GIFT OF 
 
 SEELEY W. MUDD 
 
 and 
 
 GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER 
 
 DR. JOHN R. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD 
 
 JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI 
 
 to the 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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 By the same Author. 
 
 licccntly published, in 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 1,1 Gl, price 285. 
 
 THE SECRET OF HEGEL: 
 
 BEING 
 
 THE HEGELIAN SYSTEM 
 IN ORIGIN, PRINCIPLE, FORM, AND MATTER. 
 
 oipxisrxoisrs of the i>i?,e!SS- 
 
 ' Tliero can be no question whatever respecting the weight and solidity of 
 Mr. Sth'ling's exposition. ... It will mark a period in philosophical trans- 
 actions, and tend more thoroughly to reveal the tendencies of modern thought 
 in that direction than any other work yet published in this country has done.' 
 
 Eell's Messenger. 
 
 ' Mr. Stirling's learned and laborious endeavours to imveil the mystery of 
 Hegel are entitled to attentive and thoughtful consideration. . . . Mr. Stirling 
 has applied himself to his subject systematically and thoroughly. . . . There 
 can no such complete guide be found in the English language.' 
 
 Edinburgh Coueant. 
 
 'This is a most remarkable book in several respects. The Author is, 
 perhaps, the very first in this country who has laboriously and patiently 
 soimded Hegel. . . . Unlike any of the commentators of Hegel that we have 
 yet seen, Mr. Stirling can always be understood by an intelligent and attentive 
 reader. He writes as if he wished to make himself plain to the meanest 
 capacity, and he has a facility of language and illustration which lights up the 
 driest and most abstract reasonings of his master.' Glasgow Herald. 
 
 ' A great book has just been published, entitled The Secret of HcgeJ, which, 
 sooner or later, must attract the attention, and influence the conclusions, of 
 true thinkers.' Temperance Spectator. 
 
 'A very elaborate, conscientious, and earnest work. . . . We express our 
 high estimation of the ability and research displayed in it.' 
 
 Weekly Dispatch. 
 
 'If anything can make Hegel's "complete Logic" acceptable to the English 
 mind, such faith and industry as Mr. Stirling's must succeed. . . . Those who 
 wish to form a complete siu-vey of the great field of German philosophy will 
 do well to study these volumes.' John Bull.
 
 By the same Author. 
 
 Critical Opinions of * The Secret of Hegel ' — continued. 
 
 'Wo welcome most cordially these volumes. ... A work which is the 
 mommieut of so much labour, erudition, perseverance, and thought.' 
 
 London Review. 
 
 • To say that this is by ftir the most important work written in the English 
 language on any phase of the post-Kantian philosophy of Germany would bo 
 saying very little. . . . One of the most remarkable works on philosophy that 
 has been seen for years.' Athenjedm. 
 
 ' The book itself is of much value, especially at the present time. ... It 
 win repay those well who will give the necessary attention to its reading. We 
 have to thank Mr. Stirling for setting these obscure dicta in as clear a light as 
 they can be set in, and making them as intelligible as they can be made.' 
 
 Chuechxian. 
 
 'All readers who have the taste and patience necessary for the encountering 
 such tasks wiU bo glad to receive IVIr. Stirling's exposition. We have read 
 it with deep interest. It was a very tough task, and he has wrought it in a 
 determined and intelligent manner.' Eclectic Eevtew. 
 
 ' — Has approached nearer to an intelligible exposition of the Hegelian 
 philosophy than has yet been accomplished in England. . . . The Preface a 
 remarkably vigorous and masterful piece of writing — the book able in the 
 highest degree.' Westjiinsteb Eeview. 
 
 ' IVIr. Stirling has certainly done much to help the English student. . . . He 
 is a writer of power and fii'e — original, bold, self-reliant, and with a wealth of 
 knowledge and thought that must soon make him distinguished among the 
 teachers of the teachers of this country.' Globe. 
 
 * The book deserves a cordial welcome.' Professor IVIassok, 
 
 ' The whole work is in my view a masterpiece — a great book. The style, 
 manner, method, and art of it enchant me — to use a loose expression among 
 general terms. I consider it to be completely successful in what it proposes 
 to do. Its appearance should constitute an era at once in the literary and the 
 philosophical aspect. The ease and fulness of philosophical expression in it — 
 the power and wealth of illustration, comparison, assimilation, analogy, 
 metaphor, hterary filling out and accommodation, and finish — are to my mind 
 unique. The labour, the patience — the instinct for truth and for metaphysical 
 tracks and trails — the constant connection with life— the explanatory method 
 of resuming and taking up so that the reader is taught without almost any 
 stress on his own thought — these things continually rouse my admiration and 
 delight. The whole book is colossal — a wonder of work. The style of it is 
 unique in raeiuess, original force, and utterly unaflfected prodigahty of wealth 
 — expository, ratiocinative, illustrative, literary, familiar, discursive. The 
 characterisations of the man Hegel are delicics of literary touch.' 
 
 Mr. CuppLES. 
 
 London: LONGMANS, GREEN, and CO. Paternoster Koav.
 
 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON: 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF PEPiCEPTION. 
 
 AN ANALYSIS. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES HUTCHISON STHILING 
 
 AUTHOR OP ' THE SECKET OF HEQEL. 
 
 LONDON ; 
 LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 
 
 1865, 
 
 93045 
 
 The right of translation U reserved.
 
 LONDON 
 
 P3INTED BY SPG TT I STV O O D E AND CO. 
 
 NEW-STREET SQUARE
 
 
 PEEFATORY NOTE, 
 
 Of the conclusions which, in the ' Secret of Hegel,' I 
 
 was occasionally led to express in reference to the 
 ^ teachings of Sir William flamilton, I now produce the 
 
 Deduction. Written before the work named (it was 
 0^ written in 1862, and is now re-written principally for 
 ^ the sake of condensation, and always and only from 
 
 the original materials), this deduction rose from the 
 
 c^j necessity to examine the productions of my predeces- 
 
 H sors in the field of German thought. Of these, before 
 
 (D this examination, Sir William Hamilton was to me, 
 
 M 
 
 2 so to speak, virgin-ground : I had heard of him, but I 
 
 ^ had not read a single word he had written. I believed 
 
 what I had heard, nevertheless, and, so believing, 
 
 approached him — a countryman of my own — with no 
 
 expectation, no wish, no thought, but to find all that 
 
 I had heard true. Nor, in a certain sense, did the 
 
 event prove otherwise : Sir William Hamilton showed 
 
 at once as a man of infinite acquirement, infinite ability. 
 
 In a certain other sense, however, the event did prove 
 
 otherwise, and my expectations were disappointed.
 
 vi PREFATOHY NOTE. 
 
 It is to be said, at the same time, that the surprise at 
 my own results, together with the resistance to these 
 results which I met with at the hands of two of Sir 
 William Hamilton's most competent and admiring 
 students, in whose society the relative study was 
 pretty much carried on, threw me so often back on 
 the duty of re -investigation that, in the end, it was 
 impossible for me longer to doubt the truth of my 
 own conclusions. 
 
 This deduction is divided into four parts : I. The 
 philosophy of perception, containing as subsections 
 under it — 1. Hamilton both presentationist and phe- 
 nomenalist ; 2. The testimony of consciousness, or 
 Hamilton's on; 3. The analysis of philosophy, or 
 Hamilton's ^lon-, and 4. The principle of common 
 sense: 11. The philosophy of the conditioned, con- 
 taining as subsections under it — 1. The absolute; 2. 
 Hamilton's knowledge of Kant and Hegel; and 3. The 
 law of the conditioned: III. Logic; and, IV. A 
 general conclusion. 
 
 Of these parts, I publish now only the first ; 
 amounting, perhaps, to about a third of the whole. 
 This part, however, is, so far as Hamilton's activity 
 is concerned, the most important. It will, of itself, 
 probably, suffice to justify, on the whole, the conclu- 
 sions spoken of as already before the public ; and it is
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. vu 
 
 solely Avith a view to this justification that it is 
 pubHshed. The other parts are, for the present, 
 suppressed, in submission to the temper of tlie time, 
 and in consideration of the intervention, on the same 
 subject, and, as I understand, with similar results, of 
 my more distinguished contemporary, Mr. Mill. 
 
 I am sensible, at the same time, that this partial 
 publication is, in every point of view but the one 
 indicated, unjust to myself. I seem to myself to have 
 discovered in Hamilton a certain vein of disingenuous- 
 ness that, cruelly unjust to individuals, has probably 
 caused the retardation of general British philosophy 
 by, perhaps, a generation; and it is the remaining 
 parts of my deduction that are, after all, the best fitted 
 to demonstrate this, and establish grounds for any 
 indignation which I may have been consequently led 
 to express — though without the slightest ill-will, of 
 which, indeed, however adverse to the mischievous 
 vein concerned, I am entirely unconscious. Really, 
 grown men, already gray with work, do not take 
 boyish hatreds at what they examine for the first 
 time then, and in general interests. Nay, many 
 of the averments in question occur in those provi- 
 sional Notes that were intended, in the first instance, 
 for no eye but my own, and arise, therefore, from a 
 man who, in presence only of a scientific fact, feels 
 himself as free in its regard from passion or ]:)rejudice 
 as the air tliat embraces it, or the light that records it.
 
 viii rREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 Such reasons for regret, then, are not wanting as 
 regards the parts withheld, and certainly, too, there 
 may be something in the exhaustive discussion of all 
 that Hamilton has anywhere said of the Germans 
 (part ii. 2) calculated to be of advantage, and give 
 information, at present. As it is, however, I believe 
 I act for the best in publishmg, in the meantime, only 
 the philosophy of perception.
 
 Sm WILLIAM HAMILTON, 
 
 The works of Sir William Hamilton, Logician, pre- 
 sent themselves, as is well kno^vn, in six volumes of 
 no inconsiderable bulk. Bulk, in this case, need not 
 repel, however; for at the same time that the present 
 inquest has been universal and unexceptive, it has 
 resulted thence that the six volumes stand to the 
 three reviews — ' Perception,' the ' Absolute,' and 
 ' Logic ' — pretty much as quantity to quality ; so that 
 he who possesses the latter may, with tolerable justice, 
 claim the former also. These reviews, indeed, con- 
 tain the writer's stock, and any study else in Hamil- 
 ton — unless of a few of the notes to Reid — may be 
 held superfluous. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 In this stock — we may say it at once — Percej)tion is 
 the middle-point, and to it, therefore, the present 
 examination directly addresses itself. Perception, 
 indeed, constitutes the middle-point of the entire 
 movement named Scotch Philosophy, and the reason 
 
 B
 
 2 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 lies in the general object of that movement's origi- 
 nator. Reid, namely, sought to replace the Mediate 
 and Representative Perception of the ' Ideal System * 
 — a perception that asserts itself to 2:>erceive, not 
 things without, but ideas within — by the Immediate 
 and Presentative Perception of Common Sense, which 
 believes itself to perceive, on the contrary, not ideas 
 within, but things without. And, if this was the ob- 
 ject of Reid, it was equally the object — with but few 
 exceptions (Brown, for example) — of his followers, 
 and, among these, of Hamilton in especial. Hence it 
 was that he (Hamilton) — on the authority of 'con- 
 sciousness ' and with appeal to ' common sense ' — op- 
 posed to the theory of ' representationism,' or ' cosmo- 
 thetic idealism,' his own creed of ' presentationism,' 
 or ' natural realism,' ' natural dualism.' This, indeed, 
 is the information of the very first step m Hamilton 
 — information so impossible to mistake, that it is not 
 easy to describe the shock "svith which we experience the 
 contradiction of the second. It is with this contradic- 
 tion, then, that we shall open the present discussion. 
 
 1. Hamilton both Presentationist and PhenomenalisL 
 We quote at once as follows : — 
 
 I hold that Perception is an Immediate or Presentative, 
 not a Mediate or Representative, cognition. (Rcid's Works, 
 p. 883.) Perception is the faculty presentative or intuitive 
 of the phenomena of the Non-Ego or Matter. (Reid's Works, 
 p. 809.) In Perception, mind is immediately cognisant of 
 matter. (Reid's Works, p. 755.) A thing is known immedi- 
 ately or proximately, when we cognise it in itself; mediately 
 or remotely, when we cognise it in or throuyh something
 
 HAmLTON A PRESENT ATIONTST. 3 
 
 numerically different from itself. An immediate cognition, 
 inasmuch as the thing known is itself presented to observa- 
 tion, may be called a presentative ; and inasmuch as the 
 thing presented, is, as it were, viewed by the mind face to 
 face, may be called an intuitive, cognition. A mediate cog- 
 nition, inasmuch as the thing known is lield up or mirrored 
 to the mind in a vicarious representation, may be called a repre- 
 sentative Gogn\\Aon. (Reld's Works, T^.^i)5.) To be known im- 
 mediately, an object must be known in itself. {Disc. p. 50.) 
 Mind and Matter are both equally known to us as existent 
 and in themselves. {Disc. p. 52.) Knowledge of mind and 
 matterequally zmmediate. (Z)/sc.p.54.) Consciousness declares 
 our knowledge of material qualities to be intuitive — this the 
 natural con\'iction of mankind. {Disc. p. 55.) Knoioledge and 
 existence are then only convertible when the reality is known 
 in itself; for then only can we say, that it is known because 
 it exists, and exists since it is known. And this constitutes 
 an immediate, presentative, or intuitive cognition, rigorously 
 so called. {Disc. p. 58.) The external reality zY^^//" constitutes 
 the immediate and only object of perception. The very things 
 which we perceive by our senses do really exist. {Disc.j). 59.) 
 The object knoivn convertible with the reality existing. {Disc. 
 p. 93-4.) Immediate knowledge of external objects ... if 
 we hold the doctrine of immediate perception, the necessity 
 of not limiting consciousness to our subjective states. {Meta. 
 i. 229.) Consciousness, a knoAvledge of the object of per- 
 ception, — meaning by that object the unknown reality itself. 
 {Meta. i. 231.) The material reality is the object immedi- 
 ately knoAvn in perception. {Meta. i. 279.) Those things 
 we immediately perceive are the real things. {Meta. i. 289.) 
 In perception Ave immediately know the external reality in 
 its own qualities, as existing . . , knowledge and existence 
 convertible ... the reality is known in itself [pis'] ... the 
 external reality itself constitutes the immediate and only 
 object of perception. . . . Intuitive or immediate knoAvledge 
 is that in Avhich there is only one object, and in which that 
 object is known in itself or as existing. In an immediate
 
 4 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION, 
 
 cognition, the object in consciousness and the object in exist- 
 ence are the same ; the esse intcntionale or representativum 
 coincides with the esse entitativum, the two objects both in 
 representative knowledge. {Meta. ii. 80, 81, 82, 87, 88, 
 69.) The Hypothetical Realist [otherAvise called also the 
 ' Representationist ' or the ' Cosmothetic Idealist'] contends 
 that he is wholly ignorant of things in themselves, and that 
 these are knoAvn to him, only through a vicarious phe- 
 nomenon, of which he is conscious in perception ; 
 
 * Rerumc^Q ignarus, imagine gaudet.' {Disc. p. 57.)* 
 
 The last of these extracts adds the light of the anti- 
 thesis to that of the thesis so abundantly present in 
 the rest; and only two points, perhaps, give a mo- 
 ment's pause. Firstly, the quotation from page 755 
 of Reid's Works asserts an immediate cognition of 
 matter, while that from page 809 substitutes for 
 matter the phenomena of the same ; and in this way 
 the two contradictories of noumenal and phenomenal 
 knowledge would seem to be identified. Secondly, 
 the quotation, Meta. i. 231, talks of the object of 
 cognition as the unknown reality itself, and thus, so 
 far as the words go, seems on the part of a presenta- 
 tionist — to whom, necessarily, the reality itself is not 
 unknown — a contradiction in terms. Neither diffi- 
 culty, however, is of any moment as it stands. The 
 term phenomena is used, not always as in relation to 
 cognition, and so, therefore, as opposed to noumena, 
 but frequently also just as event in general; while the 
 phrase the unknown reality itself is too plainly a mere 
 allusion to a common parlance of the opposite school, 
 to cause a moment's hesitation. These extracts, then, 
 
 * In the above, the italics are Ilamiltou's omti.
 
 HAMILTON A PIIENOMENALIST. 6 
 
 will, without difficulty, be received as definitively de- 
 monstrative of that appeal to consciousness and com- 
 mon sense, — of that presentationism, realism, dualism, 
 — of that acceptance of the position of Reid generally, 
 — which we have already attributed to Hamilton. 
 Two opinions on the matter, indeed, cannot well be 
 conceived possible: this is Hamilton's overt and 
 publicly known position. Nevertheless, we have now 
 to see, as already hinted, that if, in the extracts above, 
 Hamilton has asserted presentationism and appealed to 
 common sense, he has, in these others below, asserted 
 phenomenalism and appealed to the philosophers, — 
 and this, too, as it would seem, with equal conviction, 
 equal decision : — 
 
 Whatever we know is not known as it is, but only as it 
 seems to us to be. (3Ieia. i. 146.) Mind and matter exist 
 to us only in their qualities : and these qualities exist to us 
 only as they are known by us, i. e. as phenomena. (^Disc. 
 p. 61.) The universe and its contents, — these are known 
 to us, not as they exist, but as our mind is capable of 
 knowing them. (3Ieta. i. 61.) Existence is not cognisable 
 absolutely and in itself, but only in special modes ; because 
 these modes can be known only if they stand in a certain 
 relation to our faculties ; and because the modes, thus relative 
 to our faculties, are presented to, and known by, the mind 
 only under modifications determined by these faculties them- 
 selves. {Meta. i. 148.) Although, therefore, existence be 
 only revealed to us in phenomena, and though we can, 
 therefore, have only a relative knowledge either of mind or 
 of matter; still by inference and analogy we may legiti- 
 mately attempt to rise above the mere appearances which 
 experience and observation afford. (^Meta. i. 125.) [At 
 page 143 of this volume, he avails himself, in his ovnx sup- 
 port, of the same passages from the IVIicromegas of Voltaire
 
 6 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 which he finds quoted by Brown in support of Representa- 
 tionism ; and, indeed, Brown in this seems to have reason, 
 for a man Avith a thousand senses, or even a single additional 
 sense, would have a very different world from ours.] The 
 distinction of two substances (mind and matter) is only 
 inferred from the 'seeming incompatibility of the two series 
 of phenomena to co-inhere in one, &c. — [and Avinds up again 
 Avith] 
 
 * Rerumque ignarus, imagine gaudet.' {Meta. i. 138.) 
 
 To obviate misconception, we may here parenthetically 
 observe, that all Ave do intuitively knoAv of self, — all that we 
 may intuitively know of not-self, is only relative. Existence 
 absolutely and in itself is to us as zero ; and while nothing 
 is, so nothing is known to us, except those phases of being 
 which stand in analogy to our faculties of knoAvledge. These 
 we call qualities, jjhenomena, properties, &c. When Ave say, 
 therefore, that a thing is knoicn in itself, Ave mean only that 
 it stands face to face, in direct and immediate relation to the 
 conscious mind; in other words, that, as existing, its phe- 
 nomena form part of the circle of our knoAvledge, — exist, 
 since they are knoAvn, and are knoAvn because they exist. 
 {Disc. p. 54.) [From p. 60 of the same Avork, there folloAvs, 
 for several consecutive pages, a long polemic against ' the 
 principle that the relation of knoAvledge implies an analogy 
 of existence,' which ' analogy,' nevertheless, the above cita- 
 tion seems to assert.] What we knoAv is not a simple 
 relation [yet in the citation above, it is called ' a direct and 
 immediate relation'] apprehended betAveen the object knoAA'u 
 and the subject knoAving, — but every knowledge is a sum 
 made up of several elements, and the great business of 
 philosophy is to analyse and discriminate these elements, 
 and to determine whence these contributions have been 
 derived. {Meta. i. 146.) The sum of our knoAvledge of the 
 connection of mind and body is, therefore, this, — that the 
 mental modifications are dependent on certain corporeal con- 
 ditions; but of the nature of these conditions Ave knoAv 
 nothing. For example, avc knoAV, by exi)erience, that the
 
 HAMILTON A PlIENOMENALIST. 7 
 
 mind perceives only through certain organs of sense, and 
 that, through these different organs, it perceives in a different 
 manner. But whether the senses be instruments, whether 
 they be media, or Avhether they be only particular outlets to 
 the mind incarcerated in the body,— on all this we can only 
 theorise and conjecture. We have no reason whatever to 
 believe, contrary to the testimony of consciousness, that there 
 is an action or affection of the bodily sense previous to the 
 mental perception ; or that the mind only perceives in the 
 head, in consequence of the impression on the organ. On 
 the other hand, Ave have no reason whatever to doubt the 
 report of consciousness that we actually perceive at the 
 external point of sensation, and that we perceive the material 
 reality — not absolutely and in itself, [however, as he goes 
 on to remark. No :] the total and real object of perception 
 is [he says] the external object under relation to our sense 
 and faculty of cognition. [But it is still] no representation, 
 — no modification of the ego, it is the non-ego modified and 
 relative, it may be, but still the non-ego. For example [he 
 continues], the total object perceived being 12, the external 
 reality may contribute 6, the material sense 3, and the mind 
 3 [or, as he gives it slightly changed elsewhere, Meta. i. 
 147], the full or adequate object perceived being equal to 12, 
 this amount may be made up of 3 several parts, — of 4, con- 
 tributed by the object, — of 4, contiibuted by all tliat inter- 
 venes between the object and the organ, — and of 4, 
 contributed by the living organ itself : this may enable you 
 [he tells his students] to form some rude conjecture of the 
 nature of the object of perception. [Surely, he might have 
 added, and a very rude conjecture, indeed, of an immediate 
 perception!] {Meta. ii. 128.) Our whole knowledge of 
 mind and of matter is relative, — conditioned, — relatively 
 conditioned. Of things absolutely or in themselves, be they 
 external, be they internal, we know nothing, or know them 
 only as incognisable ; and become aware of their incompre- 
 hensible existence only as this is indirectly and accidentally 
 revealed to us, through certain qualities related to our
 
 8 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 faculties of knowledge, and which qualities, again, we can- 
 not think as unconditioned, irrelative, existent in and of 
 themselves. All that we know is therefore phenomenal — 
 phenomenal of the unknown. The philosopher speculating 
 the worlds of matter and of mind, is thus, in a certain sort, 
 only an ignorant admirer. In his contemplation of the 
 universe, the philosopher, indeed, resembles ^neas contem- 
 plating the adumbrations on his shield ; as it may equally 
 be said of the sage and of the hero, — 
 
 ' Miratur ; Rerumque ignarus, Imagine gaudet.'' 
 [Then follow testimonies to the truth of this doctrine from 
 Protagoras, Aristotle, St. Augustin, Boethius, AveiToes, 
 Albertus Magnus, Gerson, Leo Hebraeus, Melanchthon, 
 Julius Cajsar Scaliger, Francis Piccolomini, Giordano 
 Bruno, Campanella, Bacon, Spinoza, Sir Isaac Newton, and 
 Kant. Of these we quote the following : — ] Protagoras : 
 
 * Man is [for himself] the measure of all things.' Boethius : 
 
 * Omne quod scitur, non ex sua, sed ex comprehendentium, 
 natura cognoscitur.' And (iV/<?^«. i. 61), ' Quicquid recipi- 
 tur, recipitur ad modum recipientis.' Leo Hebraeus : ' Co- 
 gnita res a cognoscente, pro viribus ipsius cognoscentis, haud 
 ])ro rei cognitaj dignitate recipi solet.' Scaliger : ' Nego tibi 
 ullam esse formam nobis notam plene et plane : nostramque 
 scientiam esse umbram in sole [contendo].' And {3Ieia. i. 
 140): ' Sicut vulpes, elusa a ciconia, lambendo vitreum vas 
 pultem haud attingit : ita nos externa tantum accidentia 
 percipiendo, formas internas non cognoscimus.' Bruno : ' Ita 
 etiam, neque intellectus noster se ipsuni in se ipso et res omnes 
 in se ipsis, sed in exteriore quadam specie, simulacro, im- 
 agine, figura, signo.' Bacon : ' Infonnatio sensus semper est 
 ex analogia hominis non ex analogia universi ; atque magno 
 prorsus errore asseritur sensum esse mensuram rerum.' 
 Spinoza: * Mens humana ipsum humanum corpus non co- 
 gnoscit, nee ipsum existere scit, nisi per ideas affectionum 
 quibus corpus afficitur. Mens se ipsam non cognoscit, nisi 
 quatenus corporis affectionum ideas percipit.' Kant : ' In 
 perception everything is known in conformity to the con-
 
 NOUMENALISM A^B PIIENOMEXALISM DEFINED. 9 
 
 stitution of our faculty.' [Hamilton adds :] ' And a hundred 
 testimonies to the same truth might be adduced from the 
 philosopher of Koenigsberg, of whose doctiine it is, in fact, 
 the foundation.' {Disc. pp. 643 647.)* 
 
 On the question of accuracy here, the reader must 
 understand that he has no room to doubt. Both series 
 of statement occur in Hamilton, and both are perfectly 
 co-extensive and equally precise. Of both, too, the 
 quoted specimens might have been indefinitely aug- 
 mented, although a tithe of either — so far as conviction 
 is concerned — would probably have sufficed. Neither, 
 if the facts are certain, have we any more reason to 
 doubt the contradiction they involve. The appeal in 
 the one series is not more certainly to common sense, 
 than that in the other is to the philosophers, and the 
 burthen of the one is not more surely noumenalism 
 than that of the other is phenomenalism. 
 
 We may remark that we use these terms, noume- 
 nalism and phenomenalism, by preference to any 
 others ; for, since Kant, they are those that most 
 accurately define the point at issue. To know a 
 noumenon is to know a thing in itself, or as it is ; to 
 know a phenomenon is to know a thing in another, or 
 as it seems. This is the distinction concerned, and 
 on its very edge, apply to it what terms we may. 
 
 It is the alternatives, then, of this distinction that 
 are equally asserted by Hamilton, and it is on the 
 resultant contradiction that we are now eno:ao:ed. 
 The first series, for example, runs thus : — 
 
 In perception, the thing itself is presented to, and 
 viewed by, the mind, face to face — it is not held up or 
 
 * The italics in the above are also Hamilton's own.
 
 10 T. 1. PERCEPTION : THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 mirrored to the mind in a vicarious representation. 
 Perception is an immediate and presentative k now- 
 led o-e — it is not mediate or representative — it is 
 intuitive of the non-ego, of matter, of the object in 
 itself, and not in or through something numerically 
 diiFerent from itself. Mind and matter are known as 
 existent, immediately and in themselves. Knowledge 
 and existence are convertible. The object known and 
 the reality existing are identical. The external reality 
 itself is the one and only object of perception, and it is 
 kno"\Yn in itself and as existing. 
 
 The second series, again, runs thus : — 
 The object known is not known as it is, but only as 
 it seems — existence is not known absolutely and in 
 itself — observation and experience afford mere appear- 
 ances — nothing is known and nothing is but those 
 phases of being which stand in analogy to our faculties 
 — whatever we know is not a simple relation but a 
 sum — we know only qualities, phenomena — all that 
 we know is but phenomenal of the unknown — existence 
 absolutely and in itself is to us as zero — things in them- 
 selves are incognisable — their existence is incompre- 
 hensible, and is only indirectly and accidentally kno^vn. 
 In short, with relation to perception, according to 
 the first series, the external reality — or what is called 
 the iinhioim reality — is itself, and in itself, and as it 
 is, or as it exists, immediately and intuitively (or face 
 to face) presented to the mind. According to the 
 second series, again, the reality itself is not only 
 admittedly called unknown, but it admittedly is 
 unknown — unknown in itself, luiknown as it is, 
 unknown as it exists (presented to the mind, there-
 
 THE CONFUSION NOT INADVERTENT. 11 
 
 fore, one would suppose, not only not immediately, 
 not intuitively, not face to face, but simply not at all) ; 
 and leaving room, consequently, for no knowledge in 
 its, or any, regard that is not of the nature of mere 
 seeming, mere appearance — that is not indirect, acci- 
 dental, and phenomenal — that is not mdirect, acciden- 
 tal, and phenomenal only of what is unkno'svn, incog- 
 nisable, incomprehensible. Lastly, just to clinch cer- 
 tainty itself here, Hamilton himself, in defining the 
 representationist not to know things in themselves but 
 only in a vicarious phenomenon, would seem directly 
 to identify the position of the representationist with 
 what we can only name his OAvn second position. 
 
 It seems, too, but to add the last touch to contra- 
 diction here, to observe that Hamilton's action in all 
 this cannot be regarded as wholly inadvertent, but 
 must be considered as at least in some degree con- 
 scious. ' To obviate misapprehension,' he says {Disc. 
 p. 54), 'we may parenthetically observe' — and the 
 parenthesis occurs in the midst of a profession of the 
 strictest noumenalism — 'that all we c/(9 intuitively know 
 of self, &c., is only relative^^ &c.* Evidently, there- 
 fore, it is not without a certain consciousness that 
 Hamilton scruples not to fling into a single heap the 
 terms of both alternatives at once, or rather even to 
 correct and explain the strict language of noumenalism 
 by the no less strict language of phenomenalism — 
 placing the latter, indeed, as but the defining surrogate 
 of the former. Now we cannot say that our general 
 sense of contradiction, or that our surprise, is in any 
 
 * See quotaliun ;il p. (j, but consult oriyiuul also.
 
 12 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 degree weakened by our perception of this conscious- 
 ness of Hamilton. Rather, on the contrary, our sense 
 of contradiction and our surprise are thereby very 
 much increased ; and this, while we experience in 
 addition both discomfort and offence — discomfort and 
 offence, namely, in consequence of the confusion intro- 
 duced into well-founded and long-established distinc- 
 tions by what at least seems the arbitrary caprice of a 
 single individual. Nevertheless, this consciousness of 
 Hamilton being admitted as a fact, our general position 
 is necessarily changed. It becomes our duty, namely, 
 to inquire into Hamilton's actuating reasons, which 
 reasons may be found in the end — despite the confu- 
 sion that may result — to reconcile contradiction and 
 establish their object. 
 
 Why, then, has Hamilton, at the same time that he 
 holds all our knowledge to be phenomenal only, 
 unequivocally asserted presentationism as well ? 
 
 This question we shall consider presently. It will 
 be well, however, to dwell a moment on some subordi- 
 nate contradictions which, present with, are not 
 unillustrative of, the main one. 
 
 Of these the first concerns again Hamilton's already- 
 mentioned consciousness of this main contradiction 
 itself. On this we have to make clear to ourselves 
 that we know of this consciousness only in that we 
 have seen Hamilton expressly cross the two series, or 
 in that we have seen him expressly apply the one in 
 interpretation of the other. This is conclusive as 
 regards a consciousness of the fact of the action ; it is 
 inconclusive as regai'ds any consciousness of what the
 
 HAMILTON'S CONSCIOUSNESS, ETC. 13 
 
 action itself involves. It seems, indeed, never to have 
 struck Hamilton that presentationism is noumenalism, 
 and therefore the logical contradictory of phenomen- 
 alism. Nowhere does he seem aware that he may 
 appear to have committed the contradiction of directly 
 identifying these opposites. Nowhere do we find in 
 him any show of explanation, nowhere any apology, 
 nowhere even an acknowledgment. He seems to have 
 viewed it as a matter of course that he might consist- 
 ently maintain at once the phenomenalism of the 
 philosophers and the presentationism of Reid. ' To 
 obviate misconception^^ that he should be known sim- 
 ply to say so and so, appeared enough to him, even 
 though what he said should be that, when he said 
 noumenalism, he meant phenomenaHsm — that when he 
 said the one, he meant the other — that when he said 
 this^ he meant that! Here we go round by the rule 
 of contrairey. When I say Ay, you say No; and when 
 I say Hold fast, you let go ! Boys, we know, play at 
 this game with perfect satisfaction, though, unlike 
 Hamilton, they ore not only conscious of the fact of 
 the action, but of its contradiction as well. 
 
 But of these subordinate contradictions, perhaps, 
 however small, the most characteristic and striking, 
 as well as the most illustrative of the main one, is this : 
 if, as is readily seen on reference to the preceding 
 quotations, Hamilton, by way of coujj de grdce^ applies 
 to his own enemy, the representationist, the well- 
 known line from the eighth iEneid, 
 
 ' Mivatur ; Berumque ignarus, Imagine gmidet^ 
 
 en revanche^ he applies it — and with a similar repre-
 
 14 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 sentative and summarising force — ticice to his own 
 self! After this we are not surprised that he should 
 joyfully avail himself of Brown's insight and indus- 
 try as regards the Micromegas of Voltaire, and should 
 appropriate to himself the warmth of a nest from which, 
 with cuckoo-like regardlessness, he had but just ex- 
 truded the offspring of its own constructor. 
 
 Such another point is this, that, while in the extract 
 {Disc. p. 54), he asserts that not only 'nothing is known., 
 but nothing is^ except those phases [i.e. not only is 
 there nothing hiovm., but nothing is, except phases — 
 appearances ! ] of being which stand in analogy to our 
 faculties of knowledge,' we have but to turn the leaf 
 to find several consecutive pages devoted to a long 
 polemic against ' the principle that the relation of 
 knowledge implies an analogy of existence ' ! 
 
 Yery marked contradiction is to be found in the 
 last extract of the second series, whether this extract 
 be considered for itself or in the quotations by which 
 it is so profusely shored. The first aspect we pass, as 
 amounting only to that unexceptive and trenchant 
 phenomenalism which constitutes, with reference to 
 Hamilton's professed noumenalism, the main contra- 
 diction thus &r. But as regards the second aspect, 
 the shoring quotations, namely, we shall permit our- 
 selves a word or two. 
 
 As is matter of familiar knowledge, the leading in- 
 dustry of Hamilton, in all his most important works, 
 is a polemic — sharj), keen, cutting, headlong — for Reid 
 and against the ' Ideal System,' or for Presentative 
 Realism and against Representative Idealism. Now
 
 HAMILTON'S APPEAL TO HIS ENEMIES. 15 
 
 we have but to think of this polemic, and of the dis- 
 tinguished champions in the opposite ranks whom we 
 recollect to have expressly fallen to the spear of 
 Hamilton, to become all at once even startled by the 
 incongruity and absurdity that seem, in such quota- 
 tions, ahnost to mock us. That Sir William Hamil- 
 ton should make tearful appeal ad wisericordiam of 
 the very corpses himself had made ! That he should 
 summon to the proof the veiy foes whose bodies are 
 not yet cold on that fierce battle-field which he has 
 just so triumphantly abandoned ! That he should 
 seek to re-animate them, and just for that for which 
 he slew them ! In a word, that, as phenomenalist, he 
 should be forced to set up what, as noumenalist, he 
 has but just thrown down! It is not easy to set 
 bounds to one's surprise here, at the same time that 
 it is quite impossible to resist the evidence of the fact. 
 The reference to Kant alone is quite conclusive. Kant 
 is not only a representationist — or Kant is not only 
 universally recognised as such, but he is expressly so 
 recognised, expressly so classed, expressly so fought 
 by Hamilton. Yet to this same Kant, direct appeal 
 is now made, by tliis same Hamilton, and in behalf of 
 the very doctrine for which he but this instant hacked 
 and hewed at him ! ' Such is the testimony of Kant,' 
 he says, ' and a hundred others to the same truth 
 might be adduced from the philosopher of Kcenigsherg^ 
 of whose doctrine it is, in fact, the foundation'! No 
 one doubts but a hundred, but a thousand testimonies 
 might be adduced from Kant by the easy process of 
 turning over his pnges; but everybody must feel
 
 16 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 astounded that Hamilton should have even dreamed of 
 an appeal to a single one of them. 
 
 Nor, as regards the other authorities, is the incon- 
 gruity less. In themselves they are generally only 
 less weighty than a Kant, and Hamilton has not been 
 subjected to any difficulty in finding them. To that, 
 indeed, he had but to count the opposite camp — a 
 camp he could not well miss, either, inasmuch as the 
 stream of writers in general directly led to it. This, 
 at all events, is the confession of Reid, who owns to 
 the company of the vulgar, but complete desertion on 
 the part of the philosophers. Now, for the gainmg 
 of votes, to count one's enemies — one must at all 
 events acknowledge the gallantry of the expedient. 
 Consider them! Boethius; and 'the object is not 
 known from its nature.' Leo Hebra^us; and 'it is 
 not the thing in its dignity that is known.' Julius 
 Cassar Scaliger ; and ' we only know the shadow, the 
 glass not the contents, only external accidents.' 
 Bruno ; and ' we know things, not in themselves, but 
 in another, which other is a species, a simulacrum, an 
 image, a sign.' Bacon; and ' the senses are not ade- 
 quate to thmgs.' Spinoza; and 'we know ideas only.' 
 In short, the 'Ideal System'!! It is really curious. 
 Did Hamilton, then, wish us to believe that he knew 
 ' ideas ' only, that perception is not adequate to things, 
 that we perceive and know but 'signs,' 'unages,' 
 ' species,' ' simulacra ' ? Really, one has to think of 
 Hamilton's reputation, to justify to oneself one's own 
 pains in things so glaring. In the simplest and most 
 gratuitous fashion, indeed, contradiction follows con-
 
 HAMILTON ON PROTAGORAS AND BACON. 17 
 
 tradiction, and of inconsistency, discrepancy, afid 
 confusion, one can find no end. Why, for instance, 
 should Hamilton appeal to — of all men that ever 
 breathed — Protagoras? Why, of all doctrines that 
 ever were enunciated, should it be precisely this hea- 
 then's that a disciple of Reid should covet? Prota- 
 goras, as everybody knows, Avas the representative 
 Sophist, or Sceptic, and his doctrine, ' Man is the mea- 
 sure of all things,' is the very ' brief ' of that mate- 
 rialistic school which maintains the senses to be the 
 all-in-all both of knowledge and conduct, and with 
 this addition, that, as one man's senses differ from 
 another's, that is true and right for one which is true 
 and right for nobody else. Would Hamilton really 
 have wished us to suppose this principle his, either 
 on the theoretical or the moral side? And again, 
 had he really wished this, why incoherently have 
 made further appeal to Bacon ? Protagoras, as quoted 
 «by Hamilton, says, ' Man is [for himself] the measure 
 of all things ; ' and Bacon, as quoted by the same 
 Hamilton, says, ' The information of sense is always 
 from the analogy of man, not from the analogy of the 
 universe, and it is wholly a great error to assert that 
 sense is the measure of all things.' Now to Protagoras 
 ' man ' was only the particular sense of each particular 
 man : we may say, then, that while Protagoras asserts 
 man or sense to be the measure of all things. Bacon 
 perfectly contra-asserts man or sense not to be the 
 measure of all things. The one assertion is logically 
 the contradictory of the other, and it is eminently 
 characteristic of Hamilton that he should seek to 
 
 c
 
 18 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 apply both, and in support of one and the same thing. 
 This, indeed, is characteristic — that Hamilton, with 
 such materials before him, should seek to apply two 
 direct logical contradictories, and in support of his 
 oAvn direct logical contradictory to his own self! 
 But in the sentence from Protao-oras there is that 
 
 o 
 
 intercalated ' [for himself J ' — did Hamilton intend thus 
 to meet objection, to remove discrepancy? What 
 really could have been his object here, for, if the in- 
 tercalation is adequate to anj^hing, is it not adequate 
 only to intensify the peculiar, and peculiarly offensive 
 meaning which the phrase conveys and was intended 
 to convey ? Then, again, as regards Bacon, why should 
 a Presentationist, a pupil of Eeid, &c., &c., rejoice in 
 his authority for the falsity of sense ? Were sense 
 false, could perception be true? Has Hamilton for- 
 gotten his own words : ' The very things which we 
 perceive by our senses do really exist? ^ But Bacon, 
 as we have seen, is no exception: we may put the- 
 same question as regards the whole of them, seeing 
 that the whole of them simply maintain that Ideal 
 System which Reid and Hamilton believed themselves 
 specially sent to combat and destroy. Really, to love 
 one's enemies is Christian ; but, on the part of a philo- 
 sopher, it is occasionally, we fear, somewhat inconse- 
 quent ! 
 
 ' Protagoras, Aristotle, St. Augustin, Boethius, 
 Averroes, Albertus Magnus, Gerson, Leo Hebrteus, 
 Melancthon, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Francis Piccolo- 
 mini, Giordano Bruno, Campanella, Bacon, Spinoza, 
 •Sir Isaac Newton, Kant' — (will the reader forgive me
 
 HAMILTON'S CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 10 
 
 for pointing out in passing that Leo Hebraeus must 
 be the Hebrew Lion?) — here is a goodly list of names, 
 indeed, and any two of them, say Kant and Aristotle, 
 for example, are quite enough for any single man, but 
 what really at bottom is the value of this whole thing ? 
 For testimony^ is it enough to get a crumb of each of 
 the Doctorum Eruditorum ? If we point out that the 
 doctors differ, will you still eagerly demand their 
 crumbs ? Nay, if we point out that the crumbs them- 
 selves differ, will you still eagerly exclaim. Give, give ? 
 Is it enough for you just to get your pages covered 
 with those glittering spicula3 and the more glittering 
 names of which the spiculse themselves are but the 
 occasions and the pretence? Is there authority then, 
 so, in either glittering spicula or glittering name? Or 
 are they not both idle ? Strange that Hamilton should 
 have thought so boyish, so very easy, an industry ser- 
 vice! To be weak to a quotation that might seem 
 erudite — flauntingly to wear the same, inconsiderate 
 of the occasion: — this is the simple delight of the 
 foreigner in his orders — this is the simple delight of 
 the Negro in his Birmingham buttons. We would, 
 indeed, be just here ; but can any man well draw any 
 other or better reflection from that. Sir William Hamil- 
 ton's long sand-rope of authorities? He calls them a 
 cloud of witnesses, and, folding his hands on his con- 
 spicuous erudition the- while, he smiles to himself with 
 serene complacency. A cloud of witnesses ! Scatter 
 me such clouds, one gleam of sense, one breath of 
 manliness ! 
 
 It may seem now, that we must have exhausted the 
 
 c 2
 
 20 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTEADICTION, 
 
 subordinate contradictions present in these extracts; 
 but we feel sure that the reader, should he be inclined 
 to try, has it still in his power to discover more. For 
 our own part, we find ourselves, on turning to the 
 question we left behind us concerning Hamilton's 
 motives for his apparent confusion of noumenahsm 
 and phenomenahsm, at once encountered by others. 
 These motives, namely, lie in our last two extracts 
 but one, but so that they seem to lie also in very 
 ' nests' of discrepancy. As we have already seen, the 
 former of these extracts asserts knowledge not to be a 
 simple relation between subject and object, but a sum 
 of several elements, which elements it is the business 
 of philosophy to analyse and discriminate. The latter, 
 aofain, contains such deliverances as these: — It is con- 
 trary to the testimony of consciousness to believe an 
 action or affection of the bodily sense previous to the 
 mental perception; we have no reason whatever to 
 doubt the report of consciousness that we actually 
 perceive at the external point of sensation, and that 
 we perceive the material reality, — not a representation, 
 not a modification of the ego, — no, the non-ego itself, 
 modified and relative it may be, but still the non-ego ; 
 for example, the total object perceived — this book — 
 being 12, the external reality may contribute 6, the 
 material sense 3, and the mind 3; or the external 
 reahty may contribute 4, all that intervenes between 
 the external reahty and the organ 4, and the living 
 organ itself 4. 
 
 Now, a touch or two will readily reveal the contra- 
 dictions here. We know from the quotation {Disc.
 
 FURTHER SUBORDINATE CONTRADICTIONS. 21 
 
 p. 64), for example, that the object stands 'm direct 
 and immediate relation to the conscious mind,' and 
 from quotations of the first series we have abundantly 
 learned that ' the external reality itself is the imme- 
 diate and only object of perception,' and that this 
 object is ' only one.' We learn now, nevertheless, that 
 this immediate and direct relation is a '-sum of elements ^^ 
 of which elements, constitutive of the whole object of 
 perception, the external reality itself is but one. It 
 will suffice to pomt out this, however ; we shall leave 
 it to the reader himself to reconcile, if he can, a direct 
 and immediate (and so, one would think, simple) rela- 
 tion, as well as an object which is described as one and 
 07ily — we shall leave it to the reader himself to recon- 
 cile both with the many-ness and also-ness of a sum, 
 and that too, as we shall presently see, a very compli- 
 cated and peculiar sum. 
 
 But, again, it is said, ' mental modifications are de- 
 pendent on certain corporeal conditions,' ' the mind 
 perceives only through certain organs of sense, and 
 through these different organs it perceives in a different 
 manner.' Now, if mental modifications depend on 
 corporeal conditions^ surely a certain priority of exist- 
 ence is assigned to the latter by the very nature of 
 the words themselves. Nor is it different with the 
 accompanying allegation that the mind perceives 
 through organs, and differently through the different 
 ones : there too, surely, the very words ascribe priority 
 to the organs, and not only priority, but action as 
 well. (Difference of organ produces difference of ob- 
 ject.) Hamilton, however, has no sooner committed
 
 22 I. 1. PERCEPTION : THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 liimself to such allegations, than he proceeds, as usual, 
 directly to contradict himself. ' We have no reason 
 whatever,' he says, ' to believe, contrary to the testi- 
 mony of consciousness, that there is an action or 
 affection of the bodily sense previous to the mental 
 perception; or that the mind only perceives in the 
 head, in consequence of the impression on the organ : 
 whether the senses be instruments, whether they be 
 media, or whether they be only particular outlets to 
 the mind incarcerated in the body, — on all this we 
 can only theorise and conjecture.' Now, if it is to the 
 testimony of consciousness that Hamilton owes these 
 latter statements, one would like to know what testi- 
 mony he owes those former to. One sees that he is 
 not entitled to doubt as to whether the senses are 
 media, &c., for he has already pronounced them media, 
 and media that operate difference. Perhaps to a mind 
 so constituted as that of Hamilton to perceive mme- 
 diately through media is not by any means a contra- 
 diction in terms ! Even suppose him to perceive ' at 
 the point of contact,' is it so certain that he is not still 
 in presence of a medium — the sensitive spot ? Or, on 
 the other aspect, suppose him to perceive the external 
 reality itself — it quite directly, it all and it only — is 
 he still free to name his perception phenomenal? 
 
 Further, Hamilton, as we see from these extracts, 
 rests what noumenalism they contain on two grounds : 
 first, the testimony of consciousness; and second, the 
 analysis and discrhnination of philosophy. These 
 grounds we have to see at full again ; at present we 
 remark only, firstly, that the testimony of conscious-
 
 FURTHER SUBORDINATE CONTRADICTIONS. 2;5 
 
 ness, though Hamilton's loudest note — a note loud, 
 indeed, only, so to speak, to the deafening and stunning 
 out of all opposition — cannot surely be worth much, 
 seeing that, maugre all the mighty things so defiantly 
 ascribed to it, not only the analysis of philosophy is 
 still necessary, but precisely that to and on which 
 consciousness directly testifies and expressly reports 
 remains 'incomprehensible,' 'incognisable,' 'unknown,' 
 * zero ! ' And secondly, that, if it is the business of 
 philosophy to analyse and discriminate the elements of 
 this same object of the testimony and report of con- 
 sciousness, philosophy must be hardly yet fit for its 
 business, not only because what it pretends to analyse 
 and discriminate is admitted bv itself to remain, all 
 the same, incomprehensible, mcognisable, unlvnown, 
 zero, but because the actual analysis to which, despite 
 this foregone conclusion of impossibility, it yet very 
 strangely commits itself, is in itself so contradictory, 
 unsatisfactory, and equivocal. 
 
 Of this analysis, for example — to dwell here a single 
 moment — there are two difi*erent estimates actually 
 given in ! One is that the external reality is 6, the 
 organ 3, and the mind 3; while the other, retaining 
 the external reality and the organ, though at the new 
 values of 4 each, substitutes for the mind all that 
 intervenes between the reality and the organ — the air 
 presumably — and at a value also of 4 ! Now, the two 
 estimates difi*ering, we may reasonably conclude that 
 the thing is, as the phrase goes, not quite reliable yet. 
 But how different all this is to the standard of common 
 sense which Hamilton himself sets up— how different
 
 24 I. 1. PERCEPTION : THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 to his own express and most emphatic allegations 
 elsewhere! How different to all his own 'natural 
 convictions of mankind ! ' Common sense believes the 
 book it sees just to be the book, and Hamilton asserts 
 existence and comition to be convertible — asserts the 
 external reality itself to be only one object, and this 
 only one object to be the only one object of perception. 
 Yet here we find that when philosophy is put to ' its 
 business' by Hamilton, it results that, of the total 
 ol)ject perceived, the external reality constitutes only 
 a half, perhaps only a tliircU Again, we are told that 
 the perceptive object is no modification of the ego, 
 that it is only the non-ego : yet here the business of 
 philosophy actually declares the ego to form a fourth^ 
 a third, or even a halfoi this same object ! Philosophy, 
 to be sure, only says this — philosophy cannot do this. 
 Or, indeed, is any such power still retained among the 
 initiated of the master? Will any descendant of the 
 prophet kindly show us either the 6 or the 4 of the 
 external reality — say the book? Either will satisfy 
 us; we shall be quite contented with the 4. That 
 being given us, we cheerfully promise not to say one 
 word of either organ or mind — that being given us, 
 indeed, we cheerfully promise to be silent even on the 
 air ! What was so emphatically declared one is now, 
 indeed, triple, even quadruple ; but this, too, we shall 
 pass in silence — give us but the external reality itself, 
 be it 6, be it 4, be it 1. If, on the other hand, it 
 should appear that this cannot be done — that the 
 external reality itself, the substantia nuda, cannot be 
 ghown — unless the book itself, the whole book, and
 
 FURTHER SUBORDINATE CONTRADICTIONS. 25 
 
 nothiiio; but the book be this — then will it be too much 
 for us to say that, to declare a thing impossible, next, 
 nevertheless, to call this thing the business proper of 
 philosophy, and, lastly, to claim to perform this busi- 
 ness, exhibit this thing, but in such manner as only 
 to restore the initial impossibility — on all tliis it will 
 be enough to say nothing. 
 
 Then, again, as regards consciousness, what, after 
 all, are we to think of it? It is a small matter that 
 this so autocratic and infallible consciousness stands 
 in need still of the analysis of philosophy; but surely 
 Hamilton himself would admit that the one and only 
 object of the testimony — of the report of consciousness 
 is the book and nothing but the book ; surely he would 
 admit that consciousness as consciousness — for it is 
 to philosophy, and not to consciousness as conscious- 
 ness (which is common sense, or 'the natural con- 
 viction of mankind'), that he attributes the analysis 
 and discrimination — knows not that there is a 3 of the 
 mind, a 4 of the air, or a 3 or 4 of the organ — knows 
 not that what is truly external is, as estimated by 
 Hamilton himself, but J, or even, perhaps, but J of 
 what it discerns — knows not that this which it dis- 
 cerns is really 12 ! Surely this is so. But, if this is 
 so, then consciousness errs. In assuming the whole 
 12 to be the external reality, which it most un- 
 doubtedly does, it errs by at least 4, and by at most f ! 
 But, in such arithmetic, can either error be considered 
 insignificant? Is it at all unfair to suggest, then, that, 
 if consciousness errs in assuming f or J to be external 
 reality which is not external reality, consciousness
 
 2G I. ]. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 may err also in the remainder of the sum, be it ^ 
 or be it only ^? And, in such a case, may we not 
 say, then, with Hamilton himself — and the saying 
 is an argument to which he wholly trusts himself — 
 ' if consciousness be confessed to yield a lying evi- 
 dence in one particular, it cannot be adduced as 
 a credible witness at all, — falsus in uno, falsus in 
 omnibus ? ' 
 
 It may be said that these analyses are only suppo- 
 sititious, only illustrative. We willingly grant the 
 former epithet — we hardly see the pertinence of the 
 latter. Illustrative ! Well, it is illustrative of what 
 we shall have perpetually before us throughout the 
 whole of the present inquest — Hamiltonian contradic- 
 tion, Hamiltonian futility; — this icitlmi, while icitliout^ 
 guns, drums, trumpets, gesticulation, and assertion 
 proclaim the advance of an athlete that is to throw a 
 Kant, that is to fling a Hegel. But, grant it to be 
 only an illustration, this illustration, referring to an 
 alleged analysis, must constitute, surely, with the 
 analysis, a legitimate object of discussion. Or if the 
 analysis, indeed, is naught, why the illustration? — or 
 why any talk of it at all ? 
 
 But let us tear ourselves away from these endless 
 subordinate contradictions, and consider, at last, the 
 question before which we, in effect, stand : — Why has 
 Hamilton, at the same time that he holds all our 
 knowledge to be phenomenal only, unequivocally 
 asserted presentationism as well ? This question may 
 be put more fuUy thus: — What were the reasons 
 which, though unexpressed, were so present to
 
 WHY THE MAIN CONTRADICTION? 27 
 
 Hamilton's mind that he perceived no contradiction in, 
 and was never led to offer any apology for, the opposed 
 assertions, now that things in themselves were incom- 
 prehensible, incognisable, unknown, zero, and now that 
 they were immediately, intuitively, and face to face, 
 known? Or at shortest : — Why did Hamilton, without 
 sense of contradiction, as it seems, assert at once 
 knowledge and ignorance — of things in themselves ? 
 
 Now, as already intimated, the answer here is to be 
 found in our last two extracts but one, and we may 
 state it to run (as if Hamilton spoke) thus: — I do 
 perceive the non-ego, and therefore I am a presenta- 
 tionist ; but I only perceive it phenomenally, and there- 
 fore I am a phenomenalist. Further, first, I know that 
 I do perceive the non-ego, both by the testimony of 
 consciousness and the analysis of philosophy; and, 
 second, I know myself to perceive only phenomenally, 
 ' Because,' as I say elsewhere, ' 1°, Existence is not 
 cognisable absolutely and in itself, but only in special 
 modes; 2°, Because these modes can be known only if 
 they stand in a certain relatioji to our faculties ; and, 
 3°, Because the modes, thus relative to our faculties, 
 are presented to, and known by, the mind only under 
 modifications determined by these faculties them- 
 selves.' {Meta. i. 148.) 
 
 To take the last point in this answer first, or the 
 modality, relativity, and modifiedness of existence as 
 known — this Hamilton merely asserts. He assumes 
 it to be a fact, an ultimate fact, which, to be admitted, 
 needs only to be understood. He condescends to no 
 rationale : he never dreams of dispute. Relation^ mode,
 
 28 I. 1. rERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 and modijicatio7i are to him simply self-evident; and 
 he never suspects, in their regard, even the possibility 
 of doubt. This, then, so far, is very loose : it is but 
 a loose appeal to the consciousness of the reader, or 
 an appeal still looser to some presupposed philosophy. 
 Assertion, then, being certainly always equal to asser- 
 tion, there is the same right to another to assert the 
 substantial, irrelative, and unmodified cognition of 
 existence that there is to Hamilton to assert the con- 
 trary. Such assertion of a substantial, irrelative, and 
 unmodified cognition is not far to seek, indeed — if we 
 but return to Hamilton's own jirst series ! 
 
 As for the testimony of consciousness and the ana- 
 lysis of philosophy, they occur to be considered at full 
 elsewhere; and are here, so far, conceded. That is, 
 we accept the contradiction they ofi*er, and only con- 
 sider it as ofi'ered and in itself. 
 
 There remains before us now, then, but the single 
 difficulty: How can we possibly understand with 
 Hamilton phenomenal and presentative perception to 
 be one and the same ? for, as we know, presentationism 
 is noumenalism. Noumenally to perceive is to perceive 
 a thing in itself, and as it is ; phenomenally to perceive 
 is to perceive, on the contrary, a thing as it is in 
 another, and as it seems. These are Hamilton's own 
 definitions of presentationism and representationism. 
 The one, then, is identical with noumenalism and the 
 other with phenomenalism. Of this we are not allowed 
 to doubt; or doubt itself were at once quashed by an 
 instant's reference to Kant. The contradiction of the 
 two^ then, which to Hamilton are one^ is sheer.
 
 THE MAIN CONTRADICTION. 29 
 
 One might be apt to suspect weakness on the part 
 of Hamilton here — what we might call, perhaps, the 
 weakness of both sides. One might be apt to picture 
 Hamilton, that is, loudly and ostentatiously to take up 
 his position with the 'vulgar;' but, after a while, 
 wistful and penitent, softly to quit his place, quietly 
 to slip over the way, and insinuatingly to whisper the 
 ' philosophers : ' I am a phenomenalist all the same ! 
 In all probability, however, the facts of the case are 
 differently situated. 
 
 That Hamilton was not without satisfaction in his 
 double position we doubt not at all ; for, as we have seen, 
 his inadvertence in its regard had no reference what- 
 ever to the fact of this duplicity. Of that fact, rather, 
 he must be held to have possessed a clear and complete 
 consciousness. No; any madvertence of Hamilton 
 here concerned, probably, only the burthen of the fact 
 — only the contradiction which the peculiar duplicity 
 involved. This we cannot attribute to design — this 
 we must attribute to oversight. And, surely, it is 
 much more natural to believe in the accident of a 
 mistake than in the possibility of Hamilton — with his 
 eyes open — asserting himself to j^erceive a phenomenon 
 that was also a noumenon. Noumenalism (the ' vul- 
 gar') with a rider of phenomenalism (the 'philoso- 
 phers'), — this, indeed, were a device too weak to be 
 imputed to such an intellect. Presentationism, on 
 such an assumption as this, were, to a consciousness 
 fully awake, no longer presentationism at all, nor re- 
 presentationism any longer representationism. Should 
 the external reality be conceived, indee*d, to be fre-
 
 30 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 sented but in a phenomenon, then it were not pi^e- 
 sented, it were ?'qDresented. But of this more fully 
 again. 
 
 Mistake or no mistake, however, Hamilton's answer 
 is really what the penultimate period above implies : 
 to him the external reality is presented in a phenome- 
 non. However phenomenally wrapt up, the non-ego 
 is actually presented to the ego. Presentation of a 
 phenomenon is Hamilton's conviction: what domi- 
 nates him is, that the non-ego is actually there. 
 
 But is, then, the representationist, even in this 
 respect, — and in his answer generally — so very dif- 
 ferent ? To Kant, for example, — in whom represen- 
 tationism certainly culminated — not only was the 
 non-ego present, but the element of a non-ego was 
 absolutely indispensable.* 
 
 For proof here, we point, firstly, to the Kritik of 
 Judgment and that harmony of faculties which gives 
 rise to the cognition and emotion of Beauty; and, 
 secondly, to the Kritik of Pure Reason where the 
 element of a non-ego is held to declare itself on occa- 
 sion of every sensational state Avhatever. 
 
 Kant certainly holds that, though the fact of beauty 
 indicate an adaptation of outer to inner, or of non-ego 
 to ego, and though the fact of sensation indicate the 
 actuality of this outer, of this non-ego, what we 
 know is still really our OAvn state. The non-ego is 
 indispensable antecedent and necessary stimulus or 
 excitmg cause, but then it is not this antecedent, this 
 
 * I liold the second edition of the Kritik of Pure Reason to supersede 
 the first.
 
 REPRESENTATION NOT PORTRAITURE. P,l 
 
 stimulus, this cause, but only the consequent, the 
 result, the effect, that the ego knows. This effect is 
 only its own sensuous affection. The non-ego, it is 
 true, is the occasion of this affection, but this inter- 
 vening affection being all that is in the ego, the non- 
 ego is also, consequently, concealed even by that 
 which alone reveals it. 
 
 Now, Hamilton's understanding of this, we remark 
 in passing, is insecure. To him the representationist 
 knows only a ' vicarious phenomenon ' in which the 
 object itself is but ' mirrored ; ' or he knows only a 
 ' vicarious representation,' ' imagine gaudet.' He 
 says [Meta. ii. 137), representationism ' supposes 
 that the mind can rej)resent that of which it knows 
 nothing — that of which it is ignorant; ' and elsewhere 
 (Disc. p. 66) he conceives the cosmothetic idealist, 
 and Kant as one, to hold the ' mind either to know 
 the reality of what it represents ... or to represent 
 and truly to represent the reality which it does not 
 know.' The object of the representationist would 
 thus appear to be conceived by Hamilton as only an 
 unknown object's likeness, its picture, its portrait, its 
 reflection. But this is an error. Represent to the 
 representationist, to Kant, means simply to stand in 
 lieu of. Of images Kant does not at all speak ; of 
 likeness or unlikeness, he asserts nothing, he denies 
 nothing ; mirror-like reflection has no place in his 
 thought ; he only says that what he knows is but his 
 own affection, which, though due to a non-ego, and 
 testifying to the existence of the same, cannot add in 
 its regard a single predicate further. That picture
 
 32 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE COIs^TRADICTION. 
 
 on the wall is a representation, a likeness of Pekin ; 
 but my perception of the water in this glass (be it a 
 likeness or be it no likeness — of that 1 know nothing, 
 and likeness is certainly not by any means required) 
 only stands for, and so represents^ the unknown exter- 
 nal thing that excites that sentient state of my own 
 known to me, and referred out by me, as water. The 
 skin knows the scratch, it knows nothing of the 
 thorn. Even what the eye knows of the thorn will be 
 found on reflection to be to the eye precisely what 
 the scratch was to the skin, and not by any means 
 the thorn itself. The thorn itself — meaning by the 
 word only the unknown external thing which, acting 
 on my sentiency variously through my special senses, 
 gives rise to the compound perception of my own so 
 named — is certainly there without, undeniably present, 
 an undeniable non-ego that undeniably affects the 
 skin thus and the eye so ; but also an absolutely un- 
 known thing in itself, in regard to which I know only 
 that it does affect the skin thus and the eye so. On 
 all this, Kant has not left us the slightest room to 
 doubt, and we might quote in proof a thousand pas- 
 sages. For a sinoie instance, see the latter half of 
 the last sentence of § 3 in the Kritik of Pure Reason. 
 To regard the representation of Kant, therefore, as 
 referring to portraiture is simply to mis-represent. 
 
 To Kant, then, the non-ego is present in perception 
 quite as truly as it is to Hamilton, and Kant, like 
 Hamilton, perceives a phenomenon only: in what, 
 then, are we to conceive their difference to lie ? Or 
 how shall we find any difference between ' the un-
 
 HAMILTON AND KANT. 33 
 
 known thing in itself' of Kant, and the 'incompre- 
 hensible, incognisable, unknown thing in itself of 
 Hamilton, or between the cognition ' as it affects our 
 sentiency ' of the one and the cognition ' as it is under 
 relation to our faculties ' of the other ? 
 
 We may conceive, indeed, Hamilton to reply here : 
 My actually there is a degree more there than the ac- 
 tually there of Kant; and this is the difference. To 
 Kant, for instance, the non-ego is present only so far 
 as sensation proper is concerned ; it is not present in 
 perception pivper; to me, on the other hand, it is 
 present in both. Kant infers a non-ego, while I 
 perceive one. True, I perceive only phenomenally: 
 true, the external reality, even to the very philosophy 
 that analyses and discriminates its presence, remains 
 incognisable, unknown, zero: still, nevertheless, I 
 know this presence. The book Ave perceive, for 
 example, is made up of, (A) elements due to the 
 external reality itself, (B) elements due to all that 
 intervenes between the book and the organ, (C) 
 elements due to the material sense or organ itself, 
 (D) elements due to the mind; and I call myself a 
 presentationist because, to the analysis of philosophy 
 and the testimony of consciousness, A is actually 
 there — a veritable ingredient, but phenomenally. 
 
 Kant, again, is not without such an answer as this : 
 How can you perceive immediately, and intuitively, 
 and face to face, what you declare to be miknown 
 and incognisable? How can you perceive it at all? 
 Or how can you perceive what you admit to be 
 present only in a sum, a complex, a compound, a fused 
 
 D
 
 34 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 o-uvoAoi/ — mi Other? Your reason pro is my reason 
 con. What I perceive being A+B + C + D, it is 
 evident that I cannot perceive A itself, or in itself, 
 or intuitively, or face to face, or immediately, or at 
 all. In simple truth, I am a representationist just 
 for this, that, having no means of getting at A, and 
 B, and C, and D, in the disjunct, I am compelled to 
 take them in the conjunct ; or just for this, that what 
 I perceive is not A, but A + B + C + D — not the 
 external reality in itself and as it is, but the external 
 reality as it is in another, as it is ' in or through some- 
 thing numerically different from itself.' In short, 
 A presented but in a phenomenon, is not presented, 
 it is represented ; or if A is only phenomenally there, 
 it is also only representatively there. 
 
 It is useless, Kant may continue, for you here to 
 refer to philosophy, &c., isolating A ; for even with 
 this, on your own confession, A remains still a phe- 
 nomenon. A ' mode,' at first, the faculties have 
 added to it, besides ' relativity,' ' a modification de- 
 termined by themselves.' It comes forward thus, 
 still not in itself, but in or with an other or others ; 
 and from these it cannot be separated. It is a triple 
 phenomenon even now, the cube of a phenomenon, but, 
 were it only a simple phenomenon, it were still not in 
 itself, but in an other, in something ' numerically dif- 
 ferent from itself.' In short, the A which philosophy 
 pretends to analyse and discriminate, is admitted by 
 this same philosophy, not to be A after all, but, as it 
 were A' + A'' + A'", or mode ■\- relativity + modiJication. 
 You are thus still a representationist like myself.
 
 HAMILTON AND KANT. 35 
 
 To this Hamilton at once retorts : — The testimony 
 of consciousness is that the non-ego is actually there 
 present, and I accept the testimony of consciousness 
 as infallible ; — otherwise God is a deceiver, the uni- 
 verse is a lie, our personality, our immortality, our 
 moral liberty — in fact chaos ! 
 
 Consciousness, Kant may be allowed to rejoin, is 
 to me, just as it is to you, the seat and the source and 
 the test of truth ; but, whereas you merely subjectively 
 assert the testimony of this consciousness to be on 
 your side, I not only similarly subjectively assert 
 that, on the contrary, it is on my side, but I give you 
 my reasons as well. 
 
 Reasons ! we may conceive the sharp and querulous 
 Hamilton to break in, and have I not given my reasons 
 too ? If I have asserted that the testimony of con- 
 sciousness proves the fact of the case as it has been 
 stated by myself, have I not demonstrated as well 
 that you cannot impeach consciousness in a single 
 instance without equally impeaching it in ^\l—falsus 
 in imo, falsus in omnibus ; the root of our nature is 
 then a lie, God is a deceiver, our personality, our im- 
 mortality, our moral liberty, our — our — 
 
 Of course, if a man will not hear reason, but just 
 keep doggedly asserting and asserting, we must 
 simply leave him alone. We may conceive the good 
 Kant to retire here, then, with such thoughts in his 
 heart, but muttering to himself, perhaps, — Why, it is 
 just the business of man as man to question conscious- 
 ness. You, yourself, for the discrimination of A, call 
 in philosophy : you do not trust consciousness as coii- 
 
 D 2
 
 36 I. 1. PERCEITION : THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 sciousness, and uninstructed, there. You do yourself, 
 in very truth then, thus question consciousness. 
 At this a lio;ht falls on Hamilton, and his doofS'ed- 
 
 <—> ' Co 
 
 ness thaws, as he suddenly recalls Kant with, That is 
 true ; consciousness, on one aspect, says only A is 
 there, and shows it not ; while, on another aspect, it 
 is only philosophy that brings the naked fact in final 
 appeal to consciousness. Consciousness, however, 
 even by this appeal, remains mistress of the situation ; 
 and from this situation, consciousness declares the 
 object of its cognition to be not the ego, but ' the non- 
 ego, modified and relative, it may be, but still the 
 non-ego.' 
 
 Should Kant have relented and returned, we may 
 conceive him to respond: — It is, at bottom, but by 
 subterfuge, then, that you would claim for you)^ con- 
 sciousness the authority of common consciousness ; but 
 of common consciousness, your consciousness has yet 
 to abide the question. Meantime, and in reference 
 to your modified non-ego, I may say that an outer 
 object is to you like a parcel of tea tied up in so much 
 sheet-lead and brown paper. The ptaper is yours, the 
 lead is yours, the string is yours ; the tea alone is 
 not yours. You strip off what is yours, the three 
 former then, and you have the tea. But this tea is not 
 yet the naked tea ; for you admit the naked tea to be 
 still concealed from you by the relativity and modified- 
 ness, &c., fallen on it from your own faculties. After 
 all, it is not the tea you know. So little, indeed, is 
 there now left you to know even of it, that it is 
 hardly worth mentioning, especially in such circum-
 
 HAMILTON AND KANT. 37 
 
 stances. This 'little' itself, however, your own ad- 
 missions shall now definitively remove. 
 
 An apparatus of outer and objective substrates (the 
 primary qualities), to be clothed into the variegated 
 universe by the inner and subjective secondary quali- 
 ties: — this is your hypothesis, and it is mine. To 
 me, however, these primary qualities have their seat 
 and their source, quite as much, or more than, the 
 secondary, within. Not the less, on that account, 
 however, are they to me, as they are to you, really 
 ivithout, and prese7itant from ivithout. This peculiarity 
 is due to a demonstrated provision in my space. You 
 yourself identify your primary qualities with space, 
 and you accept my space. Your primary qualities 
 are also, then, within. But the primary qualities 
 were the ' little ' of a non-ego still left you. Your 
 own admissions, then, have now removed this 'little' 
 into the ego. Your ascription, indeed, of the primary 
 qualities to the non-ego, but resulted from failure to 
 understand my space and your OAvn primary qualities ; 
 but of this ascription, in view of my demonstrated 
 space, Occam's razor would compel the recall. 
 
 Presentationism, on such a small ground as the 
 mere assertion of so scanty and equivocal a non-ego, 
 Avas always almost absurd in you — so perfect a 
 phenomenalist otherwise; but now the last filament 
 of the already transparent septum has vanished from 
 between us, and we are one — Kant and Hamilton are 
 one — in cosmothetic idealism ! 
 
 You always knew, not A, but A + B -f C + D. Even 
 when isolated, A was still a phenomenon, into which 
 
 93045
 
 88 I. 1. PERCEPTION : THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 you yourself largely entered ; or A was not yet known 
 in itself, but only in or as A' + A'^ + A!". Of these — 
 and it was not known^ it was only known of — A' was 
 all that remained to you capable of being named 
 outer. This last remnant has now disappeared : your 
 actually there and my actually there have coalesced and 
 are the same. 
 
 As regards our common theory, however, you have 
 been contradictory, misintelligent, imperfect, incom- 
 plete, and you still want — possess not a thread of — 
 never attained to a glimpse of a thread of — the inner- 
 most net of all, that fine net of the categories that 
 brings the crass nets of space and time, with all their 
 crasser contents, into the punctuahty of apperception 
 — into the unity of the I. It is not so certain, then, 
 that I deserved the ostentatious, blind, and somewhat 
 coarse rating you have given me ! 
 
 In the above discussion, our hypothetical Kant has, 
 in some respects, certainly outgone, not only his own 
 position, but even that of the reader. Nevertheless, 
 the latter, with a look to the future and sufficient 
 mtelligence perhaps for the present, may find his own 
 advantage even so. 
 
 On the whole, we are not allowed now much diffi- 
 culty in deciding how far Hamilton, in associating 
 presentationism with phenomenalism, was inadvertent, 
 and how far conscious. So far as the latter alternative 
 is concerned again, we may presume that the reasons 
 of his action are now quite plain ; and equally plain, 
 probably, the insufficiency of these. 
 
 There is still left to surprise us, indeed, the want of
 
 HAMILTON AND KANT. 39 
 
 apology on the part of Hamilton — the want of, at 
 least, acknowledgment. We wonder how, while he 
 cuts off, with the most 2:»eremptory expression, the 
 most trenchant emphasis, either side from the other, 
 he would, at the same time — almost without nammg 
 it — occupy both. Whether, with the 'philosophers,' 
 he folds his hands in ' learned ignorance,' under the 
 shadow of his equivocal phenomenon, or whether he 
 vociferates, with ' the vulgar,' from the platform of his 
 no less equivocal noumenon, that ' the very things which 
 we perceive by our senses do really exist^ and that he 
 shares 'the natural conviction of mankind,' the breadth 
 of clamour with which he calls attention to his position 
 for the time is quite as unmisgiving as it is enormous. 
 It seems to us, indeed, that, while no language can be 
 stronger to say the ink-bottle is the ink-bottle, neither 
 can there be any language stronger to say the ink- 
 bottle is not the ink-bottle. One might almost suspect 
 Hamilton of taking delight in this utterly abrupt and 
 incommunicable distinction of opposites that were 
 both held. The astonishment it might excite was, 
 possibly, not uncongenial to a mind like his, in which, 
 indeed, a certain procacity, a certain protervity, a 
 certain wilfulness seems always to have place. 
 
 Be this as it may, with the deliverances of our 
 hypothetical Kant we may regard the discussion as 
 now terminated, and any assertion of presentationism 
 on the part of Hamilton as now, in his own phrase, 
 summarily truncated. 
 
 We may profitably spend, however — -just to com- 
 plete the subject in all its possibilities — one word on
 
 40 I. 1. PERCEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 this, that, had Hamilton asserted a noumenal know- 
 ledge of A (his external reality), and not such pheno- 
 menal knowledge as converted it into A' + A" + A'" 
 (or his mode + his relativity + his modification), we 
 might have been obliged to conclude differently. As 
 concerned A, at least, we should have been forced then 
 to allow him noumenalism, presentationism, if, with 
 regard to B, C, D (or organ, medium, and mind), he 
 could only have claimed for himself phenomenalism. 
 This, too, properly considered, ought, perhaps, really 
 to have been his position. To make A phenomenal, 
 indeed, was but, as we have seen, assertoric, gratuitous, 
 and his own subjective act. Having got the mind into 
 direct contact vnth. matter in the nervous organism, 
 which is the operation peculiar to him, he ought, per- 
 haps, to have announced simpliciter his ultimate on — 
 that the mind now had, and held, and knew matter. 
 To what end still thrust between a tertium quid of 
 phenomenalism ? Why still talk of modes, modifi- 
 cations, and relations? This has been definitively 
 brought up to that^ and the that is a cognisant element ; 
 what is there now any longer to forbid the union? 
 The mode is still the matter, the matter the mode. 
 To call extension, &c., mere modes, and to fancy 
 "matter only still an unknoAvn noumenon under these 
 modes, — this is an industry that takes with the left, if 
 it gives with the right. When are we to know nou- 
 menally, if not in the position conceived by Hamilton ? 
 To suppose the thing in itself absent when its charac- 
 ters are present, is the same absurdity as to suppose the 
 thing in itself present when its characters are absent.
 
 GENERAL CONCLUSION THUS FAR. 41 
 
 Neither, in such immediacy and directness, is the 
 relation any longer a disjunction. Rather, it is now a 
 junction — direct cognition — identification — an act in 
 which the two are one. No less easy is it to perceive 
 that the m.odijicatio7i attributed to the faculties is 
 superfluous : it is the mind itself that cognises ; it is 
 matter itself that is cognised. Here if ever, it is a 
 noumenal A that, ex hypothesi, we possess. 
 
 In this way, Hamilton might have consistently as- 
 serted a knowledge that was at once noumenal and 
 phenomenal — a knowledge that was partly this, and 
 partly that; and, through the usual expedient oi limi- 
 tation (in which at the same tune the difference is no 
 less eternal), he might have enjoyed at last concilia- 
 tion of th-e two sides. Yet, again, by his own act, 
 Hamilton has prescinded this advantage; for despite 
 the loud phenomenal cries with which he runs with 
 the hounds, he still definitively holds with the hare, 
 and calls himself, as in formal antagonism to the 
 hounds (or 'philosophers'), a presentationist. In this 
 way, Hamilton had made for himself the contradiction 
 absolute ; in this way he had cut off from Imnself 
 all possibility of retreat along a bridge of limitation, 
 leaving for himself no resource but suspension by 
 either arm across an incommunicable chasm. And 
 so, on his own holding in the face of his own showing, 
 he remains. For Hamilton, if wholly a phenomenalist 
 to us, remains a phenomenalist to himself, that calls 
 himself a presentationist. 
 
 In conclusion, thus far, we may remark that the 
 true metaphysic of the subject noAvhere finds itself
 
 42 I. 1. PEECEPTION: THE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 represented in the preceding discussion. The nou- 
 menon, if contradictory, is also essential, to the pheno- 
 menon. Both are : either is impossible without the 
 other. The noumenon is identity, the phenomenon 
 dijfference. The noumenon is the one, the pheno- 
 menon the many. The noumenon is the an sich, the 
 phenomenon the filr sich. Noumenon and pheno- 
 menon are indissolubly one — a one in trinity. This, 
 however, despite his confusion of both, or even in his 
 confusion of both, is a position unknown to Hamilton, 
 and far beyond him. To Hamilton, in fact, his own 
 principles were such that, had he fairly caught the 
 antithesis of noumenon and phenomenon, he would 
 have been compelled to have applied to it his own 
 incessant instrument of infallible divorce — the ex- 
 cluded middle ; he would have been compelled to say, 
 noumenon and phenomenon being logical contradic- 
 tories, both cannot possibly be true, but one must. 
 Instead of this application, however, of what — on the 
 model of Occam's razor — we may be allowed to name 
 Hamilton's wedge, he has, as it were m defiance of his 
 o-\vn ordinary principles, produced that incoherent 
 and untenable phenomenal presentationism of his, 
 which, as Hegel would say, is ' neither fish nor fowl,' 
 but a miserable Gehrdu^ a miserable jumble of mere 
 partial glances {each bright enough, perhaps), in a 
 confused multiplicity of directions. This confusion 
 is evident at once in the two standards to which 
 Hamilton appeals : if it is to ordinary consciousness 
 he trusts for decision, it is absurd for him to advance 
 to philosophy; and if he has once advanced to the
 
 GENERAL CONCLUSION THUS FAR. 43 
 
 latter, it is impossible for him to return to the former. 
 The harness of phenomenalism once worn on the 
 stage of philosophy, as that stage was constituted to 
 himself, could never be put off for the naked skin of 
 noumenalism. From that stage, indeed, we can say- 
 that Hamilton was quite unjustifiable in blindly tear- 
 ing up the ancient landmarks, in shaking together 
 the well-grounded and long-established distinctions of 
 history, and in confounding in a common heap two 
 perfectly separate and distinct vocabularies. The 
 discrimina of a thing in itself, and of a thing as it 
 seems, pervade philosophy, and they are not rashly 
 to be effaced by the ipse dixit of even such a man as 
 Hamilton. Nor is this less to be said from the newest 
 and latest metaphysical position; for to it the dis- 
 tinctions are no less true and necessary than the 
 dialectical reflexion by which they are, in the end, 
 identified. Surely, then, the words, ' Very arbitrarily 
 and, in fact, very abusively perverted and contorted,' 
 so familiar, probably, to the indignation of many, as 
 applied by Hamilton to the unoffending Kant — surely, 
 these words may now, with even-handed justice, be 
 retorted on his own offending and unprovoked self. 
 Wedge of Hamilton — razor of Occam ! it would pro- 
 bably have been fortunate for the former himself, had 
 he applied here for his own conviction, if also for his 
 own confusion, either wedge or razor. 
 
 We turn now to the consideration of what we have 
 hitherto, on the whole, granted — the testimony of 
 consciousness, and the analysis of philosophy.
 
 44 I. 2. PERCEPTION: THE on. 
 
 2. The Testimony of Consciousness; or Hamilton's ore. 
 
 We begin with the extracts on which our reasonings 
 
 and conclusions found : — 
 
 Aristotle regarded consciousness, not as a particular faculty, 
 but as the universal condition of intelligence. . . . Reid and 
 Stewart again hold that ' the peculiar object of consciousness 
 is, the operations of the other faculties themselves, to the 
 exclusion of their objects.' . . . [Hamilton, as if with Aris- 
 totle, and against Eeid and Stewart, maintains] It is 
 impossible, in the Jirst place, to disci-iminate consciousness 
 from all the other cognitive faculties, or to discriminate any- 
 one of these from consciousness ; and in the second, to con- 
 ceive a faculty cognisant of the various mental operations 
 without being also cognisant of their several objects. {Disc. 
 p. 47.) Let consciousness, therefore, remain one and indi- 
 visible, comprehending all the modifications — all the phe- 
 nomena — of the thinking subject. (Meta. i. 183.) To limit 
 consciousness to a cognisance of self is to deprive it of the 
 power of distinguishing external objects from each other, 
 and even of the power of discriminating the ego and the 
 non-ego. {Meta. i. 204.) If consciousness has for its objects 
 the cognitive operations, it must know these operations, and, 
 as it knows these operations, it must know their objects. 
 {Meta. i. 208-9.) How is it possible that we can be con- 
 scious of an operation of perception, unless consciousness be 
 co-extensive with that act, and how can it be co-extensive 
 with the act and not also conversant with its object? {Meta. 
 i. 228.) Consciousness constitutes, or is co-extensive with, 
 all our faculties of knowledge. {Meta. ii. 10.) Perception 
 the consciousness of external objects. {Meta. ii. 28.) Con- 
 scious of the inkstand. {Meta. i. 228.) That Reid should 
 hold consciousness to be applicable to the act, but not to the 
 object, of perception is suicidal of his great doctrine of our 
 immediate knowledge of the external world. {Meta. i. 227.) 
 His (Reid's) error of commission in discriminating conscious-
 
 HAMILTON'S STATEMENTS. 45 
 
 ness as a special faculty, and bis error of omission in not 
 discriminating intuitive from representative knowledge — a 
 distinction without which his peculiar philosophy is naught 
 — have contributed to render his doctrine of the intellectual 
 faculties prolix, vacillating, perplexed, and sometimes even 
 contradictory. {Disc. p. 46.) 
 
 To ask, therefore, a reason for the possibility of our intui- 
 tion of external things, above the fact of Its reality, as given 
 in our perceptive consciousness, betrays, as Aristotle has truly 
 said, ' an imbecility of the reasoning principle itself.' {Disc. 
 p. 63.) As ultimate, it is a fact inexplicable. ... It can only 
 be disproved by proving the mendacity of consciousness. . . . 
 Belying consciousness, it belies and so anniliilates itself. . . . 
 The truth of consciousness is the condition of the possibility 
 of all knowledge. (Disc. p. 64.) That we cannot show forth 
 hotv the mind is capable of knowing sometliing different from 
 self, is no reason to doubt that it is so capable. Every how 
 {BioTi) rests ultimately on a that (otl). {Disc. p. 63.) Con- 
 sciousness is the fountain of all comprehensibility and illus- 
 tration; but as such, cannot be itself illustrated or compre- 
 hended. {Disc. p. 63.) The Presentationist admits the 
 veracity, the Representationist postulates the falsehood, of 
 that principle, which can alone confer on this incomprehen- 
 sible foundation the character of truth. . . . Consciousness 
 must be held veracious, or philosophy is felo de se. {Meta. i. 
 265.) If consciousness, however, were confessed to yield a 
 lying evidence in one particular, it could not be adduced as 
 a credible witness at all: — Falsus in una, falsus in omnibus. 
 {Disc. p. 88.) By the very act of refusing any one datum 
 of consciousness, philosophy invalidates the whole credibility 
 of consciousness. . . . The refusal to accept the fact of the 
 duality of consciousness, is virtually an act of philosophical 
 suicide. {Meta. i. 299.) If Kant attempts to philosophise, 
 he must assert the possibility of philosophy. But the possi- 
 bility of philosophy supposes the veracity of consciousness ; 
 . . . therefore, in disputing the testimony of consciousness, 
 Kant disputes the possibility of philosophy, and, conse-
 
 4G I. 2. PERCEPTION: THE oTt. 
 
 quently, reduces his own attempts at philosophising to ab- 
 surdity. {Meta. i. 374.) 
 
 The object of this writing cannot well be misunder- 
 stood. One sees at once that Hamilton — with no will 
 but the subversion of the Representationist and the 
 establishment of himself, and with never a dream but 
 success — is wholly engrossed with two operations only. 
 The first of these introduces mind into the actual pre- 
 sence of matter, and the second declares the resultant 
 report of mind to be necessarily true. Consciousness, 
 he says, can state no falsehood ; but consciousness 
 asserts the fact of immediate contact with an exter- 
 nality different from itself, therefore such externality 
 is. The testimony is dii'ect, the testimony is unim- 
 peachable. The witness was tliere^ the witness cannot 
 lie. From antecedents so clear, there is an iiTesistible 
 consequent — the adoption of the report. 
 
 It is evident, too, that to Hamilton the one ante- 
 cedent is as indispensable as the other : they form to- 
 gether, indeed, but a conjunct tally: they are this 
 tally's complementary pieces; both are equally neces- 
 sary; — they complete and perfect each other. 
 
 As regards the first, we see that direct presence, 
 actual contact, is a sine qua non. Discontinuity is 
 never for a moment to be thought of. The slightest 
 gap, the slightest interval, were a breach irreparable, 
 a chasm of despair. The two extremes must meet ; 
 the two terms must be accurately conjoined. Mind 
 must actually reach up and out to externality — mind 
 must actually touch externality. To know of it 
 through any intermediation of means is an expedient
 
 HAMILTON ELIMINATES PROCESS, ETC. 47 
 
 — an accommodation — quite to be rejected. That 
 mind should be able to say^ mind must be able to 
 feel. Unless it touch, how can it believe? Hamil- 
 ton, very certainly, is with his whole conviction here ; 
 and he never doubts but that his reader is with him. 
 Consciousness must be co-extensive with perception : 
 this is to him — this must plainly be to aU — the pre- 
 liminary postulate. 
 
 On the second expedient, however, it is, that 
 Hamilton, we doubt not, values himself most. It is 
 not enough, he sees, to place externality, as it were, 
 in the clutch of consciousness. However direct the 
 clutch, consciousness may in itself be still incompetent 
 to speak. It is not enough to give consciousness op- 
 portunity, consciousness must be found in capacity as 
 well. Any man can look, it is only the expert that 
 can see. This, then, is Hamilton's further operation : 
 if, in the first instance, the witness was proved pre- 
 sent, he is now, in the second, proved competent. 
 
 Hamilton has long been aware of the inconveniences 
 of se7ise. What are called its subreptions, its mis- 
 takes, blunders, errors — : these, hitherto, to the pre- 
 sentationist have been, as it were, the very ghosts 
 that haunted him — troublesome importunates that 
 would not be laid, chant he what exorcism he might. 
 This Hamilton knows well, and this he would annul, 
 or this at least he would go round. Now it is always 
 the stir and strike of certain machinery that has raised 
 these ghosts, the stir and strike of the machinery of 
 sense, that is. Process is the word, in fact. Process 
 is the single sign, the proof, which, shoAvn to the
 
 48 I. 2. PERCErTION : THE ort. 
 
 presentationist, has hitherto insured his instant retreat. 
 It is the roundabout of steps, says Hamilton, which, 
 offerini^ opportunity of analysis, constitutes our whole 
 difficulty. This we must get rid of — steps we must 
 efface — wzfe^-mediation we must thrust from before us, 
 and set do^vn «?zmediation instead. Process is the 
 presentationist's impossibility— process there must be 
 
 none. 
 
 But again, says Hamilton, not only has it been 
 usual to assert process, but it has been equally usual 
 to refuse to believe what consciousness might say. 
 Now would we establish a direct cognition of exter- 
 nality, not only must we deny the process which has 
 hitherto been assumed, but we must deny also, what 
 always hitherto has likewise been assumed, the right 
 on our part at all to question consciousness. In short, 
 it must be ours to maintain that consciousness clutches 
 externality, that consciousness says so, and that con- 
 sciousness caAUot lie. 
 
 It is not difficult to see that, with these concessions, 
 Hamilton has a won game before him. If conscious- 
 ness supply a direct report, and if consciousness can- 
 not be questioned, then presentationism is inevitable. 
 We doubt not, then, that Hamilton, on the whole, 
 must have often enough surveyed with complacency 
 his own success thus far. Nor can we weU over- 
 estimate the gallantry of the logical coup de main, of 
 the logical surprise displayed in every circumstance 
 of his extraordinary argumentation. We readily grant 
 to Hamilton that consciousness must be co-extensive 
 with perception, and we cannot deny this same con-
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS IDENTIFIED WITH PERCEPTION. 49 
 
 sciousness to be the ultimate standard of appeal. No 
 sooner do we admit as much, however, than, by an 
 instant sleight of hand, that, under a cover of words, 
 would evade detection, we are astonished into the 
 belief that consciousness and perception are numeri- 
 cally one — nay, by a still more rapid sleight of hand, 
 we are astonished into the belief that consciousness 
 cannot at all be questioned — neither in any function, 
 nor on any occasion, nor at any time. 
 
 All now, then, is changed, says Hamilton ; it is no 
 longer with perception, it is no longer with sense that 
 we have at all to do. Oi^gans — with all their blunders, 
 all their subrej)tions — have disappeared. As said, the 
 ghosts are laid. It is now with consciousness we 
 have to do, and with consciousness alone. But con- 
 sciousness is not sense. You cannot dispute con- 
 sciousness. If you do, it is at once tainted throughout, 
 and it and ^^ou and all of us are logically defunct, and 
 there is an end of everything. Take consciousness, 
 but take it wholly, and there is an external world. 
 Reject a tittle of it, and you annihilate your own self 
 and the whole business you follow. 
 
 But the mere jugglery, the mere logical blind show 
 of this, must be held all the time as quite conspicuous. 
 The subreptions of sense, plainly, if covered, are not 
 by any means removed ; and it is equally plain that it 
 is either an extraordinary self-delusion, or a no less 
 extraordinary abuse of speech, to aver that the facts 
 of consciousness cannot be questioned. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton has, in this countr}^, been 
 proclaimed the greatest logician since Aristotle, ne^er- 
 
 E
 
 50 I. 2. PERCEPTION: THE ort. 
 
 thcless it is certain that lie has filled — ' prince of 
 philosophers,' and prince of logicians, as he may be — 
 the most important sections of his most important 
 works with the elaborate enunciation of a simple fal- 
 lacy. This fallacy is thefaUacia accidentis, and on both 
 of its sides. Whether it is reasoned that, perception 
 being consciousness, consciousness is perception, or 
 that, consciousness being inviolable, perception is in- 
 violable, Hamilton commits indeed this technical 
 error. It is perfectly true, for example, that percep- 
 tion is consciousness ; but it is wholly untrue to aver 
 that consciousness is perception — in the sense that all 
 consciousness is perception. When consciousness is 
 spoken of in reference to the cognition of external 
 objects, it is consciousness in the form of perception, 
 it is consciousness secundum quid, or, as Hamilton 
 himself might say it, it is only some consciousness 
 that is meant. Again, when it is affirmed that con- 
 sciousness is inviolable, the consciousness implied is 
 universal consciousness, not consciousness secundum 
 quid, but consciousness simpliciter. But we cannot 
 reason, whether from the essential to the accidental, 
 or from the accidental to the essential, without the 
 risk of committing sophisms. Thus to assert, with 
 Hamilton, that, perception being consciousness, what 
 is true of perception is true of consciousness, is to 
 conunit the fallacy of reasoning a dicto secundum quid 
 ad dictum simpliciter ; while, again, to assert, with 
 Hamilton, that, consciousness being perception, what 
 is true of consciousness is true of percej^tion, is to
 
 HAMILTON'S FALLACIA ACCIDENTIS. r,l 
 
 commit the converse fallacy of reasoning a dicto sim- 
 pliciter ad dictum secundum quid. 
 
 Hamilton's general syllogism here, in fact, seems 
 pretty much this : — Consciousness is inviolable ; but 
 perception is consciousness ; therefore, perception is 
 inviolable. Now here the middle term is conscious- 
 ness; but, in the major proposition, it is universal 
 consciousness, consciousness simpliciter; while, in the 
 minor, it is a particular consciousness, consciousness 
 secundum quid^ or only some consciousness. In this 
 way, then, the syllogism contains a quaternion of 
 terms ; or there are two middle terms, and thus, 
 the extremes not being compared with the same 
 thing, the conclusion is false. Special consciousness 
 is, in short, not universal consciousness, and, contrary 
 to the dictum of Hamilton, both must be accurately 
 discriminated. We may legitimately express some 
 surprise, then, at the simple manner in which a pro- 
 fessed logician has technically committed himself. 
 Remembering, indeed, that Hamilton was not only 
 prince of philosophers l^ut high priest of the Quanti- 
 fication of the Predicate, we might, by pointing out 
 that this his own operation was the single necessity 
 in the case before us, have brought home to him his 
 error through neglect of the same, in a manner much 
 more keen and cruel. This will appear at once if the 
 true proposition, perception is consciousness, be con- 
 verted not per accidens, not through quantification of 
 the predicate, but simpliciter^ into the false proposition, 
 consciousness is perception. All perception is only 
 
 E 2
 
 53 I. 2. PERCEPTION : THE OTt. 
 
 some consciousness, only some consciousness is all 
 perception. 
 
 -Hamilton's 'presto trick is not, then, so glorious for 
 him after all. Fancy such reasoning as this : — Con- 
 sciousness is percej)tion ; but memory is consciousness ; 
 therefore memoiy is perception ! Yet to such reason- 
 ing we have a perfect warrant in the procedure of Sir 
 William Hamilton. And by such reasoning is there 
 any difference whatever that could not be identified 
 with its opposite — so far, at least, as consciousness 
 and consciousnesses are concerned? 
 
 It is not to escape notice either, that the identifica- 
 tion of consciousness with perception does not remove 
 the difficulty of how perception, constituted and con- 
 ditioned as it is, can possibly be conceived capable of 
 a direct cognition of external things. Call it con- 
 sciousness if you will, it is still a process consisting of 
 sundry stages and steps which afford us a variety of 
 occasions for instituting experiments to try it and 
 test it. Perception is consciousness, and sight is per- 
 ception; but there is nothing in this statement to 
 preclude us from the examination of the process of 
 vision, both physiologically and psychologically; and 
 if the results of this examination tend to show the 
 impossibihty of any immediate knowledge, through 
 sight, of any outward object, and, moreover, should 
 this result repeat itself in the case of all the other 
 senses, it will be quite in vain for Sir William Hamil- 
 ton to call out, even with his most peremptory pre- 
 tentiousness, Consciousness, consciousness; for it is 
 quite competent to us to call out, equally peremptorily,
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS TRANSCENDS CONSCIOUSNESS. 53 
 
 equally authoritatively, Sight, sight, — hearing, hear- 
 ing, — touch, touch ; for each of these is consciousness, 
 and each of these is at the same time capable of a 
 formal investigation. 
 
 It is possible that Hamilton might reply here, But 
 you fail to see that I speak of an ultimate fact of 
 consciousness. ]3y no means, we may rejoin; we 
 know very well that you name the general fact in 
 perception an ultimate fact of consciousness ; but 
 consciousness here is not consciousness sim.plicitei\ but 
 consciousness secundum quid ; it is still perception, 
 and we admit, if you will, that the ultimate, and 
 universal, and, j9?"6> tanto^ necessary fact of perception 
 is the cognition of something different from self; 
 but it is still competent to consciousness qua consci- 
 ousness, to transcend perception qua perception, — to 
 begin where perception left off, and carry up or out 
 the ultimate fact of perception into a higher and very 
 different fact of its own. Nay, we may say that the 
 special business of consciousness is to carry the outer 
 fact of perception up or in to its own inner truth. 
 Were we to stay by perception, we were but brutes : 
 0U7' business is to think, and to think is — in so many 
 words — just to transcend perception. In more mtel- 
 ligible language, it is the business of consciousness to 
 examine all special consciousnesses that may be sub- 
 mitted to it ; and among these perception finds 
 itself, and finds itself, too, in its own nature so 
 peculiarly constituted, that there is no other special 
 consciousness so well adapted for the inquisition of 
 general consciousness as it is. By the very phrase,
 
 54 I. 2. PERCEPTION : THE OTL. 
 
 ultimate fact, Hamilton, indeed, just refutes his own 
 case ; for it implies a foregone process that has pro- 
 nounced it ultimate ; and, implying process, it 
 implies also a possibility of examining the same, even 
 beyond the arbitrary term of his own ipse dixit. 
 
 We may remark, too, that the nature of this 
 assumed ultimate fact of Hamilton's does not at all 
 lessen the difficulty of how such substances as mind 
 and matter can come into relation at all. Nor is it 
 to any other motive than a desire to lessen this diffi- 
 cult}", that we can attribute the identification of 
 consciousness with perception on the part of Hamil- 
 ton,, as well as his general attempt to reduce all the 
 senses to that of direct contact— touch. In this way, 
 too, we see that, despite his clamour of an ultimate 
 fact, Hamilton is really obliged tacitly to admit the 
 claims of reason and reasoning, and the demands of 
 explanation. 
 
 It is possible, then, almost directly to negative 
 every single statement of Hamilton's in the extracts 
 vnth which we set out, and to which the reader will, 
 perhaps, kindly consent to turn back a moment. As 
 regards Aristotle, for example, we can see that his 
 doctrine is simply that of universal mankind, and 
 that the doctrine of Reid and Stewart by no means 
 differs. Reid is not guilty of an ' error of commis- 
 sion ' in discriminating consciousness as a special 
 faculty. Consciousness is to Reid, as it is to Aris- 
 totle, and everybody else unless Hamilton, the genus, 
 while perception and the rest are but the species. It 
 is but a very unfair accentuation of certain words,
 
 HAMILTON'S STATEMENTS NEGATIVED. 55 
 
 which extends but a plausible pretext to Hamilton to 
 speak differently. The truth of the matter is, that of 
 all philosophers, and of all mankind, Hamilton is the 
 only one who has converted consciousness into a 
 special faculty — perception. Against which conver- 
 sion, we again assert that it is possible to discriminate 
 consciousness from the special faculties, as these 
 from it. 
 
 Then we do perceive, and it is perfectly natural for 
 us to inquire how we perceive, let us ' betray so, as 
 Aristotle has truly said, an imbecility of the reasoning 
 principle itself,' — let us betray this for thinking so if 
 we must, but we will console ourselves that this 
 spicula of Aristotle, however ornamental to Hamilton, 
 has been probably wrested from its true comiexion, 
 and if not, that, as it stands, it is sufficiently value- 
 less. Again, the so-called fact of perception is not 
 ultimate: there are steps to it, there are steps /wm it. 
 Perception is not inviolable; and, in a certain sense, 
 consciousness itself is not inviolable. Lastly, the 
 representationist does 7wt postulate the ftilsehood of 
 consciousness. These statements pretty well exhaust 
 the burthen of our extracts, though it would be quite 
 possible to carry the negative into the particular more 
 deeply still. 
 
 Consciousness is veracious; consciousness is not 
 mendacious; the facts of consciousness must be 
 accepted ; consciousness is our ultimate standard ; in 
 order to try consciousness another consciousness were 
 demanded; the facts of consciousness are mutually 
 congruent and coherent, else consciousness is itself
 
 56 I, 2. PERCEPTION: THE ort. 
 
 false, and the whole edifice of knowledge — society 
 itself — topples ; the root of nature is a lie ; God is a 
 deceiver; unconditional scepticism is the melancholy 
 result; our personality, our immortality, our moral 
 liberty — in short, ' man is the dream of a shadow,' 
 ' God is the dream of that dream ! ' No reader of 
 Hamilton but knows these utterances well. How 
 constantly, how unexceptively they are repeated I yet 
 the pole on which they turn, all of them, is a sophism, 
 a fallacy ' probably without a parallel,' as Hamilton 
 himself says of Brown, ' in the whole history of phi- 
 losophy, and this portentous error is prolific— C%z- 
 masra chimoeram pmit. Were the evidence of the 
 mistake less unambiguous we should be disposed rather 
 to question our own perspicacity than to tax so subtle 
 an intellect with so gross a blunder.' (Disc. p. 57.) 
 But the evidence is not ambiguous. Hamilton has 
 started with the fallacia accidentis^ and entangled 
 himself in error ever the deeper the further. Why, 
 were consciousness inviolable m the sense in which it 
 must be understood to leo;itimate the conclusion of 
 Hamilton in regard to the evidence of perception, 
 then the tale of history is a dream, for that whole tale 
 is but the transcendence of error after error, and these 
 errors were the errors of consciousness. For what 
 are all our reformatories, refuges, asylums, — for what 
 are missions, — to what use schools, — if special need not 
 the correction of universal consciousness? History! 
 what is it else than this? What is it else than the 
 transcendence morally, a3sthetically, and intellectually 
 of sense? Morally., for example, the good is now
 
 THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PERCEPTION. 57 
 
 above the personal^ and cesthetically the beautiful is 
 above the sapid: but was either so, when mankind 
 belched the acorn? Then, intellectually^ what original 
 facts of consciousness, so far as sense — so far as 
 perception is consciousness, have not been changed? 
 The earth is no longer a plane ; the firmament over 
 it has gone into immensity, — its lights are worlds. 
 History has, in a mamier, fixed the sun ; and yet that 
 in the morning he rises in the east, and in the evening 
 sets in the west, if false to intellect is true to sense, 
 if false to consciousness^ is true to perception. 
 
 Nay, why talk of history, when the daily experience 
 of each of us can tell but the self-same tale? For 
 what is experience? — Avhat but a later fact of con- 
 sciousness transcending (i. e. lalsifying) an earlier 
 one? The child is conscious that there is a crooked 
 stick in the water ; the man is conscious that the very 
 same stick is straight. This same man, agam, is 
 conscious that it is the rose is red, the sugar sweet, 
 &c. ; but the philosopher, and, as we shall see pre- 
 sently, even such a philosopher as Hamilton, is con- 
 scious that all this is otherwise. Experience, then, is 
 but a mutation of the fiicts of consciousness, and the 
 assumption of an inviolability of consciousness (in 
 order to counteract and nullify this mutation) would, 
 if followed out to its legitimate consequences, termi- 
 nate in an intellectual stand-still and a moral quietism 
 destructive of philosophy, destructive of society, de- 
 structive of life. In a certain sense, indeed, had con- 
 sciousness been inviolable, the universe had never 
 been, — God had been but bare identity ; and difference
 
 58 1. 2. rEPvCEPTION: THE oTt. 
 
 there had been none. For the truth is even that 
 which is viewed by Hamilton as an absurdity : in very 
 truth there is a consciousness beyond consciousness; 
 and it is the function of consciousness, though itself 
 infallible, inviolable, and veracious as nothing else is or 
 can be, to test and try and question consciousness to 
 the uttermost. Consciousness stands under conscious- 
 ness, and the vocation of consciousness is simply infi- 
 nitely to transcend itself. In a word, the busmess of 
 consciousness is to think, and to think is to transcend 
 perception — to think is to transcend thought itself. 
 Nor have we a warrant to think otherwise of the 
 consciousness, otherwise of the thought of God; for 
 He has revealed Himself to us as a Spirit in whose 
 image the spirit of man is made. 
 
 What is loudest in Hamilton, however, is his rude 
 and deafening denial — to the cosmothetic idealist (say) 
 — of any right thus to question consciousness. Con- 
 sciousness, he perpetually exclaims, is imperative as 
 to the existence of self and not self; and consciousness 
 cannot be proved mendacious without annihilatmg 
 philosophy, and so sisting the whole business at a 
 blow ; for consciousness being proved false anywhere, 
 can be trusted nowhere. The cosmothetic idealist, 
 for his part, we may conceive as always on the point 
 of beginning with. But let us looh at the fact, when 
 his voice is instantly drowned by a repetition of the 
 clamour about veracious, veracious, mendacious, men- 
 dacious, &c. Nevertheless, it is not discrepant, from 
 what we know of Hamilton already, that he should — 
 at his own time — be actually found to admit the legi-
 
 HAMILTON PERMITS WHAT HE liEFUSES. o\) 
 
 timacy of a subjection of the facts of consciousness to 
 scrutiny and question. That is as much as to say, 
 that Hamilton at once forbids and commands — the 
 examination of consciousness. On the latter head, for 
 example, we find him saying {Disc. p. 87) : ' Psycho- 
 logy is only a developed consciousness, that is, a scien- 
 tific evolution of the facts of which consciousness is the 
 guarantee and revelation.' 
 
 We may conceive the cosmothetic idealist, then, to 
 recover heart here, and to call out cheerily. That is it, 
 that is just what I want — consciousness is, as you 
 say, both revelation and guarantee; but, as you say 
 also, we can develop consciousness, we can accomplish 
 a scientific evolution of its facts; and, perhaps, this 
 development and evolution will not be found to stop 
 precisely at the spot you indicate, if you will but have 
 the goodness to listen to me a moment. 
 
 'Philosophy' (Meta. i. 277) Hs only a systematic 
 evolution of the contents of consciousness by the in- 
 strumentality of consciousness.' This, again, is but 
 the same admission, and Hamilton said no less, indeed, 
 when he told us formerly that, ' by inference and ana- 
 logy, we may legitimately attempt to rise above the 
 mere appearances which experience and observation 
 aff'ord.' It is in the same sense that we find him 
 (Meta. i. 121) describing 'the three grand questions 
 of philosophy' as '1°, phenomena (the facts) in 
 general; 2°, their laws; 3°, inferences — results.' Why, 
 these three grand questions of facts, laws, and infer- 
 ences, are just the points which Hamilton's opponent 
 would inquire into, if he (Plamilton), leaving ofi* his
 
 60 I. 2. PERCEPTION : THE oTt. 
 
 cry of ultimate and ultimate, would but let liim. The 
 cosmothetic idealist would be glad, we may sup- 
 pose, were he but allowed to act as Hamilton himself 
 implies when he avers that 'the great business of 
 philosophy is to analyse and discriminate.' 
 
 But the cosmothetic idealist, on the whole, has been 
 treated with positive cruelty by Hamilton. How 
 often, for example, do we not find the latter exciting 
 the former's hopes, leading him (the former), in what 
 appears his own (the former's) way, directly up to 
 what again appears his own (the former's) problem ; 
 but, when the very point of promise has been reached, 
 suddenly deserting him again with, ' The facts of con- 
 sciousness?' Thus, for instance {Meta. \. 273), he 
 ' cannot but regard Stewart's assertion — that the 
 present existence of the phenomena of consciousness, 
 and the reality of that to which these phenomena bear 
 mtness, rest on a foundation equally solid — as wholly 
 untenable,' and he exclaims {Meta. i. 276), 'It is not 
 the reality of consciousness that we have to prove^ 
 but its veracity or — the authority of the facts of con-- 
 sciousness as evidence of something beyond themselves.'' 
 Then {Meta. i. 275) he allows himself, accepting 
 ' the facts given in the act of consciousness itself,' to 
 doubt ' the facts which consciousness does not at once 
 give, but to the reality of which it only bears evi- 
 dence ;' nay, he allows himself to be able, ' without 
 self-contradiction^ to maintain that what he is compelled 
 to view as the phenomena of something different from 
 himself is nevertheless (unkno^vn to himself) only a 
 modification of his o\vn mind.' A similar avowal is
 
 HAMILTON AND THE COSMOTIIETIC IDEALIST. Gl 
 
 this (Reid's Wor^ks^ p. 129, note), ' I cannot doubt 
 that I am conscious of it (the rose) as something 
 different from self; but whether it have, indeed, any 
 reality beyond my mind — whether the not-self be not 
 in truth only self — that I may philosophically question.' 
 Now all this is just as if the cosmothetic idealist him- 
 self were speaking, and with all this we may conceive 
 that dejected individual highly gratified and charmed. 
 Only one step further, however, and he will find every 
 new hope suddenly quashed again beneath tlie old 
 assertion of ' the facts,' and ' the facts.' These facts 
 he had certainly been encouraged to question, but the 
 instant he would attempt to act on the encouragement, 
 he is stopped, panic-stricken, by the significant threat 
 of the encourager himself, who (Meta. i. 277) as- 
 sures him, ' This can be done only by showing that 
 consciousness tells different tales — that its evidence 
 is contradictory — that its data are repugnant; — but 
 this no sceptic has ever yet been able to do !' 
 
 No ; let the cosmothetic idealist who reads Hamilton 
 conceive at times what hopes he may, he will find ever 
 in the end that, at the very moment of fruition, they 
 are suddenly dissipated by the cold reassertion {Meta. 
 i. 278) of ' the fact to which consciousness testifies, — 
 that the object of which we are conscious in percep- 
 tion is the external reality as existing, and not merely 
 its representation in the percipient mind.' The pecu- 
 liar procedure which we would here signalise finds, 
 perhaps, its best illustration in the following passage 
 from Reid's Works^ p. 744 : — 
 
 It is, however, possible for us to suppose, without our
 
 02 I. 2. PERCEPTION: THE oTt. 
 
 supposition at least being felo-de-se, that, though given as a 
 non-ego, the object may, in reality, he only a representation 
 of a non-ego, in and by the ego. Let this, therefore, be 
 maintained: let tYvefact of the testimony be admitted, but 
 the truth of the testimony, to aught beyond its own ideal 
 existence, be doubted or denied. How in this case are we 
 to proceed ? It is evident that the doubt does not in this 
 case refute itself. It is not suicidal by self-contradic- 
 tiim. 
 
 The felo-de-se^ the very suicide, which Hamilton 
 has always hitherto cast in the teeth of the cosmo- 
 thetic idealist, is here formally, punctually retracted by 
 Hamilton himself. Now then the cosmothetic idealist 
 feels that justice has been done him at last, that his 
 difficulty is at length fairly stated, that his question 
 is here finally put just as he himself would "svish to 
 see it put. He may be forgiven, then, should he 
 again allow himself to entertain the expectation of a 
 tanmble findino^ at last. As before, so here, however : 
 the very next step, and his impatience begins; for 
 Hamilton, instead of keeping by the thing now that 
 he has come fairly up to it, instead of answering his 
 own question, coolly looks off, turns aside to Stewart, 
 from him ao-ain to Reid, then to Descartes, then to 
 Cousin, enveloping himself all the while in a variety 
 of quotations and remarks, till finally, the position 
 lost to view by reason of the very number of the 
 diversions, the only answer that comes out is, ' The 
 doubt is gratuitous ! ' 
 
 ' The deliverance of consciousness must philoso- 
 phically be accepted,' so cries Hamilton for the thou- 
 sandth time, and we are where we were — only that
 
 HAMILTON'S HEDGING. 63 
 
 having, in tliis manner, been injured in the text, we 
 find ourselves insulted in the notes thus : — 
 
 From what has now been stated [i.e. in the above passage] 
 it will be seen how far and on what grounds I hold, at once 
 with Dr. lleid and Mr. Stewart, that our original beliefs are 
 to be established, but their authority not to be canvassed ; 
 and with M. Jouffroy, that the question of their authority is 
 not to be absolutely Avithdrawn, as a forbidden problem, 
 from philosophy. 
 
 Would or could any man that ever existed — but 
 Hamilton — have written that note? Pray, observe — 
 and as placed — its full significance and veritable 
 bearing. Cannot we fancy the cosmothetic idealist 
 ironically remarking to Hamilton: — Yes, I see, 
 though true blue with Reid, you are liberal and 
 candid with Jouffroy; the question is not withdrawn 
 either; — only., when my mouth presumes to open on 
 it, there comes a back-bander of veracious, veracious 
 — here ferocious — that shuts it again : well, once I 
 can speak for pain, I -svill tell you, Sir William, that 
 it is a queer piece of hedging., that of holding both 
 with Reid and with Jouffroy ; and I cannot, some- 
 how, feel quite certain that two expressions mean also 
 always two things ; for, if allowed by this word, I am 
 forbidden by the other at all to question consciousness 
 — unless under penalty of confounding and embroiling 
 all? 
 
 AVhile it is very clear, then, that Hamilton, at his 
 own time, never scruples to allow himself the privilege 
 of putting consciousness to the question, it is equally 
 clear that he absolutely refuses at any time to share 
 this privilege with that to him unclean animal— the
 
 64 I. 2. PERCEPTION: THE ort. 
 
 cosmothetic idealist. Him he drives off ever with the 
 fiercest refusals — the angriest denials. But, no more 
 here than elsewhere, can Hamilton assert for himself 
 what he denies for others — without contradiction. 
 This, then, is still the burthen of the tale : wherever 
 we move in Hamilton, there is always present to us 
 the same element of inconsistency, discrepancy, and 
 incongruity. Hence the fallacies ; which here, too, 
 are not wanting. It is probably quite impossible, for 
 instance, to find anywhere a more striking example of 
 ' artful diversion ' than is furnished by the passage on 
 which we have just commented. We may take the 
 opportunity to remark, too, that an example of this 
 same fallacy (the igno ratio elenchi), in the form of 
 'mistake' or 'misstatement,' was afforded by Hamil- 
 ton's ascription to the Representationist in general, 
 and Kant in particular, of regarding the rej^resenta- 
 tion ( Vorstellung) perceived as, in any sense, a like- 
 ness or resemblance of the unknown antecedent. 
 ' Imputed consequences,' again, Or the remaining 
 form of the ignoratio elenclii — this is the fallacy that 
 pervades that elaborate description, now so familiar 
 to us, of the results that follow the questioning of con- 
 sciousness : our personality, our immortality, morality, 
 society, religion, &c., &;c. Strange that, ^vith such a 
 picture before him, sophistical though it be, Hamilton 
 should still have so often admitted — if only for him- 
 self, indeed — the legitimacy of this very questioning 
 — the legitimacy of transcending appearance, and of 
 scientifically and systematically developing and evolv- 
 ing facts ! The very lightness and ease with which
 
 HEGEL ON CONSCIOUSNESS. Go 
 
 he thus contradicts himself, now interdicting a single 
 look into the adytum of consciousness, and again ex- 
 pressly exhorting us to approach, examine, and arrange, 
 should alone be sufficient to demonstrate his oavh in- 
 ward consciousness of the sandy and fallacious soil on 
 which he had sought to build. 
 
 How different Hegel, to whom the antithesis is pre- 
 sent also, but who sees not only one side at a time^ like 
 Hamilton, but always both ! It is thus, that bringing 
 both thoughts together, Hegel is able 'to transcend 
 yet hold consciousness.' He, for his part, knows, too, 
 that the vocation of philosophy is just to oppose — that 
 with which Hamilton browbeats us — 'the dogma- 
 tism of ordinary consciousness.' Philosophy, he says, 
 ' begins by rising over common consciousness ; ' and 
 ( Werke, xvi. 108) with a reference that bears on what 
 amounts to Hamilton's loud side — to his or;, that is, 
 or the inviolability of consciousness — he declares : — 
 
 Of this barbarism, to ])lace undeniable certainty and verity 
 in the facts of consciousness, neither ancient scepticism, nor 
 any materialism, nor even the commonest common sense, 
 unless an absolutely bestial one, has ever made itself guilty, 
 — until the most recent times, it has been unheard of in 
 philosophy.* 
 
 By consciousness here, we are of course to under- 
 stand a consciousness, as it were, at first hand — a 
 
 * From tliis allusion in Ilegel to the Ilainiltouian cry of ' the veracity 
 of consciousness,' and from other allusions in tlie same volume to other 
 Ilamiltonian cries or distinctions, as in reference to Idealism, Eealism, &c., 
 and as ag-ainst an Absolute, we are led partly to see and partly to suspect 
 that, in the works — and they are evidently e.rofcric — of Krug, Schulzo, &c., 
 Hegel had then a matter before him much lil^e tliat which we, in the 
 works of Hamilton, have now before us, and that thus, probably, this last, 
 even in his most peculiar industry, has been, to some extent, anticipated. 
 
 F
 
 66 I. 2. PERCEPTION: THE OTt. 
 
 consciousness that, from the platform of common 
 sense, testifies to ' the natural conviction of mankind ' 
 in the independent externality of an actual non-ego. 
 It is to the same consciousness that Hegel alludes 
 when he says elsewhere : — ' In place of demonstration, 
 there come forward assertions and the recountments 
 of what is ready -found in consciousness as facts, which 
 is held the purer, the more uncritical it is.' By im- 
 plication, then, there is also to Hegel a consciousness 
 at second hand, which, critically purged, is the con- 
 sciousness of trust. It will add one more inconsistency 
 to the long catalogue of such, should we find Hamil- 
 ton, too, to end in such a consciousness as he could 
 only similarly describe. Meantime we conclude here 
 by the simple dilemma to which the factual position 
 has brought us. 
 
 It will not be denied, namely, that Hamilton, while 
 he conceives the testimony of consciousness which we 
 consider here to be in its nature sensuous^ conceives it 
 also to be in its validity ajyodictic. On the first head, 
 we remind only that Hamilton claims for himself 'the 
 natural conviction of mankind' — a conviction which, 
 even were Hamilton disposed to forget that he had 
 himself affirmed, ' The very things which we perceive 
 by the senses do really exist,' will be allowed to be- 
 lieve in the matter-of-fact and sensuous nature of the 
 external reality, the non-ego.* On the second head, 
 again, it is quite certain that Hamilton assigns to the 
 coo'nition of this non-eo;o both the universalitv and 
 the necessity of a first or ultimate principle. 
 
 * See also tlxe first extract, pp. 80-81.
 
 CONCLUDING DILEMMA. 67 
 
 Now, we know that no distinction accentuated by 
 Kant, has been received with greater approbation by 
 Hamilton than that which discriminates between the 
 apodictic and the contingent: what is a priori or 
 native to the mind is apodictic, what is a posteriori 
 or empirical (sensuous) is only contingent. While 
 Hume, too, had this same principle before him when 
 he distinguished between relations of ideas and 
 matters of fact, Hamilton himself — with a certain 
 triumph — has pointed it out in Leibnitz. The evo- 
 lution of the dilemma, then, has now no difficulty. 
 It is seen at once in the contradiction that would 
 identify a matter of fact, on this hand, and an apodictic 
 validity on the other ; and may be expressed thus : — 
 
 The cognition in question (Hamilton's on) is either 
 apodictic, or it is contingent ; but if, on the one horn, 
 it is apodictic, then it is no matter of fact ; and if, on 
 the other horn, it is contingent, then it is no necessary 
 first principle. Hamilton's further proceedings, in- 
 deed, as we shall presently see, are not unillustrated 
 by these alternatives. 
 
 3. The Anahjsis of Philosophy ; or, Hamilton'' s Bloti. 
 
 Sir "Williani Hamilton has covered, we may say, 
 quite nine-tenths of his canvas with the blinding and 
 dazzling scarlet of his on ; and for no other purpose, 
 as the reader is led to suppose always, than to over- 
 bear any tint of a oion. It is not uncharacteristic, 
 then, that he should come, in the end, to a ^i6ri 
 himself. It appears that the or/, after all, is insuffi- 
 cient, or that if ' every hoiv rests ultimately on a thaf^' 
 
 r 2
 
 68 I. 3. PERCErTION: THE Store. 
 
 the that itself requires a more ultimate liow. In this 
 Hamilton defers to the natural longing for explana- 
 tion, the instinct that turns unconsciously and by 
 irresistible necessity m us to solution and resolution 
 of every on into a SioVi. For this, too, is the truth: 
 if the how must rest on a that., the that must equally 
 rest on a how. The on itself, indeed, is not more that 
 than because. This, however, does not mitigate the 
 contradiction that lies here again at the door of Hamil- 
 ton, who really ought to have been less \^olent with 
 his that., seeing that he was minded to follow so soon 
 with his how. In fact, as we saw before, it is a 
 macula in Hamilton that he should have been obliged 
 to supplement the irrefragable consciousness he 
 claimed by any analysis of philosophy at all — a 
 macula., we may say, squared by the actual examples 
 given of this botched analysis itself — and a macula 
 raised, finally, even into an unknown degree by the 
 consideration that, despite both the testimony of con- 
 sciousness and the analysis of philosophy, the external 
 realities themselves, that were, in the first instance, 
 known in themselves and as they existed, were, in the 
 second instance, 7wt known in themselves and as they 
 existed, but remained, at last, and for all instances, 
 incomprehensible, incognisable, unknown, zero! 
 
 These are aw^kward prelimmaries certainly ; still it 
 is to be allowed that the analysis of philosophy may, 
 after all, show much better in itself than in the 
 examples we know it by; and this notwithstanding 
 even that the cipher of the apparent result would bid 
 us still despair. But, be this as it ma}^ let us see 
 now, in effect, how Hamilton actually has acquitted
 
 THE TIIEOllY OF PERCEPTION. 69 
 
 himself of that evolution of the fact which, in honour 
 of the fact, he at first refused. This evolution, prin- 
 cipally contained in the Dissertations to Reid, is the 
 Hamiltonian Theory of Perception — a word which 
 Hamilton now characteristically allows to reappear, 
 instead of the consciousness in which he formerly 
 sou":ht to mero^e it. 
 
 We premise the following quotations : — 
 
 The developed doctrine of Real Presentationisin, the basis 
 of Natural Realism, asserts the consciousness of immediate 
 perception of certain essential attributes of matter objectively 
 existing ; Avliile it admits that other properties of bodies are 
 unknown in themselves, and only inferred as causes to 
 account for certain subjective affections of Avhich we are 
 cognisant in ourselves, (lleid's Works, -^. S'25.) I hold that, 
 though sensation proper be the condition of, and therefore 
 anterior to, perception proper in the order of nature, that, in 
 the order of time, both are necessarily co-existent;- — the 
 latter being only realised in and through the present exist- 
 ence of the former. . . . Sensations of secondary qualities 
 imply an idiopathic affection of the nervous organism ; but 
 such affection reqvures only the excitation of an appro- 
 priate stimulus ; while such stimulus may be supplied by 
 manifold agents of the most opposite nature, both fi'om 
 within the body and from without. ... I hold that, on the 
 one hand, in the consciousness of sensations, out of each 
 other, contrasted, limited, and variously arranged, we have 
 a perception proper of the primary qualities, in an exter- 
 nality, though not to the nervous organism, as an immediate 
 cognition, and not merely as a notion or concept, of some- 
 thing extended, figured, &c.; and, on the other, as a cor- 
 relative contained in the consciousness of our voluntary 
 motive energy resisted, and not resisted by aught wdthin the 
 limits of mind and its subservient organs, Ave have a percep- 
 tion proper of the secundo-primary quality of resistance in 
 an extra-organic force, as an immediate cognition, and not
 
 70 I. 3. PERCEPTION : THE SlOTt. 
 
 merely as a notion or concept, of a resisting something 
 external to our body ; — though certainly in either case there 
 may be, and probably is, a concomitant act of imagination, 
 by which the whole complex consciousness on the occasion 
 is filled up. (Reid's Works, pp. 882-4.) The mind, when a 
 material existence is brought into relation with its organ of 
 sense, obtains two concomitant and immediate cognitions 
 . . . the one the secondary qualities of body ; the other the 
 primary qualities of body. Of these cognitions, the former 
 is admitted, on all hands, to be subjective and ideal ; the 
 latter, the Natural Realist maintains, against the Cosmo- 
 thetic Idealist, to be objective and real. . . . The secondary 
 qualities, as mere sensations, mere consciousness of certain sub- 
 jective affections, afford us no immediate knowledge of aught 
 different from self. (Reid's Works, p. 820.) The perception 
 proper, accompanying a sensation proper, is not an appre- 
 hension, far less a representation, of the external or internal 
 stimulus, or concause, Avhich determines the affection whereof 
 the sensation is the consciousness. Not the former ; for the 
 stimulus or concause of a sensation is always, in itself, to 
 consciousness unknoAvn. Not the latter ; for this would turn 
 perception into imagination — reduce it from an immediate 
 and assertory and objective, into a mediate and problematic 
 and subjective cognition. In this respect, perception proper 
 is an apprehension of the relations of sensations to each 
 other, primarily in space, and secondarily in time and degree. 
 (Reid's Works, p. 881.) In the primary, the sensation, the 
 condition of the perception, is not itself caused by the objec- 
 tive quality perceived ; in the secundo-primary, the con- 
 comitant sensation is the effect of the objective quality 
 perceived ; in the secondary, the sensation is the effect of 
 an objective quality supposed, but not perceived. (Reid's 
 Works, p. 860.) All the senses, simply or in combination, 
 afford conditions for the perception of the primary qualities, 
 and all, of course, supply the sensations themselves of the 
 secondary. As only various modifications of resistance, the 
 secundo-primary qualities are all, as percepts proper, as
 
 THE VARIOUS QUALITIES. 71 
 
 quasi-primary qualities, apprehended through the locomotive 
 faculty, and our consciousness of its energy ; as sensations, 
 as secondary qualities, they are apprehended as modifications 
 of touch proper, and of cutaneous and muscular feeling. 
 (Reid's Works, p. 864.) The secondary, as manifested to us, 
 are not, in propriety, qualities of body at all . . . they are 
 only subjective affections ... of which alone we are immedi- 
 ately cognisant, the external concause of the internal effect 
 remaining to perception altogether unknoA\^l. (Reid's Works, 
 p. 854.) The more determinate senses are no less subjective 
 than the others. (Reid's Works, p. 855.) [And he passes in 
 review sight, hearing, &c., asserting of each and all that the 
 sensible affection may be excited by a variety of stimuli, 
 external and internal, ' that it does not cease with the j^re- 
 sence, and, therefore, does not demonstrate the quality of 
 the external object.'] The secundo-primary qualities have 
 all relation to space, and motion in space ; and are all con- 
 tained under the category of resistance or pressure. On 
 their primary or objective phasis, they manifest themselves 
 as degrees of resistance opposed to our locomotive energy ; 
 on their secondary or subjective phasis, as modes of resistance 
 or pressure affecting our sentient organism. (Reid's Works, 
 p. 848.) On space are dependent what are called the primary 
 qualities of body, and space combined with degree affords, of 
 body, the secundo-primary qualities. {Disc. p. 607.) 
 
 These extracts will make the various qualities 
 — primary, secondary, and secundo-jmmary — plain. 
 Evidently, too, any consideration that may decide 
 on the two former will equally decide on the last 
 as but a together of both. Now, as we soon learn, 
 a certain fine, free, easy ascent over Kant is one of 
 Hamilton's commonest grand airs. We have seen, 
 indeed, how, when requiring his testimony to rela- 
 tivity, he sweetly named him the ^philosopher of 
 Konigsberg. This is by no means, however, his usual
 
 72 1. 3. PERCEPTION: THE StOTt. 
 
 tone. No ; on the contrary, the ascent alluded to is 
 generally eft'ected in a mood of the loftiest censure, 
 of the most gravely assumed reprobation. Neverthe- 
 less, it is quite plain from these extracts that, on his 
 own showing, Hamilton, so far as he goes in perception, 
 (or all reference to the categories apart), is not m any 
 respect — at least, any respect that is not a mistake of 
 his own — different from Kant. They are agreed, 
 namely, on the fact of an external world. They are 
 agreed on the secondary qualities, Avhich are to both 
 but states of our own dependent on unknown stimuli. 
 They are agreed on the primary qualities, — both re- 
 ducing them to space. And they are agreed lastly, 
 as Hamilton also unequivocally declares, on space 
 itself; so far, that is, as it is to both a native, neces- 
 sary, and a priori cognition of the mind. Hamilton, 
 however, preserves still his horror of the cosmothetic 
 idealist — pushing him off, indeed, by the infinite 
 breadth of a whole real space ; but this concerns only 
 the already mentioned mistake. In a word, Hamilton 
 conceives Kant's space to be wholly inner, sees not 
 that it is outer as well ; and so, supervacaneously 
 doublmg it, adds on another unnecessary sj)ace of his 
 own. Or Hamilton, accepting Kant's space, insists 
 on botching it with an empirical side which it already 
 abundantly possesses. An extract will explain: — 
 
 That the notion of space is a necessary condition of 
 thought, and that, as such, it is impossible to derive it from 
 experience, has been cogently demonstrated by Kant. But 
 that we may not, through sense, have empirically an imme- 
 diate perception of something extended, I have yet seen no 
 valid reason to doubt. The a priori conception does not
 
 HAMILTON MISUNDERSTANDS KANT'S SPACE. 73 
 
 exclude the a posteriori perception. (Reid's Works, p. 126, 
 note.) Our cognitions of extension and its modes are not 
 wholly ideal; although space be a native, necessary, a priori 
 form of imagination, and so far, therefore, a mere subjective 
 state, there is, at the same time, competent to us, in an im- 
 mediate perception of external things, the consciousness of a 
 really existent, of a really objective extended Avorld. (Keid's 
 Works, p. 841.) The doctrine of Kant [with Avhich Hamil- 
 ton concurs] — that time is a fundamental condition, form, 
 or category of thought. (Reid's Works, p. 124, note.) On 
 this principle [Necessity], as first evolved, — at least, first 
 signalised by Kant, space and time are merely modifications 
 of mind. (Disc. p. 273.) [See also Reid's Works, pp. 343, 847, 
 and MetaA. 403 ; ii. 114, 166-170.] 
 
 Now, it is quite certain that Kant would not have 
 rejected these expressions of Hamilton in regard to 
 our having through sense an empirical perception of 
 something extended, of a really objective extended 
 world, &c. To Kant, as little as to Hamilton, were 
 our cognitions of extension wholly ideal ; and no more 
 to the latter than to the former did the a priori con- 
 ception exclude the a posteriori perception. 
 
 We are not left any room to doubt, then, of the 
 state of Hamilton's mind in reference to the mentioned 
 doctrines of Kant. Conceptively, he accepts them : 
 perceptively, he — not rejects them — but knows them 
 not. Hamilton, in fact, has never dreamed that the 
 time and space of Kant are ^:?e?'ce/?^we and not — we 
 may, indeed, say this — conceptive. To him, time as 
 understood by Kant is only ' a condition, form, or 
 category of thought ; ' space, similarly, is only ' a con- 
 dition of thought,^ ' a form of imagination^' ' an a priori 
 conception., not an a posteriori perception.' He, for
 
 74 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE StoTt. 
 
 his part, and as, in his own idea, opposed to Kant, 
 holds that * space and time, as given, are real forms 
 of thought and — conditions of things' {Meta. i. 403); 
 and (same page), he says of Kant: 'if he does not 
 deny, he will not affirm the existence of a real space 
 external to our minds.' It is in a similar frame of 
 mind that, referring to Kant as holding the subjective 
 nature of space, he adds, ' but in this he varies,' — 
 meaning, evidently, that he knows of Kant speaking 
 at times as if he held space to be objectively existent. 
 Now, if he had not insinuated, but openly announced 
 this, he would only have stated the truth. Kant, in 
 fact, always says this, and varies never. 
 
 In short, Hamilton knows only the subjective, in- 
 tellectual, and conceptive side of Kant's space and 
 time ; he knows only one side, he knows not the 
 other ; he knows not that these intellectual, a prioi^i 
 forms are, in a-ctual, empirical fact, sensuously or 
 a posteriori presentant ; — he knows not that there is a 
 provision in the theory of Kant whereby they become 
 externalised, materialised, realised, or, as Hamilton 
 might say, objecti vised — though their veritable 
 source and seat be subjective, ideal, internal, all the 
 same. It is from this misconception and mistake 
 that he finds Kant to ' vary,' and that he can come 
 to say of him, ' if he does not deny, he will not 
 affirm,' &;c. 
 
 But this side existing in the theory of Kant, Hamil- 
 ton's supposed complement is perceived at once to be 
 neutralised and negated even by its own excess; and 
 for excision of the excrescence, Kant himself (quite as
 
 KANT'S SPACE AND TIME. 75 
 
 much as, and in priority to, Hamilton) will extend 
 to us the law of parsunony — Occam's razor! 
 
 But this side does exist in the theory of Kant. We 
 are not called upon to demonstrate here : it is suffi- 
 cient to indicate. Kant's time and space are of this 
 nature, then, that, ideal, perceptive forms, native to 
 the mmd — sensuous spectra, optical discs — they, on 
 hint of the stimuli of special sense, present themselves 
 to the mind by or through special sense, as external 
 recipients in which these stimuli (or their effects) 
 dispose themselves before us in such manner that the 
 peculiarity of their arrangement in space and time is 
 due to their own secret nature, at the same time that 
 the general fields of space and time are really fur- 
 nished to them by the mind itself. 
 
 There is no occasion, then, to burthen such a space 
 and time with the superfluity of Hamilton's addition. 
 The empirical side which is all that that addition pro- 
 2:)0ses to extend to them — this they already possess in 
 themselves ; and Hamilton would never have thought 
 of it, had he at all seen the true scope of the theory. 
 Not only, then, has Hamilton perpetrated a glaring 
 blunder in respect to Kant, not only has he with a 
 most redundant prodigality carried coals to a New- 
 castle already filled, but he has done worse : " he has 
 exposed himself to the edge of Occam's razor, and 
 not only in that respect but also in this, that he has 
 granted Kant's doctrine to be a demonstrated doctrine, 
 and yet has generously given it in gift the very articles 
 it supposed itself to have abolished and supplanted ! 
 Why — in the name of all parsimony, in the name of
 
 76 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE 8ton. 
 
 all rational economy ! — should time and space have 
 been laboriously built into the mind (as Hamilton 
 admits), if (as Hamilton adds) they were there on 
 the outside, actual objects, for the apprehension of 
 which we possessed our own special five senses? 
 
 Had Hamilton, indeed, been duly awake here, he 
 Avould have seen at once that Kant's reirie Anschauuna, 
 possessing no matter but these ajomn sensuous forms 
 of space and time, was, feature for feature, identical 
 with his own perception proper, possessing no matter 
 but those primary qualities which he himself acknow- 
 ledged to derive from — to be but modes of, space and 
 time. Nay, duly awake, he would have perceived 
 that Kant, not only in naming these forms perceptions 
 (and as against conceptions), but in proving them 
 perceptions (and as against conceptions), actually 
 contemplated their empirical use, or as Hamilton 
 might say, their objective presentation, — and this, 
 their necessary, mental, a priori nature notwithstand- 
 ing. But to have perceived this — and in a demon- 
 strated doctrine — would have been to have perceived 
 also the supererogatoriness of his own addition. The 
 eyes to a reality of actual outer space which he desi- 
 derated in the doctrine of Kant, that doctrine already 
 abundantly possessed ; and his own proffered surgery, 
 therefore, was obviously quite uncalled for. In short, 
 the complement of Hamilton is refuted by a reductio 
 ad ahsurdum. 
 
 But, in confutation of Hamilton, we are not limited 
 to his resolution, on the one hand, of his primary 
 qualities into space; and to his adoption, on the other,
 
 THE PRIMARY QUALITIES LIKE SPACE. 77 
 
 of space itself as shown to be constituted by Kant ; — 
 we can readily accomplish the same result by a consi- 
 deration of these primnr}'- qualities themselves. For 
 this purpose, we supplement the quotations already 
 made by a few others, and in the more restricted 
 reference : — 
 
 Aristotle enumerates five percejits common to all or to a 
 plurality of the senses, — viz, : Magnitude (extension), figure, 
 motion, rest, number ; but virtually admits, that these (the 
 conuiwn) are abusively termed se?isihh's at all, and are (in 
 one place he even says they are only apprehended jjct acci- 
 dens), in fact, within the domain of sense, merely as being 
 the concomitants, or consequents (aKokovdovvra, sttoixsvo) of 
 the proper. . . . St. Thomas, showing that the common sensibles 
 do not, primarily and of themselves, act upon and aifect the 
 sense, carries them all up into modifications of quantity. . . . 
 Sensibilia communia omnia pertinent aliquo modo ad con- 
 thiuum. . . . The several common sensibles are in reality 
 apprehended by other and higher energies than those of sense 
 . . . are not so much perceptions of sense (in so far as sensible 
 perception depends on corporeal affection) as concomitant 
 cognitions to which the impression on the organ by the 
 proper sensible only affords the occasion. (Keid's Works, 
 pp. 828-830.) [Kant's time and space can be characterised by 
 precisely the same words. Hutcheson holds that] exten- 
 sion, figure, motion, and rest seem to be more properly 
 ideas accompanying the sensations of sight and touch than 
 the sensations of either of these senses. (Reid's Works, pp. 124, 
 829.) [Reid himself says], upon the whole, it appears that 
 our philosophers have imposed upon themselves and upon us 
 in pretending to deduce from sensation the first origin of our 
 notions of external existences, of space, motion, and exten- 
 sion, and all the primary qualities of body — that is, the 
 qualities whereof we have the most clear and distinct concep- 
 tion . . . they have no resemblance to any sensation, or to any 
 operation of our minds ; and, therefore, they cannot be ideas
 
 78 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE StoTt. 
 
 either of sensation or of reflection [no, says Kant, they attach 
 to the sensuous, hut a priori, spectra, space and time]. (Reid's 
 Works, p. 126.) The primary qualities of matter thus develop 
 themselves Avith rigid necessity out of the simple datum — 
 substance occupying space. In a certain sort, and by con- 
 trast to the others, they are, therefore, notions, a priori, and 
 to be viewed, pro farito, as products of the understanding. 
 (Reid's Works, p. 848.) [The apprehension of the primary 
 qualities is called] purely spiritual [and they themselves] 
 necessary and universal. (Reid's Works, pp. 858, 865: see 
 also the description of the pi-imary qualities in the previous 
 quotation, Reid's Works, p. 860.) 
 
 These extracts — and many others might be added 
 to the same effect — we may allowably assume to be 
 sufficient in themselves. The general tenour of them, 
 indeed, goes to show that the primary qualities are 
 not cognitions of sense at all, but result from an in- 
 tellectual, spiritual, spontaneous energy of the mind 
 itself. In short, the entire relative argumentation of 
 Hamilton unequivocally demonstrates the necessary, 
 a priori, and so mental nature of all his own percepts 
 proper. It is quite certain, nevertheless, that Hamil- 
 ton does attach a sensuous nature to these percepts 
 all the same, and what we would point out is, that 
 Hamilton, on his own principles, ought to have seen 
 into the preposterousness of this addition, both in 
 their case individually, and in that of space as their 
 matrix in general. Hamilton is perfectly aware that 
 the signs which separate the pure or a priori from the 
 empirical or a posteriori are necessity and universality. 
 We find him ao-ain and ao-ain statino- this: we find 
 
 O O o 
 
 him, indeed, with an allure customary to him, quoting 
 Leibnitz on this point with a view to lessen the rela-
 
 THE PERCEPTS PROPER. 79 
 
 tive merit of Kant. Leibnitz, he says, remarks that 
 'the senses indeed inform us what may take place, but 
 not what necessarily takes place,' &c. (Meta. ii. 347.) 
 In truth, with this criterion of necessity so distinctly 
 present to his mind, and in view of the issues so mark- 
 edly emerging from the theory of Kant, it is surpris- 
 ing that Hamilton should have attempted a task so 
 self-contradictory and absurd as an induction from 
 experience of matters that plainly preceded, and were 
 independent of, all experience ; but it is still more 
 surprising that, of Kant's four reasons as regards the 
 nature of space, two of them were advanced directly 
 to prove that space was a perception and not a concep- 
 tion, and that Hamilton should not have known as 
 much.* 
 
 Hamilton, then, pronouncing his own percepts 
 proper, or the primary qualities, to hold of the under- 
 standing rather than of sense, and ascribing to them, 
 moreover, the peculiar necessity and validity Ave sig- 
 nalise, ought to have seen that, as they were impos- 
 sibly contingent or a posteriori^ they must be a priori, 
 and not empirical at all. His error with these, in 
 fact, is identical Avith his error with space : he failed 
 to perceive that, though mental, they might, by pro- 
 jection, pass into the contingent, and return with the 
 contingent for actual apprehension by special sense ; — 
 not, however, that they themselves, or any element of 
 
 * This is a clear proof that Hamilton was indebted for the very imper- 
 fect little he knew of Kant to the ' literature of the subject.' It is also 
 a clear proof of the precarious nature of book-manipulation, even with the 
 very quickest eye ; for few things are more cije-catchuuj in Kant than his 
 formal arguments in reference to space. But see ii. 2.
 
 80 I. 3. PERCEPTIOX: THE StoVt. 
 
 them, had any source whatever but the mind itself. 
 It is particularly interesting, indeed, to collate the 
 difficulties of Aristotle and the rest with the focal 
 solution into Avhich Kant, almost by their o^\ai argu- 
 ments, finally reduced them. 
 
 Apart, then, this untenable sensuous side, which, 
 however, we shall presently examine for itself, it is 
 impossible any longer for Hamilton to refuse the com- 
 panionship of Kant — it is impossible any longer for 
 Hamilton to refuse the title of cosmothetic idealist. 
 He himself points to the primary qualities as the only 
 septum that in his own belief exists to separate him 
 from Kant. These primary qualities he himself re- 
 solves into space, and space itself he accepts at the 
 hands of Kant. There is nothing, then, between them 
 but an unnecessary real space due to his own mistake; 
 and, this mistake corrected, septum there is none, the 
 drops have coalesced, they are now one: Hamilton, 
 already so largely relativist and phenomenalist, is now 
 wholly such, and the discussion is finished. 
 
 This sensuous side of Hamilton constitutes, how- 
 ever, perhaps the very most interesting element in the 
 whole of his industry, and cannot be passed over. It 
 is an element, indeed, that, w^iether in that he read, 
 or whether in that he thought, may be almost named 
 his centre. The following extracts will, with those 
 that precede, elucidate our meaning : — 
 
 This extreme doctrine [alluding to that referred to in the 
 quotations above from Aristotle, the Schoolmen, Hutcheson, 
 Reid, &c.] is not, however, to be admitted. As sensibles, 
 the common [i.e., the percepts proper, the primary qualities]
 
 THE SENSUOUS SIDE OF THE THEORY. SI 
 
 must be.alloAved to act somehow upon the sense, though in a 
 diiFerent manner from the proper. Comparatively speaking, 
 the proper act primarily, corporeally, and by causing a pas- 
 sion in the sense ; the common secondarily, formally, and by 
 eliciting the sense and understanding to energy. But though 
 there lies in the proper more of passivity, in the common 
 more of activity, still the common are, in propriety, objects 
 of sense per se ; being neither cognised (as substances ) ex- 
 clusively by the understanding, nor (as is the sweet by 
 vision) accidentally by sense. (Reid's Works, p. 860.) [Here, 
 evidently, it is not fact that prescribes so and so ; but just 
 Hamilton that, for his own convenience, says so and so : the 
 common sensibles are held or demonstrated to be intellec- 
 tual, but I, Hamilton, will them to be also sensuous, and 
 accordingly they are also sensuous. It is this wilfulness, 
 however, that has impaled Hamilton on the horns of the 
 dilemma Avith which the preceding sub-section (2) ends.] 
 
 It may appear, not a paradox merely, but a contradiction, 
 to say, that the organism is, at once, within and without the 
 mind ; is at once subjective and objective ; is at once ego 
 and non-ego. But so it is ; the organism, as animated, as 
 sentient, is necessarily ours, and its affections are only felt as 
 affections of the individual ego. In this respect, and to this 
 extent, our organs are not external to ourselves. But our 
 organism is not merely a sentient subject, it is at the same 
 time an extended, figured, divisible, in a word, a material, 
 subject ; and the same sensations, which are reduced to unity 
 in the indivisibility of consciousness, are in the divisible 
 organism recognised as plural and reci})rocalIy external, and, 
 therefore, as extended, figured, divided. (Reid's Works, 
 p. 880, note.) 
 
 By a law of our nature, we are not conscious of the exist- 
 ence of our organism (as a body simply), consequently not 
 conscious of any of its primary qualities, unless when we are 
 conscious of it, as modified by a secondary quality, or some 
 other of its affections, as an animated body. But the former 
 consciousness requires the latter only as its negative condi- 
 
 G
 
 82 
 
 I. 3. PERCEPTION : THE Sidrt. 
 
 tion, and is neither involved in it as a part, nor properly de- 
 pendent on it as a cause. The object in the one consciousness 
 is also wholly different from the object in the other. In that, 
 it is a contingent passion of the organism, as a constituent of 
 the human self; in this, it is some essential property of the 
 organism, as a portion of the universe of matter, and though 
 apprehended by, not an affection proper to, the conscious 
 self at all. In these circumstances, the secondary quality, 
 say a colour, which the mind apprehends in the organism, 
 is, as a passion of self, recognised to be a suhjective object ; 
 whereas the primary quality, extension, or figure, or number, 
 which, when conscious of such affection, the mind therein at 
 the same time apprehends, is, as not a passion of self, but 
 a common property of matter, recognised to be an objective 
 object. (Reid's Works, p. 858, note.) 
 
 It is sufficient to establish the simple fact, that we are com- 
 petent, as consciousness assures us, immediately to apprehend 
 through sense the non-ego in certain limited relations ; and it 
 is of no consequence whatever, either to our certainty of the 
 reality of a material world, or to our ultimate knowledge of 
 its properties, whether by this primary apprehension we lay 
 hold, in the first instance, on a larger or a lesser portion of 
 its contents. (Reid's Works, p. 814.) The perception of 
 parts out of parts is not given in the mere affection of colour, 
 but is obtained by a reaction of the mind upon such affection. 
 The secondary quality of colour is, in the strictest sense, a 
 passive affection of the sentient ego. . . . But the apprehension 
 of extension, figure, divisibility, &c., which, under condition 
 of its being thus affected, simultaneously takes place, is, 
 though necessary, Avholly active and purely spiritual. (Reid's 
 Works, p. 858.) [Thus an] Error of the common opinion, 
 that the apprehension through sight of colour, and the appre- 
 hension through sight of extension and figure, are as insepar- 
 able, identical cognitions of identical objects. (Reid's Works, 
 p. 860.) The observations of Platner, on a person born blind, 
 would prove that sight, not touch, is the sense by which we 
 principally obtain our knowledge of figure, and our empirical 
 knowledge of space. (Reid's Works, p. 125, note.) It is self-
 
 THE SENSUOUS SIDE OF THE THEORY. 63 
 
 evident that, if a thing is to be an oliject immediately known, 
 it must be known as it exists. IS^ow, a body must exist in 
 some definite part of space — in a certain place ; it cannot, 
 therefore, be immediately known as existing, except it be 
 known in its place. But this supposes the mind to be im- 
 mediately present to it in space. (Reid's Works, p. 302, note.) 
 We are not percipient of distant objects. (Reid's Works, 
 p. 814.) No sense gives us a knowledge of aught but 
 what is in immediate contact wdth its organ. All else is 
 something over and above perception . . . and only reached 
 by reasoning. (Reid's Works, p. 145, note ; 186, note.) 
 The total object of visual perception is the rays and the 
 living organ in reciprocity. (Reid's Works, p. 160, note.) 
 
 The object of consciousness in percejition is a quality, 
 mode, or phenomenon of an external realitij, in immediate 
 relation to our organs. (Reid's Works, p. 818.) A sensation 
 is actually felt there Avhere it is felt to be ... in the toe, not 
 in the brain. ... If the mind be conscious of the secondary 
 qualities only at the centre, it cannot be conscious of the 
 primary in their relation to its periphery. (Reid's Works, 
 p. 821. See also p. 882, as quoted previously.) Perception 
 proper is an apprehension of the relations of sensations to 
 each other, primarily in space, (p. 881.) In the consciousness 
 of sensations, relatively localised and reciprocally external, 
 we have a veritable apprehension and consequently an im- 
 mediate perception, of the affected organism as extended, 
 divided, figured, &c. (p. 884.) Extension is perceived only 
 in apprehending sensations out of sensations — a relation, . . . 
 The only object perceived is the organ itself, as modified, or 
 what is in contact with the organ as resisting. The doctrine 
 of a medium is an error, (p. 885.) The mind perceives 
 nothing external to itself, except the affections of the organ- 
 ism as animated, the reciprocal relations of these affections, 
 and the correlative involved in the consciousness of its loco- 
 motive energy being resisted, (p. 885.) [From the quotation 
 previously given (p. 860) we see that the object of the sensa- 
 tion is not the object oi \hQ, perception.~\ 
 
 G 2
 
 84 I. .3. PERCEPTION: THE Stdrt. 
 
 That through touch, or touch and muscular feeling, or 
 touch and sight, or touch, muscular feeling, and sight, — that 
 through these senses exclusively, we are percipient of exten- 
 sion, &c., I do not admit. On the contrary, I hold that all 
 sensations whatsoever, of which we are conscious, as one 
 out of another, eo ipso, afford us the condition of immediately 
 and necessarily apprehending extension ; for in the consci- 
 ousness itself of such reciprocal outness is actually involved 
 a perception of difference of place in space, and, consequently, 
 of the extended, (p. 861.) 
 
 [At p. 876 (Reid's Works) his general doctrine is pretty 
 well stated at full. He enumerates there eight conditions of 
 consciousness and perception. These are, shortly : 1, Atten- 
 tion ; 2, discriminated plurality, alteration, difference in 
 objects themselves (with contrast of object and subject) ; 
 3, quality ; 4, time, involving memory ; 5, space, as condi- 
 tion of a discriminated plurality ; 6, degree ; 7, relation ; 
 8, an assertory judgment, &c.] 
 
 The primary qualities are perceived as in our organism. 
 . . . Thus a perception of the primary qualities does not, 
 originally and in itself, reveal to us the existence, and quali- 
 tative existence, of aught beyond the organism, apprehended 
 by us as extended, figured, divided, &c. . . . The primary 
 qualities of things external to our organism we do not per- 
 ceive, i. e. imviediately hioiu. For these we only learn to 
 infer-. . . . This experience [on which knoAvledge of the 
 external world depends] presupposes, indeed, a notion of 
 space and motion in space. . . . On the doctrine, and in the 
 language, of Reid, our oiiginal cognitions of space, mo- 
 tion, &c., are instinctive ; a view which is confirmed by the 
 analogy of those of the lower animals which have the power 
 of locomotion at birth. It is truly an idle problem to attempt 
 imagining the steps by Avhich we may be supposed to have 
 acquired the notion of extension ; when, in fact, we are 
 unable to imagine to ourselves the possibility of that notion 
 not being always in our possession. [But still he decides] 
 We have, therefore, a twofold cognition of space ; a, an
 
 THE SENSUOUS SIDE OF THE THEORY. 85 
 
 a priori, native imagination of it in general, as a necessary 
 condition of the possibility of thought ; and b, under that an 
 a posteriori or adventitious percept of it, &c. (p. 881.) 
 
 Though the sensation of our organism as animally aifected, 
 is, as it were, the light by which it is exhibited to our percep- 
 tion as a physically extended body ; still, if the affection be 
 too strong, the pain or })leasure too intense, the light blinds 
 by its very splendour, and the perception is lost in the sen- 
 sation, (pp. 862-3.) 
 
 The ultimate fibrils are the ultimate units of sensation . . . 
 a nervous point yields a sensation as locally distinct in pro- 
 portion as it is isolated in its action from every other, (p. 862.) 
 On the smaller size of the papilke and fibrils of the optic 
 nerve, principally depends the greater power we possess, in 
 the eye, of discriminating one sensation as out of another, 
 consequently of apprehending extension, figure, &c. 
 
 [At p. 821, as we saw, Hamilton rules that to restrict the 
 mind to the centre, and exclude it from the periphery, is 
 equivalent to representationism. Now, in a note to p. 861, 
 he withdraws this, and rules that the mind may be confined 
 to the centre without injury to his theory — each nervous 
 filament, however long, may be still viewed as a point. In 
 presence of the decisive distinctness liere, we think of the 
 punctual peremptoriness there ; and when Hamilton lightly 
 remarks, 'what was said at p. 821 is to be qualified in con- 
 formity,' we consider the contrariety, the lightness, the aplomb 
 as all three eminently characteristic] The diameter of the 
 papillffi of the optic nerve is about the eight or nine thou- 
 sandth part of an inch ; . . . and a stimulus of light, though 
 applied only to part of a papilla, idiopathically affects the 
 whole ; ... an object, whose breadth, as reflected to the 
 retina, is not more than the six hundred thousandth or 
 millionth of an inch, is distinctly visible to a good eye. 
 (p. 862.) [Distinction in touch he attributes to the isolated 
 fibrils — where distinction is impossible to touch, he is sure 
 that there microscopic anatomy will find an interlacement of 
 fibrils, or an expansion of one. — p. 863.]
 
 86 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE StOTt. 
 
 Hamilton's theory lies — pretty well completely — 
 in these extracts; and, using an illustration, it is 
 shortly this : — The mind inhabits a certain vase, and 
 so that it is directly present to every unit of the 
 extension of this vase. But, single unit or entire 
 extension, these are quite unkno^vn to it till lit. Lit, 
 however, the entire vase is exhibited to it (the mind) 
 with the constituent units of the vase relatively loca- 
 lised and reciprocally out of one another, as extension 
 implies. Further, now, this vase moves ; and, moving, 
 is resisted. If before, then, the vase itself gave know- 
 ledge of a partly outer and a partly inner, resistance 
 gives knowledge now of a wholly outer. To this 
 wholly outer, the facts learned of the partly outer are 
 next inferentially transferred. Lastly, the light that 
 lit the partly outer, is also inferentially transferred to 
 this same wholly outer as to its cause. In this way 
 it is, that, to Hamilton's belief, the knowledge of the 
 external world is constituted.* 
 
 Of this theory the mind's net, the nervous envelope, 
 the organism, or, rather we may say at once, the ocular 
 membrane, is the centre of gra\aty. Reference to the 
 quotations generally, and especially to that from Reid's 
 Works, pp. 862-3, mil readily decide this. In short, 
 throughout the entire theory, it is the lit ocular mem- 
 brane that is present to Hamilton's thought. This 
 membrane affected, a light is struck in it, and the 
 threads of its extension seen. Or, in the light of the 
 secondary quality, the mind perceives the extension 
 
 * See the last paragraph of the quotations for a point iu the above 
 where Hamilton vacillates.
 
 THE LIT OCULAR MExAIBRANE. 87 
 
 of the prim.iry quality. ' The passion of colour first 
 rising into consciousness, not from the amount of the 
 intensive quantity of the affection, but from the 
 amount of the extensive quantity of the organism 
 affected, is necessarily apprehended under the condi- 
 tion of extension.' (Reid's Works^ p. 885.) Each ulti- 
 mate fibril of the membrane is a lit point, and these lit 
 points are relatively localised and reciprocally external. 
 The light, as it were, carries these points into the mind 
 which cognises them, consequently, as they are thus 
 mutually in situ. However small the ocular mem- 
 brane, any amount of an externality actually known 
 is enough: all the rest follows easily on resistance — to 
 transference — through inference. 
 
 Hamilton, then, evidently, presupposes mind, bod}^, 
 and outer world; and the only question to him is, 
 How does the first come to know the second and the 
 third ? The netted mind is further netted : how does 
 it come to perceive its ovm. net, and its net's net ? The 
 latter Hamilton does not conceive to be '■ perceived^^ to 
 be 'immediately known' at all. It is certainly a place 
 of knowledo-e, but there is nothins; known in it that 
 is not the result of inference and transference referred 
 to the former. It is in the mind's net, then, that all 
 that is important to Hamilton occurs; and this is 
 neither complicated nor hard to conceive. The mind, 
 already present to the net, is, by sensation in the net, 
 as it were, Ji7^ed to perception of the net. This is the 
 whole — there is, indeed, no more than this ; for resist- 
 ance itself only adopts this for simple externalisation 
 one step further. That is to say, the nervous net
 
 88 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE StOTt. 
 
 being flushed, coloured, or lit by a sensation, or secon- 
 dary quality, there is perception of this net itself in 
 its primary qualities. This is the ultimate fact — the 
 ultimate that (on). On sense of resistance then, 
 again, these primary qualities of the nervous net 
 (together Avith the secondary of the same) are trans- 
 ferred to an unkno^yn substrate that resists ; and so by 
 continued process of inference there gradually rises 
 around us the formed world. 
 
 The mind, then, to Hamilton, though pervading the 
 nervous net that envelops it, perceives this net only 
 when it (the net) is lit by a secondary quality; and 
 even then, be it remembered, not in itself — no, only in 
 its modes, which modes are the primary qualities. 
 These primary qualities — modes of a non-ego ; for the 
 nervous net, if on one side within the mind, is on 
 another side without the mmd, and in that aspect 
 other than the mind — are transferred by inference to 
 the non-ego beyond the nervous net ; what we called 
 the net's net ; which ulterior non-ego, or net, is itself 
 inferred on occasion of resistance to the voluntary 
 locomotion of the netted mind.* Thus is it that 
 
 * Hamilton certainly figures sensation of secondary and perception of 
 primary quality (thougli impossibly else than a sequence of first and 
 second botli in nature and in time — tliougli quite as mucli so, indeed, as 
 any sequence of two terms that can be anywhere referred to), as a single 
 organic act ; and it is very possible that he would wish to associate with 
 these, and in this act, the element of resistance as well. Such association, 
 at least, might, perhaps, relieve the difficulty as to when and where 
 Hamilton places the first cognition of outness ; for cognition of a non-ego 
 that is at once within the mind and without the mind, seems competent 
 rather to otherness than to outness. Thorough outness is, perhaps, hardly 
 possible before resistance. This difficulty, however, probably never 
 occurred to Hamilton.
 
 THE OUTER RESISTANTS. 89 
 
 Hamilton conceives the mind to arrive at cognition of 
 its entire abode. All knowledge of outer things is 
 but an inferential transference from the netted mind to 
 resistants "without. These resistants without, again, 
 are unknown things in themselves actually presented 
 to the netted mind ; but they are also only phenomena, 
 in that they are not known in themselves, but only 
 through, first, the primary qualities transferred, so to 
 speak, in to their mteriors, and, second, the secondary 
 qualities inferentially transferred on to their exteriors. 
 The former inference, again, to Hamilton, is presen- 
 tative or noumenal in its validity, while the latter is 
 only representative or phenomenal : that is to say, the 
 resistants he conceives to possess the primary qualities ; 
 but they are not, by any means, necessarily even the 
 causes, excitants, or stimuli of the very secondary 
 qualities which by inference of the mind are, as their 
 effects, reflected to them. 
 
 Hamilton thus conceives himself surrounded by 
 unknown resistants which, substantiated by the pri- 
 mary qualities and clothed by the secondary, open up 
 into, or rather simply take on, this coloured and varie- 
 gated universe ; and we may now more clearly realise 
 to ourselves the precise burthen and bearing of his 
 presentative phenomenalism, or of his presented phe- 
 nomenon. Cognition, as only relative (which is simply 
 a matter of course to Hamilton), must be phenomenal, 
 but to this cognition the phenomenon concerned is an 
 actually present other, or to this cognition an external 
 something is actually there^ under whatever amount of 
 phenomenal shimmer. A hat may, by design, by
 
 90 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE StoVt. 
 
 accident, by age, take on this shape, that shape, and a 
 hundred shapes ; this colour, that colour, and a hun- 
 dred colours; but, under every shape, and under 
 every colour (or however phenomenally varied), it 
 may conceivably retain the same substance, and remain 
 the same non-ego, or hat, still. Each of the surround- 
 ing, unknown substrates, then, is but such presented 
 phenomenon ; noumenal knowledge does not exist — 
 even the primary qualities are relative and modified 
 modes (Hamilton's own language) ; nevertheless, 
 knowledge is not confined to one's own self, to one's 
 own states — it really concerns a non-ego, or non-egos, 
 actually presented. There are outer things that, 
 though unknown in themselves, hold up, through force 
 of the primary qualities, all the variegated colouring 
 of the secondary. Hamilton evidently cannot do 
 without the supporting frames and skeletons of these 
 outer substrates; they are to him what the Anstoss 
 was to Fichte, the plane and planes of reflexion from 
 which there return to the ego — but now as outer and 
 other — the ego's own states (the secondary qualities). 
 An outer kernel of support plays a role indispensable 
 to Hamilton, and he can see for it no substitute, no 
 surrogate, anywhere else. Had Hamilton, it is true, 
 as we have seen, but understood the relative doctrine, 
 he might have found this substitute, this surrogate, in 
 the space of Kant, in which his own primary qualities 
 are admittedly implied. Had projection, indeed, from 
 within out, of such a spectrum as Kant's space, occur- 
 red to Hamilton, he would probably not have hesitated 
 to adopt the simpler, the more comprehensive, the
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY. 91 
 
 more adequate, the more consistent, and tlie more 
 satisfactory theory. To declare the primary qualities 
 (space) his own state, did not for Kant dispossess 
 these of the advantage they might offer as outer sup- 
 ports. They really, by reflexion, stood around him 
 without, and thus really performed for the secondary 
 qualities the very same function that Hamilton deside- 
 rated in his own miknown substrates. 
 
 Certainly the theory is exceedingly ingenious, but 
 it is subjected, at the same time, to a variety of very 
 serious objections. Must we not say, for example, 
 that it is, after all, a beginning at the wrong end ? If 
 we are allowed to start at once as accomplished phy- 
 siologists with the whole anatomy of the nervous 
 system before us, have we not an easy game from the 
 first? And as to that, indeed, are there not always 
 too many physiological elements present to suit inte- 
 rests which concern psychology alone? Had Hamilton 
 deduced his materials, physiological elements included, 
 from any necessary and demonstrated basis, as is now 
 always the indispensable preliminary of philosophy, 
 both objections would fall; but such deduction fails. 
 Then the direct presence of the mind to its own 
 nervous organism must be regarded as a gratuitous 
 assumption, unsupported by proof, and unillustrated 
 by consciousness. 
 
 But, supposing this, how is it that the mind is not 
 at once conscious of that which, ex hypothesis it is 
 directly present to ? This would be immediate know- 
 ledge, and it is immediate knowledge which Hamilton 
 would establish. Instead of this, how is it that the
 
 92 I. P>. PERCEPTION: THE Slotl. 
 
 mind, to reach tlie knowledge in question, has still to 
 wait for the addition of yet another element, which 
 would seem rather thus to mediate knowledge? 
 
 The problem is, How can the mind know an exter- 
 nal object? The first answer is. We have senses by 
 which to smell it, taste it, touch it, hear it, and see it. 
 Yes, is the rejoinder ; but analysis and consideration 
 will demonstrate that sense in each of these five 
 modes is adequate to no more than the excitation in 
 the mind of a passion, affection, or subjective feeling, 
 which — as in the mind, and occupying the mind, and, 
 so to speak, colouring the mind in a manner nowise 
 distinguishable from that in which a variety of con- 
 fessedly internal elements, grief, joy, hate, &c., is 
 capable of occupying and, so to speak, colouring the 
 mind — is evidence of its own self, and for its o^vn 
 self, but not possibly of or for anything else beside. 
 A sensation is only intensive, — it is only a passion ; 
 the mind, for the time, is this passion, and this 
 passion is it : there is no hint in it of anything but 
 itself, — there is not the slightest suggestion in it of 
 any transition whatever. Give the mind light only 
 — ^it fills it, the mind is it, and it is the mind ; but 
 what else is there, or what else can it suggest ? Give 
 the mind sound only, — is it conceivable that the mind 
 could disjoin it from itself, any more than it could 
 disjoin from itself anger, or hope, or fear? And as it 
 is with these senses (sight and hearing), so also is it 
 with the others. But if it be so with each singly, so 
 also must it be with all together ; for no addition of 
 subjective to subjective can ever make an objective —
 
 THE SENSATION NOT THE PERCEPTION. 90 
 
 no addition of internal to internal can ever thicken 
 into an external. 
 
 It is here, however, that Hamilton suggests, The 
 mind does not and cannot j^erceive anything external 
 to itself; but it becomes aware of its oivn sentient 
 organism on condition of a colour, or a vibration (say), 
 being excited in that organism by one, or other, or all, 
 of the stated five modes ; and the remaining world 
 of cognition is thereafter built up by process of expe- 
 riment, inference, and reasoning. To Hamilton, then, 
 it appears that, though it might be difficult to under- 
 stand how the mind, with no production before it but 
 a subjective colouring of its o^vn, should be able to 
 perceive outer objects, no such difficulty would exist 
 if the perception concerned, not outer objects, but 
 the nervous system. But it is easy to see that if the 
 nervous system have the advantage of nearness over 
 the outer objects understood here, it is still, even as 
 much as they, an other^ an outer; and so, conse- 
 quently, still separated from the mind, like them, by 
 the whole diameter of being. Nearness in such cir- 
 cumstances is but as the grain of sand that is 
 removed from the mountain while the surveyor 
 measures it. In relation to the nervous system, the 
 subjective affection is no more than it is in relation 
 to other outer objects ; and that it is knoAvn is intel- 
 ligible, for it is evidence for itself; but that anything 
 else because of it can — without any further evidence 
 — be added as known, is unintelligible. Let the 
 vibration — to call by that name each of the five re- 
 spective affections — be A; we acknowledge that we
 
 94 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE Stort. 
 
 know A; but is that any reason that we should be 
 credited with a knowledge of B as well? A, the 
 sensation., is evidence for A; but the perception B is 
 a new act, and in its nature very different from, nay, 
 the reverse of, A, and Ave have still a right to ask, 
 Where is the evidence for this new act B, and how 
 was it performed, or how was its information 
 attained to ? To say the mind perceived B because it 
 felt A, is only to say, it is not to reason. 
 
 But Hamilton would have said, perhaps, A and B, 
 as referring to the same sentient organism, are m 
 reality identical and not different ; the subjective 
 sensation and the objective perception coincide and 
 coinhere in the same identical unit. Yes, we may 
 rejoin, but, when the mind acknowledges that unit as 
 under sensation, it is present to it as to its self; whereas, 
 when the mind acknowledges that unit as under per- 
 ception, it is absent from it as from its not-self (for to 
 have clistinguished it as not-self is equivalent to such 
 estrangement), and the cleft remains as impassable as 
 ever. We acknowledge arrival at the hither side of 
 this cleft — we acknowledge experience of the subjec- 
 tive moment; but we cannot see that arrival at the 
 hither, is equivalent to arrival also at the further side, 
 or that the subjective moment is identical with the ob- 
 jective. There are the two terms still — and apart still : 
 what we want is nexus and connexus ; and we want it 
 as much as ever. There is no secondary quality — no 
 sensation — other to Hamilton himself than a mere 
 subjective feeling, and a subjective feeling takes no 
 further than itself. That the mind should undergo
 
 THE ORGANISM BUT A TERTIUM QUID. 95 
 
 passions — passion after passion — this is conceivable ; 
 but how there should add itself to this passion any 
 711SU.S on the part of the mind to sally out and cognise 
 its own nervous organism as extended, di\dded, &c. — 
 or how it should require this passion, and be unable to 
 sally out without this passion — this is inconceivable. 
 Nay, this passion itself is really in the mind ; it is 
 not in the tissue, and any question of the tissue would, 
 so far, seem not to have any place. But let us say, 
 that, in the passion, the mind absorbs into itself the 
 nervous net as its and it; how is it then that it (the 
 mind) is immediately forced, by perception, to reject 
 this same net from itself as neither its nor it, but an 
 other, a non-ego? Knpwing the sentient organism as 
 the ego, that we should be enabled, so contrariously, 
 to know it as the non-ego, or accepting it in the 
 sensation as A, that we should reject it, at the sam.e 
 time, in the perception as B — it is this recoil of mind 
 back from matter on to itself, or it is this reflexion 
 from mind to matter — this transmutation of non-effo 
 into ego, and again of ego into non-ego — it is this, so 
 to speak, presto-trick that constitutes the difficulty; 
 and, if Hamilton seems to simplify it by moving the 
 two terms nearer each other, he in reality only com- 
 plicates it by the introduction of a third — a third 
 which only adds its own difficulty, and demands a 
 new explanation of its own. 
 
 But Hamilton's favourite sense is sight, and his 
 illustration by predilection light. As we saw on 
 page 85, he considers the sensation the light by which 
 the nervous organism is ' exhibited ' in perception ;
 
 96 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE Stort. 
 
 and the figure, if very luminous so far as the general 
 doctrine is concerned, needs only to be looked at to 
 show, on the question of inner rationale, quite as 
 unsatisfactory as any that might be borrowed from 
 any other sense. The mind, for example, Hamilton 
 would seem to think, though already pervading the 
 membrane of the eye, is quite blind to this membrane 
 till this membrane is lit. When lit, however, the 
 mind, instantly confessing this membrane to be it- 
 self, experiences the sensation (colour, &c.) ; but, as 
 instantly denying this membrane to be itself, it expe- 
 riences the perception of an extended and divided 
 non-eofo. But do not the difficulties remain thus — of 
 how the light exhibits, how the attention is excited, 
 and how the one or the other should be at all neces- 
 sary ? It is simple mformation that we cannot see in 
 the dark ; but what is the meaning of the mind re- 
 quiring light to see its net by? — what power can light 
 have added to such an energy as the mind there'^ Nay, 
 one would think that the mind, occupying the same 
 position in both cases, would be less likely to attend 
 to its net when filled and occupied (with light), than 
 when empty and disengaged. Hamilton only doubles 
 the apparatus. As it is to common belief, we have 
 an eye whereby to see things ; but as it is to Hamilton, 
 we have an gjq whereby to see the eye. Or Hamilton 
 actually postulates an eye behind the eye — not only 
 an eye of the body, but an eye of the mind; excess 
 of light too, it would seem, being not more dazzling 
 and perplexing to the one, than it is dazzling and 
 perplexing to the other.
 
 THE OTHER SENSES HERE. 07 
 
 Though it is certainly the coloured or lighted 
 ocular membrane that dominates Hamilton, he as 
 certainly, so far as words go, attributes a like function 
 to the other organs of sense. ' All the senses,' he says 
 (Reid's Woj'ks, p. 864), ' simply or in combination, 
 afford conditions for the perception of the primary 
 qualities.' Let us for a moment, then, consider the 
 other senses, and see if it be with them, as the illus- 
 tration would, at least to a certain extent, appear to 
 make it with sight. How is it with smell? On sensa- 
 tion of an odour, does the mind wake up to peruse 
 its Schneiderian membrane ? Or taste ? On sensation 
 of sapidity, does the mind re-act on, or is it reflected 
 to, the amount of the palate affected by the sapid 
 particles, and as divided and figured by their varying 
 sapidity? Or hearing? On sensation of sound, does 
 the mind, by instant rebound, stand at once by the 
 wall of its own tympanum, objectively cognising 
 the same? Obviously, there is no evidence for any 
 assertion of the affirmative in either of these cases ! 
 In touch, again, is it to the skin, and the amount of 
 skin covered, that the sensation proper of smoothness, 
 or of- roughness, wetness, dryness, warmness, cold- 
 ness, directs the mind? Is it not proved by Hamil- 
 ton himself that touch is a very bungler at guessing 
 the size of the impressing body — a very bungler at 
 extension? Then is not sight too, according to the 
 same authority, but a form of touch? Do we know 
 aught but ' the rays and the living organ in recipro- 
 city?' The rays touch, then, and we have the sub- 
 jective feeling light ; but why should the mind revert 
 
 H
 
 98 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE StOTt. 
 
 to the organ on hint of this sort of touch, rather than 
 on that of any other touch, and in any other organ ? Is 
 not the whole fancy of the mind seeing its eye because 
 it is lit — is not the whole metaphor of light but a 
 will-of-the-wisp to the self-complacent Hamilton? 
 
 So far, then, as the sensation proper is the condition 
 of the perception proper, we cannot say that Hamilton 
 has, in any way, assisted us beyond the fact : we see 
 neither the necessity nor the modus operandi of the 
 same. Hamilton, indeed, says as much as this him- 
 self, for the sensation is to him nexus and it is not 
 nexus, it is necessary and it is not necessary, and 
 evidently at last he has simply blindly settled himself 
 into the analogy of light. Why any such stimulus 
 is^ — how it acts, — what it does, — Hamilton, taking up 
 his position in the nervous system, is even worse off 
 for an answer here than common sense, which, unlike 
 its professing votary, has really its seat on the ground. 
 It is easy, in the straits of such questions, to bawl out 
 oTi, and threaten us with a charge of imbecility at the 
 hands of Aristotle; but, in the end, is there a single 
 difficulty removed? Can it, indeed, be said that any 
 one single difficulty — whether physiological or psycho- 
 logical — as regards brain, and nerves, and light, and 
 images, and vibrations, and tympana, and labyrinths 
 and what not, has received solution at the hands of 
 Hamilton? The position in the nervous system is, 
 in effect, not only gratuitous but idle ; and it is very 
 characteristic of Hamilton that he should return in 
 his metaphysical lectures to his dogged or/, and wind 
 up, though weakly enough, Tvdth such passages as: —
 
 RESISTANCE SUBJECTIVE ALSO. 90 
 
 ' But whether the senses be instruments, whether they 
 be media, or whether they be only particular outlets 
 to the mind incarcerated in the body, — on all this we 
 can only theorise and conjecture.' 
 
 Nor is Hamilton one whit luckier in the step to his 
 second net than in that to his first. This step is 
 resistance — voluntary locomotion resisted ; and from 
 what we know now, it will not be difficult to perceive 
 that the transition thence to a world without is capa- 
 ble of being met by the same principles which inter- 
 posed beween the sensation proper and the perception 
 proper. Resistance, that is, is but a subjective feeling, 
 and how there should be any hint in it of an external 
 object, constitutes the difficulty. Any mental experi- 
 ence, indeed, feeling or other, cannot be referred out^ 
 till there be an out kno^vn. Nor is it different with 
 locomotion : this, too, would be simply a feeling, more 
 or less intense, and would give no knowledge of move- 
 ment till ideas of space and an external miiverse had 
 been already formed ; but for the formation of these 
 ideas we find no competent provision supplied by 
 Hamilton. 
 
 Hamilton, indeed, asserts direct perception of ex- 
 tension, and extension implies space ; but as we have 
 seen, he brings forward for himself no more than 
 assertion-, and we are compelled to indicate and 
 demand the missing element of proof. The void be- 
 tween subjective sensation and objective perception 
 he leaves unmediated ; and we refuse to participate 
 in the satisfaction he demands for his own mere spring. 
 There are certainly times, however, when the simple 
 
 H 2
 
 100 I. 3. PERCEPTION : THE StOTl. 
 
 recoil from intension to extension seems insufficient to 
 Hamilton himself — times when, as it appears, he would 
 really mediate between the intensive sensation of the 
 membrane on the one side, and its extensive percep- 
 tion on the other. We have such deliverances as 
 these, for example : — ' Sensations out of each other, 
 contrasted, limited, and variously arranged ; ' ' sensa- 
 tions recognised as plural, and reciprocally external ; ' 
 * sensations relatively localised ; ' 'all sensations, what- 
 soever, of which we are conscious, as one out of another, 
 eo ipso^ afford us the condition of immediately and 
 necessarily apprehending extension.' Now, to judge 
 from such expressions as these, there is more in the 
 thought of Hamilton than that it is simply fact^ that 
 the sensation is the condition of the perception : he 
 evidently contemplates something of reason as well. 
 In other words, it is in the peculiar reciprocity of the 
 sensations that he sees the prototype of extension. 
 With this, too, his physiological ideas cohere: he 
 would regard ' the ultimate fibrils as the ultimate 
 units of sensation;' and he unequivocally attributes 
 to ' the smaller size of the papillae and fibrils of the 
 optic nerve the greater power we possess, in the eye, 
 of discriminating one sensation as out of another, and, 
 consequently, of apprehending extension.' The theory 
 that seems involved or desiderated, however, admits 
 of a very simple refutation. The phrase, ' sensations 
 one out of another,' can. mean only one or other 
 of two thino-s : either sensations one out of another 
 as different from one another; or sensations that, as 
 such, have parts — that are, in their own nature, plural,
 
 DIFFERENT SENSATION NOT DIFFERENT PLACE. 101 
 
 out of one another, extended. Now, to take the latter 
 alternative first, Ave have simply to point out that, in 
 the matter of sensations, there are none such. Sensa- 
 tions are but subjective feeliiif^s ; they possess in- 
 tension not extension ; and Hamilton has no authority 
 to extend them to the latter. Physiologically there 
 may be a certain breadth of surface affected, or, as 
 in the eye, illuminated, and each nervous filament 
 may correspond to a distinct unit of the sensation 
 (light) ; but, psychologically, that is not so ; — psycho- 
 logically, it is the sensation (light) we know, and not 
 the membrane; and this sensation (light), this sub- 
 jective feeling, has degree, but not breadth. 
 
 Again, sensations out of one another, as different 
 from one another, will give information of difference, 
 but not of distance or separation — of different quality^ 
 but not of different place. If in different sensations, 
 we find, not only difference of quality, but difference 
 of place, then, evidently, this latter is something other 
 than themselves — something that has been added to 
 them. This, in fact, is one of Kant's strongest argu- 
 ments for the original implication and primitive pre- 
 supposition of space as an independent, a prmri^ or 
 pure perception. 
 
 Without space, then, there is no possibility of a 
 cognition on our part, whether of the first net on ex- 
 perience of a secondary quality, or of the second net 
 (the outer world) on experience of what Hamilton 
 calls a secundo-primary quality — resistance. Space 
 is the indispensable, radical condition; and it is quite 
 incapable of being deduced from any relation — re-
 
 102 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE StoTt. 
 
 ciprocal or other — of sensations. Nay, as we have 
 seen already, the very attempt to derive a knowledge 
 of space and the primary qualities — empirically — is, 
 from the first, suicidal and absurd; and Hamilton's 
 own sense of failure cannot help breaking out ever 
 and anon in his own words. Even in the midst of 
 reasonings about sensations reciprocally out of each 
 other, he admits that space must be presupposed, else 
 they would be reciprocally out of each other, only as 
 different, but not as in different places ; and, feeling, 
 perhaps, the whole floor of natural realism thus sinking 
 beneath him, he fairly gives way at last to a burst of 
 ill-humour, as he exclaims : — ' It is truly an idle pro- 
 blem to attempt imagining the steps by which we 
 may be supposed to have acquired the notion of ex- 
 tension ; when, in fact, we are unable to imagine to 
 ourselves the possibility of that notion not bemg 
 always m our possession ! ' It is quite characteristic, 
 too, that, having thus given vent to his temper, and 
 quite unconscious that he has at once supported, and 
 demonstrated ignorance of, the relative doctrme of 
 Kant, he can, in his stubborn mood, wind up : — ' We 
 have, therefore, a twofold cognition of space; a, an 
 a pinori, native imagination [not perception] of it in 
 general, as a necessary condition of the possibility of 
 thought [not experience] ; and b, under that, an 
 a posteriori or adventitious percept of it, &c.' [and 
 thus he betrays unconsciousness that, to Kant, a and b 
 are one and the same !] 
 
 In this way, then, it is patent that a physiological 
 theory of the origin of our cognition of extension.
 
 VARIOUS OBJECTIONS. 103 
 
 whether placed in the position of the first net or in 
 that of the second, is, from the very nature of the case, 
 futile, and that Hamilton would have been only judi- 
 cious had he saved himself this whole industry. An 
 mdustry, indeed, that transfers the qualities of an un- 
 perceived and unknown organism to a perceived and 
 kno"svn outer world in such wise that we only know 
 what we do not know, while what we do not perceive 
 is all that we do perceive, must be pronounced extra- 
 vagant and improbable. Nor less objectionable is the 
 violence which is done to consciousness in that it is 
 transferred from the things without to the nervous 
 tissue within, at the same tune that its natural autho- 
 rity is claimed for it — in the new position — a claim 
 which, on the part of Hamilton, can only vitiate his 
 single appeal by demolishing the sole standard to 
 which it is addressed, common sense. The inter- 
 position, indeed, of the nervous system between the 
 mind within and the world without, which is the 
 one act of Hamilton, must be declared, as it has 
 been handled by him, supervacaneous and idle; not 
 one difficulty affecting the intercourse of mind and 
 matter having in reality been touched by it; while 
 we are left at last with so insecure and insignificant 
 a non-ego that we may legitimately conclude in 
 regard to the general scheme of Hamilton, that it 
 proves what it would disprove, and disproves what 
 it would prove, or that it directly leads, not to pre- 
 sentative realism, but to cosmothetic idealism! In- 
 deed, it is difficult to conceive any theory of perception 
 more glaringly and thoroughly representative than
 
 104 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE SiOTt. 
 
 that of Hamilton : that outer object, whatever it may 
 be, that we suppose ourselves to perceive, is only in 
 name an outer object; it is an unknown substrate, a 
 phenomenon from the first, and we know it, not by 
 what it presents, but by what it represents — the 
 qualities, that is, primary and secondary, of our own 
 nervous net, or, even, as in the case of the latter, of 
 our own mental unit. It itself, the outer object, is 
 never perceived at all — it is only supposed ; and it is 
 resistance, a state of our own, that thus supposes — 
 that thus infers it. Nor is it for itself that it is in- 
 ferred, but only for an other — only as locus^ that is — 
 only as place of reflections for qualities to which, 
 whether primary or secondary, it itself may in no 
 respect correspond. Any such correspondence as re- 
 gards the latter class, Hamilton himself would seem 
 to deny; and we cannot doubt now that, had he 
 understood the evidence of Kant, he would have been 
 similarly minded as regards the former. What uni- 
 verse, then, can we possibly conceive more representa- 
 tive? In Kant, the unknown outer substrate may be 
 perceived at least to harmonise with the inner faculty ; 
 but we know of no provision in Hamilton for even so 
 much presentationism as this. His primary qualities 
 were at aU times but an insignificant barrier against 
 the great sea of relativity that existed for him every- 
 where else ; but now that these are withdrawn, there 
 is but a single expanse — an expanse of representa- 
 tionism — and its originator is Hamilton ! * 
 
 * Hamilton, -svlio would have inner immediate to outer, not only inserts 
 between them the medium of the nerves, but in order still to effect imme-
 
 WIIAT SUGGESTED THE THEORY? 105 
 
 Not only has the theory, however, a very ingenious 
 look, especially at first hand, but it has also an ori- 
 ginal look; and we become curious to know how it 
 Avas come by. Now, on this head, we may point out, 
 in the first place, that what is now so commonly known 
 as Berkeley's theory of vision, contains a very general 
 analogy to the view in question. In both, what is held 
 to be originally known by sight is but the lit or 
 coloured ocular membrane ; and in both, all that fol- 
 lows is but what has been called ' the art of seeing 
 things that are in\isible' — an art in which touch plays 
 the tutor to sight, and teaches it to translate its own 
 visual figure into its (the tutor's) tactual one. Now, 
 Dr. Thomas Brown is generally admitted to have suc- 
 cessfully controverted the assumption of visible figure 
 as an original cognition of sight. To say, then, that 
 Hamilton restored what BroAvn had destroyed, is not 
 imperfectly to name Hamilton's whole action here. 
 It was probably not from this direction, however, that 
 Hamilton came on his theory ; — though it is quite pos- 
 sible that it was at least partly from this direction 
 that he came on his hatred to Brown. His theory 
 once for all formed, that is, he conceivably found, to 
 his astonishment, that Brown — and this is an experi- 
 
 diation, lie is obliged to interpolate no less than eiglit contrivances more : 
 the eight conditions, namely, — Attention, Quality, Space, Memory, 
 Judgment, &c., — which he assumes as necessary and indispensable to 
 every act of perception. Such complicated mediacy contrasts oddly with 
 the simple immediacy it would produce. Space is granted as a presup- 
 position at last ; but this presupposition, though it nullifies in advance, 
 is not allowed to pretermit, the whole laborious theory. Then memoiy, 
 which is representative to Hamilton himself, is a necessary element in 
 what remains presentative all the same !
 
 106 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE SlotL. 
 
 ence by no means tlie only one of the sort in the too 
 precipitate Hamilton — had already destroyed it in 
 advance.* Certainly visible figure, and presence of the 
 mind to its own organ, do not, at first sight, look like 
 synonyms, and it is this unlikeness which induces us 
 to believe that the one was not derivative from the 
 other ; yet, beyond all doubt, synonyms they are, and 
 the point of view thus obtained is crucial for the 
 theory that contains the latter. 
 
 But, in the second place, the direction from which 
 we believe Hamilton really to have come on his theory 
 lies here: — At page 144 of his edition of Reid's 
 Works, Hamilton refers to a comment by Stewart on 
 a passage from Reid. The latter runs thus : — ' Our 
 eye might have been so framed as to suggest the figure 
 of the object mthout suggesting colour or any other 
 quality; and, of consequence, there seems to be no 
 sensation appropriated to visible figure ; this quality 
 being suggested immediately by the material impres- 
 sion oh the organ, of w^hich impression we are not 
 conscious.' The comment, again, after a declaration 
 on the part of Stewart, that this has been a puzzle of 
 forty years to him, is as follows : — ' To my apprehen- 
 sion, nothing can appear more manifest than this, that 
 
 * Among the preceding objections to Hamilton's theory, perhaps the 
 very strongest is that which points out that the metaphor of light is at 
 once quenched when applied to the other senses. Consulting 'Brown's 
 Lectures ' in reference to Berkeley's theory of vision, I find that argument 
 A-irtually anticipated by Brown ; and yet I think I took it not from Brown, 
 but from the nature of the case. One is rather gratified, however, by 
 anticipations at the hands of a man like Brown, who is not only built 
 into our admiration by his rare subtlety, but endeared to our very affec- 
 tion bv his sweet candour.
 
 WIIAT SUGGESTED THE THEORY? 107 
 
 if there had been no variety in our sensations of colour, 
 and, still more, if we had no sensation of colour what- 
 soever, the organ of sight could have given us no 
 information either with respect to figures, or to dis- 
 tance ; and, of consequence, would have been as use- 
 less to us, as if we had been afflicted, from the moment 
 of our birth, with a guita serena.'' 
 
 We may remark here, firstly, that Brown's general 
 argument agamst the originality of visible figure as a 
 cognition of sight, is, virtually, but a turning of the 
 first averment of Reid against his second, or it is 
 sunply an inversion of the reasoning of Reid. Reid, 
 namely (his thoughts being shaken into place), reasons 
 thus: — Figure being different from, and no element 
 of, the sensation colour, it must be immediately sug- 
 gested. Brown, again, says, Figure being different 
 from colour, and no element of the sensation, it can 
 not be immediately suggested, but is acquired by ex- 
 perience of other sense. 
 
 Then, with reference to Stewart, surely he might 
 have spared himself his long puzzle of forty years, 
 seeing that the passage from Reid is nothing but an 
 expression, not only of the general doctrine, but of 
 the single argument, accepted by both, that the primary 
 qualities, forming no part of the sensation, can only be 
 immediately suggested on occasion of the sensation. 
 Reid does not say that the eye does suggest figure 
 without suggesting colour; he understands his o^vn 
 doctrine and its terms too well for that ; but he says, 
 ' The eye might have been so framed^ and it is, at least, 
 usual to take these might-have-heens^ especially where
 
 108 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE StoTt. 
 
 sense is concerned, necessarily idle though they be, 
 with more equanimity than Stewart vouchsafes them. 
 
 But it is not with Stewart's forgetfulness of his own 
 doctrine, and his consequent limitless absorption in 
 speculation on the connection of colour and figure by 
 a certain necessity, not only of fact, but of reason — 
 which necessity of reason, did it exist (and it probably 
 did exist to Hegel), would, by the mediacy it offered, 
 destroy the immediacy attributed by himself to the 
 cognition of the primary quahties — it is not with these 
 aspects of Stewart that we are here concerned, but 
 ^vith this special averment of his in itself and in its 
 special bearing on Hamilton's perceptive theorj^; of 
 which theory surely it is at least capable of being re- 
 garded as the germ. For, not only does it declare the 
 perception figure (the objective cognition) to be impos- 
 sible without the sensation colour (the subjective pas- 
 sion), but it attributes to the variety of colour that 
 same necessary, active, and positive function wliich 
 Hamilton also attributes to the variety of colour, though 
 under the name of the relative localisation and reciprocal 
 externality of colours. The reflexion, or revulsion, of 
 the mind from the subjective sensation to the objective 
 membrane, this, indeed, is Hamilton's salto mortale^ 
 this is the centre of his theory, and it might quite 
 possibly have been suggested by these passages wliich 
 he himself signalises in Reid and Stewart. 
 
 But, as regards a theory so striking and so e\ddently 
 the centre of his thought, if one be curious to know 
 what suggested it, one is equally curious to know how 
 it is that Hamilton has not given it all the prominence
 
 WHY NOT MORE PROMINENT? 109 
 
 which his mastery of expression and his fervid per- 
 sonality might, had he so chosen, have so easily ex- 
 tended to it. For it is a remarkable fact that one 
 shall have mastered the two volumes of the Loiric, the 
 two volumes of the Metaphysic, the one volume of the 
 Discussions — that one shall have advanced far even 
 into the text of the Dissertations to Eeid — and yet 
 that one shall remain absolutely blunt to the distinc- 
 tion in question until it suddenly da-\vn on him from 
 the corner of some hardly readable, small-print foot- 
 note under these mentioned Dissertations. This is 
 no solitary experience, and it is well-fitted to surprise. 
 Nay, Hamilton's philosophical reading seems to have 
 been undertaken for no other purpose than to give 
 breadth to this distinction ; yet, hardly mentioning it 
 to his pupils, he allows it only a dark and stifled ex- 
 istence principally in foot-notes ! We shall not attempt 
 to account for this — we shall leave it simply to con- 
 jecture. 
 
 The reader who has now reached this centre of the 
 nervous net mil do well to turn round and survey the 
 ground he has travelled. All, so, will be easier to 
 him, and in readier proportion. The contradiction of 
 presentationism and phenomenalism, the dogged or/, 
 the conversion of consciousness into perception, the un- 
 satisfactory analysis of philosophy with its 3 or 4 of the 
 external reality, &c. — all this, as he now looks back on 
 it from Hamilton's point of view ^ will appear mitigated, 
 and more natural. Nevertheless, all has been pre- 
 sented to him really as it strikes himself in Hamilton, 
 and in that order which the interests of a full intelli-
 
 110 I. 3. PERCEPTION: THE StOTt. 
 
 gence required. Nor, however softened the distant 
 landscape may appear from the point we now occupy, 
 is there a single dark spot the less in it ; and we would 
 remind summarily of the various objections to this 
 point of view itself : I. It is a petitio principii to 
 begin with a nervous envelope, &c. — 2. The theory is 
 too predominatingly physiological. — 3. The position 
 of consciousness in the nervous net is not proved. — 
 4. The entire modus operandi explains nothing, and 
 the metaphor of light is but a delusion. — 5. It is 
 absurd to derive what is a loriori from an a posteriori 
 source. — 6. It is extravagant to transfer out the nerv- 
 ous net in its sensations and in its perceptions as the 
 entire outer universe. — 7. It is to do violence to con- 
 sciousness to transfer it from things it knows to nerves 
 it knows not. — 8. Such transference vitiates Hamilton's 
 own appeal to consciousness. — 9. The intercourse of 
 mind and matter is as difficult as ever. — 10. The theory 
 performs on its self its own Elenchus — provuig what 
 it would disprove, and disproving what it would prove. 
 Lastly, we would point out, in conclusion, that two of 
 the above arguments are precisely those which con- 
 vince himself of the erroneousness of that theory which 
 derives the idea oi poicer from a transference to outer 
 objects of our own nisus in volition, namely, that there 
 is no consciousness of the fact alleged (the presence 
 of the mind to the net), and that even such conscious- 
 ness would not yield the apodictic nature which the 
 primary qualities bring with them.
 
 THE POSITION OF REID. Ill 
 
 4. The Principle of Common Sense. 
 
 It is manifest that some of the points just touched 
 on are repugnant, as has been ah'eacly hinted indeed, 
 to the principles of common sense ; and yet it is to 
 common sense that Hamilton, in company with Reid, 
 appeals ; or it is in the name and interests of common 
 sense that Hamilton, in the same company, works. 
 Obviously, then, our review of the present subject mil 
 be oidy complete when we have carried it up into that 
 complement of principles which constitute, by profes- 
 sion at least, both its motive and its measure. 
 
 Now, by its very name, common sense is a common 
 property : it is no man's fee-simple to do with as he 
 will; it is every man's universal privilege; it is no 
 man's particular advantage. The first inference we 
 have to make here, then, is, that no use of the name 
 will justify any departure from the standard, no matter 
 however much he who leaves may praise what he 
 leaves or deny that he leaves. 
 
 Now Reid, in a passage which has received the im- 
 press of Hamilton himself, describes (Reid's Works^ 
 p. 302) the platform of common sense thus: — 
 
 We have here a remarkable conflict between two contra- 
 dictory opinions, wherein all mankind are engaged. On the 
 one side stand all the vulgar who are unpractised in philo- 
 sophical researches, and guided by the uncorrupted primary 
 instincts of nature. On the other side stand all the philoso- 
 phers, ancient and modern ; every man, without exception, 
 who reflects. In this division, to my great humiliation, I 
 find myself classed with the vulgar.
 
 112 I. 4. PERCEPTION : COJMMON SENSE. 
 
 The court, then, before which Reicl — with the ex- 
 press approbation of Hamilton — would arraign philo- 
 sophy, cannot well be misunderstood; nor more the 
 general situation. As proclaiming the criterion of 
 common sense, Reid stands with ' the vulgar ; ' he is 
 ' guided by the uncorrupted primary instincts of 
 nature,' to which instincts it is no prejudice that they 
 are ' unpractised in philosophical researches ; ' he finds 
 himself opposed by ' all the philosophers, ancient and 
 modern' — by 'every man, without exception, who 
 reflects ; ' and he has no resource but to appeal from 
 the latter to the former, — from the ' philosophers ' to 
 the 'vulgar,' — from every man, without exception, 
 who reflects, to every man — presumably — ^without 
 exception, who does not reflect. 
 
 Before passing specially to Hamilton, we may 
 remark that the contradiction in itself, which destroys 
 this statement, is sufficiently obvious. Reflection, 
 thought, is the single instrument of truth ; and we do 
 not usually listen twice to any man who tells us. 
 Reflection unexceptively says A, irreflection unexcep- 
 tively says B, nevertheless it is irreflection that is 
 right. But Reid not only thus negates himself by his 
 own first word, he equally negates himself by his own 
 first act. No sooner, indeed, has he called to us not 
 to reflect, than he sets himself to reflect. If, alarmed 
 at ' philosophy,' he had said, Philosophy is naught, let 
 us return to our usual beliefs, that what we taste we 
 taste, and what we touch we touch, and leave reflec- 
 tion, he would have been perfectly consistent with 
 himself, and dispute there could have been none ; but.
 
 HAMILTON AND COMMON SENSE. 113 
 
 when he proceeded, instead, to open inquiry into these 
 beliefs — then, in an instant, the vulgar had fled, and 
 there was only philosophy again — philosophy at all 
 its old cobwebs — cheerful, hopeful, busy as ever. 
 
 With Hamilton, too, we can bring the matter to the 
 same short issue. When perception, namely, with- 
 drew from the world without, and transported itself 
 to the nerves within, common sense refused to follow, 
 and Hamilton found himself cut off from it by a 
 chasm as wide and deep as that that, to Reid, separated 
 the 'philosophers' from the 'vulgar.' 
 
 But we are not confined to what is indirect here. 
 Hamilton, the very loudest for the sufficiency of com- 
 mon sense, is equally the loudest for its insufficiency 
 also. He says (Reid's Wo7'ks, p. 752) : — 
 
 In this country in particular, some of those who opposed 
 it [common sense] to the sceptical conclusions of Hume, did 
 not sufficiently counteract the notion which the name might 
 naturally suggest ; they did not emphatically proclaim that 
 it was no appeal to the undeveloped beliefs of the unre- 
 flective many; and they did not inculcate that it presup- 
 posed a critical analysis of these hehefs by the philosophers 
 themselves. 
 
 He goes on, indeed, to assert that their language 
 sometimes warranted an opposite conclusion; and he 
 names Ceattic, Oswald, and even Reid, as examples. 
 
 Now, this is surely very simple, but, at the same 
 time, very equivocal, procedure. Reid says that 
 common sense and philosophy are directly opposed ; 
 and he would destroy the latter under the feet of the 
 former. I quite agree with him, says Hamilton; I 
 
 1
 
 114 I. 4. PERCEPTION: COMMON SENSE. 
 
 cry common sense too, but I practise pliilosopliy all 
 the same. That is, I take the name common sense — 
 it is a good name ; then ' I comiteract the notion which 
 it might naturally suggest ;' after that, 'I emphatically 
 proclaim that it is no appeal to the undeveloped beliefs 
 of the unreflective many ; ' next, ' I inculcate that it 
 presupposes a critical analysis of these beliefs by the 
 philosophers themselves;' lastly, 'I, as a "philoso- 
 pher," still with the name and all the advantages of the 
 position claimed, set on my " critical analysis," and tell 
 my findings.' There are other inferences here ; but 
 we, for our parts, ask only. In what respect this posi- 
 tion differs from that of ' the ideal system,' from that 
 of ' Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and 
 Hume,' to combat and confute which were the reason 
 and the necessity of any resort to common sense at 
 all? 
 
 In Hamilton's hands, in fact, common sense shows 
 no difference whatever from philosophy, and the con- 
 clusion of the whole matter just is, that we are all to 
 reason to the best of our ability, reason itself being 
 sure to pull us up when wrong. Keason, in fact, has 
 no standard but reason ; and, with whatever disin- 
 clination, no one can refuse to keep his seat, so long- 
 as it is reason that drives. The sentence from Hamil- 
 ton, in truth, is nothmg else than the restoration to 
 the judge reason of the chair into which the drudge 
 common sense had been for an instant thrust. Never- 
 theless, this is a deliberate act of Hamilton, and he 
 vdW be found (Reid's Worh^ p. 816) expressly 
 dividing common sense into a ' philosophical form,'
 
 HAMILTON AND PRIMARY TRUTHS. 115 
 
 and a ' vulgar form' — quite unaware, apparently, that, 
 thereby, he has taken the standard on himself, or that 
 he has transferred that standard to philosophy, or that 
 he has vitiated and undermined the standard, or that 
 he has demonstrated it to be a standard incompetent 
 to him. 
 
 But the term, common sense, is as yet quite general, 
 and the position abstract ; what are the particular 
 principles by which Hamilton would introduce into 
 the latter a concrete filling? These principles — at 
 least, to take the profession of Hamilton — are under- 
 stood in a word when we describe them as what are 
 known to philosophy as our stock of primary truths. 
 True, it is very difficult to make out what these 
 truths are, if we trust to Hamilton; but not the less 
 does he make words enough about them. The cha- 
 racteristic signs by which he would have us recognise 
 them, he tells us, for instance, may (Reid's Works, p. 
 754) 'be reduced to four; — 1°, their Incomprehensi- 
 bility — 2°, their Simplicity — 3°, their Necessity and 
 absolute Universality — 4°, their comparative Evidence 
 and Certainty.' Now, suppose we draw attention here 
 to sign the third first. Well, these two terms, necessary 
 and universal, have, by Kant, been included together 
 in the single word apodictic (written by purists apo- 
 deictic) ; and they concern one of the most important 
 and fertile distinctions in later philosophy. 
 
 Hume busied himself much with what has proved, 
 not only the fundariien of German philosophy, but 
 the angle of all philosophy else, probably for some 
 time to come — the distinction, namely, between mat- 
 
 I 2
 
 116 I. 4, PERCEPTION: COMMON SENSE. 
 
 ters of fact., and relations of ideas. The former are, 
 one and all of tliem, whatever we have experienced — 
 whatever we know by experience : and experience., as 
 meditmi of knowledge., is sense., principally external., 
 but also, as understood by Locke and Kant, interiial. 
 The sun shines, stones fall, fire burns, wood floats, 
 &c. &c. &c. ; and the truth of all such propositions, 
 or the fact they name, is only known by trial., and 
 trial is but another word for experience. We have 
 actually experienced the event, and — to signalise the 
 shade between the two words — we can, at any time, 
 try it. Of all such propositions, it is seen that they 
 are true ; but it is not seen that they are necessarily., 
 or must he., true. That is, no reason 'm seen whythej 
 are true ; and, consequently, what is the same thing, 
 their contrary implies no contradiction, and is equally 
 possible. The contraries, for example, the sun does 
 not shine, stones do not fall, fire does not burn, wood 
 does not float, &c. &c. &c., we know by experience, 
 by trial, to be untrue ; but they are not contradictions 
 to thought, they are not impossible, they are still con- 
 ceivable (as really, perhaps, some woods do not burn) ; 
 and they depend wholly and solely on the state of the 
 case, which is, once for all, found to be so and so and 
 not otherwise. Now truths of this nature — the former 
 class, the matters of fact — are named by Hume (with 
 reference to their validity, or peculiar evidence) con- 
 tingent., and by Kant (with reference to their source 
 experience, to the after the fact that is in them) a pos- 
 teriori. 
 
 The latter class, again, the relations of ideas, are
 
 INTUITIVE. 117 
 
 widely difForent; and, in the words of Hume, consist 
 of ' every affirmation which is either intuitively or 
 demonstratively certain.' Indeed, seeing that what- 
 ever is demonstratively certain rests at last on what 
 is intuitively certain, we may withdraw the former as 
 superfluous, and define relations of ideas to be, all 
 affirmations that are intuitively certain. Of this class 
 all the axioms and propositions of mathematics are 
 examples. The whole is greater than its part, for in- 
 stance : for the proof of this, we do not refer to expe- 
 rience, to trial; we do not say that it just is so, that 
 this is just the fact; we know that it, not only is so, 
 but necessarily is so ; we know the reason icliy it is so ; 
 and we know that its contrary (the whole is not 
 greater than its part) implies a contradiction, and is 
 by necessity impossible. This class, then, with refer- 
 ence to their validity are named necessary and uni- 
 versal, or apodictic, truths, and (by Kant), mth 
 reference to their independence of sense — of any trial 
 or experience of sense — as source (the before thefact^ 
 or the independence of the fact), a priori truths. 
 
 There is good reason for believing, we may remark, 
 that Hume, in using the word intuitive, attached to it 
 that evidence, vision, insight — that actual percej^ition 
 and looking-at — which Kant always had before him in 
 the German word for intuition — Anschauung. Indeed, 
 it is pretty certain that their common predecessor, 
 Locke, entertained the same view. ' Many a one,' he 
 says (Book iv. c. vii. s. 10), ' knows that one and two 
 are equal to three, without having heard or thought 
 on that or any other axiom by which it might be
 
 118 I. 4. PERCEPTION: COMMON SENSE. 
 
 proved ; and knows it as certainly as any other man 
 knows that the whole is equal to all its parts, or any 
 other maxim, and all from the same principle of self- 
 evidence) the equality of those ideas being as visible 
 and certain to him, without that or any other axiom, 
 as with it, — it needing no proof to make it perceived.^ 
 On the other hand, it seems to have been Reid who, 
 through his definition of intuitive propositions as 'pro- 
 positions which are no sooner understood than they 
 are believed,' has made almost universally current 
 since his time a somewhat different sense of the word — 
 the ' no sooner ^^ that is, or the immediacy and instan- 
 taneousness, as it were the instmctivity, which it also 
 implies. 
 
 Hume, then, had the actual perception that an in- 
 tuition involves well before his mind, though it rose 
 not up to him, perhaps, as that expi^ess inspection which 
 Kant considered it. He had in mind, not the instan- 
 taneousness of the insight only, but this i?isi<jht itself. 
 Intuitive truths, then, are truths that are seeii, — truths 
 that are seeingly believed, not truths that, as incom- 
 prehensible, must be unseen^ and, if believed, can only 
 be unseeingly believed. That the straight line is the 
 shortest, requires no proof; but, for all that, it wants 
 not evidence ; it is no incomprehensible truth that rests 
 on a blind belief alone ; it is not only believed to be 
 true, but it is seen to be true.* 
 
 Hume further characterises these truths of the 
 second class thus : — ' Propositions of this kmd are 
 
 * See Note at end.
 
 HAMILTON CONFOUNDS THE CLASSES. 119 
 
 discoverable by the mere operation of thought, with- 
 out dependence on what is anywhere existent in the 
 universe: though there never were a true circle or 
 triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid 
 would for ever retain their certainty and evidence.' 
 Here Hume plainly intimates, not only that he knows 
 such truths to bring evidence^ but to be also li priori 
 — ' discoverable by thought,' that is, without any re- 
 ference to, or direct trial of, anything actually in 
 nature. We may regard, indeed, the a priori of Kant 
 to have taken birth in this passage of Hume. Pro- 
 bably we know now, then, something of the true 
 nature of those primary truths to which Hamilton's 
 third characteristic sign applies, and will be able to 
 judge of his relative utterances. 
 
 Now, we have to point out at once that these four 
 characteristic signs of Hamilton are enumerated by 
 him as referring to all primary truths indiscriminately 
 alike. Of this we cannot doubt. He expressly (Reid's 
 Works, p. 743, note) affirms of ' the primary truths of 
 fact, and of the primary truths of intelligence (the 
 contingent and necessary truths of Reid),' that, though 
 'two very distinct classes of the original beliefs or 
 intuitio7is of consciousness,' ' there appears no sufficient 
 ground to regard their sources as different.'' After 
 this, it is not difficult for us to understand that Ha- 
 milton, in what seems to have been almost his one 
 action on the platform of common sense, saw no con- 
 tradiction in asserting the cognition of a material 
 non-ego to be a universal and necessary first principle 
 — an apodictic datum of consciousness. But, of this
 
 120 I. 4. TERCEPTION: COMMON SENSE. 
 
 one action, if the first half — the postulate of a sta- 
 tionary consciousness, namely — be absurd, no less 
 absurd is the second, that would elevate into the uni- 
 versal, necessary, and a priori validity of a relation of 
 ideas, the matter of fact which is contained in our 
 contingent, sensuous, and a posteriori cognition of the 
 material world.* Consider together the averments : 
 ■ — A straight line is the shortest, a straight line is not 
 the shortest ; and, There is a material non-ego, there 
 is no material non-ego. The different validity is at 
 once apparent. In truth, the two classes of evidence 
 cannot be confounded; and Hamilton, whatever he 
 may say about 'no sufficient grounds,' knows this 
 well. In fact, there is hardly any distinction in 
 Hamilton with which his reader is more familiar than 
 that between necessity and contingency. He alludes 
 to the successful application of it by Kant; in dispa- 
 ragement of Kant he points to it in Leibnitz ; and he 
 asserts for Reid in its regard — and again in disparage- 
 ment of Kant, who in this shall have been ' indebted 
 to Leibnitz ' — ' an original and independent discern- 
 ment.' (It was plain for both Kant and Reid, in 
 what was most familiar to both — Hume.) 
 
 But Hamilton is hardly more satisfactory in the 
 remainder of his characteristic signs. Opposing tlie 
 last to the first, for example, or even the second to 
 
 * That the cognition of a material non-ego is but empirical, requires no 
 reference to authority; lleid, however, ■v^'ill he found to enumerate it 
 among his confi)tc/ent primary truths. (Reid's Works, p. 4-11.) Hamilton 
 proLahly laj's weight, as abeady said, on the complete generality of the 
 non-ego; but there is no more reason for declaring consciousness inviola- 
 ble as regards the general fact of a material non-ego, than as regards the 
 movement of the sun, or the crookedness of an immersed stick.
 
 DISCREPANCIES. 121 
 
 the first, and having always understood that evidence^ 
 especially if simple^ is precisely that by which incom- 
 prehensibility becomes comprehensibility, we are at a 
 loss to conceive how the same thing that is incompre- 
 hensible should be, not only simple^ but evident. 
 
 The discrepancy contained in the enumeration, then, 
 is certainly bad enough ; but it is probably outdone by 
 that in the paragraph that follows it, where Hamilton 
 tells us that that of which we know, not only that it 
 is, but also how or why it is, ' is not a primary datum 
 of consciousness, but a subsumption under the cogni- 
 tion or belief which affords its reason.' The ordinary 
 axioms, then, seeing that they always bring their own 
 why^ are henceforth on the authority of Hamilton to 
 be conceived to be excluded from the rank of primary 
 data ! The law of contradiction itself, though set up 
 by Hamilton himself as — so to speak — the very first 
 primary of all primaries, must, seeing that it too 
 brings its o"\vn evidence, consent to be thrown down 
 again, and by the hand that set it up. Nay, the same 
 authority, who formerly declared a thing — because of 
 its evidence — to be primary, now declares it — and still 
 because of its evidence — not to be primary. 
 
 There are many passages in Hamilton where the 
 insight, which is contained in the etymology of the 
 word intuitive^ is noticed ; but, on the whole, his custom 
 is pretty much the same as Reid's : he correlates (as we 
 have seen, p. 119) intuition with beliefs and considers 
 the instantaneous7iess of the intuition rather than the 
 intuition itself. It is to this we attribute the discre- 
 
 K
 
 122 I. 4. PERCEPTION: COMMON SENSE. 
 
 jDancies and confusions which have been just exposed.* 
 But attribute them to what we may, anything more 
 piebald and unequal than this their resulting or em- 
 bracing doctrine of common sense we do not believe 
 to exist. It is common sense, yet the natural mean- 
 ing of the phrase is to be counteracted, and it is not 
 to be common sense. It is common sense, yet the 
 result — of analysis — critical analysis — and by the 
 philosophers. It is common sense, but not the sense 
 of the common (the vulgar) ; it is the sense of the 
 uncommon (the philosophers). Then its constitutive 
 principles, they are incomprehensible yet evident, in- 
 conceivable yet ' clear,' nay ' tlie light of nature ;' they 
 are contingent yet necessary, particular yet universal, 
 a posteriori yet aj)riori, products of sense yet products 
 of intelligence. Finally, this loose shelf of principles, 
 whose origin we know not, whose connexion we know 
 not, whose completion we know not — principles which 
 have been come upon and taken up we know not how, 
 principles which lie apart and mutually indifferent, 
 principles which coalesce not into the unity of a 
 system, principles which are not even assigned — 
 finally, we say, this loose shelf of pele-mele, un- 
 vouched principles is set identical with the — Reason 
 
 * Hamilton {Logic, i. 126) says : ' This expression [intuition as a looking 
 at] has, however, been preoccupied in English to denote the apprehension 
 -we have of self-evident truths, and its application in a different significa- 
 tion [the perceptive] would, therefore, he, to a certain extent, liable to 
 ambiguity.' This, with reference to the vision present in intuitive truths, 
 would read like an excuse for not using intuition in its perceptive sense, 
 because it is already preoccupied in that sense ! Evidently, then, the 
 instinct of the intuition has shut out from Hamilton's view the insiyht of 
 it. See also page 171 same work, where he seems to have in view the 
 qjeed of the looking rather than the looking.
 
 THE GENERAL ACTION ABSURD. 123 
 
 of Kant (the objects of which are God, Freewill, and 
 the Soul) ! — and distinguished from the — Understand- 
 ing of Kant, the objects of which are just those very 
 principles which (the roots and foundations of human 
 knowledge) constitute, as named (they are not given)^ 
 Hamilton's special quest here ! What strange effect, 
 indeed, to compare this loose shelf (with but a stray 
 specimen on it all the same) with the one organic 
 germ of Kant, in which lie vitally complete a whole 
 co-articulated congeries of constitutive members ! 
 But why mention Kant? — It was Hamilton's pride to 
 have perfected the presentationism of Reid — to have 
 strengthened into impregnability Iiis fortress of com- 
 mon sense : in reality, he has but overthrown the one, 
 and broken up the other ! 
 
 But it is just possible that any conclusion yet is 
 premature ; for it is now in place to recollect that 
 Hamilton does not stop with common sense, but car- 
 ries all up into a so-called — Law of the Conditioned. 
 This we have now to see. 
 
 NOTE {See p. 118). 
 
 ' Kant held tlie intuitive cognition of outness :' this lias been said in this 
 country, and it would have been right if the sayer had meant, Kant held 
 space to be ^^erc^^j^jye. It is illustrative of vrhat has been said above, 
 however, to consider that the sayer really meant only something that was 
 somehow mysteriously instantaneous or instinctive. We, Scotch, have made 
 ourselves simply ridiculous by the mystic hocus-^wcus we have somehow 
 imac/inativcly conjured into the word intiiiU^e, instead of merely seeing 
 and saying that it was tautamoimt to pei'cqitive. ' Kant does not give 
 the Intuitions ' — ' I give the Intuitions -J it is curious to realise to oneself 
 the strange magical functions of our own secret inner which are supposed, 
 in such words, to be, as it were, weirdly seen into through vapour, and 
 by means of some supersensuous, quite original insight. Pure intuitions, 
 however, there are none, but the pure 2^erc<'pti(ms Time and Space. Ap- 
 perception, Self-consciousuess, the Ego, the inner One, is e.dernaUsed into
 
 124 I. 4, PERCErTION: COMMON SENSE. 
 
 the net of the categories (as functions if you will); these into the net of 
 the intuUions, Time and Space : and these, again, into the ultimate net of 
 actual empu-ical tilings. And what we have so is, this world, the proper 
 name of which is Spirit — Free and Immortal Spirit — Spirit in communi- 
 cation with Spirit — Spirit in dependence on, and in reconciliation through 
 Ghriat with, the one Absolute Spirit — God. 
 
 This, I take it, is pretty nearly the Kantianism of Hegel ; and it is 
 Kantianism, and nothing but Kantianism, that is the matte)- assimilated 
 by Hegel as food andJUling, into his own form. 
 
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