find in our perception or conception of an object, has necessarily a prototype in the object itself: and that we must, in each instance, determine this question by philosophic investigation. According to this doctrine, which no fault can be found with our author for maintaining, though often for not carrying it far enough—the “conditions of thought” would mean the attributes with which, it is supposed, the mind cannot help investing every object of thought—the elements which, derived from its own structure, cannot but enter into every conception it is able to form; even if there should be nothing corresponding in the object which is the prototype of the conception: though our author, in most cases, (therein differing from Kant) believes that there is this correspondence.

We have here an intelligible meaning for the doctrine that to think is to conditionk; and as Mr. Mansel, in his reply, guarantees this as the true meaning of Sir W. Hamilton,[*] I will accept it as being so. If, then (which I do not here discuss), the philosophical doctrine be true, which was held partially by Sir W. Hamilton, and in a more thorough-going manner by Kant, viz. that, in the act of thought, the mind, by an à priori necessity, invests the object of thought with attributes which are not in itself, but are created by the mind’s own laws; and if we consent to call these necessities Edition: current; Page: [57] of thought the conditions of thought; then evidently to think is to condition, and to think the Unconditioned would be to think the unthinkable. But the Unconditioned, in this application of the term, is not identical with the Infinite plus the Absolute. The Infinite and the Absolute are not necessarily, in this sense, unconditioned. The words infinite and absolute, as I have already said, have no meaning save as expressing some concrete reality or supposed reality, possessing infinitely or absolutely attributes of some sort, which attributes, as finite and limited, we are able to think. In thinking these attributes, we are not able to divest ourselves of our mental conditions, but we can think the attributes as surpassing the conditions. “To condition,” and “to think under conditions,” are ambiguous phrases. An Infinite Being may be thought, and is thought, with reference to the conditions, but not as limited by them. The most familiar examples of the alleged necessary conditions of thought, are Time and Space: we cannot, it is affirmed, think anything, except in time and space. Now, an Infinite Being is not thought as in time and space, if this means as occupying a portion of time or a portion of space. But (substituting for Time the word Duration, to get rid of the theological antithesis of Time and Eternity) we do actually conceive God in reference to Duration and Extension, namely, as occupying lthe whole of both; and these being conceived as infinite, to conceive a Being as occupying the whole of them is to conceive that Being as infinite. If thinking God as eternal and omnipresent is thinking him in Space and Time, we do think God in Space and Time: if thinking him as eternal and omnipresent is not thinking him in Space and Time, we are capable of thinking something out of Space and Time. Mr. Mansel may make his choice between the two opinions. I have already shown that the ideas of infinite space and time are real and positive conceptions:[*] that of a Being who is in all Space and in all Time is no less so. To think anything, must of course be to condition it by attributes which are themselves thinkable; but not necessarily to condition it by a limited quantum of those attributes: on the contrary, we may think it under a degree of them greater than all limited degrees, and this is to think it as infinite.*kl

If we now ask ourselves, as the result of this long discussion, what Sir W. Hamilton can be considered as having accomplished in this celebrated Essay, our answer must be: That he has established, more thoroughly perhaps than he intended, the futility of all speculation respecting those meaningless abstractions “The Infinite” and “The Absolute,” notions contradictory in themselves, and to which no corresponding realities do or can exist.*m Respecting the unknowableness, not of “the Infinite,” or “the Absolute,” but of concrete persons or things possessing infinitely or absolutely certain specific attributes, I cannot think that our author has proved anything; nor do I think it possible to prove them any otherwise unknowable, than that they can only be known in their relations to us, and not as Noumena, or Things in themselves. This, however, is true of the finite as well as of the infinite, of the imperfect as well as of the completed or Edition: current; Page: [59] absolute. Our author has merely proved the uncognoscibility of a being which is nothing but infinite, or nothing but absolute: and since nobody supposes that there is such a being, but only beings which are something positive carried to the infinite, or to the absolute, to have established this point cannot be regarded as any great achievement. He has not even refuted M. Cousin; whose doctrine of an intuitive cognition of the Deity,[*] like every other doctrine relating to intuition, can only be disproved by showing it to be a mistaken interpretation of facts; which, again, as we shall see hereafter, can only be done by pointing out in what other way the seeming perceptions may have originated, which are erroneously supposed to be intuitive.

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 akinda 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 Edition: current; Page: [61] 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 ofb 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 authorityc than Knowledge; Belief is ultimate, knowledge only derivative; Knowledge itself finally rests on Belief; natural beliefs are the Edition: current; Page: [62] 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 dind 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 Edition: current; Page: [63] 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 sourcesf 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 Edition: current; Page: [64] 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 Edition: current; Page: [65] 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

CHAPTER VI: The Philosophy of the Conditioned

the “philosophy of the conditioned,” in its wider sense, includes all the doctrines that we have been discussing. In its narrower, it consists, I think, mainly of a single proposition, which Sir W. Hamilton often reiterates, and insists upon as a fundamental law of human intellect. Though suggested by Kant’s Antinomies of Speculative Reason, in the form which it bears in Sir W. Hamilton’s writings it belongs, I believe, originally to himself. No doctrine which he has anywhere laid down is more characteristic of his mode of thought, and none is more strongly associated with his fame.

For the better understanding of this theory, it is necessary to premise some explanations respecting another doctrine, which is also his, but not peculiar to him. He protests, frequently and with emphasis, against the notion that whatever is inconceivable must be false. “There is no ground,” he says, “for inferring a certain fact to be impossible, merely from our inability to conceive its possibility.”* I regard this opinion as perfectly just. It is one of the psychological truths, highly important, and by no means generally recognised, which frequently meet us in his writings, and which give them, in my eyes, most of their philosophical value. I am obliged to add, that though he often furnishes a powerful statement and vindication of such truths, he seldom or never consistently adheres to them. Too often what he has affirmed in generals is taken back in details, and arguments of his own are found to rest on philosophical commonplaces which he has himself repudiated and refuted. I am afraid that the present is one of these cases, and that Sir W. Hamilton will sometimes be found contending that a thing cannot possibly be true because we cannot conceive it: but at all events he disclaims any such inference, and broadly lays down, that things not only may be, but are, of which it is impossible for us to conceive even the possibility.

Before showing how this proposition is developed into the “Philosophy of the Conditioned,” let us make the ground safe before us, by bestowing a Edition: current; Page: [67] brief consideration upon the proposition itself, its meaning, and the foundations on which it rests.

We cannot conclude anything to be impossible, because its possibility is inconceivable to us; for two reasons. First; what seems to us inconceivable, and, so far as we are personally concerned, may really be so, usually owes its inconceivability only to a strong association. When, in a prolonged experience, we have often had a particular sensation or mental impression, and never without a certain other sensation or impression immediately accompanying it, there grows up so firm an adhesion between our ideas of the two, that we are unable to think of the former without thinking the latter in close combination with it. And unless other parts of our experience afford us some analogy to aid in disentangling the two ideas, our incapacity of imagining the one fact without the other grows, or is prone to grow, into a belief that the one cannot exist without the other. This is the law of Inseparable Association, an element of our nature of which few have realized to themselves the full power. It was for the first time largely applied to the explanation of the more complicated mental phænomena by Mr. James Mill;[*] and is, in an especial manner, the key to the phænomenon of inconceivability. As that phænomenon only exists because our powers of conception are determined by our limited experience, Inconceivables are incessantly becoming Conceivables as our experience becomes enlarged. There is no need to go farther for an example than the case of Antipodes. This physical fact was, to the early speculators, inconceivable: not, of course, the fact of persons in that position; this the mind could easily represent to itself; but the possibility that, being in that position, and not being nailed on, nor having any glutinous substance attached to their feet, they could help falling off. Here was an inseparable, though, as it proved to be, not an indissoluble association, which while it continued made a real fact what is called inconceivable; and because inconceivable, it was unhesitatingly believed to be impossible. Inconceivabilities of similar character have, at many periods, obstructed the reception of new scientific truths: the Newtonian system had to contend against several of them; and we are not warranted in assigning a different origin and character to those which still subsist, because the experience that would be capable of removing them has not occurred. If anything which is now inconceivable by us were shown to us as a fact, we should soon find ourselves able to conceive it. We should even be in danger of going over to the opposite error, and believing that the negation of it is inconceivable. There are many cases in the history Edition: current; Page: [68] of science (I have dilated on some of them in another work)[*] where something which had once been inconceivable, and which people had with great difficulty learnt to conceive, becoming itself fixed in the bonds of an inseparable association, scientific men came to think that it alone was conceivable, and that the conflicting hypothesis which all mankind had believed, and which a vast majority were probably believing still, was inconceivable. In Dr. Whewell’s writings on the Inductive Sciences, this transition of thought is not only exemplified but defended.[†] Inconceivability is thus a purely subjective thing, arising from the mental antecedents of the individual mind, or from those of the human mind generally at a particular period, and cannot give us any insight into the possibilities of Nature.

But, secondly, aeven assuminga that inconceivability is not solely the consequence of limited experience, but that some incapacities of conceiving are inherent in the mind, and inseparable from it; this would not entitle us to infer, that what we are thus incapable of conceiving cannot exist. Such an inference would only be warrantable, if we could know à priori that we must have been created capable of conceiving whatever is capable of existing: that the universe of thought and that of reality, the Microcosm and the Macrocosm (as they once were called) must have been framed in complete correspondence with one another. That this is really the case has been laid down expressly in some systems of philosophy, by implication in more, and is the foundation (among others) of the systems of Schelling and Hegel: but an assumption more destitute of evidence could scarcely be made, nor can one easily imagine any evidence that could prove it, unless it were revealed from above.

What is inconceivable, then, cannot therefore be inferred to be false. But let us vary the terms of the proposition, and express it thus: what is inconceivable, is not therefore incredible. We have now a statement, which may mean either exactly the same as the other, or more. It may mean only that our inability to conceive a thing, does not entitle us to deny its possibility, nor its existence. Or it may mean that a thing’s being inconceivable to us is no reason against our believing, and legitimately believing, that it actually is. This is a very different proposition from the preceding. Sir W. Edition: current; Page: [69] Hamilton, as we have said, goes this length. It is now necessary to enter more minutely than at first seemed needful, into the meaning of “inconceivable;” which, like almost all the metaphysical terms we are forced to make use of, is weighed down with ambiguities.

Reid pointed out and discriminated two meanings of the verb “to conceive,”* giving rise to two different meanings of inconceivable. But Sir W. Hamilton uses “to conceive” in three meanings, and has accordingly three meanings for Inconceivable; though he does not give the smallest hint to his readers, nor seems ever to suspect, that the three are not one and the same.

The first meaning of Inconceivable is, that of which the mind cannot form to itself any representation; either (as in the case of Noumena) because no attributes are given, out of which a representation could be framed, or because the attributes given are incompatible with one another—are such as the mind cannot put together in a single image. Of this last case numerous instances present themselves to the most cursory glance. The fundamental one is that of a simple contradiction. We cannot represent anything to ourselves as at once being something, and not being it; as at once having, and not having, a given attribute. The following are other examples. We cannot represent to ourselves time or space as having an end. We cannot represent to ourselves two and two as making five; nor two straight lines as Edition: current; Page: [70] enclosing a space. We cannot represent to ourselves a round square; bnorb a body all black, and at the same time all white.

These things are literally inconceivable to us, our minds and our experience being what they are. Whether they would be inconceivable if our minds were the same but our experience different, is open to discussion. A distinction may be made, which, I think, will be found pertinent to the question. That the same thing should at once be and not be—that identically the same statement should be both true and false—is not only inconceivable to us, but we cannot cimaginec that it could be made conceivable. We cannot attach sufficient meaning to the proposition, to be able to represent to ourselves the supposition of a different experience on this matter. We cannot therefore even entertain the question, whether the incompatibility is in the original structure of our minds, or is only put there by our experience. The case is otherwise in all the other examples of inconceivability. Our incapacity of conceiving the same thing as A and not A, may be primordial; but our inability to conceive A without B, is because A, by experience or teaching, has become inseparably associated with B: and our inability to conceive A with C, is, because, by experience or teaching, A has become inseparably associated with some mental representation which includes the negation of C. Thus all inconceivabilities may be reduced to inseparable association, combined with the original inconceivability of a direct contradiction. All the cases which I have cited as instances of inconceivability, and which are the strongest I could have chosen, may be resolved in this manner. We cannot conceive a round square, not merely because no such object has ever presented itself in our experience, for that would not be enough. Neither, for anything we know, are the two ideas in themselves incompatible. To conceive a round square, or to conceive a body all black and yet all white, would only be to conceive two different sensations as produced in us simultaneously by the same object; a conception familiar to our experience; and we should probably be as well able to conceive a round square as a hard square, or a heavy square, if it were not that, in our uniform experience, at the instant when a thing begins to be round it ceases to be square, so that the beginning of the one impression is inseparably associated with the departure or cessation of the other.* Thus our inability to form a conception always arises from our being compelled Edition: current; Page: [71] to form another contradictory to it. We cannot conceive time or space as having an end, because the idea of any portion whatever of time or space is inseparably associated with the idea of a time or space beyond it. We cannot conceive two and two as five, because an inseparable association compels us to conceive it as four; and it cannot be conceived as both, because four and five, like round and square, are so related in our experience, that each is associated with the cessation, or removal, of the other. We cannot conceive two straight lines as enclosing a space, because enclosing a space means approaching and meeting a second time; and the mental image of two straight lines which have once met is inseparably associated with the representation of them as diverging. Thus it is not wholly without ground that the notion of a round square, and the assertion that two and two make five, or that two straight lines can enclose a space, are said, in common and even in scientific parlance, to involve a contradiction. The statement is not logically correct, for contradiction is only between a positive representation and its negative. But the impossibility of uniting contradictory conceptions in the same representation, is the real ground of the inconceivability in these cases. And we should probably have no difficulty in putting together the two ideas supposed to be incompatible, if our experience had not first inseparably associated one of them with the contradictory of the other.*

Thus far, of the first kind of Inconceivability; the first and most proper meaning in which the word is used. But there is another meaning, in which things are often said to be inconceivable which the mind is under no Edition: current; Page: [73] incapacity of representing to itself in an image. It is often said, that we are unable to conceive as possible that which, in itself, we are perfectly well able to conceive: we are able, it is admitted, to conceive it as an imaginary Edition: current; Page: [74] object, but unable to conceive it realized. This extends the term inconceivable to every combination of facts which to the mind simply contemplating it, appears incredible.* It was in this sense that Antipodes were inconceivable. They could be figured in imagination; they could even be painted, or Edition: current; Page: [75] modelled in clay. The mind could put the parts of the conception together, butg could not realize the combination as one which could exist in nature. The cause of the inability was the powerful tendency, generated by experience, to expect falling off, when a body, not of adhesive quality, was in contact only with the under side of another body. The association was not so powerful as to disable the mind from conceiving the body as holding on; doubtless because other facts of our experience afforded models on which such a conception could be framed. But though not disabled from conceiving the combination, the mind was disabled from believing it. The difference between belief and conception, and between the conditions of belief and those of simple conception, are psychological questions into which I do not enter. It is sufficient that inability to believe can coexist with ability to conceive, and that a mental association between two facts which is not intense enough to make their separation unimaginable, may yet create, and, if there are no counter associations, always does create, more or less of difficulty in believing that the two can exist apart: a difficulty often amounting to a local or temporary impossibility.

This is the second meaning of Inconceivability; which by Reid is carefully distinguished from the first,[*] but his editor Sir W. Hamilton employs the word in both senses indiscriminately.* How he came to miss the distinction is tolerably obvious to any one who is familiar with his writings, and especially with his theory of Judgment; but needs not be pointed out here. It is more remarkable that he gives itoi the term a third sense, Edition: current; Page: [76] answering to a third signification of the verb “to conceive.” To conceive any thing, has with him not only its two ordinary meanings—to represent the thing as an image, and to be able to realize it as possible—but an additional one, which he denotes by various phrases. One of his common expressions for it is, “to construe to the mind in thought.” This, he often says, can only be done “through a higher notion.” “We think, we conceive, we comprehend a thing only as we think it as within or under something else.”* So that a fact, or a supposition, is conceivable or comprehensible by us (conceive and comprehend being with him in this case synonymous) only by being reduced to some more general fact, as a particular case under it. Again, “to conceive the possibility” of a thing, is defined “conceiving it as the consequent of a certain reason.”† The inconceivable, in this third sense, is simply the inexplicable. Accordingly all first truths are, according to Sir W. Hamilton, inconceivable. “The primary data of consciousness, as themselves the conditions under which all else is comprehended, are necessarily themselves incomprehensible . . . that is . . . we are unable to conceive through a higher notion how that is possible, which the deliverance avouches actually to be.”‡ And we shall find him arguing things to be inconceivable, merely on the ground that we have no higher notion under which to class them. This use of the word inconceivable, being a complete perversion of it from its established meanings, I decline to recognise. If all the general truths which we are most certain of are to be called inconceivable, the word no longer serves any purpose. Inconceivable is not to be confounded with unprovable, or unanalysable. A truth which is not inconceivable in either of the received meanings of the term—a truth which is completely apprehended, and without difficulty believed, I cannot consent to call inconceivable merely because we cannot account for it, or deduce it from a higher truth.§

These being Sir W. Hamilton’s three kinds of inconceivability; is the inconceivability of a proposition in any of these senses, consistent with believing it to be true? The third kind lis avowedly compatible not only with belief, but with our strongest and most natural beliefsl. An inconceivable Edition: current; Page: [78] of the second kind can not only be believed, but believed with full understanding. In this case we are perfectly able to represent to ourselves mentally what is said to be inconceivable; only, from an association in our mind, it does not look credible: but, this association being the result of experience or of teaching, contrary experience or teaching is able to dissolve it; and even before this has been done—while the thing still feels incredible, the intellect may, on sufficient evidence, accept it as true. An inconceivable of the first kind, inconceivable in the proper sense of the term—that which the mind is actually unable to put together in a representation—may nevertheless be believed, if we attach any meaning to it, but cannot be said to be believed with understanding. We cannot believe it on direct evidence, i.e. through its being presented in our experience, for if it were so presented it would immediately cease to be inconceivable. We may believe it because its falsity would be inconsistent with something which we otherwise know to be true. Or we may believe it because it is affirmed by some one wiser than ourselves, who, we suppose, may have had the experience which has not reached us, and to whom it may thus have become conceivable. But the belief is without understanding, for we form no mental picture of what we believe. We do not so much believe the fact, as believe that we should believe it if we could have the needful presentation in our experience; and that some other being has, or may have, had that presentation. Our inability to conceive it, is no argument whatever for its being false, and no hindrance to our believing it, to the above-mentioned extent.

But though facts, which we cannot join together in an image, may be united in the universe, and though we may have sufficient ground for believing that they are so united in point of fact, it is impossible to believe a proposition which conveys to us no meaning at all. If any one says to me, Humpty Dumpty is an Abracadabra, I neither knowing what is meant by an Abracadabra, nor what is meant by Humpty Dumpty, I may, if I have confidence in my informant, believe that he means something, and that the something which he means is probably true: but I do not believe the very thing which he means, since I am entirely ignorant what it is. Propositions of this kind, the unmeaningness of which lies in the subject or predicate, are not those generally described as inconceivable. The unmeaning propositions spoken of under that name, are usually those which involve contradictions. That the same thing is and is not—that it did and did not rain at the same time and place, that a man is both alive and not alive, are forms of words which carry no signification to my mind. As Sir W. Hamilton truly says,* one half of the statement simply sublates or takes away the meaning which the other half has laid down. The unmeaningness here resides in the Edition: current; Page: [79] copula. The word is has no meaning, except as exclusive of is not. The case is more hopeless than that of Humpty Dumpty, for no explanation by the speaker of what the words mean can make the assertion intelligible. Whatever may be meant by a man, and whatever may be meant by alive, the statement that a man can be alive and not alive is equally without meaning to me. I cannot make out anything which the speaker intends me to believe. The sentence affirms nothing of which my mind can take hold. Sir W. Hamilton, indeed, maintains the contrary. He says, “When we conceive the proposition that A is not A, we clearly comprehend the separate meaning on the terms A and not A, and also the import of the assertion of their identity.”* We comprehend the separate meaning of the terms, but as to the meaning of the assertion, I think we only comprehend what the same form of words would mean in another case. The very import of the form of words is inconsistent with its meaning anything when applied to terms of this particular kind. Let any one who doubts this, attempt to define what is meant by applying a predicate to a subject, when the predicate and the subject are the negation of one another. To make sense of the assertion, some new meaning must be attached to is or is not, and if this be done the proposition is no longer the one presented for our assent. Here, therefore, is one kind of inconceivable proposition which nothing whatever can make credible to us. Not being able to attach any meaning to the proposition, we are equally incompetent to assert that it is, or that it is not, possible in itself. But we have not the power of believing it; and there the matter must rest.

We are now prepared to enter on the peculiar doctrine of Sir W. Hamilton, called the Philosophy of the Conditioned. Not content with maintaining that things which from the natural and fundamental laws of the human mind are for ever inconceivable to us, may, for aught we know, be true, he goes farther, and says, we know that many such things are true. “Things there are which may, nay must, be true, of which the understanding is wholly unable to construe to itself the possibility.”† Of what nature these things are, is declared in many parts of his writings, in the form of a general law. It is thus stated in the review of Cousin:

In the “Dissertations on Reid” he enunciates, in still more general terms, Edition: current; Page: [80] as “the Law of the Conditioned: That all positive thought lies between two extremes, neither of which we can conceive as possible, and yet as mutual contradictories, the one or the other we must recognise as necessary.” And it is (he says) “from this impotence of intellect” that “we are unable to think aught as absolute. Even absolute relativity is unthinkable.”*

The doctrine is more fully expanded in the Lectures on Logic, from which I shall quote at greater length.

one or the other of them must be true.

In other passages our author applies the same order of considerations to Time, saying that we can neither conceive an absolute commencement, nor an infinite regress; an absolute termination, nor a duration infinitely prolonged; though either the one or the other must be true. And again, of the Will: we cannot, he says, conceive the Will to be Free, because this would be to conceive an event uncaused, or, in other words, an absolute commencement: neither can we conceive the Will not to be Free, because this would be supposing an infinite regress from effect to cause. The will, however, must be either free or not free; and in this case, he thinks we have Edition: current; Page: [82] independent grounds for deciding one way, namely, that it is free, because if it were not, we could not be accountable for our actions, which our consciousness assures us that we are.[*]

This, then, is the Philosophy of the Conditioned: into the value of which it now remains to enquire.

In the case of each of the Antinomies which the author presents, he undertakes to establish two things: that neither of the rival hypotheses can be conceived by us as possible, and that we are nevertheless certain that one or the other of them is true.o

To begin with his first position, that we can neither conceive an end to space, nor space without end.

That we are unable to conceive an end to space I fully acknowledge. To account for this there needs no inherent incapacity. We are disabled from forming this conception, by known psychological laws. We have never perceived any object, or any portion of space, which had not other space beyond it. And we have been perceiving objects and portions of space from the moment of birth. How then could the idea of an object, or of a portion of space, escape becoming inseparably associated with the idea of additional space beyond? Every instant of our lives helps to rivet this association, and we never have had a single experience tending to disjoin it. The association, under the present constitution of our existence, is indissoluble. But we have no ground for believing that it is so from the original structure of our minds. We can suppose that in some other state of existence we might be transported to the end of space, when, being apprised of what had happened by some impression of a kind utterly unknown to us now, we should at the same instant become capable of conceiving the fact, and learn that it was true. After some experience of the new impression, the fact of an end to space would seem as natural to us as the revelations of sight to a person born blind, after he has been long enough couched to have become familiar with them. But as this cannot happen in our present state of existence, the experience which would render the association dissoluble is never obtained; and an end to space remains inconceivable.

One half, then, of our author’s first proposition, must be conceded. But the other half? Is it true that we are incapable of conceiving infinite space? I have already shown strong reasons for dissenting from this assertion: and those which our author, in this and other places, assigns in its support, seem to me quite untenable.

He says, “we think, we conceive, we comprehend, a thing, only as we think it as within or under something else. But to do this of the infinite is to Edition: current; Page: [83] think the infinite as finite, which is contradictory and absurd.” When we come to Sir W. Hamilton’s account of the Laws of Thought, we shall have some remarks to make on the phrase “to think one thing within or under another;” a favourite expression with the Transcendental school, one of whose characteristicsp is, that they are always using the prepositions in a metaphorical sense. But granting that to think a thing is to think it under something else, we must understand this statement as it is qinvariablyq interpreted by those who employ it. According to them, we think a thing when we make any affirmation respecting it, and we think it under the notion which we affirm of it. Whenever we judge, we think the subject under the predicate. Consequently when we say “God is good,” we think God under the notion “good.” Is this, in our author’s opinion, to think the infinite as finite, and hence “contradictory and absurd?”

If this doctrine hold, it follows that we cannot predicate anything of a subject which we regard as being in any of its attributes, infinite. We are unable, without falling into a contradiction, to assert anything not only of God, but of Time, and of Space. Considered as a reductio ad absurdum, this is sufficient. But we may go deeper into the matter, and deny the statement that to think anything “under” the notion expressed by a general term is to think it as finite. None of our general predicates are, in the proper sense of the term, finite; they are all, at least potentially, infinite. “Good” is not a name for the things or persons possessing that attribute which exist now, or at any other given moment, and which are only a finite aggregate. It is a name for all those which ever did, or ever will, or even in hypothesis or fiction can, possess the attribute. This is not a limited number. It is the very nature and constituent character of a general notion that its extension (as Sir W. Hamilton would say) is rwithout limitr.

But he might perhaps say, that though its extension, consisting of the possible individuals included in it, smays be infinite, its comprehension, the set of attributes contained in it (or as I prefer to say, connoted by its name) is a limited quantity. Undoubtedly it is. But see what follows. If, because the comprehension of a general notion is finite, anything infinite cannot without contradiction be thought under it, the consequence is, that a being possessing in an infinite degree a given attribute, cannot be thought under that very attribute. Infinite goodness cannot be thought as goodness, because that would be to think it as finite. Surely there must be some great confusion of ideas in the premises, when this comes out as the conclusion.

Our author goes on to repeat the argument used in his reply to Cousin, Edition: current; Page: [84] that Infinite Space is inconceivable, because all the conception we are able to form of it is negative, and a negative conception is the same as no conception. “The infinite is conceived only by the thinking away of every character by which the finite was conceived.” To this assertion I oppose my former reply. Instead of thinking away every character of the finite, we think away only the idea of an end, or a boundary. Sir W. Hamilton’s proposition is true of “The Infinite,” the meaningless abstraction; but it is not true of Infinite Space. In trying to form a conception of that, we do not think away its positive characters. We leave to it the character of Space; all that belongs to it as space; its three dimensions, with all their geometrical properties. We leave to it also a character which belongs to it as Infinite, that of being greater than any tfinitet space. If an object which has these well-marked positive attributes is unthinkable, because it has a negative attribute as well, the number of thinkable objects must be remarkably small. Nearly all our positive conceptions which are at all complex, include negative attributes. I do not mean merely the negatives which are implied in affirmatives, as in saying that snow is white we imply that it is not black; but independent negative attributes superadded to these, and which are so real that they are often the essential characters, or differentiæ, of classes. Our conception of dumb, is of something which cannot speak; of the brutes, as of creatures which have not reason; of the mineral kingdom, as the part of Nature which has not organization and life; of immortal, as that which never dies. Are all these examples of the Inconceivable? So false is it that to think a thing under a negation is to think it as unthinkable.

In other passages, Sir W. Hamilton argues that we cannot conceive infinite space, because we should require infinite time to do it in. It would of course require infinite time to carry our thoughts in succession over every part of infinite space. But on how many of our finite conceptions do we think it necessary to perform such an operation? Let us try the doctrine upon a complex whole, short of infinite; such as the number 695, 788. Sir W. Hamilton would not, I suppose, have maintained that this number is inconceivable. How long did he think it would take to go over every separate unit of this whole, so as to obtain a perfect knowledge of that exact sum, as different from all other sums, either greater or less? Would he have said that we could have no conception of the sum until this process had been gone through? We could not, indeed, have an adequate conception. Accordingly we never have an adequate conception of any real thing. But we have a real conception of an object if we conceive it by any of its attributes that are sufficient to distinguish it from all other things. We have a conception of any large number, when we have conceived it by some one of its modes of composition, such as that indicated by the position of its digits. We seldom Edition: current; Page: [85] get nearer than this to an adequate conception of any large number. But for all intellectual purposes, this limited conception is sufficient: for it not only enables us to avoid confounding the number, in our calculations, with any other numerical whole—even with those so nearly equal to it that no difference between them would be perceptible by sight or touch, unless the units were drawn up in a manner expressly adapted for displaying it—but we can also, by means of this attribute of the number, ascertain and add to our conception as many more of its properties as we please. If, then, we can obtain a real conception of a finite whole without going through all its component parts, why deny us a real conception of an infinite whole because to go through them all is impossible? Not to mention that even in the case of the finite number, though the units composing it are limited, yet, Number being infinite, the possible modes of deriving any given number from other numbers are numerically infinite; and as all these are necessary parts of an adequate conception of any number, to render our conception even of this finite whole perfectly adequate would also require an infinite time.*

But though our conception of infinite space can never be adequate, since we can never exhaust its parts, the conception, as far as it goes, is a real conception. Wex realize in imagination the various attributes composing it. We realize it as space. We realize it as greater than any given space. We even realize it as endless, in an intelligible manner, that is, we clearly represent to ourselves that however much of space has been already explored, and however much more of it we may imagine ourselves to traverse, we are no nearer to the end of it than we were at firsty; sincey, however often we repeat the process of imagining distance extending in any direction from us, that process is always susceptible of being carried further. This conception is both real and perfectly definite. zA merely negative notion may correspond to any number of the most heterogeneous positive things, but this notion corresponds to one thing only.z We possess Edition: current; Page: [86] it as completely as we possess any of our clearest conceptions, and can avail ourselves of it as well for ulterior mental operations. As regards the Extent of Space, therefore, Sir W. Hamilton ahas nota made out his point: one of the two contradictory hypotheses is not inconceivable.

The same thing may be said, equally decidedly, respecting the Divisibility of Space. According to our author, a minimum of divisibility, and a divisibility without limit, are both inconceivable. I venture to think, on the contrary, that both are conceivable. Divisibility, of course, does not here mean physical separability of parts, but their mere existence; and the question is, can we conceive a portion of extension so small as not to be composed of parts, and can we, on the other hand, conceive parts consisting of smaller parts, and these of still smaller, without end? As to the latter, smallness without limit is as positive a conception as greatness without limit. We have the idea of a portion of space, and to this we add that of being smaller than any given portion. The other side of the alternative is still more evidently conceivable. It is not denied that there is a portion of extension which to the naked eye appears an indivisible point; it has been called by philosophers the minimum visibile. This minimum we can indefinitely magnify by means of optical instruments, making visible the still smaller parts which compose it. In each successive experiment there is still a minimum visibile, anything less than which, cannot be discerned with that instrument, but can with one of a higher power. Suppose, now, that as we increase the magnifying bpowersb of our instruments, and before we have reached the limit of possible increase, we arrive at a stage at which that which seemed the smallest visible space under a given microscope, does not appear larger under one which, by its mechanical construction, is adapted to magnify more—but still remains apparently indivisible. I say, that if this happened, we should believe in a minimum of extension; cand as we should be unable to conceive, that is, to represent to ourselves in an image, anything smaller, any further divisibility would be as inconceivable to us as it would be unbelievablec.

There would be no difficulty in applying a similar line of argument to the case of Time, or to any other of the Antinomies, (there is a long list of them,* to some of which I shall have to return for another purpose,) but it would needlessly encumber our pages. In no one case mentioned by Sir W. Hamilton do I believe that he could substantiate his assertion, that “the Conditioned,” by which he means every object of human knowledge, lies Edition: current; Page: [87] between two “inconditionate” hypotheses, both of them inconceivable. Let me add, that even granting the inconceivability of the two opposite hypotheses, I cannot see that any distinct meaning is conveyed by the statement that the Conditioned is “the mean” between them, or that “all positive thought,” “all that we can positively think,” “lies between” these two “extremes,” these “two opposite poles of thought.” The extremes are, Space in the aggregate considered as having a limit, Space in the aggregate considered as having no limit. Neither of these, says Sir W. Hamilton, can we think. But what we can positively think (according to him) is not Space in the aggregate at all; it is some limited Space, and this we think as square, as circular, as triangular, or as elliptical. Are triangular and elliptical a mean between infinite and finite? They are, by the very meaning of the words, modes of the finite. So that it would be more like the truth to say that we think the pretended mean under one of the extremes; and if infinite and finite are “two opposite poles of thought,” then in this polar opposition, unlike voltaic polarity, all the matter is accumulated at one pole. But this counter-statement would be no more tenable than Sir W. Hamilton’s; for in reality, the thought which he affirms to be a medium between two extreme statements, has no correlation with those statements at all. It does not relate to the same object. The two counter-hypotheses are suppositions respecting Space at large, Space as a collective whole. The “conditioned” thinking, said to be the mean between them, relates to parts of Space, and classes of such parts: circles and triangles, or planetary and stellar distances. The alternative of opposite inconceivabilities never presents itself in regard to them; they are all finite, and are conceived and known as such. What the notion of extremes and a mean can signify, when applied to propositions in which different predicates are affirmed of different subjects, passes my comprehension: but it served to give greater apparent profundity to the “Fundamental Doctrine,” in the eyes not of disciples (for Sir W. Hamilton was wholly incapable of quackery) but of the teacher himself.

dIf these arguments are valid, the “Law of the Conditioned” rests on no rational foundation. The proposition that the Conditioned lies between two hypotheses concerning the Unconditioned, neither of which hypotheses Edition: current; Page: [88] we can conceive as possible,d must be placed in that numerous class of metaphysical doctrines, which have a magnificent sound, but are empty of the smallest substance.*

CHAPTER VII: The Philosophy of the Conditioned, as Applied by Mr. Mansel to the Limits of Religious Thought

mr. mansel may be affirmed, by a fair application of the term, to be, in metaphysics, a pupil of Sir W. Hamilton. I do not mean that he agrees with him in all his opinions; for he avowedly dissents from the peculiar Hamiltonian theory of Cause: still less that he has learnt nothing from any other teacher, or from his own independent speculations. On the contrary, he has shown considerable power of original thought, both of a good and of what seems to me anot a gooda quality. But he is the admiring editor of Sir W. Hamilton’s Lectures; he invariably speaks of him with a deference which he pays to no other philosopher; he expressly accepts, in language identical with Sir W. Hamilton’s own, the doctrines regarded as specially characteristic of the Hamiltonian philosophy, and may with reason be considered as a representative of the same general mode of thought. Mr. Mansel has bestowed especial cultivation upon a province but slightly touched by his master—the application of the Philosophy of the Conditioned to the theological department of thought; the deduction of such of its corollaries and consequences as directly concern religion.

The premises from which Mr. Mansel reasons are those of Sir W. Hamilton. He maintains the necessary relativity of all our knowledge. He holds that the Absolute and the Infinite, or, to use a more significant expression, an Absolute and an Infinite Being, are inconceivable by us; and that when we strive to conceive what is thus inaccessible to our faculties, we fall into self-contradiction. That we are, nevertheless, warranted in believing, and bound to believe, the real existence of an absolute and infinite being, and that this being is God. God, therefore, is inconceivable and unknowable by us, and cannot even be thought of without self-contradiction; that is (for Mr. Mansel is careful thus to qualify the assertion), thought of as Absolute, and as Infinite. Through this inherent imposibility Edition: current; Page: [90] of our conceiving or knowing God’s essential attributes, we are disqualified from judging what is or is not consistent with them. If, then, a religion is presented to us, containing any particular doctrine respecting the Deity, our belief or rejection of the doctrine ought to depend exclusively upon the evidences which can be produced for the divine origin of the religion; and no argument grounded on the incredibility of the doctrine, as involving an intellectual absurdity, or on its moral badness as unworthy of a good or wise being, ought to have any weight, since of these things we are incompetent to judge. This, at least, is the drift of Mr. Mansel’s argument; but I am bound to admit that he affirms the conclusion with a certain limitation; for he acknowledges, that the moral character of the doctrines of a religion ought to count for something among the reasons for accepting or rejecting, as of divine origin, the religion as a whole. That it ought also to count for something in the interpretation of the religion when accepted, he neglects to say; but we must in fairness suppose that he would admit it. These concessions, however, to the moral feelings of mankind, are made at the expense of Mr. Mansel’s logic. If his theory is correct, he has no right to make either of them.

There is nothing new in this line of argument as applied to theology. That we cannot understand God; that his ways are not our ways; that we cannot scrutinize or judge his counsels—propositions which, in a reasonable sense of the terms, could not be denied by any Theist—have often before been tendered as reasons why we may assert any absurdities and any moral monstrosities concerning God, and miscall them Goodness and Wisdom. The novelty is in presenting this conclusion as a corollary from the most advanced doctrines of modern philosophy—from the true theory of the powers and limitations of the human mind, on religious and on all other subjects.

My opinion of this doctrine, in whatever way presented, is, that it is simply the most morally pernicious doctrine now current; and that the question it involves is, beyond all others which now engage speculative minds, the decisive one between moral good and evil for the Christian world. It is a momentous matter, therefore, to consider whether we are obliged to adopt it. Without holding Mr. Mansel accountable for the moral consequences of the doctrine, further than he himself accepts them, I think it supremely important to examine whether the doctrine itself is really the verdict of a sound metaphysic; and essential to a true estimation of Sir W. Hamilton’s philosophy to enquire, whether the conclusion thus drawn from his principal doctrine, is justly affiliated on it. I think it will appear that the conclusion not only does not follow from a true theory of the human faculties, but is not even correctly drawn from the premises from which Mr. Mansel infers it.

We must have the premises distinctly before us as conceived by Mr. Mansel, since we have hitherto seen them only as taught by Sir W. Hamilton. Clearness and explicitness of statement being in the number of Mr. Mansel’s merits, it is easier to perceive the flaws in his arguments than in those of his master, because he often leaves us less in doubt what he means by his words.

To have “such a knowledge of the Divine Nature” as would enable human reason to judge of theology, would be, according to Mr. Mansel, “to conceive the Deity as he is.” This would be to “conceive him as First Cause, as Absolute, and as Infinite.”* The First Cause Mr. Mansel defines in the usual manner. About the meaning of Infinite there is no difficulty. But when we come to the Absolute we are on more slippery ground. Mr. Mansel, however, tells us his meaning plainly. By the Absolute, he does not mean what Sir W. Hamilton bprofesses always to mean by it, something which includes the idea of completed or finished. He adopts the other meaning, which Sir W. Hamilton mentions, but disclaims—b the opposite of Relative. “By the Absolute is meant that which exists in and by itself, having no necessary relation to any other Being.”[*]

This explanation by Mr. Mansel of Absolute in the sense in which it is opposed to Relative, is more definite in its terms than that which Sir W. Hamilton gives when attempting the same thing. For Sir W. Hamilton recognises (as already remarked) this second meaning of Absolute, and this is the account he gives of it: “Absolutum means what is freed or loosed; in which sense the Absolute will be what is aloof from relation, comparison, limitation, condition, dependence, &c., and thus is tantamount to τὸ ἀπόλυτον of the lower Greeks.”† May it not be surmised that the vagueness in which the master here leaves the conception, was for the purpose of avoiding difficulties upon which the pupil, in his desire of greater precision, has unwarily run? Mr. Mansel certainly gains nothing by the more definite character of his language. The cwords, “having no necessary relation to any other Being,”c admit of two constructions. The words, in their natural sense, only mean, capable of existing out of relation to anything else. The Edition: current; Page: [92] argument requires that they should mean, incapable of existing in relation with anything else. Mr. Mansel cannot intend the latter. He cannot mean that the Absolute is incapable of entering into relation with any other being; for he would not affirm this of God; on the contrary, he is continually speaking of God’s relations to the world and to us. Moreover, he accepts, from dDr.d Calderwood, an interpretation inconsistent with this.* This, however, is the meaning necessary to support his case. For what is his first argument? That God cannot be known by us as Cause, as Absolute, and as Infinite, because these attributes are, to our conception, incompatible with one another. And why incompatible? Because “a Cause cannot, as such, be absolute; the Absolute cannot, as such, be a cause. The cause, as such, exists only in relation to its effect: the cause is a cause of the effect; the effect is an effect of the cause. On the other hand, the conception of the Absolute involves a possible existence out of all relation.”† But in what manner is a possible existence out of all relation, incompatible with the notion of a cause? Have not causes a possible existence apart from their effects? Would the sun (for example) not exist if there were no earth or planets for it to illuminate? Mr. Mansel seems to think that what is capable of existing out of relation, cannot possibly be conceived or known in relation. But this is not so. Anything which is capable of existing in relation, is capable of being conceived or known in relation. If the Absolute Being cannot be conceived as Cause, it must be that he cannot exist as Cause; he must be incapable of causing. If he can be in any relation whatever to any finite thing, he is conceivable and knowable in that relation, if no otherwise. Freed from this confusion of ideas, Mr. Mansel’s argument resolves itself into this—The same Being cannot be thought by us both as Cause and as Absolute, because a Cause as such is not Absolute, and Absolute as such is not a Cause; which is exactly as if he had said that Newton cannot be thought by us both as an Englishman and as a mathematician, because an Englishman, as such, is not a mathematician, nor a mathematician, as such, an Englishman.‡

Again, Mr. Mansel argues, that, “supposing the Absolute to become a cause,” since ex vi termini it is not necessitated to do so, it must be a voluntary agent, and therefore conscious; for “volition is only possible in a conscious being.”* But consciousness, again, is only conceivable as a relation; and any relation conflicts with the notion of the Absolute, since relatives are mutually dependent on one another. Here it comes out distinctly as a premise in the reasoning, that to be in a relation at all, even if only a relation to itself, the relation of being “conscious of itself,” is inconsistent with being the Absolute.†

Mr. Mansel, therefore, must alter his definition of the Absolute if he would maintain his argument. He must either fall back on the happy ambiguity of Sir W. Hamilton’s definition, “what is aloof from relation,” which does not decide whether the meaning is merely that it can exist out of relation, or that it is incapable of existing in it; or he must take courage, and affirm that an Absolute Being is incapable of all relation. But as he will certainly refuse to predicate this of God, the consequence follows, that God is not an Absolute Being.

The whole of Mr. Mansel’s argument for the inconceivability of the Infinite and of the Absolute is one long ignoratio elenchi. It has been pointed out in a former chapter that the words Absolute and Infinite have no real meaning, unless we understand by them that which is absolute or infinite in some given attribute; as space is called infinite, meaning that it is infinite in extension; and as God is termed infinite in the sense of possessing infinite power, and absolute in the sense of absolute goodness, or knowledge.[*] It has also been shown that Sir W. Hamilton’s arguments for the unknowableness of the Unconditioned, do not prove that we cannot know an object which is absolute or infinite in some specific attribute, but only that we cannot know an abstraction called “The Absolute” or “The Infinite,” which is supposed to have all attributes at once. The same remark is applicable to Mr. Mansel,* with only this difference, that he, with the laudable ambition I have already noticed of stating everything explicitly, Edition: current; Page: [95] draws this important distinction himself, and says, of his own motion, that the Absolute he means is the abstraction. He says, that the Absolute gand Infiniteg can be “nothing less than the sum of all reality,” the complex of all positive predicates, even those which are exclusive of one another: and expressly identifies it with Hegel’s Absolute Being, which contains in itself “all that is actual, even evil included.”* “That which is conceived as absolute and infinite,” says Mr. Mansel, “must be conceived as containing within itself the sum not only of all actual, but of all possible modes of being.”† One may well agree with Mr. Mansel that this farrago of contradictory attributes cannot be conceived: but what shall we say of his equally positive averment that it must be believed? If this be what the Absolute is, what does he mean by saying that we must believe God to be the Absolute?

The remainder of Mr. Mansel’s argumentation is suitable to this commencement. The Absolute, as conceived, that is, as he defines it, cannot be “a whole composed of parts,” or “a substance consisting of attributes,” or

It will be noticed that the Absolute, which was just before defined as having all attributes, is here declared to have none: but this, Mr. Mansel would say, is merely one of the contradictions inherent in the attempt to conceive what is inconceivable.

Is this chimerical abstraction the Absolute Being whom anybody need be concerned about, either as knowable or as unknowable? Is the inconceivableness of this impossible fiction any argument against the possibility of conceiving God, who is neither supposed to have no attributes nor to have all attributes, but to have good attributes? Is it any hindrance to our being able to conceive a Being absolutely just, for example, or absolutely wise? Yet it is of this that Mr. Mansel undertook to prove the impossibility.

Again, of the Infinite: according to Mr. Mansel, being “that than which a greater is inconceivable,” it “consequently can receive no additional attribute or mode of existence which it had not from all eternity.” It must therefore be the same complex of all possible predicates which the Absolute is, and all of them infinite in degree. It “cannot be regarded as consisting of a limited number of attributes, each unlimited in its kind. It cannot be conceived, for example, after the analogy of a line, infinite in length, but not in breadth; or of a surface, infinite in two dimensions of space, but bounded in the third; or of an intelligent being, possessing some one or more modes of consciousness in an infinite degree, but devoid of others.”† This Infinite, which is infinite in all attributes, and not solely in those which it would be thought decent to predicate of God, cannot, as Mr. Mansel very truly says, be conceived. For

Here certainly is an Infinite whose infinity does not seem to be of much use to it. But can a writer be serious who bids us conjure up a conception of something which possesses infinitely all conflicting attributes, and because we cannot do this without contradiction, would have us believe that there is a contradiction in the idea of infinite goodness, or infinite wisdom? Instead of “the Infinite,” substitute “an infinitely good Being,” and Mr. Mansel’s argument reads thus: If there is anything which an infinitely good Being cannot become—if he cannot become bad—that is a limitation, and the goodness cannot be infinite. If there is anything which an infinitely good Being actually is (namely good), he is excluded from being any other thing, as from being wise or powerful. I hardly think that Sir W. Hamilton would patronize this logic, learnt though it be in his school.*

It cannot be necessary to follow up Mr. Mansel’s metaphysical dissertation any farther. It is all, as I have said, the same ignoratio elenchi. I have been able to find only one short passage in which he attempts to show that we are unable to represent in thought a particular attribute carried to the infinite. For the sake of fairness, I cite it in a note.† All the argument that I Edition: current; Page: [98] can discover in it, I conceive that I have already answered, as stated much better by Sir W. Hamilton.

Mr. Mansel thinks it necessary to declare that the contradictions are not in “the nature of the Absolute” or Infinite “in itself, but only” in “our own conception of that nature.”* He did not mean to say that the Divine Nature is itself contradictory. But he says “We are compelled by the constitution of our minds, to believe in the existence of an Absolute and Infinite Being.”† Such being the case, I ask, is the Being, whom we must believe to be infinite and absolute, infinite and absolute in the meaning which those terms bear in Mr. Mansel’s hdefinitionh of them? If not, he is bound to tell us in what other meaning. Believing God to be infinite and absolute must be believing something, and it must be possible to say what. If Mr. Mansel means that we must believe the reality of an Infinite and Absolute Being in some other sense than that in which he has proved such a Being to be inconceivable, his point is not made out, since he undertook to prove the inconceivability of the very Being in whose reality we are required to believe. But the truth is that the Infinite and Absolute which he says we must believe in, are the very Infinite and Absolute of his definitions. The Infinite is that which is opposed to the Finite; the Absolute, that which is opposed to the Relative. He has therefore either proved nothing, or vastly more than he intended. For the contradictions which he asserts to be involved in the notions, do not follow from an imperfect mode of apprehending the Infinite and Absolute, but lie in the definitions of them; in the meaning of the iphrasesi themselves. The contradictions are in the very object which we are called upon to believe. If, therefore, Mr. Mansel would escape from the conclusion that an Infinite and Absolute Being is intrinsically impossible, it must be by affirming, with Hegel, that the law of Contradiction does not apply to the Absolute; that, respecting the Absolute, contradictory propositions may both be true.‡

Let us now pass from Mr. Mansel’s metaphysical argumentation on an Edition: current; Page: [99] irrelevant issue, to jaj much more important subjectk, thatk of his practical conclusion, namely, that we cannot know the divine attributes in such a manner, as can entitle us to reject any statement respecting the Deity on the ground of its being inconsistent with his character. Let us examine whether Edition: current; Page: [100] this assertion is a legitimate corollary from the relativity of human knowledge, either as it really is, or as it is understood to be by Sir W. Hamilton and by Mr. Mansel.

The fundamental property of our knowledge of God, Mr. Mansel says, is that we do not and cannot know him as he is in himself: certain persons, therefore, whom he calls Rationalists, he condemns as unphilosophical, when they reject any statement as inconsistent with the character of God.[*] This is a valid answer, as far as words go, to some of the later Transcendentalists—to those who think that we have an intuition of the Divine Nature; though even as to them it would not be difficult to show that the answer is but skin-deep. But those “Rationalists” who hold, with Mr. Mansel himself, the relativity of human knowledge, are not touched by his reasoning. We cannot know God as he is in himself (they reply); granted: and what then? Can we know man as he is in himself, or matter as it is in itself? We do not claim any other knowledge of God than such as we have of man or of matter. Because I do not know my fellow-men, nor any of the powers of nature, as they are in themselves, am I therefore not at liberty to disbelieve anything I hear respecting them as being inconsistent with their character? I know something of Man and Nature, not as they are in themselves, but as they are relatively to us; and it is as relative to us, and not as he is in himself, that I suppose myself to know anything of God. The attributes which I ascribe to him, as goodness, knowledge, power, are all relative. They are attributes (says the rationalist) which my experience enables me to conceive, and which I consider as proved, not absolutely, by an intuition of God, but phænomenally, by his action on the creation, as known through my senses and my rational faculty. These relative attributes, each of them in an infinite degree, are all I pretend to predicate of God. When I reject a doctrine as inconsistent with God’s nature, it is not as being inconsistent with what God is in himself, but with what he is as manifested to us. If my knowledge of him is only phænomenal, the assertions which I reject are phænomenal too. If those assertions are inconsistent with my relative knowledge of him, it is no answer to say that all my knowledge of him is relative. That is no more a reason against disbelieving an alleged fact as unworthy of God, than against disbelieving another alleged fact as unworthy of Turgot, or of Washington, whom also I do not know as Noumena, but only as Phænomena.

There is but one way for Mr. Mansel out of this difficulty, and he adopts it. He must maintain, not merely that an Absolute Being is unknowable in himself, but that the Relative attributes of an Absolute Being are unknowable likewise. He must say that we do not know what Wisdom, Justice, Edition: current; Page: [101] Benevolence, Mercy, are, as they exist in God. Accordingly he does say so. The following are his direct utterances on the subject: as an implied doctrine, it pervades his whole argument.

In other words, it is necessary to suppose that the infinite goodness ascribed to God is not the goodness which we know and love in our fellow-creatures, distinguished only as infinite in degree, but is different in kind, and another quality altogether. When we call the one finite goodness and the other infinite goodness, we do not mean what the words assert, but something else: we intentionally apply the same name to things which we regard as different.

Accordingly Mr. Mansel combats, as a heresy of his opponents, the opinion that infinite goodness differs only in degree from finite goodness. The notion “that the attributes of God differ from those of man in degree only, not in kind, and hence that certain mental and moral qualities of which we are immediately conscious in ourselves, furnish at the same time a true and adequate image of the infinite perfections of God,” (the word adequate must have slipped in by inadvertence, since otherwise it would be an inexcusable misrepresentation) he identifies with “the vulgar Rationalism which regards the reason of man, in its ordinary and normal operation, as the supreme criterion of religious truth.”† And in characterizing the mode of arguing of this vulgar Rationalism, he declares its principles to be, that “all the excellences of which we are conscious in the creature, must necessarily exist in the same manner, though in a higher degree, in the Creator. God is indeed more wise, more just, more merciful, than man; but for that very reason, his wisdom and justice and mercy must contain nothing that is incompatible with the corresponding attributes in their human character.”‡ It is against this doctrine that Mr. Mansel feels called on to make an emphatic protest.

Here, then, I take my stand on the acknowledged principle of logic and of morality, that when we mean different things we have no right to call them by the same name, and to apply to them the same predicates, moral and intellectual. Language has no meaning for the words Just, Merciful, Benevolent, save that in which we predicate them of our fellow-creatures; and unless that is what we intend to express by them, we have no business to employ the words. If in affirming them of God we do not mean to affirm these very qualities, differing only as greater in degree, we are neither philosophically nor morally entitled to affirm them at all. If it be said that the qualities are the same, but that we cannot conceive them as they are when raised to the infinite, I grant that we cannot adequately conceive them in one of their elements, their infinity. But we can conceive them in their other elements, which are the very same in the infinite as in the finite development. Anything carried to the infinite must have all the properties of the same thing as finite, except those which depend upon the finiteness. Among the many who have said that we cannot conceive infinite space, did any one ever suppose that it is not space? that it does not possess all the properties by which space is characterized? Infinite Space cannot be cubical or spherical, because these are modes of being bounded: but does any one imagine that in ranging through it we might arrive at some region which was not extended; of which one part was not outside another; where, though no Body intervened, motion was impossible; or where the sum of two sides of a triangle was less than the third side? The parallel assertion may be made respecting infinite goodness. What belongs to it leither as Infinite or as Absolutel I do not pretend to know; but I know that infinite goodness must be goodness, and that what is not consistent with goodness, is not consistent with infinite goodness. If in ascribing goodness to God I do not mean what I mean by goodness; if I do not mean the goodness of which I have some knowledge, but an incomprehensible attribute of an incomprehensible substance, which for aught I know may be a totally different quality from that which I love and venerate—and even must, if Mr. Mansel is to be believed,[*] be in some important particulars opposed to this—what do I mean by calling it goodness? and what reason have I for venerating it? If I know nothing about what the attribute is, I cannot tell that it is a proper object of veneration. To say that God’s goodness may be different in kind from man’s goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good? To assert in words what we do not think in meaning, is as suitable a definition as can be given of a moral falsehood. Besides, suppose that certain unknown attributes are Edition: current; Page: [103] ascribed to the Deity in a religion the external evidences of which are so conclusive to my mind, as effectually to convince me that it comes from God. Unless I believe God to possess the same moral attributes which I find, in however inferior a degree, in a good man, what ground of assurance have I of God’s veracity? All trust in a Revelation presupposes a conviction that God’s attributes are the same, in all but degree, with the best human attributes.

If, instead of the “glad tidings” that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, not what are the principles of his government, except that “the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving”[*] does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures;* and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.[†]

Neither is this to set up my own limited intellect as a criterion of divine or of any other wisdom. If a person is wiser and better than myself, not in some unknown and unknowable meaning of the terms, but in their known human acceptation, I am ready to believe that what this person thinks may be true, and that what he does may be right, when, but for the opinion I have of him, I should think otherwise. But this is because I believe that he and I have at bottom the same standard of truth and rule of right, and that he probably understands better than I the facts of the particular case. If I thought it not improbable that his notion of right might be my notion of wrong, I should not defer to his judgment. In like manner, one who sincerely believes in an absolutely good ruler of the world, is not warranted in disbelieving any act ascribed to him, merely because the very small part of its circumstances which we can possibly know does not sufficiently justify it. But if what I am told respecting him is of a kind which no facts that Edition: current; Page: [104] can be supposed added to my knowledge could make me perceive to be right; if his alleged ways of dealing with the world are such as no imaginable hypothesis respecting things known to him and unknown to me, could make consistent with the goodness and wisdom which I mean when I use the terms, but are in direct contradiction to their signification; then, if the law of contradiction is a law of human thought, I cannot both believe these things, and believe that God is a good and wise being. If I call any being wise or good, not meaning the only qualities which the words import, I am speaking insincerely; I am flattering him by epithets which I fancy that he likes to hear, in the hope of winning him over to my own objects. For it is worthy of remark that the doubt whether words applied to God have their human signification, is only felt when the words relate to his moral attributes; it is never heard of in regard to his power. We are never told that God’s omnipotence must not be supposed to mean an infinite degree of the power we know in man and nature, and that perhaps it does not mean that he is able to kill us, or consign us to eternal flames. The Divine Power is always interpreted in a completely human signification, but the Divine Goodness and Justice must be understood to be such only in an unintelligible sense. Is it unfair to surmise that this is because those who speak in the name of God, have need of the human conception of his power, since an idea which can overawe and enforce obedience must address itself to real feelings; but are content that his goodness should be conceived only as something inconceivable, because they are so often required to teach doctrines respecting him which conflict irreconcilably with all goodness that we can conceive?*

I am anxious to say once more, that Mr. Mansel’s conclusions do not go the whole length of his arguments, and that he disavows the doctrine that God’s justice and goodness are wholly different from what human beings understand by the terms. He would, and does, admit that the qualities as conceived by us bear some likeness to the justice and goodness which Edition: current; Page: [106] belong to God, since man was made in God’s image. But such a semiconcession, which no Christian could avoid making, since without it the whole Christian scheme would be subverted, cannot save him; he is not relieved by it from any difficulties, while it destroys the whole fabric of his argument. The Divine goodness, which is said to be a different thing from human goodness, but of which the human conception of goodness is some imperfect reflexion or resemblance, does it agree with what men call Edition: current; Page: [107] goodness in the essence of the quality—in what constitutes it goodness? If it does, the “Rationalists” are right; it is not illicit to reason from the one to the other. If not, the divine attribute, whatever else it may be, is not goodness, and ought not to be called by the name. Unless there be some human conception which agrees with it, no human name can properly be applied to it; it is simply the unknown attribute of a thing unknown; it has no existence in relation to us, we can affirm nothing of it, and owe it no worship. Such is the inevitable alternative.*

To conclude: Mr. Mansel has not made out any connexion between his philosophical premises and his theological conclusion. The relativity of human knowledge, the uncognoscibility of the Absolute, and the contradictions Edition: current; Page: [108] which follow the attempt to conceive a Being with all or without any attributes, are no obstacles to our having the same kind of knowledge of God which we have of other things, namely not as they exist absolutely, but relatively. The proposition, that we cannot conceive the moral attributes of God in such a manner as to be able to affirm of any doctrine or assertion that it is inconsistent with them, has no foundation in the laws of the human mind: while, if admitted, it would not prove that we should ascribe to God attributes bearing the same name as human qualities, but not to be understood in the same sense; it would prove that we ought not to ascribe any moral attributes to God at all, inasmuch as no moral attributes known or conceivable by us are true of him, and we are condemned to absolute ignorance of him as a moral being.

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 Edition: current; Page: [110] 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: Edition: current; Page: [111] now, to be conscious of a perception, necessarily implies being conscious of the thing perceived.

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 Edition: current; Page: [112] 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.

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

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 Edition: current; Page: [114] 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 Edition: current; Page: [115] 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:

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 Edition: current; Page: [117] 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—

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:

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 Edition: current; Page: [119] 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 Edition: current; Page: [120] 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 Edition: current; Page: [121] 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. Edition: current; Page: [122] 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 Edition: current; Page: [123] 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.*

CHAPTER IX: Of the Interpretation of Consciousness

according to all philosophers, the evidence of Consciousness, if only we can obtain it pure, is conclusive. This is an obvious, but by no means a mere identical proposition. If consciousness be defined as intuitive knowledge, it is indeed an identical proposition to say, that if we intuitively know anything, we do know it, and are sure of it. But the meaning lies in the implied assertion, that we do know some things immediately, or intuitively. That we must do so is evident, if we know anything; for what we know mediately, depends for its evidence on our previous knowledge of something else: unless, therefore, we knew something immediately, we could not know anything mediately, and consequently could not know anything at all. That imaginary being, a complete Sceptic, might be supposed to answer, that perhaps we do not know anything at all. I shall not reply to this problematical antagonist in the usual manner, by telling him that if he does not know anything, I do. I put to him the simplest case conceivable of immediate knowledge, and ask, if we ever feel anything? If so, then, at the moment of feeling, do we know that we feel? Or if he will not call this knowledge, will he deny that when we have a feeling, we have at least some sort of assurance, or conviction, of having it? This assurance or conviction is what other people mean by knowledge. If he dislikes the word, I am willing in discussing with him to employ some other. By whatever name this assurance is called, it is the test to which we bring all our other convictions. He may say it is not certain; but such as it may be, it is our model of certainty. We consider all our other assurances and convictions as more or less certain, according as they approach the standard of this. I have a conviction that there are icebergs in the Arctic seas. I have not had the evidence of my senses for it: I never saw an iceberg. Neither do I intuitively believe it by a law of my mind. My conviction is mediate, grounded on testimony, and on inferences from physical laws. When I say I am convinced of it, I mean that the evidence is equal to that of my senses. I am as certain of the fact as if I had seen it. And, on a more complete analysis, when I say I am convinced of it, what I am convinced of is that if I were in the Arctic seas I should see it. We mean by knowledge, and by certainty, an assurance similar and equal to that afforded by our senses: if the evidence Edition: current; Page: [126] in any other case can be brought up to this, we desire no more. If a person is not satisfied with this evidence, it is no concern of anybody but himself, nor, practically, of himself, since it is admitted that this evidence is what we must, and may with full confidence, act upon. Absolute scepticism, if there be such a thing, may be dismissed from discussion, as raising an irrelevant issue, for in denying all knowledge it denies none. The dogmatist may be quite satisfied if the doctrine he maintains can be attacked by no arguments but those which apply to the evidence of the senses. If his evidence is equal to that, he needs no more; nay, it is philosophically maintainable that by the laws of psychology we can conceive no more, and that this is the certainty which we call perfect.

The verdict, then, of consciousness, or, in other words, our immediate and intuitive conviction, is admitted, on all hands, to be a decision without appeal. The next question is, to what does consciousness bear witness? And here, at the outset, a distinction manifests itself, which is laid down by Sir W. Hamilton, and stated, in a very lucid manner, in the first volume of his Lectures. I give it in his own words.

He adds, that since no doubt has been, or can be, entertained of the facts given in the act of consciousness itself, “it is only the authority of these facts as evidence of something beyond themselves,—that is, only the second class of facts,—which become matter of discussion; it is not the reality of consciousness that we have to prove, but its veracity.”[*]

By the conception and clear exposition of this distinction, Sir W. Hamilton has contributed materially to make the issues involved in the great question in hand, more intelligible; and the passage is a considerable item for the appreciation both of his philosophy and of his philosophical powers. It is one of the proofs that, whatever be the positive value of his achievements in metaphysics, he had a greater capacity for the subject than many metaphysicians of high reputation, and particularly than his two distinguished predecessors in the same school of thought, Reid and Stewart.

There are, however, some points in this long extract which are open to criticism. The distinction it draws, is, in the main, beyond question, just. Among the facts which Sir W. Hamilton considers as revelations of consciousness, there is one kind which, as he truly says, no one does or can doubt, another kind which they can and do. The facts which cannot be doubted are those to which the word consciousness is by most philosophers confined: the facts of internal consciousness; “the mind’s own acts and affections.”[†] What we feel, we cannot doubt that we feel. It is impossible to us to feel, and to think that perhaps we feel not, or to feel not, and think that perhaps we feel. What admits of being doubted, is the revelation which consciousness is supposed to make (and which our author considers as itself consciousness) of an external reality. But according to him, though we may doubt this external reality, we are compelled to admit that consciousness testifies to it. We may disbelieve our consciousness; but we cannot doubt what its testimony is. This assertion cannot be granted in the same unqualified manner as the others. It is true that I cannot doubt my present impression: I cannot doubt that when I perceive colour or weight, I perceive them as in an object. Neither can I doubt that when I look at two fields, I perceive which of them is the farthest off. The majority of philosophers, however, would not say that perception of distance by the Edition: current; Page: [129] eye is testified by consciousness; because although we really do so perceive distance, they believe it to be an acquired perception. It is at least possible to think that the reference of our sensible impressions to an external object is, in like manner, acquired; and if so, though a fact of our consciousness in its present artificial state, it would have no claim to the title of a fact of consciousness generally, aor to the unlimited credence given to what is originally consciousnessa. This point of psychology we shall have to discuss farther on.

Another remark needs to be made. All the world admits with our author, that it is impossible to doubt a fact of internal consciousness. To feel, and not to know that we feel, is an impossibility. But Sir W. Hamilton is not satisfied to let this truth rest on its own evidence. He wants a demonstration of it. As if it were not sufficiently proved by consciousness itself, he attempts to prove it by a reductio ad absurdum. No one, he says, can doubt consciousness, because, doubt being itself consciousness, to doubt consciousness would be to doubt that we doubt. He sets so high a value on this argument, that he is continually recurring to it in his writings; it actually amounts to a feature of his philosophy.* Yet it seems to me no better than a fallacy. It treats doubt as something positive, like certainty, forgetting that doubt is uncertainty. Doubt is not a state of consciousness, but the negation of a state of consciousness. Being nothing positive, but simply the absence of a belief, it seems to be the one intellectual fact which may be true without self-affirmation of its truth; without our either believing or disbelieving that we doubt. If doubt is anything other than merely negative, it means an insufficient assurance; a disposition to believe, with an inability to believe confidently. But there are degrees of insufficiency; and if we suppose, for argument’s sake, that it is possible to doubt consciousness, it may be possible to doubt different facts of consciousness in different degrees. The general uncertainty of consciousness might be the one fact that appeared least uncertain. The saying of Socrates, that the only thing he knew was Edition: current; Page: [130] that he knew nothing, expresses a conceivable and not inconsistent state of mind.[*] The only thing he felt perfectly sure of may have been that he was sure of nothing else. Omitting Socrates (who was no sceptic as to the reality of knowledge, but only as to its having yet been attained) and endeavouring to conceive the hazy state of mind of a person who doubts the evidence of his senses, it is quite possible to suppose him doubting even whether he doubts. Most people, I should think, must have found themselves in something like this predicament as to particular facts, of which their assurance is all but perfect; they are not quite certain that they are uncertain.*

But though our author’s proof of the position is as untenable as it is superfluous, all agree with him in the position itself, that a real fact of consciousness cannot be doubted or denied. Let us now, therefore, return to his distinction between the facts “given in the act of consciousness,”[†] and those “to the reality of which it only bears evidence.”[‡] These last, or, in other words, “the veracity of consciousness,” Sir W. Hamilton thinks it Edition: current; Page: [131] possible to doubt or deny; he even says, that such facts, more or fewer in number, have been doubted or denied by nearly the whole body of modern philosophers. But this is a statement of the point in issue between Sir W. Hamilton and modern philosophers, the correctness of which, I will venture to affirm that very few if any of them would admit. He represents “nearly the whole body of modern philosophers”[*] as in the peculiar and paradoxical position, of believing that consciousness declares to them and to all mankind the truth of certain facts, and then of disbelieving those facts. That great majority of philosophers of whom Sir W. Hamilton speaks, would, I apprehend, altogether deny this statement. They never dreamed of disputing the veracity of consciousness. They denied what Sir W. Hamilton thinks bitb impossible to deny; the fact of its testimony. They thought it did not testify to the facts to which he thinks it testifies. Had they thought as he does respecting the testimony, they would have thought as he does respecting the facts. As it is, many of them maintained that consciousness gives no testimony to anything beyond itself; that whatever knowledge we possess, or whatever belief we find in ourselves, of anything but the feelings and operations of our own minds, has been acquired subsequently to the first beginnings of our intellectual life, and was not witnessed to by consciousness when it received its first impressions. Others, again, did believe in a testimony of consciousness, but not in the testimony ascribed to it by Sir W. Hamilton. Facts, to which in his opinion it testifies, some of them did not believe at all, others did not believe them to be known intuitively; nay, many of them both believed the facts, and believed that they were known intuitively, and if they differed from Sir W. Hamilton, differed in the merest shadow of a shade; yet it is with these last, as we shall see, that he has his greatest quarrel. In his contest, therefore, with (as he says) the majority of philosophers, Sir W. Hamilton addresses his arguments to the wrong point. He thinks it needless to prove that the testimony to which he appeals, is really given by Consciousness, for that he regards as undenied and undeniable: but he is incessantly proving to us that we ought to believe our consciousness, a thing which few, if any, of his opponents denied.* It is true his appeal is always to the same argument, but that he is never tired of reiterating. It is stated the most systematically in the first Dissertation on Reid, that “on the Philosophy of Common Sense.” After Edition: current; Page: [132] saying that there are certain primary elements of cognition, manifesting themselves to us as facts of which consciousness assures us, he continues,

that man is “organized for the attainment, and actuated by the love of truth, only to become the dupe and victim of a perfidious creator.”† It appears, therefore, that the testimony of consciousness must be believed, because to disbelieve it, would be to impute mendacity and perfidy to the Creator.

But there is a preliminary difficulty to be here resolved, which may be stated without irreverence. If the proof of the trustworthiness of consciousness is the veracity of the Creator, on what does the Creator’s veracity itself rest? Is it not on the evidence of consciousness? The divine veracity can only be known in two ways, 1st, by intuition, or 2ndly, through evidence. If it is known by intuition, it is itself a fact of consciousness, and to have ground for believing it, we must assume that consciousness is trustworthy. Those who say that we have a direct intuition of God, are only saying in other words that consciousness testifies to him. If we hold, on the contrary, with our author, that God is not known by intuition, but proved by evidence, that evidence must rest, in the last resort, on consciousness. All proofs of religion, natural or revealed, must be derived either from the testimony of the senses, or from internal feelings of the mind, or from reasonings of which one or other of these sources supplied the premises. Religion, thus itself resting on the evidence of consciousness, cannot be invoked to prove that consciousness ought to be believed. We must already trust our consciousness, before we can have any evidence of the truth of religion.

I know not whether it is from an obscure sense of this objection to his argument, that Sir W. Hamilton adopts what, in every other point of view, is a very extraordinary limitation of it. After representing the veracity of the Creator as staked on the truth of the testimony of Consciousness, he is content to claim this argument as not amounting to proof, but only to a primâ facie presumption. “Such a supposition” as that of a perfidious creator, “if gratuitous, is manifestly illegitimate.” “The data of our original consciousness must, it is evident, in the first instance” (the italics are the Edition: current; Page: [133] author’s), “be presumed true. It is only if proved false,” which citc can only be by showing them to be inconsistent with one another, “that their authority can, in consequence of that proof, be, in the second instance, disallowed.”[*] “Neganti incumbit probatio. Nature is not gratuitously to be assumed to work, not only in vain, but in counteraction of herself; our faculty of knowledge is not, without a ground, to be supposed an instrument of illusion.”* It is making a very humble claim for the veracity of the Creator, that it should be held valid merely as a presumption, in the absence of contrary evidence; that the Divine Being, like a prisoner at the bar, should be presumed innocent until proved guilty. Far, however, from intending this remark in any invidious sense against Sir W. Hamilton, I regard it as one of his titles to honour, that he has not been afraid, as many men would have been, to subject a proposition surrounded by reverence to the same logical treatment as any other statement, and has not felt himself obliged, as a philosopher, to consider it from the first as final. My complaint dcould only bed, that his logic is not sufficiently consistente; and that thee divine veracity is entitled either to more or to less weight than he accords to it. He is bound by the laws of correct reasoning to prove his premise without the aid of the conclusion which he means to draw from it. If he can do this—if the divine veracity is certified by stronger evidence than the testimony of consciousness, it may be appealed to, not merely as a presumption, but as a proof. If not, it is entitled to no place in the discussion, even as a presumption. There is no intermediate position for it, good enough for the one purpose, but not good enough for the other. It would be a new view of the fallacy of petitio principii to contend that a conclusion is no proof of the premises from which it is deduced, but is primâ facie evidence of them.

Our author, however, cannot be convicted of petitio principii. Though he has not stated, I think he has enabled us to see, in what manner he avoided it. True, he has deduced the trustworthiness of consciousness from the veracity of the Deity; and the veracity of the Deity can only be known from the evidence of consciousness. But he may fall back upon the distinction between facts given in consciousness itself, and facts “to the reality of which it only bears evidence.”[†] It is for the trustworthiness of these last, that he assigns as presumptive evidence (which the absence of counter-evidence raises into proof) the divine veracity. That veracity itself, he may Edition: current; Page: [134] say, is proved by consciousness, but to prove it requires only the other class of facts of consciousness, those given in the act of consciousness itself. There are thus two steps in the argument. “The phænomena of consciousness considered merely in themselves,” with reference to which “scepticism is confessedly impossible,”* suffice (we must suppose him to think) for proving the divine veracity; and that veracity, being proved, is in its turn a reason for trusting the testimony which consciousness pronounces to facts without and beyond itself.

Unless, therefore, Sir W. Hamilton was guilty of a paralogism, by adducing religion in proof of what is necessary to the proof of religion, his opinion must have been that our knowledge of God rests upon the affirmation which Consciousness makes of itself, and not of anything beyond itself; that the divine existence and attributes may be proved without assuming that consciousness testifies to anything but our own feelings and mental operations. If this be so, we have Sir W. Hamilton’s authority for affirming, that even the most extreme form of philosophical scepticism, the Nihilism (as our author calls it)[*] of Hume, which denies the objective existence of both Matter and Mind, does not touch the evidences of Natural Religion. And it really does not touch any evidences but such as religion can well spare. But what a mass of religious prejudice has been directed against this philosophical doctrine, on the strength of what we have now Sir W. Hamilton’s authority for treating as a mere misapprehension.†

But something more is necessary to render the divine veracity available in support of the testimony of consciousness, against those, if such there be, who admit the fact of the testimony, but hesitate to admit its truth. The divine veracity can only be implicated in the truth of anything, by proving that the Divine Being intended it to be believed. As it is not pretended that he has made any revelation in the matter, his intention can only be inferred from the fresultf: and our author draws the inference from his having made it an original and indestructible part of our nature that our consciousness should declare to us certain facts. Now this is what the philosophers who disbelieve the facts, would not, any of them, admit. Many indeed have Edition: current; Page: [135] admitted that we have a natural tendency to believe something which they considered to be an illusion: but it cannot be affirmed that God intended us to do whatever we have a natural tendency to. On every theory of the divine government, it is carried on, intellectually as well as morally, not by the mere indulgence of our natural tendencies, but by the regulation and control of them. One philosopher, Hume, has said that the tendency in question seems to be an “instinct,” and has called a psychological doctrine, which he regarded as groundless, as “universal and primary opinion of all men.” But he never dreamed of saying that we are compelled by our nature to believe it; on the contrary, he says that this illusive opinion “is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy.”[*] Of all eminent thinkers, the one who comes nearest to our author’s description of those who reject the testimony of consciousness, is Kant. That philosopher did maintain that there is an illusion inherent in our constitution; that we cannot help conceiving as belonging to Things themselves, attributes with which they are only clothed by the laws of our sensitive and intellectual faculties.[†] But he gdrew a marked distinction between an illusion and a delusion. Heg did not believe in a mystification practised on us by the Supreme Being, nor would he have admitted that God intended us permanently to mistake the conditions of our mental conceptions for properties of the things themselves. If God has provided us with the means of correcting an error, it is probable that he does not intend us to be misled by it: and in matters speculative as well as practical, it surely is more religious to see the purposes of God in the dictates of our deliberate reason, than in those of a “blind and powerful instinct of nature.”[‡]

As regards almost all, however, if not all philosophers, it may truly be said, that the questions which have divided them have never turned on the veracity of consciousness. Consciousness, in the sense usually attached to it by philosophers,—consciousness of the mind’s own feelings and operations, cannot, as our author truly says, be disbelieved. The inward fact, the feeling in our own minds, was never doubted, since to do so would be to doubt that we feel what we feel. What our author calls the testimony of consciousness to something beyond itself, may be, and is, denied; but what is denied, has almost always been that consciousness gives the testimony; not that, if given, it must be believed.

At first sight it might seem as if there could not possibly be any doubt Edition: current; Page: [136] whether our consciousness does or does not affirm any given thing. Nor can there, if consciousness means, as it usually does, self-consciousness. If consciousness tells me that I have a certain thought or sensation, I assuredly have that thought or sensation. But if consciousness, as with Sir W. Hamilton, means a power which can tell me things that are not phænomena of my own mind, there is immediately the broadest divergence of opinion as to what are the things htoh which consciousness testifies. There is nothing which people do not think and say that they know by consciousness, provided they do not remember any time when they did not know or believe it, and are not aware in what manner they came by the belief. For Consciousness, in this extended sense, is, as iIi have so often observed, but another word for Intuitive Knowledge: and whatever other things we may know in that manner, we certainly do not know by intuition what knowledge is intuitive. It is a subject on which both the vulgar and the ablest thinkers are constantly making mistakes. No one is better aware of this than Sir W. Hamilton. I transcribe a few of the many passages in which he has acknowledged it. “Errors” may arise by attributing to “intelligence as necessary and original data, what are only contingent generalizations from experience, and consequently, make no part of its complement of native truths.”* And again: “Many philosophers have attempted to establish on the principles of common sense propositions which are not original data of consciousness; while the original data of consciousness, from which their propositions were derived, and to which they owed their whole necessity and truth—these data the same philosophers were (strange to say) not disposed to admit.”† It fares still worse with the philosophers chargeable with this error, when Sir W. Hamilton comes into personal controversy with them. M. Cousin’s mode of proceeding, for example, he characterizes thus: “Assertion is substituted for proof; facts of consciousness are alleged, which consciousness never knew; and paradoxes that baffle argument, are promulgated as intuitive truths, above the necessity of confirmation.”‡ M. Cousin’s particular misinterpretation of consciousness was, as we saw, that of supposing that each of its acts testifies to three things, of which three Edition: current; Page: [137] Sir W. Hamilton thinks that it testifies only to one. Besides the finite element, consisting of a Self and a Not-self, M. Cousin believes that there are directly revealed in Consciousness an Infinite (God) and a relation between this Infinite and the Finite.[*] But it is not only M. Cousin who, in our author’s opinion, mistakes the testimony of consciousness. He brings the same charge against a thinker with whom he agrees much oftener than with M. Cousin; against Reid. That philosopher, as we have seen, is of opinion, contrary to Sir W. Hamilton, that we have an immediate knowledge of things past. This is to be conscious of them in Sir W. Hamilton’s sense of the word, though not in Reid’s. Finally, Sir W. Hamilton imputes a similar error, no longer to any particular metaphysician, but to the world at large. He says that we do not see the sun, but only a luminous image, in immediate contiguity to the eye, and that no two persons see the same sun, but every person a different one. Now it is assuredly the universal belief of mankind that all of them see the same sun, and that this is the very sun which rises and sets, and which is 95 (or according to more recent researches 92) millions of miles distant from the earth. Nor can any of the appeals of Reid and Sir W. Hamilton from the sophistries of metaphysicians to Common Sense and the universal sentiment of mankind, be more emphatic than that to which Sir W. Hamilton here lays himself open from Reid and from the non-metaphysical world.*

We see, therefore, that it is not enough to say that something is testified by Consciousness, and refer all dissentients to Consciousness to prove it. Substitute for Consciousness the equivalent phrase (in our author’s acceptation at least) Intuitive Knowledge, and it is seen that this is not a thing which can be proved by mere introspection of ourselves. Introspection can show us a present belief or conviction, attended with a greater or a less difficulty in accommodating the thoughts to a different view of the subject: but that this belief, or conviction, or knowledge, if we call it so, is intuitive, no mere introspection can ever show; unless we are at liberty to assume that every mental process which is now as unhesitating and as rapid as intuition, was intuitive at its outset. Reid, in his commencements at least, often expressed himself as if he believed this to be the case: Sir W. Hamilton, wiser than Reid, knew better. With him (at least in his better moments) the question, what is and is not revealed by Consciousness, is a question for philosophers. “The first problem of philosophy” is “to seek out, purify, and establish, by intellectual analysis and criticism, the elementary feelings or beliefs, in which are given the elementary truths of which all are in possession:” this problem, he admits, is “of no easy accomplishment;” and the “argument from common sense” is thus

So far, good. But now, it being conceded that the question, what do we know intuitively, or, in Sir W. Hamilton’s phraseology, what does our consciousness testify, is not, as might be supposed, a matter of simple self-examination, but of science, it has still to be determined in what manner science should set about it. And here emerges the distinction between two different methods of studying the problems of metaphysics, forming the radical difference between the two great schools into which metaphysicians are fundamentally divided. One of these I shall call, for distinction, the introspective method; the other, the psychological.

The elaborate and acute criticism on the philosophy of Locke, which is perhaps the most striking portion of M. Cousin’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, sets out with a remark which sums up the characteristics of the two great schools of mental philosophy, by a summary description of their methods. M. Cousin observes, that Locke went wrong from the beginning, by placing before himself, as the question to be first resolved, the origin of our ideas.[*] This was commencing at the wrong end. The proper course would have been to begin by determining what the ideas now are; to ascertain what it is that consciousness actually tells us, postponing till afterwards the attempt to frame a theory concerning the origin of any of the mental phænomena.

I accept the question as M. Cousin states it, and I contend, that no attempt to determine what are the direct revelations of consciousness, can be successful, or entitled to any regard, unless preceded by what M. Cousin says ought only to follow it, an inquiry into the origin of our acquired ideas. For we have it not in our power to ascertain, by any direct process, what Consciousness told us at the time when its revelations were in their pristine purity. It only offers itself to our inspection as it exists now, when those original revelations are overlaid and buried under a mountainous heap of acquired notions and perceptions.

It seems to M. Cousin that if we examine, with care and minuteness, our present states of consciousness, distinguishing and defining every ingredient which we find to enter into them—every element that we seem to recognise as real, and cannot, by merely concentrating our attention upon it, analyse into anything simpler—we reach the ultimate and primary truths, which are the sources of all our knowledge, and which cannot be Edition: current; Page: [140] denied or doubted without denying or doubting the evidence of consciousness itself, that is, the only evidence which there is for anything. I maintain this to be a misapprehension of the conditions imposed on inquirers by the difficulties of psychological investigation. To begin the inquiry at the point where M. Cousin takes it up, is in fact to beg the question. For he must be aware, if not of the fact, at least of the belief of his opponents, that the laws of the mind—the laws of association according to one class of thinkers, the Categories of the Understanding according to another—are capable of creating, out of those data of consciousness which are uncontested, purely mental conceptions, which become so identified in thought with all our states of consciousness, that we seem, and cannot but seem, to receive them by direct intuition; and, for example, the belief in Matter, in the opinion of some of these thinkers, is, or at least may be, thus produced. Idealists, and Sceptics, contend that the belief in Matter is not an original fact of consciousness, as our sensations are, and is therefore wanting in the requisite which, in M. Cousin’s and Sir W. Hamilton’s opinion, gives to our subjective convictions objective authority. Now, be these persons right or wrong, they cannot be refuted in the mode in which M. Cousin and Sir W. Hamilton attempt to do so—by appealing to Consciousness itself. For we have no means of interrogating consciousness in the only circumstances in which it is possible for it to give a trustworthy answer. Could we try the experiment of the first consciousness in any infant—its first reception of the impressions which we call external; whatever was present in that first consciousness would be the genuine testimony of Consciousness, and would be as much entitled to credit, indeed there would be as little possibility of discrediting it, as our sensations themselves. But we have no means of now ascertaining, by direct evidence, whether we were conscious of outward and extended objects when we first opened our eyes to the light. That a belief or knowledge of such objects is in our consciousness now, whenever we use our eyes or our muscles, is no reason for concluding that it was there from the beginning, until we have settled the question whether it could possibly have been brought in since. If any mode can be pointed out in which within the compass of possibility it might have been brought in, the hypothesis must be examined and disproved before we are entitled to conclude that the conviction is an original deliverance of consciousness. The proof that any of the alleged Universal Beliefs, or Principles of Common Sense, are affirmations of consciousness, supposes two things; that the beliefs exist, and that lthere are no means by which they couldl have been acquired. The first is in most cases undisputed, but the second is a subject of inquiry which often taxes the utmost resources of psychology. Edition: current; Page: [141] Locke was therefore right in believing that “the origin of our ideas” is the main stress of the problem of mental science, and the subject which must be first considered in forming the theory of the Mind.[*] Being unable to examine the actual contents of our consciousness until our earliest, which are necessarily our most firmly knit associations, those which are most intimately interwoven with the original data of consciousness, are fully formed, we cannot study the original elements of mind in the facts of our present consciousness. Those original elements can only come to light as residual phænomena, by a previous study of the modes of generation of the mental facts which are confessedly not original; a study sufficiently thorough to enable us to apply its results to the convictions, beliefs, or supposed intuitions which seem to be original, and to determine whether some of them may not have been generated in the same modes, so early as to have become inseparable from our consciousness before the time mto which memory goes backm. This mode of ascertaining the original elements of mind I calln, for want of a better word,n the psychological, as distinguished from the simply introspective mode. It is the known and approved method of physical science, adapted to the necessities of psychology.*

It might be supposed from incidental expressions of Sir W. Hamilton, that he was alive to the need of a methodical scientific investigation, to determine what portion of our “natural beliefs” are really original, and what are inferences, or acquired impressions, mistakenly deemed intuitive. To the declarations already quoted to this effect, the following may be added. Speaking of Descartes’ plan, of commencing philosophy by a reconsideration Edition: current; Page: [142] of all our fundamental opinions,[*] he says, “There are among our prejudices, or pretended cognitions, a great many hasty conclusions, the investigation of which requires much profound thought, skill, and acquired knowledge. . . . To commence philosophy by such a review, it is necessary for a man to be a philosopher before he can attempt to become one.”* And he elsewhere bestows high praise upon Aristotle for not falling “into the error of many modern philosophers, in confounding the natural and necessary with the habitual and acquired connexions of thought,” nor attempting “to evolve the conditions under which we think from the tendencies generated by thinking;”† a praise which cannot be bestowed on our author himself. But, notwithstanding the ample concession which he appeared to make when he admitted that the problem was one of extreme difficulty, essentially scientific, and ought to be reserved for philosophers, I regret to say that he as completely sets at naught the only possible method of solving it, as M. Cousin himself. He even expresses his contempt for that method. Speaking of Extension, he says, “It is truly an idle problem to attempt imagining the steps by which we may be supposed to have acquired the notion of Extension, when, in fact, we are unable to imagine to ourselves the possibility of that notion not being always in our possession.”‡ That things which we “are unable to imagine to ourselves the possibility of,” may be, and many of them must be, true, was a doctrine which we thought we had learnt from the author of the Philosophy of the Conditioned. That we cannot imagine a time at which we had no knowledge of Extension, is no evidence that there has not been such a time. There are mental laws, recognised by Sir W. Hamilton himself, which would inevitably cause such a state of things to become inconceivable to us, even if it once existed. There are artificial inconceivabilities equal in strength to any natural. Indeed it is questionable if there are any natural inconceivabilities, or if anything is inconceivable to us for any other reason than because Nature does not afford the combinations in experience which are necessary to make it conceivable.

I do not think that there can be found, in all Sir W. Hamilton’s writings, a single instance in which, before registering a belief as a part of our consciousness from the beginning, he thinks it necessary to ascertain that it ocannoto have grown up subsequently. He demands, indeed, “that no fact be assumed as a fact of consciousness but what is ultimate and simple.” But Edition: current; Page: [143] to pronounce it ultimate, the only condition he requires is that we be not able to “reduce it to a generalization from experience.” This condition is realized by its possessing the “character of necessity.” “It must be impossible not to think it. In fact, by its necessity alone can we recognise it as an original datum of intelligence, and distinguish it from any mere result of generalization and custom.”* In this Sir W. Hamilton is at one with the whole of his own section of the philosophical world; with Reid, with Stewart, with Cousin, with Whewell, pand we may add, with Kantp.† The test by which they all decide a belief to be a part of our primitive consciousness—an original intuition of the mind—is the necessity of thinking it. Their proof that we must always, from the beginning, have had the belief, is the impossibility of getting rid of it now. This argument, applied to any of the disputed questions of philosophy, is doubly illegitimate: neither the major nor the minor premise is admissible. For, in the first place, the very fact that the qquestions areq disputed, disproves the alleged impossibility. Those against rwhose dissentr it is needful to defend the belief which Edition: current; Page: [144] is affirmed to be necessary, are unmistakeable examples that it is not necessary. It may be a necessary belief to those who think it so; they may personally be quite incapable of not holding it. But even if this incapability extended to all mankind, it might be merely the effect of a strong association; Edition: current; Page: [145] like the impossibility of believing Antipodes; and it cannot be shown that even where the impossibility is, for the time, real, it might not, as in that case, be overcome. The history of science teems with inconceivabilities which have been conquered, and supposed necessary truths which have first ceased to be thought necessary, then to be thought true, and have finally come to be deemed impossible.* These philosophers, Edition: current; Page: [146] therefore, and among them Sir W. Hamilton, mistake altogether the true conditions of psychological investigation, when, instead of proving a belief to be an original fact of consciousness by showing that it scannot, by any known means,s have been acquired, they conclude that it was not acquired, for the reason, often false, and never sufficiently substantiated, that our consciousness cannot get rid of it now.

Since, then, Sir W. Hamilton not only neglects, but repudiates, the only scientific mode of ascertaining our original beliefs, what does he mean by Edition: current; Page: [147] treating the question as one of science, and in what manner does he apply science to it? Theoretically, he claims for science an exclusive jurisdiction over the whole domain, but practically he gives it nothing to do except to settle the relations of the supposed intuitive beliefs among themselves. It is the province of science, he thinks, to resolve some of these beliefs into others. He prescribes, as tat rule of judgment, what he calls “the Law of Parcimony.” No greater number of ultimate beliefs are to be postulated than is strictly indispensable. Where one such belief can be looked upon as a particular case of another—the belief in Matter, for instance, of the cognition of a Non-ego—the more special of the two necessities of thought merges in the more general one. This identification of two necessities of thought, and subsumption of one of them under the other, he is not wrong in regarding as a function of science. He affords an example of it, when, in a manner which we shall hereafter characterize, he denies to Causation the character, which philosophers of his school have commonly assigned to it, of an ultimate belief, and attempts to identify it with another and more general law of thought. This limited function is the only one which, it seems to me, is reserved for science in Sir W. Hamilton’s mode of studying the primary facts of consciousness. In the mode he practises of ascertaining them to be facts of consciousness, there is nothing for science to do. For, to call them so because in his opinion he himself, and those who agree with him, cannot get rid of the belief in them, does not seem exactly a scientific process.* It is, however, characteristic of what I have called the introspective, Edition: current; Page: [148] in contradistinction to the psychological, method of metaphysical inquiry. The difference between these methods will now be exemplified by showing them at work on a particular question, the most fundamental one in philosophy, the distinction between the Ego and the Non-ego.

We shall first examine what Sir W. Hamilton has done by his method, and shall afterwards attempt to exemplify the use which can be made of the other.

CHAPTER X: Sir William Hamilton’s View of the Different Theories Respecting the Belief in an External World

sir w. hamilton brings a very serious charge against the great majority of philosophers. He accuses them of playing fast and loose with the testimony of consciousness; rejecting it when it is inconvenient, but appealing to it as conclusive when they have need of it to establish any of their opinions. “No philosopher has ever openly thrown off allegiance to the authority of consciousness.”* No one denies “that as all philosophy is evolved from consciousness, so, on the truth of consciousness, the possibility of all philosophy is dependent.”† But if any testimony of consciousness be supposed false,

That nearly all philosophers have merited this imputation, our author Edition: current; Page: [150] endeavours to show by a classified enumeration of the various theories which they have maintained respecting the perception of material objects. No instance can be better suited for trying the dispute. The question of an external world is the great battle-ground of metaphysics, not so much from its importance in itself, as because while it relates to the most familiar of all our mental acts, it forcibly illustrates the characteristic differences between the two metaphysical methods.

“We are immediately conscious in perception,” says Sir W. Hamilton,

Or rather (he should have said) such is the answer we receive, when we examine and interrogate our present consciousness. To assert more than this, merely on this evidence, is to beg the question instead of solving it.

This is, of course, the author’s own doctrine.

(But it is very far from impossible to believe that something which we now confound with consciousness, may have been altogether foreign to consciousness awhen this was unmingled with acquired impressionsa.)

The Realists, or Substantialists, those who do believe in a substratum, but reject the testimony of consciousness to an immediate cognizance of an Edition: current; Page: [152] Ego and a Non-ego, our author divides into two classes, according as they admit the real existence of two substrata, or only of one. These last, whom he denominates Unitarians or Monists, either acknowledge the ego alone, or the non-ego alone, or regard the two as identical. Those who admit the ego alone, looking upon the non-ego as a product evolved from it (i.e. as something purely mental) are the Idealists. Those who admit the non-ego alone, and regard the ego as evolved from it (i.e. as purely material) are the Materialists. The third class acknowledge the equipoise of the two, but deny their antithesis, maintaining “that mind and matter are only phænomenal modifications of the same common substance. This is the doctrine of Absolute Identity, a doctrine of which the most illustrious representatives among recent philosophers are Schelling, Hegel, and Cousin.”*

There remain those who admit the coequal reality of the Ego and the Non-ego, of mind and matter, and also their distinctness from one another, but deny that they are known immediately. These are Dualists, but

In our own country the best known and typical specimen of this mode of Edition: current; Page: [153] thinking, is Brown; and it is upon him that our author discharges most of the shafts which this class of thinkers, as being the least distant from him of all his opponents, copiously receive from him.*

With regard to the various opinions thus enumerated, I shall first make a remark of general application, and shall then advert particularly to the objects of Sir W. Hamilton’s more especial animadversion, the Cosmothetic Idealists.

Concerning all these classes of thinkers, except the Natural Realists, Sir W. Hamilton’s statement is, that they deny some part of the testimony of consciousness, and by so doing invalidate the appeals which they nevertheless make to consciousness, as a voucher for their own doctrines. If he had said that they all run counter, in some particular, to the general sentiment of mankind—that they all deny some common opinion, some natural belief (meaning by natural, not one which rests on a necessity of our nature, but merely one which, in common with innumerable varieties of false opinion, mankind have a strong tendency to adopt); had he said only this, no one could have contested its truth; but it would not have been a reductio ad absurdum of his opponents. For all philosophers, Sir W. Hamilton as much as the rest, deny some common opinions, which others might call natural beliefs, but which those who deny them consider, and have a right to consider, as natural prejudices; held, nevertheless, by the generality of Edition: current; Page: [154] mankind in the persuasion of their being self-evident, or, in other words, intuitive, and deliverances of consciousness. Some of the points on which Sir W. Hamilton is at issue with natural beliefs, relate to the very subject in hand—the perception of external things. We have found him maintaining that we do not see the sun, but an image of it, and that no two persons see the same sun; in contradiction to as clear a case as could be given of natural belief. And we shall find him affirming, in opposition to an equally strong natural belief, that we immediately perceive extension only in our own organs, and not in the objects we see or touch. Beliefs, therefore, which seem among the most natural that can be entertained, are sometimes, in his opinion, delusive; and he has told us that to discriminate which these are, is not within the competence of everybody, but only of philosophers. He would say, of course, that the beliefs which he rejects were not in our consciousness originally. And nearly all his opponents say the same thing of those which they reject. Those, indeed, who, like Kant, believe that there are elements present, even at the first moment of internal consciousness, which do not exist in the object, but are derived from the mind’s own laws, are fairly open to Sir W. Hamilton’s criticism. It is not my business to justify, in point of consistency, any more than of conclusiveness, theb reasoning, by which Kant, after getting rid of the outward reality of all the attributes of Body, persuades himself that he demonstrates the externality of Body itself.* But, as regards all existing schools of thought not descended from Kant, Sir W. Hamilton’s accusation is without ground.

There is something more to be said respecting the mixed multitude of metaphysicians whom our author groups together under the title of Cosmothetic Idealists, and whose mode of thought he judges more harshly than that of any other school. He represents them as holding the doctrine that we perceive external objects, not by an immediate, but by a mediate or representative perception. And he recognises three divisions of them, according to three different forms in which this hypothesis may be entertained.† The supposed representative object may be regarded, first, as not a Edition: current; Page: [155] state of mind, but something else; either external to the mind, like the species sensibiles of some of the ancients, and the “motions of the brain” of some of the early moderns;[*] or in the mind, like the Ideas of Berkeley. Secondly, it may be regarded as a state of mind, but a state different from the mind’s act in perceiving or being conscious of it: of this kind, perhaps, are the Ideas of Locke. Or, thirdly, as a state of mind identical with the act by which we are said to perceive it. This last is the form in which, as Sir W. Hamilton truly says, the doctrine was held by Brown.*

Now, the first two of these three opinions may fairly be called what our author calls them—theories of mediate or representative perception. The object which, in these theories, the mind is supposed directly to perceive, is a tertium quid, which by the one theory is, and by the other is not, a state or modification of mind, but in both is distinct equally from the act of perception, and from the external object: and the mind is cognizant of the external object vicariously, through this third thing, of which alone it has immediate cognizance—of which alone, therefore, it is, in Sir W. Hamilton’s sense of the word, conscious. Against both these theories Reid, Stewart, and our author, are completely triumphant, and I am in no way interested in pressing for a rehearing of the cause.

But the third opinion, which is Brown’s, cannot with any justness of thought or propriety of language be called a theory of mediate or representative perception. Had Sir W. Hamilton taken half the pains to understand Brown which he took to understand far inferior thinkers, he never would have described Brown’s doctrine in terms so inappropriate.

Representative knowledge is always understood by our author to be knowledge of a thing by means of an image of it; by means of something which is like the thing itself. “Representative knowledge,” he says, “is only deserving of the name of knowledge in so far as it is conformable with the intuitions which it represents.”† The representation must stand in a relation to what it represents, like that of a picture to its original: as the representation in memory of a past impression of sense, does to that past impression; as a representation in imagination does to a supposed possible presentation of sense; and as the Ideas of the earlier Cosmothetic Idealists were supposed to do to the outward objects of which they were the image or impress. But the Mental Modifications of Brown and those who think with him, are not supposed to bear any resemblance to the objects which excite them.[†] These objects are supposed to be unknown to us, except as the causes of the mental modifications. The only relation between the two is Edition: current; Page: [156] that of cause and effect. Brown, being free from the vulgar errord that a cause must be like its effect, and admitting no knowledge of the cause (beyond its bare existence) except the effect itself, naturally found nothing in it which it was possible to compare with the effect, or in virtue of which any resemblance could be affirmed to exist between the two. In another place, Sir W. Hamilton makes an ostensible distinction between the fact of resembling, and that of truly representing, the objects; but defines the last expression to mean, affording us “such a knowledge of their nature as we should have were an immediate intuition of the reality in itself competent to man.”* No one who is at all acquainted with Brown’s opinions will pretend him to have maintained that we have anything of this sort. He did not believe that the mental modification afforded us any knowledge whatever of the nature of the external object. There is no need to quote passages in proof of this; it is a fact patent to whoever reads his Lectures.[*] It is the more strange that Sir W. Hamilton should have failed to recognise this opinion of Brown, because it is exactly the opinion which he himself holds respecting our knowledge of objects in respect of their Secondary Qualities. These, he says, are “in their own nature occult and inconceivable,” and are known only in their effects on us, that is, by the mental modifications which they produce.†

Further, Brown’s is not only not a theory of representative perception, but it is not even a theory of mediate perception. He assumes no tertium quid, no object of thought intermediate between the mind and the outward object. He recognises only the perceptive act; which with him means, and is always declared to mean, the mind itself perceiving. It will hardly be pretended that the mind itself is the “representative object” interposed by him between itself and the outward thing which is acting upon it; and if it is not, there certainly is no other. But if Brown’s theory is not a theory of mediate perception, it loses all that essentially distinguishes it from Sir W. Hamilton’s own doctrine. For Brown, also, thinks that we have, on the occasion of certain sensations, an instantaneous and irresistible conviction of an outward object. And if this conviction is immediate, and necessitated by the constitution of our nature, in what does it differ from our author’s direct consciousness? Consciousness, immediate knowledge, and intuitive knowledge, are, Sir W. Hamilton tells us, convertible expressions; and if it be granted that whenever our senses are affected by a material object, we immediately and intuitively recognise that object as existing and distinct Edition: current; Page: [157] from us, it requires a great deal of ingenuity to make out any substantial difference between this immediate intuition of an external world, and Sir W. Hamilton’s direct perception of it.

The distinction which our author makes, resolves itself, as explained by him, into the difference of which he has said so much, but of which he seemed to have so confused an idea, between Belief and Knowledge. In Brown’s opinion,[*] and I will add, in Reid’s, the mental modification which we experience from the presence of an object, raises in us an irresistible belief that the object exists. No, says Sir W. Hamilton: it is not a belief, but a knowledge: we have indeed a belief, and our knowledge is certified by the belief; but this belief of ours regarding the object is a belief that we know it.

Accordingly, Brown is rebuked because, while rejecting our natural belief that we know the external object, he yet accepts our natural belief that it exists as a sufficient warrant for its existence. But what real distinction is there between Brown’s intuitive belief of the existence of the object, and Sir W. Hamilton’s intuitive knowledge of it? Just three pages previous, Sir W. Hamilton had said, “Our knowledge rests ultimately on certain facts of consciousness, which as primitive, and consequently incomprehensible, are given less in the form of cognitions than of beliefs.”† The consciousness of an external world is, on his own showing, primitive and incomprehensible; it therefore is less a cognition than a belief. But if we do not so much Edition: current; Page: [158] know as believe an external world, what is meant by saying that we believe that we know it? Either we do not know, but only believe it, and if so, Brown and the other philosophers assailed were right; or knowledge and belief, in the case of ultimate facts, are identical, and then, believing that we know is only believing that we believe, which according to our author’s and to all rational principles, is but another word for simple believing.

It would not be fair, however, to hold our author to his own confused use of the terms Belief and Knowledge. He never succeeds in making anything like an intelligible distinction between these two notions considered generally, but in particular cases we may be able to find something which he is attempting to express by them. In the present case his meaning seems to be, that Brown’s Belief in an external object, though instantaneous and irresistible, was supposed to be suggested to the mind by its own sensation; ewhich suggestion Brown regarded as a case of a more general law,[*] whereby every fact suggests the intuitive belief of a cause or antecedent with which it is invariably connected:e while Sir W. Hamilton’s Knowledge of the object is supposed to arise along with the sensation, and to be co-ordinate with it. And this is what Sir W. Hamilton means by calling Brown’s a mediate, his own an immediate cognition of the object: the real difference being that, on Sir W. Hamilton’s theory, the cognition of the ego or foff its modification, and that of the non-ego, are simultaneous, while on Brown’s the one immediately precedes the other. Our author expresses this meaning, though much less clearly, when he declares Brown’s theory to be “that in perception, the external reality is not the immediate object of consciousness, but that the ego is only determined in some unknown manner to represent the non-ego, which representation, though only a modification of mind or self, we are compelled by an illusion of our nature, to mistake for a modification of matter, or non-self.”* This being our author’s conception of the doctrine which he has to refute, let us see in what manner he proceeds to refute it.

“You will remark,” he says,

To this argument (of the worth of which something has been said already) I shall return presently. But he subjoins a second.

And further on:

Let me first remark that this reasoning assumes the whole point in dispute; it presupposes that the supposition which it is brought to disprove is impossible. The theory of the third form of Cosmothetic Idealism is, that though we are conscious only of the sensations which an object gives us, we are determined by a necessity of our nature, which some call an instinct, others an intuition, others a fundamental law of belief, to ascribe these sensations to something external, as their substratum, or as their cause. There is surely nothing à priori impossible in this supposition. The supposed instinct or intuition seems to be of the same family with many other Laws of Thought, or Natural Beliefs, which our author not only admits without scruple, but enjoins obedience to, under the usual sanction, that otherwise our intelligence must be a lie. In the present case, however, he, Edition: current; Page: [160] without the smallest warrant, excludes this from the list of possible hypotheses. He says that we cannot infer a reality from a mental representation, unless we already know the reality independently of the mental representation. Now he could hardly help being aware that this is the very matter in dispute. Those who hold the opinion he argues against, do not admit the premise upon which he argues. They say that we may be, and are, necessitated to infer a cause, of which we know nothing whatever except its effect. And why not? Sir W. Hamilton thinks us entitled to infer a substance from attributes, though he allows that we know nothing of the substance except its attributes.

But this is not the worst, and there are few specimens of our author in which his deficiencies as a philosopher stand out in a stronger light. As Burke in politics, so Sir W. Hamilton in metaphysics, was too often a polemic rather than a connected thinker: the generalizations of both, often extremely valuable, seem less the matured convictions of a scientific mind, than weapons snatched up for the service of a particular quarrel. If Sir W. Hamilton can only seize upon something which will strike a hard blow at an opponent, he seldom troubles himself how much of his own edifice may be knocked down by the shock. Had he examined the argument he here uses, sufficiently to determine whether he could stand by it as a deliberate opinion, he would have perceived that it committed him to the doctrine that there is no such thing as representative knowledge. But it is one of Sir W. Hamilton’s most positive tenets that there is representative knowledge, and that Memory, among other things, is an example of it. Let us turn back to his discussion of that subject, and see what he, at that time, considered representative knowledge to be.

Had Sir W. Hamilton totally forgotten all this, when a few lectures afterwards, having then in front of him a set of antagonists who needed the theory here laid down, he repudiated it—denying altogether the possibility of the mental state so truly and clearly expressed in this passage, and affirming that we cannot possibly recognise a mental modification to be representative of something else, unless we have a present knowledge of that something else, otherwise obtained?[*] With merely the alteration of putting instead of a past state of mind, a present external object, the Cosmothetic Idealists might borrow his language down to the minutest detail. They, too, believe that the mental modification is a present state of mind, which we are conscious of, not as absolute, but as relative to, and representing, “an external object, and accompanied with the belief that the object as now represented, actually” is: that we know something (viz. matter) only “as represented in the present mental modification,” and that “its existence is only an inference, resting on the belief that the mental modification truly represents what is in itself beyond the sphere of knowledge.” They do not, strictly speaking, require quite so much as this: for the word “represents,” especially with “truly” joined to it, suggests the idea of a resemblance, such as does, in reality, exist between the picture of a fact in memory, and the present impression to which it corresponds; but the Cosmothetic Idealists only maintain that the mental modification arises from something, and that the reality of this unknown something is testified by a natural belief. That they apply to one case the same theory which our author applies to another, does not, of course, prove them to be right; but it proves the suicidal character (to use one of his favourite expressions)[†] of our author’s argument, when he scouts the supposition of an instinctive inference from a known effect to an unknown cause, as an hypothesis which can in no possible case be legitimate; forgetful that its legitimacy is required by his own psychology, one of the leading doctrines of which is entirely grounded on it.

It is not only in treating of Memory, that Sir W. Hamilton requires a process of thought precisely similar to that which, when employed by opponents, he declares to be radically illegitimate. I have already mentioned[*] Edition: current; Page: [162] that in his opinion our perceptions of sight are not perceptions of the outward object, but of its image, a “modification of light in immediate relation to our organ of vision,” and that no two persons see the same sun; propositions in direct conflict with the “natural beliefs” to which he so often refers, and to which Reid, not without reason, appeals in this instance;[†] for assuredly people in general are as firmly convinced that what they see is the real sun, as that what they touch is the real table. Let us hear Sir W. Hamilton once more on this subject.

Here is a case in which we know something to be a representation, though, in our author’s opinion, that which it represents not only is not, at the present time, known to us, but never was, and never will be so. The Cosmothetic Idealists desire only the same liberty which Sir W. Hamilton here exercises, of concluding from a phænomenon directly known, to something unknown which is the cause of the phænomenon. They postulate the possibility that what our author holds to be true of the non-ego at a distance, may be true of the non-ego at the point of sense, namely, that it is not known immediately, but as a necessary inference from what is known. To shut the door upon this supposition as inherently inadmissible, and make an exactly similar one ourselves as often as our system requires it, does not befit a philosopher, or a critic of philosophers.†

In the controversy with Brown, which forms the second paper in the Discussions,[*] and much of which his reproduced verbatim inh our author’s Lectures,[†] the argument which I have now examined does not iappear.i In the room of it, we have the following argument. If Brown is right, “the mind either knows the reality of what it represents, or it does not.” The first supposition is dismissed for the absurdities it involves, and because it is inconsistent with Brown’s doctrine. But if the mind does not know the reality of what it represents, the “alternative remains, that the mind is blindly determined to represent, and truly to represent, the reality which it does not know.” And if so, the mind “either blindly determines itself” or “is blindly determined” by a supernatural power. The latter supposition he rejects because it involves a standing miracle; the former as “utterly irrational, Edition: current; Page: [164] inasmuch as it would explain an effect, by a cause wholly inadequate to its production. On this alternative, knowledge is supposed to be the effect of ignorance,—intelligence of stupidity—life of death.”* All this artillery is directed against the simple supposition that by a law of our nature, a modification of our own minds may assure us of the existence of an unknown cause. The author’s persistent ignorance of Brown’s opinion isj surprising. Brown knows nothing of the mental modification as truly representing the unknown reality; he claims no knowledge as arising out of ignorance, no intelligence growing out of stupidity. He claims only an instinctive belief implanted by nature; and the menacing alternative, that the mind must either determine itself to this belief, or be determined to it by a special interference of Providence, could be applied with exactly as much justice to the earth’s motion. But though Sir W. Hamilton’s weapon falls harmless upon Brown, it recoils with terrible effect upon his own theories of representative cognition. A remembrance, for example, does represent, and truly represent, the past fact remembered: and we do, through that representation, mediately know the past fact, which in any other sense of the word, according to our author, we do not know. Although therefore the conclusion “that the mind is blindly determined to represent, and truly to represent, the reality which it does not know,” is not obligatory upon Brown, it is upon Sir W. Hamilton. On his own showing he has to choose between the absurdity that the mind “blindly determines itself,” and the perpetual miracle of its being determined by divine interference. This is one of the weakest exhibitions of Sir W. Hamilton that I have met with in his writings. For the difficulty by which he thought to overwhelm Brown, and which does not touch Brown, but falls back upon himself, is no difficulty at all, but the merest moonshine. The transcendent absurdity, as he considers it, that the mind should be blindly determined to represent, and truly to represent, the reality which “it does not know,” instead of an absurdity, is the exact expression of a fact. It is a literal description of what takes place in an act of memory. As often as we recollect a past event, and on the faith of that recollection, believe or know that the event really happened, the mind, by its constitution, is “blindly determined to represent, and truly to represent” a fact which, except as witnessed by that representation, “it does not know.”†

It may generally, I think, be observed of Sir W. Hamilton, that his most recherché arguments are his weakest: they certainly are so in the present case. It would have been wiser in him to have been contented with his first and simpler argument, that Brown’s doctrine conflicts with consciousness, Edition: current; Page: [166] inasmuch as “we are conscious of no reference, of no representation:”[*] or, to speak more clearly, we are not aware that the existence of an external reality is suggested to us by our sensations. We seem to become aware of both at once.

The fact is as alleged, but it proves nothing, being consistent with Brown’s doctrine. Whether the belief in a non-ego arose in our first act of perception, simultaneously with the sensation, or not until suggested by the sensation, we have, as I before remarked, no means of directly ascertaining.[†] As far as depends on direct evidence, the subject is inscrutable. But this we may know, that even if the suggestion theory were true, the belief suggested would by the laws of association become so intimately blended with the sensation suggesting it, that long before we were able to reflect on our mental operations, we should have become entirely incapable of thinking of the two things as other than simultaneous. An appeal to consciousness avails nothing, when, even though the doctrine opposed were true, the appeal might equally, and with the same plausibility, be made. The facts are Edition: current; Page: [167] alike consistent with both opinions, and, for aught that appears, Brown’s is as likely to be true as Sir W. Hamilton’s. The difference between them, as already observed, is extremely small, and I will add, supremely unimportant. If the reality of matter is certified to us by an irresistible belief, it matters little whether we reach the belief by two steps, or by only one.

The really important difference of opinion on the subject of Perception, between Brown and Sir W. Hamilton, is far other than this. It is, that Sir W. Hamilton believes us to have a direct intuition not solely of the reality of matter, but also of its primary qualities, Extension, Solidity, Figure, &c., which, according to him, we know as in the material object, and not as modifications of ourselves: while Brown believed that matter is suggested to us only as an unknown something, all whose attributes, as known or conceived by us, are resolvable into affections of our senses. In Brown’s opinion we are cognizant of a non-ego in the perceptive act, only in the indefinite form of something external; all else we are able to know of it is only that it produces certain affections in us: which is also our author’s opinion as regards the Secondary Qualities. The difference therefore, between Brown and Sir W. Hamilton, is not of the kind which Sir W. Hamilton considers it to be, but consists mainly in this, that Brown really held what Sir W. Hamilton held only verbally, the doctrine of the Relativity ofn our knowledge. I shall attempt, further on, to show that on the point on which they really differed, Brown was right, and Sir W. Hamilton totally wrong.*

The considerations which have now been adduced are subversive of a great mass of triumphant animadversion by our author on the ignorance Edition: current; Page: [168] and carelessness of Brown, and some milder criticism on Reid. Sir W. Hamilton thinks it astonishing that neither of these philosophers should have recognised Natural Realism, and the third form of Cosmothetic Idealism, as two different modes of thought. Reid, whom he makes a great point of claiming as a Natural Realist, was, he says, quite unaware of the possibility of the other opinion, and did not guard against it by his language, leaving it, therefore, open to dispute whether, instead of being a Natural Realist, he was not, like Brown, a Cosmothetic Idealist of the third class; while Brown, on the other hand, never conceived Natural Realism, nor thought it possible that Reid held any other than his own opinion, as he invariably affirms him to have done.[*] I apprehend that both philosophers are entirely clear of the blame thus imputed to them. Reid never imagined Brown’s doctrine, nor Brown Reid’s, as anything different from his own, because in truth they were not different. If the distinction between a Natural Realist and a Cosmothetic Idealist of the third class, be that the latter believes the existence of the external object to be inferred from, or suggested by, our sensations, while the former holds it to be neither the one nor the other, but to be apprehended in consciousness simultaneously and co-ordinately with the sensations, Reid was as much a Cosmothetic Idealist as Brownp. The question does not concern philosophy, but the history of philosophy, which is Sir W. Hamilton’s strongest point, and was not at all a strong point with either Brown or Reid; but the matter of fact is worth the few pages necessary for clearing it up, because Sir W. Hamilton’s vast and accurate learning goes near to obtaining for his statements, on any such matter, implicit confidence, and it is therefore important to show that even where he is strongest, he is sometimes wrong.

In the severe criticism on Brown from which I have quoted, and which, though in some respects unjust, in others I cannot deny to be well merited, some of the strongest expressions have reference to the gross misunderstanding of Reid, of which Brown is alleged to have been guilty in not perceiving him to have been a Natural Realist. “We proceed,” says our author,

And he did, in time, feel some misgiving as to his “own perspicacity.” When, in preparing an edition of Reid, he was obliged to look more closely into that author’s statements, we find a remarkable lowering of the high tone of these sentences; and he felt obliged, in revising the paper for the Discussions, to write “This is too strong,” after a passage in which he had said that “Brown’s interpretation of the fundamental tenet of Reid’s philosophy is not a simple misconception, but an absolute reversal of its real and even unambiguous import.”† Well would it have been for Brown’s reputation if all Sir W. Hamilton’s attempts to bring home blunders to him, had been as little successful as this.

In the work in which Reid first brought his opinions before the world, the Inquiry into the Human Mind, his language is so unequivocally that of a Cosmothetic Idealist, that it admits of no mistake. It is almost more unambiguous than that of Brown himself. The external object is always said to be perceived through the medium of “natural signs:” these signs being our sensations, interpreted by a natural instinct. Our sensations, he says, belong to that

Again,

I must be excused if I am studious to prove, by an accumulation of citations, that these are not passing expressions of Reid, but the deliberate doctrine of his treatise.

This passage, with many others of like import, Sir W. Hamilton might usefully have meditated on, before he laid so much stress on the testimony of consciousness that the apprehension is not through the medium of a sign.

I doubt if it would be possible to extract from Brown himself an equal number of passagesq expressing as clearly and positively, and in terms as irreconcilable with any other opinion, the doctrine which our author terms the third form of Cosmothetic Idealism; in the exact shape, too, in which Edition: current; Page: [172] Brown held it, unencumbered by the gratuitous addition which Sir W. Hamilton fastens on him, that the sign must “truly represent” the thing signified,—a notion which Reid takes good care that he shall not be supposed to entertain, since he repeatedly declares that there is no resemblance between them. That Reid, at least when he wrote the Inquiry, was a Cosmothetic Idealist; that up to that time it had never occurred to him that the rconvictionsr of the existence and qualities of external objects could be regarded as anything but suggestions by, and conclusions from, our sensations—is too obvious to be questioned by any one who has the text fresh in his recollection. Accordingly Sir W. Hamilton acknowledges as much in his edition of Reid, both in the foot-notes and in the appended “Dissertations.” After restating his own doctrine, that our natural beliefs assure us of outward objects, only by assuring us that we are immediately conscious of them, he adds, “Reid himself seems to have become obscurely aware of this condition: and though he never retracted his doctrine concerning the mere suggestion of extension, we find in his Essays on the Intellectual Powers assertions in regard to the immediate perception of external things, which would tend to show that his later views were more in unison with the necessary convictions of mankind.”* And in another place he says of the doctrine maintained by Reid “in his earlier work,” that it is one which “if he did not formally retract in his later writings, he did not continue to profess.”† It is hard that Brown should be charged with blundering to a degree which is “portentous” and “without a parallel in the whole history of philosophy,” for attributing to Reid an opinion which Sir W. Hamilton confesses that Reid maintained in one of his only two important writings, and did not retract in the other. But Sir W. Hamilton is still more wrong than he confesses. He is in a mistake when he says that Reid, though he did not retract the opinion, did not continue to profess it. For some reason, not apparent, he did cease to employ the word Suggestion. But he continued to use terms equivalent to it.

Of this passage even Sir W. Hamilton honestly says in a foot-note, that it “appears to be an explicit disavowal of the doctrine of an intuitive or immediate perception.”[*] Again:

All these are as unequivocal, and the last passage as full and precise a statement of Cosmothetic Idealism, as any in the Inquiry. In the “Dissertations” appended to Reid,¶ Sir W. Hamilton, who never fails in candour, acknowledges in the fullest manner the inferences which may be drawn from passages like these, but thinks that they are balanced by others which “seem to harmonize exclusively with the conditions of natural presentationism,”∥ and on the whole is “decidedly of opinion that, as the great end—the governing principle of Reid’s doctrine was to reconcile philosophy with the necessary convictions of mankind, he intended a doctrine of natural, consequently a doctrine of presentative, realism; and that he would have at once surrendered, as erroneous, every statement Edition: current; Page: [174] which was found at variance with such a doctrine.”* But it is clear that the doctrine of perception through natural signs did not, in Reid’s opinion, contradict “the necessary convictions of mankind;” being brought into harmony with them by his doctrine, that the signs, after they have served their purpose, are “forgot,” which, as he conclusively shows in many places, it was both natural and inevitable that they should be. The passages which Sir W. Hamilton cites as inconsistent with any doctrine but Natural Realism,[*] are those in which Reid affirms that we perceive objects immediately, and that the external things which really exist are the very ones which we perceive. But Reid evidently did not think these expressions inconsistent with the doctrine that the notion and belief of external objects are irresistibly suggested through natural signs. Having this notion and belief irresistibly suggested, is what he means by perceiving the external object. He says so in more than one of the passages I have just quoted: and neither in his chapter on Perception, nor anywhere else, does he speak of perception as implying anything more. In that chapter he says, “If we attend to that act of our mind which we call the perception of an external object of sense, we shall find in it these three things: First, some conception or notion of the object perceived; Secondly, a strong and irresistible conviction and belief of its present existence; and, Thirdly, that this conviction and belief are immediate, and not the effect of reasoning.”† We see in this as in a hundred other places, what Reid meant when he said that our perception of outward objects is immediate. He did not mean that it is not a conviction suggested by something else, but only that the conviction is not the effect of reasoning. “This conviction is not only irresistible, but it is immediate; that is, it is not by a train of reasoning and argumentation that we come to be convinced of the existence of what we perceive.”‡ As Nature has given us the signs, so it is by an original law of our nature that we are enabled to interpret them. When Reid means anything but this in contending for an immediate perception of objects, he merely means to deny that it takes place through an image in the brain or in the mind, as maintained by Cosmothetic Idealists of the first or the second class.

The only plausible argument produced by Sir W. Hamilton in proof of Reid’s Natural Realism, and against his having held, as Brown thought,[†] Brown’s own opinion, is, that when in the speculations of Arnauld he had before him exactly the same opinion, he failed to recognise it.§ But on a Edition: current; Page: [175] careful examination of Reid’s criticism on Arnauld, it will be seen, that as long as Reid had to do with Arnauld’s direct statement of his opinion, he found nothing sin it differents from his own; but was puzzled, and thought that Arnauld attempted to unite inconsistent opinions, because, after throwing over the “ideal theory,” and saying that the only real ideas are our perceptions, he maintained that it is still true, in a sense, that we do not perceive things directly, but through our ideas. What! asks Reid, do we perceive things through our perceptions? But if we merely put the word sensations instead of perceptions, the doctrine is exactly that of Reid in the Inquiry—that we perceive things through our sensations. Most probably Arnauld meant this, but was not so understood by Reid. If he meant anything else, his opinion was not the same as Reid’s, and we need no explanation of Reid’s not recognising it.[*]

One of the collateral indications that Reid’s opinion agreed with Brown’s, and not with Sir W. Hamilton’s, is that in treating this question he seldom or never uses the word Knowledge, but only Belief. On Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrine, the distinction between these two terms, however vaguely and mistily conceived by him, is indispensable. The total absence of any recognition of it in Reid, shows that of the two opinions, if there was one which he had never conceived the possibility of, it was not Brown’s, as Sir W. Hamilton supposes, but Sir W. Hamilton’s. In our author’s mind this indication ought to have decided the question: for in the case of another philosopher he, on precisely the same evidence, brings in a verdict of Cosmothetic Idealism. Krug’s system, he says, as first promulgated, “was, like Kant’s, a mere Cosmothetic Idealism; for while he allowed a knowledge of the internal world, he only allowed a belief of the external.”*

It is true, Reid did not believe in what our author terms “representative perception,” if by this be meant perception through an image in the mind, supposed, like the picture of a fact in memory, to be like its original. But neither (as I have repeatedly observed) did Brown. What Brown held was exactly the doctrine of Reid in the passages that I have extracted. He thought that certain sensations, irresistibly, and by a law of our nature, suggest, without any process of reasoning, and without the intervention of any tertium quid, the notion of something external, and an invincible belief in its real existence. If representative perception be this, both Reid and Brown believed in it: if anything else, Brown believed tint it no more than Reid. Not only was Reid a Cosmothetic Idealist of Brown’s exact type, but Edition: current; Page: [176] in stating his own doctrine, he has furnished, as far as I am aware, the clearest and best statement extant of their common opinion. They differed, indeed, as to our having, in this or in any other manner, an intuitive perception of any of the attributes of objects; Reid, like Sir W. Hamilton, affirming, while Brown denied, that we have a direct intuition of the Primary Qualities of bodies. But Brown did not deny, nor would Sir W. Hamilton accuse him of denying, the wide difference between his opinion and Reid’s on this latter point.

Before closing this chapter, I will notice the curious fact, that after insisting with so much emphasis upon the recognition of an Ego and a Non-ego as an element in all consciousness, Sir W. Hamilton is obliged to admit that the distinction is in certain cases a mistake, and that our consciousness sometimes recognises a Non-ego where there is only an Ego. It is a doctrine of his, repeated in many parts of his works, that in our internal consciousness there is no non-ego. Even the remembrance of a past fact, or the mental image of an absent object, is not a thing separable or distinguishable from the mind’s act in remembering, but is another name for that act itself. Now it is certain, that in thinking of an absent or an imaginary object, we naturally imagine ourselves to be thinking of an objective something, distinguishable from the thinking act. Sir W. Hamilton, being obliged to acknowledge this, resolves the difficulty in the very manner for which he so often rebukes other thinkers—by representing this apparent testimony of consciousness as a kind of illusion. “The object,” he says, “is in this case given as really identical with the conscious ego, but still consciousness distinguishes it, as an accident, from the ego, as the subject of that accident: it projects, as it were, this subjective phænomenon from itself,—views it at a distance,—in a word, objectifies it.”* But if, in one half of the domain of consciousness—the internal half—it is in the power of consciousness to “project” out of itself what is merely one of its own acts, and regard it as external and a non-ego, why are those accused of declaring consciousness a lie, who think that this may possibly be the case with the other half of its domain also, and that the non-ego altogether may be but a mode in which the mind represents to itself the possible modifications of the ego? How the truth stands in respect to this matter I will endeavour, in the following chapter, to investigate. For the present, I content myself with asking, why the same liberty in the interpretation of Consciousness, which Sir W. Hamilton’s own doctrine cannot dispense with, should be held to be an insurmountable objection to the ucounter-doctrine.u

CHAPTER XI: The Psychological Theory of the Belief in an External World

we have seen Sir W. Hamilton at work on the question of the reality of Matter, by the introspective method, and, as it seems, with little result. Let us now approach the same subject by the psychological. I proceed, therefore, to state the case of those who hold that the belief in an external world is not intuitive, but an acquired product.

This theory postulates the following psychological truths, all of which are proved by experience, and are not contested, though their force is seldom adequately felt, by Sir W. Hamilton and the other thinkers of the introspective school.

It postulates, first, that the human mind is capable of Expectation. In other words, that after having had actual sensations, we are capable of forming the conception of Possible sensations; sensations which we are not feeling at the present moment, but which we might feel, and should feel if certain conditions were present, the nature of which conditions we have, in many cases, learnt by experience.

It postulates, secondly, the laws of the Association of Ideas. So far as we are here concerned, these laws are the following: 1st. Similar phænomena tend to be thought of together. 2nd. Phænomena which have either been experienced or conceived in close contiguity to one another, tend to be thought of together. The contiguity is of two kinds; simultaneity, and immediate succession. Facts which have been experienced or thought of simultaneously, recall the thought of one another. Of facts which have been experienced or thought of in immediate succession, the antecedent, or the thought of it, recalls the thought of the consequent, but not conversely. 3rd. Associations produced by contiguity become more certain and rapid by repetition. When two phænomena have been very often experienced in conjunction, and have not, in any single instance, occurred separately either in experience or in thought, there is produced between them what has been called Inseparable, or less correctly, Indissoluble Association: by which is not meant that the association must inevitably last to the end of life—that no subsequent experience or process of thought can possibly Edition: current; Page: [178] avail to dissolve it; but only that as long as no such experience or process of thought has taken place, the association is irresistible; it is impossible for us to think the one thing disjoined from the other. 4th. When an association has acquired this character of inseparability—when the bond between the two ideas has been thus firmly riveted, not only does the idea called up by association become, in our consciousness, inseparable from the idea which suggested it, but the facts or phænomena answering to those ideas come at last to seem inseparable in existence: things which we are unable to conceive apart, appear incapable of existing apart; and the belief we have in their coexistence, though really a product of experience, seems intuitive. Innumerable examples might be given of this law. One of the most familiar, as well as the most striking, is that of our acquired perceptions of sight. Even those who, with Mr. Bailey, consider the perception of distance by the eye as not acquired, but intuitive, admit that there are many perceptions of sight which, though instantaneous and unhesitating, are not intuitive.[*] What we see is a very minute fragment of what we think we see. We see artificially that one thing is hard, another soft. We see artificially that one thing is hot, another cold. We see artificially that what we see is a book, or a stone, each of these being not merely an inference, but a heap of inferences, from the signs which we see, to things not visible. aWe see, and cannot help seeing, what we have learnt to infer, even when we know that the inference is erroneous, and that the apparent perception is deceptive. We cannot help seeing the moon larger when near the horizon, though we know that she is of precisely her usual size. We cannot help seeing a mountain as nearer to us and of less height, when we see it through a more than ordinarily transparent atmosphere.a

Setting out from these premises, the Psychological Theory maintains, that there are associations naturally and even necessarily generated by the order of our sensations and of our reminiscences of sensation, which, supposing no intuition of an external world to have existed in consciousness, would inevitably generate the belief, and would cause it to be regarded as an intuition.

What is it we meanb, or what is it which leads us to say, that the objects we perceive areb external to us, and not a part of our own thoughts? We mean, that there cis concernedc in our perceptions something which exists when we are not thinking of it; which existed before we had ever thought of Edition: current; Page: [179] it, and would exist if we were annihilated; and further, that there exist things which we never saw, touched, or otherwise perceived, and things which never have been perceived by man. This idea of something which is distinguished from our fleeting impressions by what, in Kantian language, is called Perdurability; something which is fixed and the same, while our impressions vary; something which exists whether we are aware of it or not, and which is always square (or of some other given figure) whether it appears to us square or round—constitutes altogether our idea of external substance. Whoever can assign an origin to this complex conception, has accounted for what we mean by the belief in matter. Now all this, according to the Psychological Theory, is but the form impressed by the known laws of association, upon the conception or notion, obtained by experience, of Contingent Sensations; by which are meant, sensations that are not in our present consciousness, and dindividuallyd never were in our consciousness at all, but which in virtue of the laws to which we have learnt by experience that our sensations are subject, we know that we should have felt under given supposable circumstances, and under these same circumstances, might still feel.

I see a piece of white paper on a table. I go into another roome. If the phænomenon always followed me, or if, when it did not follow me, I believed it to disappear è rerum naturâ, I should not believe it to be an external object. I should consider it as a phantom—a mere affection of my senses: I should not believe that there had been any Body there. But,e though I have ceased to see it, I am persuaded that the paper is still there. I no longer have the sensations which it gave me; but I believe that when I again place myself in the circumstances in which I had those sensations, that is, when I go again into the room, I shall again have them; and further, that there has been no intervening moment at which this would not have been the case. Owing to this fpropertyf of my mind, my conception of the world at any given instant consists, in only a small proportion, of present sensations. Of these I may at the time have none at all, and they are in any case a most insignificant portion of the whole which I apprehend. The conception I form of the world existing at any moment, comprises, along with the sensations I am feeling, a countless variety of possibilities of sensation: namely, the whole of those which past observation tells me that I could, under any supposable circumstances, experience at this moment, together with an indefinite and illimitable multitude of others which though I do not know that I could, yet it is possible that I might, experience in circumstances not known to me. These various possibilities are the important Edition: current; Page: [180] thing to me in the world. My present sensations are generally of little importance, and are moreover fugitive: the possibilities, on the contrary, are permanent, which is the character that mainly distinguishes our idea of Substance or Matter from our notion of sensation. These possibilities, which are conditional certainties, need a special name to distinguish them from mere vague possibilities, which experience gives no warrant for reckoning upon. Now, as soon as a distinguishing name is given, though it be only to the same thing regarded in a different aspect, one of the most familiar experiences of our mental nature teaches us, that the different name comes to be considered as the name of a different thing.

There is another important peculiarity of these certified or guaranteed possibilities of sensation; namely, that they have reference, not to single sensations, but to sensations joined together in groups. When we think of anything as a material substance, or body, we either have had, or we think that on some given supposition we should have, not some one sensation, but a great and even an indefinite number and variety of sensations, generally belonging to different senses, but so linked together, that the presence of one announces the possible presence at the very same instant of any or all of the rest. In our mind, therefore, not only is this particular Possibility of sensation invested with the quality of permanence when we are not actually feeling any of the sensations at all; but when we are feeling some of them, the remaining sensations of the group are conceived by us in the form of Present Possibilities, which might be realized at the very moment. And as this happens in turn to all of them, the group as a whole presents itself to the mind as permanent, in contrast not solely with the temporariness of my bodily presence, but also with the temporary character of each of the sensations composing the group; in other words, as a kind of permanent substratum, under a set of passing experiences or manifestations: which is another leading character of our idea of substance or matter, as distinguished from sensation.

Let us now take into consideration another of the general characters of our experience, namely, that in addition to fixed groups, we also recognise a fixed Order in our sensations; an Order of succession, which, when ascertained by observation, gives rise to the ideas of Cause and Effect, according to what I hold to be the true theory of that relation, and is gon any theoryg the source of all our knowledge hwhath causes produce what effects. Now, of what nature is this fixed order among our sensations? It is a constancy of antecedence and sequence. But the constant antecedence and sequence do not generally exist between one actual sensation and another. Very few such sequences are presented to us by experience. In almost all Edition: current; Page: [181] the constant sequences which occur in Nature, the antecedence and consequence do not obtain between sensations, but between the groups we have been speaking about, of which a very small portion is actual sensation, the greater part being permanent possibilities of sensation, evidenced to us by a small and variable number of sensations actually present. Hence, our ideas of causation, power, activity, do not become connected in thought with our sensations as actual at all, save in the few physiological cases where these figure by themselves as the antecedents in some uniform sequence. Those ideas become connected, not with sensations, but with groups of possibilities of sensation. The sensations conceived do not, to our habitual thoughts, present themselves as sensations actually experienced, inasmuch as not only any one or any number of them may be supposed absent, but none of them need be present. We find that the modifications which are taking place more or less regularly in our possibilities of sensation, are mostly quite independent of our consciousness, and of our presence or absence. Whether we are asleep or awake the fire goes out, and puts an end to one particular possibility of warmth and light. Whether we are present or absent the corn ripens, and brings a new possibility of food. Hence we speedily learn to think of Nature as made up solely of these groups of possibilities, and the active force in Nature as manifested in the modification of some of these by others. The sensations, though the original foundation of the whole, come to be looked upon as a sort of accident depending on us, and the possibilities as much more real than the actual sensations, nay, as the very realities of which these are only the representations, appearances, or effects. When this state of mind has been arrived at, then, and from that time forward, we are never conscious of a present sensation without instantaneously referring it to some one of the groups of possibilities into which a sensation of that particular description enters; and if we do not yet know to what group to refer it, we at least feel an irresistible conviction that it must belong to some group or other; i.e. that its presence proves the existence, here and now, of a great number and variety of possibilities of sensation, without which it would not have been. The whole set of sensations as possible, form a permanent background to any one or more of them that are, at a given moment, actual; and the possibilities are conceived as standing to the actual sensations in the relation of a cause to its effects, or of canvas to the figures painted on it, or of a root to the trunk, leaves, and flowers, or of a substratum to that which is spread over it, or, in transcendental language, of Matter to Form.

When this point has been reached, the Permanent Possibilities in question have assumed such unlikeness of aspect, and such difference of iapparent Edition: current; Page: [182] relationi to us, from any sensations, that it would be contrary to all we know of the constitution of human nature that they should not be conceived as, and believed to be, at least as different from sensations as sensations are from one another. Their groundwork in sensation is forgotten, and they are supposed to be something intrinsically distinct from it. We can withdraw ourselves from any of our (external) sensations, or we can be withdrawn from them by some other agency. But though the sensations cease, the possibilities remain in existence; they are independent of our will, our presence, and everything which belongs to us. We find, too, that they belong as much to other human or sentient beings as to ourselves. We find other people grounding their expectations and conduct upon the same permanent possibilities on which we ground ours. But we do not find them experiencing the same actual sensations. Other people do not have our sensations exactly when and as we have them: but they have our possibilities of sensation; whatever indicates a present possibility of sensations to ourselves, indicates a present possibility of similar sensations to them, except so far as their organs of sensation may vary from the type of ours. This puts the final seal to our conception of the groups of possibilities as the fundamental reality in Nature. The permanent possibilities are common to us and to our fellow-creatures; the actual sensations are not. That which other people become aware of when, and on the same grounds, as I do, seems more real to me than that which they do not know of unless I tell them. The world of Possible Sensations succeeding one another according to laws, is as much in other beings as it is in me; it has therefore an existence outside me; it is an External World.

If this explanation of the origin and growth of the idea of Matter, or External Nature, contains nothing at variance with natural laws, it is at least an admissible supposition, that the element of Non-ego which Sir W. Hamilton regards as an original datum of consciousness, and which we certainly do find in jwhat we now call ourj consciousness, may not be one of its primitive elements—may not have existed at all in its first manifestations. But if this supposition be admissible, it ought, on Sir W. Hamilton’s principles, to be received as true. The first of the laws laid down by him for the interpretation of Consciousness, the law (as he terms it) of Parcimony, forbids to suppose an original principle of our nature in order to account for phænomena which admit of possible explanation from known causes. If the supposed ingredient of consciousness be one which might grow up (though we cannot prove that it did grow up) through later experience; and if, when it had so grown up, it would, by known laws of our nature, appear as completely intuitive as our sensations themselves; we are bound, according to Sir W. Hamilton’s and all sound philosophy, to assign to it that origin. Edition: current; Page: [183] Where there is a known cause adequate to account for a phænomenon, there is no justification for ascribing it to an unknown one. And what evidence does Consciousness furnish of the intuitiveness of an impression, except instantaneousness, apparent simplicity, and unconsciousness on our part of how the impression came into our minds? These features can only prove the impression to be intuitive, on the hypothesis that there are no means of accounting for them otherwise. If they not only might, but naturally would, exist, even on the supposition that it is not intuitive, we must accept the conclusion to which we are led by the Psychological Method, and which the Introspective Method furnishes absolutely nothing to contradict.

Matter, then, may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. If I am asked, whether I believe in matter, I ask whether the questioner accepts this definition of it. If he does, I believe in matter: and so do all Berkeleians. In any other sense than this, I do not. But I affirm with confidence, that this conception of Matter includes the whole meaning attached to it by the common world, apart from philosophical, and sometimes from theological, theories. The reliance of mankind on the real existence of visible and tangible objects, means reliance on the reality and permanence of Possibilities of visual and tactual sensations, when no such sensations are actually experienced. We are warranted in believing that this is the meaning of Matter in the minds of many of its most esteemed metaphysical champions, though they themselves would not admit as much: for example, of Reid, Stewart, and Brown. For these three philosophers alleged that all mankind, including Berkeley and Hume, really believed in Matter, inasmuch as unless they did, they would not have turned aside to save themselves from running against a post. Now all which this manœuvre really proved is, that they believed in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation. We have therefore the kunintentionalk sanction of these three eminent defenders of the existence of matter, for affirming, that to believe in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation lisl believing in Matter. It is hardly necessary, after such authorities, to mention Dr. Johnson,[*] or any one else who resorts to the argumentum baculinum of knocking a stick against the ground. Sir W. Hamilton, a far subtler thinker than any of these, never reasons in this manner. He never supposes that a disbeliever in what he means by Matter, ought in consistency to act in any different mode from those who believe in it. He knew that the belief on which all the practical consequences depend, is the belief in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, Edition: current; Page: [184] and that if nobody believed in a material universe in any other sense, life would go on exactly as it now does. He, however, did believe in more than this, but, I think, only because it had never occurred to him that mere Possibilities of Sensation could, to our artificialized consciousness, present the character of objectivity which, as we have now shown, they not only can, but unless the known laws of the human mind were suspended, must necessarily, present.

Perhaps it may be objected, that the very possibility of framing such a notion of Matter as Sir W. Hamilton’s—the capacity in the human mind of imagining an external world which is anything more than what the Psychological Theory makes it—amounts to a disproof of the theory. If (it may be said) we had no revelation in consciousness, of a world which is not in some way or other identified with sensation, we should be unable to have the notion of such a world. If the only ideas we had of external objects were ideas of our sensations, supplemented by an acquired notion of permanent possibilities of sensation, we must (it is thought) be incapable of conceiving, and therefore still more incapable of fancying that we perceive, things which are not sensations at all. It being evident however that some philosophers believe this, and it being maintainable that the mass of mankind do so, the existence of a perdurable basis of sensations, distinct from sensations themselves, is proved, it might be said, by the possibility of believing it.

Let me first restate what I apprehend the belief to be. We believe that we perceive a something closely related to all our sensations, but different from those which we are feeling at any particular minute; and distinguished from sensations altogether, by being permanent and always the same, while these are fugitive, variable, and alternately displace one another. But these attributes of the object of perception are properties belonging to all the possibilities of sensation which experience guarantees. The belief in such permanent possibilities seems to me to include all that is essential or characteristic in the belief in substance. I believe that Calcutta exists, though I do not perceive it, and that it would still exist if every percipient inhabitant were suddenly to leave the place, or be struck dead. But when I analyse the belief, all I find in it is, that were these events to take place, the Permanent Possibility of Sensation which I call Calcutta would still remain; that if I were suddenly transported to the banks of the Hoogly, I should still have the sensations which, if now present, would lead me to affirm that Calcutta exists here and now. We may infer, therefore, that both philosophers and the world at large, when they think of matter, conceive it really as a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. But the majority of philosophers fancy that it is something more; and the world at large, though they have really, as I conceive, nothing in their minds but a Permanent Possibility of Sensation, would, if asked the question, undoubtedly agree Edition: current; Page: [185] with the philosophers: and though this is sufficiently explained by the tendency of the human mind to infer difference of things from difference of names, I acknowledge the obligation of showing how it can be possible to believe in an existence transcending all possibilities of sensation, unless on the hypothesis that such an existence actually is, and that we actually perceive it.

The explanation, however, is not difficult. It is an admitted fact, that we are capable of all conceptions which can be formed by generalizing from the observed laws of our sensations. Whatever relation we find to exist between any one of our sensations and something different from it, that same relation we have no difficulty in conceiving to exist between the sum of all our sensations and something different from them. The differences which our consciousness recognises between one sensation and another, give us the general notion of difference, and inseparably associate with every sensation we have, the feeling of its being different from other things: and when once this association has been formed, we can no longer conceive anything, without being able, and even being compelled, to form also the conception of something different from it. This familiarity with the idea of something different from each thing we know, makes it natural and easy to form the notion of something different from all things that we know, collectively as well as individually. It is true we can form no conception of what such a thing can be; our notion of it is merely negative; but the idea of ma substance, apart from its relation to the impressions which we conceive it as makingm on our senses, is a merely negative one. There is thus no psychological obstacle to our forming the notion of a something which is neither a sensation nor a possibility of sensation, even if our consciousness does not testify to it; and nothing is more likely than that the Permanent Possibilities of sensation, to which our consciousness does testify, should be confounded in our minds with this imaginary conception. All experience attests the strength of the tendency to mistake mental abstractions, even negative ones, for substantive realities; and the Permanent Possibilities of sensation which experience guarantees, are so extremely unlike in many of their properties to actual sensations, that since we are capable of imagining something which transcends sensation, there is a great natural probability that we should suppose these to be it.

But this natural probability is converted into certainty, when we take into consideration that universal law of our experience which is termed the law of Causation, and which makes us nmentally connect with the beginning of everything, somen antecedent condition, or Cause. The case of Causation is one of the most marked of all the cases in which we extend to the sum total of our consciousness, a notion derived from its parts. It is a striking Edition: current; Page: [186] example of our power to conceive, and our tendency to believe, that a relation which subsists between every individual item of our experience and some other item, subsists also between our experience as a whole, and something not within the sphere of experience. By this extension to the sum of all our experiences, of the internal relations obtaining between its several parts, we are led to consider sensation itself—the aggregate whole of our sensations—as deriving its origin from antecedent existences transcending sensation. That we should do this, is a consequence of the particular character of the uniform sequences, which experience discloses to us among our sensations. As already remarked, the constant antecedent of a sensation is seldom another sensation, or set of sensations, actually felt. It is much oftener the existence of a group of possibilities, not necessarily including any actual sensations, except such as are required to show that the possibilities are really present. Nor are actual sensations indispensable even for this purpose; for the presence of the object (which is nothing more than the immediate presence of the possibilities) may be made known to us by the very sensation which we refer to it as its effect. Thus, the real antecedent of an effect—the only antecedent which, being invariable and unconditional, we consider to be the cause—may be, not any sensation really felt, but solely the presence, at that or the immediately preceding moment, of a group of possibilities of sensation. Hence it is not with sensations as actually experienced, but with their Permanent Possibilities, that the idea of Cause comes to be identified: and we, by one and the same process, acquire the habit of regarding Sensation in general, like all our individual sensations, as an Effect, and also that of conceiving as the causes of most of our individual sensations, not other sensations, but general possibilities of sensation. If all these considerations put together do not completely explain and account for our conceiving these Possibilities as a class of independent and substantive entities, I know not what psychological analysis can be conclusive.

It may perhaps be said, that the preceding theory gives, indeed, some account of the idea of Permanent Existence which forms part of our conception of matter, but gives no explanation of our believing these permanent objects to be external, or out of ourselves. I apprehend, on the contrary, that the very idea of anything out of ourselves is derived solely from the knowledge experience gives us of the Permanent Possibilities. Our sensations we carry with us wherever we go, and they never exist where we are not; but when we change our place we do not carry away with us the Permanent Possibilities of Sensation: they remain until we return, or arise and cease under conditions with which our presence has in general nothing to do. And more than all—they are, and will be after we have ceased to feel, Permanent Possibilities of sensation to other beings than ourselves. Thus our actual sensations and the permanent possibilities of sensation, stand Edition: current; Page: [187] out in obtrusive contrast to one another: and when the idea of Cause has been acquired, and extended by generalization from the parts of our experience to its aggregate whole, nothing can be more natural than that the Permanent Possibilities should be classed by us as existences generically distinct from our sensations, but of which our sensations are the effect.*

The same theory which accounts for our ascribing to an aggregate of possibilities of sensation, a permanent existence which our sensations themselves do not possess, and consequently a greater reality than belongs to our sensations, also explains our attributing greater objectivity to the Primary Qualities of bodies than to the Secondary. For the sensations which correspond to what are called the Primary Qualities (as soon at least as we come to apprehend them by two senses, the eye as well as the touch) are always present when any part of the group is so. But colours, tastes, smells, and the like, being, in comparison, fugacious, are not, in the same degree, conceived as being always there, even when nobody is present to perceive them. The sensations answering to the Secondary Qualities are only occasional, those to the Primary, constant. The Secondary, moreover, vary with different persons, and with the temporary sensibility of our organs; the Primary, when perceived at all, are, as far as we know, the same to all persons and at all times.

CHAPTER XII: The Psychological Theory of the Belief in Matter, How Far Applicable to Mind

if the deductions in the preceding chapter are correctly drawn from known and admitted laws of the human mind, the doctrine which forms the basis of Sir W. Hamilton’s system of psychology, that Mind and Matter, an ego and a non-ego, are original data of consciousness, is deprived of its foundation. Although these two elements, an Ego and a Non-ego, are in a(what we call)a our consciousness now, and are, or seem to be, inseparable from it, there is no reason for believing that the latter of them, the non-ego, was in consciousness from the beginning; since, even if it was not, we can perceive a way in which it not only might, but must have grown up. We can see that, supposing it absent in the first instance, it would inevitably be present now, not as a deliverance of consciousness in Sir W. Hamilton’s sense, for to call it so is to beg the question; but as an instantaneous and irresistible suggestion and inference, which has become by long repetition undistinguishable from a direct intuition. I now propose to carry the inquiry a step farther, and to examine whether the Ego, as a deliverance of consciousness, stands onb firmer ground than the Non-ego; whether, at the first moment of our experience, we already have in our consciousness the conception of Self as a permanent existence; or whether it is formed subsequently, and admits of a similar analysis to that which we have found that the notion of Not-self is susceptible of.

It is evident, in the first place, that our knowledge of mind, like that of matter, is entirely relative; Sir W. Hamilton indeed affirms this of mind, in can evenc more unqualified manner than he believes it of matter, making no ddistinction between Primary and Secondaryd Qualities.

We have no conception of Mind itself, as distinguished from its conscious manifestations. We neither know nor can imagine it, except as represented by the succession of manifold feelings which metaphysicians call by the name of States or Modifications of Mind. It is nevertheless true that our notion of Mind, as well as of Matter, is the notion of a permanent something, contrasted with the perpetual flux of the sensations and other feelings or mental states which we refer to it; a something which we figure as remaining the same, while the particular feelings through which it reveals its existence, change. This attribute of Permanence, supposing that there were nothing else to be considered, would admit of the same explanation when predicated of Mind, as of Matter. The belief I entertain that my mind exists when it is not feeling, nor thinking, nor conscious of its own existence, resolves itself into the belief of a Permanent Possibility of these states. If I think of myself as in dreamless sleep, or in the sleep of death, and believe that I, or in other words my mind, is or will be existing through these states, though not in conscious feeling, the most scrupulous examination of my belief will not detect in it any fact actually believed, except that my capability of feeling is not, in that interval, permanently destroyed, and is suspended only because it does not meet with the combination of econditionse which would call it into action: the moment it did meet with that combination it would revive, and remains, therefore, a Permanent Possibility. Thus far, there seems no hindrance to our regarding Mind as nothing but the series of our sensations (to which must now be added our internal feelings), as they actually occur, with the addition of infinite possibilities of feeling requiring for their actual realization conditions which may or may not take place, but which as possibilities are always in existence, and many of them present.f

In order to the further understanding of the bearings of this theory of the Ego, it is advisable to consider it in its relation to three questions, which may very naturally be asked with reference to it, and which often have been asked, and sometimes answered very erroneously. If the theory is correct, and my Mind is but a series of feelings, or, as it has been called, a thread of consciousness, however supplemented by believed Possibilities of consciousness which are not, though they might be, realized; if this is all that Mind, or Myself, amounts to, what evidence have I (it is asked) of the existence of my fellow-creatures? What evidence of a hyperphysical world, or, in one word, of God? and, lastly, what evidence of immortality?

Dr. Reid unhesitatingly answers, None.[*] If the doctrine is true, I am alone in the universe.

I hold this to be one of Reid’s most palpable mistakes. Whatever evidence to each of the three points there is on the ordinary theory, exactly that same evidence is there on this.

In the first place, as to my fellow-creatures. Reid seems to have imagined that if I myself am only a series of feelings, the proposition that I have any fellow-creatures, or that there are any Selves except mine, is but words without a meaning. But this is a misapprehension. All that I am compelled to admit if I receive this theory, is that other people’s Selves also are but series of feelings, like my own. Though my Mind, as I am capable of conceiving it, be nothing but the succession of my feelings, and though Mind itself may be merely a possibility of feelings, there is nothing in that doctrine to prevent my conceiving, and believing, that there are other successions of feelings besides those of which I am conscious, and that these are as real as my own. The belief is completely consistent with the metaphysical theory. Let us now see whether the theory takes away the grounds of it.

What are those grounds? By what evidence do I know, or by what considerations am I led to believe, that there exist other sentient creatures; that the walking and speaking figures which I see and hear, have sensations and thoughts, or in other words, possess Minds? The most strenuous Intuitionist does not include this among the things that I know by direct intuition. I conclude it from certain things, which my experience of my own Edition: current; Page: [191] states of feeling proves to me to be marks of it. These marks are of two kinds, antecedent and subsequent; the previous conditions requisite for feeling, and the effects or consequences of it. I conclude that other human beings have feelings like me, because, first, they have bodies like me, which I know, in my own case, to be the antecedent condition of feelings; and because, secondly, they exhibit the acts, and other outward signs, which in my own case I know by experience to be caused by feelings. I am conscious in myself of a series of facts connected by an uniform sequence, of which the beginning is modifications of my body, the middle is feelings, the end is outward demeanour. In the case of other human beings I have the evidence of my senses for the first and last links of the series, but not for the intermediate link. I find, however, that the sequence between the first and last is as regular and constant in those other cases as it is in mine. In my own case I know that the first link produces the last through the intermediate link, and could not produce it without. Experience, therefore, obliges me to conclude that there must be an intermediate link; which must either be the same in others as in myself, or a different one: I must either believe them to be alive, or to be automatons: and by believing them to be alive, that is, by supposing the link to be of the same nature as in the case of which I have experience, and which is in all other respects similar, I bring other human beings, as phænomena, under the same generalizations which I know by experience to be the true theory of my own existence. And in doing so I conform to the legitimate rules of experimental enquiry. The process is exactly parallel to that by which Newton proved that the force which keeps the planets in their orbits is identical with that by which an apple falls to the ground. It was not incumbent on Newton to prove the impossibility of its being any other force; he was thought to have made out his point when he had simply shown, that no other force need be supposed. We know the existence of other beings by generalization from the knowledge of our own: the generalization merely postulates that what experience shows to be a mark of the existence of something within the sphere of our consciousness, may be concluded to be a mark of the same thing beyond that sphere.

This logical process loses none of its legitimacy on the supposition that neither Mind nor Matter is anything but a permanent possibility of feeling. Whatever sensation I have, I at once refer it to one of the permanent groups of possibilities of sensation which I call material objects. But among these groups I find there is one (my own body) which is not only composed, like the rest, of a mixed multitude of sensations and possibilities of sensation, but is also connected, in a peculiar manner, with all my sensations. Not only is this special group always present as an antecedent condition of every sensation I have, but the other groups are only enabled to convert their respective possibilities of sensation into actual sensations, by means Edition: current; Page: [192] of some previous change in that particular one. I look about me, and though there is only one group (or body) which is connected with all my sensations in this peculiar manner, I observe that there is a great multitude of other bodies, closely resembling in their sensible properties (in the sensations composing them as groups) this particular one, but whose modifications do not call up, as those of my own body do, a world of sensations in my consciousness. Since they do not do so in my consciousness, I infer that they do it out of my consciousness, and that to each of them belongs a world of consciousness of its own, to which it stands in the same relation in which what I call my own body stands to mine. And having made this generalization, I find that all other facts within my reach gaccordg with it. Each of these bodies exhibits to my senses a set of phænomena (composed of acts and other manifestations) such as I know, in my own case, to be effects of consciousness, and such as might be looked for if each of the bodies has really in connexion with it a world of consciousness. All this is as good and genuine an inductive process on the theory we are discussing, as it is on the common theory. Any objection to it in the one case would be an equal objection in the other. I have stated the postulate required by the one theory: the common theory is in need of the same. If I could not, from my personal knowledge of one succession of feelings, infer the existence of other successions of feelings, when manifested by the same outward signs, I could just as little, from my personal knowledge of a single spiritual substance, infer by generalization, when I find the same outward indications, the existence of other spiritual substances.

As the theory leaves the evidence of the existence of my fellow-creatures exactly as it was before, so does it also with that of the existence of God. Supposing me to believe that the Divine Mind is simply the series of the Divine thoughts and feelings prolonged through eternity, that would be, at any rate, believing God’s existence to be as real as my own. And as for evidence, the argument of Paley’s Natural Theology, or, for that matter, of his Evidences of Christianity, would stand exactly where it does.[*] The Design argument is drawn from the analogy of human experience. From the relation which human works bear to human thoughts and feelings, it infers a corresponding relation between works, more or less similar but superhuman, and superhuman thoughts and feelings. If it proves these, nobody but a metaphysician needs care whether or not it proves a mysterious Edition: current; Page: [193] substratum for them. Again, the arguments for Revelation undertake to prove by testimony, that within the sphere of human experience works were done requiring a greater than human power, and words said requiring a greater than human wisdom. These positions, and the evidences of them, neither lose nor gain anything by our supposing that the wisdom only means wise thoughts and volitions, and that the power means thoughts and volitions followed by imposing phænomena.

As to immortality, it is precisely as easy to conceive that a succession of feelings, a thread of consciousness, may be prolonged to eternity, as that a spiritual substance for ever continues to exist: and any evidence which would prove the one, will prove the other. Metaphysical theologians may lose the à priori argument by which they have sometimes flattered themselves with having proved that a spiritual substance, by the essential constitution of its nature, cannot perish. But they had better drop this argument in any case. To do them justice, they seldom insist on it now.

The notion that metaphysical Scepticism, even at the utmost length to which it ever has been, or is capable of being, carried, has for its logical consequence atheism, is grounded on an entire misapprehension of the Sceptical argument, and has no locus standi except for persons who think that whatever accustoms people to a rigid scrutiny of evidence is unfavourable to religious belief. This is the opinion, doubtless, of those who do not believe in any religion, and seemingly of a great number who do: but it is not the opinion of Sir W. Hamilton, who says that “religious disbelief and philosophical scepticism are not merely not the same, but have no natural connexion;”* and who, as we have seen, makes use of the veracity of the Deity as his principal argument for trusting the testimony of consciousness to the substantiality of Matter and of Mind, which would have been a gross petitio principii if he had thought that our assurance of the divine attributes required that the objective existence of Matter and Mind should be first recognised.

The theory, therefore, which resolves Mind into a series of feelings, with a background of possibilities of feeling, can effectually withstand the most invidious of the arguments directed against it. But, groundless as are the extrinsic objections, the theory has intrinsic difficulties which we have not yet set forth, and which it seems to me beyond the power of metaphysical analysis to remove. Besides present feelings, and possibilities of present feeling, there is another class of phænomena to be included in an enumeration of the elements making up our conception of Mind. The thread of consciousness which composes the mind’s phænomenal life, consists not Edition: current; Page: [194] only of present sensations, but likewise, in part, of memories and expectations. Now what are these? In themselves, they are present feelings, states of present consciousness, and in that respect not distinguished from sensations. They all, moreover, resemble some given sensations or feelings, of which we have previously had experience. But they are attended with the peculiarity, that each of them involves a belief in more than its own present existence. A sensation involves only this: but a remembrance of sensation, even if not referred to any particular date, involves the suggestion and belief that a sensation, of which it is a copy or representation, actually existed in the past: and an expectation involves the belief, more or less positive, that a sensation or other feeling to which it directly refers, will exist in the future. Nor can the phænomena involved in these two states of consciousness be adequately expressed, without saying that the belief they include is, that I myself formerly had, or that I myself, and no other, shall hereafter have, the sensations remembered or expected. The fact believed is, that the sensations did actually form, or will hereafter form, part of the self-same series of states, or thread of consciousness, of which the remembrance or expectation of those sensations is the part now present. If, therefore, we speak of the Mind as a series of feelings, we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future; and we are reduced to the alternative of believing that the Mind, or Ego, is something different from any series of feelings, or possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox, that something which ex hypothesi is but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series.

The truth is, that we are here face to face with that final inexplicability, at which, as Sir W. Hamilton observes, we inevitably arrive when we reach ultimate facts; and in general, one mode of stating it only appears more incomprehensible than another, because the whole of human language is accommodated to the one, and is so incongruous with the other, that it cannot be expressed in any terms which do not deny its truth. The real stumbling block is perhaps not in any theory of the fact, but in the fact itself. The true incomprehensibility perhaps is, that something which has ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still be, in a manner, present: that a series of feelings, the infinitely greater part of which is past or future, can be gathered up, as it were, into a single present conception, accompanied by a belief of reality. I think, by far the wisest thing we can do, is to accept the inexplicable fact, without any theory of how it takes place; and when we are obliged to speak of it in terms which assume a theory, to use them with a reservation as to their meaning.

I have stated the difficulties attending the attempt to frame a theory of Mind, or the Ego, similar to what I have called the Psychological Theory of Edition: current; Page: [195] Matter, or the Non-ego. No such difficulties attend the theory in its application to Matter; and I leave it, as set forth, to pass for whatever it is worth as an antagonist doctrine to that of Sir W. Hamilton and the Scottish School, respecting the non-ego as a deliverance of consciousness.*

CHAPTER XIII: The Psychological Theory of the Primary Qualities of Matter

for the reasons which have been set forth, I conceive Sir W. Hamilton to be wrong in his statement that a Self and a Not-self are immediately apprehended in our primitive consciousness. We have, in all probability, no notion of Not-self, until after considerable experience of the recurrence of sensations according to fixed laws, and in groups.* aNor is ita credible that the first sensation which we experience awakens in us any notion of an Ego or Self. To refer it to an Ego is to consider it as part of a series of states of consciousness, some portion of which is already past. The identification of a present state with a remembered state cognised as past, is what, to my thinking, constitutes the cognition that it is I who feel it. “I” means he who saw, touched, or felt something yesterday or the day before. No single sensation can suggest personal identity: this requires a series of sensations, thought of as forming a line of succession, and summed up in thought into a Unity.

But (however this may be) throughout the whole of our sensitive life except its first beginnings, we unquestionably refer our sensations to a me and a not-me. As soon as I have formed, on the one hand, the notion of Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, and on the other, of that continued series of feelings which I call my life, both these notions are, by an irresistible association, recalled by every sensation I have. They represent two things, with both of which the sensation of the moment, be it what it may, stands in relation, and I cannot be conscious of the sensation without being conscious of it as related to these two things. They have accordingly Edition: current; Page: [211] received relative names, expressive of the double relation in question. The thread of consciousness which I apprehend the sensation as a part of, is the subject of the sensation. The group of Permanent Possibilities of Sensation to which I refer it, and which is partially realized and actualized in it, is the object of the sensation. The sensation itself ought to have a correlative name; or rather, ought to have two such names, one denoting the sensation as opposed to its Subject, the other denoting it as opposed to its Object. But it is a remarkable fact, that this necessity has not been felt, and that the need of a correlative name to every relative one has been considered to be satisfied by the terms Object and Subject themselves; the object and the subject not being attended to in the relation which they respectively bear to the sensation, but being regarded as directly correlated with one another. It is true that they are related to one another, but only through the sensation: their relation to each other consists in the peculiar and different relation in which they severally stand to the sensation. We have no conception of either Subject or Object, either Mind or Matter, except as something to which we refer our sensations, and whatever other feelings we are conscious of. The very existence of them both, so far as cognisable by us, consists only in the relation they respectively bear to our states of feeling. Their relation to each other is only the relation between those two relations. The immediate correlatives are not the pair, Object, Subject, but the two pairs, Object, Sensation objectively considered; Subject, Sensation subjectively considered. The reason why this is overlooked, might easily be shown, and would furnish a good illustration of that important part of the Laws of Association which may be termed the Laws of Obliviscence.

I have next to speak of a psychological fact, also a consequence of the Laws of Association, and without a full appreciation of which, the idea of Matter can only be understood in its original groundwork, but not in the superstructure which the laws of our actual experience have raised upon it. There are certain of our sensations which we are accustomed principally to consider subjectively, and others which we are principally accustomed to consider objectively. In the case of the first, the relation in which we most frequently, most habitually, and therefore most easily consider them, is their relation to the series of feelings of which they form a part, and which, consolidated by thought into a single conception, is termed the Subject. In the case of the second, the relation in which we by preference contemplate them is their relation to some group, or some kind of group, of Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, the present existence of which is certified to us by the sensation we are at the moment feeling—and which is termed the Object. The difference between these two classes of our sensations, answers to the distinction made by the majority of philosophers between the Primary and the Secondary Qualities of Matter.

We can, of course, think of all or any of our sensations in relation to their Objects, that is, to the permanent groups of possibilities of sensation to which we mentally refer them. This is the main distinction between our sensations, and what we regard as our purely mental feelings. These we do not refer to any groups of Permanent Possibilities; and in regard to them the distinction of Subject and Object is merely nominal. These feelings have no Objects, except by metaphor. There is nothing but the feeling and its Subject. Metaphysicians are obliged to call the feeling itself the object. Our sensations, on the contrary, have all of them objects; they all are capable of being classed under some group of Permanent Possibilities, and being referred to the presence of that particular set of possibilities as the antecedent condition or cause of their own existence. There are, however, some of our sensations, in our consciousness of which the reference to their Object does not play so conspicuous and predominant a part as in others. This is particularly the case with sensations which are highly interesting to us on their own account, and on which we willingly dwell, or which by their intensity compel us to concentrate our attention on them. These are, of course, our pleasures and pains. In the case of these, our attention is naturally given in a greater degree to the sensations themselves, and only in a less degree to that whose existence they are marks of. And of the two conceptions to which they stand in relation, the one to which we have most tendency to refer them is the Subject; because our pleasures and pains are of no more importance as marks than any of our other sensations, but are of very much more importance than any others as parts of the thread of consciousness which constitutes our sentient life. Many indeed of our internal bodily pains we should hardly refer to an Object at all, were it not for the knowledge, late and slowly acquired, that they are always connected with a local organic disturbance, of which we have no present consciousness, and which is therefore a mere Possibility of Sensation. Those of our sensations, on the contrary, which are almost indifferent in themselves, our attention does not dwell on; our consciousness of them is too momentary to be distinct, and we pass on from them to the Permanent Possibilities of Sensation which they are the signs of, and which alone are important to us. We hardly notice the relation between these sensations and the subjective chain of consciousness of which they form so extremely insignificant a part: the sensation is hardly anything to us but the link which draws into our consciousness a group of Permanent Possibilities; this group is the only thing distinctly present to our thoughts. The unimpressive organic sensation merges in the mere mental suggestion, and we seem to cognise directly that which we think of only by association, and know only by inference. Sensation is in a manner blotted out, and Perception seems to be installed in its place. This truth is expressed, though not with sufficient Edition: current; Page: [213] distinctness, in a favourite doctrine of Sir W. Hamilton, that in the operations of our senses Sensation is greatest when Perception is least, and least when it is greatest; or, as he, by a very inaccurate use of mathematical language, expresses it, Sensation and Perception are in the inverse ratio of one another.

With regard to those sensations which, without being absolutely indifferent, are not, in any absorbing degree, painful or pleasurable, we habitually think of them only as connected with, or proceeding from, Objects. And I am disposed to believe, contrary to the opinion of many philosophers, that any of our senses, or at all events any combination of more than one sense, would have been sufficient to give us some idea of Matter. If we had only the senses of smell, taste, and hearing, but had the sensations according to fixed laws of coexistence so that whenever we had any one of them it marked to us a present possibility of having all the others, I am inclined to think that we should have formed the notion of groups of possibilities of sensation, and should have referred every particular sensation to one of these groups, which, in relation to all the sensations so referred to it, would have become an Object, and would have been invested in our thoughts with the permanency and externality which belong to Matter. But though we might, in this supposed case, have had an idea of Matter, that idea would necessarily have been of a very different complexion from what we now have. For, as we are actually constituted, our sensations of smell, taste, and hearing, and bas I believe (with the great majority ofb philosophers) those of sight also, are not grouped together directly, but through the connexion which they all have, by laws of coexistence or of causation, with the sensations which are referable to the sense of touch and to the muscles; those which answer to the terms Resistance, Extension, and Figure. These, therefore, become the leading and conspicuous elements in all the groups: where these are, the group is: every other member of the group presents itself to our thoughts, less as what it is in itself, than as a mark of these. As the entire group stands in the relation of Object to any one of the component sensations which is realized at a given moment, so do these special parts of the group become, in a manner, Object, in relation not only to actual sensations, but to all the remaining Possibilities of Sensation which the group includes. The Permanent Possibilities of sensations of touch and of the muscles, form a group within the group—a sort of inner nucleus, conceived as more fundamental than the rest, on which all the other possibilities of sensation included in the group seem to depend; these being regarded, in one point of view, as effects, of which that nucleus is the cause, in another as attributes, of which it is the substratum or substance. Edition: current; Page: [214] In this manner our conception of Matter comes ultimately to consist of Resistance, Extension, and Figure, together with miscellaneous powers of exciting other sensations. These three attributes become its essential constituents, and where these are not found, we hesitate to apply the name.

Of these properties, which are consequently termed the Primary Qualities of Matter, the most fundamental is Resistance: as is proved by numberous scientific controversies. When the question arises whether something which affects our senses in a peculiar way, as for instance whether Heat, or Light, or Electricity, is or is not Matter, what seems always to be meant is, does it offer any, however trifling, resistance to motion? If it were shown that it did, this would at once terminate all doubt. That Resistance is only another name for a sensation of our muscular frame, combined with one of touch, has been pointed out by many philosophers, and can scarcely any longer be questioned. When we contract the muscles of our arm, either by an exertion of will, or by an involuntary discharge of our spontaneous nervous activity, the contraction is accompanied by a state of sensation, which is different according as the locomotion consequent on the muscular contraction continues freely, or meets with an impediment. In the former case, the sensation is that of motion through empty space. After having had (let us suppose) this experience several times repeated, we suddenly have a different experience: the series of sensations accompanying the motion of our arm is brought, without intention or expectation on our part, to an abrupt close. This interruption would not, of itself, necessarily suggest the belief in an external obstacle. The hindrance might be in our organs; it might arise from paralysis, or simple loss of power through fatigue. But in either of these cases, the muscles would not have been contracted, and we should not have had the sensation which accompanies their contraction. We may have had the will to exert our muscular force, but the exertion has not taken place.* If it does take place, and is accompanied by the usual muscular sensation, but the cdistinctive feeling which I have called the Edition: current; Page: [215] sensation of motion in empty spacec does not follow, we have what is called the feeling of Resistance, or in other words, of muscular dactiond impeded; and that feeling is the fundamental element in the notion of Matter which results from our common experience. But simultaneously with this feeling of Resistance, we have also feelings of touch; sensations of which the organs are not the nerves diffused through our muscles, but those which form a network under the skin; the sensations which are produced by passive contact with bodies, without muscular action. As these skin sensations of simple contact invariably accompany the muscular sensation of resistance—for we must touch the object before we can feel it resisting our pressure—there is early formed an inseparable association between them. Whenever we feel resistance we have first felt contacte. Whenevere we feel contact, we know that were we to exercise muscular action, we should feel more or less resistance. In this manner is formed the first fundamental group of Permanent Possibilities of Sensation; and as we in time recognise that all our other sensations are connected in point of fact with Permanent Possibilities of resistance—that in coexistence with them we should always, by sufficient search, encounter something which would give us the feeling of contact combined with the muscular sensation of resistance; our idea of Matter, as a Resisting Cause of miscellaneous sensations, is now constituted.

Let us observe, in passing, the elementary example here afforded of the Law of Inseparable Association, and the efficacy of that law to construct what, after it has been constructed, is undistinguishable, by any direct interrogation of consciousness, from an intuition. The sensation produced by the simple contact of an object with the skin, without any pressure—or even with pressure, but without any muscular reaction against it—is no more likely than a sensation of warmth or cold would be, to be spontaneously referred to any cause external to ourselves. But when the constant coexistence, in experience, of this sensation of contact with that of Resistance to our muscular effort whenever such effort is made, has erected the former sensation into a mark or sign of a Permanent Possibility of the latter; from that time forward, no sooner do we have the skin sensation which we call a sensation of contact, than we cognise, or, as we call it, perceive, something external, corresponding to the idea we now form of Matter as a resisting object. Our sensations of touch have become representative of the sensations of resistance with which they habitually coexist: just as philosophers have shown that the sensations of different shades of colour given by our sense of sight, and the muscular sensations accompanying the Edition: current; Page: [216] various movements of the eye, become representative of those sensations of touch and of the muscles of locomotion, which are the only real meaning of what we term the distance of a body from us.*

The next of the primary qualities of Body is Extension; which has long been considered as one of the principal stumbling blocks of the Psychological Theory. Reid and Stewart were willing to let the whole question of the intuitive character of our knowledge of Matter, depend on the inability of psychologists to assign any origin to the idea of Extension, or analyse it into any combination of sensations and reminiscences of sensation. Sir W. Hamilton follows their example in laying great stress on this point.

The answer of the opposite school I will present in its latest and most improved form, as given by Professor Bain,f in the First Part of his great work on the Mind.†

Mr. Bain recognises two principal kinds or modes of discriminative sensibility in the muscular sense: the one corresponding to the degree of intensity of the muscular effort—the amount of energy put forth; the other corresponding to the duration—the longer or shorter continuance of the same effort. The first makes us acquainted with degrees of resistance: which we estimate by the intensity of the muscular energy required to overcome it. To the second we owe, in Mr. Bain’s opinion, our idea of Extension.

A theory of Extension somewhat similar, though less clearly unfolded, was advanced by Brown,[*] and as it stands in his statement, fell under the criticism of Sir W. Hamilton; who gives it, as he thinks, a short and crushing refutation, as follows:

The dilemma looks formidable, but one of its horns is blunt; for the very assertion of Brown, and of all who hold the Psychological theory, is that the notion of length in space, not being in our consciousness originally, is constructed by the mind’s laws out of the notion of length in time. Their argument is not, as Sir W. Hamilton fancied, a fallacious confusion between two different meanings of the word lengthi; they maintain the one to be a product of the otheri. Sir W. Hamilton did not fully understand the argument. He saw that a succession of feelings, such as that which Brown spoke of, could not possibly give us the idea of simultaneous existence. But he was mistaken in supposing that Brown’s argument implied this absurdity. The notion of simultaneity must be supposed to have been already acquired; as it necessarily would be at the very earliest period, from the familiar fact that we often have sensations simultaneously. What Brown had to show was, that the idea of the particular mode of simultaneous existence called Extension, might arise, not certainly out of a mere succession of muscular sensations, but out of that added to the knowledge already possessed that sensations of touch may be simultaneous. Suppose two small bodies, A and B, sufficiently near together to admit of their being touched simultaneously, one with the right hand, the other with the left. Here are two tactual sensations which are simultaneous, just as a sensation of colour and one of odour might be; and this makes us cognise the two objects of touch as both existing at once. The question then is, what have we in our minds, when we represent to ourselves the relation between these two objects already known to be simultaneous, in the form of Extension, or intervening Space—a relation which we do not suppose to exist between the colour and the odour. Now those who agree with Brown, say that whatever the notion of Extension may be, we acquire it by passing our hand or some other organ of touch, in a longitudinal direction from A to B: that this process, as far as we are conscious of it, consists of a series of varied muscular sensations, differing according to the amount of muscular effort, and, the effort being given, differing in length of time. When we say that there is a space between A and B, we mean that some amount of these muscular sensations must intervene; and when we say that the space is greater or less, we mean that the series of sensations (amount of muscular effort being given) is longer or shorter. If another object, C, is farther off in the same line, we judge its distance to be greater, because to reach it, the Edition: current; Page: [221] series of muscular sensations must be further prolonged, or else there must be the increase of effort which corresponds to augmented velocity. Now this, which is jnot denied to bej the mode in which we become kawarek of extension, lby any other sense than sight,l is considered by the psychologists in question to be extension. The idea of Extended Body they consider to be that of a variety of resisting points, existing simultaneously, but which can be perceived by the same tactile organ only successively, at the end of a series of muscular sensations which constitutes their mdistancem; and are said to be at different distances from one another because the series of intervening muscular sensations is longer in some cases than in others.*

The theory may be recapitulated as follows. The sensation of muscular motion unimpeded constitutes our notion of empty space, and the sensation of muscular motion impeded constitutes that of filled space. Space is Room—room for movement; which its German name, Raum, distinctly confirms. We have a sensation which accompanies the free movement of our organs, say for instance of our arm. This sensation is variously modified by the direction, and by the amount of the movement. We have different states of muscular sensation corresponding to the movements of the arm upward, downward, to right, to left, or in any radius whatever of a sphere of which the joint, that the arm revolves round, forms the centre. Edition: current; Page: [222] We have also different states of muscular sensation according as the arm is moved more; whether this consists in its being moved with greater velocity, or with the same velocity during a longer time: and the equivalence of these two is speedily learnt, by nfinding that a greater effort conducts the hand in a shorter time from the same point to the same point; from the tactual impression A to the tactual impression Bn. These different kinds and qualities of muscular sensation, experienced in getting from one point to another (that is, obtaining in succession two sensations of touch and resistance, the objects of which are regarded as simultaneous) are all we mean by saying that the points are separated by spaces, that they are at different distances, and in different directions. An intervening series of muscular sensations before the one object can be reached from the other, is the only peculiarity which (according to this theory) distinguishes simultaneity in space, from the simultaneity which may exist between a taste and a colour, or a taste and a smell: and we have no reason for believing that Space or Extension in itself, is anything different from that which we recognise it by. It appears to me that this doctrine is sound, and that the muscular sensations in question are the sources of all the notion of Extension which we should ever obtain from the tactual and muscular senses without the assistance of the eye.

But the participation of the eye in generating our actual notion of Extension, very much alters its character, and is, I think, the main cause of the difficulty felt in believing that Extension derives its meaning to us from a phænomenon which is not synchronous but successive. The fact is, that the conception we now have of Extension or Space is an eye picture, and comprehends a great number of parts of Extension at once, or in a succession so rapid that our consciousness confounds it with simultaneity. How, then (it is naturally asked) can this vast collection of consciousnesses which are sensibly simultaneous, be generated by the mind out of its consciousness of a succession—the succession of muscular feelings? An experiment may be conceived, which would throw great light on this subject, but which unfortunately is more easily imagined than obtained. There have been persons born blind who were mathematicians, and I believe even naturalists; and it is not impossible that one day a person born blind may be a metaphysician. The first who is so, will be able to enlighten us on this point. For he will be an experimentum crucis[*] on the mode in which extension is conceived and known, independently of the eye. Not having the assistance of that organ, a person blind from birth must necessarily Edition: current; Page: [223] perceive the parts of extension—the parts of a line, of a surface, or of a solid—in conscious succession. He perceives them by passing his hand along them, if small, or by walking over them if great. The parts of extension which it is possible for him to perceive simultaneously, are only very small parts, almost the minima of extension. Hence, if the Psychological theory of the idea of extension is true, the blind metaphysician would feel very little of the difficulty which seeing metaphysicians feel, in admitting that the idea of Space is, at bottom, one of time—and that the notion of extension or distance, is that of a motion of the muscles continued for a longer or a shorter duration. If this analysis of extension appeared as paradoxical to the metaphysician born blind, as it does to Sir W. Hamilton, this would be a strong argument against the Psychological theory. But if, on the contrary, it did not at all startle him, that theory would be very strikingly corroborated.

We have no experiment directly in point. But we have one which is the very next thing to it. We have not the perceptions and feelings of a metaphysician blind from birth, told and interpreted by himself. But we have those of an ordinary person blind from birth, told and interpreted for him by a metaphysician. And the English reader is indebted for them to Sir W. Hamilton. Platner, “a man no less celebrated as an acute philosopher than as a learned physician and an elegant scholar,”[*] endeavoured to ascertain by observation what notion of extension was possessed by a person born blind, and made known the result in words which Sir W. Hamilton has rendered into his clear English.

The highly instructive representation here given by Platner, of this person’s state of mind, is exactly that which we have just read in Mr. Bain, and which that philosopher holds to be the primitive conception of extension by all of us, before the wonderful power of sight and its associations, in abridging the mental processes, has come into play. The conclusion which, as we have seen, Platner draws from the case, is that we obtain the idea of extension solely from sight; and even Sir W. Hamilton is staggered in his belief of the contrary. But Platner, though unintentionally, puts a false colour on the matter when he says that his patient had no perception of extension. He used the terms expressive of it with such propriety and discrimination, that Platner, by his own account, did not at first suspect him of not meaning by those terms all that is meant by persons who can see. He therefore meant something; he had impressions which the words expressed to his mind; he had conceptions of extension, after his own manner. But his idea of degrees of extension was but the idea of a greater or smaller number of sensations experienced in succession “to attain from some one feeling to another;” that is, it was exactly what, according to Brown’s and Mr. Bain’s theory, it ought to have been. And, the sense of touch and of the muscles not being aided by sight, the sensations continued to be conceived by him only as successive: his mental representation of them remained a conception of a series, not of a coexistent group. Though he must have had experience of simultaneity, for no being who has a plurality of senses can be without it, he does not seem to have thoroughly realized the conception of the parts of space as simultaneous. Since what was thus wanting to him, is the principal feature of the conception as it is in us, he seemed to Platner to have no notion of extension. But Platner, fortunately, being a man who could both observe, and express his observations precisely, has been able to convey to our minds the conception which his patient really had of extension; and we find that it was the same as our own, with the exception of the element which, if the Psychological theory be true, was certain to be added to it by the sense of sight. For, when this sense is awakened, and its sensations of colour have become representative of the tactual and muscular sensations with which they are coexistent, the fact that we can receive a vast number of sensations of colour at the same instant (or what appears such to our consciousness) puts us in the same position as if we had been Edition: current; Page: [225] able to receive that number of tactual and muscular sensations in a single instant. The ideas of all the successive tactual and muscular feelings which accompany the passage of the hand over the whole of the coloured surface, are made to flash on the mind at once: and impressions which were successive in sensation become coexistent in thought. From that time we do with perfect facility, and are even compelled to do, what Platner’s patient never completely succeeded in doing, namely, to think all the parts of extension as coexisting, and to believe that we perceive them as such. And if the laws of inseparable association, which are already admitted as the basis of other acquired perceptions of sight, are considered in their application to this case, it is certain that this apparent perception of successive elements as simultaneous owouldo be generated and would supply all that there is in our idea of extension, more than there was in that of Platner’s patient.*

I shall quote, in continuation, part of the exposition by Mr. Bain, of the machinery by which our consciousness of Extension becomes an appendage of our sensations of Sight. It is a striking example of the commanding influence of that sense; which, though it has no greater variety of original impressions than our other special senses, yet owing to the two properties, of being able to receive a great number of its impressions at once, and to receive them from all distances, takes the lead altogether from the sense of touch: and is not only the organ by which we read countless possibilities of tactual and muscular sensations which can never, to us, become realities, but substitutes itself for our touch and our muscles even where we can use them—causes their actual use as avenues to knowledge, to become, in many cases, obsolete,—the sensations themselves to be little heeded and very indistinctly remembered,—and communicates its own prerogative of simultaneousness to impressions and conceptions originating in other senses, which it could never have given, but only suggests, through visible marks associated with them by experience.

“The distinctive impressibility of the eye,” says Mr. Bain,

These slight changes in the action of the muscles that move the eye, habitually effected in a time too short for computation, are the means by which our visual impressions from the whole of that portion of the universe which is visible from the position where we stand, may be concentrated within an interval of time so small that we are scarcely conscious of any interval; and they are, in my apprehension, the generating cause of all that we have in our notion of extension over and above what Platner’s patient had in his. He had to conceive two or any number of bodies (or resisting objects) with a long train of sensations of muscular contraction filling up the interval between them: while we, on the contrary, think of them as rushing upon our sight, many of them at the same instant, all of them at what is scarcely distinguishable from the same instant; and this visual imagery effaces from our minds any distinct consciousness of the series of muscular sensations of which it has become representative. The simultaneous visual sensations are to us symbols of tactual and muscular ones which were slowly successive.

This last extract is from Mr. Herbert Spencer,* whose Principles of Psychology, in spite of some doctrines which he holds in common with the intuitive school, are on the whole one of the finest examples we possess of the Psychological Method in its full power. His treatment of this subject, and Mr. Bain’s, are at once corroborative and supplementary of one another: and to them I must refer the reader who desires an ampler elucidation of the general question. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to the examination of some peculiarities in Sir W. Hamilton’s treatment of it.

Sir W. Hamilton relies mainly upon one argument to prove that Vision, without the aid of Touch, gives an immediate knowledge of Extension: which argument had been anticipated in a passage which he quotes from D’Alembert.† The following is his own statement of it.

And farther on:

I must acknowledge that I cannot make the answer to this argument as thorough and conclusive as I could wish; for we have not the power of making an experiment, the completing converse of Platner’s. There is no example of a person born with the sense of sight, but without those of touch and the muscles: and nothing less than this would enable us to define precisely the extent and limits of the conceptions which sight is capable of giving, qindependentlyq of association with impressions of another sense. There are, however, considerations well adapted to moderate the extreme confidence which Sir W. Hamilton places in this argument. First, it must be observed that when the eye, at present, takes cognizance of rar visible figure, it does not cognise it by means of colour alone, but by all those motions and modifications of the muscles connected with the eye, which have so great a share in giving us our acquired perceptions of sight. To determine what can be cognised by sight alone, we must suppose an eye incapable of these changes; which can neither have the curvature of its lenses modified nor the direction of its axis changed by any mode of muscular action; which cannot, therefore, travel along the boundary line that separates two colours, but must remain fixed with a steady gaze on a definite spot. If we once allow the eye to follow the direction of a line or the periphery of a figure, we have no longer merely sight, but important muscular sensations superadded. Now there is nothing more certain than that an eye with its axis immovably fixed in one direction, gives a full and clear vision of but a small portion of space, that to which the axis directly points, and only a faint and indistinct one of the other points surrounding it. When we are able to see any considerable portion of a surface so as to form a distinct idea of it, we do so by passing the eye over and about it, changing slightly the direction of the axis many times in a second. When the eye is pointed directly to one spot, the faint perceptions we have of others are barely sufficient to serve as indications for directing the axis of the eye to each of them in turn, when withdrawn from the first. Physiologists have explained this by the fact, that the centre of the retina is furnished with a Edition: current; Page: [230] prodigiously greater number of nervous papillæ, much finer and more delicate individually, and crowded closer together, than any other part. Whatever be its explanation, the fact itself is indubitable; and seems to warrant the conclusion that if the axis of the eye were immovable, and we were without the muscular sensations which accompany and guide its movement, the impression we should have of a boundary between two colours would be so vague and indistinct as to be merely rudimentary.

A rudimentary conception must be allowed, for it is evident that even without moving the eye we are capable of having two sensations of colour at once, and that the boundary which separates the colours must give some specific affection of sight, otherwise we should have no discriminative impressions capable of afterwards becoming, by association, representative of the cognitions of lines and figures which we owe to the tactual and the muscular sense. But to confer on these discriminative impressions the name which denotes our matured and perfected cognition of Extension, or even to assume that they have in their nature anything in common with it, seems to be going beyond the evidence. sBerkeley acknowledged a very considerable amount of perception by the eye alone, of something which it was possible to call by the name of extension; and that which is so perceived has, since his time, been known to philosophers as Visible Extension, in contradistinction to Tangible.[*] But Berkeley maintained that Visible Extension not only is not the same thing as Tangible Extension, but has not the smallest likeness to it, and that a person born with only one of the two senses, and afterwards acquiring the other, would, until there had been time to learn their mutual relation by experience, never suspect that there was any connexion between them.[†] In point of fact, those who are born blind and afterwards acquire sight, know by the information of others that the eye pictures and the tactual sensations come from the same objects: yet even with that help it is always a work of time and difficulty to connect the one with the other.s Sir W. Hamilton appears to think that extension as revealed by the eye, is identical with the extension which we know by touch, except that it is only in two dimensions. “It is not,” he says, “all kind of extension and form that is attributed to sight. It is not figured extension in all the three dimensions, but only extension as involved in plane figures; that is, only length and breadth.”* But to have the notion of extension even in length and breadth as we have it, is to have it in such a manner that we might know certain muscular facts without having tried: as, Edition: current; Page: [231] for instance, that if we placed our finger on the spot corresponding to one end of a line, or boundary of a surface, we should have to go through a muscular motion before we could place it on the other. Is there the smallest reason to suppose that on the evidence of sight alone, we could arrive at this conclusion in anticipation of the sense of touch? I cannot admit that we could have what is meant by a perception of superficial space, unless we conceived it as something which the hand could be moved across; and, whatever may be the retinal impression conveyed by the line which bounds two colours, I see no ground for thinking that by the eye alone we could acquire the conception of what we now mean when we say that one of the colours is outside the other.* On this point I may again quote Mr. Bain.

Sir W. Hamilton does not limit the perception of Extension to sight and touch, either separately or combined with one another. “The opinions,” he says,

It may safely be admitted that whenever we are conscious of two sensations as “one out of another,” in the sense of locality, we have a perception of space; for the two expressions are equivalent. But to have a consciousness of difference between two sensations which are felt simultaneously, is not to feel them as “one out of another” in this sense; and the very question to be decided is, whether any of our senses, apart from feelings of muscular motion, gives us the notion of “one out of another” in the sense necessary to support the idea of Extension.

Sir W. Hamilton thinks that whenever two different nervous filaments are simultaneously affected at their extremities, the sensations received through them are felt as one out of the other. It is extremely probable that the affection of two distinct nervous filaments is the condition of the discriminative sensibility which furnishes us with sensations capable of becoming representative of objects one out of the other. But that is a different thing from giving us the perception directly. Undoubtedly we recognise difference of place in the objects which affect our senses, whenever we are aware that those objects affect different parts of our organism. But when we are aware of this, we already have the notion of Place. We must be aware of the different parts of our body as one out of another, before we can use this knowledge as a means of cognising a similar fact in regard to other material objects. This Sir W. Hamilton admits; and what, therefore, he is bound to prove is, that the very first time we received an impression of touch, or of any other sense, affecting more than one nervous filament, we were conscious of being affected in a plurality of places. This he does not even attempt to do; and direct proof is palpably unattainable. As a matter of indirect evidence, we may oppose to this theory Mr. Bain’s, according to which, apart from association, we should not have any impression of xthisx kind, and should in general be conscious only of a greater mass or “volume”[*] of sensation when we were affected in two places, than when only in one; like the more massive sensation of heat which we feel when our bodies are immersed in a warm bath, compared with that which we feel when heat of the same, or even of greater intensity, is applied only to our hands or feet. Mr. Bain’s doctrine, being as consistent Edition: current; Page: [236] with the admitted facts of the case as Sir W. Hamilton’s, has a good claim, on his own law of Parcimony, to be preferred to it. But, besides, there are recorded facts which agree with Mr. Bain’s theory, and are quite irreconcilable with Sir W. Hamilton’s; and to find such we need not travel beyond Sir W. Hamilton’s own pages.

One of them is the very case we have already had before us, that recorded by Platner. The facts of this case are quite inconsistent with the opinion, that we have a direct perception of extension when an object touches us in more than one place, including the extremities of more than one nervous filament. Platner expressly says that his patient, when an object touched a considerable part of the surface of his body, but without exciting more than one kind of sensation, was conscious of no local difference—no “outness” of one part of the sensation in relation to another part—but only (we may presume) of a greater quantity of sensation; as Mr. Bain would call it, a greater yvolumey. As Platner expresses it, “if objects and the parts of his body touched by them, did not make different kinds of impression on his nerves of sensation, he would take everything external for one and the same. In his own body, he absolutely did not discriminate head and foot at all by their distance, but merely by the difference of the feelings.”[*] Such an experiment, reported by a competent observer, is of itself almost enough to overthrow Sir W. Hamilton’s theory.

In like manner, the patient in Cheselden’s celebrated case, after his second eye was couched, described himself as seeing objects twice as large with both eyes as with one only;[†] that is, he had a double quantity, or double volume of sensation, which suggested to his mind the idea of a double size.*

Another case, for the knowledge of which I am also indebted to Sir W. Hamilton—who knew it through an abstract given by M. Maine de Biran[*] of the original report “by M. Rey Régis, a medical observer, in his Histoire naturelle de l’âme”[†]—is as incompatible with Sir W. Hamilton’s theory as Platner’s case. It is the case of a patient who lost the power of movement in one-half of his body, apparently from temporary paralysis of the motory nerves, while the functions of the sensory nerves seemed unimpaired. This patient, it was found, had lost the power of localizing his sensations.

It would be premature to establish a scientific inference upon a single experiment: but if confirmed by repetition, this is an experimentum crucis.[‡] So far as one experiment can avail, ita proves, that sensation without motion does not give the perception of difference of place in our bodily organs (not to speak of outward objects), and that this perception is even now entirely an inference, dependent on the muscular feelings.†

It gives a very favourable idea of Sir W. Hamilton’s sincerity and devotion to truth, that he should have drawn from their obscurity, and made generally known, two cases which make such havoc with his own opinions as this and Platner’s; for though he did not believe the cases to be really inconsistent with his theory, he can hardly have been entirely unaware that they could be used against it.

The only other point in Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrines respecting the Primary Qualities which it is of importance to notice, is one, I believe, peculiar to himself, and certainly not common to him with any of his eminent predecessors in the same school of thought. It is the doctrine, that those qualities are not perceived—are not directly and immediately cognized—in things external to our bodies, but only in our bodies themselves. “A Perception,” he says,

Neither, according to him, do we perceive, or immediately know, “extension in its true and absolute magnitude;” our perceptions giving different impressions of magnitude from the same object, when placed in contact with different parts of our body.

Thus, according to Sir W. Hamilton, all our cognitions of extension and figure in anything except our own body, and of the real amount of extension even in that, are not perceptions, or states of direct consciousness, but Edition: current; Page: [239] “inferences,” and even inferences “by observation and induction” from our experience. Now, we know how contemptuous he is of Brown, and other “Cosmothetic Idealists,” for maintaining that the existence of extension or extended objects otherwise than as an affection of our own minds, is not a direct perception but an inference. We know how he reproaches this opinion with being subversive of our Natural Beliefs; how often he repeats that the testimony of consciousness must be accepted entire, or not accepted at all; how earnestly and in how many places he maintains

All this, it appears, is only true of the extension of our own bodies. The extension of any other body is not known immediately or by perception, but as an inference from the former. I ask any one, whether this opinion does not contradict our “natural beliefs” as much as any opinion of the Cosmothetic Idealists can do; whether to the natural, or non-metaphysical man, it is not as great a paradox to affirm that we do not perceive extension in anything external to our bodies, as that we do not perceive extension in anything external to our minds; and whether, if the natural man can be brought to assent to the former, he will find any additional strangeness or apparent absurdity in the latter. This is only one of the many instances in which the philosopher who so vehemently accuses other thinkers of affirming the absolute authority of Consciousness when it is on their own side, and rejecting it when it is not, lays himself open to a similar charge. The truth is, it is a charge from which no psychologist, not Reid himself, is exempt. No person of competent understanding has ever applied himself to the study of the human mind, and not discovered that some of the common opinions of mankind respecting their mental consciousness are false, and that some notions, apparently intuitive, are really acquired. Every psychologist draws the line where he thinks it can be drawn most truly. Of course it is possible that Sir W. Hamilton has drawn it in the right place, and Brown in the wrong. Sir W. Hamilton would say that the common opinions which he contests are not Natural Beliefs, though mistaken for such. And Brown thinks exactly the same of those which are repugnant to his own doctrine. Neither of bthemb can justify himself but by pointing out a mode Edition: current; Page: [240] in which the apparent perceptions, supposed to be original, may have been acquired; and neither can charge the other with anything worse than having made a mistake in this extremely delicate process of psychological analysis. Neither of them has a right to give to a mistake in such a matter, the name of a rejection of the testimony of consciousness, and attempt to bring down the other by an argument which is of no possible value except ad invidiam, and which in its invidious sense is applicable to them both, and to all psychologists deserving the name.

CHAPTER XIV: How Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel Dispose of the Law of Inseparable Association

it has been obvious in the preceding discussions, and is known to all who have studied the best masters of what I have called the Psychological, in opposition to the merely Introspective method of metaphysical enquiry, that the principal instrument employed by them for unlocking the deeper mysteries of mental science, is the Law of Inseparable Association. This law, which it would seem specially incumbent on the Intuitive school of metaphysicians to take into serious consideration, because it is the basis of the rival theory which they have to encounter at every point, and which it is necessary for them to refute first, as the condition of establishing their own, is not so much rejected as ignored by them. Reid and Stewart, who had met with it only in Hartley, thought it needless to take the trouble of understanding it. The best informed German and French philosophers are barely aware, if even aware, of its existence.* And in this country and age, in which it has been employed by thinkers of the highest order as the most potent of all instruments of psychological analysis, the opposite school usually dismiss it with a few sentences, so smoothly gliding over the surface of the subject, as to prove that they have never, even for an instant, brought the powers of their minds into real and effective contact with it.

Sir W. Hamilton has written a rather elaborate Dissertation on the Laws Edition: current; Page: [251] of Association; and the more elementary of them had engaged a considerable share of his attention.* But he nowhere shows that he had the smallest suspicion of this, the least familiar and most imperfectly understood of these laws. I find in all his writings only two or three passages in which he touches, even cursorily, on this mode of explaining mental phænomena. The first and longest of these occurs in the treatment, not of any of the greater problems of mental philosophy, but of a very minor question; whether, in the perception of outward objects, our cognition of wholes precedes that of their component parts, or the bcontrary.b More fully; Edition: current; Page: [252] “whether, in Perception, do we first obtain a general knowledge of the complex wholes presented to us by sense, and then, by analysis and limited attention, obtain a special knowledge of their several parts; or do we not first obtain a particular knowledge of the smallest parts to which sense is competent, and then, by synthesis, collect them into greater and greater wholes?”* Sir W. Hamilton declares for the first theory, and quotes as supporters of the second, Stewart and James Mill; to the latter of whom, more than to any other thinker, mankind are indebted for recalling the attention of philosophers to the law of Inseparable Association, and pointing out the important applications of which it is susceptible. Through the conflict with Mr. Mill on the very subordinate question which he is discussing, Sir W. Hamilton is led to quote a part of that philosopher’s exposition of Inseparable Association; and it is a sign how little he was aware of the importance of the subject, that a theory of so wide a scope and such large consequences should receive the only recognition he ever gives it in a bye corner of his work, incidentally to one of the smallest questions therein discussed. I shall extract the very passages which he quotes from Mr. Mill, because, in a small space, they state and illustrate very happily the two most characteristic properties of our closest associations: that the suggestions they produce are, for the time, irresistible; and that the suggested ideas (at least when the association is of the synchronous kind as distinguished from the successive) become so blended together, that the compound result appears, to our consciousness, simple.

“Where two or more ideas,” says Mr. Mill,

Other illustrations follow, concluding with these words: “The following of one idea after another idea, or after a sensation, so certainly that we cannot prevent the combination, nor avoid having the consequent feeling as often as we have the antecedent, is a law of association, the operation of which we shall afterwards find to be extensive, and bearing a principal part in some of the most important phænomena of the human mind.”† And the promise of this sentence is amply redeemed in the sequel cofc the treatise.

The only remark which this highly philosophical exposition suggests to Sir W. Hamilton, is a disparaging reflection on Mr. Mill’s philosophy in general. He says that Mr. Mill, in his “ingenious” treatise, “has pushed the Edition: current; Page: [254] principle of Association to an extreme which refutes its own exaggeration,—analysing not only our belief in the relation of effect and cause into that principle, but even the primary logical laws,” so that it is no wonder he should “account for our knowledge of complex wholes in perception, by the same universal principle.”[*] Having, on the strength of this previous verdict of exaggeration, dispensed with enquiring how much the law of Inseparable Association can really accomplish, he makes no use of its most obvious applications, even while transcribing them into his own pages. One of the psychological facts stated in the passage quoted, the impossibility, to us, of separating the idea of extension and that of colour, is a truth strongly insisted on by Sir W. Hamilton himself. In the very next Lecture but one to that from which I have been quoting, he strenuously maintains, that we can neither conceive colour without extension, nor extension without colour. Even the born blind, he thinks, have the sensation of darkness, that is, of black colour, and mentally clothe all extended objects with it.* Except the last position, which has no evidence and no probability,† the doctrine is undoubtedly true, and the fact is so obviously a case of the law of association, that even Stewart, little partial as he was to that mode of explaining mental phænomena, does not dream of attributing it to anything else. “In consequence,” says Stewart, “of our always perceiving extension at the same time at which the sensation of colour is excited in the mind, we find it impossible to think of that sensation without conceiving extension along with it.” He gives this as one of the instances “of very intimate associations formed between two ideas which have no necessary connexion with one another.”[†] A mental analysis by way of association which was sufficiently obvious to recommend itself to Stewart, will scarcely be charged with “pushing the principle to an extreme.” In fact, if an association can ever Edition: current; Page: [255] become inseparable by dint of repetition, how could the association between colour and extension fail of being so? The two facts never exist but in immediate conjunction, and the experience of that conjunction is repeated at every moment of life which is not spent in darkness. Yet after transcribing this explanation both from Stewart and from Mill, Sir W. Hamilton remains as insensible to it as if it had never been given; and without a word of refutation, composedly registers the inseparableness of the two ideas as an ultimate mental fact proving them both to be original perceptions of the same organ, the eye. Sir W. Hamilton’s authority can have little weight against the doctrine which accounts for the more complex parts of our mental constitution by the laws of association, when it is so evident that he rejected that doctrine not because he had examined it and found it wanting, but without examining it; having taken for granted that it did not deserve examination.*

How imperfect was his acquaintance with the secondary laws, the axiomata media[*] of association, is plainly seen in his argument against Stewart and Mill on the comparatively insignificant question with which he started. The thesis he is asserting is, that “in place of ascending upwards, from the minimum of perception to its maxima, we descend from masses to details.”

“If the opposite doctrine” (says Sir W. Hamilton)

I have already made mention of a very important part of the Laws of Association, which may be termed the Laws of Obliviscence.[*] If Sir W. Hamilton had sufficiently attended to those laws, he never could have maintained, that if we knew the parts before the whole, we must continue to know the parts better than the whole. It is one of the principal Laws of Obliviscence, that when a number of ideas suggest one another by association with such certainty and rapidity as to coalesce together in a group, all those members of the group which remain long without being specially attended to, have a tendency to drop out of consciousness. Our consciousness of them becomes more and more faint and evanescent, until no effort of attention can recall it into distinctness, or at last recall it at all. Any one who observes his own mental operations will find this fact exemplified in every day of his life. Now the law of attention is admitted to be, that we attend only to that which, either on its own or on some other account, interests us. In consequence, what interests us only momentarily we only attend to momentarily; and do not go on attending to it, when that, for the sake of which alone it interested us, has been attained. Sir W. Hamilton would have found these several laws clearly set forth, and abundantly exemplified, in the work of Mr. Mill which he had before him. It is there shown how large a proportion of all our states of feeling pass off without having been attended to, and in many cases so habitually that we become finally incapable of attending to them. This subject was also extremely well understood by Reid, who, little as he had reflected on the principle of Association, was much better acquainted with the laws of Obliviscence than his more recent followers, and has excellently illustrated and exemplified some of them.* Among those which he has illustrated the most successfully, one is, that the very great number of our states of feeling which, being themselves neither painful nor pleasurable, are important to us only as signs of something else, and which by repetition have come to do their work as signs with a rapidity which to our feelings is instantaneous, cease altogether to be attended to; and through that inattention our consciousness of them either ceases altogether, or becomes so fleeting and indistinct as to leave no revivable trace in the memory. This happens, even when the impressions which serve the purpose of signs are not mere ideas, or reminiscences, of sensation, but actual sensations. After reading a chapter of a book, when we lay down the volume do we remember to have been individually conscious of the printed letters and syllables which have passed before us? Could we recall, by any effort of mind, the visible aspect presented by them, unless some unusual circumstance has fixed our attention Edition: current; Page: [258] upon it during the perusal? Yet each of these letters and syllables must have been present to us as a sensation for at least a passing moment, or the sense could not have been conveyed to us. But the sense being the only thing in which we are interested—or, in exceptional cases, the sense and a few of the words or sentences—we retain no impression of the separate letters and syllables. This instance is the more instructive, inasmuch as, the whole process taking place within our means of observation, we know that our knowledge began with the parts, and not with the whole. We know that we perceived and distinguished letters and syllables before we learnt to understand words and sentences; and the perceptions could not, at that time, have passed unattended to; on the contrary, the effort of attention of which those letters and syllables must have been the object, was probably, while it lasted, equal in intensity to any which we have been called upon to exercise in after life. Were Sir W. Hamilton’s argument valid, one of two things would follow. Either we have even now, when we read in a book, a more vivid consciousness of the letters and syllables than of the words and sentences, d(and by parity of reason a more vivid consciousness of the words and sentences than of the general purport of the discourse):d or else, we could read sentences off hand at first, and only by subsequent analysis discovered the letters and syllables. If ever there was a reductio ad absurdum, this is one.

The facts on which Sir W. Hamilton’s argument rests, are obviously accounted for by the laws which he ignores. In our perceptions of objects, it is generally the wholes, and the wholes alone, that interest us. In his example, that of a friend’s countenance, it is (special motives apart) only the friend himself that we are interested about; we care about the features only as signs that it is our friend whom we see, and not another person. Unless therefore the face commands our attention by its beauty or strangeness, or unless we stamp the features on our memory by acts of attention directed upon them separately, they pass before us, and do their work as signs, with so little consciousness that no distinct trace may be left in the memory. We forget the details even of objects which we see every day, if we have no motive for attending to the parts as distinguished from the wholes, and have cultivated no habit of doing so. That this is consistent with having known the parts earlier than the wholes, is proved not only by the case of reading, but by that of playing on a musical instrument, and a hundred other familiar instances; by everything, in fact, which we learn to do. When the wholes alone are interesting to us, we soon forget our knowledge of the component parts, unless we purposely keep it alive by conscious comparison and analysis.

This is not the only fallacy in Sir W. Hamilton’s argument. Considered as a reply to Mr. Mill’s explanation of the origin of our ideas of objects, it entirely misses the mark. If the argument and examples had proved their point, which it has been seen that they do not, they would have proved that we perceive and know, to some extent or other, the object as a whole, before knowing its integrant parts. But it is not of integrant parts that Mr. Mill was speaking; and he might have admitted all that Sir W. Hamilton contends for, without surrendering his own opinion. The question does not relate to parts in extension. It does not concern Mr. Mill’s theory whether we know, or do not know, a man as such, before we distinguish, in thought or in perception, his head from his feet. What Mr. Mill said was, that our idea of an object, whether it be of the man, or of his head, or of his feet, is compounded by association from our ideas of the colour, the shape, the resistance, &c., which belong to those objects.[*] These are what philosophers have called the metaphysical parts, not the integrant parts, of the total impression. Now I have never heard of any philosopher who maintained that these parts were not known until after the objects which they characterize; that we perceive the body first, and its colour, shape, form, &c., only afterwards. Our senses, which on all theories are at least the avenues through which our knowledge of bodies comes to us, are not adapted by nature to let in the perception of the whole object at once. They only open to let pass single attributes at a time. And this is as much Sir W. Hamilton’s opinion as any one’s else, except where he is sustaining an argument which makes him blind to it.

As is often the case with our author, the conclusion he is maintaining is worth more than his argument to prove it, and though not the whole truth, has truth in it. That we perceive the whole before the parts will not stand examination as a general law, but is very often true as a particular fact: our first impression is often that of a confused mass, of which all the parts seem blended, and our subsequent progress consists in elaborating this into distinctness. It was well to point out this fact: but if our author had paid more attention to its limits, he might have been able to give us a complete theory of it, instead of leaving it, as he has done, an empirical observation, which waits for some one to raise it into a scientific law.

The same want of comprehension of the power of an inseparable association, which was shown by Sir W. Hamilton in the case of Colour and Extension, is exhibited in the only other case in which he adduces any argument to prove that an idea was not produced by association. The case is that of causality, and the argument is the ordinary one of metaphysicians of his school. “The necessity of so thinking cannot be derived from a Edition: current; Page: [260] custom of so thinking. The force of custom, influential as it may be, is still always limited to the customary; and the customary never reaches, never even approaches to the necessary.”* eIf this were so, not only could an inseparable association generate no necessity of belief, but there could be no such thing as inseparable association; no entirely irresistible conjunction between two mental states.e The paviourf, however,f who cannot use his rammer without the accustomed cry, the orator who had so often while speaking twirled a string in his hand that he became unable to speak when he accidentally dropped it, are, it seems to me, examples of a “customary” which did approach to, and even reach, the “necessary.” “Association may explain a strong and special, but it can never explain a universal and absolutely irresistible belief.”[*] Not when the conjunction of facts which engenders the association, is itself universal and irresistible? “What I cannot but think, must be à priori, or original to thought: it cannot be engendered by experience upon custom.”† As if experience, that is to say, association, were not perpetually engendering both inabilities to think, and inabilities not to think. “We can think away each and every part of the knowledge we have derived from experience.”‡ Associations derived from experience are doubtless separable by a sufficient amount of contrary experience; but, in the cases we are considering, no contrary experience is to be had. On the theory that the belief in causality results from association, “when association is recent, the causal judgment should be weak, and rise only gradually to full force, as custom becomes inveterate.”§ And how do we know that it does not? The whole process of acquiring our belief in causation takes place at an age of which we have no remembrance, and which precludes the possibility of testing the matter by experiment: and all theories agree that our first type of causation is our own power of moving our limbs; which is as complete as it can be, and has formed as strong associations as it is capable of forming, long before the child can observe or communicate its mental operations.

It is strange that almost all the opponents of the Association psychology should found their main or sole argument in refutation of it upon the feeling of necessity; for if there be any one feeling in our nature which the laws of association are obviously equal to producing, one would say it is that. Necessary, according to Kant’s definition,[†] and there is none better, is Edition: current; Page: [261] that of which the negation is impossible. If we find it impossible, by any trial, to separate two ideas, we have all the feeling of necessity which the mind is capable of. Those, therefore, who deny that association can generate a necessity of thought, must be willing to affirm that two ideas are never so knit together by association as to be practically inseparable. But to affirm this is to contradict the most familiar experience of life. Many persons who have been frightened in childhood can never be alone in the dark without irrepressible terrors. Many a person is unable to revisit a particular place, or to think of a particular event, without recalling acute feelings of grief or reminiscences of suffering. If the facts which created these strong associations in individual minds, had been common to all mankind from their earliest infancy, and had, when the associations were fully formed, been forgotten, we should have had a Necessity of Thought—one of the necessities which are supposed to prove an objective law, and an à priori mental connexion between ideas.* Now, in all the supposed natural beliefs and necessary conceptions which the principle of Inseparable Association is employed to explain, the generating causes of the association did begin nearly at the beginning of life, and are common either to all, or to a very large portion of mankind.†

The beggarly account now exhibited, is, I believe, all that Sir W. Hamilton has anywhere written against the Association psychology. But it is not all that has been said against that psychology from Sir W. Hamilton’s point of view. In this as in various other cases, to supply what Sir W. Hamilton has omitted, recourse may advantageously be had to Mr. Mansel.

Mr. Mansel, though in some sense a pupil of Sir W. Hamilton, is a pupil who may be usefully consulted even after his master. Besides that he now and then sees things which his master did not see, he very often fights a better battle against adversaries. Moreover, as I before remarked,[*] he has a decided taste for clear statements and definite issues; and this is no small advantage when the object is, not victory, but to understand the subject.

Mr. Mansel joins a distinct issue with the Association psychology, and brings the question to the proper test. “It has been already observed,” he says, in his Prolegomena Logica,

This is coming to the point, and evinces a correct apprehension of the conditions of scientific proof. If other associations, as close and as habitual as those existing in the cases in question, do not produce a similar feeling of necessity of thought, the sufficiency of the alleged cause is disproved, and the theory must fall. Mr. Mansel is within the true conditions of the Psychological Method.

But hwhat areh these cases of uniform and intimate association, which do not give rise to a feeling of mental necessity? The following is Mr. Mansel’s first example of them:

The alternation of day and night is invariable in our experience; but is the phænomenon day so closely linked in our experience with the phænomenon night, that we never perceive the one, without, at the same or the immediately succeeding moment, perceiving the other? That is a condition present in the inseparable associations which generate necessities of thought. Uniformities of sequence in which the phænomena succeed one another only at a certain interval, do not give rise to inseparable associations.† There are also mental conditions, as well as physical, which are required to create such an association. Let us take Mr. Mansel’s other instance, a stone sinking in the water.[*] We have never seen it float, yet we have no difficulty in conceiving it floating. But, in the first place, we have not been seeing stones sinking in water from the first dawn of consciousness, and in nearly every subsequent moment of our lives, as we have been seeing two and two making four, intersecting straight lines diverging instead of enclosing a space, causes followed by effects and effects preceded by causes. But there is a still more radical distinction than this. No frequency of conjunction between two phænomena will create an inseparable association, if counter-associations are being created all the while. If we sometimes saw stones floating as well as sinking, however often we might have seen them sink, nobody supposes that we should have formed an inseparable association between them and sinking. We have not seen a stone float, but we are in the constant habit of seeing either stones or other Edition: current; Page: [264] things which have the same tendency to sink, remaining in a position which they would otherwise quit, being maintained in it by an unseen force. The sinking of a stone is but a case of gravitation, and we are abundantly accustomed to see the force of gravity counteracted. Every fact of that nature which we ever saw or heard of, is pro tanto an obstacle to the formation of the inseparable association which would make a violation of the law of gravity inconceivable to us. Resemblance is a principle of association, as well as contiguity: and however contradictory a supposition may be to our experience in hâc materiâ, if our experience in aliâ materiâ furnishes us with types even distantly resembling what the supposed phænomenon would be if realized, the associations thus formed will generally prevent the specific association from becoming so intense and irresistible, as to disable our imaginative faculty from embodying the supposition in a form moulded on one or other of those types.*

Again, says Mr. Mansel, “experience has uniformly presented to me a horse’s body in conjunction with a horse’s head, and a man’s head with a man’s body; just as experience has uniformly presented to me space inclosed within a pair of curved lines and not within a pair of straight lines:” yet I have no difficulty in imagining a centaur, but cannot imagine a space inclosed by two straight lines.

I answer:—Because our experience furnishes us with a thousand models on which to frame the conception of a centaur, and with none on which to frame that of two straight lines inclosing a space. Nature, as known in our experience, is uniform in its laws, but extremely varied in its combinations. The combination of a horse’s body with a human head has nothing, primâ facie, to make any wide distinction between it and any of the numberless varieties which we find in animated nature. To a common, even if not to a scientific mind, it is within the limits of the variations in our experience. Every similar variation which we have seen or heard of, is a help towards conceiving this particular one; and tends to form an association, not of fixity but of variability, which frustrates the formation of an inseparable association between a human head and a human body exclusively. We know of so many different heads, united to so many different bodies, that we have little difficulty in imagining any head in combination with any body. Nay, the mere mobility of objects in space is a fact so universal in our experience, that we easily conceive any object whatever occupying the place of any other; we imagine without difficulty a horse with his head removed, and a human head put in its place. But what model does our experience afford on which to frame, or what elements from which to construct, the conception of two straight lines inclosing a space? There are no counter-associations in that case, and consequently the primary association, being founded on an experience beginning from birth, and never for many minutes intermitted in our waking hours, easily becomes inseparable. Edition: current; Page: [266] Had but experience afforded a case of ipersistenti illusion, in which two straight lines after intersecting had appeared again to approach, the counter-association formed might have been sufficient to render such a supposition imaginable, and defeat the supposed necessity of thought. In the case of parallel lines, the laws of perspective do present such an illusion: they do, to the eye, appear to meet in both directions, and consequently to inclose a space: and by supposing that we had no access to the evidence which proves that they do not really meet, an ingenious thinker, whom I formerly quoted, was able to give the idea of a constitution of nature in which all mankind might have believed that two straight lines could inclose a space.[*] That we are unable to believe or imagine it in our present circumstances, needs no other explanation than the laws of association afford: for the case unites all the elements of the closest, intensest, and most inseparable association, with the greatest freedom from conflicting counter-associations which can be found within the conditions of human life.*

In all the instances of phænomena invariably conjoined which fail to create necessities of thought, I am satisfied it would be found that the case is wanting in some of the conditions required by the Association psychology, as essential to the formation of an association really inseparable. It is the more to be wondered at that Mr. Mansel should not have perceived the easy answer which could be given to his argument, since he himself comes very near to giving the same explanation of many impossibilities of thought, which is given by the Association theory. “We can only,” he says, “conceive in thought what we have experienced in presentation;”† and no other Edition: current; Page: [267] reason is necessary for our being unable to conceive a thing, than that we have never experienced it. He even holds that the stock example of a necessity of thought, the belief in the uniformity of the course of nature, can be accounted for by experience, without any objective necessity at all. “We cannot conceive,” he says, “a course of nature without uniform succession, as we cannot conceive a being who sees without eyes or hears without ears; because we cannot, under existing circumstances, experience the necessary intuition. But such things may nevertheless exist; and under other circumstances, they might become objects of possible conception, the laws of the process of conception remaining unaltered.”* I am aware that when Mr. Mansel uses the words Presentation and Intuition, he does not mean exclusively presentation by the senses. Nevertheless, if he had only written the preceding passage, no one would have suspected that he could have required any other cause for our inability to conceive a bilineal figure, than the impossibility of our perceiving one. It is sufficient, in his opinion, to constitute any propositions necessary, that “while our constitution and circumstances remain as they are, we cannot but think them.”† It is superabundantly manifest that many propositions which all admit to be grounded only on experience, are necessary under this definition. Mr. Mansel even asserts a more complete dependence of our possibilities of thought upon our opportunities of experience than there appears to me to be ground for: since he affirms that “we can only conceive in thought what we have experienced in presentation,” while in reality it is sufficient that we should have experienced in presentation things bearing some similarity to it.

CHAPTER XV: Sir William Hamilton’s Doctrine of Unconscious Mental Modifications

the laws of obliviscence noticed in the preceding chapter, are closely connected with a question raised by Sir W. Hamilton, and discussed at some length in his Lectures: Whether there are unconscious states of mind: or, as he expresses it in the eighteenth Lecture, “Whether the mind exerts energies, and is the subject of modifications, of neither of which it is conscious.” Our author pronounces decidedly for the affirmative, in opposition to most English philosophers, by whom, he says, “the supposition of an unconscious action or passion of the mind, has been treated as something either unintelligible or absurd;”* and in opposition, no less, to aat least one expressiona of opinion by our author himself.†b This is one of the numerous inconsistencies in Sir W. Hamilton’s professed opinions, which a close examination and comparison of his speculations brings to light, and which show how far he was in reality from being the systematic thinker which, on a first impression of his writings, he seems to be. In one point of view, these self-contradictions are fully as much an honour as a discredit to him; since they frequently arise from his having acutely seized some important psychological truth, greatly in advance of his general mode of thought, and not having brought the remainder of his philosophy up to it. Instead of having reasoned out a consistent scheme of thought, of which every part fits in with the other parts, he seems to have explored the deeper regions of the mind only at the points which had some direct connexion with the conclusions he had adopted on a few special questions of Edition: current; Page: [273] philosophy: and from his different explorations he occasionally, as in the present case, brought back different results. But, in the place where he treats directly of this particular question, he decides unequivocally for the existence of latent mental modifications. The subject is in itself not unimportant, and his treatment of it will serve as an example by which to estimate his powers of thought in the province of pure psychology.

Sir W. Hamilton recognises three different kinds, or, as he calls them, degrees, of mental latency. Two of these will be seen, on examination, to be entirely irrelevant.

The first kind of latency, is that which belongs to all the parts of our knowledge which we are not thinking of at the very moment. “I know a science, or language, not merely while I make a temporary use of it, but inasmuch as I can apply it when and how I will. Thus the infinitely greater part of our spiritual treasures lies always beyond the sphere of consciousness, hid in the obscure recesses of the mind.”* But this stored-up knowledge, I submit, is not an “unconscious action or passion of the mind.” It is not a mental state, but a capability of being put into a mental state. When I am not thinking of a thing, it is not present to my mind at all. It may become present when something happens to recall it; but it is not latently present now; no more than any physical thing which I may have hoarded up. I may have a stock of food with which to nourish myself hereafter; but my body is not in a state of latent nourishment by the food which is in store. I have the power to walk across the room, though I am sitting in my chair; but we should hardly call this power a latent act of walking. What required to be shown was, not that I may possess knowledge without recalling it, but that it can be recalled to my mind, I remaining unconscious of it all the time.†

He then cites from various authors some of the curious recorded cases “in which the extinct memory of whole languages was suddenly restored, and, what is even still more remarkable, in which the faculty was exhibited of actually repeating, in known or unknown tongues, passages which were never within the grasp of conscious memory in the normal state.”* These, however, are not cases of latent states of mind, but of a very different thing—of latent memory. It is not the mental impressions that are latent, but the power of reproducing them. Every one admits, without any apparatus of proof, that we may have powers and susceptibilities of which we are not conscious; but these are capabilities of being affected, not actual affections. I have the susceptibility of being poisoned by prussic acid, but this susceptibility is not a present phænomenon, constantly taking place in my body without my perceiving it. The capability of being poisoned is not a present modification of my body; nor is the capability I perhaps have of recollecting, should I become delirious, something which I have forgotten while sane, a present modification of my mind. These are future contingent Edition: current; Page: [275] states, not present actual ones. The real question is, can I undergo a present actual mental modification without being aware of it?

We come, therefore, to the third case, which is the only one really in point, and enquire, whether there are, in our ordinary mental life, “mental modifications, i.e. mental activities and passivities, of which we are unconscious, but which manifest their existence by effects of which we are conscious?” Sir W. Hamilton decides that there are: and even “that what we are conscious of is constructed out of what we are not conscious of;” that “the sphere of our conscious modifications is only a small circle in the centre of a far wider sphere of action and passion, of which we are only conscious through its effects.”*

His first example is taken from the perception of external objects. The facts which he adduces are these. 1st. Every minimum visibile is composed of still smaller parts, which are not separately capable of being objects of vision; “they are, severally and apart, to consciousness as zero.” Yet every one of these parts “must by itself have produced in us a certain modification, real though unperceived,”† since the effect of the whole can only be the sum of the separate effects of the parts. 2nd. “When we look at a distant forest, we perceive a certain expanse of green. Of this, as an affection of our organism, we are clearly and distinctly conscious. Now, the expanse of which we are conscious is evidently made up of parts of which we are not conscious. No leaf, perhaps no tree, may be separately visible. But the greenness of the forest is made up of the greenness of the leaves; that is, the total impression of which we are conscious, is made up of an infinitude of small impressions of which we are not conscious.” 3rd. Our sense of hearing tells the same tale. There is a minimum audibile; the faintest sound capable of being heard. This sound, however, must be made up of parts, each of which must affect us in some manner, otherwise the whole which they compose could not affect us. When we hear the distant murmur of the sea,

It is a curious question how Sir W. Hamilton failed to perceive that an unauthorized assumption has slipped into his argument. Because the Edition: current; Page: [276] minimum visibile consists of parts (as we know through the microscope), and because the minimum visibile produces an impression on our sense of sight, he jumps to the conclusion that each one of the parts does so too. But it is a supposition consistent with what we know of nature, that a certain quantity of the cause may be a necessary condition to the production of any of the effect. The minimum visibile would on that supposition be this certain quantity; and the two halves into which we can conceive it divided, though each contributing its half to the formation of that which produces vision, would not each separately produce half of the vision, the concurrence of both being necessary to produce any vision whatever. And so of the distant murmur of the sea: the agency which produces it is made up of the rolling of many different waves, each of which, if sufficiently near, would affect us with a perceptible sound; but at the distance at which they are, it may require the rolling of many waves to excite an amount of vibration in the air sufficient, when enfeebled by extension, to produce any effect whatever on our auditory nerves, and, through them, on our mind. The supposition that each wave affects the mind separately because their aggregate affects it, is therefore, to say the least, an unproved hypothesis.

The counter-hypothesis, that in order to the production of any quantity whatever of the effect, there is needed a certain minimum quantity of the cause, it is the more extraordinary that Sir W. Hamilton should have overlooked, since he has not only himself adopted a similar supposition in some other cases,* but it is a necessary part of his theory in this very case. He will not admit as possible, that less than a certain quantity of the external agent, produces no mental modification; but he himself supposes that less than a certain quantity of mental modification produces no consciousness. Yet if his à priori argument is valid for the one sequence, it is valid for the other. If the effect of a whole must be the sum of similar effects produced by all its parts, and if every state of consciousness is the effect of a modification of mind which is made up of an infinitude of small parts, the state of consciousness also must be made up of an infinitude of small states of consciousness, produced by these infinitely small mental modifications respectively. We are not at liberty to adopt the one theory for the first link in the double succession, and the other theory for the other link. Having shown no reason why either theory should be preferred, our author would have acted more philosophically in not deciding between them. But to Edition: current; Page: [277] accommodate half the fact to one theory and half to the other, without assigning any reason for the difference, is to exceed all rational license of scientific hypothesis.

After these examples from Perception, our author passes to cases of Association: and as he here states some important mental phænomena well and clearly, I shall quote him at some length.

Though our author says that the facts here described can only be explained on the supposition that the intervening ideas never came into consciousness at all, he is aware that another explanation is conceivable, namely that they were momentarily in consciousness, but were forgotten, Edition: current; Page: [278] agreeably to the law of Obliviscence already spoken of: which, in fact, is the explanation given by Stewart. The same two explanations may be given of his final example, drawn from a class of phænomena also governed by laws of association, “our acquired dexterities and habits.”* When we learn any manual operation, suppose that of playing on the pianoforte, the operation is at first a series of conscious volitions, followed by movements of the fingers: but when, by sufficient repetition, a certain facility has been acquired, the motions take place without our being able to recognise afterwards that we have been conscious of the volitions which preceded them. In this case, we may either hold with Sir W. Hamilton, that the volitions (to which cmustc be added the feelings of muscular contraction, and of the contact of our fingers with the keys) are not, in the practised performer, present to consciousness at all; or, with Stewart, that he is conscious of them, but for so brief an interval, that he has no remembrance of them afterwards.[*] The motions, in this case, are said by Hartley to have become secondarily automatic,[†] which our author supposes to be a third opinion, but dthe difference, if difference it was, between this and Stewart’s theory, is not material to the present enquiryd.

Let us now consider the reasons given by Sir W. Hamilton for preferring his explanation to Stewart’s. The first and principal of them is, that to suppose a state of consciousness which is not remembered, “violates the whole analogy of consciousness.” “Consciousness supposes memory; and we are only conscious as we are able to connect and contrast one instance of our intellectual existence with another.”† “Of consciousness, however faint, there must be some memory, however short. But this is at variance with the phænomenon, for the ideas A and C may precede and follow each other without any perceptible interval, and without any the feeblest memory of B.”‡

Here again I am obliged, not without wonder, to point out the inconclusive character of the argument. When Sir W. Hamilton says that consciousness implies memory, he means, as his words show, that we are only conscious by means of change; by discriminating the present state from a Edition: current; Page: [279] state immediately preceding. Granting this, as with proper explanations I do, all it proves is, that any conscious state of mind must be remembered long enough to be compared with the mental state immediately following it. The state of mind, therefore, which he supposes to have been latent, must, if it passed into consciousness, have been remembered until one other mental modification had supervened; which there is assuredly not a particle of evidence that it was not: for our having totally forgotten it a minute after, is no evidence, but a common consequence of the laws of Obliviscence. It is perhaps true that all consciousness must be followed by a memory, but I see no reason why an evanescent state of consciousness must be followed, if by any, by a more than evanescent memory. “It is a law of mind,” our author says further on, “that the intensity of the present consciousness determines the vivacity of the future memory. Vivid consciousness, long memory; faint consciousness, short memory.”* Well, then: in the case supposed, the intensity of consciousness is at eae minimum, therefore on his own showing the duration of memory should be so too. If the consciousness itself is too fleeting to fix the attention, so, à fortiori, must the remembrance of it. In reality, the remembrance is often evanescent when the consciousness is by no means so, but is so distinct and prolonged as to be in no danger whatever of being supposed latent. Take the case of a player on the pianoforte while still a learner, and before the succession of volitions has attained the rapidity which practice ultimately gives it. In this stage of progress there is, beyond all doubt, a conscious volition, anterior to the playing of each particular note. Yet has the player, when the piece is finished, the smallest remembrance of each of these volitions, as a separate fact? In like manner, have we, when we have finished reading a volume, the smallest memory of our successive volitions to turn the pages? On the contrary, we only know that we must have turned them, because, without doing so, we could not have read to the end. Yet these volitions were not latent: every time we turned over a leaf, we must have formed a conscious purpose of turning; but, the purpose having been instantly fulfilled, the attention was arrested in the process for too short a time to leave a more than momentary remembrance of it. The sensations of sight, touch, and the muscles, felt in turning the leaves, were as vivid at the moment as any of our ordinary sensible impressions which are only important to us as means to an end. But because they had no pleasurable or painful interest in themselves; because the interest they had as means passed away in the same instant by the attainment of the end; and because there was nothing to associate the act of reading with these particular sensations, rather Edition: current; Page: [280] than with other similar sensations formerly experienced; their trace in the memory was only momentary, unless something unusual and remarkable connected with the particular leaves turned over, detained them in remembrance.

If sensations which are evidently in consciousness may leave so brief a memory that they are not felt to leave any memory fwhateverf, what wonder that the same should happen when the sensations are of so fugitive a character, that it can be debated whether they were in consciousness at all? However true it may be that there must be some memory wherever there is consciousness, what argument is this against a theory which supposes a low degree of consciousness, attended by just the degree of memory which properly belongs to it?

Imagine an argument in physics, corresponding to this in metaphysics. Some of my readers are probably acquainted with the important experiments of M. Pasteur, which gappear tog have finally exploded the ancient hypothesis of Equivocal Generation, by showing that even the smallest microscopic animalcules are not produced in a medium from which their still more microscopic germs have been effectually excluded. What should we think of any one who deemed it a refutation of M. Pasteur, that the germs are not discernible by the naked eye? who maintained that invisible animalcules must proceed, if from germs at all, from visible germs? This reasoning would be an exact parallel to that of Sir W. Hamilton.

The only other argument of our author against Stewart’s doctrine, is confined to the phænomenon of acquired habits, in which case, he says, the supposition of real but forgotten consciousness “would constrain our assent to the most monstrous conclusions:” since, in reading aloud, if the matter be uninteresting, we may be carrying on a train of thought (even of “serious meditation”) on a totally different subject, and this, too, “without distraction or fatigue:” which, he says, would be impossible, if we were separately conscious of, or (as he rather gratuitously alters the idea), separately attentive to, “each least movement in either process.”* Sir W. Hamilton here loses sight of a part of his own philosophy, which deserves his forgetfulness the less as it is a very valuable part. In one of the most important psychological discussions in his Lectures,† he forcibly maintains that we are capable of carrying on several distinct series of states of consciousness at once; and goes so far as to contend not only that our consciousness, but what is more than consciousness, our “concentrated consciousness, or attention,”[*] is capable of being divided among as many Edition: current; Page: [281] as six simultaneous impressions.* Returning to the same subject in another place, he quotes from a modern French philosopher, Cardaillac (in a work entitled Etudes Elémentaires de Philosophie),[*] an excellent and conclusive passage, showing the great multitude of states more or less conscious, which often coexist in the mind, and help to determine the subsequent trains of thought or feeling; and illustrating the causes that determine which of these shall in any particular case predominate over the rest.† Our consciousness, therefore, according to Sir W. Hamilton, ought not to have much difficulty in finding room for the two simultaneous series of states which he quarrels with Stewart’s hypothesis for requiring: and we are not bound, under the penalty of “monstrous conclusions,” to consider one of these series as latent. Sir W. Hamilton indeed says truly, that “the greater the number of objects to which our consciousness is simultaneously extended, the smaller is the intensity with which it is able to consider each;”‡ but the intensity of consciousness necessary for reading aloud with correctness in a language familiar to us, not being very considerable, a great part of our power of attention is disposable for “the train of serious meditation”[†] which is supposed to be passing through our minds at the same time. For all this, I would not advise any person (unless one with the peculiar gift ascribed to Julius Cæsar)[‡] to stake anything on the substantial value of a train of thought carried on by him while reading aloud a book on another subject. Such thoughts, I imagine, are always the better for being revised when the mind has nothing else to do than to consider them.

It is strange, but characteristic, that Sir W. Hamilton cannot be depended on for remembering, in one part of his speculations, the best things which he has said in another; not even the truths into which he has thrown so Edition: current; Page: [282] much of the powers of his mind, as to have made them, in an especial manner, his own.

Notwithstanding the failure of Sir W. Hamilton to adduce a single valid reason for preferring his hypothesis to that of Stewart, it does not follow that he is not, at least in certain cases, in the right. The difference between the two opinions being beyond the reach of experiment, and both being equally consistent with the facts which present themselves spontaneously, it is not easy to obtain sure grounds for deciding between them. The essential part of the phænomenon is, that we have, or once had, many sensations, and that many ideas do, or once did, enter into our trains of thought, which sensations and ideas we afterwards, in the words of James Mill, are “under an acquired incapacity of attending to:”* and that when our incapacity of attending to them has become complete, it is, to our subsequent consciousness, exactly as if we did not have them at all: we are incapable, by any self-examination, of being aware of them. We know that these lost sensations and ideas, for lost they appear to be, leave traces of having existed; they continue to be operative in introducing other ideas by association. Either, therefore, they have been consciously present long enough to call up associations, but not long enough to be remembered a few moments later; or they have been, as Sir W. Hamilton supposes, unconsciously present; or they have not been present at all, but something instead of them, capable of producing the same effects. I am myself inclined to agree with Sir W. Hamilton, and to admit his unconscious mental modifications, in the only shape in which I can attach any very distinct meaning to them, namely, unconscious modifications of the nerves. There are much stronger facts in support of this hypothesis than those to which Sir W. Hamilton appeals—facts which it is far more difficult to reconcile with the doctrine that the sensations are felt, but felt too momentarily to leave a recognisable impression in memory. In the case, for instance, of a soldier who receives a wound in battle, but in the excitement of the moment is not aware of the fact, it is difficult not to believe that if the wound had been accompanied by the usual sensation, so vivid a feeling would have forced itself to be attended to and remembered. The supposition which seems most probable is, that the nerves of the particular part were affected as they would have been by the same cause in any other circumstances, but that, the nervous centres being intensely occupied with other impressions, the affection of the local nerves did not reach them, and no sensation was excited. In like manner, if we admit (what physiology is rendering more and more probable) that our mental feelings, as well as our sensations, have for their physical antecedents particular states of the nerves; it may well be Edition: current; Page: [283] believed that the apparently suppressed links in a chain of association, those which Sir W. Hamilton considers as latent, really are so; that they are not, even momentarily, felt; the chain of causation being continued only physically, by one organic state of the nerves succeeding another so rapidly that the state of mental consciousness appropriate to each is not produced. We have only to suppose, either that a nervous modification of too short duration does not produce any sensation or mental feeling at all, or that the rapid succession of different nervous modifications makes the feelings produced by them interfere with each other, and become confounded in one mass. The former of these suppositions is extremely probable, while of the truth of the latter we have positive proof. An example of it is the experiment which Sir W. Hamilton quoted from Mr. Mill, and which had been noticed before either of them by Hartley.[*] It is known that the seven prismatic colours, combined in certain proportions, produce the white light of the solar ray. Now, if the seven colours are painted on spaces bearing the same proportion to one another as in the solar spectrum, and the coloured surface so produced is passed rapidly before the eyes, as by the turning of a wheel, the whole is seen as white. The physiological explanation of this phænomenon may be deduced from another common experiment. If a lighted torch, or a bar heated to luminousness, is waved rapidly before the eye, the appearance produced is that of a ribbon of light; which is universally understood to prove that the visual sensation persists for a certain short time after its cause has ceased. Now, if this happens with a single colour, it will happen with a series of colours: and if the wheel on which the prismatic colours have been painted, is turned with the same rapidity with which the torch was waved, each of the seven sensations of colour will last long enough to be contemporaneous with all the others, and they will naturally produce by their combination the same colour as if they had, from the beginning, been excited simultaneously. If anything similar to this obtains in our consciousness generally (and that it obtains in many cases of consciousness there can be no doubt) it will follow that whenever the organic modifications of our nervous fibres succeed one another at an interval shorter than the duration of the sensations or other feelings corresponding to them, those sensations or feelings will, so to speak, overlap one another, and becoming simultaneous instead of successive, will blend into a state of feeling, probably as unlike the elements out of which it is engendered, as the colour white is unlike the prismatic colours. And this may be the source of many of those states of internal or mental feeling which we cannot distinctly refer to a prototype in experience, our experience Edition: current; Page: [284] only supplying the elements from which, by this kind of mental chemistry, they are composed. The elementary feelings may then be said to be latently present, or to be present but not in consciousness. The truth, however, is that the feelings themselves are not present, consciously or latently, but that the nervous modifications which are their usual antecedents have been present, while the consequents have been frustrated, and another consequent has been produced instead.*

CHAPTER XVI: Sir William Hamilton’s Theory of Causation

sir w. hamilton commences his treatment of the question of Causation, by warning the reader against “some philosophers who, instead of accommodating their solutions to the problem, have accommodated the problem to their solutions.”[*] It might almost have been supposed that this expression had been invented to be applied to Sir W. Hamilton himself. He has defined the problem in a manner in which it ahada been defined by no one else, for no visible reason but to adapt it to a solution which no one else had thought of.*

“When we are aware,” he says,

This being Sir W. Hamilton’s idea of what Causality means, he thinks it unnecessary to suppose, with most of the philosophers of the intuitive school, a special principle of our nature to account for our believing that every phænomenon must have a cause. The belief is accounted for, “not from a power, but from an impotence of mind,”† namely, from the Law of the Conditioned; or in other words, from the incapacity of the human mind to conceive the Absolute. We are unable to conceive and construe to ourselves an absolute commencement. Whatever we think, we cannot help thinking as existing; and whatever we think as existing, we are compelled to think as having existed through all past, and as destined to exist through all future, time. It does not at all follow that this is really the fact, for there are many things inconceivable to us, which not only may, but must, be true. Accordingly it may be true that there is an absolute commencement; it may not be true that every phænomenon has a cause. Human volitions in particular may come into existence uncaused, and, in Sir W. Hamilton’s opinion, they do so. But to us a beginning and an end of existence are both inconceivable.

Had this extraordinary view of Causation proceeded from a thinker of less ability and authority than Sir W. Hamilton, I think there are few readers, who, on reaching the sentence which I have marked by italics, would not have set down the entire speculation as a mauvaise plaisanterie.

But since any opinion, however strange, of Sir W. Hamilton, must be believed to be serious, and no serious opinion of such a man ought to be dismissed unexamined, I shall proceed to enquire, whether the problem of which he propounds this solution, is the problem of Causation, and whether the solution is a true one. To take the last question first; is it a fact that we cannot conceive a beginning of existence? Is it true that whenever we conceive a thing as existing, we are incapable of conceiving a time when it did not exist, or a time when it will exist no longer?

If, by incapacity to conceive an absolute commencement, were only meant that we cannot imagine a time when nothing existed; and if our incapacity of conceiving annihilation, only means that we cannot represent to ourselves an universe devoid of existence; I do not deny it. Whatever else we may suppose removed, there always remains the conception of empty space: and Sir W. Hamilton is probably right in his opinion, that we cannot imagine even empty space without clothing it mentally with some sort of colour or figure. Whoever admits the possibility of Inseparable Association, can scarcely avoid thinking that these are cases of it; and that we are unable to imagine any object but as occupying space, or to imagine it removed without leaving that space either vacant, or filled by something else. But we can conceive both a beginning and an end to all physical existence. As a mere hypothesis, the notion that matter cannot be annihilated arose early; but as a settled belief, it is the tardy result of scientific enquiry. All that is necessary for imagining matter annihilated is presented in our daily experience. We see apparent annihilation whenever water dries up, or fuel is consumed without a visible residuum. The fact could not offer itself to our immediate perceptions in a more palpable shape, if the annihilation were real. Having an exact type on which to frame the conception of matter annihilated, the vulgar of all countries easily and perfectly conceive Edition: current; Page: [289] it. Those to whom, if to anybody, it is inconceivable, are philosophers and men of science, who having formed their familiar conception of the universe on the opposite theory, have acquired an inseparable association of their own, which they cannot overcome. To them the vapour which has succeeded to the water dried up by the sun, the gases which replace the fuel transformed by combustion, have become irrevocably a part of their conception of the entire phænomenon. But the ignorant, who never heard of these things, are not in the least incommoded by the want of them; and if they were not told the contrary, would live and die without suspecting that the water, and the wood or bcoalb, were not destroyed.

All this is not denied by Sir W. Hamilton; but his answer to it is, that if the universe were to perish it would still remain capable of existing, which, it seems, amounts to the same thing. We conceive it as having “virtually existed before it was created,” and as virtually existing after it is destroyed. We cannot conceive that there was, at the moment after creation, “a larger complement of existence in the universe and its Author together, than there was the moment before in the Deity himself alone.” Creation is to us merely the conversion of power into outward existence; annihilation only “the retractation of an outward energy into power.” So that potential existence is exactly the same thing as actual existence; the difference is formal only. Not only is power a real entity, but the power to create an universe is the universe: all created things are but a part of its substance, and can be reabsorbed into it. And this is presented to us, not as a recondite ontological theory, forced upon philosophers as an escape from an otherwise insuperable difficulty, but as a statement of what we all think, and cannot but think, from the very constitution of our thinking faculty. Is this the fact? Does any one, except Sir W. Hamilton, think that in computing the sum total of existence, worlds which God might have created but did not, count for exactly as much as they would if he had really created them? There is a corollary from this doctrine which also deserves attention. If the sum of potential and actual existence is always the same, then with every increase of actual existence, there must be a diminution of power: for if there was once the power without the universe, and is now the same quantity of power and also the universe, what our author nautically terms the “complement of existence”[*] has been increased: which is contrary to the theory. By every exercise, therefore, of creative power, God is less powerful: he has less power now, by a whole universe, than before his power of creating the universe had been transmuted into act; and were he to “retract” the actual existence into potential, he would be more powerful than he now Edition: current; Page: [290] is, by that exact amount. Is this what all mankind think, and are under an original necessity of thinking? Is this the mode in which, by the “law of the Conditioned,”[*] every one of us is absolutely necessitated to construe the idea of Creation? Sir W. Hamilton says it is.

By a desperate attempt to put an intelligible meaning into the theory, somebody may interpret it to mean that before the universe existed in fact, it existed as a thought in the Divine Mind; and that the idea of an universe, complete in all its details, is equivalent in the “complement of existence” to an actual universe. This is not, perhaps, incapable of being maintained; but it affords no escape from the difficulty. For, this idea in the Divine Mind—is the Divine Mind now denuded of it? Has the Deity forgotten the universe, from the time when the divine conception was reduced into act? If not, there are now both the universe and the idea of the universe; that is, a double “complement of existence” instead of a single.*

But were it ever so true that we are incapable of conceiving a commencement of anything, and are necessitated to believe that whatever now exists must have existed in the same or another shape through all past time:—that Sir W. Hamilton should imagine this to be the law of Cause and Effect, must be accounted one of the most singular hallucinations to be found in the writings of any eminent thinker. According to Sir W. Hamilton, when we say that everything must have a cause, we mean that nothing begins to exist, but everything has always existed. I ask any one, either philosopher or common man, whether he does not mean the exact reverse; whether it is not because things do begin to exist, that a cause must be supposed for their existence. The very words in which the axiom of Causation is commonly stated, and which our author, in the first words of his exposition, adopts, are, that everything which begins to exist must have a cause. Is it possible that this axiom can be grounded on the fact that we Edition: current; Page: [291] never suppose anything to begin to exist? Does not he who takes away a beginning of existence, take away all causation, and all need of a cause? Sir W. Hamilton entirely mistakes what it is, which causation is called in to explain. The Matter composing the universe, whatever philosophical theory we hold concerning it, we know by experience to be constant in quantity; never beginning or ending, only changing its cformsc. But its forms have a beginning and ending: and it is its forms, or rather its changes of form—the end of one form and beginning of another—which alone we seek a cause for, and believe to have a cause. It is events, that is to say, changes, not substances, that are subject to the law of Causation. The question for the psychologist is not why we believe that a substance, but why we believe that a change in the form of a substance, must have a cause. Sir W. Hamilton, in a tardy defence of his theory against objections,* is forced, in a sort of way, to admit this, and virtually to acknowledge that all which we really consider as caused, we consider as beginning to exist. Nothing is caused but events: and it will hardly be said that we conceive an event as having never had a beginning, but been in existence as an event just as much before it happened as when it did happen. An event then being the only thing which suggests the belief or the idea of having or requiring a cause, Sir W. Hamilton may be charged with the scientific blunder which he imputes, far less justly, to Brown: he “professes to explain the phænomenon of causality, but previously to explanation, evacuates the phænomenon of all that desiderates explanation.”†

Sir W. Hamilton was familiar with the teaching of the Aristotelian schools concerning the four Causes—or rather the four meanings of the word Cause, for synonymy and homonymy were, in their classifications, very often confounded: 1, Materia. 2, Forma. 3, Efficiens. 4, Finis: Efficiens being the only one of these which answers either to the common, or to the modern philosophical notion of Cause. Sir W. Hamilton confounds Materia with Efficiens; or rather ignores Efficiens altogether, and imagines that when the rest of the world are speaking of Efficiens, they mean Materia. It is the very thing which they pre-eminently do not mean. Sir W. Hamilton may choose to call nothing Existence except the permanent element in phænomena; but it is the changeable element, and no other, which is referred to a cause, or which could ever have given the notion of causation.

Sir W. Hamilton says that the total cause—that the “concurring or co-efficient causes, in fact, constitute the effect.”‡ And again, “an effect” is Edition: current; Page: [292] “nothing more than the sum or complement of all the partial causes, the concurrence of which constitutes its existence.”* “An effect is nothing but the actual union of its constituent entities;” “causes always continue actually to exist in their effects.”† Because the original matter continues to exist in the matter transformed, the Efficiens which transformed it continues to exist in the fact of the change! Of course he takes as his example a case in which the material is the prominent thing, that of a salt, compounded of an acid and an alkali.

Strange that even this first degree of analysis should not have opened his eyes to the fact, that the moment he admits into causa efficiens anything more than materia, his theory is at an end. For he will indeed find in the salt, two of his three “co-efficients,” the acid and the alkali, with their daffinityd; but where will he find in it “the translating force, perhaps the human hand?” This essential “concause” does not embarrass him at all; it costs him nothing to make away with it altogether. “This last,” he says, “as a transitory condition and not always the same, we shall throw out of account.”§ If we throw out of account all that is transitory, we have no difficulty in proving that all that is left is permanent. But the transitory conditions are as much a part of the cause as the permanent conditions. Our author has just before said that he takes the term causes “as synonymous for all without which the effect would not be;” and if the effect is “the sum or complement” of all the causes, the transitory as well as the permanent elements must be found in it. To exclude all the transitory part of the cause, is to exclude the whole cause, except the materials. Suppose the effect to be St. Paul’s: in assigning its causes, the will of the government, the mind of the architect, and the labour of the builders, are all cast out, for they are all transitory, and only the stones and mortar remain.¶

It will have been remarked, that in propounding this theory of the belief in Causation, Sir W. Hamilton gives up Causation as a necessary law of the universe; maintaining that a fact is not to be supposed impossible to Nature because we are impotent to conceive it, and indeed regarding the free acts of an intelligent being as an exception to the universality of the law of Cause and Effect. But while in one place he pays this homage to his own principles, in another he entirely takes leave of them, and glides back into the beaten path of the school of thought which, erecting human capacities of conception into the measure of the universe, maintains that causes must be, because we are incapable of conceiving phænomena without them. After describing the process of ascending from cause to cause, quite gratuitously, as a progress towards unity, Sir W. Hamilton says,

A deliverance more radically at variance with the author’s own canons, could scarcely have been made. For, first, one of the principal of them is, that our inability to conceive a thing as possible, is no argument whatever against its being true. In the second place, the alleged impossibility of Edition: current; Page: [294] conceiving any of the phænomena of the universe to be uncaused, applies equally, on his own showing, to the First Cause itself. For, though he here talks only of one inconceivability, we are, if his theory be correct, under the pressure of two counter-inconceivabilities—being equally unable to conceive an uncaused beginning, or an infinite regress from effect to cause: it is equally inconceivable to us that there should, as that there should not, be a First Cause. In this difficulty, by what right does he (I mean merely as a philosopher, and on his own principles) select one of the rival inconceivabilities as the real interpreter of Nature, in preference to the other? And, having selected it, why apply it up to a certain point, and there stop? Why must all the phænomena of experience be referred to a single Cause, because we cannot conceive anything uncaused, and that single Cause be proclaimed uncaused, notwithstanding the same impossibility? An argument by Sir W. Hamilton would not be complete unless it wound up with his tiresome final appeal, “unless our intelligence be declared a lie.” It is time to understand, once for all, what this means. Does it mean that if our intelligence cannot conceive one thing apart from another, the one thing cannot exist without the other? If yes, what becomes of the Philosophy of the Conditioned? If no, what becomes of the present argument?*

Sir W. Hamilton makes a far better figure when arguing against other theories of Causation, than when maintaining his own. He is usually acute in finding the weak points in other people’s philosophies; and he brings this talent into play, effectively enough, on the present subject. He is not, indeed, at all successful in combating the doctrine (substantially that of Hume and Brown) that it is experience which proves the fact of causation, Edition: current; Page: [295] and association which generates the idea: for against this he only has to say, that experience and association cannot account for necessity. Now, as to real necessity, we do not know that it exists in the case. Sir W. Hamilton himself is of opinion that it does not, and that there are phænomena (the volitions of rational intelligences) which do not depend on causes. And as for the feeling of necessity, or what is termed a necessity of thought, it is (as I have already observed),[*] of all mental phænomena positively the one which an inseparable association is the most evidently competent to generate. I cannot, therefore, attribute any value to Sir W. Hamilton’s discussion of this point; but in his refutation of some of the theories of causation which have originated in his own hemisphere of the intellectual world, he is very felicitous. Take, for example, the doctrine of Wolf and the Leibnitzians (though not of Leibnitz), which “attempts to establish the principle of Causality upon the principle of Contradiction.”[†] “Listen,” says our author,

But there is another theory of Causation which is not abandoned, but has formed for some time past the stronghold of the Intuitive school. This is, that we acquire both our notion of Causation, and our belief in it, from an internal consciousness of power exerted by ourselves, in our voluntary actions: that is, in the motions of our bodies, for our will has no other direct action on the outward world. This relation of the act of will to the bodily movement, it is maintained, is “not a simple relation of succession. The will is not for us a pure act without efficiency; it is a productive energy; so that in volition there is given to us the notion of cause; and this notion we subsequently transport,—project out from our internal activities, into the changes of the external world.”

To this doctrine Sir W. Hamilton gives the following conclusive answer.

With this reasoning, borrowed as our author admits from Hume, I entirely agree; and I wonder that it did not prove to Sir W. Hamilton how little the objection to a doctrine, that it is opposed to our natural beliefs, deserves the exaggerated value he sets upon it; for if there is a natural belief belonging to us, I should suppose it to be, that we are directly conscious of ability to move our limbs. It is, nevertheless, our author’s opinion that the belief is groundless, and that we learn even a fact so closely connected with us, in the way in which any bystander learns it; by outward observation.†

Mr. Mansel, who agrees with Sir W. Hamilton in so many of his opinions, separates from him here, and adopts a modified form of the Volitional Theory. He acknowledges the validity of Hume’s and Sir W. Hamilton’s argument, and does not derive the idea of Power or Causation from mind acting upon body—from my will producing my bodily motions—but from myself producing my will. “In every act of volition, I am fully conscious that it is in my power to form the resolution or to abstain; and this constitutes the presentative consciousness of free will and of power.”* And the sole notion we have of causation in the outward universe, as anything more than invariable antecedence and consequence, “is that of a relation between two objects, similar to that which exists between ourselves and our volitions.”† Thus interpreted, continues Mr. Mansel, it is

Mr. Mansel recognises the possibility that in some other portion of the universe, phænomena may succeed one another at random, without laws of causation, or by laws which are continually changing. We cannot, he says, Edition: current; Page: [298] fconceivef this state of things, but we can gsupposeg it; and this very inability to conceive a phænomenon as taking place without a cause—in other words, this subjective necessity of the law of cause and effect—results, in his opinion, merely from the conditions of our experience. If we were asked, why a physical change must have a cause.

And further on,

In this exposition, which, I do not hesitate to say, contains more sound philosophy than is to be found on the same subject in all Sir W. Hamilton’s writings, I must, nevertheless, take exception to the main doctrine—that the type on which we frame our notion of Power or Causation in general, is the power, not of our volitions over matter, but of our Self over our volitions. In common with one half of the psychological world, I am wholly ignorant of my possessing any such power. I can indeed influence my own volitions, but only as other people can influence my volitions, by the employment of appropriate means. Direct power over my volitions I am Edition: current; Page: [299] conscious of none. However possible it may be that I possess this power without knowing it, a fact of consciousness contestable and contested cannot well be the source and prototype of an idea common to all mankind. I agree, however, with Mr. Mansel[*] in the opinion which he shares with Comte, James Mill, and many others who see nothing in causation but invariable antecedence; that we naturally, and unavoidably, form our first conception of all the agencies in the universe from the analogy of human volitions. The obvious reason is, that nearly everything which is interesting to us, comes, in our earliest infancy, either from our own voluntary motions, or (a consideration too much neglected) from the voluntary motions of others; and, among the few sequences of phænomena which at that time fall within the scope of our perceptions, scarcely any others afford us the spectacle of an apparently absolute commencement; of one thing setting others in motion without being in motion itself—or originating changes in other things, while not itself undergoing any visible change. But as I do not believe, any more than Sir W. Hamilton or Mr. Mansel, that the state of mind called volition carries with it a prophetic anticipation, which can inform us prior to experience that volition will be followed by an effect; I conceive that, no more in this than in any other case of causation, have we evidence of anything more than what experience informs us of: and it informs us of nothing except immediate, invariable, and unconditional sequence.

It is allowed on all hands that part, at least, of our idea of power, is the expectation we feel, that when the cause exists, we shall perceive the effect; but Hume himself admits that in the common notion of power there is an additional element, an animal nisus, as he calls it,[†] which would be more properly termed a conception of effort. That this idea of effort enters into our notion of Power, is to my mind one of the strongest proofs that this notion is not derived from the relation of ourselves to our volitions, but from that of our volitions to our actions. The idea of Effort is essentially a notion derived from the action of our muscles, or from that combined with affections of our brain and nerves. Every one of our muscular movements has to contend against resistance, either that of an outward object, or the mere friction and weight of the moving organ; every voluntary motion is consequently attended by the muscular sensation of resistance, and if sufficiently prolonged, by the additional muscular sensation of fatigue. Effort, considered as an accompaniment of action upon the outward world, means nothing, to us, but those muscular sensations. Since we experience Edition: current; Page: [300] them whenever we voluntarily move an object, we by a mere act of natural generalization, the unconscious result of association, on beholding the same object moved by the wind or by any other agent, conceive the wind as overcoming the same obstacle, and figure it to ourselves as putting forth the same effort. Children and savages sincerely mistake it for a conscious effort. We outgrow that belief; but it is not conformable to the mode of action of the human intellect that it should pass uno saltu, from a complete assimilation of the two phænomena, to conceiving them as totally different. The “natural tendency of men” so justly characterized by Mr. Mansel, “to identify, as far as may be, other agents with themselves,”[*] does not admit itself baffled and give up the attempt after the first failure. The consequents being the same, when the mind is no longer able to suppose an exact parity in the antecedents, it still thinks that there must be something in common between them: and when obliged to admit that there is volition in one case, and a mere unconscious object in the other, it interposes between the antecedent and the consequent an abstract entity, to express what is supposed common to the animate and the inanimate agency—through which they both work, and in the absence of which nothing would be effected. This purely subjective notion, the product of generalization and abstraction acting on the real feeling of muscular or nervous effort, is Power. And this, I conceive, is the psychological rationale of Comte’s great historical generalization, that the metaphysical conception (as he terms it) of the universe succeeds by a natural law to the Fetish conception, and becomes the agent by which the Fetish theory is transformed into Polytheism, this into Monotheism, and Monotheism itself is frittered away into energies and attributes of Nature, and other subordinate abstractions.[†]

Thus much respecting Causation as a conception of the mind. The law of Cause and Effect in its objective aspect, as the fundamental principle in the order of the universe, the basis of most of our knowledge, and the guide of all our action, has been so fully treated in its numerous bearings in my System of Logic, that it is needless for me to speak further of it here.[‡]

CHAPTER XVII: The Doctrine of Concepts, or General Notions

we now arrive at the questions which form the transition from Psychology to Logic—from the analysis and laws of the mental operations, to the theory of the ascertainment of objective truth: the natural link between the two being the theory of the particular mental operations whereby truth is ascertained or authenticated. According to the common classification, from which Sir W. Hamilton does not deviate, these operations are three: Conception, or the formation of General Notions; Judgment; and Reasoning. We begin with the first.

On this subject two questions present themselves: first, whether there are such things as General Notions, and secondly, what they are. If there are General Notions, they must be the notions which are expressed by general terms; and concerning general terms, all who have the most elementary knowledge of the history of metaphysics are aware that there are, or once were, three different opinions.

The first is that of the Realists, who maintained that General Names are the names of General Things. Besides individual things, they recognised another kind of Things, not individual, which they technically called Second Substances, or Universals a parte rei. Over and above all individual men and women, there was an entity called Man—Man in general, which inhered in the individual men and women, and communicated to them its essence. These Universal Substances they considered to be a much more dignified kind of beings than individual substances, and the only ones the cognizance of which deserved the names of Science and Knowledge. Individual existences were fleeting and perishable, but the beings called Genera and Species were immortal and unchangeable.

This, the most prevalent philosophical doctrine of the middle ages, is now universally abandoned, but remains a fact of great significance in the history of philosophy; being one of the most striking examples of the tendency of the human mind to infer difference of things from difference of names,—to suppose that every different class of names implied a corresponding class of real entities to be denoted by them. Having two such Edition: current; Page: [302] different names as “man” and “Socrates,” these inquirers thought it quite out of the question that man should only be a name for Socrates, and others like him, regarded in a particular light. Man, being a name common to many, must be the name of a substance common to many, and in mystic union with the individual substances, Socrates and the rest.

In the later middle ages there grew up a rival school of metaphysicians, termed Nominalists, who repudiating Universal Substances, held that there is nothing general except names. A name, they said, is general, if it is applied in the same acceptation to a plurality of things; but every one of the things is individual. The dispute between these two sects of philosophers was very bitter, and assumed the character of a religious quarrel: authority, too, interfered in it, and as usual on the wrong side. The Realist theory was represented as the orthodox doctrine, and belief in it was imposed as a religious duty. It could not, however, permanently resist philosophical criticism, and it perished. But it did not leave Nominalism in possession of the field. A third doctrine arose, which endeavoured to steer between the two. According to this, which is known by the name of Conceptualism, generality is not an attribute solely of names, but also of thoughts. External objects indeed are all individual, but to every general name corresponds a General Notion, or Conception, called by Locke[*] and others an Abstract Idea. General Names are the names of these Abstract Ideas.

Realism being no longer extant, nor likely to be revived, the contest at present is between Nominalism and Conceptualism; each of which counts illustrious names among its modern adherents. Sir W. Hamilton professes allegiance to both, affirming “that the opposing parties are really at one.”* But his general mode of thought, and habitual phraseology, are purely Conceptualist. This is already apparent in the passage I shall first quote, which contains his statement of the fact to be explained. It is preceded by a remark on Abstraction which is perfectly just, and throws great light on the processes of human thought. Abstraction, he says, is simply the concentration of our attention on a particular object, or a particular quality of an object, and diversion of it from everything else. There may be abstraction, therefore, without generalization. “The notion of the figure of the desk before me is an abstract idea,—an idea that makes part of the total notion of that body, and on which I have concentrated my attention, in order to consider it exclusively. This idea is abstract, but it is at the same time individual; it represents the figure of this particular desk, and not the figure of any other body.”†

There are, therefore, “individual abstract notions;” but there are also “Abstract General Notions.” These are formed

As a popular account of Classification, for learners, to be followed by a more scientific exposition, this fully answers its purpose; but it is expressed in the common language of Conceptualists, and we should naturally conclude from it that the author was a Conceptualist. He however asserts the doctrine of the Nominalists, that there are no general notions, and that the notion suggested by a general name is always singular or individual, to be “not only true but self-evident.” And he quotes as “irrefragable”† the Edition: current; Page: [304] argument of Berkeley, directed against the very possibility of Abstract Ideas. The passage from Berkeley is in the Introduction to his Principles of Human Knowledge, and is as follows:

It is evident, indeed, that the existence of Abstract Ideas—the conception of the class-qualities by themselves, and not as embodied in an individual—is effectually precluded by the law of Inseparable Association.

In what manner Sir W. Hamilton manages to combine two theories, which in words are, and in substance have always been believed to be, directly contradictory of one another, we learn only from his Lectures on Logic. The hearers of those on Metaphysics, unless the Professor supplied oral elucidations which do not appear in the text, must have been considerably puzzled by finding the task of reconciling the two doctrines thrown entirely on themselves. In the Lectures on Logic, however, an attempt is made to perform it for them. It is there stated, that the General Notion, which Sir W. Hamilton terms a Concept, and which is the notion we form of some “point of similarity”[*] between individual objects,

This is sound doctrine, but it is pure Nominalism; as the passage first quoted from our author was pure Conceptualism. It is very necessary that I should quote the additional elucidations given in the succeeding Lecture. A Concept or (General) Notion, he there says, is in this distinguished from a “Presentation of Perception, or Representation of Phantasy,” that

But if, as our author says, concepts are “incapable of being realized in thought at all,” except as representations of individual objects, how are they, even potentially, universal? Being mere mental creations, they are nothing except what they can be thought as being; and they cannot be thought as being universal, but only as being part of the thought of an individual object, though the individual object needs not always be the same. This is not a potential universality, though it is an universal potentiality. If, then, the Nominalists are thus completely right, how can it be that the Conceptualists are not wrong?

Our author thinks that the apparent difference between them is a mere case of verbal ambiguity; arising from the “employment of the same terms to express the representations of Imagination, and the notions or concepts of the Understanding.” “A relation,” he says,

We are therefore to understand that although Imagination cannot figure to itself anything general or universal, Thought Proper, or the Comparative Faculty, or the Understanding, can. But I do not believe that Berkeley, whose argument our author declares “irrefragable,” or any other of the great Nominalist thinkers whom he enumerates, would have accepted this distinction. They would, I apprehend, have denied that the attributes included in the so-called General Notion can be bthoughtb separately, any more than they can be imaged separately. But why do I talk of Berkeley? Sir W. Hamilton has himself negatived the distinction in the very passage Edition: current; Page: [308] just quoted, when he says, “the concept horse cannot, if it remain a concept, that is, a universal attribution, be represented in imagination; but, except it be represented in imagination, it cannot be applied to any object, and except it be so applied, it cannot be realized in thought.” The simple question is, Can the attributes of horse as a class be objects of thought, except as part of a representation of some individual horse? If the Concept cannot exist in the mind except enveloped in the miscellaneous attributes of an individual—which is the truth, and fully recognised as such in the passages quoted from Sir W. Hamilton,—then it can no more be thought separately by the intellect than depicted separately in the imagination.

This notion of a Concept as something which can be thought, but “cannot in itself be depicted to sense or imagination,”* is supported, as we saw, by calling it a relation. “As the result of a comparison,” a concept “necessarily expresses a relation:”† and “a relation cannot be represented in imagination.”[*] If a concept is a relation, what relation is it, and between what? “As the result of a comparison,” it must be a relation of resemblance among the things compared. I might observe that a concept, which is defined by our author himself “a bundle of attributes,”[†] does not signify the mere fact of resemblance between objects; it signifies our mental representation of that in which they resemble; of the “common circumstance”[‡] which Sir W. Hamilton spoke of in his exposition of Classification. The attributes are not the relation, they are the fundamentum relationis. This objection, however, I can afford to wave. However inappropriate the expression, let us admit that a concept is a relation. But if a relation cannot be represented in imagination, our author has just said that “the two terms, the two relative objects,”[§] can. The relation, according to him, though it cannot be imagined, can be thought. But can a relation be thought without thinking the related objects between which it exists? Assuredly, no: and this impossibility can the less be denied by Sir W. Hamilton, as it is the basis on which he founds his theory of Consciousness—of the direct apprehension of the Ego and the Non-ego. Consequently, when we think a relation, we must think it as existing between some particular objects which we think along with it: and a Concept, even if it be the apprehending of a relation, can only be thought as individual, not as general.

The true theory of Concepts needs not, I think, be sought farther off than in our author’s own account of their origin. “In the formation,” he says,

Let me remark, in passing, the fresh crecognitionc in the last sentence, of an important principle, already several times adverted to, in the theory of Naming.

The formation, therefore, of a Concept, does not consist in separating the attributes which are said to compose it, from all other attributes of the same object, and enabling us to conceive those attributes, disjoined from any others. We neither conceive them, nor think them, nor cognise them in any way, as a thing apart, but solely as forming, in combination with numerous other attributes, the idea of an individual object. But, though thinking them only as part of a larger agglomeration, we have the power of fixing our attention on them, to the neglect of the other attributes with which we think them combined. While the concentration of attention actually lasts, if it is sufficiently intense, we may be temporarily unconscious of any of the other attributes, and may really, for a brief interval, have nothing present to our mind but the attributes constituent of the concept. In general, however, the attention is not so completely exclusive as this; it leaves room in consciousness for other elements of the concrete idea: though of these the consciousness is faint, in proportion to the energy of the concentrative effort; and the moment the attention relaxes, if the same concrete idea continues to be contemplated, its other constituents Edition: current; Page: [310] come out into consciousness. General concepts, therefore, we have, properly speaking, none; we have only complex ideas of objects in the concrete: but we are able to attend exclusively to certain parts of the concrete idea: and by that exclusive attention, we enable those parts to determine exclusively the course of our thoughts as subsequently called up by association; and are in a condition to carry on a train of meditation or reasoning relating to those parts only, exactly as if we were able to conceive them separately from the rest.

What principally enables us to do this is the employment of signs, and particularly the most efficient and familiar kind of signs, viz. Names. This is a point which Sir W. Hamilton puts well and strongly, and there are many reasons for stating it in his own language.

The rationale of this is, that when we wish to be able to think of objects in respect of certain of their attributes—to recall no objects but such as are invested with those attributes, and to recall them with our attention directed to those attributes exclusively—we effect this by giving to that combination of attributes, or to the class of objects which possess them, a specific Name. We create an artificial association between those attributes and a certain combination of articulate sounds, which guarantees to us that when we hear the sound, or see the written characters corresponding to it, there will be raised in the mind an idea of some object possessing those attributes, in which idea those attributes alone will be suggested vividly to the mind, our consciousness of the remainder of the concrete idea being faint. As the name has been directly associated only with those attributes, it is as likely, in itself, to recall them in any one concrete combination as in any other. What combination it shall recall in the particular case, depends on recency of experience, accidents of memory, or the influence of other thoughts which have been passing, or are even then passing, through the mind: accordingly, the combination is far from being always the same, and seldom gets itself strongly associated with the name which suggests it; while the association of the name with the attributes that form its conventional signification, is constantly becoming stronger. The association of that particular set of attributes with a given word, is what keeps them Edition: current; Page: [311] together in the mind by a stronger tie than that with which they are associated with the remainder of the concrete image. To express the meaning in Sir W. Hamilton’s phraseology, this association gives them an unity* in our consciousness. It is only when this has been accomplished, that we possess what Sir W. Hamilton terms a Concept; and this is the whole of the mental phænomenon involved in the matter. We have a concrete representation, certain of the component elements of which are distinguished by a mark, designating them for special attention; and this attention, in cases of exceptional intensity, excludes all consciousness of the others.

Sir W. Hamilton thinks, however, that we can form, though scarcely preserve, concepts without the aid of signs. “Language,” he says, “is the attribution of signs to our cognitions of things. But as a cognition must have been already there, before it could receive a sign; consequently, that knowledge which is denoted by the formation and application of a word, must have preceded the symbol which denotes it.” A sign, however, he continues, in one of his happiest specimens of illustration,

Mr. Mansel, who agrees with Sir W. Hamilton in the essentials of his doctrine of Concepts, goes beyond him on this point, being of opinion that without signs we could not form concepts at all.[*] The objection, that we must have had the concept before we could have given it a name, he meets by the suggestion that names when first used are names only of individual objects, but being extended from one object to another under the law of Association by Resemblance, they become specially associated with the points of Resemblance, and thus generate the Concept. In Mr. Mansel’s opinion, no one, “without the aid of symbols,” can advance

This is a step in advance of Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrine, but is open to the same criticism, namely, that after showing all Concepts to be concrete and individual, it endeavours to make out by an indirect process, a sort of abstract existence for them. According to Mr. Mansel, signs are necessary to concepts, because signs alone can give this abstract existence. Signs are wanted, to emancipate our mental apprehension from the conditions of space and time which are in all our concrete representations. The other miscellaneous attributes which have to be cast out, do not, he seems to think, embarrass the formation of the Concept; but it is hampered by the conditions of space and time, and only by means of a sign can we get rid of these. But do we get rid of them by employing signs? To take Mr. Mansel’s own instance: When we establish our concept of a shilling by a verbal description of the coin, does the description enable us to conceive a shilling as not occupying any space? When we think of a shilling, either by name or anonymously, is not the circumstance of occupying space called up as an inevitable part of the mental representation? Not, indeed, the circumstance of occupying a given part of space; but if that is what Mr. Mansel means, it would follow that we need signs to enable us to form a mental representation even of an individual object, provided it be moveable: for the same object does not always occupy the same part of space. The truth is, that the condition of space cannot be excluded; it is an essential part of the concept of Body, and of every kind of bodies. But any given space, or any given time, is not a part of the concept, any more than any of the slight peculiarities in which one shilling differs from another are part of the concept of a shilling. Some space and time, and some individual peculiarities, are always thought along with the concept, and make up the whole, of which it can only be thought as a part: but these are not directly recalled by the class-name, and the attributes composing the concept are. Mr. Mansel, therefore, has not, I conceive, hit the mark: but in the passages which follow, there is real power of metaphysical discrimination.

These remarks of Mr. Mansel remove, as it seems to me, the only real argument for the supposition that Concepts, or what are called General Notions, are formed without the aid of signs. But the counter-doctrine must be received with an important reservation. Signs are necessary, but the signs need not be artificial; there are such things as natural signs. The only reality there is in the Concept is, that we are somehow enabled and led, not once or accidentally, but in the common course of our thoughts, to attend specially, and more or less exclusively, to certain parts of the presentation of sense or representation of imagination which we are conscious of. Now, what is there to make us do this? There must be something which, as often as it recurs either to our senses or to our thoughts, directs our attention to those particular elements in the perception or in the idea: and whatever performs this office is virtually a sign; but it needs not be a word; the process certainly takes place, to a limited extent, in the inferior animals; and even with human beings who have but a small vocabulary, many processes of thought take place habitually by other symbols than words. It is a doctrine of one of the most fertile thinkers of modern times, Auguste Comte, that besides the logic of signs, there is a logic of images, and a logic of feelings.[*] In many of the familiar processes of thought, and especially in uncultured minds, a visual image serves instead of a word. Our visual sensations—perhaps only because they are almost always present along with the impressions of our other senses—have a facility of becoming associated with them. Hence, the characteristic visual appearance of an Edition: current; Page: [315] object easily gathers round it, by association, the ideas of all other peculiarities which have, in frequent experience, coexisted with that appearance: and, summoning up these with a strength and certainty far surpassing that of the merely casual associations which it may also raise, it concentrates the attention on them. This is an image serving for a sign—the logic of images. The same function may be fulfilled by a feeling. Any strong and highly interesting feeling, connected with one attribute of a group, spontaneously classifies all objects according as they possess or do not possess that attribute. We may be tolerably certain that the things capable of satisfying hunger form a perfectly distinct class in the mind of any of the more intelligent animals; quite as much so as if they were able to use or understand the word food. We here see in a strong light the important truth, that hardly anything universal can be affirmed in psychology except the laws of association. As almost all general propositions which can be laid down respecting Mind, are consequences of these laws, so do these ultimate laws, in varying cases, generate different derivative laws; and are continually raising up exceptions to the empirical generalizations yielded by direct psychical observation, which, so far as true, being mere cases of the wider laws, are always limited by them.

We have now attained a theory of Classification, of Class Notions, and of Class Names, which is clear, free from difficulties, and, in its essential elements, understood and assented to by Sir W. Hamilton. With the exception of a few minor matters, I find no fault in his theory. It is where his theory ends and his practice begins, that I am obliged to diverge from him. His theory is a complete condemnation of his practice. His theory is that of Nominalism; but he affirms, in opposition to every Conceptualist, that Nominalism and Conceptualism are the same, and on this justification expounds all the operations of the intellect in the language, and on the assumptions, of Conceptualism. If a Concept does not exist as a separate or independent object of thought, but is always a mere part of a concrete image, and has nothing that discriminates it from the other parts except a special share of attention, guaranteed to it by special association with a name; what is meant by the paramount place assigned to Concepts in all the intellectual processes? Can it be right to found the whole of Logic, the entire theory of Judgment and Reasoning, upon a thing which has merely a fictitious or constructive existence? Is it correct to say that we think by means of Concepts? Would it not convey both a clearer and a truer meaning, to say that we think by means of ideas of concrete phænomena, such as are presented in experience or represented in imagination, and by means of names, which being in a peculiar manner associated with certain elements of the concrete images, arrest our attention on those elements? Sir W. Hamilton has told us that a concept cannot, as such, be “realized in Edition: current; Page: [316] thought,” or “elicited into consciousness.”[*] Can it be, that we think and reason by means of that which cannot be thought, of which we cannot become conscious? Of course Sir W. Hamilton did not mean, nor do I, that we cannot think or be conscious of the attributes which are said to compose the concept; but we can only be conscious of them as forming a representation jointly with other attributes which do not enter into the concept. And the difference between the parts of the same representation which are inside and those which are outside what is called the concept, is not that the former are attended to and the latter not, for neither of these is always true. It is, that foreseeing that we shall frequently or occasionally desire to attend only to the former, we have made for ourselves, or have received from our predecessors, a contrivance for being reminded of them, which also serves for fixing our exclusive attention upon them when called to mind. To say, therefore, that we think by means of concepts, is only a circuitous and obscure way of saying that we think by means of general or class names.*d To give an intelligible idea of the fact, we always need to translate it out of the former language into the latter. It is possible, no doubt, so to define the terms that both expressions shall mean the same thing. But the less appropriate language has the immense disadvantage, that it cannot be used without tacitly assuming that these mere parts of our complex concrete perceptions and ideas have a separate mental existence, which is admitted not to belong to them. No one, more fully than Sir W. Hamilton, recognises the true theory; but the acknowledgment only serves him as an excuse for Edition: current; Page: [317] delivering himself up unreservedly to all the logical consequences of the false theory. To read the account which he and Mr. Mansel, in common with the great majority of modern logicians, give of our intellectual processes—which they always make to consist essentially of some operation practised upon concepts—no one would ever imagine that concepts were not complete, rounded off, distinct and separate possessions of the mind, habitually dealt with by it quite apart from anything else; and this, in the general opinion of Conceptualists, they are: but according to Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, they are secretly, all the while, incapable of being thought except as parts of something else which has always to be dealt with along with them, but which these philosophers, in their expositions, suppress as completely, as if they had forgotten that its necessary presence is part of their theory. For these and other reasons, I fthink that the words Concept, General Notion, and other phrases of like import, convenient as they are for the lighter and every-day uses of philosophical discussion, should be abstained from where precision is requiredf. Above all, I hold that nothing but confusion ever results from introducing the term Concept into Logic, and that instead of the Concept of a class, we should always speak of the signification of a class name.*

The signification of a class name has two aspects, corresponding to the distinction to which Sir W. Hamilton attaches so much importance, between the Extension and the Comprehension of a concept; which is merely a bad expression for the distinction between the two modes of signification of a concrete general name. Most names are still, what according to Mr. Mansel they all were originally, names of objects;[*] and do not cease to be so by becoming class names; but, though names of objects, they become expressive of certain attributes of those objects, and when predicated of an Edition: current; Page: [318] object, they affirm of it those attributes. The name is said, in the language of logicians, to denote the objects and connote the attributes. White denotes chalk and other white substances, and connotes the particular colour which is common to them. Bird denotes eagles, sparrows, crows, geese, and so forth, and connotes life, the possession of wings, and the other properties by which we are guided in applying the name. The various objects denoted by the class name are what is meant by the Extension of the concept, while the attributes connoted are its Comprehension. It must be remarked, however, that the Extension is not anything intrinsic to the concept; it is the sum of all the objects, in our concrete images of which, the concept is included: but the Comprehension is the very concept itself, for the concept means nothing but our mental representation of the sum of the attributes composing it.

And here it is important to take notice of a psychological truth, which forms an additional reason for preferring the expression that we think by general names, to that of thinking by concepts. Since the concept only exists as a part of a concrete mental state; if we say that we think by means of it, and not by the whole which it is a part of, it ought at least to be the part by which we think. Since that is the only distinction between it and the remainder of the presentation or representation in which it is embedded, at least that distinction should be real: all which enters into the concept ought to be operative in thought. So far is this from being true, that in our processes of thought, seldom more than a part, sometimes a very small part, of what is comprehended in the concept, is attended to, or comes into play. This is forcibly stated, though in Conceptualist phraseology, by Mr. Mansel. “We can,” he says,

The attempt to stand at once on two incompatible theories, leads to strange freaks of expression. Mr. Mansel describes us as thinking by means of concepts which we are incapable of forming, and do not even attempt to form, but use the signs instead. Yet he will not consent to call this thinking by the signs, but insists that it is the concepts which are even in this case the Edition: current; Page: [319] “instruments of thought.” It is surely a very twisted logical position which, when he is so entirely right in what he has to say, compels him to use so strangely contorted a mode of saying it.

The same important psychological fact is excellently illustrated by Sir W. Hamilton in one of the very best chapters of his works, the Tenth Lecture on Logic, in which it is stated as follows:

The word does not always serve the purpose of fixing our attention on the whole of the attributes which it connotes; some of them may be only recalled to mind faintly, others possibly not at all: a phænomenon heasilyh to be accounted for by the laws of Obliviscence. But the part of the attributes signified which the word does recal, may be all that it is necessary for us to think of, at the time and for the purpose in hand; it may be a sufficient part to set going all the associations by means of which we proceed through that thought to ulterior thoughts. Indeed, it is because part of the attributes have generally sufficed for that purpose, that the habit is acquired of not attending to the remainder. When the attributes not attended to are really of no importance for the end in view, and if attended to would not have altered the results of the mental process, there is no harm done: much of our valid thinking is carried on in this manner, and it is to this that our thinking processes owe, in a great measure, their proverbial rapidity. This kind of thinking was called, by Leibnitz, Symbolical. A passage of one of the early writings of that eminent thinker, in which it is brought to notice with his accustomed clearness, is translated by Sir W. Hamilton, from whom I re-quote it.

Yet the elements which are thus habitually left out, and of which in the case of a composite notion, if Leibnitz is right, some must be left out, are really parts of the signification of the name, and if the word Concept has any meaning, are parts of the concept. Leibnitz accordingly knew better than to say, as Mr. Mansel says[*] and Sir W. Hamilton implies, that even in these cases we think by means of the concept. According to him we sometimes think entirely without the concept, generally only by a part of it, which may be the wrong part, or an insufficient part, but which may be, and in all sound thinking is, sufficient. On this point, therefore, a false apprehension of the facts of thought is conveyed by the doctrine which speaks of Concepts as its instrument. Leibnitz would perhaps have said, that the name is the instrument in one of the two kinds of thinking, and the concept in the other. The more reasonable doctrine surely is, that the name is the instrument in both; the difference being, that in one case it does the whole, and in the other only a part, perhaps the minimum, of the work for which it is intended and fitted, that of reminding us of the portions of our concrete mental representations which we expect that we shall have need of attending to.

In summary; if the doctrine, that we think by concepts, means that a concept is the only thing present to the mind along with the individual object which (to use Sir W. Hamilton’s language) we think under the concept, this is not true: since there is always present a concrete idea or image, of which the attributes comprehended in the concept are only, and cannot be conceived as anything but, a part. Again, if it be meant that the concept, though only a part of what is present to the mind, is the part which is operative in the act of thought, neither is this true: for what is operative is, in a great majority of cases, much less than the entire concept, being that portion only which we have retained the habit of distinctly attending to. In neither of these senses, therefore, do we think by means of the concept: and all that is true is, that when we refer any object or set of objects to a class, some at least of the attributes included in the concept are present to the mind; being recalled to consciousness and fixed in attention, through their association with the class-name.

Before leaving this part of the subject, it seems necessary to remark, that Sir W. Hamilton is by no means consistent in the extension which he gives to the signification of the word Concept. In most cases in which he uses it, he makes it synonymous with General Notion, and allows concepts of classes only, not of individuals.* It is thus that he expressly defines the term. “A Concept,” he says, “is the cognition or idea of the general character or characters, point or points, in which a plurality of objects coincide.”† “Concept,” he says again, “is convertible with general notion, or more correctly, notion simply.”‡ He speaks of the extending of the term to our direct knowledge of individuals, as an “abusive employment” of it.§ He also says, “Notions and Concepts are sometimes designated by the style of general notions,—general conceptions. This is superfluous, for in propriety of speech, notions and concepts are, in their very nature, general.”¶ In certain places, however, he speaks of concepts of individuals. “If I think of Socrates as son of Sophroniscus, as Athenian, as philosopher, as pugnosed, these are only so many characters, limitations, or determinations which I predicate of Socrates, which distinguish him from all other men, and together make up my notion or concept of him.”∥ And again, “When the Extension of a concept becomes a minimum, that is, when it contains no other notions under it, it is called an individual.”** And further on,

But, in the sequel of the same exposition, he again seems to surrender this use of the word Concept as an improper one, saying, “If a concept be an individual, that is, only a bundle of individual qualities, it is . . . not a proper abstract concept at all, but only a concrete representation of Imagination.”† And indeed, no other doctrine is consistent with the proposition elsewhere laid down by our author (though founded, as I think, on an error), that the “words Conception, Concept, Notion, should be limited to the thought of what cannot be represented in imagination, as the thought suggested by a general term.”‡

Mr. Mansel, on the contrary, justifies the phrase, concept of an individual, maintaining that “the subjects of all logical judgments are concepts.”§ “The man,” he says,

If this be so, one of two things follows. Either, if I met with a person who exactly corresponded to the concept I have formed of Cæsar, I must suppose that this person actually is Cæsar, and lived in the century preceding the birth of Christ; or else, I cannot think of Cæsar as Cæsar, but only as a Cæsar; and all those which are mistakenly called proper names are general names, the names of virtual classes, signifying a set of attributes which carry the name with them, wherever they are found. Either theory Edition: current; Page: [323] seems to be sufficiently refuted by stating it. Surely the true doctrine is that of Sir W. Hamilton, that what is called my concept of Cæsar is the presentation in imagination of the individual Cæsar as such. Mr. Mansel might have learnt better from Reid, who says “Most words (indeed all general words) are the signs of ideas: but proper names are not; they signify individual things, and not ideas.”* And again, soon after:

The whole of Reid’s doctrine respecting names and general notions is not only far more clear, but nearer to the true doctrine of the connotation of names, than Sir W. Hamilton’s or Mr. Mansel’s.‡

CHAPTER XVIII: Of Judgment

though, as has appeared in the last chapter, the proposition that we think by concepts is, if not positively untrue, at least an unprecise and misleading expression of the truth, it is not, however, to be concluded that Sir W. Hamilton’s view of Logic, being wholly grounded on that proposition, must be destitute of value. Many writers have given good and valuable expositions of the principles and rules of Logic, from the Conceptualist point of view. The doctrines which they have laid down respecting Conception, Judgment, and Reasoning, have been capable of being rendered into equivalent statements respecting Terms, Propositions, and Arguments; these, indeed, were what the writers really had in their thoughts, and there was little amiss except a mode of expression which attempted to be more philosophical than it knew how to be. To say nothing of less illustrious examples, this is true of all the properly logical part of Locke’s Essay. His admirable Third Book requires hardly any other alteration to bring it up to the scientific level of the present time, than to be corrected by blotting out everywhere the words Abstract Idea, and replacing them by “the connotation of the class-name.”[*]

We shall, accordingly, proceed to examine the explanation of Judgment, and of Reasoning, which Sir W. Hamilton has built on the foundation of the doctrine of Concepts.

“To judge,” he says, “is to recognise the relation of congruence or of confliction in which two concepts, two individual things, or a concept and an individual, compared together, stand to each other. This recognition, considered as an internal consciousness, is called a Judgment; considered as expressed in language, it is called a Proposition or Predication.”*

To be certain of understanding this, we must inquire what is meant by a relation of congruence or of confliction between concepts. To consult Sir W. Hamilton’s definitions of words is, as we have seen, not a sure way of ascertaining the sense in which he practically uses them; but it is one of the ways, and we are bound to employ it in the first instance. A few pages Edition: current; Page: [325] before, he has given a sort of definition of these terms. “Concepts, in relation to each other, are said to be either Congruent or Agreeing, inasmuch as they may be connected in thought; or Conflictive, inasmuch as they cannot. The confliction constitutes the Opposition of notions.” This Opposition is twofold. “1°. Immediate or Contradictory Opposition, called likewise Repugnance; and 2°. Mediate or Contrary Opposition. The former emerges when one concept abolishes directly, or by simple negation, what another establishes; the latter, when one concept does this not directly, or by simple negation, but through the affirmation of something else.”*

Congruent Concepts, therefore, adoesa not mean concepts which coincide, either wholly or in any of their parts, but such as are mutually compatible; capable of being predicated of the same individual; of being combined in the same presentation of sense or representation of imagination. This is more clearly expressed in a passage from Krug, which our author adopts as part of his own exposition.

Thus interpreted, our author’s doctrine is, that to judge, is to recognise whether two concepts, two things, or a concept and a thing, are capable of coexisting as parts of the same mental representation. This I will call Sir W. Hamilton’s first theory of Judgment; I will venture to add, his best.

But he soon after proceeds to say,

In this regress from ignotum to ignotius, the next thing to be ascertained is, what relation between one thought and another is signified by the verb “to determine.” Such explanation as our author deemed it necessary to give, may be found a few pages further back. He there stated, that by determining a notion, he means adding on more characters, by each of which “we limit or determine more and more the abstract vagueness or extension of the notion; until at last, if every attribute be annexed, the sum of attributes contained in the notion becomes convertible with the sum of attributes of which some concrete individual or reality is the complement.”† Substituting, then, the definition for what it defines, we find our author’s opinion to be, that two notions can only be congruent, that is, capable of being blended into one, if we conceive one of them as adding on additional attributes to the other. This is not yet very clear. We must have recourse to his illustration. “For example, we cannot think the two attributes electrical and polar as a single notion, unless we convert the one of these attributes into a subject, to be determined or qualified by the other.” Do we ever think the two attributes electrical and polar as a single notion? We think them as distinct parts of the same notion, that is, as attributes which are constantly combined. “But if we do,—if we say, what is electrical is polar, we at once reduce the duality to unity; we judge that polar is one of the constituent characters of the notion electrical, or that what is electrical is contained under the class of things, marked out by the common character of polarity.”‡ The last italics are mine, intended to mark the place where an intelligible meaning first emerges. “We may, therefore, articulately define a judgment or proposition to be the product of that act in which we pronounce that of two notions, thought as subject and as predicate, the one does or does not constitute a part of the other, either in the quantity of Extension, or in the quantity of Comprehension.”§

This is Sir W. Hamilton’s second theory of Judgment, enunciated at a distance of exactly three pages from the first, without the smallest suspicion on his part that they are not one and the same. Yet they differ by the whole interval which separates a part of from along with. According to the Edition: current; Page: [327] first theory, concepts are recognised as congruent whenever they are not mutually repugnant; when they are capable of being objectively realized along with one another; when the attributes comprehended in both of them can be simultaneously possessed by the same object. According to the second theory, they are only congruent when the one concept is actually a part of the other. The only circumstance in which the two theories resemble is, that both of them are unfolded out of the vague expression “capable of being connected in thought.”[*] They are, in fact, two different and conflicting interpretations of that expression. How irreconcilable they are, is apparent when we descend to particulars. Krug’s examples, learning and virtue, beauty and riches, &c., are congruent in the first sense, since they are attributes which can be thought as existing together in the same subject. But is the concept learning a part of the concept virtue, the concept beauty a part of the concept riches, or vice versâ? Sir W. Hamilton would scarcely affirm that they are in a relation of part and whole in Comprehension; and such relation as they have in Extension is not a relation between the concepts, but between the aggregates of real things of which they are predicable. One of those aggregates might be part of the other, though it is not; but one of the concepts can never be part of the other. No one can ever find the notion beauty in the notion riches, nor conversely.

Our author having thus gently slid back into the common Conceptualist theory of judgment, that it consists in recognising the identity or non-identity of two notions, adheres to it thenceforward with as much consistency as we need ever expect to find in him. We may consider as his final theory of Judgment, on which his subsequent logical speculations are built, that a judgment is a recognition in thought, a proposition a statement in words, that one notion is or is not a part of another. He makes use of the word notion b(doubtless)b to include the case in which either of the terms of the proposition is singular. The two notions, one of which is recognised as being or not being a part of the other, may be either Concepts, that is, General Notions, or one of them may be a mental representation of an individual object.

The first objection which, I think, must occur to any one, on the contemplation of this definition, is that it omits the main and characteristic element of a judgment and of a proposition. Do we never judge or assert anything but our mere notions of things? Do we not make judgments and assert propositions respecting actual things? A Concept is a mere creation of the mind: it is the mental representation formed within us of a phænomenon; or rather, it is a part of that mental representation, marked off by a sign, for a Edition: current; Page: [328] particular purpose. But when we judge or assert, there is introduced a new element, that of objective reality, and a new mental fact, Belief. Our judgments, and the assertions which express them, do not enunciate our mere mode of mentally conceiving things, but our conviction or persuasion that the facts as conceived actually exist: and a theory of Judgments and Propositions which does not take account of this, cannot be the true theory. In the words of Reid, “I give the name of Judgment to every determination of the mind concerning what is true or what is false. This, I think, is what logicians, from the days of Aristotle, have called judgment.”* And this is the very element which Sir W. Hamilton’s definition omits from it.

I am aware that Sir W. Hamilton would have an apparent answer to this. He would, I suppose, reply, that the belief of actual reality, implied in assent to a proposition, is not left out of account, but brought to account in another place. The belief, he would say, is not inherent in the judgment, but in the notions which are the subject and predicate of the judgment; these being either mental representations of real objects, which if represented in the mind at all, must be represented as real, or Concepts formed by a comparison of real objects, which therefore exist in the mind as concepts of realities. Accordingly, when we judge and make assertions respecting objects known to be imaginary, the judgments are accompanied with no belief in any real existence except that of the mental images; what our author calls the “presentations of phantasy.”[*] When, indeed, a judgment is formed or an assertion is made respecting something imaginary which is supposed to be real, as for instance concerning a ghost, there is a belief in the real existence of more than the mental image; but this belief is not anything superadded to the comparison of concepts; it already existed in the concepts; a ghost was thought as something having a real existence.

This, at least, is what might be said in behalf of Sir W. Hamilton, though he has not himself said it. But though it cescapes fromc the objection dagainstd omitting the element Belief from the definition of Judgment, it does so by an entire inversion of the logical process of definition. The element of Belief, or Reality, may indeed be in the concepts; but it never could have got into the concepts, if it had not first been in the judgments by which the concepts were constructed. If the belief of reality had been absent from those judgments originally, it never could have come round to them through the concepts. Belief is an essential element in a judgment; it may be either present or absent in a concept. Our author, and those who Edition: current; Page: [329] agree with him, postpone this part of the subject until they are treating of the distinction between True and False Propositions. They then say, that if the relation which is judged to exist between the notions, exists between the corresponding realities, the proposition is true, and if not, false. But if the operation of forming a judgment or a proposition includes anything at all, it includes judging that the judgment or the proposition is true. The recognition of it as true is not only an essential part, but the essential element of it as a judgment; leave that out, and there remains a mere play of thought, in which no judgment is passed. It is impossible to separate the idea of Judgment from the idea of the truth of a judgment; for every judgment consists in judging something to be true. The element Belief, instead of being an accident which can be passed in silence, and admitted only by implication, constitutes the very difference between a judgment and any other intellectual fact, and it is contrary to all the laws of Definition to define Judgment by anything else. The very meaning of a judgment, or a proposition, is something which is capable of being believed or disbelieved; which can be true or false; to which it is possible to say yes or no. And though it cannot be believed until it has been conceived, or (in plain terms) understood, the real object of belief is not the concept, or any relation of the concept, but the fact conceived. That fact need not be an outward fact; it may be a fact of internal or mental experience. But even then the fact is one thing, the concept of it is another, and the judgment is concerning the fact, not the concept. The fact may be purely subjective, as that I dreamed something last night; but the judgment is not the cognition of a relation between the presentation I and the concept having dreamed, but the cognition of the real memory of a real event.

This first, and insuperable objection, the force of which will be seen more and more the further we proceed, is applicable to the Conceptualist doctrine of Judgment, howsoever expressed, and to Sir W. Hamilton’s as one of the modes of expressing that doctrine. There are other objections special to Sir W. Hamilton’s form of it.

In what I have called Sir W. Hamilton’s first theory of judgment, we found him saying that the comparison, ending in a recognition of congruence or confliction, may be between “individual things”[*] as well as between concepts. But in his second theory, one at least of the terms of comparison must be a concept. For a judgment, according to this theory, is “the product of that act in which we pronounce that of two notions, thought as subject and predicate, the one does or does not constitute a part of the other.”[†] Now a concept, that is, a bundle of attributes, may be a part of another concept, and may be a part of our mental image of an individual Edition: current; Page: [330] object; but one notion of an individual object cannot be a part of another notion of an individual object. One object may be an integrant part of another, but it cannot be a part in Comprehension or in Extension, as these words are understood of a Concept. St. Paul’s is an integrant part of London, but neither an attribute of it, nor an object of which it is predicable.

Since, therefore, a judgment, in Sir W. Hamilton’s second theory, is the recognition of the relation of part and whole, either between two concepts, or between a concept and an individual presentation; the theory supposes that the mind furnishes itself with concepts, or general notions, before it begins to judge. Now this is not only evidently false, but the contrary is asserted, in the most decisive terms, by Sir W. Hamilton himself. He affirms, and it is denied by nobody, that every Concept is built up by a succession of judgments. We conceive an object mentally as having such and such an attribute, because we have first judged that it has that attribute in reality. Let us see what our author says on this point in his Lectures on Metaphysics. He says that there is a judgment involved in every mental act.

And in a subsequent part of his Course:

But if judgment is a comparison of two concepts, or of a concept and an individual object, and a recognition that one of them is a part of (or even merely congruent with) the other, it must be a process “always subsequent to the acquisition of knowledge,” or, in other words, to the formation of Concepts. The theory of Judgment in the third volume of the Lectures, belongs to a different mode of thinking altogether from the theory of Consciousness in the first and second; and when Sir W. Hamilton was occupied with either of them, he must have temporarily forgotten the other.

But in the third volume itself the same inconsistency is obtruded on us still more openly. We are there told in plain words,

That the same philosopher should have written these words, and a little more than a hundred pages after should have defined a judgment as the result of a comparison of concepts, either between themselves, or with individual objects, is, I think, the very crown of the self-contradictions which we have found to be sown so thickly in Sir W. Hamilton’s speculations. Coming from a thinker of such ability, it almost makes one despair of one’s own intellect and that of mankind, and feel as if the attainment of truth on any of the more complicated subjects of thought were impossible.

It is necessary to renounce one of these theories or the other. Either a concept is not the “synthesis and record of one or more prior acts of judgment,” or a judgment is not, at least in all cases, the recognition of a relation of which one or both of the terms are Concepts. The least that could be required of Sir W. Hamilton would be so to modify his doctrine as to admit two kinds of judgment: the one kind, that by which concepts are Edition: current; Page: [332] formed, the other that which succeeds their formation. When concepts have been formed, and we subsequently proceed to analyse them, then, he might say, we form judgments which recognise one concept as a whole, of which another is a part. But the judgments by which we constructed the concepts, and every subsequent judgment by which, to use his own words, we amplify them by the addition of a new attribute, have nothing to do with comparison of concepts: it is the Anschauungen, the intuitions, the presentations of experience, which we in this case compare and judge.*

Take, for instance, Sir W. Hamilton’s own example of a judgment, “Water rusts iron:”[*] and let us suppose this truth to be new to us. Is it not like a mockery to say with our author, that we know this truth by comparing “the thoughts, water, iron, and rusting”? Ought he not to have said the facts, water, iron, and rusting? and even then, is comparing the proper name for the mental operation? We do not examine whether three thoughts agree, but whether three outward facts coexist. If we lived till doomsday we should never find the proposition that water rusts iron in our concepts, if we had not first found it in the outward phænomena. The proposition expresses a sequence, and what we call a causation, not between our concepts, but between the two sensible presentations of moistened iron Edition: current; Page: [333] and rust. When we have already judged this sequence to exist outside us, that is, independently of our intellectual combinations, we know it, and once known, it may find its way into our concepts. But we cannot elicit out of a concept any judgment which we have not first put into it; which we have not consciously assented to, in the act of forming the concept. Whenever, therefore, we form a new judgment—judge a truth new to us—the judgment is not a recognition of a relation between concepts, but of a succession, a coexistence, or a similitude, between facts.

This is the smallest sacrifice on the part of Sir W. Hamilton’s theory of Judgment, which would satisfy his theory of Consciousness. But when thus reconciled with a part of his system with which it now conflicts, it would not be the better founded. It might still be chased from point to point, unable to make a stand anywhere. For let us next suppose, that the judgment is not new; that the truth, Water rusts iron, is known to us of old. When we again think of it, and think it as a truth, and assent to it, should we even then give a correct account of what passes in our mind, by calling this act of judgment a comparison of our thoughts—our concepts—our notions—of water, rust, and iron? We do not compare our artificial mental constructions, but consult our direct remembrance of facts. We call to mind that we have seen, or learned from credible testimony, that when iron is long in contact with water, it rusts. The question is not one of notions, but of beliefs; belief of past and expectation of future presentations of sense. Of course it is psychologically true that when I believe, I have a notion of that which I believe; but the ultimate appeal is not to the notion, but to the presentation or intuition. If I am in any doubt, what is the question I ask myself? Is it—Do I think of, or figure to myself, water as rusting iron? or is it—Did I ever perceive, and have other people perceived, that water rusts iron? There are persons, no doubt, whose criterion of judgment is the relation between their own concepts, but these are not the persons whose judgments the world has usually found worth adopting. If the question between Copernicus and Ptolemy had depended on whether we conceive the earth moving and the sun at rest, or the sun moving and the earth at rest, I am afraid the victory would have been with Ptolemy.

But, again, even if judging were entirely a notional operation, consisting of the recognition of some relation between concepts, it remains to be proved that the relation is that of Whole and Part. Could it, even then, be said, that every judgment in which I predicate one thing of another, on the faith of previous judgments recorded, as our author says, in the concepts, consists in recognising that one of the concepts includes the other as a part of itself? When I judge that Socrates is mortal, or that all men are mortal, does the judgment consist in being conscious that my concept mortal is part of my representation of Socrates, or of my concept man?

This doctrine ignores the famous distinction, admitted, I suppose, in Edition: current; Page: [334] some shape or other, by all philosophers, but most familiar to modern metaphysics in the form in which it is stated by Kant—the distinction between Analytical and Synthetical judgments. Analytical judgments are supposed to unfold the contents of a concept; affirming explicitly of a class, attributes which were already part of the corresponding concept, and may be brought out into distinct consciousness by mere analysis of it. Synthetical judgments, on the contrary, affirm of a class, attributes which are not in the concept, and which we therefore do not and cannot judge to be a part of the concept, but only to be conjoined in fact with the attributes composing the concept. This distinction, though obtruded upon our author by many of the writers with whom he was familiar, has so little in common with his mode of thought, that he only slightly refers to it, in a very few passages of his works: in one of these, however,* he speaks of it as of something very important, eexpresses his preference for the terms Explicative and Ampliative as names for ite, and discusses, not the distinction itself, but its history; apparently unconscious that his own theory entirely does away with it. According to that, all judgments are analytical, or, fas he prefers to sayf, explicative. Even giving up so much of his theory as contradicts his own doctrine on the formation of concepts, the part remaining would compel him to maintain that all judgments which are not new are analytical, and that synthetical judgments are limited to truths, or supposed truths, which we learn for the first time.g

This discrepancy between our author and almost all philosophers, even of his own general way of thinking, (including, among the rest, Mr. Mansel), arises from the fact, that he understands by concept something different from what they have usually understood by it. The concept of a class, in Sir W. Hamilton’s acceptation of the term, includes all the attributes which we have judged, and still judge, to be common to the whole class. It means, in short, our entire knowledge of the class. But, with philosophers in general, the concept of the class as such,—my concept of man, for example, as distinguished from my mental representation of an individual man,—includes, not all the attributes which I ascribe to man, but such of them only as the classification is grounded on, and as are implied in the meaning of the name. Man is a living being, or Man is rational, they would call analytical judgments, because the attributes hofh life and rationality are of the number of those which are already given in the concept Man: but Edition: current; Page: [335] Man is mortal, they would account synthetical, because, familiar as the fact is, it is not already affirmed in the very name Man, but has to be superadded in the predicate.

It is quite lawful for a philosopher (though seldom prudent) to alter the meaning of a word, provided he gives fair notice of his intention; but he is bound, if he does so, to remain consistent with himself in the new meaning, and not to transfer to it propositions which are only true in the old. This condition Sir W. Hamilton does not observe. It often happens that different opinions of his belong to different and inconsistent systems of thought, apparently through his retaining from former writers some doctrine, the grounds of which he has, by another doctrine, subverted. His whole theory of Concepts being infected by an inconsequence of this description, the retention of all the Conceptualist conclusions along with Nominalist premises, it is no wonder if further oversights of the same kind meet us in every part of the details. The following is one of the most palpable. As we just mentioned, the concept of a class in our author’s sense, includes all the attributes of the class, so far as the thinker is acquainted with them; the whole of the thinker’s knowledge of the class. This is Sir W. Hamilton’s own doctrine; but along with it he retains a doctrine belonging to the other meaning of Concept, which I have contrasted with his. “The exposition of the Comprehension of a notion is called its Definition:”* and again “Definition is the analysis of a complex concept into its component parts or attributes.”† But a thing is not analysed into its component parts if any of the parts are left out. The two opinions taken together lead, therefore, to the remarkable consequence, that the definition of a class ought to include the whole of what is known of the class. Those who mean by the concept not all known attributes of the class, but such only as are included in the connotation of the name, may be permitted to say of a Definition that it is the analysis of the concept: but to Sir W. Hamilton this was not permissible. To crown the inconsistency, he still presents the stock example, Man is a rational animal, as a good definition, and a typical specimen of what a Definition is;‡ as if the notions animal and rational exhausted the whole of the concept Man, according to his meaning of Concept—the entire sum of the attributes common to the class. It would hardly be believed, prior to a minute examination of his writings, how much vagueness of thought, leading to the unsuspecting admission of opposite doctrines in the same breath, lurks under the specious appearance of philosophical precision which distinguishes him.§

To return, from Sir W. Hamilton’s self-contradictions, to the merits of the question itself; the word Judgment, by universal consent, is coextensive with the word Proposition: a Judgment must be so defined that a Proposition shall be the expression of it in words. Now, if a Judgment expresses a relation between Concepts (which for the purpose of the present discussion I have conceded) the corresponding Proposition represents that same relation by means of names: the names, therefore, must be signs of the concepts, and the concepts must be the meaning of the names. To make this tenable, the Concept must be so construed as to consist of those attributes only which are connoted by the name. Corporeity, life, rationality, and any other attributes of man which are part of the meaning of the word, insomuch that where those attributes were not, we should withhold the name of man—these are part of the concept. But mortality, and all the other human attributes which are the subject of treatises either on the human body or on human nature, are not in the concept, because we do not affirm them of any individual by merely calling him a man; they are so much additional knowledge. The concept Man is not the sum of all the attributes of a man, but only of the essential attributes—of those which constitute him a man; in other words, those on which the class Man is grounded, and which are connoted by the name—what used to be called the essence of Man, that without which Man cannot be, or in other words, would not be what he is called. Without mortality, or without thirty-two teeth, he would still be called a man: we should not say, This is not a man; we should say, This man is not mortal, or has fewer than thirty-two teeth.

Instead, therefore, of saying with Sir W. Hamilton, that the attributes Edition: current; Page: [337] composing the concept of the predicate are part of those which compose the concept of the subject, we ought to say, they are either a part, or are invariably conjoined with them, not in our conception, but in fact. Propositions in which the concept of the predicate is part of the concept of the subject, or, to express ourselves more philosophically, in which the attributes connoted by the predicate are part of those connoted by the subject, are a kind of Identical Propositions: they convey no information, but at most remind us of what, if we understood the word which is the subject of the proposition, we knew as soon as the word was pronounced. Propositions of this kind are either definitions, or parts of definitions. These judgments are analytical: they analyse the connotation of the subject-name, and predicate separately the different attributes which the name asserts collectively. All other affirmative judgments are synthetical, and affirm that some attribute or set of attributes is, not a part of those connoted by the subject-name, but an invariable accompaniment of them.*

There remains something to be said on another very prominent feature in Sir W. Hamilton’s theory of Judgment. Having said, that in every judgment we compare “two notions, thought as subject and predicate,” and pronounce that “the one does or does not constitute a part of the other,” he adds, “either in the quantity of Extension, or in the quantity of Comprehension.”* He developes this distinction as follows:

I shall not insist on such of the objections to this passage as have been sufficiently stated; the impropriety, for instance, of saying that the notion Man contains the predicate two-legged, when that attribute is evidently not part of the signification of the word; or that the meaning of a proposition is, that an attribute is part of a notion: which, the first time it is observed, it cannot possibly be, and at no time is this the thing asserted by a proposition, unless by those which are avowedly definitions. All these considerations I at present forego: and I will even give our author’s theory its necessary correction, by restoring to Propositions the alternative meaning which belongs to them, namely, that a certain attribute is either part of a given set of attributes, or invariably coexists with them. Having thus dissociated the doctrine in the quotation from all errors which are incidental and not essential to it, we may state it as follows:—Every proposition is capable of being understood in two meanings, which involve one another, inasmuch as if either of them is true the other is so, but which are nevertheless different; of which only one may be, and commonly is, in the mind; and the words used do not always show which. Thus, All men are bipeds, may either mean, that the objects called men are all of them numbered among the objects called bipeds, which is interpreting the proposition in Extension; or that the attribute of having two feet is one of, or coexists with, the attributes which compose the notion Man: which is interpreting the proposition in Comprehension.

I maintain, that these two supposed meanings of the proposition are not two matters of fact or of thought, reciprocally inferrible from one another, but one and the same fact, written in different ways; that the supposed meaning in Extension is not a meaning at all, until interpreted by the meaning in Comprehension; that all concepts and general names which enter into Propositions, require to be construed in Comprehension, and that their Comprehension is the whole of their meaning.

That the meaning in Extension follows if the meaning in Comprehension is granted, is a point which both sides are agreed in. If the attribute signified by biped is either one of, or always conjoined with, the attributes signified by man, we are entitled to assert that the class Man is included in, is a part of, the class Biped. But my position is, that this second assertion is not a conclusion from, but a mere repetition of, the first. For what is the second assertion, if we leave out of it all reference to the attributes? It can then only mean, that we have ascertained the fact independently of the attributes—that is, that we have examined the aggregate whole “all men,” and the still greater aggregate whole “all bipeds,” and that all the former were found among the latter. Now, do we assert this? or would it be true? Assuredly no one of us ever represented and contemplated, even with his mind’s eye, either of these wholes: still less did we ever compare them as realities, and ascertain that the fact is as stated. Neither could this be done, by anything Edition: current; Page: [340] short of infinite power: for all men and all bipeds, except a comparatively few, have either ceased to exist, or have not yet come into existence. What, then, do we mean by making an assertion concerning all men? The phrase does not mean, all and each of a certain great number of objects, known or represented individually. It means, all and each of an unascertained and indefinite number, mostly not known or represented at all, but which if they came within our opportunities of knowledge, might be recognised by the possession of a certain set of attributes, namely, those forming the connotation of the wordk. “All men,” and “the class man,” are expressions which point to nothing but attributes; they cannot be interpreted except in comprehension. To say, all men are bipeds, is merely to say, given the attributes of man, that of being a biped will be found along with them; which is the meaning in Comprehension. If the proposition has nothing to do with the concept Man except as to its comprehension, still less has it with the concept Biped. When I say, All men are bipeds, what has my assertion to do with the class biped as to its Extension? Have I any concern with the remainder of the class, after Man is subtracted from it? Am I necessarily aware even whether there is any remainder at all? I am thinking of no such matter, but only of the attribute two-footed, and am intending to predicate that. I am thinking of it as an attribute of man, but of what else it may happen to be an attribute does not concern me. Thus, all propositions into which general names enter, and consequently all reasonings, are in Comprehension only. Propositions and Reasonings may be written in Extension, but they are always understood in Comprehension. The only exception is in the case of propositions which have no meaning in Comprehension, and have nothing to do with Concepts—those of which both the subject and the predicate are proper names; such as, Tully is Cicero, or, St. Peter is not St. Paul. These words connote nothing, and the only meaning they have is the individual whom they denote. But where a meaning in Comprehension, or, in other words, in Connotation, is possible, that is always the one intended. And Sir W. Hamilton’s distinction (though he lays great stress on it) between Reasoning in Comprehension and Reasoning in Extension, will be found (as we shall see hereafter)[*] to be a mere superfetation on Logic.

It is worth while to add, that even could it be admitted that general propositions have a meaning in Extension capable of being conceived as different from their meaning in Comprehension, Sir W. Hamilton would still be wrong in deeming that the recognition of this meaning depends on, or can possibly result from, a comparison of the Concepts. The Extension Edition: current; Page: [341] of a concept, as I have before remarked, is not, like the Comprehension, intrinsic and essential to the concept; it is an external and wholly accidental relation of the concept, and no contemplation or analysis of the concept itself will tell us anything about it. It is an abstract name for the aggregate of objects possessing the attributes included in the concept: and whether that aggregate is greater or smaller does not depend on any properties of the concept, but on the boundless productive powers of Nature.

CHAPTER XIX: Of Reasoning

in common with the majority of modern writers on Logic, whose language is generally that of the Conceptualist school, Sir W. Hamilton considers Reasoning, as he considers Judgment, to consist in a comparison of Notions: either of Concepts with one another, or of Concepts with the mental representations of individual objects. Only, in simple Judgment, two notions are compared immediately; in Reasoning, mediately. Reasoning is the comparison of two notions by means of a third. As thus: “Reasoning is an act of mediate Comparison or Judgment; for to reason is to recognise that two notions stand to each other in the relation of a whole and its parts, through a recognition that these notions severally stand in the same relation to a third.”* The foundation, therefore, of all Reasoning is “the self-evident principle that a part of the part is a part of the whole.”† “Without reasoning we should have been limited to a knowledge of what is given by immediate intuition; we should have been unable to draw any inference from this knowledge, and have been shut out from the discovery of that countless multitude of truths, which, though of high, of paramount importance, are not self-evident.”‡ This recognition that we discover a “countless multitude of truths,” composing a vast proportion of all our real knowledge, by mere reasoning, will be found to jar considerably with our author’s theory of the reasoning process, and with his whole view of the nature and functions of Logic, the science of Reasoning: but this inconsistency is common to him with nearly all the writers on Logic, because, like him, they teach a theory of the science too small and narrow to contain their own facts.

Notwithstanding the great number of philosophers who have considered the definition cited above to be a correct account of Reasoning, the objections to it are so manifest, that until after much meditation on the subject, one can scarcely prevail on oneself to utter them: so impossible does it seem that difficulties so obvious should always be passed over unnoticed, unless they admitted of an easy answer. Reasoning, we are told, is a mode of ascertaining that one notion is a part of another; and the use of reasoning Edition: current; Page: [343] is to enable us to discover truths which are not self-evident. But how is it possible that a truth, which consists in one notion being part of another, should not be self-evident? The notions, by supposition, are both of them in our mind. To perceive what parts they are composed of, nothing surely can be necessary but to fix our attention on them. We cannot surely concentrate our consciousness on two ideas in our own mind, without knowing with certainty whether one of them as a whole includes the other as a part. If we have the notion biped and the notion man, and know what they are, we must know whether the notion of a biped is part of the notion we form to ourselves of a man. In this case the simply Introspective method is in its place. We cannot need to go beyond our consciousness of the notions themselves.

Moreover, if it were really the case that we can compare two notions and fail to discover whether one of them is a part of the other, it is impossible to understand how we could be enabled to accomplish this by comparing each of them with a third. A, B, and C, are three concepts, of which we are supposed to know that A is a part of B, and B of C, but until we put these two propositions together we do not know that A is a part of C. We have perceived B in C intuitively, by direct comparison: but what is B? By supposition it is, and is perceived to be, A and something more. We have therefore, by direct intuition, perceived that A and something more is a part of C, without perceiving that A is a part of C. Surely there is here a great psychological difficulty to be got over, to which logicians of the Conceptualist school have been surprisingly blind.

Endeavouring, not to understand what they say, for they never face the question, but to imagine what they might say, to relieve this apparent absurdity, two things occur to athe minda. It may be said, that when a notion is in our consciousness, but we do not know whether something is or is not a part of it, the reason is that we have forgotten some of its parts. We possess the notion, but are only conscious of part of it, and it does its work in our trains of thought only symbolically. Or, again, it may be said that all the parts of the notion are in our consciousness, but are in our consciousness indistinctly. The meaning of having a distinct notion, according to Sir W. Hamilton, is that we can discriminate the characters or attributes of which it is composed. The admitted fact, therefore, that we can have indistinct notions, may be adduced as proof that we can possess a notion, and not be able to say positively what is included in it. These are the best, or rather the only presentable arguments I am able to invent, in support of the paradox involved in the Conceptualist theory of Reasoning.

It is a great deal easier to refute these arguments than it was to discover Edition: current; Page: [344] them. The refutation, like the original difficulty, is two deep. To begin; a notion, part of which has been forgotten, is to that extent a lost notion, and is as if we had never had it. The parts which we can no longer discern in it are not in it, and cannot therefore be proved to be in it, by reasoning, any more than by intuition. We may be able to discover by reasoning that they ought to be there, and may, in consequence, put them there; but that is not recognising them to be there already. As a notion in part forgotten is a partially lost notion, so an indistinct notion is a notion not yet formed, but in process of formation. We have an indistinct notion of a class when we perceive in a general way that certain objects differ from others, but do not as yet perceive in what; or perceive some of the points of difference, but have not yet perceived, or have not yet generalized, the others. In this case our notion is not yet a completed notion, and the parts which we cannot discern in it, are undiscernible because they are not yet there. As in the former case, the result of reasoning may be to put them there; but it certainly does not effect this by proving them to be there already.

But even if these explanations had solved the mystery of our being conscious of a whole and unable to be directly conscious of its part, they would yet fail to make intelligible how, not having this knowledge directly, we are able to acquire it through a third notion. By hypothesis we have forgotten that A is a part of C, until we again become aware of it through the relation of each of them to B. We therefore had not forgotten that A is a part of B, nor that B is a part of C. When we conceived B, we conceived A as a part of it; when we conceived C, we conceived B as a part of it. In the mere fact, therefore, of conceiving C, we were conscious of B in it, and consciousness of A is a necessary part of that consciousness of B, and yet our consciousness of C did not enable us to find in it our consciousness of A, though it was really there, and though they both were distinctly present. If any one can believe this, no contradiction and no impossibility in any theory of Consciousness need stagger him. Let us now substitute for the hypothesis of forgetfulness, the hypothesis of indistinctness. We had a notion of C, which was so indistinct that we could not discriminate A from the other parts of the notion. But it was not too indistinct to enable us to discriminate B, otherwise the reasoning would break down as well as the intuition. The notion of B, again, indistinct as it may have been in other respects, must have been such that we could with assurance discriminate A as contained in it. Here then returns the same absurdity: A is distinctly present in B, which is distinctly present in C, therefore A, if there be any force in reasoning, is distinctly present in C; yet A cannot be discriminated or perceived in the consciousness in which it is distinctly present: so that, before our reasoning commenced, we were at once distinctly conscious of Edition: current; Page: [345] A, and entirely unconscious of it. There is no such thing as a reduction to absurdity if this is not one.

The reason why a judgment which is not intuitively evident, can be arrived at through the medium of premises, is that judgments which are not intuitively evident do not consist in recognising that one notion is part of another. When that is the case, the conclusion is as well known to us ab initio as the premises; which is really the case in analytical judgments. When reasoning really leads to the “countless multitudes of truths” not self-evident, which our author speaks of—that is, when the judgments are synthetical—we learn, not that A is part of C, because A is part of B and B of C, but that A is conjoined with C, because A is conjoined with B, and B with C. The principle of the reasoning is not, a part of the part is a part of the whole, but, a mark of the mark is a mark of the thing marked, Nota notæ est nota rei ipsius.[*] It means, that two things which constantly coexist with the same third thing, constantly coexist with one another; the things meant not being our concepts, but the facts of experience on which our concepts ought to be grounded.

This theory of reasoning is free from the objections which are fatal to the Conceptualist theory. We cannot discover that A is a part of C through its being a part of B, since if it really is so, the one truth must be as much a matter of direct consciousness as the other. But we can discover that A is conjoined with C through its being conjoined with B; since our knowledge that it is conjoined with B, may have been obtained by a series of observations in which C was not perceptible. C, we must remember, stands for an attribute, that is, not an actual presentation of sense, but a power of producing such presentations: and that a power may have been present without being apparent, is in the common course of things, implying nothing more than that the conditions necessary to determine it into act were not all present. This power or potentiality, C, may in like manner have been ascertained to be conjoined with B, by another set of observations, in which it was A’s turn to be dormant, or perhaps to be active, but not attended to. By combining the two sets of observations, we are enabled to discover what was not contained in either of them, namely, a constancy of conjunction between C and A, such that one of them comes to be a mark of the other: though, in neither of the two sets of observations, nor in any others, may C and A have been actually observed together; or, if observed, not with the frequency, or under the experimental conditions, which would Edition: current; Page: [346] warrant us in generalizing the fact. This is the process by which we do, in reality, acquire the greater part of our knowledge; all of it (as our author says) which is not “given by immediate intuition.”[*] But no part of this process is at all like the operation of recognising parts and a whole; or of recognising any relation whatever between Concepts; which have nothing to do with the matter, more than is implied in the fact, that we cannot reason about things without conceiving them, or representing them to the mind.

The theory which supposes Judgment and Reasoning to be the comparison of concepts, is obliged to make the term concept stand for, not the thinker’s or reasoner’s own notion of a thing, but a sort of normal notion, which is understood as being owned by everybody, though everybody does not always use it; and it is this tacit substitution of a concept floating in the air for the very concept I have in my own mind, which makes it possible to fancy that we can, by reasoning, find out something to be in a concept, which we are not able to discover in it by consciousness, because, in truth, that concept is not in bourb consciousness. But a concept of a thing, which is not that whereby I conceive it, is to me as much an external fact, as a presentation of the senses can be: it is another person’s concept, not mine. It may be the conventional concept of the world at large—that which it has been tacitly agreed to associate with the class; in other words, it may be the connotation of the class-name; and if so, it may very possibly contain elements which I cannot directly recognise in it, but may have to learn from external evidence: but this is because I do not know the signification of the word, the attributes which determine its application—and what I have to do is to learn them: when I have done this, I shall have no difficulty in directly recognising as a part of them, anything which really is so. But with regard to all attributes not included in the signification of the name, not only I do not find them in the concept, but they do not even become part of it after I have learnt them by experience; unless we understand by the concept, not, with philosophers in general, only the essence of the class, but with Sir W. Hamilton, all its known attributes. Even in Sir W. Hamilton’s sense, they are not found in the concept, but added to it; and not until we have already assented to them as objective facts—subsequently, therefore, to the reasoning by which they were ascertained.

Take such a case as this. Here are two properties of circles. One is, that a circle is bounded by a line, every point of which is equally distant from a certain point within the circle. This attribute is connoted by the name, and is, on both theories, a part of the concept. Another property of the circle is, that the length of its circumference is to that of its diameter in the approximate Edition: current; Page: [347] ratio of 3·14159 to 1. This attribute was discovered, and is now known, as a result of reasoning. Now, is there any sense, consistent with the meaning of the terms, in which it can be said that this recondite property formed part of the concept circle, before it had been discovered by mathematicians? Even in Sir W. Hamilton’s meaning of concept, it is in nobody’s but a mathematician’s concept even now: and if we concede that mathematicians are to determine the normal concept of a circle for mankind at large, mathematicians themselves did not find the ratio of the diameter to the circumference in the concept, but put it there; and could not have done so until the long train of difficult reasoning which culminated in the discovery was complete.

It is impossible, therefore, rationally to hold both the opinions professed simultaneously by Sir W. Hamilton—that Reasoning is the comparison of two notions through the medium of a third, and that Reasoning is a source from which we derive new truths. And the truth of the latter proposition being indisputable, it is the former which must give way. The theory of Reasoning which attempts to unite them both, has the same defect which we have shown to vitiate the corresponding theory of Judgment: it makes the process consist in eliciting something out of a concept which never was in the concept, and if it ever finds its way there, does so after the process, and as a consequence of its having taken place.

CHAPTER XX: On Sir William Hamilton’s Conception of Logic as a Science. Is Logic the Science of the Laws, or Forms, of Thought?

having discussed the nature of the three psychological processes which, together, constitute the operations of the Intellect, and having considered Sir W. Hamilton’s theory of each, we are in a condition to examine the general view which he takes of the Science or Art, whose purpose it is to direct our intellectual operations into their proper course, and to protect them against error.

Sir W. Hamilton defines Logic “the Science of the Laws of Thought as Thought.”* He proceeds to justify each of the component parts of this definition. And first, is Logic a Science?

Archbishop Whately says that it is both a Science and an Art.[*] He says this in an intelligible sense. He means that Logic both determines what is, and prescribes what should be. It investigates the nature of the process which takes place in Reasoning, and lays down rules to enable that process to be conducted as it ought. For this distinction, Sir W. Hamilton is very severe on Archbishop Whately. In the Archbishop’s sense of the words, he says, it never has been, and never could have been, disputed that Logic is both a Science and an Art. But

But if the difference between science and art is not the same as that between knowledge theoretical and practical, we are entitled to ask, what is it? If Archbishop Whately has placed the distinction where it is not, does his rather peremptory critic and censor tell us where it is? He declines the problem. “I am well aware that it would be no easy matter to give a general definition of science as contradistinguished from art, and of art as contradistinguished from science; but if the words themselves cannot validly be discriminated, it would be absurd to attempt to discriminate anything by them.”[*] In the only other part of his Lectures where the distinction between Art and Science is touched on,* he says that the “apparently vague and capricious manner in which the terms art and science are applied,” is not “the result of some accidental and forgotten usage,” but is founded on a “rational principle which we are able to trace.”[†] But when the reader is expecting a statement of this rational principle, Sir W. Hamilton puts him off with a merely historical explanation. Without stating what the usage actually is, he derives it from a distinction drawn by Aristotle between “a habit productive,” and “a habit practical,” which he admits to be “not perhaps beyond the reach of criticism:” which he does not undertake to “vindicate,” and which he confesses to have been lost sight of by the moderns ever since they ceased to think “mechanical” arts “beneath their notice,”[‡] all these being called arts without any reference to Aristotle’s supposed criterion.† So that Sir W. Hamilton cannot claim even accordance Edition: current; Page: [350] with usage for the distinction which he seems, but does not distinctly profess, to patronize. Yet the principal fault he finds with Archbishop Whately’s distinction, is that it does not agree with usage. According to it, he says, “ethics, politics, religion, and all other practical sciences would be arts:”* and he speaks of the “incongruity we feel in talking of the art of Ethics, the art of Religion, &c., though these are eminently practical sciences.”†

Religion may abe herea placed out of the question, for if there be incongruity with common feelings in calling Religion an art, there is quite as much in calling it a science, and especially a practical science, as if the theoretical doctrines of religion were no part of religion. If religion is either a science or an art, it must be both, and it is commonly understood to consist preeminently in things different from either, namely, a state of the feelings, and a disposition of the will. As for Ethics and Politics, the one and the other are, like Logic, both sciences and arts. Ethics, so far as it consists of the theory of the moral sentiments, and the investigation of those conditions of human well-being, disclosed by experience, which the practical part of Ethics has for its object to secure, is, in all senses of the word, a science. The rules or precepts of morals are an art. If there is any reluctance felt to speak of an art of morals, it is not because people prefer calling morals a science, but because most people are unwilling to look upon it as scientific at all, but prefer to regard it as a matter of instinct, bor of religious belief,b or as depending solely on the state of the will and the affections. In the case of Politics there is not, even to the vulgarest apprehension, any incongruity in the use of the word art: on the contrary, “the art of government” is the vernacular expression, and “science of government” a sort of speculative refinement. Philosophic writers on politics have generally preferred to call their subject a science, in order to indicate that it is a fit subject for speculative thinkers, the word art being apt to suggest to modern ears (it did not to the ancients) something which is the proper business only of practitioners. In reality Politics includes both a science and an art. The Science of Politics treats of the laws of political phænomena; it is the Edition: current; Page: [351] science of human nature under social conditions. The Art of Politics consists (or would consist if it existed) of rules, founded on the science, for the right guidance and government of the affairs of society.

But, says Sir W. Hamilton, if the difference between Science and Art were merely that between affirmations and precepts, the distinction would be of no value, since it would “mark out no real difference between the various branches of knowledge, but only different points of view under which the same branch might be contemplated by us,—each being in different relations at once a science and an art.” Was it from Sir W. Hamilton we should have expected to hear that a distinction is of no value, because it does not mark a difference between two things, but a difference in the cpointsc of view in which we may regard the same thing? How often has he told us, of many of the most important distinctions in philosophy, that they are precisely of this character! The remark, moreover, in the particular case, is so extremely superficial, that, coming from an author of whom it was by no means the habit to look only at the surface of things, it is one of the strongest of the many proofs which appear in his works, how little thought he had bestowed upon the sciences or arts, beyond his own speciality. The reason why systems of precepts require to be distinguished from systems of truths, is, that an entirely different classification is required for the purposes of theoretical knowledge, and for those of its practical application. Take the art of navigation, for example: where is the single science corresponding to this art, or which could with any propriety be included under the same name with it? Navigation is an art dependent on nearly the whole circle of the physical sciences: on astronomy, for the marks by which it determines the ship’s place on the ocean; on optics, for the construction and use of its instruments; on abstract mechanics, to understand and regulate the ship’s movements; on pneumatics, for the laws of winds; on hydrostatics, for the tides and currents, and the waves as influenced by dwindsd; on meteorology, for the weather; on electricity, for thunderstorms; on magnetism, for the use of the compass; on physical geography, and so on nearly to the end of the list. Not only has each one of all these sciences furnished its contingent towards the rules composing the one art of navigation, but many single rules could only have been framed by the union of considerations drawn from several different sciences. For the purposes of the art, the rules by themselves are sufficient, wherever it has been found practicable to make them sufficiently precise. But if the learner, not content with knowing and practising the rules, wishes to understand their reasons, and so possess science as well as art, he finds no one science corresponding in its object-matter with the art; he must extract from many Edition: current; Page: [352] sciences those truths of each which have been turned to practical account for the furtherance of navigation. All this is obvious to any one (not to say a person of Sir W. Hamilton’s sagacity), who has sufficiently reflected on the sciences and arts, to be aware of the relation between them. Archbishop Whately’s distinction, therefore, in no way merits the contemptuous treatment which it receives in the Lectures, and still more in the Discussions.[*] It is eminently practical, it conforms to the natural and logical order of thought, and accords better with the ends and even with the custom of language, than any other mode in which Arts can be distinguished from Sciences. Sir W. Hamilton, though he condemns it, has not ventured to set up any competing distinction in its place, but (as we have seen) almost intimates that no satisfactory one can be found.

Next after the question whether Logic is a science, comes the consideration of its object-matter as a science, namely, “the Laws of Thought as Thought.”[†] “The consideration of this head,” says our author, “divides itself into three questions—1. What is Thought? 2. What is Thought as Thought? 3. What are the Laws of Thought as Thought?”* These three questions are successively discussed.

To the question, “What is Thought?” Sir W. Hamilton answers—It is not the direct perception of an object, nor its representation in memory or imagination, nor its mere suggestion by association, but is a product of intelligence. Intelligence acts only by comparison.

Further on, he again defines an act of thought as “the recognition of a Edition: current; Page: [353] thing as coming under a concept; in other words, the marking an object by an attribute or attributes previously known as common to sundry objects, and to which we have accordingly given a general name.”* And subsequently, as “the comprehension of a thing under a general notion or attribute;”† and again, “the cognition of any mental object by another in which it is considered as included; in other words, thought is the knowledge of things under conceptions.”‡ And again, “Thought is the Knowledge of a thing through a concept or general notion, or of one notion through another.”§

From these different expressions we may infer, that the author confines the name Thought to cases where there is a judgment; and, it would seem, a judgment affirming more than mere existence. We think an object, or make anything an object of thought, when we are able to predicate something of it; to affirm that it is something in particular; that it is a certain sort of thing; that it belongs to a class—has something which is (or may be) common to it with a number of other things; that it has, in short, a certain attribute, or attributes. This is intelligible, and unobjectionable: but our author’s technical expressions, instead of facilitating the understanding of it, tend, on the contrary, very much to confuse it. Like the transcendental metaphysicians generally, Sir W. Hamilton, when he attempts to state the nature of a mental phænomenon with peculiar precision, does it by a peculiarly unprecise employment of the common prepositions. What light is thrown upon the simple process of referring objects to a class, by calling it the recognition of one thing through, or in, or under, another? What distinct signification is conveyed by the phrases, “thinking a thing under a general notion,” “reducing it under a concept,” “knowing things under, or through, conceptions?” To find the meaning of the explanation we have to resort to the thing explained. The only passage in which the author speaks distinctly, is that in which he paraphrases these expressions by the following: “the marking an object by an attribute or attributes previously known as common to sundry objects, and to which we have accordingly given a general name.” To think of an object, then, is to mark it by an attribute or set of attributes, which has received a name, or (what is much more essential) which gives a name to the object. It gives to the object the concrete name, to which its own abstract name, if it has an abstract name, corresponds: but it is not indispensable that the attribute should have received a name, provided it gives one to the object possessing it. An animal is called a bull, in sign of its possessing certain attributes, but there does not exist an abstract word Edition: current; Page: [354] bullness. Having, then, in Sir W. Hamilton’s language, thought the object, by marking it with a name derived from an attribute, it is perhaps an allowable, though an obscure, expression, to say that we know the thing through the attribute, or through the notion of the attribute: but what is meant by saying that we know it, or think it under the attribute? We know it and think it, simply as possessing the attribute. The other phrase, while seeming to mean more, means less. Again, when we are asserted to “know one notion through another;” when, for example, we think, or judge, that men, meaning all men, are mortal; is this to know the notion Man through the notion Mortal? The knowledge we really have, is that the objects Men have the attribute mortality; in other words, that the outward facts by which we distinguish men, exist along with subjection to the outward fact, death. If there is a recommendation I would inculcate on every one who commences the study of metaphysics, it is, to be always sure what he means by his particles. A large portion of all that perplexes and confuses metaphysical thought, comes from a vague use of those small words.

After this definition of Thought, our author proceeds to explain what he means by Thought as Thought. He means, “that Logic is conversant with the form of thought, to the exclusion of the matter.”* We have here arrived at one of the cardinal points in Sir W. Hamilton’s philosophy of Logic. However he may vary on other doctrines, to this he is constant, that the province of Logic is the form, not the matter, of thought. It is a pity that the only terms he can find to denote the distinction, are a pair of the obscurest and most confusing expressions in the whole range of metaphysics. Still more unfortunate eit ise, that, thinking it necessary to employ such terms, he has never, in unambiguous language, explained their meaning. When Archbishop Whately, in somewhat similar phraseology, tells us that Logic has to do with the form of the reasoning process, but not with its matter, we know what he means.[*] It is, that Logic is not concerned with the actual truth either of the conclusion or of the premises, but considers only whether the one follows from the other; whether the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. Sir W. Hamilton is not content to mean only this. He means much more; but if we wish to know what, the only information he here gives us is a quotation from a German philosopher, Esser.

Thus far Esser. The Form, therefore, of Thought, with which alone Logic is conversant, is not the object thought of, but “the kind and manner of thinking it.” It is not necessary to show that this explanation is insufficient. But to find any other, we must have recourse, not to Sir W. Hamilton, but to Mr. Mansel. One of the chapters of Mr. Mansel’s Prolegomena Logica is entitled “On the Matter and Form of Thought.” It commences as follows:

Let me here ask, had the block of marble no form at all when it came out of the quarry?

This is a fair account of the meaning of Matter and Form in the Kantian philosophy, and the philosophies which descend genealogically from the Kantian. But this meaning must always be taken with, and interpreted by, the characteristic doctrine of the Kantian metaphysics, that the mind does not perceive, but itself creates, all the most general attributes which, by a natural illusion, we ascribe to outward things; which attributes, consequently, are called, by that philosophy, Forms. Extension and Duration, for example, it calls forms of our sensitive faculty; Substance, Causality, Quantity, forms of our Understanding, which is our faculty of thought. These, however, are not what Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel[*] mean, when they say that Logic is the science of the fformsf of thought. They do not mean that it is the science of Substance, Causality, and Quantity. The truth is, that as soon as the word Form is stretched beyond its proper signification of bodily figure, it becomes entirely vague: every thinker uses Edition: current; Page: [356] it in a sense of his own. The only bond connecting its various meanings, is the negative one of opposition to Matter. Whenever anything is called Form, there is something which, relatively to it, is regarded as Matter: and whenever anything is called Matter, there is something capable of being superinduced upon it, which when superinduced will be styled its Form. How completely the notion of Form accompanies that of Matter as its relative opposite, we have an illustrious example in Aristotle, when he defines the Soul as the Form of the Body;[*] so, at least, Sir W. Hamiltong, very freely,g translates ἐντελέχεια.* It would be quite warranted by the practice of metaphysicians, to call any compound the form of its component elements; water, for instance, the form of hydrogen and oxygen. And since there is nothing that may not be regarded as matter relatively to something which can be constructed out of it, and which is form relatively to it, but matter relatively to some other thing, we have form within form, like a nest of boxes. Kant actually calls the conclusion of a syllogism the form of it, the premises being its matter: so that in every train of reasoning, the successive conclusions pass over one by one from Form to Matter.[†] Without going this length, Sir W. Hamilton,† after Krug, considers the propositions and terms as the matter of the syllogism, and the mode in which they are connected as its form. Yet propositions and terms (i.e. concepts) are classed by him as Forms of Thought. Thus it is impossible to draw any line between the Matter of Thought and its Form, or to convey any distinct conception of the province of a science by saying that it is conversant with the one and not with the other. We may, however, in a general way, understand Sir W. Hamilton to mean, that Logic is not concerned with the actual contents of our knowledge—with the particular objects, or truths, which we know—but only with our mode of knowing them: with what the mind does when it knows, or thinks, irrespectively of the particular things which it thinks about: with the theory of the act or fact of thinking, so far as that fact is the same in all our thought, or can be reduced to universal principles.

But the fact of thinking is a psychological phænomenon; and Logic is a different thing from Psychology. It is for the purpose of marking this difference that Sir W. Hamilton adds a third point to his definition of Logic, calling it the science not simply of Thought as Thought, but of the Laws of Thought as Thought. For Psychology also treats of thought, considered merely as thought; and professes to give an acount of Thought as a mental operation. In what, then, consists the difference between the two? I cannot venture to state it in any but our author’s own words.

If language has any meaning, this passage must be understood to say, that the “laws” or “forms” which are the province of Logic, are certain “phænomena” of thought, distinguished from its other phænomena by being necessarily present in it,—“such as cannot but appear,”—while the remaining phænomena “may or may not appear.” If this be meant, we are landed in a strange conclusion. There is a science, Psychology, which is the science of all mental phænomena, and among others, of the phænomena of Thought, and yet another science, Logic, is required to teach us its necessary phænomena. There is a portion of the properties of Thought which are expressly excluded from the science which treats of Thought, to be reserved as the matter of another science, and these are precisely its Necessary hqualitiesh. Those which are merely contingent, “such as may or may not appear”—the properties which are not common to all thought, or do not belong to it at all times—these, it seems to be said, Psychology knows something about: but the Necessary properties, “such as cannot but appear”—the properties which all thoughts possess, which thought must possess, without the possession of which it would not be thought—these Psychology knows not of, and it is the office of a different science to investigate them. We may next expect to be told, that the science of dynamics knows nothing of the laws of motion, the composition of forces, Edition: current; Page: [358] the theory of continuous and accelerating force, the doctrines of Momentum and Vis Viva, &c.; it only knows of wind power and water power, steam power and animal power, and the accidents by flood and field which accompany them and disturb their operation.

This, however, supposes that our author means what he expressly says. It assumes that by the “Laws of Thought,” and the “Necessary Forms of Thought,” he means the modes in which, and the conditions subject to which, by the constitution of our nature, we cannot but think. But when we turn over a few pages, to the place where he is preparing to treat of those laws or necessary forms one by one, it appears that this is an entire mistake. Laws now no longer mean necessities of nature; they are laws in a totally different sense; they mean precepts: and the “necessary forms of thought” are not attributes which it must, but only which it ought to possess.

So that, after all, the real theory of Thought—the laws, in the scientific sense of the term, of Thought as Thought—do not belong to Logic, but to Psychology: and it is only the validity of thought which Logic takes cognisance of. It is not with Thought as Thought, but only as Valid thought, that Logic is concerned. There is nothing to prevent us from thinking contrary to the laws of Logic: only, if we do, we shall not think rightly, or well, or conformably to the ends of thinking, but falsely, or inconsistently, or confusedly. This doctrine is at complete variance with the saying of our author in his controversy with Whately, that Logic is, and never could have been doubted to be, in Whately’s sense of the terms, both a Science and an Art. For the present definition reduces it to the narrowest conception of an Art—that of a mere system of rules. It leaves Science to Psychology, and represents Logic as merely offering to thinkers a collection of precepts, which they are enjoined to observe, not in order that they may think, but that they may think correctly, or validly.

It appears to me, however, that our author, though inconsistent with himself, is much nearer the mark in this mode of regarding Logic than in the previous one. I conceive it to be true that Logic is not the theory of Thought as Thought, but of valid Thought; not of thinking, but of correct thinking. It is not a Science distinct from, and coordinate with, Psychology. So far as it is a science at all, it is a part, or branch, of Psychology; differing from it, on the one hand as a part differs from the whole, and on the other, as an Art differs from a Science. Its theoretic grounds are wholly borrowed from Psychology, and include as much of that science as is required to justify the rules of the art. Logic has no need to know more of the Science of Thinking, than the difference between good thinking and bad. A consequence of this is, that the Necessary Laws of Thought, those which our author in his first doctrine reserved especially to Logic, are precisely those with which Logic has least to do, and which belong the most exclusively to Psychology. What is common to all thought, whether good or bad, and inseparable from it, is irrelevant to Logic, unless by the light it may indirectly throw on something besides itself. The properties of Thought which concern Logic, are some of its contingent properties; those, namely, on the presence of which depends good thinking, as distinguished from bad.

I therefore accept our author’s second view of the province of Logic, which makes it a collection of precepts or rules for thinking, grounded on a Edition: current; Page: [360] scientific investigation of the requisites of valid thought. It is this doctrine which governs his treatment of the details of Logic, and it is by this that we must interpret the assertion that Logic has for its only subject the Form of Thought. By the Form of Thought we must understand Thinking itself; the whole work of the Intellect. The Matter of Thought is the sensations, perceptions, or other presentations (intuitions, as Mr. Mansel calls them),[*] in which the intellect has no share; which are supplied to it, independently of any action of its own. What the mind adds to these, or puts into them, is Forms of Thought. Logic, therefore, is concerned only with Forms, since, being rules for thinking, it can have no authority but over that which depends on thought. Logic and Thinking are coextensive; it is the art of Thinking, of all Thinking, and of nothing but Thinking. And since every distinguishable variety of thinking act is called a Form of Thought, the Forms of Thought compose the whole province of Logic; though it would be hardly possible to invent a worse phrase for expressing so simple a fact.

But what are the Forms of Thought? Kant, as already observed, gives to that expression a very wide extent. He holds that every ifundamentali attribute which we ascribe to external objects is a Form of Thought, being created, not simply discerned, by our thinking faculty.[†] Neither Sir W. Hamilton nor Mr. Mansel goes this length; and at all events they do not consider the theory of the various attributes of bodies to be a part of Logic. It was incumbent on them, therefore, to state clearly what are the Forms of Thought with which Logic is concerned, and for which it supplies precepts. This question is never put, in an express form, by Sir W. Hamilton: but the answer which he rather leaves to be picked up than directly presents, may be gathered from his classification of our intellectual operations. These he reduces to three, Conception, Judgment, and Reasoning. He must have recognised, therefore, that number of general Forms of Thought. The Forms of Thought are Conception, Judgment, and Reasoning: Logic is the Science of the Laws (meaning the rules) of these three operations. If, however, we rigorously hold our author to this short list, we shall perpetually mistake his meaning: for (as already observed) the mode in which the word Form is used, allows of form within form to an unlimited extent. Every concept, judgment, or reasoning, after having received its form from the mind, may again be contemplated as the Matter of some further mental act; and the product of that further act (according to Kant),[‡] or the relation of the product to the matter (according to Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Edition: current; Page: [361] Mansel), is again a Form of Thought; as we find, to our confusion, when we proceed further, and the more profusely, the further we proceed. We have, first, however, to consider a proposition of Sir W. Hamilton, which qualifies his definition of the province of Logic. He says:

“Logic considers Thought, not as the operation of thinking, but as its product; it does not treat of Conception, Judgment, and Reasoning, but of Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings.”*

Let me begin by saying that I give my entire adhesion to this distinction, and propose to reform the definition of Logic accordingly. It does not, as we now see, relate to the Laws of Thought as Thought, but to those of the Products of Thought. Instead of the Laws of Conception, Judgment, and Reasoning, we must speak of the Laws of Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings. This would be mere nonsense in the scientific sense of the word law: for a product, as such, can have no laws but those of the operation which produces it. But understanding by laws, as it seems we are intended to do, Precepts, Logic becomes the science of the precepts for the formation of concepts, judgments, and reasonings: or rather (a science of precepts being an improper expression) the science of the conditions on which right concepts, judgments, and reasonings depend. Thus, Logic is the Art of Thinking, which means of correct thinking, and the Science of the Conditions of correct thinking. This seems to me a sufficiently accurate definition of it. But, in attempting a deeper metaphysical analysis of the distinction he has just drawn, our author raises fresh difficulties. He says:

Just when the puzzled reader fancied that he had at last arrived at something clear, comes an explanation which throws all back into darkness. The learner who had been wandering in the mazes of “Thought as Thought,” laws which are not laws, and “Forms of Thought” in which Form stands for something which he never before heard of in connexion with that word, at last descried what seemed to be firm ground: he was told that Conception, Judgment, and Reasoning are acts of the mind, that Concepts, Edition: current; Page: [362] Judgments, and Reasonings are products of those acts, and that Psychology is conversant with the former and Logic with the latter. And now it turns out that the products are the acts. The two series of things are one and the same series. They are both of them only “Thought proper.” The product is another word for the act itself, considered in one of its aspects—“in reference to what thought is about.” It is curious that this should occur only a few pages after Whately has been rebuked for reducing a distinction to inutility, by making it coincide with a difference not between things, but between the aspects in which the same thing is regarded.

Sir W. Hamilton therefore is of opinion that the thinking act, though verbally, is not psychologically different from the thought itself. He does not hold, with Berkeley, that an Idea is a concrete object distinct from the mind, and contained in it, like furniture in a house; nor with Locke (if that was Locke’s opinion), that it is a modification of the mind, but a modification distinct from the mind’s act in cognising it; but with Brown, that a sensation is only myself feeling, and a thought only myself thinking. Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings, are only acts of conceiving, judging, and reasoning; acts of thought, considered not in their relation to the thinking mind, but to their object, to “what thought is about.”* But what is thought about? Not about Concepts, for all our thoughts are not about the thinking act. It must be about the objective presentation, the Anschauung, or Intuition, which the Concept represents, or from which it has been abstracted. According, therefore, to the doctrine here distinctly laid down by Sir W. Hamilton, there are but two things present in any of our intellectual operations; on one hand, the mind itself thinking (that is, conceiving, judging, or reasoning), and, on the other, a mental presentation or representation of the phænomenal Reality which it conceives, or concerning which it judges or reasons. I can understand that the thinking act, or in other words, the mind in a thinking state, may be contemplated in its relation to the Reality thought of, and may receive a name which connotes Edition: current; Page: [363] that Reality; but how does this entitle us to call it a product of thought? How can the act of thought, or the mind thinking, be looked upon, even hypothetically, as a product of thinking? How can Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings be regarded as products of thought, jifj they are the thought itself? Can they be both the act and something resulting from the act? Are they results and products of themselves?

I conceive that there is a way out of this difficulty; a sense in which the two assertions can be reconciled, though it has not been pointed out by Sir W. Hamilton, and is hardly compatible with some of his opinions. There is a difference between what can properly be called Acts of the mind, and the other mental phænomena which may be termed its passive States. And I know but one way of conceiving the distinction, in which it can possibly be upheld, namely, by considering as Acts only those mental phænomena which are results of Volition. Now, the first formation of a Concept, and generally (though not always) any fresh operation of judgment or reasoning, requires a mental effort, a concentration of consciousness upon certain definite objects, which concentration depends on the will, and is called Attention. When this takes place, the mind is properly said to be active. But after frequent repetition of this act of will, the associations to which it has given rise are sufficiently riveted to do their work spontaneously; the effort of attention, after becoming less and less, is finally null, and the operation, originally voluntary, becomes, in Hartley’s language, secondarily automatic.[*] When this transition has been completed, what remains of the mental phænomenon has lost the character of an Act, and become numbered among passive States. It is now either a mere mental representation of an object, differing from those copied directly from sense, only in having certain of its parts artificially made intense and prominent; or it is a fasciculus of representations of imagination, held together by the tie of an association artificially produced. When the mental phænomenon has assumed this passive character, it comes to be termed a Concept, or, more familiarly and vaguely, an Idea, and to be felt as if it were, not the mind modified, but something in the mind: and in this ultimate phasis of its existence we may properly consider it, not as an act, but as the product of a previous act; since it now takes place without any conscious activity, and becomes a subject on which fresh activity may be exercised, by an act of voluntary attention concentrating consciousness on it, or on some particular part of it. This explanation, which I leave for the consideration of philosophers, would not have suited Sir W. Hamilton, since it would have required him to limit the extent which he habitually gave to the expression Edition: current; Page: [364] “mental act.”k Every phænomenon of mind, down to the mere reception of a sensation, he regards as an act: therein differing from Kant, and annihilating the need and use of the word, the sole function of which is to distinguish what the mind originates, from what something else originates in the mind.

To return to the definition of Logic, as the science of the Forms of Thought, considered in relation, not to the thinking act itself, but, so far as they are distinguishable from it, to the products of thought. The products of thought are Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings, and the Forms of Thought are Conception, Judgment, and Reasoning. Logic is the science of those Forms, so far as concerns the rules for the right formation of the products: or, as our author elsewhere phrases it, the science of the “formal conditions” of valid thinking.[*] These modes of expression have a rare power of darkening the subject, but I am endeavouring to give them an intelligible interpretation, by means of that which they profess to explain. If, then, all thinking consists in adding, to given matter, a Form derived from the mind itself, what shall we say of the division, on which so much stress is laid, of Thinking itself into two kinds, Formal and Material Thinking, the first of which alone belongs to Logic, or at all events to pure Logic? Mr. Mansel has written a volume for the express purpose of showing that Logic is only concerned with Formal Thinking; and Sir W. Hamilton’s division of Logic into Pure and Modified, agrees with Mr. Mansel’s distinction.[†] Yet, according to the definition we have just considered, all thinking whatever is Formal Thinking: since all thinking is either conceiving, judging, or reasoning, and these are the Forms of Thought. If Logic investigates the conditions requisite for the right formation of concepts, of judgments, and of reasonings, it investigates all the conditions of right thought, for there are no other kinds of thought than these; and if it does all this, what is left for the so-called Material Thinking which Logic is said not to be concerned with?

The answer to this question affords an additional specimen of the incurable confusion, in which the processes of thought are involved by the unhappy misapplication to them of the metaphorical word Form. Though Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings, are said to be the forms of thought, and the only forms which thought takes, or rather gives; the metaphysicians who deal in Forms are in the habit of using phrases which signify that Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings, though themselves Forms, have also, in themselves, a formal part and a material. Different concepts, Edition: current; Page: [365] judgments, and reasonings, have different matter, according to what it is that the conception, the judgment, or the reasoning, is about: and as whatever part of anything is not its Matter, is always styled its Form, whatever is common to all Concepts, or whatever belongs to them irrespectively of all differences in their matter, is said to be their Form; and so of Judgments and of Reasonings. Thus, the difference between an affirmative and a negative judgment is a difference of form, because a judgment may be either affirmative or negative whatever be the matter to which it relates. The difference between a categorical and an hypothetical syllogism is a difference of form, because it neither depends on, nor is it at all affected by, any differences in the matter. Logic, according to Mr. Mansel[*]—pure Logic, according to Sir W. Hamilton—is conversant only with the Forms of Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings, not with their Matter. Not only is it concerned exclusively with the Forms of thought, but exclusively with the Forms of those Forms. And here I fairly renounce any further attempt to deduce Sir W. Hamilton’s or Mr. Mansel’s lconceptionl of Logic from their definitions of it. I collect it from the general evidence of their treatises, and I proceed to show why I consider it to be wrong.

Logic, Sir W. Hamilton has told us, lays down the laws or precepts indispensable to Valid Thought; the conditions to which thought is bound to conform, under the penalty of being invalid, ineffectual, not accomplishing its end. And what is, peculiarly and emphatically, the end of Thinking? Surely it is the attainment of Truth. Surely, if not the sole, at all events the first and most essential constituent of valid thought, is that its results should be true. Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings, should agree with the reality of things, meaning by things the Phænomena or sensible presentations, to which those mental products have reference. A concept, to be rightly framed, must be a concept of something real, and must agree with the real fact which it endeavours to represent, that is, the collection of attributes composing the concept must really exist in the objects marked by the class-name, and in no others. A judgment, to be rightly framed, must be a true judgment, that is, the objects judged of must really possess the attributes predicated of them. A reasoning, to be rightly framed, must conduct to a true conclusion, since the only purpose of reasoning is to make known to us truths which we cannot learn by direct intuition. Even those who take the most limited view of Logic, allow that the conclusion must be true conditionally—provided that the premises are true. The most important, then, and at bottom the only important quality of a thought being its truth, the laws or precepts provided for the guidance of thought must surely have for their principal purpose that the products of thinking shall be true. Edition: current; Page: [366] Yet with this, according to Mr. Mansel, Logic has no concern;[*] and Sir W. Hamilton reserves it for a sort of appendix to the science, under the title of Modified Logic. Questions of truth and falsity, according to both writers, regard only Material Thinking, while Formal Thinking is the province of Logic. The only precepts for thinking with which Logic concerns itself, are those which have some other purpose than the conformity of our thoughts to the fact. Yet every possible precept for thought, if it be an honest one, must have this for at least its ultimate object. What, then, is excluded from Logic, and what is left in it, by the doctrine that it is only concerned with Formal Thinking? What is excluded is the whole of the evidences of the validity of thought. What is included is part of the evidences of its invalidity.

In no case can thinking be valid unless the concepts, judgments, and conclusions resulting from it are conformable to fact. And in no case can we satisfy ourselves that they are so, by looking merely at the relations of one part of the train of thought to another. We must ascend to the original sources, the presentations of experience, and examine the train of thought in its relation to these. But we can sometimes discover, without ascending to the sources, that the process of thought is not valid; having been so conducted that it cannot possibly avail for obtaining concepts, judgments, or conclusions in accordance with fact. This, for example, is the case, if we have allowed ourselves to travel from premises to a conclusion through an ambiguous term. The process then gives no ground at all for believing the conclusion to be true: it is perhaps true, but we have no more reason to believe so than we had before. Or again, the concept, the judgment, or the reasoning may involve a contradiction, and so cannot possibly correspond to any real state of facts. It is with this part of the subject only, in the opinion of these philosophers, that Logic concerns itself. According to Mr. Mansel, Logic “accepts, as logically valid, all such concepts, judgments, and reasonings, as do not, directly or indirectly, imply contradictions; pronouncing them thus far to be legitimate as thoughts, that they do not in ultimate analysis destroy themselves . . . leaving to this or that branch of material science to determine how far the same products of thought are guaranteed by the testimony of this or that special experience.”* Mr. Mansel has not here conceived his own view of the subject with his usual precision. He narrows the field of Logic more than he intends. That to which he confines the name of Logic, accepts as valid all concepts and judgments that do not imply contradictions, but by no means all reasonings. It rejects these not only when self-contradictory, but when simply inconclusive. It condemns a reasoning not only if it draws a conclusion inconsistent Edition: current; Page: [367] with the premises, but if it draws one which the premises do not warrant; not only if the conclusion must, but if it may, be false though the premises be true. For the notion of true and false will force its way even into Formal Logic, whatever pains Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel give themselves to make the notions of consistent and inconsistent, or of thinkable and unthinkable, do duty instead of it. The ideas of truth and falsity cannot be eliminated from reasoning. We may abstract from actual truth, but the validity of reasoning is always a question of conditional truth—whether one proposition must be true if others are true, or whether one proposition can be true if others are true. When Judgments or Reasonings are in question, “the conditions of the thinkable” are simply the conditions of the believable.

What Mr. Mansel and Sir W. Hamilton really mean, is to segregate from the remainder of the theory of the investigation of truth, as much of it as does not require any reference to the original sufficiency of the groundwork of facts, or the correctness of their interpretation, and call this exclusively Logic, or Pure Logic. They assume that concepts have been formed and judgments made somehow; and if there is nothing within the four corners of the concept or the judgment which proves it absurd, that is, no self-contradiction, they do not question it further. Whether it is grounded on fact or on mere supposition, and if on fact, whether the fact is represented correctly, they do not ask; but think only of the conditions necessary for preventing errors from getting into the process of thought, which were not in the notions or the premises from whence it started. The theory of these conditions (of which the doctrine of the Syllogism is the principal part) Mr. Mansel calls Logic, and Sir W. Hamilton Pure Logic. The expression “Formal Logic,” which is sometimes applied to it, is perhaps as distinctive and as little misleading as any other, and is that which, for want of a better, I am content to use. That this part of Logic should be distinguished and named, and made an object of consideration separately from the rest, is perfectly natural. What I protest against, is the doctrine of Sir W. Hamilton, Mr. Mansel, and many other thinkers, that this part is the whole; that there is no other Logic, or Pure Logic, at all; that whatever is more than this, belongs not to a general science and art of Thinking, but (in the words of Mr. Mansel) to this or that material science.[*]

This doctrine assumes, that with the exception of the rules of Formal, that is, of Syllogistic Logic, no other rules can be framed which are applicable to thought generally, abstractedly from particular matter: That a general theory is possible respecting the relations which the parts of a process of thought should bear to one another, but not respecting the Edition: current; Page: [368] proper relations of all thought to its matter: That the problem which Bacon set before himself, and led the way towards resolving, is an impossible one: That there is not, and cannot be, any general Theory of Evidence: That when we have taken care that our notions and propositions concerning Things shall be consistent with themselves and with one another, and have drawn no inferences from them but such the falsity of which would be inconsistent with assertions already made, we have done all that a philosophy of Thought can do—and the agreement and disagreement of our beliefs with the laws of the thing itself, is in each case a special question, belonging to the science of that thing in particular: That the study of nature, the search for objective truth, does not admit of any rules, nor its attainment, of any general test. For if there are such rules, if there is such a test, and the consideration of it does not belong to Logic, to what science or study does it belong? There is no other science, which, irrespectively of particular matter, professes to direct the intellect in the application of its powers to any matter on which knowledge is possible. These philosophers must therefore think that there can be no such rules, or that if there are, they can only be of the vaguest possible description. Sir W. Hamilton says as much.

It is very true that all Sir W. Hamilton can tell us of it is soon told. Nothing can be more meagre, trite, and indefinite than the little which he finds to say respecting what he calls Modified Logic. And no wonder, when we consider the following extraordinary deliverance, which I quote from the conclusion of his Thirtieth Lecture on Logic. Speaking of Physical Science generally, Sir W. Hamilton thus expresses himself:

Sir W. Hamilton had good reason for confining his own logical speculations to a minor and subordinate department of the Science and Art of Thinking, when he was so destitute as this passage proves, of the preliminary knowledge required for making any proficiency in the other and higher branch. Every one who has obtained any knowledge of the physical sciences from really scientific study, knows that the questions of evidence presented, and the powers of abstraction required, in the speculations on which their greater generalizations depend, are such as to task the very highest capacities of the human intellect: and a thinker, however able, who is too little acquainted with the processes actually followed in the investigation of objective truth, to be aware of this fact, is entitled to no authority when he denies the possibility of a Philosophy of Evidence and of the Investigation of Nature; inasmuch as his own macquirementsm do not furnish him with the means of judging whether it is possible or not.*

If any general theory of the sufficiency of Evidence and the legitimacy of Generalization be possible, this must be Logic κατ’ ἐξοχήν, and anything else called by the name can only be ancillary to it. For the Logic called Edition: current; Page: [370] Formal only aims at removing one of the obstacles to the attainment of truth, by preventing such mistakes as render our thoughts inconsistent with themselves or with one another: and it is of no importance whether we think consistently or not, if we think wrongly. It is only as a means to material truth, that the formal, or to speak more clearly, the conditional, validity of an operation of thought is of any value; and even that value is only negative: we have not made the smallest positive advance towards right thinking, by merely keeping ourselves consistent in what is, perhaps, systematic error. This by no means implies that Formal Logic, even in its narrowest sense, is not of very great, though purely negative, value. On the contrary, I subscribe heartily to all that is said of its importance by Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel. It is good to have our path clearly marked out, and a parapet put up at all the dangerous points, whether the path leads us to the place we desire to reach, or to another place altogether. But to call this alone Logic, or this alone Pure Logic, as if all the rest of the Philosophy of Thought and Evidence were merely an adaptation of this to something else, is to ignore the end to which all rules laid down for our thinking operations are meant to be subservient. The purpose of them all, is to enable us to decide whether anything, and what, is proved true. Formal Logic conduces indirectly to this end, by enabling us to perceive, either that the process which has been performed is one which could not possibly prove anything, or that it is one which will prove something to be true, unless the premises happen to be false. This indirect aid is of the greatest importance; but it is important because the end, the ascertainment of truth, is important; and it is important only as complementary to a still more fundamental part of the operation, in which Formal Logic affords no help.

I do not deny the scientific convenience of considering this limited portion of Logic apart from the rest—the doctrine of the Syllogism, for instance, apart from the theory of Induction; and of teaching it in an earlier stage of intellectual education. It can be taught earlier, since it does not, like the inductive logic, presuppose a practical acquaintance with the processes of scientific investigation; and the greatest service to be derived from it, that of keeping the mind clear, can be best rendered before a habit of confused thinking has been acquired. Not only, however, is it indispensable that the larger Logic, which embraces all the general conditions of the ascertainment of truth, should be studied in addition to the smaller Logic, which only concerns itself with the conditions of consistency; but the smaller Logic ought to be, at least finally, studied as part of the greater—as a portion of the means to the same end; and its relation to the other parts—to the other means—should be distinctly displayed. If thought be anything more than a sportive exercise of the mind, its purpose is to enable us to know what can be known respecting the facts of the universe: its Edition: current; Page: [371] judgments and conclusions express, or are intended to express, some of those facts: and the connexion which Formal Logic, by its analysis of the reasoning process, points out between one proposition and another, exists only because there is a connexion between one objective truth and another, which makes it possible for us to know objective truths which have never been observed, in virtue of others which have. This possibility is an eternal mystery and stumbling-block to Formal Logic. The bare idea that any new truth can be brought out of a Concept—that analysis can ever find in it anything which synthesis has not first put in—is absurd on the face of it: yet this is all the explanation that Formal Logic, as viewed by Sir W. Hamilton, is able to give of the phænomenon; and Mr. Mansel expressly limits the province of Logic to analytic judgments—to such as are merely identical. But what the Logic of mere consistency cannot do, the Logic of the ascertainment of truth, the Philosophy of Evidence in its larger acceptation, can. It can explain the function of the Ratiocinative process as an instrument of the human intellect in the discovery of truth, and can place it in its true correlation with the other instruments. It is therefore alone competent to furnish a philosophical theory of Reasoning. Such partial account as can be given of the process by looking at it solely by itself, however useful and even necessary to accurate thought, does not dispense with, but points out in a more emphatic manner the need of, the more comprehensive Logic of which it should form a part, and which alone can give a meaning or a reason of existence to the Logic styled Formal, or to the reasoning process itself.

CHAPTER XXI: The Fundamental Laws of Thought According to Sir William Hamilton

having marked out, as the sole province of Logic, the “Laws of Thought,” Sir W. Hamilton naturally proceeds to specify what these are. The “Fundamental Laws of Thought,” of which all other laws that can be laid down for thought are but particular applications, are, according to our author, three in number: the Law of Identity; the Law of Contradiction; and the Law of Excluded Middle. In his Lectures he recognised a fourth, “the Law of Reason and Consequent,” which seems to be compounded of the Law of Causation, and the Leibnitzian “Principle of Sufficient Reason.”[*] But as, in his later speculations, he no longer considered this as an ultimate law, it needs not be further spoken of.

These three laws he otherwise denominates “The Conditions of the Thinkable:”* from which it might have been supposed that he regarded them as Laws of Thought in the scientific sense of the word law; conditions to which thought cannot but conform, and apart from which it is impossible. One would have said, à priori, that he could not mean anything but this: since otherwise the expression “Conditions of the Thinkable” is perverted from its meaning. Nevertheless, this is not what he means, at least in this place. It is on this very occasion that he disclaims, as applicable to laws of thought, the scientific meaning of the term, and declares them to be (like the laws made by Parliament) general precepts; not necessities of the thinking act, but instructions for right thinking. Yet it would not have been claiming too much for these three laws, to have regarded them as laws in the more peremptory sense; as actual necessities of thought. Our author could hardly have meant that we are able to disbelieve that a thing is itself, or to Edition: current; Page: [373] believe that a thing is, and at the same time that it is not. He not only, like other people, constantly assumes this to be an impossibility, but makes that impossibility the ground of some of his leading philosophical doctrines; as when he says that it is impossible for us to doubt the actual facts of consciousness “because the doubt implies a contradiction.”* It is true that a person may, in one sense, believe contradictory propositions, that is, he may believe the affirmative at some times and the negative at others, alternately forgetting the two beliefs. It is also true that he may yield a passive assent to two forms of words, which, had he been fully conscious of their meaning, he would have known to be, either wholly or in part, an affirmation and a denial of the same fact. But when once he is made to see that there is a contradiction, it is totally impossible for him to believe it.

Now, to compel people to see a contradiction where a contradiction is, constitutes the entire office of Logic in the limited sense in which Sir W. Hamilton conceives it: and he is quite right in regarding the whole of Logic, in that narrow sense, as resting on the three laws specified by him. To call them the fundamental laws of Thought is aa misnomer; but they are the laws of Consistency. All inconsistency is a violation of some one of these laws; an unconscious violation, for knowingly to violate them is impossible.

Something remains to be said respecting the three Laws considered singly, as well as respecting our author’s mode of regarding them.

The Law or Principle of Identity (Principium Identitatis) is no other than the time-honoured axiom, “Whatever is, is,” or, in another phraseology, “A thing is the same as itself:” the proposition which Locke, in his chapter on Maxims, treated with so much disrespect.[*] Sir W. Hamilton, probably finding it difficult to establish the “principle of all logical affirmation” on such a basis as this, presents the axiom† in a modified shape, as an assertion of the identity between a whole and its parts; or rather between a whole Concept, and its parts in Comprehension—the attributes which compose it; for Logic, as conceived by him, has nothing to do with any wholes but Concepts, abstracting altogether (as he asserts) from the reality of the things conceived.‡

Although our author still so far defers to the old version of the Principle of Identity, as to say that it is “expressed in the formula A is A, or A = A,”[*] I must admit that while paying this tribute of respect to our ancient friend, he has taken a very substantial and useful liberty with him, and has made him mean much more than he ever meant before. The only fault that can be found (but that is a serious one) is, that if we accept this view of the maxim, we shall require many “principles of logical affirmation” instead of one. For if we are to make a separate principle for every mode in which we have occasion to re-affirm the same thing in different words, we need a large number of them. If we require a special principle to entitle us, when we have affirmed a set of attributes jointly, to affirm over again the same attributes severally, we require also a long list of such principles as these: When one thing is before another, the other is after. When one thing is after another, the other is before. When one thing is along with another, the other is along with the first. When one thing is like, or unlike, another, the other is like (or unlike) the first: in short, as many fundamental principles as there are kinds of relation. For we have need of all these changes of expression in our processes of thought and reasoning. What is at the bottom of them all is, that Logic (to borrow a phrase from our author)[†] postulates to be allowed to assert the same meaning in any words which will, consistently with their signification, express it. The use and meaning of a Fundamental Law of Thought is, that it asserts in general terms the right to do something, which the mind needs to do in cases as they arise. It is in this sense that the Dictum de Omni et Nullo is called the fundamental law of the Syllogism. But, for this purpose, it is necessary that the Law or Postulate should be stated in so comprehensive and universal a manner as to cover every case in which the act authorized by it requires to be done. Looked at in this light, the Principle of Identity ought to have been expressed thus: Whatever is true in one form of words, is true in every other form of words which conveys the same meaning. Thus worded, it fulfils the requirements of a First Principle of Thought; for it is the widest possible expression of an act of thought which is always legitimate, and continually has to be done.*

Understood in this sense, the Principle of Identity absorbs into itself a Postulate of Logic on which Sir W. Hamilton lays great stress, and which he did good service in making prominent, though we shall hereafter find that he sometimes misapplies it. He expresses it as follows: “The only Postulate of Logic which requires an articulate enouncement is the demand, that before dealing with a judgment or reasoning expressed in language, the import of its terms should be fully understood; in other words, Logic postulates to be allowed to state explicitly in language, all that is implicitly contained in the thought.”* There cannot be a more just demand: but let us carefully note the terms in which our author enunciates it, that he may be held to them afterwards. Everything may be stated explicitly in language, which is “implicitly contained in the thought,” that is (according to his own interpretation) in the “import of the terms” used. In other words, we have a right to bexpressb explicitly, what has already been asserted in terms which really mean, though they do not explicitly declare it. Observe, what has been already asserted; not what can be inferred from something that has been asserted. One proposition may imply another, but unless the implication is in the very meaning of the terms, it avails nothing. It may be impossible that the one proposition should be true without the other being true also, and yet Logic cannot “postulate” to be allowed to affirm this last; she must be required to prove it. Interpreted in this, its true sense, Sir W. Hamilton’s postulate is legitimate, but is only a particular case of the Principle of Identity in its most generalized shape. It is a case of postulating to be allowed to express a given meaning in another form of words.

As already mentioned, Sir W. Hamilton represents the Principle of Identity to be “the principle of all logical affirmation.” This I can by no means admit, whether the Principle in question is taken in Sir W. Hamilton’s narrower, or in my own wider sense. The reaffirmation in new language of what has already been asserted—or (descending to particulars and adopting our author’s phraseology) the thinking of a Concept through an attribute which is a part of itself—can, as I formerly observed, be admitted as a correct account of the nature of affirmation, only in the case of Analytical Judgments. In a Synthetical Judgment, the attribute predicated is thought not as part of, but as existing in a common subject along with, the group of attributes composing the Concept: and of this operation of thought it is plain that no principle of Identity can give any account, since Edition: current; Page: [376] there is a new element introduced, which is not identical with any part of what pre-existed in thought. This is clearly seen by Mr. Mansel, who expressly limits the dominion of the Law of Identity to analytical judgments;* and, with perfect consistency, regards these as the only judgments with which Logic, as such, is concerned. If, then, the Law of Identity is to be upheld as the principle “of all logical affirmation,” we must understand that logical affirmation does not mean all affirmation, but only affirmations which communicate no fact, and merely assert that what is called by a name, is what the name declares it to be.

If our author had stated the Law of Identity to be the principle not of “logical affirmation,” but of affirmative Reasoning, he would have said something far more plausible, and which had been maintained by many of his predecessors. The truth is, however, that as far as that law is a principle of reasoning at all, it is as much a principle of negative, as of affirmative reasoning. In proving a negative, as much as in proving an affirmative, we require the liberty of exchanging a proposition for any other that is æquipollent with it, and of predicating separately of any subject, all attributes which have been predicated of it jointly. These liberties the mind rightfully claims in all its intellectual operations. The Principle of Identity is not the peculiar groundwork of any special kind of thinking, but an indispensable postulate in all thinking.

The second of the “Fundamental Laws” is the Law or Principle of Contradiction (Principium Contradictionis); that two assertions, one of which denies what the other affirms, cannot be thought together. Most people would have said, cannot be believed together; but our author resolutely refuses to recognise belief as any element in the scientific analysis of a proposition. “This law,” he says, “is the principle of all logical negation and distinction,”† and “is logically expressed in the formula, What is contradictory is unthinkable.” To this he subjoins, as an equivalent mathematical formula, “A = not A = o, or A - A = o:”‡ a misapplication and perversion of algebraical symbols, not to be omitted among other evidences how little familiar he was with mathematical modes of thought.

Concerning the name of this law, Sir W. Hamilton observes that “as it enjoins the absence of contradiction as the indispensable condition of thought, it ought to be called, not the Law of Contradiction, but the Law of Non-Contradiction, or of non-repugnantia.”§ It seems that no extent and accuracy of knowledge concerning the opinions of predecessors, can preserve a thinker from giving an erroneous interpretation of their meaning by Edition: current; Page: [377] antedating a confusion of ideas which exists in his own mind. The Law of Contradiction does not “enjoin the absence of contradiction;” it is not an injunction at all. If those who wrote before Sir W. Hamilton of the Law or Principle of Contradiction, had meant by those terms what he did, namely, a rule or precept, it would have been, no doubt, absurd in them to have given the name Law of Contradiction, to a Precept of Non-Contradiction. But I venture to assert that when they spoke of the Law of Contradiction (which most of them, I believe, never did, but called it the Principle) they were no more dreaming of enjoining anything, than when they spoke of the Law or Principle of Identity they intended to enjoin identity. They used those terms in their proper scientific, and not, as Sir W. Hamilton does, in their moral or legislative sense. By the Law of Identity they meant one of the properties of identity, namely, that a proposition which is identical must be true. And by the Law of Contradiction they meant one of the properties of contradiction, namely, that what is contradictory cannot be true. We should express their meaning better if instead of the word Law, we used the expressions, Doctrine of Identity, and Doctrine of Contradiction. This is what they had in their minds, and even expressed by their words; for the word Principle, with them, meant a particular kind of Doctrine, namely, one which is the groundwork, and justifying authority, of a whole class of operations of the mind. If the word Law is to be retained, Principium Contradictionis would be better translated, not Law of Contradiction but Law of Contradictory Propositions; were it not for the consideration, that the principle of Excluded Middle is also a law of contradictory propositions.

The Law of Contradiction, according to Sir W. Hamilton, is the “principle of all logical negation.”* I do not see how it can be the principle of any negation except the denial that a thing is the contradictory of itself. That a sight is not a taste is a negation, and it must be a very narrow use of the term which refuses it the title of a logical negation. But there is no contradiction between a sight and a taste. That blue is not green, involves no logical contradiction. We could believe that a green thing may be blue, as easily as we believe that a round thing may be blue, if experience did not teach us the incompatibility of the former attributes, and the compatibility of the latter. The negative judgment, that a man is not a horse, may indeed be said to be grounded on the Principle of Contradiction, inasmuch as the opposite assertion, that a man is a horse, is in certain of its parts contradictory, though in others only false. The word man cmay bec understood as signifying (in precise logical language, connoting) among dthed other properties, Edition: current; Page: [378] that of having exactly two legs—the word horse, that of having four; and in respect of this particular part of the meaning of the terms, the subject and the predicate are contradictory, the one affirming and the other denying the extra number of legs. But suppose the subject and predicate of the judgment to be names of classes constituted by positive attributes without negative, as mathematician and moralist, or merchant and philosopher. An affirmation uniting them may then be false, but cannot possibly be self-contradictory. The Law of Contradiction cannot be the ground on which it is asserted that a mathematician is not a moralist, for the two Concepts are only different, not contradictory, nor even repugnant.

Others have said, that the Law or Doctrine of Contradiction is the principle of Negative Reasoning. But the obvious truth is, that it is the principle of all Reasoning, so far as reasoning can be regarded apart from objective truth or falsehood. For, abstractedly from that consideration, the only meaning of validity in reasoning is that it neither involves a contradiction, nor infers anything the denial of which would not contradict the premises. Valid reasoning, from the point of view of merely Formal Logic, is a negative conception; it means, reasoning which is not self-destructive; which cannot be discovered to be worthless from its own data. It would be absurd to suppose that the validity of the reasoning process itself, either affirmative or negative, could be proved from the Doctrine of Contradiction; for though a given syllogism may be proved valid by showing that the falsity of the conclusion, combined with the truth of one premise, would contradict the truth of the other, this can only be done by another syllogism, so that the validity of Reasoning would be taken for granted in the attempt to prove it. The Law of Contradiction is a principle of reasoning in the same sense, and in the same sense only, as the Law of Identity is. It is the generalization of a mental act which is of continual occurrence, and which cannot be dispensed with in reasoning. As we require the liberty of substituting for a given assertion, the same assertion in different words, so we require the liberty of substituting, for any assertion, the denial of its contradictory. The affirmation of the one and the denial of the other are logical equivalents, which it is allowable and indispensable to make use of as mutually convertible.

The third “Fundamental Law” is the law or principle of Excluded Middle (principium Exclusi Medii vel Tertii), of which the purport is, that, of two directly contradictory propositions, one or the other must be true. I am now expressing the axiom in my own language, for the tortuous phraseology* by which our author eescapes frome recognising the ideas of truth and falsity, having already been sufficiently exemplified, may here be disregarded. Edition: current; Page: [379] This axiom is the other half of the doctrine of Contradictory Propositions. By the law of Contradiction, contradictory propositions cannot both be true; by the law of Excluded Middle, they cannot both be false. Or, to state the meaning in other language, by the law of Contradiction a proposition cannot be both true and false; by the law of Excluded Middle it must be either true or false—there is no third possibility.

Sir W. Hamilton says that this law is “the principle of disjunctive judgments.”* By disjunctive judgments, logicians have always meant, judgments in this form: Either this is true or that is true. The law of Excluded Middle cannot be the principle of any disjunctive judgment but those in which the subject of both the members is the same, and one of the predicates a simple negation of the other: as, A is either B or not B. That indeed rests on the principle of Excluded Middle, or rather, is the very formula of that principle. It is here to be remarked that Sir W. Hamilton, after Krug, but by a very unaccountable departure from the common usage of logicians, confines the name of Disjunctive Judgments to those in which all the alternative propositions have the same subject: “D is either B, or C, or A.”† This is not only an arbitrary change in the meaning of words, but renders the classification of propositions incomplete, leaving two kinds of disjunctive propositions (Either B, C, or D, is A, and Either A is B or C is D) unrecognised and without a name. But even in our author’s restricted sense of the word Disjunctive, I cannot see how the Law of Excluded Middle can be said to be the principle of all disjunctive judgments. The judgment that A is either B or not B, is warranted and its truth certified by the Law of Excluded Middle: but the judgment that A is either B or C, both B and C being positive, requires some other voucher than the law that one or other of two contradictories must be true. Thus, “X is either a man or a brute,” is not a judgment grounded on the principle of Excluded Middle, since brute is not a bare negation of man, but includes the positive attribute of being an animal, which X may possibly not be.

It might be said, with more plausibility, that the Law of Excluded Middle is the principle of Disjunctive Reasoning. Thus, in the last example, “X is either a man or a brute” may be a conclusion from two premises, that X is an animal, and that every animal is either a man or a brute: the latter of which is a disjunctive judgment grounded on the Law of Excluded Middle. But it is not the fact that all disjunctive conclusions are inferred from premises of this nature. Having been told that A has lost a son, I conclude that either B, C, or D (A having no other sons) is dead: what kind of reasoning is this? Disjunctive, surely: it has a disjunctive premise, and leads to a disjunctive conclusion. But the disjunctive premise (Every son of A is either B, C, or Edition: current; Page: [380] D) does not rest on the Law of Excluded Middle, or on any necessity of thought; it rests on my knowledge of the individual fact.

The third Law, however, like the two others, is one of the principles of all reasonings, being the generalization of a process which is liable to be required in all of them. As the Doctrine of Contradiction authorizes us to substitute for the assertion of either of two contradictory propositions, the denial of the other, so the doctrine of Excluded Middle empowers us to substitute for the denial of either of two contradictory propositions, the assertion of the other. Thus all the three principles which our author terms the Fundamental Laws of Thought, are universal postulates of Reasoning; and as such, are entitled to the conspicuous position which our author assigns to them in Logic: though it is evident that they ought not to be placed at the very beginning of the subject, but at the earliest, in its Second Part, the theory of Judgments, or Propositions: since they essentially involve the ideas of Truth and Falsity, which are attributes only of judgments, not of names, or concepts.

It is another question altogether, what we ought to think of these three principles, considered not as general expressions of legitimate intellectual processes, but as themselves speculative truths. Sir W. Hamilton considers them to be such in a very universal sense indeed, since he thinks we are bound to regard them as true beyond the sphere of either real or imaginable phænomenal experience—to be true of Things in Themselves—of Noumena. “Whatever,” he says,

And in another place: “If the true character of objective validity be universality, the laws of Logic are really of that character, for those laws constrain us, by their own authority, to regard them as the universal laws not only of human thought, but of universal reason.”† A few pages before, our author took pains to impress upon us that we were not to regard these laws as necessities of thought, but as general precepts “which we are able to violate:”[*] but they now appear to be necessities of thought and something more.

I readily admit that these three general propositions are universally true Edition: current; Page: [381] of all phænomena. I also admit that if there are any inherent necessities of thought, these are such. I express myself in this qualified manner, because whoever is aware how artificial, modifiable, the creatures of circumstances, and alterable by circumstances, most of the supposed necessities of thought are (though real necessities to a given person at a given time), will hesitate to affirm of any such necessities that they are an original part of our mental constitution. Whether the three so-called Fundamental Laws are laws of our thoughts by the native structure of the mind, or merely because we perceive them to be universally true of observed phænomena, I will not positively decide: but they are laws of our thoughts now, and invincibly so. They may or may not be capable of alteration by experience, but the conditions of our existence deny to us the experience which would be required to alter them. Any assertion, therefore, which conflicts with one of these laws—any proposition, for instance, which asserts a contradiction, though it were on a subject wholly removed from the sphere of our experience, is to us unbelievable. The belief in such a proposition is, in the present constitution of nature, impossible as a mental fact.*

But Sir W. Hamilton goes beyond this: he thinks that the obstacle to belief does not lie solely in an incapacity of our believing faculty, but in objective incapacities of existence; that the “Fundamental Laws of Thought” are laws of Existence too, and may be known to be true not only of Phænomena but also of Noumena. Of this, however, as of all else relating to Noumena, the verdict of philosophy, I apprehend, must be that we are entirely ignorant. The distinction itself is but an idle one; for since Noumena, if they exist, are wholly unknowable by us, except phænomenally, through their effects on us; and since all attributes which exist for us, even in our fancy, are but phænomena, there is nothing for us either to affirm or deny of a Noumenon except phænomenal attributes: existence Edition: current; Page: [382] itself, as we conceive it, being merely the power of producing phænomena. Now in respect to phænomenal attributes, no one denies the three “Fundamental Laws” to be universally true. Since then they are laws of all Phænomena, and since Existence has to us no meaning but one which has relation to Phænomena, we are quite safe in looking upon them as laws of Existence. This is sufficient for those who hold the doctrine of the Relativity of human knowledge. But Sir W. Hamilton, as has been seen, does not hold that doctrine, though he holds a verbal truism which he chooses to call by the same name. His opinion is that we do know something more than phænomena: that we know the Primary Qualities of Bodies as existing in the Noumena, in the things themselves, and not as mere powers of affecting us. Sir W. Hamilton, therefore, needs another kind of argument to establish the doctrine that the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, are laws of all existence: and here we have it:

This proves only that a contradiction is unthinkable, not that it is impossible in point of fact. But what follows goes more directly to the mark.

Of this favourite style of argument with our author we have already had many specimens, and have said so much about them, that we can afford to be brief in the present instance. Assuming it to be true that “to deny the universal application of the three laws” as laws of existence “is to subvert the reality of thought:” is anything added to the force of this consideration by saying that “this subversion is itself an act of thought?” If the reality of thought can be subverted, is there any peculiar enormity in doing it by means of thought itself? In what other way can we imagine it to be done? Edition: current; Page: [383] And if it were true that thought is an invalid process, what better proof of this could be given than that we could, by thinking, arrive at the conclusion that our thoughts are not to be trusted? Sir W. Hamilton always seems to suppose that the imaginary sceptic, who doubts the validity of thought altogether, is obliged to claim a greater validity for his subversive thoughts than he allows to the thoughts they subvert. But it is enough for him to claim the same validity, so that all opinions are thrown into equal uncertainty.* Sir W. Hamilton, of all men, ought to know this, for when he is himself on the sceptical side of any question, as when speaking of the Absolute, or anything else which he deems inaccessible to the human faculties, this is the very line of argument he employs. He proves the invalidity, as regards those subjects, of the thinking process, by showing that it lands us in contradictions.†

But it is entirely inadmissible that to suppose that a law of thought need not necessarily be a law of existence, invalidates the thinking process. If, indeed, there were any law necessitating us to think a relation between phænomena which does not in fact exist between the phænomena, then certainly the thinking process would be proved invalid, because we should be compelled by it to think true something which would really be false. But Edition: current; Page: [384] if the mind is incapable of thinking anything respecting Noumena except the Phænomena which it considers as proceeding from them, and to which it can appeal to test its thoughts; and if we are under no necessity of thinking these otherwise than in conformity to what they really are; we may refuse to believe that our generalizations from the Phænomenal attributes of Noumena can be applied to Noumena in any other aspect, without in the least invalidating the operation of thought in regard to anything to which thought is applicable. We may say to Sir W. Hamilton what he says himself in another case: “I only say that thought is limited; but, within its limits, I do not deny, I do not subvert, its truth.”* As he elsewhere observes, translating from Esser, truth consists “solely in the correspondence of our thoughts with their objects.”† If the only real objects of thought, even when we are nominally speaking of Noumena, are Phænomena, our thoughts are true when they are made to correspond with Phænomena: and, the possibility of this being denied by no one, the thinking process is valid whether our laws of thought are laws of absolute existence or not.

CHAPTER XXII: Of Sir William Hamilton’s Supposed Improvements in Formal Logic

of all Sir W. Hamilton’s philosophical achievements, there is none, except perhaps his “Philosophy of the Conditioned,” on account of which so much merit has been claimed for him, as the additions and corrections which he is supposed to have contributed to the doctrine of the Syllogism. These may be summed up in two principal theories, with their numerous corollaries and applications; the recognition of two kinds of Syllogism, Syllogisms in Extension and Syllogisms in Comprehension; and the doctrine of the Quantification of the Predicate. To the former of these, Sir W. Hamilton ascribed great importance. According to him, all previous logicians, “with the doubtful exception of Aristotle,” “have altogether overlooked the reasoning in Comprehension”—“have marvellously overlooked one, and that the simplest and most natural of these descriptions of reasoning,—the reasoning in the quantity of comprehension:” and he claims, in directing attention to it, to have “relieved a radical defect and vital inconsistency in the present logical system.”* For the other theory, that of the Quantification of the Predicate, still loftier claims are advanced both by himself and by others. Mr. Baynes, with an enthusiasm natural and not ungraceful in a pupil, concludes his Essay on the subject (which still remains the clearest exposition of his master’s doctrine) with the following words:

Previous to discussing these additions to the Syllogistic Theory, it is necessary to revert to a doctrine which has been briefly stated in a former chapter,[*] but did not then receive all the elucidation it requires, and which has a most important bearing on both of Sir W. Hamilton’s supposed discoveries. This is, that all Judgments (except where both the terms are proper names) are really judgments in Comprehension; though it is customary, and the natural tendency of the mind, to express most of them in terms of Extension. In other words, we never really predicate anything but attributes, though, in the usage of language, we commonly predicate them by means of words which are names of concrete objects.

When, for example, I say, The sky is blue; my meaning, and my whole meaning, is that the sky has that particular colour. I am not thinking of the class blue, as regards extension, at all. I am not caring, nor necessarily knowing, what blue things there are, or if there is any blue thing except the sky. I am thinking only of the sensation of blue, and am judging that the sky produces this sensation in my sensitive faculty; or (to express the meaning in technical language) that the quality answering to the sensation of blue, or the power of exciting the sensation of blue, is an attribute of the sky. When again I say, All oxen ruminate, I have nothing to do with the predicate, considered in extension. I may know, or be ignorant, that there are other ruminating animals besides oxen. Whether I do or do not know it, it does not, unless by mere accident, pass through my mind. In judging that oxen ruminate, I do not, unless accidentally, think under the notion ruminate (to borrow Sir W. Hamilton’s phraseology) any other notion than that of an ox. The Comprehension of the predicate—the attribute or set of attributes signified by it—are all that I have in my mind; and the relation of this attribute or these attributes to the subject, is the entire matter of the judgment.

In one of the examples above given, the predicate is an adjective, and in the other a verb, which, in a logical point of view, is classed with adjectives: but its being a noun substantive makes no difference. For reasons easily shown, a substantive is more strongly associated with the ideas of the concrete objects denoted by it, than an adjective or a verb is. But when we predicate a substantive—when we say, Philip is a man, or, A aherringa is a fish—do the words man and fish signify anything to us but the bundles of attributes connoted by them? Do the propositions mean anything except Edition: current; Page: [387] that Philip has the human attributes, and a bherringb the piscine ones? Assuredly not. Any notion of a multitude of other men, among whom Philip is ranked, or a variety of fishes besides cherringsc, is foreign to the proposition. The proposition does not decide whether there is this additional quantity or no. It affirms the attributes of its own particular subject, and of no other.

Passing now from the predicate to the subject, we shall find that the subject also, if a general term or notion, is always construed in Comprehension, that is, by the attributes which constitute it, and has no other meaning in thought. When I judge that all oxen ruminate, what do I mean by all oxen? I have no image in my mind of all oxen. I do not, nor ever shall, know all of them, and I am not thinking even of all those I do know. “All oxen,” in my thoughts, does not mean particular animals—it means the objects, whatever they may be, that have the attributes by which oxen are recognised, and which compose the notion of an ox. Wherever these attributes shall be found, there, as I judge, the attribute of ruminating will be found also: that is the entire purport of the judgment. Its meaning is a meaning in attributes, and nothing else. It supposes subjects, but merely as all attributes suppose them.

But there is another mode of interpreting the same proposition, by considering it as dad part of the statement of a classification and mental co-ordination of the objects which exist in nature. The proposition is then looked upon as an assertion respecting given objects; affirming what other individual objects they are classed among by the general scheme of human language. Thus interpreted, the proposition “all oxen ruminate” may be read as follows: If all creatures that ruminate were collected in a vast plain, and I were required to search the world and point out all oxen, they would all be found among the crowd on that plain, and none anywhere else. Moreover, this would have been the case in all past time, and will at any future, while the present order of nature lasts. This is the proposition “All oxen ruminate” interpreted in Extension. Will any one say that a process of thought like this passes in the mind of whoever makes the affirmation? It is a point of view in which the proposition may be regarded; it is one of the aspects of the fact asserted in the proposition. But it is not the aspect in which the proposition presents it to the mind.

It will, however, very naturally be objected—If the meaning in our mind is that the bovine attributes are always accompanied by the attribute of ruminating, why do we, except for the purposes of abstract logic or metaphysics, never say this, but always say “All oxen ruminate?” The Edition: current; Page: [388] reason is, that we have no other convenient and compact mode of speaking. Most attributes, and nearly all large “bundles of attributes,” have no names of their own. We can only name them by a circumlocution. We are accustomed to speak of attributes not by names given to themselves, but by means of the names which they give to the objects they are attributes of. We do not talk of the phænomena which accompany piscinity; we talk of the phænomena of fishes. We do not frame a definition of piscinity, but a definition of a fish. The definition, however, of a fish is exactly the same which the definition of piscinity would be; it is an enumeration of the same attributes. Language is constructed upon the principle of naming concrete objects first: it does not always name abstractions at all, and when it does, the names are almost always derived from those of concrete objects. The reasons are obvious. Objects—even classes of objects—being conceivable by a much less effort of abstraction than attributes, are in the necessary order of things conceived and named earlier, and remain always more familiar to the mind: attributes, even when they come to be conceived, cannot be conceived in a detached state, but are always (as may be said by an adaptation of the Hamiltonian phraseology) thought through objects of some sort. Consequently all familiar propositions are expressed in the language which denotes objects, and not in that which denotes attributes. Nor is this all. What is primarily important to us in our sensations and impressions, is their permanent groups. In our particular and passing sensations (unless in cases of exceptional intensity) the important thing to us is, not the sensation itself, but to what group it belongs; what concrete object, what Permanent Possibility of Sensation, it indicates the presence of. The mind consequently hurries on from the sensible impressions that proceed from an outward object, to the object itself, and its subsequent thoughts revolve round that. It is on the concrete object indicated, that the expectation of future sensations depends; and the concrete object, consequently, in most cases, exclusively engages our thoughts, and stimulates us to mark it by a name. The name, to answer its purpose, must remind ourselves, and inform others, of the sensations we or they have to expect: that is, it must connote an attribute, or set of attributes. And men did not at first name attributes in any other than this indirect manner. They gave no direct names to attributes, because they did not conceive attributes as having any separate existence. As they began by naming only concrete objects, so the first names by which they expressed even the results of abstraction, were not names of attributes in the abstract, regarded apart from their objects, but names of concrete objects signifying the presence of the attributes. Men talked of blue, or of blue things, before they talked of blueness. Even when they did talk of blueness, it was originally not as the Edition: current; Page: [389] attribute, but as an imaginary cause of the attribute, which cause they figured to themselves as itself a concrete thing, residing in the object.

It thus appears that though all judgments consist in ascribing attributes, the original and natural mode of expressing them was by general names denoting concrete objects, and only connoting attributes; and by the structure of language this remains the only concise mode, and the only one which, addressing itself to familiar associations, conveys the meaning at once, to minds not exercised in metaphysical abstraction. But this does not alter the obvious truth, that concrete objects are only known by attributes, are only distinguished by attributes, and that the concrete names by which we speak of them mean nothing but attributes, or “bundles of attributes.” Our representation in thought of a concrete object is but a representation of attributes, and our concept of a class of concrete objects is but a certain portion of those attributes, not, indeed, separately conceived or imaged, but exclusively attended to. There is, therefore, nothing in our mind when we affirm a general proposition, but attributes, and their coexistence or repugnance: and the position is made out, that all judgments, expressed by means of general terms, are judgments in Comprehension, though always, unless for some special purpose, expressed in Extension.

If this be the true doctrine of Judgments, what is meant by saying that there are two sorts of Judgment, one in Extension, the other in Comprehension, and two kinds of reasoning corresponding to these, one of which, that in Comprehension, had been overlooked by all logicians, except possibly Aristotle, up to the time of Sir W. Hamilton? All our ordinary judgments are in Comprehension only, Extension not being thought of. But we may, if we please, make the Extension of our general terms an express object of thought, and this may be called thinking in Extension, though it is rather thinking about Extension. When I judge that all oxen ruminate, I have nothing in my thoughts but the attributes and their coexistence. But when, by reflection, I perceive what the proposition implies, I remark, that other things may ruminate besides oxen; and that the unknown multitude of things which ruminate form a mass, with which the unknown multitude of things having the attributes of oxen is either identical, or is wholly comprised in it. Which of these two is the truth I may not know, and if I did, took no notice of it when I assented to the proposition “all oxen ruminate.” But I perceive, on consideration, that one or other of them must be true. Though I had not this in my mind when I affirmed that all oxen ruminate, I can have it now; I can make the concrete objects denoted by each of the two names an object of thought, as a collective though indefinite aggregate; in other words, I can make the Extension of the names (or notions) an object of direct consciousness. When I do this, I perceive that this operation Edition: current; Page: [390] introduces no new fact, but is only a different mode of contemplating the very fact which I had previously expressed by the words “all oxen ruminate.” The fact is the same, but the mode of contemplating it is different: the mental operation, the act of thought, is not only a distinct act, but an act of a different kind.

There is thus, in all propositions (save those in which both terms are Proper, that is, in significant, names) a judgment concerning attributes (called by Sir W. Hamilton a judgment in Comprehension), which we make as a matter of course, and a possible judgment in or concerning Extension, which we may make, and which will be true if the former is true. Nevertheless (as has just been shown), the conditions of primitive thought, and subsequent convenience, cause us generally to enunciate our propositions in terms appropriate to the derivative judgment which we seldom make, rather than to the primitive judgment which we always make. And this explains why, though the meaning of all propositions in which general terms are used is in Comprehension, writers on logic always explain the rules of the Syllogism in reference to Extension alone. It is because the framers of the rules did not concern themselves with propositions or reasonings as they exist in thought, but only as they are expressed in language. And in this they were justified. For the syllogism is not the form in which we necessarily reason, but a test of reasoning: a form into which we may translate any reasoning, with the effect of exposing all the points at which any unwarranted inference can have got in. According to this view of the Syllogism—for the justification of which I must refer to the Second Book of my System of Logic[*]—the syllogistic theory is only concerned with providing forms suitable to test the validity of inferences; and it was not necessary that the forms in which reasoning was directed to be written, should be those in which it is carried on in thought, so long as they are practically equivalent, that is, so long as the propositions in words are always true or false according as the judgments in thought are so. The propositions in Extension, being, in this sense, exactly equivalent to the judgments in Comprehension, served quite as well to ground forms of ratiocination upon: and as the validity of the forms was more easily and conveniently shown through the concrete conception of comparing classes of objects, than through the abstract one of recognising coexistence of attributes, logicians were perfectly justified in taking the course, which, in any case, the established forms of language would doubtless have forced upon them. They are thus deserving of no blame, though their mode of proceeding has been attended with some practical mischief, by diverting the attention of thinkers from what really constitutes the meaning of Propositions. Edition: current; Page: [391] It has also been one of the causes of the prejudice so general in the last three centuries, against the syllogistic theory. For a doctrine which defined one of the two great processes of the discovery of truth as consisting in the operation of placing objects in a class and then finding them there, can never, I think, have really satisfied any competent thinker, however he may have acquiesced in it for want of a better. There must always have been a dormant sense of discontent, an obscure feeling that this was a description of the reasoning process by one of its accidents, though an inseparable accident.*

Sir W. Hamilton distinguishes two kinds of Syllogism, Extensive and Comprehensive.

He acknowledges, however, that both syllogisms are identically the same argument; “every syllogism in the one quantity being convertible into a Edition: current; Page: [392] syllogism absolutely equivalent in the other quantity.”* And what is the difference in form and language between the two syllogisms? According to our author it is merely a difference in the order of the premises. The following,

• “Every morally responsible agent is a free agent;
• Man is a morally responsible agent;
• Therefore man is a free agent,”†

is, according to him, a syllogism in Extension. Transpose the premises, and write it thus,

• “Man is a responsible agent;
• But a responsible agent is a free agent;
• Therefore, man is a free agent,”‡

and we have, according to him, a syllogism in Comprehension. Far, however, from constituting two kinds of reasoning, this does not even supply us with two different forms of it. He himself says elsewhere, that “the transposition of the propositions of a syllogism affords no modifications of form yielding more than a superficial character.”§ And even this superficial difference he with his own hands abolishes, saying, that any syllogism whatever “can be perspicuously expressed not only by the normal, but by any of the five consecutions of its propositions which deviate from the regular order,” and that “a syllogism in Comprehension is equally susceptible of a transposition of its propositions as a syllogism in Extension.”¶ So that the slight distinction of form which he seemed at first to contend for, does not exist; a Syllogism in Comprehension, and the corresponding Syllogism in Extension, are word for word the same. Instead of “every syllogism in the one quantity” being “convertible into a syllogism absolutely equivalent in the other quantity,” every syllogism is already a syllogism in both quantities.∥

The distinction, therefore, is not between two kinds, or even between two forms, of syllogism, but between two modes of construing the meaning of the same syllogism. And what are these two modes? Sir W. Hamilton says, that they are distinguished by a difference in the meaning of the copula.

I cannot admit this to be a true analysis of the meaning of the proposition, either in Extension or in Comprehension. The statement that God is merciful I construe as an affirmation not concerning the notion God, but the Being God. Interpreted in Comprehension I hold it to mean, that this Being has the attribute signified by the word merciful, or, in our author’s language, comprehended in the concept. Interpreted in Extension I render it thus: The Being, God, is either the only being, or one of the beings, forming the class merciful, or, in other words, possessing the attribute mercifulness. Thus stated, who can doubt which of the two is the original and natural judgment, and which is a derivative and artificial mode of restating it? The difference between them is slight, but real, and consists in this, that the second construction introduces the idea of other possible merciful beings, an idea not suggested by the first construction. This suggestion gives rise to the idea of a class merciful, and of God as a member of that class: notions which are not present to the mind at all when it simply assents to the proposition that God is merciful. To make a distinction between Reasoning in Extension and in Comprehension, when the same syllogism serves for both, could only be admissible if we employed the same words having sometimes in our mind the meaning in Extension, sometimes that in Comprehension: but in reality all reasoning is thought solely in Comprehension, except when we, for a technical purpose, perform a second act of thought upon the Extension—which in general we do not, and have no need to, consider.

Nor is this the only objection to Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrine. There is another, less obvious, but equally fatal. The statement in Comprehension is, that A has the attributes comprehended in B. The statement in Extension Edition: current; Page: [394] is, that A belongs to the class of things which have the attributes comprehended in B. These statements are either, as I affirm them to be, one and the same assertion in slightly different words, or they are different assertions. If they are the same assertion, there is but one judgment, which is both in Extension and in Comprehension, and but one kind of reasoning, which is in both. But supposing them, for the sake of argument, to be two different assertions, the judgment respecting Extension is a corollary from that in Comprehension, expressing an artificial point of view in which we may regard the natural judgment. Now, on this supposition, that the judgment respecting Extension is not the same, but an additional judgment, it is, like all other judgments, a judgment in Comprehension. “A is part of class B” must be interpreted thus: The phænomenon A possesses, or the concept A comprehends, the attribute of being included in the class B. So that, while every judgment in Comprehension warrants, by way of immediate inference, a corresponding judgment respecting Extension, this very judgment respecting Extension is itself but a particular kind of judgment in Comprehension. Even, therefore, on the untenable doctrine that there are two different judgments in the case, the distinction between judgments in Extension and judgments in Comprehension is not sustainable; and the supposed addition to the theory of the Syllogism is a mere excrescence and incumbrance on it.

How great the incumbrance is, all are able to judge, who follow our author through the details of the syllogistic logic. He not only finds it necessary to expound and demonstrate every one of the doctrines twice over, as adapted to Extension and to Comprehension, but struggles to express all the fundamental principles in a manner combining both points of view; and is thereby compelled either to state those principles in terms too wide and abstract for easy apprehension, in order that what is laid down respecting wholes and their parts may be applicable to both kinds of wholes (in Extension and in Comprehension), or else to embarrass the learner with the necessity of carrying on two trains of thought at once, in the attempt to apprehend a single principle. I need not dwell on the additional error, of considering the relation of whole and parts as the foundation of the Syllogism in both aspects. To the point of view of Extension that relation is applicable. In every affirmative proposition, if true, the object or class of objects denoted by the subject is a part (when it is not the whole) of the class of objects denoted by the predicate. But no similar relation exists between the two “bundles of attributes” comprehended in the subject and in the predicate, except in the case of Analytical Judgments, that is, of merely verbal propositions. In Synthetical Judgments, that is, in all propositions which convey information about anything except the meaning of words, the Edition: current; Page: [395] relation between the two sets of attributes is not a relation of Whole and Part, but a relation of Coexistence.

I now pass to the doctrine of the Quantification of the Predicate; examining it by the light of the same principles which we have applied to the distinction between the supposed two kinds of Reasoning.

It will be desirable to state in Sir W. Hamilton’s own words, as first published in 1846, the claims he prefers in behalf of this doctrine, and the important consequences to which he considers it to lead.

The doctrine which leads to all these consequences, or rather, which necessitates all these changes of expression (for they are no more), is that the Predicate is always quantified in thought; that we always think it either as signifying the whole, or as signifying only a part, of the objects included in its Extension. “In reality and in thought, every quantity is necessarily either all, or some, or none.”† The proposition, All A is B, must mean, in thought, either All A is all B, or All A is some B. When I judge that all oxen ruminate, it must not only be true, but I must mean, either that All ox is all ruminating, or that All ox is some ruminating. Logic, therefore, postulates to express in words what is already in the thoughts, and to write alle propositions in one or other of these forms: which makes it necessary that all the rules for reasoning should be altered, at least in expression, and grounded on the relation of exact equality between the terms.

But if, as I have endeavoured to show, the predicate B is present in thought only in respect of its Comprehension; if it be an error to suppose that it is thought of as an aggregate of objects at all; still less is it thought of as an aggregate with a determinate quantity, as some or all. I repeat the appeal which I have already made to every reader’s consciousness: Does he, when he judges that all oxen ruminate, advert even in the minutest degree to the question, whether there is anything else which ruminates? Is this consideration at all in his thoughts, any more than any other consideration foreign to the immediate subject? One person may know that there are other ruminating animals, another may think that there are none, a third may be without any opinion on the subject: but if they all know what is Edition: current; Page: [397] meant by ruminating, they all, when they judge that every ox ruminates, mean exactly the same thing. The mental process they go through, as far as that one judgment is concerned, is precisely identical; though some of them may go on further, and add other judgments to it.*

The fact, that the proposition “Every A is B” only means Every A is some B, far from being always present in thought, is not at first seized without some difficulty by the tyro in logic. It requires a certain effort of thought to perceive that when we say, All As are Bs, we only identify A with a hportionh of the class B. When the learner is first told that the proposition All As are Bs can only be converted in the form “Some Bs are As,” I apprehend that this strikes him as a new idea; and that the truth of the statement is not quite obvious to him, until verified by a particular example in which he already knows that the simple converse would be false, such as, All men are animals, therefore all animals are men. So far is it from being true that the proposition, All As are Bs, is spontaneously quantified in thought as All A is some B.

The pretension, therefore, of the doctrine of a Quantified Predicate, to be a more correct representation and analysis of the reasoning process than the common doctrine of the syllogism, I hold to be psychologically false. And this is fatal to the doctrine, if we admit Sir W. Hamilton’s theory that Logic is the science of the laws according to which we must think in order that our thought may be valid. But according to the very different view I myself take of Formal Logic, this doctrine might still be a valuable addition to it: since, in my view, the Syllogistic theory altogether is not an analysis of the reasoning process, but only furnishes a test of the validity of reasonings, by supplying forms of expression into which all reasonings may be translated if valid, and which, if they are invalid, will detect the hidden flaw. In this point of view it might well be, that a form which always exhibited the quantity of the predicate might be an improvement on the common form. And I am not disposed to deny that for occasional use, and for purposes of illustration, it is so. The exposition of the theory of the syllogism is made clearer, by pointing out that All As are B only implies that All A is some B, while No As are B excludes A from the whole of B. This, in fact, is taught to all who learn logic in the common way, by what is called the doctrine of Suppositio; or (in the many books which leave this doctrine out) by the theory of Conversion, and the syllogistic rules against Undistributed Middle, and against proceeding à non distributo ad distributum. There is no harm, and some little good, in giving to these essential doctrines the more explicit expression demanded for them by Sir W. Hamilton. But to obtain any advantage from it, we must be content with quantifying such propositions as, in their unquantified form, are really asserted and used. To foist in any others, overlays and confuses, instead of illuminating, the theory. “All A is some B” is admissible, because it is the quantification really implied in All As are B; but “All A is all B” is inadmissible, because it is not the equivalent of any single proposition capable of being asserted in an unquantified form. As all reasoning, except in the process of teaching Logic, will always be carried on in the forms which men use in real life; and as the only purpose of providing other forms, is to supply a test for those which are really used; it is essential that the forms provided should be forms into which the propositions expressed in common language can be translated—that every proposition in logical form, should be the exact equivalent of some proposition in the common form. Now, there is no proposition capable of being expressed in the ordinary form, which is equivalent to the proposition, All A is all B. That form of expression combines the import of two propositions in common language, expressive of two separate judgments, All As are Bs, and All Bs are As.

If this had not been denied, I should have deemed it too obvious to require either proof or illustration. But Sir W. Hamilton does deny it, and Edition: current; Page: [399] therefore some enforcement of it is indispensable. When we make an assertion in the cramped and unnatural form, All man is all rational, can anything seem more evident than that to cover the whole ground occupied by this statement, two judgments are required; namely, first, that every man has the attribute reason; and secondly, that nothing which is not man has that attribute, or (which is the same thing) that every rational creature has the attributes of man? How is it possible to make only one judgment, out of an assertion divisible into two parts, one of which may be unknown and the other known, one unthought of and the other thought of, one false and the other true?*

Unless Sir W. Hamilton was prepared to maintain that whenever the universal converse of an universal affirmative proposition would be true, we cannot know the one without knowing the other, it is in vain for him to contend that a form which asserts both of them at once is only one proposition. If in judging that “All equilateral triangles are equiangular,” we judge that all equilateral triangles are all equiangular, in what condition of judgment is the mind of the tyro to whom it has just been proved that all equilateral triangles are equiangular, but who does not yet know the proof of the converse proposition that all equiangular triangles are equilateral? If “All equilateral triangles are all equiangular” is only one judgment, what is the proposition that all equilateral triangles are equiangular? Is it half a judgment?†