m 
 
 
 sj 
 
 \. 
 
 
 
AN EXAMINATION 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S 
 
 . -... 
 
 PHILOSOPHY/ 
 
 AND OF 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS 
 DISCUSSED IN HIS WRITINGS. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN STUART, MILL. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 WILLIAM V. SPENCER, 
 
 134 WASHINGTON STREET. 
 1865. 
 
Presswork by John Wilson & Son, Boston. 
 
f? 
 
 mi 
 
 A/53" 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL 
 
 .1. l/.l 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.. 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE .13 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWL- 
 EDGE, AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. ... 28 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IN WHAT RESPECT SIR W. HAMILTON REALLY DIFFERS 
 
 FROM THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE ABSOLUTE. ... 46 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WHAT IS REJECTED AS KNOWLEDGE BY SIR W. HAMILTON, 
 BROUGHT BACK UNDER THE NAME OF BELIEF. ... 70 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. . . . . . .82 
 
 (7) 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE' CONDITIONED, AS APPLIED BY 
 ME. MANSEL TO THE LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 113 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF CONSCIOUSNESS, AS UNDERSTOOD BY SIR W. HAMILTON. 135 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS 159 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SIR W. HAMILTON'S VIEW OF THE DIFFERENT THEORIES 
 
 RESPECTING THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. . 190 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE BELIEF IN AN EX- 
 TERNAL WORLD 234 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE BELIEF IN MATTER, 
 
 HOW FAR APPLICABLE TO MIND 251 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE PRIMARY QUALI- 
 TIES OF MATTER 263 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 HOW SIR W. HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL DISPOSE OF THE 
 
 LAW OF INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION. . . .307 
 
AN EXAMINATION 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 AMONG the philosophical writers of the present cen- 
 tury in these islands, no one occupies a higher position 
 than Sir William Hamilton. He alone, of our meta- 
 physicians of. this and the preceding generation, has 
 acquired, merely as such, a European celebrity ; while, 
 in our own country, he has not only had power to pro- 
 duce 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 our- 
 selves and from Kant for the rest of Europe. But that 
 general scheme of philosophy is split into many divis- 
 ions, 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 
 
 (9) 
 
10 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 French developments of the common doctrine, it is sep- 
 arated 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 recommenda- 
 tion 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 recognized 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 deter- 
 mined 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 symp- 
 toms, 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 in- 
 dispensable scientific basis of Morals, of Politics, of the 
 science and art of Education; that the difficulties of 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 11 
 
 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 if possible, but 
 at any rate negatively, we are never assured that any 
 human knowledge, even physical, stands on solid foun- 
 dations. 
 
 My subject, therefore, is not Sir W. Hamilton, but 
 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 formi- 
 dable 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 clear-sighted, 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 pos- 
 sible, the judgment of posterity on Sir W. Hamilton's 
 labors, I sincerely lament that on the many points on 
 which I am at issue with him, I have the unfair advan- 
 
12 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 tage 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 honorable, 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 learned 
 by discussing with a man, who can question and answer, 
 than with a book, which cannot. But it was not pos- 
 sible 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 con- 
 secutive exposition of his philosophy, are a posthumous 
 publication ; while the latest and most matured expres- 
 sion 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 doc- 
 trines ; 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. 
 
THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 13 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 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 re- 
 garded by most of his admirers as the greatest of his 
 titles to a permanent place in the history of metaphys- 
 ical 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 
 i* 
 
14 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 worth enunciating in words. When, therefore, a phi- 
 losopher 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 de- 
 grees of meaning he understands the phrase. 
 
 There is one of its acceptations which, for the pur- 
 pose 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 distin- 
 guished 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, that all human 
 knowledge is relative, to express this meaning, is sanc- 
 tioned 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 recognizes the truth 
 which, when thus used, it serves to express. In gen- 
 eral, 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 recognizes 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 
 
 * In particular by Mr. Bain, who habitually uses the phrase " relativity 
 of knowledge " in this sense. 
 
THE RELATIVITY OP HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 15 
 
 questions in philosophy are those which seek "to deter- 
 mine 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 ma- 
 terial 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 ob- 
 vious 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 color. 
 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 if 
 
16 THE RELATIVITY OP HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 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 psycholo- 
 gists whether they originally came to us solely through 
 touch and the muscles, or also through the organ of 
 sight. When it is cut open, we discover a certain ar- 
 rangement 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 dif- 
 ferent sensations. The rind, the pulp, the juice, differ 
 from one another in color, 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, outside one another, occupying different por- 
 tions 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 analyzed, 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 cer- 
 tain 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 sensa- 
 tions which they excite, or which we imagine them ex- 
 citing, in ourselves?^ 
 
 This is the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge 
 
TUB RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 17 
 
 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 con- 
 ception 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, ac- 
 company 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 cor- 
 responding 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 re- 
 cent thinkers, the acute and accomplished Professor 
 Terrier, 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 
 
18 THE RELATIVITY OP HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 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 Kelativity 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 lan- 
 guage only, nor a formal distinction between two aspects 
 of the same reality, but denotes two realities, each self- 
 existent, 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 Phenomenon, 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 phenomenon, and 
 is the cause of it. But as to what this Thing is "in 
 itself," we, having no organ except our senses for com- 
 municating 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 something " 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 Phenomena. External 
 things exist, and have an inmost nature, but their inmost 
 
THE RELATIVITY OP HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 19 
 
 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 Reali- 
 ties make on us the sensations they excite, the simili- 
 tudes, 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 con- 
 ceivable 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 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 ; phaenomena 
 would exist to us of which we have at present no con- 
 ception ; and we should know better than we now do, 
 many of those which are within our present experience ; 
 for since the new impressions would doubtless be linked 
 with the old, as the old are with one another, by uni- 
 formities of succession and coexistence, we should now 
 have new marks indicating to us known phaenomena 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 phenomenal. 
 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, 
 
20 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 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 facul- 
 ties 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 Nou- 
 mena, or Things in themselves, is but their bare exist- 
 ence, 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 out- 
 ward 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 any thing in the objects that answers to them. They 
 are added by the mind itself, and belong, not to the 
 
THE RELATIVITY OP HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 21 
 
 Things, but to our perceptions and conceptions of them. 
 Such properties as the objects can be conceived divested 
 of, such as sweetness or 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 par- 
 ticular 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 
 
in 
 &* co 
 
 22 THE RELATIVITY OP HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 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 in- 
 herent laws of the human faculties ; but differ from Suc- 
 cession and Duration in being laws of our intellectual, 
 not our sensitive faculty ; technically termed Categories 
 of the Understanding. Tin's is the doctrine of the 
 Relativity of our knowledge as held by Kant, who has 
 been followed in it by many subsequent thinkers, Ger- 
 man, English, and French. 
 
 By the side of this there is another philosophy, older 
 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 them- 
 selves, 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 concep- 
 tions 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 think- 
 ers, and which is compatible with 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 
 
THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 23 
 
 >f any other knowledge of Things than that of the 
 mpressions which they produce in our mental con- 
 
 ciousness. 
 
 . 
 
 Between these there are many intermediate systems, 
 iccording as different thinkers have assigned more or 
 ess to the original furniture of the mind on the one 
 land, or to the associations generated by experience on 
 he 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 
 ts full extent, the doctrine of the Relativity of our 
 knowledge, being of opinion that though we are assured 
 f the objective existence of a world external to the 
 mind, our knowledge of that world is absolutely limited 
 o the modes in which we are affected by it. The same 
 octrine is very impressively taught by one of the acutest 
 netaphysicians- of recent times, Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
 vho, in his "First Principles," insists with equal force 
 pon the certainty of the existence of Things in Them- 
 elves, and upon their absolute and eternal relegation to 
 he region of the Unknowable. TJiis is also, appa- 
 ently, the doctrine of Auguste Comte : though while 
 maintaining with great emphasis the unknowableness of 
 ^oumena by our faculties, his aversion to metaphysics 
 invented him from giving any definite opinion as to 
 heir real existence, which, however, his language al- 
 vays by implication assumes. , 
 
 It is obvious that what has been said respecting the 
 unknowableness of Things " in themselves," forms no 
 bstacle to our ascribing attributes or properties to them, 
 >rovided these are always conceived as relative to us. 
 
24 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 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 mul- 
 titude is open to our knowledge. But this knowledge is 
 merely phaenomenal. ; 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 es- 
 sence. .> The inmost nature or essence of a Thing is apt 
 to be regarded as something unknown, which, if we 
 knew it, would explain and account for all the phenom- 
 ena 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 satisfac- 
 tion ; 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 in- 
 telligence, it must, like other properties, be relative to 
 the intelligence which knows it, that is, it must consist 
 in impressing that intelligence in some specific way ; 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 
 
THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 25 
 
 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 inapplica- 
 ble, because they all stand for known modes of Being. 
 We might invent new names for the 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 cer- 
 tain 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 sensa- 
 tions, but by direct perception of them in the outward 
 object. Suppose the same philosopher, nevertheless, to 
 affirm strenuously that all our knowledge is merely 
 phenomenal, 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 
 
26 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 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 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 knowl- 
 edge is relative to us, inasmuch as it is we that know it. 
 There is another mode of understanding the doctrine 
 of Eelativity, intermediate between these insignificant 
 truisms and the substantial doctrine previously ex- 
 pounded. 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 confused with im- 
 pressions 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 colors derived from 
 the organ, as well as with those truly emanating from 
 the object. Supposing, therefore, that Things in them- 
 selves 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 
 
THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 27 
 
 brings from the Noumenon does not arrive tinged and 
 alsified, in an unknown degree, through an influence 
 trising from the necessary conditions of the mind's ac- 
 ion. We may, in short, be looking at Things in them- 
 selves, but through imperfect glasses : what we see may 
 >e the very Thing, but the colors and forms which the 
 lass 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 knowl- 
 edge, would not use the term wholly without meaning. 
 But he could not, consistently, assert that all our knowl- 
 edge 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 endeavor in the succeeding 
 chapter to find an answer. 
 
28 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWL- 
 EDGE, 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 any thing is its relation to us, com- 
 posed of, and limited to, the Phenomena which it 
 exhibits to our organs. Let me cite a passage from one 
 of the Appendices to the "Discussions." * 
 
 " Our whole knowledge of mind and of matter is 
 relative, conditioned relatively conditioned. Of things 
 absolutely or in themselves, be they external, be they 
 internal, we know nothing, or know them only as incog- 
 nizable ; and become aware of their incomprehensible 
 existence, only as this is indirectly and accidentally 
 revealed to us, through certain qualities related to our 
 faculties of knowledge, and which qualities, again, we 
 cannot think as unconditioned, irrelative, existent in and 
 of themselves. All that we know is therefore phenome- 
 nal, phaenomenal of the unknown. . . . Nor is this 
 denied ; for it has been commonly confessed, that, as 
 substances, we know not what is Matter, and are 
 ignorant of what is Mind." 
 
 This passage might be matched by many others, 
 equally emphatic, and in appearance equally decisive, 
 
 * " Discussions on Philosophy," p. 643. 
 
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 29 
 
 several of which I shall have occasion to quote. Yet in 
 the sense which the author's phrases seem to convey 
 in the only substantial meaning capable of being 
 attached to them the doctrine they assert was cer- 
 tainly 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 : * 
 
 "The developed doctrine of Eeal Presentationism, 
 the basis of Natural Realism" (the doctrine of the 
 author himself) , " asserts the consciousness or immediate 
 perception of certain essential attributes of Matter ob- 
 jectively existing ; while it admits that other properties 
 of body are unknown in themselves, and only inferred as 
 causes to account for certain subjective affections of 
 which we are cognizant in ourselves. This discrimina- 
 tion, which to other systems is contingent, superficial, 
 extraneous, but to Natural Realism necessary, radical, 
 intrinsic, coincides with what since the time of Locke 
 has been generally known as the distinction of the 
 Qualities of Matter or Body, using these terms as con- 
 vertible, into Primary and Secondary." 
 
 Further on,f he states, in additional development of 
 
 * Dissertations appended to Sir W. Hamilton's Edition of Reid's Works, 
 p. 825. 
 t Ibid. p. 842. 
 
 VOL. i. 2 
 
80 THE RELATIVITY OP HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 so-called Natural Realism, " that we have not merely a 
 notion, a conception, an imagination, a subjective repre- 
 sentation of Extension, for example called up or 
 suggested in some incomprehensible manner to the mind, 
 on occasion of an extended object being presented to the 
 sense ; but that in the perception of such an object we 
 really have, as by nature we believe we have, an imme- 
 diate knowledge of that external object as extended." 
 
 "If* we are not percipient of any extended reality, 
 we are not percipient of body as existing ; for body 
 exists, and can only be known immediately and in itself, 
 as extended. The material world, on this supposition, 
 sinks into something unknown and problematical ; and 
 its existence, if not denied, can, at least, be only 
 precariously affirmed, as the occult cause, or incom- 
 prehensible 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." 
 
 Not only, in Sir W. Hamilton's opinion, do we know, 
 by direct consciousness or perception, certain propensities 
 of Things as they exist in the Things themselves, but 
 we may also know those properties as in the Things, by 
 demonstration d priori. tf The notion f of body being 
 given, every primary quality is to be evolved out of that 
 notion, as necessarily involved in it, independently alto- 
 gether of any experience of sense." "TheJ Primary 
 Qualities may be deduced d 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 
 
 * Dissertations, p. 842. f Ibid. p. 844. J Ibid. p. 846. 
 
 
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 31 
 
 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, f " The Primary " 
 Qualities " are apprehended as they are in bodies ; the 
 Secondary, as they are in us ; the Secundo-primary " (a 
 third class created by himself, comprising the mechani- 
 cal as distinguished from the geometrical properties of 
 Body) ," as they are in bodies and as they are in us. ... 
 We know the Primary qualities immediately as objects 
 of perception ; the Secundo-primary both immediately 
 as objects of perception and mediately as causes of sensa- 
 tion ; the Secondary only mediately as causes of sensation. 
 In other words : The Primary are known immediately in 
 themselves ; the Secundo-primary, both immediately in 
 themselves and mediately in their effects on us ; the 
 Secondary, only mediately, in their effects on us. ... 
 We are conscious, as objects, in the Primary Qualities, 
 of the modes of a not-self; in the Secondary, of the 
 modes of self; in the Secundo-primary, of the modes 
 of self and of a not-self at once." 
 
 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 
 
 * Dissertations, p. 848. t Ibid. pp. 857, 858. 
 
32 THE RELATIVITY OP HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 knowledge of the Secondary Qualities of objects. Exten- 
 sion 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 contradis- 
 tinction 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 contradic- 
 tion 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 medi- 
 ately : " in other words, he merely means that we perceive 
 objects directly, and not through the species sensibiles 
 of Lucretius, the Ideas of Berkeley, or the Mental 
 Modifications of Brown. Let us suppose tlu's 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 
 
 *P.866. 
 
A3 HELD BY SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON. 33 
 
 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 knowl- 
 edge of the Thing is only relative. But if what we 
 perceive and cognize is not merely a cause of our sub- 
 jective 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 " now stating and ex- 
 plaining the great axiom that all human knowledge, 
 consequently that all human philosophy, is only of the 
 relative or phenomenal. In this proposition, the term 
 relative is opposed to the term absolute; and therefore, 
 in saying that we know only the relative, I virtually 
 assert that we know nothing absolute, nothing exist- 
 ing absolutely, that is, in and for itself, and without 
 
 * Lectures, i. 136-8. 
 
34 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 relation to us and our faculties. I shall illustrate this by 
 its application. Our knowledge is either of matter or 
 of mind. Now, what is matter? What do we know 
 of matter? Matter, or body, is to us the name either of 
 something known, or of something unknown. In so far 
 as matter is a name for something known, it means that 
 wluch appears to us under the forms of extension, solid- 
 ity, divisibility, figure, motion, roughness, smoothness, 
 color, heat, cold, &c. ; in short, it is a common name 
 for a certain series, or aggregate, or complement of 
 appearances or phenomena manifested in coexistence. 
 
 "But as these phenomena appear only in conjunction, 
 we are compelled by the constitution of our nature to 
 think them conjoined in and by something ; and as they 
 are phenomena, we cannot think them the phenomena 
 of nothing, but must regard them as the properties or 
 qualities of something that is extended, solid, figured, 
 &c. But this something, absolutely and in itself, i. e., 
 considered apart from its phenomena is to us as zero. 
 It is only in its qualities, only in its effects, in its rela- 
 tive or phenomenal existence, that it is cognizable or 
 conceivable ; and it is only by a law of thought which 
 compels us to think something absolute and unknown, 
 as the basis or condition of the relative and known, that 
 this something obtains a kind of incomprehensible reality 
 to us. Now, that which manifests its qualities in 
 other words, that in which the appearing causes inhere, 
 that to which they belong is called their subject, 
 or substance, or substratum. To this subject of the 
 phenomena of extension, solidity, &c., the term matter, 
 or material substance, is commonly given ; and there- 
 fore, as contradistinguished from these qualities, it is the 
 name of something unknown and inconceivable. 
 
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 35 
 
 " The same is true in regard to the term mind. In 
 so far as mind is the common name for the states of 
 knowing, willing, feeling, desiring, <fec., of which I am 
 conscious, it is only the name for a certain series of 
 connected phasnomena or qualities, and, consequently, 
 expresses only what is known. But in so far as it 
 denotes that subject or substance in which the phenom- 
 ena of knowing, willing, &c., inhere, something be- 
 hind or under these phenomena, it expresses what, in 
 itself or in its absolute existence, is unknown. 
 
 "Thus, mind and matter, as known or knowable, are 
 only two different series of phenomena or qualities ; 
 mind and matter, as unknown and unknowable, are the 
 two substances in which these two different series of 
 phenomena or qualities are supposed to inhere. The 
 existence of an unknown substance is only an infer- 
 ence we are compelled to make from the existence of 
 known phenomena; and the distinction of two sub- 
 stances is only inferred from the seeming incompatibility 
 of the two series of phenomena to coinhere in one. 
 
 "Our whole knowledge of mind and matter is thus, 
 as we have said, only relative ; of existence, absolutely 
 and in itself, we know nothing : and we may say of man 
 what Virgil said of ./Eneas, contemplating in the pro- 
 phetic sculpture of his shield the future glories of 
 Rome 
 
 " Rerumque ignarus, imagine gaudet." 
 
 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 incom- 
 
36 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 prehensible and incognizable basis or substratum of a 
 bundle of sensible qualities, appearances, phenomena ; 
 that we know it w only in its effects ; " that its very exist- 
 ence is " only an inference we are compelled to make " 
 from those sensible appearances ; a doctrine, by the way, 
 which, under the name of Cosmothetic Idealism, is 
 elsewhere the object of some of his most cutting attacks. 
 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 phenomena," is to us unknowable? 
 
 Subsequently he says, that not only all the knowl- 
 edge 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 own) as the inhabitants of Sirius, in 
 the " Micro megas " 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 
 onlj in certain relations to our faculties of knowledge." 
 (Nothing can be truerjor more clearly stated than all 
 this : but the clearer it is, the more irreconcilable docs 
 
 * Lectures, i. 153. 
 
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 87 
 
 it appear with our author's doctrine of the direct cog- 
 noscibility 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 for- 
 mer 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 objec- 
 tively existing ; " and if it is not to be endured that 
 matter should " sink into something unknown and 
 problematical," whose existence " can be only precari- 
 ously affirmed as the occult cause or incomprehensible 
 occasion of certain subjective affections we experience 
 in the form either of a sensation of the secondary qual- 
 ity 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 cognize and know Matter as it is in itself, and not 
 merely as an unknowable and incomprehensible substra- 
 tum ; they do cognize and know it as it exists absolutely, 
 and not merely in relation to us ; it is krown to us 
 directly, and not as a mere "inference" from Phae- 
 nomena. 
 
 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 con- 
 
 2* 
 
38 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 dition 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 re-echoed 
 by every philosopher of every school ; " nor need he 
 have added "with the exception of a few late Abso- 
 lute theorizers in Germany ; " for certainly neither 
 Schelling nor Hegel claims for us any other knowledge 
 than such as our faculties are, in their opinion, compe- 
 tent 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 pred- 
 icates of Secondary Qualities, as contradistinguished 
 from the Primary. Secondary he frankjy 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 
 
 * Discnss'.ons, Appendix, p. 644. 
 
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON^ 39 
 
 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 : - ex- 
 cept, 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 them- 
 selves are not possible objects of knowledge, we obtain 
 the "great axiom" that they cannot be known unless 
 there is somebody to know them. 
 
 Perhaps it may be suspected (and some phrases in the 
 longest of our extracts might countenance the idea) that 
 in calling our knowledge relative, Sir W. Hamilton was 
 not thinking of the knowledge of qualities, but of Sub- 
 stances, of Matter and Mind ; and meant that qualities 
 might be cognized absolutely, but that Substances being 
 only known through their qualities, the knowledge of 
 Substances can only be regarded as relative. But this 
 interpretation of his doctrine is again inadmissible. For 
 the relativity of which he is continually speaking is 
 relativity to us, while the relativity which this theory 
 ascribes to Substances is relativity to their attributes; 
 
40 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 and if the attributes are known otherwise than relatively 
 to us, so must the substances be. Besides, we have seen 
 him asserting the necessary relativity of our knowledge 
 of Attributes, no less positively than of Substances. 
 Speaking of Things in themselves, we found him saying 
 that we " become aware of their incomprehensible exist- 
 ence only as this is revealed to us through certain 
 qualities . . . which qualities, again, we cannot think 
 as unconditioned, irrelative, existent in and of them- 
 selves." There is no reservation here in favor of the 
 Primary Qualities. Whatever, in his theory, was meant 
 by relativity of knowledge, he intended it of qualities 
 as much as of substances, of Primary Qualities as much 
 as of Secondary. 
 
 Can any light be derived from the statement that we 
 do not know any qualities of things except those which 
 are in connection 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 f 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 " ? 
 
 But if " our faculties " does not here mean our know- 
 ing faculty, it must mean our sensitive faculties ; and 
 
 * Lectures, i. 141, 153. f P- 153. 
 
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 41 
 
 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. 
 
 The conclusion I cannot help drawing from this col- 
 lation of passages is, that Sir W. Hamilton either never 
 held, or, when he wrote the Dissertations, had ceased to 
 hold, 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 mean- 
 ing 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, he openly 
 reduces it in 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 rela- 
 tive. It is relative, 1st. Because existence is not cog- 
 nizable, absolutely in itself, but only in special modes ; 
 2d. 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 knowl- 
 edge is only relative, a third reason. " 3d. Because the 
 
 * Lectures, i. 148. 
 
42 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 modes, thus relative to our faculties, are assented to, 
 and known by, the mind only under modifications deter- 
 mined by those faculties themselves." Of this addition 
 to the theory we took notice near the conclusion of the 
 preceding chapter. It shall have the advantage of a 
 fuller explanation in Sir W. Hamilton's words. 
 
 " In * the perception of an external object, the mind 
 does not know it in immediate relation to itself, but 
 mediately, in relation to the material organs of sense. 
 If, therefore, we were to throw these organs out of 
 consideration, and did not take into account what they 
 contribute to, and how they modify, our knowledge of 
 that object, it is evident that our conclusion in regard 
 to the nature of external perception would be erroneous. 
 Again, an object of perception may not even stand in 
 immediate relation to the organ of sense, but may make 
 its impression on that organ through an intervening 
 medium. Now, if this medium be thrown out of ac- 
 count, and if it be not considered that the real external 
 object is the sum of all that externally contributes to 
 affect the sense, we shall, in like manner, run into error. 
 For example, I see a book I see that book through 
 an external medium (what that medium is, we do not 
 now inquire) , and I see it through my organ of sight, 
 the eye. Now, as the full object presented to the mind 
 (observe that I say the mind) in perception, is an object 
 compounded of the external object emitting or reflecting 
 light, i. e., modifying the external medium of this 
 external medium and of the living organ of sense, 
 in their mutual relation, let us suppose, in the example 
 I have taken, that the full or adequate object perceived 
 * Lectures, i. pp. 146-148. 
 
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 43 
 
 is equal to twelve, and that this amount is made up of 
 three several parts, of four, contributed by the book, 
 of four, contributed by all that intervenes between the 
 book and the organ. and of four, contributed by the 
 living organ itself. I use this illustration to show that 
 the phenomenon of the external object is not presented 
 immediately to the mind, but is known by it only as 
 modified through certain intermediate agencies ; and to 
 show, that sense itself may be a source of error, if we 
 do not analyze and distinguish what elements, in an 
 act of perception, belong to the outward reality, what 
 to the outward medium, and what to the action of sense 
 itself. But this source of error is not limited to our 
 perceptions : and we are liable to be deceived, not 
 merely by not distinguishing in an act of knowledge 
 what is contributed by sense, but by not distinguishing 
 what is contributed by the mind itself. This is the 
 most difficult and important function of philosophy ; 
 and the greater number of its higher problems arise in 
 the attempt to determine the shares to which the know- 
 ing subject, and the object known, may pretend in the 
 total act of cognition. For according as we attribute 
 a larger or a smaller proportion to each, we either run 
 into the extremes of Idealism and Materialism, or main- 
 tain an equilibrium between the two." 
 
 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 prim a facie absurd. It can- 
 not, however, warrant the assertion that all our knowl- 
 edge, but only that the part so added, is relative. If our 
 author had gone as far as Kant, and had said that all 
 
44 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 which constitutes knowledge is put in by the mind itself, 
 he would have really held, in one of its forms, the doc- 
 trine of the Relativity of our knowledge. But what he 
 does say, far from implying that the whole of our knowl- 
 edge 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 cognizing 
 mind, thus much is purely relative ; but since, by sup- 
 position, 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 
 recognizing 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 con- 
 tributed 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 rela- 
 tive, we may succeed in uncovering the pure nucleus, 
 the direct intuitions of Things in themselves ; as w r e 
 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. 
 
 It has thus been shown, by accumulated proof, that 
 
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 45 
 
 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 doc- 
 trine, 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 cither disputant ; 
 not unimportant in the view of those who dissent from 
 them both. In the succeeding chapter I shall endeavor 
 to point out what the difference was. 
 
46 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IN WHAT RESPECT SIR W. 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 ex- 
 tremely 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 con- 
 troversy. Both undertake to decide what are the facts 
 which (in their own phraseology) are given in Con- 
 sciousness ; 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 ele- 
 
 * Bampton Lectures. (The Limits of Religious Thought.) Fourth 
 edition, p. 42. 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 47 
 
 ment ; 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 superior 
 unity in which they are contained, and by which they 
 are explained ; a unity absolute as they are conditioned, 
 substantive as they are phenomenal, 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. Thes'e 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, com- 
 pounded of Self and a Not-self, " limiting and condition- 
 ing one another." He denies that God is given in 
 immediate consciousness, is apprehended by direct intu- 
 ition. 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 re- 
 mains limited to the finite element, compounded of an 
 Ego and a Non-ego. 
 
 In this contest it is almost superfluous for me to say 
 
 * Discussions, p. 9. 
 
48 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 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 facul- 
 ties, and grounded on a superficial and erroneous psy- 
 chology. (Whatever relates to God I hold with Sir W. 
 Hamilton to be matter of inference ; I would add, of 
 inference a posteriori^ And in so far as Sir W. Ham- 
 ilton has contributed, which he has done very materially, 
 towards discrediting the opposite doctrine, he has ren- 
 dered, in my estimation, a good 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 
 all 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 fol- 
 lowers, if not himself, have drawn inferences which I 
 venture to think extremely mischievous. While, there- 
 fore, I sincerely applaud the scope and purpose of this 
 celebrated piece of philosophical criticism, I think it im- 
 portant 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 rr the Ab- 
 solute ; " 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. 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 49 
 
 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. Abso- 
 lute 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. 
 
 Though the idea of Absolute is thus contrasted with 
 that of Infinite, the one is equally fitted with the other 
 to be predicated of God ; but not in respect of the same 
 attributes. There is no incorrectness of speech in the 
 phrase Infinite Power ; because the notion it expresses is 
 
50 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 that of a Being who has the power of doing all things 
 which we know, or can conceive, and more. But in 
 speaking of knowledge, Absolute is the proper word, 
 and not Infinite. The highest degree of knowledge that 
 can be spoken of with a meaning, only amounts to 
 knowing all that there is to be known : when that point 
 is reached, knowledge has attained its utmost limit. So 
 of goodness, or justice ; they cannot be more than per- 
 fect. " There are not infinite degrees of right. The will 
 is either entirely right, or wrong in different degrees : 
 downwards there are as many gradations as we choose to 
 distinguish, but upwards there is an ideal limit. Good- 
 ness (unlike time or space) can be imagined complete 
 such that there can be no greater goodness beyond it. 
 
 Such is the signification of the term Absolute, when 
 coupled and contrasted with Infinite. But the word has 
 other meanings, though often mixed and confounded 
 with this ; the more readily as they are all liable to be 
 predicated of God. 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 indefi- 
 nitely, 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 third sense, as in the second, 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 a First Cause. 
 The meaning of a First Cause is, that all other things 
 exist, and are what they are, by reason of it and of its 
 
SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 51 
 
 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 condi- 
 tional : it exists absolutely.* 
 
 Sir W. Hamilton (after Kant) unites the Infinite and 
 the Absolute under a larger abstraction, the Uncondi- 
 tioned, regarding it as a genus of which they are the 
 two species, f Having often occasion to speak of the 
 two in conjunction, he is entitled to a form of abridged 
 expression : let us hope he takes due care that it shall be 
 nothing more. But when the Absolute and the Infinite 
 are thus spoken of as two species of the Unconditioned, 
 it is necessary to know in which of the senses just dis- 
 criminated the word Absolute is to be understood. Sir 
 "VV. Hamilton professes that it is in the first sense that 
 of finished, perfected, completed. He adds that this is 
 the only sense in which, for himself, he uses the term.J 
 If we should find, then, that he does not strictly keep to 
 this resolution, we may conclude that the falling off is 
 not intentional. 
 
 In accordance with his professions he defines the In- 
 finite 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, and which is far 
 
 * Sir W. Hamilton (Discussions, note to p. 14) distinguishes and defines 
 the first two of these meanings : Absolute in the sense of " finished, per- 
 fected, completed," and Absolute as opposed to Relative. The third mean- 
 ing he does not expressly notice, but seems to confuse it with the second. 
 The meaning, however, with which it is really allied, and to which it may 
 in a certain sense be reduced, is the first : as will be seen hereafter. 
 
 f See the same note. % Note, ut supra. 
 
 Discussions, p. 13. 
 
52 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 from conveying so distinct a meaning, as, considering its 
 great importance in Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy, it 
 ought. Indeed, throughout his writings, he uses the 
 word Condition, and its derivatives, Conditioned and 
 Unconditioned, as if it was impossible to understand 
 them in more than one meaning, and as if nobody could 
 require to be told what that meaning is ; though in 
 English metaphysics two of the three phrases, until he 
 introduced them, were new, and though there are no 
 expressions in all philosophy which require definition and 
 illustration more.* 
 
 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 
 Unconditioned is unknowable. His first summary state- 
 ment of the doctrine is as follows : f 
 
 " The unconditionally unlimited, or the Infinite, the 
 unconditionally limited, or the Absolute, cannot posi- 
 tively be construed to the mind : they can be conceived 
 only by a thinking away from, or abstraction of, those 
 very conditions under which thought itself is realized ; 
 
 * In page 8 of the Discussions, speaking of the one of M. Cousin's three 
 elements of Consciousness which that author " variously expresses by the 
 terms unity, identity, substance, absolute cause, the infinite, pure thought, 
 &c.," Sir W. Hamilton says, " we will briefly call it the Unconditioned." 
 What M. Cousin u denominates plurality, difference, phcenomenon, relative 
 cause, the finite, determined thought, &c.," Sir W. Hamilton says, " we 
 would style the Conditioned." This, I think, is as near as he ever comes 
 to an explanation of what he means by these words. It is obviously no 
 explanation at all. It tells us what (in logical language) the terms denote, 
 but not what they connote. An enumeration of the things called by a 
 name is not a definition. If the name, for instance, were " dog," it would 
 be no definition to say that what are variously denominated spaniels, 
 mastiffs, and so forth, " we would style " dogs. The thing wanted is to 
 know what attributes common to all these the word signifies, what is 
 affirmed of a thing by calling it a dog. / 
 
 t Discussions, p. 13. 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 53 
 
 consequently, the notion of the Unconditioned is only 
 negative ; negative of the conceivable itself. For exam- 
 ple : On the one hand, we can positively conceive neither 
 an absolute whole, that is, a whole so great that we can- 
 not also conceive it as a relative part of a still greater 
 whole ; nor an absolute part, that is, a part so small that 
 we cannot also conceive it as a relative whole divisible 
 into smaller parts. On the other hand, we cannot pos- 
 itively represent, or realize, or construe to the mind (as 
 here Understanding and Imagination coincide) an infinite 
 whole, for this could only be done by the infinite syn- 
 thesis in thought of finite wholes, which would itself 
 require an infinite time for its accomplishment ; nor, for 
 the same reason, can we follow out in thought an infinite 
 divisibility of parts. The result is the same, whether 
 we apply the process to limitation in space, in time, or 
 in degree. The unconditional negation and the uncon- 
 ditional affirmation of limitation in other words, the 
 Infinite and the Absolute, properly so called are thus 
 equally inconceivable to us." 
 
 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.* "Kant has clearly 
 shown, that the Idea of the Unconditioned can have no 
 objective reality, that it conveys no knowledge, and 
 that it involves the most insoluble contradictions. But 
 he ought to have shown that the Unconditioned had no 
 objective application, because it had, in fact, no subjec- 
 tive affirmation ; that it afforded no real knowledge, be- 
 cause it contained nothing even conceivable ; and that it is 
 
 * Discussions, p. 17. 
 VOL. i. 3 
 
54 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 self-contradictory, because it is not a notion, either sim- 
 ple or positive, but only a fasciculus of negations 
 negations of the Conditioned in its opposite extremes, 
 and bound together merely by the aid of language and 
 their common character of incomprehensibility." 
 
 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 " only a fasciculus of nega- 
 tions." I reserve consideration of the validity of this 
 and every other part of the argumentation until we have 
 the whole before us. He proceeds : * 
 
 " As the conditionally limited (which we may briefly 
 call the Conditioned) is thus the only possible object of 
 knowledge and of positive thought, thought neces- 
 sarily supposes condition. To think is to condition; 
 and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the 
 possibility of thought. For, as the greyhound cannot 
 outstrip his shadow, nor (by a more appropriate simile) 
 the eagle outsoar the atmosphere in which he floats, and 
 by which alone he is supported, so the mind cannot 
 transcend that sphere of limitation, within and through 
 which exclusively the possibility of thought is realized. 
 Thought is only of the conditioned ; because, as we have 
 said, to think is simply to condition. The Absolute is 
 conceived merely by a negation of conceivability ; and 
 all that we know, is known as 
 
 ' Won from the cold and formless Infinite.' 
 
 " How, indeed, it could ever be doubted that thought 
 is only of the conditioned, may well be deemed a mat- 
 ter of the profoundest admiration. Thought cannot 
 transcend consciousness ; consciousness is only possible 
 * Discussions, p. 13. 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 55 
 
 under the antithesis of a subject and object of thought 
 known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each 
 other ; while, independently of this, all that we know 
 either of subject or object, either of mind or matter, is 
 only a knowledge in each of the particular, of the plural, 
 of the different, of the modified, of the phsenomenal. 
 We admit that the consequence of this doctrine is 
 that philosophy, if viewed as more than a science of th& 
 conditioned, is impossible. Departing from the partic- 
 ular, we admit, that we can never, in our highest 
 generalizations, rise above the Finite ; that our knowl- 
 edge, whether of mind or matter, can be nothing more 
 than a knowledge of the relative manifestations of an 
 existence which in itself it is our highest wisdom to 
 recognize as beyond the reach of philosophy. This is 
 what, in the language of St. Austin, (Jognoscendo 
 ignoratur, et ignoratione cognoscitur" 
 
 The dictum that "to think is to condition," whatever 
 be meant by it, may be noted as our author's second 
 argument. And here ends the positive part of his argu- 
 mentation. 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 argu-/, 
 ment 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 con- 
 ception, of the Absolute ; " and " that the Absolute, as 
 defined by him, is only a relative and a conditioned." 
 Of this argument in three parts, if we pass over (or, as 
 
 * Discussions, p. 25. 
 
56 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 our author would say, discount) as much as is only ad 
 hominem, what is of general application is as follows : 
 
 Under the first head ; that the Unconditioned is not a 
 possible object of thought, because it includes both the 
 Infinite and the Absolute, and these are exclusive of one 
 another.* 
 
 Under the second ; 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 condi- 
 tion of knowledge, is inconsistent with the meaning of 
 the Absolute, which " as absolutely universal, is abso- 
 lutely one. Absolute unity is convertible with the 
 absolute negation of plurality and difference. . . . The 
 condition of the Absolute as existing, and under which it 
 must be known, and the condition of intelligence, as 
 capable of knowing, are incompatible. For, if we sup- 
 pose the Absolute cognizable, it must be identified 
 either 1, with the subject knowing; or, 2, with the 
 object known ; or, 3, with the indifference of both. 
 The first hypothesis, and the second, are contradictory 
 of the absolute. For in these the Absolute is supposed 
 to be known, either as contradistinguished from the 
 knowing subject, or as contradistinguished from the ob- 
 ject known : in other words, the Absolute is asserted to 
 be known as absolute unity, i. e. 9 as the negation of ah 1 
 plurality, while the very act by which it is known 
 affirms plurality as the condition of its own possibility 
 The third hypothesis, on the other hand, is contradictor 
 of the plurality of intelligence ; for if the subject and th< 
 
 * Discussions, p. 28 et scqq. 
 
Sill WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 57 
 
 object of consciousness be known as one, a plurality of 
 terms is not the necessary condition of intelligence. 
 The alternative is therefore necessary : either the Abso- 
 lute cannot be known or conceived at all ; or our author 
 is wrong in subjecting thought to the conditions of 
 plurality and difference." * 
 
 We now arrive at the third head. 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. Cou- 
 sin's Absolute is but a relative. Moreover, " what exists 
 merely as a cause, exists merely for the sake of some- 
 thing else is not final in itself, but simply a mean to- 
 wards 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, w even for its reality. For to what extent 
 a thing exists necessarily as a cause, to that extent it is 
 not all-sufficient to itself; since to that extent it is de- 
 pendent on the effect, as on the condition through which 
 it realizes its existence ; and what exists absolutely as a 
 cause, exists therefore in absolute dependence on the 
 effect for the reality of its existence. An absolute cause, 
 in truth, only exists in its effects : it never is, it always 
 becomes: for it is an existence in potentia, and not an 
 existence in actu, except through and by its effects. 
 The Absolute is thus, at best, something merely in- 
 choative and imperfect, "f 
 
 Let me ask, en passant, where is the necessity for 
 supposing that if the Absolute, or, to speak plainly, if 
 God, is only known to us in the character of a cause, he 
 
 * Discussions, pp. 32, 33. t Ibid. pp. 34, 35. 
 
58 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 must therefore " exist merely as a cause," and be merelj 
 w a mean towards an end" ? It is surely possible to mail 
 tain that the Deity is known to us only as he who fe 
 the ravens, without supposing that the Divine Intelli- 
 gence 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 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 Abso- 
 lute Being, even though called God, we are entitled, and 
 
 * A passage follows, which being only directed against a special doc- 
 trine of M. Cousin (that God is determined to create by the necessity of 
 his own nature that an absolute creative force cannot but pass into crea- 
 tive activity) I should have left unmentioned, were it not worth notice 
 as a specimen of the kind of arguments which Sir W. Hamilton can some- 
 times use. On M. Cousin's hypothesis, says our author (p. 36), " One 
 of two alternatives must be admitted. God, as necessarily determined to 
 pass from absolute essence to relative manifestation, is determined to 
 pass either from the better to the worse, or from the worse to the better. A 
 third possibility, that both states are equal, as contradictory in itself and 
 as contradicted by our author, it is not necessary to consider. The first 
 supposition must be rejected. The necessity in this case determines God 
 to pass from the better to the worse, that is, operates to his partial annihila- 
 tion. The power which compels this must be external and hostile, for 
 nothing operates willingly to its own deterioration ; and as superior to the 
 pretended God, is either itself the real deity, if an intelligent and free 
 cause, or a negation of all deity, if a blind force or fate. The second is 
 equally inadmissible : that God, passing into the universe, passes from a 
 state of comparative imperfection into a state of comparative perfection. 
 The divine nature is identical with the most perfect nature, and is also 
 identical with the first cause. If the first cause be not identical with the 
 most perfect nature, there is no God, for the two essential conditions of his 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 59 
 
 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 one of these is as much an Ab- 
 solute as any other. And when you talk of something 
 in the abstract which is called The Absolute, does it mean 
 one, or more than one, of these? or does it, peradven- 
 ture, 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 tlie 
 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 
 
 existence are not in combination. Now, on the present supposition, the 
 most perfect nature is the derived ; nay, the universe, the creation, the 
 yivdpwov, is, in relation to its cause, the actual, the 6Vrwj Sv. It would also 
 be the divine, but that divinity supposes also the notion of cause, while 
 the universe, ex hypothesi, is only an effect." 
 
 This curious subtlety, that creation must be either passing from the bet- 
 ter to the worse or from the worse to the better (which, if true, would 
 prove that God cannot have created anything unless from all eternity), can 
 be likened to nothing but the Eleatic argument that motion is impossible, 
 because if a body moves it must either move where it is or where it is not ; 
 an argument, by the way, for which Sir W. Hamilton often expresses high 
 respect ; and of which he has here produced a very successful imitation. 
 If it were worth while expending serious argument upon such a curiosity 
 of dialectics, one might say it assumes that whatever is now worse must 
 always have been worse, and that whatever is now better must al- 
 ways have been better. For, on the opposite supposition, perfect wisdom 
 would have begun to will the new state at the precise moment when it 
 began to be better than the old. We may add that our author's argument, 
 though never so irrefragable, in no way avails him against M. Cousin ; for 
 (as he has himself said, only a sentence before) on M. Cousin's theory the 
 universe can never have had a beginning, and God, therefore, never was 
 in the dilemma supposed. 
 
GO SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 rule is good for other abstractions, it is good for the Ab- 
 solute. The word is devoid of meaning unless in refer- 
 ence 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 compre- 
 hending whatever is absolutely anything whatever pos- 
 sesses 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 under- 
 stood in no other sense than that the supposed Being 
 possesses in absolute completeness all predicates ; is ab- 
 solutely 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 contra- 
 dictions : and our author might have spared himself the 
 trouble of proving a thing to be unknowable, which can- 
 not be spoken of but in words implying the impossibility 
 of its existence. To insist on such a truism is not super- 
 fluous, 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?" Un- 
 doubtedly : 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 honor, which will probably be awarded 
 
 * Quoted by Mr. Mansel, " The Limits of Religious Thought," p. 30. 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 61 
 
 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 predi- 
 cate j 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 infi- 
 nitely 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 know- 
 able, 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 abso- 
 lute. 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 ante- 
 cedent, the consequent follows. A conception made up 
 3* 
 
6'2 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 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 con- 
 ception 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, con- 
 tains a negative element, but which contains positive 
 elements also. Infinite space, for instance : is there noth- 
 ing positive in that ? The negative part of this concep- 
 tion 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 con- 
 ception itself negative, and a non-entity. It would sur- 
 prise most people to be told that " the life eternal " is a 
 purely negative conception ; that immortality is incon- 
 ceivable. 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 dura- 
 tion 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 * 
 * Lectures, ii. 375. 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 63 
 
 that the infinite can be thought, but only inadequately 
 thought, is a contradiction in adjeclo; 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 any- 
 thing finite is not to know it as finite. The conception 
 of Infinite as that which is greater than any given quan- 
 tity, 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 con- 
 ception 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 veri- 
 fied 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 concep- 
 tion, 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 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 " fasciculus of negations " ? 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 
 
64 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 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 representa- 
 tion, 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 knowl- 
 edge, 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 mean- 
 ing : 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, compre- 
 hended 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 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 65 
 
 an abstract Unconditioned which cannot possibly exist, 
 and not of a concrete Being, supposed infinite and abso- 
 lute in certain definite attributes. Let us now see if 
 there be any greater value in his other arguments. 
 
 The first of them is, that the Unconditioned is incon- 
 ceivable, because it includes both the Infinite and the 
 Absolute, and these are contradictory of one another. 
 This is not an argument against the possibility of know- 
 ing the Infinite and the Absolute, but against jumbling 
 the two together under one name. If the Infinite and 
 the Absolute are each cognizable separately, of what im- 
 portance is it that the two conceptions are incompatible ? 
 If they are so, the fault is in lumping up incompatible 
 conceptions into an incomprehensible and impossible 
 compound. The argument is only tenable as against 
 the knowability and the possible existence of something 
 which is at once "The Infinite" and "The Absolute," 
 abstractions which do contradict one another, but not 
 more flagrantly than each of them contradicts itself. 
 When, instead of abstractions, we speak of Things which 
 are infinite and absolute in respect of given attributes, 
 there is no incompatibility. There is nothing contra- 
 dictory in the notion of a Being infinite in some attri- 
 butes and absolute in others, according to the different 
 nature of the attributes. 
 
 The next argument is, 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 tilings 
 which 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 
 
66 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 the world owes to Hobbes : it is fully recognized 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 denote : and in the case of Sir W. 
 Hamilton the shadow of this other Relativity always 
 floats over his discussion of the doctrine of Relativity in 
 its more special sense, and at times (as in the paper 
 w Conditions of the Thinkable," forming an Appendix to 
 the Discussions) entirely obscures it. With this doc- 
 trine 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 ab- 
 solutely 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 ? Since when have the 
 One and the Many been incompatible things, instead of 
 different aspects of the same thing ? Sir W. Hamilton 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 67 
 
 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 abso- 
 lute 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 a 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 
 Plurality likewise ? There is no escape from the alter- 
 native : " The Absolute " 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 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 dis- 
 tinguished 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 w T hat 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 
 
68 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 all. Here, surely, is one of the most unexpected slips 
 in logic ever made by an experienced logician. At the 
 beginning of the discussion we noted three meanings of 
 the word Absolute. Two of them Sir W. Hamilton 
 himself discriminated with precision. Of these, we 
 thought that the one concerned in the present discussion 
 was that of "finished, perfected, completed." Sir W. 
 Hamilton said so ; and added, that it is the meaning 
 which, for himself, he exclusively employs : and, up to 
 this time, he has really kept to it. But now, suddenly 
 and without notice, that meaning is dropped, and another 
 substituted that in which absolute is the reverse of 
 relative. We are told, as a sufficient refutation of M. 
 Cousin's doctrine, that his Absolute, since it is defined 
 as a Cause, is only a Relative. But if Absolute means 
 finished, perfected, completed, may there not be a fin- 
 ished, perfected, and completed Cause? i. e., the most a 
 Cause that it is possible to be the cause of everything 
 except itself? Has Sir W. Hamilton shown that an 
 Absolute Cause thus understood, is inconceivable or un- 
 knowable? No: all he shows is, that though absolute 
 in the only sense relevant to the question, it is not abso- 
 lute in another and a totally different sense ; since what 
 is known as a cause, 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. Hamil- 
 ton. For this knowledge of God in and by his effects, 
 according to M. Cousin, is knowing him as he is in him- 
 self; because the creative power whereby he -causes, is 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 69 
 
 in himself, is inseparable from him, and belongs to his 
 essence. And as far as I can see, the principles com- 
 mon 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 of the essence 
 of matter, and perceived as such by intuition. 
 
 I have now examined, with one exception, every argu- 
 ment (which is not merely ad hominem) advanced by 
 Sir W. Hamilton to prove against M. Cousin the un- 
 knowableness of the Unconditioned. The argument 
 which I have reserved is the emphatic and oracular 
 one, that the Unconditioned must be unthinkable, be- 
 cause "to think is to condition." I have kept this for 
 the last, because it will occupy us the longest time ; for 
 we must begin by finding the meaning of the proposi- 
 tion ; 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 mean- 
 ing 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, some- 
 thing else exists, or takes place. I promise to do some- 
 thing 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 con- 
 ditions of a phenomenon are the various antecedent cir- 
 cumstances, which, when they exist simultaneously, are 
 followed by its occurrence. As all these antecedent cir- 
 cumstances must coexist, each of them in relation to the 
 others is a conditio sine qua non; i. e. 9 without it the 
 phenomenon will not follow from the remaining condi- 
 
70 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 tions, though it perhaps may from some set of conditions 
 totally different. 
 
 If this be the meaning of Condition, the Uncondi- 
 tioned should mean, that which does not depend for its 
 existence or its qualities on any antecedent ; in other 
 words, it should be synonymous with the First Cause. 
 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 interchange- 
 ably 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 im- 
 plies child, greater implies less, like implies another like, 
 and vice versa. 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, accord- 
 ingly, 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 Un- 
 conditioned must mean its opposite : and in this accep- 
 tation, the Unconditioned would mean all Noumena; 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 71 
 
 Things in themselves, considered without reference to 
 the effects they produce in us, which are called their 
 phenomenal agencies or 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 phenomenal 
 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. Be- 
 tween the meanings in which he uses it there is un- 
 doubtedly a link of connection ; 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 inter- 
 changes them one with another. 
 
 But now, will either of these two meanings of Con- 
 dition the condition which means a correlative, or the 
 conditions the aggregate of which composes the cause, 
 will either of them give a meaning to the proposition, 
 " To think is to condition " ? The second we may at 
 once exclude. Our author cannot possibly mean that to 
 think an object is to assign to it a cause. But he may, 
 
72 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 perhaps, mean that to think it is to give it a correlative. 
 For this is true, and true in more senses than one. 
 Whoever thinks an object, gives it at least one cor- 
 relative, by giving it a thinker ; and as many more as 
 there are objects from which he distinguishes it. But 
 is this any argument against those who say that the 
 Absolute is thinkable ? Did any of them ever suggest 
 the possibility of thinking it without a thinker ? Or 
 did any of them profess to think it in any other manner 
 than by distinguishing it from other things ? If to do 
 this is to condition, those who say that we can think the 
 Absolute, say that we can condition it : and if the word 
 Unconditioned is employed to make an apparent hinder- 
 ance to our doing so, it is employed to beg the question. 
 The probability is, that when our author asserts that 
 "to think is to 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 cor- 
 rectly 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 
 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 con- 
 ceived, but from the mind itself: That, therefore, we 
 cannot at once infer that whatever we find in our percep- 
 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 73 
 
 tion or conception of an object, has necessarily a proto- 
 type in the object itself: and that we must, in each 
 instance, determine this question by philosophic investi- 
 gation. 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 corre- 
 sponding in the object which is the prototype of the con- 
 ception : though our author, in most cases (therein 
 differing from Kant) , believes that there is this corre- 
 spondence. 
 
 We have here an intelligible meaning for the doctrine 
 that to think is to condition : but the doctrine is of 
 as little use for our author's purpose in this interpreta- 
 tion as in tne two preceding. What he aims at proving 
 against Cousin is, that the Absolute is unthinkable. 
 His argument for this (if I have interpreted him right) 
 is, that we can only think anything, in conformity to the 
 laws of our thinking faculty. But his opponents never 
 alleged the contrary. Even Schelling was not so gratui- 
 tously absurd as to deny that the Absolute must be 
 known according to the capacities of that which knows 
 it though he was forced to invent a special capacity 
 for the purpose. And M. Cousin holds that the Abso- 
 lute is known by the same faculties by which we know 
 other things. They both maintained, not that the Abso- 
 lute could be thought, apart from the conditions of our 
 thinking faculty, but that those conditions are com- 
 
74 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 
 
 patible with thinking the Absolute : and the only answer 
 that could be made to them would be to disprove this ; 
 which the author has been trying to do ; by what incon- 
 clusive arguments, I have already endeavored to show. 
 
 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. 
 His own favorite abstraction " The Unconditioned," con- 
 sidered as the sum of these two, necessarily shares the 
 same fate. If, indeed, it be applied, conformably to 
 either of the received meanings of the word condition 
 if it be understood either as denoting a First Cause, or 
 as a name for all Noumena it has in each case a sig- 
 nification which can be understood and reasoned about. 
 But as a phrase afflicted with incurable ambiguity, and 
 habitually used by its introducer in several meanings, 
 with no apparent consciousness of their not being the 
 same, it seems to me a very infelicitous creation, and a 
 useless and hurtful intruder into the language of phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 Respecting the unknowableness, not of " the Infinite," 
 or w the Absolute," but of concrete persons or things 
 possessing infinitely or absolutely certain specific attri- 
 butes, I cannot think that our author has proved any- 
 thing; 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 
 
SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 75 
 
 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 absolute. Our author has merely proved 
 the uncognoscibility of a being which is nothing but 
 infinite, or nothing but absolute : and since nobody sup- 
 poses 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 re- 
 garded as any great achievement. (He has not even 
 refuted M. Cousin ; whose doctrine of an intuitive cog- 
 nition 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 ori- 
 ginated, which are erroneously supposed to be intuitive^ 
 
76 BELIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WHAT IS REJECTED AS KNOWLEDGE BY SIR W. HAMIL- 
 TON, BROUGHT BACK UNDER THE NAME OF BELIEF. 
 
 WE have found Sir "W. Hamilton maintaining with 
 great earnestness, and taking as the basis of his philos- 
 ophy, 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 im- 
 ply, 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 nought, 
 or to a mere verbal controversy, by his admission of' a 
 second source 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 
 
BELIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE. 77 
 
 pronounced unknowable to us ; and this not exclusively 
 by revelation, that is, on the supposed testimony of a 
 Being whom we have ground for trusting as veracious, 
 but by our natural faculties. 
 
 From some philosophers, this distinction would have 
 the appearance of a mere fetch one of those transparent 
 evasions which have sometimes been resorted to by the 
 assailants of received opinions, that they might have an 
 opportunity of ruining the rational foundations of a 
 doctrine without exposing themselves to odium by its 
 direct denial : as the writers against Christianity in the 
 eighteenth century, after declaring some doctrine to be 
 contradictory to reason, and exhibiting it in the absurdest 
 possible light, were wont to add that this was not of the 
 smallest consequence, religion being an affair of faith, 
 not of reason. But Sir W. Hamilton evidently meant 
 what he says ; he was expressing a serious conviction, 
 and one of the tenets of his philosophy : he really 
 recognized in Belief a substantive source, I was going 
 to say, of knowledge ; I may at all events say of trust- 
 worthy evidence. This appears in the following pas- 
 sages : 
 
 " The * sphere of our belief is much more extensive 
 than the sphere of our knowledge, and therefore, when 
 I deny that the Infinite can by us be known, I am far 
 from denying that by us it is, must, and ought to be, 
 believed. This I have indeed anxiously evinced, both 
 by reasoning and authority." 
 
 "St. Austin f accurately says, ' We know, what rests 
 upon reason; but believe, what rests upon authority. 1 
 
 * Letter to Mr. Caldcrwood, in Appendix to Lectures, ii. 530, 531. 
 t Dissertations on Reid, p. 760. 
 VOL. i. 4 
 
78 BELIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 But reason itself must rest at last upon authority ; for 
 the original data of reason do not rest on reason, but 
 are necessarily accepted by reason on the authority of 
 what is beyond itself. These data are, therefore, in 
 rigid propriety, Beliefs or Trusts. Thus it is that in the 
 last resort we must perforce philosophically admit, that 
 belief is the primary condition of reason, and not reason 
 the ultimate ground of belief. We are compelled to 
 surrender the proud Intellige ut credas of Abelard, to 
 content ourselves with the humble Orede ut intelligas 
 of Anselm." 
 
 And in another part of the same Dissertation* (he is 
 arguing that we do not believe, but know, the external 
 world) " If asked, indeed, how we know that we 
 know it ? how we know that what we apprehend in sensi- 
 ble perception is, as consciousness assures us, an object, 
 external, extended, and numerically different from the 
 conscious subject ? how we know that this object is not 
 a mere mode of mind, illusively presented to us as a 
 mere mode of matter ; then, indeed, we must reply that 
 we do not in propriety know that what we are compelled 
 to perceive as not-self is not a perception of self, and 
 that we can only on reflection believe such to be the case, 
 in reliance on the original necessity of so believing, im- 
 posed on us by our nature." 
 
 It thus appears that, in Sir W. Hamilton's opinion, 
 Belief is a higher source of evidence than Knowledge ; 
 Belief is ultimate, Knowledge only derivative ; Knowl- 
 edge itself finally rests on Belief; natural beliefs are the 
 sole warrant for all our knowledge. Knowledge, there- 
 fore, is an inferior ground of assurance to natural Belief; 
 
 * Pp. 749, 750. 
 
BELIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE. 79 
 
 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 un- 
 knowable. 
 
 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 knowl- 
 edge is relative to ourselves, and that we have no 
 knowledge of the infinite and absolute. In telling us 
 that it is impossible to the human faculties to know any- 
 thing about Things in themselves, we naturally suppose 
 he intends to warn us off the ground to bid us under- 
 stand that this subject of inquiry is closed to us, and 
 exhort us to turn our attention elsewhere. It appears 
 that nothing of the kind was intended ; we are to under- 
 stand, on the contrary, that we may have the best ground- 
 ed 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 of dis- 
 pute 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 conse- 
 quence. 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 pur- 
 pose ; and the subject would have been better left where 
 Reid left it, who did not trouble himself with nice dis- 
 
80 BELIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 tinctions between belief and knowledge, but was content 
 to consider us as knowing that which, by the constitu- 
 tion 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. \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 opposi- 
 tion to the common usage of mankind, receive exclusively 
 the appellation of knowledge, is at the most a question of 
 
 * Diseussions, p. 86. 
 
BELIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE. 81 
 
 terminology, and can only be made to appear philosophi- 
 cally important by confounding difference of name with 
 difference of fact. That any thing capable of being said 
 on such a subject should pass for a fundamental princi- 
 ple of philosophy, and be the chief source of the reputa- 
 tion 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. 
 
82 THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 CHAPTER VI, 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THM CONDITIONED. 
 
 THE " Philosophy of the Conditioned," in its wider 
 sense, includes all the doctrines that we have been dis- 
 cussing. 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 Anti- 
 nomies 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 any- 
 where 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 ne- 
 cessary 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 recognized, which frequently meet 
 us in his writings, and which give them, in my eyes, 
 most of their philosophical value. I am obliged to add, 
 
 * Discussions, p. 624. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 83 
 
 that though he often furnishes a powerful statement and 
 vindication of such truths, he seldom or never consist- 
 ently 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 pos- 
 sibility. 
 
 Before showing how this proposition is developed into 
 the " Philosophy of the Conditioned," let us make the 
 ground safe before us, by bestowing a brief consideration 
 upon the proposition itself, its meaning, and the founda- 
 tions on which it rests. 
 
 We cannot conclude anything to be impossible, be- 
 cause its possibility is inconceivable to us ; for two rea- 
 sons. (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 associa- 
 tionj When, in a prolonged experience, we have often 
 had a particular sensation or mental impression, and 
 never without a certain other sensation or impression im- 
 mediately accompanying it, there grows up so firm an 
 adhesion between our ideas of the two, that we are un- 
 able 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 disen- 
 tangling the two ideas, our incapacity of imagining the 
 
84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 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 phe- 
 nomena by Mr. James Mill; and is, in an especial 
 manner, the key to the phenomenon of inconceivability. 
 As that phenomenon only exists because our powers of 
 conception are determined by our limited experience, In- 
 conceivables 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, incon- 
 ceivable : not, of course, the fact of persons in that posi- 
 tion ; 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 indisso- 
 luble association, which while it continued made a real 
 fact what is called inconceivable ; and because incon- 
 ceivable, 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 inconceiv- 
 able by us were shown to us as a fact, we should soon 
 find ourselves able to conceive it. We should even be 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 85 
 
 in danger of going over to the opposite error, and be- 
 lieving that the negation of it is inconceivable. There 
 are many cases in the history 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 learned to conceive, becoming 
 itself fixed in the bonds of an inseparable association, 
 scientific men came to think that it alone was conceiv- 
 able, and that the conflicting hypothesis which all man- 
 kind had believed, and which a vast majority were 
 probably believing still, was inconceivable. In Dr. 
 Whewell's writings on the Inductive Sciences, this tran- 
 sition 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 possi- 
 bilities of Nature. 
 
 But secondly, were it granted 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 warrant- 
 able, if we could know a 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 foun- 
 
86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 dation (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 in- 
 ferred 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 con- 
 ceive a tlu'ng, 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. 
 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 
 
 * " To conceive, to imagine, to apprehend, when taken in the proper 
 sense, signify an act of the mind which implies no belief or judgment at 
 all. It is an act of the mind by which nothing is affirmed or denied, and 
 which, therefore, can neither be true nor false. But there is another and a 
 very different meaning of these words, so common and so well authorized 
 in language that it cannot be avoided ; and on that account we ought to be 
 the more on our guard, that we be not misled by the ambiguity. . . . 
 When we would express our opinion modestly, instead of saying, ' This is 
 my opinion,' or ' This is my judgment,' which has the air of dogmatical- 
 ness, we say, ' I conceive it to be thus I imagine, or apprehend, it to be 
 thus ; ' which is understood as a modest declaration of our judgment. In 
 like manner, when anything is said which we take to be impossible, we 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 87 
 
 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 our- 
 selves two and two as making five ; nor two straight 
 lines as enclosing a space. We cannot represent to 
 
 say, ' We cannot conceive it : ' meaning that we cannot believe it. Thus 
 we see that the words conceive, imagine, apprehend, have two meanings, 
 and are used to express two operations of the mind, which ought never to 
 be confounded. Sometimes they express simple apprehension, which im- 
 plies no judgment at all ; sometimes they express judgment or opinion. . . . 
 "When they are used to express simple apprehension they arc followed by a 
 noun in the accusative case, which signifies the object conceived ; but when 
 they are used to express opinion or judgment, they are commonly followed 
 by a verb in the infinitive mood. ' I conceive an Egyptian pyramid.' This 
 implies no judgment. ' I conceive the Egyptian pyramids to be the most 
 ancient monuments of human art.' This implies judgment. When they 
 are used in the last sense, the thing conceived must be a proposition, be- 
 cause judgment cannot be expressed but by a proposition." 
 
 Reid on the Intellectual Powei-s, p. 223 of Sir W. Hamilton's edition, to 
 which edition all my references will be made. 
 
88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 ourselves a round square ; or 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 state- 
 ment should be both true and false is not only incon- 
 ceivable to us, but we cannot conceive 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 teach- 
 ing, 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 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 89 
 
 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 de- 
 parture or cessation of the other. Thus our inability to 
 form a conception always arises from our being com- 
 pelled 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 insepara- 
 bly associated with the idea of a time or space beyond it. 
 We cannot conceive two and two as five, because an in- 
 separable 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 par- 
 
90 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 lance, to involve a contradiction. The statement is not 
 logically correct, for contradiction is only between a posi- 
 tive representation and its negative. But the impossi- 
 bility 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 incom- 
 patible, if our experience had not first inseparably asso- 
 ciated one of them with the contradictory of the other.* 
 
 * That the reverse of the most familiar principles of arithmetic and 
 geometry might have been made conceivable, even to our present mental 
 faculties, if those faculties had coexisted with a totally different constitu- 
 tion of external nature, is ingeniously shown in the concluding paper of a 
 recent volume, anonymous, but of known authorship, " Essays, by a 
 Barrister." 
 
 " Consider this case. There is a world in which, whenever two pairs of 
 things are either placed in proximity or are contemplated together, a fifth 
 thing is immediately created and brought within the contemplation of the 
 mind engaged in putting two and two together. This is surely neither in- 
 conceivable, for we can readily conceive the result by thinking of common 
 puzzle tricks, nor can it be said to be beyond the power of Omnipotence. 
 Yet in such a world surely two and two would make five. That is, the 
 result to the mind of contemplating two two's would be to count five. This 
 shows that it is not inconceivable that two and two might make five : but, 
 on the other hand, it is perfectly easy to see why in this world we are 
 absolutely certain that two and two make four. There is probably not an 
 instant of our lives in which we are not experiencing the fact. We see it 
 whenever we count four books, four tables or chairs, four men in the street, 
 or the four corners of a paving stone, and we feel more sure of it than of 
 the rising of the sun to-morrow, because our experience upon the subject is 
 so much wider and applies to such an infinitely greater number of cases. 
 Nor is it true that every one who has once been brought to see it, is equally 
 sure of it. A boy who has just learned the multiplication table is pretty 
 sure that twice two are four, but is often extremely doubtful whether seven 
 times nine are sixty-three. If his teacher told him that twice two made 
 five, his certainty would be greatly impaired. 
 
 " It would also be possible to put a case of a world in which two straight 
 lines should be universally supposed to include a space. Imagine a man 
 who had never had any experience of straight lines through the medium 
 of any sense whatever, suddenly placed upon a railway stretching out on 
 a perfectly straight line to an indefinite distance in each direction. He 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 91 
 
 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 
 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 
 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 in- 
 credible. It was in this sense that Antipodes were in- 
 conceivable. They could be figured in imagination ; 
 they could even be painted, or modelled in clay. The 
 mind could put the, parts of the conception together, but 
 it could not realize the combination as one which could 
 exist in nature. The cause of the inability was the 
 
 would sec the rails, which would be the first straight lines he had ever seen, 
 apparently meeting, or at least tending to meet at each horizon ; and he 
 would thus infer, in the absence of all other experience, that they actually 
 did enclose a space when produced far enough. Experience alone could 
 undeceive him. A world in which every object was round, with the single 
 exception of a straight inaccessible railway, would be a world in which 
 every one would believe that two straight lines enclosed a space. In such 
 a world, therefore, the impossibility of conceiving that two straight lines 
 can enclose a space would not exist." 
 
 In the "Geometry of Visibles" which forms part of Reid's "Inquiry 
 into the Human Mind," it is contended that if we had the sense of sight, 
 but not that of touch, it would appear to us that " every right line being 
 produced will at last return into itself," and that " any two right lines being 
 produced will meet in two points." Ch. vi. Sect. 9 (p. 148). The author 
 adds, that persons thus constituted would firmly believe "that two or 
 more bodies may exist in the same place." For this they would " have 
 the testimony of sense," and could " no more doubt of it than they can 
 doubt whether they have any perception at all, since they would often see 
 two bodies meet and coincide in the same place, and separate again, with- 
 out having undergone any change in their sensible qualities by this 
 penetration." (P. 151.) 
 
92 THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 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 be- 
 cause 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 con- 
 ceive, 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 coun- 
 ter-associations, always does create, more or less of diffi- 
 culty 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 "VV. Hamilton, employs the word in both 
 senses indiscriminately. How he came to miss the dis- 
 tinction is tolerably obvious to any one who is familiar 
 with his writings, and especially with his theory of Judg- 
 ment ; but needs not be pointed out here. It is more 
 remarkable that he gives the term a third sense, answer- 
 ing to a third signification of the verb "to conceive." 
 To conceive anything, 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 addi- 
 tional one, which he denotes by various phrases. One 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 93 
 
 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 con- 
 ceive, 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 (con- 
 ceive and comprehend being with him in this case synon- 
 ymous) only by being reduced to some more general 
 fact, as a particular case under it. Again, f "to con- 
 ceive the possibility " of a thing, is defined " conceiving 
 it as the consequent of a certain reason." The incon- 
 ceivable, in this third sense, is simply the inexplicable. 
 Accordingly all first truths are, according to Sir W. 
 Hamilton, inconceivable. " The J primary data of con- 
 sciousness, as themselves the conditions under which all 
 else is comprehended, are necessarily themselves incom- 
 prehensible . . . that is ... we are unable to con- 
 ceive 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 recognize. 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 unanalyzable. A truth which is not inconceivable in 
 either of the received meanings of the term, a truth 
 which is completely apprehended, and without difficulty 
 
 * Lectures, iii. 102. t Ibid. p. 100. 
 
 % Dissertations on Reid, p. 745. 
 
94 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 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 incon- 
 ceivability, is the inconceivability of a proposition in any 
 of these senses consistent with believing it to be true ? 
 The third kind we may disregard, not only as inadmis- 
 sible, but as avowedly compatible with belief. An 
 inconceivable 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 be- 
 lieved 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 imme- 
 diately 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 be- 
 lieve 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 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 95 
 
 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 in- 
 ability to conceive it, is no argument whatever for its 
 being false, and no hinderance 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 prop- 
 osition 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 in- 
 volve 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 
 
 * Lectures, iii. 99. 
 
96 THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 resides in the copula. The word is, has no meaning 
 except as exclusive of is not. The case is more hope- 
 less 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 mean- 
 ing 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,* 
 w When we conceive the proposition that A is not A, we 
 clearly comprehend the separate meaning of 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 proposi- 
 tion is no longer the one presented for our assent. 
 Here, therefore, is one kind of inconceivable proposi- 
 tion which nothing whatever can make credible to us. 
 oSjJt 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 itseTp But we have not the power 
 of believing it ; and there the matter must rest. 
 * Lectures, p. 113. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 97 
 
 We are now prepared to enter on the peculiar doctrine 
 of Sir W. Hamilton, called the Philosophy of the Con- 
 ditioned. Not content with maintaining that things 
 which from the natural and fundamental laws of the 
 human mind are forever 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 under- 
 standing is wholly unable to construe to itself the pos- 
 sibility." 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 :f "The 
 Conditioned is the mean between the two extremes 
 two unconditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of 
 which can be conceived as possible, but of which, on the 
 principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one 
 must be admitted as necessary. . . . The mind is not 
 represented as conceiving two propositions subversive 
 of each other as equally possible ; but only, as unable 
 to understand as possible, either of the extremes ; one 
 of which, however, on the ground of their mutual re- 
 pugnance, it is compelled to recognize as true." 
 
 In the Dissertations on ReidJ he enunciates, in still 
 more general terms, 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 
 recognize 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 un- 
 thinkable." 
 
 * Discussions, p. 624. t Ibid. p. 15. t ? 911. 
 
98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 The doctrine is more fully expanded in the Lectures 
 on Logic,* from which I shall quote at greater length. 
 
 " All that we can positively think . . . lies between 
 two opposite poles of thought, which, as exclusive of 
 each other, cannot, on the principles of Identity and 
 Contradiction, both be true, but of which, on the prin- 
 ciple of Excluded Middle, one or the other must. Let 
 us take, for example, any of the general objects of our 
 knowledge. Let us take body, or rather, since body as 
 extended is included under extension, let us take exten- 
 sion itself, or space. Now, extension alone will exhibit 
 to us two pairs of contradictory inconceivables,f that is, 
 in all, four incomprehensibles, but of which, though all 
 are equally unthinkable ... we are compelled, by the 
 law of Excluded Middle, to admit some two as true and 
 necessary. 
 
 " Extension may be viewed either as a whole or as 
 a part ; and in each aspect it affords us two incogitable 
 contradictions. 1st. Taking it as a whole : space, it is 
 evident, must either be limited, that is, have an end, 
 and circumference ; or unlimited, that is, have no end, 
 no circumference. These are contradictory supposi- 
 tions ; both, therefore, cannot, but one must, be true. 
 Now, let us try positively to comprehend, positively to 
 conceive, J the possibility of either of these two mutually 
 exclusive alternatives. Can we represent, or realize in 
 thought, extension as absolutely limited ? in other words, 
 can we mentally hedge round the whole of space, con- 
 
 * Lectures, iii. 100, et seq. 
 
 * To save words in the text, I shall simply indicate in foot-notes the 
 places at which the author passes from one of the three meanings of the 
 word Inconceivable to another. In this place he is using it in the first or 
 second meaning, probably in the first. 
 
 J First sense. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 99 
 
 ceive* it absolutely bounded, that is, so that beyond its 
 boundary there is no outlying, no surrounding space? 
 This is impossible. Whatever compass of space we 
 may enclose by any limitation of thought, we shall find 
 that we have no difficulty in transcending these limits. 
 Nay, we shall find that we cannot but transcend them ; 
 for we are unable to think any extent of space except as 
 within a still ulterior space, of which, let us think till 
 the powers of thinking fail, we can never reach the cir- 
 cumference. It is thus impossible for us to think space 
 as a totality, that is, as absolutely bounded, but all-con- 
 taining. We may, therefore, lay down this first extreme 
 as inconceivable.f We cannot think space as limited. 
 
 " Let us now consider its contradictory : can we com- 
 prehend the possibility of infinite or unlimited space? 
 To suppose this is a direct contradiction in terms ; it is 
 to comprehend the incomprehensible. We think, we 
 conceive, J we comprehend a thing, only as we think it 
 as within or under something else ; but to do this of the 
 infinite is to think the infinite as finite, which is contra- 
 dictory and absurd. 
 
 " Now, here it may be asked, how have we then the 
 word infinite? How have we the notion which this 
 word expresses? The answer to this question is con- 
 tained in the distinction of positive and negative thought. 
 We have a positive concept of a thing when we think it 
 by the qualities of which it is the complement. But as 
 the attribution of qualities is an affirmation, as affirmation 
 and negation are relatives, and as relatives are known 
 only in and through each other, we cannot, therefore, 
 have a consciousness of the affirmation of any quality, 
 
 * First sense. t First sense. J Third sense. 
 
100 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 without having at the same time the correlative con- 
 sciousness of its negation. Now, the one consciousness 
 is a positive, the other consciousness is a negative notion. 
 But, in point of fact, a negative notion is only the nega- 
 tion of a notion ; we think only by the attribution of 
 certain qualities, and the negation of these qualities and 
 of this attribution is simply, in so far, a denial of our 
 thinking at all. As affirmation always suggests negation, 
 every positive notion must likewise suggest a negative 
 notion : and as language is the reflex of thought, the 
 positive and negative notions are expressed by positive 
 and negative names. Thus it is with the infinite. The 
 finite is the only object of real or positive thought ; it is 
 that alone which we think by the attribution of deter- 
 minate characters ; the infinite, on the contrary, is con- 
 ceived only by the thinking away of every character by 
 which the finite was conceived ; in other words, we con- 
 ceive it only as inconceivable.* . . . 
 
 "It is manifest that we can no more realize the 
 thought or conception of infinite, unbounded, or unlimit- 
 ed space, than we can realize the conception of a finite 
 or absolutely bounded space, f But these two incon- 
 ceivables are reciprocal contradictories : we are unable 
 to comprehend J the possibility of either, while, however, 
 on the principle of Excluded Middle, one or other must 
 be admitted. . . . 
 
 " It is needless to show that the same result is given 
 by the experiment made on extension considered as a 
 part, as divisible. Here if we attempt to divide exten- 
 
 * Third sense, gliding back into the first. 
 
 t Here the return to the first sense is completed. 
 
 j Here the second sense makes its appearance. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 101 
 
 sion in thought , we shall neither, on the one hand, 
 succeed in conceiving the possibility * of an absolute 
 minimum of space, that is, a minimum ex hypothesl 
 extended, but which cannot be conceived as divisible into 
 parts, f nor, on the other, of carrying on this division to 
 infinity. But as these are contradictory opposites," 
 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 infinite- 
 ly 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 ab- 
 solute commencement : neither can we conceive the Will 
 not to be Free, because this would be supposing an in- 
 finite regress from effect to cause. The will, however, 
 must be either free or not free ; and in this case he 
 thinks we have 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 con- 
 sciousness assures us that we are. 
 
 This, then, is the Philosophy of the Conditioned : into 
 the value of which it now remains to inquire. 
 
 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. I think he has failed 
 to make out either point. 
 
 * Second sense. t First sense. 
 
 TOL. i. 5 
 
102 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 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 in- 
 herent 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 
 beeri perceiving objects and portions of space from the 
 moment of birth. How then could the idea of an ob- 
 ject, or of a portion of space, escape becoming insep- 
 arably 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 constitu- 
 tion of our existence, is indissoluble. But we have no 
 ground for believing that it is so from the original struc- 
 ture 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 con- 
 ceiving 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 exist- 
 ence, the experience which would render the association 
 dissoluble is never obtained; and an end to space re- 
 mains inconceivable. 
 
 One half, then, of our author's first proposition, must 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 103 
 
 be conceded. But the other half? Is it true that we 
 are incapable of conceiving infinite space ? I have al- 
 ready shown strong reasons for dissenting from this asser- 
 tion : and those which our author, in this and other 
 places, assigns in its support, seem to ine 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 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 favorite expression with the Transcen- 
 dental school, one of whose characteristics it 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 state- 
 ment as it is 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 predi- 
 cate 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 
 
104 THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 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 gen- 
 eral 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 hypoth- 
 esis 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 infinite. 
 
 But he might perhaps say, that though its extension, 
 consisting of the possible individuals included in it, 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 contra- 
 diction 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, 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 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 105 
 
 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 Infi- 
 nite 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 other 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 com- 
 plex, 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 differentiae, 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 
 
106 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 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 w*e conceive it by any of 
 its attributes that are sufficient to distinguish it from all 
 other things. We have a conception of any large num- 
 ber, 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 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. (j then, we can obtain a real conception of a 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 107 
 
 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. We 
 completely 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 first time ; however often we 
 repeat the process of imagining distance extending in 
 any direction from us, that process is always susceptible 
 of being carried farther. This conception is both real 
 and perfectly definite. It is not vague and indeter- 
 minate, as a merely negative notion is. We possess 
 it as completely as we possess any of our clearest con- 
 ceptions, and we can avail ourselves of it as well for 
 ulterior mental operations. As regards the Extent of 
 Space, therefore, Sir W. Hamilton does not seem to have 
 made out his point : one of the two contradictory hy- 
 potheses is not inconceivable. 
 
108 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 The same thing may be said, equally decidedly, re- 
 specting the Divisibility of Space. According to our 
 author, a minimum of divisibility, and a divisibility with- 
 out 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, con- 
 ceive parts consisting of smaller parts, and these of still 
 smaller, without end ? As to the latter, smallness with- 
 out 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 ex- 
 periment 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 power of our instruments, 
 and before we have reached the limit of possible in- 
 crease, 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 mechani- 
 cal construction, is adapted to magnify more, but still 
 remains apparently indivisible. I say, that if this hap- 
 pened, we should believe in a minimum of extension; 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 109 
 
 or, if some d priori metaphysical prejudice prevented us 
 from believing it, we should at least be enabled to 
 conceive it. 
 
 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 
 between two " inconditionate" hypotheses, both of them 
 inconceivable. Let me add, that even granting the in- 
 conceivability of the two opposite hypotheses, I cannot 
 see that any distinct meaning is conveyed by the state- 
 ment 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 be- 
 tween 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 
 
 * See the catalogue at length, in the Appendix to the second volume of 
 the Lectures, pp. 527-529. 
 
 6 * ' ~" 
 
 
110 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 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 pre- 
 sents itself in regard to them ; they are all finite, and are 
 conceived and known as such. What the notion of ex- 
 tremes and a mean can signify, when applied to propo- 
 sitions in which different predicates are affirmed of 
 different subjects, passes my comprehension ; but it 
 served to give greater apparent profundity to the " Funda- 
 mental Doctrine," in the eyes not of disciples (for Sir 
 W. Hamilton was wholly incapable of quackery) , but of 
 the teacher himself. 
 
 We have now to examine the second half of the " Law 
 of the Conditioned," namely, that although the pair of 
 contradictory hypotheses in each Antinomy are both of 
 them inconceivable, one or the other of them must be true. 
 
 I should not, of course, dream of denying this, when 
 the propositions are taken in a phenomenal sense ; when 
 the subjects and predicates of them are interpreted rela- 
 tively to us. The Will, for example, is wholly a phe- 
 nomenon ; it has no meaning unless relatively to us ; 
 and I of course admit that it must be either free or 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. Ill 
 
 caused. Space and Time, in their phenomenal character, 
 or as they present themselves to our perceptive faculties, 
 are necessarily either bounded or boundless, infinitely or 
 only finitely divisible. The law of Excluded Middle, 
 as well as that of Contradiction, is common to all phe- 
 nomena. But it is a doctrine of our author that these 
 laws are true, and cannot but be known to be true, of 
 Noumena likewise. It is not merely Space as cognizable 
 by our senses, but Space as it is in itself, which he 
 affirms must be either of unlimited or of limited extent. 
 Now, not to speak at present of the Principle of Contra- 
 diction, I demur to that of Excluded Middle as applicable 
 to Things in themselves. The law of Excluded Middle 
 is, that whatever predicate we suppose, either that or its 
 negative must be true of any given subject : and this I 
 do not admit when the subject is a Noumenon ; inas- 
 much as every possible predicate, even negative, except 
 the single one of Non-entity, involves, as apart of itself, 
 something positive, which part is only known to us by 
 phenomenal experience, and may have only a phenom- 
 enal existence. The universe, for example, must, it is 
 affirmed, be either infinite or finite : but what do these 
 words mean ? That it must be either of infinite or finite 
 magnitude. Magnitudes certainly must be either infi- 
 nite or finite, but before affirming the same thing of the 
 Noumenon Universe, it has to be established that the 
 universe as it is in itself is capable of the attribute mag- 
 nitude. How do we know that magnitude is not exclu- 
 sively a property of our sensations of the states of 
 subjective consciousness which objects produce in us? 
 Or if this supposition displeases, how do we know that 
 magnitude is not, as Kant considered it, a form of our 
 
112 THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 minds, an attribute with which the laws of thought in- 
 vest every conception that we can form, but to which 
 there may be nothing analogous in the Noumenon, the 
 Thing in itself? The like may be said of Duration, 
 whether infinite or finite, and of Divisibility, whether 
 stopping at a minimum or prolonged without limit. 
 Either the one proposition or the other must of course 
 be true of duration and of matter as they are perceived 
 by us as they present themselves to our faculties ; but 
 duration itself is held by Kant to have no real existence 
 out of our minds ; and as for matter, not knowing what 
 it is in itself, we know not whether, as affirmed of matter 
 in itself, the word divisible has any meaning. Believing 
 divisibility to be an acquired notion, made up of the ele- 
 ments of our sensational experience, I do not admit that 
 the Noumenon Matter must be either infinitely or finitely 
 divisible. As already observed, the only contradictory 
 alternative of which the negative side contains nothing 
 positive is that between Entity and Non-entity, Existing 
 and Non-existing ; and so far as regards that distinction, 
 I admit the law of Excluded Middle as applicable to 
 Noumena ; they must either exist or not exist. But this 
 is all the applicability I can allow to it. 
 
 If the preceding arguments are valid, the "Law of 
 the Conditioned" breaks down in both its parts. It is 
 not proved that the Conditioned lies between two hy- 
 potheses concerning the Unconditioned, neither of which 
 hypotheses we can conceive as possible. And it is not 
 proved, that, as regards the Unconditioned, one or the 
 other of these hypotheses must be true. Both propo- 
 sitions must be placed in that numerous class of meta- 
 physical doctrines, which have a magnificent sound but 
 are empty of the smallest substance. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 113 
 
 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 pecu- 
 liar Hamiltonian theory of Cause ; still less that he has 
 learned 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 a bad quality. But he is the 
 admiring editor of Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures ; he in- 
 variably speaks of him with a deference which he pays 
 to no other philosopher ; he expressly accepts, in lan- 
 guage identical with Sir W. Hamilton's own, the doc- 
 trines regarded as specially characteristic of the Hamil- 
 tonian 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 ap- 
 plication 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 
 
114 THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED, 
 
 relativity of all our knowledge. He holds that the Ab- 
 solute and the Infinite, or, to use a more significant ex- 
 pression, an Absolute and an Infinite being, are incon- 
 ceivable by us ; and that when we strive to conceive wjiat 
 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-contradic- 
 tion ; that is (for Mr. Mansel is careful thus to qualify 
 the assertion), thought of as Absolute, and as Infinite. 
 Through this inherent impossibility 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 reject- 
 ing, 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 
 
AS APPLIED BY MR. MANSEL TO RELIGION. 115 
 
 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 ap- 
 plied 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 reason- 
 able 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 mon- 
 strosities concerning God, and miscall them Goodness 
 and Wisdom. The novelty is in presenting this conclu- 
 sion 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 pre- 
 sented, 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, there- 
 fore, 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 inquire, whether the conclu- 
 sion thus drawn from his principal doctrine, is justly 
 
116 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED, 
 
 affiliated on it. I think it will appear that the conclu- 
 sion 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 means in the greater part of his argu- 
 ment against Cousin, that which is completed or fin- 
 ished. He means what Sir W. Hamilton means only 
 once (as we have already seen) 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 
 
 * Limits of Religious Thought, 4th edition, pp. 29, 30. 
 
AS APPLIED BY MR. HANSEL TO RELIGION. 117 
 
 recognizes (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 16 hnfamov 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 first words of his defi- 
 nition, " that which exists in and by itself," would serve 
 for the description of a Nournenon ; but Mr. Mansel's 
 Absolute is only meant to denote one being, identified 
 with God, and God is not the only Noumenon. This, 
 however, I will not dwell upon. But the remaining 
 words, " having no necessary relation to any other Being," 
 bring him into a much greater difficulty. For they 
 admit of two constructions. The words, in their natural 
 sense, only mean, capable of existing out of relation 
 to anything else. The 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 enter- 
 ing 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 Mr. Calderwood, an inter- 
 pretation inconsistent with this.f This, however, is the 
 
 * Discussions, p. 14, note. 
 
 t Limits of Religious Thought, p. 200. 
 
118 THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED, 
 
 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 attri- 
 butes are, to our conception, incompatible with one an- 
 other. 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 ex- 
 istence 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 ex- 
 istence 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 re- 
 lation, 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 Abso- 
 lute, 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, 
 
 * Limits of Religious Thought, p. 31. 
 
AS APPLIED BY MR. MANSEL TO RELIGION. 119 
 
 because an Englishman, as such, is not a mathematician, 
 nor a mathematician, as such, an Englishman. 
 
 Again, Mr. Mansel argues,* that "supposing the Ab- 
 solute 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. Ham- 
 ilton'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 incon- 
 ceivability 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 
 
 * Limits of Religious Thought, p. 32. 
 
120 THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED, 
 
 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 sup- 
 posed 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 every thing explicitly, draws this im- 
 portant distinction himself, and says, of his own motion, 
 that the Absolute he means is the abstraction. He says,* 
 that the Absolute 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 ex- 
 pressly 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, f "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. Man- 
 sel 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 suit- 
 able to this commencement. The Absolute, as con- 
 
 * Limits of Religious Thought, p. 30. f Ibid. p. 31. 
 
AS APPLIED BY MR. M ANSEL TO RELIGION. 121 
 
 ceived, that is, as he defines it, cannot be "a whole* 
 composed of parts," or " a substance consisting of at- 
 tributes," or " a conscious subject in antithesis to an 
 object. For if there is in the absolute any principle of 
 unity distinct from the mere accumulation of parts or 
 attributes, this principle alone is the true absolute. If, 
 on the other hand, there is no such principle, then there 
 is no absolute at all, but only a plurality of relatives. 
 The almost unanimous voice of philosophy, in pronoun- 
 cing that the absolute is both one and simple, must 
 be accepted as the voice of reason also, so far as rea- 
 son has any voice in the matter. But this absolute 
 unity, as indifferent and containing no attributes, can 
 neither be distinguished from the multiplicity of finite 
 beings by any characteristic feature, nor be identified 
 with them in their multiplicity." (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 con- 
 tradictions inherent in the attempt to conceive what is 
 inconceivable^ " Thus we are landed in an inextricable 
 dilemma. The Absolute cannot be conceived as con- 
 scious, neither can it be conceived as unconscious : it 
 cannot be conceived as complex, neither can it be con- 
 ceived as simple : it cannot be conceived by difference, 
 neither can it be conceived by the absence of difference : 
 it cannot be identified with the universe, neither can it 
 be distinguished from it." 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 
 
 * Limits of Religious Thought, p. 33. 
 
122 THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED, 
 
 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 hinderance 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, infi- 
 nite 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 attri- 
 butes, and not solely in those which it would be thought 
 decent to predicate of God, cannot, as Mr. Mansel very 
 truly says, be conceived. Forf "the Infinite, if it is to 
 be conceived at all, must be conceived as potentially 
 everything and actually nothing ; for if there is anything 
 general which it cannot become, it is thereby limited ; 
 and if there is anything in particular which it actually 
 is, it is thereby excluded from being any other thing. 
 But again, it must also be conceived as actually every- 
 thing and potentially nothing ; for an unrealized poten- 
 tiality is likewise a limitation. If the infinite can be that 
 
 * Limits of Religious Thought, p. 30. t Ibid- P- 48. 
 
AS APPLIED BY MR. M ANSEL TO RELIGION. 128 
 
 which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out 
 as incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection. If it 
 is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic fea- 
 ture by which it can be distinguished from anything else, 
 and discerned as an object of consciousness." Here cer- 
 tainly 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," substi- 
 tute " an infinitely good Being," and Mr. Mansel's argu- 
 ment 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 actu- 
 ally 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, 
 learned though it be in his school. 
 
 It cannot be necessary to follow up Mr. ManseFs 
 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 fair- 
 ness, I cite it in a note.* All the argument that I can 
 
 * " A thing an object an attribute a person or any other term 
 signifying one out of many possible objects of consciousness, is by that 
 very relation necessarily declared to be finite. An infinite thing, or object, 
 or attribute, or person, is therefore in the same moment declared to be both 
 finite and infinite. . . . And on the other hand, if all human attributes are 
 
124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED, 
 
 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,f 
 "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 definitions of them? If not, he is bound to 
 tell us in what other meaning. Believing God to be in- 
 finite 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 Abso- 
 lute 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 inconceiv- 
 ability of the very Being in whose reality we are required 
 to believe. But the truth is, that the Infinite and Abso- 
 lute which he says we must believe in, are the very 
 Infinite and Absolute of his definitions. The Infinite is 
 
 conceived under the conditions of difference, and relation, and time, and 
 personality, we cannot represent in thought any such attribute magnified 
 to infinity ; for this again is to conceive it as finite and infinite at the same 
 time. We can conceive such attributes, at the utmost, only indefinitely ; 
 that is to say, we may withdraw our thoughts, for the moment, from the 
 fact of their being limited ; but we cannot conceive them as infinite ; that 
 is to say, we cannot positively think of the absence of the limit ; for, the 
 instant we attempt to do so, the antagonist elements of the conception 
 exclude one another, and annihilate the whole." Limits of Religious 
 Thought, p. 60. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 39. t Ibid. p. 45. 
 
AS APPLIED BY MB. MANSEL TO RELIGION. 125 
 
 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 words them- 
 selves. The contradictions are in the very object which 
 we are called upon to believe. If, therefore, Mr. Man- 
 sel 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 Contra- 
 diction 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 irrelevant issue, to the much more 
 important subject of his practical conclusion, namely, 
 that we cannot know the divine attributes in such a 
 manner, as can entitle us to reject any statement respect- 
 ing the Deity on the ground of its being inconsistent 
 with his character. Let us examine whether this asser- 
 tion 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 nationalists, 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 
 
 VOL. I. 6 
 
126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED, 
 
 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 answ.er 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 expe- 
 rience enables me to conceive, and which I consider as 
 proved, not absolutely, by an intuition of God, but phe- 
 nomenally, by his action on the creation, as known 
 through my senses and my rational faculty. These rela- 
 tive 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 in- 
 consistent with what God is in himself, but with what 
 he is as manifested to us. If my knowledge of him is 
 only phenomenal, the assertions which I reject are phe- 
 nomenal too. If those assertions are inconsistent with 
 my relative knowledge of him, it is no answer to say 
 
AS APPLIED BY MB. MANSEL TO RELIGION. 127 
 
 that all my knowledge of him is relative. That is no 
 more a reason against disbelieving an alleged fact as un- 
 worthy 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 Phenomena. 
 
 There is but one way for Mr. Mansel out of this diffi- 
 culty, 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, Benevolence, Mercy, are, as they 
 exist in God. Accordingly he does say so. The follow- 
 ing are his direct utterances on the subject : as an 
 implied doctrine, it pervades his whole argument. 
 
 "It is a fact* which experience forces upon us, and 
 which it is useless, were it possible, to disguise, that the 
 representation of God after the model of the highest 
 human morality which we are capable of conceiving, is 
 not sufficient to account for all the phamomena exhibited 
 by the course of his natural Providence. The infliction 
 of physical suffering, the permission of moral evil, the 
 adversity of the good, the prosperity of the wicked, the 
 crimes of the guilty involving the misery of the innocent, 
 the tardy appearance and partial distribution of moral 
 and religious knowledge in the world these are facts 
 which no doubt are reconcilable, we know not how, with 
 the Infinite Goodness of God, but which certainly are 
 not to be explained on the supposition that its sole and 
 sufficient type is to be found in the finite goodness of 
 man." In other words, it is necessary to suppose that 
 the infinite goodness ascribed to God is not the goodness 
 
 * Limits of Religious Thought, Preface to the fourth edition, p. 13. 
 
128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED, 
 
 which we know and love in our fellow-creatures, distin- 
 guished 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 Ra- 
 tionalism, he declares its principles to be, thatf "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 em- 
 phatic protest. 
 
 * Limits of Religious Thought, p. 26. f Ibid. p. 28. 
 
AS APPLIED BY MB. HANSEL TO RELIGION. 129 
 
 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 wordy If in affirming them 
 of God we do not mean to affirm these very qualities, 
 differing only as greater in degree, we are neither philo- 
 sophically 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 prop- 
 erties 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 inter- 
 vened, 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 good- 
 
ICO 
 
 ness. What belongs to it as Infinite (or more properly 
 as Absolute) 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 in- 
 comprehensible attribute of an incomprehensible sub- 
 stance, 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 impor- 
 tant particulars opposed to this what do I mean by 
 calling it goodness ? and what reason have I for ven- 
 erating 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 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 attri- 
 butes 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 con- 
 viction 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 
 
AS APPLIED BY MR. M ANSEL TO RELIGION. 131 
 
 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, nor 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 bet- 
 ter 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 abso- 
 lutely good ruler of the world, is not warranted in dis- 
 believing any act ascribed to him, merely because the 
 
 ' 
 
132 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED, 
 
 very email part of its circumstances which we can pos- 
 sibly know does not sufficiently justify it. But if what 
 I am told respecting him is of a kind which no facts that 
 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 respect- 
 ing 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 contradic- 
 tion to their signification ; then, if the law of contradic- 
 tion 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 senses) 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 
 
AS APPLIED BY MB. MANSEL TO RELIGION. 133 
 
 goodness should be conceived only as something incon- 
 ceivable, because they are so often required to teach doc- 
 trines respecting him which conflict irreconcilably with 
 all goodness that we can conceive ? 
 
 I am anxious to say once more, that Mr. Hansel'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 belong to God, since 
 man was made in God's image. But such a semi-con- 
 cession, 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 diffi- 
 culties, while it destroys the whole fabric of his argu- 
 ment. 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 reflection 
 or resemblance, does it agree with what men call good- 
 ness 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 inev- 
 itable alternative. 
 
 To conclude : Mr. Mansel has not made out any con- 
 6* 
 
134 THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 
 
 nection between his philosophical premises and his theo- 
 logical conclusion. The relativity of human knowledge, 
 the uncognoscibility of the Absolute, and the contra- 
 dictions 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 abso- 
 lutely, 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 bear- 
 ing 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 abso- 
 lute ignorance of him as a moral being. 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 135 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD BY SIR WILLIAM 
 HAMILTON. 
 
 IN the discussion of the Relativity of human knowl- 
 edge 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 color 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 logi- 
 cal) , Sir W. Hamilton is merely an eminent representa- 
 tive 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 criticising 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 
 
136 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD 
 
 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 burden of mis- 
 takes and inadvertences not inherent in the theories them- 
 selves, 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 acci- 
 dentally adhered to the theory are stripped 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 common- 
 est tricks of controversy, is that of directing the attack 
 exclusively against the first crude form of a doctrine.^) 
 Whoever should judge Locke's philosophy as it is in 
 Locke, Berkeley's philosophy as it is in Berkeley, or 
 Reid's as it is in Reid, would often condemn them on the 
 ground of incidental misapprehensions, which form no 
 essential part of their doctrine, and from which its later 
 adherents and expositors are free. Sir \V. 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 
 
 * This, for example, is the secret of most of the apparent triumphs 
 which are so frequently gained over the population theory of Malthus, and 
 the political economy of Ricardo. 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 137 
 
 truth, on the whole it is impossible to pass from Eeid 
 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 inter- 
 pretations 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 Con- 
 sciousness. The words of his definition do not, of them- 
 selves, 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 ; accord- 
 ingly 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 
 
 * Lectures, i. 193 and 201, 
 
188 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD 
 
 philosophers, is justified, or even, by our mental con- 
 stitution, compelled ; according to others, not justified. 
 
 Nothing, however, can be farther from SirW. Hamil- 
 ton'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 con- 
 scious of things outside the mind. Some of the mind's 
 acts are perceptions of outward objects ; and we are, of 
 course, conscious of those acts : now, to be conscious 
 of a perception, necessarily implies being conscious of 
 the thing perceived. "It is* palpably impossible that 
 we can be conscious of an act, without being conscious 
 of the object to which that act is relative. This, how- 
 ever, is what Dr. Reid and Mr. Stewart maintain. They 
 maintain that I can know that I know, without know- 
 ing what I know or that I can know the knowledge 
 without knowing what the knowledge is about ; for 
 example, that I am conscious of perceiving a book, 
 without being conscious of the book perceived, that I 
 am conscious of remembering its contents without being 
 conscious of these contents remembered and so forth." 
 " An act f of knowledge existing and being what it is 
 only by relation to its object, it is manifest that the act 
 can be known only through the object to which it is cor- 
 relative ; and Reid's supposition that an operation can be 
 known in consciousness to the exclusion of its object, is 
 impossible. For example, I see the inkstand. How 
 can I be conscious that my present modification exists, 
 
 that it is a perception, and not another mental state, 
 
 that it is a perception of sight, to the exclusion of 
 every other sense, and finally, that it is a perception 
 
 * Lectures, i. 212. t Ibid. i. 228. 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 139 
 
 of the inkstand, and of the inkstand only, unless my 
 own consciousness comprehend within its sphere the ob- 
 ject, which at once determines the existence of the act, 
 qualifies its kind, and distinguishes its individuality? 
 Annihilate the inkstand, you annihilate the perception ; 
 annihilate the consciousness of the object, you annihilate 
 the consciousness of the operation. It undoubtedly 
 sounds strange to say, I am conscious of the inkstand, 
 instead of saying, I am conscious of the perception of 
 the inkstand. This I admit, but the admission can avail 
 nothing to Dr. Reid, for the apparent incongruity of the 
 expression arises only from the prevalence of that doc- 
 trine of perception in the schools of philosophy, which it 
 is his principal merit to have so vigorously assailed." 
 
 This is Sir W. Hamilton's first difference, on the sub- 
 ject 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. Conscious- 
 ness, 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 in 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," 
 * Lectures, i. 218-221. 
 
140 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD 
 
 but "involves a contradiction in terms." Memory is an 
 act, and an act " exists only in the now : " it can therefore 
 be cognizant only of what now is. In the case of memory , 
 what now is, is not the thing remembered, but a present 
 representation of it in the mind, which representation is 
 the sole object of consciousness. We are aware of the 
 past, not immediately, but mediately, through the repre- 
 sentation. " An act of memory is merely a present state 
 of mind, which we are conscious of, not as absolute, but 
 as relative to, and representing, another state of mind, 
 and accompanied with the belief that the state of mind, 
 as now represented, has actually been. . . . All that is 
 immediately known in the act of memory, is the present 
 mental modification ; that is, the representation and 
 concomitant belief. ... So far is memory from being 
 an immediate knowledge of the past, that it is at best 
 only a mediate knowledge of the past ; while, in philo- 
 sophical propriety, it is not a knowledge of the past at 
 all, but a knowledge of the present, and a belief of the 
 past. . . . We may doubt, we may deny that the rep- 
 resentation and belief are true. We may assert that 
 they represent what never was, and that all beyond their 
 present mental existence is a delusion : " but it is impos- 
 sible for us to doubt or deny that of which we have im- 
 mediate knowledge. 
 
 Again, that of which we are conscious must not only 
 be present in time, it must also, if external to our minds, 
 be present in place. It must be in direct contact with 
 our bodily organs. We do not immediately perceive a 
 distant object. " To say,* for example, that we perceive 
 by sight the sun or moon, is a false, or an elliptical ex- 
 pression. We perceive nothing but certain modifications 
 
 * Lectures, ii. 153. 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 141 
 
 of light, in immediate relation to our organ of vision ; 
 and so far from Dr. Reid being philosophically correct 
 when he says that f when ten men look at the sun or 
 moon, they all see the same individual object,' the truth 
 is, that each of these persons sees a different object, be- 
 cause each person sees a different complement of rays, 
 in relation to his individual organ : " to which, in another 
 place, he adds, that each individual sees two different 
 objects, with his right and with his left eye. "It is not 
 by perception, but by a process of reasoning, that we 
 connect the objects of sense with existences beyond the 
 sphere of immediate knowledge. It is enough that per- 
 ception affords us the knowledge of the non-ego at the 
 point of sense. To arrogate to it the power of immedi- 
 ately informing us of external things which are only the 
 causes of the object we immediately perceive, is either 
 positively erroneous, or a confusion of language arising 
 from an inadequate discrimination of the phenomena." * 
 (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 Rem) 
 
 It appears, then, that the true definition'of Conscious- 
 ness in Sir W. Hamilton's use of the term, would be 
 Immediate Knowledge. And he expressly says,f "Con- 
 sciousness and immediate knowledge are thus terms uni- 
 
 * And elsewhere (foot-note to Reid, p. 302) : " It is self-evident that 
 if a thing is to be an object immediately known, it must be known as it 
 exists. Now, a body must exist in some definite part of space, in a certain 
 plftce; it cannot, therefore, be immediately known as existing, except it be 
 known in its place. But this supposes the mind to be immediately present 
 to it in space." 
 
 I do not guarantee the conclusiveness of this reasoning ; but it has been 
 an error of philosophers in all times to flank their good arguments with 
 bad ones. 
 
 t Discussions, p. 51. 
 
142 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD 
 
 versally convertible ; and if there be an immediate knowl- 
 edge of things external, there is consequently the Con- 
 sciousness of an outer world." Immediate knowledge, 
 again, he treats as universally convertible with Intuitive 
 knowledge : * and the terms are really equivalent. \Ve 
 know intuitively what we know by its own evidence by 
 direct apprehension of the fact, and not through the me- 
 dium 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 dis- 
 pute about words : for Reid also says that we have an 
 immediate and intuitive knowledge of things without, 
 though he does not call it a consciousness. Sir W. 
 Hamilton stretches the word Consciousness so as to in- 
 clude 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 mate- 
 rial 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 has been already proved 
 that we cognize 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,f 
 
 * Lectures, i. 221, note, and iv. 73. f P. 810. 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 143 
 
 maintaining that " consciousness comprehends every 
 cognitive act; in other words, whatever we are not con- 
 scious 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. Ham- 
 ilton might have cleared up this difficulty by saying, as 
 he had already done, that our mediate cognitions those 
 of the past and the absent though he never hesitates to 
 call them knowledge, are in strict propriety Belief. We 
 could then have understood his meaning. But the ex- 
 planation he actually gives is quite different. It is, that 
 " all our mediate cognitions are contained in our imme- 
 diate." This is a manifest attempt to justify himself in 
 calling them, not belief, but knowledge, like our imme- 
 diate cognitions. But what is the meaning of "con- 
 tained " ? If it means that^ our mediate cognitions are 
 part of our immediate, then they are themselves imme- 
 diate, and we have no mediate cognitions. Sir W. 
 Hamilton has told us, that in the case of a remembered 
 fact, what we immediately cognize 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 repre- 
 sentation 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 tin's, it remains absent in time ; 
 
144 CONSCIOUSNESS A3 UNDERSTOOD 
 
 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 con- 
 sciousness, 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 con- 
 scious of, we do not know. 
 
 This inconsistency, which emerges only in the Dis- 
 sertations, 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 knowl- 
 edge 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 Con- 
 sciousness. 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. Ac- 
 cording to the other definition, consciousness is the mind's 
 recognition of its own acts and affections. It is not at 
 once obvious how these two definitions can be reconciled : 
 for Sir W. Hamilton would have been the last person to 
 say that the outward object is identical with the mental 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 145 
 
 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 incon- 
 sistency : for how can he then refuse the name of con- 
 sciousness to our mediate knowledge to our knowledge 
 or belief (for instance) of the past ? The past reality 
 is certainly implied in the present recollection of which 
 we are conscious : and our author has said that all our 
 mediate knowledge is contained in our immediate, just 
 as 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 recog- 
 nition 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 conscious- 
 ness 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 them- 
 selves. 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 
 
146 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD 
 
 of things, but only difference in the particular relation 
 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 main- 
 tained before him by Brown, and which is stated by Mr. 
 James Mill, with his usual clearness and force, in the 
 following passage : * 
 
 "Having a sensation, and having a feeling, are not 
 two things. The thing is one, the names only are two. 
 I am pricked by a pin. The sensation is one ; but I 
 may call it sensation, or a feeling, or. a pain, as I please. 
 Now, when, having the sensation, I say I feel the sen- 
 sation, I only use a tautological expression ; the sensa- 
 tion is not one thing, the feeling another ; the sensation 
 is the feeling. When, instead of the word feeling, I 
 use the word conscious, I do exactly the same thing 
 I merely use a tautological expression. To say I feel a 
 sensation, is merely to say that I feel a feeling ; which 
 is an impropriety of speech. And to say I am con- 
 scious of a feeling, is merely to say that I feel it. To 
 have a feeling is to be conscious ; and to be conscious 
 is to have a feeling. To be conscious of the prick of the 
 pin, is merely to have the sensation. And though I 
 have these various modes of naming my sensation, by 
 saying, I feel the prick of a pin, I feel the pain of a 
 prick, I have the sensation of a prick, I have the feeling 
 of a prick, I am conscious of the feeling ; the thing 
 named in all these various ways is one and the same. 
 
 " The same explanation will easily be seen to apply to 
 ideas. Though at present I have not the sensation 
 called the prick of a pin, I have a distinct idea of it. 
 
 * Analysis of the Human Mind, i. 170-172. 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 147 
 
 The having an idea, and the not having it, are distin- 
 guished by the existence or non-existence of a certain 
 feeling. To have an idea, and the feeling of that idea, 
 are not two things ; they are one and the same thing. 
 To feel an idea, and to be conscious of that feeling, are 
 not two things ; the feeling and the consciousness arc but 
 two names for the same thing. In the very word feeling, 
 all that is implied in the word Consciousness is involved. 
 
 "Those philosophers, therefore, who have spoken of 
 Consciousness as a feeling distinct from all other feel- 
 ings, committed a mistake, and one, the evil conse- 
 quences of which have been most important ; for, by 
 combining a chimerical ingredient with the elements of 
 thought, they involved their inquiries in confusion and 
 mystery from the very commencement. 
 
 " It is easy to see what is the nature of the terms 
 Conscious and Consciousness, and what is the marking 
 function which they are destined to perform. lt was 
 
 of great importance, for the purpose of naming, that we * 
 should not only have names to distinguish the different 
 classes of our feelings, but also a name applicable 
 equally to all those classes. This purpose is answered 
 by the concrete term, Conscious ; and the abstract of 
 it, Consciousness. Thus, if we are in any way sen- 
 tient ; that is, have any of the feelings whatsoever of a 
 living creature ; the word Conscious is applicable to 
 the feeler, and Consciousness to the feeling : that is to 
 say, the words are Generical marks, under which all the 
 
 names of the subordinate classes of the feelings of a 
 
 ^s 
 sentient creature are included^ When I smell a rose, 
 
 I am conscious ; when I have the idea of a fire, I am 
 conscious ; when I remember, I am conscious ; when I 
 
148 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD 
 
 reason, and when I believe, I am conscious ; but believing, 
 and being conscious of belief, are not two things, they 
 are the same thing : though this same thing I can name 
 at one time without the aid of the generical mark, while 
 at another time it suits me to employ the generical mark." 
 Sir TV. Hamilton's doctrine is exactly this, except 
 that he expresses the latter part of it in less perspicuous 
 phraseology, saying that Consciousness is "the funda- 
 mental form, the generic condition," of all the modes of 
 our mental activity ; * " in fact, the general condition of 
 their existence." f But, while holding the same theory 
 with Brown and Mr. Mill, he completes it by the ad- 
 dition, that though our mental states and our conscious- 
 ness of them are only the same fact, they are the same 
 fact regarded in different relations. Considered in them- 
 selves, 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 cer- 
 tain modifications are known by me, and that these 
 modifications are mine." J In this self-affirmation, how- 
 ever, no additional fact is introduced. It "is not to 
 be viewed as anything different from " the " modifications 
 themselves." There is but one mental phenomenon, 
 the act of feeling : but as this implies an acting or 
 feeling Self, we give it a name which connotes its re- 
 lation to the Self, and that name is Consciousness. 
 Thus, w consciousness and knowledge," and I think 
 
 * Discussions, p. 48. t Lectures, i. 193. 
 
 t Ibid. Ibid. pp. 194, 195. 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 149 
 
 he would have added, feeling (the mind's "affections") 
 as well as knowledge " are not distinguished by dif- 
 ferent words as different things, but only as the same 
 thing considered in different aspects. The verbal dis- 
 tinction is taken for the sake of brevity and precision, 
 and its convenience warrants its establishment. . . . 
 Though each term of a relation necessarily supposes 
 the other, nevertheless one of these terms may be to 
 us the more interesting, and we may consider that term 
 as the principal, and view the other only as subordinate 
 and correlative. Now, this is the case in the present 
 instance. In an act of knowledge, my attention may 
 be principally attracted either to the object known, or 
 to myself, as the subject knowing; and in the latter 
 case, although no new element be added to the act, the 
 condition involved in it I know that I know be- 
 comes the primary and permanent matter of considera- 
 tion. And when, as in the philosophy of mind, the 
 act of knowledge comes to be specially considered in 
 relation to the knowing subject, it is, at last, in the 
 progress of the science, found convenient, if not abso- 
 lutely necessary, to possess a scientific word in which 
 this point of view should be permanently and distinc- 
 tively embodied." 
 
 If any doubt could have existed, after this passage, 
 of Sir W. Hamilton's opinion on the question, it would 
 have been removed by one of the fragments recently 
 published by his editors, in continuation of the Disser- 
 tations on Reid. I extract the words : * 
 
 "Consciousness is not to be regarded as aught dif- 
 ferent from the mental modes or movements themselves. 
 
 * Supplement to Reid, p. 932. 
 VOL. i. 7 
 
150 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD 
 
 It is not to be viewed as an illuminated place within 
 which objects coming are presented to, and passing be- 
 yond are withdrawn from, observation ; nor is it to be 
 considered even as an observer the mental modes 
 as phenomena observed. Consciousness is just the 
 movements themselves, rising above a certain degree 
 of intensity. ... It is only a comprehensive word for 
 those mental movements which rise at once above a 
 certain degree of intension." * 
 
 We now pass to a question which is of no little im- 
 portance 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 conspicu- 
 ous part both in his own speculations and in those of 
 some of his followers. Let us now look at this distinc- 
 tion 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 repre- 
 
 * The qualification here first introduced, of *' rising above a certain degree 
 of intensity," has reference to a doctrine of our author, to be fully con- 
 sidered hereafter that of latent mental states. It makes no abatement 
 from the doctrine that consciousness of a feeling is the feeling ; for mental 
 states which are not intense enough to rise into consciousness, are, accord- 
 ing to the same theory, not intense enough to be felt : and if felt, the feel- 
 ing, and the consciousness of the feeling, are one and the same. 
 
 It was not without some difficulty, and after considerable study, that I was 
 able to satisfy myself that Sir W. Hamilton held the sound and rational 
 theory with which I have credited him in the text. For he often states 
 and defends his doctrine in a manner which might lead one to think, that 
 in saying that to know, and to know that we know, are but one fact, he 
 does not mean one fact, but two facts which are inseparable. This misap- 
 prehension of his meaning is favored by his repeated use of (what we 
 seldom meet with in his writings) a false illustration ; that of the sides and 
 angles of a triangle. " The sides suppose the angles the angles suppose 
 the sides, and, in fact, the sides and angles are in themselves, in reality, 
 one and indivisible." (Lectures, i. 194.) " The sides and angles of a 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 151 
 
 sentative, knowledge of the past and the absent, he has 
 told us that " in philosophical propriety " it ought not to 
 be called knowledge, but belief. We do not, properly 
 speaking, know a past event, but believe it, by reason 
 of the present recollection which we immediately know. 
 We do not, properly speaking, perceive or know the 
 sun, but we perceive and know an image in contact with 
 our organs, and believe the existence of the sun through 
 " a process of reasoning " which connects the image that 
 we directly perceive, with something else as its cause. 
 Again, though we cannot know an Infinite or an Abso- 
 lute 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 the 
 Infinite and the Absolute this belief is a fact present in 
 time and in place a phenomenon of our own mind ; 
 of this we are conscious ; this we immediately know. 
 
 triangle (or trilateral) as mutually correlative as together making up the 
 same simple figure and as, without destruction of that figure, actually 
 inseparable from it, and from each other, are really one ; but inasmuch as 
 they have peculiar relations, which may, in thought, be considered sever- 
 ally and for themselves, they are logically twofold." (Dissertations on 
 Reid, p. 806.) According to this, the sides are in reality the angles looked 
 at in a particular point of view ; and the angles the same thing as the 
 sides, regarded in a particular relation to something else. "When this was 
 the illustration selected of the identity between Consciousness and Knowl- 
 edge, it was natural to suppose that the writer regarded these two as no 
 otherwise one than the sides and angles of a triangle are. But a closer 
 examination has satisfied me that Sir W. Hamilton was only wrong 
 respecting sides and angles, and not respecting Consciousness and Knowl- 
 edge. On the former subject he has against him not only the reason of 
 the case, but his own authority ; for he says, when discoursing on another 
 subject (foot-note to Reid, p. 590) : " It is not more reasonable to identify 
 sense with judgment, because the former cannot exist without an act of 
 the latter, than it would be to identify the sides and angles of a mathemati- 
 cal figure, because sides and angles cannot exist apaftfrom each other" 
 
 
152 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD 
 
 Such, it is impossible to doubt, is Sir W. Hamilton's 
 opinion. 
 
 Let us now apply to this the general principle em- 
 phatically 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." Cft is impossible to make consciousness con- 
 versant abouF 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 criticised 
 Reid and Stewart ; it would be to maintain " that I can 
 know that I [believe] without knowing what I [be- 
 lieve] 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 
 
BY SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON. 153 
 
 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 be- 
 lief : and it must be as " manifest " of the one act as of 
 the other,. " that it can be known only through the ob- 
 ject 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, ex- 
 actly 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 knowl- 
 edge 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 explana- 
 tion 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 
 
154 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD 
 
 outward existence of the object is a deliverance of con- 
 sciousness, 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 opera- 
 tion 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 in- 
 volved 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 phi- 
 losophers, 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,f "But, on 
 the other hand, the manifestation of this belief necessa- 
 rily involves knowledge ; for we cannot believe without 
 some consciousness or knowledge of the belief, and con- 
 sequently without some consciousness or knowledge of 
 the object of the belief." The remark which this tardy 
 reflection suggests to him is merely this : " The consid- 
 eration, however, of the relation of Belief and Knowl- 
 edge 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 
 
 * Lectures, iv. 70. f Ibid. p. 73. 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 155 
 
 one of the most difficult problems of which Metaphys- 
 ics 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 respon- 
 sibility 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 de- 
 partment 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. (Tf Sir W. Hamilton's theory 
 of consciousness is correct, it does not leave the differ- 
 ence between Belief and Knowledge in a state of obscu- 
 rity, 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 aban- 
 doning 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 at- 
 tempt 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 cer- 
 
 * Lectures, iv. 62. 
 
156 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD 
 
 tainty founded upon insight ; Belief is a certainty found- 
 ed 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 be- 
 stowed 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 found- 
 ed 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 prepon- 
 derating. They must be equal and coextensive. The 
 whole of what we know we must believe ; and the 
 whole of what we believe we must know : for we know 
 that we believe it, and the act of belief " can only be 
 known through the object to which it is correlative." 
 Our conviction is not divided, in varying proportions, 
 between knowledge and belief: the two must always 
 keep abreast of one another. 
 
 All this follows, whatever may be the meaning of the 
 " insight" which forms the distinction in kind between 
 belief and knowledge. But what is this insight ? "The 
 immediate consciousness of an object " (he goes on to 
 say) "is called an intuition, an insight."* So that if 
 knowledge is distinguished from belief by being grounded 
 on insight, it is distinguished by being grounded on 
 immediate consciousness. But belief also supposes 
 
 * Lectures, iv. 73. 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 157 
 
 immediate consciousness, since "we cannot believe with- 
 out 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 con- 
 scious 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 knowl- 
 edge 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 par- 
 lance to what is regarded as true, while belief may con- 
 fessedly 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 con- 
 scious of a non-existent fact. Yet the one proposition 
 7* 
 
158 CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 must be equally true with the other, if consciousness of 
 an act involves consciousness of the object of the act. 
 It is over the ruins of this false theory that we must 
 force our way out of the labyrinth in which Sir W. 
 Hamilton has imprisoned us. It may be true, or it may 
 not, that an external world is an object of immediate 
 knowledge. But assuredly we cannot conclude that we 
 have an immediate knowledge of external things, because 
 we have an immediate knowledge of our cognitions of 
 them ; whether these cognitions are to be termed belief, 
 with Reid, or knowledge, with Sir W. Hamilton.* 
 
 * In many parts of Sir W. Hamilton's writings, it seems as if the distinc- 
 tion which he draws between knowledge and belief was meant to corre- 
 spond to the difference between what we can explain by reference to some- 
 thing else, and those ultimate facts and principles which cannot be referred 
 to anything higher. He often speaks of knowledge as resting ultimately 
 on belief, and of ultimate principles as not known, but believed by a ne- 
 cessity of our nature. The distinction is real, but the employment of the 
 words knowledge and belief to express it, is arbitrary and incongruous. 
 To say that we believe the premises, but know the conclusion, would be 
 understood by every one as meaning that we had other independent evi- 
 dence of the conclusion. If we only know it through the premises, the 
 same name ought in reason to be given to our assurance of both. Accord- 
 ingly Sir \V. Hamilton himself says, in one of the Dissertations on Reid 
 (p. 763), that " the principles of our knowledge must be themselves knowl- 
 edge." And there are few who will not approve this use of language, and 
 condemn the other. 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 159 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 ACORDING to all philosophers, the evidence of Con- 
 sciousness, 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 be- 
 ing, 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 im- 
 mediate 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 
 
160 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 knowledge. If he dislikes the word, I am willing in 
 discussing with him to employ some other. By what- 
 ever 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. OVe 
 mean by knowledge, and by certainty, an assurance sim- 
 ilar and equal to that afforded by our senses : if the 
 evidence 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 evi- 
 dence is what we must, and may with full confidence, act 
 upon. Absolute scepticism, if there be such a thing, 
 maybe 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 main- 
 tains 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 philosophi- 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 161 
 
 cally 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 ad- 
 mitted, 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.* 
 
 "A fact of consciousness is that whose existence is 
 given and guaranteed by an original and necessary belief. 
 But there is an important distinction to be here made, 
 which has not only been overlooked by all philosophers, 
 but has led some of the most distinguished into no incon- 
 siderable errors. 
 
 " The facts of consciousness are to be considered in 
 two points of view ; either as evidencing their own ideal 
 or phenomenal existence, or as evidencing the objective 
 existence of something else beyond them. A belief in 
 the former is not identical with a belief in the latter. 
 The one cannot, the other may possibly, be refused. In 
 the case of a common witness, we cannot doubt the fact 
 of his personal reality, nor the fact of his testimony as 
 emitted, but we can always doubt the truth of that 
 which his testimony avers. So it is with consciousness. 
 We cannot possibly refuse the fact of its evidence as 
 given, but we may hesitate to admit that beyond itself 
 of which it assures us. I shall explain by taking an 
 example. In the act of External Perception, conscious- 
 
 * Lectures, i. 271-275. 
 
162 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 ness gives as a conjunct fact, the existence of Me or Self 
 as perceiving, and the existence of something different 
 from Me or Self as perceived. Now, the reality of this, 
 as a subjective datum as an ideal phenomenon it is 
 absolutely impossible to doubt without doubting the ex- 
 istence of consciousness, for consciousness is itself this 
 fact ; and to doubt the existence of consciousness is abso- 
 lutely impossible ; for as such a doubt could not exist 
 except in and through consciousness, it would conse- 
 quently annihilate itself. We should doubt that we 
 doubted. As contained as given in an act of con- 
 sciousness, the contrast of mind knowing and matter 
 known cannot be denied. 
 
 " But the whole phenomenon as given in consciousness 
 maybe admitted, and yet its inference disputed. It may 
 be said, consciousness gives the mental subject as per- 
 ceiving an external object, contradistinguished from it as 
 perceived : all this we do not, and cannot, deny. But 
 consciousness is only a phenomenon ; the contrast 
 between the subject and object may be only apparent, 
 not real ; the object given as an external reality, may 
 only be a mental representation which the mind is, by an 
 unknown law, determined unconsciously to produce, and 
 to mistake for something different from itself. All this 
 may be said and believed, without self-contradiction, 
 nay, all this has, by the immense majority of modern 
 philosophers, been actually said and believed. 
 
 " In like manner, in an act of Memory, consciousness 
 connects a present existence with a past. I cannot deny 
 the actual phenomenon, because my denial would be 
 suicidal ; but I can without self-contradiction assert that 
 consciousness may be a false witness in regard to any 
 

 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 163 
 
 former existence ; and I may maintain, if I please, that 
 the memory of the past, in consciousness, is nothing but 
 a phenomenon, which has no reality beyond the present. 
 There are many other facts of consciousness which we 
 cannot but admit as ideal phenomena, but may discredit 
 as guaranteeing aught beyond their phenomenal exist- 
 ence itself. The legality of this doubt I do not at pres- 
 ent consider, but only its possibility ; all that I have 
 now in view being to show that we must not confound, 
 as has been done, the double import of the facts, and the 
 two degrees of evidence for their reality. This mistake 
 has, among others, been made by Mr. Stewart. . . . 
 
 " With all the respect to which the opinion of so dis- 
 tinguished a philosopher as Mr. Stewart is justly entitled, 
 I must be permitted to say, that I cannot but regard his 
 assertion that the present existence of the phenomena of 
 consciousness and the reality of that to which these phe- 
 nomena bear witness, rest on a foundation equally solid 
 as wholly untenable. The second fact, the fact testi- 
 fied to, may be worthy of all credit as I agree with 
 Mr. Stewart in thinking that it is ; but still it does not 
 rest on a foundation equally solid as the fact of the testi- 
 mony itself. Mr. Stewart confesses that of the former 
 no doubt had ever been suggested by the boldest sceptic ; 
 and the latter, in so far as it assures us of our having an 
 immediate knowledge of the external world. which is 
 the case alleged by Mr. Stewart, has been doubted, 
 nay, denied, not merely by sceptics, but by modern philos- 
 ophers almost to a man. This historical circumstance, 
 therefore, of itself, would create a strong presumption, 
 that the two facts must stand on very different founda- 
 tions ; and this presumption is confirmed when we inves- 
 tigate what these foundations themselves are. 
 
104 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 "The one fact the fact of the testimony is an act 
 of consciousness itself; it cannot, therefore, be invali- 
 dated without self-contradiction. For, as we have fre- 
 quently observed, to doubt of the reality of that of which 
 we are conscious is impossible ; for as we can only doubt 
 through consciousness, to doubt of consciousness is to 
 doubt of consciousness by consciousness. If, on the one 
 hand, we affirm the reality of the doubt, we thereby 
 explicitly affirm the reality of consciousness, and contra- 
 dict our doubt; if, on the other hand, we deny the 
 reality of consciousness, we implicitly deny the reality 
 of our denial itself. Thus, in the act of perception, 
 consciousness gives, as a conjunct fact, an ego or rnind, 
 and a non-ego or matter, known together, and contra- 
 distinguished from each other. Now, as a present phae- 
 nomenon, this double fact cannot possibly be denied. I 
 cannot, therefore, refuse the fact that, in perception, I am 
 conscious of a phenomenon which I am compelled to 
 regard as the attribute of something different from my 
 mind or self. This I must perforce admit, or run into 
 self-contradiction. But admitting this, may I not still, 
 without self-contradiction, maintain that what I am com- 
 pelled to view as the phenomenon of something different 
 from me is nevertheless (unknown to me) only a modifi- 
 cation of my mind ? In this I admit the fact of the tes- 
 timony of consciousness as given, but deny the truth of 
 its report. Whether this denial of the truth of con- 
 sciousness as a witness, is or is not legitimate, we are 
 not at this moment to consider : all I have in view at 
 present is, as I said, to show that we must distinguish in 
 consciousness two kinds of facts the fact of conscious- 
 ness testifying, and the fact of which consciousness testi- 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1G5 
 
 fies ; and that we must not, as Mr. Stewart has done, 
 hold that we can as little doubt of the fact of the exist- 
 ence of an external world, as of the fact that conscious- 
 ness gives in mutual contrast the phenomenon of self, 
 in contrast to the phenomenon of not-self. 
 
 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 discus- 
 sion ; it is not the reality of consciousness that we have 
 to prove, but its veracity." 
 
 By the conception and clear exposition of this dis- 
 tinction, 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, what- 
 ever be the positive value of his achievements in meta- 
 physics, he had a greater capacity for the subject than 
 many metaphysicians of high reputation, and particu- 
 larly 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 con- 
 sciousness, 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 ; w the mind's 
 
166 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 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 sup- 
 posed 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 color 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, how- 
 ever, would not say that perception of distance by the 
 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 conscious- 
 ness generally, not having been in consciousness from 
 the beginning. 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 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OP CONSCIOUSNESS. 167 
 
 is not satisfied to let this truth rest on its own evidence. 
 He wants a demonstration of it. As if it were not suf- 
 ficiently 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 con- 
 sciousness, 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-affirrnation of its truth ; without our either believing 
 or disbelieving that we doubt. If doubt is any thing 
 other than merely negative, it means an insufficient 
 assurance ; a disposition to believe, with an inability to 
 believe confidently. But there are degrees of insuffi- 
 ciency ; and if we suppose, for argument's sake, that it 
 is possible to doubt consciousness, it may be possible to 
 
 * It is rather more speciously put in a foot-note on Reid (p. 231) : " To 
 doubt that we are conscious of this or that, is impossible. For the doubt 
 must at least postulate itself; but the doubt is only a datum of conscious- 
 ness ; therefore in postulating its own reality, it admits the truth of con- 
 sciousness, and consequently annihilates itself." In another foot-note 
 (p. 442) he says, " In doubting the fact of his consciousness, the sceptic 
 must at least affirm the fact of his doubt ; but to affirm a doubt is to affirm 
 the consciousness of it ; the doubt would, therefore, be self-contradictory 
 t. e., annihilate itself." And again (Dissertations on Reid, p. 744) : " As 
 doubt is itself only a manifestation of consciousness, it is impossible to 
 doubt that what consciousness manifests, it does manifest, without, in 
 thus doubting, doubting that, we actually doubt ; that is, without the doubt 
 contradicting and therefore annihilating itself." 
 
168 THE INTERPRETATION OP CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 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 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. Omit- 
 ting Socrates (who was no sceptic as to the reality of 
 knowledge, but only as to its having yet been attained) , 
 and endeavoring 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 
 
 * In another passage of our author (Lectures, iv. 69), the same argument 
 reappears in different words, and for a different purpose. He is speaking 
 of the Criterion of Truth. This criterion, he says, " is the necessity de- 
 termined by the laws which govern our faculties of knowledge, and the 
 consciousness of this necessity is certainty. That the necessity of a cogni- 
 tion, that is, the impossibility of thinking it other than as it is presented 
 that this necessity, as founded on the laws of thought, is the criterion of 
 truth, is shown by the circumstance that where such necessity is found, nil 
 doubt in regard to the correspondence of the cognitive thought and its ob- 
 ject must vanish ; for to doubt whether what we necessarily think in a cer- 
 tain manner, actually exists as we conceive it, is nothing less than an en- 
 deavor to think the necessary as the not necessary or the impossible, 
 which is contradictory." 
 
 It is very curious to find Sir W. Hamilton maintaining that our necessi- 
 ties of thought are proof of corresponding realities of existence that 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OP CONSCIOUSNESS. 169 
 
 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 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 correct- 
 ness 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 cer- 
 tain facts, and then of disbelieving those facts. That 
 great majority of philosophers of whom Sir W. Hamilton 
 speaks, would, I apprehend, altogether deny this state- 
 ment. They never dreamed of disputing the veracity 
 of consciousness. They denied what Sir W. Hamilton 
 thinks 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 respect- 
 things must actually be so and so because it is impossible for us to think 
 them as being -otherwise ; forgetful of the whole " Philosophy of the Con- 
 ditioned," and the principle so often asserted by him, that things may, nay, 
 must, be true, of which it is impossible for us to conceive even the possi- 
 bility. But we are here only concerned with his argument, and in that he 
 forgets that to doubt is not a positive but a negative fact. It simply means, 
 not to have any knowledge or assured belief on the subject. Now, how 
 can it be asserted that this negative state of mind is " an endeavor to 
 think " anything ? And (even if it were) an endeavor to think a contradic- 
 tion is not a contradiction. An endeavor to think what cannot be 
 thought, far from being impossible, is the test by which we ascertain its un- 
 thinkability. The failure of the endeavor in the case supposed, would not 
 prove that what we were endeavoring to think was unreal, but only that 
 it was unthinkable ; which was already assumed in the hypothesis : and 
 our author has earned us round a long circuit, to return to the point from 
 which we set out. 
 
170 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 ing 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 be- 
 lieve 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 un- 
 deniable : 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 saying that there are certain 
 primary elements of cognition, manifesting themselves 
 to us as facts of which consciousness assures us, he 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 171 
 
 continues,* "How, it is asked, do these primary proposi- 
 tions these cognitions at first hand these fundamental 
 facts, feelings, beliefs, certify us of their own veracity? 
 To this the only possible answer is, that as elements of 
 our mental constitution as the essential conditions of 
 our knowledge they must by us be accepted as true. 
 To suppose their falsehood, is to suppose that we are 
 created capable of intelligence, in order to be made the 
 victims of delusion ; that God is a deceiver, and the 
 root of our nature a lie : " that man is " organized f 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 re- 
 solved, 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 con- 
 sciousness ? The divine veracity can only be known in 
 two ways : 1st, by intuition, or 2dly, through evidence. 
 If it is known by intuition, it is itself a fact of conscious- 
 ness, 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 wo 
 hold, on the contrary, with our author, that God is not 
 known by intuition, but proved by evidence, that evi- 
 dence must rest, in the last resort, on consciousness. 
 All proofs of religion, natural or revealed, must be de- 
 rived either from the testimony of the senses, or from 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 743. * t Ibid. p. 725. 
 
172 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 internal feelings of the mind, or from reasonings of 
 which one or other of these sources supplied the prem- 
 ises. Religion, thus itself resting on the evidence of 
 consciousness, cannot be invoked to prove that con- 
 sciousness 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 extraordi- 
 nary ^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 prima facie pre- 
 sumption. "Such* a supposition" as that of a perfidi- 
 ous creator, "if gratuitous, is manifestly illegitimate." 
 " The data of our original consciousness must, it is evi- 
 dent, in the first instance" (the italics are the author's), 
 " be presumed true. It is only if proved false," which 
 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 counter- 
 action of herself; our faculty of knowledge is not, with- 
 out 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 pre- 
 sumption, in the absence of contrary evidence ; that the 
 Divine Being, like a prisoner at the bar, should be pre- 
 sumed innocent until proved guilty. Far, however, from 
 intending this remark in any invidious sense against Sir 
 * Dissertations on Reid, pp. 743-745. 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OP CONSCIOUSNESS. 173 
 
 "VV. Hamilton, I regard it as one of his titles to honor, 
 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 is, that his logic 
 is not sufficiently consistent. The 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 presump- 
 tion. 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 prima 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 trustworthi- 
 ness of these last, that he assigns as presumptive evi- 
 dence (which the absence of counter-evidence raises into 
 
174 THE INTERPRETATION OP CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 proof) the divine veracity. That veracity itself, he may 
 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 pha^nomena of conscious- 
 ness 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 ne- 
 cessary to the proof of religion, his opinion must have 
 been that our knowledge of God rests upon the affirma- 
 tion which Consciousness makes of itself, and not of 
 anything beyond itself; that the divine existence and 
 attributes may be proved without assuming that con- 
 sciousness 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 ob- 
 jective 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 au- 
 thority for treating as a mere apprehension ! f 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 745. 
 
 t Accordingly Sir W. Hamilton says elsewhere (Appendix to Lectures, 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OP CONSCIOUSNESS. 175 
 
 Cut something more is necessary to render the divine 
 veracity available in support of the testimony of con- 
 sciousness, 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 fact : and our author draws the in- 
 ference from his having made it an original and inde- 
 structible 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 admitted that we have 
 a natural tendency to believe something which they con- 
 sidered to be an illusion : but it cannot be affirmed that 
 God intended us to do whatever we have a natural ten- 
 dency 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 t"hat the tendency in question seems to 
 be an " instinct," and has called a psychological doctrine, 
 which he regarded as groundless, a " 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 
 
 i. 394), " Religious disbelief and philosophical scepticism are not merely 
 not the same, but have no natural connection." I regret that this state- 
 ment is followed by a declaration that the former " must ever be a mat- 
 ter" not merely "of regret," but of "reprobation." This imputation of 
 moral blame to an opinion sincerely entertained and honestly arrived at, 
 is a blot which one would willingly not have found in a thinker of so much 
 ability, and in general of so high a moral tone. 
 
176 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 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 
 than 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 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 pur- 
 poses 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 con- 
 sciousness. 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 it- 
 self, may be, and is, denied; but what is denied has 
 almost always been that consciousness gives the testi- 
 mony ; not that, if given, it must be believed. 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 177 
 
 At first sight it might seem as if there could not pos- 
 sibly be any doubt whether our consciousness does or 
 does not affirm any given thing. Nor can there, if con- 
 sciousness means, as it usually does, self-consciousness. 
 If consciousness tells me that I have a certain thought 
 
 O 
 
 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 phenomena 
 of my own mind, there is immediately the broadest 
 divergence of opinion as to what are the things 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 man- 
 ner they came by the belief. For Consciousness, in this 
 extended sense, is, as we have so often observed, but an- 
 other 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." f And 
 
 * Lectures, iv. 137. 
 
 t There are writers of reputation in the present day, who maintain in 
 unqualified terms, that we know by intuition the impossibility of miracles. 
 " La negation du miracle," says M. Nefftzer (Revue Germanique for Sep- 
 tember, 1863, p. 183), "n'est pas subordonnee a 1'experience ; elle est une 
 necessite logique et un fait de certitude interne ; elle doit etre le premier 
 article du credo de tout historien et de tout penseur." 
 
178 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 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 ex- 
 ample, he characterizes thus : f " Assertion is substituted 
 for proof; facts of consciousness are alleged, which con- 
 sciousness never knew; and paradoxes, that baffle argu- 
 ment, are promulgated as intuitive truths, above the 
 necessity of confirmation." M. Cousin's particular mis- 
 interpretation of consciousness was, as we saw, that of 
 supposing that each of its acts testifies to three things, 
 of which three 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, mis- 
 takes 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 phi- 
 losopher, 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 Eeid's. 
 Finally, Sir W. Hamilton imputes a similar error, no 
 longer to any particular metaphysician, but to the world 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 749. f Discussions, p 25. 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OP CONSCIOUSNESS. 179 
 
 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 
 
 * Reid himself places the "natural belief," which Sir W. Hamilton re- 
 jects, on exactly the level of those which he most strenuously maintains, 
 saying (Works, Hamilton's edition, p. 284), in a passage which our author 
 himself quotes, " The vulgar are firmly persuaded that the very identical 
 objects which they perceive continue to exist when they do not perceive 
 them ; and are no less firmly persuaded that when ten men look at the sun 
 or the moon, they all see the same individual object." And Reid avows 
 that he agrees with the vulgar in both opinions. But Sir \V. Hamilton, 
 while he upholds the former of these as one to deny which would be to 
 declare our nature a lie, thinks that nothing can be more absurd than the 
 latter of them. " Nothing," he says (Lectures, ii. 129), " can be conceived 
 more ridiculous than the opinion of philosophers in regard to this. For ex- 
 ample, it has been curiously held (and Reid is no exception) that in look- 
 ing at the sun, moon, or any other object of sight, we arc, on the one doc- 
 trine, actually conscious of these distant objects, or, on the other, that 
 these distant objects are those really represented in the mind. Nothing 
 can be more absurd : we perceive, through no sense, aught external but 
 what is in immediate relation and in immediate contact with its organ. . . . 
 Through the eye we perceive nothing but the rays of light in relation to, 
 and in contact with, the retina." 
 
 The basis of the whole Ideal System, which it is thought to be the great 
 merit of Reid to have exploded, was a natural prejudice, supposed to be 
 intuitively evident, namely, that that which knows, must be of a similar 
 
180 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 Consciousness the equivalent phrase (in our author's ac- 
 ceptation 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 lib- 
 erty 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 
 
 nature with that which is known by it. " This principle," says our author 
 (foot-note to Reid, p. 300), " has, perhaps, exerted a more extensive in- 
 fluence on speculation than any other. ... It would be easy to show that 
 the belief, explicit or implicit, that what knows and what is immediately 
 known must be of an analogous nature, lies at the root of almost every 
 theory of cognition, from the very earliest to the very latest speculations. 
 . . . And yet it has not been proved, and is incapable of proof, nay, is 
 contradicted by the evidence of consciousness itself." 
 
 But though Sir W. Hamilton manifests himself thus thoroughly aware 
 how wide the differences of opinion may be and are respecting our intui- 
 tive perceptions, I by no means intend to deny that he on certain occa 
 sions affirms the contrary. In the fourth volume of the Lectures (p. 95), 
 he says, " I have here limited the possibility of error to Probable Reason- 
 ing, for, in Intuition and Demonstration, there is but little possibility of 
 important error." After a certain amount of reading of Sir W. Hamilton, 
 one is used to these contradictions. "What he here asserts to be so nearly 
 impossible, that no account needs to be taken of it in a classification of 
 Error, he is continually fighting against in detail, and imputing to nearly 
 all philosophers. And when he says (Lectures, i. 266) that the "revela- 
 tion " of consciousness is " naturally clear," and only mistaken by phi- 
 losophers because they resort to it solely for confirmation of their own 
 opinions, he is merely transporting into psychology the dogmatism of the- 
 ologians. 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 181 
 
 philosophers. " The first * problem of philosophy " is 
 " to seek out, purify, and establish, by intellectual anal- 
 ysis 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 " manifestly dependent on philosophy as 
 an art, as an acquired dexterity, and cannot, notwith- 
 standing the errors which they have so frequently com- 
 mitted, be taken out of the hands of the philosophers. 
 Common Sense is like Common Law. Each may be 
 laid down as the general rule of decision ; but in the one 
 case it must be left to the jurist, in the other to the phi- 
 losopher, to ascertain what are the contents of the rule ; 
 and though in both instances the common man may be 
 cited as a witness for the custom or the fact, in neither 
 can he be allowed to officiate as advocate or as judge." 
 
 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 deter- 
 mined in what manner science should set about it. C^nd 
 here emerges the distinction between two different meth- 
 ods of studying the problems of metaphysics, forming 
 the radical difference between the two great schools into 
 which metaphysicians are fundamentally divided. j 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 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 752. 
 8* 
 
182 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 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 sum- 
 mary 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 be- 
 gin 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 phenomena. 
 
 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 en- 
 titled to any regard, unless preceded by what M. Cousin 
 says ought only to follow it an inquiry into the origin 
 of our acquired ideas, (ffor 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 over- 
 laid 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, dis- 
 tinguishing and defining every ingredient which we find 
 to enter into them every element that we seem to recog- 
 nize as real, and cannot, by merely concentrating our 
 attention upon it, analyze into anything simpler we 
 reach the ultimate and primary truths, which are the 
 sources of all our. knowledge, and which cannot be 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 183 
 
 denied or doubted without denying or doubting the evi- 
 dence 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 ac- 
 cording 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 un- 
 contested, 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 interro- 
 gating consciousness in the only circumstances in which 
 it is possible for it to give a trustworthy answer, ^ould 
 we try the experiment of the first consciousness in any in- 
 fant its first reception of the impressions which we call 
 external ; whatever was present in that first conscious- 
 ness would be the genuine testimony of Consciousness, 
 
184 THE INTERPRETATION OP 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 con- 
 scious of outward and extended objects when we first 
 opened our eyes to the light. That a belief or knowl- 
 edge of such objects is in our consciousness now, when- 
 ever 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 point- 
 ed 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 con- 
 sciousness, supposes two things ; that the beliefs exist, 
 and that they cannot possibly have been acquired. The 
 first is in most cases undisputed, but the second is a sub- 
 ject of inquiry which often taxes the utmost resources 
 of psychology. 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 con- 
 sciousness until our earliest, which are necessarily our 
 most firmly knit associations, those which are most inti- 
 mately interwoven with the original data of conscious- 
 ness, are fully formed, we cannot study the original 
 elements of mind in the facts of our present conscious- 
 ness. Those original elements can only come to light, 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. J85 
 
 as residual phenomena, 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 sup- 
 posed intuitions which seem to be original, and to deter- 
 mine 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 at which memory 
 commences. ^Fhis mode of ascertaining the original 
 elements of mind I call the psychological, as distin- 
 guished 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 recon- 
 sideration of all our fundamental opinions, he says, 
 " There are among our prejudices, or pretended cogni- 
 tions, 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 philoso- 
 pher before he can attempt to become one. And he 
 elsewhere f bestows high praise upon Aristotle for not 
 falling "into the error of many modern philosophers, in 
 confounding the natural and necessary with the habitual 
 
 * Lectures, iv. 92. f Dissertations on Reid, p. 894. 
 
186 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 and acquired connections of thought," nor attempting 
 " to evolve the conditions under which we think from the 
 tendencies generated by thinking ; " a praise which can- 
 not be bestowed on our author himself. But, notwith- 
 standing 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 nought 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 learned from the author of the 
 Philosophy of the Conditioned. That we cannot im- 
 agine a time at which we had no knowledge of Exten- 
 sion, is no evidence that there has not been such a time. 
 There are mental laws, recognized 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. 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 832. 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OP CONSCIOUSNESS. 187 
 
 (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 
 could not have grown up subsequently. He demands, 
 indeed,* " that no fact be assumed as a fact of conscious- 
 ness but what is ultimate and simple." But to pronounce 
 it ultimate, the only condition he requires is, that we be 
 not able to " reduce it to a generalization from experi- 
 ence." 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 recognize 
 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, we may add, with 
 Kant, and even with Mr. Herbert Spencer. 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 no\^> 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 question is disputed, disproves the alleged 
 impossibility. Those against whom it is needful to de- 
 fend the belief which is affirmed to be necessary, are un- 
 mistakable examples that it is not necessary. It may 
 be a necessary belief to those who think it so ; they may 
 
 * Lectures, i. 268-270. 
 
188 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 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 ; like the impos- 
 sibility 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, 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 could not 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 treating the ques- 
 tion as one of science, and in what manner does he ap- 
 ply 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 them- 
 selves. It is the province of science, he thinks, to 
 resolve some of these beliefs into others. He prescribes, 
 as the 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 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 189 
 
 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 charac- 
 ter, which philosophers of his school have commonly as- 
 signed 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 study- 
 ing the primary facts of consciousness. In the mode he 
 practises of ascertaining them to be facts of conscious- 
 ness, 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, how- 
 ever, characteristic of what I have called the introspec- 
 tive, 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 ex- 
 emplify the use which can be made of the other. 
 
190 SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OP THEORIES 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 SIR w. HAMILTON'S VIEW or 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 "thatf as all phi- 
 losophy is evolved from consciousness, so, on the truth 
 of consciousness, the possibility of all philosophy is de- 
 pendent." But if any testimony of consciousness be 
 supposed false, " the J truth of no other fact of con- 
 sciousness can be maintained. The legal brocard, Falsus 
 in uno, falsus in omnibus, is a rule not more applicable 
 to other witnesses than to consciousness. Thus every 
 system of philosophy which implies the negation of any 
 fact of consciousness is not only necessarily unable, 
 without self-contradiction, to establish its own truth by 
 any appeal to consciousness ; it is also unable, without 
 self-contradiction, to appeal to consciousness against the 
 falsehood of any other system. If the absolute and 
 universal veracity of consciousness be once surrendered, 
 every system is equally true, or rather all are equally 
 
 * Lectures, i. 377. t Ibid. p. 285. % Ibid. p. 283. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 191 
 
 false ; philosophy is impossible, for it has now no in- 
 strument by which truth can be discovered, no standard 
 by which it can be tried ; the root of our nature is a 
 lie. But though it is thus manifestly the common inter- 
 est of every scheme of philosophy to preserve intact the 
 integrity of consciousness, almost every scheme of phi- 
 losophy is only another mode in which this integrity has 
 been violated. If, therefore, I am able to prove the fact 
 of this various violation, and to show that the facts of 
 coDsciousness have never, or hardly ever, been fairly 
 evolved, it will follow, as I said, that no reproach can 
 be justly addressed to consciousness as an ill-informed, 
 or vacillating, or perfidious witness, but to those only 
 who were too proud or too negligent to accept its testi- 
 mony, to employ its materials, and obey its laws." That 
 nearly all philosophers have merited this imputation, our 
 author endeavors to show by a classified enumeration of 
 the various theories which they have maintained respect- 
 ing 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 meta- 
 physics, 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 dif- 
 ferences between the two metaphysical methods. 
 
 " We are immediately conscious in perception," says 
 Sir W. Hamilton,* "of an ego and a non-ego, known 
 together, and known in contrast to each other. This is 
 the fact of the Duality of Consciousness. It is clear 
 and manifest. When I concentrate my attention in the 
 simplest act of perception, I return from my observation 
 
 * Lectures, i. 288-295. 
 
192 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 with the most irresistible conviction of two facts, or 
 rather two branches of the same fact; that I am, and 
 that something different from me exists. In this act I 
 am conscious of myself as the perceiving subject, and of 
 an external reality as the object perceived ; and I am 
 conscious of both existences in the same indivisible 
 moment of intuition. The knowledge of the subject 
 does not precede, nor follow, the knowledge of the ob- 
 ject; neither determines, neither is determined by, the 
 other. Such is the fact of perception revealed in con- 
 sciousness, and as it determines mankind in general in 
 their almost equal assurance of the reality of an external 
 world, as of the existence of our own minds." 
 
 "We may, therefore, lay it down as an undisputed 
 truth, that consciousness gives, as an ultimate fact, a 
 primitive duality ; a knowledge of the ego in relation 
 and contrast to the non-ego ; and a knowledge of the 
 non-ego in relation and contrast to the ego. The ego 
 and non-ego are thus given in an original synthesis, as 
 conjoined in the unity of knowledge, and in an original 
 antithesis, as opposed in the contrariety of existence. 
 In other words, we are conscious of them in an indivis- 
 ible act of knowledge together and at once, but we are 
 conscious of them as, in themselves, different and exclu- 
 sive of each other. 
 
 " Again, consciousness not only gives us a duality, but 
 it gives its elements in equal counterpoise and independ- 
 ence. The ego and non-ego mind and matter are 
 not only given together, but in absolute co-equality. 
 The one does not precede, the other does not follow ; 
 and, in their mutual relation, each is equally dependent, 
 equally independent. Such is the fact as given in and 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 193 
 
 by consciousness." Or rather (he should have said) 
 such is the answer we receive when we examine and in- 
 terrogate our present consciousness. To assert more 
 than this, merely on this evidence, is to beg the question 
 instead of solving it. 
 
 "Philosophers have not, however, been content to 
 accept the fact in its integrity, but have been pleased to 
 accept it only under such qualifications as it suited their 
 systems to devise. In truth, there are just as many 
 different philosophical systems originating in this fact, 
 as it admits of various possible modifications. An enu- 
 meration of these modifications, accordingly, affords an 
 enumeration of philosophical theories. 
 
 " In the first place, there is the grand division of phi- 
 losophers into those who do, and those who do not, accept 
 the fact in its integrity. Of modern philosophers, 
 almost all are comprehended under the latter category, 
 while of the former, if we do not remount to the school- 
 men and the ancients, I am only aware of a single phi- 
 losopher before Reid, who did not reject, at least in part, 
 the fact as consciousness affords it. 
 
 " As it is always expedient to possess a precise name 
 for a precise distinction, I would be inclined to denomi- 
 nate those who implicitly acquiesce in the primitive 
 duality as given in consciousness, the Natural Eealists, 
 or Natural Dualists, and their doctrine, Natural Real- 
 ism or Natural Dualism." This is, of course, the 
 author's own doctrine. 
 
 " In the second place, the philosophers who do not 
 accept the fact, and the whole fact, may be divided and 
 subdivided into various classes by various principles of 
 distribution. 
 
194 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 " The first subdivision will be taken from the total, or 
 partial, rejection of the import of the fact. I have 
 previously shown that to deny any fact of conscious- 
 ness as an actual phenomenon is utterly impossible." 
 (But it is very far from impossible to believe that some- 
 thing which we now confound with consciousness, may 
 have been altogether foreign to consciousness in its 
 primitive state.) "But though necessarily admitted as 
 a present phenomenon, the import of this pha3nomenon 
 all beyond our actual consciousness of its existence 
 may be denied. We are able, without self-contradic- 
 tion, to suppose, and consequently to assert, that all to 
 which the phenomenon of which we are conscious refers, 
 is a deception " (say rather, an unwarranted inference) ; 
 " that, for example, the past, to which an act of memory 
 refers, is only an illusion involved in our consciousness 
 of the present, that the unknown subject to which 
 ..fery phenomenon of which we are conscious involves a 
 .^ference, has no reality beyond this reference itself, 
 ,n short, that all our knowledge of mind or matter is 
 only a consciousness of various bundles of baseless 
 appearances. This doctrine, as refusing a substantial 
 reality to the phenomenal existence of which we are 
 conscious, is called Nihilism ; and consequently, philos- 
 ophers, as they affirm or deny the authority of conscious- 
 ness in guaranteeing a substratum or substance to the 
 manifestation of the ego and non-ego, are divided into 
 Realists or Substantialists, and into Nihilists or Non- 
 Substantialists. Of positive or dogmatic Nihilism there 
 is no example in modern philosophy. . . . But as a 
 sceptical conclusion from the premises of previous phi- 
 losophers, we have an illustrious example of Nihilism in 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 195 
 
 Hume ; and the celebrated Fichte admits that the specu- 
 lative principles of his own idealism would, unless cor- 
 rected by his practical, terminate in this result." 
 
 The Realists, or Substantialists, those who do believe 
 in a substratum, but reject the testimony of consciousness 
 to an immediate cognizance of an 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 sometliing purely mental) , are the Ideal- 
 ists. 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, main- 
 taining "that mind and matter are only phaenomenal 
 modifications of the same common substance. This is 
 the doctrine of Absolute Identity, a doctrine of which 
 the most illustrious representatives among recent philos- 
 ophers 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 " aref 
 distinguished from the Natural Dualists, of whom we 
 formerly spoke, in this that the latter establish the 
 existence of the two worlds of mind and matter on the 
 immediate knowledge we possess of both series of phe- 
 nomena a knowledge of which consciousness assures 
 
 * Lectures, i. 296, 297. t Ibid. 295, 296. 
 
196 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OP THEORIES 
 
 us ; whereas the former, surrendering the veracity of 
 consciousness to our immediate knowledge of material 
 phenomena, and consequently, our immediate knowledge 
 of the existence of matter, still endeavor, by various 
 hypotheses and reasonings, to maintain the existence of 
 an unknown external world. As we denominate those 
 who maintain a Dualism as involved in the fact of con- 
 sciousness, Natural Dualists, so we may style those 
 dualists who deny the evidence of consciousness to our 
 immediate knowledge of aught beyond the sphere of 
 mind, Hypothetical Dualists, or Cosmothetic Idealists. 
 
 " To the class of Cosmothetic Idealists, the great ma- 
 jority of modern philosophers are to be referred. Deny- 
 ing an immediate or intuitive knowledge of the external 
 reality, whose existence they maintain, they, of course, 
 hold a doctrine of mediate or representative perception ; 
 and, according to the various modifications of that doc- 
 trine, they are again subdivided into those who view, in 
 the immediate object of perception, a representative 
 entity present to the mind, but not a mere mental modifi- 
 cation, and into those who hold that the immediate object 
 is only a representative modification of the mind itself. 
 It is not always easy to determine to which of these 
 classes some philosophers belong. To the former, or 
 class holding the cruder hypothesis of representation, cer- 
 tainly belong the followers of Democritus and Epicurus, 
 those Aristotelians who held the vulgar doctrine of 
 species (Aristotle himself was probably a natural dualist) , 
 and in recent times, among many others, Malebranche, 
 Berkeley, Clarke, Newton, Abraham Tucker, &c. To 
 these is also, but problematically, to be referred, Locke. 
 To the second, or class holding the finer hypothesis of 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 197 
 
 representation, belong, without any doubt, many of the 
 Platonists, Leibnitz, Arnauld, Crousaz, Condillac, Kant, 
 &c., and to this class is also probably to be referred 
 Descartes." In our own country the best known, and 
 typical specimen of this mode of 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 
 
 * In one of the Dissertations on Reid (Dissertation C.) Sir W. Hamilton 
 gives a much more elaborate, and more minutely discriminated enumera- 
 tion and classification of the opinions which have been or might be held 
 respecting our knowledge of mind and of matter. But the one which I 
 have quoted from the Lectures is more easily followed, and sufficient for 
 all the purposes for which I have occasion to advert to it. I shall only cite 
 from the later exposition a single passage (p. 817), which exhibits in a 
 strong light the sentiments of our author towards philosophers of the school 
 of Brown. 
 
 "Natural Realism and Absolute Idealism are the only systems worthy 
 of a philosopher ; for, as they alone have any foundation in consciousness, 
 so they alone have any consistency in themselves. . . . Both build upon 
 the same fundamental fact, that the extended object immediately perceived 
 is identical with the extended object actually existing; for the truth of 
 this fact, both can appeal to the common sense of mankind ; and to the 
 common sense of mankind Berkeley did appeal not less confidently, and 
 perhaps more logically than Reid. . . . The scheme of Hypothetical Real- 
 ism or Cosmothetic Idealism, which supposes that behind the non-existent 
 world perceived, lurks a correspondent but unknown world existing, is 
 not only repugnant to our natural beliefs, but in manifold contradiction 
 with itself. The scheme of Natural Realism may be ultimately difficult 
 for, like all other truths, it ends in the inconceivable ; but Hypothetical 
 Realism in its origin in its development in its result, although the 
 favorite scheme of philosophers, is philosophically absurd." 
 
 Sir W. Hamilton may in general be depended on for giving a perfectly 
 fair statement of the opinions of adversaries ; but in this case his almost 
 passionate contempt for the later forms of Cosmothetic Idealism has misled 
 him. No Cosmothetic Idealist would accept as a fair statement of his 
 opinion, the monstrous proposition that a " non-existent world " is " per- 
 ceived." 
 
 VOL. i. 9 
 
198 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 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 never- 
 theless 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 com- 
 mon 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 con- 
 sider, and have a right to consider, as natural prejudices ; 
 held, nevertheless, by the generality of 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 contra- 
 diction 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 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 199 
 
 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 con- 
 clusiveness, the strangely sophistical reasoning by which 
 Kant, after getting rid of the 'out ward reality of all the 
 attributes of Body, persuades himself that he demon- 
 strates 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 hold- 
 ing the doctrine that we perceive external objects, not by 
 an immediate, but by a mediate or representative per- 
 
 * In the Lehrsatz of the 21st Supplement to the Kritik der Reinen Ver- 
 nnnft; the Lemma at p. 184 of Mr. Hay wood's Translation. See, also, in 
 Hnywood, the note at p. xxxix. of the Second Preface ; being Supplement 
 II. in Rosenkrauz and Schubert's edition of the collected works, vol. ii., 
 p. G84. 
 
200 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 ception. And he recognizes three divisions of them,* 
 according to three different forms in which this hypothe- 
 sis may be entertained. The supposed representative 
 object may be regarded, first, as not a 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 differ- 
 ent 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,f 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 me- 
 diate 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, 
 
 ' O 
 
 Stewart, and our author, are completely triumphant, 
 and I am in no way interested in pressing for a rehear- 
 ing of the cause. 
 
 But the third opinion, which is Brown's, cannot, with 
 
 * Discussions, p. 57. t Ibid. p. 58. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 201 
 
 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 under- 
 stand Brown which he took to understand far inferior 
 thinkers, he never would have described Brown's doc- 
 trine in terms so inappropriate. 
 
 Representative knowledge is always understood by our 
 author, to be knowledge of a thing by means of an im- 
 age 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 im- 
 agination does to a supposed possible presentation of 
 sense ; and as the Ideas of the earlier Cosmothetic Ide- 
 alists 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 mod- 
 ifications. The only relation between the two is that 
 of cause and effect. Brown, being free from the vul- 
 gar error of supposing 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 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 811. 
 
202 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 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, af- 
 fording 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 ac- 
 quainted 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 
 recognize this opinion of Brown, because it is exactly 
 the opinion which he himself holds respecting our knowl- 
 edge of objects in respect of their Secondary Qualities. 
 These, he says, are " in their own nature occult and in- 
 conceivable," and are known only in their effects on us, 
 that is, by the mental modifications which they produce. f 
 Further, Brown's is not only not a theory of representa- 
 tive 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 recognizes 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 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 842. 
 
 t Dissertations on Reid, p. 846 ; and the fuller explanation at pp. 854 
 and 857. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 203 
 
 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 neces- 
 sitated by the constitution of our nature, in what does 
 it differ from our author's direct consciousness ? Con- 
 sciousness, immediate knowledge, and intuitive knowl- 
 edge, are, Sir W. Hamilton tells us, convertible ex- 
 pressions ; and if it be granted that whenever our senses 
 are affected by a material object, we immediately and 
 intuitively recognize that object as existing and distinct 
 from us, it requires a great deal of ingenuity to make out 
 any substantial difference between this immediate intui- 
 tion 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 con- 
 fused 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 ob- 
 ject 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. 
 "In perception,* consciousness gives, as an ultimate 
 fact, a belief of the knowledge of the existence of some- 
 thing different from self . As ultimate, this belief can- 
 
 * Discussions, p. 89. 
 

 204 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 not be reduced to a higher principle ; neither can it be 
 truly analyzed into a double element. We only believe 
 that this something exists, because we believe that we 
 know (are conscious of) this something as existing ; the 
 belief of the existence is necessarily involved in the be- 
 lief of the knowledge of the existence. Both are ori- 
 ginal, or neither. Does consciousness deceive us in the 
 latter, it necessarily deludes us in the former ; and if 
 the former, though a fact of consciousness, is false, the 
 latter, because a fact of consciousness, is not true. The 
 beliefs contained in the two propositions, 
 
 "1. I believe that a material world exists ; 
 
 "2. I believe that I immediately know a material 
 world existing (in other words, I believe that 
 the external reality itself is the object of which 
 I am conscious in perception) , 
 
 though distinguished by philosophers, are thus virtually 
 identical. The belief of an external world was too pow- 
 erful, not to compel an acquiescence in its truth. But 
 the philosophers yielded to nature only in so far as to 
 coincide in the dominant result. They falsely discrimi- 
 nated the belief in the existence, from the belief in the 
 knowledge. With a few exceptions, they held fast by 
 the truth of the first ; but they concurred, with singular 
 unanimity, in abjuring the second." 
 
 Accordingly, Brown is rebuked because, while reject- 
 ing our natural belief that we know the external object, 
 he yet accepts our natural belief that it exists as a suffi- 
 cient 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 
 
 * Discussions, p. 86. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 205 
 
 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 incompre- 
 hensible ; it therefore is less a cognition than a belief. 
 But if we do not so much 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 gener- 
 ally, but in particular cases we may be able to find some- 
 thing 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 ; while Sir W. Hamilton's Knowledge 
 of the object is supposed to arise along with the sensa- 
 tion, 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 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 man- 
 ner to represent the non-ego, which representation, 
 though only a modification of mind or self, we are com- 
 pelled, 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,f "that Brown (and 
 Brown only speaks the language of all the philosophers 
 who do not allow the mind a consciousness of aught 
 beyond its own states) misstates the phenomenon when 
 he asserts that, in perception, there is a reference from 
 the internal to the external, from the known to the un- 
 known. That this is not the fact, our observation of the 
 phenomenon will at once convince you. In an act of 
 perception, I am conscious of something as self, and 
 of something as not self: this is the simple fact. The 
 philosophers, on the contrary, who will not accept this 
 fact, misstate it. They say that we are conscious of 
 nothing but a certain modification of mind ; but this 
 modification involves a reference to in other words, a 
 representation of something external as its object. 
 Now this is untrue. We are conscious of no reference, 
 of no representation : we believe that the object of which 
 we are conscious is the object which exists." To this 
 argument (of the worth of which something has been 
 said already) I shall return presently. But he subjoins 
 a second. 
 
 * Lectures, ii. 86. t Ibid. ii. 106. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 207 
 
 " Nor could there possibly be such reference or repre- 
 sentation ; for reference or representation supposes a 
 knowledge already possessed of the object referred to or 
 represented ; but perception is the faculty by which our 
 first knowledge is acquired, and therefore cannot suppose 
 a previous knowledge as its condition." And further 
 on : * " Mark the vice of the procedure. We can only, 
 1, assert the existence of an external world, inasmuch 
 as we know it to exist ; and we can only, 2, assert that 
 one thing is representative of another, inasmuch as the 
 thing represented is known, independently of the repre- 
 sentation. But how does the hypothesis of a represen- 
 tative perception proceed ? It actually converts the fact 
 into an hypothesis ; actually converts the hypothesis into 
 a fact. On this theory, we do not know the existence 
 of an external world, except on the supposition that that 
 which we do know, truly represents it as existing. The 
 hypothetical realist cannot, therefore, establish the fact 
 of the external world, except upon the fact of its repre- 
 sentation. This is manifest. We have, therefore, next 
 to ask him, how he knows the fact, that the external 
 world is actually represented. A representation sup- 
 poses something represented, and the representation of 
 the external world supposes the existence of that world. 
 Now, the hypothetical realist, when asked how he proves 
 the reality of the outer world, which, ex hypothesi, he 
 does not know, can only say that he infers its existence 
 from the fact of its representation. But the fact of the 
 representation of an external world supposes the exist- 
 ence of that world ; therefore he is again at the point 
 from which he started. He has been arguing in a circle." 
 
 * Lectures, ii. 138, 139. 
 
208 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 Let me first remark that this reasoning assumes the 
 whole point in dispute ; it presupposes that the supposi- 
 tion 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 neces- 
 sity 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 substra- 
 tum, or as their cause. There is surely nothing d 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 intelli- 
 gence must be a lie. In the present case, however, he, 
 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 representa- 
 tion. 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, necessi- 
 tated to infer a cause, of which we know nothing what- 
 ever 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 speci- 
 mens of our author in which his deficiencies as a phi- 
 losopher stand out in a stronger light. As Burke in 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 209 
 
 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 some- 
 thing 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 doc- 
 trine that there is no such thing as representative knowl- 
 edge. 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 knowl- 
 edge to be. 
 
 "Every act,* and consequently every act of knowl- 
 edge, exists only as it now exists ; and as it exists only 
 in the Now, it can be cognizant only of a now-existent 
 object. But the object known in memory is, ex hypothesi, 
 past ; consequently, we are reduced to the dilemma, 
 either of refusing a past object to be known in memory 
 at all, or of admitting it to be only mediately known, in 
 and through a present object. That the latter alternative 
 is the true one, it will require a very few explanatory 
 words to convince you. What are the contents of an 
 act of memory ? An act of memory is merely a present 
 state of mind which we are conscious of not as abso- 
 
 * Lectures, i. 219, 220. 
 
210 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 lute, but as relative to, and representing, another state 
 of mind, and accompanied with the, belief that the 
 state of mind, as now represented, has actually been. 
 I remember an event I saw the landing of George IV . 
 at Leith. This remembrance is only a consciousness of 
 certain imaginations, involving the conviction that 
 these imaginations now represent ideally what I for- 
 merly really experienced. All that is immediately 
 known in the act of memory, is the present mental mod- 
 ification, that is, the representation and concomitant 
 belief.- Beyond this mental modification we know 
 nothing ; and this mental modification is not only known 
 to consciousness, but only exists in and by consciousness. 
 Of any past object, real or ideal, the mind knows and 
 can know nothing, for, ex hypothesi, no such object 
 now exists ; or if it be said to know such an object, it 
 can only be said to know it mediately, as represented 
 in the present mental modification. Properly speak- 
 ing, however, we know only the actual and present, and 
 all real knowledge is an immediate knowledge. What 
 is said to be mediately known, is, in truth, not known to 
 be, but only believed to be ; for its existence is only an 
 inference resting on the belief, that the mental mod- 
 ification truly represents what is in itself beyond the 
 sphere of knowledge." 
 
 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 recognize 
 a mental modification to be representative of something 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 211 
 
 else, unless we have a present knowledge of that some- 
 thing else, otherwise obtained? With merely the altera- 
 tion 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 infer- 
 ence, 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," es- 
 pecially 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 some- 
 thing 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 
 favorite 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. 
 
212 
 
 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 
 that in his opinion our perceptions of sight are not per- 
 ceptions of the outward object, but of its image, a " mod- 
 ification of light in immediate relation to our organ of 
 vision," and that no two persons see the same sun ; prop- 
 ositions in direct conflict with the " natural beliefs " to 
 which he so often refers, and to which Eeid, 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. 
 Cjt, is * not by perception, but by a process of reason- 
 ing, that we connect the objects of sense with existences 
 beyond the sphere of immediate knowledge. It is enough 
 that perception affords us the knowledge of the non-ego 
 at the point of sense. To arrogate to it the power of 
 immediately informing us of external things, which are 
 only the causes of the object we immediately perceive, 
 is either positively erroneous, or a confusion of language 
 arising from an inadequate discrimination of the phe- 
 nomenon-", -* 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 phenomenon directly known, to something un- 
 known which is the cause of the phenomenon. They 
 
 * Lectures, ii. 153, 154. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 213 
 
 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.* 
 
 * Some of the inconsistencies here pointed out in Sir ~VV. Hamilton's 
 speculations respecting Perception have been noticed and ably discussed 
 by Mr. Bailey, in the fourth letter of the Second Series of his Letters on 
 the Philosophy of the Human Mind. 
 
 In treating of Modified Logic (Lectures, iv. 67, 68), Sir W. Hamilton 
 justifies, after his own manner, the assumption made alike by himself and 
 by the Cosmothctic Idealists ; and the grounds of justification are as avail- 
 able to them as to him. " Real truth is the correspondence of our thoughts 
 with the existences which constitute their objects. But here a difficulty 
 arises : how can we know that there is, that there can be, such a corre- 
 spondence ? All that we know of the objects is through the presentations 
 of our faculties ; but whether these present the objects as they are in 
 themselves, we can never ascertain, for to do this it would be requisite to 
 go out of ourselves, out of our faculties, to obtain a knowledge of the 
 objects by other faculties, and thus to compare our old presentations with 
 our new." The very difficulty which we have seen him throwing in the 
 teeth of the Cosmothetic Idealists. " But all this, even were the supposi- 
 tion possible, would be incompetent to afford us the certainty required. 
 For were it possible to leave our old, and to obtain a new, set of faculties, 
 by which to test the old, still the veracity of these new faculties would be 
 equally ol>noxious to doubt as the veracity of the old. For what guar- 
 antee could we obtain for the credibility in the one case, which we do not 
 already possess in the other ? The new faculties could only assert their own 
 truth ; but this is done by the old ; and it is impossible to imagine any pres- 
 entations of the non-ego by any finite intelligence to which a doubt might 
 not be raised, whether these presentations were not merely subjective 
 modifications of the conscious ego itself." It is a very laudable practice in 
 philosophizing to state the difficulties strongly. But when the difficulty is 
 one which in any case has to be surmounted, we should allow others to 
 surmount it in the same mode which we adopt for ourselves. This mode, 
 in the present case, is our author's usual one : " All that could be said 
 in answer to such a doubt, is that if such were true, our whole nature is a 
 lie ; " in other words, our nature prompts us to believe that the modifica- 
 tion of the conscious ego, points to, and results from, a non-ego with cor- 
 
214 SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OP THEORIES 
 
 In the controversy with Brown, which forms the sec- 
 ond paper in the " Discussions," and much of which was 
 transcribed from our author's Lectures, the argument 
 which I have now examined does not reappear. Sir W. 
 Hamilton, perhaps, had meanwhile become aware of its 
 inconsistency with his own principles. 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, inas- 
 much 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 ar- 
 tillery 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 is 
 truly surprising. Brown knows nothing of the mental 
 modification as truly representing the unknown reality ; 
 he claims no knowledge as arising out of ignorance, no 
 
 responding properties. The Cosmothetic Idealists do but say the same 
 thing : and they have as good a right to say it as our author. 
 * Discussions, p. 67. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WOULD. 215 
 
 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. Ham- 
 ilton's weapon falls harmless upon Brown, it recoils with 
 terrible effect upon his own theories of representative 
 cognition. A remembrance, for example, does repre- 
 sent, 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, accord- 
 ing to our author, we do not know. Although, there- 
 fore, 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 de- 
 termined to represent, and truly to represent, the reality 
 winch " 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 recollec- 
 tion, believe or know that the event really happened, the 
 
216 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 mind, by its constitution, is "blindly determined to rep- 
 resent, 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 recherche 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 doc- 
 trine conflicts with consciousness, 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 sensa- 
 tions. We seern 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, simul- 
 taneously 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 sensations suggesting it, 
 
 * Our belief in the veracity of Memory is evidently ultimate : no reason 
 can be given for it which does not presuppose the belief, and assume it to be 
 well grounded. This point is forcibly urged in the Philosophical Intro- 
 duction to Mr. Ward's able work, " On Nature and Grace ; " a book the 
 readers of which are likely to be limited by its being addressed specially 
 to Catholics, but showing a capacity in the writer which might otherwise 
 have made him one of the most effective champions of the Intuitive school. 
 Though I do not believe morality to be intuitive in Mr. Ward's sense, I 
 think his book of great practical worth by the strenuous manner in which 
 it maintains morality to have another foundation than the arbitrary decree 
 of God, and shows, by great weight of evidence, that this is the orthodox 
 doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 217 
 
 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 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 sub- 
 ject 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 modi- 
 fications 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 resolv- 
 able 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 differ- 
 ence therefore, between Brown and Sir W. Hamilton, is 
 not of the kind which Sir W. Hamilton considers it to 
 
218 
 
 be, but consists mainly .in this, that Brown really held, 
 what Sir W. Hamilton held only verbally, the doctrine 
 of the Relativity of all 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 and carelessness of Brown, 
 and some milder criticism on Reid. Sir W. Hamilton 
 thinks it astonishing that neither of these philosophers 
 should have recognized Natural Realism, and the third 
 form of Cosmothetic Idealism, as two different modes of 
 thought. Reid, whom he makes a great point of claim- 
 ing 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 
 
 * There is also a difference between Brown and Sir "W. Hamilton in the 
 particular category of intuitive knowledge to which they referred the cog- 
 nition of the existence of matter. Brown deemed it a case of the belief in 
 causation, which again he regarded as a case of our intuitive belief in the 
 constancy of the order of nature. " I do not," he says (Lecture xxiv. 
 vol. ii. p. 11), " conceive that it is by any peculiar intuition we are led to 
 believe in the existence of things without. I consider this belief as the 
 effect of that more general intuition, by which we consider a new conse- 
 quent, in any series of accustomed events, as the sign of a new antecedent, 
 and of that equally general principle of association, by which feelings that 
 have frequently co-existed, flow together and constitute afterwards one 
 complex whole." That is, he thought that when an infant finds the mo- 
 tions of his muscles, which have been accustomed to take place unimpeded, 
 suddenly stopped by what he will afterwards learn to call the resistance of 
 an external object, the infant intuitively (though perhaps not instantane- 
 ously) believes that this unexpected phenomenon, the stoppage of a series 
 of sensations, is conjoined with, or, as we now say, caused by, the presence 
 of some new antecedent ; something which, not being the infant himself, 
 nor a state of his sensations, we may call an outward object. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 219 
 
 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 Brown, and in the very same 
 manner. 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 misun- 
 derstanding of Reid, of which Brown is alleged to have 
 been guilty in not perceiving him to have been a Natu- 
 
220 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 ral Realist. " We proceed," says our author,* " to con- 
 sider the greatest of all Brown's errors, in itself and in 
 its consequences, his misconception of the cardinal posi- 
 tion of Reid's philosophy, in supposing that philosopher 
 as a hypothetical realist, to hold with himself the third 
 form of the representative hypothesis, and not, as a 
 natural realist, the doctrine of an intuitive Perception." 
 " Brown's f transmutation of Reid from a natural to 
 a hypothetical realist, as a misconception of the grand 
 and distinctive tenet of a school, by one even of its disci- 
 ples, is without a parallel in the whole history of philoso- 
 phy ; and this portentous error is prolific ; chimcera 
 chimceram parit. Were the evidence of the mistake less 
 unambiguous, we should be disposed rather to question 
 our own perspicacity than to tax so subtle an intellect with 
 so gross a blunder." And he did, in time, feel some 
 misgiving as to his " own perspicacity." When, in pre- 
 paring an edition of Reid, he was obliged to look more 
 closely into that author's statements, we find a remarka- 
 ble 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 J " Brown's interpretation of the funda- 
 mental tenet of Reid's philosophy is not a simple mis- 
 conception, 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 success- 
 ful as this. 
 
 In the work in which Reid first brought his opinions 
 before the world, the " Inquiry into the Human Mind," 
 
 * Discussions, p. 58. f Ibid. p. 56. J Ibid. p. 60. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 221 
 
 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 "class of natural signs which 
 . . . though we never before had any notion or concep- 
 tion of the thing signified, do suggest it, or conjure it 
 up, as it were, by a natural kind of magic, and at once 
 give us a conception and create a belief of it." "I take f 
 it for granted that the notion of hardness, and the belief 
 of it, is first got by means of that particular sensation 
 which, as far back as we can remember, does invariably 
 suggest it, and that, if we had never had such a feeling, we 
 should never have had our notion of hardness." Again, J 
 " when a colored body is presented, there is a certain 
 apparition to the eye, or to the mind, which we have 
 called the appearance of color. Mr. Locke calls it an 
 idea, and, indeed, it may be called so with the greatest 
 propriety. This idea can have no existence but w r hen it 
 is perceived. It is a kind of thought, and can only be 
 the act of a percipient or thinking being. By the con- 
 stitution of our nature, we are led to conceive this idea 
 as a sign of something external, and are impatient till 
 we learn its meaning." 
 
 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. " I think it appears from what hath been said, 
 
 * Inquiry into the Human Mind, Works (Hamilton's ed.), P 122. 
 t Ibid. J Ibid. p. 137. 
 
 VOL. i. 10 
 
222 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OP THEORIES 
 
 that there are natural suggestions ; particularly, that 
 sensation suggests the notion of present existence, and 
 the belief that what we perceive or feel does now exist. 
 . . . And, in like manner, certain sensations of touch, 
 by the constitution of our nature, suggest to us exten- 
 sion, solidity, and motion." * "By an original principle 
 of our constitution, a certain sensation of touch both 
 suggests to the mind the conception of hardness, and 
 creates the belief of it : or, in other words, this sensa- 
 tion is a natural sign of hardness." f " The word gold 
 has no similitude to the substance signified by it ; nor is 
 it in its own nature more fit to signify this than any other 
 substance ; yet, by habit and custom, it suggests this, and 
 no other. In like manner, a sensation of touch suggests 
 hardness, although it hath neither similitude to hardness, 
 nor, as far as we can perceive, any necessary connection 
 with it. The difference betwixt these two signs lies only 
 in this that, in the first, the suggestion is the effect of 
 habit and custom ; in the second, it is not the effect of 
 habit, but of the original constitution of our minds. J 
 " Extension, therefore, seems to be a quality suggested 
 to us " (the italics are Reid's) " by the very same sensa- 
 tions which suggest the other qualities above mentioned. 
 When I grasp a ball in my hand, I perceive it at once 
 hard, figured, and extended. The feeling is very simple, 
 and hath not the least resemblance to any quality of 
 body. Yet it suggests to us three primary qualities 
 perfectly distinct from one another, as well as from the 
 sensation which indicates them. When I move my hand 
 along the table, the feeling is so simple that I find it dif- 
 
 * Inquiry into the Human Mind, "Works, p. 111. 
 t Ibid. p. 121. I Ibid. p. 121. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 223 
 
 ficult to distinguish it into things of different natures, 
 yet it immediately suggests hardness, smoothness, exten- 
 sion, and motion things of very different natures, and 
 all of them as distinctly understood as the feeling which 
 suggests them." * " The feelings of touch, which suggest 
 primary qualities, have no names, nor are they ever re- 
 flected upon. They pass through the mind instantane- 
 ously, and serve only to introduce the notion and belief 
 of external things, which, by our constitution, are con- 
 nected with them. They are natural signs, and the mind 
 immediately passes to the thing signified, without mak- 
 ing the least reflection upon the sign, or observing that 
 there was any such thing, "f 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. 
 
 " Let a man press his hand against the table he feels 
 it hard. But what is the meaning of this ? The mean- 
 ing undoubtedly is, that he hath a certain feeling of 
 touch, from which he concludes, without any reasoning 
 or comparing ideas, that there is something external 
 really existing, whose parts stick so firmly together, that 
 they cannot be displaced without considerable force. 
 There is here a feeling, and a conclusion drawn from it, 
 or some way suggested by it. ... The hardness of 
 the table is the conclusion, the feeling is the medium 
 by which we are led to that conclusion." \ " How a sen- 
 sation should instantly make us conceive and believe the 
 existence of an external thing altogether unlike to it, I 
 
 * Inquiry into the Human Mind, Works, p. 123. 
 f Ibid. p. 124. J Ibid. p. 125. 
 
224 SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OP THEORIES 
 
 do not pretend to know ; and when I say that the one 
 suggests the other, I mean not to explain the manner of 
 their connection, but to express a fact, which every one 
 may be conscious of, namely, that by a law of our 
 nature, such a conception and belief constantly and im- 
 mediately follow the sensation."* "There are three 
 ways in which the mind passes from the appearance of a 
 natural sign to the conception and belief of the thing 
 signified by original principles of our constitution, by 
 custom, and by reasoning. Our original perceptions are 
 got in the first of these ways. ... In the first of 
 these ways, Nature, by means of the sensations of touch, 
 informs us of the hardness and softness of bodies ; of 
 their extension, figure, and motion ; and of that space 
 in which they move and are placed." f " In the testi- 
 mony of Nature given by the senses, as well as in human 
 testimony given by language, things are signified to us 
 by signs : and in one as well as the other, the mind, 
 either by original principles or by custom, passes from 
 the sign to the conception and belief of the things signi- 
 fied. . . . The signs in original perceptions are sensa- 
 tions, of which Nature hath given us a great variety, 
 suited to the variety of the things signified by them. 
 Nature hath established a real connection between the 
 signs and the things signified, and Nature hath also 
 taught us the interpretation of the signs so that, pre- 
 vious to experience, the sign suggests the thing signified, 
 and creates the belief of it." } "It is by one particular 
 principle of our constitution that certain features express 
 anger ; and by another particular principle that certain 
 
 * Inquiry into the Human Mind, "Works, p. 131. 
 t Ibid. p. 188. J Ibid. pp. 194, 195. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 225 
 
 features express benevolence. It is, in like manner, by 
 one particular principle of our constitution that a certain 
 sensation signifies hardness in the body which I handle ; 
 and it is by another particular principle that a certain 
 sensation signifies motion in that body."* 
 
 I doubt if it would be possible to extract from Brown 
 himself an equal number of passages (and I might have 
 cited many more) expressing as clearly and positively, 
 and in terms as irreconcilable with any other opinion, the 
 doctrine which our author terms the third form of Cos- 
 mothetic Idealism ; in the exact shape, too, in which 
 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 Eeid, at least when 
 he wrote the Inquiry, was a Cosmothetic Idealist ; that 
 up to that time it had never occurred to him that the 
 conviction 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 acknowl- 
 edges 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 imme- 
 diately conscious of them, he adds,f "Reid himself 
 seems to have become obscurely aware of this condition ; 
 
 * Inquiry into the Human Mind, Works, p. 195. 
 f Foot-note to Reid, p. 129. 
 
226 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 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 " porten- 
 tous " 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 con- 
 tinue to profess it. For some reason, not apparent, he 
 did cease to employ the word Suggestion. But he con- 
 tinued to use terms equivalent to it. " Every different 
 perception is conjoined with a sensation that is proper to 
 it. The one is the sign, the other the thing signified." f 
 w I touch the table gently with my hand, and I feel it to 
 be smooth, hard, and cold. These are qualities of the 
 table perceived by touch : but I perceive them by means 
 of a sensation which indicates them."J "Observing 
 that the agreeable sensation is raised when the rose is 
 near, and ceases when it is removed, I am led by my 
 nature to conclude some quality to be in the rose, which 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 821. 
 
 f Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Works, p. 312. % Ibid. p. 311. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 227 
 
 is the cause of this sensation. This quality in the rose 
 is the object perceived ; and that act of my mind by 
 which I have the conviction and belief of this quality, is 
 what in this case I call perception." * 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 : 
 " When a primary quality is perceived, the sensation 
 immediately leads our thought to the quality signified 
 by it, and is itself forgot. . . . The sensations belong- 
 ing to primary qualities . . . carry the thought to the 
 external object, and immediately disappear and are for- 
 got. Nature intended them only as signs; and when 
 they have served that purpose they vanish. "j "Nature 
 has connected our perception of external objects with 
 certain sensations. If the sensation is produced, the 
 corresponding perception follows, even when there is 
 no object, and in that case is apt to deceive us." J " In 
 perception, whether original or acquired, there is some- 
 thing which may be called the sign, and something which 
 is signified to us, or brought to our knowledge by that 
 sign. In original perception, the signs are the various 
 sensations which are produced by the impressions made 
 upon our organs. The things signified, are the objects 
 perceived in consequence of those sensations, by the 
 original constitution of our nature. Thus, when I grasp 
 an ivory ball in my hand, I have a certain sensation of 
 touch. Although this sensation be in the mind, and 
 have no similitude to anything material, yet, by the 
 laws of my constitution, it is immediately followed by 
 
 * Essays on the Intellectual Powers, p. 310. t Ibid. p. 315. 
 
 t Ibid/p. 320. 
 
228 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OP THEORIES 
 
 the conception and belief, that there is in my hand a 
 hard smooth body of a spherical figure, and about an 
 inch and a half in diameter. This belief is grounded 
 neither upon reasoning, nor upon experience ; it is the 
 immediate effect of my constitution, and this I call origi- 
 nal perception." * 
 
 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,j- Sir W. Hamilton, who never fails in candor, 
 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 presentation- 
 ism, "J 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 which was found at variance with such 
 a doctrine." But it is clear that the doctrine of percep- 
 tion 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 in- 
 consistent with any doctrine but Natural Realism, are 
 
 * Essays on the Intellectual Powers, p. 332. 
 
 t Dissertations on Reid, pp. 819-824 and 882-885. 
 
 J Ibid. p. 882. Ibid. p. 820. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 229 
 
 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. 
 Saving 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 percep- 
 tion 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. 
 CHe 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 convictiont 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 
 
 * Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Essay ii. chap. v. p. 258. 
 f Same Essay, p. 259. 
 10* 
 
230 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES 
 
 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 opin- 
 ion, is, that when in the speculations of Arnauld he had 
 before him exactly the same opinion, he failed to recog- 
 nize it.* But on a careful examination of Reid's criti- 
 cism 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 different in it 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 rec- 
 ognizing 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 
 
 * Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Essay ii. chap. xiii. For Sir W. 
 Hamilton's remarks, see Lectures, ii. 50-53 ; Discussions, pp. 75-77 ; and 
 Dissertations on Reid, p. 823. 
 
IN THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 231 
 
 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 indica- 
 tion 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 be- 
 lief 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 na- 
 ture, 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 it no more than Reid. Not only was Reid a 
 Cosmothetic Idealist of Brown's exact type, but in stating 
 his own doctrine, he has furnished, as far as I am aware, 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 797. 
 
232 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OP THEORIES 
 
 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 ad- 
 mit that the distinction is in certain cases a mistake, and 
 that our consciousness sometimes recognizes a Non-ego 
 where there is only an Ego. It is a doctrine of his, re- 
 peated in many parts of his works, that in our internal 
 consciousness there is no non-ego. Even the remem- 
 brance 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, dis- 
 tinguishable 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, 
 
 * Lectures, ii. 432. 
 
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 233 
 
 as an accident, from the ego, as the subject of that 
 accident, it projects, as it were, this subjective phe- 
 nomenon 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 alto- 
 gether 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 endeavor, 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 counter-doctrine ? 
 
234 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE BELIEF IN AN 
 EXTERNAL WORLD. 
 
 WE have seen Sir W. Hamilton at work on the ques- 
 tion of the reality of Matter, by the introspective meth- 
 od, and, as it seems, with little result. Let us now 
 approach the same subject by the psychological. I pro- 
 ceed, 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 concep- 
 tion 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, 
 learned 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 phenomena tend to be 
 thought of together. 2d. Phenomena which have 
 
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 235 
 
 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. 3d. Associations produced by 
 contiguity become more certain and rapid by repetition. 
 When two phenomena 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 inevita- 
 bly last to the end of life that no subsequent experi- 
 ence or process of thought can possibly avail to dissolve 
 it ; but only that as long as no such experience or pro- 
 cess of thought has taken place, the association is irre- 
 sistible ; 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 phenomena answering to 
 those ideas, come at last to seem inseparable in exist- 
 ence : things which we are unable to conceive apart, ap- 
 pear incapable of existing apart ; and the belief we have 
 in their co-existence, though really a product of experi- 
 ence, seems intuitive. Innumerable examples might be 
 
236 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 given of this law. One. of the most familiar, as well as 
 the most striking, is that of our acquired perceptions of 
 eight. 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. 
 
 Setting out from these premises, the Psychological 
 Theory maintains, that there are associations naturally 
 and even necessarily generated by the order of our sen- 
 sations and of our reminiscences of sensation, which, 
 supposing no intuition of an external world to have exist- 
 ed in consciousness, would inevitably generate the belief, 
 and would cause it to be regarded as an intuition. 
 
 What is it we mean when we say that the object we 
 perceive is external to us, and not a part of our own 
 thoughts? We mean, that there is in our perceptions 
 something which exists when we are not thinking of it ; 
 which existed before we had ever thought of 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 ; 
 
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 237 
 
 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, consti- 
 tutes altogether our idea of external substance. Who- 
 ever can assign an origin to this complex conception, 
 has accounted for what we mean by the belief in matter. 
 (ftow, all this, according to the Psychological Theory, is 
 but the form impressed by the known laws of associa- 
 tion, upon the conception or notion, obtained by expe- 
 rience, of Contingent Sensations^ by which are meant, 
 sensations that are not in our present consciousness, and 
 perhaps never were in our consciousness at all, but which, 
 in virtue of the laws to which we have learned by experi- 
 ence 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 room, and 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 law 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 ex- 
 isting at any moment, comprises, along with the sensa- 
 tions I am feeling, a countless variety of possibilities of 
 
238 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 sensation ; namely, the whole of those which past obser- 
 vation tells me that I could, under any supposable cir- 
 cumstances, 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 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 Sub- 
 stance or Matter from our notion of sensation. These 
 possibilities, which are conditional certainties, need a 
 special name to distinguish them from mere vague pos- 
 sibilities, which experience gives no warrant for reckon- 
 ing 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 expe- 
 riences of our mental nature teaches us, that the differ- 
 ent name comes to be considered as the name of a different 
 thing. 
 
 There is another important peculiarity of these certi- 
 fied 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 pos- 
 sible presence at the very same instant of any or all of 
 
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 239 
 
 the rest. In our mind, therefore, not only is this par- 
 ticular 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 con- 
 ceived by us in the form of Present Possibilities, which 
 miffht be realized at the very moment. And as this 
 
 o > 
 
 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 distin- 
 guished 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 recognize 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 in any case the source 
 of all our knowledge what causes produce w r hat effects. 
 Now, of what nature is this fixed order among our sen- 
 sations ? It is a constancy of antecedence and sequence. 
 But the constant antecedence and sequence do not gen- 
 erally exist between one actual sensation and another. 
 Very few such sequences are presented to us by expe- 
 rience. In almost all the constant sequences which occur 
 in Nature, the antecedence and consequence do not obtain 
 between sensations, but between the groups we have been 
 
240 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 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 them- 
 selves 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 them- 
 selves 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 pres- 
 ence or absence. Whether we are asleep or awake, the 
 fire goes out, and puts an end to one particular possibil- 
 ity of warmth and light. Whether we are present or 
 absent, the corn ripens, and brings a new possibility of 
 food. Hence we speedily think to learn 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 bo looked upon 
 as a sort of accident depending on us, and the possibili- 
 ties as much more real than the actual sensations, nay, 
 as the very realities of which these are only the represen- 
 tations, appearances, or effects. When this state of 
 mind has been arrived at, then, and from that time for- 
 ward, we are never conscious of a present sensation 
 
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 241 
 
 without instantaneously referring it to some one of the 
 groups of possibilities into which a sensation of that partic- 
 ular 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 lan- 
 guage, 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 position relatively 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 dis- 
 tinct 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. 
 
242 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 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 indi- 
 cates 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 funda- 
 mental reality in Nature. The permanent possibilities 
 are common to us and to our fellow-creatures ; the ac- 
 tual sensations are not. That which other people be- 
 come 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 our present conscious- 
 ness, 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. Ham- 
 ilton's principles, to be received as true. The first of 
 the laws laid down by him for the interpretation of Con- 
 sciousness, the law (as he terms it) of Parcimony, for- 
 
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 243 
 
 bids to suppose an original principle of our nature in 
 order to account for phenomena which admit of possible 
 explanation from known causes. If the supposed in- 
 gredient 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 com- 
 pletely intuitive as our sensations themselves ; we are 
 bound, according to Sir W. Hamilton's and all sound 
 philosophy, to assign to it that origin. Where there is 
 a known cause adequate to account for a phenomenon, 
 there is no justification for ascribing it to an unknown 
 one. And what evidence does Consciousness furnish of 
 the intuitiveness of an impression, except instantaneous- 
 ness, 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 intui- 
 tive, we must accept the conclusion to which we are led 
 by the Psychological Method, and which the Introspec- 
 tive Method furnishes absolutely nothing to contradict. , .-, ^ 
 
 Q^atter, then, may be defined, a Permanent Possibility ' 
 of SensationJ If I am asked whether I believe in 
 matter, I ask whether the questioner accepts this defini- 
 tion 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 
 
244 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 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 believ- 
 ing 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 mano2uvre really proved is, that they believed 
 in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation. We have 
 therefore the sanction of these three eminent defenders 
 of the existence of matter, for affirming, that to believe 
 in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation is 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. Pie 
 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, 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 con- 
 
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 245 
 
 sciousness, 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. Hamil- 
 ton'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 possi- 
 bilities of sensation, we must (it is thought) be incapable 
 of conceiving, and therefore still more incapable of fan- 
 cying 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 dis- 
 tinguished from sensations altogether, by being perma- 
 nent 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 
 
 *o to 
 
 VOL. I. 11 
 
246 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 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 percewe it, and that 
 it would still exist if every percipient inhabitant were 
 suddenly to leave the place, or be struck dead. But when 
 I analyze the belief, all I find in it is, that were these 
 events to take place, the Permanent Possibility of Sen- 
 sation 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, con- 
 ceive it really as a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. 
 But the majority of philosophers fancy that it is some- 
 thing more ; and the world at large, though they have 
 really, as I conceive, nothing in their minds but a Per- 
 manent Possibility of Sensation, would, if asked the 
 question, undoubtedly agree 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 
 
* 
 
 BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 247 
 
 different from it, that same relation we have no difficulty 
 in conceiving to exist between the sum of all our sensa- j 
 tions and something different from them. The differ- 
 ences which our consciousness recognizes between one 
 sensation and another, give us the general notion of dif- 
 ference, 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 dif- 
 ferent 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 neg- 
 ative ; but the idea of substance, apart from the impres- 
 sions it makes 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 experi- 
 ence 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. 
 
248 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OP THE 
 
 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 unable to conceive the beginning of 
 anything without an 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 con- 
 sciousness, a notion derived from its parts, (jtt, is a 
 striking example of our power to conceive, and our ten- 
 dency 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 airffrefrate whole 
 
 oo o 
 
 of our sensations as deriving its origin from antece- 
 dent 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 con- 
 stant antecedent of a sensation is seldom another sensa- 
 tion, or set of sensations, actually felt. It is much of- 
 tener the existence of a group of possibilities, not neces- 
 sarily 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 pur- 
 pose ; 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 
 
BELIEF IN AN EXTEENAL WORLD. 219 
 
 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, ac- 
 quire 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 substan- 
 tive 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 perma- 
 nent objects to be external, or out of ourselves. I ap- 
 prehend, 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 Pos- 
 sibilities 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. 
 
250 BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 
 
 Thus our actual sensations and the permanent possibili- 
 ties of sensation, stand 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 objectiv- 
 ity to the Primary Qualities of bodies than to the Second- 
 ary. 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 colors, 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, more- 
 over, 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. 
 
PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY AS APPLIED TO MIND. 251 
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE BELIEF IN MAT- 
 TER, HOW FAR APPLICABLE TO MIND. 
 
 IF the deductions in the preceding chapter are cor- 
 rectly 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 con- 
 sciousness, is deprived of its foundation. Although these 
 two elements, an Ego and a Non-ego, are in our con- 
 sciousness 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 con- 
 sciousness in Sir W. Hamilton's sense, for to call it so 
 is to beg the question, but as an instantaneous and ir- 
 resistible 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 conscious- 
 ness, stands on any 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 subse- 
 
252 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF MATTER 
 
 quently, and admits of a similar analysis to that which 
 we have found that the notion of Not-self is suscep- 
 tible 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 a much more 
 unqualified manner than he believes it of matter, making 
 no reservation of any Primary Qualities. " In so far * 
 as mind is the common name for the states of knowing, 
 willing, feeling, desiring, &c., of which I am conscious, 
 it is only the name for a certain series of connected phe- 
 nomena or qualities, and consequently expresses only 
 what is known. But in so far as it denotes that subject 
 or substance in which the phenomena of knowing, will- 
 ing, &c., inhere, something behind or under these 
 phenomena, it expresses what, in itself, or in its abso- 
 lute existence, is unknown." We have no conception 
 of Mind itself, as distinguished from its conscious mani- 
 festations. 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 
 
 * Lectures, i. 138. 
 
HOW FAR APPLICABLE TO MIND. 253 
 
 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 scrupu- 
 lous examination of my belief will not detect in it any 
 fact actually believed, except that my capability of feel- 
 ing is not, in that interval, permanently destroyed, and is 
 suspended only because it does not meet with the combi- 
 nation of outward circumstances which would call it into 
 action : the moment it did meet with that combination it 
 would revive, and remains, therefore, a Permanent Possi- 
 bility. Thus far, there seems no hinder ance to our 
 regarding Mind as nothing but the series of our sensa- 
 tions (to which must now be added our internal feelings) , 
 as they actually occur, with the addition of infinite pos- 
 sibilities of feeling requiring for their actual realization 
 conditions which may or may not take place, but which 
 as possibilities are always in existence, ard many of them 
 present. 
 
 The Permanent Possibility of feeling, which forms my 
 notion of Myself, is distinguished by important differ- 
 ences from the Permanent Possibilities of sensation 
 which form my notion of what I call external objects. 
 In the first place, each of these last represents a small 
 and perfectly definite part of the series which, in its 
 entireness, forms my conscious existence a single 
 group of possible sensations, which experience tells me I 
 might expect to have under certain conditions ; as dis- 
 ( tinguished from mere vague and indefinite possibilities, 
 11 * 
 
254 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF MATTER 
 
 which are considered such only because they are not 
 known to be impossibilities. My notion of Myself, on 
 the contrary, includes all possibilities of sensation, defi- 
 nite or infinite, certified by experience or not, which I 
 may imagine inserted in the series of my actual and con- 
 scious states. In the second place, the Permanent Pos- 
 b t sibilities which I call outward objects, are possibilities of 
 sensation only, while the series which I call Myself 
 includes, along with and as called up by these, thoughts, 
 emotions, and volitions, and Permanent Possibilities of 
 such. Besides that these states of mind are, to our con- 
 sciousness, generically distinct from the sensations of our 
 outward senses, they are further distinguished from them 
 by not occurring in groups, consisting of separate ele- 
 ments which coexist, or may be made to coexist, with one 
 another. Lastly (and this difference is the most impor- 
 tant of all) the Possibilities of Sensation which are 
 called outward objects, are possibilities of it to other 
 beings as well as to me : but the particular series of feel- 
 ings which constitutes my own life, is confined to myself: 
 no other sentient being shares it with me. 
 
 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 nat- 
 urally be asked with reference to it, and which often 
 have been asked, and sometimes answered very erro- 
 neously. 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 Possi- 
 bilities 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 
 
HOW FAB APPLICABLE TO MIND. 255 
 
 of my fellow-creatures? What evidence of a hyper- 
 physical world, or, in one word, of God? and, lastly, 
 what evidence of immortality? 
 
 Dr. Eeid unhesitatingly answers, None. If the doc- 
 trine 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 misappre- 
 hension. 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 succes- 
 sion 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 
 wliich I am conscious, and that these are as real as my 
 own. The belief is completely consistent with the meta- 
 physical 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 walk- 
 ing and speaking figures which I see and hear, have sen- 
 sations and thoughts, or, in other words, possess Minds? 
 The most strenuous Intuitionist does not include this 
 
 
256 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF MATTER 
 
 among the things that I know by direct intuition. ^ 
 conclude it from certain things, which my experience oT 
 my own states of feeling proves to me to be marks of it. 
 These marks are of two kinds, antecedent and subse- 
 quent ; the previous conditions requisite for feeling, and 
 the effects or consequences of it. I conclude that other 
 human beings have feelings like rne, 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 a uniform sequence, of which the begin- 
 ning is modifications of my body, the middle is feelings, 
 the end is outward demeanor. 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 inter- 
 mediate 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, there- 
 fore, obliges me to conclude that there must be an inter- 
 mediate 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 expe- 
 rience, and which is in all other respects similar, I bring 
 other human beings, as phenomena, under the same 
 generalizations which I know by experience to be the 
 true theory of my own existence. And in doing so I 
 
HOW FAR APPLICABLE TO MIND. 257 
 
 conform to the legitimate rules of experimental inquiry. 
 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 pos- 
 tulates that what experience shows to be a mark of the 
 existence of something witliin the sphere of our con- 
 sciousness, 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 any- 
 thing but a permanent possibility of feeling. Whatever 
 sensation I have, I at once refer it to one of the perma- 
 nent 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 possi-' 
 bilities of sensation, but is also connected, in a peculiar 
 manner, with all my sensations. Not only is this spe- 
 cial group always present as an antecedent condition ot 
 every sensation I have, but the other groups are only en- 
 abled to convert their respective possibilities of sensation 
 into actual sensations, by means 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 
 
258 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF MATTER 
 
 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 be- 
 longs 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 generaliza- 
 tion, I find that all other facts within my reach agree 
 with it. Each of these bodies exhibits to my senses a 
 set of phenomena (composed of acts and other manifes- 
 tations) 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 connection with it a world of 
 consciousness. All this is as good and genuine an induc- 
 tive 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 sub- 
 stances. 
 
 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 
 
HOW FAB APPLICABLE TO MIND. 259 
 
 of the Divine thoughts and feelings prolonged through 
 eternity, that would be, at any rate, believing God's ex- 
 istence 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 rela- 
 tion which human works bear to human thoughts and 
 feelings, it infers a corresponding relation between 
 works, more or less similar but superhuman, and super- 
 human thoughts and feelings. If it proves these, no- 
 body but a metaphysician needs care whether or not it 
 proves a mysterious substratum for them. Again, the 
 arguments for Revelation undertake to prove by testi- 
 mony, 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 impos- 
 ing phaenomena. 
 
 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 sub- 
 stance forever continues to exist ; and any evidence 
 which would prove the one, will prove the other. Meta- 
 physical theologians may lose the a priori argument by 
 which they have sometimes flattered themselves with 
 having proved that a spiritual substance, by the essen- 
 tial 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. 
 
260 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF MATTER 
 
 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 Scep- 
 tical argument, and has no locus standi except for per- 
 sons who think that whatever accustoms people to a rigid 
 scrutiny of evidence is unfavorable to religious belief. 
 This is the opinion, doubtless, of those who do not be- 
 lieve 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 connection ; " and who, as we have seen, makes 
 use of the veracity of the Deity as his principal argu- 
 ment 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 
 recognized. 
 
 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 phenomena to 
 be included in an enumeration of the elements making 
 up our conception of Mind. The thread of conscious- 
 
 * Lectures, L 394. 
 
HOW FAR APPLICABLE TO MIND. 261 
 
 ness which composes the mind's phenomenal life, consists 
 not 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 phenomena 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 be- 
 lieved 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 feel- 
 ings, 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 
 
262 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF MATTER. 
 
 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 ob- 
 serves, 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 per- 
 haps 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 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.* 
 
 * Mr. Mansel, in his " Prolegomena Logica," shows a perception of the 
 difference here pointed out between the character of the Psychological 
 
THE PRIMARY QUALITIES OP MATTER. 263 
 
 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. But without the notion of not-self, we can- 
 not have that of self which is contrasted with it : and 
 independently of this, it is not credible that the first sen- 
 sation 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. C.The identification of a present 
 state with a remembered state cognized 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 some- 
 thing yesterday or the day before^ No single sensation 
 can suggest personal identity : this requires a series of 
 
 explanation of the belief in Matter, and that of the belief in Mind ; and he 
 resolves the question by drawing a distinction between the two Noumcna, 
 not often drawn by philosophers posterior to Berkeley. He considers the 
 Ego to be a direct presentation of consciousness, while with regard to the 
 Non-ego he is not far from adopting the Berkeleian theory. The whole of 
 his remarks on the subject are well worth reading. See Prolegomena 
 Logica, pp. 123, 135. 
 
264 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 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 unques- 
 tionably 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, re- 
 called 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 
 received relative names, expressive of the double relation 
 in question. (The thread of consciousness which I ap- 
 prehend 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 real- 
 ized 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 con- 
 sidered 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 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 265 
 
 to each other consists in the peculiar and different rela- 
 tion 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 con- 
 scious of. The very existence of them both, so far as 
 cognizable by us, consists only in the relation they re- 
 spectively bear to our states of feeling. Their relation 
 to each other is only the relation between those two rela- 
 tions. 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 subjec- 
 tively, and others which we are principally accustomed 
 to consider objectively, (jn the case of the first, the rela- 
 tion 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 
 
266 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, the present exist- 
 ence 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 sensa- 
 tions, 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 sensa- 
 tions in relation to their Objects, that is, to the perma- 
 nent groups of possibilities of sensation to which we 
 mentally refer them. This is the main distinction be- 
 tween 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 dis- 
 tinction 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 sen- 
 sations, on the contrary, have all of them objects ; they 
 all are capable of being classed under some group of Per- 
 manent 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 con- 
 spicuous 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 atten- 
 tion is naturally given in a greater degree to the sensa- 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OP MATTER. 267 
 
 tions themselves, and only in a less degree to that whose 
 existence they are marks of. And of the two concep- 
 tions to which they stand in relation, the one to which 
 we have most tendency to refer them is the Subject ; be- 
 cause 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 con- 
 sciousness 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 be- 
 tween these sensations and the subjective chain of con- 
 sciousness 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 Per- 
 manent Possibilities ; this group is the only thing distinct- 
 ly present to our thoughts^ The unimpressive organic 
 sensation merges in the mere mental suggestion, and we 
 seem to cognize 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 in- 
 stalled in its place. This truth is expressed, though not 
 with sufficient distinctness, in a favorite doctrine of Sir 
 
2G8 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 W. Hamilton, that in the operations of our senses Sen- 
 sation 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 Per- 
 ception 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 in- 
 vested in our thoughts with the permanency and exter- 
 nality 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 (as I believe, with nearly all philosophers) 
 those of sight also, are not grouped together directly, 
 but through the connection which they all have, by laws 
 of coexistence or of causation, with the sensations which 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 269 
 
 are referable to the sense of touch and to the muscles ; 
 those which answer to the terms (Resistance s 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 sensa- 
 tions 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 fundamen- 
 tal than the rest, on which all the other possibilities of sen- 
 sation 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. In this manner our con- 
 ception of Matter comes ultimately to consist of Resist- 
 ance, Extension, and -Figure, together with miscellaneous 
 powers of exciting other sensations. These three attri- 
 butes 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 numerous scientific con- 
 troversies^ 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 Mat- 
 ter, what seems always to be meant is, does it offer any, 
 
 VOL. I. 12 
 
270 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OP THE 
 
 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 mus- 
 cles 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 hinderance might be in our organs ; it 
 might arise from paralysis, or simple loss of power 
 through fatigue. But in either of these cases, the mus- 
 cles would not have been contracted, and we should not 
 have had the sensation which accompanies their contrac- 
 tion. We may have had the will to exert our muscular 
 force, but the exertion has not taken place.* If it does 
 
 * Sir TV. Hamilton thinks (Dissertations on Reid, pp. 854, 8-55) that we 
 are conscious of resistance through a " mental effort or nisus to move," 
 distinct both from the original will to move, and from the muscular sen- 
 sation : " for we are," he says, " conscious of it, though by a narcosis or 
 gtupor of the sensitive nerves we lose all feeling of the movement of the 
 limb ; though by a paralysis of the motive nerves no movement of the 
 limb follows the mental effort to move ; though by an abnormal stimulus 
 of the muscular fibres a contraction in them is caused even in opposition 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 271 
 
 take place, and is accompanied by the usual muscular 
 sensation, but the expected sensation of locomotion does 
 not follow, we have what is called the feeling of Resist- 
 ance, or, in other words, of muscular motion 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 sen- 
 sations which are produced by passive contact with bodies, 
 without muscular action. As these skin sensations of 
 simple contact invariably accompany the muscular sensa- 
 tion 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. When- 
 ever we feel resistance, we have first felt contact ; when- 
 ever we feel contact, we know that were we to exercise 
 muscular action, we should feel more or less resistance, 
 ^jnjthis manner is formed the first fundamental group of 
 Permanent Possibilities of Sensation ; and as we in time 
 recognize 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 Resist- 
 ing Cause of miscellaneous sensations, is now constituted^. 
 Let us observe, in passing, the elementary example 
 
 to our will." If all this is true though by what experiments it has been 
 substantiated we are not told it does not by any means show that there 
 is a mental nisus not physical, but merely removes the seat of the nisus 
 from the nerves to the brain. 
 
272 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 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 pres- 
 sure, 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 ex- 
 perience, 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 sensa- 
 tion which we call a sensation of contact, than we 
 cognize, or, as w r e call it, perceive, something exter- 
 nal, corresponding to the idea we now form of Matter, 
 as a resisting object. Our sensations of touch have be- 
 come representative of the sensations of resistance with 
 which they habitually coexist ; just as philosophers have 
 shown that the sensations of different shades of color 
 given by our sense of sight, and the muscular sen- 
 sations accompanying the 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.* 
 
 * Sir W. Hamilton draws a distinction between two kinds of resistance, 
 or rather, between two senses of the word : the one, that which I have 
 mentioned, and which is a sensation of our muscular frame ; the other, the 
 property of Matter which the old writers called Impenetrability, bcin that 
 by which, however capable of being compressed into a smaller space, it 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 273 
 
 The next of the primary qualities of Body is Exten- 
 sion ; 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 analyze it into any 
 combination of sensations and reminiscences of sensa- 
 tion. 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, of Aberdeen, in the First Part of his great work 
 on the Mind.* 
 
 Mr. Bain recognizes 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 cor- 
 responding to the duration the longer or shorter con- 
 tinuance of the same effort. The first makes us ac- 
 quainted with degrees of resistance ; which we estimate 
 by the intensity of the muscular energy required to over- 
 refuses to part with all its extension, and be extruded from space alto- 
 gether. But these two kinds of resistance are merely two modes of 
 regarding and naming the same state of consciousness ; for if the body 
 could be pressed entirely out of space, the only way in which we should 
 discover that it had vanished would be by the sudden cessation of all sen- 
 sations of resistance. It is always the muscular sensation which consti- 
 tutes the presence, and its negation the absence, of body, in any given 
 portion of space. 
 
 * " The Senses and the Intellect," pp. 113-117. My first extract is from 
 the original edition, for in the one recently published (and enriched by 
 many valuable improvements) the exposition I now quote is given more 
 summarily, and in a manner otherwise less suited for my purpose. 
 
274 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OP THE 
 
 come it. To the second we owe, in Mr. Bain's opinion, 
 our idea of Extension. 
 
 " When a muscle begins to contract, or a limb to bend, 
 we have a distinct sense of how far the contraction and 
 the bending are carried ; there is something in the special 
 sensibility that makes one mode of feeling for half con- 
 traction, another mode for three fourths, and another for 
 total contraction. Our feeling of moving organs, or of 
 contracting muscles, has been already affirmed to be dif- 
 ferent from our feeling of dead tension something more 
 intense, keen, and exciting ; and I am now led to assert, 
 from my best observations, and by inference from ac- 
 knowledged facts, that the extent of range of a move- 
 ment, the degree of shortening of a muscle, is a matter 
 of discriminative sensibility. I believe it to be much less 
 pronounced, less exact, than the sense of resistance above 
 described, but to be not the less real and demonstrable. 
 
 " If we suppose a weight raised, by the flexing of 
 the arm, first four inches, and then eight inches, it is 
 obvious that the mere amount of exertion or expended 
 power will be greater, and the sensibility increased in 
 proportion. In this view, the sense of range would 
 simply be the sense of a greater or less continuance of 
 the same effort, that effort being expended in move- 
 ment. We can have no difficulty in believing that there 
 should be a discriminating sensibility in this case ; it 
 seems very natural that we should be differently affected 
 by an action continued four or five times longer than 
 another. If this be admitted, as true to observation, 
 and as inevitably arising from the existence of any dis- 
 crimination whatsoever of degrees of expended power, 
 everything is granted that is contended for at present. 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 27f 
 
 It is not meant to affirm that at each degree of shorten- 
 ing of a muscle, or each intermediate attitude of a limb, 
 there is an impression made on the centres that can be 
 distinguished from the impression of every other position 
 or degree of shortening ; it is enough to require that the 
 range or amount of movement gone over should be a 
 matter of distinct perception, through the sensibility to 
 the amount of force expended in time, the degree of 
 effort being the same. The sensibility now in question 
 differs from the former (from sensibility to the intensity 
 of effort) chiefly in making the degree turn upon dura- 
 tion, and not upon the amount expended each instant ; 
 arid it seems to me impossible to deny that force in- 
 creased or diminished simply as regards continuance, is 
 as much a subject of discriminative sensibility as force 
 increased or diminished in the intensity of the sus- 
 tained effort. . . 
 
 " If the sense of degrees of range be thus admitted as 
 a genuine muscular determination, its functions in out- 
 ward perception are very important. The attributes of 
 extension and space fall under its scope. In the first 
 place, it gives the feeling of linear extension, inasmuch 
 as this is measured by the sweep of a limb, or other organ 
 moved by muscles. The difference between six inches 
 and eighteen inches is expressed to us by the different 
 degrees of contraction of some one group of muscles ; 
 those, for example, that flex the arm, or, in walking, 
 those that flex or extend the lower limb. The inward 
 impression corresponding to the outward fact of six inches 
 in length, is an impression arising from the continued 
 shortening of a muscle, a true muscular sensibility. It 
 is the impression of a muscular effort having a certain 
 
276 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OP THE 
 
 continuance ; a greater length produces a greater con- 
 tinuance (or a more rapid movement) , and in consequence 
 an increased feeling of expended power. 
 
 "The discrimination of length in any one direction 
 includes extension in any direction. Whether it be 
 length, breadth, or height, the perception has precisely 
 the same character. Hence superficial and solid dimen- 
 sions, the size or magnitude of a solid object, come to be 
 felt in a similar manner. . . . 
 
 " It will be obvious that what is called situation or 
 Locality must come under the same head, as these are 
 measured by distance taken along with direction ; direc- 
 tion being itself estimated by distance, both in common 
 observation and in mathematical theory. In like man- 
 ner, form or shape is ascertained through the same 
 primitive sensibility to extension or range. 
 
 " By the muscular sensibility thus associated with pro- 
 longed contraction we can therefore compare different de- 
 grees of the attribute of space, in other words, difference 
 of length, surface, situation, and form. When compar- 
 ing two different lengths we can feel which is the greater, 
 just as in comparing two different weights or resist- 
 ances. We can also, as in the case of weight, acquire 
 some absolute standard of comparison, through the per- 
 manency of impressions sufficiently often repeated. We 
 can engrain the feeling of contraction of the muscles of 
 the lower limb due to a pace of thirty inches, and can 
 say that some one given pace is less or more than this 
 amount. According to the delicacy of the muscular 
 tissue we can, by shorter or longer practice, acquire dis- 
 tinct impressions for every standard dimension, and can 
 decide at once whether a given length is four inches or 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OP MATTER. 277 
 
 four and a half, nine or ten, twenty or twenty-one. This 
 sensibility to size, enabling us to dispense with the use 
 of measures of length, is an acquirement suited to many 
 mechanical operations. In drawing, painting, and en- 
 graving, and in the plastic arts, the engrained discrimi- 
 nation of the most delicate differences is an indispensable 
 qualification. 
 
 " The third attribute of muscular discrimination is the 
 velocity or speed of the movement. It is difficult to 
 separate this from the foregoing. In the feeling of range, 
 velocity answers the same purpose as continuance ; both 
 imply an enhancement of effort, or of expended power, 
 different in its nature from the increase of dead effort in 
 one fixed situation. We must learn to feel that a slow 
 motion for a long time is the same as a quicker motion 
 with less duration ; which we can easily do by seeing 
 that they both produce the same effect in exhausting the 
 full range of a limb. If we experiment upon the differ- 
 ent ways of accomplishing a total sweep of the arm, we 
 shall find that the slow movements long continued are 
 equal to quick motions of short continuance, and we are 
 thus able by either course to acquire to ourselves a meas- 
 ure of range and lineal extension. . . . 
 
 " We would thus trace the perception of the mathe- 
 matical and mechanical properties of matter to the mus- 
 cular sensibility alone. We admit that this perception 
 is by no means very accurate if we exclude the special 
 senses, but we are bound to show at the outset that these 
 senses are not essential to the perception, as we shall af- 
 terwards show that it is to the muscular apparatus asso- 
 ciated with the senses that their more exalted sensibility 
 must be also ascribed. The space moved through by the 
 12* 
 
278 THE PYSCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 foot in pacing may be .appreciated solely through the 
 muscles of the limb, as well as by the movements of the 
 touching hand or the seeing eye. Whence we may ac- 
 cede to the assertion sometimes made, that the proper- 
 ties of space might be conceived, or felt, in the absence 
 of an external world, or of any other matter than that 
 composing the body of the percipient being; for the 
 body's own movements in empty space would suffice to 
 make the very same impressions on the mind as the 
 movements excited by outward objects. A perception 
 of length, or height, or speed, is the mental impression, 
 or state of consciousness, accompanying some mode of 
 muscular movement, and this movement may be gener- 
 ated from within as well as from without ; in both cases 
 the state of consciousness is exactly the same." 
 
 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 : * 
 
 " As far as I can find his meaning in his cloud of 
 words, he argues thus : The notion of Time or succes- 
 sion being supposed, that of longitudinal extension is 
 given in the succession of feelings which acompanies the 
 gradual contraction of a muscle ; the notion of this suc- 
 cession constitutes, ipso facto, the notion of a certain 
 length ; and the notion of this length (he quietly takes 
 for granted) is the notion of longitudinal extension 
 sought. The paralogism here is transparent. Length 
 is an ambiguous term ; and it is length in space, exten- 
 sive length, and not length in time, protensive length, 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 869. 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OP MATTER. 279 
 
 whose notion it is the problem to evolve. To convert, 
 therefore, the notion of a certain kind of length (and 
 that certain kind being also confessedly only length in 
 time) into the notion of a length in space, is at best an 
 idle begging of the question. Is it not ? Then I would 
 ask, whether the series of feelings of which we are 
 aware in the gradual contraction of a muscle, involves 
 the consciousness of being a succession in length, (1) in 
 time alone? or (2) in space alone? or (3) in time and 
 space together ? These three cases will be allowed to be 
 exhaustive. If the first be affirmed ; if the succession 
 appear in consciousness a succession in time exclusively, 
 then nothing has been accomplished ; for the notion of 
 extension or space is in no way contained in the notion 
 of duration or time. Again, if the second or third is 
 affirmed ; if the series appear to consciousness a succes- 
 sion in length, either in space alone, or in space and 
 time together, then is the notion it behooved to generate 
 employed to generate itself." 
 
 (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 origi- 
 nally, 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 length, but an identifica- 
 tion of them as one. 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 argu- 
 
280 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OP THE 
 
 ment implied this absurdity. The notion of simulta- 
 neity 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 color and 
 one of odor might be ; and this makes us cognize the 
 two objects of touch as both existing at once. The ques- 
 tion then is, what have we in our minds, when we repre- 
 sent to ourselves the relation between these two objects 
 already known to be simultaneous, in the form of Exten- 
 sion, or intervening Space a relation which we do not 
 suppose to exist between the color and the odor? Now 
 those who agree with Brown, say that whatever the no- 
 tion 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 sen- 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 281 
 
 sation (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 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 unquestionably the mode in which we be- 
 come aware of extension, is considered by the psycholo- 
 gists 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 per- 
 ceived by the same tactile organ only successively, at the 
 end of a series of muscular sensations which constitutes 
 their distance ; and are said to be at different distances 
 from one another because the series of intervening mus- 
 cular sensations is longer in some cases than in others.* 
 
 * It is not pretended that all this was clearly seen by Brown. It is im- 
 possible to defend the theory as Brown stated it. He seems to have thought 
 that the essence of extension consisted in divisibility into parts. " A suc- 
 cession of feelings " (he says), " when remembered by the mind which 
 looks back upon them, was found to involve, necessarily, the notion of 
 divisibility into separate parts, and therefore of length, which is only an- 
 other name for continued divisibility" (Lecture xxiv. vol. ii. p. 3 of the 
 19th edition, 1851.) He thought that he had explained all that needed ex- 
 planation in the idea of space, when he had shown how the notion of con- 
 tinued divisibility got into it. This appears when he says, " It would not 
 be easy for any one to define matter more simply, than as that which has 
 parts, and that which resists our efforts to grasp it ; and in our analysis of 
 the feelings of infancy, we have been able to discover how both these 
 notions may have arisen in the mind." But if divisibility into parts consti- 
 tutes all our notion of extension, every sensation we have must be identi- 
 fied with extension, for they are all divisible into parts (parts in succession, 
 which Brown thinks sufficient) when they are prolonged beyond the short- 
 est instant of duration which our consciousness recognizes. It is probable 
 that Brown did not mean this, but thought that all he had to account for 
 in the conception of space, was its divisibility, because he tacitly assumed 
 that all the rest of the notion was already given in the fact of muscular 
 movement. And this, properly understood, is maintainable ; but Brown 
 cannot here be acquitted of a charge to which he is often liable that of 
 leaving an important philosophical question only half thought out. 
 
282 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OP THE 
 
 The theory may be recapitulated as follows. The sen- 
 sation 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, 
 Jtaum, distinctly confirms. We have a sensation which 
 accompanies the free movement of our organs, say for 
 instance of our arm. This sensation is variously modi- 
 fied by the direction, and by the amount of the move- 
 ment. 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. 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 
 learned by experience. ^These different kinds and quali- 
 ties 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 pecu- 
 liarity which (according to this theory) distinguishes 
 simultaneity in space from the simultaneity which may 
 exist between a taste and a color, or a taste anil a smell : 
 and we have no reason for believing that Space or Exten- 
 sion in itself, is anything different from that which we 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 283 
 
 recognize 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 charac- 
 ter, and is, I think, the main cause of the difficulty felt 
 in believing that Extension derives its meaning to us from 
 a phenomenon 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 simul- 
 taneity. How, then (it is naturally asked) , can this vast 
 collection of consciousnesses which are sensibly simul- 
 taneous, be generated by the mind out of its conscious- 
 ness 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 experirnentum crucis on the 
 mode in which extension is conceived and known, inde- 
 pendently of the eye. Not having the assistance of that 
 organ, a person blind from birth must necessarily per- 
 ceive 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, 
 
284 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 or by walking over them if great. The parts of exten- 
 sion which it is possible for him to perceive simultane- 
 ously, 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 metaphy- 
 sicians 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 SirW. 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 philoso- 
 pher than as a learned physician and an elegant scholar," 
 endeavored 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.* " In regard to the 
 visionless representation of space or extension, the at- 
 tentive observation of a person born blind, which I for- 
 merly instituted in the year 1785, and again, in relation 
 
 * Lectures, ii. 174. 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OP MATTER. 285 
 
 to the point in question, have continued for three whole 
 weeks this observation, I say, has convinced me, that 
 the sense of touch, by itself, is altogether incompetent to 
 afford us the representation of extension and space, and 
 is not even cognizant of local exteriority ; in a word, 
 that a man deprived of sight has absolutely no percep- 
 tion of an outer world, beyond the existence of some- 
 thing effective, different from his own feeling of passivity, 
 and in general only of the numerical diversity shall I 
 say of impressions, or of things? In fact, to those born 
 blind, time serves instead of space. Vicinity and dis- 
 tance mean in their mouths nothing more than the 
 shorter or longer time, the smaller or greater number of 
 feelings, which they find necessary to attain from some 
 one feeling to another. That a person blind from birth 
 employs the language of vision that may occasion con- 
 siderable error ; and did, indeed, at the commencement 
 of my observations, lead me wrong ; but, in point of 
 fact, he knows nothing of things as existing out of each 
 other ; and (this in particular I have very clearly re- 
 marked) if objects, and the part 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 dis- 
 tance, but merely by the difference of the feelings (and 
 his perception of such differences was incredibly fine) 
 which he experienced from the one and from the other, 
 and moreover through time. In like manner, in external 
 bodies, he distinguished their figure merely by the 
 varieties of impressed feelings ; inasmuch, for example, 
 as the cube, by its angles, affected his feeling differently 
 from the sphere." 
 
286 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 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 ex- 
 tension 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 color on 
 the matter when he says that his patient had no per- 
 ception 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 simul- 
 taneity, for no being who has a plurality of senses can 
 be without it, he does not seem to have thoroughly real- 
 ized the conception of the parts of space as simultaneous. 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 287 
 
 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 color have become repre- 
 sentative of the tactual and muscular sensations with 
 which they are coexistent, the fact that we can receive a 
 vast number of sensations of color at the same instant 
 (or what appears such to our consciousness) puts us in 
 the same position as if we had been able to receive that 
 number of tactual and muscular sensations in a single 
 instant. (The ideas of all the successive tactual and mus- 
 cular feelings which accompany the passage of the hand 
 over the whole of the colored surface, are made to flash on 
 the mind at once : and impressions which were successive 
 in sensation become coexistent in thoughtA 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 percep- 
 tions of sight, are considered in their application to this 
 case, it is certain that this apparent perception of suc- 
 cessive elements as simultaneous would be generated, 
 and would supply all that there is in our idea of exten- 
 sion, more than there was in that of Platner's patient. 
 
288 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OP THE 
 
 I shall quote, in continuation, part of the exposition, 
 by Mr. Bain, of the machinery by which our conscious- 
 ness of Extension becomes an appendage of our sen- 
 sations 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 actual 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 com- 
 municates 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,* " is for Color. This is the effect specific to it as 
 a sense. But the feeling of Color by itself, implies no 
 knowledge of any outward object, as a cause or a thing 
 wherein the color inheres. It is simply a mental effect 
 or influence, a feeling or conscious state, which we should 
 be able to distinguish from other conscious states, as for 
 example, a smell or a sound. We should also be able 
 to mark the difference between it and others of the same 
 
 * The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 370, 374. I now quote from the second 
 edition (18(34). The corresponding passage in the first edition begins at 
 p. 363. 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 289 
 
 kind, more or less vivid, more or less enduring, more or 
 less voluminous. So we should distinguish the qualita- 
 tive differences between one color and another. Pleas- 
 ure or pain, with discrimination of intensity and of 
 duration, would attach to the mere sensation of color. 
 Knowledge or belief in an external or material colored 
 body, there would be none. 
 
 " But when we add the active or muscular sensibility 
 of the eye, we obtain new products. The sweep of the 
 eye over the colored field gives a feeling of a definite 
 amount of action, an exercise of internal power, which 
 is something totally different from the passive feeling of 
 light. This action has many various modes, all of the 
 same quality, but all distinctively felt and recognized by 
 us. Thus the movements may be in any direction 
 horizontal, vertical, or slanting ; and every one of these 
 movements is felt as different from every other. In ad- 
 dition to these, we have the movements of adjustment 
 of the eye, brought on by differences in the remoteness 
 of objects. We have distinctive feelings belonging to 
 these different adjustments, just as we have towards the 
 different movements across the field of view. If the 
 eyes are adjusted, first to clear vision for an object six 
 inches from the eye, and afterwards change their adjust- 
 ment to suit an object six feet distant, we are distinctly 
 conscious of the change, and of the degree or amount 
 of it ; we know that the change is greater than in ex- 
 tending the adjustment to a three-feet object, while it is 
 less than we should have to go through for a twenty-feet 
 object. Thus in the alterations of the eyes for near and 
 far, we have a distinctive consciousness of amount or 
 degree, no less than in the movements for right and left, 
 
290 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 up and down. Feelings with the character of activity 
 are thus incorporated with the sensibility to color ; the 
 luminous impression is associated with exertion on our 
 part, and is no longer a purely passive state. We find 
 that the light changes as our activity changes ; we recog- 
 nize in it a certain connection with our movements ; an 
 association springs up between the passive feeling and the 
 active energy of the visible [visual] organ, or rather of 
 the body generally ; for the changes of view are owing to 
 movements of the head and trunk, as well as to the 
 sweep of the eye within its own orbit. . . . 
 
 " When, along with a forward movement, we behold 
 a steadily varying change of appearance in the objects 
 before us, we associate the change with the locomotive 
 effort, and after many repetitions, we firmly connect the 
 one with the other. We then know what is implied in a 
 certain feeling in the eye, a certain adjustment of the 
 lenses and a certain inclination of the axes, of all of 
 which we are conscious ; we know that these things are 
 connected with the further experience of a definite loco- 
 motive energy needing to be expended, in order to alter 
 this consciousness to some other consciousness. Apart 
 from this association, the eye-feeling might be recognized 
 as differing from other eye-feelings, but there could be 
 no other perception in the case. Experience connects 
 these differences of ocular adjustment with the various 
 exertions of the body at large, and the one can then 
 imply and reveal the others. The feeling that we have 
 when the eyes are parallel and vision distinct, is asso- 
 ciated with a great and prolonged effort of walking, in 
 other words, with a long distance. An inclination of 
 the eyes of two degrees, is associated with two paces to 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OP MATTER. 291 
 
 bring us up to the nearest limit of vision, or with a 
 stretch of some other kind, measured in the last resort 
 by pacing, or by passing the hand along the object. The 
 change from an inclination of 30 to an inclination of 
 10% is associated with a given sweep of the arm, carry- 
 ing the hand forward over eight inches and a half." 
 
 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 impres- 
 sions 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 distinguish- 
 able 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 symbolic relation, being 
 far briefer, is habitually thought of in place of that it 
 symbolizes : and by the continued use of such symbols, 
 and the union of them into more complex ones, are gen- 
 erated our ideas of visible extension ideas which, like 
 those of the algebraist working out an equation, are 
 
292 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 wholly unlike the ideas symbolized ; and which yet, like 
 his, occupy the mind to the entire exclusion of the ideas 
 symbolized." 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.f The following is his own statement of it. 
 " It can J easily be shown that the perception of color 
 involves the perception of extension. It is admitted that 
 we have by sight a perception of colors, consequently a 
 perception of the difference of colors. But a perception 
 of the distinction of colors necessarily involves the per- 
 ception of a discriminating line ; for if one color be laid 
 beside or upon another, we only distinguish them as dif- 
 ferent by perceiving that they limit each other, which 
 limitation necessarily affords a breadthless line, a line 
 of demarcation. One color laid upon another, in fact, 
 gives a line returning upon itself, that is, a figure. But 
 
 * Principles of Psychology, p. 224. f Lectures, ii. 172. 
 
 J Ibid. p. 165. 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 293 
 
 a line and a figure are modifications of extension. The 
 perception of extension, therefore, is necessarily given 
 in the perception of colors." 
 
 And farther on,* "All parties are, of course, at one 
 in regard to the fact that we see color. Those who hold 
 that we see extension, admit that we see it only as 
 colored ; and those who deny ug any vision of extension, 
 make color the exclusive object of sight. In regard to 
 this first position, all are, therefore, agreed. Nor are 
 they less harmonious in reference to the second that 
 the power of perceiving color involves the power of per- 
 ceiving the differences of colors. By sight we, therefore, 
 perceive color, and discriminate one color, that is, one 
 colored body, one sensation of color, from another. 
 This is admitted. A third position will also be denied 
 by none that the colors discriminated in vision are, or 
 may be, placed side by side in immediate juxtaposition ; 
 or, one may limit another by being superinduced partially 
 over it. A fourth position is equally indisputable that 
 the contrasted colors, thus bounding each other, will form 
 by their meeting a visible line, and that, if the superin- 
 duced color be surrounded by the other, this line will 
 return upon itself, and thus constitute the outline of a 
 visible figure. These four positions command a per- 
 emptory assent ; they are all self-evident. But their 
 admission at once explodes the paradox under discus- 
 sion" (that extension cannot be cognized by sight 
 alone) . " And thus : A line is extension in one dimen- 
 sion, length; a figure is extension in two, length 
 and breadth. Therefore, the vision of a line is a vision 
 of extension in length ; the vision of a figure, the vision 
 of extension in length and breadth." 
 
 * Lectures, ii. 167. 
 VOL. i. 13 
 
294 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OP THE 
 
 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 experi- 
 ment, 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 ex- 
 tent and limits of the conceptions which light is capable 
 of giving, independent 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 visible figure, it does not cognize it by 
 means of color alone, but by all those motions and modi- 
 fications of the muscles connected with the eye, which 
 have so great a share in giving us our acquired percep- 
 tions of sight. To determine what can be cognized 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 colors, 
 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 super- 
 added. 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. 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 295 
 
 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 percep- 
 tions 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. Physiolo- 
 gists have explained this by the fact, that the centre of 
 the retina is furnished with a prodigiously greater num- 
 ber of nervous papillae, much finer and more delicate 
 individually, and crowded closer together, than any other 
 part. Whatever be its explanation, the fact itself is in- 
 dubitable ; and seems to warrant the conclusion that if 
 the axis of the eye were immovable, and we were with- 
 out the muscular sensations which accompany and guide 
 its movement, the impression we should have of a boun- 
 dary between two colors 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 color at once, and that the 
 boundary which separates the colors must give some 
 specific affection of sight, otherwise we should have no 
 discriminative impressions capable of afterwards becom- 
 ing, 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. Sir W. Ham- 
 
296 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 ilton 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 plain 
 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 for 
 instance, that if we placed our finger on the spot corre- 
 sponding 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 impres- 
 sion conveyed by the line which bounds two colors, 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 colors is outside the other. On 
 this point I may again quote Mr. Bain.f "I do not see 
 how one sensation can be felt as out of another, without 
 already supposing that we have a feeling of space. If I 
 see two distinct objects before me, as two candle flames, 
 I apprehend them as different objects, and as distant 
 from one another by an interval of space ; but this ap- 
 
 * Lectures, ii. 160. 
 
 t The Senses and the Intellect, 2d cd. p. 376 ; 1st ed. p. 368. 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 297 
 
 prehension presupposes an independent experience and 
 knowledge of lineal extension. There is no evidence to 
 show that, at the first sight of these objects, and before 
 any association is formed between visible appearances 
 and other movements, I should be able to apprehend in 
 the double appearance a difference of place. I feel a 
 distinctness of impression, undoubtedly, partly optical 
 and partly muscular, but in order that this distinctness 
 may mean to me a difference of position in space, it 
 must reveal the additional fact, that a certain movement 
 of my arm would carry my hand from the one flame to 
 the other ; or that some other movement of mine would 
 change by a definite amount the appearance I now see. 
 If no information is conveyed respecting the possibility 
 of movements of the body generally, no idea of space is 
 given, for we never consider that we have a notion of 
 space, unless we distinctly recognize this possibility. 
 But how a vision to the eye can reveal beforehand what 
 would be the experience of the hand or the other .moving 
 members, I am unable to understand."* 
 
 * To this passage Mr. Bain has appended, in his second edition (p. 377), 
 the following instructive note : 
 
 " In following a wide ranging movement, or in expatiating over a large 
 prospect, we must move the eyes, or the head ; and probably every one 
 would allow that, in such a case, feelings of movement make a part of our 
 sensation and our subsequent idea. The notion of a mountain evidently 
 contains feelings of visual movement. But when we look at a circle, say, 
 one tenth of an inch in diameter, the eye can take in the whole of it with- 
 out movement, and we might suppose that the sensation is, in that case, 
 purely optical, there being no apparent necessity for introducing the mus- 
 cular consciousness. A characteristic optical impression is produced ; we 
 should be able to discriminate between the small circle and a square, or an 
 oval ; or between it and a somewhat larger or somewhat smaller circle, 
 from the mere optical difference of the effect on the retina. Why then 
 may we not say, that, through the luminous tracing alone, we have the 
 feeling of visible form ? 
 
 "By making an extreme supposition of this nature, it is possible to 
 
298 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 Sir W. Hamilton does not limit the perception of Ex- 
 tension to sight and touch, either separately or combined 
 with one another. "The opinions," he says,* "so gener- 
 ally prevalent, that through touch, or touch and muscu- 
 lar feeling, or touch and sight, or touch, muscular feeling, 
 and sight, that through these senses, exclusively, we 
 are percipient of extension, &c., I do not admit. On 
 the contrary, I hold that all sensations whatsoever of 
 which we are conscious as one out of another, eo ipso 
 afford us the condition of immediately and necessarily 
 apprehending extension ; for in the consciousness itself 
 of such reciprocal outness is actually involved a percep- 
 
 remove the case from a direct experimental test. We may still, however, 
 see very strong grounds for maintaining the presence of a muscular 
 element even in this instance. In the first place, our notions of form are 
 manifestly obtained by working on the large scale, or by the survey of 
 objects of such magnitude as to demand the sweep of the eye, in order to 
 comprehend them. We lay the foundations of our knowledge of visible 
 outline in circumstances where the eye must be active, and must mix its 
 own activity with the retinal feelings. The idea of a circle is first gained 
 by moving the eye round some circular object of considerable size. Having 
 done this, we transfer the fact of motion to smaller circles, although they 
 would not of themselves demand an extensive ocular sweep. So that when 
 we look at a little round body, we are already pre-occupied with the double 
 nature of visible form, and are not in a position to say how we should 
 regard it, if that were our first experience of a circle. 
 
 " But, in the second place, the essential import of visible form is some- 
 thing not attainable without the experience of moving the eye. If we 
 looked at a little round spot, we should know an optical difference between 
 it and a triangular spot, and we should recognize it as identical with another 
 round spot ; but that is merely retinal knowledge, or optical discrimina- 
 tion. That would not be to recognize form, because by form we never 
 mean so little as a mere change of color. We mean by a round form 
 something that would take a given sweep of the eye to comprehend it ; and 
 unless we identify the small spot with the circles previously seen, we do 
 not perceive it to be a circle. It may remain in our mind as a purely opti- 
 cal meaning ; but we can never cross the chasm that separates an optical 
 meaning from an effect combining light and movement, in any other way 
 than by bringing in an experience of movement." 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 861. 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 299 
 
 tion of difference of place in space, and, consequently, 
 of the extended." It may safely be admitted that when- 
 ever 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 sensa- 
 tions 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 "VV. 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. Undoubt- 
 edly we recognize 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 cognizing a similar fact in 
 regard to other material objects. This Sir W. Hamil- 
 ton 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 
 
300 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OP THE 
 
 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 the 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 im- 
 mersed 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 doc- 
 trine, being as consistent 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. Hamil- 
 ton'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 extrem- 
 ities of more than one nervous filament. Platner ex- 
 pressly 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 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 301 
 
 would call it, a greater volume. 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. Key Re*gis, a medical observer, in his 
 Histoire Naturelle de 1'Ame," is as incompatible with 
 
 * I may here observe that Sir W. Hamilton (and the same mistake has 
 been made by Mr. Bailey) considers Cheseldeu's case as evidence that the 
 " perception of externality," as distinguished from that of distance from 
 the eye, is given by sight as well as by touch, because the young man said 
 that objects at first seemed " to touch his eyes as what he felt did his skin." 
 (Foot-note to Reid, p. 177.) He seems to think that, on the other theory, 
 the boy should have been metaphysician enough to recognize in the per- 
 ception " a mere affection of the organ," or at least should have perceived 
 the objects " as if in his eyes." But he was not accustomed to con- 
 ceive tangible objects as if in his fingers. He conceived them as touching 
 his fingers ; and he simply transferred the experience of touch to the newly- 
 acquired sense. All his notions of perception were associated with direct 
 contact ; and as he did not perceive any of the objects of sight to be at a 
 distance from the organ by which he perceived them, he concluded that 
 they must be in contact with it. 
 
302 THE PYSCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 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 rnotory nerves, while the functions of the sensory 
 nerves seemed unimpaired. This patient, it was found, 
 had lost the power of localizing his sensations. " Ex- 
 periments,* various and repeated, were made to ascertain 
 with accuracy, whether the loss of motive faculty had 
 occasioned any alteration in the capacity of feeling ; and 
 it was found that the patient, though as acutely alive 
 as ever to the sense of pain, felt, when this was secretly 
 inflicted, as by compression of his hand under the bed- 
 clothes, a sensation of suffering or uneasiness, by which, 
 when the pressure became strong, he was compelled 
 lustily to cry out ; but a sensation merely general, he 
 being altogether unable to localize the feeling, or to say 
 whence the pain proceeded. . . . The patient, as he 
 gradually recovered the use of his limbs, gradually also 
 recovered the power of localizing his sensations." It 
 would be premature to establish a scientific inference 
 upon a single experiment : but if confirmed by repeti- 
 tion, this is an experimentum crucis. So far as one 
 experiment can avail, it fully 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 favorable 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 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, pp. 874, 875. 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OP MATTER. 303 
 
 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 impor- 
 tance 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,* "of the Primary Qualities does 
 not, originally and in itself, reveal to us the existence, 
 and qualitative existence, of aught beyond the organism, 
 'apprehended by us as extended, figured, divided, &c. 
 The primary qualities of things external to our organism 
 we do not perceive, i. e., immediately know. For these 
 we only learn to infer, from the affections which we come 
 to find that they determine in our organs ; affections 
 which, yielding us a perception of organic extension, we 
 at length discover, by observation and induction, to im- 
 ply a corresponding extension in the extra-organic agents. " 
 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 differ- 
 ent parts of our body. " As perceived extension is only 
 the recognition of one organic affection in its outness 
 from another ; as a minimum of extension is thus to per- 
 ception the smallest extent of organism in which sensa- 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, pp. 881, 882. 
 
304 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE 
 
 tions can be discriminated as plural ; and as in one part 
 of the organism, this smallest extent is perhaps some 
 million, certainly some myriad, times smaller than in 
 others ; it follows that, to perception, the same real ex- 
 tension will appear, in this place of the body, some mil- 
 lion or myriad times greater than in that. Nor does this 
 difference subsist only as between sense and sense ; for 
 in the same sense, and even in that sense which has 
 very commonly been held exclusively to afford a knowl- 
 edge of absolute extension, I mean Touch proper, the 
 minimum at one part of the body, is some fifty times 
 greater than it is at another." 
 
 Thus, according to Sir W. Hamilton, all our cogni- 
 tions 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 
 M 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 exten- 
 sion 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 of- 
 ten he repeats that the testimony of consciousness must 
 be accepted entire, or not accepted at all ; how ear- 
 nestly and in how many places he maintains " that we 
 have not merely a notion, a conception, an imagina- 
 tion, a subjective representation of Extension, for ex- 
 ample, called up or suggested in some incomprehensible 
 manner to the mind, on occasion of an extended object 
 being presented to the sense ; but that in the perception 
 
PRIMARY QUALITIES OP MATTER. 305 
 
 of such an object we have, as by nature we believe we 
 have, an immediate knowledge or consciousness of that 
 external object as extended. In a word, that in sensitive 
 perception, the extension, as known, and the extension 
 as existing, are convertible ; known because existing, and 
 existing, since known."* 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 per- 
 ception, but as an inference from the former. I ask any 
 one, whether this opinion does not contradict our "nat- 
 ural beliefs " as much as any opinion of the Cosmothetic 
 Idealists can do ; whether to the natural, or non-meta- 
 physical 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 phi- 
 losopher 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 him- 
 self, 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 
 
 * Dissertations on Reid, p. 842. 
 
306 THE PRIMARY QUALITIES OP MATTER. 
 
 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 repug- 
 nant to his own doctrine. Neither of these can justify 
 himself but by pointing out a mode in which the apparent 
 perceptions, supposed to be original, may have been ac- 
 quired ; 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 conscious- 
 ness, and attempt to bring down the other by an argu- 
 ment which is of no possible value except ad invidium, 
 and which in its invidious sense is applicable to them 
 both, and to all psychologists deserving the name. 
 
THE LAW OP INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION. 307 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 HOW SIR W. 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 inquiry, 
 that the principal instrument employed by them for un- 
 locking 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, be- 
 cause 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 tliis 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 glid- 
 
 * As lately as the year 1864 has been published the first work (I believe) 
 in the French language, which recognizes the association psychology in its 
 modern developments ; an able and instructive " Etude sur 1'Assoriation 
 des Idees," by M. P. M. Mervoyer. 
 
308 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED 
 
 ing 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 Dis- 
 sertation on the Laws 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 phe- 
 nomena. 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 
 contrary? More fully; "whether, in Perception, do 
 we first obtain a general knowledge of the complex 
 
 * In this Dissertation, which originally broke off abruptly, but the con- 
 clusion of which has recently been supplied from the author's papers, he 
 attempts to simplify the theory of Association, reducing Association by 
 Resemblance, not indeed to Association by Contiguity, but to that com- 
 bined with an elementary law, for the first time expressly laid down by Sir 
 W. Hamilton, though implied in all Association and in all Memory : viz., 
 that a present sensation or thought suggests the remembrance of what he 
 calls the same sensation or thought (meaning one exactly similar) ex- 
 perienced at a former time. This leaves Resemblance of simple sensations 
 as a distinct principle of association, the foundation of all the rest, while it 
 resolves resemblance of complex phenomena into that simple principle 
 combined with the law of Contiguity. 
 
 By virtue of this speculation, Sir "W. Hamilton thinks it possible to re- 
 duce Association to a single law : " Those thoughts suggest each other, 
 which had previously constituted parts of the same entire or total act of 
 cognition." (Lectures, ii. 238, and the corresponding passages of the Dis- 
 sertation.) This appears to me, I confess, far from a happy effort of 
 generalization ; for there is no possibility of bringing under it the elemen- 
 tary case of suggestion, which our author has the merit of being the first 
 to put into scientific language. The sweet taste of to-day, and the similar 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MB. MANSEL. 309 
 
 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 com- 
 petent, 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 In- 
 separable 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 
 
 sweet taste of a week ago which it reminds me of, have not " previously 
 constituted parts of the same act of cognition ; " unless we take literally the 
 expression by which they are spoken of as the same taste, though they are 
 no more the same taste, than two men are the same man if they happen to 
 be exactly alike. It is a further objection, that the attempted simplifica- 
 tion, even if otherwise correct, would merely unite two clear notions into 
 one obscure one ; for the notion of feelings which suggest one another 
 because they resemble, or because they have been experienced together, is 
 universally intelligible, while that of forming parts of the same act of cog- 
 nition involves all the metaphysical difficulties which surround the ideas 
 of Unity, Totality, and Parts. 
 
 After thus, as he fancies, reducing all the phtenomena of Association to a 
 single law, Sir "W. Hamilton asks, how is this law itself explained ? and 
 justly observes that it may be an ultimate law, and that ultimate laws are 
 necessarily unexplainable. But he nevertheless quotes, with some appro- 
 bation, an attempt by a German writer, H. Schmid, to explain it by an A 
 priori theory of the human mind, which may be recommended to notice as 
 a choice specimen of a school of German metaphysicians who have remained 
 several centuries behind the progress of philosophical inquiry, having never 
 yet felt the influence of the Baconian reform. See Lectures, ii. 240-243. 
 
 * Lectures, ii, 144. 
 
310 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED 
 
 only recognition he ever gives it in a by-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 character- 
 istic properties of our closest associations ; that the sug- 
 gestions 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 suc- 
 cessive) become so blended together, that the compound 
 result appears, to our consciousness, simple. 
 
 "Where two or more ideas," says Mr. Mill,* "have 
 been often repeated together, and the association has 
 become very strong, they sometimes spring up in such 
 close combination as not to be distinguishable. Some 
 cases of sensation are analogous. For example ; when 
 a wheel, on the seven parts of which the seven prismatic 
 colors are respectively painted, is made to revolve rap- 
 idly, it appears not of seven colors, but of one uniform 
 color white. By the rapidity of the succession, the 
 several sensations cease to be distinguishable; they run, 
 as it were, together, and a new sensation, compounded 
 of all the seven, but apparently a single one, is the result. 
 Ideas, also, which have been so often conjoined, that 
 whenever one exists in the mind, the others immediately 
 exist along with it, seem to run into one another, to 
 coalesce, as it were, and out of many to form one idea ; 
 which idea, however in reality complex, appears to be 
 no less simple than any one of those of which it is com- 
 pounded. . . . 
 
 " It is to this great law of association that we trace 
 
 * Analysis of the Human Mind, i. 68-75. 
 
BY SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MB. M ANSEL. 311 
 
 the formation of our ideas of what we call external 
 objects ; that is, the ideas of a certain number of sensa- 
 tions received together so frequently that they coalesce, 
 as it were, and are spoken of under the idea of unity. 
 Hence what we call the idea of a tree, the idea of a 
 stone, the idea of a horse, the idea of a man. 
 
 " In using the names, tree, horse, man, the names of 
 what I call objects, I am referring, and can be referring, 
 only to my own sensations ; in fact, therefore, only 
 naming a certain number of sensations, regarded as in 
 a particular state of combination ; that is, of concomi- 
 tance. Particular sensations of sight, of touch, of the 
 muscles, are the sensations, to the ideas of which, color, 
 extension, roughness, hardness, smoothness, taste, smell, 
 so coalescing as to appear one idea, I give the name idea 
 of a tree. 
 
 "To this case of high association, this blending to- 
 gether of many ideas, in so close a combination that 
 they appear not many ideas, but one idea, we owe, as I 
 shall afterwards more fully explain, the power of clas- 
 sification, and all the advantages of language. It is 
 obviously, therefore, of the greatest moment, that this 
 important phenomenon should be well understood. 
 
 " Some ideas are by frequency and strength of associ- 
 ation so closely combined that they cannot be separated. 
 If one exists, the other exists along with it, in spite of 
 whatever effort we may make to disjoin them. 
 
 " For example ; it is not in our power to think of 
 color, without thinking of extension ; or of solidity, 
 without figure. We have seen color constantly in com- 
 bination with extension, spread, as it were, upon a sur- 
 face. We have never seen it except in this connection. 
 
312 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED 
 
 Color and extension have been invariably conjoined. The 
 idea of color, therefore, uniformly comes into the mind, 
 bringing that of extension along with it ; and so close is 
 the association, that it is not in our power to dissolve it. 
 We cannot, if we will, think of color, but in combina- 
 tion with extension. The one idea calls up the other, 
 and retains it, so long as the other is retained. 
 
 w This great law of our nature is illustrated in a man- 
 ner equally striking by the connection between the ideas 
 of solidity and figure. We never have the sensations 
 from which the idea of solidity is derived, but in con- 
 junction with the sensations whence the idea of figure is 
 derived. If we handle anything solid it is always either 
 round, square, or of some other form. The ideas corre- 
 spond with the sensations. If the idea of solidity rises, 
 that of figure rises along with it. The idea of figure 
 which rises is, of course, more obscure than that of ex- 
 tension ; because, figures being innumerable, the general 
 idea is exceedingly complex, and hence, of necessity, 
 obscure. But such as it is, the idea of figure is always 
 present when that of solidity is present ; nor can we, by 
 any effort, think of the one without thinking of the other 
 at the same time." 
 
 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 associa- 
 tion, the operation of which we shall afterwards find to 
 be extensive, and bearing a principal part in some of the 
 most important phenomena of the human mind." And 
 the promise of this sentence is amply redeemed in the 
 sequel to the treatise. 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MB. M ANSEL. 313 
 
 The only remark which this highly philosophical expo- 
 sition 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 principle of Association to an extreme which refutes 
 its own exaggeration, analyzing 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 inquiring how much the law of Insepara- 
 ble 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 color, 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 color without extension, nor extension 
 without color. Even the born blind, he thinks, have the 
 sensation of darkness, that is, of black color, and men- 
 tally clothe all extended objects with it.* Except the 
 last position, which has no evidence and no probability, f 
 
 * Lectures, ii. 168-172. 
 
 f According to the doctrine of all advanced psychologists, to which Sir 
 W. Hamilton gives an express adhesion, it is impossible to have a con- 
 sciousness of darkness without having had a consciousness of light. Be- 
 sides, it is a notorious optical fact that a completely black object occupying 
 the whole sphere of vision is invisible ; it reflects no light. Blackness, 
 therefore (the complete blackness of absolute darkness), is not a sensa- 
 tion, but the total absence of sensation ; it is, in fact, nothing at all ; and 
 to say that a person born blind cannot imagine extension without clothing 
 
314 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED 
 
 the doctrine is undoubtedly true, and the fact is so obvi- 
 ously a case of the law of association, that even Stewart, 
 little partial as he was to that mode of explaining mental 
 phenomena, 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 sen- 
 sation of color is excited in the mind, we find it impos- 
 sible 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 connection 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 become inseparable by dint of repetition, how could 
 the association between color and extension fail of being 
 so ? The two facts never exist but in immediate conjunc- 
 tion, 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 associa- 
 
 it with nothing at all, is to assert something not very intelligible. In the 
 case of a person who has become blind, it might have a meaning ; for 
 blackness to him, like darkness to us, does not stand for mere inability to 
 see, but for the usual effort to see, not followed by the usual consequence. 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 315 
 
 tion, 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 secon- 
 dary 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) * 
 were correct, what would it involve ? It would involve 
 as a primary inference, that, as we know the whole 
 through the parts, we should know the parts better 
 than the whole. Thus, for example, it is supposed that 
 we know the face of a friend, through the multitude of 
 perceptions which we have of the different points of 
 which it is made up ; in other words, that we should 
 know the whole countenance less vividly than we know 
 the forehead and eyes, the nose and mouth, &c., and 
 that we should know each of these more feebly than we 
 know the various ultimate points, in fact, unconscious 
 minima of perceptions, which go to constitute them. 
 According to the doctrine in question, we perceive only 
 one of these ultimate points at the same instant, the 
 others by memory incessantly renewed. Now, let us take 
 the face out of perception into memory altogether. Let 
 us close ,our eyes, and let us represent in imagination 
 the countenance of our friend. This we can do with the 
 utmost vivacity ; or, if we see a picture of it, we can 
 
 * Lectures, ii. 149, 150. 
 
316 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED 
 
 determine with a consciousness of the most perfect accu- 
 racy, that the portrait is like or unlike. It cannot, 
 therefore, be denied that we have the fullest knowledge 
 of the face as a whole, that we are familiar with its 
 expression, with the general result of its parts. On the 
 hypothesis, then, of Stewart and Mill, how accurate 
 should be our knowledge of these parts themselves ! But 
 make the experiment. You will find, that unless you 
 have analyzed, unless you have descended from a con- 
 spectus of the whole face to a detailed examination of 
 its parts, with the most vivid impression of the con- 
 stituted whole, you are almost totally ignorant of the 
 constituent parts. You may probably be unable to say 
 what is the color of the eyes, and if you attempt to de- 
 lineate the mouth or nose, you will inevitably fail. Or 
 look at the portrait. You may find it unlike, but unless, 
 as I said, you have analyzed the countenance, unless you 
 have looked at it with the analytic scrutiny of a painter's 
 eye, you will assuredly be unable to say in what respect 
 the artist has failed, you will be unable to specify 
 what constituent he has altered, though you are fully 
 conscious of the fact and effect of the alteration. What 
 we have shown from this example may equally be done 
 from any other a house, a tree, a landscape, a concert 
 of music, &c." * 
 
 I have already made mention of a very important part 
 of the Laws of Association, which may be termed the 
 
 * Those who are acquainted with Mr. Bailey's attempt to disprove 
 Berkeley's Theory of Vision, will be reminded by this passage of an ex- 
 actly similar argument employed by that able thinker and writer, to prove 
 the intuitive character of what philosophers almost unanimously consider 
 as the acquired perceptions of sight. I have given the same answer to 
 Mr. Bailey on another occasion, which I give to Sir W. Hamilton here. 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 317 
 
 Laws of Obliviscence. If Sir W. Hamilton had suffi- 
 ciently 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 con- 
 sciousness 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. Ham- 
 ilton 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 under- 
 stood 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 fol- 
 lowers, and has excellently illustrated and exemplified 
 
 VOL. I. 14 
 
318 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED 
 
 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 at- 
 tended 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 mem- 
 ory. This happens, even when the impressions which 
 serve the purpose of signs are not mere ideas, or remi- 
 niscences, 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 con- 
 scious 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 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 
 
 * See his Inquiry into the Human Mind, chap. v. sections 2 and 8 ; chap, 
 vi. sects. 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 19 ; Intellectual Powers, Essay ii. chaps. 16 and 17. 
 
BY SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MB. MANSEL. 319 
 
 distinguished letters and syllables before we learned 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 fol- 
 low. Either we have even now, when we read in a 
 book, a more vivid consciousness of the letters and sylla- 
 bles than of the words and sentences, and a more vivid 
 consciousness of the words and sentences than of the 
 general purport of the discourse ; 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 in- 
 terested about ; we care about the features only as signs 
 that it is our friend whom we see, and not another per- 
 son. Unless, therefore, the face commands our atten- 
 tion 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 dis- 
 tinct 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 
 
320 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED 
 
 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 instru- 
 ment, and a hundred other familiar instances ; by every- 
 thing, 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 ar- 
 gument. 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 know- 
 ing its integrant parts. But it is not of integrant parts 
 that Mr. Mill was speaking ; and he might have ad- 
 mitted 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 percep- 
 tion, 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 color, the shape, the resistance, <c., 
 which belong to those objects. These are what phi- 
 losophers have called the metaphysical parts, not the 
 integrant parts, of the total impression. OSow, I have 
 never heard of any philosopher who maintained that these 
 parts were not known until after the objects which they 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. M ANSEL. 321 
 
 characterize; that we perceive the body first, and its 
 color, 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 attri- 
 butes 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 elabo- 
 rating 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 Color and Extension, is ex- 
 hibited 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 argu- 
 ment is the ordinary one of metaphysicians of his school. 
 "The necessity* of so thinking cannot be derived from 
 
 * Discussions, Appendix i. on Causality, p. 615. 
 
322 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED 
 
 & custom of so thinking. -The force of custom, influen- 
 tial as it may be, is still always limited to the customary ; 
 and the customary never reaches, never even approaches 
 to the necessary." The pavier 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." ^5^~ 
 sociatiou 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 d 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 f 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 consid- 
 ering, no contrary experience is to be had. On the 
 theory that the belief in causality results from associa- 
 tion, " 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 possi- 
 
 * Lectures, ii. 191. t Ibid. iv. 74. 
 
 % Discussions, ut supra. . 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND ME. MANSEL. 323 
 
 bility of testing the matter by experiment : and all the- 
 ories 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 neces- 
 sity ; 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 that of which 
 the negation is impossible. <Jfjwe find it impossible, by 
 any trial, to separate two ideas, we have all the feeling 
 of necessity which the mind is capable ofT) Those, there- 
 fore, 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 par- 
 ticular 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 for- 
 gotten, we should have had a Necessity of Thought 
 one of the necessities which are supposed to prove 
 an objective law, and an d priori mental connection 
 
 ^^^ T 
 
324 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED 
 
 between ideas. Now, in all the supposed natural beliefs 
 and necessary conceptions which the principle of Insep- 
 arable Association is employed to explain, the generating 
 causes of the association did begin nearly at the begin- 
 ning 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 be- 
 fore 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 Prole- 
 gomena Logica,* " that whatever truths we are compelled 
 to admit as everywhere and at all times necessary, must 
 have their origin, not without, in the laws of the sen- 
 sible world, but within, in the constitution of the mind 
 itself. Sundry attempts have, indeed, been made to 
 derive them from sensible experience and constant asso- 
 ciation of ideas ; but this explanation is refuted by a 
 
 * Beginning of chap. iv. p. 90. 
 
BY SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 325 
 
 criterion decisive of the fate of all hypotheses : it does 
 not account for the phenomena. It does not account for 
 the fact that other associations, as frequent and as uni- 
 form, are incapable of producing a higher conviction 
 than that of a relative and physical necessity only" 
 
 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 exist- 
 ing 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, j 
 
 But what are 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 : * "I may imagine the sun rising and setting 
 as now for a hundred years, and afterwards remaining 
 continually fixed in the meridian. Yet my experiences 
 of the "alternations of day and night have been at least 
 as invariable as of the geometrical properties of bodies. 
 I can imagine the same stone sinking ninety-nine times 
 in the water, and floating the hundredth, but my experi- 
 ence invariably repeats the former phenomenon only." 
 \^The alternation of day and night is invariable in our 
 experience ; but is the phenomenon day so closely linked 
 in our experience with the phenomenon 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 insejmrable associations 
 which generate necessities of thought y Uniformities of 
 
 * Prolegomena Logica, pp. 96, 97. 
 14* 
 
326 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED 
 
 sequence In which the phenomena 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 associa- 
 tion. 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 fol- 
 lowed by effects and effects preceded by causes. But 
 there is a still more radical distinction than this. No 
 frequency of conjunction between two phenomena 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 things which have the same tendency to sink, re- 
 maining 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 abun- 
 dantly accustomed to see the force of gravity counter- 
 acted. 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 
 
BY SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MB. M ANSEL. 327 
 
 however contradictory a supposition may be to our expe- 
 rience in hac materid, if our experience in alia ma- 
 teria furnishes us with types even distantly resembling 
 what the supposed phenomenon would be if realized, the 
 associations thus formed will generally prevent the spe- 
 cific 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 en- 
 closed 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 enclosed by two 
 straight lines. " Why do I, in the former case, consider 
 the results of my experience as contingent only and 
 transgressible, confined to the actual ph&nomena of a 
 limited field, and possessing no value beyond it ; while, 
 in the latter, I am compelled to regard them as necessary 
 and universal? Why can I give in imagination to a 
 quadruped body what experience assures me is possessed 
 by bipeds only? And why can I not, in like manner, 
 invest straight lines with an attribute which experience 
 has uniformly presented in curves ? " 
 
 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 enclosing a space. Nature, as known in 
 our experience, is uniform in its laws, but extremely 
 
 * Prolegomena Logica, pp. 99, 100. 
 
828 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED 
 
 varied in its combinations'. The combination of a horse's 
 body with a human head has nothing, primd 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 with- 
 in 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 associa- 
 tion between a human head and a human body exclu- 
 sively. (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 enclosing a space? There are no counter-associa- 
 tions in that case, and consequently the primary associa- 
 tion, being founded on an experience beginning from 
 birth, and never for many minutes intermitted in our 
 waking hours, easily becomes inseparable. Had but ex- 
 perience afforded a case of 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 : 
 
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 329 
 
 they do, to the eye, appear to meet in both directions, 
 and consequently to enclose a space : and by supposing 
 that we had no ^access, to the evidejoc^ which proves that 
 they do not really meet, an ingenious thinker, whom I 
 formerly quoted, was able to give the idea of a constitu- 
 tion of nature in which all mankind might have believed 
 that two straight lines could enclose a space. That we 
 are unable to believe or imagine it in our present circum- 
 stances, needs no other explanation than the laws of 
 association afford : for the case unites all the elements 
 of the closest, intensest, and most inseparable associa- 
 tion, with the greatest freedom from conflicting counter- 
 associations which can be found within the conditions of 
 human life. 
 
 In all the instances of phenomena invariably con- 
 joined 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 psy- 
 chology, 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 Associ- 
 ation theory. "We can only," he says,* "conceive in 
 thought what we have experienced in presentation ; " ur.d 
 no other reason is necessary for our being unable to con- 
 ceive 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 na- 
 ture, can be accounted for by experience, without any 
 
 * Prolegomena Logiea, p. 112. 
 H* 
 
330 THE LAW OF INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION. 
 
 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 cir- 
 cumstances, experience the necessary intuition. But such 
 things may nevertheless exist ; and under other circum- 
 stances, they might become objects of possible concep- 
 tion, 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 ex- 
 clusively 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 super- 
 abundantly 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 pres- 
 entation," while in reality it is sufficient that we should 
 have experienced in presentation things bearing some 
 similarity to it. 
 
 * Prolegomena Logics, p. 149. f Ibid. p. 150. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ 
 
 This book is due on the last DATE stamped below. 
 
 FEB 1 7 197| 
 
 FEBS '77 
 
 OOm-8,'65 (F6282s8 ) 2373