y 0Aavaa / EXPLORATIO PHILOSOPHIC!: BOUGH NOTES ON MODERN INTELLECTUAL SCIENCE. PART I. By JOHN GROTE, B.D. FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY I.\ THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. LONDON: BELL AND DALDY. 1865. ► 3 3 i> CONTENTS. PA8S Introduction vii CHAPTER I. Phenomenalism 1 CHAPTER II. Philosophy and Consciousness .....»• 17 CHAPTER III. Sensation, Intelligence, and Will 3-4 CHAPTER IV. Ferrier's Institutes of Metaphysio S3 CHAPTER V. Shi "William Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics ... 8 CHAPTER VI. The Scale of Sensation or Knowledge 106 CHAPTER VII. Sir William Hamilton— Consciousness ok Matter . . .125 CHAPTER VIII. Logic — Mr Mill , . . , UG 1267709 Vi CONTENTS. PAGB CHAPTER IX. Mill's Logic— continued 176 CHAPTER X. Dr "Whewell's Philosophy of Science 203 CHAPTER XL The Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy .... 226 CHAPTER XII. The Interpretation of Nature 242 CHAPTER XIII. « * Substance and Medium . . . 246 1 « 9 * • INTRODUCTION. I will first give an account of the circumstances of the publication of these ' rough notes', and then of the system of philosophy, if so it is to be called, con- tained in them. They represent a continued general thinking on the subjects to which they relate, though they are rather hastily put together as regards their particular form. But there is nothing hasty or extemporaneous in such thought as they may contain. A not inconsiderable portion of them was written two years since, on the following occasion. After the publication of Mr Mill's small book on Utilitarianism, I had the intention of writing some- thing in answer to him on that subject, and had actu- ally begun the printing of the result of this intention. I was led, in connexion with this, to put together the intellectual views on which the moral view rested, or which had something of the character of ' prolegomena ' to it, and had meant if they should come within reason- able limits, to publish them in an Appendix. Being of a nature hesitating and irresolute, I altered my mind as to this : and though at first sti- mulated to controversy, which of itself I do not think I should have shrunk from, I thought that what, in r<"_-;inl of the subject, was likely to be most useful was another course, and accordingly determined rather Vlll INTRODUCTION. to put together, in an uncontroversial form, what seemed to me the truth, in opposition to what I thought error. This, if it please God, is in the way of being accom- plished, subject to all the delays which interest in other employments, uncertain health, and some not, I think, uncalled for scrupulousness and anxiety as to what one writes on a subject so important, may throw in the way of it. But in the meantime, I have thought it might be as well to return upon the intellectual views with which the moral view connects itself, and to re-examine them and test them. The result is the publication of these pages: to which, for reasons which will appear, I have not attempted to give any very regular form or artistic completeness. This explanation is almost necessary for the understanding of the beginning of them, which is abrupt, and refers, it will be seen, to something as going before, and which I thought it was as well to leave so referring. But I have carefully avoided in the following pages all reference to Morals or Ethics, and (except most incidentally) all approbation or dis- approbation of anything in a moral view or as to moral tendency. I have endeavoured to bring together, for comparison, views, the respective holders of which would probably thank me very little for my trouble : but philosophical controversy is a worse confusion than a battle without generals or discipline, and as we come more to morals and ethics the dust and smoke become tenfold worse. I have wished therefore to examine some things in the earlier and clearer atmosphere. I have nothing to do here with any results to which opi- nions may lead, or with any supposed opinions held by any one beyond what the books which I notice contain. INTRODUCTION. IX. I have now to give a short account of the na- ture of the philosophy which these 'rough notes' exhibit or involve. It perhaps may be said, that there are three main heads or kinds of philosophy in England at present, each of which it seems to me has appendant error : and it is against these errors that a great deal of what I say is directed. Of these three kinds of philosophy, as I call them, the first which I will mention is ' the Philosophy of the Human Mind' or Psychology, and there appears to me to attach itself to a great deal of that a very mis- taken view, which I have called generally the wrong psychology or mis-psychology. For the particular nature of this error I must refer to what follows, and will only briefly now say about it, that it consists, substantially, in the attempt to analyze our consciousness while nevertheless we suppose our- selves, who have the consciousness, to be particular local beings in the midst of an universe of things or objects similar to what we ourselves are. My feeling about the whole 'Philosophy of the Human Mind' is this : that at present it is attacked, and with reason, from two opposite sides; that its philosophy will not satisfy philosophers, nor its physiology physiologists ; and that it will have to divide itself, for utility and productiveness, into two lines of thought, very different, rarely likely to be pursued by the same people, each very likely to be despised by those who sympathize with the other, but quite consistent the one with the other, and really of such a nature, that the more purely and independently each takes its own way, the better is it likely to be not only for itself, but also for the other. I am myself very much of opinion that the old X INTRODUCTION. vein of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, or nod- psychology, is worked out, and that whatever there was to be got from it (not much, I think, ever) is got already. But it seems to me that the way is singularly open and inviting now for a good physio-psychology, as I should call it, by which however I mean something possibly very different from w T hat several who have already treated that subject would mean. Such a study is a mental and moral human ana- tomy, and a mental and moral comparative anatomy: but I do not believe that these, or either of them, can ever be pursued with good result unless the pursuers of them dismiss from their minds what I should call philosophy — either looking upon it as a different line of thought, or else ignoring it — in any case not thinking that it is their science which will answer the higher questions of the human mind, or tell us what we ought to do. I have always had a very strong oj)inion that the later psychology, or Philosophy of the Human Mind, has neglected a large province of consideration which really belonged to it, in its failing to take notice of, and to try to bring into relation with human in- telligence, the various intelligence of our humbler fellow-creatures in the universe, the lower animals: mind belongs to them as well as to us. Mental human anatomy, which is of two kinds, the anatomy of the body pursued as far as it can be in the direction of the mind, and the observation of the results of the action of mind in connexion with this — such psychology always has considered in its province, though lately it has been pursued with special fruit: we want now more of mental comparative anatomy, or the study of the varieties of animal intelligence, above alluded to. INTRODUCTION. XI But for all this we must disengage psychology from the philosophy which it has mingled with itself, and which in all probability it will try still to mingle with itself. Hitherto the result of its doing so has been in the main that confusion of thought on which I have dwelt at length in the following pages. Now probably its effort will be to furnish a philosophy (less con- fused indeed) from itself better understood than before, and it will tell us that we must be satisfied with that philosophy. In my view, this course will effectually ruin itself. Philosophy, by which I mean the study of thought and feeling not as we see them variously associated with corporeal organization, and producing various results in the universe, but as we understand, think, feel them of ourselves and from within, is something to me of an entirely different nature, and leads to entirely different fields of speculation from the physio- psychology which I have been speaking of. I think that those who have the truest view of the one will also have the truest of the other. It does not seem to me that anything, for instance, as to our moral action waits for a better physio-psychology, except in that subordinate degree in which such action is likely to be altered and benefited by any increase of our know- ledge of any kind. In my view, the question of the relation of our mind to our corporeal organization, and the question of the distribution of mind more or less like ours through various organizations, are the two questions of physics far the most interesting: but they are physics after all. Whatever may be found out about them seems to me to have quite a subordinate bearing upon the great questions of the nature of know- ledge and of moral sentiments and obligations. These Xll INTRODUCTION. belong to what I have called philosophy, which rises high above the other, or if we prefer the language, underlies it as its foundation : how, I shall discuss in the following pages. I think then that the ' Philosophy of the Human Mind' is now in the way to divide itself into different branches, all, it seems to me, hopeful and promising result : the manner in which its method has hitherto been faulty is one of the matters of my discussion. The second kind of philosophy which we have among us is the true and real philosophy, this which I have described as one line of those into which the Philosophy of the Human Mind is likely to divide itself: but it seems to have an appendant error of great import- ance, which I have described in the ensuing pages as 'notionalism' and 'relativism', terms in a great measure, though perhaps not quite, equivalent. I will only briefly describe this here as the realizing (and any realizing must be mis-realizing, wrongly realizing) our logical terms. We get from this what we may call a philosophy of 'notions', and knowledge, instead of bringing us into real contact with the thing we know, appears as something between us and it, either altering its real reality to accommodate it to us, or forming some screen or barrier between us and it, or some way disguising it— but on this I shall have to speak in abundance. I shall have to consider, against a good deal of the third kind of philosophy which I have yet to speak of, that the mind is really active, and that its proper creations, so to call them, are realities; but, also, against such views as I have just mentioned, that its logical creations are for a temporary purpose only, and that the greatest care must be taken not to realize them : INTRODUCTION. Xlll that a merely logical philosophy is worse than none, and much worse than that which I am now going to mention. The third kind of philosophy, though it is not properly philosophy, and is only good in its own place when it does not claim to be so, is that manner of looking at the universe to which belongs the physio- psychology of which I lately spoke : and what I said about that applies to the many other sciences into which this study of the universe divides itself. The error belonging to it consists in its claiming to be philo- sophy, or claiming to be all that need be considered. This error I have called ultra-phenomenalism or mis- phenomenalism, and I have given the reasons for my language : it is the same manner of thought as is very frequently called ' positivism'. A real philosophy without notionalism, and a real, honest, thorough, study of nature without the feeling that we are to find our philosophy and morality, more than very subordinate!}', there — these are the two things which I should like to see co-existing, and which I should think not only might co-exist, but would each be the better for the existence of the other: and for both alike is needed a good logic, in which we are neither on the one side afraid of logical suppositions and abstractions, nor on the other hand disposed to rest in them as if the right dealing with them was the knowledge, and they all the furniture our mind needed : and with all these a good history of advance of human thought and feeling, upon which depends what I have in these pages called 'Real' Logic: all these things seem to me to belong the one to the other : the war- fare constantly carried on between the partizans of one and another seems quite uncalled for, and un- reasonable. Of them all, the 'philosophy' which I XIV INTRODUCTION. have named the first is in my view the most important, as that on which all the rest depend, and in which they all find their application. It is what all begins with for us, for all that we call existence is for us a thought of ours, which it belongs to that philosophy to discuss the nature, meaning, validity of. It is what on the other side, is concerned with that which we must know and have settled for ourselves before we can, with reason, apply our knowledge of experience to action : namely, what we want : what we mean to do with ourselves, what ends we wish to gain, what it is well we should do, what we are called upon to do : this is the region of ideals, of freedom, and of choice, where no positive knowledge or knowledge of experience can help us except in those subordinate manners to which I have alluded, as to judge what is attainable, or by what means we may best gain our end. The purpose then of what I have here written is to clear the ground, or to do what I could to help clear thought, both in respect of philosophy and of physical view of nature : the one is quite as interesting to me as the other, and they seem to me, rightly pursued, to be mutually helpful, not antagonistic. A great deal of the Philosophy of the Human Mind damages both, especially philosophy proper, by its confusion of view — this I have endeavoured to exhibit: ' notionalism' or 'relativism' damages both, philosophy by cutting off from it all life, and fruit, and prospect, the view of nature by making us think and talk of abstractions where they are out of place, and where we want to be in the fresh and open air of good or rightly applied phenomenalism (as I have called it), looking at things as they are before our eyes without perplexing our- selves by thought as to how we know them or what INTRODUCTION. XV they may be besides. Mis-phenomenalism or positiv- ism damages the study of nature and of fact in this way, that by the expecting from it, and the trying to effect by it, what does not belong to it, it raises sus- picion against it, and what is worse, tends sometimes to make its cultivators pursue it with a sort of mis- giving, as if this suspicion really attached to it, and as if fidelity to it really required that at whatever sacrifice, we should abnegate, at its apparent bidding, everything which I should call our higher nature, and all our worthier beliefs and aspirations. "What I have called philosophy is of course to such positivism of the nature of a dream, and that a foolish and pernicious one. The manner in which I have tried to help clear thought I must leave the following pages to show for themselves — I will only mention one thing here. It is in reference to what I may call the co- ordinating facts of mind and matter, as what go to- gether to make up the universe. This I have variously commented on. I think the purpose of what I have said may be better understood through a few words here to the following effect. One of the branches of science in which perhaps at this moment (in company probably with many others) I feel special interest on account of the manner in which it seems to promise fruit, is the study of what we may call 'the facts of mind' as we may see, observe, experiment, upon them in the universe, both in various human individuals with corporeal organizations indi- mlually different, and in various animals (so far as we can thus study them) with such organizations dif- fering rjenericaV '//. Facts of mind of this character are facts of the universe, and may legitimately be co-ordinated with XVI INTRODUCTION. facts of matter, and knowledge about them must be pur- sued in the same manner in which the study of the facts of matter is — by observation, experiment, induction. But there are facts of mind, and what are more pro- perly described as 'facts of mind' than these are, which are not at all of this character, but are of such a nature, that so far from being in any way what can be co-ordinated with facts of matter to make up the uni- verse, the whole universe is itself one such fact of mind to us — when we say it is, we mean that we believe in it — it is the way in which we think, something which our thought sets before us — and there are other such facts of mind besides this. The great fact of the kind is human freedom, liberty, choice. Mind, as we study it for instance in various animal organizations following various laws, is something different from mind as we feel it, or ourselves, thinking and choosing what we will do : and the generic mind in such organizations, with its future, so to speak, marked out for it by nature, is something different from our mind as we feel it, which is more even than humanly generic or generically hu- man — for we have a free view around us — we may see what is good to be done, and choose what we will act for, not (in this case) as men, but as moral beings, who can see even beyond their manhood or proper kind, and can aspire to raise themselves and that kind — when we have chosen indeed, it is as men that we shall have to act: we have but human powers, though we have a choice going beyond known or proper humanity: and thus, in a subordinate way, the facts of mind which may be 'physically studied are of vast consequence : but the real and great facts of mind are the others. And the treatment of these, in both an intellectual and moral view, is what I have called philosophy: the examina- INTRODUCTION. XV11 tion what knowledge is, how we know, and what we mean by certainty and truth : the examination what liberty or choice is, what is the meaning of a purpose or ideal of action, what purposes or ideals present them- selves to us, what we are to think about them. Unless we have philosophy of this kind, whatever we can make of it, as a companion or pendant, it seems to me that we cannot follow either of the two lines of thought which at this moment are of special interest, without getting into a hopeless perplexity as to the application of them to our action. By these two lines of thought I mean, the one, the physio-psychology of which I have spoken : the other, the past history of the human race, both intellectual and moral or civil. If we wait to know what we ouodit to think about our- selves and what we are to do (more than subordinately) upon these studies, not only shall we be in an unnatural suspense, but we can hardly fail to get more and more into a logical perplexity, and we shall injure these studies themselves. Already it is evident that the study of human progress, or human developement, or civiliza- tion, is in a confusion most difficult to disentangle, on account of people's having failed to present to them- selves as two different notions, the progressive improve- ment, on the one side, of beings with liberty, enterprize, aspiringness, and desire to do the best and the right and to elevate their nature, and, on the other, such a pro- gressive developement as we may conceive to take place in any kind of beings (or zoocosm as I have later called it, i.e. system of kinds) in consequence of any natural tendencies in them or circumstances about them, inde- pendent of such free choice and aspiringness. In respect of the great and important science of the philosophy of history, as we call it, it seems to me that the prospect is b XV111 INTRODUCTION. bad for the very reason which makes some think it good: namely, that we are now looking to it for our morality : we want to find out from it what I am sure we cannot find out from it without perverting it, namely, what we ought to do : we shall lose our power of moral judgment in criticizing what man has done, and after all we shall never be able to say why what man has done (whatever it may be) is, as such, the thing which we ought to do now. The world is in some respects getting old, and its value for the history of the past, whether the intellec- tual history of man's successive discovery of things, or the moral history of his advance in civilization, may be taken as one sicm of this : at the same time the world is in some respects as young as, or, if one might ven- ture the expression, more young than, ever, and never I suppose were hopefulness and enterprize more abund- ant. No one can feel more interest in history of all kinds than I do : almost, perhaps too much. But the tendency of questions and subjects of all kinds at this time to run to liistovy, if I may so express it, amounts, in many cases, to a blinking the great and real ques- tions, which ought not to be encouraged. This histo- rical tendency is a part of the character of mind which may be called ' positivism', though it spreads widely beyond the circle of those who would accept the name. But roughly, the principle of this tendency is the fol- lowing: To understand things, you must understand their history : or perhaps, we cannot understand things : all that we can understand is their history. For things we might put 'men': the study of the history of man is now put before us as that by means of which we are to understand man himself, and know what we ought to do. INTRODUCTION. XIX I will not say that the truth lies in the exact oppo- site of this, but I will say that it lies a good deal nearer to that extremity than to the other. In speaking, in what follows, of Mr Mill's Logic, I have commented on the manner in which he gives attention (as I have expressed it) to what goes on in the universe, which we come to believe upon evidence as we come to believe any ordinary fact, rather than to what is in the uni- verse, which, in whatever way, we come to know, con- ceive, perceive. And yet what goes on, as the fact, in the universe, is that the beings and things in the universe do this and that, change in this or that manner : the beings and things are of prior conside- ration really to the fact: we cannot understand the fact without understanding them. We want, in mathe- matical metaphor, a sort of integration. But if we ask Mr Mill what a thing is, we shall get, I think, but an uncertain answer : it is something which is, or has been, or may be named : it is an unknowable substra- tum with knowable attributes: it is a co-existence of attributes, in virtue of what nexus or principle we can- not tell. But it is this, what the universe is made up of, what is in it, what makes things things, which we really want to know before we can properly appreciate what the things do, their changes, what is going on : no doubt the study of this latter helps us towards the former: it is its main interest: but without the former, so far as we can attain to that, it is what can be but imperfectly entered into and what the mind will not . rest in. It is the same in regard of man and his history : we ask what man is and what man should do, and we are answered with what man has done and does. Here again, we can make nothing of this latter, we cannot b 2 XX INTRODUCTION. realize or appreciate it, except in virtue of our know- ledge of the former. It is the knowledge which we have already of the former which gives interest to our study of the latter. No doubt when we can rightly ap- preciate and understand what man has done and does, it will mightily add to and deepen our knowledge of what he is : still, as the general fact, the basis of history is the more or less knowledge of the nature of that which it is history of. But we, 'men', are by our thought and feeling- in a manner much more intimate and real than we are as members of the human race on earth, in such a manner that history can take account of us. And therefore the consideration of what we are by our thought and feeling, which is what I call ' philosophy ', is something which no history of any kind can make up for the want of or supply to us, and something with- out which that history itself loses very much of its im- portance and its interest. But I now proceed to describe the method — so far as there is any method — upon which the following pages go. The first three chapters contain a sketch of my own view as to the double manner of proceeding necessary in mental philosophy or the discussion of the nature of knowledge. I then proceed to review, if it may be called so, various books on the subject and on cognate subjects : more correctly however, to compare my views with the views of the authors of the books wdiich I speak of. To some extent I give an account of the purpose and manner of proceeding of the books, not however to a very great extent. I will first mention what books I notice, and then say why I notice any books, and why these in particular. INTRODUCTION. XXI The first which I speak of is Professor Ferrier's Institutes of Metaphysic. The second, Sir William Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics. The third, Mr Mill's Lome. The fourth, Dr Whewell's series of works, representing his former ' Philosophy of the In- ductive Sciences'. The fifth and sixth, which however I fear will not occur to be noticed, or at least but very slightly, in what I publish now — I will give the reasons at the close of this Introduction — are Mr Morell's Ele- ments of Psychology and Mr Herbert Spencer's Prin- ciples of Psychology. The last is Professor Bain's book upon the Senses and the Intellect, with possible refer- ence to his later book upon the Emotions and the Will. First then, why do I notice any books at all ? The disposition to comment is one with which, ex- cept in certain particular cases, I do not sympathize at all, and the disposition to criticise is not one with which I sympathize greatly. This latter k a disposition which in an age like ours flourishes much : I am disposed to think that the degree to which it does so is due in some decree rather to readers than to writers : I think that what we may call first-hand thought in philosophy is more ready to spring up and appear than it is valued, at first, when it does appear, and that the manner in which the public ear, at any time, is open only to a few or to something said about them has a tendency to make thought more parasitic (so to call it) than of itself it would naturally be. This however is by the way. But I have to explain how it is that, if not fond of the spirit of criticism, I apparently so much criticise. Philosophy lias been from the first SiaXeKTao], dis- cussion, argument — even when delivered in a gnomic and authoritative, or in a poetical form, it must rest, in tli'- mind <>f the philosopher, upon this imagined — and XX11 INTRODUCTION. it never can be otherwise. Lord Bacon, by most vi- gorous controversy and criticism, we may say, on bis own part, endeavoured to call men away from contro- verting each other to the study of the book of nature open before them : but in mental or intellectual philo- sophy, not only must we have the vigorous controversy at the beginning, but even in the carrying out of the philosophy we cannot get free from it. The reason is this : the important thing in intellectual philosophy is to be sure that we are saying something. As soon as a philosopher has in any way made an impression, he will very likely have some, it may be many, to admire and adopt what he says : but these are very imperfect judges as to its substantialness. The test of what he says being not only words, but something, is first his own inward sight : but this is something for himself alone, and even he cannot entirely trust it : we cannot allow that an idea is, by mere virtue of its clearness, certain and true. Hence mind must be brought into contact with mind — no man can know even his own mind without this. And thus the conversational and discussional form of much early philosophy is not an artistic accident of it, but belongs to its being : the philosopher is the man who can SiSdvat and U^oOai \6yov — who uses effort to think clearly himself and give a clear account of what he thinks, and who besides thinks it worth while to be patient in trying to enter into the views of others. Intelligent philosophic criticism is really what I may call substantial, though not literary and artistic, philosophic dialogue : it is the meeting of mind with mind where truth is supposed to be the object of both, and where truth is of such a nature that discussion is likely not to confuse, but to clear it. It is in this spirit that I have noticed the books INTRODUCTION. XXlll which I have noticed — not with the slightest idea of appraising their literary value, or judging them from a superior point of view. So far from this being so, I might mention among the reasons why I have chosen these books out of the books on the subject, this, that these, it so happens, are the books from which I have learnt. "When I say 'learnt', I mean that they are books with which my thought on these subjects has been a good deal associated, and which has suggested much of it : not at all that they are books which I particularly follow, in which case such heterogeneous teaching must produce rather singular results. But it is my nature at least to learn as much from what I differ with as from what I agree with. The philosophi- cal thought is always best which is generated in the mind, and sometimes the thought which is caused by opposition is likely to be the more native, sometimes that caused by acquiescence ; not of course mere acqui- escence, but such as is intelligent and suggestive. As to this, the case is different with different individuals. It will be seen in my notices of the books, that I never criticise any views of the writers without giving in the fullest manner my own, in fact not unfrequently making their views only a suggestive of what I say myself. I mention this, lest it should appear that what 1 have called criticism was my object, which it is not. I care not the least to dispute what any one says, ex- cept with a view of clearing my own thoughts and those of others. I have noticed what seem to me various bad arguments, but I dare say I have used some my- self: every philosopher ought to make up his mind, that if he does serve the cause of truth, one way in which li. : will do so will be by his error being the cause of truth in others. I have seen already so much reason, XXIV INTRODUCTION. in anything which. I have thought about these subjects, to correct previous thought by later, that though, without a reasonable feeling that what I write now is the truth, so far as I can see it, I should not write at all — yet still, when the process of self-correction and growth of thought ceases, I shall consider the cessation a mental senescence which I shall be sorry, not glad, to feel in myself: and of course, what one would correct for one's self, one must not be indignant at having cor- rected by others. But in one respect the notice which I have taken of the books which I mention may be considered cri- ticism — that it is taken with an earnest desire to help the understanding and the study of the books: if I had not thought them eminently worthy to be under- stood and studied, I should have been as little disposed to give so much time to them myself as to take up the time of readers with thought about them. There is no doubt in England at present a want of philosophy — that this is not a character of our minds as Enoiish- men, I think the literary history of England at other times proves : but at this time it seems to me that the want is rather of general philosophic interest than, so to call it, of philosophic leading, or of minds dis- posed to philosophic speculation, or of philosophic writers. So far as my own observation goes, there seems to be commencement of germination of the phi- losophic seed, and there seem to be good philosophical books, which, from the nature of them, can never in any age be numerous : but for what reason I know not, the seed seems scarcely to go on from germination to fruit, and the philosophical books are more admired than entered into : what I have called want of philo- sophic interest seems to me deserving possibly of a INTRODUCTION. XXV harder name : but there have been certainly periods, and those possibly periods when men's thoughts were much taken up with civil and political excitements, in which men nevertheless found time to think with in- terest of philosophic problems to which now they are quite indifferent, and to find pleasure in effort of mind about things worth it, where now it seems to them only waste of force. What however I have mentioned this for, is, that it does not seem to me that there is want of good books of our day on philosophy, and I have chosen for criticism such books as I have with the notion that the philosophic problems which they treat of are treated of by them with an ability which leaves no reason that we should go for the discussion of them beyond our own time and country. I give this of course as a partial reason only for my having selected such books. I leave the philosophy of other countries and the an- cient fountains of all our philosophy to others more com- petent and more acquainted with them than I : but I do say, and that though I fear that those whom I speak of would each one, were they all alive to do so, only in a very limited degree concur with me — that the books which I speak of — and more might be added to the list, for as I have said and shall say more fully, my selection of these is in part accidental — form as good a philosophic literature for one period as we shall iind at many periods which we much more distinctly should call philosophical. It is not to fill any void, or make good any deficiency that I write, according to \vh;r prefaces usually say: it is to help readers to un- derstand and use what they have got: but then by understanding and using a philosophical book I do not in' an simply taking in what it says, and thinking, so XXVI INTRODUCTION. far as tliis is thinking, accordingly: I mean studying it. entering into the view, following the arguments (and matching them also) seeing the difficulties and seeing whether they are met — and much besides of this kind. It will be said, There cannot be many readers like this: perhaps not. What is really the truth as to the philosophy of different periods and generations, we really cannot tell: we should perhaps consider Bishop Butler's generation a philosophical one in comparison with ours: but as to the readers, his impatience at their supposed sluggishness of thought is almost amusing : and as to the writers, it does not seem to me that we are at all inferior. I will now mention why I have selected for notice the particular books which are selected. Some of the reasons have been anticipated, but there are others 1 . The books form, it will be readily observed, a sort of scale, spectrum, or gamut, of which Professor Ferrier represents the extreme philosophical end, and Professor Bain the extreme physiological or physical. Towards the centre of the scale, as is natural, there is not much principle of succession. I have put Mr Mill 1 I take the books as representative — as exhibiting, more or less, parti- cular schools of thought. I am not quite certain of the extent to which they are so, and perhaps, in what I hope may follow these pages at a later time, shall remark upon this. Supposing this however to be so, it is evi- dent that in each school of thought there are books to which I make no reference, in regard of which I have not the least wish to pronounce that those which I notice are superior to them. No one for instance could think that I should undervalue what has been written on these subjects by Professor Mansel — but I have considered that what needed saying on his manner of thought would be said sufficiently for my purpose in speaking of Sir William Hamilton — and the same as to Professor Fraser. It so happens that of those whom I notice some are alive and some are dead — it cannot therefore be said that I care to criticise only those who can feel the criticism, or only those who cannot answer. And Sir William Hamilton still lives — a philosopher's best life — in discijtles. INTRODUCTION. XXV11 nearer the philosophical end of the scale, and Dr Whe- well nearer the other for reasons which further on I have mentioned, and which refer to the method of each : that of Mr Mill being derived in some degree from the Formal Loo-ic, and having rather a logical and scholastic character throuo'hout: that of Dr Whewell resting very much upon physics and physical histor}-, with much less use of logical manner and language. If I had looked at the substance more than at the method the arrangement might possibly have been different, Dr Whewell joining with his definite physics much more of what I call the philosophical view. Of these books, those at the extremes will be found probably the most suggestive of any thought which these pages contain, so far as any of them have sug- gested it, though those in the middle (I may mention especially that of Dr Whewell) on account of the wider range of view, may be those in which I have taken the more interest, and may perhaps think the more instructive. But there is much less, in the books at the extremes, of that confusion of thought, as it seems to me, which one purpose of the following pages is to call attention to. And also — what may excite some surprise, but I think it strongly — I think that the books at each extreme, so far as they do touch any matter belonging to the opposite extreme, are likely, from their less confusion of view, to surest truer thoughts about it than perhaps the others would. This is the same thing as what I have meant when I have O said that though philosophy on the one side, and phy- siology and physical science on the other, are very different things and may perhaps require different mind- for the (ly a comparison of experiences, and the putting together what will stand such ■ on, as a something supposedly existing, in the manner which I have de i ribed, independently of being known. The escape in the di- rection of the higher philosophy, which I do not dwell on now, is, in my view, the communication, \ut \\lnr- there is communication only of one kind there cannot be description of, or racket in, the reality— there ii then no U st whether there is illusion <>r n I 14 PHENOMENALISM. [CHAP. Having spoken of the phenomenal test of truth, I will speak a word on the phenomenalist mind or spirit. I am going, after this, to do the best I can to show the actual way in which we come to know what we do know, and to examine knowledge itself instead of the (supposed) matter of knowledge, which is one part of the whole abstracted from the rest. By the pheno- menalist mind or spirit I mean a manner of knowing or thinking which we never have originally, but which, in the advance of knowledge and growth of our mind, we are very likely to have, sometimes holding it with that due qualification and regard for other possible (extra-phenomenal) knowledge which, in my view, is the right state of our mind, sometimes holding it as what we ought to hold exclusively, and to the destruction of all possi- bilities of truth beyond it or outside of it (this is what, in the physical application of the term, I should mean by 'positivism'), sometimes feeling ourselves disposed to fall into it without con- sidering, nevertheless, that we ought to hold it (at least exclu- sively), in fact being in difficulty of mind about it. I think the best way of our conceiving this phenomenalist spirit, carefully avoiding, in our intellectual conception of it, any moral approbation or disapprobation, is to conceive what exists existing without being known (I can hardly say con- ceived when we are ourselves supposed conceiving it, so entirely is what we are supposing now what I have called an abstrac- tion) by any one : without any mind, or anything like mind, having originated it or having been concerned with its origina- tion or arrangement, so that when we find in it anything which we should describe as order, or form, or composition, it is not that kind of order, or anything like it, which we mean when we speak of putting together anything ourselves with a meaning and a reason. The phenomenalist maxim must be, to put nothing (mentally) in the universe beyond what we find there; and what we find there, phenomenally, is that, and nothing more, which communicates with the various natural elements, nervous matter, &c. of which our bodies are composed. We really, phenomenally, have no right to speak of order, ar- rangement, composition, &c. in the universe, all which are ideas belonging to our own consciousness of active and con- structive powers. The great rule of phenomenalism is to be I.] PHENOMENALISM. 15 sure that we do not do that which, as we shall see, we always naturally do do, humanize the universe, recognize intelligence in it, have any preliminary faith, persuasion, suppositions about it, find ourselves, if I may so speak, at all at home in it, think it has any concern with us. To me there is something in the simply phenomenalist spirit, so far as one has a tendency to sink (as I should say) into it, inexpressibly depressing and desolate. "We are supposed to wake, not into a world (for even a world or universe is something for the imagination to lay hold of, a unity, a something added to what we wake into from ourselves) but into circumstances to which we ourselves are accidental, and our knowino- which or knowing anything as to which, is quite an accident in regard to them : as if we were thrown on an uninhabited island where everything, in a manner which to our actual human experience is impossible, was strange and out of relation to us. And as wo go on in our island, in this view, the state of things does not alter. Without the links to bind them together which our mind must supply, one thing is as strange to another as each tiling is to us — though here I am using wrong language, as it is impossible to avoid doing, for unless our mind proceeded other- wise than phenomenally at first there would not be even things to us; we should separate and distinguish nothing. The pro- 's of knowledge, so far as we can be true to this manner of thought, is the passing on unmeaningly, Ave might almost say the falling helplessly, from one view to a fresh one in a course which is nut advance towards an end but the getting further and further into a hopeless infinity. I am aware that it will be said that this is not at all the phenomenalist or even the positivist view, but that wli.it we do is to mount up from particular fact- to general laws, ami brace again tin' working of the general laws in the particular facts, and that in all this then' is or may be (as i- most true) both intense intellectual pleasure and high moral elevation. But what do v..- mean by 'laws'? Why do we thus take plea and find our mind ted, in the .- i hag in the universe these uniformities, and recurrences, and order \ \\ is rase we recognize a lik< o what we should do ourselv< and do do, that i>, we trace mind, and here we are going quite 16 PHENOMENALISM. [dlAP. I. beyond the phenomena. When we view things in this way, knowledge is not accidental to the universe, or to fact, but so far as either is to be postponed to the other, the universe is accidental to knowledge, and one out of various possible results or expressions of it. And so far therefore as we come to know fact or the universe, we are brought into relation with the knowledge of which it is a result and an example. This is what I meant by our feeling ourselves, as to knowledge, at home in the universe. And this is something quite beside phenomenalism. CHAPTER II. PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. But I must not dwell longer on this, and must proceed, as well as I can, to exhibit the philosophical or more general view. In using the term philosophical, I am speaking quite without reference to any comparative superiority : I mean simply the view which belongs, not to physical research but to philosophy or the higher logic, and which in some respects, as we shall see, resembles, in its distinction from phenomenal- ism, the popular or ordinary view which appears in language. I am not quite certain whether, when I say 'the philo- sophical or more general view', the language is correct. If we consider simply the process of knowing, or ask ourselves what knowledge is, without any reference to any thing being known, we have again what, in respect of the whole fact, is an abs- traction, in the same way in which, on its side, phenomenalism is so. If we consider that we have general faculties of knowing (which are the subject of our investigation), with which, so far we can tell, we might know any thing, and that what we hap- pen to come to know is the facts of the universe, we have the counterpart abstraction to phenomenalism ; in which latter we as- sume the existence, as matter of fact, of the several parts of the universe, which happen to become the objects of intelligence perceiving and knowing them. To keep this consideration of knowledge quite in its character of an abstraction, I think will ooi Lead to useful result. Nor are the two counterpart abstrac- tions alt* »g< t lier similarly circumstanced. After we have learn • •• I . to forget all about the manner and meaning of our learning and lose ourselves in whai we have learned, which is in sub- stance phenomenalism, is, whatever may be wrong in it, a 18 PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. [CHAP. more interesting and promising course than to study exclusively the nature of our instrument or power without reference to its application or the results which it has produced. If I mistake not, the suggesting or ground thought of Kant's Critique of the Pure Reason is, bearing in mind the analogy with Pure and Applied Mathematics, to disengage the action of intelligence from all application and actual use of it, and to see what it is in itself, previously to its being applied in such a way as to generate particular knowledge. I rather question myself whether we can abstract to such an extent as to make investigation of this kind really fruitful, or exhibit the primary and most important acts of the mind in this way as a kind of calculus, from the application of which to the unknown, or to the un- informed, unmeasured, chaotic matter of knowledge, knowledge will proceed. In place of any process so abstract as this, I shall simply start from our consciousness, and endeavour to follow it as we advance in knowledge : I shall dismiss from my thoughts all previous supposition of there being anything to be known, or of there being a phenomenal world to make itself known to us — that is a thing which, so far as we are concerned with it at the outset of this investigation, may turn out to be so, or may not : just as, in what I have said about phenomenalism, the pheno- menal world is what it is, whether we or anybody else know it and perceive it, or whether we do not. In speaking about phe- nomenalism, I described the extent to which sensation was a phenomenon, or fact of the phenomenal world, which could be physically reasoned about, and I described the application of the term in which it was not so — namely, in so far as it is feeling; for feeling is incommunicable ; it cannot be brought into the common stock of knowledge and thought, or reasoned about phenomenally according to any logic which we know of. This feeling or con- sciousness, excluded from phenomenalism, I now assume as the one thing which we do know or are certain of. It is evident that this is a higher and a more intimate certainty to us than any phenomenal certainty. Whether anything beyond ourselves exists or not, we are at least certain that we feel, i. e. that feel- ing, pleasure and pain, are realities, and individual to what, in virtue of this feeling or consciousness, we call ourselves : and II.] PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 19 that so far as consciousness is a proof or a fit suggestive of exist- ence, ' cogito ' of ' sum/ we ourselves exist. The ' we ' or ' I ' of consciousness is something quite different from the 'we', 'I', 'man' of phenomenalism, which, as I said, is a portion of matter organised and variously endowed, with phenomenal sensation (i. e. liability to affection of certain por- tions of it in a particular manner by natural agents, which af- fection produces various results) for one of its properties. I described some time since the entire process of sensation on the hypothesis of the existence of ourselves on the one side, and on the other objective reality or an objective universe (phenomenally, an independent external world). If the reader will turn back to that, he will see that the middle point of the process is what I called a communication between certain na- tural agents and certain constituents of our body, and pheno- menalism is a recognition and following out of this central por- tion without attention to the extremes. We have now on the other hand to dismiss from our thoughts this central portion, and give our attention to the communication which, by the means of it, takes place between the extremes. Except that we do not, as in phenomenalism, start with the meeting of two things of the same nature. ' We perceive things.' But 'we' and ' things ' are something different. Let us imagine to ourselves the successive changes of our feeling as our consciousness developes itself. Still however I will make one preliminary observation. The reader may have observed that I have generally used the expression 'sensive powers' where most writers would have spoken of 'senses'. An instance of what appears to me the con- fusion between philosophy or logic on the one side, and physio- . or phenomenalism on the other, appears in the manner in which the whole question of sensation has constantly been treated. 'Sensation', meaning by the term an affection or modi- Bcation (however we may style it) of our senses (to use that mis- leading expression), nerves, and brain, is a phenomenon belong- ing to the domain of physiology. It is what I have above called 'communication'. 'Sensation', meaning by the term a feeling "n our part, or a portion or instance of consciousness, which, in whatever manner r < to knowledge, is a fact, so far as we 20 PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. [CHAP. call it one, belonging to a different order of thought, and it is philosophy or logic which must deal with it so far as it can be dealt with. Our whole body is a sense to, or, if we prefer the expres- sion, the sense of, our intelligent self, which latter is the ' We ' or 'I' of consciousness, and the subject of knowledge. Every communication of our body with the remainder of the phe- nomenal world, whether it be towards the body inwards or from the body outwards, i. e. whether it be the result of im- pression from without or of exertion of what we call our will from within, is, I conclude, as the rule, attended with feeling on our part, and this feeling is sensation as feeling. By 'as the rule' I mean this: that latency of the feeling in conse- quence of rapid passage of it and want of attention to it must of course be allowed to some extent, and may perhaps be so to a very considerable extent — this is a question which I cannot discuss now. This sensation or feeling is of course a very main part of consciousness : some might say it is the whole of it : and that, as every bodily affection is accompanied with feeling, so every feeling is accompanied with some bodily or organic modification corresponding with it. The important thing is to keep in mind that even if this latter is the case, feeling is not the less feeling, something essentially unbodily and imma- terial. The only real iminaterialism seems to me to reside in the view of consciousness as, in the idea of it, necessarily dis- tinct from any bodily or phenomenal modification, and those who think, with regard of consciousness, that any possible phy- siological acuteness or discovery can ever bring consciousness or feeling under what we call now the laws of matter, or even perhaps any laws at all resembling them, seem to me to be materialists already, subtle perhaps, but really so. Keeping on the surface of physics, into which I do not wish to go deep, we may say that the different affections of our body, (which are -phenomenal sensation) are of two kinds, chemical and mechanical: the question whether the chemical ones are only mechanical of a more refined kind, I do not discuss. The chemical constitution of bodies affects, under certain circum- stances, any part of our body to which they can be applied, and where there can be communication : but there is more par- II.] PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 21 ticular communication between certain portions of that consti- tution and certain particular parts of our body, as the palate and nostrils. I suppose too that it is the chemical constitution of bodies which determines how they shall be affected by light, so as to have what we call this or that colour, and the light then transmitted from them affects in a manner which we may for convenience call chemical, our optic nerve. But besides this, bodies applied to our body (or to which parts of our body are applied) affect it mechanically or displace portions of it, and here there comes into play our active nature, or will : our body is 'a sense' to our conscious self in a double manner, first in so far as it is affected in the manner which I have described, and next in so far as it is not only a frame, vessel, focus, for recep- tion, but also a machine for action, its different portions move- able at our will, and this movement of them, as movement by us, being of course accompanied with our being aware of the movement, and of the amount of it ; by our, in feeling, mea- suring it. Hence we move our limbs, aware, as we do so, how much pressure we exert and how much of force producing change of position : hence we move the muscles of our eyes with more or less motion, and measure, as well as chemically feel, what is (phenomenally) before them. To the philosopher, then, as I have said, the body is all one sense ; it is the glass through which the intelligence looks out into the phenomenal world. To the physiologist, it is sensive or possessed of sensation (his sensation) altogether, but pos- ing withal what he would call various special organs of sen- sation for particular purposes and adapted to particular natural agents, of which perhaps the chief is the eye. But the attempt to particularize and enumerate our senses, as things or unities, when under the term are included notions so incommensurable as that of the eye and what is commonly called the touch, mi- unprofitable. As J have alluded here to the eye and the touch, I will make one more observation preliminary to the philosophical view of knowledge which I am going to try to give. One most fruit- ful source of the confusion between philosophy and phenome- nalism is the treatment of tin.' eye us the main sense, without though! <>f the complicated!!' iss of the information which it gives 22 PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. [CHAP. to us. In reality, philosophers who have treated about our notion of space seem universally to me to have in their minds lighted space, which really, whenever we look towards it with- out a distinct object terminating it, is something which we imagine we see (not see through), i.e. is matter to us. In the reasoning about geometrical figures, it seems to me, and I hope to show it, that this error has largely entered in. And it has worked far more deeply than this. Few philosophers seem to have guarded themselves sufficiently against the danger of error which lies in words involving so much metaphor as ' intuition ' and other words suggested by light and sight. But to return. Let us examine our consciousness or sensation as feeling without any thought, at the present, that it is other than feel- ing. Let us try to follow back as well as we can, the stream of our knowledge. Let us try to examine knowledge as it is in the subject, abstracting and separating this, to a certain extent, as I have said, but only to a certain extent, from consideration of the object. This is the companion-process to what we did in regard of phenomenalism, when we endeavoured to attend to the matter or object of knowledge without thought of its being known. I do not think that it can be doubted that the first and original consciousness (to keep that word still for a moment) is double: that is, that we no more, and no sooner, feel ourselves to exist than we feel something to exist besides ourselves. When we virtually say in our minds, 'Cogito, ergo sum', whatever force there may be in the ' ergo ' — that is, when we look at con- sciousness as, what it undoubtedly is, an assertion to ourselves of our own existence, it being really the only assertion we ever do make of that, the only meaning, at bottom, of our belief in it — the one thing which distinguishes the notion (if we may speak of notions in this very seminal and embryotic state of consciousness) ' be ' from that of ' feel ' is that by ' be ' we mean something which something else may share with us, by ' feel ' we mean something which something else can have like us, but cannot share with us. In this way the separation of the notion of personality or individuality from that of being is coeval with the first consciousness. The matter may be best II.] PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 23 understood thus : if we, any of us, were the solitary existence, the simple monad, of the universe, though the notion of feeling or individuality would exist in us, I do not think that of exist- ence would — we feel for ourselves, but we are not for and by ourselves, Ave are something; that is, in other words, in the notion be there is something quasi-generic, and it implies al- ready a state of things, an universe. I do not however mean to dwell on anything so abstract as this — it is more important to think, whether the words 'consciousness', 'to feel', are rightly applied to this initiatory knowledge of the non ego, or something besides ourselves. (We must keep in mind of course that the object of the verb 'feel' here is to be understood after the analogy of ' I feel pleasure, pain, &c.', not 'I feel this table or this chair', which belongs to another order of ideas.) Is it then correct to say, we are con- scious of, we feel, what is not ourselves ? Does it, or does it not, violate the idea of consciousness, which is certainly re- flective, and the idea of feeling, which is certainly indi- vidual ? I shall have to discuss at some length the manner in which philosophers have applied the term 'consciousness' to our notion of something beyond ourselves, and the manner in which some of them, especially Sir William Hamilton, have, in my view, mis- applied it in doing so. I shall have to compare it with ' common sense', 'original beliefs', and other expressions which have been used in a similar application. The important fact is that even our rudimentary consciousn far as it is intellectual, i.e. a seed of intellectual development, is a distinguishing ourselves from something : even this earliest of notions is not single, but has its counter-notion. We are born, intellectually, into a state of things, an universe: and here it is, at the very root, that lies the difference between the philosophical and the simply phe- nomenalist view. It is not really correct to say, as an ultimate which cannol and need riot be accounted for, that we r our first feelings of pleasure and pain (or some of them) to a cause independent of us, for the distinction begins earlier than this, and as early a£ we have the consciousness which to the Lang tage 'our feelings' we have the idea of an universe, largo or small, of which we are a part. 24 PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. [cnAP. All our after knowledge is contained seminally in this first particular of it, and our progress in knowledge consists in the gradual making acquaintance with that which is thus revealed to us. And not only this, but our after knowledge still preserves in one step after another the same character of distinction: and the great mass of notions are not distinct to us or properly held unless so far as we give attention also to their counter- notion or ground, that from which they are a distinction. A progress of knowledge of this description has of necessity various other particular characters. One is, that it is perpetual self-correction : it proceeds a8 it were by hitches, and every step in it together with truth contains error, which the next or an after step corrects. Another is, that every step in it suggests to the mind a fresh crop of possibilities, with which the imagination em- ploys itself: its employment in this manner is the means by which the notion involved in the last step is familiarized to the mind : and the next or an after step determines among these possibilities which is the truth. In various ways like these it is that the dim universe which is the ground or counter-notion of primitive conscious- ness, the reality or state of things in which, so soon as we understand anything, we understand ourselves as existing, takes form and fulness and particularity : I will trace some of the particulars. The consciousness or feeling from the first is various in kind. Certain forms of it, not many, have been particularized and named in language. All consciousness however is, loosely speaking, pleasurable or painful : it is feeling of pleasure or feeling of pain. Of its more complicated forms, the principal is desire : and this forms the link between our sensive nature and another part of our entire nature closely joined with it, our volitional or active nature. Our feelings of pleasure and pain, and the consequent various exertion of our will, with the accompanying feeling that we are so exerting it, run closely together. There is one element or particular, and one only, entirely common to the world of feeling and the world of phenomenal II.] PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 25 fact, and that is, duration or time, with its circumstance, repeti- tion, which it always involves to some extent. Our feelings have nothing else entirely in common with the parts of the phe- nomenal world, except that they last for a certain length of time. If we like so to express it, the duration of our feelings reveals to us or gives to us time : or what we call time is some- thing, otherwise unknown to us, which is testified of to us by the duration of our feelings. Perhaps it is as well to take the occasion of this first of our notions to explain what seems to me to be the proper relation to each other of the expressions 'sensation' (meaning the feeling) and 'idea.' We feel time, or are conscious of its passage, in the manner which I have just described. That is, we have a sensation of it, in the way in which we are now using that word : and if we did not have such a sensation of it, it would be to us and we should be as though it were not. I said however also, it is otherwise unknown to us : that is, though we really can get no further than the sensation, yet still we do not rest in the sensation : we consider, believe, understand, that there is some- thing more in the case than that we feel : we ask, what is this which belongs to all our feelings? and answer, it is time: we have made a step in knowledge, such a step as I have above described : we have the idea of time : we grasp by sensation the end of something which \vc then mark by a name and set ourselves to think about, and as our knowledge grows, we find out about it more and more. It will be best however to speak further of this when wo havejnore sensations and ideas to illustrate it by. Time, I said, is entirely common to the world of feeling and the world of phenomena : space is partially so, and the reason of this partial community is our possession of a body or bodily organization. That is, not only do we, considered philosophi- cally ami widely, feel and think, but we, considered phenome- nally, occupy a portion of space, or, in a certain way, our feeling diffused over space, is local, having of course then this being local in common with phenomenal existences. Only thai this localized feeling, or feeling phenomenally viewed, is not what we analyse in consciousness. 26 PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. [CHAP. By saying here 'in a certain way' I mean to express a good deal of possible qualification, because I do not want to enter into the question of the real relation of feeling, as local, to parts of our body. It is sufficient that our corporeal organiza- tion introduces our feeling into phenomenal space (which I defined as the continent of matter), not indeed thereby making it, as feeling, a phenomenal fact, which it cannot be, but bring- ing it into a relation with phenomenalism, which, as we go on, we shall do our best (it is questionable whether much can any- how be done) to make clearer. Phenomenalism, though feeling is thus introduced to it and brought into relation with it, can never, from the nature of the two things, absorb it : nor can any extension of physiology make feeling a phenomenal fact, so as to give us an account of it in terms of matter, force, and the other elements which make phenomenalism. When we make phenomenalism our basis of reality, feeling, though we may know it to exist, must exist as something alien, unique, and insoluble, so that we are driven then to a dualism, or to the admission of a second basis of a reality of a different kind from the first which we supposed. So far as we make feeling or consciousness our basis of reality, which is what we are doing now, the way in which this fact, which we should phenomenally describe as that our feeling is diffused, through our being corporeal, over a portion of space, presents itself, is the following. We feel as what, so far as we feel it, is entirely individual to us and what nothing else is concerned with, the duration of our feelings, or time. We feel also the amount of effort which we make in the exertion of our will : but with regard to a portion of this effort, we feel that though we make it, we are not all that is concerned with it, that there is resistance, that we move something, that our effort shows something beyond itself answering and measuring it. What we thus feel we call 'space' and 'matter', 'space', so far as our effort meets with no other resistance than such as is in- volved in its being effort at all (I mean, than such as I suppose would be mechanically described as the inertia of the parts of our own body), 'matter', so far as it does meet with resistance beyond this : in the former case, the amount of motion mea- sures and feels to us or is feJt by us as space, in the latter case II.] PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 27 the amount of resistance measures, feels to us, is felt by us as, the solidity of matter. I must apologize to those who have clearer mechanical ideas than I have for any mechanical misdescription which there may be in this : here, as in former cases, I want to avoid going into detail to which I am incompetent, and I think that the sub- stantial truth of what I say is independent of any, not unlikely, mistake as to that. The important point is, that we feel space, or have a sensation of space, as much as we can be said to have a sensation of anything : or in other words, that the definition of space, in our present line of consideration, is that which we feel when we move, or are moving portions of our body without meeting any resistance. (I say when we 'are moving' in dis- tinction from when 'we begin to move', in which latter case it may be said that the definition would apply properly to the inertia of our body.) Still without entering into detail, though a portion of what we feel may be said to be the inertia of the parts of our body, or resistance in this view, a portion is the distance moved through, or space. Time we feel without going be}^ond our feeling, conscious or necessary selves : space we feel without going beyond our phenomenal or corporeal selves, our bodies. Our feeling of space indeed involves to us matter (which time does not), the matter which makes our bodies. But it does not involve, or suggest to us, any matter beyond our corporeal selves (though the notion of these latter may itself do so). As of time, so of space, we have a sensation, and form an idea : that is, we do not rest in our sensation, but instantly ima- gine that what we have thus some slight hold of is a great deal more than what we feel; and what we thus imagine behind the sensation is the supposed thing, the idea of the thing. On this I will speak again in a moment. What gives time and space the prerogative over all our other and later sensations and idf a Bcience of importance ac merely based on definitions. Supposing the definition of a 30 PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. [CHAP. straight line to represent a reality, is the fact, that two such lines cannot inclose a space, that is, that between us and something, or between two things, the distance or spatial in- terval is one, a thing understood by us as a necessary truth, or a thing found out by us in the course of experience ? I put this question here without any particular intention of trying to answer it, but only on account of the distinction, real or supposed, between necessary truth and truth of experience which it illustrates, and which distinction, in what I am writinsr, will recur to us under various aspects. Whether we begin with knowing nothing, or begin with knowing, confusedly and implicitly, everything, is in my view a question much more of description and of the notions which we start with about knowledge, than of fact which can be made out by observation or argument. We may describe knowledge with equal propriety as the writing characters on the e/c/iayelov (tabula rasa), or as a sort of chemical process like fermentation, crystal- lization, or any in fact in which something previously confused takes new form and arrangement so that there is produced from it what is clear and definite. . The description of knowledge as a course of experience and the description of it as a course of analytic and self-correcting judgments — as what many would call sensation, or as reflection in this view of reflection — are both what I call abstractions : that is, the historical advance of knowledge is the continued exercise of the mind in judgment in conjunction with the continued communication, by the senses, with phenomenal fact ; this latter being the continued conscious- ness of what we call such communication, or judgment that there is such : knowledge does not advanqp, as a fact, simply by the succession of our experiences : in regard of these we are passive ; it advances by the continual exercise of our will and judgment, not loosely and vaguely, but in conjunction with the consciousnesses which we describe as such experiences. Not that the judgment and the experience can be separated, except, as I have described, by abstraction : they are not two parts of knowledge, but two incomplete views: in judgment, for it to be knowledge, there must be something to judge or be judged; in experience, for it to be knowledge, there must be notice or exercise of will. I hold therefore that there is no real II.] PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 31 difference between truth as necessarily known and truth as known by experience : all truth is found out : the question is, what is it that is found out, and what the manner of the finding? We go on continually finding out, we may say, two things, though really they are but one, namely the bearing of the knowledge which we have already, and the circumstances of our environment, or what we consider such: and constantly, as a matter of fact, one thing may come to our knowledge either way,, or both, one confirming the other, so far as either is the better for confirmation. The thinker, evolving all knowledge from his consciousness, is the exact pendant, on the one side of our knowledge, to the inattentive wanderer on the other, brought into contact with, and to such experience of, innume- rable phenomena, and noticing nothing. Consciousness, abs- tracted from attention to the occasions of our sensation, is sterile on the one side, as unnoticed communication is sterile on the other: neither is knowledge. But each interpretation of an occasion of sensation is full of bearing in all possible directions, if we prefer rather to follow out these bearings than to proceed to interpret a new occasion of sensation. The difference between necessary and experimental truth is a difference, and very likely an accidental difference, in our manner of arriving at truth, and not a difference in truth itself. And the urging it on either side as if anything of importance depended on it seems to me to ari.su from a misapprehension. The experiential is not really, or i:i Itself, fragmentary and desultory, though the effort to make its bound-; appear as wide as possible seems generally ac- companied with a perverse pleasure in the considering it such, and though the same notion of it is entertained on the other side with opposite feelings. Its appearing so is an accident, not of anything that can be properly called our intelligence or our faculties of knowledge, but of certain circumstances of these, nami ly oursensive powers and our corporeal frame. Onrreason is reason of all intelligence, but oursensive communication with tin- univei that of the animal man, or rather we might say more . Uy, of typical terre trial animalhood, for eyes, for instance, or communication with distant bodies by means of light, belong to all animals, whereas there is in none a special Ben ive 32 PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. [CHAP. instrument to communicate with bodies by means of magnetism, or various other agencies as real as light. Our knowledge there- fore gained by experience or sense is, as such, incoherent, not on account of anything in the nature of the things known, but be- cause our powers of sensive communication do not constitute a consistent and universal physiometer, so to call it : they put us into communication with some things, leaving what we under- stand to be gaps and can partially, but partially only, fill up, with the important provision however that we have from the first an intelligence or reason which presents to us the universe as a whole, a frame to be filled up, so that we never rest satisfied with the incoherence. Our sensive power for space is all the variety of our motor nerves, or in fact we may say our whole body, and consequently our sensation of it is full and intimate to a degree to which some of our sensive powers offer no sort of parallel. And in proportion to this fullness and intimateness is the less doubt about its particular informations, and the less need of repeated experience for the testing of them. I find it hard to under- stand the controversy, whether a geometrical axiom (as that two straight lines cannot enclose a space) is a truth necessary or experiential, in this way : those who hold the latter I sup- pose do not mean that it is an accident of space : those who hold the former do not I suppose mean that we could have known it without ever having moved our body, or had space suggested to us : the questions on the point are really two : is space itself suggested to us by experience 1 and can space be suggested to us without distance and the singleness of dis- tance, being so? I think the latter must be answered in the negative : the question then is as to the general nature of space. The answer which I give, a little anticipating what is to follow, is this : that meaning or purpose in a thing (which is really mind or intelligence invested or deposited in phenomena) time, space, force, light, oxygen, are all equally real with the different meanings which reality must take in application to them, all equally matters of experience because they are what we successively find out, but all parts of one universe of which if we have got hold of any portion we have got some hold (little or much) upon the whole, a piece of preg- II.] PHILOSOPHY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 33 nant and developable knowledge already, from which will come truth (such as it may be) without fresh experience. One sen- sation of space, so full and intimate, is almost indefinitely de- velopable — one sensation of light, communicating only with tho optic nerve and retina, may carry us but a very little way along the road of knowledge there. But enough of this : I proceed in the next chapter, in con- tinuing the subject of sensation, to the sensation of power. CHAPTER III. SENSATION, INTELLIGENCE, AND WILL. As I have begun to speak of resistance it is fit that I should notice the corresponding and companion feeling to the sensation of it, which feeling may be called the sensation of power. It is not altogether correct to say, that, in its nature, desire, at least so far as we conceive desire to be the result of expe- rienced pleasure or pain, is the necessary foundation, parent, antecedent of volition, and in this way to subordinate our active nature to our susceptible. Impulse to action or rudimentary irritability is, I should think we may consider, something as original to us as susceptibility to pleasure and pain, and the disposition to exert will exists not as a principle, so to speak, intimate and necessary to us in the second degree only — that is, as a remedy owing to our being subject to pain, and an aid owing to our being capable of pleasure — but as something as intimate and necessary to us as our susceptibility or proper sensibility. I do not know but that we can conceive as easily individualities which in the first instance can act only, and feel nothing but such pleasure as is taken in the action, as indi- vidualities which can feel only, without ability to act. With us, the two things from the first go together. This seems to me an important thing to bear in mind. Of its application to Ethics this is not the place to speak. But it is of importance also in regard of the distinction which I am at present endeavouring to elucidate, between the phenomenalist view and the philosophical, whether this latter be regarded as a wider view or as a companion abstraction. The phenomenalist view considers us as beings (or rather as something) susceptible of knowledge, considers knowledge as coming to us (which gives the point to the term 'sensation' as used by Locke and after- wards by most philosophers in the last century), considers such CHAP. III.] SENSATION, INTELLIGENCE, AND WILL. 35 activity as there is, or the spring of movement, to reside in the supposed object of knowledge, so that, before we can form ideas (supposing us to do so) we must have received impressions, we must have been somehow affected : there must therefore be sup- posed in the object of knowledge, in matter (for instance) some power, or activity in this way to impress and affect us, and it is on that side that the process begins. Hence while the whole run of language, evincing the human natural understanding, is we see, we hear, we perceive, we think, the language of the portion of philosophy which I am now speaking of is, that ob- jects begin and impress themselves upon our sense, and that their impressions, transformed or modified in whatever way, constitute knowledge : in ruder or rougher philosophy of the same kind they have been supposed to send forth actual ema- nations or physical images which did this : this was because a thing could not act where it was not, and it was supposed that it was matter, not we, that acted in perception. The phenomenalist view rests on a supposition, one way of putting which is that we are thus jwssive in knowledge (though of course we must be careful about the language). As good an idea perhaps as can be gained of the phenomenalist scheme of knowledge may be gained in this way: the one physical fact which we know to take place in knowledge is that there is, as I have said, communication between particular natural agents and particular parts of our body, i.e. that there is, in such a place and body, sensation, so far as physics can conceive sen- sation. At this communication we are present, as it were, or in tli'; French use, 'assist': the communication between the matter on the one side and the matter on the other is accom- panied by a feeling on our part, and that is knowledge. Fur- ther, in this way, than there is communication, there is no knowledge. The knowledge and the communication arc coex- tensive. The communication, which in re-pect of the particular portions of it is called 'sensation', is often in respect of the whole of it eall.il 'experience'. The extension of knowledge, in this view, is the extension of this communication. There all kinds of abbreviations and summarizations by (he help of 1. : i the means of which we may multiply our communication in a manner otherwise quite impossible; and 3 2 36 SENSATION, INTELLIGENCE, AND WILL. [CHAP. there is a world, so to call it, of conditional communication, which is what we express, in this view, by what we call laws of nature : the facts or particulars of the communication have their regular concomitances and sequences, and much perhaps besides : and we as it were stand by (in virtue of the accom- panying feeling) and see all this. There is a process going on which we call 'nature', and there is a wonderful, extra-pheno- menal power of contemplating this process: the whole is know- ledge. In reality, as I have said, what we do is not to assist pas- sively at a process independent of our real selves, but to look through it at something beyond : and it is upon the amount, and the right application of this activity that depend the amount and value of our knowledge. The roots however of the phenomenalist (that is, the wrongly phenomenalist) view lie deep, going even to the original suppo- sition, that it is feeling (or susceptibility) that makes our being, and not feeling and acting (or willing) as well, or if we like it, something deeper still, of which feeling and willing both, and perhaps other things besides, are equally early attributes. We are sometimes inadvertently led to this view by our language, when we say that it is consciousness which shows to us our per- sonality : by this we should mean not only consciousness as plea- surable or painful feeling, but consciousness of willing or acting. Our consciousness of willing or acting is undoubtedly more difficult to be conceived by us than the other. On account of the very intimateness of it to our being, we may say that we only know that we do will and do so far as we measure our action by feeling the amount of it, i. e. the amount of effect produced by it, and this is going beyond ourselves, and more thoroughly suggesting, or even making us feel, something be- yond ourselves than any merely passive feeling can suggest this. This is true : and though, as I have said, we wake, even so far as feeling is concerned, not to ourselves alone, but into a world of things or an universe, it is our commencements of willing or of action which first begin to distinctify this universe to us, and make us understand it in particular. We feel time without (necessarily) feeling our activity if we were beings without will, and with only sentience or susceptibility of plea- III.] SENSATION, INTELLIGENCE, AND WILL. 37 sure and pain, we might feel and measure the comparative duration of our feelings : but with the feeling of space awakes to distinctness the feeling of ourselves as active and as doing something. I have said here ' awakes to distinctness ': and I am desir- ous that what I have said in the former part of the paragraph should be carefully attended to. That we do not need space for our activity, becomes abundantly evident in the advance of our consciousness, for effort may be, and is, expended on feeling alone, with no other circumstance therefore but time belonging to it. But space, which makes us feel not only that there is something besides ourselves, but that it is something which we can and do act upon, is what at once first brings us into com- munication with this ' besides', and reveals to us distinctly our own active nature. In saying however that it is space, or the feeling of space, which does this, I am probably not speaking correctly, though, as I said a short time since, I must refer to those with clearer mechanical ideas for strict expression on this subject. Force and matter, I suppose, go together : and so soon as we feel that we exercise not only will, but force, we feel also that what, as thus felt, we afterwards call matter resists our force. So far as this is so, the sensation of matter is as early and as intimate to us as that of space. I have said that we feel space without going beyond ourselves: that is, our material selves: to the extent to which we fuel ourselves as occupying space, we feel ourselves (to describe a simple thing in necessarily periphrastic language) resisting, more or less, the occupation of it by anything else. I will not attempt to follow out here the relations of space and matter. I have said that while allowing to the idea of space, with that of time, a certain prero- gative, I <1" ii"t look upon it to be fitly described as, in contra- distinction to other ideas, a condition of our perceptions. But our - asatioD of <>ur activity and of the resistance of matter to it Lb a lb p which lands us upon quite a new field of knowledge. The sketch which I am now giving of the course of know- ledge does ii"' aim al being really chronological We '1" ao1 have sensations al all in the simple, separate, and marked 38 SENSATION, INTELLIGENCE, AND WILL. [CHAP. manner, which what I have said, were it intended to be histor- ical, would imply. "We are always, as the rule, feeling some- thing, and feelings rapidly succeed one another, and become entangled and compounded together. And thus, though I have hitherto been speaking of one sort of sensations only that we have, there is another sort (I call them different sorts rather loosely, for it is not of consequence) which we have quite as early, perhaps earlier, and which must now be spoken of. Sensation proper, as a feeling, (I mean by proper to distin- guish it from the sensation of our activity) is all, in a manner, as I have said, pleasurable or painful. In a manner : for the sensation of time is rather as containing our feeling of pleasure and pain, and so far as we have a sensation of time, we must perhaps rather call it neutral. Our sensation of space is as of the continent of our motion, of matter as of the absorbent, or counter-agent of our force : how far these sensations are to be considered neutral, i.e. not of pleasure and pain, seems hard to determine, and not now important. Those who think, in the manner which I have mentioned, that we are in the first instance only susceptible beings, and not active till our activity is called forth by something which we want and desire, may be supposed really to consider that action in itself is a necessary evil, and that we should be happier and more perfect beings without it : so far as this is so, the sensations of space and matter, as arising from our action, must be considered painful. On the other hand, so far as we look upon action in the manner in which I have done, as what our nature calls us to for itself as well as for the gaining of a result, they would be to be considered in themselves pleasurable. Of course however pain is always a possible and likely accident of them, as in case of the exertion or pressure being great. Be this as it may, what- ever of pleasure or pain these sensations may have in them is quite inconsiderable in comparison with that which belongs to other sensations, which may be said to be of pleasure and pain, leaving very little of attention to anything beyond the sensa- tion ; that is (in the language which I have used) to the forma- tion of any idea of the supposed object of them. The cardinal sensation of this kind is that which we call taste. We have sensations of pain and pleasure variously localised in our body, III.] SENSATION, INTELLIGENCE, AND WILL. 39 but which suggest to us uo idea beyond the sensation : but when, in the course of the various parts of our body coming in contact by pressure with matter independent of it, certain sub- stances come in contact with our palate, we have sensation of special pleasure or pain, and this sensation we call taste. Taste may be considered the typical form of the sensation which ac- companies the phenomenal fact of the communication between the chemical properties of matter and certain parts of our organ- ization ; in other words, the phenomenal character of a sort of sensation of w T hich taste may be taken as the type is that the chemical properties of matter (I have made such qualifications as are to be made in speaking of this before) communicate with our organism, while the subjective or feeling character of the sensation is that it is not of activity, but of pleasure or pain, and that perhaps very strongly. Our sensation of matter by pressure and our sensation of it by taste constantly go together, as, more or less, in the case of taste proper to which I have alluded : so far as we feel upon the palate the degree of hardness, and the shape (to which we shall come more fully presently), of the thing tasted, the knowledge which we thus gain is not properly by taste, but by the pre- vious sort of sensation. As we may loosely call our chemical sensation of matter (so to speak), which is the etymological sensus, 'taste', so we may call our mechanical sensation of it which I have before described, (the etymological feelinrj), the 'handling' of it (pal- patio, yp-T]\a(f)rjcn^), the hand being the portion of our body most naturally moved in tliis way. The handling of whatever we come in contact with speedily gives to us the sensation, and suggests to us the idea, of whal we call its she. Our sensation of this is simply the feeling of the amount and direction of movement which the hand has to make in tracing it.s boundai We may now (but we had no business to do so till nov apeak of that which, in the advance of knowledge, is of all the most important organ of sensation, the eye: which is in fad a machine for both handling or touching, and also tasting, that is, appreciating certain chemical qualities of matter removed from us, perhape widely, in Bpace. The instrument of this com 40 SENSATION, INTELLIGENCE, AND WILL. [CHAP. munication is the particular physical substance or agent, (what- ever may be its constitution), light. I am not going to enter into any detail about this com- plicated sense. Suffice it to say, (describing first the nature of the phenomenal communication) that there are in the at- mosphere (or in space) variously coloured rays of light moving in various directions, and on the other hand in our eye various lenses in front of a nervous surface, the whole variously move- able by muscles : after and by means of an action in which movement of the rays from without and the meeting them by volitional (though it may be too subtle to be traced) adjustment of the lenses &c. from within concur, the rays arrive at the nervous surface in a particular manner which, for our present purpose, we need not further investigate. The phenomenal communication being this, the corresponding subjective feeling is, that we, in the language which I have used before, as it were taste the colour by means of the nervous surface, in a way in some measure analogous to that in which we taste the taste of anything by the palate : and that, contemporaneously with this (though in a manner the commencement of the other pro- cess must be regarded as the stimulant) the movements of the various parts of the eye (really volitional, though so infinitely rapid, and therefore supplying us with sensation of the former kind) measure to us space in the same manner in which I have described the movements of the hand or other parts of the body to do so 1 . We generally understand that space in the line in which we are looking (which in most cases is what we call the distance of the object which we are looking at) is not measured to us by the eye, or not a thing which we properly see. 1 Imagine the palm of the hand to be sensitive to particles travelling in right lines, whenever these fall upon the parts of it perpendicularly — imagine it to have its present power of turning its face in any direction, and of contracting itself aDd turning about the portions of its surface — also that it is only the surface, or palm itself, that is sensitive — and we have the same result secured in a different manner as I have described in the eye. The particles must of course give sensa- tions independent of the movements, that is, taste, as we may call it. The hand would then be a kind of instrument of distant taste, like our smell, and discrimi- native in the two ways, chemically and muscularly — intensively and extensively. On the next sentence, see a note in the Appendix. in.] Sensation, intelligence, and will. 41 But it is very hard to say what we do see, that is, to deter- mine what is the best use of language in reference to the expres- sion 'see', and it is for this reason that I have spoken, in the first instance, rather of other senses than of this. The sensation, on the ivliole, of space is the same, whether the occasion of it is the movement of the muscles of the eye or of those of the hand : and the particular sensations of space are referred one to the other, the later and more remote to the earlier and more intimate. It is possible that we should not understand the seen shape of a remote body if we had not actually handled a near one. The eye travels round an object of sight of any magnitude, as the hand travels round a portion of matter near : the result in both cases is our sensation of shape. When I say 'of any magnitude', I mean only to decline any question which may belong to physicists, as to how much may be said to be seen at once, without any movement of the eye. Whether we can or cannot, physically, follow the less and less amount of movement, in the case of the perception of larger and smaller shape, to entire absence of it, I do not know. Active sensations or sensations of handling, though almost always present to us, are what we may call uniform, being of space and matter alone. Passive sensations or sensations of taste are conceivably infinite in variety, at least as various as the different agents in nature, and conceivably also, in par- ticular cases, such as could be brought into no relation the one to the other. As it is, our powers of nervous or sensitive com- munication with natural agents are not numerous. Of those which we have, some are in close relation one to another, as taste and smell; some are, I suppose, so far as we can go, out of relation with each other, as taste proper and colour. I shall now, as the shortest and most natural way of ex- pression* -]x;ik of seeing objects. I hope that, after what has been said, we may be able to do so without being misled by our Language. But wli.it is the meaning of seeing objects? The sense of sight as i.1 ie d< veloped becomes the most im- portanl the intellectual sense, or the sense in a special manner. The taste-like sensation of colour, always mosl refined as compared with other taste-like sensations, occupies the atten- 42 SENSATION, INTELLIGENCE, AND WILL. [CHAP. tion rather in its character of a means of discrimination than as an actual pleasure or pain, except as these latter mingle with intellectual considerations, and become artistic or aesthetic. The active sensation, in sight, of space and shape or figure brings itself into relation with, tests itself by, and grounds itself upon, the nearer sensations of the same kind which accompany motions of the whole body or of larger portions of it, and then, we may say, developes* them and multiplies them indefinitely. The sight of a wide prospect is really a mental travelling over it. What we really, in our consciousness, may be said to mean by saying that we see one conspicuous object, for instance, of such a magnitude and figure at such a distance off, another of such another magnitude and figure at such a distance from that, and these in various relation of magnitude, figure, and distance, with others, is, that were we among them and in con- tact severally with each we should have to move the parts of our body so much and so much in feeling about them, and in getting from one to the other. What amounts to movement of this kind, impossible probably in fact, and if it were not so, endless probably in duration, sight, through the intervention of light, effects in a few moments. Volitional movement of the muscles of our eye accompanying the arrival of the light at it, which light arrives in the particular manner in which it does owing to certain particular circumstances in distant matter, the effect is the same as if the rays of light were so many sensitive filaments, so to call them, belonging to ourselves, by which, across whatever distance, we felt or touched that matter. The sense of sight being thus, with developement of the intellect, the most important, takes also a subjective importance of a different kind. We use it as the typical sense by means of which we describe, and to which we refer, the operations of sense in general. We speak of the feelings which we often have, closely resembling sensation or feeling, but not accom- panied, like it, with communication between our body and the universe beyond, as imagination, by a metaphor derived from sight. We speak again of something resembling this last, but accompanied by a (supposedly well-founded) belief in the im- portance and groundedness of it, as intuition or inward sight. It is to this use of the sense of sight that are due the terms III.] SENSATION, INTELLIGENCE, AND WILL. 43 'presentation', 'representation', and many similar: for in con- sequence of the rapidity of the visual movements, we may have in contact with the sense, or with what is understood as the internal sense, at what seems the same moment, any amount of objects. In the case of persons blind from birth, I presume that this, the quasi-visual imagination or inward sight, exists to a certain extent, though there must be an absence of distinction of colour, and it is hard to understand how space is represented in the consciousness. Still I conclude that it is more than dark space, or a mere generalization of handling, feeling, groping. The human organization being one, and the eye being a part of it in such a way that the other parts, if we may use the lan- guage, suppose it and take account of it ; there being also, we may suppose, as a part of that internal organization which every external organization of a being with will supposes, an impulse to the use of the eye, even where that impulse is, from circumstances, abortive: though the stimulant to any ocular movement, by the sensation of colour, is wanting, and perhaps any such actual movement impossible: we may consider it probable that there is something which supplements the hand- ling and feeling, and enables, in a manner, something like a prospect to be present to what we call the imagination. It is a physiological question upon which I do not enter, whether, when imagination is at work, there is or is not disturbance in those portions of the body which, if the imagination were sen- sation, would be rurrcsp.Midontly with the sensation, in such circumstances of disturbance — whether e. f the communication which have no coun- terpari in tin- feeling, it is certain that there is much in the feeling which has no counterpart in the communication. It is this !att<-r, when philosophers use such language, which is un- d< rstood by the form of the sensation, or the form superadded upon the b* nsation, so thai sensation as consciousness or know- ledge i- something differenl from whal it would be, were it simple attention to the communication. The word 'form' is as ambiguous nsation'. We may understand the meaning of it be8l perhaps in tlii-; way. that the relation of 8hape to matt, i oncretely and rudely unden '• — I atone, cla} &c I, i - taken as l 52 SENSATION, INTELLIGENCE, AND WILL. [CHAP. III. a type, figure, or suggestion of the relation of something (the metaphysical form which we want to understand) to incondite or confused material (so to call it) of any kind. As the sculp- tor or modeller gives shape to his clay, so is something given to the unmeaning and unsuggestive feeling — which, if we merely felt, as we feel a prick or a pinch, what is going on in our retina and the other sensive portions of our body, would be all that there would be — to make it the meaning and suggestive feeling which the real subjective sensation is. This, which is given, is the form of the sensation. A result of the fact, that our subjective sensation has thus, in comparison with the bodily feeling and any mere feeling of that, a form given to it, is this, that we consider ourselves to be knowing or feeling, not, as in the phenomenal fact, something in ourselves, but something beyond ourselves : and when I said some time back, that at the same time we both have a sensa- tion of a thing, and form an idea of it, I might have expressed the same by saying that the special character of the sensation, as having the form that it has, is that it is something the mind does not rest in. The mind makes out of it something which it rests in. The sensation passes away, yielding to the next sensation : but it has done something and it has left something: and this is expressed by saying that we have formed an idea. Our sensations give form to each other, and the early and great sensation, that which we have of space, goes some way, in the manner which I have mentioned, in giving form to all the sensations which follow it. But it does not do everything. I hope to make what I have said upon these subjects clearer by comparing it with what has been said by others. CHAPTER IV. FERRIER'S INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC. It is possible that the view which I have endeavoured to exhibit here will be better understood if I make a few remarks on one or two of the most important English works of our time on Psychology and Logic, showing how far they fall in with the distinction which I have endeavoured to draw between the phenomenalist and the philosophical or logical view, and how far they offend against it. I do this with no care for criticizing or controverting the works which I shall name, but simply because I think such a course is the best illustration which I can give of my own view. The books of which I shall speak have been mentioned in the Introduction, as well as the principle of their selection and arrangement, and the first which comes is Professor Ferrier's Institutes of Metaphysic. Whatever demerits Professor Ferrier's book may have, it has what I, having given the view which I have given, cannot but regard as a very great merit, namely, that it is free, I should think entirely, from the confusion of thought which much which I have written is directed to prevent. He has invented or adopted the term ' epistemology' for the logical or philosophical exposition which he has given of the nature of knowledge, and has, it seems to me, in a manner of which there are not many examples, kept in mind throughout the assump- tions with which he has started, without changing his point of view, or introducing alien and unwarranted considerations. I do not attach much importance to the show of demonstration which his Euclidic method exhibits, for which, I think, the subject is not adapted. In fact, he has omitted from it that I important preliminary, the definitions and axioms, and 54 ferrier's institutes of metaphysic. [chap. that this omission is important, may appear from the fact that his first proposition, from which all the rest are supposed to follow, and which is treated as almost self-evident, Mr Her- bert Spencer, whose book I shall speak of shortly, totidem verbis denies 1 . Till axioms then are agreed upon, representing a ground common to various thinkers on the subject, the most perfect consecution in the demonstration is not important. Nor do I agree with Mr Ferrier's notion of the relation of the epi- stemological view which he gives to the view, in general, which, with great clearness and vigour, he gives as contrasting with it. He describes this latter partly as ' psychology ', which with him is a term of great opprobrium, and more generally, as 'ordi- nary thinking', and something which it is the business of phi- losophy to correct. This ordinary thinking represents in the main what I have called the phenomenalist view (with a mix- ture indeed of the 'logical' which I hope at a future time to notice), which, it seems to me, is as valid within its large pro- vince as epistemological thinking is in its province, the busi- ness of the latter being not to correct or simply to oppose the former, but to prevent the misapplication of it. A good deal, no doubt, of ' ordinary thinking' is simply the philosophy of bad philosophers : but the mass of it, as represented by lan- guage, is not. It is not, I think, so much in the direct line of Mr Ferrier's thought as in the incidental remarks, and the whole manner of thought which they exhibit, that the value of his book con- sists. For his direct argument, I can hardly think that his saying, so repeatedly and so barely (this repetition without explanation is due, it is to be observed, to his method of de- monstration) that we cannot think or know an object without thinking or knowing the subject (ourselves) or a subject (our- selves as the type) with it, is a sufficient account of what I should call the feeling which we have, that what we know could not have been known by us unless there had been in it some- thing making it possible to be known, or fit to be known, or the possible matter for future knowledge, or however we like to express ourselves. And in the same manner when he tells us that it is not the object of our knowledge, but ourselves as 1 Psychology, page 44, et passim. iv.] ferrier's institutes of metapiiysic. 55 knowing or apprehending that object, that we know, he seems too much to forget that he has got to give an account of the second knowing which he speaks of, or the apprehending, which at least must be of the object without an apjDrehended subject going with it. Whether then Mr Ferrier has thrown any fresh light upon this question by the particular language in which he has chosen to speak about it, I am doubtful ; but he seems to me, as I have said, to have the very great merit of seeing the problem clearly. The examination of the nature of knowledge, when we start from the logical or philosophical point of departure, may very conveniently take the form of an observation or consideration of the difference between what on the one side is known, and what on the other side is unknown — not merely as a matter of fact, because we do not happen to know it — but unknown on account of something in its own nature, or unknowable. For the observation of the difference, we may suppose this latter, and we may then add to it in thought what suggests itself to us as necessary in order to convert that which cannot be the mat- ter (or in this sense 'subject') of knowledge into that which can. The simplest expression of this is to say, that for anything, what- soever it is, to be possibly the subject (in this sense) of knowledge, it must have definite qualities or properties, and definite rela- tions to other things, and must be such that one and another tiling may be said or predicated intelligibly about it. What Lb then not possibly the subject of knowledge in this sense is what does not possess the above character. And the tracing the difference between this and that which on the other hand is subject (in this sense) of knowledge, is the transforming, in thought and by successive steps, a something supposed of the latter kind into the universe or system of things as we know it. Mr Ferrier lias in very clear and vigorous language dis- tinguished between this with its analogous processes and the apprehensions of tin tn which arc very probable, and are chiefly of two kinds: the one that this pmeess of logic or thought i- an actual, historical (imagined) production on our part of things from nothing, a creation: the other that in such processes, alongside of our thought, we are to suppose things already existing as we know them, Both these misappreh 56 ferrier's institutes of metapiiysic. [chap. sions are in reality confusions between what I have called the philosophical and the phenomenalist point of view, of the kind which I have endeavoured to prevent. Against the first of these Mr Ferrier has well shown how the distinction, in the above-named processes, is not between existence and non- existence, between something and nothing, but between known- ness, knowableness, knowable existence and what he (in his language) calls 'nonsense' or 'the contradictory'. Against the latter he has shown that the double point of view merely results from confusion of thought. Mr Ferrier claims for himself much merit for his ' agnoi- ology', or theory of ignorance, of that kind which Sir William Hamilton is very fond of claiming, namely, that he is here original, and the first to break new ground. This merit does not seem to me so great in philosophy as in some other branches of thought or literature, for the reason that the pro- blems of philosophy are all so intertwined together, that from the first, in the touching of any of them, they have all been more or less touched, and to distinguish between what is really new, and what is only the same thing in other words, is diffi- cult. But the calling attention to the difference between igno- rance (so to call it) of the knowable and that mere nescience (so to call it) which must be the state of mind in regard of that which is not matter of knowledge, is an observation of much importance. If borne in mind, it would prevent much foolish talk in depreciation of human intelligence. I will repeat summarily the view which I have given above myself, and I think Mr Ferrier, with a manner of expression of his own, and a more ambitious, perhaps a better, method, does not in its great features differ from it. The course of objective knowledge is the growth of the non- ego, which from the first, in conjunction with the ego, we are conscious of, into distinctness. The spring or start in this course is given by (what I suppose we must consider a pri- mary fact of all intelligence) the attribution, in the first instance, to each one of these members of the form of thought under which we view the other: i. e. the attribution of objective knowableness to our felt self, and the attribution of subjective knowingness or mind to the non-ego. The latter of these two IV.] FERRIERS INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC. 57 facts is the spring of objective knowledge. Sensation simply and of itself, considered in its relation to knowledge or the later and grown intellectual sensation, might be regarded (Mr Fer- rier has spoken well about this) as the subjective state answer- ing to which, as object or quasi-object, stands what I have generally called confusion or a non-ego of confusion, what Mr Ferrier calls nonsense or the contradictory. It is the projection of ourself into this confusion which begins to generate order in it. It is the supposition of an unity in one and another phase of the non-ego, as we are conscious of them, which unitv is really a projection or extension of our subjective selves, or taking ourselves, the first and most immediate thing we are conscious of, as the type of existence, which makes us (in psychological language) co-ordinate our sensations into masses which suggest to us things ; which gives law to the disorderly mass, and really (in Dr "WhewelTs language) informs (gives form to) or forms the sensation. The continual correction of this by successive experiences divides our knowledge into two lines, or generates on the one side what I have called the phenomenalist view, on the other that of the higher philosophy. For a complete view of things, we in our most developed and instructed thought suppose as much mind in the objective universe as we did in our first and most uninstructed thought. The difference is, that we now suppose an embodiment of the thought or mind which stands between it and our thought or mind: the pheno- menal view is the resting, more or less, in this embodiment, without the thought of its suggesting anything beyond : the supposing it a quasi-absolute, an ultimate fact so far as we are concerned, either for some purposes or entirely and for all. If the former, there is simply that view which is true so far as it goes, and is the basis of all physical science : if the latter, there is what I have called positivism or mis-phenomenalism: a simple negation of everything beyond phenomenalism. Knowledge from the philosophical point of view is a com- munication of mind with mind through an embodiment or It of the one, analyzed or traced back out of embodiment or result into thoughl again, by the other. The process or manner of this analysis may 1>" variously described: it is the mistaken, but continuously corrected, attribution to what wo aro con- 58 ferrier's institutes op metapiiysic. [chap. scious of as different from ourselves, of the mind which is in ourselves : one thing after another detaches itself from this supposition, and is considered to exist what we call merely phe- nomenally, and by the continuance of this process the mind which we contemplate is set farther and further off from us: but the entire view, if we think rightly, never alters or should alter. The process of knowledge again, logically viewed, is a continued (logical) creation of an orderly universe out of what, but for knowledge, has no properties and cannot have anything thought or said about it: but this creation is always felt or understood by us not as a creation, but as a recognition : while Ave are really throwing our own mind into the inform (unformed) matter of sensation, what we think is, that we are meeting another mind. The great problem of the higher philosophy, as distinguished from simple epistemology or philosophy of know- ledge, is tp examine the validity of this feeling, understanding, thought, that we do not, in knowing or perceiving, make things, but find them. There is a phenomenal outward universe, com- municating with our brain and nerves, an environment corre- sponding to our organized or corporeal life : but when we say, the one thing which we are certain of is our consciousness, in the first instance, only, and the development of that; does the manner of this development suggest any antithesis, anything correspondent to, or we may say, communicating with, that, through and beyond phenomenalism ? and does it suggest such reasonably ? "We are really conscious of a non-ego as of an ego, we are not therefore the only existence, and from this it seems to me to follow, that we have reason in considering that in evolving (by thought), order and character, or somethingness out of mere disorder — objects out of prse-objectal possibility — we are not the only mind at work : as much as we feel ourselves mind, we feel ourselves one mind, and that there may be others. We know things therefore not only because we are, but because there are things which can be known : because there are things which have in them the quality or character of knowableness, i.e. a counterpart or adaptedness to reason : which is, however we like to describe it, the same as a mind or reason so far insub- stantiated or embodied. I do not wish to follow this out into iv.] ferrier's institutes of metapiiysic. 59 any conclusions of Natural Theology : only to indicate, that with respect to this, is the real difference of view in all philosophy. The difference as to philosophical view which is a real and fundamental one, whereas almost all differences which cannot be resolved into this have in them more or less of vagueness and mutual misunderstanding, is that between what I have called 'positivism' on the one side, and on the other a view contrasted with this, which has no single name, though in application to ethics I should call it ' idealism'. The point of the difference is that in the former we look upon what we can find out by phy- sical research as ultimate fact, so far as we are concerned, and upon conformity with it as the test of truth : so that nothing is admitted as true except so far as it follows by some process of inference from this. In opposition to this, the contrasted view is to the effect, that for philosophy, for our entire judg- ment about things, we must go beyond this, or rather go further back than it, the ultimate fact really (however for the purposes of physical science we may assume the former) for us — the basis upon which all rests — being not that things exist, but that we know them, i.e. think of them as existing: the order of things in this view is not, existence first, and then knowledge with axd to this or to parts of it arising in whatever manner; but knowledge first, involving or implying the existence of what is known, but logically at least, prior to it, and conceivably more :nsive than it, and not all meeting with application. In the former view, knowledge about things is looked upon as a possi- bly supervi ning accident to them or of them: in the latter view, their knowableness is a part, and the most important part, of their reality or essential being. In the former view mind is supposed to follow, desultorily and accidentally, after matter of fact: in the latter view mind or consciousness begins with recognizing itself as a part of an entire supposed matter of fact or universe, and next as correspondent, in its subjective character, b> the whole >>f this besides as object, while the un- derstanding of this latter ;i / "//, germinates into the notion of the recognition of other mind or reason in it. The various distinctions, as 1- twe a * sensualism' and 'ideal- ism'— -between ' inductive' and 'intuitive', 'a posteriori' and 'a priori', philosophy— and oth< rs, represenl bo far a real and n< i CO ferrier's institutes of metaphysic. [chap. sary conflict of thought as they embody, each of them, more or less of the above distinction or contrast ; and not more. This may be a convenient place for a word or two upon a point, in the treating of which I shall refer not only to Mr Ferrier, but by anticipation to one or two books hereafter to be noticed, as those of Sir William Hamilton and Mr Mill. This is the point of the relativeness of knowledge, and the question of ' things in themselves'. There seems a good deal of misapprehension and confusion in people's minds about this. To speak first about ' things in themselves'. Our knowledge may be contemplated in either of two ways, or, to use other words, we may speak in a double manner of the ' object' of knowledge. That is, we may either use language thus, we know a thing, a man, &c. : or we may use it thus: we know such and such things about the thing, the man, &c. Language in general, following its true logical instinct, dis- tinguishes between these two applications of the notion of knowledge, the one being yvSvai, noscere, kennen, connaitre, the other being elSevai, scire, wissen, savoir. In the origin, the for- mer may be considered more what I have called phenomenal — it is the notion of knowledge as acquaintance or familiarity with what is known : which notion is perhaps more akin to the phe- nomenal bodily communication, and is less purely intellectual than the other : it is the kind of knowledge which we have of a thing by the presentation of it to the senses or the representa- tion of it in a picture or type, a ' vorstellung'. The other, which is what we express in judgments or propositions, what is em- bodied in 'begriffe' or concepts without any necessary imagina- tive representation, is in its origin the more intellectual notion of knowledge. There is no reason however why we should not express our knowledge, whatever its kind, in either manner, provided only we do not confusedly express it, in the same proposition or piece of reasoning, in both. I am not sure whether Mr Ferrier, in general so clear, is not in this particular otherwise, when he speaks of our knowledge as the knowing ourselves as knowing or apprehending, or the knowing that we know and apprehend, the object of our knowledge. I have said that he iv.] ferrier's institutes of metaphysic. Gl seems to lose sight of the necessity of giving an account of the last-mentioned knowledge, or apprehension. Is the word ' know • in the two parts of the sentence used in the same or in different meanings ? It appears to me that the notion of a difference between things in themselves and things as we know them arises in the main from the confusion together of these two views of know- ledge. If by knowledge we mean acquaintance or familiarity, kenntniss, then we know the thing in itself, partially indeed and indistinctly, but still in the same manner in which we or any intelligence must always go on knowing it till the knowing is exhausted and the kernel (or rather central point) reached. If we begin, as to the thing, with this notion of knowing, we must keep this notion to the last. We must not suppose that however we may go on making acquaintance with the thing till we know it in this way thoroughly, there is still something to be known about it which is the real and important know- ledge, and which cannot be attained to. What is defective here is not our knowledge, but our logic. Perhaps the mistake, as I think it, most frequently pre- sents itself when there is taken, in the beginning, the other view of knowledge. Here I must make a preliminary remark on the use of the terms 'subject' and 'object'. If we wish to try the clearness of a philosopher's thought, it seems to me that the crucial test is his use of the term ' object' in application to knowledge. ' Subject' and 'object', in their common application to know- ledge, though they form an antithesis in use, do not form one in proper signification. Or, in other words, they arc not proper correlatives. The object is not the object of the subject, or vice versa. I, the knower or intelligence, am the subject of the knowledge, because the knowledge, here, is considered a quality or property attaching to me or which I possess. What I know is the hhject of the knowledge because the knowing, here, is considered an action on my part, not a quality. The two terms are therefore, in different views, relatives to tjie know- ledge, and not properly correlatives of each other. They are only antithetic in use. The appropriation of the t< 1 m 'subjecl of knowledge to the G2 terrier's institutes of metaphysics [chap. knowing intelligence has, it so happens, damaged philosophical thought in this manner, that it has interfered with the appli- cation of it in various other ways in which it was needed. When we speak of knowledge in that which I gave as the second view of it, as the knowing this and that about a thing, we want the term 'subject' (as it is used in logic) to express the thing about which what is known (the proper 'object' of the knowledge) is known. Using it now in this sense (I have, where necessary, done so before) I think that the confusion which I have above alluded to as to ' things in themselves ' arises from this, that after, with the meaning of knowledge which I am now supposing, we have known (if it is so) about the thing all that there is to be known, we still, mistakenly, think there is something wanting unless we know, with the first sort of know- ledge or that of acquaintance, the thing which all the other knowledge was about. But that thing, supposing we use such language about it, was itself no object of knowledge, and never entered in thought as such, or even possibly such. The thing in this view of knowledge, 'is all' that can be known about it', and when we have come to this, we have come to the end, not only of our knowledge, but of all possible knowledge, in this direction. The notion of the relativeness of knowledge is to be con- sidered much in the same manner. There is little significance in saying that knowledge is 'relative'. It is itself a relation; between the knowing mind and the object known: and this relation arguing a prior one between the mind as capable of knowledge on the one side and the matter of knowledge as, whether actually known or not, knowable, on the other: it shows, that is, an existing constitution or state of things to which the knowing mind and the matter of knowledge both belong. And more than this, knowledge not only is a relation, but it is of relations or related things : that, of which or about which the knowledge is, must be constituted somehow, must have particularity and character involving relations to other things, or qualities having relations to each other, in order for knowledge to be possible of or about it. The unconditioned, unparticular, unqualitied, unpropertied, cannot be known, there being no means of distinguishing it, and nothing to be known about it. iv.] ferrier's institutes of metaphtsic. G3 So far then as we talk of knowledge in general, or from the logical point of view, as being relative, what is really meant is that it is itself a relation, and is knowledge of the relative as variously related. So far as we speak of our own knowledge, or the knowledge of any minds of supposed particular constitution, being rela- tive, the notion is different, and what is meant then is, 'relative to that constitution '. And here it is important to observe what, in or about the knowledge, is relative in this maimer. The meaning of 'relative' here is 'different' (more or less) 'ac- cording as the intelligent constitution is different' — varying with that. But in this case, it is not the knowledge proper which differs, but what we might rather call the means of it ; or, if we prefer the language, it is not the important and higher part of the knowledge, but the lower and subsidiary. Sir William Hamilton's language is, that all that can be possibly known is not existence, but modes of existence — and only some of these modes, according to the particular consti- tution of the knowing mind — and then not the modes them- selves but only modifications of them, determined by the facul- ties making up that constitution. We do not know existence, or the things themselves, but only modifications of some, out of many possible, modifications of them 1 . This seems to me to be a very vain multiplication of logical barriers between our intelligence and the thing which we suppose ourselves to know. What is added by the particularity of our Intelligence t - * the general tact of know ledge is, undoubtedly, that we know through sense (under Sir William Hamilton's modifica- tions, see i he '[notation) and that we know, we may say for conve- nience, through some senses, it being possible for us to conceive a larger number (we know some therefore only, in Sir William Eamilton'a language, of the modes of existence). This is what I have in other [ibices expressed by saying, that we are, whatever 1 LectureBon Metaphysics, p. 148, ed. 2. 'All our knowledge is only relative. It is relative, i", because existence is not cognisable absolutely and in itself, but only 2", because these modes can be known only if they stand in a certain relation to oui faculties: and 3°, because the modes, thus relative to our faculties, an presented to, and Known by, the mind only under modifies lions determined bj tfc lti< 1 then Ivi 04 ferrier's institutes of metapiiysic. [chap. we may be besides, phenomenal or corporeal beings, communi- cating, as such, with a phenomenal or physical universe, and communicating with it in certain definite ways, which ways we might conceive multiplied. It appears to me that Sir William Hamilton's description of all this as 'our knowledge being relative' is language likely to puzzle and confuse both physics and logic. It seems to imply that if we had more senses (a special organ, e. g. for the perception of magnetism, as the eye for that of light) our present physical knowledge would cease to be real, its reality depending upon our having the particular senses, and no others, which we have. Whereas I conclude that the conception of the physical universe which we form in accordance with our present sensive powers, though it might possibly be absorbed and altered in form by an addition to them, is and must ever remain real and valid so far as it goes. In the same manner this ' relativeness of our knowledge' seems to imply that our knowledge, as through sense, must be con- sidered as what I should call incommensurable, that is, out of relation, non-communicable, with that of any conceivable in- telligence which was not attained through sense, like ours. As the other view puzzles physics, this seems to me to puzzle philosophy and logic. My view is, that though we not only perceive, but even more or less, think, by means of sense, yet that the results of our thought, so far as they are to be held as knowledge or true, must be valid for, and intelligible to, and communicable with, all conceivable intelligence, by whatever means, different from ours, it may have attained to its results. Knowledge is one and the same. It seems to me that the proper statement of the fact is, that knowledge, which as I have said is itself a relation and implies for its significance a relation or particularity in things, comes into existence in our case owing to what we may call, if we like it, a relation between our intelligent selves and our phenomenal organism, and to a second definite relation between the parts of this organism and the constituents of the material world. Whether we like or not to use the word 'relation' in this multiplied manner, is a matter of description, carrying no consequences. We may express, if we like it, by the term 'relative' properly understood, what I have endeavoured to IV.] ferrier's institutes of metaphysic. G5 express by 'phenomenalism.' I have called the phenomenalist view an abstraction, by which I have meant, that though true in its proper place, it must not be taken to represent the entire of what we ought to think, and becomes erroneous if it is so taken. If the relativeness of our particular knowledge is un- derstood as expressing this, I have nothing to say against it : nor again if it be taken to mean simply that our generic intel- ligence, as compared with that of one and another sort of ani- mals, or as compared with that of conceivable incorporeal beings, is particular, our own, in the means and manner of it. No one could doubt this. With regard to the relativeness of knowledge in general, as Sir William Hamilton has exhibited it in the first of his three reasons why knowledge is relative, I would refer to what I have said about 'things in themselves'. The 'thing in itself if we use that lan^ua^e, or ' existence ' if we use Sir William Hamil- ton's, may be considered either as a simply logical entity, a manner of expression necessary for us because we wish to con- sider knowledge as the knowing about something, the forming of judgments, scientia — in which case it is not the object of knowledge at all, but simply the. logical subject of the judg- ments, and the notion of reality attaches not to it, but to the sum of what is and can be known about it: or it may be con- sidered as the intended object of the knowledge, what the mind, acting in the way of intuition, apprehension, kenntniss (not, i.e. judgment about) is always aiming at, to whatever degree it succeeds. 'Existence,' says Sir William Hamilton, in the pas- sage already cited, ' is not cognisable absolutely and in itself, but only in special modes.' If cognition is taken in the former view, then the sum of the modes of the existence is the exist- ence itself, as an object of knowledge, and there is no relative- ness, though there may be partialness, some of the modes only being known, and nut others. And this view is what cognition must be taken in fur the word 'absolute' tu have its proper in' aning, antithetical to 'relative'. If it is taken in the latter view, absolute only means 'complete', and cognisable 'completely' cognisable The suppositiun that existence is a reality, and yet that we can only know it in modes, (i.e. the whole supposition of relativeness of knowledge) Beems t" me exactly a confusion 66 FERRIEIt's INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC. [CHAP. of the two views of knowledge (the simultaneous employment of which is almost a sort of juggling) which I have described. Supposing us to have exhausted, in knowledge, all the modes of existence, we are told, you know all about it, but you do not know it. In reality acquaintance with, intuition or apprehen- sion or comprehension of, it, and judging correctly and exhaust- ively this, that, and the other thing, about it, are two ways of expressing the same thing, and either of them are definitions of knowledge : the difficulties as to relativeness seem to me to arise simply from a confusion between the two. It aj)pears to me, accordingly, that the language of almost all the Kantist-speaking philosophers has been a language of uncertainty between the saying, It is absurd to talk of know- ing things in themselves, or, which is the same thing, of con- ceiving the unconditioned, and the saying, It is vainly presump- tuous to think of doing so. The two ways of speaking involve entirely different views. If the impossibility of conceiving the unconditioned is logical, because there is nothing to conceive, (the unconditioned being merely a logical figment, for certain purposes, of the knowable divested of what makes it know- able) then the refraining from the attempt to conceive it is no restraint, or subjugation, or submission of the intellect to limits traced out for it, which it must not transcend : such attempts then are simply mistakes, and there is no reason why people should not find out the mistakenness of them (though of course we may tell them they will find it) by making the attempts, and seeing the absurdity which results. All the language about submitting or restraining the intellect belongs to the other view, in which the impossibility of conceiving the unconditioned is supposed not in this manner logical, but an accident of our particular intelligence. We are then, sup- posedly, bound down to certain ways of viewing things which we see to be particular ways, being able, so far as this, to criticize, i.e. to rise above, our particular intelligence, while, at the same time, we are unable to conceive how the things can be seen in any other way than these particular ones, or what they, independent of the ways of seeing them, are. This, of course, puts the intellect in a state of unstable equilibrium, of a sort of war with itself, of struggle, effort, and difficult}-. IV.] ferrier's institutes of metaphysic. G7 All those forms of idealism which represent the present state of things in which we are as ' phenomenal' , in the original mean- ing of the term, beyond and through which we may form an imperfect conception of unseen realities, embody more or less this view. And while, as I think, every supposition of religion necessitates this view in a certain measure, there is reason, though the proceeding is not one with which I have myself much sympathy, in the endeavour, for the interest of definite religion, to restrain the too great activity of the intel- lect in these directions, and to enforce upon it moderation and submission. But what there is not reason in is the endeavour to reinforce this restraint by means of a view quite inconsistent with the view upon which the notion of restraint depends, by means, i. e. of the view which I have given above, namely, that the attempt to conceive anything beyond the phenomenal world is merely illogical and leads to nonsense. I have gone into this however rather more at length than I meant here. In taking leave of Mr Ferrier, I would say again, that in giving my own view some time since, and supposing his to be similar, I am not quite certain whether I am justified. He is, I think, superfluously occupied in making his demonstration inexpugnable, and scarcely, I think, explains sufficiently the exact point of some of his expressions. Knowledge, in my view, is the mingling our own consciousness with a certain (so to call it) pne-objectal matter of knowledge of which we are so far conscious, as that it is that, by distinction from which we know ourselves: and it is this mingling which generates objects, or converts the supposed occasions of our feelings, a continuous undigested confusion otherwise, into things. When Mr Ferrier - that we think the subject with the object, I rather ques- tion the term 'object' in this application: if, till the subject is added to it, there is no knowledge, it is not as yet, or itself, the object. And Mr Ferrier hardly sufficiently explains whe- ther lie means to pass from the notion of ourselves as knowing. or from knowledge being 'knowledge that we know', which of itself, 1 think, is not very important, to the notion of ourselves, or pari of our selv< s, known in the object, which is the importanl one. It is this which really leads on, in the chain of thought, to .9 — _ 63 ferrier's institutes of metaphysic. [chap. the notion of knowledge being the meeting, through the inter- vention of phenomenal matter and the conversion of it into in- tellectual objects, with the thoughts, proceeding in the opposite direction, of mind or a mind like our own, however wider and vaster. This is my version of Mr Ferrier's final propositions. But I think a great deal of time is wasted in discussing and rediscussing what one and another philosopher means. Or, granting the value of this for the ancient philosophers, of whom we have very imperfect remains, I think we may very well do it too much in regard of the modern ones. Philosophical language is very uncertain, and it is a good thing, in some points of view, that it -is so, for this manifold uncertainty is a great security against mere unmeaningness in the language. No phi- losopher who reflects on this uncertainty, but must feel the im- portance of making effort to set before both himself and his readers what he himself means by the terms he uses. Nor is any logic or reasoning in a philosophical book of the slightest value without special care given in this respect. But beyond this, a philosopher's view will probably be of most value to us by our conceiving it in our own way, provided we think about it bond fide and without putting force upon it. In a real philosopher, the ground of the whole, the fundamental view, is something very hard, if possible, to put into words and which he probably labours much in expressing, and perhaps he does this by using various manners of expression, or perhaps he may be unwilling to mar such distinctness of expression of it as he may have attained by illustrations of it which may lead to mis- apprehension. In these cases, an infinite literature may be taken up in discussing and rediscussing what he meant. The important thing is how far what he meant or what we may sup- pose him to have meant is suggestive of what is the truth. I have said however very little about Mr Ferrier's book itself. I will give now a few of his own words, with comments on them, comparing them with my views. How my view stands upon the whole with his I cannot quite make out. His manner of expression is so exceedingly differ- ent from mine, some of it being quite unintelligible to me, that whether what he means is the same on the whole as what I mean, or something quite different, I cannot tell. When there- iv.] fekrier's institutes of metaphysic. 69 fore I say that I agree with him, and that what he says seems to me right, I interpret him in my own way, and if any one disputes that being his meaning, I have no care to maintain that it is. "What I say then is not applicable to him. I have observed upon the inutility of lengthened controversy as to whether a philosopher means this or that. Suppose him to mean either or both or neither, and let us see only how what it may be thought he means helps the truth, and suggests thought in us. Mr Ferrier says 1 , "Philosophy is not only a war, but it is a " war in which none of the combatants understands the grounds " either of his own opinion or of that of his adversary : or sees " the roots of the side of the question which he is either attack- " ing or defending." And again 2 , "Now, no" (philosophical) "ques- " tion comes before the world which does not present many " disguises, both natural and artificial, worn one above another : " and these false faces are continually increasing. . . It may be "affirmed with certain tv that no man, for the last two thousand "years, has seen the true flesh-and-blood countenance of a single " philosophical problem." Mr Ferrier expresses himself strongly, but otherwise this his starting-point is quite mine. Philoso- phical controversy is full of confusion, and this is one great reason of resultlessness of it. But with his remedy I cannot agree : that is, with the applicability of it. We want, he says, strictly reasoned philosophy : and when we have it, we shall be so cer- tain that we have it, it will be so evidently irrefragable, that we shall take our ground with the most perfect confidence as against all possible controversy. His own Institutes, Mr Fer- rier considers, furnish such a philosophy, and the language of confidence with which he speaks about them is extraordinary. It is extraordinary, because his first proposition, which lie takes as a sorl of axiom to build the rest upon, is, as we have seen, controverted by Mr Herbert Spencer (and in fact by many more) and is even it would appear, thought to require support and defence by Mr Kerricr himself. This proposition is, that the act of knowledge is not know- ledge -imply of the object of knowledge, but is knowledge of 1 Page 5. 3 Page 9. 70 terrier's institutes of metapiiysic. [chap. ourselves, the subject, along with the object, and as knowing the object. I have already hinted a comment or two on this. I agree with Mr Ferrier. Mr Herbert Spencer's view is one which I may possibly touch on further forward : it may be put, as I understand it, thus : the object is more important and imme- diate to knowledge than the subject is : knowledge must have an object, but it may be conceived, i. e. at the ultimate point, as without a subject : in knowledge there must be something known, but, conceivably, and for a moment, there may be know- ledge without its being anybody's knowledge, without anybody's thinking or feeling it : the basal fact is not ' cogito', not sensa- tion or consciousness, but, as we may say, 'hoc cogitatur', or 'cogitatur de hoc', from which, though still in my view 'ergo sum' may be concluded, it is by a longer process. I am not going to discuss this point, which is the often discussed one of the nature of personality, and only say, that in point of method I do not see what is gained by Mr Ferrier putting a system of philosophy professedly reasoned in such a manner as to preclude all controversy, upon a point thus con- trovertible, however, in my view, he may be right upon it. Interpreting Mr Ferrier, as I have said, in my own way, and translating him into my own language, I might under- stand, by this master proposition guiding our whole view of knowledge, what I should express as follows : that knowledge is this ; thought, justifying itself to us as right thought (belief, if any choose to call it) of ourselves as communicating, ac- quainted, in contact, with a something not ourselves ; but this at the same time requires the accompanying thought (as to which I do not know whether it appears in any form in Mr Ferrier) of ourselves as so to speak extending into something not ourselves, or having a being partaking of that which is not ourselves besides our simple being in virtue of which we think : this is what I have called our phenomenal or corporeal selves : this second thought being present, it is seen that the commu- nication, the object of the first thought, is at various steps : communication of ourselves as thinking with thought, and again of ourselves as phenomenal with physical fact : the com- munication at the lower stages gives us what I have called iv.] feruier's institutes of metaphysic. 71 'phenomenalism': this may be treated by itself, as hioidedge so far as it goes : but it does not represent an entire view of know- ledge, being all included in the leading thought with which we began, and there being knowledge above and beside it. How far Mr Ferrier's view is really intended to be of the nature of this, which is mine, those who read him and me must judge. The valuable point in Mr Ferrier, in my view, is, as I have said, his consistency in distinguishing what I have called the philosophical and phenomenalist view. But we must have a transition from one to the other, though we must be careful u'hat transition : and in reference to this I will comment on a passage of his 1 . "That which we call 'I' is the object of intel- " lect alone. We are never objects of sense to ourselves. A man " can see and touch his body, but he cannot see and touch "himself. When the cognizance of self is laid down as the "condition of all knowledge, this of course does not mean that " certain objects of sense (external things, to wit) arc apprehended " through certain other objects of sense (our own bodies, namely), " for such a statement would be altogether futile. It would leave " the question precisely where it found it." This is important and true, time, I think, as against views of Sir William Hamilton and Mr Mansel which I have touched on, but we must take care of overstatement. What is the meaning of ' our own bodies'? Taking 'external things' as our type of 'objects of sense', our own bodies are not, except subsequently and par- tially, objects of sense to us in this way. I v, ill imt dwell upon this, having already spoken a good deal on the subject in another reference. It appears to me that Sir William Hamilton and probably others are obnoxious to what Mi- Ferrier says here': but it seems to me that he is in error in Bpeaking of our own bodies as it' they were merely, in relation to us, external things like the things which surround them. They are a real intermediation between 'us,' (Mr Ferrier's '1'), and externa] things: they belong to both worlds in this way: not thai feeling, or thought is local, for it is not our band thai feels, hut 'wo'; not, •_■;. d 1 1 -_; tie- other way, thai locality is Colt with real consciousness, for what we feel with feeling thus 1 Page So. 72 ferrier's institutes of metaphysic. [chap. meant (i. e. as consciousness) is the amount of will or force that we exert: but that, in that apprehension of self which Mr Fer- rier justly lays down as at the root of knowledge, the self apprehended is not merely the same thing as the self appre- hending, in which case the process would be unimportant: the apprehending the apprehended self is the clothing it with various predicates (then, indeed, first understood), among them locality (corporealness or phenomenalness). That is how it is that our bodies are ourselves and not ourselves: we feel by means of them and we do not feel by means of them: it is not they that feel, but we, but we feel that we should not feel without them. However on this I have spoken. Some of Mr Ferrier's sentences seem better adapted than anything else that I know of to cure in the minds of students the great psychological confusion : such as 1 , "The expositors of " Pythagoras's theory of numbers have usually thought " (I do not guarantee the fact) " that things are already numbered by " nature either as one or many, and that all that P3 T thagoras " taught was that we re-number them when they come before " us". And again, "A theory which professes to explain how " things became intelligible must surely not suppose that they " are intelligible before they become so". And again 2 , "As " if any genuine idealism ever denied the existence of external " things — ever denied that these things were actually and bond "fide external to us. Idealism never denied this: it only asks " what is the meaning of 'external' considered out of all re- " lation to ' internal', and it shows that, out of this relation, the " word ' external' has, and can have, no meaning." What Mr Ferrier attacks he calls himself, ' ordinary or na- tural thinking, confirmed and made worse by psychology'. It seems to me to be three things, on the first of which I only par- tially agree with him, on the other two quite. On the first point however I am not sure whether his view is single and one. He condemns (philosophically) ordinary or natural thinking, with its 'plausibilities' 3 , and considers that philosophy only exists 4 "to correct the inadvertencies of man's "ordinary thinking. She has no other mission to fulfil no "other business to do". To settle, as a fact, what 'ordinary or 1 Page 89. s Page 105. 3 Page 25. * Page 29. IV.] FERRIERS INSTITUTES OF METAPHTSIC. 73 natural' thinking is, is' difficult enough, as any one will know who has read Bishop Berkeley. And then are 'ordinary' and ' natural' the same ? It seems to me that there are two ways of common thinking, which may well be expressed by these several words, and that each, also, is only ■partially wrong. Suppose we call 'ordinary thinking' that which is repre- sented by common language. This, in the main, I believe in, and think it is right. It represents what may be described as the way we learn, or come to our knowledge: it is only partially what I call ' phenomenalist', containing, besides, a large amount of logical notion, here in its place, and most helpful to learning and speculation : the phenomenalism which it has represents a sort of normal condition, or mean level, of phenomenalistic thought, at which perhaps the human race will always stand — (I mean we still talk of the sun rising, oca). I am sorry to say, I have always had the feeling, that the language of ordinary intelligent communication among men is better than the language of philosophers. And the thought therefore cannot be very bad. Suppose we call 'natural' thought the thoroughly phenome- nalistic view, as I have called it, which is what, with increase of ; di ysical knowledge, there is in many ways more and more a tendency to ; this, as I have said, is in my view perfectly right in its place and for its own purposes, only not beyond. With Mr Ferrier's account of what philosophy exists for, just now quoted, I do not agree at all. So far as philosophy does exist for any correction of this kind its use as to 'ordinary' thinking seems to bo to prevent any tendency to what I should r.ill 'notionalism', that is, to prevent people's thinking that the 'qualities', 'attributes' &c. which they talk about, and in my view arc quite right in talking about, are the real things of the universe. Similarly, its use as to 'natural' thinking would be to prevenl phenomenalism trespassing, as I should call it, on morals and religion, and becoming positivism. So much t'"i- ill'' first tiling which it seems to me Mr Ferrier attack., — the second is 'the philosophy of the human mind', as he with .-Mini' kind of contempt calls it; psychology, or, as I have called it, nob-psychology (as distinguished from physio- psychology), the Lockian psychology or thai of thelasl centuiy. 74 ferrier's institutes of metaphysic. [chap. I may not despise this, as he seems to do, or think its re- sults, as he does, 'frightful' 1 ; but I disagree with it as much as he. Under the name of 'psychology' Mr Ferrier includes the third thing, not quite, it seems to me, the same as the last, though it is what I equally agree with him in condemning ; and in fact I have, in much that I have written, been attacking it. It is the doctrine of the 'unknowable substratum', or 'thing in itself. I refer to Mr Ferrier at page 128 for an account, too long to quote, which I go with thoroughly, saving the philosophical language. The misfortune is, that this philosophical difficulty is worse than Proteus-like : it is not only infinitely self-transfor- mative and scarcely any way seizable, but it has the property of making those who most attempt to grasp it appear to hold themselves all that is wrong in it, while itself puts on an ap- pearance all innocent and right. People will say that Mr Ferrier's ' matter per se ' is as bad as ' the unknowable sub- stratum'. I believe, myself, that Mr Ferrier is right, and that there is the error which he notices in those whom he criticizes : but what we want is to be able to do without talking of this horrible chimera which philosopher after philosopher will talk about so much in order to persuade people what, while he does so, he cannot get them to believe, that neither he nor anybody can know anything about it. Consequently, I do not like the language of 'matter per se'. Nor am I certain that I see the bearing, on this question, of his great law, that we apprehend ourselves in conjunction with the object. Unfortunately, the method of his philosophy, its being reasoned, as he calls it, which was to carry irrefragable conviction and end controversy, is what I can but little enter into or follow. I can, indeed, translate this ' law ' into my own language, much as I have done : then Mr Ferrier seems to say much the same as I, or I as he. But if I cannot appreciate his demonstration, I can the point and clearness of many of his sentences. I may say the same, in reference to this subject, of his Agnoiology or theory of ignorance. His manner of thought here, as I understand it, is one which might strike many 1 Pa?e «o.s. iv.] ferrier's institutes of METAPHYSICS. 75 minds forcibly. We do not know this ' thiug in itself ', to be sure, but then., on the other hand, Ave are not ignorant of it : our state in regard of it is not that of ignorance, which is what all you who talk about it imply, and even say : it is no inore ignorance than it is knowledge : if you can find a third alternative, that is our state in regard to it : if not. you have no more right to say, expressly or impliedly, that we are iornorant of it. than 1 have to sav we know it. This, as I understand, is in other language what I meant by saying, that the notion of knowledge is not applicable to it : that there is nothing to know : that talking of knowing it is like talking of eating light, or smelling sound : disparate, incongruous. I will comment slightly on Mr Ferrier's language as to the necessary and the contingent, that which is, and that which is not, conceivable otherwise : with a view of showing how his laniruasre differs from that which I have used. Nature, he says in one place if I remember rightly', could have made the sun to turn round the earth, instead of the opposite, but could not have made two straight lines to end - a spac . Now here I do not go with him, and I allude to what he thinks because it will perhaps illustrate my view, and be- cause my difference with him spreads further. The difference between the necessary and the contingent usin g this latter term of what we know to be fact — to avoid ambiguity, it might 1 tsatt it 'contingential') seems to only a differ.. f our manner of arriving at knowledge ; that ki _ which we arrive at chiefly by the way of thought and : • n has to us more of the character which we call necessity : that which is more of experience, acquaintance, testi- mony, is contingential : but we cannot draw a line: we cannot . one portion of knowledge i> and must be- known tons in the one way, another part in the other: so far as the contingential not approximate only or hypotheti- cal, it inL q arrived at by the road of thought, and then it would 1. ary : and, en the other hand, there is no thought which is not exp I have in another pJ I it, v. out ( eerythi r that which rt with, our own exi-t- t 76 ferrier's institutes op metaphysic. [chap. I think Mr Ferrier's account of what nature could have done in the above case is not correct — it depends on what we mean by the ' sun ' and the ' earth '. If in our notion of ' the sun ' and ' the earth ' we compre- hend only a small number of their actual properties, it is ex- ceedingly easy to suppose the order of things to have been ' the sun round the earth '. Men did long so suppose. The more ignorant we are of their properties, the more easy it is to suppose it. That is, it is the omission of properties from the notion which makes the easiness. The straight line has got but one property (say), namely, that it is the shortest distance between two points : there is therefore but one thing to omit (to make a parallel case), and the suppo- sition of omission is difficult, because there remains nothino- for the notion. But omission thus being scarcely possible, let us suppose, what is very likely, obscure view or inattention: it is then perfectly possible to conceive that two straight lines might inclose a space: and I dare say at this moment many people would so conceive about them. I am unable therefore to see any difference in nature's power in the two cases : if she had made two straight lines to inclose a space, they would not be what we now understand by straight lines : if she had made the sun to turn round the earth, these would not be what we now understand by the sun and the earth: the solar system would have been different, and very likely we should not be talking of the sun and the earth at all. The difference in the cases is this : common language is constructed on what I have called a sort of normal stage of phe- nomenalism : hence for things like the sun there is a common, non-scientific, language, but it does not express the full intelli- gent notion ; for geometrical notions there is, I suppose, only the scientific language, expressing the full notion. The sun and the earth which can change their relative circumstances are those of the vulgar, but then what the straight lines of the vulgar may do, or what spaces they may inclose, I can hardly tell — we must compare the sun and earth as they are, i. e. as we best can know them, with straight lines as they are. The notion of necessity and contingency is important with Mr Ferrier in reference to knowledge altogether. I do not IV.] terrier's institutes of metaphysic. 77 • propose to examine what lie says, "which would take too long, only to say one or two words. The contingent laws of cognition, he says, are the senses and the circumstances of them : the necessary law of it is the apprehension of self in conjunction with the object of know- ledge. So far as I understand this, it seems the same view which I hold if we take care about these notions of 'necessity' and ' contingence ', which nevertheless with Mr Ferrier play an important part: there is a fact, a difference to be expressed, but it is not an absolute difference, such as Mr Ferrier pro- bably means to express by these terms. His fundamental view, that all knowledge is of oneself in conjunction with the object, is, as I understand it, what I should translate in different ways into my language : one way would be this. Our second or known self is to our first or think- ing self, the great sense or faculty of knowledge, by which the object is known. The notion then of the self (the known self) being the necessary, the senses the contingent, accompaniments of knowledge, seems to me to be simply an expression of the subordination of the latter to the former. All that I say about 'necessary' and 'contingent' here is that they do not express an absolute difference : that they shade off the one into the other ; they mean what I have in another place called the comparatively important, and unim- portant, parts of knowledge : the important, according to their importance, belonging more universally to all intelligence : the less important allowing the conception of a science of com- parative epistemology, or of the different knowledge of different beings according to their different cognitive organisations. One of the b ildest efforts of abstract imagination (a sort of thing I like very much) is made by Mr Ferrier in pp. 381, 382, and it * ems to me rather to -how what 7" am saying. It is too long to '| 'id 1 can hardly otherwise give an idea of it, 1 will Iim. • iy. One and all of our presenl senses, he says, might be abolished, and provided they were replaced by a set of different sens< man's know 1< r attained to it, as we all do, we may leave out of account the manner in which we did so, ami suppose for the time that the element-, fora mtain somehow in themselves the entire on why they are viewed by us in the manner in which they 6- 2 84 sir william Hamilton's [chap. are viewed: such a view, as compared with a supposed view of the entire of things, makes what I have called an abstraction. This phenomenalist view is what, both in the individual and collective advance of knowledge, we in one respect grow more and more to, that it is what experience continually clears and confirms : in another respect, it is simply the view of such intel- ligence as is possessed by all animals, and we have something about us which protests against its entire engrossment of us. The original fact to us, the one thing of which we are, be- fore all others, certain, is not the existence of an universe of which we, as organized beings, form a part, but the feeling, thinking, knowing, that this is so, and the knowing that we do know it, or, in other words, that we who know it, are anterior, in our own view of ourselves, to it. If then we begin with this supposition, we know nothing about a phenomenal uni- verse, a universe of existing things besides ourselves, except so far as we realize the manner in which one part of it after another becomes known to us or the subject of our thoughts (object of our knowledge), and we must not, previously to this realization, suppose them existing. This successive realization is the logical genesis or growth of our knowledge. It is not ex- istence of any kind, that in the first instance is supposed to be the object of our knowledge, but what is supposed is feeling, thought, knowledge, and I as' the subject of them, and only existence in so far as this feeling may, in whatever way, in- evitably suggest it. This, evidently, is a deeper view than phe- nomenalism, or, in other words, it mounts to an earlier original fact. But, in the first instance, all that we may consider it concerned about is feelings, thoughts, knowledge, of a supposed /. While so restrained, however widely it may trace the man- ner in which we think and the results at which our thought arrives, it is an abstraction, like jihenomenalism, in comparison with what we may imagine, an entire view of things. This is what I have called the logical (epistemological) or lower philo- sophical view. My notion of the higher philosophy anwers to what might be called, and by many philosophers has been and is called Ontology', or the theory of 'being', as against the theory of knowing, or the phenomenology of knowledge, or various other V.] LECTURES ON METAPHYSICS. 85 language: but I do not think the term a good one, for this reason. I do not at all say but that what I have called pheno- menalism represents to us, or is to us, a true and real existence. I only say, that we must draw no conclusions from it beyond its sphere, and that if we mount to the primary fact upon which every thing to us, even it, rests, our consciousness, it seems to me that we must consider that the sphere of pheno-. menalism does not represent to us the whole of reasonable thought. Further than this I do not go now. The purpose with which I am at present examining Sir William Hamilton and other books is to see how far the pheno- menalist view and that of the pure philosophy of knowledge are confused : i. e. how far there is a vacillation, in the primary assumption, between that of a thinking mind and that of a phenomenal universe. Sir William Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics are I sup- pose, as to method, a Philosophy of the Human Mind, following more or' less the order of considering the subject which was begun long ago, and has been followed, in the main, by the successive Scotch philosophers. He differs from them, or most of them, first, in the greater use of logical conceptions and terms, and next, in what I may call the less prominence, at -t, of phenomenalism. I mean that his purpose is described very definitely as being ' the analysis of consciousness'. So far 1. 'The phenomena of mind' are however talked of by the side of ' the phenomena of matter'. This is less promising. But effort is then made to get the two into one consideration by the establishing that we have a consciousness (I suppose) of matter similar to the consciousness which we have of mind or self. This so far as it is not language only, but represents fact, is what stands in direct opposition to my view, and what, in consequence of this, I shall rather fully examine. But still my vi<-w outflovnks this, so to speak, and the establishment of this is Dot only impossible, but would not, it' successful, serve the purpose Deeded. Mind is above matter, because even if there could be established a parallel consciousness of pheno- mena of mind and of those of matter, it is mind which has that consciousness. There would still be a pli.i nomenoD of mind at the head of all, namely, this double consciousness itself. SO sir willtam Hamilton's [chap. "What Sir William Hamilton then has done, is to point out, more distinctly than seems to have been done by others, the doubleness of consciousness, or in other words, he has, it may be, introduced (I am not certain whether that is so) the prac- tice of extending the application of the term 'consciousness' from 'self-consciousness' to (what I may call) the whole amount of knowledge which we have, in the first instance and imme- diately, in conjunction with this self-consciousness. This is very well: but he seems to me to consider that the amount of this knowledge is greater than it is, and to be confused in his notion of it, and consequently he has applied, as I think, the term consciousness quite beyond the reasonable application of it. We are aware of the not-self or non-ego quite as immedi- ately and primarily as we are of the self, or ego, the distinction of the one from the other being necessary for the knowledge of either. The term ' consciousness' is therefore very fitly ap- plied, if we like so to apply it, to our knowledge of the non- ego as well as to our knowledge of the ego. But the non-ego as known merely by this consciousness is entirely formless : it is known to us only as the not-self, and in no other character. Difficulty begins to arise when we try to understand how it is that it puts on to us the form of what we call the external world. There requires to be, of course, careful thought here. We are conscious of the non-ego exactly corresj)ondingly to our consciousness of the ego, but no further. We are conscious of ourselves as feeling (say), or thinking, and correspondingly with this Ave are conscious (if we like so to speak) of something be- yond or distinct from ourselves {ourselves being determined by feeling or thinking), which, according to the language we use, we describe as being what w r e feel or think, or what causes us to feel or think, or in various other manners. Over against then, and correspondent to, the feeling of ourselves stands a knowledge of something as not-ourselves. But the various qualities or characters of feeli/ng are not space, direction, mag- nitude, solidity, but are pleasure, pain, duration, repetition, &c. : on the other hand, our detailed knowledge has for its qualities or characters the former sort of things: how is it that the original double consciousness of an ego and non-ego. while, V.] LECTURES OS METAPHYSICS. 87 in the line of the ego, it puts on to us those various characters of pleasure, pain, &c, which we can understand as attaching to feeling, changes itself, in the line of the non-ego, into some- thing with which we cannot at all suit the notion of conscious- ness, the qualities or characters of it (space, magnitude, &c.) being what cannot be characters of feeling ? In reality of course, being an expression of what, in the last resort, is to us feeling, they are in a manner characters of feeling, and we might, in language cumbrous and bizarre, de- scribe our multiplied experience by talking of ourselves as feel- ing seeingly, feeling hearingly, and by using no other forms of language than verbs and adverbs. What is the reason why we do not do this ? In our capacity for pleasure and pain there is the seed of endless variety in our consciousness in the line of the ego : what is the seed of the expansion of our conscious- ness of the non-ego beyond mere consciousness, which is what would be represented by the language which I have given above, into phenomenal knowledge, which is what our actual language represents ? It is strange, but it seems to me as if Sir William Hamil- ton throughout considered that the saying we were conscious of a non-ego w r ere the same as saying wc were conscious of matter 1 . Our body is of course the medium between our in- 1 I have returned to this in another place, and must apologize for much repe- tition and awkwardness in the treatment of it, only begging that it may be re- ibered that J never professed to be free from such. What T have here expressed wonder at is I suppose undoubtedly what Sir William Hamilton did consider, and his considering it is looked upon by those who sympathize philosophically with him as an important discovery on his part. So far as he did mean this, I have in another place (page 116&C.) commented on the misapplication of the term 'conscious- Jnd' pendent of the term, all that T can see in Sir William Hamilton's sup- d discovery is a fresh form of what seems to me the cardinal error, the putting phenomena of matter and the phenomena of mind side by side. Sir William Hamilton, starting from consciousness, thinks it a great thing to be able to put the phenomena of matter by the ride of the phenomena of mind, which of couim: are the first thing he supposes: Mr Mill, starting from the supposition of the spa nniverse, thinks it a great thing to bo a Kb- to put the facts of mind by the side of th( which (jf ionise- an; the first thing he supposes. Sir William Hamilton's supposition of our being conscious of matter seems to me to he wrong in exactly the tame manner as Mr Mill's supposition, which I should describe as that we phenomenally know mind- i.e. that we may put itt facts, and that ex- haustively, or as our only consideration of them, by the side of physical ones. In 8S sir willtam Hamilton's [chap. telligence and the external world : only that in saying this we must be careful. We may conceive ourselves as we are pheno- menally, or in other words, corporeally : we may in this view be said to be conscious of our body : that is, whatever takes place in it (speaking generally) has corresponding to it some kind of alteration of our feeling : our body is in this view a great organ of sense, a vehicle by which we come to feel the exist- ence, as similar to our own phenomenal existence, of a vast ex- ternal universe in which we fill a place : in this use of the term consciousness, according to what I said just now, that con- sciousness of the non-ego is corresponding to that of the ego, we are conscious of the external universe in the same way as we are of our bodies, knowing the one by distinction from the other, or (in this case) by the mutual antithetic communication of the two, only the self is what is in the first instance directly in thought. But in all this we are supposing ourselves corporeal, cor- poreal here being a highly complicated notion, which, in its complication, we certainly do not immediately feel ourselves, for what we mean by it is that we' see and handle ourselves as of such and such a shape and solidity, a tree having such and such another shape, &c. What is the root of this in feeling ? The question whether, as the root of all our after objective knowledge, there can be admitted what we may call a relation of locality of our conscious or feeling self, taking place in conse- quence of the extension of our body — (we, who feel, are pheno- menally here — is the feeling here? our arm is phenomenally a part of us — is the feeling in it, or in us?) — is a question which has two sides, a physiological and a logical one. The physio- logical side, whether, so far as that science goes, we are to be considered as having a locally distributable, or on the other hand concentrated and unitary, feeling self, I do not touch. But the logical side is whether the notion of ascribing locality to feeling, the various possible modes of which, I have said, are pleasure, pain, duration, &c. can be even admitted — whether it respect of Sir William Hamilton — we are conscious of seeing, and just the problem of philosophy is to make out what is our mental relation to the thing we see : what is it hut plastering up a crack to say that the word 'consciousness' will cover that also, and that being conscious of seeing is being conscious of the thing we see ? V.] LECTURES ON METAPHYSICS. 89 is not like talking of a yellow sound, a sour colour, or various other incongruities of thought. No doubt locality is abun- dantly associated with feeling, as the language of psychologists runs : but the question is as to the nature of this association, and how we are to conceive it beginning. Sir William Hamilton's view of our knowledge of an ex- ternal world seems to be that we feel or are conscious of, locally, the parts of our body and the changes which take place as to them, first, and that then with our body we feel, proceeding onward, outward space and matter. It seems to me that this is not true physically (or in my language, phenomenally), and that if it were, it would do nothing to explain the logical difficulty. The logical difficulty is, Why, instead of saying, I feel in such and such a manner, which is all that, with any of us, what we are pleased to call knowledge, when we get to the bottom of it, amounts to, do we use such language as, I see (e. g.) this or that tiling ? Sir William Hamilton's answer seems to be, There is a part of space {i.e. the dimensions of our body) within which if the thing or object bo, the knowledge of such things or object and the feeling in such and such a manner, are two identical things, or two ways of expressing the same thing. Our feeling in such and such a way, and our knowing e.g. the form of an image on the retina 1 are, we are to suppose, two tilings which not only uv in whatever wav. associated with each other, but which n illy are the same thing, and the knowledge of the image on the retina leads, in after experience, to the knowledge of an outward object corresponding with it, which is full or developed vision. Nov, it seems tome not only that wc do not know, except bv Inter science, the form of the image on the retina, nor that, if we did, could our doing so he considered the same thing, the Bame (nol an associated) notion, as our feeling in such and 1 Sir William Hamilton's language is, I believe, and bo far as T know, that what we really perceive is the rays of light in contact with the eye. It is Mr Man- ia hii Metaphj ics who says that what we see is the imago on the retina, agreeing in this with manj other philosophers (among them I believe I)r Tl as Brown). I suppose the two notions arc in .substance the samp. See forward (p. i i • where passages are quoted. 00 sir william Hamilton's [chap. such a manner. The blank ' in such and such a manner' must be rilled up with some possible quality or character of feeling (pleasurably e.g.), and this cannot be the same thing as the other. What takes place is: correspondingly with, in the phe- nomenal world, certain movements of light, and then of the muscles of our eye, and certain changes, mechanical or chemical, in our oj)tic nerve and brain, there exists in the world of con- sciousness a feeling on our part, which we call the sight of such and such an object. Of course the feeling is what it is, corre- sjDondingly with the changes in our sensive organ being what they are: and in this way, if we like to change the word feeling from being a neuter verb to being an objective term, we may say we feel those changes, as we say, ' servit servitutem': but we are not conscious of them in the sense of being able to tell, independent of after science, what they are : we only know the variations of them from considering them correspondent to the variations of the feeling. The fact that our body is the vehicle of our communication (so to speak) with the external world, does not mean that we feel our body and its parts first, and then the external world afterwards. Our body is a part of matter which has these two characters, that disturbances of the parts of it are accompanied with feelings, on our part, of pleasure and pain, and that motion of different parts of it follows at once upon, or accompanies, our will. But whenever it is disturbed, there is a disturbing cause, which we feel, in the sense of being aware of it, contem- poraneously with the disturbance, and we cannot move parts of it without moving, or pressing, something beyond it, what we are aware of also in the same manner. Though, therefore, our being aware of it is accompanied with pleasure and pain, or with exertion, and in this way it is specially intimate to us, yet we are as much aware of it through the external world as we are aware of the external world through it. Sir William Hamilton it would seem, considers that he has made a discovery in showing that we are conscious, or imme- diately aware, of the existence of the external world. It appears to me unphilosophical even to suppose that a discovery can be made of the kind which he thinks he has made. V.] LECTURES OX METAPHYSICS. 91 It cannot possibly be shown, nor would there be any purpose in showing, that we know our own existence (or, more generally, the existence of mind) and the existence of an external world, in the same manner, or with the same kind of knowledge. So far from this, it is evident that we do not. The question is not, as to both one and the other being certain to us : we may have no inclination to scepticism either way, but if we try to realize to ourselves the nature of our certainty of the two, we cannot but understand that it is in a different manner that it is realized in the two cases, and that to the extent to which we confine our idea of knowledge to, or let it be absorbed in the one or the other, we have a tendency to lose our certainty as to the other case, or to become, as to that, sceptical. So far as we try to establish the one certainty on the basis of the other, we have the double difficulty, first, that we have no logic applicable to such rudimentary thought, or which can give validity to inference in such very primitive matter: and next, that even so far as we can do what we are here wishing to do, the second certainty, whichever of the two we suppose such, would be only derivative and secondary, which does not correspond to the character which seems to belong to it. So far as we suppose two independent and original knowledges of different kinds, we must give up the idea of homogeneity of knowledge, and of the necessary commensurability (so to speak), so far as they are known, of the things known in it, i.e. of the possibility of their bring brought into relation one with the other. If we have one sort of knowledge in which the forms of the knowledge or the qualities of the things known are space, solidity, Sec. (whatever language we use) and another kind of knowledge in which such firms or qualities are pleasure, pain, &c. — knowledge then is nol a common ground upon which the things which are known can 1 1 j • -• - 1 — nol a way in which they can be brought together : there are two worlds: and though we may think of space and solidity, and though we may see the space or the solid body in which we understand the pleasure and the pain to be, we can- oot bring th<- characters of the one world into relation with those of the other, or in differenl words) establish any relation • iy Lmperfecl one of contemporaneousness, between them. 02 sir William Hamilton's [chap. This being so, we may either, in our thought, start with supposed knowledge of the one kind or the same of the other, and in that case what we have to aim at is (that which it is the object of all these observations to urge) the keeping steady to our first principle or original point of view. The more important and higher point of view is that given by con- sciousness or thought of our own existence. But since, in our habitual thought and life, we both con- sider ourselves to exist as thinking beings, and consider the external world to exist also : that is, equally call by the name of existence the being the subject of pleasure, pain, will, &c. and the being the subject of figure, solidity, colour &c. : how are we to deal, or how do human beings deal, with these two kinds of knowledge (so for the present to call them) when they are thus in conjunction? Practically, where the one has been considered a knowledge, the other has been considered what we may call a belief, that is, has been expressed by some term not at all conveying, in the natural sense of it, any less notion of certainty than know- ledge conveys, but conveying a notion of the difference of the manner of the certainty. ■ The most ordinary use, in relation to each other, of these two terms 'knowledge' and 'belief is for 'knowledge' to be applied to right thought in the phenomenalist view or sphere, and for 'belief to be applied to the feeling (so far as supposed reasonable) which we have of our own unphenomenal or super- phenomenal existence, and to the consequences considered to flow from that — the world or sphere of super-phenomenal rela- tions. A view more or less phenomenalistic is natural from the first to our manner of existence here ; distinct phenomenalism (as I have already said) is on the one side what experience developes, but it is also on the other a manner of mental action analogous in certain respects to that of the animals, in whom distinct consciousness is not beo"un. On the other hand, Eeligion in many forms, the higher philosophy as in Plato, and the lower or logical philosophy (as e.g. in Dr Keid), all point out that in reason the name 'know- ledge ' belongs to the certainty which attaches to consciousness or to the recognition of ourselves as thinking or as mind. V.] LECTURES OX METAPHYSICS. 93 This is what I have at various times expressed by saying that the great original fact to each of us is not the existence of the univei'se or the external universe, but our feeling ('our' sup- posing of course the preliminary feeling of ourselves) that it exists, whatever may be the value and warrant of that feeling. Knowledge of the external world thus, in the philosophical view, descends a step, and has to be dependent on the consideration what is this value and warrant. Philosophical language therefore has usually been (rather startlingly to the phenomenalist or merely natural habit of thought) that we believe in the existence of the external world, on whatever ground. The ground of this belief has been vari- ously assigned as instinct, habit, &c. Dr Reid, whom I particu- larize here on account of the constant reference to him by Sir William Hamilton, assigns as the ground 'common sense', or the common sense of mankind. The question has been evi- dently confused. In the first place, it took the form in the last century of a controversy against scepticism, or a defence of certainty altogether, and the jDossibility of such, against peo- ple supposed to deny such possibility. But this is quite an accident of it. The discussion of the nature of our certainty of an external world is of itself a simply philosophical one, and should so be treated. Again, the question of our knowledge of the external world is the same as that of the knowledge of our corporeal selves. This people are very confused in seeing, nor is it wonderful they should be. For in the reasonings by which the external world, as independent of our mind, was supposed to be anni- hilated, our corporeal scum's, the exigence of which was a part of the matter in dispute, had, for the purposes of the proof (and that not a proof by way of reductio ad absurdum) to be sup- posed existing. Under such circumstances, whatever the value of the conclusion, there was danger as to the validity of the proof. The point and interest of Berkeley's proceedings seem to have beeu his putting together two notions which really do not belong to the -.one manner of thought 1 , viz. the philosophical 1 Not but that they might t.H as lo the meaning "f tin: Bpatial universe and the things in it, 34 sir william Hamilton's [chap. notion that the external world cannot be known to exist in the same manner in which we know ourselves to do so, and another notion, to the effect that by the existence of the external world is meant the same thing as the actual, phenomenal, existence of the logical subject of the various qualities, (shape, size, solidity, colour, &c.) which we speak of matter as having. By giving his view the one or other of these two forms (that of the denial of a knowledge of the external world in the same sense in which we know ourselves, and that of the denial of the actual existence of the logical subject as above) according, in general, as he turned it towards the philosophers or towards the vulgar, Berkeley commanded to a considerable extent, though always as to a paradox, the assent of both. Sir William Hamilton seems to consider Dr Reid to have held confusedly and with mistake the doctrine, in this respect, which he himself exhibits clearly and right. Really, he may be said to take Dr Reid's 'common sense', and instead of describing it as a ground and a legitimate ground of a belief that the external world exists, to consider it a proof in us of a consciousness of this external world. Our being conscious of a thing, and every body that we know of (apparently therefore in virtue of his human nature) thinking it, are two very good sources of certainty for us, but they are different, and the certainty which they produce is different. If we call the certainty in the former case know- ledge, we must call the certainty in the other by some different name: we will say 'belief. Sir William Hamilton labours hard to found our certainty of the existence of the external world on consciousness, or to make it, in his language, the result of immediate perception. The way to show how far this is so, is carefully to analyze consciousness : a process at least very difficult. But Sir William Hamilton seems to me in a very unphilosophical manner to reiterate the fact that the mass of that what he said would have been quite unremarkable, if it had not been that he started with the Lockian supposition of ourselves in the middle of a spatial uni- verse, which made the conclusion he came to seem absurd, and invited the unphi- losophical refutations of it by kicking things down, or whatever it might be. The drawing the conclusion invalidated the premises it was drawn from, under which circumstances the mind gets into the state into which the old sophistical puzzlers tried to bring it, unless we suppose a reductio ad absurdum. V.] LECTURES OX METAPHYSICS. 95 men do think in such and such a manner, as a proof that what they thus think is a fact of consciousness. AVhat the) T thus think may have as much certainty as if it "were a fact of con- sciousness — that is not the question: but when what we are investigating is the nature of the certainty, the fact that any number of men think so may be a legitimate ground for our believing in that manner, but can never be a proof of its being a fact of consciousness. The analysis of consciousness is so difficult, and when it goes beyond the simplest observations, so deceitful, that I am disposed to think (I will not say however altogether) that nothino- should be referred to consciousness in regard to which even the doubt can arise whether it belongs to consciousness or not. Pleasure or pain e.g. are referred to consciousness or feeling, for the simple reason that except as matters of con- sciousness they cannot be conceived as existing at all. But, if I were called upon to produce a fact of consciousness, I should be disposed to assign as such the direct negation of that which Sir William Hamilton assigns, and to say that if we are con- scious of anything, one thing of which we are so is of our own existence as feeling, thinking, &c. in a manner not only differ- ent from, but out of relation with, that which we, in advancing experience, understand as the manner of existence of the ex- ternal world: that consciousness thus, while embracing (if we like so to speak) a non-ego as distinguished from the ego, dis- tinctly guards itself against, throws off from itself, that non-ego in the investment which it acquires, in whatever manner, of phenomenal or sensible existence. It is a fact of conscious- ness, if any is, that existence as lit", thinkingness, feeling- ness, the exercise of will, is not the same thing with existence as visibleness, tangibleness, measurableness, audibleness, &c. : tli.it they are known, so far as they are known, in a different manner: it is a fact of consciousness again that existence of the first kind is known to us in ourselves by consciousness : if any logic i- allowed as to these rudiments of thought, we may surely then say thai it i> a fact of consciousness, that it is in iome other way than by consciousness that we know, so far as we ki: i itence of I be \&\ ter kind I wish mosl carefully to guard againsl mere verbal discus- 96 sir william Hamilton's [chap. sions on the word 'consciousness'. All our knowledge, as knowledge, is consciousness: Sir William Hamilton has well exhibited the philosophy of knowledge as the analysis of con- sciousness. But consciousness, thus widely understood, is ana- lysable in two manners: into reflexion or self-consciousness on the one side, and that on the other which is understood to have a bearing, or to relate to something, beyond ourselves : and again into that which is original, and has never had, as to our mind, any other character than that of consciousness, and that of (or in) which we have become conscious, or which we have come to know, through (or in conjunction with) some sort of sug- gestion different from the above original consciousness: we know ourselves by self-consciousness or reflexion: we know the existence of a not-self by consciousness, in so far as we do not, and cannot, conceive ourselves as constituting an universe: but we know the form or qualities of this not-self (i. e. the sensible world) as something entirely dissimilar to the form and quali- ties which in ourselves we are conscious of. This ought not indeed (as I have said) to be called knowledge, if knowledge is what is built on consciousness: we may call it belief: by which we need mean no more than that, without the slightest doubt as to matter (the form and qualities of the not-self) existing, the certainty which we have of it is not the same (in kind, i.e. for in degree, for all that I know, it may be) as the certainty which we have of our own existence. I can see nothing in Sir William Hamilton's doctrine except assertion that it is the same, without any attempt at reason for the assertion except wdiat I have already spoken of, the notion (if I may so describe it) of a local coincidence of thinking ex- istence and material existence on the occasion of what we call a sensation in a particular part of the body. We feel that part of our body and what is in contact with it, I understand him to say, — that is, we feel or are conscious of matter — in the same way as we feel or are conscious of mind, our thinking selves. We know thus from the first, in the same way and with a like original knowledge, mind and matter. In different words, we have an immediate knowledge of matter (or the external world), and the establishment of this immediate knowledge Sir William Hamilton looks upon as an important discovery. V.] LECTURES ON METAPHYSICS. 07 All this is exactly that confusion between two lines of thought which it is the purpose of what I am writing to criti- cize. We feel (say) the prick of a pin, and feel it locally, though in the nature of the reference to the locality there is much, I suppose, for physiologists to discuss. But though we may use one word, as impression, for the two (so to call it) coincident things, the movement of certain particles of matter (in the pin and in our finger), and our feeling of pain, the two things belong to two different regions of thought, and the only way in which, supposing the two both existent, we can be certain of their being related to each other, is that they are contemporaneous. The supposed locality of the feeling is a complicated fact, and no matter of original certainty. Sir William Hamilton's view is (as I understand it) that the coincidence brings the two kinds of things, our feeling e. g. (on the one side, the form of the pin on the other), into the same world of thought, and that we are aware of the form of the pin with the same consciousness, the same immediacy, with which we are aware of the pain which it produces. Surely this is not so. They belong to different kinds of thought, and the knowledge in the two cases is different. If we call knowledge, or if we call immediate knowledge, what we know in the latter case, we may reasonably call the other belief or knowledge not immediate. In the one we might, con- ceivably, be deceived : in the other we could not be. Sir William Hamilton calls his doctrine of the immediate- ness of our knowledge of the external world by the name of Natural Realism or Natural Dualism 1 : the mass of philosophers, who have Looked upon this knowledge as, in comparison with our knowledge of our own existence, something which required, so to speak, to give an account of itself, a belief, a mediate knowledge (or however they might express it) — being called by hi in Cosmothetic Idealists or Hypothetic Dualists. The classification here made of philosophers seems of very lit tli- value, making, as it does, no account of the purpose and method of tin: various philosophies, nor any distinction between what a philosopher a -umed at the beginning and the results which he considered himself to arrive at. As to the Hypothetic Dualists, it ia to 1m- observed that almost all philosophers have 1 Lectures, Vol. r. j>. 79-2. 98 sir william Hamilton's [chap. been dualists, (nay, have not all?) in admitting a 'besides-self as well as a self or mind, Berkeley as much so as Sir William Hamilton : our sensations were not in his view causeless or merely self-modifications, only he did not consider the cause of them to be what we are here calling ' the external world'. The name ' Hypothetic' therefore is little applicable to these philosophers, nor, it seems to me, is that of Natural Dualism to Sir William Hamilton's view, which I should rather describe as a sort of Monism (in language of his own), or an attempt to fuse toge- ther, as objects of one kind of knowledge, two kinds of things (if they may be called things) so different as feelings and material qualities \ The way in which I should state what seems to me the fact is this : We feel ourselves as mentally living, or know our ex- 1 In speaking of what all or almost all philosophers have thought I speak with unfeigned diffidence, not only because I have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of philosophy compared with Sir William Hamilton's, but because I seem to myself to have a different notion from his of what such a knowledge should con- sist in. As a branch of study, what I should mean in the first instance by the history of philosophy is a (probably rather loose) general account of the course of philosophical speculation, which is an important branch of literature, and will make a man know, in the general, what philosophy has concerned itself with : but in case any one means to make a more thorough study of it, I think there is another branch of study, so to call it, which he wants first. This is 'interpreta- tion': penetration and conscientiousness in entering into people's thought. And in order to this a man must think much himself. He is a merely superficial (which in this case is inaccurate) reporter unless he understands and has felt the philoso- pher's doubts and difficulties. For thought like this to co-exist with an extensive literary knowledge may be difficult— I will not say — perhaps I may be making the reader think no man can be a historian of philosophy, as Crassus that no man can be an orator, or Imlac that no man can be a poet — but anyhow I hope that I am ennobling his notion of the task. In the present case the philosophers are bundled up together, and a vast quan- tity of them represented as allowing nothing but 'modifications of the ego'. But I am very doubtful what this really means. A sentence for instance like the follow- ing (Vol. it. p. 29,) quite staggers me. 'Others, again, deny to the mind not only any consciousness of an external non-ego, but of a non-ego at all, and hold that what the mind immediately perceives, and mistakes for an external object, is only the ego itself peculiarly modified.' Whether Sir William Hamilton means here that the philosophers whom he speaks of suppose the notion of external objects, and a wrong assignment to that class of what belongs to another — in which case they would be most thorough Dualists- — or whether the mis-psychological iron has entered so deeply into his soul that he can never, in the most abstract regions of thought, get rid of the notion of 'external objects' himself, I cannot tell. V.] LECTURES ON METAPHYSICS. 99 istence as thinking and feeling beings, and with this have what we may call a sub-consciousness of something besides ourselves; or, as I have above expressed it, that we are not everything — not the universe. This is our most immediate or absolutely necessary knowledge : without this we should not be we, to think and feel. We feel ourselves wdth less intimacy and less immediateness to be corporeal or (as I have called it) pheno- menal beings, and, what is a part of the same feeling, to be locally portions of a material or phenomenal world. There is no harm in describing this latter feeling as consciousness : in fact it is so : only it is a consciousness which might be illusion, whereas the former consciousness cannot: we feel as if we lived in a material universe, and people have been found like Bishop Berkeley to say that though we feel as if we so lived, yet we really do not so live : but there is no meaning in saying we feel as if we felt and thought : here then is real immediate- ly -<: and no one can say that though we feel as if we felt, yet we really do not feel. Hence the second consciousness, though consciousness if we like to call it so, is still, in com- parison with the other, mediate or belief. What we are conscious of in this way is not matter, but ourselves as materia] : and the meaning of this is simply that a certain portion of our feelings, so it is, are suggestive of what, as we feel it, we may call a communication (or in language which has been used by some, ' a conflict') between us and what is not ' we 1 going on in a particular manner, (which manner is what is meant by the common confused term, 'sensation'). This com- munication, as our feeling suggests the existence of it, is, as I have described, between us and what is not Ave. This same communication if phenomenally viewed, or studied as a matter of physiology by what I have called a disengaged intelligence, is only between one portion of matter and another, namely, our bodies and what is around them. That is, the communication, and with it the e\i-H nee of matter, is only, from the side of feeling, something that feeling, so it is, suggests: and feeling sugges- tive (as distinguished from the immediate feeling above) might, conceivably, be all wrong: there might be no external world at all. On the ether hand, from the side of phenomenalism, the convmunication is the certain fact, and the fact which can 7-2 100 sir william Hamilton's [chap. be compared with other phenomenal facts : that along with the communication there go feelings of a sentient being is something which phenomenalism as such, can only take as supposed cause (or causes) of various effects, which might be caused otherwise. The study of this communication, what should have been called sEsthetics, is of course most interesting : biit the keeping in mind whether our point of view is that of consciousness, or that of physiology, is important for the success of it. The communication, so far as we are to conceive such, be- tween mind and matter, or (in other words) between feeling and the spatial universe, is a different notion from that of the communication between the matter or nerves of our body and matter extraneous to it, with which latter communication feeling on our part is some way correspondent. Such questions as those of immediateness of knowledge have all really refer- ence to the former communication. In reference to this former communication, we might either consider the notion conceivable and reasonable, but the thing, except by some extraordinary agency (the meaning of this will appear shortly), impossible : or we might consider the notion reasonable and the thing pos- sible ; or we might consider, which is what I am disposed to do, that there is something confused in the notion. Perhaps it is more correct to describe the first of these views as the considering the notion unreasonable, but still the thing, or something amounting to the thing, by some contri- vance (we may almost say) such as a pre-established harmony, or by the continued interposition of divine power, possible. We look now upon theories of this kind as unphilosophical, but the philosophers who made them had the great merit of seeing clearly what we do not always see, how feeling and the qualities of matter belong, as I have expressed it, to two different kinds of thought. All that we know, or, it seems to me, can know, as to the relation of the feeling in any case to the contempo- raneous nervous or cerebral disturbance, is that they are con- temporaneous. Theories like that of a pre-established har- mony, unreasonable enough it may be, yet exhibiting the two streams running side by side, have the merit of clearly bringing home to us that this relation of contemporaneousness is as far as we can get. V.] LECTURES ON METAPHYSICS. 101 The second view given above, to the effect that the notion of a communication between mind and matter, feeling and space, is reasonable, and the thing possible or the fact, seems to have been held by those philosophers who considered that the primary qualities of matter were like their ideas or mental representations, whereas the secondary were not: this being, as I understand it, equivalent to saying, that in respect of the primary qualities, the mind and matter (or feeling and space) actually met, that there was a communication or something common to both, whereas in respect of the secondary qualities there was only a correspondence, or contemporaneousness, be- tween feeling on the one side and the presence of the qualities of matter on the other. This notion as to the primary quali- ties, which is to the effect, that in the case of knowledge of them, the qualities of matter might be predicable of feeling, for otherwise there could be no resemblance between the idea and the material object, was I suppose suggested by such things as the image on the retina. The image, on the nerves, of a square object, did look something like a square idea. The re- tinal surfaces, at once sensible and capable of square figure, seemed to be a meeting-ground of mind and matter. The thing forgotten was, that what felt was not the retina which was thus figured, but /, and though, in calling it sensible, we imply a particular relation of it to this /, the nature of this relation was still the undetermined question. I can only see, in Sir William Hamilton's doctrine of imme- diate knowledge, the re-introduction, in different language, of a notion similar to this. I am aware that, as in a great many philosophical errors, there is a truth involved in this notion of the resemblance of the ideas of primary qualities to their prototypes. The form which tli is truth bears to me, is this: the matter of our bodies and that of the external world seem to communicate in two different manners, which we may call mechanical and chemical: correspondingly to the first we have feeling of the kind which we call active, i.e. we, with more or less of attentiveness, exeii our will : correspondingly to the latter we have feeling of the kind we call passive: we feel mure or less of simple pleasure and pain In saying above 'seem to communicate in two manners', whal I 102 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S [CHAP. mean to express is this : it is possible, perhaps, for close physio- logical observation to make out that the difference in the consti- tution of one and another of our nerves, which fits them for one and another purpose, is only at the bottom, mechanical, and that all that takes place in them is really only motion of homogeneous elements, and correspondingly with this, it is conceivably possible for us to follow out our consciousness to such minuteness that in the pleasure and pain (contemporaneous with the movements) we may discover really elements (so to speak) of volitional effort, attraction and repulsion, acquiescence and shrinking, &c. — about all this possible ultimate analysis I say nothing, only considering in the meantime the fact to be as I have described. The fact which the above-named erroneous notion -as to primary qualities seems to me indistinctly to represent, is this : that active feeling, exertion of our will, is homogeneous in our view : pleasure and pain (passive feeling) are both infinitely va- rious, not always even readily distinguishable the one from the other, neither of them suggesting that kind of attention to them which could make measurement, and such that the different kinds of them have scarcely any comparability the one to the other. And as active feeling is, in its different exertions, homo- geneous in ourselves, so it is what we seem to be able reasonably to assure ourselves is the same in us and in others : with passive feeling this is in no respect so : as has abundantly been said, what I see as green another man may see as blue, and the differ- ence be for ever undiscoverable. Hence we feel the amount of exertion of will, and in so feeling we feel ourselves also in relation with other beings which exert will: mechanical sensa- tion is measurement, whereas chemical remains in this par- ticular nearly sterile. The reason why I have mentioned this here, is, because, in this measurement, we have something like an actual meeting of mind and matter, of feeling on the one side, of space and solidity on the other. When therefore philo- sophers said that the ideas of primary qualities, and not of secondary, were resemblances of the qualities (the primary qualities being, speaking generally, those known by mechanical sensation), they meant, in a not good way, to express what I will for a moment call an approach to each other of mind and matter in the way which I have above described. V.] LECTURES ON METAPHYSICS. 103 This approach is in fact by means of the idea of motion. Time or duration belongs to, or is an attribute of, mind or feel- ing, no one doubts. Does locality also? Has feeling 'daseyn'? The attributing locality to feeling in virtue of passive sensation is as we have seen, very difficult. When we are investigating physiologically what we call the seat of feeling, what we want is, to find the portion of the body, with the material modifica- tions of which portion the feeling is exactly {finally we might say) contemporaneous. So far as the feeling or consciousness itself tells us, this part, scientifically found, is rarely or never the seat of it. A man's feeling, so far as itself bears witness, may be in his supposed leg, which he has lost long ago. The attribution of locality to feeling in virtue of active sensation seems to present less difficulty. A feeling of ours of this kind, we say, moves or is the means of moving our arm, and must therefore be locally present or in communication with the arm to do so. I am not going to discuss this: only to say thus much. The notion implies the unity of the two ideas, force as one of the ingredients (so to speak) of motion and pressure, and force (or activity) as the source of change, or that which gives beginning to what did not exist before. That our volition is a real cause of the movement of our own body, or, in other words, that our will is a reality and our supposed consciousness of it not a delusion, I hold most thoroughly, and if we like from this to draw the conclusion that our will, acting locally, must have locality, valeat quantum. • But I think that the only way in which we arc able to conceive these things, and to investigate them fruit- fully, is to keep, even here, the two lines of thought which I have endeavoured to exhibit, separate: to put no stress upon the phenomenalist to admit what cannot be expressed in quali- ties of matter, nor on the other hand, to assert against him that we are cdflscious of anything which he from his premises and by reference to those.- qualities, can disprove: keeping however in mind thai we, in the position of consciousness, are nearer the source of the stream of knowledge than he, and that he can have cone of it, in the entire view oft lungs, except as we allow il tops to him. It may be a question whether we bave an arm at all (for all our immediate knowledge is thai we feel or 104 sir william Hamilton's [chap. think we have), aud if this is denied, the matter, as to certain knowledge, is settled for him and for us alike. Only every reason which goes to justify our belief that we have an arm or that our arm exists, goes also to justify our belief that we move it, and that it rests with us, uncertain till we determine it, whether it is moved or not. But for the purposes of research, there are two sets of things or considerations — on the one side the circumstances which determine our will, on the other the qualities of our arm as matter — which, like oil and water, will not mix together. We create then, or abstract, the phenomenalist view, from which origination is excluded, and in which there are instead of it only relations of time and perhaps of mechanical force : and since feeling, whatever it may be susceptible of be- sides, is susceptible of these relations of time, we let feeling so far into phenomenalism, or in other words, we let the two lines of thought ruo together in this particular, though further than this we cannot do so without confusion. What I have said is not exactly as I meant to say it, but I think there is conveyed in it what I should have said, namely, the reason why I think that even the idea of a communication between mind and matter, feeling and space, further than as a relation of contemporaneousness is such, is not reasonable. The measurement which I have last spoken of, or in other words, the mental conversion of so much effort of will into so much space traversed or so much motion resisted, is a manner of sensation, and far the most important manner, its import- ance arising from this, that by means of the relation of amount or magnitude (measurableness) the qualities of matter and of mind do seem to, or do in some measure, approach each other. But they do not meet or mix: amount of will exerted, and amount of space traversed, though both amounts and so far in relation, belong to different worlds of thought. In respect then of that kind of form of objects which is given by relations of space and solidity, mind and matter (feeling and space), though they in a manner approach, do not meet or mix. The kind of form of objects in relation to which they do meet is the el&os, principle, meaning, purpose of them, that which gives to each its unity. This kind of form may be considered at once an attribute of the material object and of V.] LECTURES OX METAPHYSICS. 105 the knowing mind. The colour of an object is not transplanted from matter into mind in any degree — colour cannot be at all a quality of our thought: the length of it only partially — it is so much distance, and our will may have for an attribute of it quantity of exertion corresponding to this distance : but the meaning, reason, purpose, of it, that is, the expression of the re- lation of the parts of it to each other, which gives it unity, thinghood, reality, may be transferred to the mind altogether — it may be with equal propriety described as a thought and as the thing, as something in our mind or something in the object. I do not think that the metaphor or manner of speaking conveyed in the word ' transference ' and in such expressions as 'in' the mind can really here cause any deception. Of course I am not speaking of any movement or any locality, and the reference to such which the words convey (and it is impossible to find words un-extravagating in this respect) does not enter into the thought or argument. I have not lately been making much reference to Sir "William Hamilton, and will now for a short time leave him entirely, in order to discuss some points connected with what I will call the scale of sensation or knowledge. CHAPTER VI. THE SCALE OF SENSATION OR KNOWLEDGE. I DO not know that there is any harm in saying that we have sensations, or the sensation, of time, space, solidity, and even of unity or genericity. After all, sensation is the general term to express the consciousness, feeling, thought which we have correspondent with (so far as we assume the existence of the external world, but), more correctly, supposed by us correspond- ent with, the presence of any portion of existence independent of us. We may conveniently imagine two kinds of this sensa- tion, in no degree rigidly separable the one from the other, viz. feeling and thought: feeling, that kind of it in which self- consciousness, reflexive attention, pleasure or pain, is strongly present : thought, that in which the attention is directed rather to the non-ego and to the exertion of the will. The former is clearly that in which there is the least approximation to each other, in the qualities of the feeling and those of the matter. To this extent there was reason in the language of many philo- sophers, that the ideas, as they called them of secondary (chemical) qualities were unlike the qualities. A feeling em- bodying pleasure or pain must be most thoroughly incommen- surable and out of relation with any quality which can be sup- posed in unliving matter. As at the extremity on the side of feeling the incommensurability is complete, so at the extremity on the side of thought, or the sensation of unity, thinghood (so for the present to call it), the meeting is complete : this we have seen. Half-way along the line stand the relations of space. At one end then of this line the mind has feelings, the matter qualities, contemporaneous, but not mutually compar- CHAP. TI.] THE SCALE OF SENSATION, &C. 107 able: at the other the mind has thoughts, and the matter something in it which we may call (for the present) thoughts embodied: near this extremity must be relations of time and half-way those of space. At every step of what we call perception, i.e. the advance of our experience or conception of the external world, sensations of all these kinds are blended together. It is obvious that sensations belonging to the feeling end would be of themselves, for intellectual result, mere confusion. What makes this con- fusion orderly is in a less degree sensation belonging to the middle of the scale, in which there is measurement ; and in a higher, the highest degree, sensations belonging to the other end, to which belong special distinction, arrangement, classifi- cation. I carefully guarded the word ' transference ' where I used it before, but I will now resume it with a little less care. We will speak of mind and matter as if they were things between which there could take place something like movement. In what I have called feeling the mind is passive, and since it is supposed there must be activity somewhere, the matter is considered active, and the mind or subject of the feeling is spoken of as 'affected' or in some similar way. In reality there is no importance in this, for in respect of the sensation, there is no more activity of the matter than of the mind. Under certain circumstances of the one, there is feeling of the other: activity must have been required for the putting the former in these circumg . and that is all. The passivity of the mind is tolerably readily comprehen- sible, but what is the meaning of its activity? and as it is all passive at the feeling end of the scale, is it all active at the thought end? And what is it halt-way? There being at this latter end, on the one side, thought in the mind, on the other, thought embodied in the matter, is the relation ofthi je two thoughts one of coincidence, or of identity? In other words, Lb the thought which meets as in the matter though! which we have firsl put there? Here the mind would be acti Again, half-way, the qualities of space and those of the mind being capable of being brought into Borne relation, has 108 THE SCALE OF SENSATION [CHAP. this which is common to the two, its source in the mind, or from the other side? Is the mind here active or not? The describing space as a form of thought, or as a form given by thought to sensation, seems to me a manner of speak- ing in some respects exactly analogous, from the opposite point of view, to the manner of speaking about primary quali- ties of Locke and other philosophers, which I before commented on (namely, that the ideas of them were like their prototypes) ; to be in the same manner itself an error, but to be representa- tive of the same truth which that represented. To say ' we think spatially ', which is the kind of language we ought to use on the supposition of space being a form of thought, seems to me language in some respects of (exactly) the same kind as the supposition of a square idea. The way we think spatially, so far as we do so, is to will a certain amount of exertion, which exertion we understand as carrying our hand (say) through a certain amount of what then we call ' space'. I have before said, that if we liked to use language in that manner, all that we ultimately or immediately are certain of is that we think or feel in such and such a manner. There is therefore certainly no harm in the description of our having the sensation of space (so I have expressed it) as 'thinking spati- ally '. But the point is, Is there more reason, in the above case, for using the language ' think spatially ' than there is for de- scribing our sensation of a red colour as 'thinking redly'? In other words, is space more a form of thought as distinguished from a quality or relation of body or matter, more subjective, as some w r ould describe it, than colour is ? I do not think we can understand the manner in which it is so without here making a most careful distinction. When I said just above, "may we speak with more reason "of 'thinking spatially' than of 'thinking redly'?" I follow the same line of thought as Berkeley, when he considers, Is there any difference in the manner of our perception of primary and secondary qualities, giving everything of a higher or more im- portant character to the perception of the former ? He decides that there is not. But the prerogative of the primary qualities above the se- condary, against which he argues, viz. that the ideas of them VI.] OR KNOWLEDGE. 109 are like their prototypes, whereas those of the others are not, is, in one view, exactly the opposite of the prerogative which is claimed for them when space is described as a form of thought, so that we might use the language 'think spatially', whereas we could not say reasonably, 'think redly'. If, in the case of pri- mary qualities, the idea was like the quality, whereas in the other it was only correspondent or contemporaneous, it was clear that the object in the former case came into the mind in a manner which it did not do in the latter, or that the percep- tion in the case of the primary qualities was objective, and that of the others subjective, possibly therefore illusion. And it was on this supposed subjectivity of the perception of secondary qualities, and the disproof of any prerogative of primary per- ception above them, that Berkeley built what we know as his doctrine. If we describe space as a form of thought, in contrast with secondary qualities as qualities or relations of matter, we of course do exactly the opposite to this, and make the primary perception the subjective, the other the objective. This is what I referred to in saying, that the Kantian language had an ana- logy with that of Locke, from an opposite point of view. Now what we must keep in mind about all this is, that our thought must start from the phenomenalist or the philosophical assumption, and that whereas in the former objectivity is the test of truth, in the latter subjectivity is. On the philosophical or epistemological assumption, knowledge is not the bringing of one thing which is, into the relation which we call knowledge with another thing which is: such a description would be ab- surd, involving in the description the thing which we are de- scribing (we cannot describe the things without supposing them known): knowledge is the view as orderly, formed, having reason and meaning, character and qualities, in it, of that which, but for the knowledge, would have to be viewed (if it could be viewed) tonfused, inform, characterless, undistinguished. ( >n thephe- nomenalisl assumption, on the other hand, we begin with sup- ]. . ed i tence independent of us, of which we are a pari orwith which we coexist, and taking for granted what knowledge i (which cannot be investigated on this view), we investigate the particular ways in which we come to the knowledge of the par- 110 THE SCALE OF SENSATION [CHAP. ticulars of this existence. On this view what we see first is things, then we see them of such and such a shape and size, then of such and such a shape, size, and colour : by which of course I do not mean that this is the historical order of perception, but I mean that if we take up a book of this kind, we see first things talked about as what are supposed (or very often, with much confusion of thought, objects) — these tilings are supposed from the first to have various powers to do this and that, and the course of the investigation is to make out how the shape, size, &c, which is assumed as belonging to them comes to be known by us, and then how the colour, taste, &c, similarly assumed, does so: and the old doctrine as to primary and secondary qualities was to the effect that the shape, size, &c, really belong to them, as a part of the thing, but that the colour, taste, &c, are something, as compared with those, super- added, and which the thing might be without — and are more- over known to us much less perfectly than the others, we only knowing, as to them, that we have certain feelings to which there must be something, though we know not what, corre- spondent. Now, exactly to the degree to which anything (the reader will not be deceived by the necessary word ' thing') on this assumption, is a more necessary quality of external or objective reality, so on the other or philosophical assumption, is it more subjective, or in a higher degree a form of thought. The order of consideration on the philosophical assumption is exactly the reverse of that on the phenomenalist, which I have described. On the philosophical assumption the confused mass of chemical or secondary sensation gives the confused and chaotic matter of (in this sense), or preparation for, what is afterwards knowledge. To this time and space (which viewed from within, are in fact a higher degree of self-consciousness and so much volitional exertion) give form and order of the first or lower description, in the sense of shape, magnitude, relative position, &c. Then finally form of the higher description, eZ8o?, quality or qualitiecl- ness, kind, true reality, is given by a higher self- consciousness, and there begin to be things. The things are specially things, they are noticed and distinguished as unities out of the confused mass of sensation of which they are a part, in virtue of various VI.] OR KNOWLEDGE. Ill suppositions, most thoroughly subjective or matters of thought, about them : that they are like ourselves : that they are a con- trast to ourselves : that they are what we can handle or use : that they are like -what we can construct: that they are what hurt us: and a variety of other suppositions of like kind. They are made things to a certain degree by the lower description of form or by relations of space : but it is evident things mean to us much more than solid shapes, of one and another colour, &c, and if this was all the character which they possessed, we should very slightly notice and distinguish them, even if we did so at all. Of course this is not meant as a historical order of percep- tion, any more than the order which I gave as to phenome- nalism. Of the actual or historical course of such perception, I shall speak in a moment. It will be seen that the discussion whether space, e. g. is a form of thought (i e. a form given by thought to our sensation, experience, or lower intuition) or a relation (circumstance, quality) of matter is one which I do not regard as important, or, more strictly, I think the supposition that it must be one or the other unphilosophical. As that discussion is sometimes conducted, people seem to think that the supposition is, that there are things with their secondary qualities on one, the objective side, and we, out of various possible forms which thought might have, have for our form of it the supposing these existing in what we then call space. So far as space is a form of thought and not a relation of matter, it is when the subject of our investigation is not what matter is, but how we think about what we call so. Space is very fitly described as giving form to that which is commonly described as sensation, that is, to the confused scmi- peroeption which belongs to what I have called the 'feeling' end of the Bcale. Any dwelling upon this would come more fitly in speaking of I>r WhewelTs books: but 1 will say now thus much, thai so far as relations of space are considered to give fonu to that Borl of sensation, they want higher relations still, thus.- which 1 have described as of unity or reality, to give what is more properly '•.•died 'form' to them. Relations of 112 THE SCALE OF SENSATION [CHAP. space, in consequence of their being, as I may say, perceived by measurement, or measured in the perceiving, have a cha- racter of exactitude about them which has caused great atten- tion to be given to them as exhibitions of accurate truth, in a way in which nothing else is. All this may be made to mean too much, or may have more philosophical importance given to it than it should have. From the time of Plato downward, more strongly however in followers of his than in himself, this has been so. But mathematics, though giving exact truth, give truth only of a very poor sort : and what is more, they require, even for this, to be informed (or to have form given to them) themselves by higher considerations than those of space, time, and number. As I have said, it is not the shape (or size, or position) of a thing which to us, except in a very limited de- gree, constitutes it a thing, but it is what Aristotle called the A.0709 of it, that in it which Plato conceived to correspond to the idea, that which I have variously called (for indeed one can give it no one name) the meaning, purpose, &c, the reason, in a manner, embodied in it which is a kind of principle or soul to the arrangement of it. This is what, in order to have a fixed point round which growing knowledge may group itself, we suppose, and mark by the name, and take for the logical subject of the adjective things or predicates which one after another we go on learning about the substantive thing or ori- ginally noticed and distinguished unity. This first principle of notice so to call it may be a mere supposition, may turn out to have been a mistake — this is not of consequence to the after knowledge : for every real step of knowledge, as I have before remarked, is as well a correction of error as, if we like so to view it, an addition to an aggregate. The important point is this — that the thing, unless it is a mere mathematical repre- sentation, is a thing or object of our thought in virtue of some- thing (supposedly) in it or about it more important and of a higher reality than its shape or size, which, in comparison with this, are only accessory features. It is the same in regard of number. The great importance of this at all times in philosophy has been assumed (and honour has thence accrued to mathematics) to arise from the exactitude of which the calculations which it deals with are susceptible. VI.] OR KXOWLEDCE. 113 But this is quite a subordinate reason of its importance, the great reason of which is in the conception of a unit which such calculations suppose. Such unit is really a logical individual, a conception most complicated: that is, not merely an object singular (what in common language we loosely style an indi- vidual) which is all that relations of space can separate and distinguish for us, but an object of a sort or kind, involving therefore the idea of such sort or kind, or of order and arrange- ment, that is, invested, embodied, mind, in the universe. Num- ber, setting apart the pleasure of calculation, has no importance except as it is number of tilings, the bringing of which together implies, so far, generic identity. What I have last said explains, sufficiently for the present, the thought which I have supposed to stand at the opposite end of the scale from sensation as mere feeling. Historically, in every act at all important of perception, sensation enters of every kind, all along the scale. It may be said in this respect that all the operations of our mind are homogeneous, or that into all perception, or intelligence, what we commonly describe as the later mental operations really enter. In the same manner also all perception or intelligence is acquired or composed — an aggregate, cemented by past expe- rience. If Ave analyze the operations of the mind, or which is the same thing, analyze itself as we know it, assigning to it various faculties, what 1 have called sensation will probably be divided among several of these. The thougld at the head of my scale, the measurement at the centre, and the feeling at the bottom, have from very early times been allotted to three separate facul- called once 1/01/9, hiuvoia, aiadrjais, and this sort of triple division, under various names, has been frequently recognized. The course of the school often called Sensationalisl or that of Experience (now perhaps the Inductive School) has gene- rally been to blend together the central and lower part of the scale, as involving no important difference, and to leave out of account, ae more or Less visionary or fiotitious, the upper pari (thai of thought), thus making the whole homogeneous. The question whether relation of space (e.g.) are modes of thoughl or of objective reality, Is as I bave said, al leasl unim 8 114 THE SCALE OF SENSATION [CHAP. portant, perhaps wrong in the conception: hut it is otherwise with the question whether they are of the same nature as the secondary qualities, or those of mere feeling. Locke as I have said, and I suppose Kant, maintain the difference from opposite sides, the former (following the old philosophy) making the primary qualities more objective or more intimate to matter than the others, and therefore in his view more real, the latter making them more subjective or more a part of thought than the other, and therefore more real than they, so far as his view is to be considered the philoso- phical, less real so far as it is to be considered the phenomenal. On this I sav nothing. It seems to me that the general effect of Kantism in England, owing perhaps to a phenomenalist appli- cation of it belonging to our habit of mind, has rather been to puzzle philosojDhy and to strengthen what seems to me scepti- cism, and that when applied in the other direction, it has had, as perhaps with Kant himself, too much of a merely mathema- tical (or drily logical) character. We in England use the word subjective often as almost synonymous with visionary: and the saying that space, upon the reality of which depends whether or not the external world (or what we think so) is an illusion, is subjective, would be taken as the saying, with a different phi- losophical reason, much the same as Berkeley did. And so for much of Kantism besides. What I have said hitherto about mind and matter has been very general — I will now speak of them a little more with reference to the particular circumstances of our perception. I use the word 'perception' for the gaining of fresh know- ledge in what I have previously called the way of acquaintance with things, kenntniss. 'Sensation' I rarely or never use, though I use it constantly, without describing what, in the particular application, I mean by it. At the lower or feeling end of the scale of sensation which I gave a short time since the two things which stand opposite to each other are not properly feeling and matter (sensation and body), but are sensation or feeling on the one side, and on the other side a communication between two kinds of matter, that of our body and that which is external to it. It is possible, as I have said, that here there may be a mechanical measurement VI.] OR KNOWLEDGE. 115 and corresponding to it a latent, because infinitesimally minute, consciousness: e.g. that the real character of taste might be an action and reaction (the force on the one side being our will)' between the separate portions of our organ of taste and the particles and minute forces of the thing tasted. But this, though we might possibly follow it out on the side of physiology, we could never possibly follow out on the side of feeling, having no microscope for consciousness. We can only say then, that the communication between the tasted substance and the palate is accompanied by what we call a feeling (the sensation of taste) entirely, as feeling, out of relation with the communi- cation. And the contact or contemporaneousness is not be- tween feeling and matter, but between feeling and the mutual communication of two kinds of matter. At the middle of the scale, to which correspond relations of space, the case is not exactly similar. Here the sensation or feeling (not like the last) does enter in some degree, though not in a great degree, into a relation which we can under- stand with the supposed matter without. It is still the phe- nomenal fact, that matter on the one side (in our bodies) com- municates with, on the other side, space, or what is traversed, and external matter, or what resists or is resisted: but the feeling on our part which accompanies this communication, is one which, starting from the phenomenalist side, we can to a certain degree take account and speak of: it is not entirely out of relation with the qualities of matter: it is what we understand as not Bimply accompanying, but more or less giv- fche reason for, the communication. Winn we say that it is an effort or force of will that moves the arm, of course we do not mean more than to a certain degree to compare what tak<-; place in the world of feeling with the phenomenal forces in the world without: but to that degree we do mean bo compare them: between the one and the other then.' is some relation which we can understand: they are mutually commen- surable or the one is understood as measuring the other: the will-force ha in this respeel aol thai entire subjectivity which belongs to feeling of pleasure and pain (which, as I have said, mighl be entirely differed in different people, and the thing, of it» It. Q< ■ i i 'in" bo be know d), in o far as, having an imme- 8—2 116 THE SCALE OF SENSATION [CHAP. diate measure in the world without, we are able in some degree from this direction to judge of it. At this part of the scale then, though still feeling and matter belong to two worlds, and we must say that what is on the one side is feeling, and what is on the other side is the communication between two sorts of matter, yet the feeling is associated with one of the sorts of matter in a way which we can more or less understand : it acts upon it, and that means something though it may not mean much : feeling is here in relation not merely with a relation between two kinds of matter, but with matter itself. At the upper end of the scale, that of thought, the case is exactly the opposite of what it was in the lower. As there there was communication between two kinds of matter, and over against these a corresponding feeling or mode of mind, so here there is communication between two different forms or modes of mind, and matter, phenomenalism, appears distinct from them, as simply what has brought about the communication. The perception, in its completeness, of an existing object of know- ledge, is really a sympathy with its constitution, arising from the fact that we know ourselves more or less as constituted beings, and that we can make or constitute things ourselves for purposes for which we need them. We recognize therefore in the objects mind kindred to our own. The feeling and mea- surement which build up the knowledge thus completed, and through which this final (far indeed from final in point of time, for it is the spring of the others) perception strikes the life of unity, are the crude material of the knowledge on our side, just as the qualities of matter are on the other side the material in which the mind which we recognize has been invested, em- bodied, immateriated. It is in consequence of the complication of all this which I have endeavoured to exhibit, that the words 'presence', 'pre- sentation ', &c, and the words ' inward ', ' internal ', have rarely been used in reference to these subjects without confusion. If we mean by ' presence ' a sort of abstract contact, which phenomenally or concretely, is only contemporaneousness, then what is ' present ' to the feeling (obscure, not known) is, at the lower end of the scale of sensation the communication between the two 3orts of matter: in the middle, either (or both) that, VI.] OR KNOWLEDGE. 117 or (and) matter itself: at the upper end the mind embodied in the matter. If we mean by 'presence' local presence, then by 'ourselves' (the one side) we must understand our corporeal selves, i.e. the organized matter of our bodies, to which our mental selves, our feeling, is, in whatever way, related. With the confusion of these two notions, that is, with the failure to keep in mind whether our assumption is the pheno- meualist or the logical, and with the taking the sense of sight for the typical sense, there arises an entanglement almost inex- tricable. A thing cannot act where it is not. This, as to pheno- menalist things and forces (or, if any prefer the expression, when spoken concretely and without metaphor) is true. Hence an object {e.g. a tree) affecting the eye, must in some way be pre- sent at the eye: and even, affecting the mind, must in some way be present there (somewhere, as those who speak thus have usually supposed, within the body) too. All this is only car- rying out the language. Hence the endless theories about ' images ' of things, and hence too the discussions and rediscus- sions, whether or not Dr Reid's adversaries meant by ' ideas', images, whether or not he meant that they meant images, whether if he did mean that they meant it, he really refuted them — and much more. The disentanglement of this may be left to those who have Sir "William Hamilton's interest in clear- ing up points like these. Perhaps the thing will appear most clear if, looking back to the sentence in tin- last paragraph which refers to an object affecting the eye, I try to point out to the reader which por- tions belong to the logical, which to the phenomenalist view. 'Object 1 (in other words the Baying that it is the tree that we see, the tree which out of the whole field of view is in relation with us) and then afterwards, 'affecting the mind,' 'being pre- sent al the mind,' are logical or philosophical: 'affecting the eve,' 'being pn • nt at the eye,' are phenomenalist. Logically, the object, or the tree as such, may be said to affect the mind and to be pr< 3en1 at it, so far as that is a good description ofwhal really takes place, viz. that we have a feel- ing in our mind that there exists in that relation to us which I ] S THE SCALE OF SENSATION [CHAP. we call .sight, one particular object of knowledge out of a spatial universe, which object we call a tree, and understand to be such in virtue of certain qualities, forming together a whole or unity, which we suppose it to possess, vegetable life, greenness, &c. &c. Phenomenally, what the eye is affected by is light, one cir- cumstance of the light which so affects it being that it is in- terrupted, or reflected, or modified in whatever way by the portion of matter which, when the perception is completed, we call the tree. The saying then that the tree affects the eye, though there is no harm in it, is insignificant, and carries no conclusion of the kind above. But the speaking of any one thing affecting the eye is dangerous. The whole is a process highly complicated, one part of which is various change (of position &c.) in what we call the eye. It would take me too long to go further into this confusion, illustrations of which will recur. It is not so easy to discover how far there is or is not con- fusion in the use by philosophers of the terms 'presentation' and 'representation', or e.g. ' presentative and representative con- sciousness'. ' Presentative consciousness ' should mean the feel- ing (which we regularly and naturally have) of our phenomenal existence, and in conjunction with this the feeling also, to which latter it is that the attention is directed, that there exists in actual communication with us through the bodily senses an object, which in this character we fix and name, in- dependent of us. (In this view of presentativeness there is no room for discussion whether the knowledge is or is not imme- diate. The speaking of it as 'immediate' would have no dis- tinctive significance.) In contrast with this stands consciousness representative: which is the feeling, first as before of -our phe- nomenal existence, and then (with attention given to it) of there being in our thought something which might be in com- munication with us by the bodily senses, but which, so far as the representation goes, is not. I say, ' so far as the represen- tation goes', because the feelings of presentation and repre- sentation may be, without special attention, undistinguishable, or may be concurrent. Philosophers generally have considered that the only way in which we can consider that a thing might VI.] OR KNOWLEDGE. 119 be in communication with our bodily senses is from the know- ledge that every separate portion of it has been. In this respect representation must involve memory, and may involve besides what we may call an active power in the mind of recomposing. How do presentation and representation thus viewed, stand related to the notions of mediacy and immediacy of knowledge? In this way: Representation, in the notion of it, might be described as bi-objectal knowledge, that is, knowledge in the case of which we might use the word object in either of two senses, either to express what is thought, or (in common language) what is thought of: there is supposed something (for the mo- ment we will say) in the mind, and something also, possibly but not necessarily existent, out of the mind, which that in it represents. We know then the thing out of the mind by vir- tue of (through the medium of) that in it. It is important to observe that the notion 'mediate' or 'im- mediate' is really wider than that of 'representative' or 'presen- tative,' and that they ought not at all to be used as equivalent. Bi-objectalism is only one form of mediateness. What is really meant by knowledge being immediate, when we are speaking of the foundations of knowledge, is that from the most intimate of it there is no break, but that it is continuous, in a manner homogeneous. Thus, if our most intimate knowledge is con- sidered to be of ourselves, we have not an immediate knowledge of an external or phenomenal world: there is a break: and so far as the word knowledge belongs to the former, some word like 'belief belongs to the latter. This is in fact only saying, tli.it we have no means of demonstrating the latter from the former. But this docs not mean, thai we know the external or phenomenal world by representation: if the reader will look at the description given of representation above, he will see tli.it this cannot be. The whole notion of representation is in fact borrowed from the supposition of an external world, ami cannot be applied back to that. Ts'ay more, it, is borrowod, ,-it greal danger of confusion, from one particular manner of viewing the ernal world, or the suggestions of one sense, the eye. The difficulty of Language in these respects may appear from the word 'immediate', as I have above applied it. Con- tinuousm - "t knowledge (by which is meant the absence of ; , 120 THE SCALE OF SENSATION [CHAP. break or gap) may be denoted by immediateness or mediateness, really as we choose to apply the word : immediateness may mean no chasm between, or no road between. I have made it mean the formei - . Our knowledge of the external world is not a knowledge gained (in the first instance) or gainable, by demonstration, and in this respect, so far as it is a knowledge, it is immediate : but at the same time it is a knowledge separated by a step or break, and that a most important one, from our knowledge which is immediate, our proper consciousness, and in this respect it is mediate. The two things, the reader will see, are the same ; there is different use of the same word. It is from the suppo- sition of their being different things that arises what is often called scepticism : such, e. g. as that knowledge which is medi- ate, and yet undemonstrable, must be no knowledge, and that such is our knowledge of the external world. I will just signalize what, in the endlessly confused contro- versy as to immediate or mediate knowledge, presentative or representative perception, which carries away in its torrent alike clear metaphysical thinkers like Mr Ferrier, masters of philoso- phical history like Sir William Hamilton, and masters of phe- nomenal] st logic like Mr Mill (as we shall see), seem to me to be the real points of importance. Our knowledge of the phenomenal w T orld is not, if we take as standard of immediateness our proper consciousness (i. e. self- consciousness with a formless non-ego as accompaniment) imme- diate. The latter has the higher degree of certainty. We know, but besides this we know that we know. It is not proper to say that this latter statement, as against the former, is the true one : both because in this way, as Aristotle would say, the thing goes on ek a-rreipov, and the same reasons which recommend to us this degree of abstractness of conscious- ness or double use of the word know, would seem also to recom- mend to us a higher degree of it, and a triple use of the word (we know that we know that we know, &c.) : also because (as I mentioned in speaking of Mr Ferrier) it is very possible that this double use of the word know may be applied by us, or may tempt us, to give the word ' know ', improperly, a double mean- ing. But though this is so, there is reason in making the latter VI.] OR KNOWLEDGE. 1*21 statement by the side of the other, because, besides knowing the object of knowledge, we do know the fact or phenomenon (the first and greatest of all phenomena) of knowledge, and upon this knowledge, in the higher philosophy, many important conclusions depend. But this is only saying that the object of knowledge may be, if for a particular purpose we choose to make it so, the fact of knowledge itself. Sir William Hamilton seems to me to make all knowledge, even as knowledge, me- diate. We know the external world by our feeling ourselves some- thing, which I have called phenomenal beings : the fact being, that we feel, consider, imagine (however we may describe it) ourselves in communication, not merely with a formless non- ego, but with a regular and various universe independent of us, by means of a part of that universe which we call our bodies, with which part also, in various manners, we consider our feel- ing associated. Of some portions or characters of this universe (secondary qualities) our feelings are only suggestive : some (primary qualities) they directly measure : some (the composi- tion and order in the universe) they identify themselves with or entirely appropriate. With what reason we think or feel all this, is the problem of what is commonly called 'Ontology'. Upon this I will not enter now, nor upon the question, whether there is reason in proposing such a problem. This being so, calling our knowledge of the particulars of tlic universe ' perception', are we to consider it immediate or mediate, presentation or representation? The answer to this really depends on what we mean by the word 'thing' or on what we consider, in perception, to be the object of knowledge. I described some time since the two kinds of words by which, in mosl languag* -. knowledge has been expressed. One chief particular of the difference between the two, is our placing ourselves in imagination, when speaking of knowledge, lower or higher upon the scale of sensation Knowledge of acquaintance with things is the notion <»l knowledge which is raggested by the lower portion of the scale of sensation, where are the secondary qualities of matter: (the 122 THE SCALE OF SENSATION [CHAP. primary qualities enter both into this and as we shall see into the other kind of knowledge, most specially perhaps and neces- sarily into this). This is kenntniss, connaissance : the type of it is usually taken to be the sense of sight, which embodies both secondary and primary qualities : hence the philosophical name of it is ' intuition', ' anschauung': and hence the great tendency in the term 'representation', &c, as applied to it, to give the notion of an actual image. It would have saved some confusion of thought, at the expense of some picturesqueness, if instead of words referring to the sense of sight to express notions of this kind, we could have used or coined some referring to the sense of touch (in the double character of feeling and handling, nerv- ous and muscular perception), such a word e.g. as 'betouch- ment'; the term 'apprehension' and words of this kind have something of the character which I mean : here, however, there would have been danger of confusion too : for whatever sensive power (even the simplest) we refer the term we use to, the re- ference to the sensive power will be something of a metaphor, for we mean to express something more general, more abstract than the reference to the sensive power would imply, though something which the sensive power suggests to us. Any feel- ing distinctly attended to is more or less of an intuition, and any recurrence of such feeling, similarly attended to, is more or less of a representation. If we take knowledge of acquaintance, or by way of in- tuition in this use of the term, for the type of knowledge, and mean by the word 'thing', as is its real meaning, 'the object of our knowledge', then of course our perception or knowledge of things is immediate : the words intuitive and immediate in this sense will mean the same thing. The 'thing' in this view is what we see, handle, smell, taste. I have expressed the fact this way as the way in which it would be expressed, and to shew how many philosophical disputes arise from mere inattention to language. Is here expresses a relation of co-extensiveness or identity : it does not mean that what follows it is a predicate or part of the description of that which goes before. The pro- position is true converted : what we see, handle, smell, taste, is the thing. Even so it is not absolutely safe from misappre- hension: and it is this misapprehension which gives rise to VI.] OR KNOWLEDGE. 123 the notion of something mysterious contained in the word what. What is it we see, handle, &c. people will ask : with some reason we shall see presently, though not with the reason they sometimes think. What is the substratum or substance of which these qualities which we perceive, seeableness or colour, handleableness or shape, taste, smell, &c. are attributes ? The answer is, there is, in the sense you mean, none such : the thing itself is really, so far as knowledge is concerned (on this view of knowledge as acquaintance), determined by these par- ticulars which you perceive about it, which are really therefore the elements or constituents of it. But because you do not know how many of these constituents there are (and for an- other reason too, which we shall see) you choose, in thought or language, to suppose the thing itself unknown, and to call all these things qualities or adjuncts of it. In reality, on this view of knowledge, there is nothing more to be known than the sum of these qualities. But of these qualities of the supposed thing there is one of transcendant importance, which is its thinghood or reality, which is really the same notion as that of the relation of its parts to each other, and of itself to what is about it. In the view of knowledge as acquaintance with things, this is not to be treated as a mysterious substratum of the qualities, but is a quality itself, only the most important, and the particulars of which we are always endeavouring to discover. I have men- tioned, that all the discussion about things in themselves seems to me to arise from the treat ing as two different portions of know- Ledgewhai are really two differenl views of the same knowledge. The cardinal quality of a sensible object of knowledge, which is what I have called its 'reality' or 'unity' vanishes out of the field of knowledge of acquaintance with things, fur this reason, that it bi ' bo a high it [kiN of tin- sr;i!o of sensation and thoughl than thai knowledge will really apply to. It i- possible however, thai we may take acquaintance with things, instead of being the type of knowledge, to be do know- ledge a1 all, and to resolve all intellecl a1 bottom merely into n of habit or familiarity: just as from passings tree every day we might know, entirely without intellectual exercise, ever) branch and leaf of it, or might know in little purpose ever) 124 THE SCALE OF SENSATION OR KNOWLEDGE. [CHAP. VI. line on the face and every button on the coat of a man whom we meet every day, but to whom we had never spoken. "We may take for type of knowledge the knowledge of facts about things, judgment. This is the logical notion of knowledge, and it is because it is so that, in the manner which I have mentioned, knowledge or acquaintance, in order to enter into thought and language, is put into this form, and the thing we make acquaintance with is split into substance and qualities, to which correspond, logic- ally, subject and possible predicates. Knowledge, when the former type is taken of it, is a matter of communication, the suggestion of which is given by the com- munication between our body and the external universe : when this latter type is taken, it is a matter of question and answer, of dissection and analysis : we stand as it were behind the great web of reality, of which we do not, so far, see the face ; or rather, seeing the face, we endeavour to get behind it. Of knowledge of this type there are continually varying actual objects, which are the facts we know about things : these facts put together make up in this view the thing, and we are said to have a conception of the thing, as distinct from an in- tuition. Truth, in the intuitive view of knowledge, is simply undis- turbedness or purity : in the conceptive, it is thinking rightly or as we should about things : the highest notion of truth alto- gether is perhaps the accordance of the two desertions of knowledge, or the agreement of the results of the one with those of the other. CHAPTEE VII. SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON— CONSCIOUSNESS OF MATTER. Xx the last Chapter but one I have made some general re- marks on Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, but have as yet made little or no quotation from him. I shall probably have occasion, in a later Chapter than this 1 , to refer to his philosophy again : in the present Chapter I will try to exhibit the part of it with which I am most concerned in his own words as well as the proof which he gives of it. Upon this part of his philosophy, our (supposed) consciousness of matter, I have myself written, I fear, with some confusion (and I must apologise for it) in this way : I have done my best to enter into. Sir William Hamilton's view, by putting it to myself in various ways, and have seemed to myself thus to come to see it more clearly — it is probable that what I have written will bear the traces of this effort. But certainly, the more I seem to myself to understand it, the less do I agree with it. I should almost be disposed to consider it the master-con- fusion, the 'temporis partus maximus' of mis-psychology — but we will see. I have myself not the slightest objection to say that we are conscious of matter, if these are the terms we like to use, in this way. Matter is a thing we know, and whatever we know we may be said to be conscious of, if we talk of 'consciousness o/' things : all our knowledge, even all our thought, is con- Bciousness, as I have said myself as strongly as I can : what we know then, and not only that, bul what we imagine, what we conceive, what we remember, we are conscious of: thi^ very simple fact, or rather manner of expression seems to me to be all the Bubstance of many pages of Sir William Hamilton, where he proves thai the different faculties, by which, in the language of some philosophers, we are said to do these various ' In the q< ■■■ part, 126 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON — [CHAP. tilings, arc only so many manners of consciousness. Matter, then, is a thing that we are conscious of: this is my cardinal doctrine: I put it two ways: it is because matter is after all, so far as we can tell, only a thing that we are conscious of — a thought of ours supposed warranted, a mental creation pro- perly created, a something the certainty of the existence of which depends for us on the certainty of our own existence, and the trustworthiness of our own feeling — that the study of consciousness is higher than the study of matter (in my lan- guage, philosophy than phenomenalism) and that we ourselves, who are conscious, know ourselves, preeminently, with a differ- ent knowledge from that with which we know matter, of which we are conscious, just as we know also our own thoughts and feelinsrs with a consciousness more intimate and immediate than that with which Ave know matter, since we mean by matter something which we suppose to give occasion to varieties of such feelings : that is one way : again because matter is a thing which w r e are conscious of, therefore there is a study of it as we are conscious of it, which we may pursue without at all troubling ourselves what the being conscious of it means, and this is what I call 'phenomenalism'. My hesitation in treating of Sir "William Hamilton's view has arisen from an anxious desire not to misinterpret him : but the more I study what he says, the more I think that his view is nothing like such consciousness of matter as this, but some- thing quite different. "Whatever we are conscious of must be, so far as we are conscious of it, an object of consciousness, a creation of the mind: I really suppose that what Sir William Hamilton means by saying that the whole body of philosophers onlv allow us to be conscious of modifications of the ecro, is that, in fact, they say this, which I have said above: and that he himself really says against it that we may, making the phe- nomenalist (which, used in connection with philosophy, is the mis-psychologist) supposition to begin with, that the things, or matter, are actually, spatially, existing before us, describe our relation to such things as the being conscious of them, without altering the meaning of the word 'conscious', but using ir still in the same manner, drawing the same conclusions from it, as we do when we use it as to the previously sup- VII.] CONSCIOUSNESS OF MATTER. 127 posed objects of consciousness, mental conceptions, mental states, self. Matter is supposed first as existing, described, defined, quite independent of consciousness: Sir William Hamilton is not finding matter by examining consciousness, but knows it already and lays down what it is. Consciousness then, which is variously synonymized, defined, particularized, as thought, feeling, will, and by other such notions or expressions, all, for that is the condition of them, referrible to a conscious or sen- tient subject, is examined as to its 'contents', in Sir William Hamilton's expression, which of course must be in some way homogeneous with, or predicable of, these things, thought feeling, &c. : and then among the contents of it there comes to be found this matter known otherwise, so entirely hetero- geneous, with its constituents of oxygen, light, &c, and its qualities and predicates of shape, colour, taste, sound, &c. : and from its being thus supposedly found the conclusion is drawn that matter with its constituents or qualities exists to us in the same manner and with the same reality as the thought, feeling, &c. which are the other contents of consciousness, and tliis conclusion is supposed to be necessary to obviate scepticism. Against this incongruity I will endeavour to put what seems to me the truth. Wo are conscious of beliefs, thoughts, feelings, occupying our mind with various degrees of conviction or cogency, and next in conviction to the central belief. that we exist at all, is the belief that we exist with what we call a body, by which we communicate with much which is not only independent of mil- primal selves, but external to our corporeal selves, and whai we thus, speaking from our primal selves, think Ave com- municate with, or, speaking from our corporeal selves, actually do communicate with, we call the universe of matter. Taking this universe of matter, with our corporeal selves in the middle of it, up here and with these considerations abort it it v.. .ire philosophers, and, if we * 1 « » not care to philosophize, simply ,//, without these considerations ;ii .-ill: and proceeding in (lie i, - e direction to that in which, if we have made these consider- ation-, we have hitherto proceeded : this universe of matter com- municates with on i- body a ii< I all its various sensive organization, :ui«l concurrently with this various communication there is various 128 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON — [CHAP. consciousness, with which this course is brought to a halt — the other is complete, this is not — for in the consciousness thus come to we say I, I know, and other such things of which this way of consideration can take no account, and which, belonging really to the other, absorb everything which belongs to this, and make tliis appear a something secondary, included, an ab- straction. I hope the reader will give me credit for a wish to make Sir William Hamilton's view intelligible to him, so far as it can be so made — of course he may think it would have been better without my aid — and for being thus long, both upon the view itself and the opposite view, with this purpose. But we will now take Sir William Hamilton's own words. I will give first his various enunciations of his view, then his proof of it : and on his proof I will first examine whether it proves what he wishes, and next, if it proves anything, what it proves. First of all, however, I will make a general remark on his reasoning, and on his frequent quotation. His reasoning is, it seems to me, sometimes very doubtful : I think I could find more instances like the following. Philosophers, he saj^s 1 , refuse to admit the fact of conscious- ness, the immediate perception of external things, declare it to be impossible, and give reasons for thinking so : these reasons, he continues ought, if they are good for anything, to establish the absolute necessity for the rejection of this testimony of con- sciousness : he will endeavour to refute them, ' by showing that they do not establish the necessity required'. He finds five such reasons given : the second is, " Mind and matter are sub- " stances of different and even opposite natures : mind cannot "therefore be conscious or immediately cognisant of matter." Sir William Hamilton conceives it is an answer to this to say: " But the very first fact of our experience contradicts the asser- " tion, that mind, as of an opposite nature, can have no imme- " diate cognisance of matter : for the primary datum of con- " sciousness is, that in perception, we have an intuitive knowledge " of the ego and of the non-ego, equally and at once " (know- 1 Vol. ii. p. 1 1 8. VII.] CONSCIOUSNESS OF MATTER. 129 ledge of the non-ego and of matter being not, with Sir William Hamilton, distinguished) 1 '. The philosophers reject what Sir "William Hamilton considers the testimony of consciousness, be- cause the fact which, it is averred, it bears witness to, they say is impossible. Sir William Hamilton undertakes, against five reasons, to prove the possibility. The above is the way in which he does so against one of them. To prove the possi- bility, he thinks it enough straightforwardly to re-assert the fact which is in dispute on the ground of its being impossible. The philosophers say, What you assign as a datum of consciousness cannot be admitted as such, because mind can have no im- mediate cognisance of the non-ego or of matter: he thinks it is an answer to this to say, You are wrong in saying mind cannot have immediate consciousness of matter, because that which I have assigned as a datum of consciousness is such a datum, and the primary datum 2 . I notice this, which I hope the reader will examine for himself, not in respect of the consideration, which here is wrong or which is right, but because it shows a notion of argument which, in the case of any with whom, as with Sir William Hamilton, argument is so main a feature, rather affects one's confidence in him. The passage here quoted is not something occurring obiter, or an apparent inadvertence, but is introduced as is often Sir William Hamilton's wont, with much parade. Next, on his quotations. Sir William Hamilton's Lectures, as published by Professors Mansel and Witch with full references, form a book the 1 Vol. II. p. 12 2. 2 I do not lay so much stress upon another thing which I will just mention here, which is a certain degree of inconsistency of view in what is said in different places, because some uncertainty of view, possibly even involving incon- sistency, is by no means a defect in a philosopher in my eyes, if only it seems to not from eonfused thought, but from a continued nisus in the conception of truth, a struggle and a feeling after it. But if we compare Sir William Hamil- ton's language herewith the first portion <>f his proof, which I shall shortly notice, it is certainly i ble. Tin's supposed fact of mind and matter being opposite, in what 1. upon ili'i-i as a strong argument for the knowledge of the two being on. l^e, viz. consciousness: /";"•, what he had then brought forward as an argument for the thin.', tin- philosophers are represented as bringing forward asanargumenl against the pot ibilityofit: ami he, as if In; had forgotten his own arguiiv-nt, instead of r. | »rting the at fument upon them, or doing anythis that kind, answers as we see, by simpbj I ag the matter in dispute. i) 130 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON [CHAP. value of which cannot be over-estimated to the student who has opportunity to turn to the references. But I trust that the notion of learning, and of its meaning and value, which made Sir William Hamilton quote so much, is going out of fashion. I am quite ready to consider, that for reporting a philosopher's opinion, no person could have been found better, both in the way of conscientiousness and of penetration, than Sir "William Hamilton. But I should have thought that his own endless and complicated discussions as to Heid's misconstruing of those before him, and Brown's misconstruing of Reid, and I know not what more, would have suggested to him of how very little value an off-hand report of a philosopher's opinion on an intricate and disputed matter is ; so that his frequent citations of philosophers and quotations of them, in strings and shoals, might as to value have been spared, though I fully acknow- ledge the interest of them. When we come to Mr Mill, we shall see perhaps the value of one such string. In my own opinion, but that is my own only, there is some- thing depressing in this weight of learning, in this manner : nothing can come into one's mind, but one is told, Oh, that is the opinion of such and such a person long ago: and naturally therefore on the other hand if anything should come into our mind which we cannot find in any body, the air of a discoverer is put on for very little, and in a manner which seems to me unworthy of those whose business is simply truth. So long as a philosopher's meaning is as discussible in the case of our predecessors, as Sir William Hamilton has in practice shown, I am suspicious both of the professed originalities and of the references of opinion to this or that philosopher. And I can conceive nothing more noxious for students than to get into the habit of saying to themselves about their ordinary philosophical thought, 'Oh, somebody must have thought it all before', and about one or two particularities perhaps, ' Ah, but this is some- thing which I have been the first to say'. The progress of philo- sophy is a thinking, and a re-thinking, and a re-thinking still more clearly and better, about the same matters of everlasting interest, and the philosophic disposition is to value correct thought about these greater things, rather than small originality, if it be so, in detail. VII.] CONSCIOUSNESS OF MATTER. 131 I will now proceed to give the various manners in which Sir William Hamilton enunciates his doctrine, that we are conscious of matter. 1. The primary datum of consciousness is described to be: "That we are immediately cognitive of the phenomena of "matter and of the phenomena of mind 1 ". 2. This is called in the passage cited a short time since: " That we have an intuitive knowledge of the ego and of the "non-ego, equally and at once 2 ". 3. Again : " Consciousness declares that we have an imme- "diate knowledge of an ego, and of an external non-ego 3 ". 4. Again : " The fact to which consciousness testifies is — "that the object, of which we are conscious in perception, is the " external reality as existing, and not merely its representation "in the percipient mind 4 ". 5. In the following passage the two portions of this intui- tive knowledge are looked" at separately. " The acquisition of knowledge can only be accomplished "by the immediate presentation of a fresh object to conscious- " ness, in other words, by the reception of a new object within "the sphere of our cognition. We have thus a faculty which " may be called the Acquisitive, or the Presentative, or the Ite- "ceptive". " Now new or adventitious knowledge may be either of things " external, or of things internal, in other words, either of the "phenomena of the non-ego, or of the phenomena of the ego: "and this distinction of object will determine a subdivision of "this, the Acquisitive Faculty. If the object of knowledge be "external, the faculty receptive or presentative of such objects " will be a consciousness of the non-ego. This has obtained the "name of Externa] Perception, or of Perception simply 6 ". G. Again: "The great fact" — is — "that we .tie immediately "conscious in perception of an ego, and a non-ego, known to- " orether, and known in contrast to each other. This is the fact " of the Duality of ( lonsciousness 6 ", ' Vol. n. ,.. 86. ' Vol. i. p. -27s. 1 Vol. 11. p. 122. s Vol. II. [». M. me inconceivable. That there should have been some confusion on my part in making out Sir William Hamilton's view may perhaps appear excusable, when we pass from these passages to the third, where we are told that we have an immediate know- ledge of a iiMii-ego and of an external non-ego. Here we have a duality given essentially different from, or going beyond, the last It is this ' external ' which is the point. And the fourth passage is to the same effect. So also the seventh, where for ternal' we have l material qualities'. To this we shall re- turn. The fifth pa ■■ ha1 I call the wrong psj chology in its fullesl blossom. There La a parallel drawn (continued 134 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON [CHAP. in what follows, if the reader will refer) between the presenta- ation or consciousness of things internal, and of things external. Now the things internal are feelings, thoughts &c, and the making them present, or their becoming present, to conscious- ness, is reasonable enough : in Sir William Hamilton's wide view of consciousness they are in fact always so, they are (in their nature) presentations : but then, next, there is supposed a material object already existing with its material qualities, and Sir William Hamilton seems to think that by merely using the same word he can make it be believed that in respect of (or be- tween) consciousness and something so incongruous with it as this there takes place a process in some way similar to that which takes place in respect of (or between) consciousness and the thoughts or feelings. What is of consequence, of more consequence than the criticism of Sir William Hamilton, is that the i*eader should see what these errors spring from, or what I have called the bad psychology — it is the confusing together the difference, on the one side, between thought and matter, or in other words the mu- tual independence of them, and, on the other, the externality, the distance from us, of the object, or the difficulty of its com- munication with the bodily sense. Of course, when Sir William Hamilton begins with supposing the existence already of the material object, he cannot but have in mind the thought of this latter communication : and as soon as he thinks he has solved the difficulty as to this, so that object and sense can come together without anything which he would call represen- tation, he thinks he has solved the other difficulty. But what he has got to do is to show that there is, or can be, any mean- ing in form, smell, sound being -present to thought except that they are thought, thought of, thought to exist and to occasion sensation in us. The last thing which I will notice is the 'almost' in the last passage, which at first sight one might be disposed to take for a misprint. In fact there is a carelessness in the sen- tence altogether, which would lead one to think that perhaps further attention would have put it differently. For what has philosophy to do with qualifications like this 'almost'? And what is Sir William Hamilton's 'consciousness of matter' good for at all, if it does not furnish an altogether equal assurance of VII.] CONSCIOUSNESS OF MATTER. 135 the reality of matter and of that of mind ? And what is the meaning of his supporting, as he does, his opinion by the voice of mankind against the voice of philosophers, if all that the voice of mankind goes to is this qualified, partial, assurance ? If the expression is genuine, it seems to me to show a sort of unphilosophical misgiving, which really I think does belong to all the psychology with its notions of ' common sense' &c. I hold a secondary and mediate (if Sir William Hamilton likes the term) knoidedge of an external world compared with the knowledge of ourselves, but a perfectly equal assurance of its reality : i.e. the assurance is in each case, in its own way, com- plete : what is the use of establishing a primary or immediate knowledge, to come after all to an almost equal assurance? So much for Sir William Hamilton's statements of his doc- trine : now for his manner of establishing it. Reid, in Sir William Hamilton's view, had in his doctrine of Common Sense taught truly on the subject of our immediate knowledge of an external world, but had been wrong in re- stricting the meaning of the term 'consciousness' to self-con- sciousness or reflection, and in saying that the knowledge which we had in the furmer case was by a faculty, 'perception', different from consciousness. Against this Sir William Hamilton argues that it is wrong so to restrict 'consciousness', ami that 'per- ception' is a 'consciousness'. The discussion has a double cha- racter, one character quite indifferent to me, and I should hope to many of my readers. It is a convenient often and useful way king to speak of did faculties of thought or know- ledge, but the realizing them to such an extent as to make it a matter of importance whether this or thai piece ^( thoughl belongs to one or another facult}', is a thing I do not care for. But the discussion has anoth< r character more important. Sir William Hamilton makes use of the description of perception as ' consciousness' to give to the supposed 'immediate know Ledge' a meaning so far as moaning of the kind is possible vi ry dif- ferent from whal the term 'Common Souse' or any such term would i 'I beg 1 may not be understood as giving any opinion as to what Dr Reid meant). This meaning I have en- deavoured t" describe above. We are conscious then, jays Sir William Eamilton, 'I do1 136 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON — [CHAP. only of ourselves, but of the not-ourselves : (2) not only of perception, but of the object which we perceive. I will begin with the latter of these, and quote at length the reasoning on it, with a few remarks on it : the reason why I take the other last will be seen 1 . " Reid's assertion, that we are conscious of the act of per- ception, but not of the object perceived, involves, first of all, " a general absurdity. For it virtually asserts that we can know " what we are not conscious of knowing. An act of perception "is an act of knowledge; what we perceive, that we know. " Now, if in perception there be an external reality known, but " of which external reality we are, on Reid's hypothesis, not con- scious, then is there an object known, of which we are not con- scious. But as we know only inasmuch as we know that we "know, — in other words, inasmuch as we are conscious that "we know, — we cannot know an object without being conscious "of that object as known; consequently, we cannot perceive an "object without being conscious of that object as perceived. " But, again, how is it possible that we can be conscious of " an operation of perception, unless consciousness be coextensive " with that act ; and how can it be coextensive with the act, " and not also conversant with its object ? An act of knowledge "is only possible in relation to an object, — and it is an act of "one kind or another only by special relation to a particular "object. Thus the object at once determines the existence, and "specifies the character of the existence, of the intellectual "energy. An act of knowledge existing and being what it is "only by relation to its object, it is manifest that the act can "be known only through the object to which it is correlative; "and Reid's supposition that an operation can be known in "consciousness to the exclusion of its object, is impossible. For " example, I see the inkstand. How can I be conscious that my "present modification exists, — that it is a perception, and not " another mental state, — that it is a perception of sight to the " exclusion of every other sense, — and, finally, that it is a per- ception of the inkstand, and of the inkstand only, — unless my "consciousness comprehend within its sphere the object, which 1 Vol. i. pp. 227, 228. VII.] CONSCIOUSNESS OF MATTER. lo7 " at once determines the existence of the act, qualifies its kind, "and distinguishes its individuality? Annihilate the ink- " stand, you annihilate the perception ; annihilate the conscious- ness of the object, you annihilate the consciousness of the " operation." This proof, so to call it, seems to me to have three mem- bers, each, for a different reason, wrong. In the first paragraph, so far as I can make out, there is a non-sequitur at the point of the conclusion : f we know an object inasmuch as we are conscious that we know an object' (or 'we cannot know an object without being so conscious') is treated as if it were the same sentence as, 'we cannot know an object without being conscious of that object as known' — the whole question in dispute is the legitimacy of the application of the term 'consciousness' to the object — Sir William Hamilton settles the dispute by simply so applying it, which he is at liberty to do, and then, which he is not at liberty to do, con- cluding that his so applying it is a reason why it ought to be so applied. The second portion of the argument, occupying the first half of the second paragraph, is a piece of what I call ' notion- alism'. Knowledge is described as 'an act'; an act must have an object, and can be known only through the object — whether there is meaning or not in this, I recognise no cogency in it. Knowledge might be described in many other ways than as being an act, and in calling it an act I should in no degree mean that it was thereby broughl under the laws of a sort of general science of acting or agency, supposing that there was such. The third or remaining portion of the argument seems to me to belong to the wrong psychology. I do not understand the phrase, 'unless my consciousness comprehend within its sphere the object'. Consciousness doubtless comprehends within its sphere the object of the consciousness, but what it is that is the objed of the consciousness is just the question in dispute. Sir William Hamilton wants to prove that consciousness compre- hends within its Bphere the inkstand, and seems to think that can be done by calling the inkstand an object. The expression 'an nihilate the inkstand, you annihilate the perception' shows the 138 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON — [CHAP. ■wrong view : i. e. the phenomenalist view trying to swell itself out to include consciousness, which makes the bad psychology. I should say: Are we in the spatial world? then I know nothing about consciousness of things — it does not belong here — I know about things, and communication of what we call external things with one important thing which we call our body, and accompaniment of this communication with sensation — which we have to stop with: annihilate the inkstand, there is vacant space, no communication, no accompanying sensation: call the sensation perception, if you like, use the language if you like 'perception of the thing': then with the inkstand, you annihilate the perception of the thing: but all this cannot prove, when we start with phenomena, that consciousness of the thing, or perception of it, represents any fact, anything to do or done between the mind and the thing — any relation between them. The thing is what it is— the feeling or con- sciousness is what it is — there we have to stop. If instead of starting with the spatial world and coming in to ourselves, we are awaking without any previous knowledge or remembrance, and opening, as a sailor might say, the spatial world point after point, feature after feature, thing after thing, to ourselves — then the truth is not perhaps exactly the converse of what Sir William Hamilton says — annihilate the perception and you annihilate the inkstand — but something like it — sup- pose no perception of an inkstand where perception of an ink- stand ought to be, and (barring sensal defect or disease, which is not our present business) there is no inkstand. So much for the second portion of Sir William Hamilton's proof: the first is of a different nature. Having quoted the other portion at such length, I cannot do the same with this : I trust the reader will refer to the book : but I will endeavour to give as good an account of it as I can. Dr Reid then 'maintains', says Sir William Hamilton, 'that we are conscious of our perception of a rose, but not of the rose perceived'. 'That we know the ego by one act of knowledge' (viz. consciousness), 'the non-ego by another' (viz. perception). This doctrine he proceeds to refute 1 . I will now quote : " It is not only a logical axiom, but a 1 Vol. i. p. 225. u vn.] consciousness or matter. 139 "self-evident truth, that the knowledge of opposites is one. "Thus we cannot know what is tall without knowing what is " short, — we know what is virtue only as we know what is vice — "the science of health is but another name for the science of "disease. Nor do we know the opposites, the I and Thou, the ego and non-ego, the subject and object, mind and matter, by a different law Unless we are prepared to maintain that " the faculty cognisant of self and not-self is different from the " faculty cognisant of not-self and self, we must allow that the "eco and non-e^o are known and discriminated in the same " indivisible act of knowledge". And this faculty or act of know- ledge he proceeds to describe as ' consciousness'. This is a line of proof with which, if we examine what it really proves, I heartily concur. But what does it really prove ? Let us look at Sir William Hamilton's catalogue of oppo- sites. The nature of the antithesis between subject and object I examined before. Whether here Sir William Hamilton con- siders all these as different oppositions, or different views of the same opposition, I cannot tell. But what is the nature of the antithesis between mind and matter? Mind and matter are repeatedly called by Sir William Hamilton opposite. I suppose that what at the top of the same page, he puts into the mouth of the partisans of Dr Reid, but it would appear, fully admits, may be taken as an explanation of what he means by this oppo- sition, " Mind and matter are mutually separated by the whole '• diameter of being. Mind and matter are, in fact, nothing but " words to express tin- series of phenomena known less in them- -, than in contradistinction from each other". This loose manner of speaking, ' known less in themselves than ...', which mbles the 'almost' on which I commented before, and which is quite i t with the argument, seems to me to denote a want of confidence in the opinion hold, a fear of going through with it, or it may be a want of full Bight and hold of it. The firsi of the two sentences I have jusl quoted may be perfectly true, bul has nothing to do with the opposition which we are now concerned with. An opposition of Buch 'separation' as that could not make the two things objed of one faculty. But an opposition of 'contradistinction' such as that 140 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON — [CHAP. mentioned in the second sentence, (if we omit the qualification ■which destroys the argument) would. Only the argument bears to me a different aspect from that which it does to Sir Wil- liam Hamilton, and I should use it to draw from it the con- clusion that the two things (or any two things) which, in the manner which he describes, are the objects of one faculty or one act of knowledge, must be opposites of each other, and must be known in mutual contradistinction. This the ego and non-eg-o are. But what is the case as to mind and matter ? The fact of the contradistinctional opposition of matter to mind is, it appears to me, my great fact, not his — it belongs to the philosophical view, not to the psychological — and, coupled with the inevitable existence to us of mind, thought, ourselves, it is what makes my fundamental view. For I recognise two manners of existence, in mutual opposition or contradistinction, thinkingness and thoughtness, and it is this latter which, when we believe the thought correct or justified, we call phenomenal existence or matter. In this view I have no objection to speak of our consciousness of matter. But matter, from Sir William Hamilton's phenomenalist (which here is the wrongly psychological) point of view, is something quite different from this. He supposes the matter existing as we know it : I have myself, at the beginning of all that I am now writing, described how it does thus exist: it is, if we like to call it so, a succession of natural agents acting according to their various laws : it is body or matter, if we like rather to call it so, with its various attributes or qualities: mind, on the other side has its attributes or qualities : (for this logical language, and it is its great advantage, being kept in mind as referring to notions only, may be used without imply- ing, as to the things of wdiich it is used, any commensurability of existence or possible co-consideration). And the thing to be observed is, that the attributes of matter and the attributes of mind as thus understood are not contradistinguished or opposed : they are simply incongruous with each other. They belong, in my more ordinary manner of expression, to different worlds. Sir William Hamilton, as in fact every body else, allows and teaches this abundantly when that is what is before his con- sideration — strange that he forgets it here, for, so far as we VII.] CONSCIOUSNESS OF MATTER. 141 speak of faculties, this incongruity most thoroughly shows that the two sorts of things must be the object of different ones. A moment's consideration will show the reader that there is no meaning in memory being contradistinguished from light, or imagination from weight — the things, as I have said, belong to different worl I reserved the discussion of this first part of Sir William Hamilton's proof till last just to show what the fact is which he misapprehends and misdescribes — to show, as I said in other words, what his argument does prove. The knowledge of some- thing besides ourself is, so far as we can judge, a necessary accompaniment of the knowledge of ourself — here we may speak of contradistinction and opposition, and may with reason use, if we like it, the word consciousness for the double know- ledge. But the word consciousness thus used, to keep any value or to serve any use, must retain the notion of the con- tradistinction to self which is the point of it when used of this non-ego, and when we come, by sense, perception, orhowever we may call it, to develope this non-ego into the phenomenal universe or matter, and come thus to a set of things or qualities entirely incongruous with the facts of mind of which we are conscious — then, if we choose still to apply the word conscious- ness to our knowledge of them, we simply destroy all value in the word, and can conclude nothing from it. If the reader will turn back to a previous passage 1 of Sir William Hamilton's, where he is showing how consciousness is a discrimination, and examine it, I hope it may help his understanding what I am saying. Sir William Hamilton speaks of three discriminations: between self and not self: between one state of mind and another: between one external object and another. In these three ways consciousness discri- m iu The distinction therefore between mind and matter is considered, I presume, identical with thai between self and not-self. This is in harmony with all that I have been noting in Sir William Hamilton: [ call attention to it as just thewr chology, or the misapplication of phenomenalism, which I wish to condemn. A- 1 have] bjection to our speaking of con- sciousness of matt, r, so I have no objection to our speaking 1 V..]. i. p. 20;. 142 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON [CHAP. a self distinguished from external or spatial objects: this is what I called our phenomenal or corporeal self: only let us then remem- ber that our starting point is matter, and no more expect pheno- menal knowledge of thoughts and feelings, than in the other case we expected conscious knowledge of weight, light, and oxygen. In commenting, a short time back, on the expression 'almost equal assurance', I alluded to Sir William Hamilton's opinion 1 , that on the doctrine which we have been treating of he has with him the universal voice of mankind, and against him the almost universal voice of philosophers. This I think of little consequence either way, on account of the exceeding difficulty, as it seems to me, of ascertaining what, on a point of philosophy of this kind, is the common voice either of mankind or of phi- losophers. I will however notice it now for two reasons : first, because, as I have already slightly noticed, the assertion that the opinion in question is thus the common opinion of mankind throws, in my view, a little suspicion upon the assertion that it is a fact of consciousness — suspicion, lest really this latter should mean no more than the former, in which case it is liable of course to the same doubt as the former, in reference to what the opinion of mankind really is. Sir William Hamilton changes Reid's expression 'common sense' into his own 'consciousness': but a passage like the following leads one to doubt whether what he points to is after all much more than popular opinion : "The fact that consciousness does testify to an immediate "knowledge by mind of an object different from any modifica- "tion of its own, is thus admitted even by those philosophers " who still do not hesitate to deny the truth of the testimony : " for to say that all men do naturally believe in such a know- " ledge, is only, in other words, to say that they believe it on " the authority of consciousness. A fact of consciousness, and a " fact of the common sense of mankind, are only various expres- " sions of the same import. We may therefore lay it down as "an undisputed fact, that consciousness gives, as an ultimate 1 Passages in which Sir William Hamilton expresses the above-mentioned opi- nion are numerous: as Vol. I. p. 223, £Dr Reid vindicated against the unanimous authority of philosophers, the universal opinion of mankind." Again, Reid and Stewart, Vol. I. p. 204, "hold with mankind at large, that we do possess an im- mediate knowledge of something different from the knowing self." See also Vol. 1. p. 278, and in fact passim. VI!.] CONSCIOUSNESS OF MATTER. 143 "fact, a primitive duality 1 ". This is another manner of proof, so to call it, of Sir William Hamilton's doctrine, from that which we have considered. I am not fond of discussing whether a thing is or is not a fact of consciousness, because the principles upon which the dispute is to be settled are not very clear. If we appeal to what is felt, feeling is individual : we can only very imperfectly compare one man's with another's : but if we try to cure this defect by massing individuals together, we get rather, it seems to me, out of the region of philosophy. I must confess to caring not much what, on questions of this nature, men in general or masses of men think or are said to think. Not but that, if I knew that they thought and knew really what they thought, I should prize (speaking generally) the opinion of any one of them as much as my own, and their collective opinion much more : but I do not know these things, and I do not see how I am to know them : whereas I do know what I think myself, and know probably also (if I am a philosopher) that 1 have taken some pains to think, if I can, correctly. By philosophy, as the analysis of consciousness, I do not mean a report and record of the popular opinions of mankind. The second reason why I notice Sir William Hamilton's saying that the common or universal opinion of mankind 'is on his side, is because I cannot the least understand the use of his saving so when he has got so shortly afterwards, in order for his view to hold, to use the extraordinary language about what it is that we perceive which I have in a former chapter alluded to'"', and of which I will now give a specimen. "The reporl of consciousness", he says, "is that we perceive " at the external point of sensation, and that we perceive the " material reality 3 '. The word 'perceive', in the former part of the sentence, in it exactly that confusion between physiology and phi- losophy which is what I want to prevent, spoiling as it does both. But I will not repeal my own often given view as to what takes place. Duly how dose 'consciousness' report as it is bere Baid to do? " The too ordinary style of philosophising", Sir William Eamilton in speaking of Dr Thomas Brown, 1 Vol. i. p 291. " Pi • 8g. ' J Vol. n. p. 144 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON [CHAP. " is an easy way of appealing to or overlooking the facts of "consciousness, as the philosopher finds them convenient or " inconvenient for his purpose 1 ". It is in the hope that the pre- sent generation of students of philosophy, who are likely to learn so much from Sir William Hamilton, will not learn from him their tone of speaking about other philosophers, that I notice how thoroughly, if philosophers will not give each other credit for a real love of truth, this same language may be used of any, and of himself. But the matter of importance is the second part of the sentence. What is meant by 'perceiving the material reality'? " In the first place", we are told, "it does not mean that we " perceive the material reality absolutely and in itself, that is, " out of relation to our organs and faculties : on the contrary, "the total and real object of perception, is the external object "under relation to our sense and faculty of cognition". Have we not here even enough to make the appeal to the common voice of mankind nugatory and unmeaning, for what does that voice know about this notionalism of the absolute and the relative, in which Sir William Hamilton qualifies his statement into what Mr Ferrier, or I, or almost any body might accept, supposing only we acknowledged meaning in it ? The common voice of mankind, so far as it says anything, says, We perceive the thing: the thing is what we perceive : this common voice would surely say to Sir William Hamilton here, You mean then, we do not see the thing after all ? But the common voice, or feeling, of mankind must be still more shocked with the answer to the next question. " In the second place, what is meant by the external "object perceived? Nothing 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 looking at the sun, moon, or any other object of sight, " we are, on the one doctrine, 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; 1 Vol. i. p. 278. VII.] CONSCIOUSNESS OF MATTER. 145 "and that is true which Democritus of old asserted, that all our " senses are only modifications of touch. Through the eye Ave " perceive nothing hut the rays of light in relation to, and in " contact with, the retina". If anything was wanted to justify my saying that there is really no use in appealing to the common voice either of man- kind or of philosophers, surely this extraordinary passage would do so. Did any language ever, if we may take that as a specimen of human opinion, talk about perceiving 'rays of light', and not the sun or the tree which they proceed from? Common opinion is asked, Do we perceive immediately, and what do we per- ceive ? It answers, we do perceive immediately, and we per- ceive the tree, sun, &c. I might doubt as to the answer which it would give to the former part of the question, but no one could doubt as to the answer to the latter. Sir William Hamilton then, who made just now the observation as to Dr Thomas Brown which I quoted, answers common opinion, I will accept you as representing human consciousness so far as the former part of your answer goes, but cannot as to the latter. And common opinion, it would appear, Sir William Hamilton's self-chosen referee, considers that we perceive im- mediately something which, in his view, it is impossible that we should be conscious of, namely distant objects ]ike the tree or the sun: going, it would appear to me, to prove, that though we perceive the external world as it understands perceiving, we are not conscious of it. I am myself indeed q\iite unable to appreciate the greater philosophical difficulty of saying, 'we are conscious of the gun'j than of saying ' we ;ue conscious of the rays of light'. We are told that it was ridiculous in the phi- losophers who held representation to say that distant objects like the sun were represented in the mind — would he have had them say, as Less ridiculous, thai the rays of light were re- pr< -ented in the mind? But it is hopeless to make anything of ;dl this, and the philosophical reasoning which follows, and t,, which I refer the reader, is ;i- hopeless. We have seen sufficiently then, 1 think, how Sir William Bamilton really deals with the common voice of mankind. Bui I havi Baid lor thi pr< enl enough upon this subji ct. LO CHAPTER VIII. LOGIC— MR MILL. I WILL vary the somewhat monotonous course of what I am now writing by a very little philosophical reminiscence. The idealism, personalism, or whatever it may be called, which lies at the root of all that I have said, is not simply a doctrine or opinion, but seems to me to have been my earliest philosophical feeling, and to have continued, if not so vivid, yet not less strong, ever since. Experience in these things is all individual, but what from my own, I should guess, is, that that phenomenalism which seems to us to be everything, that world which is too much with us, that nature or universe into which, as time goes on, we seem to sink all our independent selfhood so as to be only parts of it, the highest animals in it, is some- thing in a manner which we require to get used to : and that before this familiarity is complete, in earlier years, there is a disposition in us to be struck with what I may call our personal or conscious difference from it, or independence of' it, or how- ever else we may style the individual feeling: this is what is with me the root of philosophy : in respect of the problems, or difficulties, or as some please to call them mysteries of philo- sophy, I think that one reason why they have this character is on account of a kind of dullness which is superinduced over our disposition to higher thought by what the course of every- body's life is pretty certain to be. We get then the notion of philosophy as something only to be learnt with infinite labour, as indeed is the case when all this familiarity with life, and nature, and the phenomenal universe has supervened — but we have had it near to us, and still all this labour would be of little value except there comes now and then a glance of insight, which is the real philosophy. CHAP. YIII.] LOGIC MR MILL. 147 I suppose there is more of what may be called personal or individual philosophy in the world than one readily hears of, but it is not a thing which seems much in people's mind that any real philosophy (or metaphysics, other than mere talk) is something that they must see for themselves, and that they must value any chance or early glimpses they may get about it, because the course of life and study will in many respects make it more difficult for them to get such. Corresponding with the feeling, from early times, of the deep interest of personal consciousness, has been to me the feeling which I have alluded to already l , of the dreariness, as I have called it, of the phenomenalist view, or knowledge as ot experience, taken to represent everything for us. I will not repeat what I have said about that. In a similar manner, my condemnation in these 'rough notes' of what I have called 'notionalism' is not an opinion simply produced in me by the sight of what seems to me a wrong philosophy, but represents much effort in thinking what, as to these logical conceptions, is the truth. A belief in a real substance, or thing in itself, is what I have always had, and have most strongly: but it is this very belief which makes me revolt against the philosophy which would disjoin from the sub- stance or reality of the thing every thing, it appears to me, which we do or can come to know about it: it is the assigning a character of unkn uess to the substance which i- repug- it to me. So long as our knowledge is imperfect, which in fact all knowledge of every being One Being only except must be, we must suppose complete knowledge, i" fast* d out incomplete knowledge on: and the complete knowledge thus supposed includes of course a portion <>i' ignorance, or unknown, But of the unknown there is no reason for us t<> suppose either that it is unknowable, or that it is (necessarily) more important to the thinghood of the thing about which the knowL than the qualities which we know about it. There is without doubt a - use in which we may say that knowledge itself i> impossible —complete knowledge Decessarily i-, and in various point-, of view complete knowledge and know- ire tic- same. In knowledge of thought, we suppose 1 Ante, )• 15. 1M -2 148 LOGIC — MR MILL. [CHAP. subject or a substance, and knowledge is the filling this up with its appropriate predicates or attributes. In knowledge of acquaintance, our attributes and those of the thing communi- cate: but there is not proper knowledge except so far as we, consciousness, thought, comes into play: there must be, for knowledge, something in the thing with which this can come into communication — is there ? the thinghood of the thing, thus, looking at the matter this way, is the thought locked up in it, which by the key of our sensive power, fitting its sensible qua- lities, we try to open. But in either of the cases it may be said, do we ever arrive at knowledge? Can we ever, in the former case, convert our supposition into anything which we can consider as more than supposition, and can we ever, in the latter case, get at any thought in the thing in regard of which we may consider that it is more than imagination on our part about it? It appears to me, that what is to be said about this is that which I hold strongly, that while there are two views, there are not two parts, of knowledge, and consequently, that it is not knowledge, or any one kind of knowledge, which we cannot get at, but complete knowledge: the knowledge of the thought locked up in a thing is not generically different from the knowledge of its sensible qualities, which are all portions of its thought or thinghood: in the same way substance is not differ- ent from the qualities, and we attain towards the knowledge of it as we fill up the knowledge of the qualities. Knowledge is thus a reality, though either of the two manners of knowledge may be described in such a manner as apparently not to con- stitute it: the mere rubbing ourselves against fact (which, con- cisely put, is the view which some have of experience) is not knowledge, nor on the other hand, is the imaginatively sup- posing what after all may be chimera: learning, or the action of the mind in gaining knowledge, is by these two processes in conjunction, but knowledge does not consist of an union of the two, which would be incongruous, but of a something between the two, which may be conceived arrived at either way, and to which we may approximate, and really approximate, each way. As we learn, thought and fact may be said roughly to cor- rect each other: but it is incongruous to describe knowledge either as thought corrected by fact (as something different from VIII.] LOGIC — MR MILL. 149 thought), or as fact converting itself, in the mind, into thought (as something different from fact). We may describe it as right thought, and then what such thought presents to us we call fact: or we may describe it as communication with fact, and then, supplementing something, which in this, the incomplete view, we must, we may suppose the communication accompanied on our part by feeling. In the former case we have the know- ledge given us, with difficulty as to knowing its truth : in the latter case we have something given which so far as it is know- ledge, must be true, but is it knowledge 1 '} I seem unable however to keep the thread of philosophical reminiscence, and will only mention one more particular, which is in fact the occasion of my having alluded to the subject here. AVith respect to the psychology which I have rather strongly criticised, from my very first, study of it I have felt, though indistinctly, the difficulty about it; what it was that it aimed at, or what it could result in. The sort of bewilderment or puzzle which Berkeley's views produce in many has always ap- peared to me to belong to the whole of this psychology. I 1 One of the many possible ways in which the distinction between the two views of knowledge may be put, and of which I give, for illustration, as many as suggest themselves to me, is this : suppose a mirror reflecting the universe : and then make in succession the two suppositions, first, of the mirror simply feeling the reflection, or image, if we may use such language, i. e. of there being feeling in it, we cannot tell more, varying with the variations of the image: next, of an eye more or less identified with the mirror seeing the ima^e. We have here roughly the two views of knowledge. In tin; first, the communication, that Is, the reflection of the universe in the mirror, is a fact, there is no (piestion as to mi-take or error in it. in wy . but it is not knowledge : for knowledge we must Buppose an accompanying sensation, and as to the relation of such sensation to the image, or whether it is pose ble for it to have any relation to it, we cannot say anything at all. That is, with knowledge begins fallibility or uncertainty. In the second c we have only the depreciated mediate or indirect knowledge: but it is knowlei from the first, it 1.. gins with though! : possibility of mistake, the test oihnou as distinct from m< re familiarity an. I habit, is in it from the first; tie i tivity from the first, or knowing what we are about. Not to dwell on this, I will jn t these two views of knowledge cannot !»■ pot together. We an- sentient in ir.. i - iii tin- on..- view, in the other we are contemplators of the universe as it is in our consciousness ; but rs of our sentience, because the . put different ways. The supposed eye seeB the imau'e, not tl,.- supposedly coincident sensation. In the same way it would lie unrei able to -ay thai pari ol the ims n. and part felt. 150 LOGIC — MR MILL. [CHAP. never could understand how, if we took for granted, as we all naturally do, that we were members of a spatial universe with things round about us, it ever could be considered a question whether things really existed, or how there could be any meaning in giving an account (as by means of 'Common Sense') of our supposition of their existence. The whole psychology begins with human beings knowing that they are members of a spatial world, and then, as an important defence against scepti- cism, it is established upon this basis that they believe (safr on principles of common sense) that they are so. What is their actual state of mind on the subject seems in this way hard to tell. I have always had a strong faith in philosophy and thouo-ht, and have believed that the former existed for a better purpose than to make itself a reductio ad absurdum by return- ing upon its postulate and invalidating it. The uneasy state of one's logical feelings thus produced is likely to concentrate thouo-ht more strongly upon personality or consciousness as the real starting-point, in distinction from which the phenomenal point of view is an assumed one for certain purposes, so that in the establishing that it does not hold for others there is no- thing at all surprising. It would be an interesting subject to consider how philo- sophers have got into what seems to me this singular position, but I will not follow that now, but mention the point in this psychology, a slight and small one, which is the immediate oc- casion of my introducing these experiences. The relation of logic to the above psychology long ago puzzled me. "We are told in the books of psychology about ' perception', this is what the logicians call ' simple apprehen- sion', without any reason given why the logicians should call the same thing by one name and the psychologists by another. I am inclined to think that the different ways of speaking, all in my view meaning the same thing, coming some from logic and some from psychology, cause in the minds of students a great deal of puzzle, and in the minds of philosophers them- selves a great deal of notionalism, by the converting different accounts of the same process into different processes. I am quite aware that the having, so to speak, different * philosophical sciences, and the yet mixing them, in some par- VIII.] LOGIC — MR MILL. 151 ticulars, together, is a thing which has been from the begin- ning, and certainly was in Aristotle. But I am sure it is desirable as much as possible to consider them together, and as one subject, or we get into hopeless confusion. When logic and psychology are pursued each by a different person, are they the same line of thought in different language, or are they not, and who is to know ? In Aristotle, Logic, Physics, Metaphysics, and Psychology all are connected with each other, or have common parts. But Aristotle's psychology is much more pure psychology, as I should call it, than the nob-psychology which we have been speaking of. The Aristotelian logic and psychology therefore confuse each other very little. Logic is the theory of thought and of correctness of thought and of advance of correct thought by reasoning, almost for any kind of intelligence, almost for any universe. There is assumed a subject of thought as a peg to hang predicates on, and in these predicates is the knowledge : the subjects, in virtue of the predicates attachable to them, may be put together (as terms) in propositions, and the propo- sitions again be put together in syllogisms leading to further propositions. Correctness of thought is in proper predication, in making propositions and putting them together: advance of thought is in the fruitfulness of such predication, making of propositions, and putting them together, in view of further pre- dication. Right thought, and its advance, being thus in right predi- cating, asserting, and syllogizing, what, to begin, is right predi- cating? The 'subject' is to be supposed a something with only one character about it, viz. a capacity for certain predicates and not for others, and when we have attached .-ill the right predical to it we thoroughly know it; when we have attached any wrong ones (or for which it has not a capacity) we are mistaken about it. How to attach whal predicates to what Bubject, Aristotle tells us nothing: that belongs to knowledge of the universe: hut he give.- ;i rough list of heads of predication, greal or summary predicates, predicaments, categories . The predicates too may attach to the subject in differenl ways: he speaks of 152 LOGIC — MR MILL. [CHAP. these to some extent, and bis successors catalogued them : they are a sort of higher predicaments or categories still, 'predicables '. In all predications we assert, but when the subject has had any predicate attached to it, or is at all clothed, it becomes not only, in reference to other predicates, a subject, but in reference to the proposition, or assertion, a term, as does also that which in the proposition is predicated of it. For rightness of asser- tion, besides the relation of subjects to their possible predicates, there have\to be considered certain other relations of the terms to each other. Propositions put together in certain ways bear fruit in fur- ther propositions, or predications, by which therefore our know- ledge of the subjects is increased : and thus knowledge grows. Of the manner of tins growth of knowledge I have at various times^ spoken. It is as I have said by imagination or speculation about things with constant self-correction arising mainly from our constant rubbing against things, as I a short time ago expressed it, which latter it is that in the main fixes predicates to subjects. The Aristotelian scheme may be re- garded as an exceedingly abstract outline of a vast imagina- tion about things,~with certain ways and methods in which this imagination may correct itself and keep itself in order inde- pendently of this experience : still the imagination without the experience is entirely visionary; as the experience without the imagination or thought would be merely proximity or famili- arity — not knowledge. As I have said, whatever we rightly imagine we might con- ceivably have been in contact with: whatever we are in contact with we might conceivably have pre-imagined: there is nothing generically different in the object in the two cases : the difference isjn the manner of our learning. We might therefore if we liked it, call Aristotle's list of categories a sketch of the great heads of reality or fact in all, or almost all, conceivable uni- verses : the great category of ' quality ' would I suppose be the repository ^of differences, and an universe in which (their) matter had what some would call different secondary qualities, or in vvhich light, oxygen, magnetism, &c. were replaced, if we can conceive it, by other elements or natural agents, would differ from ours in this category. VIII.] * LOGIC — MR MILL. 153 The growth of knowledge being, as I mentioned just above, by the ""speculation and experience joined, it is obvious that the Aristotelian proceeding, running wholly on the former, or on the latter only in so very abstract a form, can be of little conse- quence as to this. I shall call a supposed method of Logic, of any kind, which so far incorporates into itself the notion of actual experience as to be able to take into account the growth of knowledge, whether in the individual or the race, a Real Logic, in contrast with such as the Aristotelian, which we may call if we like, when pure and by itself, Formal, and which may have various valuable applications, besides this, if we consider it one : as to verification, to grammar, or to digestion of argument. The great mass of ' the Philosophy of the Human Mind' is in its details an attempt at a Real Logic of individual know- ledge ; an attempt vitiated in various ways. For this Real Logic of the individual is of more complicated and difficult con- sideration than the Real Logic of the knowledge of the race, unless we may say that this, to counterbalance, has difficulties of a different kind. The greater difficulty is in this: that we are considering the growth of the knowledge of one mind in the midst of a quantity of others where the knowledge exists. This I believe, at bottom, is the origin of the mis-psychological error on which I comment so abundantly. 'A stone lies before me: I see it'. "We put this down quite naturally in the account of the growth of individual knowledge, not apparently thinking that the first clause is other people's knowledge : the second is the step-of mine: and, now, that the step is taken, I say the -• me lies before me. Our collective Ileal Logic, which I shall shortly speak of, is not to the same extent puzzled with the double view of angels and superior beings of we know not how many amounts and kinds Beeing the universe, and our seeing it with them, in the way in which the human race will (physi- cal! it, we may suppose, some hundred centuries heme, .-honld it last so long, ami with this, of our race coming step by p e it in this real way. In respect of the race, we can understand and watch the learning, because we cannot and do Hot make the ?asl and ah.-uid - ii|>|tosit ion of all the /,/ !„■ inmnt in i hi- way as already exi i ing Had '. 1 I an Dot certain whether this ia put in the best way, but 1 leave it. On the ject of advance in perception ce in knowledge "I natui beyond 154 LOGIC MR MILL. [CHAP. The fact of the one learning mind existing in the middle of a multitude of knowing ones is of importance in another way. While almost all books, I think, of the philosophy of the Human Mind make, as above, the already existing knowledge come in where it ought not, they do not make it come in where it ought. The course of individual knowledge is described not only without sufficient reference to the consideration, how much, as a matter of fact, we are taught by others, but also to the more important consideration, that whether we are actually taught by others or not, our intelligence is in its very constitu- tion social, and our mind is the mind of a social being, a being such as our organization (tongue, &c.) shows us to be. We think of necessity socially : more socially perhaps in some soli- tude than in some society : we think with the minds of others as well as our own: thought is internal conversation and dis- cussion. Language, which is social, goes to the bottom of our mind: not but that we might, and perhaps do, abundantly ima- gine without language, but that we should not, without it, come to anything like the results to which we do come, and that in respect of some of the earliest and simplest things. The two sets of Lectures of Sir William Hamilton which have been published are one on Metaphysics, and the other on Logic, the two courses having some introductory Lectures in common. The Lectures on Metaphysics I have to a certain degree examined, because, though the subject is called Meta- physics, and the point of view, the purpose assigned being the analysis of consciousness, is more philosophical than that of several of Sir William Hamilton's Edinburgh predecessors, yet still the subject is considered 'the Philosophy of the Human Mind' ; and the confusion of the wrong psychology is abun- dantly prevalent. In pursuing his subject of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Sir William Hamilton discusses faculties &c. and gives several new names, but hardly seems to have said anything very important. What I have criticized in those Lectures of Sir William Hamilton is his application of the term 'consciousness' to 'per- ception'. It may perhaps be remembered, that the point of view of the analysis of consciousness has been called by me what would be commonly called perception, and their relation to each other, I shall have a few things to say. VIII.] LOGIC MR MILL. 155 sometimes the pliilosophical (answering to Sir William Hamil- ton's metaphysical) and sometimes the logical. Sir William Hamilton's error seems to me to have arisen from his haviner before him the psychology of his predecessors, which prevented him, as he was so abundantly able to do and one would have thought would have been likely to do, taking the line of philo- sophical (not mis-psychological) metaphysics and logic in con- junction, going so naturally as they would together. As it is, I imagine students ask themselves what his metaphysics and logic have to do with each other : they read, I think, the former more than the latter, with some wonder, of the kind which I mentioned before, how the subject comes to be two. Locke's Essay on Human Understanding is Logic and Psychology united : most of the Philosophies of the Human Mind are intended to supersede the necessity of the Formal Logic, and Dugald Stew- art, whose memory Sir William Hamilton cherishes in a manner which does him great honour, says of it that its 'inutility is now pretty generally acknowledge'!, and it deserves our atten- tion chiefly as a curious article in the history of science': while a Logic of the kind which I have called Real Logic he describes as the valuable logic, though still in its infancy. The importance of all this is of the following kind : people constantly talk about these different professedly philosophical subjects as it' they were like branches of physical science, say geology and botany, in regard of which one man may know and value both, another may know one and honour the other as a ace, anothermay know one and think, or pretend to think, the other worthless, and all this be of no consequence in respect of his knowledge of what he does know. But this is not the case with the e philosophical subjects. Theyare rival claimants more or less for the same ground. The thinking wrongly about their relation to each other may do damage in all sort.-, of ways. Sir William Hamilton speaks, as we have seen, of matter being the objeci of consciousness. It seems odd thai he should do this, when, in a differenl sel of Lectures, those on Logic, we have the real objects of consciou uess, which he calls ' concepts', treated truly and properly a such: we seem to have here, all along, thai difficulty which I spoke of, and the student of Sii William Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics is astonished t<. • 156 LOGIC — MR MILL. [CHAP. find that, when he has got through them, there are two volumes, as big as the others, treating knowledge and the processes of the human understanding in an entirely different manner and with different language — after, all, he asks, have I only got half the subject, and now I know what 'perceiving' things is have I got to learn all about the ' forming concepts ' of them, and is it a different thing or the same ? I have written this (and shall now not go further into the subject) for two reasons: first, to suggest that these things want putting together — we want to know, more than people are aware of, what different terms only express the same thing put different ways ; and secondly, to account for my speaking of the philosophical and the logical view as in the main the same, though by the logical we may often mean what, as compared with the other, is an abstraction. If Sir William Hamilton had put his metaphysics and his logic together, I do not think we should have had the same confusion. The 'consciousness of matter' seems to me to be a jumbling together of the things impressing our senses and our forming concepts or ideas of them, which would not have been fallen into except that the whole theory of this forming concepts is made into a separate subject for a different set of Lectures. I mil say no more about the Formal Logic and the various books of interest and value upon it. What I protest strongly against is the realizing its terms (which is what I have called notionalism) : but I do not at all call in question the great value of its language for its proper purpose. Its value depends in every way upon this non-realizing, upon its being kept formal and abstract. The attempt to apply it too much may very pos- sibly I think by confusing it and realizing it in another sort of way, injure its value 1 . But that is not now my business. What I am going to speak of is the Real Logic of the know- ledge of the human race, which is at once an important branch of literature and an important philosophical subject, and the two books which I have taken as specimens of it are Mr Mill's and Dr Whewell's. 1 An exact appreciation of the real bearing and importance of the extensions of tLis Logic by Sir William Hamilton, Professor de Morgan, the late Professor Boole, Dr Thomson, and others, would be of very much interest. -1* VIII.] LOGIC — MR MILL. 157 My concern, it will be remembered, is not so much with the advance of knowledge as with the beginning of it: not with reasoning, but with sensations; with conceiving and perceiving But since this latter process or these processes take place in advanced knowledge, of course I am concerned with the ad- vance ; what I mean is that I shall say little about the manner or mental machinery of the advance, reasoning, syllogism, in- duction, deduction. Mr Mill's book is what I should call a Phenomenalist Loo-ic with a starting point from the Aristotelian or Formal Loo-ic. It will be remembered that I described the phenomenalist view, as I called it, to be an abstraction, meaning this : that when we have got the knowledge, we may suppose the things we know to exist without any reference to our knowing them or to the manner in which we come to know them: but that in reality the manner in which we come to know them is by a great deal of imagination, speculation, and action of mind. However, when we know them, we say one of two things of them, both coming to the same: either, 'they exist': or 'we believe them'. There is a third thing which we might say: viz. 'We have learnt them'. In the first case the understood men- tal accompaniment is more or less of this nature : ' There they are : do you not see them?' In the second, ' I can give a reason for my belief, if you wish to hear it'. In the third, ' I have thought about the matter a good deal and made many observa- tions, and this is the result I have come to'. The view of knowledge which 1 understand Mr Mill to take is that which I should call the proper phenomenalist view, or the notion of 'adstance', 'presence at' anything (the French assistance), which I have already in some degree alluded to, and to which I hope to return 1 . 1 Mr Mill's phenomenalist 1 gic is in '-fleet a description of the farts of nature, the heads of this description being suggested by the relations and processes of . as these \>:< previously underel I. 'Mir knowledge is then, in hi.. view, a Following "r tracii g in one direction or another, a keening close to, these Thus in : ' of propositions, whal Mr Mill considers is, thai where the proposition is important forth advai ! knowledge, what we are doing in ion of anything as to the applicability of the terms or names (which i* the Ham- thing as thi reference of things to classe i, nor the making a ji in th that the result of the proposition is something in or having referenci 158 LOGIC — MR MILL. [CHAP. The special character of this view is the avoidance as much as possible of any reference to activity of the mind — the saying but little, so to speak, of 'thought about things'. So far as the state of the mind which possesses knowledge, in face of the facts of nature, is to be described, it is to be described as a state of belief upon evidence. We are in phenomenal contact, so to speak, with every thing that we know : but this contact, in re- gard of a great deal of our knowledge, is not immediate, distinct, recoguisable : it is mediate through the intervention of evidence on which we believe. We believe that the earth moves round the sun, and can, if we wish, exhibit a scheme of the grounds of our belief in this, for examination as to satisfactoriness : at the same time these grounds only represent a complicated and vast contact of the same nature as that in virtue of which we consider that a tree before us is green, or a bird in front of us is flying. On this ' belief on evidence', as I am not at this moment going to dwell upon it, I will just remark so much : that the evidence upon which we should justify our belief is not at all likely to represent in any way the process by which the know- ledge of it has actually been come to : that such evidence is a very vague term, and the manner of its possible exhibition, to our own mind (a view, a change of view, a notion &c.) but the assisting, as it were, the standing by or looking on at, an (imagined or actual) natural fact, which the terms of the proposition, indicate. The proposition in this phenomenalist logic, is not the reference by us of a thing to a class, nor is a judgment, or opi- nion, on our part, about a thing, but is an expression of a natural fact or rela- tion of things. What is important about the proposition is not the goodness and good employment of a classification of things which it may imply, nor the correctness of thought on our part which it may imply, but its trueness to the phenomenal fact. The distinction between the latter two of these members is in fact the dis- tinction between the logical (as I have called it) and the phenomenalist view. The object of the previous logic has been correctness of thought : that of Mr Mill's logic is true following and rendering phenomena. In the distinction between the two latter and the former of these members, disallowing this, the reference in the first instance to classification, as the proper business of any logic, Mr Mill, as I understand him, has my hearty adhesion. His views as to the subordination of the classification of things to what I will call their nature, which latter, not the former, our propositions in the first instance refer to, are important and true for all logic alike. Reference of things to classes and the introducing in this way quantitative relation into logic may be a most valuable and important subsidiary thing to do, but logic looks at things as variously endued with similar qualities, and therefore as classifiable, not, except subsidiarily, as already classified. Till.] LOGIC — MR MILL. 159 in many cases, infinitely various : that, in fact between the remote, hidden, or complicated phenomenon and human sense, there are what we may call two threads of experience, contact or communication, the one the historical thread by which the knowledge has been arrived at, the other the thread of most satisfactory justification of the belief, or nearest communication between the sense and the phenomenon now. So much as to the relation of the evidence to experience and sensation. Mr Mill's purpose, as I understand it, is to avoid as much as possible what I have called the logical point of view in our simpler or more immediate knowledge of nature, and when we come to the more complicated and mediate knowledge of it, the historical attainment of which by the human race is what we call the advance of science and is the object of Real Logic, to treat this by what I may call the Logic of Evidence. It is the minor proposition in a syllogism, or that in an argument which most corresponds to such minor proposition, which con- stitutes what we should call the evidence for the conclusion — as distinct from the principle of the argument, or the considera- tions which give value to the evidence, or the theory upon which we conclude from it, which vaguely represent what in a regular syllogism is the major proposition. Mr Mills treatment of the syllogism seems to me to go upon this view. My business here however is very little with reasoning or belief upon evidence, but with the general view of knowledge: and I proceed t.. explain what I mean by saying that in resped of our simple and more immediate knowledge, Mr .Mill takes great pain- to avoid the logical point of view: which is in this way remarkable, thai he bas taken great pains to preserve the eld logical language, and if I may so speak, utilize it. In this I rpathize with him much : but I think it has led him into !i amount of error, which I -hall afterwards notice. The old logicians had thru tie— proc simple apprehen- . ' perception, ption), 'judgment', and 'reasoning', and one way or another this triplicity must always Thoughl or language naturally divides itself into notions or words, judg- ments or propositions, and Byllogisms or argumenl It i> for the two former members of tin- triplicity that Mi- Mill as I said carefully avoids the Logical poinl of view. 1G0 LOGIC — MR MILL. [CHAP. For instance I mean that in regard of the first member of the triplicity he prefers not to speak of notions, ideas, con- cepts, or to use corresponding terms, but will take cognisance only of things, which things we express by names. His care in this respect is more striking on account of his equally care- fully avoiding all nominalism, as it was called, that is, the ignoring more or less the reasons why things were collected as they were into classes, and had such and such names given to them, and the attending only to the classes and names. Mi- Mill sees more in a thing than a mere member of a class and object of a name: he sees in it the properties in virtue of which it is such : but he will not allow of 'notion', ' idea', 'con- cept ' of it. This, so far as we have gone, is what I have called the plie- nomenalist point of departure in contradistinction to the logical : and for the better explaining what I say of Mr Mill, I will just say how / should have proceeded from this point of de- parture, which of itself is a very legitimate one. I should have asked the physical, chemical, physiological, philosopher what it was to the best of his knowledge that the universe was made up of, and I suppose he would have told me elements, forces, tissues, organizations, I know not what more : he and I should both of us have understood that there must be space and time for all these to exist in : and though we should have in some degree diverged as to what comes next, yet we should have gone some way together; namely, as to laws, order, system, if I may venture to say, ' idea'. Mr Mill's first proceeding however with his 'things' is to categorize them. This is a part of what I mentioned, his care to preserve the old logical methods and language, while altering their application and utilizing them. I mentioned previously about the Aristotelian categories, that though they proceed from a logical point of view, yet they might be turned round to a sort of quasi-phenomenalist one, in which view they will represent the main constituents, so to speak, of almost any possible universe. Mr Mill finds, reason- ably enough, that they are a very poor catalogue of the con- stituents of this universe, and proceeds to utilize the notion by substituting others for them. VIII.] LOGIC — MR MILL. 161 I will make a few remarks on what he substitutes. He makes four categories of things : minds : bodies : attri- butes of mind, viz. feelings : attributes of bodies, of which then he makes sub-categories. This classification resolves itself, for use, into the two latter heads (as I have given them) : for minds, and bodies (or sub- stances), are only described as the unknown and unknowable substrata of the feelings and the bodily attributes or qualities: the categories therefore of things which are objects of know- ledge are really to be considered only two, with the observation appended that these objects of knowledge are not independent, but involve in themselves (how can Mr Mill or anybody avoid saying in our notion of them ?) a reference to something un- known as the substratum of them. "\\ e are thus, at this apparently second step of our progress, only advanced as far as to say that the things (known to us are yet only as nameables) are attributes of a substratum, which, in reality, was Aristotle's first .step, or was the notion, itself, of categories. In one respect indeed we are further advanced, but, it seems to me, wrongly, or, at least, confusedly. Mr Mill makes two sets of attributes of two substrata, mind and 1) >dy. The importance of this proceeding in Mr Mill is this. For the whole of what we may call his actual logic, things are with him only the^ attributes of body with their substratum what- i is to be considered about this), and the above classification is of no applicati m a1 all. It only receives application when it is considered, as Mr Mill does consider in the latl r part of his book, that the same Logic which he has exhibited and illus- trated from an examination of the advance of phenomenal know- Ledge La applicable also to knowledge of the attributes of mind. Now thai it may be possible to find or exhibit a 'real' Logic, I ■ used the word real applicable both to the study of mind and the study of physical nature, I have no \s i h to deny. I; • I do not admil the propriety of the proc settling such a from observation of the advance of phj sical knowledge my 'phenomenalism') and then at once saying, All this is applicable similarly to the study of feelings or mind. I I 1G2 LOGIC — MR MILL. [CHAP. The relation which facts of mind, so to call them, bear to facts of body is not this : nor on this supposition, can we deal properly with the great fact of mind, human liberty. As the appai'ent purpose of this classification, in my view, involves errors, so the classification itself involves some curious danger of confusion. Mr Mill sees well, and has expressed in language which leaves nothing to be desired for clearness, the difference between feelings (or sensations) and physical fact or relations of any kind. He also says as distinctly as I or any one taking my view could say it, that, nevertheless, in the last analysis, all physical fact or relation is in fact our feeling of such fact or relation : this, our feeling or sensation, is what we come to in the last resort as to all. But yet again, in another place, he says, in effect 1 , that it is conceivable that further physiological knowledge may resolve all our feeling, as we call it, into a sort of refined physical fact: into a delicate and special kind of physical relation. The complication here is great. There is a circularity which seems almost to result in nihilism : for if physical fact is at the bottom only a manner of describing our feeling, and yet again this our feeling is or may be a refined kind of physical fact, we seem to revolve endlessly without any logical standing for our feet. In fact, Mr Mill seems to try to take at once two positions which, in my view, can only be taken separately ; we may choose which we will take, and there is one of the two which may be so taken as to embrace the other. But Mr Mill's view seems to me to puzzle phenomenalism as much as to annihilate the higher philosophy. The phenomenalist will, I conclude, say with Mr Mill, that as he looks upon physical science, it is within its purview, it is what he hopes will one day be accomplished, that mental facts, as he would call them, one such fact being what we call our consciousness of personality, should be recognized and under- stood as one kind of affections or circumstances of the orga- nism, and nothing more, in the same ways as its size, colour, form, are another kind of circumstances of it. But I do not think such a person would be inclined to say with Mr Mill that the qualities of matter are after all only our feelings of some- thing. The phenomenalist's test of reality is not our feeling 1 Noticed afterwards, p. 197. VIII. ] LOGIC MR MILL. 1G about anything, but things or elements as he understands them — what I have before called ' natural agents', for instance. Aud conversely the logician or philosopher who really looks upon the ultimate test of reality, for us, as being our consciousness, is, in truth, precluded by his initial view (and this, as I shall have to say more fully, is what it seems to me philosophers too much forget) from allowing the possibility that this conscious- ness can, by any process, be proved to be only a circumstance or relation of matter. It stands to him as his basis for every- thing else that he knows, and therefore, whatever may be proved from this so as that he knows it, the utmost is that he must hold it in accompaniment with that his original thought or basis. On this view it can never be the feeling itself, but only something about the feeling, which on any supposition of pheno- menalism, can be shown to be a circumstance of matter. It seems to me then that the manner in which Mr Mill tries to put mind and its feelings by the side of body and its attri- butes is not successful. It was open to him to take the phe- nomenalist view, to understand by 'things' body and its attri- butes, to take as ultimate realities chemical elements or primary forces, to trace the logic of our knowing them and all about them (supposing it possible), and to consider it conceivable that future physiology might possibly bring into relation with them the as yet incommensurable or unassimilated matter, not yet things for this view, which we call 'consciousness', 'feelings'. This view would have had its truth as what I have called an abstraction. Or it was open to him to take the other view, which, made a co-abstract inn with this, is the 'logical', an categorize or classify the ' things', so the same is now done as to the facts or phenomena, and there are found to be five great facts or heads of fact 1 . On these I shall not comment, except very slightly, as e.g. on the mention of 'space' and 'time'. They occur I think here for the first time, and I am not quite certain as to the position which they are intended to occupy — i.e. whether they are to be considered ' things ', and to come under the category of attributes of matter, or of matter and of mind — or whether they are something prseter-real which we are here introduced to, and with which 'things' have rela- tions, such relations as we see here, forming the object of propo- sitions. I scarcely know whether Mr Mill is quite aware of the great delicacy of speaking as he does about co-existence in time and again in space, and about 'order' in them. Two things or facts, both occupying or taking place in space, or one doing so and one not, or perhaps both not doing so, are co-exist- ent 1 supp ise in time if tjiey occupy the same time. The saint- two things or facts, pari of their nature being tin-' occupation of space, if they occupy the same space, are jusl what are not xistent, either in time or in space: they are non-eo-ex- iit in time, and though they have a special relation the one to tin' other, it i- aol "in' which any term of this kind can express. All objects filling space and co-existenl in time may ■ ■ailed co-existenl in space: but I suppose co-existence in 1 Mr M !' _•'. ;reat heads "f natural fact, just aa he giv< -. '.\itli what- sis or cat o[ things. Ti ire facta about the things, or what th< inner as propositions are about the terms, "r whal they enter into. Th< jories or kinds "T f.u-t an I enoes, Sequi l ' ition, Resemblance. 106 LOGIC — MR MILL. [CHAP. space means proximity, side-by-sideness — equally exclusive of occupation of the same space or of a remote one. I mention these various things only to show that what Mr Mill is speaking about here is not at all a matter of easy con- sideration, or clear — otherwise I do not know that about space and time I am particularly likely to differ with him. Whether they had come in previously under 'things' or come in here first as something with which ' things' have a relation, is not a matter of consequence in my view. Things are in them, and yet if we like to extend the use of the term, they are things too : they are objects, so far as we can tell, of our right or grounded thought, and that is all that I mean by ' things'. As space and time come thus in here, after we have cate- gorized the universe, so there comes in at a later stage still, in the chapter entitled ' On the Ground of Induction', something which I should have thought would have come in sooner. But I will speak of this by itself in another chapter, though I fear it will not be in what I publish now. In the same manner in which 'things' are 'nameables', so propositions are in Mr Mill's view, though he does not use the language, 'asseribles' or ' assertables'. That is, their object exists in nature in the same way as the object of names does. The universe is an infinite complication of the 'nameable' and the 'assertable' (or thing and fact) from the former of which we separate portions into distinct nameables or things, from the latter of which we separate portions into distinct assertables or propositions. A thorough philosophical language is the ideal of a good separation of the former kind. An ideally good separa- tion of the latter kind would be a perfect scheme or rationale of knowledge. As I said in regard of names, we are puzzled by the fact of human error, and by the vast mass of the asserted which is not properly asserted, that is, of propositions which do not corre- spond with any facts of nature. The truth of propositions is their so corresponding. And the case in regard of the proposi- tions is different from that in regard of the names. It is in the asserting facts of nature, and only such, that is truth. And how do we know hoiv to do this, and when we do do it? This is proper Logic : and here, in respect of the third VIII.] LOGIC MR MILL. 167 member of the triplicity, Mr Mill does come to a certain extent to a logical point of view, i.e. entertains the idea not only of things being and our expressing them, but of our thinking and reasoning about them. I may perhaps however have spoken too generally about this — but it is not of importance. I am not writing to criticize Mr Mill. There is in him abundance of most valuable logic in reference to definitions 6cc. (the earlier portion of the triplicity). And, in reference to reasoning (the latter portion of it), there is kept up fully, as with what went before, the notion that what we want is in nature — that it is not supposition of ours about nature. Only that with reference to this third member of the triplicity, the manner of our proceeding in reference to what is thus in nature is given more elaborately : as is natural, this being the most special and thoroughly necessary business of logic. Without at all entering to or criticizing Mr Mill's Real Logic as compared with others, which would be quite beyond my present purpose, I shall just mention what in his view (so far as I understand it) is in nature, and how we, in the progress of knowledge, proceed in reference to it. Mr Mill changes his ground (so I describe it, but that is of no importance) from th ings to fact. I mean by this, that his important continent of the universe as something to be investigated, in other words, that which the universe and its contents exist in, is time, not space: in othei words still, that which we are to investigate in the universe is not (at least so much) what is or exists in the universe, but what goes on in it. Order in space is with him of some import- ance in the universe, but only apparently in reference to some geometrical considerations, and so much as to occupy a few pages: what is important in the universe is, its sequences, and I shall take the liberty of calling them, it- 'contemporanei- ties' or co-existences in time) or 'simultaneities' (I use the word to prevenl any misleading of the term 'co-existences'). But as the sequences are thus importanl in the univ< there is something most important in respect of them : there are uniformities of them, or invariable sequences among thi m: these uniformities are, in a manner, quasi-identities or same- es of sequence, i.e. of fad or occurrence, they are whal we 1G8 LOGIC — MR MILL. [CHAP. should describe roughly as the same fact, their sameness being of the same sort as that which generic identity gives to things — they constitute kinds of fact — they are sequences different in time and place, and with different accompaniments, but alike in themselves. These sequences have their conditions or antecedents (which answer with them to the qualities of things) : but each sequence has what we may call a prime condition, or antecedent not only invariable, but really connected with it, and unconditional, which gives us the answer to the question, Why has it occurred ? and which, as we conceive, accounts for the sequence being what it is : and this is its 'cause'. In the case of contemporaneities or (definitely constituted) tilings, it might be considered there must also be some prime quality, corresponding to cause in the case of fact, giving the reason and principle of the thing, and making the thing what it is, in the same way as the cause does in the case of fact. This however Mr Mill does not allow : considering indeed, that we may indeed look for the cause or causes which have made the thing what it is, but that is all. I mention this, not as criti- cizing, but as showing what I mean by saying that with him what is important in the universe is the fact or sequences in it, not the things (contemporaneities or co-existences) which, he considers, depend upon the other. His proceeding has a sort of similarity of contrast with that of Bacon, with whom the causes of fact depended on the forms or prime properties of things, which he thought the important part of nature \ I mention it also for this reason. The regularity of the uni- verse, that is, both the entire connexion of fact and the entire compages of thing, is composed, in Mr Mill's view, of a number of regularities, or different sequences and co-existences. Mi- Mill speaks to this effect very quietly, without seeming to ob- serve how much he is saying. I have already spoken of the circumstances, most complicated, under which there takes place this process, which I am quite willing should be described as we please, either as the universe separating itself in our presence 1 Mr Mill criticizes Bacon's view, Vol. n. p. 128, 2nd Edit. See the accurate description given of this part of Bacon's method by Mr Ellis, in his General Introduction to Bacon's Philosophical Works, Ellis and Spedding's Edition. VIII.] LOGIC — ME MILL. 1CD into units of fact and being, or as our conceiving separate and in- dividual facts or things. In reality, the facts or sequences which he speaks of — would rarely have any unitary character at all, that is, would hardly be looked at as separate or particular fa< without the notion of a cause or necessary antecedent, and it is this which most strongly suggests the existence of such cause. But the same is the case in regard of things. Mr Mill's word 'coexistence' as I have before said, always puzzles me, and I converted it into 'contemporaneity'. But it is evident that a thing is more than a contemporaneity of attributes (a crow e.g. more than a contemporaneity of blackness, feathers, living tissue, &c.) and yet the question is, What more? Unless Mr Mill flies to his unknown substratum, about which I shall shortly have something to say, what is the nexus or connexion in virtue of which we say 'co-existence'? Is it spatial ? but what are we to think of things indefinitely separated or indefinitely dispersed in space, as the solar system, or a gas ? We seem to want, in regard of the 'thing', to individualize it or separate it from the rest of the universe, exactly that same nexus which the sup- posed cause supplies in the case of the sequence: or at least the 'co-existence' requires some explanation — a better one than the substratum. This looking in the universe at /'■■( rather than things, at what goes on rather than at what is, is of course a part of that to look at matter of knowledge as history or irrencc, which belongs to positivism (I do not mean the word at all in any invidious sense). Such then being the matter of knowledge, viz. the facts or sequences in the universe, and the circumstance of importance in reaped of each of these being it- 'cause', what is our mental position in respect of them? Any adstarwe or presence with them iiiu-i be by an intermediation of some kind, and it mighl have been considered what sort of intermediation there could be. Mr Mill however, as I have said, deals with the univ< ;,- with facts, not with things: and the knowledge of these facts he describes (mosl reasonably) as belief: by so doing he takes what I have called the logical point of new, or considers what is the state of out i jciousm 58. In other words, when v.,. ,, e the term belief of anything, it is not the $ame rie* J 70 LOGIC — MR MILL. [CHAP. if we said, Such and such a thing is in nature, it is there what- ever is the case with me, whether I believe it or disbelieve it, whether I am alive or dead, whether or not there is or has been anybody to know about it — in this case, if we do suppose anybody by or present (adstant) to know, we must bear in mind that the thing known is entirely independent of the know- ledge. When, on the other hand, we speak of believing, con- ceiving, &c, the thing known is a part of the knowledge : we are at what I called the logical point of view : we must not previously suppose the independent existence of the thing known, because its existence depends upon the correctness of our belief: we cannot speak with meaning of believing any- thing that is in the universe : we believe something about the universe, and if our belief is correct, then we may say with reason, if we like the language, the thing is in the universe, but not before. We believe then in the first instance, by a belief counter-respondent to (i. e. the same thing as, looked at the other way) simple adstance or presence with the thing known, the existence of the facts or sequences : if we believe anything as to the causes of them, it must be through an intermediation, which is what we call 'evidence', and the treatment of this evidence is the purpose of Mr Mill's Logic proper. Mr Mill's Logic then, like Bacon's, is simply a Theory of the Evidence of the Facts of Nature, or Art of dealing with it, in the double way of dealing with evidence which belongs to all use of it, whether for legal purposes or for others, viz. to find out by it that which we do not know, and to verify by it (or prove to others) what we suppose we do know. This is one way in which the advance of knowledge may be looked on: we go on from one to another fresh step of knowledge: each must be fresh, and each must be knowledge : we have got therefore first to have it suggested to our thought, and then shown to be knowledge : the evidence acts to both purposes. Mr Mill uses the word ' induction' in a wider and in a nar- rower sense : first, for all inference, or in fact all mental process, by which anything is added to knowledge, or know- ledge grows : and next for the particular case of such inference or process, in which the added knowledge is more general than VIII.] LOGIC MR MILL. 171 that which it had proceeded from. Hence the most important process of Induction in the first sense is Deduction, by which latter term is signified a triple process : first of Induction in the second sense : next of Ratiocination, which may be con- sidered an extension or expansion, in the sense of a wide appli- cation, of the general truth thus approximately obtained : and finally, a continued Verifying or testing it as thus applied. This language does not seem to me very happy for general use : by which I mean : every philosopher has a right to his own language : I think such language is generally best when it is most his own : and all this language is explained and used by Mr Mill with most perfect clearness. Brit the term ' De- duction', of which I do not very well know the history, was I suppose invented and used as an antithesis to Induction : and so, in books inferior to Mr Mill's, and in much philosophical language derived more or less from his views it constantly is : with him it scarcely represents such an antithesis: it is must expressly opposed to 'Experimental'. Altogether, I do not think the language is favourable to clearness of thought, and I question whether there is much significance in what Mr Mill says, ;is to the Anti-Baconian revolution (so to call it) now going on. But I will not dwell on this. I am not at all going to criticize Mr Mill's System of Real Logic, if so we may call it. To do this with any utility would requin- much more space and care than belongs to my presenl purpose. I will only make one or two observations. A Real Logic has in one respect two parts, thus: it contains always in some degree a sort of review of the manner in which knowledge has advanced, and also a scheme, Bystem, and ratio- nale of the manner of proceeding which is best for its future advance. Every Real Logic is to me of great interest on ac- count of the former of these parts of it, But the differenl view-; taken of the circunist anees under which knowledge has advanced, or, in other words, which have been the cause of its advance, make me pu1 not much faith in the second part, or in any Real Logic as a kind of art of the advance of know- ledge tor the future. Tic- logical language which the imw Real Logic is introducing semis to nie to he of ;i cumbrous character, as likely to be a load upon speculation and investi- 172 LOGIC — MR MILL. [CHAP. gation, and as little likely to be helpful, as much of the old Formal Logic. I think there is still something to desire as to the way in which we ought, philosophically, to think of the vast advance in physical knowledge which man has made. And till we understand it in this way more than it seems to me we do, I think any conclusions from the manner of it as to our best way of proceeding now are very doubtful. According to Mr Mill, we are unlearning Baconianism — would it, or would it not, have been better for us never to have learnt it \ or after all, is it nothing that we have learnt and are now unlearning, only a manner of speaking? Apparently, however, non-logical physical research has been too strong for our Baconian Real Looic — if this is so, I do not say that no purpose is served by our trying, in whatever degree, to direct this research by a fresh Heal Logic, but only that the same thing may happen again. In another quite different respect also a Real Logic has two parts : viz. it has a view of nature or of the universe, and it has a view of the manner in which our mind should proceed for the advance of the knowledge of it. These two are pretty certain of course to be connected together, and if the one is wrong, some things also necessarily in the other must be : but it may be some only, and it is quite possible that to a considerable ex- tent the views may be separable. In the case of Mr Mill his Logic of Evidence may be to a considerable extent separated from his phenomenalist view of nature : we may disallow, or think very insufficient, his view of the universe with its supposed sequences and their causes, and yet consider that the scheme he gives of the manner in which we may best find out the truth about something which we want to know, is most valuable, important, and useful. For all this ' Induction ' is only what we are always about when we want to increase our knowledge of any kind, or to find out the truth about anything. This Mr Mill tells us, and truly. And this is important, in relation of my present discussion, in this way. What seems most important to Mr Mill's mind, and what many of his readers think most important in his researches, is the making a Real Logic for Social and Moral Science — the appli- cation of methods which have been so fruitful as to physical science, now to moral. I have not the least doubt but that VIII.] LOGIC- — MR MILL. 173 Mr Mill's book is full of most valuable hints and helps for such a Keal Logic. But so far as this is so, I think it is quite in- dependently of his view of nature and of the universe. So tin- as his book is a good Real Logic in general, applicable to Moral Science as well as physical, it might be taken in hand for in- stance by a lawyer, and there might be published, similar in method to it, and without a word about sequences and co- existences, a treatise e.g. on the manner in which we hunt out crime, and bring it home to any body — the word ' causa ' is probably, like atria, a quasi-legal word from ' caveo ', signifying who or what is to blame for anything, to whom or what it ought to be attributed. I dare say Mr Mill's Deduction, with its three steps, would be the best way to set about this — a pre- liminary induction would fix upon some one for strong suspicion — suppose him to be the man, and argue then what other sup- positions must follow from this — see if these suppositions are verified by actual fact. I put this in this manner only to show how thoroughly independent all of it is of Mr Mill's peculiar lancmage or of his views of the universe : it is his Logic as a good logic of discovery of fact and belief of it on evidence which is of value for moral and social science, not his Logic as founded on any particular view of nature. How far Mr Mill's view of the [nductive Deduction to which I have just now referred, is really different from Dr WhewelTs view of fitting a cone ption to the observed farts, is no1 easy t.» I very much doubt whether it is greatly so. Mr Mill's discussion with Dr Whewell as to the 'conceptions' La in sub- stance double: Do the <-,,. ci ptions belong t" the mind, or are they, if right, in the facts? Is the process of tw> members only, a comparison of conceptions ami facts, or is ii more elabo- rate, induction, ratiocination ami verification? I have just alluded to this controvi which I am not ig to pursue, tor the two following reasons. My difference with DrWhewelLas we shall shortly see, is in this: that I think the conceptions- which are d< scribed as tal their origin in the mind are oothing but the other side, so to p ak, of the tacts which are described as independenl "I' the mind, and to which the conceptions arc to l> • applied. I regard therefore the firsi member oi the above di cu ion between 174 LOGIC MR MILL. [CHAP. Dr Whewell and Mr Mill as not involving any real matter of discussion. It is discussed in Mr Mill's Chapter on Abstractions : he makes great effort to prove that " the conceptions which we " employ for the colligation and methodization of facts, do not " develope themselves from within, but are impressed upon the " mind from without : they are never obtained otherwise than by " way of comparison and abstraction, and in the most important " and the most numerous cases are evolved by abstraction from "the very phenomena which it is their office to colligate 1 ". If the reader follows what I have written all along, he will see that one special value to me, of the view which I take, is, that it prevents this most undecidable controversy. Let us call knowledge whichever we please, an impression made by reality upon the mind, or a right view taken by the mind as to reality, but do not let us discuss which it is, for it is either and both: do not let us say it is one to the exclusion of the other, for then we shall infallibly become slaves of our terms, and think that we mean something really taking place, when we talk of 'conceptions being impressed upon the mind from without': in respect of each view, its counter- view is needed to prevent any such misapprehension: and last, do not let us say, which seems to me to be Dr Whewell's mistake, that knowledge is partly in the facts and partly from the mind : the highest conceptions are in the things as well as the most mate- rial and secondary quality: the most material quality, as a part of knowledge, is a notion of the mind, as well as the highest conception. If this discussion is put aside, we come much more freely and hopefully to the other, namely, that as to the manner of the action of the mind in adding to its store of knowledge, and eli- citing truth. And, as I have hinted, it would probably be really the better for the Real Logic of Science, that it should not be too speedily involved with technical terms, but that the general principles of the logic of learning or finding out anything should be as distinctly as possible laid down first. Mr Mill appeals from his technical logic to the natural logic of us all : ' Let any watch the manner in which he himself unravels any complicated mass of evidence 2 ': and then he goes on to de- 1 Vol. II. pp. 223, 224. 2 Vol. II. p. 30. VIII.] LOGIC MR MILL. 17.") scribe how we speculate, and form our theories, &c. and see whether they will do, and so on. In reality, I doubt much whether any purpose is served by speaking, in a manner which I have described as ' cumbrous ', about the ' Hypothetical Method ', for instance — the disadvantage is, that we get hard and sharp technical distinctions, of little use, as it seems to me. This 'Hypothetical Method', says Mr Mill, 'out of the three pro- cesses, induction, ratiocination, verification, suppresses the for- mer' : now the former, surely, at least exists in the shape of ' suggestion ', and considering that in the proper ' Deduction ' the preliminary induction is avowedly incomplete, the limits be- tween such suggestion and the incomplete induction are very vague : and then the distinction between the preliminary induc- tion and the final verification is by no means very absolute : as the terms are technically used by Mr Mill, no doubt it is so : but as I have said, the technical ism ought to stand upon a general basis of good mathetic logic, or the logic of learning, finding out, arriving at truth, and then we have to apply this. The reason why I do not say any more about Mr Mill's account of the various Inductive and Experimental processes, is because what is of interest in his book for my present purpose is his view of nature and his view of the general action of the mind. I shall investigate to a certain degree how far he is or is not free from what I have called ' notionalism', and from what I have called wrong psychology: I shall allude to what he says about the logic of the moral sciences: and after an interval, shall make a few additional remarks upon his most general views of the universe, of truth, and of the manner of our arriv- ing at it, and the extent to which we do so arrive. CHAPTER IX. MILL'S LOGIC CONTINUED. If an}* person would have been likely to avoid notionalism (or relativism) and the wrong psychology, one would have thought that Mr Mill would, on account of his strong view of ' things ' as the objects of knowledge, and of his clear observation of the dif- ference between 'sensation' as 'consciousness' and 'sensation' as (so to call it) 'bodily affection'. I do not think he does avoid either of them, and the present chapter is a discussion as to his doing so : the conclusion which I draw from this is, that phe- nomenalism, with a philosophic mind like his, will not stand alone, and if it cannot have (what seems to me) right philo- sophy to support it, must have wrong. 1. In speaking of an unknown and unknowable substra- tum of things, Mr Mill seems to me amenable to all that I said in speaking of Mr Ferrier, about the error of those philosophers who speak about ' things in themselves ', or use any language of that kind, from a logical point of view, converting their mere logical supposition into a supposed reality. I will leave this however for a moment, and before saying more about it, will say a little about something else. 2. I think Mr Mill is inconsistent with himself in the fol- lowing manner. All facts of body are ultimately facts of mind, i. e. the truth about them is capable of being reduced to truth of thought in the thinking mind. This is what I understand him to say, what I heartily agree with him in, and what seems to me the same as my saying, that the phenomenalist view is a partial one or an abstraction, and that the philosophical view, or that from the point of view of consciousness, is the compre- hensive and complete one. But in this philosophical view, that which we are conscious of in the first step of immediateness is chap, ix.] mill's logic. 177 on the one side our own feelings, on the other side something which gives occasion to them, which latter developes itself, as our intelligence goes on, into the facts of body or phenomenal- ism. Thus, on the philosophical view, these facts of body stand at a further remove from our consciousness, the test of certainty, than our feelings do: which Mr Mill himself seems to consider, in saying that the facts of body may be ultimately referred to feelings of mind. But then these feelings of mind ought not to be put on the same level of thought as the facts of body, as phenomena together with them, to be treated conjunctly with them, and to be considered as forming, along with them, a class of nameables in the universe. Still less ought a system of logic, formed upon the basis of the observation how we advance in the knowledge of the phenomena of body, to be applied to them, and to be considered as the instrument by which we shall advance in knowledge of them. And Mr Mill's attempting to do this seems to me inconsistent with his saying previously, that the facts of body are ultimately referrible to feelings of mind — i.e. that these latter stand at a higher stage, in the complete view, than the former. The immediate result of this logic, which I have called phenomenalist, is the denial of the existence of will, and of causation as action : i. e. as soon as the feelings of mind are prof - lly set by the side of the facts of body as co-phenomena, they are really subordinated to them, no longer treated as facts of mind or consciousness, bul dealt with according to principles which the phenomenalisl Logic has given. It is quite possible thai our supposed consciousness of will or activity may be a delusion: but it is possible in exactly the same manner, and at the same Btage of thought, in which it is possible for our supposition of the existence of an universe independent of us, or a spatial, external world, to be a delusion. Our feeling of our activity or of our being sources of change exists by the side of, and at tin; level of, the entire and general feeling thai there is a universe independent of us. We follow oul this latter feeling into phenomenalism, and lay down (or describe) the fact of the universe : bu1 it is not a proper coi to pul by the Bide of the e fad . and to consider as phenomena analogous in any way to them, our various consciou uess, 01 our feelings, which belong to a higher and different region. Our 12 178 mill's logic [ctiap. feeling of there being a universe at all, upon which all phe- nomenalism depends, is but one of these feelings. Our feelings, viewed from the philosophical point of view or point of view of consciousness, are not phenomena of the universe or capable of standing by the side of such, but the universe, if we like to use the language, is a fact or phenomenon of them. I do not quarrel with the looking at our feeling, so far as it can be so looked at, from the phenomenal point of view. Each one of us is a corporeal organization in the universe, filling space as a tree fills space, and sensitive more or less as a dog is sensitive. Of this sensitiveness which we share certainly with the dog, perhaps with the tree, for there may be an infinite number of degrees and kinds of it, we may, from the phenomenal point of view, have some notion : it is a fact of the universe : we may call it if we like consciousness : we may apply our individual feeling of consciousness towards the gaining this notion, so far as we can : we may imagine what the dog's feeling must be, and judge from what he does, how far it is like our own : I have no quarrel with all this. All I say is, that with each one of us (if we say 'each one'), with me, with you, the one great reality which absorbs all others is that I, you, think and feel, and we only talk of a universe because we think and feel that there is one ; that our thought in this way surrounds or embraces the uni- verse and cannot therefore be embraced by it in such a manner as to be liable to have said of it, This, or that, matter of con- sciousness, is inconsistent with such and such laws of the uni- verse which we have discovered, and therefore cannot be true. We may, to a certain extent, be able to treat of our thought or feeling as embraced in the universe, as a fact of it : but we have no right to conclude that because we may do this we may con- clude things about it, from its being a fact of the universe, which the thought itself, as consciousness, disowns. There seems to me, in all this attempt to apply pheno- menalist logic to the consideration of thought and feeling, to be the same confusion of two views which I have all along been noting. We are, for physical and physiological study (which is what I call phenomenal) one species of animal upon the earth, the highest that we know, with communicative tongues and constructive hands, so that we can make all sorts ix.] mill's logic. 170 of things and combine together, with common and mutual understanding, to make them, and talk about them, and talk in our own minds about them — we may study the facts of our own nature, including our thought and feeling to the ex- tent I have mentioned above, in our place in the universe, we may study any facts of any nature, phenomenally. But we are, and we cannot help really feeling ourselves, for pur- poses of philosophical and moral study, not this, but something different — what I should call, 'higher'. We feel with, and wo feel ourselves as having, a free consciousness, a disposition to look at things generally, a curiosity, or love of knowing, a disposition to do things for a purpose and to try to do them well, all which with kindred feelings besides, makes us occupy, in our own view, the position, not of animals, however high, in the universe with a sphere and environment, and with our own existence subordinated to that, but of observers of the relation between ourselves and this universe, with its ex- istence subordinated to ours, believing in it not because we are inferior to it but because we think it, judging about it as well as studying it, and when we are settling upon our action, thinking, from this free point of view, what is worth doing, what wants doing, what it is well should be done ; not simply considering that our experience in the universe as the animal inn a, is to guide our action in the same way as a dog's ex- perience or instinct as the animal dog guides his, which is what he cannot help. I have pu1 this a little strongly just to mark how it is at the point of human nature and human action that we must take care that we keep tin views distinct. 1 have been notic- ing, throughout what 1 have been saying now, the confusion, as it Beems t<> me, of the two views, in reference to philoso- phy or the stu.lv of knowledge: Mr Mill, in resped of the application of his logic to knowledge, docs not much fall into it, but he does when he thinks to apply his Logic to social science and to morals. Because for these, in my view, we musl start, net from phenomena, hut from consciousness, in the same way as we -tart for the higher philosophy of knowledge. I baye jusl tried to describe what I mean by this. The put- ting our feelings as co-phenomena with the facts oi the uni- I 'J 180 mill's logic. [chap. verse is the bringing them from a higher level to which they do belong to a lower to which they do not. It is analogous in a different application of thought, to the want of clearness of view in setting before ourselves the question whether we are thinking of ourselves as corporeal and local, or whether we are considering how we gain the knowledge, or conceive the notion, of corporealness and locality. From what I have said as to the extent to which our feelings may be treated phenomenally it will be understood that I do not wish to deny the possibility of much valuable result from this line of thought — but it must be kept within its proper limits for this, and must be subordinate, as a logic of philosophy and morals, to the logic of the higher point of view which I have mentioned. Whereas Mr Mill considers, and I believe has influenced many to consider, that by what he has said he has opened the way to a new and better method, promising much advance, in respect of social science for instance and morals. This I think is mistaken. I should perhaps have said, that for the phenomenalist study of human nature and morals, we have now, at this stage of the world's life, something beyond physics and physiology, in the facts of the history of human society. All this I most fully allow, and the very valuable results which may result from the study of these facts or phenomena. But even these, though phenomena if we like to call them so of a higher order, do not alter what I have said, that our starting point must not be from them. All that man has done, whatever aid it may give, can never teach us what man should do or what it is best for him to do, any more than the facts of the universe can. Before however proceeding further on the logic of the moral sciences, which is what comes last in Mr Mill's book, I had better finish what I have to say about the 'unknowable sub- stratum' of things, and mention one or two points in which there seems to me confusion. 3. I am not at all now criticizing Mr Mill, which could not be properly done except at much greater length than I wish here to go to, and without going into details which would interfere with the general view which I want to give. I take ix.] mill's logic. 181 his book, a book well known and of universally acknowledged merit, as a type of a kind of thought, and so far as he is concerned, it is quite sufficient answer for him to say that I have misunderstood him. This is not unlikely, but in that case the criticism of the view which I suppose in him remains the same. This may be not an improper place to call attention to a possible misunderstanding of the term ' phenomenal', as I use it. I use it as an adjective formed from 'phenomenon', in our present acceptation of the word phenomenon, as synonymous with physical fact, or fact of nature, or fact in the universe, or however we describe it. The word ' phenomenon ', in this use, is a relic of the old philosophy which taught that all in nature, as sensible, was appearance, and that the process of learning or gaining knowledge or forming true notions was a coming, through the intervention of this appearance, and by proper thinking about it (dialectic) at the idea or true reality of tilings, and forming our notions in conformity with this. The word ' phenomenon', as I use it, means to those who are what I call wrong phenomenalists, or posit Lvists, simply fact, they recog- nizing no other reality: to me it means what it does to them, so far as used for their purposes, but also besides, for philo- sophical purposes, what it meant, in the main, to the old philo- sophers. That is, I look upon our complete and right concep- tion of things as something in relation to which our view of the universe as fact or nature is something incomplete — I do not call it deceptive appearance) but 1 call it partial and an abstraction. The words 'phenomenal', 'phenomenal', 'phenomenology', andothei such, as they are used by Sir William Hamilton and a greal many philosophers a1 present, carry with them a different reference, /recognize in 'nowmena\ their opposite, only mental creations, temporary notions, if we like so to call them, formed bide to, or in the way towards, the notions which we want to form, not at all the things themselves or our final uotions of them. W li.it thephysicisl considers facts are 'phenomena' (sig- nificantly) in the eye of the philosopher, because lie takes c< nizance of something further back than the physicisl goes, viz. thai he only calls them 'facts' because they seem to him which last is the real fact, the fad of facts: the universe is all 182 mill's logic. [chap. a dressing up of one side of this fact : he wants to escape from the word 'seem', not, as the simple phenomenalist does, by ignoring this latter great fact, but by facing it, and trying whe- ther he can arrive at, or approach towards, anything, in regard of which the word ' seem' would lose its meaning, and be felt as identical with 'is' — at anything which is to him with the same completeness and conviction as, in his own view, he himself is. In this view the idea, the proper reality, is the true. object of knowledge: it is what all our efforts are directed towards: to say that it is not matter of knowledge, that it is something which from its nature cannot be known, is negativing the view altogether: it is just what can be known, and the only thing which can be known in the full propriety of the term, so far as we can attain to know it. All this is entirely different from the notion of an unknow- able noumenism with which pha3nomenism (as I here on pur- pose write it) is contrasted, phenomena being supposed only the dress of the noumena, and the latter, though in their nature unknowable, being the things in themselves, the substratum, the true realities. Our consciousness, the ultimate test, sug- gests to us, we may say, ourselves, as a continuing substratum of our varying feelings; but it does not suggest to us this as unknoivn, for it is just what we most do know: and it is quite a false parallel to suppose that in any way our consciousness sug- gests to us a (supposedly) similar unknowable substratum for the occasions of our sensations, or phenomena. What our con- sciousness su£f2fests to us on this side is not at all tJiis, but is oo a universe or existing order of things of which we form a part at the same time that, in the first instance, we in our thought comprehend it. What suggests the supposed substratum is merely notionalism, or wrong conclusion from the manner or process of our knowledge, which is the describing things by pre- dicating qualities of them, so that in the process of knowledge, we have to suppose the thing (for it is only temporary supposi- tion), independent of each, and therefore of all, its qualities. I hope what I have said may make it clear how my use of the term 'phenomenal' differs from Sir William Hamilton's in that passage of his quoted in Mr Mill's later editions 1 , where 1 Vol. i. p. C$, 4 th edit. ix.] mill's logic. 183 he says, "All that we know is therefore phenomenal — phreno- " menal of the unknown." All that we know is but a small part of the knowable, and since we all hold whatever we know as a whole, since our knowledge is a view of things or of the uni- verse, since there is given us in our mind so to speak a frame for our knowledge, which the particular things which we know more or less fill up — all that we know may be regarded as that appearance which the universe or reality takes to us — as phenomenal of the unknown whole — the whole unknown and unknowable as a matter of fact, but not unknowable in its nature or philosophically. It seems to me a strange perversion of the notion of know- ledge to suppose that we can know that anything is in its nature ?/??knowable, except so far as the notion 'knowledge' is inapplicable to it, in which case nobody would talk of knowing it, or would call it unknowable. We do not talk of colours as inaudible, and if we do of sounds being invisible, it is because of the wide and loose way in which sight is used as the type of all sense. It is the giving a mere logical puzzle as a supposed wholesome humbling of the intellect which is what I call 'no- tionalism' or 'relativism'. To return from these observations on phenomenalism to Mr Mill. In that passage 1 which I have just referred to, 1 doubted, in the former edition, where he ceased to speak tin- language of Kant, and where he began his own: in the lata r it appears more clearly. B< pr< -< rv< - in his note the passa of Cousin which expresses, as pointedly as could possibly I"' pressed, the relativism with which 1 have expressed my dis- agreement, now evidently as expressing hie own view, and he adds the p from Sir William Eamilton which 1 have jusl quoted. '•It may", says Mr Mill, "be safely laid down that of the "outward world we know and can know absolutely nothing, "excepl the -• osations which we experience from it 2 ". 1 Page 78, 2nd edit. ; page 64, 4th edit. • I am in a difficulty as to what to quote hi re, but perhaps, 1 had bettei inthil note the whole p d Mr Mill (aince I shall return to il stands in the fourth edition, omitting onlj the long from M. Cousin, which the reader may una [ine. 1 will Bi tt. "But although the doctrine of the [dealist metaphysicians, that 184 mill's logic. [chap. I mentioned some time since that a good test of a philo- sopher's manner of thought was his use of the term ' object of " objects are nothing but our sensations and the laws which connect them, has not "been generally adopted by subsequent thinkers ; the point of most real importance "is one on which those metaphysicians are now very generally considered to have " made out their case : viz. that all ire hnow of objects is the sensations which they "give us, and the order of the occurrence of those sensations. Kant himself, on "this point, is as explicit as Berkeley or Locke. However firmly convinced that "there exists an universe of 'Things in themselves,' totally distinct from the "universe of phenomena, or of tilings as they appear to our senses; and even "when bringing into use a technical expression (Noumenon) to denote what the "thing is in itself, as contrasted with the representation of it in our minds; he " allows that this representation (the matter of which, he says,- consists of our " sensations, though the form is given by the laws of the mind itself) is all we know "of the object : and that the real nature of the Thing is, and by the constitution "of our faculties ever must remain, at least in the present state of existence, an "impenetrable mystery to us. ' Of things absolutely or in themselves,' says Sir " William Hamilton, ' be they external, be they internal, we know nothing, or " 'know them only as incognisable ; 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 them- " ' selves. All that we know is therefore phsenomenal, — phenomena] of the un- " ' known.' The same doctrine is laid down in the clearest and strongest terms "by M. Cousin, whose observations on the subject are the more worthy of atten- tion, as, in consequence of the ultra-German and ontological character of his "philosophy in other respects, they may be regarded as the admissions of an " opponent. "There is not the slightest reason for believing that what we call the sensible " qualities of the object are a type of anything inherent in itself, or bear any affinity "to its own nature. A cause does not, as such, resemble its effects; an east " wind is not like the feeling of cold, nor heat like the steam of boiling water. Why "then should matter resemble our sensations ? Why should the inmost nature of " fire or water resemble the impressions made by those objects upon our senses ? " Or on what principle are we authorised to deduce from the effects, anything con- cerning the cause, except that it is a cause adequate to produce those effects? " It may therefore safely be laid down as a truth both obvious in itself, and ad- "mitted by all whom it is at present necessary to take into consideration, that, " of the outward world, we know and can know absolutely nothing, except the "sensations which we experience from it. Those, however, who still look upon " Ontology as a possible science, and think, not only that bodies have an essential "constitution of their own, lying deeper than our perceptions, but that this essence "or nature is accessible to human investigation, cannot expect to find their refuta- tion here. The question depends on the nature and laws of Intuitive Know- " ledge, and is not within the province of logic." I will now give the note. " Sir William Hamilton even goes so far as to assert that this opinion not only "now is, but always has been, held by nearly all philosophers. ' It has been com- ix.] mill's logic. 185 knowledge ' : I will now mention another, which is, his use of the term 'outward' or 'external'. For instance, Mr Mill speaks in one place of something being ' external both to the body and the mind ' as if the term was in the same sense applicable to both. This is just the way of speaking which I do not understand, and which I have called a confusion between two views. The mind, as distinguished from the body, is the knowing (thing) or the subject of the attribute knowledge, in regard of which the question is, not whether anything is or is not spatially external to it, but whether it is or is not, in any way, independent of it. Not however to dwell on this: as to the passage quoted, I cannot see the force of it, because I cannot understand what 'the out- ward world' means or can mean more than the (supposed) occasion of the sensations which, in Mr Mill's language, 'we experience from it'. What I understand by the term 'out- ward' is a reference of it to these sensations: so far as we know any more, if we do so know, than these sensations tell us, the term 'outward' so far ceases to be applicable to it : thai is all that seems to me to happen : as I should express it, we are taking no longer the phenomenalist view. And what I differ from Mr Mill in as to the last sentence is this, that while con- demning apparently Ontology, or the notion that bodies have a "'monly confessed, that, as substances, we know not what is Matter, and are jnorant of what is Mind. With the exception, in fact, of a few late Absolutist " 'theorisers in Germany, this is, perhaps, the truth of all others most harmoni- " ' ously reechoed by every philosopher of every school.' And he supports his "assertion by quotations from seventeen thinkers of eminence, beginning with " Protagoras and Aristotle, and ending with Kant. Gladly, however, as I Bhonld '• learn that a philosophical truth destructive of so great a mass of baseless and "misleading speculation had been universally recognized by philosophers <>f all "past time, and that Ontology, instead of being, as I had hitherto beli red, the "oldest form of philosophy, was a recent invention of g ,ni II _. ! ; I am 'obliged to confess, that none of the passages extracted by Sir William Hamilton. "except one from the elder Scaliger and another from Newton, convey to my "mind the conclusion that the writers had ever come within sight of the greal " truth which he supposes them to have intended to express. Almost all the pas- "sages seem to me perfectly compatible with the rejection of it; and in most "I cannot, by any legitimate interpretation, find anything more than a recog- " nition of tiie far more obvio iple, that our knowledge of external things "i.« : ly conditioned by the laws of our knowing faculty: a very diflerenl "thing fr^in th- ii that the laws of that faetilty are Mich as to deny us "all kn ■■ of outward tilings, except that of their mere I ISO mill's logic. [chap. super-perceptional constitution which we may hope to find out, he seems to countenance the belief that they have one, which, from its very nature it is useless for us even to try to find out. This is the ' notional ' Ontology, if I may so call it, which seems to me worse than an attemptedly Real Ontology. It is what I have alluded to above as the Kantist manner of thought — I give no opinion as to proper Kantism. I say nothing at all as to whether there is any meaning in speaking of 'an essen- tial constitution of things': I say only this, that if the notion is to be entertained even so far as to say that such a thing is possible, this constitution must have some relation to the facts about things which we know by our sensations, along which re- lation there is a road for our intellect towards the knowledge of this constitution — how good a road is a question I do not enter upon : the question is as to a chasm or discontinuity in virtue of the nature of things. I do not allude to this in Mr Mill for the purpose of criti- cizing his sentences — it requires much fuller consideration than I am giving here to know how far a particular sentence ex- presses a philosopher's full view — but because it is all a part of that which is my difference with him — his not indeed ignoring the philosophical view, which would be the course of many phenomenalists, but his attempt to bring it in along with the phenomenalist, in a way which confuses both. He thus seems to consider that the semi-Ontology of Kantists and Sir William Hamilton (which seems to me a mocking of our intelligence) will come in by the side of his phenomenalism, while a further going philosophy will not. I have taken as the real or import- ant line of thought with him that which seems to me really in- consistent with this, and in which ' notionalism ' is just what he opposes. What we see and name are ' things ', and propositions express 'facts' or 'phenomena'. Ideas of things, and judg- ments about things, may in this view, and I agree with him in it, be left out of consideration. I cannot resist dwelling still however for a moment on this page of Mr Mill, in which every sentence, both of his and Sir W. Hamilton's fills me with a sort of wonder — how so much knowledge, and so much ignorance or nescience, of these 'things in themselves', can go together, I cannot understand. ix.] mill's logic. 187 "Of things absolutely and in themselves", says Sir William Hamilton, " be they external, be they internal, we know nothing, "or know them only as incognizable: and become aware of their "incomprehensible existence, only as this is indirectly and acci- " dentally revealed to us, through certain qualities related to our " faculties of knowledge, and which qualities, again, we cannot " think as unconditional, irrelative, existent in and of themselves. "All that we know is therefore phaenomenal — phsenomenal of "the unknown 1 ". I go with the description so far as this — we know the object through certain qualities fitted to our faculties of knowledge — these, in language I have used, fit each other. I generalize : whoever, whatever mind, even an all-knowing one, knows the object, knows it by qualities fitted to its faculties of knowledge. Qualities and faculties of knowledge go together. Suppose one single universal faculty of knowledge, in place of various special and particular ones, what the mind having tins must know is — one universal quality of the object and no more. Who then knows the object itself, if even omniscience does not and cannot go beyond quality? Here we have doubtless got at an unknow- ableness of the 'thing in itself, but it is an unknowable]] I think of my sort, viz. because there is nothing to know. Or was I wromr in generalizing as I did above, and should I have said, Some minds, including ours, know objects through qua- lities, and some know them independent of knowledge of their qualities, by themselves ? They know them then I suppose without faculties of knowledge. An. I what then is meant by qualities? By qualities or properties of an objed I mean no- thing but what (by one mind and another, if you like, accord- ing i'. its faculties) can be known about it: here we Beem to have an object unqualitied, unpropertied, unconditioned— But I do nut pursue the Bubject. There can 1- little doubt but that in all this there i- tin- confusion I have Bpoken of, and that tin- philosophers who have thought in this manner didnol know whether they themselves meanl that wecouldnoi l,,,,,v. the thing itself because we could only know qualiti< -. or because with our intelligence, we could only kno* some qualiti 1 P*g« ( >l, 4 t ' 1 «M'' 188 mill's logic [chap. The real being of things is doubtless uncomprehended by us: how do we know that, and how do we know why, it is incomprehensible? How do we know that the revelation of the things to us by the particular qualities by which we know them is 'indirect' and 'accidental'? Can anybody imagine there is any meaning in these terms as thus applied? Or can there be a worse, and a more vain Ontology? This is the worst form of realism : the realizing of logical notions, and then pacifying our intellectual conscience by say- ing that we only know the things, the result of this our real- izing process, as ' incognisable '. How do we know them as that, I ask? There is truth within its province in phenome- nalist realism, so to call it, by which I mean the supposition that the chemical elements or constituents of the universe, forces perhaps, are the ultimate realities : and if this does not satisfy us, as it does not me, because the universe consists not only of such things as these, but of these going together to make other things, bodies as we call them, organizations, sys- tems, constitutions, more or less after the analogy of the manner in which we make them go together to compose things which Ave want for our use, ploughs, houses, &c, in regard of which, besides the elements, there is, at once in our mind and in them, plan, meaning, purpose — then we may consider this plan, mean- ing, purpose, itself a reality, of a different and higher nature than the elementary reality, and as constituting the real thing- hood of the things, the reason why we notice them and call them things: here we have the ideal reality of things, in con- tradistinction to the phenomenal : we know the things by a process which may equally well be described in either way, cither as putting meaning into the things, or seeing meaning in them, for the simple reason that in reality the thinghood is a something between the two sides, the subjective and the ob- jective — it is the meeting of the two. The thinghood of a thing is the proper thoughtness of it — what it is rightly thought to be : the right thinking about it is indeed on the other side the thinking of it as it is, but the two do not exactly counterdefine each other, because mind comes first — the cardinal point of philosophy in my view: the thing as thought, pre-contemplated by its Creator, contemplated by beings with created faculties ix.] mill's logic. 189 ■ of knowledge -with such following of his thought as they can attain to, is the idea, the ideal thing, the ideal reality, the truest reality. This of course, when carried to this extent is abstruse and may seem visionary : no one need carry it further than he likes : what I have endeavoured to show is that to whatever extent we go along it, so long as we are in this road, we have a true reality: I accept the notion of phenomenal realty most fully, when not misapplied. What I protest against is the wretched ghost of this higher philosophy which is furnished by the real- izing our logical notions. It is Sir William Hamilton, not I, who says that the real existence of things is only ' indirectly and accidentally revealed to us' by the phenomenal knowledge which we have of them. It is an accident of the things we know that they are known by us, but that they are known by means of faculties of knowledge such as ours is no accident of them — they are so known in consequence of their having quali- ties which those faculties fit, which qualities are as much a part of their constitution or thinghood as anything else of them is. Indirect, we may indeed call the revelation of them if we like, in tJtis way: whatever higher realities, so to call them, we may be able to know about them might have come to our knowledge without the necessity of so much lower reality — of so much communication and contact, to be used by intelligei. of our corporeal or sensive frame with the particular natural ate, elements, constituents, of the universe. But I do not think there is really reason in this. I do not think man is the worse for the fact, that for such knowledge as he has of the universe, there has been obliged to be such a vast amount of particular "1.- rvation or communication betw< en his senses and phenomena. Were our knowledge direct, it would 1m-. I sup- pose one grout, single, monotonous art: we know the higher properties of things with the same Borl of indirectness of know- Ledge with which wo know that the earth turns round the sun. ;md I do not know that directness of knowledg : immediate- nesfl of feeling would be any advanta I JU pp thai Sir William Hamilton, in his attempl to anitelogic, Ri idian psychology, and Kantian criticism, really did confus • . ther the logical view of knowledj forming 190 mill's logic. [chap. proper notions of what (no matter to logic what) in virtue of the notions thus formed, we call things, and the view of know- ledge as a communication or presence with something supposed existent. The idea of the essential unknowableness belongs to the former : the solemnity with which it is talked about, as if this unknowable were something real and awful, belongs to the latter. I write with genuine self-distrust here, in spite of the firm- ness of my conviction, on account of my wonder not only at Sir William Hamilton's saying what he does, but at Mr Mill's receiving what he says as he does. In spite of Mr Mill's ad- miration of what Sir William Hamilton says here, whether he and Sir William Hamilton really understand each other, is what I cannot make out : Sir William Hamilton says the doctrine which he gives has been held always and by almost all philo- sophers, and cites, textually and in order, seventeen philo- sophers to prove this : Mr Mill, judging from Sir William Hamilton's own citations, thinks all but two of the seventeen hold a doctrine different and apparently wrong, the doctrine which I and (it would seem) most people hold. If we consider that what Sir William Hamilton really holds is that which is taught by the fifteen, and understand his text by this comment, then he is, I suppose, on my side against Mr Mill. Nor can I make out from Mr Mill's own description whether his doctrine is really the same as Sir William Hamilton's : the latter says, we are aware of the existence of things, aware that it is incomprehensible, and aware, accidentally, of various qualities about the things: Mr Mill says, as I understand, 'The laws of our knowing faculty are such as to deny us all knowledge of things, except that of their mere existence'. And the unexpected fraternization of such an Ontologist, in Mr Mill's view, as Mr Cousin, whom Mr Mill quotes with approval, might almost make him suspect. I dwell on this in Mr Mill rather for my own satisfaction, in this way : in order to convince myself that I really do him justice in treating his plienomenalist view and logic as really his true view, and that it is only his dread of Schelling and Hegel which makes him fly to such a very doubtful auxiliary in these points as Sir William Hamilton. He says, shortly afterwards 1 , 1 pp. 69, 70, 4th edit. ; 83, 84, -2nd edit. ix.] mill's logic. 191 that qualities and attributes are not real entities, but the result of the convenience of discourse (what I call logical) 1 : and he describes, no one could do it clearer, the various sensations which are the real fact when we use the logical language, such and such qualities. The confusion arises from this : that while, as clearly as can be, he points to us the two worlds, or two points of view, to which the expressions ' quality ' and ' sensa- tion'" belong, he makes the mysterious unknowable which we have been speaking of a citizen of both worlds — a something underlying both sensations and qualities. Sensations may very likely have something beyond them — i. e. they may not be proper knowledge themselves, but a means towards knowledge : if so, that which they are the road to is just what we can know, and ought to try to know. Qualities again, as a logical expression, may involve the notion of a subject or substance : but this latter, then, by the notion of knowledge, is something which we know when we know the qualities, and only know by knowing them : knowing it is predicating all its predicates of it : to try to know it otherwise is like trying to hear a colour. Speculation about the basis of sensations (if we like to use the language) or qualities as they are phenomena, may be fruitless, but is not foolish : speculation about the knowledge of the subject of qualities or attributes a- distinct from knowledge of the quali- ties, and the treating it as a grave and real fact that the former is unknowable, La foolish. 4. The manner in which, in his categories, Mr Mill speaks, rather reiteratedly, of facts and phenomena being resolvable into states of consciousness, after he had put facts of body and facts of mind by the side of each other as going together to makeup the universe of things, is another part of the same bringing in of philosophy when it should not come. The ne- rity of this reiteration iii reference to particular facts, and as it Beems to me, puzzling of things, would have be< o spared by tie- saying in the beginning, as I should do, that the exist- ence of body itself, the universe, anything, is a fad of mind 1 From the fact that tli. ■ we n Sties, Mr Mill apparently draws the conclusion that the substratum (tli- thing it- If. or in its own oat supposed unknowable) must be real: fro... the same feet / draw ti. ion, that it ii only a supposition rendered neoes ary by the supposition of them, and bat the Ham<; reality, or non-reality, with them. 192 mill's logic. [chap. or mental supposition in the first instance, and of course there- fore every developement of it is: then, with this preliminary supposition made about body and all the facts of it, we might proceed to categorize and treat them without continually and puzzlingly repeating this supposition as to particulars. In reality, Mr Mill's continually saying that facts of body are re- solvable into facts of mind is, to my view, a refutation of the view with which he starts that facts of body and facts of mind go by the side of each other, as co-phenomena in the universe. This view of Mr Mill's is of course the view of the ordi- nary, or, if I may call it, Lockian, psychology, and Mr Mill cannot help, as, it seems to me, the whole of that does, con- fusing the philosophical and phenomenalist views together. I cannot understand such a sentence as the following : " I infer " that the object is present, because it gives me a certain assem- " blage or series of sensations 1 ". If this means, as I suppose it must, 'because I feel that it gives me the sensations', then I am aware of its presence before the inference. If it means, 'because, as a fact, it gives me the sensations', then the fact is not properly described as inference : the phenomenal fact is the communication (as I call it) between the natural agents concerned with what we call the object, and our organs, and this is accompanied with the feeling or fact of consciousness, which makes us use the language, 'Such and such an object is present'. No person describes more clearly than Mr Mill the distinction, as he calls it, between the sensation itself, and the state of the bodily organs which (as he says) precedes, (as I should say) accompanies in time, the sensation. The difficulty begins when he goes on to say, ' and which constitutes the physical agency by which it is produced', the same language as in the sentence I quoted, 'the object gives sensations'. 'Physical agency' seems to imply a sort of intermediation of means of some sort : and what intermediation or means can be conceived between a physical state of the organ, some mode suppose of motion, and what we call feeling or consciousness ? Nor does Mr Mill seem able to keep hold of his own distinction w T hen he uses such language as " When a stone lies before me, I am " conscious of certain sensations which I receive from it : but 1 Vol. I. p. 83, 2nd Edit. ix.] mill's logic. 19 o " when I say that these sensations come to me from an external "object which I perceive, the meaning of these words is, that "receiving the sensations, I intuitively believe that an external " cause of those sensations exists 1 ". In this sentence does 'receive the sensations' exjiress a part of the consciousness, or express simply a fact, a second fact besides the fact that ' the stone lies before me'? If it expresses a part of the consciousness, then I cannot understand the distinction made between the conscious- ness of the sensations and also of the reception of them from the object, in the first part of the sentence, and the intui belief that the object exists, in the last. This is the same as I said in regard of the last sentence quoted. If the conscious- ness is simply of the sensation, or feeling, which according to Mr Mill's distinction it should be, then the stone giving me the sensations, or my receiving them from it, is simply a matter of fact, like the stone lying where it does lie, and then there seems to me the confusion between the two views, which is no particular fault of Mr Mill, for I conclude it to belong to all the psychology which he here represents. Instead of describing a thing in either of two ways in which wc might describe it, we seem to describe it in a manner confused of the two. 'Winn a stone lies before me, i. e. corporeal me, filling space in the univer- me (or I receive from it) certain sensations': this is my manner of describing the fact that light comes from it in such a way that my optic nerve and brain are in a parti- cular state, simultaneously with which state I, knowing sub- ject, feel or think, There is a stone. Or we miglrl say, I, knowing subject, am conscious of something or have a feeling — a double feeling, viz. of a feeling ami a supposed occasion for it; and tlii-. tak< o along with my pasl and my other con- temporaneous consciousness, is what I express by saying, I, corporeal I, see a stone before me in a phenomenal uiiivi i filling space a& I myself do. All that I say is, that we musl take the one view or the other, ami that it is mere confusion of thought to try to blond both, except -o l':ir us the phenomena] one may be absorbed in the conscious. It' 'the stone I before us', then we are making our supposition already of the phenomena] world and oursel part of it, and anythi 1 Vol, r. p. 70. 1 194 mill's logic. [chap. about ourselves which will not come into relation with this phenomenal world is so much besides this view and showing it incomplete : of this nature is our consciousness as feeling, which it is right, with Mr Mill, to distinguish from its bodily accompaniments, but as to which it is otiose and useless to talk of its being produced by physical agency, for no notion which we can form of physical agency can make us at all understand how it can produce what we call 'consciousness' or feeling. If on the other hand 'we are conscious of certain sensations', then we begin with the conscious side : /, then, is the knowing sub- ject : w r e interpret the sensations into the thought of ourselves as corporeal or phenomenal, and of the stone, w 7 e will say, lying before us and being seen by us : but on this supposition and previously to the supposition of the interpretation it is idle to talk of ' the stone lying before us'. The stone lying before the knowing subject is like such a phrase as 'external to the mind' which I commented on before. Whatever is wrong in all this Mr Mill shares with a very large number of others, most of whom have gone less far than he has in drawing attention to the distinction between con- sciousness and bodily state or phenomenalism. To come now r to the logic of moral science. I do not want to go into any detail on the subject of social or moral science, on the logic of which Mr Mill has several chapters, though in reality it is with a view to that that what I am now writing is written ; namely, in order to test, by com- parison with the views of others, the general intellectual or philosophical spirit in which I should look on moral questions. But w r hat I have said will be made clearer by a word or two on these chapters. They are full of value. I agree with Mr Mill, that, according to the title of his third chapter, ' there is, or may be, a science of human nature' in the manner in which he describes such a science in that chapter: such a science does exist, more or less, as a practical science : we do study human actions, and more or less, accordingly, predict them: this prediction, or even attempt at prediction, shows that we consider they go upon law r s. Such a science as this may be in some degree, but only in some degree, brought into relation with phenomenalism, and studied ix.] mill's logic. 195 by phenomenalist logic. Actions are determined by motives, circumstances, and character : this character again is itself largely determined by circumstances: to a certain extent we may consider this to be analogous to the occurrence of natural phenomena according to their laws, and to this extent we may put these facts of mind as co-phenomena in the universe with facts of nature: this extent is not I should think determinable: and under the circumstances of this indetermination, there is an extensive approximate or inexact science of human action, bv which we may learn a great deal about it, and to a considerable extent, as I have said, predict it. But the point where I differ with Mr Mill and that which makes me say that we must not, as he does, except to a small degree, put facts (so to call them) of mind on a level, as co- phenomena, with facts of nature, is this. We seem, in my view, to have in the above but a small part of what is wanted for moral and social science. Mr Mill speaks 1 of ' the laws of Mind, and the laws of Society', and says, 'it is still a controversy whether they are capable of becoming subjects of science, in the strict sense of the term' : and thinks that ' the principles ' (i.e. of phenomenalist logic) 'laid down in the preceding books will be useful' to settle such controversy. No doubt they would, and they would settle it, if we were to allow their application, but that is what, except to the extent described above, I should not be disposed to allow. Take ' the laws of Society', mentioned above: what do we mean by the term? In my view (I am not now speaking of any religious view we may entertain besides), what we call 'society' is a creation of man, which then he (that is certain portions of the human race) has been endeavouring during all his coiled life upon earth to improve, according to his notions of improve- ment. The result we call 'civilization'. We have got to form our notions of improvement, in order to do our part, in our time, for this work, and it seems to me that the firs! and •-' point of a social science is to aid us in forming these notions. We may examine the laws, so to call them, upon which society has developed itself (so again to call this] : or in othi c words, we may study what man haa thoughl about society, and by what 1 3 2 19G mill's logic. [chap. means man has succeeded in creating the society which he has created : I should be the last person to deny the importance of all this : and we may study these laws, so far as we can study them in that manner, as we study the laws of nature : anthro- pology like geology. But before we can act, which is the important thing as to society, as Aristotle told us long ago, we must know what we want. In social and moral matters, art comes first, science afterwards, and therefore the phenomenal view will not be suf- ficient for us, in which, as Mr Mill rightly describes in his con- cluding chapter, science comes first, and art afterwards as an application of it. Suppose we know perfectly how society has developed itself, or how, and with what views, man has created and developed it : still, before acting, we want to make up our minds what society ought to be. That is, we come here into the region of ideals. "We are at the point of view, not of phe- nomenalism and observation, which has become subordinate, but of consciousness and activity. The laws which have deve- loped society may in virtue of their having done so, guide us now, for one of two reasons : either because that they have been is taken by us for an argument or proof that they ought to have been, and were what was meant to be and should be now, in which case full account should be given of the nature of this argument : or these laws may guide us because we are not really active and have not really power of choice, though we seem to have — we may say that they will guide us because they will guide us. Upon this manner of speaking, which is the complete application of phenomenalism to human action, I will say nothing now. No person can really, in moral and social matters, consistently adhere to it. There cannot but be an oscillation of expression between, 'This is what you will do anyhow', and 'This is what you ought to do'. I think the reader will see this in M. Comte : it is never exactly clear whether we are to be positivists (I mean in his earlier philoso- phical application of the term, not with reference to any later extravagances) because we ought to be, or because it is certain we shall be, and is what we have come to. Having said so much about the laws of society, let us now take the laws of mind. A good deal of what Mr Mill says in ,- "I *rrrx' IX. ] MILLS LOGIC. 107 his chapter with that title I agree with, and will only notice one point of difference, because it is important to illustrate my own view. In the paragraph 1 which begins 'Whether any other por- tion of our mental states (besides sensation) are similarly de- pendent on physical conditions', he appears to me to confuse the views from the point of consciousness, and from that of phenomenalism, in the way which I have frequently alluded to. What I am unable to see is, that supposing physiology were carried to such an extent that every association (so to call it) between thoughts were proved to be accompanied (as I should call it) by an association between two states of the brain and nerves: that even then 'mental science', in Mr Mill's language, ' would be a mere branch, though the highest and most recon- dite branch, of the science of physiology'. I mentioned in the introduction to what I am now writing, that, in my belief, the more genuine and thorough, in a proper way, is our phenomenalism on the one side, the more genuine will be our philosophy on the other. Mental science, as the analysis of consciousness, seems to me to be unaffectable by anything that physiology can possibly discover. Whatever may be proved, from the side of phenomenalism, about what, simul- taneously with thought, takes place in the brain, seems to me to have nothing more to do with mental science as the analj sis of consciousness than anything which can be proved about what similarly takes place in the eye or hand. I may be wrong, but it appears to me that in all thai .Mr Mill says here, be is neither true to the distinction which, as we saw a short time since, ho rightly draws between feeling and bodily states, nor to his own view, phenomenally I suppo-e correct, of causation as antece- dence. He uses such expressions as ' thoughts bring griirraird through the intervention of material mechanism', and similarly ' produced' and other terms in the same application, as we have d before, as if they involved the thing generated being is some way of the same nature as the generating speaks (e.g I oi 'derivative uniformities'. If, as he tells us himself, the feeling is something in it- nature different from any bodily Btate, hoM can anything thai is discovered aboul the bodily tate con 1 Vol. n. ]p. 504, ind edit. 198 mill's logic. [chap. the science of the feeling, such as it is, into a science of the bodily state, or physiology ? I have alluded to this, because itappears to me that nothing is more important at the present time than that physiologists should not attempt by their science to prove what it is not in its nature to pi-ove, and on the other hand, that much most unreasonable jealousy of physiology should cease. But what is of most consequence for my present purpose is what Mr Mill says in his chapter entitled 'Ethology': on which, in relation to the laws of mind, I have the same to say as what I have just said about the laws of society. Mr Mill says 1 , "If we employ the name Psychology for the " science of the elementary laws of mind, Ethology will serve for " the subordinate science which determines the kind of character " produced, in conformity to those general laws, by any set of " circumstances, physical and moral. According to this definition, " Ethology is the science which corresponds to the art of Educa- " tion". It seems to me that either for the science which corre- sponds to the art of education, or else for that art in such a manner that the 'science' becomes something in comparison subordinate, you have got to know something which Mr Mill takes no notice of here, as he took no notice of the same kind of thing in reference to society — namely, the kind of character you want to produce. It is very well to know what circumstances will produce this and that character, but it is subordinately im- portant, i. e. as something to be applied : what is first to be discussed is the comparative merits of the characters. That is, here again we have come to 'ideals': art goes before science. The consideration of the laws by which character is formed is something comprised in a wider view from a different point, viz. the consideration what we ouo-ht to do and be, or had better do and be, and had better trv to make others. Ethology, Mr Mill tells us, is still to be created : and in describing how it should be studied 2 he apparently considers that it takes for granted what are the 'qualities in human beings which are most interesting to us, as facts to be pro- duced, to be avoided, or merely to be understood': and that what it studies is, 'the origin and sources of these qualities, 1 Page 528, 2nd edit. = Page 534, 2nd edit, ad fin. ix.] mill's logic. 199 in order to consider what circumstances would promote or prevent them'. As I said in reference to Mr Mill's science of society, I yield to none in my estimation of this ethology ■. but there seems to me to want a science, so to call it, besides and above this ethology, to discuss and tell us what are the qualities which are thus interesting. In fact there needs a whole science, in my view, to explain the meaning of the word ' interesting,' as it is thus applied. In his later editions, Mr Mill has added something at the end to what he had said before on this subject, and has given, or adopted the name 'Teleology' to represent a science, in effect, such as I have just described. This science, in the domain of practice or of life, must be considered I suppose to correspond to what, for the domain of thought, Mr Mill frequently (as I have mentioned) alludes to at the beginning of his book as 'the higher metaphysics', and to ■which he refers various problems as to the nature and grounds, for instance, of belief, which, he says, it does not belong to logic to touch. All that I have said amounts to this. Mr Mill, as belongs to him to do, limits his own subject, and excludes 'Teleology' from the Logic of the Moral Sciences as he excludes 'the higher metaphysics' from the logic of physical science. This being so, logic, in both cases, stands as a subordinate science to a higher one: but subordinate, in the two cases, in very different degrees. Phenomenalist logic, as I have called it, will stand for the physical world, in many ways, well by itself, and one of the reasons why I am writing what 1 am writing i make this more fully appear. 1 have endeavoured to show thai Mr Mill Introduces into his phenomenalist logic more meta- physics than he need, and puzzles the simplicity of hi- vie\* of it with notion- from Sir William Hamilton of relativism and an unknowable substratum. If the simply phenomenalisl view sat; ny one's intelligence, 1 have no care to urge him beyond it. I a matter of positive revelation, has grounds or roots in that as well as in philosophical thought, however 1 may think that without this latter, it i dingly imperfect. All that I want La thai the phenomenal »uld doI c include beyond his phenomenalism from data thai belong 200 mill's logic [chap. to that alone. As, for instance, that he should not be under the delusion that in anatomizing the brain and accurately watching states of nerve he is getting really any nearer to the expressing and explaining in terms of what we often call matter — i. e. in sufficiently describing by any language of motion or chemical change — that which Mr Mill, as we have seen, distinguishes so justly from any bodily state, the feeling, the subjective feeling, which corresponds to the bodily states, so far as it does cor- respond to them, really in quite another world of notions, and which corresponds to phenomenal fact, not as actual or possible co-phenomenon (except to the very small extent which I have described), but as cast and mould, mould and cast, correspond the one to the other. Let the phenomenalist or physiologist either leave this subjective feeling alone, or else take his stand fairly within it and look at things from that point, in which case, in my view, he will find, not that phenomenalism absorbs it, but that it absorbs phenomenalism. That is, that if we are to say one or the other, there is more reason in saying, that the phenomenal world of chemical elements and mechanical forces, as we suppose it, is an imagination on our part perhaps ungrounded, than that God, freewill, the notion of something which we ought to do and of a purpose to which all action should be directed, are so. The phenomenalist logic then may, in many ways, stand alone without metaphysics if we are satisfied with physical pheno- mena and speculation about them, though, as I hope to say shortly more fully, I do not think it is by the use of it, at least as commonly understood, that physical science has made the advance which it has, and I think that the supposed scientific sterility of the pre-Baconian period arose quite as much from want of imaginative enterprize and speculation as from want of observation and experiment — from inability to digest or make anything of known matter of fact as from an attempt to exer- cise the intellectual digestion without matter of fact for it to act on. That however does not belong to us now, and is rather a matter of the phenomenalist logic itself. But the logic of the moral sciences, or what Mr Mill con- siders such, will not at all in the same degree stand alone with- out Teleology, and the attempt to make it do so is almost ix.] mill's logic. 201 certain to be an abuse of it as logic — that is, there will be a supposition more or less express and distinct, but always with- out reason given for it, that it, the logic, is to supply us with the end as well as the means. This is precisely what I under- stand as the proceeding of M. Comte, and it seems to me the proceeding, to some degree, of all those who, like Mr Mill, put moral phenomena in the universe simply by the side of physical. Suppose ' sociology', a science of the logic, and treated as such by Mr Mill, tells us that it is a fact or law of human history that at a certain stage of civilization man passes through a me- taphysical stage in which he talks of the ideal of the good and right, and then passes out of this into another, the positivist, in which he looks at all this as figment — on what principle are we, individual men, to infer from this that we are therefore to look upon it so ? The logic of the moral sciences is to guide us in sciences of the fact — what men do do — what are the laws by which they do act — what they ought to do, what Ave ought to think, belongs to the supposed teleology. By what right, and on what principle of logic, so to call it, does the sociology settle the teleology .- This greater importance of the teleology in reference to the moral sciences, above that of the metaphysics in reference to the physical sciences, is what I meant when I said that in the former, art came before science. In another way we may put it thus: the moral world is man's creation: the phenomenal world is not. All the uses to which we put our physical know- ledge, all our inventions and applications, are a small thing compared with the vast amount of thai physical knowledge, and a main reason why they are 30 Large as they are ia thai we have pursued the physical knowledge to a considerable degree for its own sake, and independenl of thorn — science first, ari afterwards, lint sociology and ethology (Mr Mill's) — independenl of the consideration how far societii - and individuals have b right in what we find, by these sciences, they do do and have done — are matters of quite a different sort of important — they will not at all stand in this way as simple sciences of fact, even if we can conceive them so. The truth is, thai the- conception of them i- not clear — History and Teleology are mixed in the conception of each science -sciences of this kind are not trulj 202 MILLS LOGIC. [CHAP. IX. analogous to phenomenal and physical science : so far as they are really carried out according to the conception (I speak of course mainly of sociology and of the other only as a supposed parallel of it) they will be a bad mixture of history and specula- tion, the former rendered inaccurate by the latter, the latter not recognizing its proper position, and trammelled by the former, instead of hand-in-hand with it. Since adding to his later editions what I have been noticing, Mr Mill has published his ' Utilitarianism.' On this I say just so much, in illustration of the present matter, that it seems to me to show how logic, that is, a principle of decision among con- flicting claims to truth, is wanted for the Teleology, more than for the subordinate science. Without saying here the least whether Mr Mill is right or not in considering 'human happi- ness' to be the great end or ideal, I look only, and that for a moment, at the principles upon which he considers himself to be justified in saying so. Roughly, these seem to me to be, that with human happiness thus taken morality can be made an inductive science, and that happiness is what men do desire. Suppose both these things to be so, I ask myself, do they esta- blish what Mr Mill wants, that human happiness is that to which men ought to direct all their effort, or their highest effort? that it is the proper end, the end to be chosen in preference to other conceivable ends ? Have we in this a real Teleology, or merely the same thing which I have just noticed in M. Comte ? Are fact and ideal rightly put together? I do not the least here want to press upon Mr Mill, being quite willing to go on, Can anybody make a Teleology, or put fact and ideal properly together ? Does not this carry us back to the hopeless discus- sions of Ethics long, long ago ? Perhaps it may : all my point is, that here are the real difficulties of Ethics, and that Mr Mill's sociology and ethology will only solve subordinate ones. CHAPTER X. DR WHEWELI/S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. I COME now to Dr "Whewell's series of works, originally con- stituting in conjunction 'The Philosophy of the Inductive Sci- ences', which he has since amplified and made into three works, the 'History of Scientific Ideas', the 'Philosophy of Dis- covery', and the 'Novum Organon Renovatum'. As I understand the arrangement, the first of the three above-mentioned works or portions may be considered as the philosophy of the History of Science, which history Dr Whewell had first investigated, and exhibited in detail, as a basis (cer- tainly much the fittest basis) for all speculation about the advance of the science, or Real Logic. The last two of the three works may be considered as upon Scientific Method, the former being a History of such Method, i. e. of the views which have been entertained about it, and of the manner in which men actually have proceeded in advancing, or trying to advance, knowledge : the last being the Philosophy of this History (so to call it) which of course is the exhibition of the proper method, the Real Logic itself, for which all the n -i is foundation and preparation: the actual 'Novum Organon Renovatum'. We have then two histories, or a double Rational', of Hu- man Thought: the one of Human Thought about the univ< which is the history of the progress in Science itself: the oth< r of Human Thoughl ahoul Real Logic as I have called it), thai aboul the way in which knowledge ought to be pursued and anced. We each one of us learn, and the human race learn and between I he two proc< i • ' here musl be and may I very great, analogy. Real Logic, a [ha cribed it, beloi 204 dr, whewell's [chap. to both. So far as there is analogy, the history of learning by the race must be that of learning by the individual, ' writ large'; and must aid the understanding of the latter in the same kind of way in which Plato expected (rightly or wrongly) that politics would help the understanding of morals. And the growth of knowledge in the individual, on the other hand, is something conveniently at hand for us continually to notice, and within a compass possible for us to notice: it may, on its side, greatly help our understanding of the other. In fact, however, in the manner which I have noticed, this learning by the individual is not a thing of which the rationale has been traced out very accurately ; as happens with things near at hand to us, w T e do not know much about it. Dr Whewell's starting point is then in many respects the same as that of those Philosophers of the Human Mind, who describe, according as they conceived it, the growth of indi- vidual thought and experience. As by that practice of the limbs and senses which results in greater sharpness and skill in the use of them, coupled with activity of mind and of reason, we learn individually to see and think of things about us in the manner in wdiich we all of us do, so the race — by that continual use of sense in fresh and fresh observation, which is experience, and the continued improvement of sense, so to call it, by the invention of instruments, all this also coupled with continual activity of mind, in reasoning, speculating, and discussing — has learnt (as represented by its instructed and scientific in- tellects) to see and think of things in the way in which it now does, and which we describe as its present stage of knowledge or scientific attainment. Dr Whewell's book, though not starting like Mr Mill's from the science of Logic, yet starts with what I describe as a more logical point of view. That is, his book is a view, substantially, of change in human thought : not a view, as I have described Mr Mill's to be, of the objective world such as we may be sup- posed, standing by, to see or know it. The history of the growth of human thought about the universe forms a sub- ject of. consideration in some respects analogous to the past history of the universe itself, and to some minds it may be quite as interesting. It is a history not likely to have sug- X.] PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. 205 gested itself as a special subject of consideration before our time : and in our time, what has made it do so has been with- out doubt one science in especial, astronomy. The ideas of human scientific progress would probably not have been what they are, or even like what they are, if it had not been for that science, assumed, with more or less reason, as a type of the others. This change of human thought about the universe is a matter of fact, quite as much as the universe itself is, and it is a matter of fact which is a more convenient starting point for a Real Logic than a description (or anything of the nature of a description) of the universe itself and the facts of it, because the manner in which we must describe the universe is a vary- ing manner according to this change of thought about it, and it ought to come last in our logic, rather than first. In spite of Mr Mill's desire to escape from notions to things, his Real Lo«ic, it seems to me, is more notional than Dr Whewell's. There seems to me to be in Dr Whewell's book more of what I might call an open air effect, more of contact with living thoughts of men and with nature and actual fact, A descrip- tion of the universe, or what amounts to such, set before a view of the logic of our knowing it, can hardly avoid i ither being notional, or else anticipating what should come afterwards, and, so far as the logic may really act practically, hind, ring the growth of knowledge. Mr Mill's old Logic of substances and attributes, and his newer logic of co-existences and uniformiti fe from the latter of these dangers, bu1 still they Beem to me (it maybe prejudice) less in harmony with actual pheno- menal nature before us, and with the way in which men have fruitfully and profitably speculated about it, than Dr Whewell's Language and way of speaking. This is what 1 should mean by describing the latter as more real, Less notional, than the :ier. The view, mch as Dr Whewell has given it, of the growth of knowledge in the human race, is invaluable, not only in n p of our understanding this knowledge in the race, and the best way of our pushing it further, bul in resped of the compari between the growth of knowledge in the race and in the indi- vidual. 1 have said on a former occasion, that the growth of 206 Dit wiiewell's [chap. knowledge is a perpetual self-correction as well as a perpetual aggregation or self-enlargement. Seeing little is seeing wrong. If we are to talk of real stages in an advance of knowledge, one character by which the reality of any such stage may be known is that it is a mistake in regard of what follows it in the same manner in which it is a truth in regard of what has preceded it: if it is not afterwards itself corrected by being included in a broader view, in the same manner as it has itself corrected by inclusion what has gone before it, it is out of the line of advance of knowledge: a deduction or analogical conclusion, but not fruitful : its fruitfulness is in its correctibility. Our first act of knowledge then is not only a seed or cell in which is contained, seminally or as in a focus of aggregation, all that comes after, not only like a word of a language, what could not exist or be in the mind without the supposition of the existence of the whole which it belongs to, but it is a real, though utterly insufficient, indistinct, even mistaken, look at the entire universe. I am not at all here, it is to be observed, speaking the words of Dr Whewell, though I am saying some- thing which it seems to me his view suggests : and I am doubtful whether the bearing of what I have said would be on his side in the question of ' inconceivability ' as a test of falsehood, and of the difference between our knowledge of space, &c. and our other knowledge. I observe these things now, in the view of the interest of human knowledge as a course: and this interest is doubled, when we compare the course in the individual and the course in the race. It is interesting to think in what re- spects the learning of the individual to see a distant object, and the learning by the race to see, for so it virtually is, what is the real motion of the heavenly bodies, are and are not in analogy. The one and the other is a continued correction of first (and even of second, third, &c.) impressions by putting them together in conjunction with a continual activity of mind in respect of them : there is in the former all that Dr Whewell calls ' colli- gation of facts' and 'induction of conceptions' in a rudimentary state : in these earlier stages with changes of consciousness so rapid that we cannot follow them : whereas each one of the corresponding changes of thought or view in later science may be the work of generations, involving observation heaped upon X.] PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. 207 observation, and the trying fruitlessly conceptions after concep- tions. So far there is first a tolerably complete, and then a very imperfect, analogy : in what follows there is no analogy at all : namely, that the first lands us in a normal or habitual state of thought and view from which all the latter, to what- ever extent carried, does not, and does not seem likely to, dis- lodge us. This is a circumstance which, apparently, depends upon the relation between the time which we take to learn anything and the duration of our individual existence. We learn to say that we see the distance between a tree a mile off and another many times that distance, but I suppose we should hardly say that we saw the sun to be further off from us than the moon is, though we know this fact as perfectly, and have learnt it really in very much the same manner. In the same way we never feel, and I suppose never shall feel, that we turn round the sun or round the centre of the earth, though various things which we say we do feel or know by sensation come to our knowledge in really as distinct and intellectual a manner as these facts do. I mention this analogy and want of analogy between the course of knowledge in the individual and in the race, because the comparison between the one and the other seems to me in its truth one of the most important, and in its error one of the most deceiving and injurious, of comparisons possible. I have mentioned that I say very little about the merit of books, one reason fur which is, that my view of merit of this kind is rather my own, and what in tin.- common talk of criti- i mighl not he accepted as praise. In any branch of know- Ledge which is advancing, a \e .. or a hook without something of incompleteness, and undig< stedness, and consequently mistake, would seem to me as little to be desired as full developed man- hood in a growing boy ; and in estimating the value of a book I look quite as much at the openings which it make, in fronl of it for fresh knowledge, which are no1 unfrequently in the way of mistake, as at the points which it. definitely secui And besides this, I have a grounded disbelief in that view of the nature of the advance of knowledge which is implied h\ the Haconian expn ion 'intellectue sibi permissus', used in a de- preciating I do not want to have the intellect unshackled 208 dr whewell's [chap. from sloth, and prejudice, and misapplied authority, to be re- shackled by a perhaps mistaken logic. This makes me look with less interest upon Real Logic as a means, method, or instrument of discovery than many would. But it makes me look with more interest upon it as a rationale of what man has actually, from time to time, thought. I have not the smallest belief in Bacon's having reformed the methods of discovery (believing rather that if he had had any success in this way, in the manner he wished, it would have been most calamitous for science) : nor, to the extent of my knowledge, which is not great/ should I judge with Dr Whewell that a reform is wanted in this respect now 1 . But I think that the history of the advance of human thought about the universe is only inferior in interest and profitable- ness, if it is that, to the history of the universe itself, and that the vigorous manner in which Bacon conceived this advance, as possible when not actual, sets him in the highest intellectual, as much as the earnest manner in which he urged it on sets him in the highest moral rank. What Bacon had to look back upon was not in many respects satisfactory, and he misconceived it by making it worse than it was. Dr Whewell looks back upon a far brighter retrospect, and has the advantage of Bacon in the absence of such misconception. This advantage and the tone of mind belongfinsf to it, runs through the book. Dr Whewell show T s us how the human mind has acted in the advance after truth, how its very mistakes have been of advan- tage to it, and how great men have trodden down the way which may after them be the more easily followed. Bacon had, 1 " It will be found, I think," says Dr Whewell, "that some of the doctrines now "most widely prevalent respecting the foundations of truth are of such a kind that a "Reform is needed. The present age seems, by many indications, to be called upon " to seek a sounder Philosophy of Knowledge than is now current among us." (Hist, of Scientific Ideas, Vol. I. p. 7.) ' I suppose this refers to positivist or ultra-phe- nomenalist doctrines, and if so, I heartily sympathize with Dr Whewell's efforts against them. But to know what philosophy of knowledge, or whether any, is current among us, seems to me to be a very hard task, and the desire to find it out is one of the things which has prompted my present employment. What Dr Whewell assigns as the task of the present age seems to me to be the duty of every age. To improve the philosophy of our age in the direction which seems to us the right one is the duty of all who can do it — but to understand it to such a degree as to be able to judge that it ought to be reformed, seems to me very difficult. How great is the complication, for instance, of all the controversies with which I am dealing. X-] PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. 200 whether necessarily or not, the far less enviable task of a con- demner, critic, corrector. In my view then of Dr Whewell's book, I consider it a o- od Keal Logic, because it does exhibit the action of the human mind in large as the same, in its great features, with its action in small, and because it recognizes not only as interesting, but as im- portant in the past history of the human race, that varied experience, that feeling after truth, that approach towards it at once by way of mental activity and variety of experience of fact, which is the same way as that in which we gain our simpler and earlier knowledge. With full justice done, in this way, to the value of past imagination and even error, there is no fear of too shackling or restraining an art of logic for the future. Logic of all kinds, Real Logic included, is likely to be in some difficulty as to its way of dealing with first principles of belief or knowledge — that is, whether it shall include within itself notice of them, or not. Mr Mill professes not to do so — dealing only with logic of inference: some difficulties, we have seen, arise from this. Dr Whewell goes to the bottom — does deal with them 1 . We may view knowledge, as I have said, from the logical or from the phenomenalist point of view. The pure phenomenalist point of view is what, in speaking of Mr Mill, I have called the supposition of presence witli things, or 'adstance', on our part — in this case notice of our faculties of knowing:, or our manner of thinking, does not enter into the consideration: there is sup- posed the universe with its facts: it so happens that it is we, witli and by our faculties of knowledge, who know them: bu1 1 Mr Mill, I think, i3 rather too free in his references to a supposed ' meta- physics', to which the consideration of certain fundamental difficulties belongs. That is to say, he does to a certain extent ileal with such difficulties, to such an extent, it seems to me, as to preclude himself from saying with reason thai they belong to a different subject from that which he treats of. In my view, as I have mentioned, philosophy is all one subject, and tho reference of a difficulty from one to another supposed branch of it is one of tin- must, tempting subteri bad philosophers, and with good ones, like Mr .Mill and sir William Hamilton, is likely to lead to mistake ami insufficient consideration. Of mnrse tie n i a diffi culty in this: no one book can contain everything. Bat the reference of thing to a different subject is a shelving them, different from a simple declining, for * ever reason, to enter upon them. I think DrWhewell's vi< w faces diffi fully and thoroughly, in this respect, than Mr Mill's. 1 1 210 dr wiiewell's [chap. so far as the view of the universe (or the proper physics) is concerned, it might be a different being with and by different faculties who did so. The facts, not the knowledge of them, make here the important consideration. The logical point of view is that of correctness of thought. So far as we say 'correctly' of thought about things, we must be aware that by ' things ' here we only mean a formless non- ego; the thought is not about the really existing things until, or except so far as, it is correct: i.e. there must be supposed something distinct from ourselves which we think about, but from this point of view it is no more than an assumed object, or rather subject, in one sense of the word subject, of our thought : we have no business with any supposition as to what it may be, or may not be, in itself: knowledge of it is the thinking rightly about it, or investing it with the at- tributes which the laws of our thought induce us or compel us to invest it with. Any supposed real essence of itself is in this view left out of account exactly in the same manner as any specialty of the faculties of knowledge is left out of account by the phenomenalist. It will be remembered that, using the word ' sensation' to express the whole of our consciousness, from the most agitating feeling of nervous or concrete pleasure or pain to the merest abstraction of thought, I supposed a scale of this, in which relations such as those of space would concern about the middle. The logical view takes notice first of the top or thought end of this scale, and proceeds downwards, considering what it meets with as of less and less intellectual importance, till the lower part will be neglected altogether, or treated as that unreason or nonsense which it is the business of the higher part to con- vert into knowledge. And each higher part, as I said, is form to what is below it. The phenomenalist view, so far as it deals with the scale at all, begins with the lower end, as, for it, the most real. It then proceeds upwards, attributing more and more of an empty, non-material, visionary character to what it in succession meets with : till that which the logicalist begins with, that which constitutes what I have called the thinghood of things, is with the phenomenalist unnoticed or treated as a delusion. The X.] PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. 211 thing is, with him, a co-existence (say), in regard of which any supposition of reason for the co-existence, anything beyond its beiug a fact, is unmeaning. In my view, it is a difference in manner of thinking rather than a difference in absolute truth, whether we speak of the whole scale or of any part of it as belonging to ourselves or as belonging to things, as part of the subject, or as the object, of knowledge. Our faculties of knowing and the things which we know are plainly in adaptation, however arising, the one to the other, and I do not see what principles we have to o-o on in saying what, in the act of knowledge, belongs to the one and what to the other. Except so far as this; I have represented sensation as a scale: so far as we speak of subject and object about it, we might represent it by two converging and meeting lines. Subject and object, at the lower or feeling end of the scale, are widely separated, there being between them (I mean the subject and object of intelligence) matter or body, phenomenalism, which is the vehicle of their communica- tion: our body on the one side, extraneous matter on the other. Higher in the scale they converge, till in thought they meet. Let us say, e.g. as Dr Whewell would be inclined to say, that in an organized animal there is plainly indicated purpose or a final cause. Xow here it seems to me an identical way of speaking, and only different in words, whether we say that the purpose is a fact of the organization, or a thought which we with reason have about it. If we disputed whether it was one or the other we should be disputing only about words. Being a thought in any case, it is jusl the same tiling whether Ave consider it em- bodied in the organization or existing, with reason to exist, in our j j i ii j* Is. Lower down in the scale, if we discuss whether whatever it is that we are speaking about is in the subject or in the object, in ourselves or in things, it is more than a question of words, though less than a question of absolute truth ; it i a difference of yiew. We mean different things, though we might mean either not incorrectly. This 1 conceive to be th< for instance, as to space. If there is to bo any meaning of importance in our saying that space is subjective ami not objective, an idea or form «'i thought as \ 1 'Contingent truths', Hays Dr Whewell, 'are truths which it happen* (eontingit) are true', (as that a lunar month contain! 30 days). Thi« u making the conveying term too significant, for Dr Whewell would hardly liki the leu [th of the lunar month to be called 'an acci- plicable to phenomena and in aid of observation : but observation adds nothing to it, either in the way of amount or clearness. The case is exactly opposite in reference to the idea of 'polarity': this the mind has no hold of at the first or the slightest sug- gestion of it: only with far advanced observation it shows itself. In the case of the idea of resemblance, what happens is that it takes, with advance of knowledge, the character of a different idea: the growing definiteness attaching to it is an alteration of its nature, this definiteness being, in reality, an increasing perception of law, order, reason, meaning, underly- ing the resemblance, and substituting itself in the mind for it, making: the sciences which Dr "Whewell has called 'classifi- catory' continually less and less so, and more and more what may be loosely called 'physiological'. As the idea of 'resem- blance' is thus a temporary one, so the idea of c a medium' seems to me a mistaken one, mistaken both in a logical and phenomenal point of view, ami to disappear for this reason. The great ideas of ' substance ' and of 'cause' are tin- mosl difficult. With regard to the former, I should have bhoughl that chemical speculations and researches :is to the constitution of matt* r were not Likely to be benefited by a comparison of the object of their search with the very difficult ami doubtful notions, in which to disentangle logic from supposed pheno- menal truth i- scarcely possible, which the philosophical use "t the word ' Bubstance ' involves 1 . If it is really an idea, it ■ ■ ma 1 Qpon this idea of 'substance', uvdl u upon that just mentioi 222 DR tvhewell's [chap. to me that the advance of knowledge consists in the entire transforming it, and gradually substituting a different one. 'Cause' Dr Whewell seems to look at in four manners. ' Efficient cause ', which is what is connected with the sciences of force: 'final cause', which is what is connected with the sciences of organization: rical cause', which is what is connected with the (Etiological sciences, or those which concern the historv and origin of things : and what I may call ' physical cause', the consideration of which is what differences certain sciences or branches of science 'astronomy, e.g.) as 'physical', from certain others relating to the same subject and which are called ' formal '. I may observe that ' cause ', as looked upon by Mx Hill and phenomenalists, is a relation of time, and little else, in the main like the third view above : cause being simply antecedent with certain considerations indeed about it, in some respects similar to those which belong to the fourth view above. And I will observe in connexion with this,, that the viewing of things as much as possible in the relation of time is what, substantially, the phenomenalist view amounts to, and it is because this view of them is felt as a poor and insufficient view that the phenomenalist view is unsatisfactory. The phe- nomenalisms knowledge of nature is the knowledge of the history of nature. In that view, our presence or adstance. as I have called it, is in face of what we are bid to call a series of chancres, without our bein£ able to know what it is that changes, or v:\y the changes take place, in any other sense of the why, than this, what previous change any present change is the result of. The thought of ' cause '", in the fourth view above, he asking the question, why the changes take place, in the hope of an answer other than historical. The asking the ques- tion is in reality the theorizing about the change or fact, and the brinorincr it, so far as the theorizincr succeeds, under a CO' © * broader and more general fact : the quest of cause then, in this fourth view of it, is — as instructed or trained by the advance of knowledge — the desire of c/eneralitv and simplicity, the tendencv towards them in our thought, the looking for them, and expec- medium', I cannot enter into Dr "WhewelTs view at all. I vdll append in a future chapter some remarks upon each of them. X.] PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. 223 tation of finding them, in nature. The tendency to proceed from formal science to physical is the same as that to proceed from knowledge hy way of fact to knowledge of reason, and they are two ways of describing the general 'nisus' towards advance in knowledge. The view of 'substance', and these various views of 'cause', seem to me attempts (but I do not think any attempt can be suc- cessful), to exhibit as distinct subjective ideas, that thought which belongs to the upper part of my scale of knowledge. I most thoroughly believe in or think one thing, which appears to me stateable with equal truth in either of two ways : namely, that there is in the universe, besides chemical constitution, besides solidity, shapes, and forces, something more abstract or as I should call it higher than these, I mean order, law, meaning, principle, purpose, however we may describe it : we are present or look on at this as much as at the other things : our thought is as real a sensive power for this purpose as our feeling is for sweetness or bitterness. It appears to me only to represent the same tiiith if we say from the other side, that we have sensations which we call the tasting and smelling things : that we have sensations again more refined about them, by some named ideas, and which we describe as the handling and measuring things : and again that we have thoughts about them (higher sensations or intuitions) certainly to be called ideas, as namely, that they have substance or real existence, that there is final cause or purpose about them, and many more. But so far ns these things are to be considered as in the uni- verse, they would be by no means the first things that we should find out: and I do not think therefore that we ought to begin science with laying them down, or even attempting to do so. I think that if this came to affect our Real Logic as an art, i. e. to influence our action for the future, in attempts t<> discover, it would be injurious, as Bacon's method of a very differenl kind would have been injurious. And I think it injures our .1 Logic as a science by confusing it. Lh- Whewel] prop his boot to us as a Novum Organum for our time, it is, looked at simply as an Organum or guide to scientific thought, no1 only more suited to our time, bul thanth I mian < rganum — I say nothing about the two 224 dr whewell's [chap. works in any other point of view. It seems to me to have far more truth in it for all and for any time : no wonder perhaps — there has been not only Bacon, but many others, to learn from. But in reality it is a new ' Traite de la Methode' — I mean the thought of it descends (of its actual suggestion I know nothing) quite as much from the manner of thought of Descartes as from that of Bacon. This is a vast advantage. Bacon and Descartes were two contemporary intellectual reformers with exactly op- posite views, and the looking at them seems to me of the greatest value in regard of all our view of such reform : the general positive recommendations of each were I think in their different lines equally wanted and have been since equally valuable : the more particular recommendations, or more special reform, have been nugatory. The scholastic stagnation of mind, so far as it existed, wanted a Descartes to shake it up quite as much as a Bacon. When Bacon urged attention, still attention, and ever repeated attention, to nature, to fact, to observation, to experiment, he was most right and useful: but so far as he said, You must give less attention, in order for this, to books and to reflection or self-concentrated thought (idle cobwebs of the brain) he spoke without force or meaning. What was wanted in regard of books and thought was exactly the same which was wanted in regard of observation, not at all less attention to the one and the other, but a wiser, better applied, more real attention, which would really leave abundance of time for the utmost amount of observa- tion of nature and fact, and would really help, instead of hinder- ing it. In respect of this wiser and better reflection or thought, Descartes was the apostle of it, as Bacon was of better and more abundant observation. To complete the trio, there should have existed at the same time some man doing in a special way what was being done by many, and was a work quite as important as either of the others, namely, urging the wiser and more thorough study of books, better criticism : the intellectual revival of that time was an awaking at once to more close study of nature — to more accurate and methodical thought — and to better criticism, and each one of them aided the other. The careful criticism and study of what Aristotle really said probably aided the ad- vance of science better than the putting him into the fire would have done, in spite of Bacon's denunciations of him. X.] PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. 225 Dr Whewell then it seems to me joins with Bacon's view of the important thing about truth being its closeness to fact, Descartes' view of its being clearness and distinctness of thought and is eminently right in doing so 1 . He has mixed with this what seems to me error, but I think it is his view on the whole which is the right and the fruitful one. Any discussion of the particulars of his Method of Real Logic does not concern my present purpose, which has only reference to his general principles or view. I shall proceed however in another chapter to enter a little inure into detail on some of my points of difference given above, and to examine one or two passages which embody his views. 1 I am not at all aware that Dr AYhewell thinks as highly of Descartes as I do, and he does not I think say very much ahout him. He himself (Phil, of Discovery, p. 162), attaches the great reform of scientific method to Bacon, considers that Descartes set himself speculatively in opposition to it, but that still he and his disciples did attend very much to experiment and to the known facts, that consequently his physical philosophy (then the most important part of natmal philosophy) was the best then current, and he came to be considered as the great hero of the overthrow of Aristotle. At the same time the de- durtivc character of his philosophy, his rushing to general principles and deducing conclusions from them, his deducing effects from causes rather than causes from effects— this was a wrong side of his doctrine which gave nevertheless to it much of its charm, a 'gratissimus error' to human nature. When one reads this, one asks one's self, what really is the position of the two great controvertists in this matter of our day, Dr Whewell and Mr Mill, as to Bacon and Descartes 1 They both put forward the: name of Bacon, they disagree nevertheless in their view of him, and neither of them really much follow him— do they take- from Descartes' manner of thinking, the one his 'clear ideas', the other his 'deduction' 1 And do they each, more or less, consider that the other is in this ' Betting himself in oppo- sition to the reform which science needs'? I give no opinion about this, only observing how very difficult it is to enter into a controversy and see the real bearing of it. 15 CHAPTEE XI. THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. I shall proceed to put Dr WhewelTs view and mine iu conjunction in this way : by quoting various passages from him which indicate his view, and expressing my agreement with some of them, my difference from others. At the basis then of all knowledge Dr Whewell considers there is that fundamental antithesis which I have already to a certain degree discussed. It is constant and essential, but without a fixed and permanent line dividing its members : it is variously modifiable, and variously expressible. The simplest expression of the antithesis is the opposition of 'things' and 'thought'. Upon these I begin as Dr Whewell ends : he says, after describing the antithesis, as a conclusion to his description, " Thoughts and things are so intimately combined in our know- " ledge, that we do not look upon them as distinct. One single " act of the mind involves them both, and their contrast dis- " appears in their union. But though knowledge requires the " union of these two elements, Philosophy requires the separa- " tion of them, in order that the nature and structure of know- " ledge may be seen 1 ". The first two sentences I hold : in the third, I do not accept the description of ' things' and 'thoughts' as 'two elements' of knowledge : and so far as Philosophy sepa- rates them, I hold that it presents us with two aspects of know- ledge from different sides, not with two portions of it. It seems to me, that as soon as we begin, in the manner which Dr Whewell here describes, to make the separation he speaks of, his language will no more stand examination than that of Sir William Hamilton and of Mr Mill. "Things", says Dr Whewell, "are something different from " ourselves and independent of us ; something which is without. « 1 II Ut. of Scientific Ideas, Vol. I. p. 25. GH. XI.] THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 1^7 "us: they are; we see them, touch them, and thus know thai " they exist : but we do not make them by seeing or touching "them, as we make our thoughts by thinking them: we are " passive, and Things act upon our organs of perception 1 ". Here we have, as before, 'without us' as quasi-synony- mous with 'different from us' and 'independent of us'. But what seems to me the case with Dr Whewell is, that the wrong psychology which we find, carries in a way its antidote with it : I will show how. ' "We see the things, touch them, and thus know that they exist '. This sentence i" should put : we see, touch (so we describe certain sensations), and in so doing know that things exist, which last clause means, we become aware of something to which we attribute an existence like our own. In the wrong psychology the sentence would mean : three steps, instead of my one: first, the things are by us to be seen : next, we see and touch thorn : third, we infer from the seeing and touching that they exist. The first step here is not strongly marked in Dr Whewell : the transition from the second to the third seems more strongly so: though still his 'thus' ('wo thus know that they exist') need not imply an inference 2 . The next clause of the passage quoted, it appears to me, should be put with other passages of Dr Whewell, in which he seems to in- to say that wo do make things the things that tiny are to us by thinking them, that is, by superinducing 'ideas' upon what he calls the sensations (the seeing and touching): when some 'things', viz. the rays of Light, act upon our organs of perception, then, by thinking (as we make our thoughts), by superinducing ideas of space, &c), we make other 'things', viz. a tree or tin- sun, and these are the thin-;- which common language describes us as 'seeing'. The antithesis between 'thoughts' and 'things', and the antithesis between 'theories' and 'facts', are in the main similar, and arc- described in very much tin' same language. And I speak of them in particular, because it seems to mo that the 1 iii. ]•. 24. * Of course if it does, the inference must be from a maxim, ' whai w< an I and touch exists': implying, previous to Ihe commi net mi ot of know!* dge, a notii n of exi ti dm indi pi adent of our own, and a sort of pn 11 ii d< i of 1 ur seeing and touchi 15—2 228 THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS [CHAP. 'antithesis', so to call it, has really, as Dr Whewell himself puts it sometimes, much more the character of a contrast (or counter-respondence) of view than of a separation of elements. 1 That which is a Fact under one aspect, is a Theory under another". So says Dr Whewell in one place, and so say I, and the same of ' thought ' and ' thing ', ' idea ' and ' sensa- tion '. ' Theories ', again he says, ' become facts by becoming certain and familiar'. That is, they become facts as we con- ceive facts : and just in the same manner if we look in the reverse direction, 'facts' become in our mind true theories or conceptions. Speaking of theory, I will just comment for a moment on a passage of Dr Whewell's, in which he gives a most interest- ing and fruitful illustration, and falls it seems to me into a mistake as illustrative and important. " The scene of nature is a picture without depth of sub- " stance, no less than the scene of art ; and in the one case as " in the other, it is the mind which, by an act of its own, dis- " covers that colour and shape denote distance and solidity. " Most men are unconscious of this perpetual habit of reading " the language of the external world, and translating as they " read. The draughtsman, indeed, is compelled, for his purposes, "to return back in thought from the solid bodies which he has " inferred, to the shapes of surface which he really sees. He " knows that there is a mask of theory over the whole face of " nature, if it be theory to infer more than we see. But other •' men, unaware of this masquerade, hold it to be a fact that " they see cubes and spheres, spacious apartments and winding " avenues. And these things are facts to them, because they " are unconscious of the mental operation by which they have "penetrated nature's disguise 2 ". If any one will ponder this passage well, he will see, I think, how the two things which I condemn, the relativism and the wrong psychology, go together, and how they render clear thought impossible. What is it that we want to see, or, if we prefer the expres- sion, which ought we to see ? It appears to me that Dr Whewell, in the above passage, 1 Hist, of Scientific Ideas, p. 44. s lb. p. 46. XI.] OP PHILOSOPHY. 229 describes exactly the same proceeding on our part, in the earlier part of the passage as 'the seeing, not the face of nature, but a mask of theory over it ', and in the end of the passage as 'the penetrating nature's disguise'. That is, in the same passage, the view of knowledge taken is changed to one exactly the reverse. The draughtsman does not see the cubes and spheres, but the surfaces, and it is this sight which is it ap- pears the real face of nature : we do see the cubes and spheres, and this way of our seeing is described first as seeing nature in masquerade, and then as u/imasquerading her. Which is it ? I may be wrong in my understanding of the sentence, and so far as I am right, I say most unfeignedly that my view of the confusion is as of something which it is almost impossible to avoid, so long as the language about sensation and nature is used, which is almost the received language, and no peculiar language of Dr Whewell. I mean such language as ' the shapes of surface which the draughtsman really sees' , and the language about 'inference', to which however I will return if I can again. And then, supposing the existence of this mask of theory (a most happy expression it seems to me, well understood), what does the mask cover ? The face of nature ? Nature, or fact, is to me, and I should have thought to Dr Whewell, the mask it- self, if we are to call 'mask' what theory presents to us; and what is beneath the mask is not 'the face of nature', but the 'unknowable substratum' of the notionalists, the 'nonsense in- contradictory' of Mr Ferrier. The notion of the mask over the face of nature is exactly that which I am sure Dr Whewell does not wish to fall into — it is what I have called 'relativism'. It' 'the face of nature' is reality, then the mask over it, which is what theory gives us, is so nun-li deception, and that is what relativism really comes to. Excepl that even the mask is l< deceptive than the relativist's knowledge, for the mask dues give us some features of what is within. If on the other hand, what theory •^'•'•^ "s is r< • o\ fact, then, as 1 said, the mask is the face. And in either case, we have nothing to do with 'penetrating nature's disguise'; and this view of knowledge, anyhow out of place here, is not worth much anywhere. If nature dm-^ disguise herself, as the relativists believe, she is likely, as they also believe, to do bo effectually. 1230 THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS [CHAP. My view then is precisely expressed by the antithesis as it exists between Theories and Facts. "As our knowledge", says Dr Whew ell, " becomes more sure and more extensive, we are " constantly transferring to the class of facts, opinions which were "at first regarded as theories 1 ". Fact is nature or the uni- verse : and fact here, with Dr Whewell, is described as justified or verified opinion, just as I have described it as Tightness of thought: the growth of our knowledge is the increase of faet for us by the conversion of opinion into it : I have described fact, or phenomenalism, as a deposit from imagination in this same way. In my view, the antithesis between thoughts and things is just the same as this between theories and facts. How far they are the same with Dr Whewell, we have seen. I will quote rather at length Dr Whewell's language on the antithesis as it exists between 'ideas' and 'sensations'. " Space, time, number, are not Sensations or Things. They " are something different from, and opposed to Sensations and " Things. We have termed them Ideas. It may be said they " are Relations of Things, or of Sensations. But granting this " form of expression, still a Relation is not a Thing or a Sensa- "tion; and therefore we must still have another and opposite " element, along with our Sensations. And yet, though we have " thus these two elements in every act of perception, we cannot " designate any portion of the act as absolutely and exclusively " belonging to one of the elements. Perception involves Sen- " sation, along with Ideas of time, space, and the like ; or, if any " one prefers the expression, we may say, Perception involves " Sensations along with the apprehension of Relations. Percep- " tion is Sensation, along with such ideas as make Sensation " into an apprehension of Things or Objects. "And as Perception of Objects implies Ideas, — as Obser- " vation implies Reasoning; — so, on the other hand, Ideas cannot " exist where sensation has not been 2 ". If we begin, as in the case of the antithesis between things and thoughts, with the latter part of this language, I hold with it, giving my own meaning to 'sensation' and 'percep- tion', and my own meaning to the calling the object of the 1 lb. p. 49. 2 lb. p. 46. XI.] OF PHILOSOPHY. . 231 one and that of the other, 'two elements': but this meaning is such as does not lead me to say that space is not 'a thing', or that it is not, in another and more proper signification of the term 'sensation', a 'sensation': nor can I understand the lan- guage, that space and time are 'opposed' to sensations or things, and constitute an element 'opposite' to the other. I will not say again what I have said as to 'the scale of sensation or knowledge': I am equally ready (if only we take care which we do) to use the term 'sensation' of all our knowledge, or of knowledge such as our knowledge of secondary qualities : and similarly 'perception' of all our just thought suggesting the presence of phenomena, or of such thought as applied to the primary qualities, united with sensation in the second significa- tion above : and if any one likes to call knowledge such as that of the secondary, and such again as that of the primary qualities (knowledge i.e. at different heights on my scale), different ele- ments, I do not quarrel with him. Only that in this view we have really not two, but many, elements of knowledge : and to me, Dr Whewell's 'Ideas' rise some of them as much above others as any of them rise above his 'sensations'. This we shall see better shortly. What I quarrel with is the supposition of the two elements, with the reason for it, viz. thai the one is derived from the mind, the other from things. I have described the extenl to which, in my view, tins may be said justly : but as it is given by Dr Whewell, it seems to me to involve all the wrong psy- chology which it is my chief business to oppose. 'Sensal ions' are defined 'the impressions upon our senses': then these sensa- tions are connected by us ra perception according to relations of Bpace, time, number : these connexions of the sensations contem- plated distinct from the things to which they are applied, con- stitute 'ideas'. The sensations are apprehended by the se] then relations of them by an ad of the mind : the senses furnish lething, but these relations go beyond whal they furnish: the mind is passive, as well as active; there are obji cts without a- wi II as faculties within. The mind is always actively applying ideas to the objects which it perceives, bul at the same tirat pa sively perceiving them by means of sensations This ii Dr Whewell's account. 232 THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS [CHAP. I do not want here the least to be cavilling about language, and for that reason give a variety of sentences of Dr Whewell's, who is here giving nothing which is peculiarly his own, but only describing vividly and interestingly what a great many would agree with him in. What I want the reader to judge for him- self about, not by any one sentence, but by conceiving, as well as he can, the whole view, is this : Are there here two processes, or as I say, one ? Is the mind's passivity, in so far as it is recep- tivity, or in other words, as there is knowledge, anything other than its activity looked at the other way ? Are objects objects to us any otherwise than as our faculties are exercised upon them ? What is the meaning of ' applying ideas to the objects' ? Are the objects objects to us independently of this application? then we know without ideas : and what do the ideas add ? Or, on the other hand, are they not? then the application of the ideas is the knowing: and till they are applied there is no knowledge of any kind. All I am concerned with is, that there are not two processes, but one described different ways. And when Dr Whewell speaks of anything ' being apprehended by the senses ', is he not doing the very thing which he condemned in the passage which I quoted before, and ' designating a por- tion of the act of perception as exclusively belonging to one of its elements', viz. (his) sensation? I will not dwell upon this because what is wanted is thought, and not perhaps very easy thought on the part of the reader, and I speak of it in reference to Dr Whewell, because it seems to me, as I have said, that all that he says here is eminently instructive as to our view of knowledge, and that the wrong psychology is not essential, and has got, as I expressed it, its antidote with it. It is chiefly by the aid of the sense of sight that this dis- tinction between what comes from the mind and what from the thing is made out. I will not speak of this now, because I should like to speak a little of this sense shortly by itself. Let the reader only weigh such a sentence as this (it is 'seeing' that is being spoken of): "Who does not know how " much we, by an act of the mind, add to that which our senses "receive? 1 " What 'our senses 'means here, I cannot understand. 1 lb. p. 45- XI.] OF PHILOSOPHY. '233 Is it the optic nerve ? Then the act of the mind adds every- thing, and we do not apprehend by the sense anything. Is it ourselves as sensitive, so that ' what our senses receive' is the change of consciousness which we describe as 'seeino-'? Then what needs any act of the mind besides this ? Is it not itself an act of the mind, if so we choose to describe it ? I have perhaps said enough to make it understood in what manner I consider the antithesis right, and in what wrong. It is right in three ways : (1) as presenting the double view, in the way which I mentioned in speaking about theory and fact : (2) as applied through Dr WhewelTs book, in bringing out pro- perly the manner in which the mind, in the process of learning or increasing knowledge, is active : and (3) in marking the dif- ferent hinds of things which are the objects of our knowledge, though Dr WhewelTs view of these kinds is different in some il'^Tee from mine. The antithesis is wrong in one way: that it divides a part of knowledge, as belonging to the mind, from a part as not belong- ing to it : whereas all knoui. -dg.- is right thought, if we look at it so, as on the other hand all knowledge is fact exhibiting itself to us or at which we are present, it' we look at it so. The second way in which, as I noticed above, the antithesis is important, gives it probably its main value "An inductive truth", says Dr Whewell, " is proved like the "guess which answers a riddle, by its agreeing with the facts " described x ". This account is incomplete, and is commented upon as such very severely by Mr Mill, because it is possible that various theories nii gjree with the facts described, and we want one answer, nol several to the riddle of the universe: but the describing the problem as th<- gu.-.sing ••' riddle puts it more aptly than any description of il as 'fad impressing itself upon us', because the real activity is Oil OUT side, and in ail history of the process this is the important thing to bring fully out Dr WnewelTs view Is I think more likely than many others to save us from thai cardinal confusion in the study of the process of knowledge, the considering the things as known before we know them. 1 /'-. p 39. 234 THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS [CHAP. The mass of observed fact at any time, say upon any par- ticular subject as to which knowledge is progressing, presents a double aspect: in reference to its past, and to the thought which has been expended upon it, it is knowledge and is orderly : but on the side opposite to this it is not knowledge but only the inform matter of possible future knowledge, and itself chaos or confusion. The idea or right conception is then applied to it : it becomes knowledge and order. The important thing to observe here is, that it is not to this as to fact that the idea is applied, thereby generating knowledge, but to this as fact as yet unac- counted for, and felt as unaccounted for : it is this, the unac- counted for, which is the matter of knowledge, and wants the idea or conception to make it knowledge : as fact, it is knowledge already, and is orderly, having been generated as Dr Whewell has himself described, from theory : this, the unaccounted for, is Mr Ferrier's non-sense, the not-yet sense. Now it is only in this way, it seems to me, that we can form a notion of this in- form matter of knowledge, and therefore of what it is which the application of the idea effects. To form a notion of it, we must of course to some degree know it, i.e. it must in some way be no longer only matter of knowledge, but knowledge : but we may consider it in another way not yet knowledge, and this is just the state of Dr Whewell's 'fact with the idea as yet unapplied'. It is not therefore that the idea is of any different nature from the fact to which it is applied : it is not that the fact is something generically given to the mind, and the idea something generi- cally proceeding from the mind : the fact, as known fact, does not want the idea, nor is capable of it : it is the fact in that aspect of it in which it is analogous to what I described the logical subject to be — in its aspect of the unaccounted for and undescribed, conceptible but unconceived, in which aspect it has no character but that of capability of the appropriate concep- tion — in which it is waiting for its idea as the subject waits for its predicate — it is the fact in this aspect of it that wants the idea: and it is in this view that Dr Whewell's account of the growth of knowledge is true and valuable. We have epistemo- logy, or the manner in which we make knowledge out of its prae-objectal matter or confusion, exemplified before us in an actual course or progress : and that without even so much of XI.] OF PHILOSOPHY. 23") t eel 1 idealism as I use here, with no cumbrous logical phraseology bringing us into danger of notionalism or mis-realization, but with, when fact is what we are concerned with, what I call a genuine and good phenomenalism, that is, a view of nature as our sensive powers actually communicate with it. Such being the manner in which I look at Dr "Whewell's proceeding, of course I set no particular value on his language, as distinguished from other possible language in conjunction with which the same pi-oceeding might go on. This successive application of ideas to the matter of knowledge is a course of thought on our part about the universe, the great and primaeval subject of knowledge, the vast unaccounted for and conceptible, but only one way, in substance, conceptible — capable only of the right account of it and the appropriate conception. Dr "Whewell's ideas are a set of real categories or great predicates, of which the universe, as such a subject, is susceptible. And all this, as I view it, does not prevent our turning the thing the other way, and looking at these ideas as the great facts of the universe, if we like to begin with supposing the universe whal we finally come to find out that it is : then, however, we are merely adstant, presenl a1 it, we must not make the incongruous supposition of ourselves thinking and learning about it. But since we do think and learn about it, and knowledge grows, and the Rationale of its growth is Real Logic, the best method for Real Logic is that of Dr Whewell, where the activity of our mind- Lb fully taken accounl of, or that is the point of view. Dr Whewell's ideas are in my view simply knowledge viewed as proceeding from the activity of the mind, in the Bame way as his t'nrts are Bimply knowledge viewed as coming to the mind, or apparent to it. It seems to me thai there is throughoul an inconsistency in Ins language, arising from hifl mixing the notion to me right) of the mind forming its conceptions and applying them to the facts (in the manner jusl described), with the notion to me the wrong one) of the mind having ideas (the relation of which to the above 'conceptions' is confused) as its furniture, in the same way as the universe has things for its furniture. I accept, as against Mr Mill, ML". C te, and perhaps others, Dr Whewell's view in general of the manner of the growth of knowledge. Bui 1 think thai the notion of the idea 236 THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS [CHAP. being the furniture of the mind, so fax from being necessary to what is good in the view, is incongruous with it. The whole purpose of distinguishing anything as belonging to the mind from something else as belonging to the universe, is in order that we may be able to contemplate reflectively the former in- dependent of that continuing change of view which progressive experience or growth of knowledge causes in us. But Dr Whewell's ideas have got nothing fixed or stable about them: even the value of space and time, as necessary and original ideas, is destroyed by the association with them of ideas in regard of which we are in no degree certain that we are really in right possession of them : the ideas cannot warrant any truth to us when so many of them want warranting themselves. For the notion of the generic distinction of the idea from the fact, there needs to be substituted the notion which I gave above, that it is not the fact, qua fact, which wants the idea as something to complete it, but the fact as unaccounted for. " We see two trees of different kinds : but we cannot know that " they are so, except by applying to them our idea of the resem- " blance and difference which makes kinds 1 ". The superinduc- tion of the idea upon the fact as fact is just that same relativism and wrong psychology united which makes us suppose the ex- isting universe first, and then speculate how we know it. We then inevitably get the notion that our knowledge of it alters its existence to us, or is not of its true existence, which is what I call ' relativism '. And between the senses feeling and the mind perceiving we make the notion of knowledge utterly disjointed and confused. This is the wrong psychology. In the sentence above, I cannot possibly understand the meaning of 'seeing two trees of different kinds', and yet having still to know that they are of different kinds, by applying to them the idea of kind. When we first see the trees, how do they seem to us ? of the same kind ? then what leads us to apply to them the idea which makes us change our mind about them and think them of dif- ferent kinds ? Or, on the other hand, do we see them of dif- ferent kinds ? then we do know their difference already before the idea is applied. Or, again, do we see them of no kind ? but then we do not see them as trees : they cannot be trees to us 1 lb. p. 32. XI.] OF PHILOSOPHY. 237 without the thought on our part of kind. What I want to uro-e is this : that the idea is not applied to the fact as fact, for, as such, it is complete already, but to the fact as idea (if so for a moment we may speak, following the analogy of some language which I have formerly used), or in other words, to the jagged edge of the fact, to the fact where it is incomplete, suggestive, causing wonder, stirring imagination, leaving something to be accounted for. We see two trees of different kinds : Avhat we want to know is not that they are of different kinds, for that is what we see, and it is very likely this difference which makes us notice them : there wants no fresh idea applying for that : but no doubt there is something we want to know, and a great deal, viz. what I should call the meaning of their being of different kinds, the reason of what we see : are they both the same thing, what ought to be called by the same name, or are they not ? What is the meaning of their being so like each other, and yet so curiously different? The answer to these questions is the development of the idea of kind: whether this idea comes from the mind or whether it is in the thing I do not care to enquire for various reasons, which I have given. What is of consequence is, that there is no seeing till there is the idea : and after there is seeing, the idea is not wanted for that seeing, though it is wanted perhaps abundantly for what that seeing suggests. What I agree with Dr Whewell in is the following: "Thus " the Idea is disclosed bul noi fully revealed, imparted bul aol "transfused, by the use we make of it in science. When we "have taken from the fountain so much as serves our purpose, " there still remains behind a deep well of truth, which we have "not exhausted, and which we may easily believe to be in- " exhaustible"'. And such an account Of Space as that which he gives, where ho describes 'the perception of it as by a sixth 'sense 2 ' and uses language in which I have cut inly followed him and other,; 'we perceive space by motion': and much besides of mosl interesting de cription, Leaving mo quite ; ,t .-i loss why space is described, as we saw in another place, as something opposite to sensations. What I dissent from him in is expressed by smh a passage 1 Ih. p. 75. 3 I''- V- If* 238 THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS [CHAP. as the following, surely very different from the description above : "Whether we call the conception of space a Condition " of perception, a Form of perception, or an Idea, or by any " other term, it is something originally inherent in the mind " perceiving, and not in the objects perceived 1 ". The putting together the following two passages 2 from the same page may perhaps exactly express my difference with him. The first : " Ideas regulate the active operations of our " minds, without which our passive sensations do not become "knowledge". The second: "Knowledge involves an active as " well as a passive element; knowledge is not possible without " an act of the mind, regulated by certain laws". Instead of this last passage, what I should say would be : Knowledge is all active if we like to call it so, or all passive if we prefer that way of expressing ourselves : if we only knew, and did not learn, it would not matter which way we spoke : as it is the former is the better, because in learning we must describe the mind as active, and the description of knowledge as passive only applies to the mind after the knowledge has been gained. Is Dr Whewell's latter passage here consistent with the former ? If by 'sensations' in the former passage is meant what I have called 'bodily communication', then the former passage exactly expresses my view. But then the sensations, though they may be necessary for some knowledge, are no part or element of knowledge themselves. The knowledge is all super- induced upon them. If by ' sensations' is meant consciousness in conjunction with the nervous affection, then it is wrong to say that without the idea superinduced there is not knowledge. This conscious- ness in the sensation is itself knowledge — in fact the idea is superinduced — in the sensation as felt is implied notice, i. e. mental activity — if sensation is more than unfelt bodily communication there is thought in it, and this thought is Dr Whewell's ' idea '. There are not two elements of know- ledge. 1 lb. p. 94. " lb. p. 69. XI.] OF PHILOSOPHY. 230 Dr Whewell's argument that the idea of space is not from experience, but is inherent in the mind, is of the following- character. " I assert, then, that space is not a notion obtained by " experience. Experience gives us information concerning things "without us: but our apprehending them as without us, takes " for granted their existence in space. Experience acquaints us " what are the form, position, magnitude of particular objects : "but that they have form, position, magnitude, presupposes that "they are in space. We cannot derive from appearances, by " the way of observation, the habit of representing things to " ourselves as in space ; for no single act of observation is " possible any otherwise than by beginning with such a re- presentation, and conceiving objects as already existing in a 1" space . What the first three sentences of this passage go to prove is, that the existence of objects in space is a presupposition to any particular experience, on our part, of them. Does this prove in any way that space may not be considered the first, and a general, experience? We cannot apprehend objects with- out apprehending space. How does this show that the space is more in the mind than the objects are? Dr Whewell's sen- tence — 'our apprehending things as without us, takes for granted their existence in space'— seems to me, naturally taken, to express my view rather than his. I say, our appre- hending objects, and that in space, and the objects, to our belief, existing, and that in space, are two ways of expressing the same thing. Both objects and space either belong to the mind, or exist independently of the mind, according as we use our language. Space and objects both alike (phe lenal- ism, as I fall the union, though not approving the term 'ob- jects') constitute either the first great general experience, <>r represent a way in which we inevitably think, \s lii suggest happily the truth ae between thi two parties. Be says, You experientialists 1 lb. i' 139. 240 THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS [CHAP. must then consider that the representing to ourselves things in spaoe is a habit which we learn by experience, and that cannot be, surely : they say, No, the expression ' habit of representing things to ourselves in space' belongs to you: we feel the space as we feel them : it is with lis an object, a part of objects, the first object : it is with you that spatial representation is a mental habit : with us the expression has no significance : space with us is a part of objects. I have dwelt upon all this as I have, because I seem quite certain that in what Dr Whewell says about ideas there is a great deal that is true, and because it appears to me that this semi-Kantist or Kantoidic doctrine (of Kantism itself I say nothing) with its almost inevitable results of notionalism and relativism, does not properly belong to the right portion of Dr Whewell's views, however much it may seem inwoven with it. In looking at the ' Scientific Ideas' of which Dr Whewell writes the history, I want to be free to look at them as I please and according to the purpose which I have in view, either as, what certainly they are, so far as we can be certain we have fairly got hold of them, the great constituents, features, realities of the universe, or as, what is all that we can be certain they are till we have a reasonable confidence that we have fairly got hold of them, man's ideas about the universe, the results of the activity of his mind as in his history he comes into contact with one portion of the universe after another, and not only examines the things which offer themselves, but puts them into new circumstances for better examination. To me, the ideas are equally interesting in both aspects. To know, so far as we can, the world we live in, is one most glorious aim. To know the history of man's speculations about it, right and wrong, is to me scarcely less interesting. But the saying, in this respect, that the ideas belong to the mind, and that the universe is something to which the ideas do not belong, seems to me to be a tearing in half what ought to go all together, and to spoil the whole view. When this is done, we can make nothing really of either the ideas or the universe. There is a necessary confusion about the ideas, whether they are something which the mind furnishes, ready to its hand from the beginning, or whether they are something XI.] OF PHILOSOPHY. 241 which we learn and gradually attain to. And so our notion of the universe must be that confused mis-psychological one which I have so often spoken of — the universe is before us and we can describe it, and yet somehow or other we have yet got to apply the ideas and to know it. And besides, this wrong antithesis between the ideas on the one side, and on the other the universe, not as confused matter of knowledge, but as already fact and objects to us, pre- vents any proper examination of the relation of the ideas to each other, and of their relative subordination and importance. Notions most heterogeneous, as 'duty', 'cause', 'space', have to be put into one category as belonging to the mind as against what does not belong to it, and this antithesis is looked at as so important that we are in danger of losing the proper notion of the relations among the things thus put together. On Dr WhewelTs book I have perhaps said enough. Space in my view is something higher, more mental, than oxygen or car- bon, time than space, cause and kind than time, and in this way there may be a continued succession, and a continued succession .of antitheses : the mind may go on supplying higher and higher ideas; the universe, or fact, is not anything which receives the idea, but is that which the idea constitutes before us. And this is the same process as thai which may be described as man's finding the ideas in the universe: the history of the ideas is alike the history of man's mental construction of the univ< rse which his mind lives in. and of his analysis, ever evoh ing higher and worthier features, of the universe which he finds himself bodily in. 16 CHAPTER XII. THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. On the famous metaphor of knowledge being the interpre- tation of nature, of which Dr Whewell speaks — and warms in the speaking of it to the consideration of it as something more than a metaphor 1 — I will say a few words : for this reason, that I think the metaphor rightly employed is a most instructive means of illustrating the wrong psychology, and wrongly used it is a very great support of relativism. Let us suppose that I, ignorant of Sanscrit, purchase a Sanscrit book, without the slightest knowledge of its title or subject. It has been the property of other people before me, and they, or some of them, know that it is an account of the campaign of Alexander in India : but this knowledge of theirs is nothing to me. The reason why the consideration of this is important in respect of the wrong psychology, is the following: (1) that it gives us a good illustration of what is the meaning of the matter, or inform (unformed) matter, of knowledge, out of which we, by activity of the mind (superinducing form, if we like so to speak), make knowledge in percej>tion : (which matter of know- ledge Dr Whewell erroneously supposes to be things known already to a certain extent by a kind of inferior knowledge or sensation) : and (2) that it is likely to show us the wrongness of the mis-psychological supposition of the independence, first, of the things perceived, and of our then, as such, j)erceiving them, A stone lies before me : I see it. This is very well to de- 1 Jlist. Scient. Ideas, Vol. I. p. 42. CHAP. XII.] THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 2-13 scribe what we each of us do now: we know our Sanscrit : but if this manner of expression be used, as we shall find it con- tinually used, in speaking of the manner of our coming to see things, or in giving a history of vision, it is just as if in relation to the book which I spoke of it should be said of me, He has got the history of Alexander's campaign before him : he reads it. He has really got before him a bewildering chaos of lines and characters, out of which, as he learns, he makes out, or in which, if we prefer the expression, he gradually comes to per- ceive, what he then calls, or finds out to be what others call, a history of the campaign of Alexander. This is the manner in which we perceive or know anything, whether rudimentary or advanced: whether the supposed stone lying before us, or the mighty fact equally lying before us, of the earth's revolution round the sun. And the illustration from language is useful, because it is only by means of an illustration that the truth on the subject can come home to us. We cannot unsee the pro- spect before us. Dr Whewel] has well described, in a passage which I lately quoted, how the draughtsman (as /will expi it) unsees to a certain extent, i.e. by effort divests himself of certain habitual ways of vision or inference from vision: bul we have got to unsee and unknow much further back- than this, if we are in anyway to attempt imaginatively to recon- struct our knowledge. The inform matbr of knowledge of course cannot be conceived or imagined as inform, because the conception or imagination is so far giving it form, or making it actual knowledge: but we musl remember thai when we speak of the activity of tin' mind exerting itself in such a manner that there arises knowledge, it is upon this thai we musl Bup- pose it exerting itself, or upon something in >■> tar a- n ha. this character, not upon something which has its term ami character, so a- to be known, already. In the book, thai whirl, Lies before me, Lndependenl of my understanding it. is a cha ■■""1 lines: that which before me, and I understand (supposing 1 understand i\ . [e the history of Alexander's campaign. Our language, in our Bpeaking of the universe and of our advancing knowledge oi it, should follow this analogy. What lie, before ua men in the universe Lndepend< ul of our or anybody's perci iving, who L6— 2 244 THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. [CHAP. there tliat shall say ? is there any meaning in saying that any- thing does? What lies before us, and we perceive, is the universe, or what we call the universe, in all its particulars. But let it be observed (and the illustration is equally good for the showing us this), what ' we want to know, what is the real thing to be known, is what we do come to know, or advance more and more towards knowing : this inform matter of know- ledge is not the thing in itself, or anything deserving the name of a substratum : knowing is superinducing form upon, i. e. thinking rightly about, this matter of knowledge, and it is merely in- consfi'uous to lament or to feel humbled because it cannot be known otherwise than by being thought rightly about. The characters are our road to the knowledge of the contents of the book. The notion of the thing in itself and the unknowable substratum seems to me to be as if, in the case of the book, instead of learning Sanscrit, I should occupy myself in thinking what the characters are independent of their being Sanscrit or a language. No knowledge lies that road. And on the other hand, as the inform matter of knowledge is no thing in itself, so neither is the real thing in itself, the true object of knowledge (in this case the history of Alexander's campaign), something that the characters hide from us, but something which they guide us to. The coming to understand them is the coming to understand what is in them or what they contain — different as the knowledge of them is from the know- ledge of this latter, the attaining to the one of these things is the attaining to the other. This same fruitful metaphor may illustrate (for we must remember that it is all but illustration) something more about relativism. Using language similar to that of Sir William Hamilton on which I some time ago commented, we might say that there is a double relativeness in the knowledge which we have from the book of Alexander's campaign (the thing in itself or real existence) : we know not it, but only a modification of it, viz. the knowledge or opinion which the writer of the book had of it: and we know this only through our knowledge of the Sanscrit language, as we know what we know only through our own special faculties. Now of course there might exist an account of Alexander's XII.] THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 245 campaign in Greek written by a different person from the writer of my account of it, and another person might know that He and I should then know Alexander's campaign, differently, that is, should have, to a certain extent, different opinions about it. And what I want observed is, that there is no meaning in describing this state of things (and the parallel is exact with Sir William Hamilton's language) as our having two different relative knowledges of the history of the campaign, as our not knowing the history itself of the campaign, but only a modifi- cation of it — of course this is so, but it is simply because the knowledge is incomplete; and so far as we do know or as there is knowledge, what we do know is the history itself of the cam- paign, and nothing else. In the one case the one language and the one author's view, in the other case the other language and the other author's view, are successive stages on the road to some knowledge of the actual history, and we pass by them to this. The deceptiveness of the relativist view is in this, that it sug- gests that there is one sort of knowledge proper for people to whom one modification of existence is turned and who have one set of faculties, and another for another. But these, as the illustration illustrates to us, are only stages towards the attain- ment of the knowledge which is beyond them, which, so far as it is knowledge, is necessarily the same for all, and is un- relative. CHAPTER XIII. SUBSTANCE AND MEDIUM. The ideas which Dr Whewell gives seem to go each of them through a very different history. Some are seen with tolerable distinctness almost from the first: some are for a long time without there being any suspicion or glimpse of them: and some are at the first most vaguely apprehended or most strangely misapprehended. The supposition that in them is the element of certainty or trustworthiness in our knowledge seems to have arisen from observation of the first of these three kinds, to which belong space and time, the foundations of geometry and arithmetic: and to apply this supposition to the other kinds, seems extraor- dinarily difficult. As ' polarity ' belongs to the second kind, so I suppose ' sub- stance ' does to the third. Ideas of this third sort appear to pass through three stages, not at all like to, but still something in the manner of, M. Comte's three stages of thought. First a stage of most wild vagueness : second, perhaps, one of logical or philosophical consideration or rendering: third, the clear and developed stage. Whether or not 'resemblance' goes through these three stages, I think Dr Whewell's ' substance ' does. So far as the first of these stages is of interest and import- ance, it can only be so in a very wide and general consideration- of it, such as with reference, for instance, to the constitution of the universe or of matter, is contained in various portions of Dr Whewell's book. The history of early human speculation about anything is most interesting. But it can go very little way towards helping us to the right idea or portion of truth which such very vague speculations may contain. CHAP. XIII.] SUBSTANCE AND MEDIUM. L'47 And what Dr Whewell says about such early speculation at the beginning of his chapter on the idea of 'substance' I cannot enter into at all. It is exceedingly likely that in the minds of some philosophers the 'gigni e nilo nil' — that nothing can be produced of nothing — and views .similar to it, may have represented early speculations about the constitution of matter which chemical investigation will now justify: but surely it is not right to speak of any notion of this kind, in one and a con- sistent sense, as ' current as an axiom among the early philo- sophers of Greece', and to call it 'a steady keeping hold of the Idea of substance'. There is not anything which can be called either currency or tangible idea. And so far as there is, it is surely something entirely dif- ferent from the logical notion of the idea of substance to which Dr Whewell then proceeds. The principle that ' nothing can be produced from nothing' of the mat' rial philosophers, and the maxim of the logical philosophers, that every property must be a property of something, or must inhere in a subject or sub- stance, seem to me to have nothing at all in common : and the fact that they may be, and perhaps often have been, brought into relation, appears to me to show that what we are dealing with here is simply the history of human speculation, full of interest, but full of error, and that it is not to this history that we must look in our search for 'idea' as 'certainty' and what we can rest in. I have commented on Mr Mill's notion of substratum or substance. That of Dr Whewell here should be, in the view of both of them, worse, as it is decidedly more ' ontologies!', and with both of them 'ontology' appears a term of reproach 1 . 1 Mr Mill's horror of Ontology we have formerly seen— for Dr Whewell's I refer to such passage* as bis character of Sir William Hamilton {Hut. Seu VoL ii. p. 7,7). " Tins writer is a man of nnqvectionable aenteneu and V( i Hive reading : but b shows itself in barren Ontolo tinctions which appear to me to b the speculations of the eminent schoolmen of the most sterile p riods of the dark ages. 'I bould ha i ption of progri 'inductive sciena ronderfuL when we recollect that he holds, as an important part of his philosophy, thai thestndj oi mathematics perverts and obscures the mind." I quote thii ■ just to show how 'ontolo* gical' is used as a stone to fl • and in order to mention, that I think Sir William Hamilton's en . is*the making too much of logic and the o 248 SUBSTANCE AND MEDIUM. [CHAP. " An apple/' says Dr Whewell, " which is red, and round, and " hard, is not merely redness, and roundness, and hardness : " these circumstances may all alter while the apple remains the " same apple. Behind or under the appearances which we see, " we conceive something of which we think : or to use the " metaphor which obtained currency among the ancient philo- " sophers, the attributes and qualities which we observe are " supported by and inherent in something : and this something " is called a substratum or substance — that which stands beneath " the apparent qualities and supports them 1 ". And further on : " The supposition of the existence of substance is so far from " being uncertain, that it carries with it irresistible conviction, " and substance is necessarily conceived as something which "cannot be produced or destroyed 2 ". If this is not 'ontology' I do not know what is : not that its being ontology is any reproach in my eyes, but its being, as I conceive it to be, wrong. The conviction which attaches to the supposition of the existence of substances is in Dr Whewell's view of a double nature : (1) " The Axiom of the Indestructibility of Substance " (the principle mentioned a short time since, that nothing can " be produced out of nothing) proves the existence of the Idea " of Substance, just as the axioms of geometry and arithmetic " prove the existence of the ideas of space and number 3 ". And (2), " We unavoidably assume that the qualities and pro- " perties which we observe are properties of things : — that the " adjective implies a substantive : — that there is, besides the " external characters of things, something of which they are the " characters 4 ". sional misapplication of it, in the same way as may be readily done, and as I think Dr Whewell in a slight degrees does, with mathematics. I offer no apology for Sir William Hamilton's illiberal depreciation of mathematics. But progressive or inductive science is no more connected with mathematics than it is with logic. Both are alike usefid in their place, and both may be pursued into vain sterilities or misapplied. The best thing for both of them is to be earnestly enlisted in aid of progressive science. Dr Whewell has worked hard so to enlist mathematics — but T think Sir William Hamilton endeavoured to do the same with logic — perhaps not with equal success. Nor am I satisfied that the Scholastic speculations were alto- gether so sterile. 1 Hist. Sclent. Ideas, Vol. II. p. 30. 2 lb. p. 32. 3 lb. p. 31. 4 lb. p. 30. XIII.] SUBSTANCE AND MEDIUM. 249 It seems to me, that Dr WhewelTs view of substance is ' ontology', while that of Mr Mill and I suppose of Sir William Hamilton is what I call ' notionalism' : and I allude to this, to illustrate the difference between these : the ontology in my view is the better of the two. With Dr Whewell, the f sub- stance' of the apple is something behind and under the appear- ances or apparent qualities which we see, and is also something as to which we necessarily conceive that it cannot be produced or destroyed. With Mr Mill, as I understand, the substance of the apple would be an unknown and unknowable substratum of its qualities. The former of these notions seems to me exactly the same as that of the scholastic philosophers who conceived that a thing might be transsubstantiated, or have its substance changed, without any change in its apparent qualities : I call it, as dis- tinct from the other, 'ontology', because this substance is con- ceived as the proper matter, as first matter as yet undrest, and if we do not know it, there seems no reason in the nature of things why we should not. I call the other f notionalism', be- cause it depends solely upon the realizing, in my view quite mis-realizing, of logical terms. Dr WhewelTs view it will be seen depends partly on this, but incorporates with it the view of the substance being the real matter, that of which all thi] consist, which can neither be added to nor diminished : putting together, it seems to me, two things quite incongruous, but giving a kind of reality to the idea of substance, due to this latter incorporated view. For if we do like to call the ultimate • •l'-ment or elements of reality in the universe, so far as we tan discover or imagine them, 'substance', this notion is important and may be mosl fertile: material substance, as a physical notion, is well enough. But from every possible point of view, the notion of this sub- stance being the same with substance as the Buppoii of qualities Ls a confusion, ae 1 presume was Been by the better of the school- men : — the substance of a body which supporl 3 its qualities is nol its substantial matter a1 Leasl by itself, bul its substantial form. So Ear as we are nol afraid of ontology, the substantial matter of a thing and it, substantial form may together be conceived to constitute its reality: what is really meant by this lb, as 250 SUBSTANCE AND MEDIUM. [CHAP. I should express it and already have expressed it, that ' a thing' consists of various features, characters, or qualities if we like to use the word in our own way, which form a scale from ab- stractness to concreteness, and that the characters of a thing which are in the higher part of the scale which communicate more specially with the intellect may be called its form, while those in the lower part which communicate with the nerves of the body may be called its matter. But to put in the case of the apple the substantial matter, or material substance, as the support of qualities, is as I have said confusion on every view. Setting aside this confusion, the difficulty or confusion as to the notion of substance or substratum of any kind has to do with our old enemy, the division of truth or reality between the thing and the mind. " Behind or under the appearances (of the "apple) that we see", says Dr Whewell, "we conceive some- " thing of which we think". This is the same thing we have seen so often before, two views put together which will not go together, while either by itself represents the fact. " Behind "the appearances (which are what we describe ourselves as "seeing), there is something of which we think". That is one view. Or, we see something, and this we describe as appear- ance or sensible quality: but we conceive something as behind this, and this we call — what we will; 'substance', 'form', 'idea'. That is the other view. But ' we conceive something of which we think' is not significant. We may say, We conceive some- thing, with a belief which we call belief in its existence : then there it is for us : that, so far as we are concerned, is its ulti- mate being. Or, from the other side ; there is something, and it so happens that this something presents itself to our thought : its thus presenting itself is what we mean by saying that we think of it or conceive it : and this, so far as it is concerned, is the meaning of its being known. The most formal part of the reality of a thing may be what we know first about it, or may be what we know last, or may be what we in fact cannot come at at all : that is matter of accident. To take a plough, as something familiar and at hand : the thinghood of that, that is, the reason of there being such a notion in men's heads and such a word in the dictionary, lies mainly in the purpose of it, viz. to turn up the ground in a par- XIII.] SUBSTANCE AND MEDIUM. 251 ticular (say sideways) manner. This 'idea', 'form', 'substance', of a plough is what we in England commonly come to know fiist about it: we are told, there is something used to turn up the ground, and it is called a plough: we have got the sub- stance or idea to make our logical subject of, and we add according to circumstances the qualities or predicates — that is woodenness, redness, going upon wheels, or as the case may be- Supposing a plough abandoned in Australia, and found by savages who wonder at it much : they will clearly call it some- thing, that is, it will be a subject with them for predicates, but probably they will never find out what it was meant for or what work it will do: they will then reason, I suppose, about it much as we do about the universe : they will say that the name which they give it represents something mysterious and unknowable, beyond the reach of human faculties: or they might with more truth, though more ontology, get towards the mystery by con- sidering, perhaps not indeed' that if instead of being wooden, and red, and on wheels, it was iron, and blue, and without wheels, it would be the same plough with one which they had seen of the former character (as the apple might be the same apple 1 ), but that it might be a plough or thai there was some- thing about it tin' same, and in thai '■••I-'' they would have the notion of the genus plough (or whatever they called it), which would be some way towards the meaning or purpose of it. I will now speak about Dr Whewell's idea of a medium, the idea which belongs to the secondary mechanical Bciences, as Optics and Acoustics. What I have Baid aboui 'sensation' i-, that it involves two facts; one, a corporeal communication with some pari of the universe; the other, a feeling or unit of conscious^ iss contem- poraneous with this. This corrrniunicatum, thus widely meant, i- of course ■■> vague term, and in my use it repress nta ■■> n lation of one pari of our body to anotl i r, and of parte of our body with space, as well as : , relation of certain n of our body or certain ally nervous surfaces with some independent material substance whose contaci with them Lb accompanied with a feelii i DrWheweU has judiciously oho : ""' superficial qualities of the apple for hio suhstanoe to QodeffHe. 252 SUBSTANCE AND MEDIUM. [CHAP. I have said that for good phenomenalism or physical science what is wanted is as much as possible to put ourselves and our manner of perceiving out of consideration. The physical world is what it is, and it is of the nature of an accident of it that it is known by us through the instrumentality by which we do know it. But there are certain physical sciences, in respect of which this seems at first impossible. We seem obliged, in regard of the physical science of light, or optics, to have more or less of that confusion caused by considering the subject and object, or the two sides in the relation of knowledge, independent of each other, and yet modified the one by the other, which is what I have tried as much as possible, in the more general view of knowledge, to prevent. The contact between certain sensorially nervous surfaces of our body and certain material substances, as between the retina and light, the ear and vibrating air, the nostrils or palate and that chemical efflux, or whatever it may be, from bodies, which we describe as their smell and taste, is described by Dr Whewell as 'perception through a medium'. It will be readily under- stood, from what I have said, that I do not consider this a good description. There is actual contact in each case between the material substances and the nerves, and in taste or smell the feeling or consciousness accompanying this is of a very simple nature. In the eye, on the other hand, besides the contact between the light and the retina, there is a most complicated process, and the accompanying sensation is most complicated, and is described by us as the perceiving of a perhaps distant object: but the describing this as the perceiving through a medium is a mixture of logic or philosophy on the one side, with physics or phenomenalism on the other, of the kind which I have endeavoured to condemn and to prevent. The idea therefore of a medium does not seem to me in any respect a scientific one, nor do I see how it can be in any way even developed into truth. I have said that Dr Whewell's parallel consideration of the growth of knowledge in the individual and its growth in the race seems to me interesting and fruitful. Here however, I should think it misleads. I speak with diffidence as to physical science, XIII.] SUBSTANCE AND MEDim. 253 but I should question whether the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, which is a matter of our sensation, not of nature considered independently of it, furnished a good principle of classification or arrangement of the latter. The difference be- tween primary aud secondary qualities of matter, or as we might with equal correctness say, primary or secondary sensation on our part, is very mainly in this, that the secondary qualities, looked at in their relation to the physical world, have as compared with the primary, something of an accidental character. To use a word which a short time since, I quoted from Dr Whewell: putting all religious considerations for a moment aside : I look upon it as a thing which only in the very minutest degree possible can be said to happen to be so, that the universe has the qualities which it has, or that, correspondingly, the reason or mind of reasonable beings acts as it does. Coming then to particular qualities: the first portion of the above sentence is still true : it is not a thing that (with more than very slight significance of the word) happens to be so that space exists: but with more significance, though still not with much, it might be said to be a thing which happens to be so that we men perceive it, for we just might have been passive only, without power or notion of movement : and in the same way we may perhaps say, there just might be other primary qualities of the universe which we are Dot consti- tuted in such a manner as to be aware of. In the same manner it is not at all a thing that happens to be so only thai there is this or that secondary quality (as we call them in the univei h one of them be I ■ the universe as much as space does: but it is a thing which in a very eminenl degree happens to be so that we men, or as we mighl rather say, we terrestrial animals, we the terrestrial zoocosm altogether, are with more or Less of directness aware or percipi< q1 of this or thai secondary quality. In order for this percipience, or sentience) we require, it would appear, to have particular materia] nerves with very special susceptibilities, and an organism, perhaps b mosi complicated instrument, for bringing aboul the contact between the material substance and the nerve. This our special Bensive organization may be called an accident of the universe with a much higher degree of significance of the word than if we called the exist* ace of oxygen, or air, or light, or heat, an accidenl of it: and the 254 SUBSTANCE AND MEDIUM. . [CHAP. more so, since we are aware indirectly of various circumstances or qualities in the universe, such as magnetism, for which we might conceivably have had a special sensive organization, an eye or ear, so as to perceive them directly as secondary qualities. Physical or phenomenalist knowledge, as I have said, .should involve the notion of knowledge as adstance, that is, it should be independent of the manner, as regards the lower and more con- crete circumstances of knowledge, in which it was known : as regards the higher or more abstract, it could not be so, and this belongs to its being, as I have all along called it, an abstraction, that is, a notion which cannot be carried thoroughly out. In other words, our physical science should be true so far as it had or would have any significance, not for beings with other minds than ours, nor for beings without limbs which they could move (this would be impossible), but for beings with a different set of senses from ours, so far as this is conceivable under the above conditions. Our physical science should be such, that if we lost as a race one of our present senses, and all the mental circum- stances associated with it, yet the secondary quality which it took cognizance of should be still more or less indirectly indi- cated to us : and similarly that if we had a new special nerve and sensive power for some secondary quality now only indi- rectly known by us to exist, our present knowledge should be absorbed indeed but should still be confirmed and hold true so far as it went. These principles are difficult perhaps to understand, and certainly to apply, but I think they hold good at least to this extent, that the scheme for arranging physical science should not be made to depend upon our manners of perception. I do not as it is quite understand Dr Whewell's arrangement as he does make it thus to depend : how for instance his secondary me- chanical sciences, or sciences associated with secondary qualities, separate themselves definitely from the mechanics of fluids, &c. on the one side, and from the chemistry of heat, &c. on the other: and there seems no science at all, nor place for one, corresponding to his 'media' in the case of taste and smell 1 . 1 Of course I am not condemning the use of the term 'medium' for what is between our eye and the thing we say we see (and the same for other senses) if we like to use the term—but on sight, or rather on the use of language in respect of the sense of sight, T should like to say a little in the next part. XIII.] SUBSTANCE AND MEDIUM. '2oO Optics and Acoustics, the latter specially (both of which I speak of very diffidently) do cause I presume some difficult v. But I suppose that the general physical science of light and the physiology of vision may be kept separate: when the former is known, all in the eye that is in front of the retina is simply a self-adjusting optical instrument: the laws of the self-adjustment, and the circumstances of the retina, belong to the physiology of vision ; not to Optics as photology. As to Acoustics, such science in it as is separable from the Phy- siology of Hearing is I suppose of the very delicate vibra- tions of a fluid: the fact of these vibrations we discover by other means than hearing, in fact could not discover them by that, any more than we can now discover by looking or sight whether light is undulation or rectilinear motion : as to Acoustics therefore, what we have besides the Physiology of Hearing is a science which / suppose is a branch of the mechanics of fluids, and which is independent of the aerial vibration coming into contact with our ears, though suggested by its doing so; I will finish by quoting a long passage from l>r Whewell It is as follows: "Though the fundamental principles of " several sciences depend upon the assumption of a Medium " of Perception, these principles do not at all depend upon " any special view of the Process of our perceptions. The "mechanism of that process is a curious subject of considera- " tion : but it belongs to physiology, more properly than either ■• to metaphysics, or to those branches of physics of which we " are now speaking. The general nature of the process is the " same for all the senses. The object affects the appropriate "intermedium; the medium, through the proper organ, the "eye, the ear, the nose, affects the nerves of the particular "sense; and, by these, in some way, the sensation is conveyed " to the mind. But to treat the impression upon the a' I "as the act of sensation which we have to consider, would 1"' "to mistake our object, which is doI the constitution of the " human body, bul of the human mind. It would be to mis- •■ take one link of the chain for the power whicb holds the end •■ of the chain. No anatomical analysis of the corporeal con- ■• ditions of vision, or hearing, <>r feeling warm, is aec< ai '■ the sciences of Optics, or Acoustics, or Thermoti 256 SUBSTANCE AND MEDIUM. [CHAP. " Not only is tins physiological research an extraneous part " of our subject, hut a partial pursuit of such a research may " mislead the inquirer. We perceive objects by means of certain " media, and by means of certain impressions on the nerves : " but we cannot with propriety say that we perceive either the " media or the impressions on the nerves. What person in the " act of seeing is conscious of the little coloured spaces on the " retina ? or of the motions of the bones of the auditory ap- " paratus whilst he is hearing ? Surely, no one. This may " appear obvious enough, and yet a writer of no common acute- " ness, Dr Brown," has put forth several very strange opinions, " all resting upon the doctrine that the coloured spaces on the " retina are the objects which we perceive ; and there are " some supposed difficulties and paradoxes on the same sub- "ject which have become quite celebrated (as upright vision " with inverted images), arising from the same confusion of " thought 1 ". I have quoted the passage for three reasons. First, because, as to the three sciences (so to speak) of Meta- physics, Physiology, and Physics, it seems to me to represent the truth, and almost makes me surprised at Dr Whewell's other language which I have been criticizing. Next, because, what more than anything I want the reader to be accustomed to, is to learn from passages like the above what is to be learnt from them, which is often much, without being misled by their language. The tree (to take a particular object), we are told in the passage, affects light, light through the lenses of the eye affects the optic nerve, and by this nerve in some way the sensation is conveyed to the mind. When language like this is used, which itself is no harm, let the reader's mind go with it. We may, if we like it, call the action of the various laws 'of chemistry and light by which light proceeding from the sun is partly (if it is so) intercepted from our eye by the tree, partly absorbed, partly transmitted to our eye, ' the tree affects light'. There is one use then of the word ' affect'. Again we may call the highly complicated process which finishes with what I may term a disturbance of the optic nerve when the light 1 Hist. Scient. Ideas, Vol. i. p. 300. XIII.] SUBJECT AND MEDIUM. 257 reaches the retiua, 'the medium affecting the nerves of the sense': this is another and different use of the word 'affect'. Again, we may call this affecting of the nerve by the medium 'a sensation', and we may say that the nerve 'in some way conveys this sensation to the mind'. Here we must dismiss all notion of ' conveying' meaning moving through space, trans- ferring from one thing in space to another thing in space, or anything of that sort : in fact, as I have said, I do not see what the words can mean more than that there is a feeling or con- sciousness contemporaneous with the nervous disturbance. The ' impression' upon the nerve in the next sentence is the second ' affecting' above, and is quite appropriate. Third, I quote the passage, because I want the reader to observe that the very same process which Dr Whewell in the first paragraph describes as the object affecting the medium, the medium affecting the nerve, the nerve conveying its affectation (or the sensation) to the mind, he describes in the second para- graph as 'our perceiving the object by means of the medium and by means of the impression on the nerve, while we do not per- ceive either the impression or the medium'. These two ways of putting the matter (if he properly attends, in the way which I have described above, to the language of the first) are exactly the two ways in which I would wish the reader to put it, only that, fur his life, he must avoid mixing them. The ad of his mind is 'perceiving': he perceives the object: between him and the object, in his perception, is much thai he does nol perceive, which is no part of his perception of the object, and which is only matter to him of indirect and subsequent, physiological and physical, knowledge. When physiology and physics take the matter in hand to give him this knowledge, they proceed in a dif- ferent direction: they describe the objecl as affecting a medium, ;,i,,l describe the manner of its affecting it : they describe the medium ae affecting a nerve, and describe the manner of this again: and then wtihwi description, for here thej are brought to a halt, they simply say in some way the nerve conveys the sensation to the mind. I cannot c seive language more fitted than I>r WheueH's to show clearly the double riew of the Bame process. But the view which I think will be learnt from a g 1 deal 17 258 SUBJECT AND MEDIUM. [CHAP. XIII. of Dr Whewell's book, and from which I dissent, is that by sensation something is given to us from the object : that to this, by perception (or in whatever way it is described) we add some- thing, to wit 'idea', from the mind: that there are thus two processes instead of one : that knowledge is divided into a part from the object and a part from the mind : the former some- times appearing as knowledge, sometimes as not knowledge: this is the putting of the two views together, which I have ufged the reader to avoid. But on this I have said enough. I will finish with remarking again upon l)r V, T heweH's scien- tific ideas that when the notion is introduced of their being progressive and developable I do not see how. as ideas, the; can preserve any character of being original, universal, necessary, convictions, or in any respect help, as ideas, the certainty of knowledge. But though the notion of them does not seem to me to be of value in this way, I think it is in many others, some of which I have mentioned. now close this part of my work, hoping very shortly t pursue the subject. In the interval, I trust to study the book of Mr Hill's to which I have alluded in the Introduction, and if I have done him any injustice, shall have an opportunity of correcting it, and of avowing any error into which 1 may have fallen. I am aware of some imperfections in what I have said about him, more especially obscurities which it might be de- sirable to make clearer — now this will be done better. The next Chapter (or one soon to follow), to which I have alluded by anticipation in page 166, was intended to have reference principally to him. In the other Chapters I shall follow out the scheme indicated in the Introduction, and discuss the re- maining works there mentioned: I may add some others to them: and I hope to finish by putting the views here given in a clearer manner than I have been able to do in the course of the c exploration ', in consequence of the additional hold upon them which I trust this may have given. ^AHvaaiw^ y o* UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.