J. PETER MAYER
LIBRARY
AN EXAMINATION
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
PHILOSOPHY
AND OF
THE PRINCIPAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS
DISCUSSED IN HIS WRITINGS
JOHN STUAET MILL
FIFTH EDITION
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER.
1878
LONDON :
8AYILL, EDWARD3 AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STRKM,
OOYENT GARDEN.
JUilStt AJR. I
UNIVERSITY ( F CALIFORNIA
SANTA BARBARA
PEEFACE
THE THIED EDITION.
IN former writings I have perhaps seemed to go in
search of objectors, whom I might have disregarded, but
who enabled me to bring out my opinions into greater
clearness and relief. My present condition is far different;
for a host of writers, whose mode of philosophic thought
was either directly or indirectly implicated in the
criticisms made by this volume on Sir W. Hamilton,
have taken up arms against it, and fought -as pro arts et
focis. Among these are included, not solely friends or
followers of Sir W. Hamilton, who were under some
obligation to say whatever could fairly be said in his
defence, but many who stand almost as widely apart
from him as I do, though mostly on the reverse side.
To leave these attacks unanswered, would be to desert
the principles which as a speculative thinker I have
maintained all my life, and which the progress of my
thoughts has constantly strengthened. The criticisms
which have come under my notice (omitting the daily
and weekly journals) are the following; there may be
others :
Mr. Mansel : " The Philosophy of the Conditioned ;
comprising some remarks on Sir William Hamilton's
Philosophy, and on Mr. J. S. Mill's Examination of that
VI PREFACE.
Philosophy." (First published in Nos. 1 and 2 of the
Contemporary Review.)
" The Battle of the Two Philosophies ; by an In-
quirer."
Dr. M'Cosh : " An Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill's
Philosophy, being a Defence of Fundamental Truth."
Dr. Calderwood : " The Sensational Philosophy Mr.
J. S. Mill and Dr. M'Cosh;" in the British and
Foreign Evangelical Review for April 1866.
Dr. Henry B. Smith : " Mill v. Hamilton," in the
American Presbyterian and Theological Review for
January 1866.
Mr. H. F. O'Hanlon : " A Criticism of John Stuart
Mill's Pure Idealism ; and an Attempt to show that, if
logically carried out, it is Pure Nihilism."
Review of this work in Blackwood's Magazine for
January 1866.
(The two last mentioned are confined to the doctrine
of Permanent Possibilities of Sensation).
Mr. J. P. Mahaffy, in the Introduction to his transla-
tion of Professor Kuno Fischer's account of Kant's
Kritik. (Confined to the doctrine of Permanent
Possibilities, and the subject of Necessary Truths.)
Mr. Patrick Proctor Alexander : " An Examination of
Mr. John Stuart Mill's Doctrine of Causation in Relation
to Moral Freedom ;" forming the greater part of a volume
entitled " Mill and Carlyle."
Reviews of this work in the Dublin Review for October
1865 (with the signature R. E. G.), and in the Edinburgh
Review for July 1866.
And, earlier than all these, the able and interesting
volume of my friend Professor Masson, entitled " Recent
British Philosophy: a Review, with Criticisms; including
some comments on Mr. Mill's Answer to Sir William
Hamilton."
PREFACE. Vll
All these, in regard to such of the main questions as
they severally discuss, are unqualifiedly hostile ; though
some of the writers are, in a personal point of view,
most courteous, and even over-complimentary ; and the
last eminently friendly as well as flattering.
The following are only partially adverse:
Review of the present work in the North British
Review for September 1865, attributed to Professor
Fraser, and bearing the strongest internal marks of that
origin. This able thinker, though he considers me to
have often misunderstood Sir W. Hamilton, is, on the
substantive philosophic doctrines principally concerned,
a most valuable ally ; to whom I might almost have
left the defence of our common opinions.
Mr. Herbert Spencer : " Mill v. Hamilton The Test
of Truth;" in the Fortnightly Review for July 15,
1865.
Review of the present work in the North American
Review for July 1866.
The only important criticism, in all essentials favour-
able, to which I am able to refer, is that in the West-
minster Review for January 1866, by an illustrious his-
torian and philosopher, who, of all men now living, is
the one by whom I should most wish that any writing
of mine, on a subject in speculative philosophy, should
be approved. There have also been published since the
first edition of the present work, two remarkable books,
which, if they do not give me direct support, effect a
powerful diversion in my favour. One is Mr. Bolton's
" Inquisitio Philosophica ; an Examination of the Prin-
ciples of Kant and Hamilton ;" which, along with much
other valuable matter, contains a vigorous assault upon
my most conspicuous assailant, Mr. Mansel. The other
is Mr. Stirling's "Sir William Hamilton, being the
Philosophy of Perception ; an Analysis :" an able and
Vlli PREFACE.
most svere criticism on Sir ~W. Hamilton's inconsis-
tencies, and on his general character as a philosopher,
taken from a different point of view from mine, and
expressed with far greater asperity than I should myself
think justifiable ; legitimated, no doubt, to the writer's
mind by " a certain vein of disingenuousness" which he
finds in Sir W. Hamilton, but which I have not found,
and shall not believe until I see it proved.
I must have been quite incapable of profiting by cri-
ticism, if I had learnt nothing from assailants so nume-
rous, all of more or less, and some of very considerable,
ability. They have detected not a few inadvertences of
expression, as well as some of thought : and partly by
their help, partly without it, I have discovered others.
They have not shaken any statement or opinion of real
moment; but I am sincerely indebted to them, both for
the errors they have corrected, and for compelling me to
strengthen my defences. The point in which it was to
be expected that they would ofteuest prevail, was in
showing me to have erroneously interpreted Sir W.
Hamilton. The difficulty to any thinker is so great, in
these high regions of speculation, of placing himself com-
pletely at the point of view of a different philosophy,
and even of thoroughly understanding its language, that
it would be very presumptuous in me to imagine that
I had always overcome that difficulty ; and that too with
the warning before me, of the absolute failure of able
and accomplished minds on the other side in philosophy,
to accomplish this in regard to the modes of thinking
with which I am most familiar. I have been surprised,
therefore, to find in how few instances, and those how
little important, the defenders of Sir W. Hamilton have
been able to show that I have misunderstood or incor-
rectly stated his opinions or arguments. I cannot doubt
that more such mistakes remain to be pointed out : and
PREFACE. IX
I regret that the greater part of the volume has not yet,
in its relation to Sir W. Hamilton, had the benefit of a
sufficiently minute scrutiny. Had the unsparing criti-
cism of Mr. Mansel on the first few chapters been con-
tinued to the remainder, he would doubtless have pointed
out real mistakes ; he might perhaps have thrown light
on some of the topics from his own thoughts ; and I
should at least have had to thank him for additional confi-
dence in the statements and opinions which had passed
unharmed through the ordeal of his attacks.
Where criticism or reconsideration has convinced me
that anything in the book was erroneous, or that any
improvement was required in the mode of stating and
setting forth the truth, I have made the requisite
alterations. When the case seemed to require that I
should call the reader's attention to the change, I have
done so ; but I have not made this an invariable rule.
Mere answers to objectors I have generally relegated to
notes. With so many volumes to deal with, I could
not take express notice of every criticism which they
contained. When any of my critics finds that he, or
some of his objections, are not individually referred to,
let him be assured that it is from no disrespect, but
either because I consider them to have been answered
by the reply made to some one else, or because their
best confutation is to remand the objector to the work
itself, or because the edge of the objection has been
turned by some, perhaps quite unapparent, correction of
the text. A slight modification in a sentence, or even
in a phrase, which a person acquainted with the former
editions might read without observing it, and of which,
even if he observed it, he would most likely not perceive
the purpose, has sometimes effaced many pages of hostile
criticism.
X PREFACE.
Of the assailants to whom I replied, two only have
published a rejoinder ; Dean Mansel, in the Contemporary
Eeviewfor September 1867, and Dr.M'Cosh,in the British
and Foreign Evangelical Eeview for April 1868. Neither
of them appears to me to have added much of value to what
he had previously advanced ; and so far as concerns Dean
Mansel, his regretted death has put a final termination
to the controversy between us. I am not, however,
thereby exempted from taking notice, however briefly,
of such points in his rejoinder as appear to require it.
Dr. M'Cosh seems to think it a great triumph of his
assaults upon me, that many of them were not noticed
in my replies to critics. It is a little unreasonable in
Dr. M'Cosh to suppose that in a work, the subject of
which is the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, I was
bound to fight a pitched battle with Dr. M'Cosh on the
whole line. His book was an attack directed against
the whole of my philosophical opinions. I answered
such parts of it as had reference to the present work,
when they seemed to require an answer, and not to have
received it sufficiently in what I had already written.
And I have done the same, in the present edition, with
his rejoinder.
Besides several unpublished criticisms which I owe to
the kindness of correspondence, and which have helped
me to correct or otherwise improve some of the details of
the work; two more attacks have been made upon it
subsequently to the third edition. Professor Veitch, in
the Appendices to his interesting Memoir of Sir W.
Hamilton, has commented sharply on what I have said
respecting Sir W. Hamilton's mode of understanding
the Eelativity of human knowledge, and respecting his
failure to apprehend correctly the general character of
Hume and Leibnitz as philosophers, as well as some par-
ticular passages of Aristotle. On the first subject, that
PREFACE. XI
of Relativity, I find so much difficulty in reducing Pro-
fessor Veitch's statement to distinct propositions, and, so
far as I understand his meaning, it differs so little, and
that little not to its advantage, from what I have already
commented on in answering Mr. Mansel, that I do not
think it necessary to burthen this volume with an express
reply to him. With regard to Hume and Leibnitz I am
content that they who have a competent knowledge of
those philosophers should form their own opinion. As
regards Sir W. Hamilton's interpretation of Aristotle,
Professor Veitch has convicted me of a mistake in treat-
ing a citation made by his editors as if it had been made
by himself, and of an overstatement of one of Sir W.
Hamilton's opinions which I only noticed incidentally.
These errors I have corrected, in their places, and it will
be found that they do not affect anything of importance
in the criticism there made upon Sir W. Hamilton.
Professor Veitch* considers it unfair that I should
press against Sir W. Hamilton anything contained in
his Lectures, these having been hastily written under
pressure from time, and not being the most matured
expression of some of his opinions. But though thus
written, it is admitted that they continued to be
delivered by Sir W. Hamilton as long as he performed
the duties of Professor ; which would not have been the
case if he had no longer considered them as a fair repre-
sentation of his philosophy. A complete representation
I never pretended that they were; a correct representation
I am bound to think them ; for it cannot be believed
that he would have gone on delivering to his pupils
matter which he judged to be inconsistent with the
subsequent developments of his philosophy.
The other thinker who has taken the field against my
psychological opinions is Dr. Ward, who, in the Dublin
* Memoir of Sir William Hamilton, pp. 212, 213.
Xll PREFACE.
Review for October 1871, has made an able attack on
the views I have expressed in this and other writings on
the subject of what is called Necessary Truth. Some of
Dr. Ward's observations are more particularly directed
against a portion of my System of Logic, and the fittest
place for their discussion is in connexion with that
treatise. But the greater part of his article principally
regards the chapter of the present work which relates to
Inseparable Association, and a reply to it will be found
in a note which I have added at the end of that chapter.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
MAI
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ..... . 1
CHAPTER II.
THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 5
CHAPTER III.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, AS HELD
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON 17
CHAPTER IV.
IN WHAT RESPECT SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON REALLY DIFFERS FROM
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE ABSOLUTE 45
CHAPTER V.
WHAT IS REJECTED AS KNOWLEDGE BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON,
BROUGHT BACK UNDER THE NAME OF BELIEF 74
I
CHAPTER VI.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED 82
XIV CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VII.
turn
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED, AS APPLIED BY MR. MANSEL
TO THE LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT Ill
CHAPTER VIII.
OF CONSCIOUSNESS, AS UNDERSTOOD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON . 136
X ' ^
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS 157
CHAPTER X.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S VIEW OF THE DIFFERENT THEORIES
RESPECTING THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD .... 187
CHAPTER XL
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL
WORLD "... 225
CHAPTER XII.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE BELIEF IN MATTER, HOW
FAR APPLICABLE TO MIND 240
APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS ....... 250
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE PRIMARY QUALITIES OF
MATTER . 265
CHAPTER XIV.
HOW SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL DISPOSE OF THE
LAW OF INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION 314
CONTENTS. XV
CHAPTER XV.
FAGl
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S DOCTRINE OF UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL
MODIFICATIONS 341
CHAPTER XVI.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S THEORY OF CAUSATION 359
CHAPTER XVII.
THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS, OR GENERAL NOTIONS 380
CHAPTER XVIII.
OF JUDGMENT 414
CHAPTER XIX.
OF REASONING 438
CHAPTER XX.
ON SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S CONCEPTION OF LOGIC AS A SCIENCE.
IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 446
CHAPTER XXI.
THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF THOUGHT ACCORDING TO SIR WILLIAM
HAMILTON 479
CHAPTER XXII.
OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL
LOGIC 496
CHAPTER XXHI.
OF SOME MINOR PECULIARITIES OF DOCTRINE IN SIR WILLIAM
HAMILTON'S VIEW OF FORMAL LOGIC 521
XVI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MM
OF SOME NATURAL PREJUDICES COUNTENANCED BY SIR WILLIAM
HAMILTON, AND SOME- FALLACIES WHICH HE CONSIDERS IN-
SOLUBLE 539
CHAPTER XXV.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S THEORY OF PLEASURE AND PAIN . . . 553
CHAPTER XXVI.
ON THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 561
CHAPTER XXVII.
SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS ON THE STUDY OF MATHE-
MATICS 591
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CONCLUDING REMARKS . . . 617
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S PHILOSOPHY,
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
AMONG the philosophical writers of the present century
in these islands, no one occupies a higher position than
Sir William Hamilton. He alone, of our metaphysicians
of this and the preceding generation, has acquired, merely
as such, an European celebrity : while, in our own
country, he has not only had power to produce a revival
of interest in a study which had ceased to be popular,
but has made himself, in some sense, the founder of a
school of thought. The school, indeed, is not essentially
new ; for its fundamental doctrines are those of the philo-
sophy which has everywhere been in the ascendant since
the setting in of the reaction against Locke and Hume,
which dates from Reid among ourselves and from Kant
for the rest of Europe. But that general scheme of
philosophy is split into many divisions, and the Hamil-
tonian form of it is distinguished by as marked pecu-
liarities as belong to any other of its acknowledged
varieties. From the later German and French develop-
ments of the common doctrine, it is separated by dif-
ferences great in reality, and still greater in appearance ;
while it stands superior to the earlier Scottish and Eng-
lish forms by the whole difference of level which has
2 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
been gained to philosophy through the powerful nega-
tive criticism of Kant. It thus unites to the prestige of
independent originality, the recommendation of a general
harmony with the prevailing tone of thought. These
advantages, combined with an intellect highly trained
and in many respects highly fitted for the subject, and a
knowledge probably never equalled in extent and accu-
racy of whatever had been previously thought and
written in his department, have caused Sir William
Hamilton to be justly recognised as, in the province
of abstract speculation, one of the important figures of
the age.
The acknowledged position of Sir W. Hamilton at the
head, so far as regards this country, of the school of
philosophy to which he belongs, has principally deter-
mined me to connect with his name and writings the
speculations and criticisms contained in the present
work. The justification of the work itself lies in the
importance of the questions, to the discussion of which
it is a contribution. England is often reproached by
Continental thinkers, with indifference to the higher
philosophy. But England did not always deserve this
reproach, and is already showing, by no doubtful symp-
toms, that she will not deserve it much longer. Her
thinkers are again beginning to see, what they had
only temporarily forgotten, that a true Psychology is
the indispensable scientific basis of Morals, of Politics, of
the science and art of Education ; that the difficulties of
Metaphysics lie at the root of all science ; that those diffi-
culties can only be quieted by being resolved, and that
until they are resolved, positively whenever possible, but
at any rate negatively, we are never assured that any
human knowledge, even physical, stands on solid foun-
dations.
My subject, therefore, is less Sir W. Hamilton, than
the questions which Sir W. Hamilton discussed. It is,
however, impossible to write on those questions in our
own country and in our own time, without incessant
reference, express or tacit, to his treatment of them. On
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. O
all the subjects on which he touched, he is either one of
the most powerful allies of what I deem a sound philo-
sophy, or (more frequently) by far its most formidable
antagonist ; both because he came the latest, and wrote
with a full knowledge of the flaws which had been de-
tected in his predecessors, and because he was one of the
ablest, the most far-sighted, and the most candid.
Whenever any opinion which he deliberately expressed,
is contended against, his form of the opinion, and his
arguments for it, are those which especially require to be
faced and carefully appreciated : and it being thus im-
possible that any fit discussion of his topics should not
involve an estimate of his doctrines, it seems worth while
that the estimate should be rendered as complete as
practicable, by being extended to all the subjects on
which he has made, or on which he is believed to have
made, any important contribution to thought.
In thus attempting to anticipate, as far as is yet possible,
the judgment of posterity on Sir W. Hamilton's labours,
I sincerely lament that on the many points on which I
am at issue with him, I have the unfair advantage pos-
sessed by one whose opponent is no longer in a condition
to reply. Personally I might have had small cause to
congratulate myself on the reply which I might have
received, for though a strictly honourable, he was a
most unsparing controversialist, and whoever assailed
even the most unimportant of his opinions, might look
for hard blows in return. But it would have been worth
far more, even to myself, than any polemical success, to
have known with certainty in what manner he would
have met the objections raised in the present volume. T
feel keenly, with Plato, how much more is to be learnt
by discussing with a man, who can question and answer,
than with a book, which cannot. But it was not possible
to take a general review of Sir W. Hamilton's doctrines
while they were only known to the world in the frag-
mentary state in which they were published during his
life. His Lectures, the fullest and the only consecutive
exposition (as far as it goes) of his philosophy, are a
B 2
4 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
posthumous publication; while the latest and most
matured expression of many of his opinions, the Disser-
tations on Eeid, left off, scarcely half finished, in the
middle of a sentence ; and so long as he lived, his readers
were still hoping for the remainder. The Lectures, it is
true, have added less than might have been expected to
the knowledge we already possessed of the author's doc-
trines ; but it is something to know that we have now
all that is to be had ; and though we should have been
glad to have his opinions on more subjects, we could
scarcely have known more thoroughly than we are now
at last enabled to do, what his thoughts were on the
points to which he attached the greatest importance,
and which are most identified with his name and fame.
CHAPTEE II.
THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.
THE doctrine which is thought to belong in the most
especial manner to Sir W. Hamilton, and which was the
ground of his opposition to the transcendentalism of the
later French and German metaphysicians, is that which
he and others have called the Eelativity of Human
Knowledge. It is the subject of the most generally
known, and most impressive, of all his writings, the one
which first revealed to the English metaphysical reader
that a new power had arisen in philosophy ; and, together
with its developments, it composes the " Philosophy of
the Conditioned," which he opposed to the German and
French philosophies of the Absolute, and which is re-
garded by most of his admirers as the greatest of his
titles to a permanent place in the history of metaphy-
sical thought.
But the " relativity of human knowledge," like most
other phrases into which the words relative or relation
enter, is vague, and admits of a great variety of meanings.
In one of its senses, it stands for a proposition respecting
the nature and limits of our knowledge, in my judgment
true, fundamental, and lull of important consequences
in philosophy. From this amplitude of meaning its
significance shades down through a number of gradations,
successively more thin and unsubstantial, till it fades
into a truism leading to no consequences, and hardly
worth enunciating in words. When, therefore, a philo-
sopher lays great stress upon the relativity of our know-
ledge, it is necessary to cross-examine his writings, and
compel them to disclose in which of its many degrees of
meaning he understands the phrase.
6 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.
There is one of its acceptations, which, for the pur-
pose now in view, may be put aside, though in itself
defensible, and though, when thus employed, it expresses
a real and important law of our mental nature. This is,
that we only know anything, by knowing it as distin-
guished from something else ; that all consciousness is
of difference ; that two objects are the smallest number
required to constitute consciousness ; that a thing is only
seen to be what it is, by contrast with what it is not. The
employment of the proposition, that all human knowledge
is relative, to express this meaning, is sanctioned by high
authorities,* and I have no fault to find with that use
of the phrase. But we are not concerned with it in
the present case ; for it is not in this sense, that the
expression is ordinarily or intentionally used by Sir W.
Hamilton ; though he fully recognises the truth which,
when thus used, it serves to express. In general, when
he says that all our knowledge is relative, the relation
he has in view is not between the thing known and
other objects compared with it, but between the thing
known and the mind knowing.
All language recognises a distinction between myself
the Ego and a world, either material, or spiritual, or both,
external to me, but of which I can, in some mode and
measure, take cognizance. The most fundamental ques-
tions in philosophy are those which seek to determine
what we are able to know of these external objects, and
by what evidence we know it.
In examining the different opinions which are or may
be entertained on this subject, it will simplify the ex-
position very much, if we at first limit ourselves to the
case of physical, or what are commonly called material
objects. These objects are of course known to us through
the senses. By those channels and no otherwise do we
learn whatever we do learn concerning them. Without
the senses we should not know nor suspect that such things
existed. We know no more of what they are, than the
* In particular by Mr. Bain, who habitually uses the phrase " relativity
of knowledge" in this sense.
THE RELATIVITY OP HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 7
senses tell us, nor does nature afford us any means of
knowing more. Thus much, in the obvious meaning of
the terms, is denied by no one, though there are thinkers
who prefer to express the meaning in other language.
There are, however, conflicting opinions as to wliat it
is that the senses tell us concerning objects. About one
part of the information they give, there is no dispute.
They tell us our sensations. The objects excite, or
awaken in us, certain states of feeling. A part, at least,
of what we know of the objects, is the feelings to which
they give rise. What we term the properties of an
object, are the powers it exerts of producing sensations
in our consciousness. Take any familiar object, such as-
an orange. It is yellow ; that is, it affects us, through
our sense of sight, with a particular sensation of colour.
It is soft ; in other words it produces a sensation, through
our muscular feelings, of resistance overcome by a slight
effort. It is sweet; for it causes a peculiar kind of
pleasurable sensation through our organ of taste. It is-
of a globular figure, somewhat flattened at the ends : we
affirm this on account of sensations that it causes in us,
respecting which it is still in dispute among psycholo-
gists whether they originally came to us solely through
touch and the muscles, or also through the organ of
sight. When it is cut open, we discover a certain ar-
rangement of parts, distinguishable as being, in certain
respects, unlike one another ; but of their vmlikeness we
have no measure or proof except that they give us dif-
ferent sensations. The rind, the pulp, the juice, differ
from one another in colour, in taste, in small, in degree
of consistency (that is, of resistance to pressure) all of
which are differences in our feelings. The parts are,
moreover, outside one another, occupying different por-
tions of space : and even this distinction, it is maintained
(though the doctrine is vehemently protested against by
some) may be resolved into a difference in our sensations.
When thus analysed, it is affirmed that all the attributes
which we ascribe to objects, consist in their having the
power of exciting one or another variety of sensation in
3 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.
our rnind ; that to us the properties of an object have
this and no other meaning ; that an object is to us no-
thing else than that which affects our senses in a certain
manner ; that we are incapable of attaching to the word
object, any other meaning ; that even an imaginary ob-
ject is but a conception, such as we are able to form, of
something which would affect our senses in some new
way; so that our knowledge of objects, and even our
fancies about objects, consist of nothing but the sensa-
tions which they excite, or which we imagine them ex-
. citing in ourselves.
This is the doctrine of the Eelativity of Knowledge
to the knowing mind, in the simplest, purest, arid, as I
think, the most proper acceptation of the words. There
are, however, two forms of this doctrine, which differ
materially from one another.
According to one of the forms, the sensations which,
in common parlance, we are said to receive from objects,
are not only all that we can possibly know of the objects,
but are all that we have any ground for believing to
exist. What we term an object is but a complex con-
ception made up by the laws of association, out of the
ideas of various sensations which we are accustomed to
receive simultaneously. There is nothing real in the
process but these sensations. They do not, indeed, ac-
company or succeed one another at random ; they are
held together by a law, that is, they occur in fixed groups,
and a fixed order of succession : but we have no evidence
of anything which, not being itself a sensation, is a sub-
stratum or hidden cause of sensations. The idea of such
a substratum is a purely mental creation, to which we
have no reason to think that there is any corresponding
reality exterior to our minds. Those who hold this
opinion are said to doubt or deny the existence of matter.
They are sometimes called by the name Idealists, some-
times by that of Sceptics, according to the other opinions
which they hold. They include the followers of Berkeley
and those of Hume. Among recent thinkers, the acute
and accomplished Professor Ferrier, though by a circuitous
THE RELATIVITY OP HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 9
path, and expressing himself in a very different phrase-
ology, seems to have arrived at essentially the same
point of view. These philosophers maintain the Rela-
tivity of our knowledge in the most extreme form in
which the doctrine can be understood, since they con-
tend, not merely that all we can possibly know of any-
thing is the manner in which it affects the human
faculties, but that there is nothing else to be known ;
that affections of human or of some other minds are all
that we can know to exist.
This, however, is far from being the shape in which
the doctrine of the Relativity of our knowledge is usu-
ally held. To most of those who hold it, the difference
between the Ego and the Non-Ego is not one of lan-
guage only, nor a formal distinction between two aspects
of the same reality, but denotes two realities, each
having a separate existence, and neither dependent on
the other. In the phraseology borrowed from the School-
men by the German Transcendentalists, they regard the
.Noumenon as in itself a different thing from the Phae- j
nomenon, and equally real ; many of them would say, \
much more real, being the permanent Reality, of which
the other is but the passing manifestation. They be-
lieve that there is a real universe of " Things in Them-
selves/' and that whenever there is an impression on
our senses, there is a " Thing in itself," which is behind
the phaenomenon, and is the cause of it. But as to
what this Thing is "in itself," we, having no organs
except our senses for communicating with it, can only
know what our senses tell us ; and as they tell us nothing
but the impression which the thiug makes upon us, we
do not know what it is in itself at all. We suppose (at
least these philosophers suppose) that it must be some-
thing " in itself," but all that we know it to be is merely
relative to us, consisting in the power of affecting us in
certain ways, or, as it is technically called, of producing
Phenomena. External things exist, and have an in-
most nature, but their inmost nature is inaccessible to
our faculties. We know it not, and can assert nothing
10 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.
of it with a meaning, Of the ultimate Realities, as
such, we know the existence, and nothing more. But
the impressions which these Realities make on us i;he
sensations they excite, the similitudes, groupings, and
successions of those sensations, or, to sum up all this
in a common though improper expression, the represen-
tations generated in our minds by the action of the
Things themselves these we may know, and these are
all that we can know respecting them. In some future
state of existence it is conceivable that we may know
more, and more may be known by intelligences superior
to us. Yet even this can only be true in the same sense
in which a person with the use of his eyes knows more
than is known to one born blind, or in which we should
know more than we do if we were endowed with two or
three additional senses. We should have more sensa-
tions ; phamornena would exist to us of which we have
at present no conception ; and we might know better
than we now do, many of those which are within our
present experience; for if the new impressions were
linked with the old, as the old are with one anoiher, by
uniformities of succession and coexistence, we should
now have new marks indicating to us known phseno-
mena in cases in which we should otherwise have been
unaware of them. But all this additional knowledge
would be, like that which we now possess, merely phae-
nomenal. We should not, any more than at present,
know things as they are in themselves, but merely an
increased number of relations between them and us.
And in the only meaning which we are able to attach
to the term, a^L^^ii^g^ by however exalted an In-
telligence, can only be relative to the knowing Mind.
]i[ Things have an inmost nature, apart not only troni
the impressions which they produce, but from ail those
which they are fitted to produce, on any sentient being,
this inmost nature is unknowable, inscrutable, and in-
conceivable, not to us merely, but to every other crea-
ture. To say that even the Creator could know it,, is
to use language which to us has no meaning, because
THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 11
we have no faculties by which to apprehend that there \
is any such thing for him to know.
It is in this form that the doctrine of the Eelativity
of Knowledge is held by the greater number of those
who profess to hold it, attaching any definite idea to the
term. These again are divided into several distinct
schools of thinkers, by some of whom the doctrine is
held with a modification of considerable importance.
Agreeing in the opinion that what we know of Nou-
mena, or Things in themselves, is but their bare exis-
tence, all our other knowledge of Things being but a
knowledge of something in ourselves which derives its
origin from them ; there is a class of thinkers who hold
that our mere sensations, and an outward cause which \
produces them, do not compose the whole of this relative v/ A/sh
knowledge. The Attributes which we ascribe to out- * //
ward things, or such at least as are inseparable from
them in thought, contain, it is affirmed, other elements,
over and above sensations plus an unknowable cause.
TTiese additional elements are still only relative, for they
are not in the objects themselves, nor have we evidence
of anything in the objects that answers to them. They
are added by the mind itself, and belong, not to the '
Things, but to our perceptions and conceptions of them. <
Such properties as the objects can be conceived divested
of, suck as sweetness or sourness, hardness or softness,
hotness or coldness, whiteness, redness, or blackness
these, it is sometimes admitted, exist in our sensations
only. But the attributes of filling space, and occupying
a portion of time, are not properties of our sensations
in their crude state, neither, again, are they properties
of the objects, nor is there in the objects any prototype
of them. They result from the nature and structure of
the Mind itself : which is so constituted that it cannot
take any impressions from objects except in those par-
ticular modes. We see a thing in a place, not because
the Noumenon, the Thing in itself, is in any place, but
because it is the law of our perceptive faculty that we
must see as in some place, whatever we see at all. Place
12 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.
is not a property of the Thing, but a mode in which the
mind is compelled to represent it. Time and Space are
only modes of our perceptions, not modes of existence,
and higher Intelligences are possibly not bound by
them. Things, in themselves, are neither in time nor
in space, though we cannot represent them to ourselves
except under that twofold condition. Again, when we
predicate of a thing that it is one or many, a whole or a
part of a whole, a Substance possessing Accidents, or an
Accident inhering in a Substance when we think of it
as producing Effects, or as produced by a Cause, (I omit
other attributes not necessary to be here enumerated,)
we are ascribing to it properties which do not exist in
the Thing itself, but with which it is clothed by the
laws of our conceptive faculty properties not of the
Things, but of our mode of conceiving them. We are
compelled by our nature to construe things to ourselves
under these forms, but they are not forms of the Things.
The attributes exist only in relation to us, and as in-
herent laws of the human faculties ; but differ from
Succession and Duration in being laws of our intel-
lectual, not our sensitive faculty; technically termed
Categories of the Understanding. This is the doctrine
of the .Relativity of our knowledge as held by Kant,
who has been followed in it by many subsequent
thinkers, German, English, and French.
By the side of this there is another philosophy, older
in date, which, though temporarily eclipsed and often
.^contemptuously treated by it, is, according to present
appearances, likely to survive it. Taking the same view
with Kant of the unknowableness ot Things in them-
selves, and also agreeing with him that we mentally
invest the objects of our perceptions with attributes
which do not all point, like whiteness and sweetness, to
specific sensations, but are in some cases constructed by
the mind's own laws ; this philosophy, however, does
not think it necessary to ascribe to the mind certain
innate forms, in which the objects are (as it were)
moulded into these appearances, but holds that Place,
Extension, Substance, Uause, and the rest, are conceptions
RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 13
put together out of ideas of sensation by the known
^laws of association. This, the doctrine of Hartley, of
James Mill, of Professor Bain, and other eminent
thinkers, and which is compatible with either the
acceptance or the rejection of the Berkeleian theory, is
the extreme form of one mode of the doctrine of Relati-
vity, as Kant's is of another. Both schemes accept the
doctrine in its widest sense the entire inaccessibility
to our faculties of any other knowledge of Things than
that of the impressions which they produce in our mental
consciousness.
Between these there are many intermediate systems,
according as different thinkers have assigned more or
less to the original furniture of the mind on the one
hand, or to the associations generated by experience on
the other. Brown, for example, regards our notion of
Space or Extension as a product of association, while
many of our intellectual ideas are regarded by him as
ultimate and undecomposable facts. But he accepts, in
its full extent, the doctrine of the Relativity of our
knowledge, being of opinion that though we are assured
of the objective existence of a world external to the mind,
our knowledge of that world is absolutely limited to the
modes in which we are affected by it. The same
doctrine is very impressively taught by one of the
acutest metaphysicians of recent times, Mr. Herbert
Spencer, who, in his " First Principles," insists with
equal force upon the certainty of the existence of Things
in Themselves, and upon their absolute and eternal
relegation to the region of the Unknowable.* This is
also, apparently, the doctrine of Auguste Comte : though
while maintaining with great emphasis the unknow-
ableness of Noumena by our faculties, his aversion to
metaphysics prevented him from giving any definite
opinion as to their real existence, which, however, his
language always by implication assumes.
It is obvious that what has been said respecting the '
unknowableness of Things " in themselves," forms no
* See, however, below, a note near the end of chap. ix.
14 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.
obstacle to our ascribing attributes or properties to them,
provided these are always conceived as relative to us.
If a thing produces effects of which our sight, hearing,
or touch can take cognizance, it follows, and indeed is
but the same statement in other words, that the thing
hasj^ftfr to produce those effects. These variousjpowers
are its properties, and of such, an indefinite multitude is
open to our knowledge. But this knowledge is merely
phenomenal. The object is known to us only in one
special relation, namely, as that which produces, or is capa-
ble of producing, certain impressions on our senses ; and
all that we really know is these impressions. This nega-
tive meaning is all that should be understood by the
assertion, that we cannot know the Thing in itself; that
we cannot know its inmost nature or essence. The in :
most nature or essence of a Thing is apt to be regarded
as something unknown, which, if we knew it, would ex-
. plain and account for all the phenomena which the thing
' exhibits to us. But this unknown something is a sup-
-' 'position without evidence. We have no ground for
supposing that there is anything which if known to us
would afford to our intellect this satisfaction ; would
sum up, as it were, the knowable attributes of the object
in a single sentence. Moreover, if there were such a
central property, it would not answer to the idea of an
" inmost nature ;" for if knowable by any intelligence, it
must, like other properties, be relative to the intelligence
which knows it, that is, it must solely consist in pro-
ducing in that intelligence some specifically definite
state of consciousness ; for this is the only idea we have
of knowing; the only sense in which the verb "to
know" means anything.
It would, no doubt, be absurd to assume that our
words exhaust the possibilities of Being. There may be
innumerable modes of it which are inaccessible to our
faculties, and which consequently we are unable to name.
But we ought not to speak of these modes of Being by
any of the names we possess. These are all inapplicable,
because they all stand for known modes of Being. We
might invent new names for such unknown modes ; but
THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 15
the new names would have no more meaning than the
x, y, z, of Algebra. The only name we can give them
which really expresses an attribute, is the word Unknow-
able.
The doctrine of the Relativity of our knowledge, in
the sense which has now been explained, is one of great
weight and significance, which impresses a character on
the whole mode of philosophical thinking of whoever
receives it, and is the key-stone of one of the only two
possible systems of Metaphysics and Psychology. But
the doctrine is capable of being, and is, understood in at
least two other senses. In one of them, instead of a
definite and important tenet, it means something quite
insignificant, which no one ever did or could call in
question. Suppose a philosopher to maintain that cer-
tain properties of objects are in the Thing, and not in
our senses ; in the thing itself, not as whiteness may be
said to be in the thing (namely, that there is in the
thing a power whereby it produces in us the sensation
of white), but in quite another manner ; and are known
to us nol; indirectly, as the inferred causes of our sensa-
tions, but by direct perception of them in the. outward
object. Suppose the same philosopher nevertheless to
affirm strenuously that all our knowledge is merely
phaenomenal, and relative to ourselves; that we do not
and cannot know anything of outward objects, except
relatively to our own faculties. I think our first feeling
respecting a thinker who professed both these doctrines,
would be to wonder what he could possibly mean by the
latter of them. It would seem that he must mean one
of two trivialities ; either that we can only know what
we have the power of knowing, or else that all our know-
ledge is relative to us inasmuch as it is we that know it.
There is another mode of understanding the doctrine
of Relativity, intermediate between these insignificant
truisms and the substantial doctrine previously ex-
pounded. The position taken may be, that perception
of Things as they are in themselves is not entirely
denied to us, but is so mixed and confounded with
impressions derived from their action on us, as to
16 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.
give a relative character to the whole aggregate. Our
absolute knowledge may be vitiated and disguised by the
presence, of a relative element. Our faculty (it may be
said) of perceiving tilings as they are in themselves,
though real, has its own laws, its own conditions, and
necessary mode of operation : our cognitions subse-
quently depend, not solely on the nature of the things
to be known, but also on that of the knowing faculty,
as our sight depends not solely upon the object seen, but
upon that together with the structure of the eye. If the
eye were not achromatic, we should see all visible objects
with colours derived from the organ, as well as with
those truly emanating from the object. Supposing, there-
fore, that Things in themselves are the natural and
proper object of our knowing faculty, and that this
faculty carries to the mind a report of what is in the
Thing itself, apart from its effects on us, there would
still be a portion of uncertainty in these reports, inasmuch
as we could not be sure that the eye of our mind is
achromatic, and that the message it brings from the
Noumenon does not arrive tinged and falsified, in an
unknown degree, through an influence arising from the
necessary conditions of the mind's action. We may, in
short, be looking at Things in themselves, but through
imperfect glasses : what we see may be the very Thing,
but the colours and forms which the glass conveys to us
may be partly an optical illusion. This is a possible
opinion : and one who, holding this opinion, should speak
of the Eelativity of our knowledge, would not use the
term wholly without meaning. But he could not, con-
sistently, assert that all our knowledge is relative ; since
his opinion would be that we have a capacity of Absolute
knowledge, but that we are liable to mistake relative
knowledge for it.
In which, if in any, of these various meanings, was
the doctrine of Relativity held by Sir W. Hamilton ?
To this question, a more puzzling one than might have
been expected, we shall endeavour in the succeeding
chapter to find an answer.
17
CHAPTER III.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE,
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON.
IT is hardly possible to affirm more strongly or more ex-
plicity than Sir W. Hamilton has done, that Things in
themselves are to us altogether unknowable, and that all
we can know of anything is its relation to us, composed
of, and limited to, the Phsenomena which it exhibits to
our organs. Let me cite a passage from one of the
Appendices to the " Discussions/ 3 *
" Our whole knowledge of kind and of matter is re-
" lative, conditioned relatively conditioned. Of things
" absolutely or in themselves, be they external, be they
" internal, we know nothing, or know them only as in-
" cognisable; and become aware of their incomprehensible
" existence, only as this is indirectly and accidentally re-
" vealed to us, through certain qualities related to our
" faculties of knowledge, and which qualities, again, we
" cannot think as unconditioned, irrelative, existent in
" and of themselves. All that we know is therefore
" phenomenal, phenomenal of the unknown ....
" Nor is this denied; for it has been commonly confessed,
" that, as substances, we know not what is Matter, and
" are ignorant of what is Mind."
This passage might be matched by many others,
equally emphatic, and in appearance equaiiy decisive ;
several of which I shall have occasion to quote. Yet in
the sense which the author's phrases seem to convey-
in the only important meaning capable of being attached
to them the doctrine they assert was certainly not held
* " Discussions on Philosophy," p. 643.
C
18 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
by Sir W. Hamilton. He by no means admits that we
know nothing of objects except their existence, and the
impressions produced by them upon the human mind.
He affirms this in regard to what have been called by
metaphysicians the Secondary Qualities of Matter, but
denies it of the Primary.
On this point his declarations are very explicit. One
of the most elaborate of his Dissertations on Reid is
devoted to expounding the distinction. The Disserta-
tion begins thus :*
" The developed doctrine of Real Presentationism, the
" basis of Natural Realism" (the doctrine of the author
himself) " asserts the consciousness or immediate per-
" ception of certain essential attributes of Matter ob-
jectively existing; while it admits that other properties
" of body are unknown in themselves, and only inferred
" as causes to account for certain subjective affections of
" which we are cognizant in ourselves. This discrimina-
" tion, which to other systems is contingent, superficial,
" extraneous, but to Natural Realism necessary, radical,
" intrinsic, coincides with what since the time of Locke
" has been generally known as the distinction of the
" Qualities of Matter or Body, using these terms as con-
" vertible, into Primary and Secondary."
Further on,f he states, in additional development of
so-called Natural Realism, " that we have not merely a
"' notion, a conception, an imagination, a subjective re-
" presentation of Extension, for example called up or
" suggested in some incomprehensible manner to the
" mind, on occasion of an extended object being pre-
" sented to the sense ; but that in the perception of such
" an object we really have, as by nature we believe we
" have, an immediate knowledge of that external object
" as extended."
" If J we are not percipient of any extended reality,
" we are not percipient of body as existing ; for body
* Dissertations appended to Sir W. Hamilton's Edition of Reid's
Works, p. 825.
f Dissertations, p. 842. J Ibid.
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 19
" exists, and can only be known immediately, and in
(< itself, as extended. The material world, on this sup-
" position, sinks into something unknown and proble-
" matical ; and its existence, if not denied, can, at least, be
" only precariously affirmed, as the occult cause, or in- o* J!k0 '
" comprehensible occasion, of certain subjective affections
" we experience in the form either of a sensation of the
" secondary quality or of a perception of the primary."
Not only, in Sir W. Hamilton's opinion, do we know, ^vA" 3
by direct consciousness or perception, certain properties vy/*-
of Things as they exist in the Things themselves, but ^ ,
we may also know those properties as in the Things, by
demonstration a priori. " The notion* of body being
" given, every primary quality is to be evolved out of
" that notion, as necessarily involved in it, independently
" altogether of any experience of sense." " Thef Pri-
" mary Qualities may be deduced a priori, the bare notion
" of matter being given ; they being, in fact, only evo-
" lutions of the conditions which that notion necessarily
" implies." He goes so far as to say, that our belief of
the Primary Qualities is, not merely necessary as in-
volved in a fact of which we have a direct perception,
but necessary in itself, by our mental constitution. He]
speaks j of " that absolute or insuperable resistance which f
" we are compelled, independently of experience, to think
" that every part of matter would oppose to any attempt
" to deprive it of its space, by compressing it into an in- 1
" extended."
The following is still more specific. " The Primary"
Qualities " are apprehended as they are in bodies ; the
Secondary, as they are in us: the Secundo-primary"
(a third class created by himself, comprising the me-
chanical as distinguished from the geometrical properties
of Body) " as they are in bodies and as they are in us. . . .
" We know the Primary qualities immediately as objects
" of perception ; the Secundo-primary both immediately
" as objects of perception and mediately as causes of sen-
* Dissertations, p. 844.
f Ibid. p. 846. I Ibid. p. 848. Ibid. pp. 857, 853.
c 2
20 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
" sation ; the Secondary only mediately as causes of sen-
" sation. In other words : The Primary are known im-
" mediately in themselves ; the Secundo-primary, both
" immediately in themselves and mediately in their effects
" on us ; the Secondary, only mediately in their effects on
" us We are conscious, as objects, in the
" Primary Qualities, of the modes of a not-self; in the
" Secondary, of the modes of self; in the Secundo-pri-
" mary, of the modes of self and of a not-self at once."
There is nothing wonderful in Sir W. Hamilton's
entertaining these opinions ; they are held by perhaps a
majority of metaphysicians. But it is surprising that,
entertaining them, he should have believed himself, and
been believed by others, to maintain the Relativity of all
our knowledge. What he deems to be relative, in any
sense of the term that is not insignificant, is only our
knowledge of the Secondary Qualities of objects. Exten-
sion and the other Primary Qualities he positively asserts
that we have an immediate intuition of, " as they are in
bodies" "as modes of a not-self ;" in express contra-
distinction to being known merely as causes of certain
impressions on our senses or on our minds. As there
cannot have been, in his own thoughts, a flat contradic-
tion between what he would have admitted to be the two
cardinal doctrines of his philosophy, the only question
that can arise is, which of the two is to be taken in a
non-natural sense. Is it the doctrine that we know
certain properties as they are in the Things ? Were we
to judge from a foot-note to the same Dissertation, we
might suppose so. He there observes* " In saying
" that a thing is known in itself, I do not mean that this
" object is known in its absolute existence, that is, out
" of relation to us. This is impossible : for our know-
" ledge is only of the relative. To know a thing in itself
" or immediately, is an expression I use merely in con-
" trast to the knowledge of a thing in a representation,
" or mediately :" in other words, he merely means that
we perceive objects directly, and not through the species
* P. 866.
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 21
sensibiles of Lucretius, the Ideas of Locke, or the
Mental Modifications of Brown. Let us suppose this
granted, and that the knowledge we have of objects is
gained by direct perception. Still, the question has to
be answered whether the knowledge so acquired is of
the objects as they are in themselves, or only as they
are relatively to us. Now what, according to Sir W. *
Hamilton, is this knowledge ? Is it a knowledge of the ^-T^
Thing, merely in its effects on us, or is it a knowledge of ,.]
' somewhat in the Thing, ulterior to any effect on us ?
He asserts in the plainest terms that it is the latter. t ,r
Then it is not a knowledge wholly relative to us. If
what we perceive in the Thing is something of which we QJ#>*
are only aware as existing, and as causing impressions on \f*
us, our knowledge of the Thing is only relative. But yP-
if what we perceive and cognise is not merely a cause of
our subjective impressions, but a Thing possessing, in itso^*^,.
own nature and essence, a long listof properties, Extension, ^
Impenetrability, Number, Magnitude, Figure, Mobility,^
Position, all perceived as " essential attributes " of the %
Thing as " objectively existing" all as " Modes of a
Not-Self" and by no means as an occult cause or causes
of any Modes of Self (and that such is the case Sir W.
Hamilton asserts in every form of language, leaving no
stone unturned to make us apprehend tlie breadth of the
distinction) then I am willing to believe that in affirming
this knowledge to be entirely relative to Self, such a
thinker as Sir W. Hamilton had a meaning, but I have
no small difficulty in discovering what it is.
The place where we should expect to find this difficulty
cleared up, is the formal exposition of the Relativity of
Human Knowledge, in the first volume of the Lectures.
He declares his intention* of " now stating and ex-
" plaining the great axiom that all human knowledge,
" consequently that all human philosophy, is only of the
" relative or phenomenal. In this proposition, the term
" relative is opposed to the term absolute ; and therefore,
" in saying that we know only the relative, I virtually
* Lectures, i. 136-8.
22 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
" assert that we know nothing absolute, nothing exist -
" ing absolutely, that is, in and for itself, and without rela-
" tion to us and our faculties. I shall illustrate this by
" its application. Our knowledge is either of matter or
" of mind. Now, what is matter? What do we know
" of matter ? Matter, or body, is to us the name either
" of something known, or of something unknown. In so
" far as matter is a name for something known, it means
" that which appears to us under the forms of extension,
" solidity, divisibility, figure, motion, roughness, smooth-
" ness, colour, heat, cold, &c. ; in short, it is a common
" name for a certain series, or aggregate, or complement
" of appearances or phsenomena manifested in coexistence.
" But as these phenomena appear only in conjunction,
" we are compelled by the constitution of our nature to
" think them conjoined in and by something ; and as they
" are phsenomena, we cannot think them the phsenomena
" of nothing, but must regard them as the properties or
" qualities of something that is extended, solid, figured,
" &c. But this something, absolutely and in itself,
" i.e. considered apart from its phsenomena is to us as
" zero. It is only in its qualities, only in its effects, in
" its relative or phaenomenal existence, that it is cogniz-
! " able or conceivable ; and it is only by a law of thought
" which compels us to think something absolute and un-
" known, as the basis or condition of the relative and
" known, that this something obtains a kind of incom-
* O
" prehensible reality to us. Now, that which manifests
" its qualities in other words, that in which the appear-
" ing causes inhere, that to which they belong, is called
" their subject, or substance, or substratum. To this sub-
" ject of the phsenomena of extension, solidity, &c., the
" term matter or material substance is commonly given ;
" and therefore, as contradistinguished from these quali-
" ties, it is the name of something unknown and incon-
" ceivable.
" The same is true in regard to the term mind. In so
" far as mind is the common name for the states of
" knowing, willing, feeling, desiring, &c., of which I am
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 23
" conscious, it is only the name for a certain series of
" connected phsenomena or qualities, and, consequently,
" expresses only what is known. But in so far as it
" denotes that subject or substance in which the phseno-
" mena of knowing, willing, &c., inhere -something be-
" hind or under these phenomena it expresses what,
" in itself or in its absolute existence, is unknown.
" Thus, mind and matter, as known or knowable, are
" only two different series of phsenomena or qualities ;
" mind and matter, as unknown and unknowable, are
" the two substances, in which these two different series
" of phsenomena or qualities are supposed to inhere.
" The existence of an unknown substance is only an in-
" ference we are compelled to make from the existence
" of known phsenomena ; and the distinction of two sub-
" stances is only inferred from the seeming incompati-
" bility of the two series of phsenomena to coinhere in
"oneT~
" Our whole knowledge of mind and matter is thus,
" as we have said, only relative ; of existence, absolutely
" and in itself, we know nothing : and we may say of
" man what Virgil said of tineas, contemplating in the
" prophetic sculpture of his shield the future glories of
" Koine
" Rerumque ignarus, imagine gaudet,"
Here is an exposition of the nature and limits of our
knowledge, which would have satisfied Hartley, Brown,
and even Comte. It cannot be more explicitly laid
down, that Matter, as known to us, is but the incom-
prehensible and incognisable basis or substratum of a
bundle of sensible qualities, appearances, phsenomena;
that we know it "only in its effects;" that its very
existence is " only an inference we are compelled to
make " from those sensible appearances. On the subject
of Mind, again, could it have been more explicitly
affirmed, that all we know of Mind is its successive
states " of knowing, willing, feeling, desiring, &c.," and
that Mind, considered as " something behind or under
these phaenomena," is to us unknowable ?
24 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
Subsequently he says, that not only all the know-
ledge we have of anything, but all which we could have
if we were a thousandfold better endowed than we are,
would still be only knowledge of the mode in which the
thing would affect us. Had we as many senses (the
illustration is his own) as the inhabitants of Sirius, in
the " Micromegas" of Voltaire ; were there, as there
may well be, a thousand modes of real existence as
definitely distinguished from one another as are tnose
which manifest themselves to our present senses, and
" had we,* for each of these thousand modes, a separate
" organ competent to make it known to us, still would
" our whole knowledge be, as it is at present, only of
" the relative. Of existence, absolutely and in itself, we
" should then be as ignorant as we are now. We should
" still apprehend existence only in certain special modes
" only in certain relations to our faculties of knowledge."
Nothing can be truer or more clearly stated than all
this : but the clearer it is, the more irreconcileable does
. .^ it appear with our author's doctrine of the direct cog-
v . ' noscibility of the Primary Qualities. If it be true that
Extension, Figure, and the other qualities enumerated,
are known " immediately in themselves," and not, like
Secondary qualities, " in their eifects on us ;" if the
former are " apprehended as they are in bodies," and not,
like the Secondary, " as they are in us ;" if it is these
last exclusively that are " unknown in themselves, and
only " inferred as causes to account for certain subjective
" affections in ourselves :" while, of the former, we are
immediately conscious as ''attributes of matter objec-
tively existing;" and if it is not to be endured that
matter should "sink into something unknown and
problematical," whose existence "can be only precari-
" ouslv affirmed as the occult cause or incomprehensible
" occasion of certain subjective affections we experience
" in the form either of a sensation of the secondary qua-
" lity or of a perception of the primary" (being pre-
cisely what Sir YV. Hamilton, in the preceding quota-
* Lectures, i. 153.
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 25
tions, appeared to say that it is) ; if these things be so,
our faculties, as far as the Primary Qualities are con-
cerned, do cognise and know Matter as it is in itself,
and not merely as an unknowable and incomprehensible
substratum ; they do cognise and know it as it exists
absolutely, and not merely in relation to us ; it is known
to us directly, and not as a mere " inference " from
Phenomena.
Will it be said that the attributes of extension, figure,
number, magnitude, and the rest, though known as in
the Things themselves, are yet known only relatively
to us, because it is by our faculties that we know them,
and because appropriate faculties are the necessary con-
dition of knowledge? If so, the "great axiom" of
Relativity is reduced to this, that we can know things
as they are m themselves, but can know no more of them
than our faculties are competent to inform us of. If
such be the meaning of Relativity, our author might
well maintain* that it is a truth "harmoniously re-
echoed by every philosopher of every school ;" nor need
he have added " with the exception of a few late Ab-
solute theorizers in Germany;" for certainly neither
Schelling nor Hegel claims for us any other knowledge
than such as our faculties are, in their opinion, compe-
tent to give.
is it possible, that by knowledge of qualities " as
they are in Bodies," no more was meant than knowing
that the Body must have qualities whereby it produces
the aifection of which we are conscious in ourselves ?
But this is the very knowledge which our author pre-
dicates of Secondary Qualities, as contradistinguished
from the Primary. Secondary he frankly acknowledges
to be occult qualities : we really, in his opinion, have no
knowledge, and no conception, what that is in an object,
by virtue of which it has its specific smell or taste.
But Primary qualities, according to him, we know all
about : there is nothing occult or mysterious to us in
these; we perceive and conceive them as they are in
* Discussions, Appendix, p. 644.
26 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
themselves, and as they are in the body they belong to.
They are manifested to us, not, like the Secondary
qualities, only in their effects, in the sensations they
excite in us, but in their own nature and essence.
Perhaps it may be surmised, that in calling knowledge
of this sort by the epithet Relative, Sir W. Hamilton
meant that though we know those qualities as they are
in themselves, we only discover them through their re-
lation to certain effects in us ; that in order that there
may be Perception there must also be Sensation ; and
we thus know the Primary Qualities, in their effects on
us and also in themselves. But neither will this ex-
planation serve. This theory of Primary Qualities does
not clash with the Secondary, but it runs against the
Secundo-primary. It is this third class, which, as he
told us, are known " both immediately in themselves
and mediately in their effects on us." The Primary are
only known " immediately in themselves." He has thus
with his own hands deliberately extruded from our
knowledge of the Primary qualities the element of rela-
tivity to us :- except, to be sure,' in the acceptation in
which knowing is itself a relation, inasmuch as it implies
a knower ; whereby instead of the doctrine that Things
in themselves are not possible objects of knowledge, we
obtain the " great axiom " that they cannot be known
unless there is somebody to know them.
Can any light be derived from the statement that we
do not know any qualities of things except those which
are in connextion with our faculties, or, as our author
expresses it (surely by a very strained use of language),
which are " analogous to our faculties ?"* If, by " our
faculties," is to be understood our knowing faculty, this
proposition is but the trivial one already noticed, tiiat
we can know only what we can know. And this is what
the author actually seems to mean for in a sentence
immediately following,! he paraphrases the expression
" analogous to our faculties," by the phrase that we must
" possess faculties accommodated to their apprehension."
* Lectures, i. 141, 153. f P. 153.
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 27
To be able to see, we must have a faculty accommodated
to seeing. Is this what we are intended to understand
by the " great axiom ?" But if " our faculties " does
not here mean our knowing faculty, it must mean our
sensitive faculties ; and the statement is, that, to be
known by us, a quality must be " analogous " (meaning,
I suppose, related) to our senses. But what is meant by
being related to our senses ? That it must be fitted to
give us sensations. We thus return as before to an
identical proposition.
There is still another possible supposition ; that, in
calling oar knowledge relative in contradistinction to
absolute, Sir W. Hamilton was not thinking of our
knowledge of qualities, but of substances of Matter
and Mind ; and meant that qualities might be cognised
absolutely, or as they are in themselves, but that, since
substances are only known through their qualities, the
knowledge of substances is not knowledge of them as
they are in themselves, but is merely relative. Accord-
ing to this interpretation, the relativity which Sir W.
Hamilton ascribes to our knowledge of substances is re-
lativity not to us, but to their attributes : we " become
" aware of their incomprehensible existence only as this
" is revealed to us through certain qualities." And
when he adds, " which qualities, again, we cannot think
" as unconditioned, irrelative, existent in and of theni-
" selves," thus predicating relativity of attributes also
(considered as known or conceived by us), he means rela-
tivity to a substance. We can only know a substance
through its qualities, but also, we can only know quali-
ties as inhering in a substance. Substance and attri-
bute are correlative, and can only be thought together :
the knowledge of each, therefore, is relative to the other ;
but need not be, and indeed is not, relative to us. For
we know attributes as they are in themselves, and our
knowledge of them is only relative inasmuch as attri-
butes have only a relative existence. It is relative
knowledge in a sense not contradictory to absolute. It
is an absolute knowledge, though of things which only
28 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE .
exist in a necessary relation to another thing called a
substance.*
1 am not disposed to deny that this interpretation of
Sir W. Hamilton's doctrine is, to a certain point, correct.
He did draw a distinction between our manner of know-
ing attributes and our manner of knowing substances ;
and did regard certain attributes (the primary qualities)
as objects of direct and immediate knowledge ; which,
in his opinion, substances are not, but are merely as-
sumed or inferred from phenomena, by a law of our
nature which compels us to think phsenomena as attributes
of something beyond themselves. I do not doubt that
when he said that our knowledge of attributes is relative,
the necessity of thinking every attribute as an attribute
of a substance was present to his mind, and formed a
part of his meaning. There is, however, abundant evi-
dence that the relativity which Sir W. Hamilton ascribed
to our knowledge of attributes was not merely relativity
to their substances, but also relativity to us. He affirms
of attributes as positively as of substances, that all our
knowledge of them is relative to us. The passages
already quoted apply as much to attributes as to sub-
stances. " In saying that we know only the relative, I
" virtually assert that we know nothing absolute nothing
" existing absolutely, that is, in and for itself, vxAwithuut
" relation to us and our /acuities!^ " In saying that a
" thing is known in itself, I do not mean that this object
" is known in its absolute existence, that is, out of rela-
" tion to us. This is impossible, for our knowledge is only
" of the relative." I In the following passages he is
speaking solely of attributes. " By the expression what
" they are in themselves, in reference to the primary
<{ qualities, and of relative notion in reference to the
" secondary, Reid cannot mean that the former are
" known to us absolutely and in themselves, that is, out
* This is essentially the interpretation put on Sir W. Hamilton's
meaning by the ingenious reviewer of the present work in the Edinburgh
Heview.
f Lectures, i. 137. % Dissertations, p. 866.
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 29
" of relation to our cognitive faculties ; for he elsewhere
" admits that all our knowledge is relative."* " We
" can know, we can conceive, only what is relative.
" Our knowledge of qualities or phenomena is neces-
" sarily relative ; for these exist only as they exist in
" relation to our faculties. "f The distinction, therefore,
which Sir W. Hamilton recognises between our know-
ledge of substances and that of attributes, though
authentically a part of his philosophy, is quite irrelevant
here. He affirms without reservation, that certain at-
tributes (extension, figure, &c.) arejknown to us as they
really exist out of ourselves; and also that ajl our
knowledge of them is relative to us. And these two
assertions are only reconcileable, if relativity to us is
understood in the altogether trivial sense, that we know
them only so far as our faculties permit. J
The conclusion I cannot help drawing from this col-
lation of passages is, that Sir W. Hamilton either never
held, or when he wrote the Dissertations had ceased to
hold (for his theory respecting knowledge of the Primarv
Qualities does not occur in the Lectures) the doctrine
for which he has been so often praised and nearly as
often attacked the Relativity of Human Knowledge.
He certainly did sincerely believe that he held it. But
he repudiated it in every sense which makes it other
than a barren truism. In the only meaning in which he
really maintained it, there is nothing to maintain. It
is an identical proposition, and nothing more.
And to this, or something next to this, he reduces it
in the first portion of the summary with which he con-
cludes its exposition. " From what has been said," he
* Footnote to Reid, p. 313.
f Ib. p. 320. I am indebted to Mr. Hansel (Philosophy of the Con-
ditioned, p. 79) for reminding me of the last two passages. 1 should not
have failed to quote them in the first edition, if I had kept references to
them.
| I may add that even the Edinburgh Reviewer's supposition does not
save either the relativity of human knowledge to us, or its relativity in
the sense in which relative is opposed to absolute, as doctrines of Sir W.
Hamilton: for by the Reviewer's interpretation our knowledge of attributes
would be relative only to their substances ; absolute in their cognition by us.
01 dfy Out, V*i-fi^ <TU/f
* Q- >.
1
UK.
30 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
observes,* "you will be able, I hope, to understand
" what is meant by the proposition, that all our know-
" ledge is only relative. It is relative, 1st. Because ex-
" istence is not cognisable absolutely in itself, but only
" in special modes ; 2nd. Because these modes can be
" known only if they stand in a certain relation to our
" faculties." Whoever can find anything more in these
two statements, than that we do not know all about a
Thing, but only as much about it as we are capable of
knowing, is more ingenious or more fortunate than
myself.
He adds, however, to these reasons why our know-
ledge is only relative, a third reason. " 3rd. Because the
" modes, thus relative to our faculties, are assented to, and
" known by, the mind only under modifications deter-
" mined by those faculties themselves." Of this addition
to the theory we took notice near the conclusion of the
preceding chapter. It shall have the advantage of a
fuller explanation in Sir W. Hamilton's words.
" Inf the perception of an external object, the mind
" does not know it in immediate relation to itself, but
" mediately, in relation to the material organs of sense.
" If, therefore, we were to throw these organs out of
" consideration, and did not take into account what they
" contribute to, and how they modify, our knowledge of
" that object, it is evident that our conclusion in regard
" to the nature of external perception would be erroneous.
" Again, an object of perception may not even stand in
" immediate relation to the organ of sense, but may
" make its impression on that organ through an inter-
" vening medium. Now, if this medium be thrown out
" of account, and if it be not considered that the real
" external object is the sum of all that externally con-
" tributes to affect the sense, we shall, in like manner,
" run into error. For example, I see a book I see that
" book through an external medium (what that medium
" is, we do not now inquire) and I see it through my
" organ of sight, the eye. Now, as the full object pre-
* Lectures, i. 148. f Ibid. pp. 146-148.
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 31
" seated to the mind (observe that T say the miud) in
: ' perception, is an object compounded of the external
" object emitting or reflecting light, i.e., modifying the
" external medium of this external medium and of
" the living organ of sense, in their mutual relation,
' let us suppose, in the example I have taken, that the
" full or adequate object perceived is equal to twelve, and
" that this amount is made up of three several parts ; of
" four, contributed by the book, of four, contributed by
" all that intervenes between the book and the organ,
" and of four, contributed by the living organ itself. I
" use this illustration to show that the phenomenon of
" the external object is not presented immediately to
" the mind, but is known by it only as modified
" through certain intermediate agencies ; and to show,
" that sense itself may be a source of error, if we do
" not analyze and distinguish what elements, in an act
" of perception, belong to the outward reality, what to
" the outward medium, and what to thj action of sense
" itself. But this source of error is not limited to our
" perceptions ; and we are liable to be deceived, not
" merely by not distinguishing in an act of knowledge
" what is contributed by sense, but by not distinguishing
" what is contributed by the mind itself. This is the
" most difficult and important function of philosophy ;
" and the greater number of its higher problems arise in
" the attempt to determine the shares to which the
" knowing subject, and the object known, may pretend
" in the total act of cognition. For according as we
" attribute a larger or a smaller proportion to each, we
" either run into the extremes of Idealism and Mate-
" rialism, or maintain an equilibrium between the two."
The proposition, that our cognitions of objects are
only in part dependent on the objects themselves, and
in part on elements supentdded by our organs or by our
minds, is not identical, nor prima facie absurd. It can-
not, however, warrant the assertion that all our know-
ledge, but only that the part so added, is relative. If our
author had gone as far as Kant, and had said that all
32
the primary qualities which we think we perceive in
bodies, are put in by the mind itself, he would have
really held, in one of its forms, the doctrine of the
Relativity of our knowledge. But what he does say,
far from implying that the whole of our knowledge is
relative, distinctly imports that all of it which is real
and authentic is the reverse. If any part of what we
fancy that we perceive in the objects themselves, origi-
nates in the perceiving organs or in the cognising mind,
thus much is purely relative ; but since, by supposition,
it does not all so originate, the part that does not, is as
much absolute as if it were not liable to be mixed up
with these delusive subjective impressions. The ad-
mixture of the relative element not only does not take
away the absolute character of the remainder, but does
not even (if our author is right) prevent us from recog-
nising it. The confusion, according to him, is not in-
extricable. It is for us to " analyze and distinguish what
elements" in an " act of knowledge" are contributed by
the object, and what by our organs, or by the mind.
We may neglect to do this, and as far as the mind's
share is concerned, can only do it by the help of philo-
sophy ; but it is a task to which in his opinion philosophy
is equal. By thus stripping off such of the elements in
our apparent cognitions of Things as are but 'cognitions
of something in us, and consequently relative, we may
succeed in uncovering the pure nucleus, the direct in-
tuitions of Things in themselves ; as we correct the
observed positions of the heavenly bodies by allowing
for the error due to the refracting influence of the
atmospheric medium, an influence which does not alter
the facts, but only our perception of them.
This last doctrine, however, that the mind's own con-
stitution contributes along with the outward object, to
make up what is called our knowledge of the object,
is what Mr. Mansel maintains Sir W. Hamilton to
have meant by the assertion that our whole knowledge
of the object is relative. And this is the foundation of
all that Mr. Mansel presents as a refutation of the
present chapter.
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 33
If it be true (to use Mr. Hansel's words)* that, in the
constitution of our knowledge, the mind " reacts on the
" objects affecting it, so as to produce a result different
" from that which would be produced, were it merely a
" passive recipient," this modifying action of the mind
must consist, as is affirmed by Kant and by all others
who profess the doctrine, in making us ascribe to the
object, and apprehend as in the object, properties which
are not really in the object, but are merely lent to it by
the constitution of our mental nature. Now, if the attri-
butes which we perceive, or think we perceive, in objects,
are partly given by the mind, but not wholly, being also
partly given by the nature of the object itself (which is
admitted to be Sir W. Hamilton's opinion) ; this joint
agency of the object and of the mind's own laws in gene-
rating what we call our knowledge of the object, may be
conceived in two ways.
First : The two factors may be jointly operative in every
part of the effect. Every attribute with which we per-
ceive the thing as invested, may be a joint product of
the thing itself and of the modifying action of the mind.
If this be the case, we do not really know any property
as it is in the object : we have no reason to think that
the object as we apprehend it, and as we figure to our-
selves that we perceive and know it, agrees in any respect
with the object that exists without us ; but only that it
depends upon that outward object, as one of its joint
causes. Such was the opinion of Karit ; and whoever is
of this opinion, holds, in one of its forms, as I have ex-
pressly admitted, the genuine doctrine of the Relativity
of our knowledge. For all must agree with Mr. Mansel
when he says, that an object of thought, into which the
mind puts a positive element of its own, thereby making
it different from what it otherwise would be, is that which
it is, only relatively to the mind. This seems to be Mr.
Mansel's own mode of representing to himself the com-
bined action of the mind and the object in perception.
* Mansel, p. 64.
D
34 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
For he compares it* to the action of an acid and an alkali in
forming a neutral salt ; andf to a chemical fusion together
of two elements, in contradistinction to a mere mechanical
juxtaposition. If we had never seen, and could not get at,
the acid or the alkali except as united in the salt, Mr.
Mansel could not think that our knowledge of the salt
gave us any knowledge of the acid or the alkali them-
selves.
But, secondly : There is another mode in which the
co-operation of the object and the mind's own properties
in producing our cognition of the object, may be con-
ceived as taking place. Instead of there being joint
agents in producing our cognitions of all the attributes
with which we mentally clothe the object, some of the
attributes as cognised by us may come from the object
only, and some from the mind only, or from both. Now
it is not open to a holder of this second opinion, as it is
to one of the first, to affirm that all the attributes are
only known relatively to us. Such of them, indeed, as
are made to be that which they are by what the mind
puts into them, are, on this theory, only known relatively
to the mind : they have even no existence except rela-
tively to the mind. But those into which no positive
element is introduced by the mind's laws (I say no posi-
tive element, because a mere negative limitation by the
mind's capacities is nothing to the purpose), these, as
their cognition contains nothing but what is presented in
the external object, must be held to be known not rela-
tively, but absolutely. The doubt how much of what we
apprehend in them is due to our own constitution, and
how much to the external world, has no place here : they
are, by supposition, wholly perceptions of something in
the external world.
Now, this second view of the joint action of the mind
and the outward thing, as the two factors in our cog-
nition of the thing, is Sir W. Hamilton's. The pas-
sages in which he characterizes our knowledge of the
* Mansel, p. 71. f Ibid. p. 75.
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 35
Primary Qualities place this beyond question. He affirms \
clearly and consistently that extension, figure, and the
other Primary Qualities are known by us " as they are in
bodies," and not " as they are in us ;" that they are known
as " essential attributes of matter objectively existing ;"
as " modes of a not-self," not even combined, as in the
Secundo-primary, with any " modes of self;" so that no
element originating in our subjective constitution in-
terferes with the purity of the apperception. In this
respect the physical phenomena which Mr. Mansel
calls in as illustrations afford no parallel. No one
would say that the acid in a neutral salt is perceived
and known by us in the salt as what it is as an
acid. Indeed, the discrimination which Sir W. Hamilton i
thinks it possible for philosophy to make, between that
in our knowledge which the object contributes and that
which the mind contributes, almost requires as its con-
dition that some attributes should be wholly contributed
by the one and some by the other : for if every
attribute was the joint product of both, it is difficult
to see what means the case could afford of making the
discrimination, any more than of discriminating between
the acid and the alkali in Mr. Mansel's salt. The
question, how much of the salt is due to the acid and
how much to the alkali, is not merely unresolvable, but
intrinsically absurd.*
* Sir W. Hamilton has the appearance of disclaiming the opinion here
attributed to him, and professing the alternative opinion that every attri-
bute is a joint product of the object and the mind, in the following foot-
note to Eeid (p. 313) :
"The distinctions of perception and sensation, and of primary and
' secondary qualities, may be reduced to one higher principle. Knowledge
' is partly objective, partly subjective ; both these elements are essential
' to every cognition, but in every cognition they are always in the inverse
' ratio of each other. Now, in_rjercepjtipn and the primary qualities, the
objective element preponderates ; whereas the subjective element pre-
p.. migrates in sensation and the secondary qualities. See Notes D
'andD*."
But a reference to the Notes in question will shew, that in admitting a
subjective element in the Primary Qualities, he only meant that a sub-
jective element accompanies our apprehension of them; that whenever
we perceive the primary qualities we are conscious of a sensation also.
" Sensation proper," he says, " is the conditio sine qua non of a Perception
D 2
36 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
Mr. Mansel's mode of reconciling Sir W. Hamilton's
emphatic declaration, that we know the Primary Qualities
as they are in objects, with his assertion of the entire
incognoscibility of Things in themselves, is by saying*
that " objects" are not identical with " things in them-
selves." " Objective existence," he says,f " does not mean
" existence per se ; and a phenomenon does not mean a
" mere mode of mind. Objective existence is existence as
" an object, in perception, and therefore in relation; and
" a phenomenon may be material, as well as mental. The
" thing per se may be only the unknown cause of what
" we directly know ; but what we directly know is some-
" thing more than our own sensations. In other words,
" the phenomenal effect is material as well as the cause,
" and is, indeed, that from which our primary conceptions
" of matter are derived."
Now, this is a possible opinion ; it was really the
opinion of Kant. That philosopher did recognise a
direct object of our perceptions, different from the thing
itself, and intermediate between it and the perceiving
mind. And it was open to Kant to do so ; because he
held what Sir W. Hamilton calls a representative theory
of perception. He maintained that the object of our
perception, and of our knowledge, is a representation in
our own minds. In his philosophy, both object and sub-
ject are accommodated within the mind itself the object
within the subject. The mind has no perception of the
external thing, nor comes into any contact with it in the
" proper of the Primary qualities." And again, " Every Perception proper
" has a Sensation proper as its condition." " The fact of Sensation proper
" and the fact of Perception proper imply each other :" they always co-
exist, though " in the degree or intensity of their existence they are always
" found in an inverse ratio to one another" (Reid, p. 886). This co-
existence does not prevent the two from being entirely distinct. " The
" apprehensions of the Primary" qualities " are perceptions, not sensa-
" tions ; of the Secondary, sensations, not perceptions ; of the Secundo-
" primary, perceptions and sensations together" (p. 858). Perceptions,
the apprehensions of the Primary qualities, are themselves wholly
objective.
* Hansel, p. 79. f Ibid. p. 82.
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 37
act of perception.* Was this Sir W. Hamilton's opinion?
On the contrary, if there be a doctrine of his philosophy
which he has laboured at beyond any other, against,
as he affirms, nearly all philosophers, it is, that the
thing we perceive is the real thing which exists outside
us, and that the perceiving mind is in direct contact with
it, without any intermediate link whatever. We never I
hear from Sir W. Hamilton of three elements in our
cognition of the outward world, but of two only, the
mind, and the real object ; which he sometimes calls the
external object, sometimes Body, sometimes Matter, some-
times a Non-ego. Yet, according to Mr. Mansel, he '
must have believed that this object, which he so strenu-
ously contended to be the very thing itself, is not the
very thing in itself, but that behind it there is another
Thing in itself, the unknown cause of it. I can discover
no trace in Sir W. Hamilton's writings of any such
entity. The outward things which he believed to exist,
he believed that we perceive and know : not, indeed,
" absolutely or in themselves," because only in such of
their attributes as we have senses to reveal to us ; but yet
as they really are. He did not believe in, or recognise, a |
Thing per se, itself unknowable, but engendering another
material object called a phenomenon, which is knowable. I
The only distinction he recognised between a phsenome-
non and a Thing per se, was that between attributes and
a substance. But he believed the primary attributes to i
be known by us as they exist in the substance, and not ,
in some intermediate object.f
* Such, at least, is the doctrine of Kant in the first edition of the
Kritik, though, in the so-called Refutation of Idealism introduced into
the second, he is sometimes supposed to have intended to explain it away;
but Mr. Mahaffy (Introd. part iv. and notes to Appendix C) seems to
have explained away the explanation ; and Mr. Stirling, who holds (p. 30)
" the second edition of the Kritik of Pure Reason to supersede the first,"
still credits Kant with this doctrine, interpreting in a sense consistent
with it, the externality which Kant ascribes to objects in space. Kant's
external and internal were both internal to the mind. Nothing but the
noumenon was external to it.
f If any doubt could remain that Mr. Mansel defends Sir W. Hamil-
ton by ascribing to him an opinion he never held, the following passage
38 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
The mark by which Mr. Mansel distinguishes between
the object and the Thing in itself, is that the object is
in space and time, but the Thing out of space and time ;
space and time having merely a subjective existence, in
us, not in external nature. This is Kantism, but it is
not Hamiltonism. I do not believe that the expression
" out of space and time" is to be found once in all Sir
would dispel it. " If, indeed," says Mr. Mansell (p. 83) " Hamilton had
" said with Locke, that the primary qualities are in the bodies themselves,
" whether we perceive them or no, he would have laid himself open to
" Mr. Mill's criticism. But he expressly rejects this statement, and con-
" trasts it with the more cautious language of Descartes, ' ut sunt, vel
" saltern esse possunt.' " Sir W. Hamilton may never have said, totidem
verbis, that the Primary Qualities are in the bodies even when we do not
perceive them : but can any one who has read his writings doubt that this
was his opinion ? The passage which Mr. Mansel refers to as "reject-
ing" it (Dissertations, p. 839) runs as follows : " On the doctrine of
" both philosophers" (Locke and Descartes) " we know nothing of material
"existence in itself: we know it only as represented, or in idea. When
" Locke, therefore, is asked, how he became aware that the known idea
' truly represents the unknown reality, he can make no answer. On the
" first principles of his philosophy, he is wholly and necessarily ignorant
' whether the idea does or does not represent to his mind the attributes
' of matter, as they exist in nature. His assertion is, therefore, con-
' fessedly without a warrant ; it transcends, ex hypothesi, the sphere of
' possible knowledge. Descartes is more cautious. He only says, that
' our ideas of the qualities in question represent those qualities as they
' are, or as they may exist ; ' ut sunt, vel saltern esse possunt.' The
' Cosmothetic Idealist can only assert to them a problematical reality."
Mr. Mansel actually thinks this an adoption of Descartes' opinion ; and
does not see that Sir W. Hamilton merely pronounces Descartes to be
right and Locke wrong from their own point of view, that of Cosmothetic
Idealism. As Cosmothetic Idealists, they have, he says, no evidence that
the qualities we perceive are in the object itself, and are as we perceive
them. Not admitting that we directly perceive the qualities in the
object, they cannot do more than assert problematically that the qualities
are in the object ; and this Descartes saw, and Locke, more inconsistently,
did not see. But what they as Cosmothetic Idealists could not affirm, Sir
W. Hamilton, as a Natural Realist, could ; because, as a Natural Realist,
he held that we directly perceive the qualities in the object. Mr. Mansel
mistakes one of the thousand statements by Sir W. Hamilton of hjs
difference with the Cosmothetic Idealists, for an adhesion to them.
(Mr. Mansel, in his rejoinder, admits and withdraws this error.) Sir
W. Hamilton, as Professor Fraser observes (p. 22), believed that " the
' solid and extended percepts which our sensations reveal to us, exist,
" whether we are conscious or not." He believed that bodies exist whether
we perceive them or not, and that they always carry their "essential
attributes," the Primary Qualities, with them : if, therefore, he had thought
that the Primary Qualities only exist while we perceive them, he must
have thought so of the bodies likewise, and must have believed that we
create the bodies in the act of perceiving them; which Kant, who
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 39
W. Hamilton's writings. It belongs to the Kantian,
not to the Hamiltoniaii philosophy. Sir W. Hamilton
does indeed hold with Kant, and on Kant's shewing,
that space and time are a priori forms of the mind, but
he believes that they are also external realities, known
empirically.* And it is worth notice, that he grounds
the outward reality of Space, not on his favourite evi-
dence, that of our Natural Beliefs, but on the specific
reason, that (Extension being only another name for
Space), if Space was not an outward thing cognizable
deemed the body we perceive to be really in tlie mind, did believe ; but
if Sir W. Hamilton did, his whole philosophy of perception is without a
meaning.
In the essay in his " Discussions," headed " Philosophy of Perception,"
Sir W. Hamilton speaks of the knowledge of external objects claimed by
a Natural Realist, ipsissimis verbis, as knowledge of " things in them-
selves." (Discussions, p. 57, in the statement of the opinion of Hypo-
thetical Realists.)
For a critical examination of the doctrine ascribed to Sir W. Hamilton
by Mr. Mansel, that of an external object cognizable by us, and an un-
cognizable Noumenon besides, I may refer to Mr. Bolton's able work,
pp. 218 et seqq.
Mr. Mansel, in his rejoinder, though he does not give up the theory of
the tertium quid, does not further insist on it ; but attempts to shew that
when Sir W. Hamilton speaks of knowing the Primary qualities as they
are in themselves, and as they are in the body, he means knowing them
in immediate relation to the mind, in contradistinction to knowing them
mediately through a mental representation, or merely inferring them as
the hypothetical cause of a mental state. I admit, and have already
admitted, that Sir W. Hamilton did mean this, and did say that he meant
it. But the " immediate relation to the mind" which Sir W. Hamilton
thus distinguished from the different modes of mediate relation, is no
other than that between perceiver and perceived : and to say that all our
knowledge is relative, meaning only this relation, is but to say, that we
know of external things only what we perceive of them, and that in order
that we may know an object of sense it must be presented to our senses.
The knowledge, when we do get it, according to Sir W. Hamilton, is not
(in the case of Primary qualities) knowledge of an impression made on
our own sensitive faculty, which would be really relative knowledge j it is
knowledge of the Thing as it exists in itself, independently of our per-
ceptions. It is this which, as I have pointed out, reduces the pretended
Relativity to a name.
It is a great confirmation of the unmeaningness of the Relativity Doc-
trine in Sir W. Hamilton's hands, that those who have most studied his
philosophy, Dean Mansel and Professor Veitch, are reduced to such straits
in the attempt to find a meaning for it, and do not always find the same
meaning.
* See Lectures, ii. 113, 114 ; Discussions, p. 16; Dissertations, p. 882 ;
and, in further illustration, foot note to Reid, p. 12t> ; passages strangely
overlooked by Mr. Mansel (p. 138).
40 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
a posteriori, we could not, as he affirms that we do,
cognize Extension as an external reality. He must
therefore have thought, not that Space is a mere form in
which our perceptions of objects are clothed by the laws
of our perceiving faculty, but that we perceive real things
in real space.*
Mr. Mansel is not the only one of my critics who has
interpreted Sir W. Hamilton's doctrine of our direct
knowledge of outward objects, as if those outward objects
were a tertium quid, between the mind and the real out-
ward, or if the expression may be permitted, the outer
outward object. For, irreconcilable as this supposition
is with the evidence of his writings, it is the only one
which can be thought of to give a substantial meaning
to his doctrine of Kelativity, consistent with the external
reality of the Primary Qualities. Professor Mason con-
sequently had already taken refuge in the same inter-
pretation as Mr. Mansel ; but propounded it in the
modest form of an hypothesis, not a dogmatical asser-
tion. The North American Ke viewer in like manner
saysf : " An existence non-ego may be immediately cog-
" nizable consistently with the doctrine of the relativity
" of knowledge, provided this non-ego be phenomenal,
" that is, necessarily dependent on some other incogniz-
" able existence among the real causes of things
" If the meaning of the word phenomenon which we
" have attributed to Hamilton be a valid one, his philo-
" sophy escapes from this criticism by affirming that the
" primary qualities of matter, that is, the having exten-
" sion, figure, &c., though not cognized as the effects of
* When Sir W. Hamilton says (Dissertations, p. 841) that although
Space is a native, necessary, a priori form of imagination, we yet have
an immediate perception of a really objective extended world, Mr. Mansel
imagines that Sir W. Hamilton is maintaining at once the subjectivity
of Space, and the objectivity of bodies as occupying space. But Sir W.
Hamilton himself declares unequivocally that these two opinions contra-
dict one another, unless reconciled by the suppositiou that Space ia
objective and external to us as well as subjective : not, therefore, properly
a form of our mind, but an outward reality which has a form of our
mind corresponding to it* See the whole of the passages referred to in
the last note.
f Pp. 252, 253.
AS HELD BT SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 41
" matter on us, are yet modes of existence implying an
" unknown substance, and are hence phenomenal in
' Hamilton's meaning of the word." This explanation
might pass, if Sir W. Hamilton's assertion of the rela-
tivity of our knowledge to our mind were all contained
in the word phsenomenal, and could be explained away
by supposing that word to mean relativity not to us,
but to an unknown cause. But I need not requote his
declaration that our knowledge of Qualities is all relative
to us, nor his assertion that nevertheless certain qualities
are in the object, and are perceived and known in the
object, and that the object perceived and known is no
other than the real Thing itself. Nowhere in his works
do I find any recognition of another real Thing, which
is not the Thing perceived by us through its attributes.
He does not tell us of a Body perceived, and an unper-
ceived Substance in the background : the Body is the
Substance. He does indeed say that the Substance is
only an inference from the Attributes ; but he also says
that certain attributes are perceived as in the real exter-
nal Thing ; and he never drops the smallest hint of any
real external thing in which the attributes can be, except
the Substance itself, which he expressly defines as
" that which manifests its qualities," that in which
" the phaenomena or qualities are supposed to in-
" here."
Professor Fraser, in the (in many respects) profound
Essay of which he has done this work the honour of
making it the occasion, vindicates at once the consistency
of Sir W. Hamilton, and the substantial significance of
his doctrine of Kelativity, by ascribing to him, in oppo-
sition to his incessant declarations, Mr. Eraser's own far
clearer views of the subject. Mr. Fraser, like myself,
believes the Primary Qualities to have no more existence
out of our own or other minds, than the Secondary *
Qualities have, or than our pains and pleasures have ;
and he asks,* " Where does he " (Sir W. Hamilton) " say
* Fraser, p. 16.
42 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
" that we have an absolute knowledge of the primary
" qualities of matter, in any other sense than that in
" which he says that we have a like knowledge of a feel-
" ing of pain or pleasure in our minds while it is being
" felt, or of an act of consciousness while it is being
" acted?" To this "where," I answer, in every place
where he says that we know the Primary Qualities not
as they are in us, but as they are in the Body. That is
asserting an absolute knowledge of them, as distinguished
from relativity to us : and he would not have made a
similar assertion of our pains and pleasures, or of our
acts of internal consciousness. Again, asks Air. Fraser,*
" How does the assertion that we are percipient directly,
" and not through a medium, of phenomena of solidity
" and extension, contradict the principle that all our
" knowledge is relative, when the assertion that we are
" percipient, directly and not through a medium, of the
" phenomena of sensation or emotion or intelligence
" does not ?'' Because the phenomena of sensation or
emotion or intelligence are admitted to be perceived or
felt as facts that have no reality out of us, and the facts
being only relative to us, the knowledge of the facts
partakes of the same relativity : but the phenomena of
solidity and extension are alleged by Sir W. Hamilton
to be perceived as facts whose reality is out of our
minds, and in the material object : which is indeed know-
v ' ^o*** ing them relatively to the outward object, but is the
diametrical opposite of knowing them relatively to us.f
It has now been shown, by accumulated proof, that
* Fraser, p. 15.
f Mr. Fraser affirms (p. 20) with me, and contrary to Mr. Mansel and
the North American Reviewer, that in Sir W. Hamilton's opinion '' there
" is nothing behind the proper objects of sense-consciousness, these being
" the very things or realities themselves which we call material, external,
" extended, solid." Instead of recognizing three elements, a .Noumenal
real thing, a Phenomenal real thing, and the perceiving mind, the middle
one of the three being that which the mind cognizes, Mr. Fraser sees that
Sir W. Hamilton recognised but one real Thing, the very Thing which we
perceive ; unknown to us in its essence, but perceived and known through
its attributes ; and by means of those attributes, actually brought into
what Sir W. Hamilton calls our consciousness. This Mr. Fraser regards
as "a distinct and important contribution by Sir W.Hamilton to the
AS HELD BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 43
Sir W. Hamilton did not hold any opinion in virtue of
which it could rationally be asserted that all human
knowledge is relative ; but did hold, as one of the main
elements of his philosophical creed, the opposite doctrine,
of the cognoscibility of external Things, in certain of
their aspects, as they are in themselves, absolutely.
But if this be true, what becomes of his dispute with
" theory of matter previously common in this country," because bringing
matter into our consciousness is part of the way towards making it (what
Mr. Fraser believes it to be) wholly a phenomenon of mind. But Sir W.
Hamilton did not intend his doctrine to lead to this ; he admits Matter
into our consciousness because, contrary to the general opinion of philo-
sophers, he thinks (see below, chap, viii.) that we can be conscious of .s
what is outside our mind. Sir W. Hamilton, in short, was not a Berkeleian,
a.s Mr. Fraser is, and as that philosopher almost admits (p. 2b') that the
interpretation which he would like to put on Sir W. Hamilton's doctrine
would make Sir W. Hamilton.
Mr. Fraser seems to me, throughout his defence of Sir W. Hamilton,
to have yielded to the natural tendency of a consistent thinker when
standing up for an inconsistent one, to interpret ambiguous utterances
which face two ways, as if they looked only one way ; though the part of
their author's philosophy towards which those expressions face on their
other side, is thereby set at nought and abolished.
Since the publication of the third edition of this work, my attention
has been drawn to a passage (unfortunately left unfinished) in the post-
humous continuation of Sir W. Hamilton's Dissertations on Reid, which
strikingly confirms the opinion I have expressed, that the relativity of
human knowledge, as understood by him, is a mere identical proposition.
" That all knowledge consists in a certain relation of the object known
" to the subject knowing, is self-evident. What is the nature of this
" relation, and what are its conditions, is not, and never can be, known to
" us ; because we know only the qualities of our own faculties of know-
" ledge, as relations to their objects, and we only know the qualities of
" their objects, as relations to our minds. All qualities both of mind and
" of matter are therefore only known to us as relations ; we know nothing
" in itself. We know not the cause of this relation, we know nothing of
" its conditions, the fact is all. The relation is the relation of knowledge.
" We know nothing consequently of the kind of the relation ; we have no
" consciousness and no possible knowledge whether the relation of knpw-
' ledge has any analogy to the relations of similarity, contrariety, identity,
' difference we have no consciousness that it is like any other, or any
' modification of any other : these are all relations of a different kind
' between object and object ; this between subject and object : we can
* institute no point of comparison" (Reid, p. 965).
That is to say, we know nothing except in relation to us, but that
relation is simply the relation of being known by us, and this is the only
relation cognizable by us which exists between the knower and the known.
Our knowledge is relative, but only in the sense that knowing is itself a
relation. Would Cousin, or Hegel, or Schelling, have had the slightest
objection to admit that onr knowledge even of the Absolute is relative,
in the sense that it is we that know it ?
44 THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.
Cousin, and with Cousin's German predecessors and
teachers ? That celebrated controversy surely meant
something. Where there was so much smoke there
must have been some fire. Some difference of opinion
must really have existed between Sir W. Hamilton and
his antagonists.
Assuredly there was a difference, and one of great im-
portance from the point of view of either disputant ; not
unimportant in the view of those who dissent from
them both. In the succeeding chapter I shall endeavour
to point out what the difference was.
45
CHAPTER IV.
IN WHAT RESPECT SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON REALLY DIFFERS
FROM THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE ABSOLUTE.
THE question really at issue in Sir W. Hamilton's cele-
brated and striking review of Cousin's philosophy, is
this : Have we, or have we not, an immediate intuition
of God. The name of God is veiled under two ex-
tremely abstract phrases, " The Infinite" and " The
Absolute," perhaps from a reverential feeling : such, at
least, is the reason given by Sir W. Hamilton's disciple,
Mr. Mansel,* for preferring the more vague expressions.
But it is one of the most unquestionable of all logical
maxims, that the meaning of the abstract must be sought
for in the concrete, and not conversely; and we shall
see, both in the case of Sir W. Hamilton and of Mr.
Mansel, that the process cannot be reversed with im-
punity.f
* Bampton Lectures. (The Limits of Religious Thought.) Fourth
edition, p. 42.
f Mr. Mansel (pp. 90 98) denies the correctness of the representations
made in this paragraph ; and at least seems to assert, that the question
between M. Cousin and Sir W. Hamilton did not relate to the possibility
of knowing the Infinite Being, but to a " pseudo-concept of the Infinite,"
which Sir W. Hamilton believed to be not a proper predicate of God, but
a representation of a non-entity. And Mr. Mansel affirms (p. 92) that to
substitute the name of God in the place of the Infinite and the Absolute,
is" exactly to reverse Sir W. Hamilton's argument. We have here a direct
issue of fact, of which every one is a judge who will take the trouble to
read Sir W. Hamilton's Essay. I maintain that what M. Cousin affirms
and Sir W. Hamilton denies, is the cognoscibility not of an Infinite and
Absolute which is not God, but of the Infinite and Absolute which is God.
I might refer to almost any page of the Essay ; I will only quote the
application which Sir W. Hamilton himself makes of his own doctrine
(Disc. p. 15, note). " True, therefore, are the declarations of a pious phi-
" losophy : ' A God understood would be no God at all.' ' To think that
" God is, as we can think him to be, is blasphemy.' The Divinity, In a
46 SIR WII.LTAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
I proceed to state, chiefly in the words of Sir W.
Hamilton, the opinions of the two parties to the con-
troversy. Both undertake to decide what are the facts
which (in their own phraseology) are given in Conscious-
ness ; or, as others say, of which we have intuitive
knowledge. According to Cousin, there are, in every
act of consciousness, three elements ; three things of
which we are intuitively aware. There is a finite ele-
ment; an element of plurality, compounded of a Self
or Ego, and something different from Self, or Non-ego.
There is also an infinite element ; a consciousness of
something infinite. " At* the same instant when we are
" certain sense, is revealed ; in a certain sense, is concealed : he is at once
" known and unknown. But the last and highest consecration of all true
"religion, must be an altar 'Ayyoborw 6eo> ' To the unknown and unknow-
" able God.' " When this is what the author of the Essay presents as
its practical result, it is too much to tell us that the Essay is not con-
cerned about God but about a " Pseudo-Infinite," and that we are not
entitled, when we find in it an assertion about the Infinite, to hold the
author to the assertion as applicable to God. We shall next be told that
Mr. Mansel himself, in his Bampton Lectures, is not treating the question
of our knowledge of God. It is very true that the only, Infinite about
which either Sir W. Hamilton or Mr. Mansel proves anything, is a
Pseudo-Infinite ; but they are not in the least aware of this ; they fancy
that this Pseudo- Infinite is the real Infinite, and that in proving it to be
unknowable by us, they prove the same thing of God.
The reader who desires further elucidation of this point, may consult
the sixth chapter of Mr. Bolton's Inquisitio Philosophica. That acute
thinker also points out various inconsistencies and other logical errors in
Mr. Mansel's work, with which I am not here concerned, my object in
answering him not being recrimination, but to maintain my original
assertions against his denial.
Mr. Mansel, in his rejoinder, quotes from his Bampton Lectures some
passages in which he says, and others in which he implies, that " our
" human conception of the Infinite is not the true one," and that " the
" infinite of philosophy is not the true Infinite :" and thinks it very unfair
that, with these passages before me, I should accuse him of mistaking a
pseudo-infinite for the real Infinite. But the mistake from which he clears
himself is not that which I charged him with. I maintained, that the
abstraction " The Infinite," in whatever manner understood, as dis-
tinguished from some particular attribute possessed in an infinite degree,
has no existence, and is a pseudo-infinite. Mr. Mansel, on the contrary,
affirmed throughout, and affirms in the very passages which he quotes,
that "The Infinite" has a real existence, and is God: though when we
attempt to conceive what it is, we only reach a mass of contradictions,
which is a pseudo-infinite. Mr. Mansel did not suppose his pseudo-infinite
to be the true Infinite ; but my assertion, which stands unrefuted, is, that
his " true Infinite" is a pseudo-infinite ; and that in proving it to be un-
knowable by us, he mistakenly fancied that he had proved this of God.
* Discussions, p. 9.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 47
" conscious of these [finite] existences, plural, relative,
" and contingent, we are conscious likewise of a superior
" unity in which they are contained, and by which they
" are explained ; a unity absolute as they are conditioned,
" substantive as they are phenomenal, and an infinite
" cause as they are finite causes. This unity is God."
The first two elements being the Finite and God, the
third element is the relation between the Finite and God,
which is that of cause and effect. These three things
are immediately given in every act of consciousness, and
are, therefore, apprehended as real existences by direct
intuition.
Of these alleged elements of Consciousness, Sir W.
Hamilton only admits the first ; the Finite element, com-
pounded of Self and a Not-self, " limiting and condition-
ing one another." He denies that God is given in
immediate consciousness is apprehended by direct intui-
tion. It is in no such way as this that God, according
to him, is known to us : and as an Infinite and Absolute
Being he is not, and cannot be, known to us at all ; for
we have no faculties capable of apprehending the Infinite
or the Absolute. The second of M. Cousin's elements
being thus excluded, the third (the Relation between the
first and second) falls with it; and Consciousness remains
limited to the finite element, compounded of an Ego and
a Non-ego.
In this contest it is almost superfluous for me to say,
that I am entirely with Sir W. Hamilton. The doctrine,
that we have an immediate or intuitive knowledge of
God, I consider to be bad metaphysics, involving a false
conception of the nature and limits of the human facul-
ties, and grounded on a superficial and erroneous psycho-
logy. Whatever relates to God I hold to be matter of
inference ; I would add, of inference a posteriori. And
in so far as Sir W. Hamilton has contributed, which he
has done very materially, towards discrediting the oppo-
site doctrine, he has rendered, in my estimation, a valuable
service to philosophy. But thougli 1 assent to his con-
clusion, his arguments seem to me very far from inex-
48 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
pugnable : a sufficient answer, I conceive, might without
difficulty be given to most of them, though I do not say
that it was always competent to M. Cousin to give it.
And the arguments, in the present case, are of as much
importance as the conclusion : not only because they are
quite as essential a part of Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy,
but because they afford the premises from which some
of his followers, if not himself, have drawn inferences
which I venture to think extremely mischievous. While,
therefore, I sincerely applaud the scope and purpose of
this celebrated piece of philosophical criticism, I think
it important to sift with some minuteness the reasonings
it employs, and the general mode of thought which it
exemplifies.
The question is, as already remarked, whether we have
a direct intuition of " ihe Infinite" and " the Absolute :"
M. Cousin maintaining that we have Sir W. Hamilton
that we have not ; that the Infinite and the Absolute are
inconceivable to us, and, by consequence, unknowable.
It is proper to explain to any reader not familiar with
these controversies, the meaning of the terms. Infinite
requires no explanation. It is universally understood
to signify that, to the magnitude of which there is no
limit. If we speak of infinite duration, or infinite space,
we are supposed to mean duration which never ceases,
and extension which nowhere comes to an end. Absolute
is much more obscure, being a word of several meanings ;
but, in the sense in which it stands related to Infinite, it
means (conformably to its etymology) that which is
finished or completed. There are some things of which
the utmost ideal amount is a limited quantity, though a
quantity never actually reached. In this sense, the
relation between the Absolute and the Infinite is (as
Bentham would have said) a tolerably close one, namely
a relation of contrariety. For example, to assert an
absolute minimum of matter, is to deny its infinite
divisibility. Again, we may speak of absolutely, but not
of infinitely, pure water. The purity of water is not a fact
of which, whatever degree we suppose attained, there re-
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 49
mains a greater beyond. It has an absolute limit : it is
capable of being finished or complete, in thought, if not
in reality. The extraneous substances existing in any
vessel of water cannot be of more than finite amount, and
if we suppose them all withdrawn, the purity of the water
cannot, even in idea, admit of further increase.
The idea of Absolute, in this sense of the term, being
thus contrasted with that of Infinite, they cannot, both
of them, be truly predicated of God ; or, if truly, not in
respect of the same attributes. But the word Absolute,
without losing the signification of perfect or complete,
may drop that of limited. It may continue to mean
the whole of that to which it is applied ; but without
requiring that this whole should be finite. Granted (for
instance) a being of infinite power, that Being's know-
ledge, if supposed perfect, must be infinite ; and may
therefore, in an admissible sense of the term, be said to
be both absolute and infinite.* In this acceptation there
is no inconsistency or incongruity in predicating both
these words of God.
* In the first edition of this work it was maintained, that though Power
admits of being regarded as Infinite, Knowledge does not ; because " the
" highest degree of knowledge that can be spoken of with a meaning, only
" amounts to knowing all that there is to be known." But Mr. Hansel
and the " Inquirer" (author of "The Battle of the Two Philosophies'")
have justly remarked, that on the supposition of an Infinite Being, "all
that there is to be known" includes all which a Being of infinite power
can think or create; consequently, the power being infinite, the know-
ledge, if supposed complete, must be infinite too. In regard to the moral
attributes, it was said in the first edition, that Absolute is the proper
word for them, and not Infinite, since those attributes "cannot be more
" than perfect. There are not infinite degrees of right. The will is
" either entirely right, or wrong in different degrees." In this I did not
properly distinguish between moral Tightness or justice as predicated of
acts or mental states, and the same regarded as attributes of a person.
Conformity to the standard of right has a positive limit, which can only
be reached, not surpassed ; but persons, though all exactly conforming to
the standard, may differ in the strength of their adherence to it : in-
fluences (temptations for example) might detach one of them from it,
which would have no effect upon another. There are thus, consistently with
complete observance of the rule of right, innumerable gradations of the
attribute considered as in a person. But. on the other hand, there is an
extreme limit to these gradations the idea of a Person whom no influences
or causes, either in or out of himself, can deflect iu the minutest degree
from the law of right. This I apprehend to be a conception of absolute,
not of infinite, righteousness. The ductrine, therefore, or the firt edition,
E
50 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
The word Absolute, however, has other meanings,
which have nothing to do with perfection or complete-
ness, though often mixed and confounded with it ; the
more readily as they are all habitually predicated of the
Deity. By Absolute is often meant the opposite of Re-
lative ; and this is rather many meanings than one ; for
Relative also is a term used very indefinitely, and
wherever it is employed, the word Absolute alwa\ 7 s
accompanies it as its negative. In another of its senses,
Absolute means that which is independent of anything
else : which exists, and is what it is, by its own nature,
and not because of any other thing. In this fourth
sense as in the third, Absolute stands for the negation
of a relation ; not now of Relation in general, but of the
specific relation expressed by the term Effect. In this
signification it is synonymous with uncaused, and is
therefore most naturally identified with the First Cause.
The meaning of a First Cause is, that all other things
exist, and are what they are, by reason of it and of its
properties, but that it is not itself made to exist, nor to
be what it is, by anything else. It does not depend, for
its existence or attributes, on other things : there is
nothing upon the existence of which its own is con-
ditional : it exists absolutely.
In which of these meanings is the term used in the
polemic with M. Cousin ? M. Cousin makes no dis-
tinction at all between the Infinite and the Absolute.
Sir W. Hamilton distinguishes them as two species of a
higher genus, the Unconditioned ; and defines the Infi-
nite as "the unconditionally unlimited," the Absolute
as "the unconditionally limited/''* Here is a new
word introduced, the word " unconditionally ;" of which
we look in vain for any direct explanation, but which
needs it as much as either of the words which it is em-
ployed to explain. In the Essay itself, this is the only
that an Infinite Being may have attributes which are absolute, but not
infinite, still appears to me maintainable. But as it is immaterial to my
argument, and was only the illustration nearest at hand of the meaning
of the terms, I withdraw it from the discussion.
* Discussions, p. 13.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIV. 51
attempt made to define the Absolute : but in the reprint
Sir W. Hamilton appends the following note :*
" The term Absolute is of a twofold (if not threefold)
" ambiguity, corresponding to the double (or treble) sig-
" nification of the word in Latin." The third applica-
tion he, with reason, dismisses, as here irrelevant. The
other two are as follows :
" 1. Absolutum means what is freed or loosed : in
" which sense the Absolute will be what is aloof from
" relation, comparison, limitation, condition, dependence,
" &c., and thus is tantamount to TO a-n-oXvTov of the lower
" Greeks. In this meaning the Absolute is not opposed
" to the Infinite." This is an amplification of my third
meaning.
" 2. Absolut urn means finished, perfected, completed ; in
" which sense the Absolute will be what is out oi
" relation, &c. as finished, perfect, complete, total, and
" thus corresponds to TO oXov and TO Tf'Xaoi/ of Aristotle.
" In this acceptation and it is that in which for myself
" I exclusively use it, the Absolute is diametrically
" opposed to, is contradictory of, the Infinite." This
second meaning of Sir W. Hamilton, which I, in the
first edition, by a blameable inadvertence, confounded
with my own first meaning,! must be reckoned as a
fifth, compounded of the first and third of the idea of
finished or completed, and the idea of being out of rela-
tion. How to make an intelligible meaning out of the
two combined, is the question. One can, with some
difficulty, find a meaning in being " aloof from relation,
" comparison, limitation, condition, dependence ;" but
what is meant by being all this " as finished, perfect,
" complete, total ?" Does it mean, being both out of rela-
tion and also complete ? and must the Absolute in Sir
* Discussions, p. 14, note.
f And, in consequence, erroneously charged Sir W. Hamilton with
having, in one of his arguments against Cousin, departed from his own
meaning of the term. I have freed the text from everything which de-
pended on this error, the only serious misrepresention of Sir W. Hamil-
ton which has been established against me.
E 2
52 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
W. Hamilton's second sense be also Absolute in his
first, and be out of all relation whatever ? or does the
particle "as" signify that it is out of relation only in
in respect of its completeness, which (I suppose) means
that it does not depend for its completeness on anything
but itself? Mr. Hansel's comment, which otherwise
does not help us much, decides for the latter. " Out of
" relation as completed" means (he says*) " self-existent
" in its completeness, and not implying the existence of
" anything else."t Without further attempt to clear up
the obscurity, let it suffice that Sir W. Hamilton's
Absolute, though not synonymous with a " finished,
perfected, completed," but limited, whole, includes that
idea, and is therefore incompatible with Infinite. J
Having premised these verbal explanations, I proceed
to state, as far as possible in Sir W. Hamilton's own
words, the heads of his argumentation to prove that the
Absolute and Infinite are unknowable. His first
summary statement of the doctrine is as follows :$
" The unconditionally unlimited, or the Infinite, the
" unconditionally limited, or the Absolute, cannot posi-
" tively be construed to the mind : they can be conceived
" only by a thinking away from, or abstraction of, those
" very conditions under which thought itself is realized ;
" consequently, the notion of the Unconditioned is only
" negative ; negative of the conceivable itself. For
" example : On the one hand, we can positively conceive
* Mansel, p. 104.
f But the assimilation with TO 0X01* and TO re\fiov again throws us out ;
for TO 6Xof , with all Greek thinkers, meant either the completed aggregate
of all that exists, or an abstract entity which they conceived aa the Prin-
ciple of Wuoleness in virtue of which, and by participation in which,
that universal aggregate and all other wholes owe wholes. Either of these
would be an additional meaning for the word Absolute, different from all
which have yet been mentioned.
J I demur, however, to Sir W. Hamilton's assertion, that for himself he
exclusively uses the term in this meaning. In the whole of the discussion
respecting the relativity of our knowledge, Absolute, with Sir W. Hamilton,
is simply the opposite of relative, and contains no implication of " finished,
perfected, completed." Moreover, in this very Essay, when arguing against
M. Cousin, who uses Absolute in a sense compatible with Infinite, Sir
W. Hamilton continually falls into M. Cousin's sense.
Discussions, p. lo.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 53
" neither an absolute whole, that is, a whole so great
" that we cannot also conceive it as a relative part of a
" still greater whole ; nor an absolute part, that is, a part
" so small that we cannot also conceive it as a relative
" whole divisible into smaller parts. On the other hand,
" we cannot positively represent, or realize, or construe
" to the mind (as here Understanding and Imagination
" coincide) an infinite whole, for this could only be done
" by the infinite synthesis in thought of finite wholes,
" which would itself require an infinite time for its
"accomplishment; nor, for the same reason, can we
" follow out in thought an infinite divisibility of parts.
" The result is the same, whether we apply the process
" to limitation in space, in time, or in degree. The un-
" conditional negation, and the unconditional affirmation
" of limitation ; in other words, the Infinite and the
" Absolute properly so called, are thus equally incon-
" ceivable to us."
This argument, that the Infinite and the Absolute are
unknowable by us because the only conceptions we are
able to form of them are negative, is stated still more
emphatically a few pages later.* " Kant has clearly
" shown, that the Idea of the Unconditioned can have
" no objective reality, that it conveys no knowledge,
" and that it involves the most insoluble contradictions.
" But he ought to have shown that the Unconditioned
" had no objective application, because it had, in fact, no
" subjective affirmation; that it afforded no real know-
" ledge, because it contained nothing even conceivable ;
" and that it is self-contradictory, because it is not a
" notion, either simple or positive, but only a fasciculus of
" negations negations of the Conditioned in its opposite
" extremes, and bound together merely by the aid of
" language, and their common character of incompre-
'- hensibility."
Let us note, then, as the first and most fundamental
of Sir W. Hamilton's arguments, that our ideas of the
Infinite and the Absolute are purely negative, and the
* Discussions, p. 17.
54 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
Unconditioned which combines the two, " a fasciculus of
negations." I reserve consideration of the validity of
this and every other part of the argumentation,, until we
have the whole before us. He proceeds :*
" As the conditionally limited (which we may briefly
" call the Conditioned) is thus the only possible object of
" knowledge and of positive thought, thought neces-
" saril.y supposes condition. To think is to condition ; and
" conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the
" possibility of thought. For, as the greyhound cannot
" outstrip his shadow, nor (by a more appropriate simile)
" the eagle outsoar the atmosphere in which he floats,
" and by which alone he is supported ; so the mind
" cannot transcend that sphere of limitation, within and
" through which exclusively the possibility of thought
" is realized. Thought is only of the conditioned ; be-
" cause, as we have said, to think is simply to condition;
" The Absolute is conceived merely by a negation of con-
t: ceivability ; and all that we know, is known as
" Won from the cold and formless Infinite."
" How, indeed, it could ever be doubted that thought
" is only of the conditioned, may well be deemed a
" matter of the profoundest admiration. Thought cannot
" transcend consciousness ; consciousness is only possible
" under the antithesis of a subject and object of thought
" known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each
" other ; while, independently of this, all that we know
" either of subject or object, either of mind or matter,
" is only a knowledge in each of the particular, of the
" plural, of the different, of the modified, of the phaeno-
" menal. We admit that the consequence of this doc-
" trine is that philosophy, if viewed as more than a
" science of the conditioned, is impossible. Departing
" from the particular, we admit that we can never, in
" our highest generalizations, rise above the Finite ; that
" our knowledge, whether of mind or matter, can be
O * '
" nothing more than a knowledge of the relative maiu-
* Discussions, p. 13.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 55
" festatinns of an existence which in itself it is our
" highest wisdom to recognise as beyond the reach of
" philosophy. This is what, in the language of St.
" Austin, Cognoscendo ignoratur, et ignoratione cognoscitur"
The dictum that " to think is to condition" (the
meaning of which will be examined hereafter) may be
noted as our author's second argument. And here ends
the positive part of his argumentation. There remains
his refutation of opponents. After an examination of
Schelling's opinion, into which 1 need not follow him, he
grapples with M. Cousin, against whom he undertakes to
show,* that " his argument to prove the correality of his
" three Ideas proves directly the reverse ;" " that the
" conditions under which alone he allows intelligence to
" be possible, necessarily exclude the possibility of a
" knowledge, not to say a conception, of the Absolute ;"
and "that the Absolute, as defined by him, is only a re-
" lative and a conditioned." Of this argument in three
parts, if we pass over (or, as our author would say, dis-
count) as much as is only ad hominem, what is of general
application is as follows :
First: M. Cousin and our author are agreed that
there can be no knowledge except " where there exists a
plurality of terms ;" there are at least a perceived and
a perceiver, a knower and a known. But this necessity
of " difference and plurality" as a condition of know-
ledge, is inconsistent with the meaning of the Absolute,
which " as absolutely universal, is absolutely one. Ab-
" solute unity is convertible with the absolute negation
" of plurality and difference The condition
" of the Absolute as existing, and under which it must,
" be known, and the condition of intelligence, as capable
" of knowing, are incompatible. For, if we suppose the
" Absolute cognizable : it must be identified either 1,
" with the subject knowing : or, 2, with the object
" known ; or, 5, with the indifference of both. The
" first hypothesis, and the second, are contradictory of
" the Absolute. For in these the Absolute is supposed
* Discussions, p. 25.
00 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON' AGAINST COUSIN.
" to be known, either as contradistinguished from the
" knowing subject, or as contradistinguished from the
" object known : in other words, the Absolute is asserted
"to be known as absolute unity, i.e., as the negation of
" all plurality, while the very act by which it is known,
" affirms plurality as the condition of its own possibility.
" The third hypothesis, on the other hand, is contradic-
" tory of the plurality of intelligence ; for if the subject
" and the object of consciousness be known as one, a
" plurality of terms is not the necessary condition of
" intelligence. The alternative is therefore necessary :
" either the Absolute cannot be known or conceived at
"all; or. our author is wrong in subjecting thought to
" the conditions of plurality and difference."*
Secondly : In order to make the Absolute knowable
by us, M. Cousin, says the author, is obliged to present
it in the light of an absolute cause : now causation is a
relation ; therefore M. Cousin's Absolute is but a relative.
Moreover, " what exists merely as a cause, exists merely
" for the sake of something else is not final in itself,
" but simply a mean towards an end. . . . Abstractly
" considered, the effect is therefore superior to the cause."
Hence an absolute cause " is dependent on the effect for
" its perfection ;" and, indeed, " even for its reality. For
" to what extent a thing exists necessarily as a cause, to
" that extent it is not all-sufficient to itself; since to that
" extent it is dependent on the effect, as on the condition
" through which it realizes its existence ; and what
" exists absolutely as a cause, exists therefore in abso-
" lute dependence on the effect for the reality of its
" existence. An absolute cause, in truth, only exists in its
" effects : it never is, it always becomes : for it is an exis-
" tence in potentia, and not an existence in actu, except
' : through and by its effects. The Absolute is thus, at
" best, something merely inchoative and imperfect. "f
* Discussions, pp. 32, 33.
f Discussions, pp. 34, 33. In the first edition three points of our author's
argument were discussed, instead of two only : but I now perceive that
the remaining argument is ad hominem merely, and has reference to M.
Cousin's confusion of the Absolute with the Infinite.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 57
Let me ask, en passant, why M. Cousin is under an
obligation to think that if the Absolute, or, to speak
plainly, if God, is only known to us in the character of
a cause, he must therefore u exist merely as a cause,"
and be merely "a mean towards an end?" It is surelv
possible to maintain that the Deity is known to us only
as he who feeds the ravens, without supposing that the
Divine Intelligence exists solely in order that the ravens
may be fed.*
* A passage follows, which being only directed against a special doctrine
of M. Cousin, (that God is determined to create by the necessity of his
own nature that an absolute creative force cannot but pass into creative
activity) I. should have left unmentioned, were it not worth notice as a
specimen of the kind of arguments which Sir VV. Hamilton can sometimes
use. On M. Cousin's hypothesis, says our author, (p. 36) " One of two
" alternatives must be admitted. God, as necessarily determined to pass
" from absolute essence to relative manifestation, is determined to pass
" either from the better to the worse, or from the worse to the better. A
" third possibility, that both states are equal, as contradictory in itself and
'' as contradicted by our author, it is not necessary to consider. The first
" supposition must be rejected. The necessity in this case determines
" God to pass from the better to the worse, that is, operates to his partial
" annihilation. The power which compels this must be external and hostile,
" for nothing operates willingly to its own delerioration ; and as superior
" to the pretended God, is either itself the real deity, if an intelligent and
" free cause, or a negation of all deity, if a blind force or fate. The second
" is equally inadmissible: that God, passing into the universe, passes from
" a stateof comparative imperfection into a state of comparative perfection.
" The divine nature is identical with the most perfect nature, and is also
" identical with the first cause. If the first cause be not identical with
" the most perfect nature, there is no God, for the two essential conditions
" of his existence are not in combination. K ow, on the present supposition,
" the most perfect nature is the derived ; nay, the universe, the creation,
" the yivoptvov, is, in relation to its cause, the actual, the oiro>r ov. It would
' also be the divine, but that divinity supposes also the notion of cause,
'' while the universe, ex hypothesi, is only an effect."
This curious subtlety, that creation must be either passing from the
better to the worse or from the worse to the better (which, if true, would
prove that God cannot have created anything unless from all eternity) can
be likened to nothing but the Eleatic argument that motion is impossible,
because if a body moves it must either move where it is or where it is not ;
an argument, by the way, for which Sir W. Hamilton often expresses
high respect ; and of which he has here produced a very successful imita-
tion. It it were worth while expending serious argument upon such a
curiosity of dialectics, one might say it assumes that whatever is now worse
must always have been worse, and that whatever is now better must always
have been better. For, on the opposite supposition, perfect wisdom would
have begun to will the new state at the precise moment when it began to
be better than the old. We may add that our author's argument, though
never so irrefragable, in no way avails him against M. Cousin ; for (as he
has himself said, only a sentence before) on M. Cousin's theory the uni-
58 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
fn reviewing- the series of arguments adduced by Sir
W. Hamilton for the incognoscibility and inconceivability
of the Absolute, the first remark that occurs is, that most
of them lose their application by simply substituting for
the metaphysical abstraction " The Absolute," the more
intelligible concrete expression "Something Absolute,'
If the first phrase has any meaning, it must be capable
of being expressed in terras of the other. When we are
told of an " Absolute" in the abstract, or of an Abso-
lute Being, even though called God, we are entitled,
and if we would know what we are talking about, are
bound to ask, absolute in what? Do you mean, 1'or ex-
ample, absolute in goodness, or absolute in know ledge ? or
do you, perchance, mean absolute in ignorance, or absolute
in wickedness? for any one of these is as much an Ab-
solute as any other. And when you talk of something
in the abstract which is called the Absolute, does it mean
one, or more than one, of these? or does it, peradventure,
mean all of them ? When (descending to a. less lofty
height of abstraction) we speak ot The Horse, we mean
to include every object of which the name horse can
be predicated. Or, to take our examples from the same
region of thought to which the controversy belongs
verse can never have had a beginning, and God, therefore, never was iu
the dilemma supposed.
[On this Mr. ivlansel remarks (p. 107), " Hamilton is not speaking of
" states of things, but of states of the divine nature, as creative or not
" creative : and Mr. Mill's argument, to refute Hamilton, must suppose a
" time when the new nature of God begins to be better than the old."
This is not a happy specimen of Mr. Mausel's powers of confutation. If
God made the universe at the precise moment when it was wisest and
best to do so and if the universe was made by a perfectly wise and good
being, this must have been the case who besides Mr. Manse), or, accord-
ing to him, Sir W. Hamilton, would assert that God, in doing so, acquired
anew nature? or passed out of one state into another state ot his own
nature? Did he not simply remain in the state of perfect wisdom and
goodness in which he was before ?
Mr. Mausel makes the odd assertion, that this argument of Sir W.
Hamilton is taken from Plato. There is very little in common between
it and the passage in the .Republic in which bocrates, to disprove the
fabulous metamorphoses of the gods into the forms of men, animals, or
inanimate things, argues that no being would voluntarily change itself
from better to worse. I cannot be mistaken in the passage of Plato
which Mr. Mansel has in view, for he had himself cited a part of it, with
the same intention, in the notes to his Bampton Lectures ^p. 2uy.)J
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 59
when The True or The Beautiful are spoken of, the
phrase is meant to include all things whatever that are
true, or all things whatever that are beautiful.* If this
rule is good for other abstractions, it is good for the
Absolute. The word is devoid of meaning unless in
O
reference to predicates of some sort. What is absolute
must be absolutely something; absolutely this or ab-
solutely that. The Absolute, then, ought to be a
genus comprehending whatever is absolutely anything
whatever possesses any predicate in finished completeness.
If we are told therefore that there is some one Being
who is, or which is, The Absolute not something abso-
lute, but the Absolute itself, the proposition can be
understood in no other sense than that the supposed
Being possesses in absolute completeness all predicates ;
is absolutely good, and absolutely bad; absolutely wise,
and absolutely stupid ; and so forth. f The conception o.f
* Mr. Mansel (pp. 108, 109) considers this sentence a curious specimen
of my reading in philosophy, and informs me that " Plato expressly d;--
" tinguishes between ' the beautiful ' and ' things that are beautif 1 ' an
" the One in contrast to the Many the Heal in contrast to the Apparent.''
Mr. Mansel will doubtless be glad to hear that I already possessed the
very elementary knowledge of Plato which he seeks to impart to mt' ;
indeed (if it were of any consequence) I have elsewhere given an accouut
of this theory of Plato, and made the excuses which may justly be made
for such a doctrine ia Plato's time. But to recognise it as a theory whicii
it is necessary to take into consideration now, is to follow the example of
the later German transcendentalists in putting philosophy back to its very
incunabula.
f The " Inquirer" objects, that merely negative predicates should be
excluded from the account; and that many of those here mentioned are
merely negative : absolute littleness being but the negation of greatness ;
weakness, ot strength; folly, of wisdom; evil, of good (p. 22). But
(without meddling with the very disputable position, that all bad qualities
are merely deficiency of good ones) the question is, not whether the
qualities which the " Inquirer" enumerates are negative, but whether
they are capable of being predicated as absolute. If they are, the general
or abstract Absolute logically includes them. And, surely, negations are
still more susceptible of being absolute than positive qualities. The
" Inquirer" will hardly deny that " absolutely none" is as correct an em-
ployment of the word absolute as " absolutely all." With regard to
Infinite, the same writer says, " To talk of infinite littleness infinite non-
" extension or non-duration is to talk of infinite nothing. Which is
" indeed to talk, we must not say infinite, but absolute nonsense." It is
hardly fair to refer a pupil of Sir W. Hamilton to mathematics ; but
the "Inquirer" might have learnt from Sir W. Hamilton himself that it
is not nonsense to talk of infinitely small quantities.
60 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
such a being, I will not say of such a God, is worse than
a " fasciculus of negations ;" it is a fasciculus of con-
tradictions : and our author might have spared himself
the trouble of proving a thing to be unknowable, which
cannot be spoken of but in words implying the impos-
sibility of its existence. To insist on such a truism is
not superfluous, for there have been philosophers who
saw that this must be the meaning of " The Absolute,"
and yet accepted it as a reality. " What kind of an
" Absolute Being is that," asked Hegel,* " which does
" not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil
"included?" Undoubtedly: and it is therefore neces-
sary to admit, either that there is no Absolute Being, or
that the law, that contradictory propositions cannot both
be true, does not apply to the Absolute. Hegel chose
the latter side of the alternative ; and by this, among
other things, has fairly earned the honour which will
probably be awarded to him by posterity, of having logi-
cally extinguished transcendental metaphysics by a series
of reductiones ad absardissimum.
What I have said of the Absolute is true, mutatis
mutandis, of the Infinite. This also is a phrase of no
meaning, except in reference to some particular predi-
cate; it must mean the infinite in something as in
size, in duration, or in power. These are intelligible
conceptions. But an abstract Infinite, a Being not
merely infinite in one or in several attributes, but which
is " The Infinite" itself, must be not only infinite in
greatness, but also in littleness ; its duration is not only
infinitely long, but infinitely short; it is not only
infinitely awful, but infinitely contemptible ; it is the
same mass of contradictions as its companion the Abso-
lute. There is no need to prove that neither of them
is knowable, since, it the universal law of Belief is of
objective validity, neither of them exists.
It is these unmeaning abstractions, however, these
muddles of self-contradiction, which alone our author has
proved, against Cousin and others, to be unknowable.
* Quoted by Mr. Mansel, " The Limits of Religious Thought," p. 30.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 61
He has shown, without difficulty, that we cannot know
The Infinite or The Absolute. He has not shown that
we cannot know a concrete reality as infinite or as abso-
lute. Applied to this latter thesis, his reasoning breaks
down.
We have seen his principal argument, the one on which
he substantially relies. It is, that the Infinite and the
Absolute are unknowable because inconceivable, and in-
conceivable because the only notions we can have of them
are purely negative. If he is right in his antecedent,
the consequent follows. A conception made up of nega-
tions is a conception of Nothing. It is not a conception
at all.
But is a conception, by the fact of its being a con-
ception of something infinite, reduced to a negation ?
This is quite true of the senseless abstraction " The
Infinite." That indeed is purely negative, being formed
by excluding from the concrete conceptions classed under
it, all their positive elements. But in place of " the
Infinite," put the idea of Something infinite, and the
argument collapses at once. " Something infinite" is a
conception which, like most of our complex ideas, con-
tains a negative element, but which contains positive
elements also. Infinite space, for instance : is there no-
thing positive in that? The negative part of this con-
ception is the absence of bounds. The positive are, the
idea of space, and of space greater than any finite space.
So of infinite duration : so far as it signifies " without
end" it is only known or conceived negatively ; but in
so far as it means time, and time longer than any given
time, the conception is positive. The existence of a
negative element in a conception does not make the con-
ception itself negative and a non-entity. It would sur-
prise most people to be told that " the life eternal" is a
purely negative conception ; that immortality is incon-
ceivable. Those who hope for it for themselves have &
very positive conception of what they hope for. True
we cannot have an adequate conception of space or dura-
tion as infinite ; but between a conception which though
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
inadequate is real, and correct as far as it goes, and the
impossibility of any conception, there is a wide difference.
Sir W. Hamilton does not admit this difference. He
thinks the distinction without meaning. " To say* that
" the infinite can be thought, but only inadequately
" thought, is a contradiction in adjecto ; it is the same as
" saying that the infinite can be known, but only known
" as finite." I answer, that to know it as greater than
anything finite is not to know it as finite. The conception
of Infinite as that which is greater than any given quan-
tity, is a conception we all possess, sufficient for all human
purposes, and as genuine and good a positive conception
as one need wish to have. It is not adequate ; our con-
ception of a reality never is. But it is positive ; and
the assertion that there is nothing positive in the idea
of infinity can only be maintained by leaving out and
ignoring, as Sir W. Hamilton invariably does, the very
element which constitutes the idea. Considering how
many recondite laws of physical nature, afterwards veri-
fied by experience, have been arrived at by trains of
mathematical reasoning grounded on what, if Sir W.
Hamilton's doctrine be correct, is a non-existent con-
ception, one would be obliged to suppose that conjuring
is a highly successful mode of the investigation of nature.
If, indeed, we trifle by setting up an imaginary Infinite
which is infinite in nothing in particular, our notion of
it is truly nothing, and a " fasciculus of negations." But
this is a good example of the bewildering effect of putting
nonsensical abstractions in the place of concrete realities.
Would Sir W. Hamilton have said that the idea of God
is but a negation, or a fasciculus of negations ? As having
nothing greater than himself, he is indeed conceived
negatively. But as himself greater than all other real
or imaginable existences, the conception of him is
positive.
Put Absolute instead of Infinite, and we come to the
same result. " The Absolute," as already shown, is a
heap of contradictions, but " absolute" in reference to
* Lectures, ii. 375.
Wux 4 &(
<fWA
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 63
any given attribute, signifies the possession of that
attribute in finished perfection and completeness. A
Being absolute in knowledge, for example, is one who
knows, in the literal meaning of the term, everything
Who will pretend that this conception is negative, or
unmeaning to us? We cannot, indeed, form an adequate
conception of a being as knowing everything, since to do
this we must have a conception, or mental representa-
tion, of all that he knows. But neither have we an
adequate conception of any parson's finite knowledge.
I have no adequate conception of a shoemaker's know-
ledge, since I do not know how to make shoes : but my
conception of a shoemaker and of his knowledge is a
real conception ; it is not a fasciculus of negations. If
I talk of an Absolute Being (in the sense in which we
are now employing the term) I use words without mean-
ing ; but if I talk of a Being who is absolute in wisdom
and goodness, that is, who knows everything, and at all
times intends what is best for every sentient creature, I
.understand perfectly what I mean: and however much
the fact may transcend my conception, the shortcoming
can only consist in my being ignorant of the details of
which the reality is composed : as I have a positive, and
may have a correct conception of the empire of China,
though I know not the aspect of any of the places, nor
the physiognomy of any of the human beings, compre-
hended therein.
It appears, then, that the leading argument of Sir W.
Hamilton to prove the inconceivability and consequent
unknowability of the Unconditioned, namely, that our
conception of it is merely negative, holds good only of
an abstract Unconditioned which cannot possibly exist,
and not of a concrete Being, supposed infinite and abso-
lute in certain definite attributes.* Let us now see if
there be any greater value in his other arguments.
* The answer of Mr. Mansel and the " Inquirer" to the preceding
argument, is, that it confounds the infinite with the indefinite. They
could not have understood the argument worse if they had never read it.
Indefinite, in its ordinary acceptation, is that which has a limit, but a
limit either variable in itself, or unknown to us. Infinite is that which
64 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
The first of them is, that all knowledge is of things
plural and different ; that a thing is only known to us
by being known as different from something else ; from
ourselves as knowing it, and also from other known things
whicli are not it. Here we have at length something
which the mind can rest on as a fundamental truth. It
is one of the profound psychological observations which
the world owes to Hobbes ; it is fully recognised both
by M. Cousin and by Sir W. Hamilton ; and it has, more
recently, been admirably illustrated and applied by Mr.
Bain and by Mr. Herbert Spencer. That to know a thing
is to distinguish it from other things, is, as I formerly
remarked, one of the truths which the very ambiguous
expression " the relativity of human knowledge" has
been employed to denote. With this doctrine I have
no quarrel. But Sir W. Hamilton proceeds to argue
that the Absolute, being " .absolutely One/' cannot be
known under the conditions of plurality and difference,
has no limit. In what Mr. Mansel calls the metaphysical use of the word
indefinite, he affirms it (p. 114) to mean " indefinitely increasable." Else-
where (p. 50) he says " An indefinite time is that which is capable of per-
" petual addition : an infinite time is one so great as to admit of no
" addition." I now ask, which of these is the correct expression for that
which is greater than anything finite. Is this a property which can be
affirmed of anything which lias an undetermined limit ? or of anything
which is indefinitely increasable ? or of anything which is capable of
perpetual addition P Is a merely indefinite time greater than every finite
time ? Is a merely indefinite space greater than every finite space ?
Is a merely indefinite power greater than every finite power? The
property of being greater than everything finite belongs, and can belong,
only to what is in the strictest sense of the term, both popular and philo-
sophical, Infinite.
Mr. Mansel, in his rejoinder, defends himself by saying that Descartes
and Cudworth agree with him in giving the name indefinite to what I
(and as he acknowledges, the mathematicians) understand by infinite. I
cannot affirm that Descartes and Cudworth have nowhere done this ; but
thoy certainly have not done it in the passages which Mr. Mansel quoted,
either in his first reply or in this. All that either Descartes or Cudworth
says in those passages is that the indefiniteness, to our minds, of the
possible extension of the physical universe, is not tantamount to, nor a
proof of, its infinity ; as of course it is not.
Mr. Mansel adds that even supposing me to be in the right, it would
only follow, not that Sir W. Hamilton is wrong, but that he and I do not
mean the same thing by the same term. "Whoever has read the present
note must, however, be aware, that I maintain my position to be true even
in what Mr. Mansel affirms to be Sir W. Hamilton's meaning of the term.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 65
and as these are the acknowledged conditions of all our /
knowledge, cannot, therefore, be known at all. There
is here, as it seems to me, a strange confusion of ideas.
Sir W. Hamilton seems to mean that, being absolutely
One, it cannot be known as plural. But the proposition
that plurality is a condition of knowledge, does not
mean that the thing known must be known as itself
plural. It means, that a thing is only known, by being
known as distinguished from something else. The plu-
rality required is not within the thing itself, but is made
up between itself and other things. Again, even if we
concede that a thing cannot be known at all unless '
known as plural, does it follow that it cannot be known
as plural because it is also One ? Are the One and the
Many, then, incompatible things, instead of different
aspects of the same thing? Sir W. Hamilton surely
does not mean by Absolute Unity, an indivisible Unit;
the minimum, instead of the maximum of Beinr. He
' O
must mean, as M. Cousin certainly means, an absolute
Whole ; the Whole which comprehends all things. If
this be so, does not this Whole not only admit of, but
necessitate, the supposition of parts ? Is not an Unity
which comprehends everything, ex m termini known as
a plurality, and the most plural of all pluralities, plural
in an unsurpassable degree ? If there is any meaning
in the words, must not Absolute Unity be Absolute
Totality, which is the highest degree of Plurality ?
There is no escape from the alternative: the Abso-
lute either means a single atom or monad, or it means
Plurality in the extreme degree. I$A \
Though it is hardly needful, we will try this argument
by the test we applied to a previous one; by substituting
the concrete, God, for the abstract Absolute. Would
Sir W. Hamilton have said that God is not cognizable
under the condition of Plurality is not known as dis-
tinguished from ourselves, and from the objects in
nature ? Call any positive Thing by a name which
expresses only its negative predicates, and you may
easily prove it under that name to be incognizable and
66 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
a non-entity. Give it back its full name (if Mr.
ManseTs reverential feelings will permit), its positive
attributes reappear, and you find, to your surprise, that
what is a reality can be known as one.*
The next argument is chiefly directed against the
doctrine of M. Cousin, that we know the Absolute as
Absolute Cause. This doctrine, says Sir W. Hamilton,
destroys itself. The idea of a cause is irreconcilable
with the Absolute, for a Cause is relative, and implies
an Effect : this Absolute, therefore, is not an Absolute
at all. This would be unanswerable, if by the Absolute
we were obliged to understand something which is not
only "out of" all relation, but incapable of ever passing
into relation. But is this what any one can possibly
mean by the Absolute, who identifies it with the Creator?
Granting that the Absolute implies an existence in itself,
standing in no relation to anything : the only Absolute
with which we are concerned, or in which anybody
* Mr. Mansel, as I have mentioned, vehemently objects to testing what
Sir W. Hamilton says of the Infinite by its applicability to God, affirm-
ing that the Infinite which Sir W. Hamilton is speaking of, namely the
Infinite as we conceive it, is a " pseudo-infinite." This is a curious in-
version of the parts of Sir W. Hamilton and of his critic. It is I who
assert that Sir W. Hamilton's Infinite is a pseudo-infinite ; it is he who
maintains that it is the real. At least he substitutes this pseudo-infinite
which is really inconceivable, for an intelligible infinite, a concrete Deity,
and proving the inconceivability of the one, thinks he has sufficiently
proved the inconceivability of the other. It was his business, it is what
he professes, to prove that God, considered as Infinite, is inconceivable
by us. Instead of this, he proves the inconceivability of an Infinite
which is not and cannot be God, and which does not and cannot exist,
and leaves it to Mr. Mansel to discover (after others have pointed it out)
that this is a pseudo-infinite.
Mr. Mansel is still more indignant that I should try what Sir W.
Hamilton says of the Absolute, by the test of applicability to God, and
says that this is actually inverting Sir W. Hamilton's meaning, since his
definition of the Absolute, " the unconditionally limited," is contradictory
to the nature of God. But Sir W. Hamilton is here arguing with M.
Cousin, who does not mean by Absolute the limited, but the complete,
and who does predicate it of God. As Mr Bolton truly remarks (p. 159)
" In discussing the doctrines of Schelling and Cousin, Hamilton uses the
" word Absolute in conformity with their usage, according to which the
" Infinite and the Absolute are not opposed, or contraries, as in Hamil-
" ton's own terminology." Nor for this does he deserve any blame; for
if the Absolute which he affirms to be unknowable, because it cannot be
known under the conditions of Plurality, is Absolute only in his own
sense of the term, and not in M. Cousin's, he has not refuted M. Cousin.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 67
believes, must not only be capable of entering into rela-
tion with things, but must be capable of entering into
any relation whatever, except that of dependence, with
anything. May it not be known in some, at least, of
those relations, and particularly in the relation of a
Cause ? And if it is a " finished, perfected, completed"
Cause, i.e. the most a cause that it is possible to be
the cause of everything except itself tben, if known as
such, it is known as an Absolute Cause. Has Sir W.
Hamilton shown that an Absolute Cause, thus under-
stood, is inconceivable, or unknowable ? No : all he
shows is, that,, though capable of being known, it is
known relatively to something else, namely, to its effects;
and that such knowledge of God is not of God in him-
self, but of God in relation to his works. The truth is,
M. Cousin's doctrine is too legitimate a product of the
metaphysics common to them both, to be capable of
being refuted by Sir W. Hamilton. For this knowledge
of God in and by his effects, according to M. Cousin, is
knowing him as he is in himself : because the creative
power whereby he causes, is in himself, is inseparable
from him, and belongs to his essence. And as far as I
can see, the principles common to the two philosophers
are as good a warrant to M. Cousin for saying this, as
to Sir W. Hamilton for maintaining that extension and
figure are " essential attributes " of matter, and perceived
as such by intuition.
I have now examined, with one exception, every
argument (which is not merely ad hominem) advanced
by Sir W. Hamilton to prove against M. Cousin the
unknowableness of the Unconditioned. The argument
which I have reserved, is the emphatic and oracular one,
that the Unconditioned must be unthinkable, because
" to think is to condition." I have kept this tor the
last, because it will occupy us the longest time : for we
must begin by finding the meaning of the proposition ;
which cannot be done very briefly, so little help is
afforded us by the author.
According to the best notion I can form of the mean-
r -2
(J7IM** 1
68 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
ing of " condition," either as a term of philosophy or of
common life, it means that on which something else is
contingent, or (more definitely) which being given, some-
thing else exists, or takes place. I promise to do some-
thing on condition that you do something else : that is,
if you do this, I will do that ; if not, I will do as I
please. A Conditional Proposition, in logic, is an asser-
tion in this form : " If so and so, then so and so." The
conditions of a phenomenon are the various antecedent
circumstances which, when they exist simultaneously,
are followed by its occurrence. As all these antecedent
circumstances must coexist, each of them in relation to
the others is a conditio sine qua non ; i.e. without it the
phenomenon will not follow from the remaining condi-
tions, though it perhaps may from some set of conditions
totally different.
If this be the meaning of Condition, the Uncondi-
tioned should mean, that which does not depend for its
existence or its qualities on any antecedent ; in other
words, it should be synonymous with Uncaused. This,
however, cannot be the meaning intended by Sir W.
Hamilton : for, in a passage already quoted from his
argument against Cousin, he speaks of the effect as a
condition of its cause. The condition, therefore, as he
understands it, needs not be an antecedent, and may be
a subsequent fact to that which it conditions.
He appears, indeed, in his writings generally, to
reckon as a condition of a thing, anything necessarily
implied by it : and uses the word Conditioned almost
interchangeably with Relative. For relatives are always
in pairs : a term of relation implies the existence of two
things, the one which it is affirmed of, and another :
parent implies child, greater implies less, like implies
another like, and vice versa. Eelation is an abstract
narre for all concrete facts which concern more than one
object. Wherever, therefore, a relation is affirmed, or
anything is spoken of under a relative name, the exis-
tence of the correlative may be called a condition of the
relation, as well as of the truth of the assertion. When,
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 09
accordingly, Sir W. Hamilton calls an effect a condition
of its cause, he speaks intelligibly, and the received use
of the term affords him a certain amount of justification
for thus speaking.
But, if the Conditioned means the Relative, the Un-
conditioned must mean its opposite ; and in this accep-
tation, the Unconditioned would mean all Noumena; |
Things in themselves, considered without reference to
the effects they produce in us, which are called their
phenomenal agencies or properties. Sir W. Hamilton
does, very frequently, seem to use the term in this sense.
In denying all knowledge of the Unconditioned, he i
often seems to be denying any other than phenomenal
knowledge of Matter or of Mind. Not only, however,
he does not consistently adhere to this meaning, but it
directly conflicts with the only approach he ever makes
to a definition or an explanation of the term. We have
seen him declaring that the Unconditioned is the genus
of which the Infinite and the Absolute are the two
species. But Things in themselves are not all of them
infinite and absolute. Matter and Mind, as such, are
neither the one nor the other. It is evident that Sir ,
W. Hamilton had never decided what extent he intended
giving to the term Unconditioned. Sometimes he gives
it one degree of amplitude, sometimes another. Between
the meanings in which he uses it there is undoubtedly
a link of connexion ; but this only makes the matter
still worse than if there were none. The phrase has
that most dangerous kind of ambiguity, in which the
meanings, though essentially different, are so nearly
allied that the thinker unconsciously interchanges them
one with another.*
* In page 8 of the Discussions, speaking of the one of M. Cousin's
three elements of Consciousness which that author " variously expresses
" by the terms, unity, identity, substance, absolute cause, the infinite, pur-
" thought, &c.," Sir VV. Hamilton says, " we will briefly call it the Uncon-
" ditioned." What M. Cousin denominates "plurality, difference, phceno\^ >
" menon, relative cause, the finite, determined thought, &c ," Sir W.
Hamilton says, " we would style the Conditioned." This, 1 think, is as
near as he ever comes to an explanation of what he means by these words.
It is obviously no explanation at all. It tells us what (in logical language)
70 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
The probability is that when our author asserts that
" to think is to condition," he uses the word Condition
in neither of these senses, but in a third meaning,
equally i'amiliar to him, and recurring constantly in
such phrases as " the conditions of our thinking faculty,"
" conditions of thought," and the like. He means by
Conditions something similar to Kant's Forms of
Sense and Categories of Understanding ; a meaning
more correctly expressed by another* of his phrases,
" Necessary Laws of Thought." He is applying to the
mind the scholastic maxim, " Quicquid recipitur, re-
cipitur ad modum recipientis." He means that our
perceptive and conceptive faculties have their own laws,
which not only determine what we are capable of per-
ceiving and conceiving, but put into our perceptions and
conceptions elements not derived from the thing per-
ceived or conceived, but from the mind itself: That,
therefore, we cannot at once infer that whatever we find in
our perception or conception of an object, has necessarily
a prototype in the object itself: and that we must, in each
instance, determine this question by philosophic investi-
gation. According to this doctrine, which no fault can
be found with our author for maintaining, though often
\ for not carrying it far enough the "conditions of
thought" would mean the attributes with which, it is
supposed, the mind cannot help investing every object
of thought the elements which, derived from its own
structure, cannot but enter into every conception it is
able to form ; even if there should be nothing cor-
responding in the object which is the prototype of the
conception : though our author, in most cases, (therein
differing from Kant) believes that there is this cor-
respondence.
We have here an intelligible meaning for the doctrine
the terms denote, but not what they connote. An enumeration of the
things called by a name is not a definition. If the name, for instance,
were " dog," it would be no definition to say that what are variously
denominated spaniels, mastiffs, and so forth, " we would style " dogs. The
thing wanted is to know what attributes common to all these the word
signifies, what is affirmed of a thing by calling it a dog.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. 71
that to think is to condition ; and as Mr. Mansel, in his
reply, guarantees this as the true meaning of Sir W.
Hamilton, I will accept it as being so. If, then (which
I do not here discuss), the philosophical doctrine be
true, which was held partially by Sir W. Hamilton, and
in a more thorough-going manner by Kant, viz. that, in
the act of thought, the mind, by an a priori necessity,
invests the object of thought with attributes which are
not in itself, but are created by the mind's own laws ;
and if we consent to call these necessities of thought
the conditions of thought ; then evidently to think is to
condition, and to think the Unconditioned would be to
think the unthinkable. But the Unconditioned, in this
application of the term, is not identical with the Infinite 1
plus the Absolute. The Infinite and the Absolute are Jj
not necessarily, in this sense, unconditioned. The '
words infinite and absolute, as \[ have already said, have j
no meaning save as expressing some concrete reality
or supposed reality, possessing infinitely or absolutely
attributes of some sort, which attributes, as finite and
limited, we are able to think. In thinking these attri-
butes, we are not able to divest ourselves of our mental
conditions, but we can think the attributes as surpassing \
the conditions. " To condition," and " to think under
conditions," are ambiguous phrases. An Infinite Being
may be thought, and is thought, with reference to the
conditions, but not as limited by them. The most
familiar examples of the alleged necessary conditions
of thought, are Time and Space : we cannot, it is
affirmed, think anything, except in time and space.
Now, an Infinite Being is not thought as in time and
space, if this means as occupying a portion of time or
a portion of space. But (substituting for Time the
word Duration, to get rid of the theological antithesis of
Time and Eternity) we do actually conceive Grod in,
reference to Duration and Extension, namely, as occupy-
ing the whole of both ; and these being conceived as
infinite, to conceive a Being as occupying the whole of
them is to conceive that Being as infinite. If thinking
72 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN.
God as eternal and omnipresent is thinking him in
Space and Time, we do think God in Space and Time :
if thinking him as eternal and omnipresent is not
thinking him in Space and Time, we are capable of
thinking something out of Space and Time. Mr.
Mansel may make his choice between the two opinions.
I have already shown that the ideas of infinite space and
time are real and positive conceptions : that of a Being
who is in all Space and in all Time is no less so. To
think anything, must of course be to condition it by
attributes which are themselves thinkable ; but not
necessarily to condition it by a limited quantum of those
attributes : on the contrary, we may think it under a
degree of them greater than all limited degrees, and this
is to think it as infinite.*
If we now ask ourselves, as the result of this long
discussion, what Sir W. Hamilton can be considered as
having accomplished in this celebrated Essay, our answer
must be : That he has established, more thoroughly
perhaps than he intended, the futility of all speculation
respecting those meaningless abstractions " The Infi-
nite" and " The Absolute," notions contradictory in
themselves, and to which no corresponding realities do
or can exist, f Respecting the unknowableness, not of
* " To be conceived as unconditioned," says Mr. Mansel (pp. 17, 18),
" God must be conceived as exempt from action in time : to be conceived
" as a person, if his personality resembles ours, he must be conceived as
" acting in time." Exempt from action in time, as much as you please ;
in other words, not necessitated to it, nor restricted by its conditions ; but
did any one ever conceive the Deity as not acting in time ? Nay, even if
he is not conceived as a person, but only as the first principle of the uni-
verse, " one absolutely first principle on which everything else depends,"
a belief which is held by Mr. Mansel along with the Christian doctrine of
the Divine Personality (pp. 7 to 18) ; even so, the first principle of every-
thing which takes place in Time, must, from the very meaning of the
words, not only be conceived as acting in Time, but must really act in
Time, and in all Time. Action in Time does not belong to the Deity as a
Person, but quite as much to the Deity as the first principle of all things,
which is what Mr. Mansel means by the Unconditioned.
f On this Mr. Mansel's remark is (pp. 110, 111) that Sir W. Hamilton
did not assert these to be unmeaning abstractions. I never pretended
that he did ; the gist of my complaint against him is, that he did not per-
ceive them to be unmeaning. " Hamilton," says Mr. Mansel, "maintains
" that the terms absolute and infinite are perfectly intelligible as abstrac-
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AGAINST COUSIN. . 73
" the Infinite," or "the Absolute," but of concrete persons
or things possessing infinitely or absolutely certain specific
attributes, I cannot think that our author has proved
anything ; nor do I think it possible to prove them any
otherwise unknowable, than that they can only be known
in their relations to us, and not as Noumena, or Things
in themselves. This, however, is true of the finite as
well as of the infinite, of the imperfect as well as of the
completed or absolute. Our author has merely proved
the uncognoscibility of a being which is nothing but in-
finite. or nothing but absolute : and since nobody supposes
that there is such a being, but only beings which are
something positive carried to the infinite, or to the abso-
lute, to have established this point cannot be regarded as
any great achievement. He has not even refuted M.
Cousin ; whose doctrine of an intuitive cognition of the
Deity, like every other doctrine relating to intuition, can
only be disproved by showing it to be a mistaken inter-
pretation of facts; which, again, as we shall see here-
after, can only be done by pointing out in what other
way the seeming perceptions may have originated, which
are erroneously supposed to be ^intuitive.
" tions, as much so as relative and finite." Quis dubitavit ? It is not
the terms absolute and infinite that are unmeaning; it is "The Infinite"
and " The Absolute." Infinite and Absolute are real attributes, abstracted
from concrete objects of thought, if not of experience, which are at least
believed to possess those attributes. "The Infinite" and "The Absolute"
are illegitimate abstractions of what never were, nor could without self-
contradiction be supposed to be, attributes of any concrete. 1 regret to
difiev, on this point, from my distinguished reviewer in the Westminster
Review, who considers these to be intelligible abstractions, though of a
higher reach of abstraction than the preceding (p. 14). The distinction is
seized by one of my American critics, Dr. H. B. Smith (p. 134), who re-
gards it as the difference between talking " about the Infinite and Abso-
lute as entities," and considering them " simply as modes or predicates of
real existences." That there are persons " in Laputa or the Empire" (as
Sir W. Hamilton phrases it) who do talk about them as entities, up to
any pitch of wild nonsense, I am quite aware ; and against these Sir W.
Hamilton's Essay, as the protest, though the insufficient protest, of a rival
Transcendentalist, has its value.
vL
74
CHAPTER V.
WHAT IS REJECTED AS KNOWLEDGE BY SIR WILLIAM
HAMILTON, BROUGHT BACK UNDER THE \AME OF BELIEF.
WE have found Sir W. Hamilton maintaining with great
earnestness, and taking as the basis of his philosophy;
an opinion respecting the limitation of human know-
ledge, which, if he did not mean so much by it as the
language in which he often clothed it seemed to imply,
meant at least this, that the Absolute, the Infinite, the
Unconditioned, are necessarily unknowable by us. I
have discussed this opinion as a serious philosophical
dogma, expressing a definite view of the relation between
the universe and human apprehension, and fitted to guide
us in distinguishing the questions which it is of any
avail to ask, from those which are altogether closed to
our investigations.
But had the doctrine, in the mind of Sir VV. Hamilton,
neant ten times more than it did had he upheld the
relativity of human knowledge in the fullest, instead of
the scantiest meaning of which the words are susceptible
the question would still have been reduced to naught,
or to a mere verbal controversy, by his admission of a
second kind of intellectual conviction called Belief;
which is anterior to knowledge, is the foundation of it,
and is not subject to its limitations ; and through the
medium of which we may have, and are justified in
having, a full assurance of all the things which he has
pronounced unknowable to us ; and this not exclusively
by revelation, that is, on the supposed testimony of a
Being whom we have ground for trusting as veracious,
but by our natural faculties.
BKLIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE. 75
From some philosophers, this distinction would have
the appearance of a mere fetch one of those transparent
evasions which have sometimes been resorted to by the
assailants of received opinions, that they might have an
opportunity of ruining the rational foundations of a
doctrine without exposing themselves to odium by its
direct denial : as the writers against Christianity in the
eighteenth century, after declaring some doctrine to be
contradictory to reason, and exhibiting it in the absurdest
possible light, were wont to add that this was not of the
smallest consequence, religion being an affair of faith,
not of reason. But Sir W. Hamilton evidently meant
what he says ; he was expressing a serious conviction,
and one of the tenets of his philosophy : he really recog-
nised under the name of Belief a substantive source, I was
going to say, of knowledge ; I may at all events say of
trustworthy evidence. This appears in the following
passages :
" The* sphere of our belief is much more extensive
" than the sphere of our knowledge, and therefore, when
" I deny that the Infinite can by us be known, I am far
" from denying that by us it is, must, and ought to be,
" believed. This I have indeed anxiously evinced, both
" by reasoning and authority."
" St. Austinf accurately says, 'We know, what rests
" upon reason ; but believe, what rests upon authority.*
" But reason itself must rest at last upon authority; for
" the original data of reason do not rest on reason, but
" are necessarily accepted by reason on the authority of
" what is beyond itself. These data are, therefore, in
" rigid propriety, Beliefs or Trusts. Thus it is that in
" the last resort we must perforce philosophically admit,
" that belief is the primary condition of reason, and not
" reason the ultimate ground of belief. We are com-
" pelled to surrender the proud Intellige ut credas of Abe-
" lard, to content ourselves with the humble Crede ut
" intelligas of Anselm."
* Letter to Mr. Calderwood, in Appendix to Lectures, ii. 530, 531.
t Dissertations on Reid, p. 760,
76 BELIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE.
Arid in another part of the same Dissertation,* (he is
arguing that we do not believe, but know, the external
world) " If asked, indeed, how we know that we know
" it ? how we know that what we apprehend in sensible
" perception is, as consciousness assures us, an object,
" external, extended, and numerically different from the
" conscious subject ? how we know that this object is not
" a mere mode of mind, illusively presented to us as a
" mere mode of matter ; then indeed we must reply that
" we do not in propriety know that what we are com-
" pelled to perceive as not-self is not a perception of self,
" and that we can only on reflection bdieve such to be
" the case, in reliance on the original necessity of so
" believing-, imposed on us by our nature."
It thus appears that, in Sir W. Hamilton's opinion,
Belief is a conviction of higher authority than Know-
ledge ; Belief is ultimate, knowledge only derivative ;
Knowledge itself finally rests on Belief; natural beliefs
are the sole warrant for all our knowledge. Knowledge,
therefore, is an inferior ground of assurance to natural
Belief; and as we have beliefs which tell us that we
know, and without which we could not be assured of
the truth of our knowledge, so we have, and are warranted
in having, beliefs beyond our knowledge ; beliefs re-
specting the Unconditioned respecting that which is
in itself unknowable.
I am not now considering what it is that, in our
author's opinion, we are bound to believe concerning the
unknowable. What here concerns us is, the nullity to
which this doctrine reduces the position to which our
author seemed to cling so firmly viz., that our know-
ledge is relative to ourselves, and that we can have no
knowledge of the infinite and absolute. In telling us
that it is impossible to the human faculties to know any-
thing about Things in themselves, we naturally suppose
he intends to warn us off the ground to bid us under-
stand that this subject of enquiry is closed to us, and
* Pp. 749, 750.
BELIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE. 77
exhort us to turn our attention elsewhere. It appears
that nothing of the kind was intended : we are to un-
derstand, on the contrary, that we may have the best
grounded and most complete assurance of the things
which were declared unknowable an assurance not only
equal or greater in degree, but the same in nature, as
we have for the truth of our knowledge : and that the
matter in dispute was only whether this assurance or
conviction shall be called knowledge, or by another name.
If this be all, I must say I think it not of the smallest
consequence. If no more than this be intended by the
" great axiom " and the elaborate argument against
Cousin, a great deal of trouble has been taken to very
little purpose ; and the subject would have been better
left where Reid left it, who did not trouble himself with
nice distinctions between belief and knowledge, but was
content to consider us as knowing that which, by the
constitution of our nature, we are forced, with entire
conviction, to believe. According to Sir W. Hamilton,
we believe premises, but know the conclusions from them.
The ultimate facts of consciousness* are " given less in
" the form of cognitions than of beliefs :" " Conscious-
" ness in its last analysis, in other words our primary
" experience, is a faith." But if we know the theorems
of Euclid, and do not know the definitions and axioms
on which they rest, the word knowledge, thus singularly
applied, must be taken in a merely technical sense. To
say that we believe the premises, but know the conclu-
sion, would be understood by every one as meaning that
we had other independent evidence of the conclusion.
If we only know it through the premises, the same name V^A
ought in reason to be given to our assurance of both.f^ -.
lu common language, when Belief and Knowledge are
distinguished, Knowledge is understood to mean complete
* Discussions, p. 86.
f Accordingly Sir W. Hamilton himself, in one of the Dissertations on
Keid (p. 76'3), says that " the principles of our knowledge must be them- <
" selves' knowledge " And there are few who will not approve this use of
language, and condemn the other.
73 BELIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE.
conviction, Belief a conviction somewhat short of com-
plete ; or else we are said to believe when the evidence
is probable (as that of testimony), but to know, when it
is intuitive, or demonstrative from intuitive premises :
we believe, for example, that there is a Continent of
America, but know that we are alive, that two and two
1 make four, and that the sum of any two sides of a triangle
is greater than the third side. This is a distinction of
practical value : but in Sir W. Hamilton's use of the
term, it is the intuitive convictions that are the Beliefs,
and those which are dependent and contingent upon
them, compose our knowledge. Whether a particular
portion of our convictions, which are not more certain,
but if anything less certain, than the remainder, and
according to our author rest on the same ultimate basis,
shall in opposition to the common usage of mankind,
receive exclusively the appellation of knowledge, is at
^f l the most a question of terminology, and can only be
made to appear philosophically important by confound-
ing difference of name with difference of fact. That
anything capable of being said on such a subject should
*&* pass for a fundamental principle of philosophy, and be
\\ vA>ne of the chief sources of the reputation of a meta-
^A C physical system, is but an example how the mere forms
of logic and metaphysics can blind mankind to the total
absence of their substance.
It must not be supposed, from anything which has
been here said, that I wish to abolish the distinction
between Knowledge and Belief (meaning True Belief)
or maintain that it is necessarily a distinction without a
difference. Those terms are employed to denote more
than one real difference, and neither of them can conve-
niently be dispensed with in philosophy.* What con-
* There is much dispute among philosophers as to the difference
between Knowledge and Belief; and the strife is not likely to terminate,
until they perceive that the real question is, not what the distinction is,
but what it shall be ; what one among several differences already known
and recognised, the words shall be employed to denote. "The word belief,"
says Dr. M'Cosh (p. 36), in this more discerning than the generality, "is
" unfortunately a very vague one, and may stand for a number of very
BELIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE.
79
cerns us in the present chapter is not the rationale of
the distinction between knowledge and belief, but whether
that distinction is relevant to the question between Sir
"W. Hamilton and M. Cousin about the Infinite and the
Absolute ; and whether Sir W. Hamilton is warranted
in giving back under the name of Belief, the assurance
or conviction respecting these objects which he refuses
under the name of knowledge. My position is, that
the Infinite and Absolute which Sir W. Hamilton has
" different mental affections. When I am speaking of first or intuitive
" principles, 1 use the term to signify our conviction of the existence of
' an object not now present, and thus I distinguish primitive faith from
" primitive knowledge, in which the object is present." This distinction
agrees well with usage in the cases to which Dr. M'Cosh applies it : we know
that which we perceive by the senses, and believe that which we only re-
member : we know that we ourselves, and (while we look at them) our
house and garden, exist, and believe the existence of the Czar of Eussia
and the Island of Ceylou. Every definition of Belief, as distinguished
from Knowledge, must include these cases, because in them the conviction
which receives the name of Belief falls short of the complete assurance
implied in the word knowledge : our memory may deceive us ; the Czar
or the island may have beeu swallowed up by an earthquake. But if we
attempt to carry out Dr. M'Cosh's distinction through the entire region
of thought, the whole of what we call our scientific knowledge, except
the primary facts or intuitions on which it is grounded, has to pass into
the category of Belief ; for the objects with which it is conversant are
seldom present.
Mr. Mansel might be supposed to be adopting Dr. M'Cosh's distinction,
when he says (p. 126), "We believe that the true distinction between
" knowledge and belief may ultimately be referred to the presence or
" absence of the corresponding intuition." But his criterion of the dis-
tinction, and, according to him, bir W. Hamilton's also, is the following :
we believe that a thing is, but do not know even that it is, unless we can
conceive how, or in what manner, it is. " When I say that I believe in
' the existence of a spiritual being who can see without eyes, I cannot
' conceive the manner in which seeing co-exists with the absence of the
' bodily organ of sight" (p. 126). " We cannot conceive the manner in
which the unconditioned and the personal are united in the Divine
' Nature ; yet we may believe that, in some manner unknown to us, they
' are so united. To conceive the union of two attributes in one object of
' thought, I must be able to conceive them as united in some particular
' manner : when this cannot be done, I may nevertheless believe thai the
' union is possible, though I am unable to conceive how it is possible."
This may be more briefly expressed by saying that we can believe what
is inconceivable, but can know only what is conceivable ; and undoubtedly
Coin these contrasted propositions are maintained by Sir W. Hamilton.
But to regard them as a clue to the distinction in his mind between
knowledge and belief, would be to misunderstand his opinions : for the
convictions which he most emphatically characterized as beliefs, in contra-
distinction to knowledge, are what he calls our natural and necessary
80 BELIEF WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE.
been proving to be unknowable, being made up of con-
tradictions, are as incapable of being believed as of being
known ; that the only attitude in reference to them, of
any intellect which apprehends the meaning of language,
is that of disbelief. On the other hand, there are In-
finites and Absolutes which, not being self-contradictory,
admit of being believed, namely, concrete realities sup-
posed to be infinite or absolute in respect of certain
attributes : but Sir W. Hamilton, as I maintain, has
done nothing towards proving that such concrete reali-
ties cannot be known, in the way in which we know
other things, namely, in their relations to us. When,
therefore, he affirms that though the Infinite cannot by
us be known, " by us it is, must, and ought to be be-
" lieved," I answer, that the Infinite which, as he has so
laboriously proved, cannot be known, neither is, must,
nor ought to be believed ; not because it cannot be
known, but because there exists no such thing for us to
beliefs, "the original data of reason," which, far from being inconceivable,
are usually tested by being themselves conceivable while their negations
are not. If knowledge were distinguished from belief by our being aware
of the manner as well as the fact, we could not believe and know the same
fact ; our knowledge could not rest, as he says it does, on a belief that it
is itself true.
But indeed, this notion of Sir W. Hamilton that we have two convic-
tions on the same poiut, one guaranteeing the other our knowledge of a
truth, and a belief in the truth of that knowledge seems to me apiece of
' false philosophy, resembling the doctrine he elsewhere rejects, that we
have both a feeling and a consciousness of the feeling. We do not know
a truth and believe it besides; the belief is the knowledge. Belief,
altogether, is a genus which includes knowledge : according to the usage
of language we believe whatever we assent to ; but some of our beliefs are
knowledge, others are only belief. The first requisite which, by universal
admission, a belief must possess, to constitute it knowledge, is that it be
true. The second is, that it be well grounded ; for what we believe by
accident, or on evidence not sufficient, we are not said to know. The
grounds must, moreover, be sufficient for the very highest degree of assu-
rance; for we do not consider ourselves to know, as long as we think there
is any possibility (I mean any appreciable possibility) of our being mis-
taken. But when a belief is true, is held with the strongest conviction
we ever have, and held on grounds sufficient to justify that strongest con-
viction, most people would think it worthy of the name of knowledge,
whether it be grounded on our personal investigations, or on the appro-
priate testimony, and whether we know only the fact itself, or the manner
of the fact. And I am inclined to think that the purposes of philosophy,
as well as those of common life, are best answered by making this the line
of demarcation.
BELIE! 1 WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE. 81
know ; unless, with Hegel, we hold that the Absolute
is not subject to the Law of Contradiction, but is at
once a real existence and the synthesis of contradictories.
And, on the other hand, the Infinite and Absolute
which are really capable of being believed, are also, for
anything Sir W. Hamilton has shown to the contrary,
capable of being, in certain of their aspects, known.
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82
CHAPTER VI.
THE PHILOSOPHY OY THE CONDITIONED.
THE " Philosophy of the Conditioned," in its wider
sense, includes all the doctrines that we have been dis-
cussing-. In its narrower, it consists, I think, mainly of
a single proposition, which Sir W. Hamilton often
reiterates, and insists upon as a fundamental law of
human intellect. Though suggested by Kant's Anti-
nomies of Speculative Reason, in the form which it bears
in Sir W. Hamilton's writings it belongs, I believe,
originally to himself. No doctrine which he has any-
where laid down is more characteristic of his mode of
thought, and none is more strongly associated with his
fame.
For the better understanding of this theory, it is
necessary to premise some explanations respecting
another doctrine, which is also his, but not peculiar to
him. He protests, frequently and with emphasis,
against the notion that whatever is inconceivable must
be false. " There is no ground," he says,* " for infer-
" ring a certain fact to be impossible, merely from our
" inability to conceive its possibility." I regard this
opinion as perfectly just. It is one of the psychological
truths, highly important, and by no means generally
recognised, which frequently meet us in his writings,
and which give them, in my eyes, most of their philo-
sophical value. I am obliged to add, that though he
often furnishes a powerful statement and vindication of
such truths, he seldom or never consistently adheres to
them. Too often what he has affirmed in fjenerals is
O
* Discussions, p. 624.
THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 83
taken back in details, and arguments of his own are
found to rest on philosophical commonplaces which he
has himself repudiated and refuted. I am afraid that
the present is one of these cases, and that Sir W. Hamil-
ton will sometimes be found contending that a thing
cannot possibly be true because we cannot conceive it :
but at all events he disclaims any such inference, and
broadly lays down, that things not only may be, but
are, of which it is impossible for us to conceive even the
possibility.
Before showing how this proposition is developed into
the " Philosophy of the Conditioned," let us make the
ground safe before us, by bestowing a brief considera-
tion upon the proposition itself, its meaning, and the
foundations on which it rests.
We cannot conclude anything to be impossible, because
its possibility is inconceivable to us ; for two reasons.
First ; what seems to us inconceivable, and, so far as we
are personally concerned, may really be so, usually owes
its inconceivability only to a strong association. When,
in a prolonged experience, we. haveoiten had a particular
sensation or mental impression, and never without a /
certain other sensation or impression immediately ac-
companying it, there grows up so firm an adhesion
between our ideas of the two, that we are unable to
think of the former without thinking the latter in close
combination with it. And unless other parts of our
experience afford us some analogy to aid in disentang-
ling the two ideas, our incapacity of imagining the one
fact without the other grows, or is prone to grow, into a
belief that the one cannot exist without the other. This
is the law of Inseparable Association, an element of our
nature of which few have realized to themselves the full
power. It was for the first time largely applied to the
explanation of the more complicated mental phenomena
by Mr. James Mill ; and is, in an especial manner, the
key to the phamomenon of inconceivability. As that
phenomenon only exists because our powers of concep-
tion are determined by our limited experience, Incon-
G 2
V
84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
ceivables are incessantly becoming Conceivables as our
experience becomes enlarged. There is no need to go
farther for an example tban the case of Antipodes. This
physical fact was, to the early speculators, inconceivable :
not, of course, the fact of persons in that position ; this
the mind could easily represent to itself; but the possi-
bility that, being in that position, and. not being nailed
on, nor having any glutinous substance attached to their
feet, they could help falling off. Here was an insepa-
rable, though, as it proved to be, not an indissoluble
association, which while it continued made a real fact
Avhat is called inconceivable; and because inconceivable,
it was unhesitatingly believed to be impossible. Incon-
ceivabilities of similar character have, at many periods,
obstructed the reception of new scientific truths : the
Newtonian system had to contend against several of
them ; and we are not warranted in assigning a different
origin and character to those which still subsist, because
the experience that would be capable of removing them
has not occurred. If anything which is now inconceiv-
able by us were shown to us as a fact, we should soon
find ourselves able to conceive it. We should even be
in danger of going over to the opposite error, and believ-
ing that the negation of it is inconceivable. There are
many cases in the history of science (I have dilated on
some of them in another work) where something: which
' O
had once been inconceivable, and which people had with
great difficulty learnt to conceive, becoming itself fixed
in the bonds of an inseparable association, scientific men
came to think that it alone was conceivable, and that
the conflicting hypothesis which all mankind had believed,
and which a vast majority were probably believing still,
was inconceivable. In I)r. Whewell's writings on the
. Inductive Sciences, this transition of thought is not
only exemplified but defended. Inconceivability is thus
a purely subjective thing, arising from the mental ante-
cedents of the individual mind, or from those of the
human mind generally at a particular period, and cannot
give us any insight into the possibilities of Mature.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 85
But, secondly, even assuming that inconceivability is
not solely the consequence of limited experience, but
that some incapacities of conceiving are inherent in the
mind, and inseparable from it ; this would not entitle us
to infer, that what we are thus incapable of conceiving
cannot exist. Such an inference would only be warrant-
able, if we could know a priori that we must have been
created capable of conceiving whatever is capable of
existing : that the universe of thought and that of
reality, the Microcosm and the Macrocosm (as they
once were called) must have been framed in complete
correspondence with one another. That this is really
the case has been laid down expressly in some systems
of philosophy, by implication in more, and is the
foundation (among others) of the systems of Schelling
and Hegel : but an assumption more destitute of evidence
could scarcely be made, nor can one easily imagine any
evidence that could prove it, unless it were revealed from
above.
What is inconceivable, then, cannot therefore be
inferred to be false. But let us vary the terms of the
proposition, and express it thus : what is inconceivable,
is not therefore incredible. We have now a statement,
which may mean either exactly the same as the other,
or more. It may mean only that our inability to con-
ceive a thing, does not entitle us to deny its possibility,
nor its existence. Or it may mean that a thing's
being inconceivable to us is no reason against our
believing, and legitimately believing, that it actually
is. This is a very different proposition from the pre-
ceding. Sir W. Hamilton, as we have said, goes this
length. It is now necessary to enter more minutely
than at first seemed needful, into the meaning of
"inconceivable;" which, like almost all the metaphy-
sical terms we are forced to make use of, is weighed
down with ambiguities.
Keid pointed out and discriminated two meanings of
the verb "to conceive,"* giving rise to two different
* " To conceive, to imagine, to apprehend, when taken in the proper
56
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
meanings of inconceivable. But Sir W. Hamilton uses
" to conceive " in three meanings, and has accordingly
three meanings for Inconceivable ; though he does not
give the smallest hint to his readers, nor seems ever to
suspect, that the three are not one and the same.
The first meaning of Inconceivable is, that of which
the mind cannot form to itself any representation ; either
(as in the case of Noumena) because no attributes are
given, out of which a representation could be framed,
or because the attributes given are incompatible with
one another are such as the mind cannot put together
in a single image. Of this last case numerous instances
present themselves to the most cursory glance. The
fundamental one is that of a simple contradiction. We
cannot represent anything to ourselves as at once being
something, and not being it ; as at once having, and
not having, a given attribute. The following are other
examples. We cannot represent to ourselves time or
space as having an end. We cannot represent to our-
sense, signify an act of the mind which implies no belief or judgment at
all. It is an act of the mind by which nothing is affirmed or denied,
and which, therefore, can neither be true nor false. But there is another
and a very different meaning of these words, so common and so well
authorized in language that it cannot be avoided ; and on that account
we ought to be the more on our guard, that we be not misled by the am-
biguity. . . . When we would express our opinion modestly, instead of
saying, ' This is my opinion,' or ' This is my judgment,' which has the air
of dogmaticalness, we say, ' I conceive it to be thus I imagine, or appre-
hend it to be thus ;' which is understood as a modest declaration of our
judgment. In like manner, when anything is said which we take to be
impossible, we say, 'We cannot conceive it:' meaning that we cannot
believe it. Thus we see that the words conceive, imagine, apprehend,
have two meanings, and are used to express two operations of the mind,
which ought never to be confounded. Sometimes they express simple
apprehension, which implies no judgment at all ; sometimes they express
judgment or opinion. . . . When they are used to express simple appre-
hension they are followed by a noun in the accusative case, which
signifies the object conceived ; but when they are used to express opinion
or judgment, they are commonly followed by a verb in the infinitive
mood. ' I conceive an Egyptian pyramid.' This implies no judgment.
' I conceive the Egyptian pyramids to be the most ancient monuments
" of human art.' This implies judgment. When they are used .in the
'' last sense, the thing conceived must be a proposition, because judgment
" cannot be expressed but by a proposition." Eeid on the Intellectual
Powers, p. 223 of Sir W. Hamilton's edition, to which edition all my
references will be made.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 87
selves two and two as making five ; nor two straight
lines as enclosing a space. We cannot represent to our-
selves a round square ; nor a body all black, and at the
same time all white. .
These things are literally inconceivable to us, our /
minds and our experience being what they are. Whether
they would be inconceivable it' our minds were the same
but our experience different, is open to discussion. A
distinction may be made, which, I think, will be found
pertinent to the question. That the same thing should
at once be and not be that identically the same state-
ment should be both true and false-^is not only incon-
ceivable to us, but we cannot imagine that it could be
made conceivable. We cannot attach sufficient meaning
to the proposition, to be able to represent to ourselves
the supposition of a different experience on this matter.
We cannot therefore even entertain the question, whether
the incompabibility is in the original structure of our
minds, or is only put there by our experience. The case
is otherwise in all the other examples of inconceivability.
Our incapacity of conceiving the same thing as A and not
A, may be primordial ; but our inability to conceive A
without B, is because A, by experience or teaching, has
become inseparably associated with B : and our inability
to conceive A with C, is, because, by experience or
teaching, A has become inseparably associated with some
mental representation which includes the negation of C.
Thus all inconceivabilities may be reduced to inseparable
association, combined with the original inconceivability
of a direct contradiction. All the cases which I have
cited as instances of inconceivability, and which are the
strongest I could have chosen, may be resolved in this
manner. We cannot conceive a round square, not ]
merely because no such object has ever presented itself
in our experience, for that would not be enough, j
Neither, for anything we know, are the two ideas in
themselves incompatible. To conceive a round square, |
or to conceive a body all black and yet all white, would \
only be to conceive two different sensations as produced
*8S THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
in us simultaneously by the same object ; a conception
familiar to our experience ; and we should probably be
as well able to conceive a round square as a hard square,
or a heavy square, if it were not that, in our uniform
experience, at the instant when a thing begins to be
round it ceases to be square, so that the beginning
of the one impression is inseparably associated with the
departure or cessation of the other.* Thus our inability
to form a conception always arises from our being com-
pelled to form another contradictory to it. We cannot
conceive time or space as having an end, because the
idea of any portion whatever of time or space is insepa-
rably associated with the idea of a time or space beyond
it. We cannot conceive two and two as five, because
an inseparable association, compels us to conceive it as
four; and it cannot be conceived as both, because four
and five, like round and square, are so related in our
experience, that each is associated with the cessation, or
removal, of the other. We cannot conceive two straight
lines as enclosing a space, because enclosing a space
means approaching and meeting a second time ; and the
mental image of two straight lines which have once
met is inseparably associated with the representation of
them as diverging. Thus it is not wholly without
ground that the notion of a round square, and the
assertion that two and two make five, or that two
straight lines can enclose a space, are said, in common
and even in scientific parlance, to involve a contradic-
tion. The statement is not logically correct, for contra-
* It has been remarked to me by a correspondent, that a round square
differs from a hard square or a heavy square in this respect, that the two
sensations or sets of sensations supposed to be joined in the first-named
combination are affections of the same nerves, and therefore, being dif-
ferent affections, are mutually incompatible by our organic constitution,
and could not be made compatible by any change in the arrangements of
external nature. This is probably true, and may be the physical reason
why when a thing begins to be perceived as round it ceases to be perceived
as square; but it is not the less true that this mere fact suffices, under the
laws of association, to account for the inconceivability of the combination.
I am willing, however, to admit, as suggested by my correspondent, that
" if the imagination employs the organism in its representations," which
it probably does, "what is originally unperceivable in consequence of
organic laws " may also be " originally unimaginable."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 89
diction is only between a positive representation and its *i
negative. But the impossibility of uniting contra-
dictory conceptions in the same representation, is the
real ground of the inconceivability in these cases. And
we should probably have no difficulty in putting together
the two ideas supposed to be incompatible, if our expe-
rience had not tirst inseparably associated one of them
with the contradictory of the other.*
* That the reverse of the most familiar principles of arithmetic and
geometry might have been made conceivable, even to our present mental
faculties, if those faculties had coexisted with a totally different constitu-
tion of external nature, is ingeniously shown in the concluding paper of a
recent volume, anonymous, but of known authorship, "Essays, by a
Barrister."
" Consider this case. There is a world in which, whenever two pairs of
' things are either placed in proximity or are contemplated together, a
' fifth thing is immediately created and brought within the contempla-
' tion of the mind engaged in putting two and two together. This is
' surely neither inconceivable, for we can readily conceive the result by
' thinking of common puzzle tricks, nor can it be said to be beyond the
' power of Omnipotence. Yet in such a world surely two and two would
' make five. That is, the result to the mind of contemplating two two's
' would be to count five. This shows that it is not inconceivable that two?'/'
' and two might make five : but, on the other hand, it is perfectly easy ,'
'to see why in this world we are absolutely certain that two and twoi h-^
' make four. There is probably not an instant of our lives in which we tfw* it
' are not experiencing the fact. We see it whenever we count four books, ^
' four tables or chairs, four men in the street, or the four corners of a
' paving stone, and we feel more sure of it than of the rising of the sun
' to-morrow, because our experience upon the subject is so much wider
' and applies to such an infinitely greater number of cases. Nor is it true
' that every one who has once been brought to see it, is equally sure of it.
' A boy who has just learnt the multiplication table is pretty sure that
'twice two are four, but is often extremely doubtful whether seven times-
' nine are sixty-three. If his teacher told him that twice two made five,
' his certainty would be greatly impaired.
" It would also be possible to put a case of a world in which two straight
' lines should be universally supposed to include a space. Imagine a man
' who had never had any experience of straight lines through the medium
' of any sense whatever, suddenly placed upon a railway stretching put
' on a perfectly straight line to an indefinite distance in each direction.
He would see the rails, which would be the first straight lines he had
' ever seen, apparently meeting, or at least tending to meet at each
' horizon ; and he would thus infer, in the absence of all other experience,
' that they actually did enclose a space, when produced far enough.
' Experience alone could undeceive him. A world in which every object
' was round, with the single exception of a straight inaccessible railway,
' would be a world in which every one would believe that two straight
' lines enclosed a space. In such a world, therefore, the impossibility of
' conceiving that two straight lines can enclose a space would not exist."
In the " Geometry of Visibles " which forms part of Reid's " Inquiry
90 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
Thus far, of the first kind of Inconceivability ; the
first and most proper meaning in which the word is used.
But there is another meaning, in which things are often
said to be inconceivable which the mind is under no
into the Human Mind," it is contended that if we had the sense of sight,
but not that of touch, it would appear to ua that " every right line being
" produced will at last return into itself," and that " any two right lines
" being produced will meet in two points." Ch. vi., Sect. 9 (p. 148). The
author adds, that persons thus constituted would firmly believe " that
" two or more bodies may exist in the same place." For this they woukl
' have the testimony of sense," and could " no more doubt of it than they
' can doubt whether they have any perception at all, since they woukl
' often see two bodies meet and coincide in the same place, and separate
' again, without having undergone any change in their sensible qualities
' by this penetration." (P. 151.)
Hardly any part of the present volume has been so maltreated, by so
great a number of critics, as the illustrations here quoted from an able
and highly instructed cotemporary thinker ; which, as they were neither
designed by their author nor cited by me as anything more than illustra-
tions, I do not deem it necessary to take up space by defending. When
a selection must be made, one is obliged to consider what one can best
spare.
[Some of my correspondents, looking upon the illustrations by " A
"Barrister" as (what they are not) an essential part of my argument,
think me bound either to defend them or to give them up. As they are,
in my opinion, perfectly defensible, I am ready, thus challenged, to stand
up for them. And I select, among the attacks made on them, that of Dr.
M'Cosh (Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill's Philosophy, pp. 209-211), as one
of the fairest, and including what is most worthy of notice in the others.
Of the first illustration. Dr. M'Cosh says :
" Were we placed in a world in which two pairs of things were always
" followed by a fifth thing, we might be disposed to believe that the pairs
" caused the fifth thing, or that there was some prearranged disposition
" of things producing them together ; but we could not be made to judge
' that 2+2=5, or that the fifth thing is not a different thing from the two
' and the two. On the other supposition put, of the two pairs always
' suggesting a fifth, we should explain their recurrence by some law of
'association, but we would not confound the 5 with the 2+2, or think
' that the two pairs could make five."
This passage is a correct description of what would happen if the pre-
sentation of the fifth thing were posterior, by a perceptible interval, to
the juxtaposition of the two pairs, so that we should have time to judge
that the two and two make four previously to perceiving the fifth. But
the supposition is that the production of the fifth is so instantaneous in
the very act of seeing, that we never should see the four things by them-
selves as four : the fifth thing would be inseparably involved in the act of
perception by which we should ascertain the sum of the two pairs. I
confess it seems to me that in this case we should have an apparent
intuition of two and two making five.
To the second illustration, Dr. M'Cosh replies : " I allow that this
" person as he looked one way, would see a figure presented to the eye of
" two straight lines approaching nearer each other ; and that as he looked
THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 91
incapacity of representing to itself in an image. It is
often said, that we are unable to conceive as possible that
which, in itself, we are perfectly well able to conceive :
we are able, it is admitted, to conceive it as an imaginary
" the other way he would see a like figure. But I deny that in combining
" the two views he would ever decide that the four lines seen, the two
" seen first and the two seen second, make only two straight lines. In
' uniting the two perceptions in thought, he would certainly place a bend
' or a turn somewhere, possibly at the spot from which he took the two
' views. He would continue to do so till he realized that the lines seen
' on either side did not in fact approach nearer each other. Or, to state
' the whole phenomenon with more scientific accuracy : Intuitively, and
' to a person who had not acquired the knowledge of distance by ex-
' perience, the two views would appear to be each of two lines approaching
' nearer each other ; but without his being at all cognisant of the relation
' of the two views, or of one part of the lines being further removed from
' him than another. As experience told him that the lines receded from
' him on each side, he would contrive some means of combining his obser-
' vations, probably in the way above indicated; but he never could make
' two straight lines enclose a space."
Now it seems to me that the supposed percipient could not account for
his apparent perceptions in the manner indicated ; he could not believe
that there was a turn or a bend anywhere. " At the spot from which he
took the two views" he would have the evidence of his senses that there
was no bend. Looking along the interval between the lines, he would
again have the evidence of sense that they were not deflected either way,
but maintained an uniform direction. Until therefore, experience of the
laws of perspective had corrected his judgment, he would have the ap-
parent evidence of his senses that two straight lines met in two points.
This appearance, until shown by further experience to be an illusion
would probably decide his belief : and any doubts that might be raised by a
contemplation of straight lines which were nearer to him, would be silenced
by the supposition that two straight lines will inclose a space if only the}
are produced far enough.
Dr. M'Cosh may himself be cited as a witness to the intrinsic possi-
bility of conceiving combinations which I should have thought were uni-
versally regarded as inconceivable. When distinguishing between the two
meanings of inconceivable (in pp. 234, 235 of his book) he says : " We
" cannot be made to decide or believe that Cleopatra's Needle should be
" in Paris and Egypt at the same time ; yet with some difficulty we can
" simultaneously image it in both places." Now when we consider that
in order really to image the same Needle (and not two Needles exactly
similar) in two places at once we must actually imagine the two places,
Paris and Alexandria, superposed upon one another and occupying the
same portion of space, it seems to me that this conception is quite as
impossible to us as the reverse of a geometrical axiom ; and is, indeed, of
much the same character.]
The "Geometry of Visibles" has been noticed only by Dr. M'Cosh
(pp. 211-213), who rejects it, as founded on the erroneous doctrine (as he
considers it) that we cannot perceive by sight the third dimension of
space. I regard this, on the contrary, as not only a true doctrine, but
one from which Dr. M'Cosh's own opinion does not materially differ : and
92 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
object, but unable to conceive it realized. Tins extends
the term inconceivable to every combination of facts
which to the mind simply contemplating it, appears in-
credible.* It was in this sense that Antipodes were in-
conceivable. They could be figured in imagination ;
they could even be painted, or modelled in clay. The
mind could put the parts of the conception together, but
could not realize the combination as one which could
exist in nature. The cause of the inability was the
powerful tendency, generated by experience, to expect
falling off, when a body, not of adhesive quality , was in
contact only with the under side of another body. The
association was not so powerful as to disable the mind
from conceiving the body as holding on ; doubtless be-
cause other facts of our experience afforded models on
if it be true, it is impossible to resist Reid's conclusion, that to beings
possessing only the sense of sight, the paradoxes here quoted, and several
others, would be truths of intuition self-evident truths.
[Dr. Ward, in the Dublin Review, contests this doctrine ; and an argu-
ment against it has been sent to me by the intelligent and instructed
correspondent already once referred to. For a reply I might refer them
to the chapter on the Geometry of Visibles, in Reid's work ; but I will
point out, in few words, where I think they are in error. They contend
that Reid's Idomenians would not possess the notion which we attach to
the term straight line, but would call by that name what they would really
image to themselves as a circular arc. But Reid's position (and he assigns
good reasons for it) is the reverse of this ; that what we, who have the
sense of touch, perceive as a circular arc with ourselves in the centre,
Idomenians could only perceive as a straight line; and that, consequently,
all the appearances which Reid enumerates would be by them appre-
hended, and, as they would think, perceived, as phenomena of straight
lines.
Dr. M'Cosh also returns to the charge, but holds a different doctrine
from my other two critics, being of opinion that the Idomenians would
really have the notion of a straight line. For the consequences of this I
refer him back to Reid. He adds, that as touch alone can reveal to us
impenetrability, the Idomenians could argue nothing as to bodies pene-
trating one another. But, they could have the conception of the only
penetration Reid contended for, namely, of bodies meeting and coinciding
in the same place, and separating again without alteration. And for this
they would hare the evidence of sense. The fact is literally true of the
visual images, which to them would be the whole bodies ; and as they
could form no notion of one thing passing behind another, their only
impression would be of penetration.]
* I do not mean, which is really incredible, as Mr. Mansel, in his re-
joinder, supposes I do, and consequently charges me with imputing to Sir
W. Hamilton that in the Law of the Conditioned he maintains that of
two incredible alternatives one must be believed.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 93
which such a conception could be framed. But though
not disabled from conceiving the combination, the mind
was disabled from believing it. The difference between
belief and conception, and between the conditions of
belief and those of simple conception, are psychological
questions into which I do not enter. It is sufficient
that inability to believe can coexist with ability to con-
ceive, and that a mental association between two facts
which is not intense enough to make their separation
unimaginable, may yet create, and, if there are no coun-
ter associations, always does create, more or less of diffi-
culty in believing that the two can exist apart: a difficulty
often amounting to a local or temporary impossibility.
This is the second meaning of Inconceivability; which
by Reid is carefully distinguished from the first, but his
editor Sir W. Hamilton employs the word in both senses
indiscriminately.* How he came to miss the distinction
is tolerably obvious to any one who is familiar with his
writings, and especially with his theory of Judgment ;
but needs not be pointed out here. It is more remark-
able that he gives to the term a third sense, answering to
a third signification of the verb " to conceive." To con-
ceive any thing, has with him not only its two ordinary
meanings to represent the thing as an image, and to be
able to realize it as possible but an additional one, which
* It is curious that Dr. M'Cosh, with this volume before him, and occu-
pied in criticizing it, did not fiiid out until his book was passing through
the press, and then only from the sixth edition of my '* System of Logic,"
that I was aware of the difference between these two meanings of " to
conceive " (M'Cosh, p. 241, note). He consequently thought it necessary to
tell me, what I had myself stated in the text, that Antipodes were incon-
ceivable only in the second sense.
Dr. M'Cosh continually charges me with confounding the two meanings
an 1 arguing from one of them to the other. But he must be well aware
that intuitional philosophers in general (I do not say that Dr. M'Cosh)
assign as the sufficient, and conclusive proof of inconceivability in the one
sense, inconceivability in the other. They arj,'ue that a proposition must
be true, and ought to be believed on the ground that we cannot conceive
its opposite, meaning that we cannot frame a mental representation of it. ,
It is therefore quite pertinent to show (when it can be done) that this
inability to join the ideas together is not inherent in our constitution, but
is accounted for by the conditions of our experience ; for to shew this, is to
destroy the argument principally relied on as a proof that the judgment
is a necessary one.
94 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
he denotes by various phrases. One of his common ex-
pressions for it is, " to construe to the mind in thought."
This, he often says, can only be done " through a higher
"notion." "We* think, we conceive, we comprehend a
"thing only as we think it as within or under some-
" thing else." So that a fact, or a supposition, is con-
ceivable or comprehensible by us (conceive and compre-
hend being with him in this case synonymous) only by
being reduced to some more general fact, as a particular
case under it. Again, f "to conceive the possibility " of
a thing, is defined " conceiving it as the consequent of a
" certain reason." The inconceivable, in this third sense,
is simply the inexplicable. Accordingly all first truths
are, according to Sir W. Hamilton, inconceivable. "The|
" primary data of consciousness, as themselves the con-
" ditions under which all else is comprehended, are ne-
" cessarily themselves incomprehensible. . . . that is ...
" we are unable to conceive through a higher notion how
" that is possible, which the deliverance avouches actually
"to be." And we shall find him arguing things to be
inconceivable, merely on the ground that we have no
higher notion under which to class them. This use of
the word inconceivable, being a complete perversion of
it from its established meanings, I decline to recognise.
.If all the general truths which we are most certain of
are to be called inconceivable, the word no longer serves
any purpose. Inconceivable is not to be confounded
with unprovable, or unanalysable. A truth which is not
inconceivable in either of the received meanings of the
term a truth which is completely apprehended, and
without difficulty believed, I cannot consent to call in-
conceivable merely because we cannot account for it, or
deduce it from a higher truth. $
* Lectures, iii. 102. f Ibid. p. 100.
Dissertations on Eeid, p. 745.
Mr. Mansel refuses to admit (pp. 13i et seqq ) that Sir W. Hamilton
confounds these different senses of the word Conception, and asserts that
he always adheies to the meaning indicated by him in a foot-note to Reid
(p. 377), and answering to the first meaning of inconceivable, namely,
unimaginable. Of the second meaning Mr. Mansel says (p. 132), "When
THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 95
These being Sir W. Hamilton's three kinds of incon- |
ceivability ; is the inconceivability of a proposition in
any of these senses, consistent with believing it to be ]
true ? The third kind is avowedly compatible not only
Hamilton speaks of being ' unable to conceive as possible,' he does not
mean, as Mr. Mill supposes, physically possible under the law of gravi-
tation or some other law of matter, but mentally possible as a represen-
tation or image ; and thus the supposed second se a se is identical with
the first." According to this interpretation, when Sir W. Hamilton
says of any thing that it cannot be conceived as possible, he does not mean
possible in fact, but possible to thou.ht. in other words, that it cannot be
conceived as conceivable. I, however, do Sir W. Hamilton the justice of
believing, that when he added the words " as possible" to the word con-
ceive, he intended to add something to the idea. Accordingly he uses the
phrases " to understand as possible," " to comprehend as possible," as
equivalents for "to conceive as possible," I believe that by " possible"
he meant, as people usually do, possible in fact. And I have the authority
of Mr. Mansel himself for so thinking. Mr. Mansel, in another place
(p. 36') expresses what was probably the real meaning of Sir W. Hamilton,
and laments that Sir W Hamilton did not state it distinctly. " To con-
" ceive a thing as possible," says Mr. Mansel, " we must conceive the man-
" ner in which it is possible : but we may believe in the fact without being
" able to conceive the manner." This makes no sense if understood as
Mr. Mansel, in his rejoinder, says that it ought to be" mentally possible
" as a notion, not physically possible as a fact." There is no manner of
being possible as a mere notion : the elements of the notion can be put
together in the mind, or they cannot. A manner of being possible can
only refer to possibility as a fact. When people say that they cannot
conceive how a thing is possible, they always mean, that but for evidence
to the contrary, they should have supposed it impossible. And this I
always find to be the case when Sir W. Hamilton uses the phrase. I know
not of any manner of a possibility that would enable us to conceive the
thing "as possible" unless " it removed some obstacle to believing that
the thing is possible. Such, for instance, would be the case, if we have
found or imagined something which is capable of causing the thing ; or
some means or mechanism by which it could be brought about (tho
desideratum in Mr. Mansel's illustration of a being who sees without
eyes) ; or if we have had an actual intuition of the thing as existing :
which, when sufficiently familiar, makes it no longer seem to require any
ground of possibility beyond the fact itself. In short, the how of its
existence, which enables us to conceive it as possible, must be a how which
affords at least a semblance of explanation of Mr. Mansel's that. This is
distinctly recognised by Sir W. Hamilton in one of the passages I have
quoted, in which " to conceive the possibility" of a thing is defined " con-
ceiving it as the consequent of a certain reason." By conceiving a thing
as possible, he meant apprehending some fact, or imagining some hy-
pothesis, which would explain its possibility ; which would be, in the
Leibnitzian sense, its Sufficient Eeason. For, an explanation, even
hypothetical, of a thing which previously seemed to admit of none,
removes a difficulty in believing it. We have a natural tendency to dis-
believe anything which, while it has never been presented in our ex-
perience, also contradicts our habitual associations : but the suggestion to
our mind of some possible conditions which would be !\ Sufficient Reason
96 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
with belief, but with our strongest and most natural
beliefs. An inconceivable of the second kind can not
only be believed, but believed with full understanding.
In this case we are perfectly able to represent to ourselves
mentally what is said to be inconceivable ; only, from an
association in our mind, it does not look credible : but,
this association being the result of experience or of
teaching, contrary experience or teaching is able to dis-
solve it ; and even before this has been done while the
thing still feels incredible, the intellect may, on sufficient
evidence, accept it as true. An inconceivable of the first
kind, inconceivable in the proper sense of the term
that which the mind is actually unable to put together
in a representation may nevertheless be believed, if we
attach any meaning to it, but cannot be said to be believed
with understanding. We cannot believe it on direct
evidence, i.e. through its being presented in our expe-
rience, for if it were so presented it would immediately
cease to be inconceivable. We may believe it because
its falsity would be inconsistent with something which
we otherwise know to be true. Or we may believe it
because it is affirmed by some one wiser than ourselves,
who, we suppose, may have had the experience which
has not reached us, and to whom it may thus have be-
come conceivable. But the belief is without under-
standing, for we form no mental picture of what we
believe. We do not so much believe the fact, as believe
that we should believe it if we could have the needful
presentation in our experience ; and that some other
being has, or may have, had that presentation. Our in-
ability to conceive it, is no argument whatever for its
being false, and no hindrance to our believing it, to the
above-mentioned extent.
But though facts, which we cannot join together in an
for its existence, takes away its incredibility, and enables us to " conceive
' it as possible." This view of Sir W. Hamilton's meaning explains,
though it does not justify, his using the term in its third signification ;
which Mr. Mansel (p. 132) also endeavours to reduce to the first, but
which may be better identified with the second : for of First Truths also
it is impossible to assign any Sufficient Reason.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 97
image, may be united in the universe, and though we
may have sufficient ground for believing that they are
so united in point of fact, it is impossible to believe a
proposition which conveys to us no meaning at all. If
any one says to me, Humpty Dumpty is an Abracadabra,
I neither know what is meant by an Abracadabra, nor
what is meant by Humpty Dumpty, I may, if I have
confidence in my informant, believe that he means some-
thing, and that the something which he means is pro-
bably true : but I do not believe the very thing which
he means, since I am entirely ignorant what it is. Pro-
positions of this kind, the unmeaningness of which lies
in the subject or predicate, are not those generally
described as inconceivable The unmeaning proposi-
tions spoken of under that name, are usually those
which involve contradictions. That the same thinsr is
and is not that it did and did not rain at the same
time and place, that a man is both alive and not alive,
are forms of words which carry no signification to my
mind. As Sir W. Hamilton truly says,* one half of the
statement simply sublates or takes away the meaning
which the other half has laid down. The unmeaning-
ness here resides in the copula. The word is has no
meaning, except as exclusive of is not. The case is more
hopeless than that of Humpty Dumpty, for no explana :
tion. by the speaker of what the words mean can make
the assertion intelligible. Whatever may be meant by a
man, and whatever may be meant by alive, the statement
that a man can be alive and not alive is equally without
meaning to me. I cannot make out anything which the
speaker intends me to believe. The sentence affirms
nothing of which my mind can take hold. Sir W.
Hamilton, indeed, maintains the contrary. He says,f
" When we conceive the proposition that A is not A, we
" clearly comprehend the separate meaning of the terms
" A and not A., and also the import of the assertion of
" their identity." We comprehend the separate meaning
* Lectures, iii. 99. t Ibid. p. 113.
98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
of the terms, but as to the meaning of the assertion,
I think we only comprehend what the same form of
words would mean in another case. The very import of
the form of words is inconsistent with its meaning
anything when applied to terms of this particular
kind. Let any one who doubts this, attempt to define
what is meant by applying a predicate to a subject,
when the predicate and the subject are the negation
of one another. To make sense of the assertion, some
new meaning must be attached to is or is. not, and if this
be done the proposition is no longer the one presented
for our assent. Here, therefore, is one kind of incon-
ceivable proposition which nothing whatever can make
credible to us. Not being able to attach any meaning
to the proposition, we are equally incompetent to assert
that it is, or that it is not, possible in itself. But we
have not the power of believing it ; and there the matter
must rest.
We are now prepared to enter on the peculiar doctrine
of Sir W. Hamilton, called the Philosophy of the Con-
ditioned. Not content with maintaining that things
which from the natural and fundamental laws of the
human mind, are for ever inconceivable to us, may, for
aught we know, be true, he goes farther, and says, we
know that many such things are true. " Things* there
" are which may, nay must, be true, of which the under-
" standing is wholly unable to construe to itself the pos-
" sibility." Of what nature these things are, is declared
in many parts of his writings, in the form of a general
law. It is thus stated in the review of Cousin :f " The
" Conditioned is the mean between the two extremes
" two unconditionates, exclusive of each other, neither
" of which can be conceived as possible, but of which, on
" the principles of contradiction and excluded middle,
"one must be admitted as necessary. . . . The mind is
" not represented as conceiving two propositions sub-
" versive of each other as equally possible ; but only,
* Discussions, p. 624. f Ibid. p. 15.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 99
" as unable to understand as possible, either of the
" extremes ; one of which, however, on the ground of
" their mutual repugnance, it is compelled to recognise
" as true."
In the Dissertations on Reid* he enunciates, in still
more general terms, as " The Law of the Conditioned :
' That all positive thought lies between two extrem'es,
" neither of which we can conceive as possible, and yet
" as mutual contradictories, the one or the other we must
" recognise as necessary." And it is (he says) " from
" this impotence of intellect " that " we are unable to
" think aught as absolute. Even absolute relativity
" is unthinkable."
The doctrine is more fully expanded in the Lectures
on Logic, f from which I shall quote at greater length.
" All that we can positively think .... lies between
" two opposite poles of thought, which, as exclusive of
" each other, cannot, on the principles of Identity and
" Contradiction, both be true, but of which, on the prin-
" ciple of Excluded Middle, one or the other must. Let
" us take, for example, any of the general objects of
" our knowledge. Let us take body, or rather, since
" body as extended is included under extension, let us
" take extension itself, or space. Now extension alone
" will exhibit to us two pairs of contradictory incon-
" ceivables, j that is, in all, four incomprehensibles, but of
" which, though all are equally unthinkable .... we are
" compelled, by the law of Excluded Middle, to admit
" some two as true and necessary.
" Extension may be viewed either as a whole or as a
" part ; and in each aspect it affords us two incogitable
" contradictions. 1st. Taking it as a whole : space, it
" is evident, must either be limited, that is, have an end,
" and circumference; or unlimited, that is, have no end,
* P. 911. f Lectures, iii. 100, et seq.
J To save words in the text, I shall simply indicate in foot-notes the
places at which the author passes from one of the three meanings of the
word Inconceivable to another. In this place he is using it in the first
or second meaning, probably in the first.
H 2
100 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
" no circumference. These are contradictory supposi-
" tions ; both, therefore, cannot, but one must, be true.
" Now let us try positively to comprehend, positively to
"conceive,* the- possibility of either of these two
" mutually exclusive alternatives. Can we represent, or
" realize in thought, extension as absolutely limited ? in
" other words, can we mentally hedge round the whole of
" space, conceive f it absolutely bounded, that is, so that
" beyond its boundary there is no outlying, no surround-
" ing space ? This is impossible. Whatever compass of
" space we may enclose by any limitation of thought,
" we shall find that we have no difficulty in transcend-
" ing these limits. Nay, we shall find that we cannot
" but transcend them ; for we are unable to think any
" extent of space except as within a still ulterior space,
" of which, let us think till the powers of thinking fail,
" we can never reach the circumference. It is thus im-
" possible for us to think space as a totality, that is, as
" absolutely bounded, but all -containing. We may,
" therefore, lay down this first extreme as inconceivable, j
" We cannot think space as limited.
" Let us now consider its contradictory : can we com-
" prehend the possibility of infinite or unlimited space ?
" To suppose this is a direct contradiction in terms ; it is
" to comprehend the incomprehensible. We think, we
" conceive, we comprehend a thing, only as we think it
" as within or under something else ; but to do this of
" the infinite is to think the infinite is finite, which is
" contradictory and absurd.
" Now here it may be asked, how have we then the
" word infinite ? How have we the notion which this
" word expresses ? The answer to this question is con-
" tained in the distinction of positive and negative
" thought. We have a positive concept of a thing when
" we think it by the qualities of which it is the comple-
" ment. But as the attribution of qualities is an aflir-
* First and second senses confused together,
f First sense. J First sense. Third sense.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 101
" mation, as affirmation and negation are relatives, and \
" as relatives are known only in and through each other,
" we cannot, therefore, have a consciousness of the affir-
" mation of any quality, without having at the same time
" the correlative consciousness of its negation. Now,
" the one consciousness is a positive, the other conscious-
" ness is a negative notion. But, in point of fact, a
" negative notion is only the negation of a notion ; we
" think only by the attribution of certain qualities, and
" the negation of these qualities and of this attribution
" is simply, in so far, a denial of our thinking at all.
" As affirmation always suggests negation, every positive
" notion must likewise suggest a negative notion : and
" as language is the reflex of thought, the positive and
" negative notions are expressed by positive and negative
" naines. Thus it is with the infinite. The finite is the
" only object of real or positive thought; it is that alone
" which we think by the attribution of determinate cha-
" racters ; the infinite, on the contrary, is conceived only
" by the thinking away of every character by which the
" finite was conceived: in other. words, we conceive it
." only as inconceivable.*
" It is manifest that we can no more realize the
" thought or conception of infinite, unbounded, or un-
" limited space, than we can realize the conception of
" a finite or absolutely bounded space.f But these two ^*
" inconceivables are reciprocal contradictories : we are
" unable to comprehend} the possibility of either, while, -
" however, on the principle of Excluded Middle, one or
" other must be admitted
" It is needless to show that the same result is given
" by the experiment made on extension considered as a
" part, as divisible. Here if we attempt to divide ex-
" tension in thought, we shall neither, on the one hand,
" succeed in conceiving the possibility of an absolute ^
" minimum of space, that is, a minimum ex hypotltesi
* Third sense, gliding back into the first.
t Here the return to the first sense is^ completed.
J Second sense. Second sense.
102 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
" extended, but which cannot be conceived as divisible
" into parts,* nor, on the other, of carrying on this
" division to infinity. But as these are contradictory
" opposites," one or the other of them must be true.
In other passages our author applies the same order
of considerations to Time, saying that we can neither
conceive an absolute commencement, nor an infinite
regress; an absolute termination, nor a duration infinitely
prolonged ; though either the one or the other must be
true. And again, of the Will : we cannot, he says, con-
ceive the Will to be Free, because this would be to con-
ceive an event uncaused, or, in other words, an absolute
commencement : neither can we conceive the Will not
to be Free, because this would be supposing an infinite
regress from effect to cause. The will, however, must
be either free or not free ; and in this case, he thinks we
have independent grounds for deciding one way, namely,
that it is free, because if it were not, we could not be
accountable for our actions, which our consciousness
assures us that we are.
This, then, is the Philosophy of the Conditioned : into
the value of which it now remains to enquire.
In the case of each of the Antinomies which the
author presents, he undertakes to establish two things :
that neither of the rival hypotheses can be conceived by
us as possible, and that we are nevertheless certain that
one or the other of them is true.
To begin with his first position, that we can neither
conceive an end to space, nor space without end.
That we are unable to conceive an end to space I fully
acknowledge. To account for this there needs no in-
o
herent incapacity. We are disabled from forming this
conception, by known psychological laws. We have
never perceived any object, or any portion of space,
which had not other space beyond it. And we have
been perceiving objects and portions of space from the
moment of birth. How then could the idea of an object,
* First sense.
THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED. 103
or of a portion of space, escape becoming inseparably
associated with the idea of additional space beyond ?
Every instant of our lives helps to rivet this association,
and we never have had a single experience tending to
disjoin it. The association, under the present constitu-
tion of our existence, is indissoluble. But we have no !
ground for believing that it is so from the original struc- |
ture of our minds. We can suppose that in some other
state of existence we might be transported to the end
of space, when, being apprised of what had happened by
some impression of a kind utterly unknown to us now, i
we should at the same instant become capable of con-
ceiving the fact, and learn that it was true. After some
experience of the new impression, the fact of an end to
space would seem as natural to us as the revelations of
sight to a person born blind, after he has been long
enough couched to have become familiar with them.
But as this cannot happen in our present state of exis-
tence, the experience which would render the association
dissoluble is never obtained ; and an end to space
remains inconceivable.
One half, then, of our author's first proposition, must
be conceded. But the other half? Is it true that we
are incapable of conceiving infinite space ? I have
already shown strong reasons for dissenting from this
assertion: and those which our author, in this and other
places, assigns in its support, seem to me quite untenable.
He says, " we think, we conceive, we comprehend, a
" thing, only as we think it as within or under something
" else. But to do this of the infinite is to think the
" infinite as finite, which is contradictory and absurd."
When we come to Sir W. Hamilton's account of the
Laws of Thought, we shall have some remarks to make
on the phrase to think one thing within or under
another ;" a favourite expression with the Transcen-
dental school, one of whose characteristics is, that
they are always using the prepositions in a metaphorical
sense. But granting that to think a thing is to think
it under something else, we must understand this state-
104 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
ment as it is invariably interpreted by tbose who em-
ploy it. According to them, we think a thing when we
make any affirmation respecting it, and we think it
under the notion which we affirm of it. Whenever we
judge, we think the subject under the predicate. Con-
sequently when we say "God is good," we think God
under the notion "good." Is this, in our author's
opinion, to think the infinite as finite, and hence " con-
tradictory and absurd ?"
If this doctrine hold, it follows that we cannot predi-
cate anything of a subject which we regard as being
in any of its attributes, infinite. We are unable, without
falling into a contradiction, to assert anything not only
of God, but of Time, and of Space. Considered as a
reductio ad absurdum, this is sufficient. But we may go
deeper into the matter, and deny the statement that to
think anything " under " the notion expressed by a
general term is to think it as finite. None of our gene-
ral predicates are, in the proper sense of the term, finite ;
they are all, at least potentially, infinite. " Good " is
not a name for the things or persons possessing that
attribute which exist now, or at any other given
moment, and which are only a finite aggregate. It is
a name for all those which ever did, or ever will, or even
in hypothesis or fiction can, possess the attribute. This
is not a limited number It is the very nature and
constituent character of a general notion that its ex-
tension (as Sir W. Hamilton would say) is without
limit.
But he might perhaps say, that though its extension,
consisting of the possible individuals included in it, may be
infinite, its comprehension, the set of attributes contained
in it (or as I prefer to say, .connoted by its name) is a
limited quantity. Undoubtedly it is. But see what
follows. If, because the comprehension of a general
notion is finite, any thing infinite cannot without contra-
diction be thought under it, the consequence is, that a
being possessing in an infinite degree a given attribute,
cannot be thought under that very attribute. Infinite
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 105
goodness cannot be thought as goodness, because that
would be to think it as finite. Surely there must be
some great confusion of ideas in the premises, when this
comes out as the conclusion.
Our author goes 011 to repeat the argument used in
his reply to Cousin, that Infinite Space is inconceivable,
because all the conception we are able to form of it is
negative, and a negative conception is the same as no
conception. "The infinite is conceived only by the
" thinking away of every character by which the finite
" was conceived." To this assertion I oppose my former
reply. Instead of thinking away every character of the
finite, we think away only the idea of an end, or a
boundary. Sir W. Hamilton's proposition is true of
" The Infinite," the meaningless abstraction ; but it is
not true of Infinite Space. In trying to form a concep-
tion of that, we do not think awav its positive characters.
We leave it to the character of Space ; all that belongs
to it as space ; its three dimensions, with all their geome-
trical properties. We leave to it also a character which
belongs to it as Infinite, that of being greater than any
finite space. If an object which has these well-marked
positive attributes is unthinkable, because it has a nega-
tive attribute as well, the number of thinkable objects
must be remarkably small. Nearly all our positive con-
ceptions which are at all complex, include negative attri-
butes. I do not mean merely the negatives which are
implied in affirmatives, as in saying that snow is white
we imply that it is not black ; but independent negative
attributes superadded to these, and which are so real that
they are often the essential characters, or differentiae, of
classes. Our conception of dumb, is of something which
cannot speak ; of the brutes, as of creatures which have
not reason; of the mineral kingdom, as the part of
Nature which has not organization and life ; of immortal,
as that which never dies. Are all these examples of the
Inconceivable ? So false is it that to think of a thing
under a negation is to think it as unthinkable.
, In other passages, Sir W. Hamilton argues that we
\
106 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
cannot conceive infinite space, because we should require
infinite time to do it in. It would of course require
infinite time to carry our thoughts in succession over
every part of infinite space. But on how many of our
finite conceptions do we think it necessary to perform
such an operation ? Let us try the doctrine upon a
complex whole, short of infinite ; such as the number
695,788. Sir W. Hamilton would not, I suppose, have
maintained that this number is inconceivable. How
,, .*. u long did he think it would take to go over every separate
unit of this whole, so as to obtain a perfect knowledge
vfrf* of that exact sum, as different from all other sums, either
greater or less ? Would he have said that we could
have no conception of the sum until this process had
been gone through ? We could not, indeed, have an
adequate conception. Accordingly we never have an
adequate conception of any real thing. But wejiave a
real conception of an object if we conceive it by any of
its attributes that are sufficient to distinguish it from all
other ~13iiDgsL We have a conception of any large
number, when we have conceived it by some one of its
modes of composition, such as that indicated by the
position of its digits. We seldom get nearer than this
to an adequate conception of any large number. But
for all intellectual purposes, this limited conception is
sufficient : for it not only enables us to avoid confounding
the number, in our calculations, with any other numerical
whole even with those so nearly equal to it that no
difference between them would be perceptible by sight
or touch, unless the units were drawn up in a manner
expressly adapted for displaying it but we can also, by
means of this attribute of the number, ascertain and add
to our conception as many more of its properties as we
please. If, then, we can obtain a real conception of a
finite whole without going through all its component
parts, why deny us a real conception of an infinite whole
because to go through them all is impossible ? Not to
mention that even in the case of the finite number,
though the units composing it are limited, vet, Number
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 107
being infinite, the possible modes of deriving any given
number from other numbers are numerically infinite ; and
as all these are necessary parts of an adequate conception
of any number, to render our conception even of this
finite whole perfectly adequate would also require an
infinite time.*
But though our conception of infinite space can never
be_ adequate, since we can never exhaust its parts, the
conception, as far as it goes, is a real conception. We
realize in imagination the various attributes composing
it. We realize it as space. We realize it as greater
than any given space. We even realize it as endless, in
an intelligible manner, that is, we clearly represent to
ourselves that however much of space has been already
explored, and however much more of it we may imagine
ourselves to traverse, we are no nearer to the end of it
than we were at first; since, however often we repeat
the process of imagining distance extending in any
direction from us, that process is always susceptible of
being carried further. This conception is both real and
perfectly definite. A merely negative notion may cor-
respond to any number of the most heterogeneous posi-
tive things, but this notion corresponds to one thing
only. We possess it as completely as we possess any
of our clearest conceptions, and can avail ourselves of it
as well for ulterior mental operations. As regards the
Extent of Space, therefore, tSir W. Hamilton has not
made out his point : one of the two contradictory
hypotheses is not inconceivable.
The same thing may be said, equally decidedly, respect-
ing the Divisibility of Space. According to our author,
a minimum of divisibility, and a divisibility without
* Mr. Mansel replies (p. 134) that our system of numeration enables us
to " exhaust any finite number, by dealing with its items in large masses,"
but that no such process can "exhaust the infinite." My argument is
that we need not exhaust the infinite to be enabled to conceive it ; since,
in point of fact, we do not exhaust the finite numbers which it is admitted
that we can and do conceive. Mr. Mansel says we do ; which reduces the
question to a difference in the meaning of the word exhaust. In the only
sense that is of importance to the argument, we do not mentally exhaust
any large number, since we do not acquire an adequate idea ot it.
108 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
limit, are both inconceivable. I venture to think, on
the contrary, that both are conceivable. Divisibility, of
course, does not here mean physical separability of parts,
but their mere existence ; and the question is, can we
conceive a portion of extension so small as not to be
composed of parts, and can we, on the other hand, con-
ceive parts consisting of smaller parts, and these of still
smaller, without end ? As to the latter, smallness without
limit is as positive a conception as greatness without
limit. We have the idea of a portion of space, and to
this we add that of being smaller than any given portion.
The other side of the alternative is still more evidently
conceivable. It is not denied that there is a portion of
extension which to the naked eye appears an indivisible
point ; it has been called by philosophers the minimum
visibile. This minimum we can indefinitely magnify by
means of optical instruments, making visible the still
smaller parts which compose it. In each successive ex-
periment there is still a minimum visibile, anything less
than which, cannot be discerned with that instrument,
but can with one of a higher power. Suppose, now, that
as we increase the magnifying powers of our instruments,
and before we have reached the limit of possible increase,
we arrive at a stage at which that which seemed the
smallest visible space under a given microscope, does
not appear larger under one which, by its mechanical
construction, is adapted to magnify more but still re-
mains apparently indivisible. I say, that if this happened,
we should believe in a minimum of extension ; and as
we should be able to conceive, that is, to represent to
ourselves in an image, anything smaller, any further
divisibility would be as inconceivable to us as it would
be unbelievable.
There would be no difficulty in applying a similar line
of argument to the case of Time, or to any other of the
Antinomies, (there is a long list of them,* to some of
which 1 shall have to return for another purpose,) but it
would needlessly encumber our pages. In no one case
* See the catalogue at length, in the Appendix to the second volume of
the Lectures, pp. C27-5i!9.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. 109
mentioned by Sir W. Hamilton do I believe that he could
substantiate his assertion, that " the Conditioned," by
which he means every object of human knowledge, lies
between two " inconditionate " hypotheses, both of them
inconceivable. Let me add, that even granting the in-
conceivability of the two opposite hypotheses, I cannot
see that any distinct meaning is conveyed by the
statement that the Conditioned is " the mean " between
them, or that " all positive thought," " all that we can
positively think," " lies between " these two " extremes,"
these "two opposite poles of thought." The extremes
are, space in the aggregate considered as having a
limit, Space in the aggregate considered as having no
limit. Neither of these, says Sir W. Hamilton, can we
think. But what we can positively think (according to
him) is not Space in the aggregate at all ; it is some
limited Space, and this we think as square, as circular, as
triangular, or as ellipfical. Are triangular and elliptical
a mean between infinite and finite ? They are, by the
very meaning of the words, modes of the finite. So that
it would be more like the truth to say that we think the
pretended mean under one of the extremes ; and if
infinite and finite are " two opposite poles of thought,"
then in this polar opposition, unlike voltaic polarity, all
the matter is accumulated at one pole. But this counter-
statement would be no more tenable than Sir W.
Hamilton's ; for in reality, thejbhought which he affirms
to be a medium between two extreme statements, has no
correlation with those statements at all. It does not
relate to the same object. The two counter-hypotheses
are suppositions respecting Space at large, Space as a
collective whole. The " conditioned " thinking, said to
Be the mean between them, relates to parts of Space, and
classes of such parts : circles and triangles, or planetary
and stellar distances* The alternative of opposite in-
conceivabilities never presents itself in regard to them ;
they are all finite, and are conceived and known as such.
AVhat the notion of extremes and a mean can signify,
when applied to propositions in which different predicates
are affirmed of different subjects, passes my comprehen-
110 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THB CONDITIONED.
sion : but it served to give greater apparent profundity
to the " Fundamental Doctrine," in the eyes not of dis-
ciples (for Sir W. Hamilton was wholly incapable of
quackery) but of the teacher himself.
If these arguments are valid, the "Law of the Con-
ditioned " rests on no rational foundation. The propo-
sition that the Conditioned lies between two hypotheses
concerning the Unconditioned, neither of which hypo-
theses we can conceive as possible, must be placed in
that numerous class of metaphysical doctrines, which
have a magnificent sound, but are empty of the smallest
substance.*
* In the first edition, besides denying the inconceivability of the pairs
of contradictory hypotheses in Sir W. Hamilton's Antinomies, I also con-
tested the assertion that one or other of them must be true ; arguing, that
the law of Excluded Middle, though true of all phenomena, and therefore
of Space and Time in their phaenomenal character, is not a law of Things.
" The law of Excluded Middle is, that whatever predicate we suppose,
" either that or its negative must be true of any given subject : and this
" I do not admit when the subject is a Noumenon ; inasmuch as every
" possible predicate, even negative, except the single one of Non-entity,
" involves, as a part of itself, something positive, which part is only known
" to us by phaenomenal experience, and may have only a phenomenal
" existence." This, being an over-statement, and when reduced to its
proper bounds, not necessarily conflicting with anything said by Sir W.
Hamilton on the present subject, I abandon. But I retain a portion of
my remarks, illustrative of the abusive application of which the Principle
of Excluded Middle is susceptible. " The universe, for example, must, it
" is affirmed, be either infinite or finite : but what do these words mean ?
" That it must be either of infinite or finite magnitude. Magnitudes
" certainly must be either infinite or finite, but before affirming the same
" thing of the Noumenon Universe, it has to be established that the
' universe as it is in itself is capable of the attribute magnitude. How do
' we know that magnitude is not exclusively a property of our sensations
' of the states of subjective consciousness which objects produce in us ?
' Or if this supposition displeases, how do we know that magnitude is
' not, as Kant considered it to be, a form of our minds, an attribiite with
' which the laws of thought invest every conception that we can form,
' but to which there may be nothing analogous in the Noumenon, the
' Thing in itself? The like may be said of Duration, whether infinite or
' finite, and of Divisibility, whether stopping at a minimum or prolonged
" without limit. Either the one proposition or the other must of course
" be true of duration and of matter as they are perceived by us as they
" present themselves to our faculties ; but duration itself is held by Kant
" to have no real existence out of our minds ; and as for matter, not
" knowing what it is in itself, we know not whether, as affirmed of matter
" in itself, the word divisible has any meaning. Believing divisibility to
" be an acquired notion, made up of the elements of our sensational ex-
" perience, I do not admit that the Noumenon Matter must be either
" infinitely or finitely divisible."
Ill
CHAPTER VII.
THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE CONDITIONED AS APPLIED BY
MR. HANSEL TO THE LIMITS OP RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
MR. MANSEL may be affirmed, by a fair application of
the term, to be, in metaphysics, a pupil of Sir W.
Hamilton. I do not mean that he agrees with him in all
his opinions ; for he avowedly dissents from the peculiar
Hamiltonian theory of Cause: still less that he has
learnt nothing from any other teacher, or from his own
independent speculations. On the contrary, he has
shown considerable power of original thought, both of a
good and of what seems to me not a good quality. But he
is the admiring editor of Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures ;
he invariably speaks of him with a deference which he
pays to no other philosopher ; he expressly accepts, in
language identical with Sir W. Hamilton's own, the
doctrines regarded as specially characteristic of the
Hamiltonian philosophy, and may with reason be con-
sidered as a representative of the same general mode of
thought. Mr. Mansel has bestowed especial cultivation
upon a province but slightly touched by his master
the application of the Philosophy of the Conditioned to
the theological department of thought ; the deduction of
such of its corollaries and consequences as directly con-
cern religion.
The premises from which Mr. Mansel reasons are
those of Sir W. Hamilton. He maintains the necessary
relativity of all our knowledge. He holds that the Ab-
solute and the Infinite, or, to use a more significant
expression, an Absolute and an Infinite Being, are incon-
ceivable by us ; and that when we strive to conceive what
112 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
is thus inaccessible to our faculties, we fall into self-con-
tradiction. That we are, nevertheless, warranted in
believing, and bound to believe, the real existence of an
absolute and infinite being, and that this being is God.
God, therefore, is inconceivable and unknowable by us,
and cannot even be thought of without self-contradic-
tion ; that is (for Mr. Mansel is careful thus to qualify
the assertion), thought of as Absolute, and as Infinite.
Through this inherent impossibility of our conceiving
or knowing God's essential attributes, we are disqualified
from judging what is or is not consistent with them.
If, then, .a religion is presented to us, containing any
particular doctrine respecting the Deity, our belief or re-
jection of the doctrine ought to depend exclusively upon
the evidences which can be produced for the divine origin
of the religion ; and no argument grounded on the in-
credibility of the doctrine, as involving an intellectual
absurdity, or on its moral badness as unworthy of a good
or wise being, ought to have any weight, since of these
things we are incompetent to judge. This, at least, is
the drift of Mr. Mansel's argument ; but I am bound to
admit that he affirms the conclusion with a certain limi-
tation ; for he acknowledges, that the moral character of
the doctrines of a religion ought to count for something
.among the reasons for accepting or rejecting, as of divine
origin, the religion as a whole. That it ought *also to
.count for something in the interpretation of the religion
when accepted, he neglects to say ; but we must in fair-
ness suppose that he would admit it. These concessions,
however, to the moral feelings of mankind, are made at
the expense of Mr. Mansel's logic. If his theory is
correct, he has no right to make either of them.
There is nothing new in this line of argument as ap-
plied to theology. That we cannot understand God ;
that his ways are not our ways ; that we cannot scruti-
nize or judge his counsels propositions which, in a rea-
sonable sense of the terms, could not be denied by any
Theist have often before been tendered as reasons why
we may assert any absurdities and any moral monstrosi-
AS APPLIED BY MR. MANSEL TO RELIGION. 113
x
ties concerning God, and miscall them Goodness and
Wisdom. The novelty is in presenting this conclusion
as a corollary from the most advanced doctrines of modern
philosophy from the true theory of the powers and
limitations of the human mind, on religious and on ail
other subjects.
My opinion of this doctrine, in whatever way pre-
sented, is, that it is simply the most morally pernicious
doctrine now current ; and that ihe question, it involves
is, beyond all others which now engage speculative
minds, the decisive one between moral good and evil for
the Christian world. It is a momentous matter, there-
fore, to consider whether we are obliged to adopt it.
Without holding Mr. Mansel accountable for the moral
consequences of the doctrine, further than he himself ac-
cepts them, I think it supremely important to examine
whether the doctrine itself is really the verdict of a sound
metaphysic ; and essential to a true estimation of Sir
W. Hamilton's philosophy to enquire, whether the con-
clusion thus drawn from his principal doctrine, is justly -
affiliated on it. I think it will appear that the con-
clusion not only does not follow from a true theory of the ,
human faculties, but is not even correctly drawn from'
the premises from which Mr. Mansel infers it.
We must have the premises distinctly before us as
conceived by Mr. Mansel, since we have hitherto seen
them only as taught by Sir W. Hamilton. Clearness and
explicitness of statement being in the number of Mr.
Mansel's merits, it is easier to perceive the flaws in his
arguments than in those of bis master, because he often
leaves us less in doubt what he means by his words.
To have " such a knowledge of the Divine Nature"
as would enable human reason to judge of theology, would
be, according to Mr. Mansel,* " to conceive the Deity as
he is." This would be to "conceive him as First
Cause, as Absolute, and as Infinite." The First Cause
Mr. Mansel defines in the usual manner. About the
meaning of Infinite there is no difficulty. But when
* Limits of Beligious Thought, 4th edition, pp. 29, 30.
I
114 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
we come to the Absolute we are on more slippery
ground. Mr. Mansel, however, tells us his meaning
plainly. By the Absolute, he does not mean what Sir
W. Hamilton professes always to mean by it, something
which includes the idea of completed or finished. He
adopts the other meaning, which Sir W. Hamilton men-
tions, but disclaims the opposite of Eelative. " By
" the Absolute is meant that which exists in and by itself,
" having no necessary relation to any other Being."
This explanation by Mr. Mansel of Absolute in the
sense in which it is opposed to Relative, is more definite
in its terms than that which Sir W. Hamilton gives
when attempting the same thing. For Sir W. Hamilton
recognises (as already remarked) this second meaning of
Absolute, and this is the account he gives of it :*
" Absolutum means what is freed or loosed ; in which
" sense the Absolute will be what is aloof from relation,
" comparison, limitation, condition, dependence, &c.,
" and thus is tantamount to TO cnr6\VT(>v of the lower
" Greeks." May it not be surmised that the vagueness
in which the master here leaves the conception, was for
the purpose of avoiding difficulties upon which the pupil,
in his desire of greater precision, has unwarily run ? Mr.
Mansel certainly gains nothing by the more definite
character of his language. The words, " having no
necessary relation to any other Bein^," admit of two
constructions. The words, in their natural sense, only
mean, capable of existing out of relation to anything else.
The argument requires that they should mean, incapable
of existing in relation with anything else. Mr. Mansel
cannot intend the latter. He cannot mean that the
Absolute is incapable of entering into relation with any
other being ; for he would not affirm this of God ; on
the contrary, he is continually speaking of God's rela-
tions to the world and to us. Moreover, he accepts,
from Dr. Calderwood, an interpretation inconsistent
with this.f This, however, is the meaning necessary
to support his case. For what is his first argument ?
* Discussions, p. 14, note. f Limits of Religious Thought, p. 200.
AS APPLIED BY MR. MANSEL TO RELIGION. 115
That God cannot be known by us as Cause, as Abso-
lute, and as Infinite, because these attributes are, to our
conception, incompatible with one another. And why
incompatible ? Because* " a Cause cannot, as such, be
" absolute ; the Absolute cannot, as such, be a cause.
" The cause, as such, exists only in relation to its effect :
"the cause is a cause of the effect ; the effect is an effect
" of the cause. On the other hand, the conception of
" the Absolute involves a possible existence out of all
" relation." But in what manner is a possible existence
out of all relation, incompatible with the notion of a cause?
Have not causes a possible existence apart from their
effects ? Would the sun (for example) not exist if there
were no earth or planets for it to illuminate ? Mr. Mansel
seems to think that what is capable of existing out of
relation, cannot possibly be conceived or known in rela-
tion. But this is not so. Anything which is capable
of existing in relation, is capable of being conceived or
known in relation. If the Absolute Being cannot be
conceived as Cause, it must be that he cannot exist as
Cause ; he must be incapable of causing. If he can be
in any relation whatever to any finite thing, he is con-
ceivable and knowable in that relation, if no otherwise.
Freed from this confusion of ideas, Mr. Mansel's argu-
ment resolves itself into this the same Being cannot
be thought by us both as Cause and as Absolute,
because a Cause as such is not Absolute, and Absolute
as such is not a Cause ; which is exactly as if he had
said that Newton cannot be thought by us both as an
Englishman and as a mathematician, because an English-
man, as such, is not a mathematician, nor a mathema-
tician, as such, an Englishman.!
* Limits of Eeligious Thought, p. 31.
t Mr. Mausel, in his reply (p. 151) accuses me of mutilating hia argu-
ment. I therefore add the remainder of it. " We attempt to escape from
" this apparent contradiction by introducing the idea of succession in
" time. The Absolute exists first by itself, and afterwards becomes a
" Cause. But here we are checked by the third conception, that of the
" Infinite. How can the Infinite beco'me that which it was not from the
" first ? If Causation is a possible mode of existence, that which exists
i 2
116 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
Again, Mr. Mansel argues,* that, " supposing the Ab-
solute to become a cause," since ex m termini it is not
necessitated to do so, it must be a voluntary agent, and
therefore conscious ; for " volition is only possible in a
conscious being." But consciousness, again, is only
conceivable as a relation; and any relation conflicts with
the notion of the Absolute, since relatives are mutually
dependent on one another. Here it comes out distinctly
as a premise in the reasoning, that to be in a relation at
all, even if only a relation to itself, the relation of being
" conscious of itself," is inconsistent with being the
Absolute.!
Mr. Mansel, therefore, must alter his definition of the
Absolute if he would maintain his argument. He must
" without causing is not infinite ; that which becomes a cause has passed
" beyond its former limits." (Limits of Eeligious Thought, pp. 31, 32.)
This alleged inconsistency of thought in supposing the Infinite to
become a cause, because to do so would be to become something which it
was not from the first, applies, like nearly all the rest of Mr. Mansel's
argumentation, only to the self-contradictory fiction, " The Infinite,"
which is supposed either infinite without reference to any attributes, or
infinite in all possible attributes. Substitute for this the notion of a
Being infinite in given attributes, and the incompatibility disappears.
Surely the most familiar form of the notion of an infinite being, is that
of a Being infinite in power. Power is not only compatible with, but
actually means, capability of causing. Can we be told that a Being
infinite in its capability of causing, cannot to our conceptions, consis-
tently with its infinity, actually cause anything, but the power, because
infinite, must remain dormant through eternity ? or, as the opposite
alternative, that this Being must be conceived as having exercised from
all eternity the whole of its infinite power of causing, because any later
exercise of that power would be passing into causation ? Either hypo-
thesis Mr. Mansel affirms (Limits of Religious Thought, p. 204) to be
'inconceivable of an Infinite Being. But if an Infinite Being means a
Being of infinite wisdom and goodness as well as power, the conception of
that infinite power as only partly exercised is so far from being a contra-
diction, that it is not even a paradox.
* Limits of Religious Thought, p. 32.
f- How does Mr. Mansel reconcile this argument with the definition of
the Absolute which he himself accepts from Dr. Calderwood (Limits of
Religious Thought, p. 200) ? " The Absolute is that which is free from
" all necessary relation, that is, which is free from every relation as a conV,
" dition of existence ; but it may exist in relation, provided that rela-i :'
" tion be not a necessary condition of its existence, that is, provided the)
"relation maybe removed without affecting its existence." A better]/
definition of an Absolute Being could scarcely be devised ; and that Mr.^
Mansel should borrow it, and then deny the latter half of it, proves him
to be greatly inferior to Dr. Calderwood in the important accomplishment
of understanding his own meaning. For before it can be maintained that
AS APPLIED BY MR. M ANSEL TO EELIGION. 117
either fall back on the happy ambiguity of Sir W.
Hamilton's definition, " what is aloof from relation,"
which does not decide whether the meaning is merely
that it can exist out of relation, or that it is incapable
of existing in it ; or he must take courage, and affirm
that an Absolute Being is incapable of all relation.
But as he will certainly refuse to predicate this of God,
the consequence follows, that God is not an Absolute
Being.
The whole of Mr. Hansel's arguments for the incon-
ceivability of the Infinite and of the Absolute is one
long ignoratio elenchi. It has been pointed out in a
former chapter that the words Absolute and Infinite
have no real meaning, unless we understand by them
that which is absolute or infinite in some given attri-
bute ; as space is called infinite, meaning that it is infi-
nite in extension ; and as God is termed infinite in the
sense of possessing infinite power, and absolute in the
sense of absolute goodness, or knowledge. It has also
been shown that Sir W. Hamilton's arguments for the
unknowableness of the Unconditioned, do not prove that
we cannot know an object which is absolute or infinite
in some specific attribute, but only that we cannot know
an abstraction called "The Absolute" or "The Infinite,"
which is supposed to have all attributes at once. The
same remark is applicable to Mr. Mansel,* with only this
to be a conscious being contradicts the notion of the Absolnte, because
consciousness is a relation, the power just admitted in the Absolute of
existing in relation provided it is not bound to any relation, must be either
denied or forgotten.
[Mr. Mansel, in his rejoinder, says that he did not mean to admit the
second half of Dr. Calderwood's definition ; and he holds to the doctrine
" The absolute, as such, must be out of all relation " (not merely capable
of existing out of relation) " and consequently cannot be conceived in the
relation of plurality." (Philosophy of the Conditioned, p. 117).]
* Mr. Mansel (pp. 153, 154) protests against this passage, as attribu-
ting to him the use of the word " Absolute" in the sense attached to it
by Sir W. Hamilton, which includes perfection, though he had expressly
stated that he used the term in a different sense. " When Mr. Mill
' charges Mr. Mansel with undertaking to prove the impossibility of con-
' ceiving a Being absolutely just or absolutely wise (i.e. as he supposes,
' perfectly just or wise) he actually forgets that he has just been criti-
' cisiug Mr. Mansei's definition of the Absolute, as something having a 1
' possible existence out of relation." And he asks what I can mean by
118 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
difference, that he, with the laudable ambition I have
already noticed of stating everything explicitly, draws
this important distinction himself, and says, of his own
motion, that the Absolute he means is the abstrac-
tion. He says,* that the Absolute and Infinite can be
" nothing less than the sum of all reality," the complex
of all positive predicates, even those which are exclusive
of one another ; and expressly identifies it with Hegel's
Absolute Being, which contains in itself " all that is
" actual, even evil included." "That which is conceived
" as absolute and infinite," says Mr. Mansel, f " must be
" conceived as containing within itself the sum not only
" of all actual, but of all possible modes of being." One
may well agree with Mr. Mansel that this farrago of
goodness or knowledge " out of all relation." If I have, in this passage,
exchanged Mr. Hansel's definition of the Absolute for Sir W. Hamilton's,
by including in it the notion of " finished, perfected, completed," Mr.
Mansel had set me the example. As long as he kept to his own definition,
1 did the same : I only followed him when he himself imported the idea
of perfection from the other meaning of the term, and reasoned from it as
one of the characteristics of the Absolute. Does the reader doubt this ?
He shall see. We cannot, says Mr. Mansel, reconcile the idea of the
Absolute with that of a Cause, because " if the condition of causal ac-
tivity is a higher state than that of quiescence, the Absolute, whether
acting voluntarily or involuntarily, has passed from a condition of com-
parative imperfection to one of comparative perfection, and therefore
was not originally perfect. If the state of activity is an inferior state
to that of quiescence, the Absolute, in becoming a cause, has lost its
original perfection." (Limits of Religious Thought, pp. 34, 35. The
talics are my own.) Again (p. 3b) " While it is impossible to represent
in thought any object except as finite, it is equally impossible to repre-
sent any finite object, or any aggregate of finite objects, as exhausting
the universe of being. Thus the hypothesis which would annihilate the
Infinite is itself shattered to pieces against the rock of the Absolute."
In spite, therefore, of his own definition, Mr. Mansel thinks it part of the
notion of the Absolute that it is the Perfect, and that it exhausts the uni-
verse of being, i.e., is the completed whole of existence.
It thus appears that if 1 am chargeable with anything, it is with
having neglected to point out one confusion of ideas the more in Mr.
Mansel, and, this time, a confusion between two ideas which he had ex-
pressly discriminated. But even I had really committed the blunder he
imputes to me, it would not have affected the question between us : for he
always (and, as I. think, rightly) assumes that the Being whose conceiva-
bility by us is the subject of discussion, has to be conceived both as abso-
lute and as infinite (the infinito-Absolute of Sir W. Hamilton); and if he
had escaped untouched trom my criticism of Sir W. Hamilton in respect
of the Absolute, he would still have been inextricably involved in it as
regards the Infinite.
* Limits of Religious Thought, p. 30. f Ibid. p. 31.
AS APPLIED BY MR. HANSEL TO RELIGION. 119
contradictory attributes cannot be conceived : but what
shall we say of his equally positive averment that it
must be believed ? If this be what the Absolute is,
what does he mean by saying that we must believe God
to be the Absolute ?
The remainder of Mr. Mansell's argumentation is
suitable to this commencement. The Absolute, as con-
ceived, that is, as he defines it, cannot be " a whole* com-
" posed of parts," or " a substance consisting of attri-
" butes," or a " conscious subject in antithesis to an
" object. For if there is in the absolute any principle of
" unity, distinct from the mere accumulation of parts or
" attributes, this principle alone is the true absolute. If,
" on the other hand, there is no such principle, then
" there is no absolute at all, but only a plurality of rela-
" tives. The almost unanimous voice of philosophy, in
" pronouncing that the absolute is both one and simple,
" must be accepted as a voice of reason also, so far as
" reason has any voice in the matter. But this absolute
" unity, as indifferent and containing no attributes,
" can neither be distinguished from the multiplicity
" of finite beings by any characteristic feature, nor be
" identified with them in their multiplicity." It will
be noticed that the Absolute, which was just before
defined as having all attributes, is here declared to have
none : but this, Mr. Mansel would say, is merely one
of the contradictions inherent in the attempt to con-
ceive what is inconceivable. " Thus we are landed in
" an inextricable dilemma. The Absolute cannot be
" conceived as conscious, neither can it be conceived as
" unconscious : it cannot be conceived as complex, neither
"can it be conceived as simple: it cannot be conceived
" by difference, neither can it be conceived by the ab-
" sence of difference : it cannot be identified with the
" universe, neither can it be distinguished from it." Is
this chimerical abstraction the Absolute Being whom
anybody need be concerned about, either as knowable or
as unknowable? Is the inconceivableness of this iinpos-
* Limits of Religious Thought, p. 33.
120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
sible fiction any argument against tLe possibility of
conceiving God, who is neither supposed to have no
attributes nor to have all attributes, but to have good
attributes? Is it any hindrance to our being able to
conceive a Being absolutely just, for example, or abso-
lutely wise ? Yet it is of this that Mr. Mansel undertoqk
to prove the impossibility.
Again, of the Infinite : according to Mr. Mansel,*
being " that than which a greater is inconceivable," it
" consequently can receive no additional attribute or
" mode of existence which it had not from all eternity."
It must therefore be the same complex of all possible
predicates which the Absolute is, and all of them infinite
in degree. It " cannot be regarded as consisting of a
"limited number of attributes, each unlimited in its
" kind. It cannot be conceived, for example, after the
"analogy of a line, infinite in length, but not in
" breadth ; or of a surface, infinite in two dimensions of
" space, but bounded in the third ; or of an intelligent
" being, possessing some one or more modes of conscious-
" ness in an infinite degree, but devoid of others." This
Infinite, which is infinite in all attributes, and not solely
in those which it would be thought decent to predicate
of God, cannot, as Mr. Mansel very truly says, be
conceived. Forf "the Infinite, if it is to be conceived
" at all, must be conceived as potentially everything and
" actually nothing ; for if there is anything general which
" it cannot become, it is thereby limited ; and if there is
" anything in particular which it actually is, it is thereby
" excluded from being any other thing. But again,
" it must also be conceived as actually everything and
" potentially nothing ; for an unrealized potentiality is
" likewise a limitation. If the infinite can be that which
" it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as
" incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection. If it
" is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic
" feature by which it can be distinguished from anything
" else, and discerned as an object ol consciousness." Here
* Limits of Beligious Thought, p. 30. f Ibid. p. 48.
AS APPLIED BY MR. MANSEL TO RELIGION. 121
certainly is an Infinite whose infinity does not seem to
be of much use to it. But can a writer be serious who
bids us conjure up a conception of something which
possesses infinitely all conflicting attributes, and because
we cannot do this without contradiction, would bave us
believe that there is a contradiction in the idea of infinite
goodness, or infinite wisdom ? Instead of " the Infinite,"
substitute " an infinitely good Being," and Mr. Hansel's
argument reads thus : If there is anything which an
infinitely good Being cannot become if he cannot be-
come bad that is a limitation, and the goodness cannot
be infinite. If there is anything which an infinitely
good Being actually is (namely good), he is excluded
from being any other thing, as from being wise or
powerful. I hardly think that Sir W. Hamilton would
patronize this logic, learnt though it be in his school.*
It cannot be necessary to follow up Mr. Mansel's
metaphysical dissertation any farther. It is all, as I have
said, the same ignoratio elenc/ti. I have been able to find
only one short passage in which he attempts to show
that we are unable to represent in thought a particular
attribute carried to the infinite. For the sake of fairness,
* By the time Mr. Mansel gets to this place, he grows tired of giving
relevant answers, and thinks that any verbal repartee will suffice. To the
first half of my statement, his answer is this ^p. 158) : " Is becoming bad
a higher perfection?" I reply, that Mr. Mansel seems to think so;
inasmuch as he says " If the infinite can be that which it is not, it is by
" that very possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a higher
" perfection." If the infinite is God, and, as such, good, to become bad
would be to become what it is not, and consequently, according to Mr.
Mansel, to attain a higher perfection. To the second half he replies by
identifying the manner in which the Infinite, by being anything in par-
ticular, is excluded from being any other thing, with the manner in which
a thing, by being a horse, is excluded from being a dog. Let me remind
him that a horse and a dog are substances, and that we are talking about
attributes. A substance cannot become another substance, but it may
put on any number of additional attributes. Does not the whole of the
discussion turn upon attributes ? Does the question, what the Infinite
can or cannot be or become, mean anything but what attributes it can
have or acquire ? As a Substance the Infinite is the Infinite, and cannot
become anything else. Does it follow from this that by possessing one
attribute, it is excluded from possessing any other ? Or is it possible that
Mr. Mansel means, that the " Infinite, if it is to be conceived at all," must
be conceived as capable of changing its substance, and becoming a finite
dog, thereby excluding itself from being a horse ? That would indeed be
a stretch beyond anything I have charged him with.
122 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
I cite it in a note.* All the argument that I can dis-
cover in it, I conceive that I have already answered,
as stated much better by Sir W. Hamilton.
Mr. Mansel thinks it necessary to declare f that the
contradictions are not in "the nature of the Absolute"
or Infinite " in itself, but only" in " our own conception
of that nature." He did not mean to say that the
Divine Nature is itself contradictory. But he saysj
" We are compelled by the constitution of our minds,
" to believe in the existence of an Absolute and Infinite
"Being." Such being the case, I ask, is the Being, whom
we must believe to be infinite and absolute, infinite and
absolute in the meaning which those terms bear in Mr.
Mansel's definition of them ? If not, he is bound to tell
us in what other meaning. Believing God to be infinite
and absolute must be believing something, and it must be
possible to say what. If Mr. Mansel means that we
must believe the reality of an Infinite and Absolute
Being in some other sense than that in which he has
proved such a Being to be inconceivable, his point is not
made out, since he undertook to prove the inconceiva-
bility of the very Being in whose reality we are required
to believe. But the truth is that the Infinite and Abso-
lute which he says we must believe in, are the very
Infinite and Absolute of his definitions. The Infinite is
that which is opposed to the Finite ; the Absolute, that
which is opposed to the Relative. He has therefore
* " A thing an object an attribute a person or any other term sig-
' nifying one out of many possible objects of consciousness, is by that very
' relation necessarily declared to be finite. An infinite thing, or object, or
' attribute, or person, is therefore in the same moment declared to be both
finite and infinite. . . And on the other hand, if all human attributes are
conceived under the conditions of difference, and relation, and time, and
personality, we cannot represent in thought any such attribute magnified
to infinity ; for this again is to conceive it as finite and infinite at the
same time. We can conceive such attributes, at the utmost, only indefi-
nitely ; that is to say, we may withdraw our thoughts, for the moment,
from the fact of their being limited ; but we cannot conceive them as
infinite ; that is to say, we cannot positively think of the absence of the
limit; for, the instant we attempt to do so, the antagonist elements of
the conception exclude one another, and annihilate the whole." Limits
of Eeligious Thought, p. bU.
f ibid. p. 39. J Ibid. p. 45.
AS APPLIED BY MR. M ANSEL TO RELIGION. 123
either proved nothing, or vastly more than he intended.
For the contradictions which he asserts to be involved
in the notions, do not follow from an imperfect mode
of apprehending the Infinite and Absolute, but lie in
the definitions of them ; in the meaning of the phrases
themselves. The contradictions are in the very object
which we are called upon to believe. If, therefore, Mr.
Mansel would escape from the conclusion that an Infi-
nite and Absolute Being is intrinsically impossible, it
must be by affirming, with Hegel, that the law of
Contradiction does not apply to the Absolute ; that,
respecting the Absolute, contradictory propositions may
both be true.*
Let us now pass from Mr. Mansel's metaphysical
argumentation on an irrelevant issue, to a much more
important subject, that of his practical conclusion,namely,
that we cannot know the divine attributes in such a
manner, as can entitle us to reject any statement respect-
* Mr. Mansel's summary of his reply on this portion of the case is as
follows (pp.161, 162): "The reader may now, perhaps, understand the
" reason of an assertion which Mr. Mill regards as supremely absurd,
' namely, that we must believe in the existence of an absolute and infinite
' Being, though unable to conceive the nature of such a Being. To be-
' lieve in such a Being is simply to believe that God made the world : to
' declare the nature of such a Being inconceivable, is simply to say that
' we do not know how the world was made. If we believe that God made
' the world, we must believe that there was a time when the world was not,
' and when God alone existed, out of relation to any other being. But
' the mode of that sole existence we are unable to conceive, nor in what
' manner the first act took place by which the absolute and self -existent
* gave existence to the relative and dependent."
I know not how Mr. Mansel discovers that I regard as supremely absurd
the notion that we may believe, and may have good grounds for believing,
things which are inconceivable to us. As he most truly says, there is no
one with whose mode of thinking such an opinion would more flagrantly
conflict. But I venture to think that one may deem it possible to have a
real and positive, though inadequate, conception of an infinite Being,
without supposing oneself to know how God made the world. Mr. Mansel
resumes (p. J63) " Where is the incongruity of saying, I believe that a
" being exists possessing certain attributes, though I am unable in mjr
" present state of knowledge to conceive the manner of that existence ? '
Assuredly, nowhere : provided that you do not invest the object of your
belief with contradictory attributes ; for my admission of the believability
of what is inconceivable, stops at the self-contradictory : consequently I
do not admit the believability of such an Absolute and Infinite as Mr.
Mansel has been mystifying us with. The sum of what I am maintaining
against him is, that the Absolute and Infinite which are believable, and
124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
ing the Deity, on the ground of its being inconsistent
with his character. Let us examine whether this asser-
tion is a legitimate corollary from the relativity of
human knowledge, either as it really is, or as it is under-
stood to he by Sir W. Hamilton and by Mr. Mansel.
The fundamental property of our knowledge of God,
Mr. Mansel says, is that we do not and cannot know
him as he is in himself: certain persons, therefore, whom
he calls Rationalists, he condemns as unphilosophical,
when they reject any statement as inconsistent with
the character of God. This is a valid answer, as far
as words go, to some of the later Transcendentalists to
those who think that we have an intuition of the Divine
Nature ; though even as to them it would not be difficult
to show that the answer is but skin-deep. But those
" Rationalists" who hold, with Mr. Mansel himself, the
relativity of human knowledge, are not touched by his
reasoning. We cannot know God as he is in himself
(they reply) ; granted : and what then ? Can we know
man as he is in himself, or matter as it is in itself?
the Absolute and Infinite which are inconceivable, are different things '
That the Absolute and Infinite of which, as he has shown, the conception
annihilates itself by the contradictions it involves, is that which possesses
absolutely and infinitely all attributes, and that this is as unbelievable as
it is inconceivable : That the Absolute and Infinite which is believable is
that which possesses absolutely and infinitely some given attributes, which
in their finite degrees are known to us, and is therefore conceivable; and
involves no contradiction, unless we include among the attributes some
that contradict one another, in which case it is indeed inconceivable, but
also unbelievable.
When Mr. Mansel maintains (pp. 14-18, and 142) that being infinite is,
to our conceptive faculty, inconsistent with being a Person, I answer, that
it is being " The Infinite " which is so. When he insists (if he does insist)
that the Creator must, in some manner inconceivable to us, be this non-
entity ; when he identifies the Creator (p: 100) with something which we
must believe to be " the sole existence, having no plurality beyond itself,"
and " simple, having no plurality within itself," thus literally annihilating
all plurality in the universe ; when he says (pp. 28, 29) " we believe that "
God's " own nature is simple and uniform, admitting of no distinction
between various attributes, nor between any attribute and its subject,"
buyet conceivable by us " only by means of various attributes, distinct
from the subject and from each other," i.e. conceived by us as he is nut ;
it appears to me that in thus following the old theologians in the mystical
metaphysics which is always at the service of mystical theology, he en-
cumbers Theism and Christianity with (to say the least) very unnecessary
difficulties.
AS APPLIED BY MR. M ANSEL TO RELIGION. 125
We do not claim any other knowledge of God than such
as we have of man or of matter. Because I do not
know my fellow-men, nor any of the powers of nature,
as they are in themselves, am T therefore not at liberty
to disbelieve anything I hear respecting them as being
inconsistent with their character ? I know something
of Man and Nature, not as they are in themselves, but
as they are relatively to us ; and it is as relative to us,
and not as he is in himself, that I suppose myself to
know anything of God. The attributes which I ascribe
to him, as goodness, knowledge, power, are all relative.
They are attributes (says the rationalist) which my expe-
rience enables me to conceive, and which I consider as
proved, not absolutely, by an intuition of God, but phaeno-
menally, by his action on the creation, as known through
my senses and my rational faculty. These relative
attributes, each of them in an infinite degree, are all I
pretend to predicate of God. When I reject a doctrine
as inconsistent with God's nature, it is not as being in-
consistent with what God is in himself, but with what
he is as manifested to us. If my knowledge of him is
only phenomenal, the assertions which I reject are
phenomenal too. If those assertions are inconsistent
with my relative knowledge of him, it is no answer to
say that all my knowledge of him is relative. That is
no more a reason against disbelieving an alleged fact as
unworthy of God, than against disbelieving another
alleged fact as unworthy of Turgot, or of Washington,
whom also I do not know as Noumena, but only as
Phenomena.
There is but one way for Mr. Mansel out of this diffi-
culty, and he adopts it. He must maintain, not merely
that an Absolute Being is unknowable in himself, but
that the Relative attributes of an Absolute Being are
unknowable likewise. He must say that we do not know
what Wisdom, Justice, Benevolence, Mercy, are, as they
exist in God. Accordingly he does say so. The follow-
ing are his direct utterances on the subject : as an im-
plied doctrine, it pervades his whole argument.
126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
" It is a fact * which experience forces upon us, and
" which it is useless, were it possible, to disguise, that
" the representation of God after the model of the
" highest human morality which we are capable of
" conceiving, is not sufficient to account for all the
" phenomena exhibited by the course of his natural
" Providence. The infliction of physical suffering,
" the permission of moral evil, the adversity of the
*' good, the prosperity of the wicked, the crimes of the
" guilty involving the misery of the innocent, the tardy
" appearance and partial distribution of moral and reli-
" gious knowledge in the world these are facts which
" no doubt are reconcilable, we know not how, with the
" Infinite Goodness of God, but which certainly are not
" to be explained on the supposition that its sole and
" sufficient type is to be found in the finite goodness of
" man." In other words, it is necessary to suppose that
the infinite goodness ascribed to God is not the goodness
which we know and love in our fellow-creatures, distin-
guished only as infinite in degree, but is different in
kind, and another quality altogether. When we call
the one finite goodness and the other infinite goodness,
we do not mean what the words assert, but something
else : we intentionally apply the same name to things
which we regard as different.
Accordingly Mr. Mansel combats, as a heresy of his
opponents, the opinion that infinite goodness differs only
in degree from finite goodness. The notion f " that the
" attributes of God differ from those of man in degree
" only, not in kind, and hence that certain mental and
" moral qualities of which we are immediately conscious
" in ourselves, furnish at the same time a true and
" adequate image of the infinite perfections of God,"
(the word adequate must have slipped in by inadvertence,
since otherwise it would be an inexcusable misrepresenta-
tion) he identifies with " the vulgar Eationalism which
"regards the reason of man, in its ordinary and normal
* Limits of Beligious Thought, Preface to the fourth edition, p. 13,
f Ibid. p. 26.
AS APPLIED BY MR. M ANSEL TO RELIGION. 127
" operation, as the supreme criterion of religious truth."
And in characterizing the mode of arguing of this vulgar
Rationalism, he declares its principles to be, that* " all
" the excellences of which we are conscious in the
" creature, must necessarily exist in the same manner,
" though in a higher degree, in the Creator. God is
" indeed more wise, more just, more merciful, than man;
" but for that very reason, his wisdom and justice and
" mercy must contain nothing that is incompatible with
<k the corresponding attributes in their human character."
It is against this doctrine that Mr. Mansel feels called
on to make an emphatic protest.
Here, then, I take my stand on the acknowledged
principle of logic and of morality, that when we mean
different things we have no right to call them by the
same name, and to apply to them the same predicates,
moral and intellectual. Language has no meaning
for the words Just, Merciful, Benevolent, save that in
which we predicate them of our fellow-creatures ; and
unless that is what we intend to express by them, we have
no business to employ the words. If in affirming them
of God we do not mean to affirm these very qualities,
differing only as greater in degree, we are neither philo-
sophically nor morally entitled to affirm them at all. If
it be said that the qualities are the same, but that we
cannot conceive them as they are when raised to the
infinite, I grant that we cannot adequately conceive them
in one of their elements, their infinity. But we can
conceive them in their other elements, which are the
very same in the infinite as in the finite development.
Anything carried to the infinite must have all the pro-
perties of the same thing as finite, except those which
depend upon the finiteness. Among the many who
have said that we cannot conceive infinite space, did any
one ever suppose that it is not space? that it does not
possess all the properties by which space is characterized?
Infinite Space cannot be cubical or spherical, because
.these are modes of being bounded: but does any one
* Limits of Eeligious Thought, p. 28.
128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
imagine that in ranging through it we might arrive at
some region which was not extended ; of which one part
was not outside another ; where, though no Body inter-
vened, motion was impossible ; or where the sum of two
sides of a triangle was less than the third side? The
parallel assertion may be made respecting infinite good-
ness. What belongs to it either as Infinite or as Ab-
solute I do not pretend to know ; but I know that
infinite goodness must be goodness, and that what is not
consistent with goodness, is not consistent with infinite
goodness. If in ascribing goodness to God I do not
mean what I mean by goodness ; if I do not mean the
goodness of which I have some knowledge, but an in-
comprehensible attribute of an incomprehensible sub-
stance, which for aught I know may be a totally different
quality from that which I love and venerate and even
must, if Mr. Mansel is to be believed, be in some impor-
tant particulars opposed to this what do I mean by
calling it goodness? and what reason have I for venerating
it ? If I know nothing about what the attribute is, I
cannot tell that it is a proper object of veneration. To
say that God's goodness may be different in kind from
man's goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight
change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be
good? To assert in words what we do not think in
meaning, is as suitable a definition as can be given of a
moral falsehood. Besides, suppose that certain unknown
attributes are ascribed to the Deit}^ in a religion the
external evidences of which are so conclusive to my mind,
as effectually to convince me that it comes from God.
Unless I believe God to possess the same moral attributes
which I find, in however inferior a degree, in a good
man, what ground of assurance have I of God's veracity?
All trust in a Revelation presupposes a conviction that
God's attributes are the same, in all but degree, with the
best human attributes.
If, instead of the " glad tidings " that there exists a
Being in whom all the excellences which the highest
human mind can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable
T
AS APPLIED BY MR. MANSEL TO RELIGION. 129
to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being
whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot
learn, nor what are the principles of his government, ex-
cept that "the highest human morality which we are
capable of conceiving" does not sanction them ; convince
me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when
I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time
call this being by the names which express and affirm
the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I
will not. Whatever power such a being may have over
me, there is one thing which he shall not do : he shall
not compel me to worship him. I will call no being
good, who is not what I mean when I apply that
epithet to my fellow-creatures ;* and if such a being can
sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I
will go.
Neither is this to set up my own limited intellect as
a criterion of divine or of any other wisdom. If a person
is wiser and better than myself, not in some unknown
and unknowable meaning of the terms, but in .their
known human acceptation, I am ready to believe that
what this person thinks may be true, and that what he
does may be right, when, but for the opinion I have of
him, I should think otherwise. But this is because I
believe that he and I have at bottom the same standard
of truth and rule of right, and that he probably under-
stands better than I the facts of the particular case. If
I thought it not improbable that his notion of right
might be my notion of wrong, I should not defer to his
judgment. In like manner, one who sincerely believes
in an absolutely good ruler of the world, is not war-
ranted in disbelieving any act ascribed to him, merely
because the very small part of its circumstances which
we can possibly know does not sufficiently justify it.
But if what am I told respecting him is of a kind which
* Mr. Mansel, in his rejoinder, says that this means that I will call no
being good " the phenomena of whose action in any way differ from those
of a good man." This is a misconstruction ; he should have said " no
" being, the principle or rule of whose action is different from that by
" which a good man endeavours to regulate his actions."
K
130 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
no facts that can be supposed added to my knowledge
could make me perceive to be right ; if his alleged
ways of dealing with the world are such as no imagi-
nable hypothesis respecting things known to him and
unknown to me, could make consistent with the good-
ness and wisdom which I mean when I use the terms,
but are in direct contradiction to their signification ;
then, if the law of contradiction is a law of human
thought, I cannot both believe these things, and believe
that God is a good and wisa being. If I call any being
wise or good, not meaning the only qualities which the
words import, I arn speaking insincerely ; I am flattering
him by epithets which I fancy that he likes to hear, in
the hope of winning him over to my own objects. For
it is worthy of remark that the doubt whether words
applied to God have their human signification, is only
felt when the words relate to his moral attributes ; it is
never heard of in regard to his power We are never
told that God's omnipotence must not be supposed to
mean an infinite degree of the power we know in man
and nature, and that perhaps it does not mean that he is
able to kill us, or consign us to eternal flames. The
Divine Power is always interpreted in a completely
human signification, but the Divine Goodness and Jus-
tice must be understood to be such only in an unintelli-
gible sense. It is unfair to surmise that this is because
those who speak in the name of God, have need of the
human conception of his power, since an idea which can
overawe and enforce obedience must address itself to
real feelings ; but are content that his goodness should
be conceived only as something inconceivable, because
they are so often required to teach doctrines respecting
him which conflict irreconcilably with all goodness that
we can conceive ?*
* I quote in Mr. Hansel's words nearly the whole of his answer to the
preceding remarks (pp. 164-170).
" Mr. Mansel asserts, as many others have asserted before him, that
" the relation between the communicable attributes of God and the corre-
" spending attributes of man is one not of identity but of analogy ; that is
" to say, that the Divine attributes have the same relation to the Divine
AS APPLIED BY MR. MANSEL TO RELIGION. 131
I am anxious to say once more, that Mr. Mansel's
conclusions do not go the whole length of his arguments,
and that he disavows the doctrine that God's justice and
goodness are wholly different from what human beings
" nature that the human attributes have to human nature. Thus, for
" example, there is a Divine justice and there is a human justice ; but God
" is just as the Creator and Governor of fye world, having unlimited
" authority over all his creatures, and unlimited jurisdiction over all their
" acts ; and man is just in certain special relations, as having authority
" over some persons and some acts only, so far as is required for the needs
' of human society. So, again, there is a Divine mercy and there is "a
" human mercy ; but God is merciful in such a manner as is fitting com-
" patibly with the righteous government of the universe ; and man is
" merciful in a certain limited range, the exercise of the attribute being
" guided by considerations affecting the welfare of society or of imli-
" viduals. Or to take a more general case : Man has in himself a rule of
" right and wrong implying subjection to the authority of a superior (for
" conscience has authority only as reflecting the law of God) ; while God
" has in himself a rule of right and wrong, implying no higher authority,
" and determined absolutely by his own nature. The case is the same
" when we look at moral attributes not externally in their active mani-
" festations, but internally, in their psychological constitution. If we do
" not attribute to God the same complex mental constitution of reason,
" passion, and will, the same relation to motives and inducements, the
" same deliberation and choice of alternatives, the same temporal succes-
" sion of facts in consciousness, which we ascribe to man, it will follow
" that those psychological relations between reason, will, and desire,
" which are implied in the conception of human action, cannot represent
" the Divine excellences in themselves, but can only illustrate them by
" analogies from finite things. And if man is liable to error in judging of
" the conduct of his fellow-men, in proportion as he is unable to place
" himself in their position, or to realize to himself their modes of thought
" and principles of action if the child, for instance, is liable to error in
" judging the actions of the man, or the savage of the civilised man surely
" there is far more room for error in men's judgment of the ways of God,
" in proportion as the difference between God and man is greater than the
" difference between a man and a child. . . . We will simply ask, whether
" Mr. Mill really supposes the word good to lose all community of mean-
" ing when it is applied, as it certainly is, to different persons among our
" fellow creatures with express reference to their different duties and
" different qualifications for performing them ? The duties of a father
" are not the same as those of a son ; is the word therefore wholly
" equivocal when we speak of one person as a good father, and another as
" a good son ? Nay, when we speak generally of a man as good, has not
" the epithet a tacit reference to human nature and human duties ? and
" yet is there no community of meaning when the same epithet is applied
" to other creatures ? 'H dperf) npbs TO epyov TO ohdov, the goodness of
" any being whatever has relation to the nature and office of that being.
"We may therefore test Mr. Mill's declamation by a parallel case. A
" wise and experienced father addresses a young and inexperienced son :
" ' My son,' he says, ' there may be some of my actions which do not
" seem to you to be wise or good, or snch as you would do in my place.
" Eeuiember, however, that your duties are different from mine : that
K 2
132 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
understand by the terms. He would, and does, admit
that the qualities as conceived by us bear some likeness
to the justice and goodness which belong to Grod, since
man was made in God's image. But such a semi-
" your knowledge of my duties is very imperfect ; and that there may be
" things which you cannot now see to be wise and good, but which you
" may hereafter discover to .be so.' 'Father,' says the son, ' your prin-
" ciples of action are not the same as mine ; the highest morality which
" I can conceive at present does not sanction them ; and as for believing
" that you are good in anything of which I do not plainly see the good-
" ness' we will not repeat Mr. Mill's alternative ; we will only ask
" whether it is not just possible that there may be as. much difference
" between man and God as there is between a child and his father ?"
There is a mode of controversy which I do not remember to have seen
in any enumeration of Fallacies, but which will some day find a place
there, under some such name as the Inversion of Parts. It consists in
indignantly vindicating as against your adversary the very principle
which he is asserting against yourself. Would not any reader of the
above passage suppose that it is Mr. Mansel who is contending against
me for the " community of meaning" of the word good, to whatever being
it is applied ; instead of me against him ? It is I who say that as good-
ness in a good father is the very same quality with goodness in a good
son, so goodness in a good God must be, in all but degree, the same quality
as goodness in a good man, or we are not entitled to call it goodness.
It is Mr. Mansel who denies this, affirming that there is more than a
difference of degree. And unless he is to be understood as surrendering
this point by the illustrations he now employs, his defence is no defence
aft all; for it confounds a difference in the outward circumstances in which
a moral quality has to be exercised, with a difference in the quality itself.
In his imaginary dialogue between a son and a father, does the son really
think the father's conduct inconsistent with such goodness as, under the
father's teaching, he has realized in himself, or learnt to recognise in
others ? Does he not tliink that it is the same goodness, but acting under
a knowledge of facts, and an appreciation of means, such as he does not
himself possess ? Does the son think that the father's conduct is not
justifiable by the same moral law which he prescribes to the son, and
that in order to justify the father it is necessary to suppose him actuated
by another kind of morality, not the same, but merely having the same
relation to the father's nature that the other goodness has to the son's
nature ? If the son has implicit confidence in the father, he will not
answer, in the words put into his month by Mr. Mansel, "your prin-
ciples of action are not the same as mine." He will say, " your prin-
ciples of action I well know : they are those which you have taught to
me those by which, in my best moments, I endeavour, though with
inferior strength, to guide my conduct. You are incapable of acting on
any others. Knowing your principles, and not knowing what conduct,
in your different position, the principles require, but being convinced that
you do know, 1 am certain that you act on those principles " All the
allowance for human ignorance which can be demanded on similar grounds
in judging of what is ascribed to God, I have amply granted.
On the latter part of the paragraph in the text, Mr. Mansel makes some
further remarks. To the statement that " the doubt whether words
" applied to God have their human signification, is only felt when the
AS APPLIED BY MR. MANSEL TO RELIGION. 133
concession, which no Christian could avoid making,
since without it the whole Christian scheme would be
subverted, cannot save him ; he is not relieved by it
from any difficulties, while it destroys the whole fabric
of his argument. The Divine goodness, which is said to
be a different thing from human goodness, but of
which the human conception of goodness is some im-
perfect reflexion or resemblance, does it agree with what
men call goodness in the essence of the quality in what
constitutes it goodness ? If it does, the " Rationalists"
are right ; it is not illicit to reason from the one to the
" words relate to his moral attributes it is never heard of in regard to
his power," Mr. Mansel makes answer (p. 172), " We meet Mr. Mill's
confident assertion with a direct denial, and take the opportunity of in-
forming him that the conception of infinite Power has suggested the
same difficulties, and has been discussed by philosophers and theologians
in the same manner, as those of infinite Wisdom and infinite Goodness.
Has Mr. Mill never heard of such questions as, Whether Omnipotence can
reverse the past ? Whether God can do that which he does not will to
do ? Whether God's perfect foreknowledge is compatible with his own
' perfect liberty ? Whether God could have made a better world than the
' existing one ?" In return for the information thus liberally bestowed, I
humbly reply, that I have " heard of such questions :" but I see in them
(with the exception of the second, which relates to the meaning of Power,
not of Infinite power) only enquiries, mostly frivolous, how much more
power God has than man. There is no difference in the conception of the
power itself, which ig in both cases the same, namely, the conformity of the
event to the volition. The divine omnipotence is always supposed to mean
an infinite degree of this, and not of anything else. But infinite goodness,
according to Mr. Mansel, means not an infinite degree, but a different
kind, not admitting of any common definition with human goodness.
[Mr. Mansel's answer to this is a curious one. He says that " if power,
" as predicated of man, means the conformity of the event to the volition,
" man assuredly can do no more than he actually wills to do ; for there can
" be no conformity except where there is a volition and an event." We may
know that the event would conform to our volition although it has not
actually taken place. Most people, I believe, if they said that they had the
power of throwing themselves into a well, would mean that if they willed
so to throw themselves, the effect would follow. And if it were asked
whether there are any limits to God's power, the question would mean, Is
there anything which if willed by him, nevertheless would not take place.
What else can be meant when we speak of a living being as having power,
I cannot divine.]
The concluding sentence Mr. Mansel censures as attributing discredit-
able motives to opponents. Had it not been for this proof, I should have
thought it unnecessary to say, that no imputation was intended on the
sincerity either ot classes or of individuals. But the effect of men's ne-
cessities of position on their opinions as well as on their conduct, is far
too widely reaching and influential an element in human affairs, to be
always passed over in silence for fear of offending personal susceptibilities.
134 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
other. If notj the divine attribute, whatever else it may
be, is not goodness, and ought not to be called by the
name. Unless there be some human conception which
agrees with it, no human name can properly be applied
to it ; it is simply the unknown attribute of a thing un-
known ; it has no existence in relation to us, we can
affirm nothing of it, and owe it no worship. Such is
the inevitable alternative.*
To conclude : Mr. Mansel has not made out any con-
nexion between his philosophical premises and his theo-
logical conclusion. The relativity of human knowledge,
the uncognoscibility of the Absolute, and the contra-
dictions which follow the attempt to conceive a Being
with all or without any attributes, are no obstacles to
* Mr, Manael says (p. 175), " The question really at issue is not whether
" the Rationalist argument is licit or illicit, but whether, in its lawful
" use, it is to be regarded as infallible or fallible." If this were all, there
would be nothing for him and the Eationalists to quarrel about ; for who
ever asserted, of any human reasoning, that it is infallible ? Neither, I
believe, would any " Rationalist" dissent from Mr. Mansel's view of the
"lawful use" of the argument, which he declares throughout his Eighth
Lecture to be only admissible (as one argument among others) on the
question of the authenticity of a Revelation. No Rationalists, I should
suppose, believe that what they reject as inconsistent with the Divine
Goodness was really revealed by God. They do not both admit it to be
revealed and believe it to be false. They believe that it is either a mis-
taken interpretation, or found its way by human means into documents
which they may nevertheless consider as the records of a Revelation. They
concede, therefore, to Mr. Mansel (and unless the hypothesis were admitted
of a God who is not good, they cannot help conceding) that the moral objec-
tions to a religious doctrine are only valid against its truth if they are
strong enough to outweigh whatever external evidences there may be of
its having been divinely revealed. But when the question is, how much
weight is to be allowed to moral objections, the difference will be radical
between those who think that the Divine Goodness is the same thing with
human goodness carried to the infinite, and Mr. Mansel, who thinks that
it is a different quality, only having some analogy to the human. Indeed
it is hard to see how any one, who holds the latter opinion, can give more
than a nominal weight to any such argument against a religious doctrine.
For, if things may be right according to divine goodness which would be
wrong according to even an infinite degree of the human, and if all that
is known is that there is some analogy between the two, while no one
pretends to have any knowledge how far the analogy reaches, and it may
be presumed to be as distant as the remainder of the Divine Nature is
from the human, it is impossible to assign any determinate weight to an
argument grounded on contradiction of such an analogy. It becomes a
mere dialectical locus cominunis ; an argument to be taken up and laid
down as suits convenience, and which different men will hold valid in
different cases, according to their fancies or prepossessions.
AS APPLIED BY MR. HANSEL TO RELIGION. 135
our having the same kind of knowledge of God which
we have of other things, namely not as they exist abso-
lutely, but relatively. The proposition, that we cannot
conceive the moral attributes of Grod in such a manner
as to be able to affirm of any doctrine or assertion that
it is inconsistent with them, has no foundation in the
laws of the human mind : while, if admitted, it would
not prove that we should ascribe to God attributes bear-
ing the same name as human qualities, but not to be
understood in the same sense ; it would prove that we
ought not to ascribe any moral attributes to God at all,
inasmuch as no moral attributes known or conceivable
by us are true of him, and we are condemned to absolute
ignorance of him as a moral being.
136
CHAPTER VIII.
OF CONSCIOUSNESS, AS UNDERSTOOD BY SIR WILLIAM
HAMILTON.
IN the discussion of the Eelativity of human knowledge
and the Philosophy of the Conditioned, we have brought
under consideration those of Sir. W. Hamilton's meta-
physical doctrines which have the greatest share in
giving to his philosophy the colour of individuality
which it possesses, and the most important of those
which can be regarded as belonging specially to himself.
On a certain number of minor points, and on one of
primary importance, Causation, we shall again have to
examine opinions of his which are original. But on
most of the subjects which remain to be discussed, at
least in the psychological department (as distinguished
from the logical), Sir W. Hamilton is merely an eminent
representative of one of the two great schools of meta-
physical thought ; that which derives its popular
appellation from Scotland, and of which the founder
and most celebrated champion was a philosopher whom,
on the whole, Sir W. Hamilton seems to prefer to any
other, Dr. Eeid. For the future, therefore, we shall be
concerned less with Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy as
such, than with the general mode of thought to which it
belongs. We shall be engaged in criticizing doctrines
common to him with many other thinkers ; but in doing
so we shall take his writings as text- books, and deal with
the opinions chiefly in the form in which he presented
them. No other course would be so fair to the opinions
themselves : not only because they have not, within the
last half century, had so able a teacher, and never one
CONSCIOUSNESS. 137
so well acquainted with the teachings of others, but also
because he had the great advantage of coming last. All
theories, at their commencement, bear the burthen of
mistakes and inadvertences not inherent in the theories
themselves, but either personal to their authors, or arising
from the imperfect state of philosophical thought at
the time of their origin. At a later period, the errors
which accidentally adhered to the theory are stript off,
the most obvious objections to it are perceived, and more
or less successfully met, and it is rendered, at least
apparently, consistent with such admitted truths as it at
first seemed to contradict. One of the unfairest, though
commonest tricks of controversy, is that of directing the
attack exclusively against the first crude form of a
doctrine.* Whoever should judge Locke's philosophy
as it is in Locke, Berkeley's philosophy as it is in
Berkeley, or Reid's as it in Reid, would often condemn
them on the ground of incidental misapprehensions,
which form no essential part of their doctrine, and from
which its later adherents and expositors are free. Sir
W. Hamilton's is the latest form of the Pteidian theory ;
and by no other of its supporters has that theory been
so well guarded, or expressed in such discriminating terms,
and with such studious precision. Though there are a
few points on which the earlier philosopher seems to me
nearer the truth, on the whole it is impossible to pass
from Reid to Sir W. Hamilton, or from Sir W. Hamilton
back to Reid, and not be struck with the immense pro-
gress which their common philosophy has made in the
interval between them.
All theories of the human mind profess to be inter-
pretations of Consciousness: the conclusions of all of them
are supposed to rest on that ultimate evidence, either
immediately or remotely. What Consciousness directly
reveals, together with what can be legitimately inferred
from its revelations, composes, by universal admission,
* This, for example, is the secret of most of the apparent triumphs
which are so frequently gained over the population theory of Malthus, and
the political economy of Bicardo.
138 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD
all that we know of the mind, or indeed of any other
thing. When we know what any philosopher considers
to he revealed in Consciousness, we have the key to the
entire character of his metaphysical system.
There are some peculiarities requiring notice, in Sir
W. Hamilton's mode of conceiving and denning Con-
sciousness. The words of his definition do not, of
themselves, indicate those peculiarities. Consciousness,
he sa3 r s,* is " the recognition by the mind or ego of its
own acts or alfections ;" and in this, as he truly
observes, " all philosophers are agreed." But all
philosophers have not, by any means, meant the same
thing by it. Most of them (including Reid and Stewart)
have meant, as the words naturally mean, Self-conscious-
ness. They have held, that we can be conscious only of
some state of our own mind. The mind's " own acts or
affections" are in the mind itself, and not external to
it : accordingly we have, in their opinion, the direct
evidence of consciousness, only for the internal world.
An external world is but an inference, which, according
to most philosophers, is justified, or even, by our
mental constitution, compelled : according to others, not
justified.
Nothing, however, can be farther from Sir W. Hamil-
ton's mind than he declares this opinion to be. Though
consciousness, according to him, is a recognition of the
mind's own acts and alfections, we are nevertheless con-
scious of things outside the mind. Some of the mind's
acts are perceptions of outward objects ; and we are, of
course, conscious of those acts : now, to be conscious of
a perception, necessarily implies being conscious of the
thing perceived. " It isf palpably impossible that we
" can be conscious of an act, without being conscious of
" the object to which that act is relative. This, how-
" ever, is what Dr. Lieid and Mr. Stewart maintain.
<c They maintain that I can know that I know, without
" knowing what I know or that I can know the know-
" ledge without knowing what the knowledge is about :
* Lectures, i. 193 and 201. f Ibid. i. 212.
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 139
" for example, that I am conscious of perceiving a book,
" without being conscious of the book perceived, that
" I am conscious of remembering its contents without
" being conscious of these contents remembered and so
" forth." " An act* of knowledge existing and being
" what it is only by relation to its object, it is manifest
"'that the act can be known only through the object to
" which it is correlative ; and Reid's supposition that an
" operation can be known in consciousness to the ex
" elusion of its object, is impossible. For example, I
" see the inkstand. How can I be conscious that my
" present modification exists, that it is a perception
" and not another mental state, that it is a perception
" of sight, to the exclusion of every other sense, and
" finally, that it is a perception of the inkstand, and of
" the inkstand only, unless my own consciousness com-
" prehend within its sphere the object, which at once
" determines the existence of the act, qualifies its kind,
"and distinguishes its individuality ? Annihilate the
" inkstand, you annihilate the perception ; annihilate
" the consciousness of the object, you annihilate the
" consciousness of the operation. It undoubtedly sounds
" strange to say, I am conscious of the inkstand, instead
" of saying, I am conscious of the perception of the ink-
" stand. This I admit, but the admission can avail
" nothing to Dr. Keid, for the apparent incongruity of
" the expression arises only from the prevalence of that
" doctrine of perception in the schools of philosophy,
" which it is his principal merit to have so vigorously
" assailed."
This is Sir W. Hamilton's first difference, on the sub-
ject of Consciousness, from his predecessor, Jfteid. In
being conscious of those of our mental operations which
regard external objects, we are, according to Sir W.
Hamilton, conscious of the objects. Consciousness,
therefore, is not solely of the ego and its modifications,
but also of the non-ego.
This first difference is not the only one. Conscious-
* Lectures, i. 228.
140 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD
ness, according to Sir W. Hamilton, may be of things
external to self, but it can only be of things actually
present. In the first place, they must be present in
time. We are not conscious of the past. Thus far Sir
W. Hamilton agrees with Reid, who holds that memory
is of the past, consciousness only of the present. Reid,
however, is of opinion that memory is an " immediate
knowledge of the past," exactly as consciousness is an
immediate knowledge of the present. Sir W. Hamilton
contends* that this opinion of Reid is " not only false,"
but "involves a contradiction in terms." Memory is
an act, and an act " exists only in the now ;" it can there-
lore be cognizant only of what now is. In the case of
memory, what now is, is not the thing remembered, but
a present representation of it in the 'mind, which re-
presentation is the sole object of consciousness. We
are aware of the past, not immediately, but mediately,
through the representation. " An act of memory, is
" merely a present state of mind, which we are con-
" scious of, not as absolute, but as relative to, and repre-
" senting, another state of mind, and accompanied with
" the belief that the state of mind, as now represented,
" has actually been. . . . All that is immediately known
" in the act of memory, is the present mental modifi-
" cation ; that is, the representation and concomitant
" belief .... So far is memory from being an imme-
" diate knowledge of the past, that it is at best only a
" mediate knowledge of the past; while in philosophical
" propriety, it is not a knowledge of the past at all,
" but a knowledge of the present, and a belief of the
" past. . . . We may doubt, we may deny that the
" representation and belief are true. We may assert that
" they represent what never was, and that all beyond
" their present mental existence is a delusion :" but it is
impossible for us to doubt or deny that of which we have
immediate knowledge.
Again, that of which we are conscious must not only
be present in time, it must also, if external to our minds,
* Lectures, i. 218-221.
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 141
be present in place. It must be indirect contact with
our bodily organs. We do not immediately perceive a
distant object. " To say,* for example, that we perceive
" by sight the sun or moon, is a false or an elliptical ex-
" pression. We perceive nothing but certain modifica-
" tions of light, in immediate relation to our organ of
" vision ; and so far from Dr. Eeid being philosophically
" correct when he says that ' when ten men look at the
" sun or moon, they all see the same individual object,'
" the truth is that each of these persons sees a different
" object, because each person sees a different complement
" of rays, in relation to his individual organ ;" to which,
in another place, he adds, that each individual sees two
different objects, with his lig'it and with his left eye.
" It is not by perception, but by a process of reasoning, I
" that we connect the objects of sense with existences J
" beyond the sphere of immediate knowledge. It is
" enough that perception affords us the knowledge of the
" non-ego at the point of sense. To arrogate to it the
" power of immediately informing us of external things
" which are only the causes of the object we immediately
" perceive, is either positively erroneous, or a confusion
" of language arising from an inadequate discrimination
" of the phenomena, "f There can, I think, be no doubt
that these remarks on knowledge of the past and per-
ception of the distant, are correct, and a great improve-
ment upon Reid.
It appears, then, that the true definition of Conscious-
ness in Sir W. Hamilton's use of the term, would be
Immediate Knowledge. And he expressly says,| "Con-
* Lectures, ii. 153.
f And elsewhere (foot-note to Eeid, p. 302) : " It is self-evident that
' if a thing is to be an object immediately known, it must be known as it
' exists. Now, a body must exist in some definite part of space, in a
' certain place ; it cannot, therefore, be immediately known as existing,
'except it be known in its place. But this supposes the mind to be
' immediately present to it in space."
I do not guarantee the conclusiveness of this reasoning; but it has
been an error of philosophers in all times to flank their good arguments
with bad ones.
J Discussions, p. 51 .
142 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD
" sciousness and immediate knowledge are thus termg uni-
" versally convertible : and if there be an immediate
" knowledge of things external, there is consequently
" the Consciousness of an outer world." Immediate
knowledge, again, he treats as universally convertible
with Intuitive knowledge :* and the terms are really
.equivalent. We know intuitively, what we know by its
own evidence by direct apprehension of the fact, and
not through the medium of a previous knowledge of some-
thing; from which we infer it. Regarded in this lisrht, our
O O o '
author's difference with Reid as to our being conscious
of outward objects, would appear, on his own showing,
to be chiefly a dispute about words : for Reid also says
that we have an immediate and intuitive knowledge of
things without, and (if Sir W. Hamilton understands
him rightly) that it is immediate and intuitive in the
same meaning and mode, as that claimed for us by Sir
W. Hamilton. Sir W. Hamilton stretches the word Con-
sciousness so as to include this knowledge, while Reid,
with greater regard for the origin and etymology of the
word, restricts it to the cases in which the mind is
" conscia sibi." Sir W. Hamilton has a right to his own
use of the term ; but care must be taken that it do not
serve as a means of knowingly or unknowingly begging
any question. One of the most disputed questions in
psychology is exactly this Have we, or not, an imme-
diate intuition of material objects? and this question
must not be prejudged by affirming that those objects
are in our consciousness. On the contrary, it is only
allowable to say that they are in our consciousness,
after it had been already proved that we cognise them
intuitively.
It is a little startling, after so much has been said of
the limitation of Consciousness to immediate knowledge,
to find Sir W. Hamilton, in the Dissertations on Reid,f
(maintaining that " consciousness comprehends every
" cognitive act ; in other words, whatever we are not
" conscious of, that we do not know." If consciousness
* Lectures, i. 221, note ; and iv. 73. f P. 810.
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 143
comprehends all our knowledge, but yet is limited to im-
mediate knowledge, it follows that all our knowledge must
be immediate, and that we have, therefore, no knowledge
of the past or of the absent. Sir W. Hamilton might
have cleared up this difficulty by saying, as he had already
done, that our mediate cognitions those of the past and
the absent though he never hesitates to call them know-
ledge, are in strict propriety Belief. We could then have
understood his meaning. But the explanation he ac-
tually gives is quite different. It is, that "all our
mediate cognitions are contained in our immediate.'
This is a manifest attempt to justify himself in calling
them, not belief, but knowledge, like our immediate
cognitions. But what is the meaning of " contained ?"
If it means that our mediate cognitions are part of our
immediate, then they are themselves immediate, and we
have no mediate cognitions. Sir W. Hamilton has told
us, that in the case of a remembered fact, what we im-
mediately cognise is but a present mental representation
of it, " accompanied with the belief that the state of
mind, as now represented, has actually been." Having
said this, he also says that the past fact, which does not
now exist, is " contained" in the representation and in the
belief which do exist. But if it is contained in them, it
must have a present existence too, and is not a past fact.
Perhaps, however, by the word " contained," all that is
meant is, that it is implied in them ; that it is a neces-
sary or legitimate inference from them. But if it is only
this, it remains absent in time ; and what is absent in
time, our author has said, is not a possible object of
consciousness. If, therefore, a past fact is an object of
knowledge, we can know what we are not conscious of;
consciousness does not comprehend all our cognitions.
To state the same thing in another manner ; a remem-
bered fact is either a part of our consciousness, or it is
not. If it is, Sir W. Hamilton is wrong when he says
that we are not conscious of the past. If not, he is
wrong, either in saying that we can know the past, or in
saying that what we are not conscious of, we do not know.
144 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD
This inconsistency, which emerges only in the Dis-
sertations, I shall not further dwell upon : it is chiefly
important as showing that the most complicated and
elaborate version of Sir W". Hamilton's speculations is
X not always the freest from objection. The doctrine of
his Lectures is, that a part of our knowledge the know-
ledge of the past, the future, and the distant is mediate
and representative, but that such mediate knowledge is
not Consciousness ; consciousness and immediate know-
ledge being coextensive.
From our author's different deliverances as above
quoted, it appears that he gives two definitions of Con-
sciousness. In the one, it is synonymous with direct,
immediate, or intuitive knowledge ; and we are conscious
not only of ourselves but of outward objects, since, in
our author's opinion, we know these intuitively. Ac-
cording to the other definition, consciousness is the
mind's recognition of its own acts and affections. It is
not at once obvious how these two definitions can be
reconciled: for Sir W. Hamilton would have been the
last person to say that the outward object is identical
with the mental act or affection. He must have meant
that consciousness is the mind's recognition of its own
acts and affections together with all that is therein im-
plied, or as he would say, contained. But this involves
him in a new inconsistency : for how can . he then refuse
the name of consciousness to our mediate knowledge
to our knowledge or belief (for instance) of the past ?
The past reality is certainly implied in the present
recollection of which we are conscious : and our author
has said that all our mediate knowledge is contained in
our immediate, as he has elsewhere said that knowledge
of the outward object is contained in our knowledge of
the perception. If, then, we are conscious of the outward
object, why not of the past sensation or impression ?
From the definition of Consciousness as " the recog-
nition by the mind or Ego of its own acts or affections,"
our author might be supposed to think (as has been
actually thought by many philosophers) that conscious-
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 145
ness is not the fact itself of knowing or feeling, but a
subsequent operation by which we become aware of that
fact. This however is not his opinion. By " the mind's
recognition of its acts and affections" he does not mean
anything different from the acts and affections them-
selves. He denies that we have one faculty by which
we know or feel, and another by which we know that
we know, and by which we know that we feel. These
are not, according to him, different facts, but the same
fact seen under another point of view. And he takes
this occasion for making a remark, of wide application
in philosophy, which it would be of signal service to all
students of metaphysics to keep constantly in mind;
that difference of names often does not signify difference
of things, but only difference in the particular aspect
under which a thing is considered. On the real identity
between our various mental states and our consciousness ,^-
of them, he seems to be of the opinion which was main-^[\
tained before him by Brown, and which is stated by Mr: ^
James Mill, with his usual clearness and force, in tl
following passage :*
" Having a sensation, and having a feeling, are not
" two things. The thing is one, the names only are two.
" I am pricked by a pin. The sensation is one ; but I
" may call it sensation, or a feeling, or a pain, as I please.
" Now, when, having the sensation, I say I feel the sen-
" sation, I only use a tautological expression ; the sensa-
" tion is not one thing, the feeling another ; the sensation
" is the feeling. When instead of the word feeling, I
" use the word conscious, I do exactlv the same thing
/
" I merely use a tautological expression. To say I feel a
" sensation, is merely to say that I feel a feeling ; which
" is an impropriety of speech. And to say I am con-
" scious of a feeling, is merely to say that I feel it. To
" have a feeling is to be conscious ; and to be conscious
" is to have a feeling. To be conscious of the prick of the
" pin, is merely to have the sensation. And though I
" have these various modes of naming my sensation, by
* Analysis of the Human Mind, i. 170-172.
L
146 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD
" saying, I feel the prick of a pin, I feel the pain of a
" prick, I have the sensation of a prick, I have the feel-
" ing of a prick, I am conscious of the feeling ; the thing
" named in all these various ways is one and the same.
" The same explanation will easily be seen to apply to
" ideas. Though at present I have not the sensation,
" called the prick of a pin, I have a distinct idea of it.
" The having an idea, and the not having it, are distin-
" guished by the existence or non-existence of a certain
" feeling. To have an idea, and the feeling of that idea, are
" riot two things ; they are one and the same thing. To
" feel an idea, and to be conscious of that feeling, are not
" two things ; the feeling and the consciousness are but
" two names for the same thing. In the very word feeling,
<c all that is implied in the word Consciousness is involved.
"Those philosophers, therefore, who have spoken of
" Consciousness as a feeling distinct from all other feel-
" ings, committed a mistake, and one, the evil conse-
" quences of which have been most important ; for, by
" combining a chimerical ingredient with the elements
" of thought, they involved their enquiries in confusion
" and mystery from the very commencement.
" It is easy to see what is the nature of the terms
" Conscious and Consciousness, and what is the marking
" function which they are destined to perform. It was of
" great importance, for the purpose of naming, that we
"should not only have names to distinguish the different
"classes of our feelings, but also, a name applicable
" equally to all those classes. This purpose is answered
" by the concrete term, Conscious, and the abstract of
<e it, Consciousness. Thus, if we are in any way sen-
" tient ; that is, have any of the feelings whatsoever of a
" living creature ; the word Conscious is applicable to
"the feeler, and Consciousness to the feeling; that is to
" say, the words are Generical marks, under which all the
" names of the subordinate classes of the feelings of a
" sentient creature are included. When I smell a rose,
" I am conscious ; when I have the idea *of a fire, I am
" conscious ; when I remember, I am conscious ; when I
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON.
147
" reason, and when I believe, I am conscious; but believing
" and being conscious of belief, are not two things, they
" are the same thing : though this same thing I can name
" at one time without the aid of the generical mark, while
" at another time it suits me to employ the erenerical
"mark."
Sir W. Hamilton's doctrine is exactly this, except
that he expresses the latter part of it in less perspicuous
phraseology, saying that consciousness is " the funda-
mental form, the generic condition " of all the modes of
our mental activity;* "in fact, the general condition
of their existence."! But, while holding the same
theory with Brown and Mill, he completes it by the
addition that though our mental states and our con-
sciousness of them are only the same fact, they are the
same fact regarded in different relations. Considered
nTthem selves, as acts and feelings, or considered in rela-
tion to the external object with which they are concerned,
we do not call them consciousness. It is when these
mental modifications are referred to a subject or ego, and
looked at in relation to Self, that consciousness is the
term used ; consciousness being "the self-affirmation that
certain modifications are known by me, and that these
modifications are mine."J In this self-affirmation,
however, no additional fact is introduced. It " is not to
be viewed as anything different from " the " modifications
themselves." There is but one mental phsenomenon,
the act of feeling ; but as this implies an acting or feel-
ing Self, we give it a name which connotes its relation to
the Self, and that name is Consciousness. Thus, " con-
sciousness and knowledge " and I think he would have
added feeling (tbe mind's " affections ") as well as know-
ledge " are not distinguished by different words as dif-
" fereut things, but only as the same thing considered in
" different aspects. The verbal distinction is taken for the
" sake of brevity and precision, and its convenience war-
" rants its establishment. . . . Though each term of a
* Discussions, p. 48.
Ibid.
L2
t Lectures, i. 193.
Ibid. pp. 194, 5.
'4
148 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD
" relation necessarily supposes the other, nevertheless
" one of these terms may be to us the more interesting,
" and we may consider that term as the principal, and
" view the other only as subordinate and correlative.
" Now, this is the case in the present instance. In an
" act of knowledge, my attention may be principally
" attracted either to the object known, or to myself, as
" the subject knowing ; and in the latter case, although
" no new element be added to the act, the condition
" involved in it / know that I know, becomes the
" primary and permanent matter of consideration. And
" when, as in the philosophy of mind, the act of know-
" ledge comes to be specially considered in relation to
" the knowing subject, it is, at last, in the progress of
" the science, found convenient, if not absolutely neces-
" sary, to possess a scientific word in which this point of
" view should be permanently and distinctively em-
' bodied."
If any doubt could have existed, after this passage, of
Sir W. Hamilton's opinion on the question, it would
have been removed by one of the fragments recently
published by his editors, in continuation of the Disserta-
tions on Reid. I extract the words :*
" Consciousness is not to be regarded as aught dif-
" ferent from the mental modes or movements them-
" selves. It is not to be viewed as an illuminated place
" within which objects coming are presented to, and
" passing beyond are withdrawn from, observation ; nor
" is it to be considered even as an observer the mental
" modes as phenomena observed. Consciousness is just
" the movements themselves, rising above a certain
" degree of intensity. ... It is only a comprehensive
" word for those mental movements which rise at once
" above a certain degree of intension."!
* Supplement to Eeid, p. 932.
f The qualification here first introduced, of " rising above a certain
degree of intensity," has reference to a doctrine of our author to be fully
considered hereafter, that of latent mental states. It makes no abatement
from the doctrine that consciousness of a feeling is the feeling ; for mental
states which are not intense enough to rise into consciousness, are, accord-
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 149
We now pass to a question which is of no little im-
portance to the character of Sir W. Hamilton's system
of philosophy. We found, not long ago, that he makes
between Knowledge and Belief a broad distinction, on
which he lays great stress, and which plays a con-
spicuous part both in his own speculations and in those
of some of his followers. Let us now look at this distinc-
tion in the light thrown upon it by those doctrines of
Sir W. Hamilton which are the subject of the present
chapter.
Though Sir W. Hamilton allows a mediate, or repre-
sentative, knowledge of the past and the absent, he has
told us that " in philosophical propriety " it ought not
to be called knowledge, but belief. We do not, properly
speaking, know a past event, but believe it, by reason of
ing to the same theory, not intense enough to be felt : and if felt, the
feeling, and the consciousness of the feeling, are one and the same.
It was not without some difficulty, and after considerable study, that I
was able to satisfy myself that Sir W. Hamilton held the sound and
rational theory with which I have credited him in the text. For he often
states and defends his doctrine in a manner which might lead one to think,
that in saying that to know, and to know thai we know, are but one fact,
he does not mean one fact, but two facts which are inseparable. This
misapprehension of his meaning is favoured by the repeated use of (what
we seldom meet with in his writings) a false illustration ; that of the sides
and angles of a triangle. "The sides suppose the angles the angles
" suppose the sides, and, in fact, the sides and angles are in themselves
in reality, one and indivisible." (Lectures, i. 194.) " The sides and angles
' of a triangle (or trilateral) as mutually correlative as together making
' up the same simple figure and as, without destruction of that figure,
' actually inseparable from it, and from each other, are really one ; but
' inasmuch as they have peculiar relations, which may, in thought, be
considered severally and for themselves, they are logically twofold."
(Dissertations on Reid, p. 80b'.) According to this, the sides are in reality
the angles looked at in a particular point of view ; and the angles th -
same thing as the sides, regarded in a particular relation to something
else. When this was the illustration selected of the identity between
Consciousness and Knowledge, it was natural to suppose that the writer
regarded these two as no otherwise one than the sides and angles ot a
triangle are. But a closer examination has satisfied me that Sir W.
Hamilton was only wrong respecting sides and angles, and not respecting
Consciousness and Knowledge. On the former subject he has against him
not only the reason of the case, but his own authority; for he says, when
discoursing on another subject (foot-note to Reid, p. 590) : " It is not
" more reasonable to identify sense with judgment, because the former
" cannot exist without an act of the latter, tkan it would be to identify
" the sides and angles of a mathematical figure, because sides and angles
" cannot exist apart from, each other."
150
CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD
the present recollection which we immediately know.
We do not, properly speaking, perceive or know the
sun, but we perceive and know an image in contact with
our organs, and believe the existence of the sun through
" a process of reasoning," which connects the image
that we directly perceive, with something else as its
cause. Again, though we cannot know an Infinite or
an Absolute Being, we may and ought to believe in
the reality of such a Being. But in all these cases the
belief itself, the conviction we feel of the existence of
^ \ lr< 'k*i ^ ne sun ' an( ^ ^ ^ ne rea ^.Y f the past event, and which
according to Sir W. Hamilton we ought to feel of the
existence of a Being who is the Infinite and the Absolute
this belief is a fact present in time and in place a
phenomenon of our own mind; of this we are conscious ;
this we immediately know. Such, it is impossible to
doubt, is Sir W. Hamilton's opinion.
Let us now apply to this the general principle em-
phatically affirmed by him, and forming the basis of his
argument against Reid and Stewart on the subject of
Consciousness. " It is palpably impossible that we can
" be conscious of an act, without being conscious of the
" object to which that act is relative. The knowledge
" of an operation necessarily involves the knowledge of
" its object." " It is impossible to make consciousness
" conversant about the intellectual operations to the
" exclusion of their objects," and therefore, since we are
conscious of our perceptions, we must be conscious of
the external objects perceived. Such is Sir W. Hamil-
ton's theory. But perceptions are not the only mental
operations we are conscious of, which point to an external
object. This is no less true of beliefs. We are con-
scious of belief in a past event, in the reality of a distant
body, and (according to Sir W. Hamilton) in the exis-
tence of the Infinite and the Absolute. Consequently, on
Sir W. Hamilton's principle, we are conscious of the
objects of those beliefs ; conscious of the past event,
conscious of the distant body, conscious of the Infinite
and of the Absolute. To disclaim this conclusion would
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 151
be to bring down upon himself the language in which
he criticized Eeid and Stewart ; it would be to maintain
" that I can know that I [believe] without knowing what
;c I [believe] or that I can know the [belief] without
" knowing what the [belief] is about : for example, that
" I am conscious of [remembering a past event] without
" being conscious of [the past event remembered] ; that
"I am conscious of [believing in Grod], without being
" conscious [of the (rod believed in] ." If it be true that
" an act of knowledge " exists, and is what it is, " only
" by relation to its object," this must be equally true
of an act of belief : and it must be as " manifest " of the
one act as of the other, "that it can be known only .
through the object to which it is correlative." There- || C
fore past events, distant objects, and the Absolute, inas- \
much as they are believed, are as much objects of im- \
mediate knowledge as things finite and present ; since \
they are presupposed and implicitly contained in the !
mental fact of belief, exactly as a present object is '
implicitly contained in the mental fact of perception, i
Either, therefore, Sir W. Hamilton was wrong in his
doctrine that consciousness of our perceptions implies j
consciousness of their external object, or if lie was right
in this, the distinction between Beliefand Knowledge i
collapses : all objects of Belief are objects of Knowledge:
Belief and Knowledge are the same thing : and he was
wrong in asserting that the Absolute ought to be be-
lieved, or wrong in maintaining against Cousin that it
is incapable of being known.
Another reasoner might escape from this dilemma uy
saying that the knowledge of the object of belief, which
is implied in knowledge of the belief itself, is not know-
ledge of the object as existing, but knowledge of it as
believed the mere knowledge what it is that we believe.
And this is true; but it could not be said by Sir W.
Hamilton; for he rejects the same reasonable explana-
tion in the parallel case. He will not allow it to be
said that when we have what we call a perception, and
refer it to an external object, we are conscious not of the
152 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD
external object as existing-, but of ourselves as inferring
an external existence. He maintains that the actual
outward existence of the object is a deliverance of con-
sciousness, because " it is impossible that we can be
" conscious of an act without being conscious of the
" object to which that act is relative." He cannot, then,
reject as applied to the act of Belief, a law which, when
he has occasion for applying it to the acts of Perception
and Knowledge, he affirms to be common to all our
mental operations. If we can be conscious of an opera-
tion without being conscious of its object, the realit3* of
an external world is not indeed subverted, but there is an
end to Sir W. Hamilton's theory of the mode in which it
is known, and to his particular mode of proving it.
The difficulty in which Sir W. Hamilton is thus
involved seems to have become, though very insuffi-
ciently, perceptible to himself. Towards the end of his
Lectures on Logic, after saying* that "we may be equally
certain of what we believe as of what we know," and
that, " it has, not without ground, been maintained by
" many philosophers, both in ancient and modern times,
" that the certainty of all knowledge is, in its ultimate
" analysis, resolved into a certainty of belief," he adds,f
" But, on the other hand, the manifestation of this
" belief necessarily involves knowledge ; for we cannot
" believe without some consciousness or knowledge of
" the belief, and consequently without some conscious-
'' ness or knowledge of the object of the belief." The
remark which this tardy reflexion suggests to him is
merely this : " The consideration, however, of the rela-
" tion of Belief and Knowledge does not properly belong
" to Logic, except so far as it is necessary to explain the
" nature of Truth and Error. It is altogether a meta-
" physical discussion ; and one of the most difficult pro-
" bleins of which Metaphysics attempts the solution."
Accordingly, he takes the extremely unphilosophical
liberty of leaving it unsolved. But when a thinker is
c oinpelled by one part of his philosophy to contradict
* Lectures, iv. 70. f Ibid. p. 73.
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 153
another part, he cannot leave the conflicting assertions
standing, and throw the responsibility of his scrape on
the arduousness of the subject. A palpable self-contra-
diction is not one of the difficulties which can be
adjourned, as belonging to a higher department of
science. Though it may be a hard matter to find the
truth, that is no reason for holding to what is self-con-
victed of error. If Sir W. Hamilton's theory of con-
sciousness is correct, it does not leave the difference
between Belief and Knowledge in a state of obscurity,
but abolishes that distinction entirely, and along with it
a great part of his own philosophy. If his premises are
true, we not only cannot believe what we do not know,
but we cannot believe that of which we are not con-
scious ; the distinction between our immediate and our
mediate or representative cognitions, and the doctrine of
things believable but not knowable, must both succumb;
or if these can be saved, it must be by abandoning the
proposition, which is at the root of so much of his
philosophy, that consciousness of an operation is con-
sciousness of the object of the operation.
But when Sir W. Hamilton began to perceive that it'
his theory is correct nothing can be believed except in
so far as it is known, he did not therefore renounce the
attempt to distinguish Belief from Knowledge. In the
very same Lecture, he says,* " Knowledge and Belief
" differ not only in degree but in kind. Knowledge is a
" certainty founded upon insight ; Belief is a certainty
" founded upon feeling. The one is perspicuous and ob-
" jective: the other is obscure and subjective. Each, how-
" ever, supposes the other : and an assurance is said to
" be a knowledge or a belief, according as the one element
" or the other preponderates." If Sir W. Hamilton had
bestowed any sufficient consideration on the difficulty, he
would hardly have consented to pay himself with such
mere words. If each of his two certainties supposes the
other, it follows that whenever we have a certainty
founded upon feeling, we have a parallel certainty
* Lectures, iv. 62.
154 CONSCIOUSNESS AS UNDERSTOOD
founded upon insight. We therefore have always insight
when we are certain ; and we are never certain except
to the extent to which we have insight. It is not a case
in which we can talk of one or the other element pre-
ponderating. They must be equal and coextensive.
The whole of what we know we must believe ; and the
whole of what we believe we must know : for we know
that we believe it, and the act of belief " can only be
known through the object to which it is correlative."
Our conviction is not divided, in varying proportions,
between knowledge and belief: the two must always
keep abreast of one another.
All this follows, whatever may be the meaning of the
" in sight" which forms the distinction in kind between
belief and knowledge. But what is this insight ?
" The immediate consciousness of an object "(he goes
on to say) " is called an intuition, an insight."* So that if
knowledge is distinguished from belief by being grounded
on insight, it is distinguished by being grounded on
immediate consciousness. But belief also supposes
immediate consciousness, since " we cannot believe with-
" out some consciousness or knowledge of the belief, and
" consequently without some consciousness or knowledge
" of the object of the belief." Not merely without
some consciousness, but, if our author's theory is correct,
without a consciousness coextensive with the belief.
As far as we believe, so far as we are conscious of the
belief, and so far, therefore, if the theory be true, we are
conscious of the thins: believed.
O
But though Sir W. Hamilton cannot extricate himself
from this entanglement, having, by the premises he laid
down, cut off his own retreat, other thinkers can find a
way through it. For, in truth, what can be more absurd
than the notion that belief of anything implies know-
ledge of the thing believed ? Were this so, there could
be no such thing as false belief. Every day's experience
shows that belief of the most peremptory kind assurance
founded on the most intense " feeling," is compatible
* Lectures, iv. 73.
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 155
with total ignorance of the thing- which is the object of
belief; though of course not with ignorance of the belief /
itself. And this absurdity is a full refutation of the
theory which leads to it that consciousness of an opera-
tion involves consciousness of that about which the
operation is conversant. The theory does not seem so
absurd when affirmed of knowledge as of belief, because,
(the term knowledge being only applied in common par-
lance to what is regarded as true, while belief may con-
fessedly be false,) to say that if we are conscious of our
knowledge, we must be conscious of that which we know,
is not so manifestly ridiculous, as it is to affirm that if
we are conscious of a mistaken belief, we must be con-
scious of a non-existent fact. Yet the one proposition
must be equally true with the other, if consciousness of an
act involves consciousness of the object of the act. It is
over the ruinsof this false theory that we must force our
way out of the labyrinth in which Sir W. Hamilton has
imprisoned us. It may be true, or it may not, that an
external world is an object of immediate knowledge.
But assuredly we cannot conclude that we have an im-
mediate knowledge of external things, because we have
an immediate knowledge of our cognitions of them ;
whether those cognitions are to be termed belief, witli
Keid, or knowledge, with Sir W. Hamilton.*
* Mr. Mansel (p. 129) gets over this criticism on Sir W. Hamilton very
easily. " Hamilton," he says, " maintains that we cannot be conscious of
a mental operation without being conscious of its object. On this Mr.
' Mill retorts, that if, as Hamilton admits, we are conscious of a belief in
' the Infinite and the Absolute, we must be conscious of the Infinite and
' the Absolute themselves ; and such consciousness is knowledge. The \ s
' fallacy of this retort is transparent. The .immediate object of .Belief is J <C w
' ^proposition which I hold to be true, not a thimj apprehended in an act
' of conception. I believe in an Infinite God ; i.e., I believe that God is '
'Infinite. I believe that the attributes which I ascribe to Gofl exist in
' him in an infinite degree. Now, to believe this proposition I must, of
' course, be conscious of its meaning ; but I am not therefore conscious
' of the Infinite God as an object of conception ; for this would require
' further an apprehension of the manner in which these infinite attributes
' coexist so as to form one object."
A very simple explanation, if only it be a true one. Sir W. Hamilton
had no need to feel embarrassed in applying his doctrine, that the know-
ledge of an operation involves the knowledge of its object, to the operation
called Belief ; for the object of Belief is but a proposition, and knowledge
. A a
156 CONSCIOUSNESS.
of the proposition is the only knowledge required. Strange, that when
this explanation stood so obvious, Sir W. Hamilton should have missed
it should not only have felt that there was a difficulty, but remanded it
to the abstruser Metaphysics, as part of " one of the most difficult problems
of which Metaphysics attempts the solution." Sir W. Hamilton was often
confused and inconsistent, but rarely, if ever, on subjects which he had
studied, superficial. He would have brushed away Mr. Mansel's distinc-
tion with the decisive stroke with which he so often levels at fallacy. The
object of Belief is a proposition ; but is not the object of Knowledge pro-
~ positions? Is not all knowledge a series of judgments; and is not a
judgment expressed in words, a proposition? It is true that knowledge-
is of things ; but we know things only by their attributes : our knowledge
of a thing is made up of our knowledge of a certain number of its attri-
butes, every one of which may be expressed in a proposition. When we
are said to know a Thing, the meaning is either that we know it as pos-
sessing some attribute, or that we know it and its attributes together as
existing. So when we do not know the Thing, but have a belief respecting
it, the belief is either that it possesses some attribute, or is a belief of its
existence, which is called believing in it. When the question is one of
attributes, the object of belief is a proposition, but so is the object of
knowledge. When the question is one of existence, the object of know-
ledge is a Thing, but so is the object of belief.
The " Inquirer" (pp. 31-33), unlike Mr. Mansel, thinks that this is " a
very intricate point ;" that there is a real metaphysical difficulty, and that
Sir W. Hamilton was aware of it ; that he perceived two facts, both true,
which he could not reconcile with one another, and that he died without
having had time to find the reconciliation. On this I remark, first, that
the difficulty is not in reconciling two facts, but two of Sir W. Hamilton's
opinions, and that the only solution would be to give up one of them.
Secondly, that, whatever the solution might be, he had nearly the whole
of his philosophical life to find it in ; for the inconsistent opinions are
two of the cardinal doctrines of his philosophy. The " Inquirer" thinks
that we ought to look indulgently on inconsistencies, as being mere
incidents of growths ; as indeed they are in a learner, who, independently
of his ignorance of Things, is not yet fully master of his own thoughts :
but a teacher is supposed to be full grown. While admitting (p. 7) that I
have proved against Sir W. Hamilton " continual inconsistencies and dis-
crepancies," the " Inquirer" maintains that all sound philosophy, while
incomplete, must be liable to the objection of inconsistency. I confess I
cannot see the necessity that our thoughts should be contradictory because
our knowledge is incomplete ; that because there is much that we do not
know, we should not have sufficiently considered what we do know, to
avoid holding in conjunction opinions which conflict with one another.
The " Inquirer" probably confounds two different things : the belief in
contradictories, and the recognition of positive truths which merely limit
one another, but to what extent or at what points we cannot yet deter-
mine.
157
CHAPTER IX.
OF THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
ACCORDING to all philosophers, the evidence of Conscious- "\
ness, if only we can obtain it pure, is conclusive. This "
is an obvious, but by no means a mere identical proposi-
tion. If consciousness be defined as intuitive knowledge,
it is indeed an identical proposition to say, that if we
intuitively know anything, we do know it, and are sure
of it. But the meaning lies in the applied assertion,
that we do know some things immediately, or intuitively. | ^
That we must do so is evident, if we know anything; \\j*- f
for what we know mediately, depends for its evidence 1 Afc^
on our previous knowledge of something else : unless,
therefore, we knew something immediately, we could not
know anything mediately, and consequently could not
know anything at all. That imaginary being, a com-
plete Sceptic, might be supposed to answer, that perhaps
we do not know anything at all. I shall not reply to
this problematical antagonist in the usual manner, by
telling him that if he does not know anything, I do. I
put to him the simplest case conceivable of immediate
knowledge, and ask, if we ever feel anything ? If so,
then, at the moment of feeling, do we know that we
feel? Or if he will not call this knowledge, will he
deny that when we have a feeling, we have at least some
sort of assurance, or conviction, of having it? This
assurance or conviction is what other people mean by
knowledge. If he dislikes the word, 1 am willing in
discussing with him to employ some other. By what-
ever name this assurance is called, it is the test to which
.^-X "
158 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
we bring all our other convictions. He may say it is
not certain ; but such as it may be, it is our model of
certainty. We consider all our other assurances and
convictions as more or less certain, according as they
approach the standard of this. I have a conviction that
there are icebergs in the Arctic seas. I have not had
the evidence of my senses for it : I never saw an iceberg.
Neither do I intuitively believe it by a law of my mind.
My conviction is mediate, grounded on testimony, and
on inferences from physical laws. When I say I am
convinced of it, I mean that the evidence is equal to
that of my senses. I am as certain of the fact as if I
3^ had seen it. And, on a more complete analysis, when I
say I am convinced of it, what I am convinced of is that
<y if I were in the Arctic seas I should see it. We mean
by knowledge, and by certainty ; an assurance similar and_
equal to that afforded by our senses : if the evidence in
any other case can be brought up to this, we desire no
more. If a person is not satisfied with this evidence,
it is no concern of anybody but himself, nor, practically,
of himself, since it is admitted that this evidence is what
we must, and may with full confidence, act upon. Ab-
solute scepticism, if there be such a thing, may be dis-
missed from discussion, as raising an irrelevant issue,
for in denying all knowledge it denies none. The dog-
matist may be quite satisfied if the doctrine he main-
tains can be attacked by no arguments but those which
apply to the evidence of the senses. If his evidence is
equal to that, he needs no more; nay, it is philosophi-
cally maintainable that by the laws of psychology we
can conceive no more, and that this is the certainty
which we call perfect.
The verdict, then, of consciousness, or, in other words,
our immediate and intuitive conviction, is admitted, on
all hands, to be a decision without appeal. The next
question is to what does consciousness bear witness ?
And here, at the outset, a distinction manifests itself,
which is laid down by Sir W. Hamilton, and stated, in
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 159
a very lucid manner, in the first volume of his Lectures.
I give it in his own words,*
:t A fact of consciousness is that whose existence is
" given and guaranteed by an original and necessary
' belief. But there is an important distinction to be
"here made, which has not only been overlooked by all
" philosophers, but has led some of the most distin-
" guished into no inconsiderable errors.
' The facts of consciousness are to be considered in
" two points of view ; either as evidencing their own
" ideal or phsenomenal existence, or as evidencing the
" objective existence of something else beyond them.
" A belief in the former is not identical with a belief in
" the latter. The one cannot, the other may possibly,
" be refused. In the case of a common witness, we
" cannot doubt the fact of his personal reality, nor the
" fact of his testimony as emitted, but we can alwavs
"doubt the truth of that which his testimony avers.
" So it is with consciousness. We cannot possibly
" refuse the fact of its evidence as given, but we may
" hesitate to admit that beyond itself of which it assures
" us. I shall explain by taking an example. In the
" act of External Perception, consciousness gives as a
" conjunct fact, the existence of Me or Self as perceiving,
" and the existence of something different from Me or
" Self as perceived. Now the reality of this, as a
" subjective datum as an ideal phenomenon it is
" absolutely impossible to doubt without doubting the
" existence of consciousness, for consciousness is itself
" this fact ; and to doubt the existence of consciousness
" is absolutely impossible ; for as such a doubt could not
" exist except in and through consciousness, it would,
" consequently, annihilate itself. We should doubt that
" we doubted. As contained as given in an act of
" consciousness, the contrast of mind knowing and mat-
" ter known cannot be denied.
" But the whole phsenomenon as given in conscious-
* Lectures, i. 271-275.
160 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
" ness may be admitted, and yet its inference disputed.
" It may be said, consciousness gives the mental subject
" as perceiving an external object, contradistinguished
" from it as perceived : all this we do not, and cannot,
" deny. But consciousness is only a phenomenon ;
" the contrast between the subject and object may be
" only apparent, not real ; the object given as an exter-
" nal reality, may only be a mental representation which
" the mind is, by an unknown law, determined uncon-
" sciously to produce, and to mistake for something
" different from itself. All this may be said and be-
" lieved, without self-contradiction, nay, all this has,
" by the immense majority of modern philosophers, been
" actually said and believed.
" In like manner, in an act of Memory, consciousness
" connects a present existence with a past. I cannot
" deny the actual phenomenon, because my denial would
" be suicidal, but I can without self-contradiction assert
" that consciousness may be a false witness in regard to
" any former existence ; and I may maintain, if I please,
" that the memory of the past, in consciousness, is
" nothing but a phsenomenon, which has no reality
" beyond the present. There are many other facts of
"' consciousness which we cannot but admit as ideal
" phenomena, but may discredit as guaranteeing aught
" beyond their phenomenal existence itself. The legality
" of this doubt I do not at present consider, but only its
" possibilit} r ; all that I have now in view being to
" show that we must not confound, as has been done,
" the double import of the facts, and the two degrees of
" evidence for their reality. This mistake has, among
" others, been made by Mr. Stewart. . . .
" With all the respect to which the opinion of so dis-
" tinguished a philosopher as Mr. Stewart is justly
" entitled, I must be permitted to say, that I cannot
" but regard his assertion that the present existence of
" the phenomena of consciousness and the reality of
" that to which these phenomena bear witness, rest on
" a foundation equally solid as wholly untenable. The
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 161
" second fact, the fact testified to, may be worthy of all
" credit as I a^ree with Mr. Stewart in thinking that
" it is ; but still it does not rest on a foundation equally
" solid as the fact of the testimony itself. Mr. Stewart
" confesses that of the former no doubt had ever been
" suggested by the boldest sceptic ; and the latter, in so
" far as it assures us of our having an immediate know-
" ledge of the external world, which is the case alleged
" by Mr. Stewart, has been doubted, nay denied, not
" merely by sceptics, but by modern philosophers almost
" to a man. This historical circumstance, therefore, of
" itself, would create a strong presumption, that the two
" facts must stand on very different foundations ; and
" this presumption is confirmed when we investigate what
" these foundations themselves are.
" The one fact, the fact of the testimony, is an act
" of consciousness itself; it cannot, therefore, be invali-
" dated without self-contradiction. For, as we have
" frequently observed, to doubt of the reality of that of
" which we are conscious is impossible : for as we can
" only doubt through consciousness, to doubt of con-
" sciousness is to doubt of consciousness by consciousness.
" If, on the one hand, we affirm the reality of the doubt,
" we thereby explicitly affirm the reality of conscious-
" ness, and contradict our doubt ; if, on the other hand,
" we deny the reality of consciousness, we implicitly
" deny the reality of our denial itself. Thus, in the act
" of perception, consciousness gives, as a conjunct fact, an
" ego or mind, and a non-ego or matter, known together,
" and contradistinguished from each other. Now, as a
" present phenomenon, this double fact cannot possibly
" be denied. 1 cannot, therefore, refuse the fact, that, ,
" in perception, I am conscious of a phenomenon which
" I am compelled to regard as the attribute of something
" different from my mind or self. This I must perforce
" admit, or run into self-contradiction. But admitting
" this, may I not still, without self-contradiction, main-
" tain that what I am compelled to view as the phae-
" nomenon of something different from me is nevertheless
16.2 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
" (unknown to me) only a modification of my mind ?
" In this I admit the fact of the testimony of conscious-
" ness as given, but deny the truth of its report.
" Whether this denial of the truth of consciousness as a
" witness is or is not legitimate, we are not, at this
" moment, to consider : all I have in view at present is,
<c as I said, to show that we must distinguish in con-
" sciousness two kinds of facts, the fact of consciousness
" testifying, and the fact of which consciousness testifies;
" and that we must not, as Mr. Stewart has done, hold
" that we can as little doubt of the fact of the existence
" of the external world, as of the fact that consciousness
" gives in mutual contrast, the phenomenon of self in
" contrast to the phenomenon of not-self."
He adds, that since no doubt has been, or can be,
entertained of the facts given in the act of consciousness
itself, " it is only the authority of these facts as evidence
" of something beyond themselves, that is, only the
" second class of facts, which become matter of discus-
" sion ; it is not the reality of consciousness that we
" have to prove, but its veracity."
By the conception and clear exposition of this distinc-
tion, Sir W. Hamilton has contributed materially to
make the issues involved in the great question in hand,
more intelligible ; and the passage is a considerable item
for the appreciation both of his philosophy and of his
philosophical powers. It is one of the proofs that, what-
ever be the positive value of his achievements in meta-
physics, he had a greater capacity for the subject than
many metaphysicians of high reputation, and particularly
than his two distinguished predecessors in the same
school of thought, Reid and Stewart.
There are, however, some points in this long extract
which are open to criticism. The distinction it draws,
is, in the main, beyond question, just. Among the facts
which Sir W. Hamilton considers as revelations of con-
sciousness, there is one kind which, as he truly says, no
one does or can doubt, another kind which they can and
do. The facts which cannot be doubted are those to
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
1G3
which the word consciousness is by most philosophers
confined : the facts of internal consciousness ; " the
mind's own acts and affections." What we feel, we
cannot doubt that we feel. It is impossible to us to feel,
and to think that perhaps we feel not, or to feel not,
and think that perhaps we feel. What admits of being
doubted, is the revelation which consciousness is sup-
posed to make (and which our author considers as itself
consciousness) of an external reality. But according to
him, though we may doubt this external reality, we are
compelled to admit that consciousness testifies to it.
We may disbelieve our consciousness ; but we cannot
doubt what its testimony is. This assertion cannot be
granted in the same unqualified manner as the others.
It is true that I cannot doubt my present impression : I
cannot doubt that when I perceive colour or weight, I
perceive them as in an object. Neither can I doubt
that when I look at two fields, I perceive which of them
is the farthest off. The majority of philosophers, how-
ever, would not say that perception of distance by the
eye is testified by consciousness; because although we
really do so perceive distance, they believe it to be an
acquired perception. It is at least possible to think that
the reference of our sensible impressions to an external
object is, in like manner, acquired ; and if so, though a
factjof our consciousness in its present artificial state, it
would have no claim to the title of a fact of conscious-
ness generally, or to the unlimited credence given to
what is originally consciousness. This point of psy-
chology we sFalTnave^o discuss farther on.
Another remark needs to be made. All the world
admits with our author, that it is impossible to doubt a
fact of internal consciousness. To feel, and not to know
that we feel, is an impossibility. But Sir W. Hamilton is
not satisfied to let this truth rest on its own evidence. He
wants a demonstration of it. As if it were not sufficiently
proved by consciousness itself, he attempts to prove it by
a redactio ad absurdum. No one, he says, can doubt con-
sciousness, because, doubt being itself consciousness, to
M 2
164 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
doubt consciousness would be to doubt that we doubt.
He sets so high a value on this argument, that he is
continually recurring to it in his writings ; it actually
amounts to a feature of his philosophy.* Yet it seems
to me no better than a fallacy. It treats doubt as some-
thing positive, like certainty, forgetting that doubt is
uncertainty. Doubt is not a state of consciousness, but
the negation of a state of consciousness. Being nothing
positive, but simply the absence of a belief, it seems to
be the one intellectual fact which may be true without
self affirmation of its truth ; without our either believing
or disbelieving that we doubt. If doubt is anything
other than merely negative, it means an insufficient
assurance ; a disposition to believe, with an inability to
believe confidently. But there are degrees of insuffi-
ciency ; and if we suppose, for argument's sake, that it
is possible to doubt consciousness, it may be possible to
doubt different facts of consciousness in different degrees.
The general uncertainty of consciousness might be the
one fact that appeared least uncertain. The saying of
Socrates, that the only thing he knew was that he knew
nothing, expresses a conceivable and not inconsistent
state of mind. The only thing he felt perfectly sure of
may have been that he was sure of nothing else. Omit-
ting Socrates (who was no sceptic as to the reality of
knowledge, but only as to its having yet been attained)
and endeavouring to conceive the hazy state of mind of a
person who doubts the evidence of his senses, it is quite
* It is rather more speciously put in a foot-note on Reid (p. 231) : " To
' doubt that we are conscious of this or that, is impossible. For the
' doubt must at least postulate itself; but the doubt is only a datum of
' consciousness : therefore in postulating its own reality, it admits the
' truth of consciousness, and consequently annihilates itself." In another
'oot-note (p. 442) he says, " In doubting the fact of his consciousness, the
' sceptic must at least affirm the fact of his doubt ; but to affirm a doubt
' is to affirm the consciousness of it ; the doubt would, therefore, be self-
' contradictory i.e., annihilate itself." And again (Dissertations on
Eleid, p. 744) : "As doubt is itself only a manifestation of consciousness,
' j.t is impossible to doubt that what consciousness manifests, it does
' manifest, without in thus doubting, doubting that we actually doubt ;
'that is, without the doubt contradicting and therefore annihilating
' itself/'
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 165
possible to suppose him doubting even whether he
doubts. Most people, I should think, must have found
themselves in something like this predicament as to
particular facts, of which their assurance is all but
perfect ; they are not quite certain that they are un-
certain.*
But though our author's proof of the position is as
imtenable as it is superfluous, all agree with him in
the position itself, that a real fact of consciousness
cannot be doubted or denied. Let us now, therefore,
return to his distinction between the facts "given in
the act of consciousness," and those " to the reality of
which it only bears evidence." These last, or, in other
words, "the veracity of consciousness," Sir W. Hamilton
thinks it possible to doubt or deny ; he even says, that
such facts, more or fewer in number, have been doubted
* In another passage of our author (Lectures, iv. 69), the same argu-
ment reappears in different words, and for a different purpose. He i*
speaking of the Criterion of Truth. This criterion, he says, " is the neces-
' sity determined by the laws which govern our faculties of knowledge,
' and the consciousness of this necessity is certainty. That the necessity
' of a cognition, that is, the impossibility of thinking it other than as it is
' presented that this necessity, as founded on the laws of thought, is
' the criterion of truth, is shown by the circumstance that where such
' necessity is found, all doubt in regard to the correspondence of the
' cognitive thought and its object must vanish ; for to doubt whether
' what we necessarily think in a certain manner, actually exists as we
' conceive it, is nothing less than an endeavour to think the necessary as
' the not necessary or the impossible, which is contradictory."
It is very curious to find Sir W. Hamilton maintaining that our necessi-
ties of thought are proof of corresponding realities of existence that
things must actually be so and so because it is impossible for us to think
them as being otherwise ; forgetful of the whole " Philosophy of the Con-
ditioned," and the principle so often asserted by him, that things may,
nay, must be true, of which it is impossible for us to conceive even the
possibility. But we are here only concerned with his argument, and in
that he forgets that to doubt is not a positive but a negative fact. It
simply means, not to have any knowledge or assured belief on the subject.
Now, how can it be asserted that this negative state of mind is " an
endeavour to think " anything ? And (even if it were) an endeavour to
think a contradiction is not a contradiction. An endeavour to think what
cannot be thought, far from being impossible, is the test by which we
ascertain its uiithinkability. The failure of the endeavour in the case
supposed, would not prove that what we were endeavouring to think was
unreal, but only that it was unthinkable ; which was already assumed in
the hypothesis : and our author has carried us round a long circuit, to
return to the point from which we set out.
166 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
or denied by nearly the whole body of modern philo-
sophers. But this is a statement of the point in issue
between Sir W. Hamilton and modern philosophers, the
correctness of which, I will venture to affirm that very
few if any of them would admit. He represents " nearly
the whole body of modern philosophers" as in the
peculiar and paradoxical position, of believing that
consciousness declares to them and to all mankind the
truth of certain facts, and then of disbelieving those
facts. That great majority of philosophers of whom
Sir W. Hamilton speaks, would, I apprehend, altogether
deny this statement. They never dreamed of disputing
the veracity of consciousness. They denied what {Sir
W. Hamilton thinks it impossible to deny ; the fact of
its testimony. They thought it did not testify to the
facts to which he thinks it testifies. Had they thought
as he does respecting the testimony, they would have
thought as he does respecting the facts. As it is, many
of them maintained that consciousness gives no testi-
mony to anything beyond itself; that whatever know-
ledge we possess, or whatever belief we find in ourselves,
of anything but the feelings and operations of our own
minds, has been acquired subsequently to the first begin-
nings of our intellectual life, and was not witnessed to
by consciousness when it received its first impressions.
Others, again, did believe in a testimony of conscious-
ness, but not in the testimony ascribed to it by Sir W.
Hamilton. Facts, to which in his opinion it testifies,
some of them did not believe at all, others did not be-
lieve them to be known intuitively ; nay, many of them
both believed the facts, and believed that they were
known intuitively, and if they differed from Sir W.
Hamilton, differed in the merest shadow of a shade ;
yet it is with these Jast, as we shall see, that he has his
greatest quarrel. In his contest, therefore, with (as he
says) the majority of philosophers, Sir W. Hamilton
addresses his arguments to the wrong point. He thinks
it needless to prove that the testimony to which he
appeals, is really given by Consciousness, for that he
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 167
regards as undenied and undeniable : but he is inces-
santly proving to us that we ought to believe our con-
sciousness, a thing which few, if any, of his opponents
denied.* It is true his appeal is always to the same
argument, but that he is never tired of reiterating. It
is stated the most systematically in the first Dissertation
on Reid, that " on the Philosophy of Common Sense."
After saying that there are certain primary elements of
cognition, manifesting themselves to us as facts of which
consciousness assures us, he continues,! " How, it is
" asked, do these primary propositions these cognitions
" at first hand these fundamental facts, feelings, beliefs,
" certify us of their own veracity? To this the only
" possible answer is, that as elements of our mental con-
" stitution as the essential conditions of our knowledge,
" they must by us be accepted as true. To suppose their
" falsehood, is to suppose that we are created capable of
" intelligence, in order to be made the victims of delu-
" sion ; that God is a deceiver, and the root of our
" nature a lie :" that man is " organized \ for the attain-
" ment, and actuated by the love of truth, only to be-
" come the dupe and victim of a perfidious creator." It |
appears, therefore, that the testimony of consciousness
must be believed, because to disbelieve it, would be to |
impute mendacity and perfidy to the Creator.
But there is a preliminary difficulty to be here re-
solved, which may be stated without irreverence. If '
the proof of the trustworthiness of consciousness is the
veracity of the Creator, on what does the Creator's
veracity itself rest? Is it not on the evidence of con-
sciousness? The divine veracity can only be known in
two ways, 1st, by intuition, or 2ndly, through evidence.
If it is known by intuition, it is itself a fact of conscious- ,
* The philosophers who have most insisted on the necessity of a test
for consciousness, have always found that test in consciousness itselt.
Hear Mr. Stirling, the latest of them, who in this respect represents them
all : " It is the function of consciousness, though itself infallible, invio-
lable, and veracious as nothing else is or can be, to test and try and
question consciousness to the uttermost" (p. 58).
f Dissertations on Eeid, p. 743. J Ibid. p. 745.
168 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
ness, and to have ground for believing it, we must assume
that consciousness is trustworthy. Those who say that
we have a direct intuition of Grod, are only saying in
other words that consciousness testifies to him. If we
hold, on the contrary, with our author, that Grod is not
known by intuition, but proved by evidence, that evi-
dence must rest, in the last resort, on consciousness.
All proofs of religion, natural or revealed, must be de-
rived either from the testimony of the senses, or from
internal feelings of the mind, or from reasonings of
which one or other of these^ sources supplied the pre-
mises. Religion, thus itself resting on the evidence of
consciousness, cannot be invoked to prove that conscious-
ness ought to be believed. We must already trust our
consciousness, before we can have any evidence of the
truth of religion.
I know not whether it is from an obscure sense of
this objection to his argument, that Sir W.. Hamilton
adopts what, in every other point of view, is a very
extraordinary limitation of it. After representing the
veracity of the Creator as staked on the truth of the
testimony of Consciousness, he is content to claim this
argument as not amounting to proof, but only to a
prima facie presumption. " Such* a supposition" as that
of a perfidious creator, " if gratuitous, is manifestly ille-
gitimate." " The data of our original consciousness
must, it is evident, in the first instance' (the italics are
the author's), " be presumed true. It is only if proved
false," which it can only be by showing them to be in-
consistent with one another, " that their authority can,
" in consequence of that proof, be, in the second instance,
" disallowed." "Neganti incumbit probatio. Nature
" is not gratuitously to be assumed to work, not only
" in vain, but in counteraction of herself; our faculty of
" knowledge is not, without a ground, to be supposed
" an instrument of illusion." It is making a very
humble claim for the veracity of the Creator, that it
should be held valid merely as a presumption, in the
* Dissertations on Reid, pp. 743-74i>.
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 169
absence of contrary evidence ; that, the Divine Being,
like a prisoner at the bar, should be presumed innocent
until proved .guilty. Far, however, from intending this
remark in any invidious sense against Sir W. Hamilton,
I regard it as one of his titles to honour, that he has not
been afraid, as many men would have been, to subject a
proposition surrounded by reverence to the same logical
treatment as any other statement, and has not felt him-
self obliged, as a philosopher, to consider it from the
first as final. My complaint could only be, that his logic
is not sufficiently consistent; and that the divine veracity
is entitled either to more or to less weight than he accords
to it. He is bound by the laws of correct reasoning to
prove his premise without the aid of the conclusion
which he means to draw from it. If he can do this
if the divine veracity is certified by stronger evidence
than the testimony of consciousness, it may be appealed
to, not merely as a presumption, but as a proof. If not,
it is entitled to no place in the discussion, even as a
presumption. There is no intermediate position for it,
good enough for the one purpose, but not good enough
tor the other. It would be a new view of the fallacy of
petitio principii to contend that a conclusion is no proof
of the premises from which it is deduced, but is prima
facie evidence of them.
Our author, however, cannot be convicted of petitio
principii. Though he has not stated, I think he has
enabled us to see, in what manner he avoided it. True,
he has deduced the trustworthiness of consciousness
from the veracity of the Deity ; and the veracity of the
Deity can only be known from the evidence of con-
sciousness. But he may fall back upon the distinction
between facts given in consciousness itself, and facts " to
the reality of which it only bears evidence." It is for
the trustworthiness of these last, that he assigns as pre-
sumptive evidence (which the absence of counter-evidence
raises into proof) the divine veracity. That veracity itself,
he may say, is proved by consciousness, but to prove it
requires only the other class of facts of consciousness,
170 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
those given in the act of consciousness itself. There
are thus two steps in the argument. " The phenomena
of consciousness considered merely in themselves," with
reference to which " scepticism is confessedly impos-
sible/'* suffice (we must suppose him to think) for
proving the divine veracity ; and that veracity, being
proved, is in its turn a reason for trusting the testimony
which consciousness pronounces to facts without and
beyond itself.
Unless, therefore, Sir W. Hamilton was guilty of a
paralogism, by adducing religion in proof of what is ne-
cessary to the proof of religion, his opinion must have
been that our knowledge of Grod rests upon the affirma-
tion which Consciousness makes of itself, and not of
anything beyond itself; that the divine existence and
attributes may be proved without assuming that con-
sciousness testifies to anything but our own feelings
and mental operations. If this be so, we have Sir W.
Hamilton's authority for affirming, that even the most
extreme form of philosophical scepticism, the Nihilism
(as our author calls it) of Hume, which denies the ob-
jective existence of both Matter and Mind, does not
touch the evidences of Natural Religion. And it really
does not touch any evidences but such as religion can
well spare. But what a mass of religious prejudice has
been directed against this philosophical doctrine, on the
strength of what we have now Sir W. Hamilton's au-
thority for treating as a mere misapprehension.!
But something more is necessary to render the divine
veracity available in support of the testimony of con-
sciousness, against those, if such there be, who admit
the fact of the testimony, but hesitate to admit its
* Dissertations on Reid, p. 745.
f Accordingly Sir W. Hamilton says elsewhere (Appendix to Lectures,
i. 394) : " Religious disbelief and philosophical scepticism are not merely
not the same, but have no natural connexion." I regret that this state-
ment is followed by a declaration that the former " must ever be a matter"
not merely "of regret," but of "reprobation." This imputation of moral
blame to an opinion sincerely entertained and honestly arrived at, is a
blot which one would willingly not have found in a thinker of so much
ability, and in general of so high a moral tone.
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
171
truth. The divine veracity ^an only be implicated in
the truth "oT any thing, by proving that the Divine Being
intended it to be believed. As it is not pretended that
Ee has made any revelation in the matter, his intention
can only be interred from the result : and our author
draws the inference from his having made it an original
and indestructible part of our nature that our conscious-
ness should declare to us certain facts. Now this is
what the philosophers who disbelieve the facts, would
not, any of them, admit. Many indeed have admitted
that we have a natural tendency to believe something
which they considered to be an illusion : but it cannot
be affirmed that God intended us to do whatever we have
a natural tendency to. On every theory of the divine
government, it is carried on, intellectually as well as
morally, not by the mere indulgence of our natural ten-
dencies, but by the regulation and control of them. One
philosopher, Hume, has said that the tendency in ques-
tion seems to be an "instinct," and has called a psycho-
logical doctrine, which he regarded as groundless, an
" universal and primary opinion of all men." But he
never dreamed of saying that we are compelled by our
nature to believe it ; on the contrary, he says that this
illusive opinion "is soon destroyed by the slightest
philosophy." Of all eminent thinkers, the one who
comes nearest to our author's description of those who
reject the testimony of consciousness, is Kant. That
philosopher did maintain that there is an illusion in-
herent in our constitution; that we cannot help con-
ceiving as belonging to Things themselves, attributes
with which they are only clothed by the laws of our
sensitive and intellectual faculties. But he drew a
marked distinction between an illusion and a delusion.
He did not believe in a mystification practised on us by
the Supreme -Being, nor would he have admitted that
God intended us permanently to mistake the conditions
of our mental conceptions for properties of the things
themselves. If God has provided us with the means of
correcting an error, it is probable that he does not
172
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
intend us to be misled by it : and in' matters specula-
tive as well as practical, it surely is more religious to
see the purposes of Grod in the dictates of our deliberate
reason, than in those of a "blind and powerful instinct
of nature."
As regards almost all, however, if not all philosophers,
it may truly be said, that the questions which have
divided them have never turned on the veracity of con-
sciousness. Consciousness, in the sense usually attached
to it by philosophers, consciousness of .the mind's own
feelings and operations, cannot, as our author truly
says, be disbelieved. The inward fact, the feeling in
our own minds, was never doubted, since to do so
would be to doubt that we feel what we feel. What
our author calls the testimony of consciousness to some-
thing beyond itself, may be, and is, denied ; but what
is denied, has almost always been that consciousness
gives the testimony ; not that, if given, it must be
believed.
At first sight it might seem as if there could not pos-
sibly be any doubt whether our consciousness does or
does not affirm any given thing. Nor can there, if con-
* y^vsciousness means, as it usually does, self-consciousness.
^ If consciousness tells me that I have a certain thought
or sensation, I assuredly have that thought or sensation.
But if consciousness, as with Sir W. Hamilton, means a
power which can tell me things that are not phenomena
of my own mind, there is immediately the broadest
divergence of opinion as to what are the things to whicli
consciousness testifies. There is nothing which people
do not think and say that they know by consciousness,
provided they do not remember any time when they did
not know or believe it, and are not aware in what manner
they came by the belief. For Consciousness, in this
extended sense, is, as I have so often observed, but
another word for Intuitive Knowledge : and whatever
other things we may know in that manner, we certainly
do not know by intuition what knowledge is intuitive.
It is a subject on which both the vulgar and the ablest
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSC OUSNESS. 1 73
thinkers are constantly making mistakes. No one is
better aware of this than Sir W. Hamilton. I transcribe
a few of the many passages in which he has acknow-
ledged it. "Errors"* may arise by attributing to "in-
" telligence as necessary and original data, what are
" only contingent generalizations from experience, and
" consequently, make no part of its complement of native
" truths."! And again :J " Many philosophers have
" attempted to establish on the principles of common
" sense propositions which are not original data of con-
" sciousness ; while the original data of consciousness,
" from which their propositions were derived, and to
" which they owed their whole necessity and truth these
" data the same philosophers were (strange to say) not
" disposed to admit." It fares still worse with the
philosophers chargeable with this error, when Sir W.
Hamilton comes into personal controversy with them.
M. Cousin's mode of proceeding, for example, he charac-
terizes thus: "Assertion is substituted for proof; facts
" of consciousness are alleged, which consciousness never
" knew ; and paradoxes that baffle argument, are pro-
" mulgated as intuitive truths, above the necessity of
" confirmation." M. Cousin's particular misinterpreta-
tion of consciousness was, as we saw, that of supposing
that each of its acts testifies to three things, of which
three Sir W. Hamilton thinks that it testifies only to
one. Besides the finite element, consisting of a Self and
a Not-self, M. Cou*in believes that there are directly
revealed in Consciousness an Infinite (God) and a rela-
tion between this Infinite and the Finite. But it is not
only M. Cousin who, in our author's opinion, mistakes
the testimony of consciousness. He brings the same
charge against a thinker with whom he agrees much
* Lectures, iv. 137.
f There are writers of reputation in the present day, who maintain in
unqualified terms, that we know by intuition the impossibility of miracles.
" La negation du miracle," says M. Nefftzer (Revue Gtrrmanique tor
September 1863, p. 183), " n'est pas subordonne'e a I'expeVience ; elle est
" une necessite logique et un fait de certitude interne ; elle doit e'tre le
" premier article du credo de tout historien et de tout penseur."
J Dissertations on Reid, p. 749. Discussions, p. 25.
174 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
oftener than with M. Cousin ; against Eeid. That
philosopher, as we have seen, is of opinion, contrary to
Sir W. Hamilton, that we have an immediate knowledge
of things past. This is to be conscious of them in Sir
W. Hamilton's sense of the word, though not in Reid's.
Finally, Sir W. Hamilton imputes a similar error, no
longer to any particular metaphysician, but to the world
at large. He says that we do riot see the sun, but only
a luminous image, in immediate contiguity to the eye,
and that no two persons see the same sun, but every
person a different one. Now it is assuredly the universal
belief of mankind that all of them see the same sun, and
that this is the very sun which rises and sets, and which
is 95 (or according to more recent researches 92) millions'
of miles distant from the earth. Nor can any of the
appeals of Reid and Sir W. Hamilton from the sophistries
of metaphysicians to Common Sense and the universal
sentiment of mankind, be more emphatic than that to
which Sir W. Hamilton here lays himself open from Eeid
and from the non-metaphysical world.*
We see, therefore, that it is rot enough to say that
something is testified by Consciousness, and refer all
* Reid himself places the "natural belief" which Sir W. Hamilton
rejects, on exactly the level of those which he most strenuously maintains,
saying ("Works, Hamilton's edition, p. 284) in a passage which our author
himself quotes, " The vulgar are firmly persuaded that the very identical
" objects which they perceive continue to exist when they do not perceive
" them : and are no less firmly persuaded that when ten men look at the
" sun or the moon, they all see the same individual object." And Eeid
avows that he agrees with the vulgar in both opinions. But Sir W.
Hamilton, while he upholds the former of these as one to deny which
would be to declare our nature a lie, thinks that nothing can be more
absurd than the latter of them. " Nothing," he says (Lectures, ii. 129),
can be conceived more ridiculous than the opinion of philosophers in
regard to this. For example, it has been curiously held (and Eeid is no
exception) that in looking at the sun, moon, or any other object of sight,
, we are, on the one doctrine, actually conscious of these distant objects,
or, on the other, that these distant objects are those really represented
in the mind. Nothing can be more absurd : we perceive, through no
sense, aught external but what is in immediate relation and in immediate
' contact with its organ. . . . Through the eye we perceive nothing but
' the rays of light in relation to, and in contact with, the retina."
The basis of the whole Ideal System, which it is thought to be the great
merit of Eeid to have exploded, was a natural prejudice, supposed to be
intuitively evident, namely, that that which knows, must be of a similar
THE INTERPRETATION OP CONSCIOUSNESS. 175
dissentients to consciousness to prove it. Substitute for
Consciousness the equivalent phrase (in our author's
acceptation at least) Intuitive Knowledge, and it is seen
that this is not a thing which can be proved by mere
introspection of ourselves. Introspection can show us
a present belief or conviction, attended with a greater
or a less difficulty in accommodating the thoughts to a
different view of the subject : but that this belief, or
conviction, or knowledge, if we call it so, is intuitive, no
mere introspection can ever show ; unless we are at
liberty to assume that every mental process which is now
as unhesitating and as rapid as intuition, was intuitive
at its outset. Reid, in his commencements at least, often
expressed himself as if he believed this to be the case :
Sir W. Hamilton, wiser than ileid, knew better. With
him (at least in his better moments) the question, what
is and is not revealed by Consciousness, is a question for
philosophers. " The first* problem of philosophy " is
" to seek out, purify, and establish, by intellectual analysis
" and criticism, the elementary feelings or beliefs, in
" which are given the elementary truths of which all are
" in possession :" this problem, he admits, is " of no easy
nature to that which is known by it. " This principle," says our author
(foot-note to Reid. p. 300), " has, perhaps, exerted a more extensive
" influence on speculation than any other. ... It would be easy to show
" that the belief, explicit or implicit, that what knows and what is imme-
" diately known must be of an analogous nature, lies at the root of almost
" every theory of cognition, from the very earliest to the very latest
" speculations. . . . And yet it has not been proved, and is incapable of
" proof, nay, is contradicted by the evidence of consciousness itself."
But though Sir W. Hamilton manifests himself thus thoroughly aware
how wide the differences of opinion may be and are respecting our intui-
tive perceptions, I by no means intend to deny that he on certain occa-
sions affirms the contrary. In the fourth volume of the Lectures (p. 95),
he says, " I have here limited the possibility of error to Probable Reason -
" ing, for in Intuition and Demonstration, there is but little possibility of
" important error." After a certain amount of reading of Sir W. Hamilton,
one is used to these contradictions. What he here asserts to be so nearly
impossible, that no account needs to be taken of it in a classification of
Error, he is continually fighting against in detail, and imputing to nearly
all philosophers. And when he says (Lectures, i. 266) that the " revela-
tion" of consciousness is " naturally clear," and only mistaken by philoso-
phers because they resort to it solely for confirmation of their own opinions,
he merely transports into psychology the dogmatism of theologians.
* Dissertations on Reid, p. 752.
176 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
accomplishment;" and the "argument from common
sense " is thus " manifestly dependent on philosophy as
" an art, as an acquired dexterity, and cannot, notwith-
" standing the errors which they have so frequently
" committed, be taken out of the hands of the philoso-
j " phers. Common sense is like Common Law. Each may
" he laid down as the general rule of decision ; but in
" the one case it must be left to the jurist, in the other
" to the philosopher, to ascertain what are the contents
" of the rule ; and though in both instances the common
" man may be cited as a witness for the custom or the
" fact, in neither can he be allowed to officiate as advo-
" cate or as judge."
So far, good. But now, it being conceded that the
question, what do we know intuitively, or, in Sir W.
Hamilton's phraseology, what does our consciousness
testify, is not, as might be supposed, a matter of simple
self-examination, but of science, it has still to be deter-
mined in what manner science should set about it. And
here emerges the distinction between two different me-
thods of studying the problems of metaphysics, forming
the radical difference between the two great schools into
which metaphysicians are fundamentally divided. One
-,.- of these I shall call, for distinction, the introspective
method ; the other, the psychological.
The elaborate and acute criticism on the philosophy
. of Locke, which is perhaps the most striking portion of
J\i. Cousin's Lectures on the History of Philosophy, sets
out with a remark which sums up the characteristics of
the two great schools of mental philosophy, by a summary
description of their methods. M. Cousin observes, that
Locke went wrong from the beginning, by placing before
himself, as the question to be first resolved, the origin of
our ideas. This was commencing at the wrong end. The
proper course would have been to begin by determining
what the ideas now are ; to ascertain what it is that
consciousness actually tells us, postponing till afterwards
the attempt to frame a theory concerning the origin of
any of the mental phenomena.
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 177
I accept the question as M. Cousin states it, and I
contend, that no attempt to determine what are the direct
revelations of consciousness, can be successful, or entitled
to any regard, unless preceded by what M. Cousin says
ought only to follow it, an inquiry into the origin of
our acquired ideas. For we have it not in our power to
ascertain, by any direct process, what Consciousness told
us at the time when its revelations were in their pristine
purity. It only offers itself to our inspection as it exists
now, when those original revelations are overlaid and
buried under a mountainous heap of acquired notions
and perceptions.
It seerns to M. Cousin that if we examine, with care
and minuteness, our present states of consciousness, dis-
tinguishing and defining every ingredient which we find
to enter into them every element that we seem to re-
cognise as real, and cannot, by merely concentrating our
attention upon it, analyse into anything simpler we
reach the ultimate and primary truths, which are the
sources of all our knowledge, and which cannot be denied
or doubted without denying or doubting the evidence of
consciousness itself, that is, the only evidence which
there is for anything. I maintain this to be a misap-
prehension of the conditions imposed on inquirers by
the difficulties of psychological investigation. To begin
the inquiry at the point where M. Cousin takes it
up, is in fact to beg the question. For he must be
aware, if not of the fact, at least of the belief of his
opponents, that the laws of the mind the laws of
association according to one class of thinkers, the
Categories of the Understanding according to another
are capable of creating, out of those data of con- ^ ^
sciousness which are uncontested, purely mental con- -j&fo
ceptions, which become so identified in thought with
all our states of consciousness, that we seem, and cannot
but seem, to receive them by direct intuition ; and, for
example, the belief in Matter, in the opinion of some of
these thinkers, is, or at least may be, thus produced.
Idealists, and Sceptics, contend that the belief in Matter
N
I IV^-CU-M v \/\tvwvw**v
178 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
is not an original fact of consciousness, as our sensations
are, and is therefore wanting in the requisite which, in
M. Cousin's and Sir W. Hamilton's opinion, gives to our
subjective convictions objective authority. Now, be
these persons right or wrong, they cannot be refuted in
the mode in which M. Cousin and Sir W. Hamilton
attempt to do so by appealing to Consciousness itself.
^ For we have no means of interrogating consciousness
in the only circumstances in which it is possible for it
to give a trustworthy answer. Could we try the ex-
periment of the first consciousness in any infant its first
reception of the impressions which we call external ;
whatever was present in that first consciousness would
be the genuine testimony of Consciousness, and would
he as much entitled to credit, indeed there would be as
little possibility of discrediting it, as our sensations
themselves. But we have no means of now ascertaining,
by direct evidence, whether we were conscious of out-
ward and extended objects when we first opened our
eyes to the light. That a belief or knowledge of such
objects is in our consciousness now, whenever we use
our eyes or our muscles, is no reason for concluding that
it was there from the beginning, until we have settled
the question whether it could possibly have been brought
in since. If any mode can be pointed out in which
within the compass of possibility it might have been
brought in, the hypothesis must be examined and dis-
proved before we are entitled to conclude that the con-
viction is an original deliverance of consciousness. The
proof that any of the alleged Universal Beliefs, or Prin-
ciples of Common Sense, are affirmations of conscious-
ness, supposes two things ; that the beliefs exist, and
that there are no means by which they could have been
acquired. The first is in most cases undisputed, but the
second is a subject of inquiry which often taxes the
utmost resources of psychology. Locke was therefore
right in believing that " the origin of our ideas" is the
main stress of the problem of mental science, and the
subject which must be first considered in forming the
THE INTERPRETATION OP CONSCIOUSNESS. 179
theory of the Mind. Being unable to examine the actual
contents of our consciousness until our earliest, which
are necessarily our most firmly knit associations, those
which are most intimately interwoven with the original
data of consciousness, are fully formed, we cannot study
the original elements of mind in the facts of our pre-
sent consciousness. Those original elements can only
come to light as residual phenomena, by a previous
study of the modes of generation of the mental facts
which are confessedly not original ; a study sufficiently
thorough to enable us to apply its results to the convic-
tions, beliefs, or supposed intuitions which seem to be
original, and to determine whether some of them may
not have been generated in the same modes, so early as
to have become inseparable from our consciousness before
the time to which memory goes back. This mode of
ascertaining the original elements of mind I call, for want
of a better word, the psychological, as distinguished from
the simply introspective mode. It is the known and
approved method of physical science, adapted to the
necessities of psychology.*
It might be supposed from incidental expressions of
Sir W. Hamilton that he was alive to the need of a
methodical scientific investigation, to determine what
o
portion of our " natural beliefs" are really original, and
* The " Inquirer" thinks he refutes the preceding paragraph when he
says (pp. 52, 53) that Consciousness may not have given its full revelation
in the infant, and that it would be "contrary to ail analogy" to suppose
" that consciousness alone, of all our natural properties, needs no develop-
ment, no education." If this supposed improvement of consciousness
by exercise be admitted, it goes even harder with the Introspective Method
than I had maintained. I pointed out an experiment not realizable, but
conceivable, which by ascertaining the contents of consciousness ante-
cedently to any acquired experience, would authenticate as the original
data of consciousness whatever that experiment revealed. But if con-
sciousness does not tell its tale at once, but requires time and practice to
tell it, and does not get it completed until there has been time for impres-
sions originating in experience to be formed, then there is no period at
which the Introspective Method, applied to the case, would yield a con-
clusive result : the natural and acquired testimonies of consciousness are
inseparably blended at every stage, and to separate them by mere selt-
observation, and show that any particular item belongs to the one and
not to the other, involves a double impossibility, instead of the single ons
I contended for.
N 2
rv'
ISO THE INTERPRKTATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
what are inferences, or acquired impressions, mistakenly
deemed intuitive.* To the declarations already quoted
to this effect, the following may be added. Speaking of
Descartes' plan, of commencing philosophy by a recon-
sideration of all our fundamental opinions, he says,
" There are among our prejudices, or pretended cog-
-" nitions, a great many hasty conclusions, the investi-
" gation of which requires much profound thought,
" skill, and acquired knowledge To commence
" philosophy by such a review, it is necessary for a man
" to be a philosopher before he can attempt to become
" one." And he elsewheref bestows high praise upon
Aristotle for not falling " into the error of many modern
" philosophers, in confounding the natural and necessary
" with the habitual and acquired connexions of thought,"
nor attempting " to evolve the conditions under which
we think from the tendencies generated by thinking ;"
a praise which cannot be bestowed on our author him-
self. But, notwithstanding the ample concession which
he appeared to make when he admitted that the problem
was one of extreme difficulty, essentially scientific, and
ought to be reserved for philosophers, I regret to say
that he as completely sets at naught the only possible
method of solving it, as M. Cousin himself. He even
expresses his contempt for that method. Speaking of
Extension, he says,| " It is truly an idle problem to
" attempt imagining the steps by which we may be sup-
" posed to have acquired the notion of Extension, when
" in fact, we are unable to imagine to ourselves the possi-
" bility of that notion not being always in our posses-.
" sion." That things which we " are unable to imagine
to ourselves the possibility of," may be, and many of
them must be, true, was a doctrine which we thought
we had learnt from the author of the Philosophy of the
Conditioned. That we cannot imagine a time at which
we had no knowledge of Extension, is no evidence that
there has not been such a time. There are mental laws,
* Lectures, iv. 92. t Dissertations on Eeid, p. 894.
J Ibid. p. 882.
THE INTERPRETATION OF coNsciotsNEss. 181
recognised by Sir W. Hamilton himself which would
inevitably cause such a state of things to become incon-
ceivable to us, even if it once existed. There are artificial
inconceivabilities equal in strength to any natural. In-
deed it is questionable if there are any natural incon-
ceivabilities, or ifjinything is inconceivable to us tor any
other reason than because Nature does not afford the
combinations in experience which are necessary to make
it conceivable.
I do not think that there can be found, in all Sir W.
Hamilton's writings, a single . instance in which, before
registering a belief as a part of our consciousness from the
beginning, he thinks it necessary to ascertain that it can-
not have grown up subsequently. He demands, indeed,*
" that no fact be assumed as a fact of consciousness but
what is ultimate and simple." But to pronounce it
ultimate, the only condition he requires is that we be not
able to " reduce it to a generalization from experience."
This condition is realized by its possessing the " character
" of necessity." "It must be impossible not to think it.
" In fact, by its necessity alone can we recognise it as an-
" original datum of intelligence, and distinguish it from
" any mere result of generalization and custom." In
this Sir VV. Hamilton is at one with the whole of his
own section of the philosophical world ; with Eeid, with
Stewart, with Cousin, with Whewell, and we may add,
with Kant.f The test by which they all decide a belief
.* Lectures, i. 268-270.
f In the first edition I added, " and even with Mr. Herbert Spencer :"
but that powerful thinker, in his paper in the Fortnightly Review, dis-
claims the doctrine. As I now understand Mr. Spencer, he maintains
that the impossibility of getting rid of a belief is a proof of its truth, and
also of its being a primary, or ultimate, truth, but not of its being intui-
tive, since even our primary forms of thought are, in Mr. Spencer's opinion,
products of experience, either our own, or inherited by us from ancestors
by the laws of the development of organization. I had confounded the
two ideas, of a primary truth and an intuitive truth, which had never, as
far as 1 know, been distinguished by any one except Mr. Spencer ; and
had, therefore, ideatified his theory with the ordinary doctrine of the
intuitive philosophy ; which I now see to be a misconception, though I
think both theories open to refutation by the same arguments, and the
difference between them not material to the test of truth, though highly
important to psychology,
i perceive also that I was mistaken, when, in an early chapter of this-
j t>'
^ ^^ ^ n^, <rw ; T<<
_i^*~, v^.J~
182 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
to be part of our primitive consciousness an original
intuition of the mind is the necessity of thinking it.
Their proof that we must always, from the beginning,
have had the belief, is the impossibility of getting rid
of it now. This argument, applied to any of the dis-
puted questions of philosophy, is doubly illegitimate :
neither the major nor the minor premise is admissible.
For, in the first place, the very fact that the questions
are disputed, disproves the alleged impossibility. Those
against whose dissent it is needful to defend the belief
Avhich is affirmed to be necessary, are unmistakeable
examples that it is not necessary. It may be a necessary
work (chap, ii.) I classed Mr. Spencer among the philosophers who hold,
.in its widest sense, the doctrine of the Eelativity of human knowledge :
for the external things which, he contends, we cannot help believing to be
connected with all our sensations, are riot, according to him, entirely un-
cognizable by us. On the contrary, he believes (p. 548) that " the more or
" less coherent relations among" one's " vstates of consciousness, are gene-
" rated by experience of the more or less constant relations in something
" beyond his consciousness :" i.e., that for every proposition which we can
truly assert about the similitudes, successions, and coexistences of our
states of consciousness, there is a corresponding similitude, succession, or
coexistence really obtaining among Noumena beyond our consciousness,
and even that we can have " experience " of the same. This prodigious
amount of knowledge respecting the " Unknowable " is only consistent
with the doctrine of Eelativity if we understand that doctrine in the very
limited sense in which Sir W. Hamilton holds it. This abates nothing
from the value of the psychological analyses due to Mr. Spencer, whose
services to philosophy as an applier and defender of the " experience
hypothesis" are beyond all price.
Mr. Spencer, in the same paper, adheres to his doctrine that the test of
truth in the last resort is the inconceivability of its negation, and main-
tains that doctrine with his usual argumentative power. In one part of
his argument, he seems to put a sense upon it which would leave little, if
any, difference between his opinion and my own. He seems to say (p. 539)
that the proposition, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one
another, is known to be true by the inconceivability of its negation, in the
same manner in which it might be said that two unequal lines placed side
by side are known to be unequal by the inconceivability of their being equal,
i.e., " I nnd it impossible, while contemplating the lines, to get rid of the
consciousness" of their inequality. If the inconceivableness of the nega-
tive only means that I cannot resist the evidence of my senses for the
affirmative, I have no objection to admit this as the test of any truth,
even a geometrical axiom. I believe that my knowledge of the axiom is? of
exactly the same kind as my knowledge of the inequality of the two lines :
1 know it because I see it ; and as I cannot have this positive intuition
together with its negative, this may be called, if any one pleases, the
inconceivability of the negative. But I do not therefore rest the belief
that things equal to the same thing are equal to one another on an
a priori incapacity of my mind to conceive them unequal. I believe that
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 183
belief to those who think it so ; they may personally be
quite incapable of not holding it. But even if this in-
capability extended to all mankind, it might be merely
the effect of a strong association ; like the impossibility
of believing Antipodes ; and it cannot be shown that even
where the impossibility is. for the time, real, it might
not, as in that case, be overcome. The history of science ]
teems with inconceivabilities which have been conquered,
and supposed necessary truths which have first ceased to
be thought necessary, then to be thought true, and have
finally come to be deemed impossible.* These philoso-
phers, therefore, and among them Sir W. Hamilton, |
I am only unable to conceive them unequal because I have always seen I
them to be equal, and am renewing that experience at almost every instant |
of my life.
Mr. Spencer asks (p. 549), If an axiom of mathematics is said to be
known " only by induction from personal experiences," on what warrant
" are personal experiences asserted ? The testimony of experience is given
" only through memory," and "the trustworthiness of memory" is open to
more doubt than the " immediate consciousness" of the mathematical
truth. Instead, however, of immediate consciousness, let us call it imme-
diate observation, which is a mode of consciousness, and the " personal
experiences" which it yields become the most certain evidence which is
is possible to have : not depending upon memory, but upon direct percep-
tion, which can be repeated at any moment ; corroborated, however, by a
vast mass of memories, both of our own and of other people, which by
their number, ubiquity, and variety operate as a complete insurance against
the possible error of memory in any single instance.
* Mr. Mahaffy, after distinguishing as I have done, between the two \'."
kinds of so-called inconceivables, the Unimaginable and the simply
Incredible, says (pp. viii. ix.), " There seems to be a definite distinction 1
" between them, not of degree, but of kind. We may safely defy Mr. Mill
" to point out a case where an unimaginable (inconceivable) was proved
" true, or even possible. And the reason is plain. The latter depends
" upon the form of the thinking or intuiting faculty ; the former, merely
" upon empirical association." In Mr. Mahaft'y's philosophical system
the distinction passes for one of kind, but he must surely see that it
admits of being construed as a difference only of degree. If an empirical
association between two ideas, not so strong as to be altogether irresistible. \o
makes it difficult to image in our own minds the corresponding facts as
disjoined, it is but rational to believe that a stronger empirical association,
produced by still more incessant repetition, will convert that difficulty
into a conditional impossibility ; an inability only to be overcome by con-
trary experience, which experience the conditions of our terrestial exis-
tence may not permit. And if, as I have before observed, " a mental
" associatioa between two facts, which is not intense enough to make
" their separation unimaginable, may yet create, and if there are no
" counter-associations, always does create, more or less of difficulty in
" believing that the two can exist apart ; a difficulty often amounting to
" a local or temporary impossibility ;" an association which ifl so intense
184 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
mistake altogether the true conditions of psychological
investigation, when, instead of proving a belief to be an
original fact of consciousness by showing that it cannot,
by any known means, have been acquired, they conclude
that it was not acquired, for the reason, often false, and
never sufficiently substantiated, that our consciousness
cannot get rid of it now.
Since, then, Sir W. Hamilton not only neglects, but
repudiates, the only scientific mode of ascertaining our
original beliefs, what does he mean by treating the
question as one of science, and in what manner does
he apply science to it ? Theoretically, he claims for
science an exclusive jurisdiction over the whole domain,
but practically he gives it nothing to do except to settle
as to make the separation unimaginable, may siirely create an impossibility
of belief, not local or temporary, but as durable as the experience which
gave rise to the association.
Mr. Spencer, who is almost willing to rest the claims of inconceivability
as a test of truth on its expressing " the net result of our experience up
to the present time," has given an excellent exposition of this point. He
sees clearly that the difference between the two kinds of inconceivable is
only one of degree the degree of strength of the cohesion between the
two ideas. The proposition " the ice was hot" he justly classes as not
unimaginable, but merely unbelievable ; the unbelievableness, however,
arising from a difficulty, though not amounting to an impossibility, of
combining the two ideas in a representation. " The elements of the pro-
position cannot be put together in thought without great resistance.
Between those other states of consciousness which the word ice connotes,
and the state of consciousness named cold, there is an extremely strong
cohesion a cohesion measured by the resistance to be overcome in
thinking of the ice as hot." (Spencer, p. 543). The merely unbelievable
is thus distinguished from Mr. Mahaffy's unimaginable, not by a generic
difference, but by a minor degree of unimaginability. And the seeming
incredibility is strictly proportioned to the degree of difficulty in com-
bining the two thoughts in one representation.
With regard to Mr. Mahaffy's assertion, that nothing unimaginable has
ever been "proved true, or even possible;" the point would have been
more effectually maintained if he could have said '' nothing which seemed
unimaginable ;" for whatever has been " proved true" or even " possible"
has thereby become imaginable. People had much difficulty, and most
people have some difficulty still, in representing to themselves sunrise as
a motion not of the sun but of the earth ; but no one ha called this
notion of sunrise either inconceivable or unimaginable after knowing it
to be the true notion. Let us first, then, state the question correctly :
Has anything which seemed unimaginable been proved true, or possible ?
It is hardly practicable to give such an answer to this question as will
silence the retort, that what was called unimaginable was realiy no more
than incredible ; for since unimaginableness, as I have said, exists in
.
THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 185
the relations of the supposed intuitive beliefs among
themselves. It is the province of science, he thinks, to
resolve some of these beliefs into others. He prescribes, j
as a rule of judgment, what he calls " the Law of
Parcimony." No greater number of ultimate beliefs are
to be postulated than is strictly indispensable. Where ,
one such belief can be looked upon as a particular case f
of another the belief in Matter, for instance, of the
cognition of a Non-ego the more special of the two
necessities of thought merges in the more general
one. This identification of two necessities of thought,
and subsumption of one of them under the other, he
is not wrong in regarding as a function ot science.
He affords an example of it, when, in a manner
which we shall hereafter characterize, he denies to
Causation the character, which philosophers ot his school
numerous degrees, graduating from a slight difficulty to at least a tem-
porary impossibility, there is no definite line of demarcation between the
absolutely unimaginable (if there be such a thing) and the totally incre-
dible, nor even between what is unimaginable by a given person, and what
is merely incredible to him. Most of the questions which lie on that (
border land are still disputed. For example : is a creation a nihilo, or
Matter capable of thinking, unimaginable, or only incredible ? Both the
one and the other are habitually ranked among the most unimaginable of
all things. Yet the one is firmly believed by all Materialists, and the
other by all Christians. Every Materialist, therefore, and every Christian,
may be called as a witness that things which are unimaginable are not
only possible but true. To take another instance an event without a
cause. Is that unimaginable, or only incredible ? All who regard the
category of Cause and Effect as a necessity of thought, including Sir W.
Hamilton, and Mr. Mahaffy himself, maintain it to be unimaginable.
Yet most of these believe it to be both possible and true in the case of
human freewill. Not only therefore what to one man seems unimaginable,
another believes to be true, but the same man believes to be true what
to himself seems unimaginable : witness the whole Philosophy of the
Conditioned.
Dr. M'Cosh thinks that antipodes were unbelievable, not in consequence
of an association, but because (p. 240) " the alleged fact seemed contrary
" to a law of nature established by observation. A gathered experience
" seemed to show that there was an absolute up and down, and that heavy
" bodies tended downwards." Of course it was the apparent experience
that generated the association. But if there had been no more in the
matter than an intellectual conviction, the conviction would have given
way as soon as any one made the remark that the experience was con-
fined to a region in which the direction of down coincided with direction
towards the earth. It is because our intellectual convictions generate
temporarily inseparable associations, that they give way so slowly before
evidence.
'.
i
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A
186 THE INTERPRETATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
have commonly assigned to it, of an ultimate belief,
and attempts to identify it with another and more
general law of thought. This limited function is the
only one which, it seems to me, is reserved for science
in tSir W. Hamilton's mode of studying the primary
facts of consciousness. In the mode he practises of
ascertaining them to be facts of consciousness, there is
nothing for science to do. For, to call them so because
in his opinion he himself, and those who agree with him,
cannot get rid of the belief in them, does not seem
exactly a scientific process.* It is, however, characteristic
of what I have called the introspective, in contradis-
tinction to the psychological, method of metaphysical
inquiry. The difference between these methods will
now be exemplified by showing them at work on a
particular question, the most fundamental one in philo-
* sophy, the distinction between the -higo and the Non-ego.
We shall first examine what Sir W. Hamilton has
done by his method, and shall afterwards attempt to
exemplify the use which can be made of the other.
* The " Inquirer" (p. 54) thinks that Sir W. Hamilton demanded, as
evidence that a supposed fact of consciousness is not acquired, but ori-
ginal, not only that it should not be reducible to a generalization from
experience, but that it should lie " at the root of all experience ;" which
the " Inquirer" understands to mean " that no experience is possible unless
this belief, this mode of thought, is already present with us." If Sir W.
Hamilton meant this, he took no pains to show that he meant it. The
authority quoted is a passing expression (Lectures, i. 270) : '* Whenever
" in an analysis of the intellectual phenomenon, we arrive at an element
" which we cannot reduce to a generalization from experience, but which
" lies at the root of all experience, and which we cannot, therefore, resolve
" into any higher principle, this we properly call a fact of consciousness."
The idea of the words in italics is no further developed ; it is omitted from
the definition in the next page, " A fact of consciousness is thus, that
whose existence is given and guaranteed by an original and necessary
" belief" (unless the idea is supposed to be implied in the word "original");
and Sir W. Hamilton never, as far as I am aware, recurs to it in his
attempts to prove the originality of a belief. This is the more remarkable,
because Kant makes a continual and obtrusive use of this criterion ; we
I are always hearing from him that this or that mental element cannot be
the product of experience, because its pre-existeuce is required to render
.
experience possibiJe ; which goes far to show that Sir W. Hamilton's
abstinence was intentional, and grounded on a sense of the extreme
difficulty of proving, in any of the disputed cases, what Kant so confidently
affirms. It is not unusual with Sir W. Hamilton to adopt, from other
philosophers, single expressions of which the full meaning forms no part
of his own mode of thought.
187
CHAPTER X.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S VIEW OF THE DIFFERENT THEORIES
RESPECTING THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD.
SIR W. HAMILTON brings a very serious charge against
the great majority of philosophers. He accuses them of
playing fast and loose with the testimony of conscious-
ness ; rejecting it when it is inconvenient, but appealing
to it as conclusive when they have need of it to establish
any of their opinions. "No* philosopher has ever^
" openly thrown off allegiance to the authority of con-
" sciousness." No one denies " thatt as all philosophy
" is evolved from consciousness, so on the truth of con-
" sciousness, the possibility of all philosophy is depen-
" dent." But if any testimony of consciousness be sup-
posed false, " thej truth of no other fact of consciousness
"can be maintained. The legal brocard, Falsus in uno,
" falsus in omnibus, is a rule not more applicable to other
" witnesses than to consciousness. Thus every system
" of philosophy which implies the negation of any fact
" of consciousness is not only necessarily unable, without
" self-contradiction, to establish its own truth by any
" appeal to consciousness ; it is also unable, without self-
" contradiction, to appeal to consciousness against the
" falsehood of any other system. If the absolute and
" universal veracity of consciousness be once surrendered,
" every system is equally true, or rather all are equally
" false ; philosophy is impossible, for it has now no in-
" strument by which truth can be discovered, no standard
" by which it can be tried ; the root of our nature is a
" lie. But though it is thus manifestly the common
" interest of every scheme of philosophy to preserve
* Lectures, i. 377. t Ibid. p. 285. J Ibid p. 283.
188 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
" intact the integrity of consciousness, almost every
" scheme of philosophy is only another mode in -which
" this integrity has been violated. If, therefore, I am
" able to prove the fact of this various violation, and to
" show that the facts of consciousness have never, or
" hardly ever, been iairly evolved, it will follow, as 1
" said, that no reproach can be justly addressed to con-
" sciousness as an ill-informed, or Vacillating, or perfi-
" dious witness, but to those only who were two proud
" or too negligent to accept its testimony, to employ its
" materials, and obey its Jaws." That nearly all philo-
sophers have merited this imputation, our author endea-
vours to show by a classified enumeration of the various
theories which they have maintained respecting the per-
ception of material objects. No instance can be better
suited for trying the dispute. The question of an ex-
ternal world is the great battle-ground of metaphysics,
not so much from its importance in itself, as because
while it relates to the most familiar of all our mental
acts, it forcibly illustrates the characteristic differences
between the two metaphysical methods.
" We are immediately conscious in perception," says
Sir.W. Hamilton.* "of an ego and a non-ego, known
" together, and known in contrast to each other. This
" is the fact of the Duality of Consciousness. It is clear
'' and manifest. When 1 concentrate my attention in the
'' simplest act of perception, I return irom my observa-
'' tiori with the most irresistible conviction of two facts,
*' or rather two branches of the same fact ; that I am,
'' and that something different irom me exists. In this
'' act I am conscious of myself as the perceiving subject,
'' and of an external reality as the object perceived ; and
" 1 am conscious of both existences in the same indivi-
'* sible moment of intuition. The knowledge of the
" subject does not precede, nor follow, the knowledge of
'* the object ; neither determines, neither is determined
" by the other. Such is the fact of perception revealed
,i " in consciousness, and as it determines mankind in.
* Lectures, i. 288-295.
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 189.
" general in their almost equal assurance of the reality of
" an external world, as of the existence of our own minds.
" We may, therefore, lay it down as an undisputed
" truth, that consciousness gives, as an ultimate fact, a
" primitive quality; a knowledge of the ego in relation
" and contrast to the non-ego ; and a knowledge of the
" non-ego in relation and contrast to the ego. The ego
" and non-ego are thus given in an original synthesis, as
" conjoined in the unity of knowledge, and in an original
" antithesis, as opposed in the contrariety of existence.
" In other words, we are conscious of them in an indivi-
" sible act of knowledge together and at once, but we
" are conscious of them, as, in themselves, different and
" exclusive of each other.
" Again, consciousness not only gives us a duality, but
" it gives its elements in equal counterpoise and inde-
" pendence. The ego and non-ego mind and matter
" are not only griven together, but in absolute co-equality.
" The one does not precede, the other does not follow ;
" and in their mutual relation, each is equally dependent,
" equally independent. Such is the fact as given in and
" by consciousness." Or rather (he should have said)
such is the answer we receive, when we examine and in-
terrogate our present consciousness. To assert more than
this, merely on this evidence, is to beg the question
instead of solving it.
" Philosophers have not, however, been content to
" accept the fact in its integrity, but have been pleased
" to accept it only under such qualifications as it suited
" their systems to devise. In truth, there are just as
" many different philosophical systems originating in this
" fact, as it admits of various possible modifications. An
" enumeration of these modifications, accordingly, affords
" an enumeration of philosophical theories.
"In the first place, there is the grand division of
" philosophers into those who do, and those who do not,
" accept the fact in its integrity. Of modern philosophers,
" almost all are comprehended under the latter category,
" while of the former, if we do not remount to the
190 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
" schoolmen and the ancients, I am only aware of a single
" philosopher before Reid, who did not reject, at least in
" part, the fact as consciousness affords it.
"As it is always expedient to possess a precise name
" for a precise distinction, I would be inclined to de-
" nominate those who implicitly acquiesce in the primi-
" tive duality as given in consciousness, the Natural
" Realists, or Natural Dualists, and their doctrine, Na-
" tural Realism or Natural Dualism." This is, of course,
the author's own doctrine.
" In the second place, the philosophers who do not
" accept the fact, and the whole fact, may be divided and
" subdivided into various classes by various principles of
" distribution.
" The first subdivision will be taken from the total, or
" partial, rejection of the import of the fact. I have
" previously shown that to deny any fact of conscious-
" ness as an actual phenomenon is utterly impossible."
(But it is very far from impossible to believe that some-
thing which we now confound with consciousness, may
have been altogether foreign to consciousness when this
was unmingled with acquired impressions.) " But
" though necessarily admitted as a present phenomenon,
" the import of this phenomenon all beyond our actual
" consciousness of its existence may be denied. We
" are able, without self-contradiction, to suppose, and
" consequently to assert, that all to which the pheno-
" menon of which we are conscious refers, is a decep-
tion ;" (say rather, an unwarranted inference;) that
" for example, the past, to which an act of memory
" refers, is only an illusion involved in our consciousness of
" the present that the unknown subject to which every
" phenomenon of which we are conscious involves a
" reference, has no reality beyond this reference itself,
" in short, that all our knowledge of mind or matter is
" only a consciousness of various bundles of baseless
" appearances. This doctrine, as refusing a substantial
-" reality to the phenomenal existence of which we are
" conscious, is called Nihilism ; and consequently, philo-
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 191
" sophers, as they affirm or deny the authority of con-
" sciousness in guaranteeing a substratum or substance
" to the manifestation of the ego and non-ego, are di-
" vided into Realists or Substantialists, and into Nihilists
" or Non-Substantialists. Of positive or dogmatic
"Nihilism there is no example in modern philo-
" sophy But as a sceptical conclusion from the
" premises of previous philosophers, we have an illus-
" trious example of Nihilism in Hume ; and the cele-
" brated Fichte admits that the speculative principles of
" his own idealism would, unless corrected by his prac-
" tical, terminate in this result."
The Realists, or Substantialists, those who do believe <^
in a substratum, but reject the testimony of consciousness
to an immediate cognizance of an Ego and a Non-ego, our
author divides into two classes, according as they admit
the real existence of two substrata, or only of one.
These last, whom he denominates Unitarians or Monists,
either acknowledge the ego alone, or the non-ego alone,
or regard the two as identical. Those who admit the
ego alone, looking upon the non-ego as a product evolved i^
from it (i.e. as something purely mental) are the Idealists. \jpj
Those who admit the non-ego alone, and regard the ego
as evolved from it (i.e. as purely material) are the Ma-
terialists. The third class acknowledge the equipoise of
the two, but deny their antithesis, maintaining " that
" mind and matter are only phenomenal modifications ,^\
" of the same common substance. This is the doctrine
" of Absolute Identity, a doctrine of which the most
" illustrious representatives among recent philosophers
" are Schelling, Hegel, and Cousin." 5 *
There remain those who admit the coequal reality of
the Ego and the Non-ego, of mind and matter, and also
their distinctness from one another, but deny that they
are known immediately. These are Dualists, " hut aref
" distinguished from the Natural Dualists of whom we
" formerly spoke, in this that the latter establish the
" existence of the two worlds of mind and matter on the
* Lectures, i. 296-297. t Ibid. 295-296.
192 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
" immediate knowledge we possess of both series of
" phenomena a knowledge of which consciousness
" assures us ; whereas the former, surrendering the
" veracity of consciousness to our immediate knowledge
" of material phenomena, and consequently, our im-
" mediate knowledge of the existence of matter, still
" endeavour, by various hypotheses and reasonings, to
"maintain the existence of an unknown external world.
" As we denominate those who maintain a Dualism as
" involved in the fact of consciousness, Natural Dualists;
" so we may style those dualists who deny the evidence
" of consciousness to our immediate knowledge of aught
" beyond the sphere of mind, Hypothetical Dualists, or
" Cosmothetic Idealists.
" To the class of Cosmothetic Idealists, the great
" majority of modern philosophers are to be referred.
" Denying an immediate or intuitive knowledge of the
" external reality, whose existence they maintain, they,
" of course, hold a doctrine of mediate or representative
" perception ; and, according to the various modifications
" of that doctrine, they are again subdivided into those
" who view, in the immediate object of perception, a
" representative entity present to the mind, but not a
" mere mental modification, and into those who hold
" that the immediate object is only a representative
" modification of the mind itself. It is not always easy
" to determine to which of these classes some philoso-
" pliers belong. To the former, or class holding the
" cruder hypothesis of representation, certainly belong
" the followers of Democritus and Epicurus, those Aris-
" totelians who held the vulgar doctrine of species
"' (Aristotle himself was probably a natural dualist), and
" in recent times, among manv others, Malebranche,
" Berkeley, Clarke, Newton, Abraham Tucker, &c. To
" these is also, but problematically, to be referred, Locke.
''To the second, or class holding the finer hypothesis
" of representation, belong, without any doubt, many
" of the Platonists, Leibnitz, Aruauld, Crousaz, Con-
" dillac, Kant, &c., and to this class is also probably to
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 193
"be referred Descartes." In our own country the best
known and typical specimen of this mode of thinking,
is Brown ; and it is upon him that our author discharges
most of the shafts which this class of thinkers, as being
the least distant from him of all his opponents, copiously
receive from him.*
With regard to the various opinions thus enumerated,
I shall first make a remark of general application, and
shall then advert particularly to the objects of Sir W.
Hamilton's more especial animadversion, the Cosmo-
thetic Idealists.
Concerning all these classes of thinkers, except the
Natural Realists, Sir W. Hamilton's statement is, that
they deny some part of the testimony of consciousness,
and by so doing invalidate the appeals which they
nevertheless make to consciousness, as a voucher for
* In one of the Dissertations on Reid (Dissertation C.) Sir "W. Hamilton
gives a much more elaborate, and more minutely discriminated enumera-
tion and classification of the opinions which have been or might be held
respecting our knowledge of mind and of matter. But the one which I
have quoted from the Lectures is more easily followed, and sufficient for
all the purposes for which I have occasion to advert to it. I shall only
cite from the later exposition a single passage (p. 817) which exhibits in a
strong light the sentiments of our author towards philosophers of the
school of Brown.
" Natural Realism and Absolute Idealism are the only systems worthy
" of a philosopher ; for, as they alone have any foundation in conscious-
" ness, so they alone have any consistency in themselves. . . . Both build
' upon the same fundamental fact, that the extended object immediately
' perceived is identical with the extended object actually existing ; for
' the truth of this fact, both can appeal to the common sense of mankind ;
' and to the common sense of mankind Berkeley did appeal not less confi-
' dently, and perhaps more logically than Reid. . . . The scheme of
" Hypothetical Realism or Cosmothetic Idealism, which supposes that
" behind the nonexistent world .perceived, lurks a correspondent but un-
" known world existing, is not only repugnant to our natural beliefs, but
' in manifold contradiction with itself. The scheme of Natural Realism
' may be ultimately difficult for, like all other truths, it ends in the
' inconceivable ; but Hypothetical Realism in its origin in its develop-
' ment in it? result, although the favourite scheme of philosophers is
' philosophically absurd."
Sir W. Hamilton may in general be depended on for giving a perfectly
fair statement of the opinions of adversaries ; but in this case his almost
passionate contempt for the later forms of Cosmothetic Idealism has misled
him. No Cosmothetic Idealist would accept as a fair statement of his
opinion, the monstrous proposition that a " non-existent world" is " per-
ceived."
194 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
their own doctrines. If he had said that they all run
"
counter, in some particular, to the general sentiment of
mankind that they all deny some common opinion,
some natural belief (meaning by natural, not one
which rests on a necessity of our nature, but merely
one which, in common with innumerable varieties
of false opinion, mankind have a strong tendency
to adopt) ; had he said only this, no .one could have
contested its truth ; but it would not have been a
reductio ad afaurdum of his opponents. For all philo-
sophers, Sir W. Hamilton as much as the rest, deny
some common opinions, which others might call natural
beliefs, but which those who deny them consider, and
have a right to consider, as natural prejudices ; held,
nevertheless, by the generality of mankind in the per-
suasion of their being self-evident, or, in other words,
intuitive, and deliverances of consciousness. Some of
the points on which Sir W. Hamilton is at issue with
natural beliefs, relate to the very subject in hand the
perception of external things. We have found him
maintaining that we do not see the sun; but an image
of it, and that no two persons see the same sun ; in con-
tradiction to as clear a case as could be given of natural
"belief. And we shall find him affirming, in opposition
to an equally strong natural belief, that we immediately
perceive extension only in our own organs, and not in
the objects we see or touch. Beliefs, therefore, which
seem among the most natural that can be entertained,
are sometimes; in his opinion, delusive ; and he has told
us that to discriminate which these are, is not within
the competence of everybody, but only of philosophers.
He would say, of course, that the beliefs which he rejects
were not in our consciousness originally. And nearly
all his opponents say the same thing of those which they
reject. Those, indeed, who, like Kant, believe that
there are elements present, even at the first moment of
internal consciousness, which do not exist in the object,
but are derived from the mind's own laws, are fairly
open to Sir W. Hamilton's criticism. It is not my
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 195
business to justify, in point of consistency, any more
than of conclusiveness, the reasoning, by which Kant,
after getting rid of the outward reality of all the attri- JQsW^
butes of Body, persuades himself that he demonstrates ''
the externality of Body itself.* But, as regards all
existing schools of thought not descended from Kant,
Sir W. Hamilton's accusation is without ground.
There is something more to be said respecting the
mixed multitude of metaphysicians whom our author
groups together under the title of Cosmothetic Idealists,
and whose mode of thought he judges more harshly
than that of any other school. He represents them as V
holding the doctrine that we perceive external objects,
not by an immediate, but by a mediate or representative /
perception. And he recognises three divisions of tliem,f
according to three different forms in which this hypo-
thesis may be entertained. The supposed representa-
tive object maybe regarded, first, as not a state of mind,
but something else ; either external to the mind, like
the species sensibiles of some of the ancients, and the
" motions of the brain" of some of the early moderns ;
or in the mind, like the Ideas of Berkeley. Secondly,
it may be regarded as a state of mind, but a state dif-
ierent from the mind's act in perceiving or being con-,
scious of it : of this kind, perhaps, are the Ideas of Locke.
Or, thirdly, as a state of mind identical with the act by
which we are said to perceive it. This last is the form
in which, as Sir W. Hamilton truly says,| the doctrine
was held by Brown.
Now, the first two of these three opinions may fairly
be called what our author calls them theories of me-
diate or representative perception. The object which, in
* In the Lehrsatz of the 21st Supplement to the Kritik der Reiuen
Vernunft ; the Lemma at p. 184 of Mr. Heywood's Translation. See
also, in Heywood, the note at p. xxxix. of the Second Preface ; being
(Supplement II. in Kosenkranz and Schubert's edition of the collected
works, vol. ii. p. 684. This reasoning of Kant, to my mind, strangely
sophistical, nevertheless does not place the externality of Bodies out of
the mind. It is " externality in Space," and Space, in his philosophy,,
does not exist out of the mind.
f Discussions, p. 57. + Ibid. p. 58*
o 2
190 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
these theories, the mind is supposed directly to perceive,
is a tertium quid, which by the one theory is, and by
{ t>.the other is not, a state or modification of mind, but in
A v"* both is distinct equally from the act of perception, and
,! from the external object : and the mind is cognizant of
external object vicariously, through this third thing,
of which alone it has immediate cognizance of which
alone, therefore, it is, in Sir W. Hamilton's sense of the
V/*
word, conscious. Against both these theories Reid,
Stewart, and our author, are completely triumphant, and
; I am in no way interested in pressing for a rehearing of
, the cause.
But the third opinion, which is Brown's, cannot with
any justness of thought or propriety of language 'be
called a theory of mediate or representative perception.
Had Sir W. Hamilton taken half the pains to under-
stand Brown which he took to understand far inferior
thinkers, he never would have described Brown's doc-
trine in terms so inappropriate.
Representative knowledge is always understood by
our author to be knowledge of a thing by means of an
image of it ; by means of something which is like the
thing itself. " Representative knowledge," he says, " is
" only deserving of the name of knowledge in so far as
" it is conformable with the intuitions which it repre-
" sents."* The representation must stand in a rela-
tion to what it represents, like that of a picture to its
original : as the representation in memory of a past
impression of sense, does to that past impression ; as a
representation in imagination does to a supposed pos-
sible presentation of sense ; and as the Ideas of the earlier
Cosmothetic Idealists were supposed to do to the out-
ward objects of which they were the image or impress.
But the Mental Modifications of Brown and those who
think with him, are not supposed to bear any resem-
blance to the objects which excite them. These ob-
jects are supposed to be unknown to us, except as the
causes of the mental modifications. The only relation
* Dissertations on Reid, p. 811.
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 197
between the two is that of cause and effect. Brown,
being free from the vulgar < error that a cause must
be like its effect, and admitting no knowledge of
the cause (beyond its bare existence) except the effect
itself, naturally found nothing in it which it was pos-
sible to compare with the effect, or in virtue of which
any resemblance could be affirmed to exist between
the two. In another place,* Sir W. Hamilton makes
an ostensible distinction between the fact of resembling
and that of truly representing the objects ; but defines
the last expression to mean, affording us " such a know-
" ledge of their nature as we should have were an im-
" mediate intuition of the reality in itself competent to
" man." No one who is at all acquainted with Brown's
opinions will pretend him to have maintained that we have
anything of this sort. He did not believe that the mental
modification afforded us any knowledge whatever of the
nature of the external object. There is no need to quote
passages in proof of this ; it is a fact patent to whoever
reads his Lectures. It is the more strange that Sir W.
Hamilton should have failed to recognise this opinion of
Brown, because it is exactly the opinion which he him-
self holds respecting our knowledge of objects in respect
of 'their Secondary Qualities. These, he says, are " in
their own nature occult and inconceivable," and are
known only in their effects on us, that is, by the mental
modifications which they produce.!
Further, Brown's is not only not a theory of repre-
sentative perception, but it is not even a theory of
mediate perception. He assumes no tertium quid, no
object of thought intermediate between the mind and
the outward object. He recognises only the perceptive
act ; which with him means, and is always declared to
mean, the mind itself perceiving. It will hardly be pre-
tended that the mind itself is the " representative object"
interposed by him between itself and the outward thing
* Dissertations on Eeid, p. 842.
t Dissertations on Reid, p. b46 : aud the fuller explanation at pp. 8o4
and 857.
198 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
which is acting upon it ; and if it is not, there certainly
is no other. But if Brown's theory is not a theory of
mediate perception, it loses all that essentially distin-
guishes it from Sir W. Hamilton's own doctrine. For
Brown, also thinks that we have, on the occasion of
certain sensations, an instantaneous and irresistible con-
viction of an outward object. And if this conviction is
immediate and necessitated by the constitution of our
nature, in what does it differ from our author's direct
consciousness ? Consciousness, immediate knowledge,
and intuitive knowledge, are, Sir W. Hamilton tells us,
. ~ convertible expressions ; and if it be granted that when-
ever our senses are affected by a material object, we
immediately and intuitively recognise that object as
existing and distinct from us, it requires a great deal of
ingenuity to make out any substantial difference between
this immediate intuition of an external world, and Sir
W. Hamilton's direct perception of it.
The distinction which our author makes, resolves
itself, as explained by him, into the difference of which
he has said so much, but of which he seemed to have so
confused an idea, between Belief and Knowledge. In
Brown's opinion, and I will add, in Reid's, the mental
modification which we experience from the presence of
' an object, raises in us an irresistible belief that the
object exists. No, says Sir W. Hamilton : it is not a
belief, but a knowledge : we have indeed a belief, and our
knowledge is certified by the belief; but this belief of
ours regarding the object is a belief that we know it.
" In perception,* consciousness gives, as an ultimate
" fact, a belief of the knowledge of the existence of somc-
" thing different from self. As ultimate, this belief cannot
" be reduced to a higher principle ; neither can it be
" truly analysed into a double element. We only believe
" that this something exists, because we believe that we
" know (are conscious of) this something as existing ;
" the belief of the existence is necessarily involved in the
" belief of the knowledge of the existence. Bath are
* Discussions, p. 89.
M
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 199
" original, or neither. Does consciousness deceive us in
" the latter, it necessarily deludes us in the former ; and
" if the former, though a fact of consciousness, is false,
" the latter, because a fact of consciousness, is not true.
' The beliefs contained in the two propositions,
" 1. I believe that a material world exists ;
" 2. I believe that I immediately know a material
" world existing (in other words, I believe that
" the external reality itself is the object of which
" I am conscious in perception),
" though distinguished by philosophers, are thus vir-
" tually identical. The belief of an external world was
" too powerful, not to compel an acquiescence in its truth.
" But the philosophers yielded to nature, only in so far '
" as to coincide in the dominant result. They falsely
" discriminated the belief in the existence, from the belief
" in the knowledge. With a few exceptions, they held
" fast by the truth of the first ; but they concurred, with
" singular unanimity, in abjuring the second."
Accordingly, Brown is rebuked because, while reject-
ing our natural belief that we know the external object,
he yet accepts our natural belief that it exists as a suffi-
cient warrant for its existence. But what real distinction
is there between Brown's intuitive belief of the existence
of the object, and Sir W. Hamilton's intuitive knowledge
of it ? Just three pages previous,* Sir W. Hamilton had
said, " Our knowledge rests ultimately on certain facts of
" consciousness, which as primitive, and consequently
" incomprehensible, are given less in the form of cogni-
" tions than of beliefs." The consciousness of an exter-
nal world is, on his own showing, primitive and
incomprehensible ; it therefore is less a cognition than
a belief. But if we do not so much know as believe an
external world, what is meant by saying that we believe
that we know it ? Either we do not know, b it only
believe it, and if so, Brown and the other philosophers
assailed were right ; or knowledge and belief, in the case
of ultimate facts, are identical, and then, believing that
* Discussions, p. 86.
200 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW or THEORIES
we know is only believing that we believe, which accord-
ing to our author's and to all rational principles, is but
another word for simple believing.
It would not be fair, however, to hold our author to
his own confused use of the terms Belief and Knowledge.
He never succeeds in making anything like an intelli-
gible distinction between these two notions considered
generally, but in particular cases we may be able to find
something which he is attempting to express by them.
In the present case his meaning seems to be, that
Brown's Belief in an external object, though instanta-
neous and irresistible, was supposed to be suggested to
the mind by its own sensation; which suggestion Brown
regarded as a case of a more general law, whereby every
fact suggests the intuitive belief of a cause or antecedent
with which it is invariably connected : while Sir W.
Hamilton's Knowledge of the object is supposed to
arise along with the sensation, and to be co-ordinate
with it. And this is what Sir W. Hamilton means
by calling Brown's a mediate, his own an immediate
cognition of the object : the real difference being that,
on Sir W. Hamilton's theory, the cognition of the ego
or of its modification, and that of the non-ego, are simul-
taneous, while on Brown's the one immediately precedes
the other. Our author expresses this meaning, though
much less clearly, when he declares* Brown's theory to
be "that in perception, the external reality is not the
" immediate object of consciousness, but that the ego is
" only determined in some unknown manner to represent
" the non-ego, which representation, though only a modi-
" fication of mind or self, we are compelled by an illusion
" of our nature, to mistake for a modification of matter,
" or non-self." This being our author's conception of
the doctrine which he has to refute, let us see in what
manner he proceeds to refute it.
"You will remark," he says,f "that Brown (and
" Brown only speaks the language of all the philosophers
" who do not allow the udnd a consciousness of aught
* Lectures, ii. 86. f Ibid. ii. 106.
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 201
" beyond its own states,) misstates the phenomenon
" when he asserts that, in perception, there is a reference
" from the internal to the external, from the known to
" the unknown. That this is not the fact, our observa-
" tion of the phenomenon will at once convince you.
" In an act of perception, I am conscious of something
" as self and of something as not self : this is the simple
" fact. The philosophers, on the contrary, who will not
" accept this fact, misstate it. They say that we are
" conscious of nothing but a certain modification of
" mind ; but this modification involves a reference to,
" in other words, a representation of, something external
" as its object. Now this is untrue. We are conscious \
" of no reference, of no representation : we believe that J
" the object of which we are conscious is the object which "
" exists." To this argument (of the worth of which
something has been said already) I shall return presently.
But he subjoins a second.
" Nor could there possibly be such reference or repre-
" sentation ; for reference or representation supposes a
" knowledge already possessed of the object referred to
" or represented ; butjDerception is the faculty by which
" our first knowledge is acquired, and therefore cannot
" suppose a previous knowledge as its condition." And
further on :* " Mark the vice of the procedure. We can
" only, 1, assert the existence of an external world in-
" asmuch as we know it to exist ; and we can only, 2,
" assert that one thing is representative of another, mas-
" much as the thing represented is known, independently
" of the representation. But how does the hypothesis
" of a representative perception proceed ? It actually
" converts the fact into an hypothesis : actually converts
" the hypothesis into a fact. On this theory, we do not
" know the existence of an external world, except on the
" supposition that that which we do know, truly repre-
" sents it as existing. The hypothetical realist cannot,
"therefore, establish the fact of the external world,
" except upon the fact of its representation. This is
* Lectures, ii. 138, 139.
202 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
" manifest. We have, therefore, next to ask him, how
" he knows the fact, that the external world is actually
" represented. A representation supposes something
" represented, and the representation of the external
" world supposes the existence of that world. Now the
" hypothetical realist, when asked how he proves the
" reality of the outer world, which, ex hypothesi, he does
" not know, can only say that he infers its existence from
" the fact of its representation. But the fact of the re-
" presentation of an external world supposes the exis-
" tence of that world ; therefore he is again at the
" point from which he started. He has been arguing
" in a circle."
Let me first remark that this reasoning assumes the
whole point in dispute ; it presupposes that the supposi-
tion which it is brought to disprove is impossible. The
theory of the third form of Cosmothetic Idealism is, that
though we are conscious only of the sensations which
'an object gives us, we are determined by a necessity of
our nature, which some call an instinct, others an intui-
tion, others a fundamental law of belief, to ascribe these
sensations to something external, as their substratum, or
as their cause. There is surely nothing a priori impos-
sible in this supposition. The supposed instinct or in-
tuition seems to be of the same family with many other
Laws of Thought, or Natural Beliefs, which our author
not only admits without scruple, but enjoins obedience to,
under the usual sanction, that otherwise our intelligence
must be a lie. In the present case, however, he, without
the smallest warrant, excludes this from the list of pos-
sible hypotheses. He says that we cannot infer a reality
from a mental representation, unless we already know
the reality independently of the mental representation.
Now he could hardly help being aware that this is the
very matter in dispute. Those who hold the opinion he
argues against, do not admit the premise upon which he
argues. They say that we may be, and are, necessitated
to infer a cause, of which we know nothing whatever
except its effect. And why not ? Sir W. Hamilton
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 203
thinks us entitled to infer a substance from attributes,
though he allows that we know nothing of the substance
except its attributes.
But this is not the worst, and there are few specimens
of our author in which his deficiencies as a philosopher
stand out in a stronger light. As Burke in politics, so
Sir W. Hamilton in metaphysics, was too often a
polemic rather than a connected thinker : the generali-
zations of both, often extremely valuable, seem less the
matured convictions of a scientific mind, than weapons
snatched up for the service of a particular quarrel. If
Sir W. Hamilton can only seize upon something which
will strike a hard blow at an opponent, he seldom
troubles himself how much of his own edifice may be
knocked down by the shock. Had he examined the
argument he here uses, sufficiently to determine whether
he could stand by it as a deliberate opinion, he would have
perceived that it committed him to the doctrine that
there is no such thing as representative knowledge. But
it is one of Sir W. Hamilton's most positive tenets that
there is representative knowledge, and that Memory,
among other things, is an example of it. Let us turn
back to his discussion of that subject, and see what he,
at that time, considered representative knowledge to be.
"Every act,* and consequently every act of know-
" ledge, exists only as it now exists ; and as it exists
" only in the Now, it can be cognizant only of a now-
" existent object. But the object known in memory is,
" ex hypothesi, past ; consequently, we are reduced to
" the dilemma, either of refusing a past object to be \
" known in memory at all, or of admitting it to be only 1
" mediately known, in and through a present object. /
" That the latter alternative is the true one, it will ]
" require a very few explanatory words to convince you.
" What am the contents of an act of memory ? An act
" of memory is merely a present state of mind which we '
" are conscious of not as absolute, but as relative to, and
" representing, another state of mind, and accompanied with
* Lectures, i. -219, 220.
204 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
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" the belief that the state of mind, as now represented has
" actually been. I remember an event I saw the land-
" ing of George IV. at Leith. This remembrance is
" only a consciousness of certain imaginations, involving
" the conviction that these imaginations now represent ideally
" what I formerly really experienced. All that is imme-
" diately known in the act of memory, is the present
" mental modification, that is, the representation and
" concomitant belief. Beyond this mental modification
" we know nothing; and this mental modification is not
" only known to consciousness, but only exists in and
" by consciousness. Of any past object, real or ideal, the
" mind knows and can know nothing, for, ex hypothesi, no
" such object now exists ; or if it be said to know such
" an object, it can only be said to know it mediately, as
" represented in the present mental modification. Properly
" speaking, however, wel^now only the actual and pre-
" sent, and all real knowledge is an immediate know-
" ledge. What is said to be mediately known, is, in
" truth not known to be, but only believed to be : for
" its existence is only an inference resting on the belief, that
" the mental modification truly represents what is in itself
" beyond the sphere of knoivledge."
Had Sir W. Hamilton totally forgotten all this, when
a few lectures afterwards, having then in front of him
a set of antagonists who needed the theory here laid
down, he repudiated it denying altogether the possi-
bility of the mental state so truly and clearly expressed
in this passage, and affirming that we cannot possibly
recognise a mental modification to be representative of
something else, unless we have a present knowledge of
that something else, otherwise obtained ? With merely
the alteration of putting instead of a past state of mind,
a present external object, the Cosmothetic Idealists
might borrow his language down to the minutest detail.
They, too, believe that the mental modification is a pre-
sent state of mind, which we are conscious of, not as
absolute, but as relative to, and representing, " an ex-
" ternal object, and accompanied with the belief that
jK
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 205
" the object as now represented, actually" is : that we
know something (viz. matter) only " as represented in
" the present mental modification," and that " its exis-
" tence is only an inference, resting on the belief that
" the mental modification truly represents what is in
" itself beyond the sphere of knowledge." They do not,
strictly speaking, require quite so much as this : for the
word " represents," especially with " truly" joined to it,
suggest the idea of a resemblance, such as does, in
reality, exist between the picture of a fact in memory,
and the present impression to which it corresponds ;
but the Cosmothetic Idealists only maintain that the
mental modification arises from something, and that the
reality of this unknown something is testified by a
natural belief. That they apply to one case the same
theory which our author applies to another, does not, of
course, prove them to be right ; but it proves the suicidal
character (to use one of his favourite expressions) of our
author's argument, when he scouts the supposition of
an instinctive inference from a known effect to an un-
known cause,, as an hypothesis which can in no possible
case be legitimate ; forgetful that its legitimacy is re-
quired by his own psychology, one of the leading doc-
trines of which is entirely grounded on it.
It is not only in treating of Memory, that Sir W.
Hamilton requires a process of thought precisely similar '-. -
to that which, when employed by opponents, he declares &t<J
to be radically illegitimate. I have already mentioned ty^k
that in his opinion our perceptions of sight are not per- f/ovwv*
ceptions of the outward object, but of its image, a " modi- ^
" fication of light in immediate relation to our organ of ;
" vision," and that no two persons see the same sun ; pro-
positions in direct conflict with the " natural beliefs" to -'
which he so often refers, and to which Reid, not without ( ^* vv '
reason, appeals in this instance ; for assuredly people in
general are as firmly convinced that what they see is the
real sun, as that what they touch is the real table. Let us
hear Sir W. Hamilton once more on this subject. " It is*
* Lectures, ii. 153, 154.
206 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
" not by perception, but by a process of reasoning, that
" we connect the objects of sense with existences beyond
" the sphere of immediate knowledge. It is enough that
" perception affords us the knowledge of the non-ego at
"'the point of sense. To arrogate to it the power of
" immediately informing us of external things, which are
" only the causes of the object, we immediately perceive, is
" either positively erroneous, or a confusion of language
" arising from an inadequate discrimination of the pheno-
" menon." Here is a case in which we know something
to be a representation, though, in our author's opinion,
that which, it represents not only is not, at the present
time, known to us, but never was, and never will be so.
The Cosmothetic Idealists desire only the same liberty
which Sir W. Hamilton here exercises, of concluding from
a phenomenon directly known, to something unknown
which is the cause of the phenomenon. They postulate
the possibility that what our author holds to be true of
the non-ego at a distance, may be true of the non-ego at
the point of sense, namely, that it is not known imme-
diately, but as a necessary inference from what is known.
To shut the door upon this supposition as inherently
inadmissible, and make an exactly similar one ourselves
as often as our system requires it, does not befit a philo-
sopher, or a critic of philosophers.*
* Some of the inconsistencies here pointed out in Sir W. Hamilton's
speculations respecting Perception have been noticed, and ably discussed
by Mr. Bailey, in the t fourth letter of the Second Series of his Letters on
the Philosophy of the'Human Mind.
In treating of Modified Logic (Lectures, iv. 67, 68), Sir W. Hamilton
justifies, after his own manner, the assumption made alike by himself and
by the Cosmothetic Idealists; and the grounds of justification are as avail-
able to them as to him. " Real truth is the correspondence of our thoughts
' with the existences which constitute their objects. But here a difficulty
' arises : how can we know that there is, that there can be such a corre-
' spondence ? All that we know of the objects is through the presenta-
' tions of our faculties ; but whether these present the objects as they are
' iu themselves, we can never ascertain, for to do this it would be requisite
' to go out of ourselves, out of our faculties, to obtain a knowledge of
' the objects by other faculties, and thus to compare our old presentations
" with our new." The very difficulty which we have seen him throwing
in the teeth of the Cosmothetic Idealists. " But all this, even were the
" supposition possible, would be incompetent to afford us the certainty
" required. For were it possible to leave our old., and t^ obtain a new, set
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 207
In the controversy with Brown, which forms the second
paper in the " Discussions," and much of which is re-
produced verbatim in our author's Lectures, the argument
which I have now examined does not appear. In the
room of it, we have the following argument.* If Brown
is right, " the mind either knows the reality of what it
" represents, or it does not." The first supposition is
dismissed for the absurdities it involves, and because it
is inconsistent with Brown's doctrine. But if the mind
does not know the reality of what it represents, the
" alternative remains, that the mind is blindly determined
" to represent, and truly to represent, the reality which it
" does not know." And if so, the mind " either blindly
"determines itself" or "is blindly determined" by a
supernatural power. The latter supposition he rejects
because it involves a standing miracle ; the former as
" utterly irrational, inasmuch as it would explain an
" of faculties, by which to test the old, still the veracity of these new
" faculties would be equally obnoxious to doubt as the veracity of the old.
' For what guarantee could we obtain for the credibility in the one case,
' which we do not already possess in the other ? The new faculties could
' only assert their own truth ; but this is done by the old ; and it is impos-
' sible to imagine any presentations of the non-ego by any finite intelli-
' gence to which a doubt might not be raised, whether these presentations
' were not merely subjective modifications of the conscious ego itself." It
is a very laudable practice in philosophizing to state the difficulties
strongly. But when the difficulty is one which in any case has to be sur-
mounted, we should allow others to surmount it in the same mode which
we adopt for ourselves. This mode, in the present case, is our author's
usual one : " All that could be said in answer to such a doubt is that if
" such were true, our whole nature is a lie :" in other words, our nature
prompts us to believe that the modification of the conscious ego points to,
and results from, a non-ego with corresponding properties. The Cosmo-
thetic Idealists do but say the same thing : and they have as good a right
to say it as our author.
In saying that the Cosmothetic Idealists can make out as good a case
for their opinion as Sir W. Hamilton for his, Ldo not say that their case
is good against Berkeley, who held that the non-ego we are compelled to
postulate as the cause of our sensations is not matter, but a mind. Minds,
Berkeley would say, we know to exist, in ourselves by consciousness, in
other beings by evidence. Matter we do not know to exist, for all the
indications of it are otherwise explicable : we ought not, therefore, to
assume its existence until it is shown that our sensations cannot be caused
by a Mind. Sir W. Hamilton escapes from this argument by his doctrine,
that Matter with its Primary and Secundo-primary qualities is directly
and immediately perceived.
* Discussions, p. 67.
208 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
" effect, by a cause wholly inadequate to its production.
" On this alternative, knowledge is supposed to be the
" effect of ignorance, intelligence of stupidity life of
" death." All this artillery is directed against the simple
supposition that by a law of our nature, a modification
of our own minds may assure us of the existence of an
unknown cause. The author's persistent ignorance of
Brown's opinion is surprising. Brown knows nothing
of the mental modification as truly representing the un-
known reality ; he claims no knowledge as arising out of
ignorance, no intelligence growing out of stupidity. He
claims only an instinctive belief implanted by nature ;
and the menacing alternative, that the mind must either
determine itself to this belief, or be determined to it by
a special interference of Providence, could be applied
with exactly as much justice to the earth's motion. But
though Sir W. Hamilton's weapon falls harmless upon
Brown, it recoils with terrible effect upon his own
theories of representative cognition. A remembrance,
for example, does represent, and truly represent, the
past fact remembered : and we do, through that repre-
sentation, mediately know the past fact, which in any
other sense of the word, according to our author, we do
not know. Although therefore the conclusion " that the
mind is blindly determined to represent, and truly to
represent, the reality which it does not know," i not
obligatory upon Brown, it is upon Sir W. Hamilton.
On his own showing he has to choose between the
absurdity that the mind " blindly determines itself,"
and the perpetual miracle of its being determined by
divine interference. This is one of the weakest exhibi-
tions of Sir W. Hamilton that I have met with in his
writings. For the difficulty by which he thought to
overwhelm Brown, and which does not touch Brown,
but falls back upon himself, is no difficulty at all, but
the merest moonshine. The transcendent absurdity, as
he considers it, that the mind should be blindly deter-
mined to represent, and truly to represent, the reality
which " it does not know," instead of an absurdity, is
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 200
the exact expression of a fact. Tt is a literal description
of what takes place in an act of memory. As often as
we recollect a past event, and on the faitli of that -recol-
lection, believe or know that the event really happened,
the mind, by its constitution, is " blindly determined to
represent, and truly to represent " a fact which, except as
witnessed by that representation, "it does not know."*
It may generally, I think, be observed of Sir W.
Hamilton, that his most recherche arguments are his
weakest ; they certainly are so in the present case. It
would have been wiser in him to have been contented
with his first and simpler argument, that Brown's
doctrine conflicts with consciousness, inasmuch as " we
are conscious of no reference, of no representation :"
or, to speak more clearly, we are not aware that the
existence of an eternal reality is suggested to us by
* Our belief in the veracity of Memory is evidently ultimate : no reason
can be given for it which does not presuppose the belief, and assume it to
be well grounded. This point is forcibly urged in the Philosophical Intro-
duction to Dr. Ward's able work, " On Nature and Grace :" a book the
readers of which are likely to be limited by its being addressed specially
to Catholics, but showing a capacity in the writer which might otherwise
have made him one of the most effective champions of the Intuitive school .
Though I do not believe morality to be intuitive in Dr. "Ward's sense, I
think his book of great practical worth, by the strenuous manner in which
it maintains morality to have another foundation than the arbitrary decree
of God, and shows, by great weight of evidence, that this is the orthodox
doctrine of the Eoman Catholic Church.
Dr. Ward, returning to this subject in the. Dublin Review (p. 309), says
that in declaring our belief in the veracity of Memory to be ultimate, I am
admitting " an exception " to the doctrine of what he calls the Pheno-
menist school, and " an exception which no phenomenist had made before."
The necessity of making this exception, he deems a powerful argument
against the doctrine itself. "If ever there were a paradoxical position"
mine, according to him, " is one on the surface. It is most intelligible to
" say that there are no trustworthy institutions ; and it is most intelligible
" to say that there are many such; but on the surface it is the ne plus,
" ultra of paradox, to say that there is jnst one such, and no more."
First, on what account is it more improbable that there should be " jast
one " source of intuitive knowledge besides present consciousness, making
two in all, than that jbhere should be three, four, or any other number.
To me it seems that there is no antecedent presumption in the case, but a
mere question of evidence. Dr. Ward, with good reason, challenges me
to explain " where the distinction lies between acts of memory and other
alleged intuitions " which I do not admit as such. The distinction is,
that as all the explanations of mental phenomena presuppose Memory,
Memory itself cannot admit of being explained. Whenever this ia shown
to be true of any other part of our knowledge, I shall admit that part to
P
210 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
our sensations. We seem to become aware of both at
once.
The fact is as alleged, but it proves nothing, being
consistent with Brown's doctrine. Whether the belief
in a non-ego arose in our first act of perception, simul-
taneously with the sensation, or not until suggested by
the sensation, we have, as I before remarked, no means
be intuitive. Dr. Ward thinks that there are various other intuitions
" more favourably circumstanced for the establishment of their trust-
" worthiness " than Memory itself, and he gives as an example our convic-
tion of the wickedness of certain acts. My reason for rejecting this as a
case of intuition is, that the conviction can be explained without pre-
supposing, as part of the explanation, the very fact itself; which the belief
in Memory cannot.
Dr. Ward has been too hasty in saying that no phenomenist ever before
made this " exception." I doubt if he could point out any phenomenist
who has not made it, either expressly or by implication. All who have
attempted the explanation of the human mind by sensation have postu-
lated the knowledge of past sensations as well as of present ; some of them
have expressly said so. Take Hume, for instance, the most extreme of
Phenomenists : he always excepts Memory from the sources of knowledge
of which he attempts to find an explanation. In his " Sceptical Doubts,"
he says " It may be a subject worthy curiosity, to inquire what is the
' nature of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter
' of fact, beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the records of our
'memory." And again, "all reasonings concerning matter of fact seem
' to be founded in the relation of Cause and Effect. By means of that
' relation alone can we go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses."
And in his " Sceptical Solution of these Doubts,'' where he is attempting
to explain Belief by the laws of Association, he asserts that belief " where
it reaches beyond the memory and senses " is amenable to his theory.
It would be easy to quote equally decisive passages from other Pheno-
menists. How, indeed, could any one make Experience the source of all
our knowledge without postulating the belief in Memory as the funda-
mental fact? What is Experience but Memory ?
For myself, I do admit other sources of knowledge than sensation and
the memory of sensation, though not than consciousness and the memory
of consciousness. I have distinctly declared that the elementary relations
of our sensations to one another, viz. their resemblances, and their succes-
sions and coexistences, are subjects of direct apprehension. And I have
avowedly left the question undecided whether our perception of ourselves
of our own personality is not a case of the same kind. It is curious that
while Dr. Ward thinks I am bound to explain why I acknowledge only
one case of intuition, Dr. M'Cosh charges me with postulating as great a
number of first principles as are demanded by either the Scotch or ithe
German metaphysicians, and has devoted a whole chapter of his book to
an enumeration of them ; including several which, as he might have known,
1 regard as truths indeed, but not as ultimate principles. I do riot know
what extreme of supposed psychological analysis Dr. M'Cosh thought it
incumbent on me to profess. In my estimation, the doctrine of " all or
none " is no more a necessity in philosophy than in politics.
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 211
of directly ascertaining. As far as depends on direct
evidence, the subject is inscrutable. But this we may
know, that even if the suggestion theory were true, the
belief suggested would by the laws of association become
so intimately blended with the sensation suggesting it,
that long before we were able to reflect on our mental
operations, we should have become entirely incapable of
thinking of the two things as other than simultaneous.
An appeal to consciousness avails nothing, when, even
though the doctrine opposed were true, the appeal might
equally, and with the same plausibility, be made. The
facts are alike consistent with both opinions, and, for
aught that appears, Brown's is as likely to be true as
Sir W. Hamilton's. The difference between them, as
already observed, is. extremely small, and I will add,
supremely unimportant. If the reality of matter is
certified to us by an irresistible belief, it matters little
whether we reach the belief by the two steps, or by only
one.
The really important difference of opinion on the
subject of Perception, between Brown and Sir W.
Hamilton, is far other than this. It is, that Sir W.
Hamilton believes us to have a direct intuition not solely
of the reality of matter, but also of its primary qualities,
Extension, Solidity, Figure, &c., which, according to
him, we know as in the material object, and not as modi-
fications of ourselves : while Brown believes that matter
is suggested to us only as an unknown something, all
whose attributes, as known or conceived by us, are resolv-
able into affections of our senses. In Brown's opinion
we are cognizant of a non-ego in the perceptive act,
only in the indefinite form of something external ; all
else we are able to know of it is only that it produces
certain affections in us : which is also our author's opinion
as regards the Secondary Qualities. The difference there-
fore, between Brown and Sir W. Hamilton, is not of the
kind which Sir W. Hamilton considers it to be, but con-
sists mainly in this, that Brown really held what Sir
^"VV. Hamilton held only verbally, the doctrine of the
p 2
-212 sm WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
Belativity of our knowledge. I shall attempt, further
on, to show that on the point on which they really
differed, Brown was right, and Sir W. Hamilton totally
wrong. *
The considerations which have now been adduced
are subversive of a great mass of triumphant animad-
version by our author on the ignorance and carelessness
of Brown, and some milder criticism on Beid. Sir W.
Hamilton thinks it astonishing that neither of these
philosophers should have recognised Natural Bealism,
and the third form of Cosmothetic Idealism, as two
different modes of thought. Reid, whom he makes a
great point of claiming as a Natural Realist, was, he
says, quite unaware of the possibility of the other opinion,
and did not guard against it by his language, leaving it
therefore, open to dispute whether, instead of being a
Natural Realist, he was not, like Brown, a Cosmothetic
Idealist of the third class ; while Brown, on the other
hand, never conceived Natural Realism, nor thought it
possible that Reid held any other than his own opinion,
as he invariably affirms him to have done. I apprehend
that both philosophers are entirely clear of the blame
thus imputed to them. Reid never imagined Brown's
doctrine, nor Brown Reid's, as anything different from
his own, because in truth they were not different. If
* There is also a difference between Brown and Sir W. Hamilton in the
particular category of intuitive knowledge to which they referred the
cognition of the existence of matter. Brown deemed it a case of the belief
in causation, which again he regarded as a case of our intuitive belief in the
constancy of the order of nature. " I do not," he says, (Lecture xxiv.
vol. ii. p. 11) " conceive that it is by any peculiar intuition we are led to
' believe in the existence of things without. I consider this belief as the
' effect of that more general intuition, by which we consider a new con-
' sequent, in any series of accustomed events, as the sign of a new ante-
' cedent, and of that equally general principle of association, by which
' feelings that have frequently co-existed, flow together and constitute after-
' wards one complex whole." That is, lie thought that when an infant
finds the motions of his muscles, which have been accustomed to take place
unimpeded, suddenly stopped by what he will afterwards learn to call the
resistance of an external object, the infant intuitively (though perhaps not
instantaneously) believes that this unexpected phasuornenon, the stoppage
of a series of sensations, is conjoined with, or as we now say, caused by
the presence of some new antecedent : which, not being the infant himself,
nor a state of his sensations, we may call an outward object.
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 213
the distinction between a Natural Realist and a Cosmo-
tbetic Idealist of the third class, be that the latter
believes the existence of the external object to be infer-
red from, or suggested by, our sensations, while the
former holds it to be neither the one nor the other, but
to be apprehended in consciousness simultaneously and
co-ordinately with the sensations, Reid was as much a
Cosmothetic IdealftCas Brown. The' question does not
concern philosophy, but the history of philosophy, which
is Sir W. Hamilton's strongest point, and was not at all
a strong point with either Brown or Reid ; but the
matter of fact is worth the few pages necessary for
clearing it up, because Sir W. Hamilton's vast and
accurate learning goes near to obtaining for his state-
ments, on any such matter, implicit confidence, and it
is therefore important to show that even where he is
strongest, he is sometimes wrong.
In the severe criticism on Brown from which I have
quoted, and which, though in some respects unjust, in
others I cannot deny to be well merited, some of the
strongest expressions have reference to the gross mis-
understanding of Reid, of which Brown is alleged to have
been guilty in not perceiving him to have been a Natural
Realist. " We proceed," says our author,* " to consider
" the greatest of all Brown's errors, in itself and in its
" consequences, his misconception of the cardinal position
" of Reid's philosophy, in supposing that philosopher as
" a hypothetical realist, to hold with himself the third
" form of the representative hypothesis, and not, as a
" natural realist, the doctrine of an intuitive Perception.".
" Brown'sf transmutation of Reid from a natural to a
" hypothetical realist, as a misconception of the grand
" and distinctive tenet of a school by one even of its
" disciples, is without a parallel in the whole history
" of philosophy ; and this portentious error is prolific ;
" chimara ckimcBram parit. Were the evidence of the
" mistake less unambiguous, we should be disposed
" rather to question our own perspicacity than to tax so
* Discussions, p. 58. f Ibid. p. 56.
214 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW or THEORIES
" subtle an intellect with so gross a blunder." And he
did, in time, feel some misgiving as to his " own perspi-
cacity." When, in preparing an edition of Reid, he
was obliged to look more closely into that author's state-
ments, we find a remarkable lowering of the high tone
of these sentences ; and he felt obliged, in revising the
paper for the Discussions, to write " This is too strong,"
after a passage in which he had said that* " Brown's
" interpretation of the fundamental tenet of Reid's philo-
" sophy is not a simple misconception, but an absolute
" reversal of its real and even unambiguous import."
Well would it have been for Brown's reputation if all
Sir W. Hamilton's attempts to bring home blunders to
him, had been as little successful as this.
In the work in which Reid first brought his opinions
before the world, the " Inquiry into the Human Mind,"
his language is so unequivocally that of a Cosmothetic
Idealist, that it admits of no mistake. It is almost
more unambiguous than that of Brown himself. The
external object is always said to be perceived through
the medium of " natural signs :" these signs being our
sensations, interpreted by a natural instinct. Our sen-
sations, he says,f belong to that " class of natural signs
" which . . though we never before had any notion or
" conception of the thing signified, do suggest it, or
" conjure it up, as it were, by a natural kind of magic,
" and at once give us a conception and create a belief of
"it." "I takej it for granted that the notion of hard-
" ness, and the belief of it, is first got by means of that
" particular sensation which, as far back as we can
" remember, does invariably suggest it, and that, if we
" had never had such a feeling, we should never have
" had our notion of hardness." Again, " when a coloured
" body is presented, there is a certain apparition to the
" eye, or to the mind, which we have called tke appearance
" of colour. Mr. Locke calls it an idea, and, indeed, it
* Discussions, p. 60.
f Inquiry into the Human Mind, Works (Hamilton's ed.), p. 122.
J Ibid. Ibid. p. 137.
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 215
" may be called so with the greatest propriety. This
" idea can have no existence but when it is perceived.
' It is a kind of thought, and can only be the act of a
" percipient or thinking being. By the constitution of
" our nature, we are led to conceive this idea as a sign
" of something external, and are impatient till we learn
" its meaning/'
I must be excused if I am studious to prove, by an
accumulation of citations, that these are not passing
expressions of Reid, but the deliberate doctrine of his
treatise. " I think it appears from what hath been said,
" that there are natural suggestions ; particularly, that
" sensation suggests the notion of present existence, and
" the belief that what we perceive or feel does now
" exist. . . And, in like manner, certain sensations of
" touch, by the constitution of our nature, suggest to us
" extension, solidity, and motion."* " By an original
" principle of our constitution, a certain sensation of
" touch both suggests to the mind the conception of
" hardness, and creates the ^belief of it: or, in other
" words, this sensation is a natural sign of hardness/'!
" The word yold has no similitude to the substance
" signified by it ; nor is it in its own nature more tit to
" signify this than any other substance ; yet, by habit
" and custom, it suggests this and no other. Jn like
" manner, a sensation of touch suggests hardness, al-
" though it hath neither similitude to hardness, nor, as
" far as we can perceive, any necessary connexion with
" it. The difference betwixt these two signs lies only
" in this that, in the first, the suggestion is the eiiect
" of habit and custom ; in the second, it is not the
" effect of habit, but of the original constitution of our
" minds."J " Extension, therefore, seems to be a quality
" Myyested to us" (the italics are Eeid's) " by the very
" same sensations which suggest the other qualities
" above- mentioned. When I grasp a ball in my hand,
" I' perceive it at once hard, figured, and extended,
* Inquiry into the Human Mind, Works, p. 111.
f Ibid. p. 121. J Ibid. p. 121.
216 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
" The feeling is very simple, and hath not the least
" resemblance to any quality of body. Yet it suggests
" to us three primary qualities perfectly distinct from one
" another, as well as from the sensation which indicates
" them. When I move my hand along the table, the
" feeling is so simple that I find it difficult to distinguish
" it into things of different natures, yet it immediately
" suggests hardness, smoothness, extension, and motion
" -things of very different natures, and all of them as
" distinctly understood as the feeling which suggests
" them."* " The feelings of touch, which suggest
" primary qualities, have no names, nor are they ever
" reflected upon. They pass through the mind install -
" taneously, and serve only to introduce the notion and
" belief ot external things, which by our constitution,
" are connected with them. They are natural signs,
" and the mind immediately passes to the thing signified,
" without making the least reflection upon the sign,
" or observing that there was any such thing. "f
This passage, with many others of like import, Sir
W. Hamilton might usefully have meditated on, before
he laid so much stress on the testimony of conscious-
ness that the apprehension is not through the medium
of a sign.
" Let a man press his hand against the table he feels
" it hard. But what is the meaning of this ? The
' meaning undoubtedly is, that he hath a certain feeling
' of touch, from which he concludes, without any rea-
' soning or comparing ideas, that there is something
' external really existing, whose parts stick so firmly
' together, that they cannot be displaced without con-
' siderable force. There is here a feeling, and a con-
' elusion drawn from it, or some way suggested by
'it The hardness of the table is the conclusion,
' the feeling is the medium by which we are led to that
' conclusion."! " How_a sensation should instantly make
' us conceive and believe the existence of an external
* Inquiry into the Human Mind, Works, p. 123.
T Ibid. p. 124:. I Ibid. p. I2o.
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 217
" thing altogether unlike to it, I do not pretend to know;
" and when I say that the one suggests the other, I
" mean not to explain the manner of their connexion,
" Hut to express a fact, which every one may be conscious
" of, namely, that by a law of our nature, such a con-
" ( ^Et\ 1 ? anc ^ belief constantly and immediately follow
" the sensation."* " There are three ways in which the
" mind passes from the appearance of a natural sign to
" the conception and belief of the thing signified by
" original principles of our constitution, by custom, and
" by reasoning. Our original perceptions are got in the
" first of these ways. ... In the first of these ways,
" Nature, by means of the sensations of touch, informs
" us of the hardness and softness of bodies ; of their
" extension, figure, and motion ; and of that space in
" which they move and are placed. "f " In the testi-
" mony of Nature given by the senses, as well as in
" human testimony given by language, things are signi-
" fied to us by signs : and in one as well as the other,
" the mind, either by original principles or by custom,
" passes from the sign to the conception and belief of
" the things signified. . . . The signs in original per-
" ceptions are sensations, of which Nature hath given
" us a great variety, suited to the variety of the things
" signified by them. Nature hath established a real con-
" nexion between the signs and the things signified,
" and Nature hath also taught us the interpretation of
" the signs so that, previous to experience, the sign
" ^HS^ 68 ^ 8 ^ ne ^hi n > signified, and creates the belief of
" iE + " It is by one particular principle of our con-
" stitution that certain features express anger ; and by
" another particular principle, that certain features ex-
" press benevolence. It is, in like manner, by one parti
" cular principle of our constitution that a certain sensa-
" tion signifies hardness in the body which I handle ;
" and it is by another particular principle that a certain
" sensation signifies motion in that body."
* Inquiry into the Human Mind, Works, p. 131.
f Ibid. p. 188. J Ibid. pp. 19-i, lyd. Ibid. p. 195.
218 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
I doubt if it would be possible to extract from Brown
himself an equal number of passages expressing as
clearly and positively, and in terms as irreconcilable
with any other opinion, the doctrine which our author
terms the third form of Cosmothetic Idealism ; in the
exact shape, too, in which Brown held it, unencumbered
by the gratuitous addition which Sir W. Hamilton
fastens on him, that the sign must " truly represent "
the thing signified, a notion which Reid takes good
care that he shall not be supposed to entertain, since he
repeatedly declares that there is no resemblance be-
tween them. That Reid, at least when he wrote the
Inquiry, was a Cosmothetic Idealist ; that up to that
time it had never occurred to him that the convictions
of the existence and qualities of external objects could
be regarded as anything but suggestions by, and con-
clusions from, our sensations is too obvious to be
questioned by any one who has the text fresh in his
recollection. Accordingly Sir W. Hamilton acknow-
ledges as much in his edition of Reid, both in the foot-
notes and in the appended Dissertations. After restating
his own doctrine, that our natural beliefs assure us of
outward objects, only by assuring us that we are imme-
diately conscious of them, he adds,* "Reid himself seems
" to have become obscurely aware of this condition : and
" though he never retracted his doctrine concerning the
" mere suggestion of extension, we find in his Essays on
" the Intellectual Powers assertions in regard to the
" immediate perception of external things, which would
" tend to show that his later views were more in unison
" with the necessary convictions of mankind." And in
another placef he says of the doctrine maintained by
Reid " in his earlier work," that it is one which " if he
" did not formally retract in his later writings, he did
" not continue to profess." It is hard that Brown should
be charged with blundering to a degree which is " por-
tentous' 7 and " without a parallel in the whole history of
philosophy," for attributing to Reid an opinion which
* Foot-note to Reid, p. 129. f Dissertations on Reid, p. 821.
/tCC Of W{ yrguft ' ^.p
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 219
Sir W. Hamilton confesses that Reid maintained in one
of his only two important writings, and did not retract
in the other. But Sir W. Hamilton is still more wrong
than he confesses. He is in a mistake when he sa}-s
that Reid, though he did not retract the opinion, did not
continue to profess it. For some reason, not apparent, \
he did cease to employ the word Suggestion. But he /
continued to use terms equivalent to it. " Every dif-
" ferent perception is conjoined with a sensation that is \
" proper to it. The one is the sign, the other the thing !
" signified."* " I touch the table gently with my hand, j
" and I feel it to be smooth, hard, and cold. These are
" qualities of the table perceived by touch: but I perceive
" them by means of a sensation which indicates them/'f
" Observing that the agreeable sensation is raised when
" the rose is near, and ceases when it is removed, I am
" led by my nature to conclude some quality to be in the
" rose, which is the cause of this sensation. This quality
" in the rose is the object perceived ; and that act of my
" mind by which I have the conviction andbelief of this
" quality, is what in this case I call perception. "J Of
this passage even Sir W. Hamilton honestly says in a
foot-note, that it " appears to be an explicit disavowal of
the doctrine of an intuitive or immediate perception."
Again : " When a primary quality is perceived, ihe sen-
" sation immediately leads our thought to ike quality signified
" by it, and is itself forgot. . . . The sensations belonging
" to primary qualities . . . carry the thought to the ex-
" ternal object, and immediately disappear and are forgot.
" Nature intended them only as signs; and when they have
" served that purpose they vanish." " Nature has con-
" nected our perception of external objects with certain
" sensations. If the sensation is produced, the corresponding
" perception follows, even when there is no object, and in
"that case is apt to deceive us."|| "In perception,
" whether original or acquired, there is something which
" may be called the sign, and something which is signified
* Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Works, p. 312.
f Ibid. p. 311. J Ibid. p. 310. Ibid. p. 315, |1 Ibid. p. 320.
Xf
220 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
" to us, or brought to our knowledge by that sign. In
" original perception, the signs are the various sensations
" which are produced by the impressions made upon our
" organs. The things signified are the objects perceived
" in consequence of those sensations, by the original
" constitution of our nature. Thus, when I grasp an
" ivory ball in my hand, I have a certain sensation of
" touch. Although this sensation be in the mind, and
" have no similitude to anything material ; yet, by the
" laws of my constitution, it is immediately followed by the
" conception and belief, that there is in my band a hard
" smooth body of a spherical figure, and about an inch
" and a half in diameter. This belief is grounded neither
" upon reasoning, nor upon experience ; it is the imme-
" diate effect of my constitution, and this I call original
" perception."*
All these are as unequivocal, and the last passage as
full and precise a statement of Cosmothetic Idealism, as
any in the Inquiry. In the Dissertations appended to
Beid,f Sir W. Hamilton, who never fails in candour,
acknowledges in the fullest manner the inferences which
may be drawn from passages like these, but thinks that
they are balanced by others which " seem to harmonize
" exclusively with the conditions of natural presenta-
" tionism/'j and on the whole is decidedly of opinion
" that, as the great end the governing principle of Beid's
" doctrine was to reconcile philosophy with the neces-
" sary convictions of mankind, he intended a doctrine
11 of natural, consequently a doctrine of presentative,
" realism ; and that he would have at once surrendered
" as erroneous, every statement which was found at
" variance with such a doctrine." But it is clear that
the doctrine of perception through natural signs did not,
in Beid's opinion, contradict " the necessary convictions
of mankind ;" being brought into harmony with them
by his doctrine, that the signs, after they have served
* Essays on the Intellectual Powers, p. 332.
f Dissertations on Eeid, pp. 819-824 and 882-885.
J Ibid. p. 882. Ibid. p. 820.
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 221
their purpose, are "forgot," which, as he conclusively
shows in many places, it was both natural and inevitable
that they should be. The passages which Sir W.
Hamilton cites as inconsistent with any doctrine but
Natural Realism, are those in which Reid affirms that
we perceive objects immediately, and that the external
things which really exist are the very ones which we
perceive. But Reid evidently did not think these
expressions inconsistent with the doctrine that the
notion and belief of external objects are irresistibly
suggested through natural signs. Having this notion
and belief irresistibly suggested, is what he means by
perceiving the external object. He says so in more
than one of the passages I have just quoted : and neither
in his chapter on Perception, nor anywhere else, does he
speak of perception as implying anything more. In that
chapter he says,* " If we attend to that act of our mind
" which we call the perception of an external object of
" sense, we shall tind in it these three things : First. 0)
" some conception or notion of the object perceived ;
" Secondly, a strong and irresistible conviction and belief
" of its present existence ; and, Thirdly, that this con-
' viction and belief are immediate, and not the effect of
" reasoning." We see in this as in a hundred other
places, what Reid meant when he said that our perception
ot outward objects is immediate. He did not mean that
it is not a conviction suggested by something else, but
only that the conviction is not the effect of reasoning,
"This convictionf is not only irresistible, but it ig
" immediate ; that is, it is not by a train of reasoning
" and argumentation that we come to be convinced oi -
" the existence of what we perceive." As Nature has '
given us the signs, so it is by an original law of our
nature that we are enabled to interpret them. When
Reid means anything but this in contending for an
immediate perception of objects, he merely means to
deny that it takes place through an image in the brain
* Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Essay ii. chap. v. p. 258.
f Same Essay, p. 259.
2.22 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES
or in the mind, as maintained by Cosmothetic Idealists
of the first or the second class.
The only plausible argument produced by Sir W.
Hamilton in proof of Reid's Natural Realism, and
against his having held, as Brown thought, Brown's
own opinion, is, that when in the speculations of Arnauld
he had before him exactly the same opinion, he failed to
recognise it.* But on a careful examination of Reid's
criticism on Arnauld, it will be seen, that as long as
Reid had to do with Arnauld's direct statement of his
opinion, he found nothing in it different from his own ;
but was puzzled, and thought that Arnauld attempted
to unite inconsistent opinions, because, after throwing
over the "ideal theory," and saying that the only real
ideas are our perceptions, he maintained that it is still
true, in a sense, that we do not perceive things directly,
but through our ideas. What ! asks Reid, do we perceive
things through our perceptions ? But if we merely put
the word sensations instead of perceptions,*the doctrine
is exactly that of Reid in the Inquiry that we perceive
things through our sensations. Most probably Arnauld
meant this, but was not so understood by Reid. If he
meant anything else, his opinion was not the same as
Reid's, and we need no explanation of Reid's not recog-
nising it.
One of the collateral indications that Reid's opinion
agreed with Brown's, and not with Sir W. Hamilton's,
is that in treating this question he seldom or never uses
the word Knowledge, but only Belief. On Sir W.
Hamilton's doctrine, the distinction between these two
terms, however vaguely and mistily conceived by him,
is indispensable. The total absence of any recognition
of it in Reid, Allows that of the two opinions, if there
was one which he had never conceived the possibility of,
it was not Brown's, as Sir W. Hamilton supposes, but
Sir W. Hamilton's. In our author's mind this indica-
* Same Essay, chap. xiii. For Sir W. Hamilton's remarks, see
Lectures, ii. 50-53 ; Discussions, pp. 75-77 ; and Dissertations on Keid,
p. 823.
ON THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 223
tion ought to have decided the question: for in the
case of another philosopher he, on precisely the same
evidence, brings in a verdict of Cosmothetic Idealism.
Krug's system, he says,* as first promulgated, " was,
" like Kant's, a mere Cosmothetic Idealism ; for while
" he allowed a knowledge of the internal world, he only
" allowed a belief of the external."
It is true, Reid did not believe in what onr author
terms "representative perception," if by this be meant
perception through an image in the mind, supposed, like
the picture of a fact in memory, to be like its original.
But neither (as I have repeatedly observed) did Brown.
What Brown held was exactly the doctrine of Reid in *
the passages that I have extracted. He thought that IS.
certain sensations, irresistibly, and by a law of our nature,
suggest, without any process of reasoning, and without
the intervention of any tertium quid, the notion .of
something external, and an invincible belief in its real
existence. If representative perception be this, both
Reid and Brown believed in it : if anything else, Brown
believed in it no more than Reid. Not only was Reid a
Cosmothetic Idealist of Brown's exact type, but in stating
his own doctrine, he has furnished, as far as I am aware,
the clearest and best statement extant of their common
opinion. They differed, indeed, as to our having, in
this or in any other manner, an intuitive perception of
any of the attributes of objects ; Reid, like Sir W.
Hamilton, affirming, while Brown denied, that we have
a direct intuition of the Primary Qualities of bodies.
But Brown did not deny, nor would Sir W. Hamilton
accuse him of denying, the wide difference between his
opinion and Reid's on this latter point.
Before closing this chapter, I will notice the curious
fact, that after insisting with so much emphasis upon
the recognition of an Ego and a Non-ego as an element
in all consciousness, Sir W. Hamilton is obliged to admit
that the distinction is in certain cases a mistake, and
that our consciousness sometimes recognises a Non-ego
* Dissertations on Reid, p. 797.
224 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S REVIEW OF THEORIES.
where there is only an Ego. It is a doctrine of his,
repeated in many parts of his works, that in our internal
consciousness there is no non-ego. Even the remem-
brance of a past fact, or the mental image of an absent
object, is not a thing separable or distinguishable from
the mind's act in remembering, but is another name for
that act itself. Now it is certain, that in thinking of
an absent or an imaginary object, we naturally imagine
ourselves to be thinking of an objective something, dis-
tinguishable from the thinking act. Sir W. Hamilton,
being obliged to acknowledge this, resolves the difficulty
in the very manner for which he so often rebukes other
thinkers by representing this apparent testimony of
consciousness as a kind of illusion. " The object," he
says,* " is in this case given as really identical with the
" conscious ego, but still consciousness distinguishes it,
c< as an accident from the ego, as the subject of that
" accident : it projects, as it were, this subjective phae-
" nomenon from itself, views it at a distance, in a
" word, objectifies it." But if, in one-half of the domain
of consciousness the internal half it is in the power
of consciousness to " project " out of itself what is merely
one of its own acts, and regard it as external and a non-
ego, why are those accused of declaring consciousness a
lie, who think that this may possibly be the case with
the other half of its domain also, and that the non-ego
altogether may be but a mode in which the mind repre-
sents to itself the possible modifications of the ego ?
How the truth stands in respect to this matter I will
endeavour, in the following chapter, to investigate. For
the present, I content myself with asking, why the same
liberty in the interpretation of Consciousness, which
Sir W. Hamilton's own doctrine cannot dispense with,
should be held to be an insurmountable objection to the
counter doctrine.
* Lectures, ii. 432.
225
CHAPTER XI.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE BELIEF IN AN
EXTERNAL WORLD.
WE have seen Sir W. Hamilton at work on the question
of the reality of Matter, by the introspective method,
and, as it seems, with little result. Let us now approach
the same subject by the psychological. I proceed,
therefore, to state the case of those who hold that the
belief in an external world is not intuitive, but an
acquired product.
This theory postulates the following psychological
truths, all of which are proved by experience, arid are
not contested, though their force is seldom adequately
felt, by Sir W. Hamilton and the other thinkers of the
introspective school.
It postulates, first, that the human mind is capable of
Expectation. In other words, that after having had
actual sensations, we are capable of forming the concep-
tion of Possible sensations ; sensations which we are not
feeling at the present moment, but which we might feel,
and should feel if certain conditions were present, the
nature of which conditions we' have, in many cases,
learnt by experience.
It postulates, secondly, the laws of the Association of
Ideas. So far as we are here concerned, these laws are
the following: 1st. Similar phaenomena tend to bethought
of together. 2nd. Phenomena which have either been
experienced or conceived in close contiguity to one
another, tend to be thought of together. The conti-
guity is of two kinds ; simultaneity, and immediate
succession. Facts which have been experienced or
226 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
thought of simultaneously, recall the thought of one
another. Of facts which have been experienced or
thought of in immediate succession, the antecedent, or
the thought of it, recalls the thought of the consequent,
bat not conversely. 3rd. Associations produced by
contiguity become more certain and rapid by repetition.
When two phenomena have been very often experienced
j in conjunction, and have not, in any single instance,
occurred separately either in experience or in thought,
there is produced between them what has been called
Inseparable, or less correctly, Indissoluble Association :
by which is not meant that the association must inevitably
last to the end of life that no subsequent experience or
process of thought can possibly avail to dissolve it ; but
only that as long as no such experience or process of
thought has taken place, the association is irresistible ;
it is impossible for us to think the one thing disjoined
j from the other. 4th. When an association has acquired
this character of inseparability when the bond between
the two ideas has been thus firmly riveted, not only
does the idea called up by association become, in our
consciousness, inseparable from the idea which suggested
it, but the facts or phsenomena answering to those ideas
come at last to seem inseparable in existence : things
which we are unable to conceive apart, appear incapable
of existing apart ; and the belief we have in their co-
existence, though really a product of experience, seems
intuitive. Innumerable examples might be given of this
law. One of the most familiar, as well as the most
striking, is that of our acquired perceptions of sight.
Even those who, with Mr. Bailey, consider the percep-
tion of distance by the eye as not acquired, but intuitive,
admit that there are many perceptions of sight which,
though instantaneous and unhesitating, are not intuitive.
What we see is a very minute fragment of what we
think we see. We see artificially that one thing is hard,
another soft. We see artificially that one thing is hot,
another cold. We see artificially that what we see is a
book, or a stone, each of these being not merely an
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD.
227
inference, but a heap of inferences, from the signs
which we see, to things not visible. We see, and
cannot help seeing, what we have learnt to infer, even
when we know that the inference is erroneous, and that
the apparent perception is deceptive. We cannot help
- seeing the moon larger when near the horizon, though
* we know that she is of precisely her usual size. We
cannot help seeing a mountain as nearer to us and of
less height, when we see it through a more than ordi-
narily transparent atmosphere.
Setting out from these premises, the Psychological
Theory maintains, that there are associations naturally
and even necessarily generated by the order of our
sensations and of our reminiscences of sensation, which,
supposing no intuition of an external world to have
existed in consciousness, would inevitably generate the
belief, and would cause it to be regarded as an intuition.
What is it we mean, or what is it which leads us to
say, that the objects we perceive are external to us, and
not a part of our own thoughts ? We mean, that there
is concerned in our perceptions something which exists
when we are not thinking of it ; which existed before
we had ever thought of it, and would exist if we were
annihilated ; and further, that there exists things which
we never saw, touched, or otherwise perceived, and
things which never have been perceived by man. This i
idea of something which is distinguished from our fleet-
ing impressions by what, in Kantian language, is called
Perdurability ; something which is fixed and the same,
while our impressions vary ; something which exists
whether we are aware of it or not, and which is always
square (or of some other given figure) whether it appears
to us square or round constitutes altogether our idea .
of external substance. Whoever can assign an origin
to this complex conception, has accounted for what we
mean by the belief in matter. Now all this, according \
to the Psychological Theory, is but the form impres>.- t
by the known laws of association, upon the conception
or notion, obtained by experience, of Contingent Sensa
228 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
tions ; by which are meant, sensations that are not in
our present consciousness, and individually never were
in our consciousness at all, but which in virtue of the
laws to which we have learnt by experience that our
sensations are subject, we know that we should have
felt under given supposable circumstances, and under
these same circumstances, might still feel.
I see a piece of white paper on a table. I go into
another room. If the phenomenon always followed me,
or if, when it did not follow me, I believed it to dis-
appear e rerum naturd, I should not believe it to be an
external object. I should consider it as a phantom a
mere affection of my senses : I should not believe that
there had been any Body there. But, though I have
ceased to see it, I am persuaded that the paper is still
there. I no longer have the sensations which it gave
me ; but I believe that when I again place myself in the
circumstances in which I had those sensations, that is,
when I go again into the room, I shall again have
them ; and further, that there has been no intervening
moment at which this would not have been the case.
Owing to this property of my mind, my conception of
the world at any given instant consists, in only a small
proportion, of present sensations. Of these I may at
the time have none at all, and they are in any case a
most insignificant portion of the whole which I appre-
hend. The conception I form of the world existing at
any moment, comprises, along with the sensations I am
feeling, a countless variety of possibilities of sensation :
namely, the whole of those which past observation tells
me that I could, under any supposable circumstances,
experience at this moment, together with an indefinite
and illimitable multitude of others which though I do
not know that I could, yet it is possible that 1 might,
experience in circumstances not known to me. These
various possibilities are the important thing to me in
the world. My present sensations are generally of little
importance, and are moreover fugitive : the possibilities,
on the contrary, are permanent, which is the character
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 229
that mainly distinguishes our idea of Substance or
Matter from our notion of sensation. These possibilities,
which are conditional certainties, need a special name to
distinguish them from mere vague possibilities, which
experience gives no warrant for reckoning upon. Now, \
as soon as a distinguishing name is given, though it be
only to the same thing regarded in a different aspect,
one of the most familiar experiences of our mental nature
teaches us, that the different name comes to be considered
as the name of a different thing.
There is another important peculiarity of these certi-
fied or guaranteed possibilities of sensation ; namely,
that they have reference, not to single sensations, but to
sensations joined together in groups. When we think
of anything as a material substance, or body, we either
have had, or we think that on some given supposition
we should have, not some one sensation, but a great and
even an indefinite number and variety of sensations,
generally belonging to different senses, but so linked
together, that the presence of one announces the possible
presence at the very same instant of any or all of the
rest. In our mind, therefore, not only is this particular
Possibility of sensation invested with the quality of
permanence when we are not actually feeling any of the
sensations at all ; but when we are feeling some of them,
the remaining sensations of the group are conceived by
us in the form of Present Possibilities, which might be
realized at the very moment. And as this happens in
turn to all of them, the group as a whole presents itself to
the mind as permanent, in contrast not solely with the
temporal iness of my bodily presence, but also with the
temporary character of each of the sensations composing
the group ; in other words, as a kind of permanent
substratum, under a set of passing experiences or
manifestations : which is another leading character of
our idea of substance or matter, as distinguished from
sensation.
Let us now take into consideration another of the
general characters of our experience, namely, that in
230 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
.
addition to fixed groups, we also recognise a fixed Order
in our sensations ; an Order of succession, which, when
ascertained by observation, gives rise to the ideas of
Cause and Effect, according to what T hold to be the true^
theory of that relation, and is on any theory the source
of all our knowledge what causes produce what effects.
Now, of what nature is this fixed order among our sensa-
tions ? It is a constancy of antecedence and sequence. But
the constant antecedence and sequence do not generally
exist between one actual sensation and another. Very
few such sequences are presented to us by experience.
In almost all the constant sequences which occur in
Nature, the antecedence and consequence do not obtain
between sensations, but between the groups we have
been speaking about, of which a ver}'- small portion is
actual sensation, the greater part being permanent pos-
sibilities of sensation, evidenced to us by a small and
variable number of sensations actually present. Hence,
our ideas of causation, power, activity, do not become
connected in thought with our sensations as actual at
all, save in the few physiological cases where these figure
by themselves as the antecedents in some uniform
sequence. Those ideas become connected, not with
sensations, but with groups of possibilities of sensation.
The sensations conceived do not, to our habitual thoughts,
present themselves as sensations actually experienced,
inasmuch as not only any one or any number of them
may be supposed absent, but none of them need be
present. We find that the modifications which are
taking place more or less regularly in our possibilities of
sensation, are mostly quite independent of our conscious-
ness, and of our presence or absence. Whether we are
asleep or awake the fire goes out, and puts an end to
one particular possibility of warmth and light. Whether
we are present or absent the corn ripens, and brings a
new possibility of food. Hence we speedily learn to
think of Nature as made up solely of these groups of
possibilities, and the active force in Nature as manifested
in the modification of some of these by others. The
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 231
sensations, though the original foundation of the whole,
come to be looked upon as a sort of accident depending
on us, and the possibilities as much more real than the
actual sensations, nay, as the very realities of which
these are only the representations, appearances, or effects.
When this state of mind has been arrived at, then, and
from that time forward, we are never conscious of a
present sensation without instantaneously referring it
to some one of the groups of possibilities into which a
sensation of that particular description enters; and if
we do not yet know to what group to refer it, we at
least feel an irresistible conviction that it must belong
to some group or other; i.e. that its presence proves
the existence, here and now, of a great number and
variety of possibilities of sensation, without which it
would not have been. The whole set of sensations as
possible, form a permanent background to any one or
more of them that are, at a given moment, actual ; and
the possibilities are conceived as standing to the actual
sensations in the relation of a cause to its effects, or of
canvas to the figures painted on it, or of a root to the
trunk, leaves, and flowers, or of a substratum to that
which is spread over it, or, in transcendental language,
of Matter to Form.
When this point has been reached, the Permanent
Possibilities in question have assumed such unlikeness
of aspect, and such difference of apparent relation to us,
from any sensations, that it would be contrary to all we
know of the constitution of human nature that they
should not be conceived as, and believed to be, at least
as different from sensations as sensations are from one
another. Their groundwork in sensation is forgotten,
and they are supposed to be something intrinsically dis-
tinct from it. We can withdraw ourselves from any of
our (external) sensations, or we can be withdrawn from
them by some other agency. But though the sensations
cease, the possibilities remain in existence; they are
independent of our will, our presence, and everything
which belongs to us. We find, too, that they belong as
232 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
r much to other human or sentient beings as to ourselves.
We find other people grounding their expectations and
; conduct upon the same permanent possibilities on which
we ground ours. But we do not find them experiencing
the same actual sensations. Other people do not have
our sensations exactly when and as we have them : but
they have our possibilities of sensation ; whatever indi-
cates a present possibility of sensations to ourselves, in-
dicates a present possibility of similar sensations to them,
except so far as their organs of sensation may vary
j from the type of ours. This puts the final seal to our
conception of the groups of possibilities as the funda-
mental reality in Nature. The permanent possibilities
are common to us and to our fellow-creatures ; the actual
sensations are not. That which other people become
aware of when, and on the same grounds, as 1 do, seems
more real to me than that which they do not know of
unless I tell them. The world of Possible Sensations
succeeding one another according to laws, is as much
in other beings as it is in me ; it has therefore an existence
] outside me ; it is an External World.
If this explanation of the origin and growth of the
idea of Matter, or External Nature, contains nothing at
variance with natural laws, it is at least an admissible
\ supposition, that the element of Non-ego which Sir W.
Hamilton regards as an original datum of consciousness,
\. and which we certainly do find in what we now call our
consciousness, may not be one of its primitive elements
may not have existed at all in its first manifestations.
But if this supposition be admissible, it ought, on Sir
W. Hamilton's principles, to be received as true. The
first of the laws laid down by him for the interpretation
of Consciousness, the law (as he terms it) of Parcimony,
forbids to suppose an original principle of our nature in
order to account for phenomena which admit of possible
explanation from known causes. If the supposed in-
gredient of consciousness be one which might grow up
(though we cannot prove that it did grow up) through
later experience ; and if, when it had so grown up, it
A" -^
y '
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 233
would, by known laws of our nature, appear as completely
intuitive as our sensations themselves ; we are bound,
according to Sir W. Hamilton's and all sound philosophy,
to assign to it that origin. Where there is a known
cause adequate to account for a phseriomenon, there is
no justification for ascribing it to an unknown one. And
what evidence does Consciousness furnish of the intui-
tiveness of an impression, except instantaneousness,
apparent simplicity, and unconsciousness on our part of
how the impression came into our minds ? These
features can only prove the impression to be intuitive,
on the hypothesis that there are no means of accounting
for them otherwise. If they not only might, but
naturally would, exist, even on the supposition that it
is not intuitive, we must accept the conclusion to which
we are led by the Psychological Method, and which the
Introspective Method furnishes absolutely nothing to
contradict.
Matter, then, may be defined, a Permanent
of Sensation. If I am asked, whether I believe in
matter, I ask whether the questioner accepts this
definition of it. If he does, I believe in matter : and
so do all Berkeleians. In any other sense than this, I
do not. But I affirm with confidence, that this con-
ception of Matter includes the whole meaning attached
to it by the common world, apart from philosophical,
and sometimes from theological, theories. The reliance |
of mankind on the real existence of visible and tangible
objects, means reliance on the reality and permanence of
Possibilities of visual and tactual sensations, when no
such sensations are actually experienced. We are war-
ranted in believing that this is the meaning of Matter
in the minds of many of its most esteemed metaphysical
champions, though they themselves would not admit as
much : for example, of Ileid, Stewart, and Brown. For
these three philosophers alleged that all mankind, in-
cluding Berkeley and Hume, really believed in Matter,
inasmuch as unless they did, they would not have turned
aside to save themselves from running against a post.
234 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
Now all which this man ceuvre really proved is, that they
believed in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation. We
have therefore the unintentional sanction of these three
eminent defenders of the existence of matter, for affirming,
that to believe in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation
is believing in Matter. It is hardly necessary, after such
authorities, to mention Dr. Johnson, or any one else
who resorts to the argumentum. baculinum of knocking a
stick against the ground. Sir W. Hamilton, a far subtler
thinker than any of these, never reasons in this manner.
He never supposes that a disbeliever in what he means
by Matter, ought in consistency to act in any different
mode from those who believe in it. He knew that the
belief on which all the practical consequences depend, is
the belief in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, and
that if nobody believed in a material universe in any
other sense, life would go on exactly as it now does. He,
however, did believe in more than this, but, I think,
only because it had never occurred to him that mere
Possibilities of Sensation could, to our artificial ized con-
sciousness, present the character of objectivity which, as
we have now shown, they not only can, but unless the
known laws of the human mind were suspended, must
necessarily, present.
Perhaps it may be objected, that the very possibility
of framing such a notion of Matter as Sir W. Hamilton's
the capacity in the human mind of imagining an
external world which is anything more than what the
Psychological Theory makes it amounts to a disproof
of the theory. If (it may be said) we had no revelation
in consciousness, of a world which is not in some way or
other identified with sensation, we should be unable to
have the notion of such a world. If the only ideas
we had of external objects were ideas of our sensations,
supplemented by an acquired notion of permanent pos-
sibilities of sensation, we must (it is thought) be in-
capable of conceiving, and therefore still more incapable
of fancying that we perceive, things which are not
sensations at all. it being evident however that some
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 235
philosophers believe this, and it being maintainable that
the mass of mankind do so, the existence of a perdurable
basis of sensations, distinct from sensations themselves,
is proved, it might be said, by the possibility of believ-
ing it.
Let me first restate what I apprehend the belief to be.
We believe that we perceive a something closely related
to all our sensations, but different from those which we
are feeling at any particular minute ; and distinguished
from sensations altogether, by being permanent and
always the same, while these are fugitive, variable, and
alternately displace one another. But these attributes
of the object of perception are properties belonging to all
the possibilities of sensation which experience guarantees.
The belief in such permanent possibilities seems to me
to include all that is essential or characteristic in the
belief in substance. I believe that Calcutta exists,
though I do not perceive it, and that it would still exist
if every percipient inhabitant were suddenly to leave the
place, or be struck dead. But when I analyse the belief,
all I find in it is, that were these events to take place, the
Permanent Possibility of Sensation which I call Calcutta
would still remain ; that if I were suddenly transported to
the banks of the Hoogly, I should still have the sensa-
tions which, if now present, would lead me to affirm
that Calcutta exists here and now. We may infer,
therefore, that both philosophers and the world at large,
when they think of matter, conceive it really as a
Permanent Possibility of Sensation. But the majority
of philosophers fancy that it is something more ; and
the world at large', though they have really, as I con-
ceive, nothing in their minds but a Permanent Possibility
of Sensation, would, if asked the question, undoubtedly
agree with the philosophers : and though this is suf-
ficiently explained by the tendency of the human mind
to infer difference of things from difference of names,
I acknowledge the obligation of showing how it can
be possible to believe in an existence transcending
all possibilities of sensation, unless on the hypothesis
236 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
tli at such an existence actually is, and that we actually
perceive it.
The explanation, however, is not difficult. It is an
admitted fact, that we are capable of all conceptions
which can be formed by generalizing from the observed
laws of our sensations. Whatever relation we find to
exist between any one of our sensations and something
different from it, that same relation we have no difficulty
in conceiving to exist between the sum of all .our sensa-
tions and something different from them. The differences
which our consciousness recognises between one sensation
and another, give us the general notion of difference, and
inseparably associate with every sensation we have, the
feeling of its being different from other things : and when
once this association has been formed, we can no longer
conceive anything, without being able, and even being
compelled, to form also the conception of something dif-
ferent from it. This familiarity with the idea of some-
thing different from each thing we know, makes it natural
and easy to form the notion of something different from
all things that we know, collectively as well as indi-
vidual!}'. It is true we can form no conception of what
such a thing can be ; our notion of it is merely negative ;
but the idea of a substance, apart from its relation to
the impressions which we conceive it as making on our
senses, is a merely negative one. There is thus no
psychological, obstacle to our forming the notion of a
something which is neither a sensation nor a possibility
of sensation, even if our consciousness does not testily
to it ; and nothing is more likely than that the Perma-
nent Possibilities of sensation, to which our conscious-
ness does testify, should be confounded in our minds
with this imaginary conception. All experience attests
the strength of the tendency to mistake mental abstrac-
tions, even negative ones, lor substantive realities ; and
the Permanent Possibilities of sensation which experience
guarantees, are so extremely unlike in many of their
properties to actual sensations, that since we are capable
of imagining something which transcends sensation,
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 237
there is a great natural probability that we should
suppose these to be it.
But this natural probability is converted into certainty,
when we take into consideration that universal law of
our experience which is termed the law of Causation, and
which makes us mentally connect with the beginning of
everything, some antecedent condition, or Cause. The
case of Causation is one of the most marked of all the
cases in which we extend to the sum total of our conscious-
ness, a notion derived from its parts. It is a striking
example of our power to conceive, and our tendency to
believe, that a relation which subsists between every
individual item of our experience and some other item,
subsists also between our experience as a whole, and
something not within the sphere of experience. By this
extension to the sum of all our experiences, of the internal
relations obtaining between its several parts, we are led
to consider sensation itself the aggregate whole of
our sensations as deriving its origin from antecedent
existences transcending sensation. That we should do
this, is a consequence of the particular character of the
uniform sequences, which experience discloses to us
among our sensations. As already remarked, the con-
stant antecedent of a sensation is seldom another sensa-
tion, or set of sensations, actually felt. It is much
oftener the existence of a group of possibilities, not
necessarily including any actual sensations, except such
as are required to show that the possibilities are really
present. Nor are actual sensations indispensable even
for this purpose ; for the presence of the object (which
is nothing more than the immediate presence of the
possibilities) may be made known to us by the very
sensation which we refer to it as its effect. Thus, the
real antecedent of an effect the only antecedent which,
being invariable and unconditional, we consider to be
the cause may be, not any sensation really felt, but
solely the presence, at that or the immediately preceding
moment, of a group of possibilities of sensation Hence
it is not with sensations as actually experienced, but
238 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
with their Permanent Possibilities, that the idea of
Cause comes to be identified : and we, by one and the
same process, acquire the habit of regarding Sensation
in general, like all our individual sensations, as an Effect,
and also that of conceiving as the causes of most of our
individual sensations, not other sensations, but general
possibilities of sensation. If all these considerations put
together do not completely explain and account for our
conceiving these Possibilities as a class of independent
and substantive entities, I know not what psychological
analysis can be conclusive.
It may perhaps be said, that the preceding theory
gives, indeed, some account of the idea of Permanent
Existence which forms part of our conception of matter,
but gives no explanation of our believing these per-
manent objects to be external, or out of ourselves. I
apprehend, on the contrary, that the very idea of any-
thing out of ourselves is derived solely from the know-
ledge experience gives us of the Permanent Possibilities.
Our sensations we carry with us wherever we go, and
they never exist where we are not ; but when we change
our place we do not carry away with us the Permanent
Possibilities of Sensation : they remain until we return, or
arise arid cease under conditions with which our presence
has in general nothing to do. And more than all
they are, and will be after we have ceased to feel, Per-
manent Possibilities of sensation to other beings than
ourselves. Thus our actual sensations and the per-
manent possibilities of sensation, stand out in obtrusive
contrast to one another : and when the idea of Cause has
been acquired, and extended by generalization from the
parts of our experience to its aggregate whole, nothing
can be more natural than that the Permanent Possi-
bilities should be classed by us as existences generically
distinct from our sensations, but of which our sensations
are the effect.*
* My able American critic, Dr. H. B. Smith, contends through several
pages (152-167 ,' that these facts afford no proofs that objects are external
to us. I never pretended that they do. I am accounting tor our conceiving,
BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 239
The same theory which accounts for our ascribing to
an aggregate of possibilities of sensation, a permanent
existence which our sensations themselves do not possess,
and consequently a greater reality than belongs to our
sensations, also explains our attributing greater objec-
tivity to the Primary Qualities of bodies than to the
Secondary. For the sensations which correspond to
what are called the Primary Qualities (as soon at least
as we come to apprehend them by two senses, the eye as
well as the touch) are always present when any part of
the group is so. But colours, tastes, smells, and the
like, being, in comparison, fugacious, are not, in the
same degree, conceived as being always there, even when
nobody is present to perceive them. The sensations
answering to the Secondary Qualities are only occasional,
those to the Primary, constant. The Secondary, more-
over, vary with different persons, and with the temporary
sensibility of our organs ; the Primary, when perceived
at all, are, as far as we know, the same to all persons
and &i all times.
or representing to ourselves, the Permanent Possibilities as real objects
external to us. I do not believe that the real externality to us of anything,
except- other minds, is capable of proof. But the Permanent Possibilities
are external to us in tne only sense we need care about ; they are not
constructed by the mind itself, but merely recognised by it ; in Kantian
language, they are given to us, and to other beings in common with us.
Men cannot act, cannot live," says Professor Fraser (p. 26), " without'
' assuming an external world, in some conception of the term external.
' It is the business of the philosopher to explain what that conception \
' ought to be. For ourselves we can conceive only (1) An externality to
' our present and transient experience in our own possible experience past
' and future, and (2) An externality to our own conscious experience, in
' the contemporaneous, as well as in the past or future experience of other [
' minds." The view I take of externality, in the sense in which I acknow-
ledge it as real, could not be more accurately expressed than in Professor
Fraser's words. Dr. Smith's criticisms continually go wide of the mark
because he has somehow imagined that I am defending, instead of attack-
ing, the belief in Matter as an entity per se. As when he says (pp. 157-
158) that my reasoning assumes, contrary to my own opinion, " an
" <i priori necessity and validity of the law of cause and effe ?t, or in-
" variable antecedence and consequence." This might fairly have been
eaid if I were defending the belief in the supposed hidden cause of our
sensations : but I am only accounting for it ; and to do so I assume only
the tendency, but not the legitimacy of the tendency, to extend all the
laws of our own experience to a sphere beyond our experience.
M t,. / ,
240
CHAPTER XII.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE BELIEF IN MATTER,
HOW FAR APPLICABLE TO MIND.
IF the deductions in the preceding chapter are correctly
drawn from known and admitted Jaws of the human
mind, the doctrine which forms the basis of Sir W.
Hamilton's system of psychology, that Mind and Matter,
an ego and a non-ego, are original data of consciousness, is
deprived of its foundation. Although these two elements,
an Ego and a Non-ego, are in (what we call) our con-
sciousness now, and are, or seem to be, inseparable from it,
there is no reason for believing that the latter of them,
the non-ego, was in consciousness from the beginning;
since, even if it was not, we can perceive a way in which
it not only might, but must have grown up. We can see
that, supposing it absent in the first instance, it would
inevitably be present now, not as a deliverance of con-
sciousness in Sir W. Hamilton's sense, for to call it so is
to beg the question ; but as an instantaneous and irresis-
tible suggestion and inference, which has become by long
repetition undistinguishable from a direct intuition. I
now propose to carry the inquiry a step farther, and to
examine whether the Ego, as a deliverance of con-
sciousness, stands on firmer ground than the Non-ego ;
whether, at the first ' moment of our experience, we
already have in our consciousness the conception of Self
as a permanent existence ; or whether it is formed sub-
sequently, and admits of a similar analysis to that which
we have found that the notion of Not-self is suscep-
tible of.
It is evident, in the first place, that our knowledge of
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY AS APPLIED TO MIND. 241
mind, like that of matter, is entirely relative ; Sir W.
Hamilton indeed affirms this of mind, in an even more
unqualified manner than he believes it of matter, making
no distinction between Primary and Secondary Qualities.
"In so far* as mind is the common name for the states ' |(
" of knowing, willing, feeling, desiring, &c., of which I
" am conscious, it is only the name for a certain series of
" connected phsenomena or qualities, and consequently
" expresses only what is known. But in so far as it
" denotes that subject or substance in which the phse-
" nomena of knowing, willing, &c., inhere something
" behind or under these phaenomena it expresses what,
" in itself, or in its absolute existence, is unknown." We -\
have no conception of Mind itself, as distinguished from )
its conscious manifestations. We neither know nor can
imagine it, except as represented by the succession of
manifold feelings which metaphysicians call by the name
of States or Modifications of Mind. .It is nevertheless
true that our notion of Mind, as well as of Matter, is
the notion of a permanent something, contrasted with
the perpetual flux of the sensations and other feelings or
mental states which we refer to it ; a something which
we figure as remaining the same, while the particular
feelings through which it reveals its existence, change.
This attribute of Permanence, supposing that there were
'nothing else to be considered, would admit of the same
explanation when predicated of Mind, as of Matter. The
belief I entertain that my mind exists when it is-jjot
feeling, nor thinking, nor conscious of its own existence,
resolves itself into the belief of a Permanent Possibility ,
of these states. If I think of myself as in dreamless
sleep, or in the sleep of death, and believe that I, or in
other words my mind, is or will be existing through
these states, though not in conscious feeling, the most
scrupulous examination of my belief will not detect in
it any fact actually believed, except that my capability :
of feeling is not, in that interval, permanently destroyed,
and is suspended only because it does not meet^with the
* Lectures, i. 138.
R
242 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF MATTER
combination of conditions which would call it into action :
the moment it did meet with that combination it would
revive, and remains, therefore, a Permanent Possibility.
Thus far, there seems no hindrance to our regarding
Mind as ' nothing but the series of our sensations (to
which must now be added our internal feelings), as
they actually occur, with the addition of infinite pos-
sibilities of feeling requiring for their actual realization
conditions which may or may not take place, but which
as possibilities are always in existence, and many of
them present.
In order to the further understanding of the bearings
of this theory of the Ego, it v is advisable to consider it
in its relation to three questions, which may very
naturally be asked with reference to it, and which often
have been asked, and sometimes answered very erro-
neously. If the theory is correct, and my mind is but
a series of feelings, or, as it has been called, a thread of
consciousness, however supplemented by believed Pos-
sibilities of consciousness which are not, though they
might be, realized ; if this is all that Mind, or Myself,
amounts to, what evidence have I .(it is asked) of the
existence of my fellow-creatures ? What evidence of a
hyperphysical world, or, in one word, of God? and,
lastly, what evidence of immortality?
Dr. Reid unhesitatingly answers, None. If the doc-
trine is true, I am alone in the universe.
I hold this to be one of Reid's most palpable mistakes.
Whatever evidence to each of the three points there is
on the ordinary theory, exactly that same evidence is
there on this.
In the first place, as to my fellow-creatures. Reid
seems to have imagined that if I myself am only a series
of feelings, the proposition that I have any fellow-
creatures, or that there are any Selves except mine, is
but words without a meaning. But this is a misappre-
hension. All that I am compelled to admit if I receive
this theory, is that other people's Selves also are but
series of feelings, like my own. Though my Mind, as 1
HOW FAR APPLICABLE TO MIND. 243
am capable of conceiving it, be nothing but the succes-
sion of my feelings, and though Mind itself may be
merely a possibility of feelings, there is nothing in that
doctrine to prevent my conceiving, and believing, that
there are other successions of feelings besides those of
which I am conscious, and that these are as real as my
own. _ The belief is completely consistent with the me-
taphysical theory. Let us now see whether the theory
takes away the grounds of it.
What are those grounds ? By what evidence do I
know, or by what considerations am I led to believe,
that there exist other sentient creatures ; that the
walking and speaking figures which I see and hear, have
sensations and thoughts, or in other words, possess
Minds? The most strenuous Intuitionist does not in-
clude this among the things that I know by direct
intuition. I conclude it from certain things, which my
experience of my own states of feeling proves to me to
be marks of it. These marks are of two kinds, ante-
cedent and subsequent ; the previous conditions requisite
for feeling, and the effects or consequences of it. I con-
clude that other human beings have feelings like me,
because, first, they have bodies like me, which I know,
in my own case, to be the antecedent condition of feel-
ings ; and because, secondly, they exhibit the acts, and
other outward signs, which in my own case I know by
experience to be caused by feelings. I am conscious in
myself of a series of facts connected by an uniform
sequence, of which the beginning is modifications of my
body, the middle is feelings, the end is outward de-
meanour. In the case of other human beings I have
the evidence of my senses for the first and last links of
the series, but not for the intermediate link. I find,
however, that the sequence between the first and last is
as regular and constant in those other cases as it is in
mine. In my own case I know that the first link pro- r
duces the last through the intermediate link, and could
not produce it without. Experience, therefore, obliges
me to conclude that there must be an intermediate link ;
R 2
<\
244 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OY MATTER
which must either be the same in others as in myself, or
a different one : I must either believe them to be alive,
or to be automatons : and by believing them to be alive,
that is, by supposing the link to be of the same nature
as in the case of which I have experience, and which is
in all other respects similar, I bring other human beings,
as phenomena, under the same generalizations which I
know by experience to be the true theory of my own
existence. And in doing so I conform to the legitimate
rules of experimental enquiry. The process is exactly
parallel to that by which Newton proved that the force
which keeps the planets in their orbits is identical with
that by which an apple falls to the ground. It was not
incumbent on Newton to prove the impossibility ot its
being any other force ; he was thought to have made
out his point when he had simply shown, that no other
force need be supposed. We know the existence of other
beings by generalization from the knowledge of our
own : the generalization merely postulates that what
experience shows to be a mark of the existence of some-
thing within the sphere of our consciousness, may be con-
cluded to be a mark of the same thing beyond that sphere.
This logical process loses none of its legitimacy on
the supposition that neither Mind nor Matter is any-
thing but a permanent possibility of feeling. What-
ever sensation I have, I at once refer it to one of the
permanent groups of possibilities of sensation which I
call material objects. But among these groups I find
there is one (my own body) which is not only composed,
like the rest, of a mixed multitude of sensations and possi-
bilities of sensation, but is also connected, in a peculiar
manner, with all my sensations. Not only is this special
group always present as an antecedent condition of every
sensation I have, but the other groups are only enabled
to convert their respective possibilities of sensation into
actual sensations, by means of some previous change in
that particular one. I look about me, and though
there is only one group (or body) which is connected
with all my sensations in this peculiar manner, I
HOW PAR APPLICABLE TO MIND. 245
observe that there is a great multitude of other bodies,
closely resembling in their sensible properties (in the
sensations composing them as groups) this particular
one, but whose modifications do not call up, as those of
my own body do, a world of sensations in my conscious-
ness. Since they do not do so in my consciousness, I [
infer that they do it out of my consciousness, and that
to each of them belongs a world of consciousness of its
own, to which it stands in the same relation in which
what I call my own body stands to mine. And having
made this generalization, I find that all other facts
within my reach accord with it. Each of these bodies
exhibits to my senses a set of phenomena (composed of
acts and other manifestations) such as I know, in my
own case, to be effects of consciousness, and such as
might be looked for if each of the bodies has really in
connexion with it a world of consciousness. All this is
as good and genuine an inductive process on the theory
we are discussing, as it is on the common theory. Any
objection to it in the one case would be an equal objec-
tion in the other. I have stated the postulate required
by the one theory : the common theory is in need of the
same. If I could not, from my personal knowledge of
one succession of feelings, infer the existence of other
successions of feelings, when manifested by the same
outward signs, 1 could just as little, from my personal
knowledge of a single spiritual substance, infer by
generalization, when I find the same outward indica-
tions, the existence of other spiritual substances.
As the theory leaves the evidence of the existence
of my fellow-creatures exactly as it was before, so does
it also with that of the existence of God. Supposing
me to believe that the Divine MinJ is simply the series
of the Divine thoughts and feelings prolonged through
eternity, that would be, at any rate, believing God's
existence to be as real as my own. And as for evidence,
the argument of Paley's Natural Theology, or, for that
matter, of his Evidences of Christianity, would stand
exactly where it does. The Design argument is drawn
246 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF MATTER
from the analogy of human experience. From the rela-
tion which human works bear to human thoughts and
, feelings, it infers a corresponding relation between works,
more or less similar but superhuman, and superhuman
thoughts and feelings. If it proves these, nobody but
a metaphysician needs care whether or not it proves a
mysterious substratum for them. Again, the arguments
for Eevelation undertake to prove by testimony, that
within the sphere of human experience works were done
requiring a greater than human power, and words said
I requiring a greater than human wisdom. These posi-
! tions, and the evidences of them, neither lose nor gain
anything by our supposing that the wisdom only means
wise thoughts and volitions, and that the power means
i thoughts and volitions followed by imposing phenomena.
As to immortality, it is precisely as easy to conceive
that a succession of feelings, a thread of consciousness,
may be prolonged to eternity, as that a spiritual sub-
stance for ever continues to exist: and any evidence
which would prove the one, will prove the other. Meta-
physical theologians may lose the a priori argument by
which they have sometimes flattered themselves with
having proved that a spiritual substance, by the essen-
tial constitution of its nature, cannot perish. But they
had better drop this argument in any case. To do them
justice, they seldom insist on it now.
The notion that metaphysical Scepticism, even at the
utmost length to which it ever has been, or is capable of
being, carried, has for its logical consequence atheism,
is grounded on an entire misapprehension of the Scep-
tical argument, and has no locus standi except for persons
who think that whatever accustoms people to a rigid
scrutiny of evidence is unfavourable to religious belief.
This is the opinion, doubtless, of those who do not
believe in any religion, and seemingly of a great number
who do : but it is not the opinion of Sir W. Hamilton,
who says* that " religious disbelief and philosophical
" scepticism are not merely not the same, but have no
* Lectures, i. 394.
HOW FAR APPLICABLE TO MIND. 247
" natural connexion ;" and who, as we have seen, makes
use of the veracity of the Deity as his principal argu-
ment for trusting the testimony of consciousness to the
substantiality of Matter and of Mind, which would have
been a gross petitio principii if he had thought that our
assurance of the divine attributes required that the
objective existence of Matter and Mind should be first
recognised.
The theory, therefore, which resolves Mind into a
series of feelings, with a background of possibilities of
feeling, can effectually withstand the most invidious
of the arguments directed against it. But, groundless
as are the extrinsic objections, the theory has intrinsic
difficulties which we have not yet set forth, and which it
seems to me beyond the power of metaphysical analysis
to remove. Besides present feelings, and possibilities of
present feeling, there is another class of phsenomena to ^
be included in an enumeration of the elements making
up our conception of Mind. The thread of conscious- j
ness which composes the mind's phsenoruenal life, con-
sists not only of present sensations, but likewise, in part,
of memories and expectations. Now what are these ? j
In themselves, they are present feelings, states of present j
consciousness, and in that respect not distinguished from
sensations. They all, moreover, resemble some given *
sensations or feelings, of which we have previously had
experience. But they are attended with the peculiarity,
that each of them involves a belief in more than its own
present existence. A sensation involves only this : but '
a remembrance of sensation, even if not referred to any
particular date, involves the suggestion and belief that a
sensation, of which it is a copy or representation, actually
existed in the. past : and an expectation involves the
belief, more or less positive, that a sensation or other
feeling to which it directly refers, will exist in the future,
Nor can the phsenomena involved in these two states of
consciousness be adequately expressed, without saying
that the belief they include is, that I myself formerly
had, or that I myself, and no other, shall hereafter have,
248 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF MATTER
the sensations remembered or expected. The fact be-
lieved is, that the sensations did actually form, or will
hereafter form, part of the self-same series of states, or
thread of consciousness, of which the remembrance or ex-
pectation of those sensations is the part now present. If,
therefore, we speak of the Mind as a series of feelings,
we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a
series of feelings which is aware of itself as past and
future ; and we are reduced to the alternative of believ-
ing that the Mind, or Ego, is something different from
any series of feelings, or possibilities of them, or of ac-
cepting the paradox, that something which ex hypothesi is
but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series.
The truth is, that we are here face to face with that
final inexplicability, at which, as Sir W. Hamilton
observes, we inevitably arrive when we reach ultimate
facts ; and in general, one mode of stating it only
appears more incomprehensible than another, because
the whole of human language is accommodated to the
one, and is so incongruous with the other, that it cannot
be expressed in any terms which do not deny its truth.
The real stumbling block is perhaps not in any theory
of the fact, but in the fact itself. The true incompre-
hensibility perhaps is, that something which has ceased,
or is not yet in existence, can still be, in a manner,
present : that a series of feelings, the infinitely greater
part of which is past or future, can be gathered up, as
it were, into a single present conception, accompanied
by a belief of reality. I think, by far the wisest thing
we can do, is to accept the inexplicable fact, without
any theory of how it takes place ; and when we are
obliged to speak of it in terms which assume a theory,
to use them with a reservation as to their meaning.
I have stated the difficulties attending the attempt to
frame a theory of Mind, or the Ego, similar to what I
have called the Psychological Theory of Matter, or the
Non-ego. No such difficulties attend the theory in its
application to Matter ; and I leave it, as set forth, to pass
for whatever it is worth as an antagonist doctrine to that
HOW FAR APPLICABLE TO MIND. 249
of Sir W. Hamilton and the Scottish School, respecting
the non-ego as a deliverance of consciousness.*
* Mr. Mansel, in his " Prolegomena Logica," shows a perception of the
difference here pointed out between the character of the Psychological
explanation of the belief in Matter, and that of the belief in Mind ; and he
resolves the question by drawing a distinction between the two Noumena,
not often drawn by philosophers posterior to Berkeley. He considers the
Ego to be a direct presentation of consciousness, while with regard to the
Non-ego he is not far from adopting the Berkeleian theory. The whole of
his remarks on the subject are well worth reading. See Prolegomena
Logica, pp. 122-135.
250
APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS.
THIS attempt 'to bring out into 'distinctness the mode in which
the notions of Matter and Mind, considered as Substances, may
have been generated in us by the mere order of our sensations,
has naturally received from those whose metaphysical opinions
vf^ were already made up, a much greater amount of opposition
than of assent. I think I have observed, however, that the re-
pugnance shown to it by writers has been in tolerably correct
proportion to the evidence they give of deficiency in that indis-
pensable aptitude of a metaphysician, facility in placing himself
at the point of view of a theory different from his own : and
that those who have ever (if the expression may be pardoned)
thought themselves into the Berkeleian or any other Idealistic
scheme of philosophy, however little favourable towards other
parts of the present volume, have either let this part of it alone,
or expressed more or less approbation of it. Those who are
completely satisfied with the popular every-day notion of
Matter, or whose metaphysics have been adopted from any of
the Realistic thinkers who undertake to legitimate that common
notion, are usually content with going round the counter-
theory on the outside, and seldom place themselves sufficiently
at the centre of it to perceive what a person ought to think
or do, who occupies that position. They no longer, indeed,
commit so gross a blunder as that which, not very long ago,
even Reid, Stewart, and Brown rushed blindly into that of
charging a Berkeleian with inconsistency if he did not walk
into the water or into the fire. Acquaintance with the German
metaphysicians, and (it is but just to add) the teachings of Sir
W. Hamilton, have had that much of beneficial result. But if
such thinkers as these three could pass judgment on Berkeley's
doctrine while showing by such conclusive proof that they had
never understood its very alphabet that, however much consi-
deration they may have given to the mere arguments of Berkeley,
they had not begun to realize his doctrine in their own minds
to look at the sensible universe as he saw it, and see what
consequences would follow ; it is not wonderful that those who
have got on a few steps further than this, have still much to
do, before they are able to accommodate their conceptive
faculties to the conditions of what I have called the Psycho-
APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 251
logical Theory, and follow that theory correctly into the rami-
fication of its applications.
In principle, I must admit that my opponents, as a body, .
have referred the Psychological Theory to the right test. They ! /
have aimed at showing that its attempt to account for the belief >
in Matter (I say Matter only, because I do not profess to have
adequately accounted for the belief in Mind) implies or requires
that the belief should already exist, as a condition of its own
production. The objection, if true, is conclusive; but they are
not very particular about the proof of its truth. They, one and
all, think their case made out, if I employ, in any part of the
exposition, the language of common life a language con-
structed on the basis of the notions into the origin of which I
am inquiring. If I say, that after we have seen a piece of paper
on a table, our belief that it is still there during our absence
means a belief that if we went again into the room we should
see it, they cry out, Here is belief in Matter already assumed ;
the idea of going into a room implies belief in matter. If, as
a proof that modifications may take place in our possibilities of
sensation while the sensations are not in actual consciousness,
I say that whether we are asleep or awake the fire goes out, I
am told that I am assuming a knowledge of ourselves as a sub-
stance, and of the difference between being asleep and awake.
They forget that to go into a room, to be asleep or awake, are
expressions which have a meaning in the Psychological Theory
as well as in theirs ; that every assertion that can be made
about the external world, which means anything on the Realistic
theory, has a parallel meaning on the Psychological. Going into
a room, on the Psychological theory, is a mere series of sensa-
tions felt, and possibilities of sensation inferred,* but distin-
guishable from every other combination of sensations and
possibilities, and which, with others like to itself, forms as
vast and variegated a picture of the universe as can be had on
the other theory ; indeed, as I maintain, the very same picture.
The Psychological theory requires that we should have a con-
ception of this series of actual and contingent sensations, as
distinct from any other ; but it does not require that we should
have referred these sensations to a substance ulterior to all
sensation or possibility of sensation. To suppose so, is to
commit the same kind of misapprehension, though in a less
extreme degree, which Reid, Stewart, and Brown committed.
When, in attempting an intelligible discussion of an abstruse
* This particular series includes volitions in addition to sensations ; but
the difference is of no consequence ; and the theory would stand if we
suppose ourselves carried into the room instead of walking into it.
252 APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS.
metaphysical question, I have occasion to speak of any com-
bination of physical facts, I must speak of it by the only names
there are for it. I must employ language, every word of which
expresses, not things as we perceive them, or as we may have
conceived them originally, but things as we conceive them now.
I was addressing readers, all of whom had the acquired notion
of Matter, and nearly all of them the belief in it : and it was
my business to show, to these believers in Matter, a possible
mode in which the notion and belief of it might have been
acquired, even if Matter, in the metaphysical meaning of the
term, did not exist. In endeavouring to point out to them, by
what facts the notion might have been generated, it was com-
petent to me to state those facts in the language which was not
only the most intelligible, but, to the minds I was addressing,
the truest. The real paralogism would have been, if I had said
anything implying, not the existence of Matter, but that the
belief in it or the notion of it was part of the facts by which I
was maintaining that this belief and notion may have been
generated. But in no single instance have any adversaries
whom I am aware of, been able to show this : and if they fairly
placed themselves at the point of view of the Psychological
explanation, they would see that I could not, in any circum-
stances whatever, have been reduced to this necessity : because
there is, as I have said, for every statement which can be made
concerning material phenomena in terms of the Realistic
theory, an equivalent meaning in terms of Sensation and Pos-
sibilities of Sensation alone, and a meaning which would justify
all the same processes of thought. In fact, almost all philo-
sophers who have narrowly examined the subject, have decided
that Substance need only be postulated as a support for phseno-
mena, or as a bond of connexion to hold a group or series of
otherwise unconnected phenomena together : let us only, then,
v think away the support, and suppose the phsenomena to remain,
v and to be held together in the same groups and series by some
other agency, or without any agency but an internal law, and
r/-- A / every consequence follows without Substance, for the saiie of
which Substance was assumed. The Hindoos thought that
,^ the earth required to be supported by an elephant; but
the earth turned out quite capable of supporting itself, and
"hanging self-balanced" on its own "centre." Descartes thought tyf
that a material medium tilling the whole space between the
earth and the sun, was required to enable them to act on
one another ; but it has been found sufficient to suppose an
immaterial law of attraction, and the medium and its vortices
'i " ~T /M **" /
dropped off as superfluities.
>
r
APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 253
To dispel some of the haze which seems still to hang about
the data assumed by the Psychological theory of the belief in
Matter, it will be well that, as I have stated what laws and
capacities, in one word what conditions, that theory postulates
in the mind itself, I should also state what conditions it postu-
lates in Nature ; in that which, to use the Kantian phraseology,
is given to the mind, as distinguished from the mind's own
constitution.
First, then, it postulates Sensations ; and a certain Order among
sensations. And the Order postulated, is of more kinds than one.
In the first place, there is the mere fact of succession. Sen-
sations exist before and after one another. This is as much a
primordial fact as sensation itself; it is a feature always present
in sensation, and we have the strongest ground that can ever
be had for regarding it as ultimate, because every genesis we
assign to any other fact of perception or thought, includes it
as a condition. I shall be told, that this is postulating the
reality of Time : and it is so, if by Time be understood an in-
definite succession of successions, unequal in rapidity. But an
entity called Time, and regarded as not a succession of succes-
sions, but as something in which the successions take place, I
do not and need not postulate.* Neither do I decide whether
this inseparable attribute of our sensations is annexed to them
by the laws of mind, or given in the sensations themselves ; nor
whether, at this great height of abstraction, the distinction does
not disappear. Let me say also, that I have never pretended to |
account by association for the idea of Time. It is the seeming
infinity of Time, as of Space, which, after Mr. James Mill, I
have tendered that explanation of: and that of this it is the
true and sufficient one, is to me obvious.
Sensations are not only successive, they are also simultaneous :
it often happens that several of them are felt, apparently at the
same instaut. This attribute of sensations is not so evidently
primordial as their succession. There are philosophers who
* This objective conception of Time, as holding the successions instead
of being them, is probably suggested by our being able to measure time,
and number its parts. But what we call measuring Time is only com-
paring successions, and measuring the length or rapidity of one series of
successions by that of another. Rapidity of succession, indeed, is a phrase
which derives all its meaning from such a comparison. I say that the
words of a person to whom I am listening succeed one another more
rapidly than the tickings of a clock, because, after I have heard a word
and a ticking simultaneously, a second word occurs before a second ticking.
The only ultimate facts or primitive elements in Time are Before and
After ; which (the knowledge of opposites being one) involve the notion of
Neither before nor after, i.e. simultaneous.
254 APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS.
think that the sensations deemed simultaneous are very rapidly
successive, their distinction from other cases of succession being
that they may succeed one another in any order. I do not agree
in this opinion ; but, even supposing it correct, we should equally
have to postulate the distinction. We should have to assume
that plurality of sensations exists in two modes, one consciously
successive, the other felt as simultaneous, and that the mind is
able to distinguish between the one sort and the other.
Besides this twofold order inherent in sensations, of being
either successive or simultaneous, there is an order within that
order: they are successive or simultaneous in constant combi-
nations. The same antecedent sensation is followed by the
same consequent sensation ; the same sensation is accompanied
by the same set of simultaneous sensations. I use these
expressions for shortness, for the uniformity of order is not
quite so simple as this. The consequent sensation is not always
acLualiy felt after the antecedent, nor are all the synchronous
sensations actually felt whenever one of them is felt. But the
one which is felt gives us assurance, grounded on experience,
that each of the others, if not felt, is feelable, i.e., will be felt if
the other facts be present which are the known antecedent con-
ditions of such a sensation as it is. For example, I have the
sensations of colour and of a visible disk, which are parts of our
present conception of a cast-iron ball. I infer that there are,
now or presently to be had by me, simultaneously with those
visual sensations, another feeling, called the sensation of hard-
ness. But I do not have this last sensation inevitably and at once.
Why ? Because (as I also know by experience) no sensation of
hardness is ever felt unless preceded by a condition, the same
in all cases, but itself sensational, the sensations of muscular
exertion and pressure. The visual sensation is synchronous,
not necessarily with the actual sensation of hardness, but with
a present possibility of that sensation. When we feel the one,
we are not always feeling the other, but we know that it is to
be felt on the ordinary terms : we know that so soon as the
muscular sensations take place which are the observed prelimi-
nary to every sensation of hardness, that particular sensation of
hardness will certainly be had, simultaneously with the visual
sensation. This is what is meant by saying that a Body is a
group of simultaneous possibilities of sensation, not of simulta-
neous sensations. It rarely happens that the sensations which
enter into the group can all be experienced at once; because
many of them are never had without a long series of antecedent
sensations, including volitions, which may be incompatible with
the sensations and volitions necessary for having others. The
APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 255
sensations which we receive when we study the internal structure
of a closed body, are not to be obtained without having previously
the complex series of sensations and volitions concerned in the
operation of opening it. The sensations we receive from the
complicated process by which food nourishes us, must be long
waited for after our first siht of the food, and many of them
are not even then to be had without our being led up to them
through a long series of muscular and other sensations. But
the very first sensations we have, that are sufficient to identify
the group, guarantee to us the possibility or potentiality of all
the others. The potentiality becomes actuality on the occurrence
of certain known conditions sine qua non of each, which are
conditions not of having that particular sensation at a given
moment, but of having any sensation of that kind ; conditions
which, when analysed, are themselves also merely sensational.
Any one who had thrown his mind, by an act of imagination,
into the Psychological theory, would see at a glance all these
applications and developments of it, even if he did not follow
them out into detail. But men will not, and mostly cannot,
throw their minds into any theory with which they are not
familiar ; and the bearings and consequences of the Psychological
theory will have to be developed and minutely expounded innu-
merable times, before it will be seen as it is, and have whatever
chance it deserves of being accepted as true.
I have postulated, first, Sensations ; secondly, succession and
simultaneousness of sensations ; thirdly, an uniform order in
their succession and simultaneousness, such that they are united
in groups, the component sensations of which are in such a
relation to one another, that when we experience one, we are
authorized to expect all the rest, conditionally on certain ante-
cedent sensations called organic, belonging to the kind of each.
This is all we need postulate with regard to the groups, con-
sidered in themselves, or considered in relation to the perceiving
Subject. Let us examine whether it is necessary to postulate
anything additional respecting the groups considered in relation
to one another.
In Dr. M'Cosh's opinion, the Psychological theory overlooks
this part of the subject.* In quoting the analysis of our con-
ception of Matter into Resistance, Extension, and Figure,
together with miscellaneous powers of exciting other sensations,
he observes, " There is a palpable omission here, for it omits
* M'Cosh, p. 118. The same observation applies to another of my
critics, the writer in Elackwood's Magazine, who says (p. 28) " The quali-
ties by which they [Things] act upon each other, cannot be resolved
into any receptivity or subjectivity of mine."
v A-S* -*"VHt*-
vl- to vV &fc> ^(JL^Lt^if Ci C^tDo ft-<!\v-\
APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPT
cccyw vZTo-/ if u. K f\ft< n <ft*-fJUft*.*.
those powers by which one body operates upon another ; thus
the sun has a power to make wax white, and fire to make lead
" fluid." If Dr. M'Cosh had entered even a very little way into
the mode of thought which he is combating, he must have seen
that after mentioning the attribute of exciting sensations, it
could not be necessary to add that of making something else
excite sensations. If Body altogether is only conceived as a
power of exciting sensations, the action of one body upon
another is simply the modification by one such power, of the
sensations excited by another; or, to use a different expression,
the joint action of two powers of exciting sensations. It is easy
for any one competent to such enquiries who will make the
attempt, to understand how one group of Possibilities of Sensa-
tion can be conceived as destroying or modifying another such
group.
Let there be granted a synchronous group, connected by the
contingent simultaneousness already described, which renders
each of the component sensations a mark of the possibility of
having all the others ; while each, independently of the others,
has conditions sine qua non of its own, also sensational, but of
the kind which, in common language, we call organic, and refer
to an internal sense. Let us suppose that these organic condi-
tions, instead of existing for one or more sensations of the
group and not for the rest, do not at present exist for any of
them. The whole of the possibilities of sensation which form
the group, and which mutually testify to each other's presence,
are now dormant : but they are ready to start into actuality at
any moment, when the conditions sine qua non which belong to
them separately are realized : and whenever any of them thus
starts up, it informs us (so far as our experience happens to
have reached) what others are ready to do so in the same
manner. This dormancy of all the possibilities, while, as real
possibilities guaranteeing one another, they continue to exist,
constitutes, on the Psychological theory, the fact which is at the
bottom of the assertion that the body is in existence when we
are not perceiving it. This fact is all that we need postulate
to account for our conceiving the groups of Possibilities of
Sensation as permanent and independent of us ; for our pro-
jecting them into objectivity ; and for our conceiving them as
perhaps capable of being Possibilities of Sensation to other
beings in like manner as to ourselves, as soon as we have con-
ceived the idea of other sentient beings than ourselves. And
since we do actually recognise other sentient beings as existing,
and receive impressions from them which entirely accord with
this hypothesis, we accept the hypothesis as a truth, and believe
t ^
~ jL
APPENOTX
f tfc toytx/t A*) &*.*t<> O^fy. 4 tt*c A
TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 257 /, -
-. . TAX K/o^Vk * wusufw uifuA+uA I
I I ' tr
that the Permanent Possibilities of Sensation really are common
to ourselves and other beings.
Having thus arrived at the conception of an absent group of <UL&At
Possibilities, there is surely no more difficulty in conceiving the
annihilation or alteration of the Possibilities while absent, than
of the sensations themselves when present. The log which I
saw on the fire an hour ago, has been consumed and has dis-
appeared when I look again ; the Possibilities of Sensation
which I called by that name, are possibilities no longer. The
ice which I placed in front of the fire at the same time, is now
water; such Possibilities of Sensation as form part of the groun<
called ice and not of the groups called water, have ceased and
given place to others. All this is intelligible without supposing
the wood, the ice, or the water, to be anything underneath or
beyond Permanent Possibilities of Sensation. Why, then,
whe'i I ascribe the disappearance of the wood, and the conver-
sion of the ice into water, to the presence of the fire, must I
suppose the fire to be something underneath a Possibility of
Sensation? My experience informs me that those other Pos-i-
bilities of Sensation do not vanish or change in the manner
mentioned, unless another Possibility of Sensation known by
the name of fire, has existed immediately before, and continued
to exist simultaneously with the change. Changes in the Per-
manent Possibilities I find to have always for their antecedent
conditions, other Permanent Possibilities, and to be connected
with them by an order or law, as uniform as that which connects
the elements of each group with one another; indeed by a still
stricter order, for the laws of succession, those of Cause and
Effect, are laws of more rigid precision than those of simulta-
neousness. But the facts, between which the observed uni-
formities of succession exist, are f:icts of sense; that is, either
actual sensations, or possibilities of sensation inferred from the
actual. Thus the whole variety of the facts of nature as we
know it, is given in the mere existence of our sensations, and
in the laws or order of their occurrence.*
I have now given an exposition of the Psychological Theory,
and of the mode in which it accounts for what is supposed to
be our natural conviction of the existence of Matter, from the
* Mr. O'Hanlon, in his little pamphlet (pp. 12 and 14) puts his diffi-
culty on this subject in the following terms : " Your permanent possi-
" bilities of sensation are, so long as they are not felt, nothing actual. Yet
"you speak of change taking place in them, and that independently of
" our consciousness and of our presence or absence. ... If the fire, apart
" from any consciousness, be some positive condition or conditions of
" warmth and light, if the corn be some positive condition or conditions of
" food, my thesis is made out, and your Pure Idealism falls to the ground.
258 APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS.
objective point of view, as I had previously done from the sub-
jective ; and I think it will be found that the exposition does
not presuppose anything which I have not expressly postulated,
and that I have not postulated any of the facts or notions
which I undertake to explain. It may be said that I postulate
an Ego the sentient Subject of the sensations. I have stated
what subjective, as well as what objective data I postulate.
Expectation being one of these, in so far as reference to an
Ego is implied in Expectation I do postulate an Ego. But I
am entitled to do so, for up to this stage it is not Self, but
Body, that I have been endeavouring to trace to its origin as
an acquired notion.*
I now pass to this very subject, the Ego, and to the objections
which have been made against the manner in which it is treated
in the preceding chapter.
"If, on the other hand, the fire be nothing positive apart from any con-
" sciousness, then, since it is nothing at all when so apart, you can have
" no right to speak of modifications taking place in it whether we are
" asleep or awake, present or absent."
I give great credit to my young antagonist, not only for the neatness of
his dilemma, but for having gone so directly to the point at which is the
real stress of the dispute. But I think he will perceive, from what T have
said in the text, in what manner one may have a right to speak of modi-
fications as taking place in a possibility. And I think he will be able to
see that the condition of a phaenomenon needs not necessarily be anything
positive, in his sense of the word, or objective ; it may be anything, posi-
tive or negative, actuality or possibility, without which the phaenomenon
would not have occurred, and which may therefore be justly inferred from
its occurrence.
* Mr. O'Hanlon saya (p. 14) : " Conceding the entire truth of the posi-
'tion, that there are associations naturally and even necessarily generated
'by the order of our sensations, and of our reminiscences of sensation,
' which, supposing no intuition of an external world to have existed in
' consciousness, would inevitably generate the belief, and would cause it
'to be regarded as an intuition; conceding, I say, for argument's sake,
' the entire truth of this position, it may still be true that though we have
' no intuition of the external world, the inference that such a world exists
' is a legitimate one." Undoubtedly it may. Malebranche, for instance,
according to whose system Matter is not perceived, nor in any way cog-
nised, nor capable of being cognised, by our minds, all the things that we
see or feel existing only as ideas in the Divine Mind, nevertheless' fully
believed in the reality of this superfluous wheel in the mechanism of the
universe, which merely revolves while the machinery does its work inde-
pendently of it because he thought that God himself had asserted its
existence in the Scriptures : and whoever agrees with Malebranche in his
premises is likely to agree with him in his conclusion. But with most
people, whether philosophers or common men, the evidence on which
Matter is believed to exist independently of our minds, is either that we
}>erceive it by our senses, or that the notion and belief of it come to us by
an original law of our nature. If it be shown that there is no ground for
either of these opinions that all we are conscious of may be accounted
APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 259
Having shown that in order to account for the belief in Matter,
or, in other words, in a non-ego supposed to be presented in or
along with sensation, it is not necessary to suppose anything but
sensations and possibilities of sensation connected in groups ; it
was natural and necessary to enquire whether the Ego, supposed
to be presented in or along with all consciousness whatever, is
also an acquired uotion, inexplicable in the same manner. I there-
fore stated this phaenomenal theory of the Ego ; freed it from
the prejudice which attaches to it on the score of consequences
to which it does not lead, the non-existence, first, of our fellow-
creatures, and secondly, of God;* but showed that it has
for without supposing that we perceive Matter by our senses, and that
the notion and belief in Matter may have come to us by the laws of our
constitution without being a revelation of any objective reality, the main
evidences of Matter are at an end ; and though 1 am perfectly willing to
listen to any other evidence, Malebranche's argument is, I must confess,
quite as conclusive as any that I expect to find.
* Some of my critics have impugned the arguments of the preceding
chapter on this particular point They have said (Mr. O'Hanlon is the
one who has said it with the greatest compactness and force) that persons,
equally with inanimate things, may be conceived as mere states of my
own consciousness ; that the same processes of thought which, according
to the Psychological theory, can generate the belief in Matter even if it
does not exist, must be equally competent to engender the belief of the
existence of other Minds : and that the principles of the theory require
us, under the law of Parcimony, to conclude that if the belief may have
been, it has been, thus generated : consequently the theory takes away all
evidence of the existence of other minds, or of other threads of conscious-
ness than our own.
It would undoubtedly do so, if the only evidence of the existence of other
threads of consciousness was a natural belief, as a natural belief is the
only evidence which rational persons now acknowledge of the existence of
Al atter. But there is other evidence, which does not exist in the case of
Matter, and which is as conclusive, as the other is inconclusive. The
nature of this has been stated, with sufficient fulness of development, in
the preceding chapter, and Mr. O'Hanlon has rightly understood it to be
a simple extension of " the principles of inductive evidence, which experience
' shows hold good of my states of consciousness, to a sphere without my
' consciousness." But he objects (p. 7) : " The doing so postulates two
' things : (a) That there is a sphere beyond my consciousness, the very
' thing to be proved. (6) That the laws which obtain in my conscious-
' ness, also obtain in the sphere beyond it."
To this I reply, that it does not postulate these two things, but, to the
extent required by the present question, proves them. There is nothing
in the nuture of the inductive principle that confines it within the limits
of my own consciousness, when it exceptionally happens that an inference
surpassing the limits of my consciousness can conform to inductive
conditions.
I am aware, by experience, of a group of Permanent Possibilities of
Sensation which I call my body, and which my experience shows to be an
universal condition of every part of my thread of consciousness. I am
also aware of a great number of other groups, resembling the one that I
s 2
260 APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS.
intrinsic difficulties, which no one has been able to remove ;
since certain of the attributes comprised in our notion of the
Ego, and which are at the very foundation of it, namely
Memory and Expectation, have no equivalent in Matter, and
cannot be reduced to any elements similar to those into which
Matter is resolved by the Psychological theory. Having stated
these facts, as inexplicable by the Psychological theory, I left
them to stand as facts, without any theory whatever : not
adopting the Permanent Possibility hypothesis as a sufficient
call my body, but which have no connexion, such as that has, with the
remainder of my thread of consciousness. This disposes me to draw an
inductive inference, that those other groups are connected with other
threads of consciousness, as mine is with my own. If the evidence stopped
here, the inference would be but an hypothesis ; reaching only to the
inferior degree of inductive evidence called Analogy. The evidence, how-
ever, does not stop here ; for, having made the supposition that real
feelings, though not experienced by myself, lie behind those phenomena
of my own consciousness which, from their resemblance to my body, I
call other human bodies, I find that my subsequent consciousness pre-
sents those very sensations, of speech heard, of movements and other
outward demeanour seen, and so forth, which, being the effects or con-
sequents of actual feelings in my own case, I should expect to follow upon
those other hypothetical feelings if they really exist : and thus the hy-
pothesis is verified. It is thus proved inductively that there is a sphere
beyond my consciousness: i.e., that there are other consciousnesses beyond
it ; for there exists no parallel evidence in regard to Matter. And it is
proved inductively, that so far as respects those other consciousnesses,
linked to as many groups of Permanent Possibilities of Sensation similar
to my own body, the laws which obtain in my consciousness also obtain
in the sphere beyond it ; that those other threads of consciousness are
beings similar to myself.
The legitimacy of this process is open to no objections, either real or
imaginary, but such as may equally be made against inductive inferences
within the sphere of our own actual or possible consciousness. Facts of
which I never have had consciousness are as much unknown facts, as
much apart from my actual experience, as facts of which I cannot have
consciousness. When I conclude, from facts that I immediately'perceive,
to the existence of other facts such as might come into my actual con-
sciousness (which the feelings of other people never can) but which never
did come into it, and of which I have no evidence but an induction from
experience ; how do I know that I am concluding rightly that the infe-
rence is warranted, from an actual consciousness to a contingent possi-
bility of consciousness which has never become actual P Surely because
this conclusion from experience is verified by further experience ; because
those other experiences which I ought to have if my inference was correct,
really present themselves. This verification, which is the source of all
my reliance on induction, justifies the same reliance wherever it is found.
The alien threads of consciousness of which I presume the existence from
the analogy of my own body, manifest the truth of the presumption by
visual and tactual effects within my own consciousness, resembling those
which follow from sensations, thoughts, or emotions felt by myself The
reality beyond the sphere of my consciousness rests on the twofold
APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 261
theory of Self in spite of the objections to it, as some of my
critics have imagined, and have wasted no small amount of
argument and sarcasm in exposing the untenability of such a
position : neither, on the other hand, did I, as others have
supposed, accept the common theory of Mind, as a so-called
Substance. Since the state in which I profess to leave the
question has been so ill understood, it is incumbent on me to
explain myself more fully.
Since the fact which alone necessitates the belief in an Ego,
evidence, of its antecedents, and its consequents. It is an inference up- !
wards from the manifestations, and downwards from the antecedent con-
ditions ; and whichever of these inferences is first drawn, the other is its
verification.
I venture to hope that these considerations may remove Mr. O'Hanlon's
difficulty. But whatever the difficulty may be, it is not peculiar to the
Psychological theory, but lias equally to be encountered on every other.
For no one supposes that other people's feelings or states of consciousness
are a matter of direct intuition to us, or of JSatural Belief. We do not
directly perceive other minds : their reality is not known to us imme-
diately, but by means of evidence. And there is no evidence by which it
can be proved to me that there is a conscious being within each of the
human bodies that I see, without a process of induction involving the very
same assumptions which are required by the Psychological Theory.
I will delay the reader a few momeuts more while I reply to a minor
difficulty of Mr. O'Hanlon. He urges, that the Psychological theory
inserts an alien consciousness between two consciousnesses of my own, as
the effect of one of them and the cause of the other. " A boy cuts his
' finger and screams. The knife, the blood, and the boy's body are only
' (in Mr. Mill's view) actual and possible groups of my sensations, and
' the scream is an actual sensation. I inter, continuing to accept Mr.
' Mill's theory, that between the scream and the other sensations, namely
' between two sets of states of my own consciousness, a foreign conscious-
' ness had the feeling I call pain, and also that the sensations of cutting
' its finger, the same sensations, belong as much to it as to me, combined
' with certain additions, and in a very peculiar manner. Yet if I was not
' by, the boy, the knife, the blood, the scream, would only exist poten-
' tially" (pp. 8, 9). Whatever seeming absurdity, and real confusion,
exist here, are only attributable to the fact, that Mr. O'Hanlon, notwith-
standing his acuteness, has not yet sufficiently thought himself into the
theory he denies. On the same evidence on which I recognise foreign
threads of consciousness, I believe that the Permanent Possibilities of
Sensation are common to them and to me ; but not the actual sensations. U^^
The evidence proves to me, that although the knife, the blood, and the
boy's body would, if I were absent, be mere potentialities of sensation k/^* 1
relatively to me, the similar potentialities which i infer to exist in him
have been realized as actual sensations ; and it is as conditions of the
sensations in him, and not of sensations in me, that they form a part of
the series of causes and effects which take place out of my consciousness.
Tne chain of causation is the following : 1. A modification in a set of
Permanent Possibilities of Sensation common to the boy and me. 2. A
sensation of pain in the boy, not felt by me. 6. The scream, which is a
sensation in me.
262 APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS.
the one fact which the Psychological theory cannot explain, is
the fact of Memory (for Expectation I hold to be, both psycho-
logically and logically, a consequence of Memory), I see no
reason to think that there is any cognizance of an Ego until
Memory commences. There seems no ground for believing,
with Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, that the Ego is an
original presentation of consciousness ; that the mere impression
on our senses involves, or carries with it, any consciousness of
a Self, any more than I believe it to do of a Not-self. Our
very notion of a Self takes its commencement (there is every
reason to suppose) from the representation of a sensation in
memory, when awakened by the only thing there is to awaken
it before any associations have been formed, namely, the occur-
rence of a subsequent sensation similar to the former one. The
fact of recognising a sensation, of being reminded of it, and, as
we say, remembering that it has been felt before, is the simplest
and most elementary fact of memory : and the inexplicable tie,
or law, the organic union (as Professor Masson calls it) which
connects the present consciousness with the pa*t one, oi which
it reminds me, is as near as I think we can get to a positive
conception of Self. That there is something real in this tie,
real as the sensations themselves, and not a mere product of
the laws of thought without any fact corresponding to it, I
hold to be indubitable. The precise nature of the process by
which we cognise it, is open to much dispute. Whether we
are directly conscious of it in the act of remembrance, as we
are of succession in the fact of having successive sensations, or
whether, according to the opinion of Kant, we are not conscious
of a Self at all, but are compelled to assume it as a necessary
condition of Memory,* I do not undertake to decide. But this
original element, which has no community of nature with
any of the things answering to our names, and to which we
cannot give any name but its own peculiar one without imply-
ing some false or ungrounded theory, is the Ego, or Self. As
such, I ascribe a reality to the Ego to my own Mind dif-
ferent from that real existence as a Permanent Possibility,
which is the only reality i acknowledge in Matter: and by fair
* Mr. Mahaffy thinks that the question may be decided in favour of
Kant on the evidence of consciousness itself. " Are you," he asks (p. Ivi.)
'conscious of being presented with yourself as a substance? or are you
' only conscious that in every act of thought you must presuppose a per-
' inanent self, and always refer it to self, while still that self you cannot
' grasp, and it remains a hidden basis upon which you erect the structure
'of your thoughts ? Which of these opinions will most men adopt?
' After all, Kant's view is the simpler, and the more consistent with the
' ordinary language."
APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 263'
experiential inference from that one Ego, I ascribe the same
reality to other Egoes, or Minds.
Having thus, as I hope, more clearly defined my position in
regard to the reality of the Ego, considered as a question of
Ontology, I return to my first starting point, the Relativity of
human knowledge, and affirm (being here in entire accordance
with Sir W. Hamilton) that whatever be the nature of the real
existence we are compelled to acknowledge in Mind, the Mind
is only known to itself phaenomenally, as the series of its feel-
ings or consciousnesses. We are forced to apprehend every
part oi the series as linked with the other parts by something
in common, which is not the feelings themselves, any more than
the succession of the feelings is the feelings themselves : and as
that which is the same in the first as in the second, in the
second as in the third, in the third as in the fourth, and so on,
must be the same in the first and in the fiftieth, this common
element is a permanent element. But beyond this, we can
affirm nothing of it except the states of consciousness them-
selves. The feelings or consciousnesses which belong or have
belonged to it, and its possibilities of having more, are the
only tacts there are to be asserted of Self the only positive
attributes, except permanence, which we can ascribe to it. In
consequence of this, I occasionally use the words " mind " and
" thread of consciousness" interchangeably, and treat Mind as
existing, and Mind as known to itself, as convertible : but this
is only for brevity, and the explanations which I have now given
must always be taken as implied.*
Dr. M'Cosh has renewed his attack upon the doctrine of Permanent
Possibilities. But I canuot find in his later remarks, so far as they are to
the purpose, much more than a repetition of his earlier. On some minor
points he does present some novelties. He is severe upon me for hesi-
tating to decide whether the attribute of succession as between our sensa-
tions is given in the sensations themselves, or annexed to them by a law
of the mind. The first supposition he characterizes as a mere verbal
generalization like those which I have laid to the charge of Condillac ;
forgetting the opinion held by some acute metaphysicians, and which is
no mere verbal generalization, that to have sensations in succession is only
the same thing as having more sensations than one. The other supposi-
tion, that the attribute of succession is annexed to our sensations by a
law of the mind, he says is giving to the mind the " power of generating
" in the course of its exercise a totally new idea," an opinion, he says,
utterly inconsistent with my "empirical theory;" he does not say with
what theory. In any scheme of human knowledge that I am able to
form, the resemblances and the successions and coexistences of our sensa-
tions are real facts, and objects of direct apprehension. Whether we are
said to apprehend them by our senses or by our minds (which is the real
meaning of the alternative 1 have left open) affects no theory of mine,
and is to me a matter of indifference.
The most curious part of Dr. M'Cosh's reply is that he thinks, accord-
264 APPENDIX TO THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS.
ing to my "theory" there is no difference between sensations and thoughts.
According to him, if I am right, the facts of external nature being only
possibilities of sensation, ought to succeed one another according to
" mental laws, say the laws of association." The reader will scarcely
believe that I am not misrepresenting Dr. M'Cosh ; but I refer him to
the article, pp. 345 and 346.
Dr. M'Cosh still maintains that the action of bodies on one another
cannot be accounted for on the hypothesis of Immateriality, takes credit
for having, on this point, detected me in an oversight, and seems to con-
sider the answer I was " obliged" to give him as an afterthought of my
own. This only proves that Dr. M'Cosh has forgotten, if he ever knew,
the very elements of the Berkeleian controversy. Whoever knows any-
thing of that, has got far beyond the stage of thought at which Dr.
M'Cosh remains. Berkeley would indeed have been easily answered if
his doctrine could give no account of the greater part of all the phae-
iiomena of physical nature.
265
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE PRIMARY QUALITIES
OF MATTER.
FOR the reasons which have been set forth, I conceive
Sir W. Hamilton to be wrong in his statement that a
Self and a Not-self are immediately apprehended in our
primitive consciousness. We have, in all probability, no
notion of Not-self, until after considerable experience of
the recurrence of sensations according to fixed laws, and
~ 7
in groups.* Nor is it credible that the first sensation
which we experience awakens in us any notion of an
Ego or Self. To refer it to an Ego is to consider it as
part of a series of states of consciousness, some portion
of which is already past. The identification of a present
state with a remembered state cognised as past, is what,
to my thinking, constitutes the cognition that it is I who
i'eel it. " I" means he who saw, touched, or felt some-
thing yesterday or the day before. No single sensation
can suggest personal identity : this requires a series of
sensations, thought of as forming a line of succession,
and summed up in thought into a Unity.
But (however this may be) throughout the whole of our
sensitive life except its first beginnings, we unquestion-
ably refer our sensations to a me and a not-me. As soon as
1 have formed, on the one hand, the notion of Permanent
* In the first edition I said : " But without the notion of not-self, we
" cannot have that of self, which is contrasted with it." In saying this I
overlooked the fact, that my own sensations and other feelings, as dis-
tinguished from what I call Myself, are a sufficient Not-self to make the
Self apprehensible. The contrast necessary to all cognition is sufficiently
provided for by the antithesis between the Ego and particular modifi-
cations of the -h]go.
266 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
Possibilities of Sensation, and on the other, of that con-
tinued series of feelings which I call my life, both these
notions are, by an irresistible association, recalled by
every sensation I have. They represent two things, with
both of which the sensation of the moment, be it what
it may, stands in relation, and I cannot be conscious of
the sensation without being conscious of it as related to
these two things. They have accordingly received
relative names, expressive of the double relation in
question. The thread of consciousness which I apprehend
the sensation as a part of, is the subject of the sensation.
The group of Permanent Possibilities of Sensation to
which I refer it, and which is partially realized and
actualized in it, is the object of the sensation. The
sensation itself ought to have a correlative name; or
rather, ought to have two such names, one denoting the
sensation as opposed to its Subject, the other denoting
it as opposed to its Object. But it is a remarkable fact,
that this necessity has not been felt, and that the need
of a correlative name to every relative one has been con-
sidered to be satisfied by the terms Object and Subject
themselves; the object and the subject not being at-
tended to in the relation which they respectively bear
to the sensation, but being regarded as directly corre-
lated with one another. It is true that they are related
to one another, but only through the sensation : their
relation to each other consists in the peculiar and dif-
ferent relation in which they severally stand to the
sensation. We have no conception of either Subject or
Object, either Mind or Matter, except as something to
winch we refer our sensations, and whatever other feel-
ings we are conscious of. The very existence of them
both, so far as cognisable by us, consists only in the
relation they respectively bear to our states of feeling.
Their relation to each other is only the relation between
those two relations. The immediate correlatives are
not the pair, Object, Subject, but the two pairs, Object,
Sensation objectively considered ; Subject, Sensation
subjectively considered. The reason why this is over-
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 267
looked, might easily be shown, and would furnish
a good illustration of that important part of the
Laws of Association which may be termed the Laws of
Obliviscence.
I have next to speak of a psychological fact, also a
consequence of the Laws of Association, and without a
full appreciation of which, the idea of Matter can only
be understood in its original groundwork, but not in the
superstructure which the laws of our actual experience
have raised upon it. There are certain of our sensations
which we are accustomed principally to consider subjec-
tively, and others which we are principally accustomed
to consider objectively. In the case of the first, the
relation in which we most frequently, most habitually, and
therefore most easily consider them, is their relation to
the series of feelings of which they form a part, and
which, consolidated by thought into a single conception,
is termed the Subject. In the case of the second, the
relation in which we by preference contemplate them is
their relation to some group, or some kind of group, of
Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, the present exis-
tence of which is certified to us by the sensation we are at .
the moment feeling and which is termed the Object.
The difference between these two classes of our sensa-
tions, answers to the distinction made by the majority
of philosophers between the Primary and the Secondary
Qualities of Matter.
We can, of course, think of all or any of our sensa-
tions in relation to their Objects, that is, to the perma-
nent groups of possibilities of sensation to which we
mentally refer them. This is the main distinction be-
tween our sensations, and what we regard as our purely
mental feelings. These we do not refer to any groups
of Permanent Possibilities ; and in regard to them the
distinction of Subject and Object is merely nominal.
These feelings have no Objects, except by metaphor.
There is nothing but the feeling and its Subject. Meta-
physicians are obliged to call the feeling itself the
object. Oar sensations, on the contrary, have all of
268 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
them objects ; they all are capable of being classed under
some group of Permanent Possibilities, and being re-
ferred to the presence of that particular set of possibili-
ties as the antecedent condition or cause of their own
existence. There are, however, some of our sensations,
in our consciousness of which the reference to their
Object does not play so conspicuous and predominant a
part as in others. This is particularly the case with
sensations which are highly interesting to us on their
own account, and on which we willingly dwell, or which
by their intensity compel us to concentrate our attention
on them. These are, of course, our pleasures and pains.
In the case of these, our attention is naturally given in
a greater degree to the sensations themselves, and only
in a less degree to that whose existence they are marks
of. And of the two conceptions to which they stand in
relation, the one to which we have most tendency to
refer them is the Subject ; because our pleasures and pains
are of no more importance as marks than any of our other
sensations, but are of very much more importance than
any others as parts of the thread of consciousness which
constitutes our sentient life. Many indeed of our in-
ternal bodily pains we should hardly refer to an Object
at all, were it not for the knowledge, late and slowly
acquired, that they are always connected with a local
organic disturbance, of which we have no present con-
sciousness, and which is therefore a mere Possibility of
Sensation. Those of our sensations, on the contrary,
which are almost indifferent in themselves, our attention
does not dwell on ; our consciousness of them is too
momentary to be distinct, and we pass on from them to
the Permanent Possibilities of Sensation which they are
the signs of, and which alone are important to us. We
hardly notice the relation between these sensations and
the subjective chain of consciousness of which they form
so extremely insignificant a part : the sensation is hardly
anything to us but the link which draws into our con-
sciousness a group of Permanent Possibilities ; this group
is the only thing distinctly present to our thoughts. The
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 269
unimpressive organic sensation merges in the mere mental
suggestion, and we seem to cognise directly that which
we think of only by association, and know only by
inference. Sensation is in a manner blotted out, and
Perception seems to be installed in its place. This truth
is expressed, though not with sufficient distinctness, in
a favourite doctrine of Sir W. Hamilton, that in the
operations of our senses Sensation is greatest when Per-
ception is least, and least when it is greatest ; or, as
he, by a very inaccurate use of mathematical language,
expresses it, Sensation and Perception are in the inverse
ratio of one another.
With regard to those sensations which, without being
absolutely indifferent, are not, in any absorbing degree,
painful or pleasurable, we habitually think of them only
as connected with, or proceeding from, Objects. And I
am disposed to believe, contrary to the opinion of many
pliilosophers, that any of our senses, or at all events any
combination of more than one sense, would have been
sufficient to give us some idea of Matter. If we had
only the senses of smell, taste, and hearing, but had the
sensations according to fixed laws of coexistence so that
whenever we had any one of them it marked to us a
present possibility of having all the others, I am inclined
to think that we should have formed the notion of
groups of possibilities of sensation, and should have
referred every particular sensation to one of these groups,
which, in relation to all the sensations so referred to it,
would have become an Object, and would have been
invested in our thoughts with the permanency and
externality which belong to matter. But though we
might, in this supposed case, have had an idea of
Matter, that idea would necessarily have been of a very
different complexion from what we now have. For, as
we are actually constituted, our sensations of smell,
taste, and hearing, and as I believe (with the great
majority of philosophers) those of sight also, are not
grouped together directly, but through the connexion
which they all have, by laws of coexistence or of causa-
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
tion, with the sensations which are referable to the sense
of touch and to the muscles ; those which answer to the
terms Resistance, Extension, and Figure. These, there-
fore, become the leading and conspicuous elements in
all the groups : where these are, the group is : every
other member of the group presents itself to our
thoughts, less as what it is in itself, than as a mark of
these. As the entire group stands in the relation of
Object to any one of the component sensations which is
realized at a given moment, so do these special parts of
the group become, in a manner, Object, in relation not
only to actual sensations, but to all the remaining Pos-
sibilities of Sensation which the group includes. The
Permanent Possibilities of sensations of touch and of
the muscles, form a group within the group a sort of
inner nucleus, conceived as more fundamental than the
rest, on which all the other possibilities of sensation
included in the group seem to depend ; these being
regarded, in one point of view, as effects, of which that
nucleus is the cause, in another as attributes, of which
it is the substratum or substance. In this manner our
conception of Matter comes ultimately to consist of
Resistance, Extension, and Figure, together with mis-
cellaneous powers of exciting other sensations. These
three attributes become its essential constituents, and
where these are not found, we hesitate to apply the
name.
Of these properties, which are consequently termed
the Primary Qualities of Matter, the most fundamental
is Resistance : as is proved by numerous scientific con-
troversies. When the question arises whether something
which affects our senses in a peculiar way, as for instance
whether Heat, or Light, or Electricity, is or is not Matter,
what seems always to be meant is, does it offer any,
however trifling, resistance to motion ? If it were shown
that it did, this would at once terminate all doubt.
That Resistance is only another name for a sensation of
our muscular frame, combined with one of touch, has
been pointed out by many philosophers, and can scarcely
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 271
any longer be questioned. When we contract the
muscles of our arm, either by an exertion of will, or by
an involuntary discharge of our spontaneous nervous
activity, the contraction is accompanied by a state of
sensation, which is different according as the locomotion
consequent on the muscular contraction continues freely,
or meets with an impediment. Tn the former case, the
sensation is that of motion through empty space. After
having had (let as suppose) this experience several times
repeated, we suddenly have a different experience : the
series of sensations accompanying the motion of our
arm is brought, without intention or expectation on our
part, to an abrupt close. This interruption would not,
of itself, necessarily suggest the belief in an external
obstacle. The hindrance might be in our organs ; it
might arise from paralysis, or simple loss of power
through fatigue. But in either of these cases, the
muscles would not have been contracted, and we should
not have had the sensation which accompanies their
contraction. We may have had the will to exert our
muscular force, but the exertion has not taken place.*
If it does take place, and is accompanied by the usual ,
muscular sensation, but the distinctive feeling which [
have called the sensation of motion in empty space
does not follow, we have what is called the feeling of
Resistance, or in other words, of muscular action im-
peded ; and that feeling is the fundamental element in
the notion of Matter which results from our common .
experience. But simultaneously with this feeling of
Resistance, we have also feelings of touch ; sensations of
* Sir W. Hamilton thinks (Dissertations on Reid, pp. 854, 855) that
we are conscious of resistance through a " mental effort or nisus to move,"
distinct both from the original will to move, and from the muscular sensa-
tion : "for we are," he says, "conscious of it, though, by a narcosis or
" stupor of the sensitive nerves we lose all feeling of the movement of the
" limb ; though by a paralysis of the motive nerves no moment of the limb
" follows the mental effort to move ; though by an abnormal stimulus of the
" muscular fibres, a contraction in them is caused even in opposition to our
" will." If all this is true though by what experiments it has been sub-
stantiated wo are not told it does not by any means show that there is a
mental nisus not physical, but merely removes the seat of the nisus from
the nerves to the brain.
272 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
which the organs are not the nerves diffused through our
muscles, but those which form a network under the skin ;
the sensations which are produced by passive contact
with bodies, without muscular action. As these skin
sensations of simple contact invariably accompany the
muscular sensation of resistance for we must touch
the object before we can feel it resisting our pressure
there is early formed an inseparable association between
them. Whenever we feel resistance we have first felt
contact. Whenever we feel contact, we know that were
we to exercise muscular action, we should feel more or
less resistance. In this manner is formed the first
fundamental group of Permanent Possibilities of Sensa-
tion ; and as we in time recognise that all our other
sensations are connected in point of fact with Permanent
Possibilities of resistance that in coexistence with them
we should always, by sufficient search, encounter some-
thing which would give us the feeling of contact com-
bined with the muscular sensation of resistance ; our
idea of Matter, as a Resisting Cause of miscellaneous
sensations, is now constituted.
Let us observe, in passing, the elementary example
here afforded of the Law of Inseparable Association,
and the efficacy of that law to construct what, after it
has been constructed, is undistinguishable, by any direct
interrogation of consciousness, from an intuition. The
sensation produced by the simple contact of an object
with the skin, without any pressure or even with pres-
sure, but without any muscular reaction against it is
no more likely than a sensation of warmth or cold would
be, to be spontaneously referred to any cause external
to ourselves. But when the constant coexistence, in
experience, of this sensation of contact with that of
Resistance to our muscular effort whenever such effort
is made, has erected the former sensation into a mark
or sign of a Permanent Possibility of the latter; from
that time forward, no sooner do we have the skin sensa-
tion which we call a sensation of contact, than we
cognise, or, as we call it, perceive, something external,
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 273
corresponding to the idea we now form of Matter as a
resisting object. Our sensations of touch have become
representative of the sensations of resistance with which
they habitually coexist : just as philosophers have shown
that the sensations of different shades of colour given
by our sense .of sight, and the muscular sensations
accompanying the various movements of the eye, become
representative of those sensations of touch and of the
muscles of locomotion, which are the only real meaning
of what we term the distance of a body from us.*
The next of the primary qualities of Body is Exten-
sion ; which has long been considered as one of the '
principal stumbling blocks of the Psychological Theory.
E-eid and Stewart were willing to let the whole question
of the intuitive character of our knowledge of Matter,
depend on the inability of psychologists to assign any
origin to the idea of Extension, or analyse it into any
combination of sensations and reminiscences of sensation.
Sir W. Hamilton follows their example in laying great
stress on this point.
The answer of the opposite school I will present in
its latest and most improved form, as given by Professor
Bain, in the First Part of his great work on the
Mind.f
* Sir W. Hamilton draws a distinction between two kinds of resis-
tance, or rather, between two senses of tbe word : the one, that which I
have mentioned, and which is a sensation of our muscular frame ; the other,
the property of Matter which the old writers called Impenetrability, being
that by which, however capable of being compressed into a smaller space,
it refuses to part with all its extension, and be extruded from space alto-
gether. But these two kinds of resistance are merely two modes of
regarding and naming the same state of consciousness ; for if the body
could be pressed entirely out of space, the only way in which we should,
discover that it had vanished would be by the sudden cessation of all
sensations of resistance. It is always the muscular sensation which con-
stitutes the presence, and its negation the absence, of body, in any given
portion of space.
f " The Senses and the Intellect," pp. 113-117. My first extract is
from the original edition ; for in the one recently published (and enriched
by many valuable improvements) the exposition I now quote is given more
summarily, and in a manner otherwise less suited for my purpose.
[Dr. M'Cosh, without any warrant, speaks (p. 121) of Mr. Bain as
having " elaborated into a minute system the general statements scattered
throughout Mr. Mill's Logic ;" and in another passage (pp. 123, 124)
T
274 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
Mr. Bain recognises two principal kinds or modes
of discriminative sensibility in the muscular sense : the
, one corresponding to the degree of intensity of the
muscular effort the amount of energy put forth; the
other corresponding to the duration the longer or
shorter continuance of the same effort. The first makes
us acquainted with degrees of resistance : which we esti-
mate by the intensity of the muscular energy required
to overcome it. To the second we owe, in Mr. Bain's
opinion, our idea of Extension.
" When a muscle begins to contract, or a limb to bend,
" we have a distinct sense of how far the contraction
" and the bending are carried ; there is something in the
" special sensibility that makes one mode of feeling for
" half-contraction, another mode for three- fourths, and
" another for total contraction. Our feeling of moving
" organs, or of contracting muscles, has been already
" affirmed to be different from our feeling of dead ten-
" sion something more intense, keen, and exciting ;
" and I am now led to assert, from my best observations
refers to him and to Mr. Herbert Spencer (Mr. Herbert Spencer!) as
merely following out an investigation indicated by me. Coleridge re-
minded one of his critics, that there are such things in the world as
springs, and that the water a man draws does not necessarily come from
a hole made in another man's cistern. Mr. Bain did not stand in need of
any predecessor except our common precursors, and has taught much
more to me, on these subjects, than there is any reasonable probability
that I can have taught to him. Dr. M'Cosh falls into a corresponding
mistake concerning myself, when he ascribes (pp. 7, 8) my regarding it
" as impossible for the mind to rise to first or final causes, or to know the
" nature of things," to " the influence " of M. Comte. The larger half of
my " System of Logic," including all its fundamental doctrines, was
written before I had ever seen the " Cours de Philosophie Positive."
That work was indebted to M. Comte for many valuable thoughts, but a
short list would exhaust the chapters, and even the pages, which contain
them. As for the general doctrine which Dr. M'Cosh's words so imper-
fectly express that our knowledge is only of the coexistences and
sequences, or the similitudes, of phasnomena ; I was familiar with it before
I was out of boyhood from the teachings of my father, who had learnt
it where M. Comte learnt it from the methods of physical science, and
the writings of their philosophical predecessors. Ever since the days of
Hume, that doctrine has been the general property of the philosophic
world. From the time of Brown it has entered even into popular
philosophy. I have given a brief history of it in " Auguste Comte and
Positivism."]
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 275
" and by inference from Acknowledged facts, that the
" extent of range of a movement, the degree of shorten-
" ing of a muscle, is a matter of discriminative sensi-
" bility. I believe it to be much less pronounced, less
" exact, than the sense of resistance above described,
" but to be not the less real and demonstrable.
" If we suppose a weight raised, by the flexing of the
" arm, first four inches, and then eight inches, it is
" obvious that the mere amount of exertion or expended
" power will be greater, and the sensibility increased in
" proportion. In this view, the sense of range would
" simply be the sense of a greater or less continuance of
" the same effort, that effort being expended in move-
" merit. We can have no difficulty in believing that
" there should be a discriminating sensibility in this
" case ; it seems very natural that we should be diffe-
" rently affected by an action continued four or five times
" longer than another. If this be admitted, as true to
" observation, and as inevitably arising from the exis-
" tence of any discrimination whatsoever of degrees of
" expended power, everything is granted that is con-
" tended for at present. It is not meant to affirm that
" at each degree of shortening of a muscle, or each inter-
" mediate attitude of a limb, there is an impression made
" on the centres that can be distinguished from the im-
" pression of every other position or degree of shorten-
" ing ; it is enough to require that the range or amount
" of movement gone over should be a matter of distinct
" perception, through the sensibility to the amount of
" force expended in time, the degree of effort being the
" same. The sensibility now in question differs from
" the former (from sensibility to the intensity of effort)
" chiefly in making the degree turn upon duration, and
" not upon the amount expended each instant ; and it
" seems to me impossible to deny that force increased
" or diminished simply as regards continuance, is as
" much a subject of discriminative sensibility as force
"increased or diminished in the intensity of the sus-
" tained effort
T 2
276 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
" If the sense of degrees of range be thus admitted as
" a genuine muscular determination, its functions in out-
" ward perception are very important. The attributes of
" extension and space fall under its scope. In the first
" place, it gives the feeling of linear extension, inasmuch
" as this is measured by the sweep of a limb, or other
" organ moved by muscles. The difference between six
" inches and eighteen inches is expressed to us by the
" different degrees of contraction of some one group of
" muscles; those, for example, that flex the arm, or, in
" walking, those that flex or extend the lower limb.
" The inward impression corresponding to the outward
" fact of six inches in length, is an impression arising
" from the continued shortening of a muscle, a true
" muscular sensibility. It is the impression of a mus-
" cular effort having a certain continuance ; a greater
" length produces a greater continuance (or a more rapid
" movement) and in consequence an increased feeling of
" expended power.
" The discrimination of length in any one direction
" includes extension in any direction. Whether it be
" length, breadth, or height, the perception has pre-
" cisely the same character. Hence superficial and solid
" dimensions, the size or magnitude of a solid object,
" come to be felt in a similar manner
" It will be obvious that what is called situation or
" Locality must come under the same head, as these are
" measured by distance taken along with direction ;
" direction being itself estimated by distance, both in
" common observation and in mathematical theory. In
" like manner, form or shape is ascertained through the
" same primitive sensibility to extension or range.
" By the muscular sensibility thus associated with
" prolonged contraction we can therefore compare dif-
" ferent degrees of the attribute of space, in other words,
" difference of length, surface, situation, and form. When
" comparing two different lengths we can feel which is
" the greater, just as in comparing two different weights
" or resistances. We can also, as in the case of weight,
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 277
" acquire some absolute standard of comparison, through
" the permanency of impressions sufficiently often re-
" peated. We can entrain the feeling of contraction of
" the muscles of the lower limb due to a pace of thirty
" inches, and can say that some one given pace is less or
" more than this amount. According to the delicacy of
" the muscular tissue we can, by shorter or longer
" practice, acquire distinct impressions for every standard
" dimension, and can decide at once whether a given
" length is four inches or four and a half, nine or ten?
" twenty or twenty-one. This sensibility to size, en-
" abling us to dispense with the use of measures of
" length, is an acquirement suited^to many mechanical
" operations. In drawing, painting, and engraving, and
" in the plastic arts, the engrained discrimination of the
" most delicate differences is an indispensable qualiri-
" cation.
" The third attribute of muscular discrimination is
" the velocity or speed of the movement. It is difficult
" to separate this from the foregoing. In the feeling of
" range, velocity answers the same purpose as continuance;
" both imply an enhancement of effort, or of expended
" power, different in its nature from the increase of dead
" effort in one fixed situation. We must learn to feel
" that a slow motion for a long time is the same as
" a quicker motion with less duration; which we can
" easily do by seeing that they both produce the same
" effect in exhausting the full range of a limb. If we
" experiment upon the different ways of accomplishing
" a total sweep of the arm, we shall find that the slow
" movements long continued are equal to quick motions
" of short continuance, and we are thus able by either
" course to acquire to ourselves a measure of range and
" lineal extension
" We would thus trace the perception of the inathe
" matical and mechanical properties of matter to the
" muscular sensibility alone. We admit that this per-
" ception is by no means very accurate if we exclude the
" special senses, but we are bound to show at the outset
278 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
" that these senses are not essential to the perception, as
" we shall afterwards show that it is to the muscular
" apparatus associated with the senses that their more
'' exalted sensibility must be also ascribed. The space
' moved through by the foot in pacing may be appre-
" ciated solely through the muscles of the limb, as well
" as by the movements of the touching hand or the
" seeing eye. Whence we may accede to the assertion
" sometimes made, that the properties of space might be
" conceived, or felt, in the absence of an external world,
"or of any other matter than that composing the body
" of the percipient being; for the body's own movements
" in empty space would suffice to make the very same
" impressions on the mind as the movements excited by
" outward objects. A perception of length, or height, or
" speed, is the mental impression, or state of conscious-
" ness, accompanying some mode of muscular movement,
" and this movement may be generated from within as
" well as from without; in both cases the state of con-
" sciousness is exactly the same."
A theory of Extension somewhat similar, though less
cleirly unfolded, was advanced by Brown, and as it
stands in his statement, fell under the criticism of Sir
W. Hamilton; who gives it, as he thinks, a short and
crushing refutation, as follows :*
" As far as I can find his meaning in his cloud of words,
" he argues thus : The notion of Time or succession
" being supposed, that of longitudinal extension is given
" in the succession of feelings which accompanies the
" gradual contraction of a muscle; the notion of this
" succession constitutes, ipso facto, the notion of a certain
" length; and the notion of this length (he quietly takes
" for granted) is the notion of longitudinal extension
" sought. The paralogism here is transparent. Length
" is an ambiguous term; and it is length in space,
" extensive length, and not length in time, protensive
" length, whose notion it is the problem to evolve. To
" convert, therefore, the notion of a certain kind of
* Dissertations on Eeid, p. 869.
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 279
" length (and that certain kind being also confessedly
" only length in time) into the notion of a length in
" space, is at best an idle begging of the question Is
" it not ? Then I would ask, whether the series of feel-
" ings of which we are aware in the gradual contraction
" of a muscle, involves the consciousness of being a suc-
" cession in length, (I) in time alone? or (2) in space
" alone ? or (3) in time and space together ? These
" three cases will be allowed to be exhaustive. If the
" first be affirmed; if the succession appear in eonscious-
" ness a succession in time exclusively, then nothing has
" been accomplished ; for the notion of extension or
" space is in no way contained in the notion of duration
" or time. Again, if the second or third is affirmed; if
" the series appear to consciousness a succession in
" length, either in space alone, or in space and time
" together, then is the notion it behoved to generate
" employed to generate itself."
The dilemma looks formidable, but one of its horns
is blunt ; for the very assertion of Brown, and of all
who hold the Psychological theory, is that the notion of
length in space, not being in our consciousness originally,
is constructed by the mind's laws out of the notion of
length in time. Their argument is not, as Sir W.
Hamilton fancied, a fallacious confusion between two
different meanings of the word length ; they maintain
the one to be a product of the other. Sir W. Hamilton
did not fully understand the argument. He saw that a
succession of feelings, such as that which Brown spoke
of, could not possibly give us the idea of simultaneous
existence. But he was mistaken in supposing that
Brown's argument implied this absurdity. The notion
of simultaneity must be supposed to have been already
acquired ; as it necessarily would be at the very earliest
period, from the familiar fact that we often have
sensations simultaneously. What Brown had to show
was, that the idea of the particular mode of simul-
taneous existence called Extension, might arise, not
certainly out of a mere succession of muscular sensa-
280 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
tions, but out of that added to the knowledge already
possessed that sensations of touch may be simultaneous.
Suppose two small bodies, A and B, sufficiently near
together to admit of their being touched simultaneously,
. one with the right hand, the other with the left. Here
are two tactual sensations which are simultaneous, just
as a sensation of colour and one of odour might be ; and
this makes us cognise the two objects of touch as both
existing at once. The question then is, what have we
in our minds when we represent to ourselves the relation
between these two objects already known to be simul-
taneous, in the form of Extension, or intervening Space
a relation which we do not suppose to exist between
the colour and the odour. Now those who agree with
Brown, say that whatever the notion of Extension may
be, we acquire it by passing our hand or some other organ
of touch in a longitudinal direction from A to B : that
this process, as far as we are conscious of it, consists of
a series of varied muscular sensations, differing according
to the amount of muscular- effort, and, the effort being
given, differing in length of time. When we say that
there is a space between A and B, we mean that some
amount of these muscular sensations must intervene ;
and when we say that the space is greater or less, we
mean that the series of sensations (amount of muscular
effort being given) is longer or shorter. If another
object, C, is farther off in the same line, we judge its
distance to be greater, because to reach it, the series of
muscular sensations must be further prolonged, or else
there must be the increase of effort which corresponds
to augmented velocity. Now this, which is not denied
to be the mode in which we become aware of extension,
by any other sense than sight, is considered by the
psychologists in question to be extension. The idea of
Extended Body they consider to be that of a variety of
resisting points, existing simultaneously, but which can
be perceived by the same tactile organ only successively,
at the end of a series of muscular sensations which con-
stitutes their distance ; and are said to be at different dis-
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 231
tances from one another because the series of intervening
muscular sensations is longer in some casesthan in others.*
The theory may be recapitulated as follows. The
sensation of muscular motion unimpeded constitutes our
notion of empty space, and the sensation of muscular
motion impeded constitutes that of filled space. Space
in Room room for movement ; which its German name,
Raum, distinctly confirms. We have a sensation which
accompanies the free movement of our organs, say for
instance of our arm. This sensation is variously modified
by the direction, and by the amount of the movement.
We have different states of muscular sensation correspond-
ing to the movements of the arm upward, downward, to
right, to left, or in any radius whatever of a sphere of
which the joint, that the arm revolves round, forms the
centre. We have also different states of muscular sen-
sation according as the arm is moved more ; whether this
consists in its being moved with greater velocity, or with
the same velocity during a longer time : and the equiva-
lence of these two is speedily learnt, by finding that a
greater effort conducts the hand in a shorter time from
* It is not pretended that all this was clearly seen by Brown. It is
impossible to defend the theory as Brown stated it. He seems to have
thought that the essence of extension consisted in divisibility into parts.
" A succession of feeling " (he says) " when remembered by the mind
" which looks back upon them, was found to involve, necessarily, the
"notion of divisibility into separate parts, and therefore of length, which
" is only another name for continued divisibility." (Lecture xxiv. vol. ii.
p. 3 of the 19th edition, 1851.) He thought that he had explained all
that needed explanation in the idea of space, when he had shown how the
notion of continued divisibility got into it. This appears when he says,
" It would not be easy fur any one to define matter more simply, than as
" that which has parts, and that which resists our efforts to grasp it ;
" and in our analysis of the feelings of infancy, we have been able to dis-
" cover how both these notions may have arisen in the mind." But if
divisibility into parts constitutes all our notion of extension, every sensa-
tion we have must be identified with extension, for they are all divisible
into parts (parts in succession, which Brown thinks sufficient) when they
are prolonged beyond the shortest instant of duration which our con-
sciousness recognises. It is probable that Brown did not mean this, but
thought that all he had to account for in the conception of space, was its
divisibility, because he tacitly assumed that all the rest of the notion was
already given in the fact of muscular movement. And this, properly
understood, is maintainable ; but Brown cannot here be acquitted of a
charge to which he is often liable, that of leaving an important philo-
sophical question only half thought out.
282 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
the same point to the same point; from the tactual
impression A to the tactual impression B. These dif-
ferent kinds and qualities of muscular sensation, expe-
rienced in getting from one point to another (that is,
obtaining in succession two sensations of touch and
resistance, the objects of which are regarded as simul-
taneous) are all we mean by saying that the points are
separated by spaces, that they are at different distances,
and in different directions. An intervening series of
muscular sensations before the one object can be reached
from the other, is the only peculiarity which (according
to this theory) distinguishes simultaneity in space, from
the simultaneity which may exist between a taste and a
colour, or a taste and a smell : and we have no reason
for believing that Space or Extension in itself, is any-
thing different from that which we recognise it by. It
appears to me that this doctrine is sound, and that the
muscular sensations in question are the sources of all the
notion of Extension which we should ever obtain from
the tactual and muscular senses without the assistance
of the eye.
But the participation of the eye in generating our
actual notion of Extension, very much alters its charac-
ter, and is, I think, the main cause of the difficulty
felt in believing that Extension derives its meaning to
us from a phenomenon which is not synchronous but
successive. The fact is, that the conception we now
have of Extension or Space is an eye picture, and
comprehends a great number of parts of Extension at
once, or in a succession so rapid that our consciousness
confounds it with simultaneity. How, then (it is natu-
rally asked) can this vast collection of consciousnesses
which are sensibly simultaneous, be generated by the
mind out of its consciousness of a succession the suc-
cession of muscular feelings? An experiment may be
conceived, which would throw great light on this sub-
ject, but which unfortunately is more easily imagined
than obtained. There have been persons born blind who
were mathematicians, and I believe even naturalists ; and
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 283
it is not impossible that one day a person born blind
may be a metaphysician. The first who is so, will be
able to enlighten us on this point. For he will be an
experimentum crucis on the mode in which extension is
conceived and known, independently of the eye. Not
having the assistance of that organ, a person blind from
birth must necessarily perceive the parts of extension
the parts of a line, of a surface, or of a solid in con-
scious succession. He perceives them by passing his
hand along them, if small, or by walking over them if
great. The parts of extension which it is possible for
him to perceive simultaneously, are only very small parts,
almost the minima of extension. Hence, if the Psycho-
logical theory of the idea of extension is true, the blind
metaphysician would feel very little of the difficulty which
seeing metaphysicians feel, in admitting that the idea
of Space is, at bottom, one of time and that the notion
of extension or distance, is that of a motion of the mus-
cles continued for a longer or a shorter duration. If this
analysis of extension appeared as paradoxical to the
metaphysician born blind, as it does to Sir W. Hamilton,
this would be a strong argument against the Psycholo-
gical theory. But if, on the contrary, it did not at all
startle him, that theory would be very strikingly cor-
roborated.
We have no experiment directly in point. But we
have one which is the very next thing to it. We have
not the perceptions and feelings of a metaphysician blind
from birth, told and interpreted by himself. But we have
those of an ordinary person blind from birth, told and
interpreted for him by a metaphysician. And the English
reader is indebted for them to Sir W. Hamilton. Platner,
" a man no less celebrated as an acute philosopher than
" as a learned physician and an elegant scholar," endea-
voured to ascertain by observation what notion of ex-
tension was possessed by a person born blind, and made
known the result in words which Sir W. Hamilton has
rendered into his clear English.* " In regard to the
* Lectures, ii. 174.
284 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
" visionless representation of space or extension, the
" attentive observation of a person born blind, which I
" formerly instituted in the year 1785, and again, in
" relation to the point in question, have continued for
" three whole weeks this observation, I say, has con-
" vinced me, that the sense of touch, by itself, is alto-
gether incompetent to afford us the representation of
" extension and space, and is not even cognisant of local
" exteriority ; in a word, that a man deprived of sight
" has absolutely no perception of an outer world, beyond
" the existence of something effective, different from his
" own feeling of passivity, and in general only of the
" numerical diversity shall I say of impressions, or of
" things ? In fact, to those born blind, time serves instead
" of space. Vicinity and distance means in their mouths
; " nothing more than the shorter or longer time, the
" smaller or greater number of feelings, which they find
" necessary to attain from some one feeling to another.
" That a person blind from birth employs the language
" of vision that may occasion considerable error; and did,
" indeed, at the commencement of my observations, lead
" me wrong ; but, in point of fact, he knows nothing of
" things as existing out of each other ; and (this in par-
" ticular I have very clearly remarked) if objects, and the
" parts of his body touched by them, did not make
" different kinds of impression on his nerves of sensation,
" he would take everything external for one and the
" same. In his own body, he absolutely did not dis-
" criminate head and foot at all by their distance, but
" merely by the difference of the feelings (and his per-
" ception of such differences was incredibly fine) which he
" experienced from the one and from the other, and
" moreover through time. In like manner, in external
" bodies, he distinguished their figure, merely by the
" varieties of impressed feelings ; inasmuch, for example,
" as the cube, by its angles, affected his feeling differently
" from the sphere."
The highly instructive representation here given by
Platner, of this person's state of mind, is exactly that
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 285
which we have just read in Mr. Bain, and which that
philosopher holds to be the primitive conception of ex-
tension by all of us, before the wonderful power of sight
and its associations in abridging the mental processes,
has come into play. The conclusion which, as we have
seen, Platner draws from the case, is that we obtain the
idea of extension solely from sight ; and even Sir W.
Hamilton is staggered in his belief of the contrary. But
Platner, though unintentionally, puts a false colour on
the matter when he says that his patient had no per-
ception of extension. He used the terms expressive of
it with such propriety and discrimination, that Platner,
by his own account, did not at first suspect him of not
meaning by those terms all that is meant by persons
who can see. He therefore meant something; he had
impressions which the words expressed to his mind ; he
had conceptions of extension, after his own manner.
But his idea of degrees of extension was but the idea of
a greater or smaller number of sensations experienced in
succession " to attain from some one feeling to another ;"
that is, it was exactly what, according to Brown's and
Mr. Bain's theory, it ought to have been. And, the
sense of touch and of the muscles not being aided by
sight, the sensations continued to be conceived by him
only as successive; his mental representation of them
remained a conception of a series, not of a coexistent
group. Though he must have had experience of simul-
taneity, for no being who has a plurality of senses can be
without it, he does not seem to have thoroughly realized
the conception of the parts of space as simultaneous.
Since what was thus wanting to him, is the principal
feature of the conception as it is in us, he seemed to
Platner to have no notion of extension. But Platner,
fortunately, being a man who could both observe, and
express his observations precisely, has been able to con-
vey to our minds the conception which his patient really
had of extension ; and we find that it was the same as our
own, with the exception of the element which, if the
Psychological theory be true, was certain to be added
286 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
to it by the sense of sight. For, when this sense is
awakened, and its sensations of colour have become
representative of the tactual and muscular sensations
with which they are coexistent, the fact that we can
receive a vast number of sensations of colour at the
same instant (or what appears such to our consciousness)
puts us in the same position as if we had been able to
receive that number of tactual and muscular sensations
in a single instant. The ideas of all the successive
tactual and muscular feelings which accompany the
passage of the hand over the whole of the coloured
surface, are made to flash on the mind at once : and
impressions which were successive in sensation become
coexistent in thought. From that time we do with
perfect facility, and are even compelled to do, what
Platner's patient never completely succeeded in doing,
namely, to think all the parts of extension as coexisting,
and to believe that we perceive them as such. And if
the laws of inseparable association, which are already
admitted as the basis of other acquired perceptions of
sight, are considered in their application to this case, it
is certain that this apparent perception of successive
elements as simultaneous would be generated and would
supply all that there is in our idea of extension, more
than there was in that of Platner's patient.*
* Mr. Mahaffy thinks (pp. xx., xxi.) that Platner omitted to ascertain
whether his patient was capable of recognising simultaneity ; and is of
opinion that he could not do so, or that if he could, it must have been
owing to his education among people possessed of sight. " The question
' remains: can we postulate a sense of such simultaneity originally, be-
' fore any space or extension is given ? I am disposed to agree with
' Brown, that, although we can afterwards" analyse them, all simultaneous
' feelings form originally one mental state ; which of course excludes
' simultaneity until the analysis obtained by the aid of space and exten-
" sion give us the elements separately. Hence, until at least one body
" was given as extended, we should not obtain the notion." Brown may
very possibly be right, but it does not follow that the analysis necessary
to our distinguishing different sensations in one mass of simultaneous
feeling, can only take place by means of space and extension. If the
simultaneous sensations differ in kind, as a sound, for instance, and a
smell, all that is necessary to our being able to distinguish them when
together is that we should at some other time have experienced them
separate. We should then know the compound, and also the elements :
and since these are not chemically fused into a product bearing no resem-
PRIMARY' QUALITIES OF MATTER. 287
I shall quote, in continuation, part of the exposition
by Mr. Bain, of the machinery by which our consci-
ousness of Extension becomes an appendage of our
sensations of Sight. It is a striking example of the
commanding influence of that sense ; which, though it
has no greater variety of original impressions than our
other special senses, yet owing to the two properties, of
being able to receive a great number of its impressions
at once, and to receive them from all distances, takes
the lead altogether from the sense of touch: and is not
only the organ by which we read countless possibilities
of tactual and muscular sensations which can never, to
us, become realities, but substitutes itself for our touch
and our muscles even where we can use them causes
their actual use as avenues to knowledge, to become, in
many cases, obsolete, the sensations themselves to be
little heeded and very indistinctly remembered, and
communicates its own prerogative of simultaneousness to
impressions and conceptions originating in other senses,
which it could never have given, but only suggests,
through visible marks associated with them by experience.
" The distinctive impressibility of the eye," says Mr.
Bain,* " is for Colour. This is the effect specific to it
blance to its factors, bat retain when, combined their identity with what
they are in their separate state, our knowledge of them separately would
enable us to recognise them in the compound ; in other words, to feel two
sensations as simultaneous.
Dr. M'Cosh says (p. 143) that the experience of other observers (and
particularly Mr. Kinghan, Principal of the Institut : on for the Blind at
Belfast) as well as experiments by Dr. M'Cosh himself on young children
born blind, do not confirm Platner's statement, but prove that those born
blind have " a very clear notion of figure and distance, got directly from
the sense of touch." This is just what might have been expected, for I
am far from agreeing with Platner that the notions of figure and distance
come originally from sight. The sense of sight is not necessary to give
the perception of simultaneity ; but, giving a prodigious number of simul-
taneous sensations in one glance, it greatly quickens all processes depen-
dent on observation of the fact of simultaneousness. A person born blind
can acquire, by a more gradual process, all that there is in our notion of
Space except the visible Picture : but he will be much longer before he
realizes it completely, and in the case of Platner's patient that point does
not seem to have been reached.
* The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 370-374. 1 now quote from the second
dition (1864). The corresponding passage in the first edition begins at p. 363.
288 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
" as a sense. But the feeling of Colour by itself, im-
" plies no knowledge of any. outward object, as a cause
" or a thing wherein the colour inheres. It is simply a
" mental effect or influence, a feeling or conscious state,
" which we should be able to distinguish from other con-
" scious states, as for example, a smell or a sound. We
" should also be able to mark the difference between it
" and others of the same kind, more or less vivid, more
" or less enduring, more or less voluminous. So we
" should distinguish the qualitative differences between
" one colour and another. Pleasure or pain, with dis-
" crimination of intensity and of duration, would attach
" to the mere sensation of colour. Knowledge or belief
" in an external or material coloured body, there would
v be none.
" But when we add the active or muscular sensibility
" of the eye, we obtain pew products. The sweep of the
" eye over the coloured field gives a feeling of a definite
" amount of action, an exercise of internal power, which
" is something totally different from the passive feeling
" of light. This action has many various modes, all of
" the same quality, but all distinctively felt and recog-
" nised by us. Thus the movements may be in any
" direction horizontal, vertical, or slanting ; and every
" one of these movements is felt as different from every
" other. In addition to these, we have the movements
" of adjustment of the eye, brought on by differences in
" the remoteness of objects. We have distinctive feelings
" belonging to these different adjustments, just as we
" have towards the different movements across the field
" of view. If the eyes are adjusted, first to clear vision
" for an object six inches from the eye, and afterwards,.
" change their adjustment to suit an object six feet dis-
" tant, we are distinctly conscious of the change, and of
" the degree or amount of it ; we know that the change is
" greater than in extending the adjustment to a three-feet
" object, while it is less than we should have to go
" through for a twenty-feet object. Thus in the altera-
" tions of the eyes for near and far, we have a distinctive
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 2*9
" consciousness of amount or degree, no less than in the
" movements for right and left, up and down. Feelings
" with the character of activity are thus incorporated
" with the sensibility to colour ; the luminous impression
" is associated with exertion on our part, and is no
" longer a purely passive state. We find that the light
" changes as our activity changes, we recognise in it a
" certain connexion with our movements ; an association
" springs up between the passive feeling and the active
" energy of the visible |~" visual "] organ, or rather of the
" body generally ; for the changes of view are owing to
" movements of the head and trunk, as well as to the
" sweep of the eye within its own orbit. ....
" When, along with a forward movement, we behold
" a steadily varying change of appearance in the objects
" before us, we associate the change with the locomotive
" effort, and after many repetitions, we firmly connect
" the one with the other. We then know what is im-
" plied in a certain feeling in the eye, a certain adjust-
" ment of the lenses and a certain inclination of the
" axes, of all of which we are conscious ; we know that
" these things are connected with the further experience
" of a definite locomotive energy needing to be expended,
" in order to alter this consciousness to some other con-
" sciousness. Apart from this association, the eye-feel-
" ing might be recognised as differing from other eye-
" feelings, bnt there could be no other perception in the
" case. Experience connects these differences of ocular
" adjustment with the various exertions of the body at
" large, and the one can then imply and reveal the
" others. The feeling that we have when the eyes are
" parallel and vision distinct, is associated with a great
" and prolonged effort of walking, in other words, with
" a long distance. An inclination of the eyes of two
" degrees, is associated with two paces to bring us up to
" the nearest limit of vision, or with a stretch of some
" other kind, measured in the last resort by pacing, or
" by passing the hand along the object. The change
" from an inclination of 30 to an inclination of 10, is
u
290 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
" associated with a given sweep of the arm, carrying the
" hand forward over eight inches and a half"
These slight changes in the action of the muscles
that move the eye, habitually effected in a time too short
for computation, are the means by which our visual
impressions from the whole of that portion of the
universe which is visible from the position where we
stand, may be concentrated within an interval of time
so small that we are scarcely conscious of any interval ;
and they are, in my apprehension, the generating cause
of all that we have in our notion of extension over and
above what Platner's patient had in his. He had to
conceive two or any number of bodies (or resisting
objects) with a long train of sensations of muscular
contraction filling up the interval between them :
while we, on the contrary, think of them as rushing
upon our .sight, many of them at the same instant,
all of them at what is scarcely distinguishable from the
same instant ; and this visual imagery effaces from our
minds any distinct consciousness of the series of muscu-
lar sensations of which it has become representative.
The simultaneous visual sensations are to us symbols of
tactual and muscular ones which were slowly successive.
" This symbolic relation being far briefer, is habitually
" thought of in place of that it symbolizes : and by the
" continued use of such symbols, and the union of them
" into more complex ones, are generated our ideas of
" visible extension ideas which, like those of the
" algebraist working out an equation, are wholly unlike
." the ideas symbolized; and which yet, like his, occupy
" the mind to the entire exclusion of the ideas sym-
" bolized." This last extract is from Mr. Herbert
Spencer,* whose Principles of Psychology, in spite of
some doctrines which he holds in common with the
intuitive school, are on the whole one of the finest
examples we possess of the Psychological Method in its
full power. His treatment of this subject, and Mr,
Bain's, are at once corroborative and supplementary of
* Principles of Psychology, p. 224.
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 291
one another : and to them I must refer the reader who
desires an ampler elucidation of the general question.
The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to the
examination of some peculiarities in Sir W. Hamilton's
treatment of it.
Sir W. Hamilton relies mainly upon one argument to
prove that Vision, without the aid of Touch, gives an
immediate knowledge of Extension : which argument
had been anticipated in a passage which he quotes from
D'Alembert.* The following is his own statement of
it. " It canf easily be shown that the perception of
" colour involves the perception of extension. It is
" admitted that we have by sight a perception of colours,
" consequently a perception of the difference of colours.
" But a perception of the distinction of colours neces-
" sarily involves the perception of a discriminating line ;
" for if one colour be laid beside or upon another, we
" only distinguish them as different by perceiving that
" they limit each other, which limitation necessarily
" affords a breadthless line, a line of demarcation.
" One colour laid upon another, in fact, gives a line
" returning upon itself, that is, a figure. But a line and
" a figure are modifications of extension. The percep-
" tion of extension, therefore, is necessarily given in the
" perception of colours."
And farther on:J "All parties are, of course, at one
" in regard to the fact that we see colour. Those who
" hold that we see extension, admit that we see it only
" as coloured ; and those who deny us any vision of
" extension, make colour the exclusive object of sight.
" In regard to this first position, all are, therefore, agreed.
" Nor are they less harmonious in reference to the
" second ; that the power of conceiving colour involves
" the power of perceiving the differences of colours. By
" sight we, therefore, perceive colour, and discriminate
" one colour, that is, one coloured body, one sensation
" of colour, from another. This is admitted. A third
* Lectures, ii. 172. f Ibid. p. 165.
J Ibid. p. 167.
2
292 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
" position will also be denied by none, that the colours
" discriminated in vision, are, or may be, placed side by
" side in immediate juxtaposition ; or, one may limit
" another by being superinduced partially over it. A
" fourth position is equally indisputable ; that the con-
" trasted colours, thus bounding each other, will form by
" their meeting a visible line, and that, if the superin-
" duced colour be surrounded by the other, this line will
" return upon itself, and thus constitute the outline of
" a visible figure. These four positions command a
" peremptory assent ; they are all self-evident. But
"their admission at once explodes the paradox under
" discussion" (that extension cannot be cognised by
sight alone). " And thus : A line is extension in one
" dimension, length ; a figure is extension in two,
" length and breadth. Therefore, the vision of a line is
" a vision of extension in length ; the vision of a figure,
" the vision of extension in length and breadth."
I must acknowledge that I cannot make the answer
to this argument as thorough and conclusive as I could
wish ; for we have not the power of making an experi-
ment, the completing converse of Platner's. There is
no example of a person born with the sense of sight, but
without those of touch and the muscles: and nothing
less than this would enable us to define precisely the
extent and limits of the conceptions which sight is capable
of giving, independently of association with impressions
of another sense. There are, however, considerations
well adapted to moderate the extreme confidence which
Sir W. Hamilton places in this argument. First, it
must be observed that when the eye, at present, takes
cognizance of a visible figure, it does not cognise it by
means of colour alone, but by all those motions and
modifications of the muscles connected with the eye,
which have so great a share in giving us our acquired
perceptions of sight. To determine what can be cog-
nised by sight alone, we must suppose an eye incapable
of these changes ; which can neither have the curvature
of its lenses modified nor the direction of its axis changed
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 293
by any mode of muscular action ; which cannot, therefore,
travel along the boundary line that separates two colours,
but must remain fixed with a steady gaze on a definite
spot. If we once allow the eye to follow the direction
of a line or the periphery of a figure, we have no longer
merely sight, but important muscular sensations super-
added. Now there is nothing more certain than that
an eye with its axis immovably fixed in one direction,
gives a full and clear vision of but a small portion of space,
that to which the axis directly points, and only a faint
and indistinct one of the other points surrounding it.
When we are able to see any considerable portion ot a
surface so as to form a distinct idea of it, we do so by
passing the eye over and about it, changing slightly the
direction of the axis many times in a second. When
the eye is pointed directly to one spot, the faint percep-
tions w.e have of others are barely sufficient to serve as
indications for directing the axis of the eye to each of
them in turn, when withdrawn from the first. Physiolo-
gists have explained this by the fact, that the centre of
the retina is furnished with a prodigiously greater num-
ber of nervous papillae, much finer and more delicate
individually, and crowded closer together, than any other
part. Whatever be its explanation, the fact itself is
indubitable ; and seems to warrant the conclusion that
if the axis of the eye were immovable, and we were
without the muscular sensations which accompany and
guide its movement, the impression we should have of a
boundary between two colours would, be so vague and
indistinct as to be merely rudimentary.
A rudimentary conception must be allowed, for it is
evident that even without moving the eye we are capable
of having two sensations of colour at once, and that the
boundary which separates the colours must give some
specific affection of sight, otherwise we should have no
discriminative impressions capable of afterwards becom-
ing, by association, representative of the cognitions of
lines and figures which we owe to the tactual and the mus-
cular sense. But to confer on these discriminative im-
294 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
pressions the name which denotes our matured and per-
fected cognition of Extension, or even to assume that they
have in their nature anything in common with it, seems
to be going beyond the evidence. Berkeley acknow-
ledged a very considerable amount of perception by the
eye alone, of something which it was possible to call
by the name of extension ; and that which is so perceived
has, since his time, been known to philosophers as
Visible Extension, in contradistinction to Tangible.
But Berkeley maintained that Visible Extension not
only is not the same thing as Tangible Extension, but
has not the smallest likeness to it, and that a person
born with only one of the two senses, and afterwards
acquiring the other, would, until there had been time to
learn their mutual relation by experience, never suspect
that there was any connexion between them. In point
of fact, those who are born blind and afterwards acquire
sight, know by the information of others that the eye
pictures and the tactual sensations come from the same
objects : yet even with that help it is always a work of
time and difficulty to connect the one with the other.
Sir W. Hamilton appears to think that extension as
revealed by the eye, is identical with the extension which
we know by touch, except that it is only in two di-
mensions. " It is not," he says,* " all kind of extension
" and form that is attributed to sight. It is not figured
" extension in all the three dimensions, but only extension
" as involved in plane figures ; that is, only length and
" breadth." But to have the notion of extension even in
length and breadth as we have it, is to have it in such a
manner that we might know certain muscular facts
without having tried : as, for instance, that if we placed
our finger on the spot corresponding to one end of a line,
or boundary of a surface, we should have to go through
a muscular motion before we could place it on the other.
Is there the smallest reason to suppose that on the
evidence of sight alone, we could arrive at this con-
clusion in anticipation of the sense of touch ? I cannot
* Lectures, ii. 160.
PRIMART QUALITIES OF MATTER. 295
admit that we could have what i.s meant by a perception
of superficial space, unless we conceived it as something
which the hand could be moved across ; and, whatever
may be the retinal impression conveyed by the line
which bounds two colours, I see no ground for thinking
that by the eye alone we could acquire the conception of
what we now mean when we say that one of the colours
is outside the other.* On this point I may again quote
* The following cae, however, which I quote from Dr. M'Cosh
(pp. 163-165), if correctly reported, would require a considerable modifica-
tion of the preceding doctrine. " The best reported case" of a person
born blind, but who acquired eyesight by means of a surgical operation,
" is that of Dr. Franz of Leipsig (i j hil. Trans, of Eoy. Soc. 1841). The
' youth had been born blind, and was seventeen years of age when the
' experiment was wrought which gave him the use of one eye. When the
' eye was sufficiently restored to bear the light, a sheet of paper on which
' two strong black lines had been drawn, the one horizontal, the other
' vertical, was placed before him at the distance of about three feet. He
' was now allowed to open the eye, and after attentive examination he
' called the lines by their right denominations," that is, according to
Dr. M'Cosh, horizontal and vertical. " ' The outline in black of a square,
" six inches in diameter, within which a circle had been drawn, and within
" the latter a triangle, was, after careful examination, recognised and
" correctly described by him.' ' At the distance of three feet, and on a
" level with the eye, a solid cube and a sphere, each of four inches dia-
" meter, was placed before him.' After attentively examining these
" bodies, he said he saw a quadrangular and a circular figure, and after
" some consideration he pronounced the one a square and the other a disc.
" His eye being then closed, the cube was taken away and a disc of equal
" size substituted and placed next to the sphere. On again opening his
" eye he observed no difference in these objects, but regarded them both
" as discs. The solid cube was now placed in a somewhat oblique posi-
" tion before the eye, and close beside it a figure cut out of pasteboard,
" representing a plane outline prospect of the cube when in this position.
" Both objects he took to be something like tiat quadrates." [qy. quadri-
laterals ?] " A pyramid placed before him with one of its sidus towards
" his eye he saw as a plain" [plane ?] " triangle. This object was now
" turned a little, so as to present two of its sides to view, but rather more
" of one side than of the other : after considering and examining it for a
" long time, he said that this was a very extraordinary figure ; it was
" neither a triangle, nor a quadrangle, nor a circle ; he had no idea of it,
" and could not describe it ; in fact, said he, I must give it up. On the
" conclusion of these experiments, I asked him to describe the sensations
the objects had produced, whereupon he said, that immediately on
opening his eye he had discovered a difference in the two objects, the
cube and the sphere, placed before him, and perceived that they were
not drawings ; but that he had not been able to form from them the
idea of a square and a disc, until he perceived a sensation of what he saw
' in the points of his fingers, as if he really touched the object." (A very
significant fact, both psychologically aid physiologically.) " When I
" gave the three bodies (the sphere, cube, and pyramid) into his hand, he
206 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
Mr. Bain.* " I do not see how one sensation can be
" felt as out of another, without already supposing that we
" have a feeling of space. If I see two distinct ohjects
v. . " before me, as two candle flames, I apprehend them as
" different objects, and as distant from one another by an
" interval of space; but this apprehension presupposes
" an independent experience and knowledge of lineal
" extension. There is no evidence to show that, at the
" was much surprised he had not recognised them as such by sight, as he
" was well acquainted with mathematical figures by his touch."
The case as stated looks like an experimental proof, that not only some-
thing which admits of being called extension, but an extension which is
promptly identified with that already known by touch, though in two
dimensions only, may be perceived by sight at the very first use of the
eyes, before the muscular action necessary for directing the eye has been
learnt by practice. There is one suspicious circumstance in the recital
the youth's instantaneous perception that the cube and the sphere were
not drawings ; for how could one who had never before had any sensation
of sight, distinguish without help a drawing from its object ? Cheselden's
patient was for a long time deceived by pictures, and asked which was the
lying sense, feeling or seeing. We ought, moreover, to have been ex-
pressly told whether, previous to the operation, the blindness was abso-
lutely complete ; which in many of the cases cited by Mr. Samuel Bailey
it was not, and, according to Cheselden, in cases of congenital cataract it
seldom is so. If no material circumstance is omitted in the report of
Dr. Franz's case, the doctrine in the text will require a certain amount of
correction. What is there called a rudimentary conception of figure by
the eye, must be more than rudimentary ; it must be, in its way, con-
sidorably developed ; and it must be such that " after attentive examina-
tion" it could be recognised as corresponding with the circles and
quadrangles already known by touch. On this last point the report does
not agree with other recorded cases. In a recent case, for example, re-
corded by Mr. Nunneley (I quote at second hand from Professor Fraser
in the North British Review) the boy could indeed, after couching, " at
ouce perceive a difference in the shapes of objects," could see that the
cube and the sphere " were not of the same visible figure," but could not
tell which was which : " it was not till they had been many times placed
" in his hands, that he learnt to distinguish by sight the one which he
' had just had in his hands from the other placed beside it. He gradually
' became more correct in hi? judgments, but it was only after several days
' that he could tell by the eye alone which was the sphere and which the
' cube ; when asked, he always, before answering, wished to take both in
' his hands. Even when this was allowed, when immediately afterwards
' the objects were placed before the eyes, he was not certain of the
' figure."
If Dr. Franz's case is fairly reported, his patient was probably of more
than ordinary natural quickness of observation, and identified the figures
not by resemblance proper, but by analogy, or resemblance of relations.
* The Senses and the Intellect, 2nd ed. p. 376 ; 1st ed. p. 368.
PRIMARY QUALITIES OP MATTER. 297
" first sight of these objects, and before any association
" is formed between visible appearances a,nd other niove-
" ments, I should be able to apprehend in the double
" appearance a difference of place. I feel a distinctness
" of impression, undoubtedly, partly optical and partly
" muscular, but in order that this distinctness may mean
" to me a difference of position in space, it must reveal
" the additional fact, that a certain movement of my arm
Though beholding for the first time a visual square and circle, he was no
doubt aware through the persons who surrounded him, that the objects
shown to his sight were objects which could be touched which he already
knew by touch. During the " careful examination" and " consideration"
which preceded his recognition of them, he was probably employed in
asking himself to what, in his experience of tangible objects, these visible
objects bore the greatest affinity. Now, he was " well acquainted with
mathematical figures by touch," and had therefore acquired a complete
idea of a closed figure, and of the boundary which encloses it the outline
separating object from not-object. A relation similar to that between a
tangible figure and its boundary, exists between the visual periphery and
the mass of colour it encloses. This mere analogy might be sufficient to
direct his choice, when a visual object had at any rate to be identified with
a tangible. The grand difficulty was in discovering that any visual object
was the same with any tangible : but, this difficulty once surmounted by
the information of others, a small circumstance might give him a hint for
pairing the one class of objects with the other. In his familiarity, by
touch and the muscles, with (let us say) a triangular outline, he had become
aware of sudden and sharp bends in it, and knew that there were three
of these in the tangible periphery. There was the same number of pecu-
liar points in the visual outline, which might not spontaneously have
reminded him of the bends he knew by touch, but, if a choice had to be
made, were more analogous to them than anything in a circular outline.
Being required therefore to give to this object the name of something
tangible, he was naturally led to calling it a triangle. It is by no means
evident that if left entirely to himself, he would have found out, except by
gradual experience, that the phenomenon analogous to extension, which
he perceived by sight, was the extension which he already knew by touch.
I n:ay add, that since we have from sight distinctive sensations answering
to the various figures, it is no more than natural that these sensations,
however unlike the tactual sensations which they represent, should have
relations among themselves, resembling the mutual relations of those.
The same explanation may probably serve for the lad's ability to dis-
tinguish by sight a vertical line from a horizontal. He was probably told
that one of them was horizontal and the other vertical, and was only
asked which was which ; and without further information we cannot tell
what small circumstance may have determined him to guess the one
rather than the other. To sum up my view of Dr. Franz's case, it does
not prove that we perceive extension by sight, but only that we have
discriminative sensations of sight, corresponding to all the diversities of
superficial extension : but, if rightly reported, it greatly widens the range
of those discriminative sensations, and almost shows that by sight alone
we might rise to the height of Reid's Geometry of Visibles.
298 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
" would carry my Land from the one flame to the other ;
" or that some other movement of mine would change by
" definite amount the appearance I now see. If no
" information is conveyed respecting the possibility of
" movements of the body generally, no idea of space is
" given, for we never consider that we have a notion
" of space, unless we distinctly recognise this possi-
" bility. But how a vision to the eye can reveal
" beforehand what would be the experience of the hand
" or the other moving members, i am unable to un-
" derstand."*
* To this passage, Mr. Bain has appended, in his second edition (p. 377),
the following instructive note :
" In following a wide ranging movement, or in expatiating over a large
" prospect, we must move the eyes or the head ; and probably every one
" would allow that, in such a case, feelings of movement make a part of
" our sensation and our subsequent idea. The notion of a mountain
" evidently contains feelings of -visual movement. But when we look at a
" circle, say, one tenth of an inch in diameter, the eye can take in the
" whole of it without movement, and we might suppose that the sensa-
" tion is, in that case, purely optical, there being no apparent necessity
" for introducing the muscular consciousness A characteristic optical
" impression is produced ; we should be able to discriminate between the
" small circle and a square, or an oval, or between it and a somewhat larger
" or somewhat smaller circle, from the mere optical difference of the effect
" on the retina. Why then may we not say, that, through the luminous
" tracing alone, we have the feeling of visible form ?
" By making an extreme supposition of this nature, it is possible to
" remove the case from a direct experimental test. We may still, how-
" ever, see very strong grounds for maintaining the presence of a muscu-
" lar element even in this instance. In the first place, our notions of
" form are manifestly obtained by working on the large scale, or by the
" survey of objects of such magnitude as to demand the sweep of the eye,
" in order to comprehend them. We lay the foundations of our knowledge
" of visible outline in circumstances where the eye must be active, and
" must mix its own activity with the retinal feelings. The idea of a
" circle is first gained by moving the eye round some circular object of
' considerable size. Having done this, we transfer the fact of motion to
' smaller circles, although they would not of themselves demand an ex-
' tensive ocular sweep. So that when we look at a little round body, we
' are already pre-occupied with the double nature of visible form, and are
' not in a position to say how we should regard it, if that were our first
' experience of a circle.
" But, in the second place, the essential import of visible form is some-
" thing not attainable without the experience of moving the eye. If we
" looked at a little round spot, we should know an optical difference be-
" tween it and a triangular spot, and we should recognise it as identical
" with another round spot ; but that is merely retinal knowledge, or
" optical discrimination. That would not be to recognise form, because
" by form we never mean so little as a mere change of colour. We mean
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 299
Sir W. Hamilton does not limit the perception of
Extension to sight and touch, either separately or com-
bined with one another. " The opinions," he says,*
" so generally prevalent, 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 extension, &c., I do
" not admit. On the contrary, I hold that all sensations
" whatsoever, of which we are conscious as one out of
" another, eo ipso afford us the condition of immediately
" and necessarily apprehending extension ; for in the
" consciousness itself of such reciprocal outness is actually
" involved a perception of difference of place in space, and,
" consequently, of the extended." It may safely be
admitted that whenever we are conscious of two sensa-
tions as " one out of another," in the sense of locality, we
have a perception of space ; for the two expressions are
equivalent. But to have a consciousness of difference
between two sensations which are felt simultaneously,
is not to feel them as "one out of another" in this sense ;
and the very question to be decided is, whether any of
our senses, apart from feelings of muscular motion, gives
us the notion of " one out of another" in the &ense
necessary to support the idea of Extension.
Sir W. Hamilton thinks that whenever two different
nervous filaments are simultaneously affected at their
extremities, the sensations received through them are
felt as one out of the other. It is extremely probable
that the affection of two distinct nervous filaments is the
condition of the discriminative sensibility which furnishes
us with sensations capable of becoming representative of
objects one out of the other. But that is a different
thing from giving us the perception directly. Un-
" by a round form something that would take a given sweep of the eye to
" comprehend it ; and unless we identify the small spot with the circles
" previously seen, we do not perceive it to be a circle. It may remain in
" our mind as a purely optical meaning ; but we can never cross the chasm
" that separates an optical meaning from an effect combining light and
" movement, in any other way than by bringing in an experience of move-
" ment."
* Dissertations on Reid, p. 861.
300 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
doubtedly we recognise difference of place in the objects
which affect our senses, whenever we are aware that those
objects aifect different parts of our organism. But when
we are aware of this, we already have the notion of Place.
We must be aware of the different parts of our body as
one out of another, before we can use this knowledge as
a means of cognising a similar fact in regard to other
material objects. This Sir W. Hamilton admits ; and
what, therefore, he is. bound to prove is, that the very
first time we received an impression of touch, or of any
other sense, affecting more than one nervous filament, we
were conscious of being affected in a plurality of places.
This he does not even attempt to do ; and direct proof is
palpably unattainable. As a matter of indirect evidence,
we may oppose to this theory Mr. Bain's, according to
which, apart from association, we should not have any
impression of this kind, and should in general be con-
scious only of a greater mass or " volume" of sensation
when we were affected in two places, than when only in
one ; like the more massive sensation of heat which we
feel when our bodies are immersed in a warm bath, com-
pared with that which we feel when heat of the same, or
even of greater intensity, is applied only to our hands or
feet. Mr. Bain's doctrine, being as consistent with the
admitted facts of the case as Sir W. Hamilton's, has a
good claim, on his own law of Parcimony, to be pre-
ferred to it. But, besides, there are recorded facts which
agree with Mr. Bain's theory, and are quite irreconcilable
with Sir W. Hamilton's ; and to find such we need not
travel beyond Sir W. Hamilton's own pages.
One of them is the very case we have already had before
us, that recorded by Platner. The facts of this case are
quite inconsistent with the opinion, that we have a direct
perception of extension when an object touches us in
more than one place, including the extremities of more
than one nervous filament. Platner expressly says that
his patient, when an object touched a considerable part
of the surface of his body, but without exciting more
than one kind of sensation, was conscious of no local dif-
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 301
ference no " outness" of one part of the sensation in
relation to another part but only (we may presume) of
a greater quantity of sensation ; as Mr. Bain would call
it, a greater volume. As Platner expresses it, " if objects
" and the parts of his body touched by them, did not
" make different kinds of impression on his nerves of
" sensation, he would take everything external for one
" and the same. In his own body, he absolutely did not
" discriminate head and foot at all by their distance, but
" merely by the difference of the feelings." Such an
experiment, reported by a competent observer, is of
itself almost enough to overthrow Sir W. Hamilton's
theory.
In like manner, the patient in Cheselden's celebrated
case, after his second eye was couched, described himself
as seeing objects twice as large with both eyes as with
one only ; that is, he had a double quantity, or double
volume of sensation, which suggested to his mind the
idea of a double size.*
Another case, for the knowledge of which I am also
indebted to Sir W. Hamilton who knew it through an
abstract given by M. Maine de Biran of the original
report by M. Eey Regis, a medical observer, in his
" Histoire Nat urelle de lAme" is as incompatible with
Sir W. Hamilton's theory as Platner's case. It is the case
* I may here observe that Sir W. Hamilton (and the same mistake has
been made by Mr. Bailey) considers Cheselden's case as evidence that the
" perception of externality," as distinguished from that of distance from
the eye, is given by sight as well as by touch, because the young man said
that objects at first seemed " to touch his eyes, as what he felt did his
skin." (Foot-note to Reid, p. 177.) He seems to think that, on the other
theory, the boy should have been metaphysician enough to recognise in
the perception " a mere affection of the organ," or at least should have
perceived the objects " as if in his eyes." But he was not accustomed to
conceive tangible objects as if in his fingers. He conceived them as
touching his fingers : and he simply transferred the experience of touch
to the newly-acquired sense. All his notions of perception were associated
with direct contact ; and as he did not perceive any of the objects of
sight to be at a distance from the organ by which he perceived them, he
concluded that they must be in contact with it.
Mr. Nunneley's case, on this point, agrees with Cheselden's. The boy
" said everything touched his eyes, and walked carefully about with his
" hands held up before him, to prevent things hurting his eyes by touch-
" ing them."
302 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE
of a patient who lost the power of movement in one-half
of his body, apparently from temporary paralysis of the
motory nerves, while the functions of the sensory nerves
seemed unimpaired. This patient, it was found, had
lost the power of localizing his sensations. " Experi-
" ments,* various and repeated, were made to ascertain
" with accuracy, whether the loss of motive faculty had
" occasioned any alteration in the capacity of feeling; and
" it was found that the patient, though as acutely alive
" as ever to the sense of pain, felt, when this was secretly
" inflicted, as by compression of his hand under the
" bedclothes, a sensation of suffering or uneasiness, by
" which, when the pressure became strong, he was com-
1 " pelled lustily to cry out ; but a sensation merely
" general, he being altogether unable to localize the
" feeling, or to say whence the pain proceeded. . . . The
" patient, as he gradually recovered the use of his limbs,
" gradually also recovered the power of localizing his
" sensations." It would be premature to establish a
scientific inference upon a single experiment : but if
confirmed by repetition, this is an experimentum crucis.
So far as one experiment can avail, it proves, that sensa-
tion without motion does not give the perception of
difference of place in our bodily organs (not to speak
of outward objects), and that this perception is even
now entirely an inference, dependent on the muscular
feelings.f
It gives a very favourable idea of Sir W. Hamilton's
sincerity and devotion to truth, that he should have
drawn from their obscurity, and made generally known,
two cases which make such havoc with his own opinions
* Dissertations on Eeid, pp. 874, 875.
f Dr. M'Cosh says (p. 151) : " This case is valueless, as evidently the
functions of the nervous apparatus were deranged." I am far from pre-
tending that this single experiment is conclusive ; but I can as little
admit that it ought to count for nothing. The functions of the motor
nerves were deranged ; but no derangement appears to have been re-
marked in those of the nerves of sensation ; unless, by a petitio principii,
the incapacity of localizing the sensations is considered to prove it. We
cannot indeed prove that those nerves were not also in a morbid state :
but pathological cases, which are admitted to be the nearest equivalents
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 303
as this and Platner's ; for though he did not believe the
cases to be really inconsistent with his theory, he can
hardly have been entirely unaware that they could be
used against it.
The only other point in Sir W. Hamilton's doctrines
respecting the Primary Qualities which it is of impor-
tance to notice, is one, I believe, peculiar to himself, and
certainly not common to him with any of his eminent
predecessors in the same school of thought. It is the
doctrine, that those qualities are not perceived are not
directly and immediately cognized in things external
to our bodies, but only in our bodies themselves. " A
" Perception," he says,* " of the Primary Qualities does
" not, originally, and in itself, reveal to us the existence,
" and qualitative existence, of aught beyond the organism,
" apprehended by us as extended, figured, divided, &c.
" The primary qualities of things external to our organism
" we do not perceive, i.e. immediately know. For these
" we only learn to infer, from the affections which we
" come to find that they determine in our organs ; affec-
" tions which, yielding us a perception of organic ex-
" tension, we at length discover, by observation and
" induction, to imply a corresponding extension in the
" extra-organic agents." Neither, according to him, do
we perceive, or immediately know, " extension in its true
and absolute magnitude ;" our perceptions giving dif-
ferent impressions of magnitude from the same object,
when placed in contact with different parts of our body.
" As perceived extension is only the recognition of one
" organic affection in its outness from another ; as a
" minimum of extension is thus, to perception, the
in physiology to experiments in inorganic science, would lose all their
scientific value if it could be assumed without evidence that the disease
extended to other functions than those in which it was observed. Even
if a physical derangement were proved, one not unimportant point would
have been ascertained by the experiment that a morbid affection may
take away the power of localizing sensations, without taking away the
sensations. Localization, therefore, does not depend on the same con-
ditions with the sensations themselves, still less is it inseparably involved
in them.
* Dissertations on Reid, pp. 881, 882.
304
" smallest extent of organism in which sensations can
" be discriminated as plural; and as in one part of the
" organism this smallest extent is perhaps some million,
" certainly some myriad, times smaller than in others ;
" it follows that, to perception, the same real exten-
" sion will appear, in this place of the body, some
" million or myriad times greater than in that. Nor
" does this difference subsist only as between sense
" and sense ; for in the same sense, and even in that
" sense which has very commonly been held exclu-
" sively to afford a knowledge of absolute extension, I
" mean Touch proper, the minimum, at one part of
" the body, is some fifty times greater than it is at
" another."
Thus, according to Sir W. Hamilton, all our cogni-
tions of extension and figure in anything except our own
body, and of the real amount of extension even in that,
.are not perceptions, or states of direct consciousness; but
" inferences," and even inferences " by observation and
induction" from our experience. Now, we know how
contemptuous he is of Brown, and other " Cosmothetic
Idealists," for maintaining that the existence of exten-
sion or extended objects otherwise than as an affection
of our own minds, is not a direct perception but an
inference. We know how he reproaches this opinion
with being subversive of our Natural Beliefs ; how often
he repeats that the testimony of consciousness must be
accepted entire, or not accepted at all ; how earnestly
and in how many places he maintains " that we have
" not merely a notion, a conception, an imagination, a
" subjective representation of Extension, for example,
" called up or suggested in some incomprehensible man-
" ner to the mind, on the occasion of an extended object
" being presented to the sense ; but that in the percep-
" tion of such an object we have, as by nature we believe
" we have, an immediate knowledge or consciousness of
" that external object as extended. In a word, that in
" sensitive perception, the extension as known, and the
" extension as existing, are convertible ; known because
PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MATTER. 305
" existing, and existing, since known."* All this, it
appears, is only true of the extension of our own
bodies. The extension of any other body is not known
immediately or by perception, but as an inference from
the former. I ask any one, whether this opinion does
not contradict our " natural beliefs" as much as .any
opinion of the Cosmothetic Idealists can do ; whether
to the natural, or non-metaphysical man, it is not as great
a paradox to affirm that we do not perceive extension
in anything external to our bodies, as that we do not
perceive extension in anything external to our minds ;
and whether, if the natural man can be brought to
* O
assent to the former, he will find any additional strange-
ness or apparent absurdity in the latter. This is only
one of the many instances in which the philosopher who
so vehemently accuses other thinkers of affirming the
absolute authority of Consciousness when it is on their
own side, and rejecting it when it is not, lays himself
open to a similar charge. The truth is, it is a charge
from which no psychologist, not Reid himself, is exempt.
No person of competent understanding has ever applied
himself to the study of the human mind, and not dis-
covered that some of the common opinions of mankind
respecting their mental consciousness are false, and that
some notions, apparently intuitive, are really acquired.
Every psychologist draws the line where he thinks it can
be drawn most truly. Of course it is possible that Sir
W. Hamilton has drawn it in the right place, and Brown
in the wrong. Sir W. Hamilton would say that the
common opinions which he contests are not Natural
Beliefs, though mistaken for such. And Brown thinks
exactly the same of those which are repugnant to his
own doctrine. Neither of them can justify himself but
by pointing out a mode in which the apparent percep-
tions, supposed to be original, may have been acquired ;
and neither can charge the other v\ith anything worse
than having made a mistake in this extremely delicate
* Dissertations on Reid, p. 842.
X
306 NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.
process of psychological analysis. Neither of them has
a right to give to a mistake in such a matter, the name
of a rejection of the testimony of consciousness, and
attempt to bring down the other by an argument which
is of no possible value except ad invidiam, and which in
its invidious sense is applicable to them both, and to all
psychologists deserving the name.
NOTE TO THE PKECEDING CHAPTER.
A host of critics, headed by Dr. M'Cosh, Mr. Mahaffy, and the writer
in Slackwood, have directed their shafts against this chapter ; but Pro-
fessor Fraser, himself a host, is on my side. The essential point in the
controversy being the analysis of Extension, I shall confine my notice to
the arguments bearing upon that point.
The principal objection is the same which was made to the two preced-
ing chapters : that the explanation given of Extension presupposes
Extension : that the notion itself is surreptitiously introduced, to account
for its own origin. The case of the objectors is most compactly stated
by Mr. Mahaffy, in the following extract :*
" The briefest way of criticizing the long passage" [quoted from Mr.
Bain] " will be to enumerate its fallacies in general heads, (a) A know-
" ledge of our organism as extended must not be begged, when we are
" going to explain extension ; hence, such expressions as the ' range of a
" limb' or ' sweep of a limb,' must either be carefully confined to the
" mere succession of feelings in moving it, or they beg the question : and
" indeed, as suggesting extension in the very statement, they should be
" avoided when we are describing the phenomena from which extension is
" to be derived. (j8) Any mention or postulating of direction cannot be
" for a moment allowed ; for what possible meaning can direction have ex-
" cept in space ? In particular, lineal (by which 1 suppose Mr. Bain
" principally means rectilinear) direction would be only given with great
" difficulty by the moving of limbs, and we should be brought back to
" the old Greek notion of circular motion being the most natural. This
" difficulty, as well as a host of others, are urged with great acnteness by
" Mr. Abbott. (Sight and Touch, chap, v.) More especially he states,
" from E. H. Weber, that touch cannot give us the idea of a right line at
" all, and consequently not the slightest idea of direction (y) No such
" notion as velocity or rapidity can be admitted, far less such a notion as
" the comparison of quicker and slower motions. In fact, the idea of motion
" requires 1 as its logical antecedent both space and time, and is not iden-
" tical with pure succession. Suppose we had nothing but the series of
" our thoughts to analyse, we could never get beyond the idea of a series,
" nor could we ever by any chance get the notion of acceleration or retar-
" dation in it. .For what is quicker or slower ? Nothing but more space
" traversed in less time, and vice versa. Motion cannot be apprehended
" without something fixed, which is only given us by relations of space, as
" Kant has well shown. The motion of our thoughts, then, is in the first
* Mahaffy, pp. xviii.-xx.
NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.
' place, only an analogical expression ; and secondly, conld never have
' been felt without something in space whereby not only to measure the
' increased or diminished velocity of our thinking, but even to learn
' that there is any velocity at all in the matter. The evidence of dreaming
' seems to corroborate this view. Why is it, that, the intuitions of velocity
' afforded us by space being removed, the current of thoughts is found
' by itself completely incompetent to suggest or estimate speed at all ?
' (8) What we necessarily use to measure extension must not for that reason
' have originally suggested it. And yet all that the association school
' ever attempt to prove is only this : that all the measures of extension
' can be traced to series of muscular feelings in time. The knowledge of
' extension is one thing, and primitive ; the measure of extension is
' another, and empirical ; and we should not accept Mr. Bain's confusion
' of them together (perhaps identification of them), without some further
' proof than his bare statement.
" Upon all these assumptions, however, tbe theory of Mr. Bain is based,
' and the intelligent reader will find them scattered over the very surface
' of the argument. I would call particular attention to the passage . . .
' ' We must learn to feel that a slow motion for a long time is the same
' as a quicker motion with less duration, which we can easily do by seeing
' that they both produce the same effect in exhausting the full range of
' the limb.' Surely it is clear that without space we could never get the
' idea of motion, which involves space as much as time in fact, a series
' in time only changes, it does not move ; and even granting we had the
' idea, we could never discriminate whether that motion was quicker or
' slower, except the notion of something permanent in space, and motion
' in space, were given. The same petitio principii is made by Mr. Mill."
This orderly and succinct mode of setting forth the objection is a great
convenience for answering it. I shall take Mr. Mahaffy's points in his
own order.
(a) The phraseology employed to express the data common to both
parties must, at least in the commencement, be that which common lan-
guage affords ; since no other would enable the reader to understand, with-
out a laborious process, on a subject already so difficult, what are the facts
meant. But the phraseology, of course, must not be so used as to assume
anything which either the theory itself, or the theory opposed to it, does
not admit. As Mr. Mahaffy observes, " such expressions as the range of
a limb, or the sweep of a limb," must "be carefully confined to the
mere succession of feelings in moving it " And if the reader turns back
to the first of the quoted passages, he will find that Mr. Bain has been
most industrious in directing attention to the feelings involved in the
motion of a limb, as the point to be attended to, in contradistinction to
the motion itself, and in showing that his expressions are to be under-
stood of the former, and not of the latter.
(/3) Direction, Mr. Mahaffy maintains, must not be mentioned or re-
ferred to in the analysis of extension, because direction means space, and
space must not be called in to account for itself. It would have been
nearer the truth if, instead of saying that direction means space, he had
said that space means direction. Space is the aggregate of directions, as
Time is of successions. To postulate direction, therefore, is to postulate,
not space, but the element which the notion of space is made of. Mr.
Bain, however, does not postulate direction. He postulates the distinc-
tive sensations which, from the first, accompany the motions of a limb in
what we, with our acquired perceptions, call variety of directions. There
are such distinctive sensations, otherwise we should not even now know,
x 2
IV OA<
u/vw- u^
NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.
when our eyes are shut, in what direction our arm is moving. According
to Mr. Bain, the difference in the sensations depends on the difference in
the muscles exerted. " All directions that call forth the play of the same
" muscles, are similar directions as respects the body : different muscles
" mean different directions."* These sensations, shading, as they do,
gradually into one another, without abruptness or break, are well fitted
to give rise to the feeling of continuity, which unites all our different
notions of different directions into one notion of space.f
(y) Velocity or rapidity, comparison of quicker and slower motions,
must not, Mr. Mahatfy says, be postulated, because quicker or slower have
no meaning but with reference to the greater or smaller space traversed
in a given time. It is true that the two motions derive their name from
space.; but are the motions themselves therefore undistinguishable ? A
saw and a hatchet are so called on account of the different kind of work
they do ; but can we not also distinguish the two objects when we see
them p Again I say, what is postulated is not the space traversed, but
the greater or less energy of the muscular sensation. It only remains to
be explained how we learn that a more energetic sensation lasting a shorter
time, is equivalent to a less energy continued for a longer time. Mr.
Bain thinks we learn this by their both producing the same effect, in
, " exhausting the full range of the limb ;" by which he means, attaining
the extreme limit of the sensation which accompanies protension the
point beyond which no further addition to it can be made. Where is the
petitio principii here ? I think that the solution is an admissible one
that we may fairly be supposed to take the entire series of the sensations
* The Senses and the Intellect, p. 203 (second edition),
f With regard to Mr. Abbott's difficulties, the following is a speci-
men of them : " Let us suppose a blind man trying to get the notion
of distance from the motion of his hand. He finds a certain sweep of
the hand brings it into contact with a desk ; the distance of which,
therefore, is represented by that effort. But it requires a greater effort
to reach the eyes or the nose ; and distance being=locomotive effort, it is
demonstrated that the nose extends beyond the desk. The top of the
head must be conceived as more remote, and the back farthest of all."
Mr. Abbott seems to suppose that a blind man's permanent impression
of the distance of objects from him, will be derived from his very first ex-
periment; and denies him the common privilege belonging to all expe-
rience, of correcting and completing itself. If the nose is really nearer to
his hand than the desk, will he not soon find a way of reaching the nearer
object with less locomotive effort than the more distant? If it be said,
that this can only be done by bending his arm, and that flexure of the
arm is attended with more sense of effort than protension of it, the an-
swer is that even if this were true, the effort is of a different kind ; and
the blind man would speedily distinguish between the two, and would
learn that objects reached by his bended arm are nearer to his body, by
all the other tests of proximity, than those which can only be reached
with the arm extended. Dr. M'Cosh (p. 135) falls into a fallacy of the
game kind,
Mr. Abbott's book, a repetition of the attack made by Mr. Bailey on
Berkeley's Theory of Vision, has sufficient ability to require an answer by
itself, had not this been effectually done by Professor Fraser in an elabo-
rate and able paper in the North British Review for August, 1864, which
I trust will eventually be reprinted in a more permanent form.
NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER. 309
which accompany the stretching out of the limb, as a unit of measure-
ment, divisible into an ascending scale of degrees, which may be passed
through in a shorter or a longer time, but the sum of which is always
equal to itself. I have myself pointed out another road by which we
might arrive at the same equivalence. We have two simultaneous
sensations of touch with our two hands. We then move the right hand
until it joins the left, and touches the same object. It need not be
supposed that we yet know them as our hands, or the object as a body,
or know of our right hand as moving through space. But the two
simultaneous sensations of touch, either of which we may prolong or
repeat at pleasure, have given us the notion of a permanent element
in touch, and of two such permanent elements as coexisting. We have
now had the two sensations of touch with a single hand, but separated
by a series of the sensations accompanying muscular movement : and we
find that to get from one of the tactual sensations to the other requires
a shorter time, in proportion to the energy of the intervening muscular
sensations. In this mental process time is postulated, but not space :
and it is contended that the shorter time, or its equivalent, the greater
energy, required to get from one object of touch to another already
recognised as simultaneous, is the measure, in the last resort, of their
distance in space. The eye then comes in, and with its greater powers
of simultaneous sensation, it gathers up, by its acquired perceptions,
a host of such measurements in one apparent intuition.
(8) " What we necessarily use to measure extension" need not, as Mr.
Mahaffy justly observes, have originally suggested it : but if all the facts
of consciousness involved in what we call extension can be accounted for
on the supposition that the measure is the thing itself, no other evidence
needs be required * The apparent testimony of consciousness to a
difference between them, is perfectly explicable by the totally altered
aspect which, as I have shown in the text, our cognizance of Extension
puts on when the sense of sight has assumed the lead of it. When a
larger collection of carefully observed facts respecting persons blind from
birth, shall have been subjected to an acuter and more discriminating
analysis, the additional insight which we may hope to obtain into the
psychology of such persons, will probably dissipate the remains of ob-
scurity which still hang over some of the details of the subject.
Dr. M'Cosh and the writer in Blackwood are constractive thinkers as
well as critics, and endeavour to prove, in a direct manner, that the
notion of extension is not acquired through our muscular sensations.'
The evidence on which they chiefly insist is that antecedently to expe-
rience, we localize our sensations at different points of our body : accord-
ing to Dr. M'Cosh, at the extremities of the nerve-fibres ; every sensation
being, by nature, felt at the point where the nerve terminates. The
writer in Blackwood^ says, ** We do not commence our sentient life with
* The writer in Blackwood thinks it absurd that the measure should
"measure itself" (p. 32) that muscular sensation, as a measure of
distance, should be employed in measuring muscular sensation. But
are not quantities usually measured by quantities of the same kind ? A
foot rule measures length by its own length. A bushel measures solid
contents by its own contents. The tickings of a clock measure other
successions by their own succession. A weight measures other weights
by itself.
f Pp. 26, 27.
310 NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.
" sensations felt nowhere we certainly Dave no memory of pains that
" were not felt somewhere in that arena, in fact, which we come to call
" our body." The absence of remembrance of what took place soon after
birth being, as I have so often observed, no proof that it did not happen,
the proof offered is, " that no ingenuity whatever will get our pains into
" our bodies, or give us knowledge of these bodies, unless we commence
" with the admission that certain pains and pleasures of a physical order
" are, as soon as they attain to any distinctness, felt in different parts of
" a certain arena, thus localizing each other. . . . Many writers describe
" this localization as an acquired perception. Now, no one doubts for a
' moment that the accurate localization of our sensations is acquired by
' experience ; but that experience, we maintain, would not be possible
' were there not some vague localization given us at once, by simulta-
' neous sensations felt in different parts of our system. How else do we
' get our first idea of space or position p" To this last question I have
already endeavoured to give an answer.* With regard to the locali-
zation, so far as it regards our external sensations, I see no difficulty in
believing that it takes place altogether by the process to which, as the
writer admits, we are indebted for our power of " accurate localization."
I am bit by an animal, or my skin is irritated at some point, and I am at
first unable, as occasionally happens even now, to fix the exact place of
the sensation. I move my hand along the surface until I find the place
where the friction of the hand relieves the irritation, or where its contact
increases the smart. I am now expressing these facts in the ordinary
language of mankind, but I have sufficiently explained the sense which
that language bears in my own doctrine. The view I have taken of the
manner in which we obtain our cognition of place, does not rest on any
previous localization, even vague, of our sensations. Nor does the loca-
lizing of a sensation, say in one of our limbs, amount to anything but
attributing to the sensation an uniform and close conjunction, either syn-
chronous or by immediate succession, with the group of sensations of
various kinds which constitute my perception of the limb. In general
we probably first discover that the sensation is connected with the limb,
by perceiving that the exciting cause of the sensation is connected with it.
Mr. Bain states the matter as follows :f "I can associate one pain with
" the sight of my finger, another pain with the sight of my toe,
" and a third with the position of my arm that determines the crown of
" my head. An infant at the outset knows not where to look for the
" cause of an irritation when anything touches it ; by and by the child
" observes a coincidence between a feeling and a pressure operating on
" some one part ; whence a feeling in the hand is associated with the
" sight of the hand, and so for other members. When the feeling is more
* If distance and direction are explicable in the way I have pointed
out, place and position follow by obvious consequence. If once it be
admitted that impressions of touch can be cognised as at once simul-
taneous and separated by a series of muscular feelings, i.e. at once distant
and simultaneous, and that this amounts to cognising them as in space ;
the position of these impressions among one another, which constitutes
their place, will easily result from the different quantities of muscular
sensation required for passing from one to the other, combined with the
distinctive qualities of the muscular sensation dependent on what we call
difference in the direction of the motion.
t The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 397, 398 (2nd ed.)
NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER. 311
' internal, as in the interior of the trunk, we have greater difficulty in
' tracing the precise seat, often we are quite at a loss on the point. In
' this case we have to trust to some indications that come to the surface,
' or to the effect of superficial pressure on the deep parts. By getting a
' blow on the ribs we come to connect feelings in the chest with the place
' in our map of the body : we can thus make experiments on the deep-
' seated organs and learn the meaning of their indications. But the more
' inaccessible the parts, the more uncertainty is there in assigning the
' locality of their sensations." There are some difficulties, not yet com-
pletely resolved, respecting the localization of our internal pains, for the
solution of which we need more careful and intelligent observation of
infants. But I think enough is known to show that the localization of our
sensations is not the starting point of our knowledge of place and position,
but follows it. It is true that (as Dr. M'Cosh observes*) " if a child is
wounded in the arm, it will not hold out its foot." But, before it has
given evidence of having " any acquired perceptions," will it hold out its
arm either ? On the theory that the localization is an acquired percep-
tion, it should do neither the one nor the other .t
Dr. M'Cosh has another argument to prove that we have an original
power of localizing our sensations, and, strange to say, it is the very one
which is usually thought to be the strongest proof that the power is ac-
quired : viz., the persistence of the association which makes us refer sen-
sations to a limb, after the limb has been cut off. " Miiller," says Dr.
M'Cosh.J " has collected a number of such cases," of which one will be
a sufficient sample : "a student named Schmidts, from Aix, had his arm
" amputated above the elbow thirteen years ago ; he has never ceased to
" have sensations as if in the fingers." It is a singular oversight in
Dr. M'Cosh to adduce these facts as proof that we localize the sensation
at the extremities of the nerves. He forgets that after the arm was cut
off, the extremity of the nerve was in the stump, and that it is there, and
not in the fingers, that, if his theory were true, the sensation ought to have
been felt. The reference of it to the limb which was gone could only be a
case of irresistible association. It does not directly negative the existence
of an instinctive localization ; but it proves that, if there be any such, an
acquired association can overpower it. So in respect to the following
fact, also quoted from Miiller : " When, in the restoration of a nose, a
" flap of skin is turned down from the forehead and made to unite with
" the stump of the nose, the new nose thus formed has, as long as the
" isthmus of skin by which it maintains its original connexions remains
" undivided, the same sensations as if it were still on the forehead ; in
" other words, when the nose is touched, the patient feels the impression
" in the forehead." But the nerve that conveys the impression no longer
* M'Cosh, p. 150.
f Dr. M'Cosh says (same page) " It is hard to believe that the
" instantaneous voluntary drawing back of a limb when wounded, and
" the shrinking of the frame when boiling liquid is poured down the
" throat, can proceed from an application of an observed law as to the
" seat of sensations." The obvious solution of this difficulty is, that both
the drawing back and the shrinking, when they take place in an ex-
tremely young infant, are purely automatic ; a reflex action, produced,
without the intervention of the will, by the irritation of the motor nerves :
a solution quite conformable to phvsiology.
J P. 148. P. 149.
312 NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.
terminates in the forehead ; it terminates in the new nose ; and according
to Dr. M'Cosh's theory the sensation should be felt there, exactly as it is
after the " isthmus of skin" has been divided, the old nervous connexion
cut off, and a new one gradually formed. Dr. M'Cosh's facts well nigh
destroy his own theory ; but they are such as, on the association theory,
would certainly happen. The last, especially, is of great value to that
theory, because it is one of the strongest instances which show that there
is a distinctive " Quale" (as one of Dr. M'Cosh's German authorities calls
it) belonging to the sensation conveyed by each one of the nerves, which
hinders it from being confounded with the sensation conveyed by any
other nerve, and enables it to form associations special to itself with the
part of the body it serves, which, as we see, persist even after it has been
taken away to serve another part.
Dr. M'Cosh, in his reply, denies that his facts conflict with his theory,
for his theory is, that we intuitively localize our sensations, not where the
nerves really terminate, but where they " normally" terminate ; that is,
not where the termination is, but where it ought to be. In other words,
we, naturally and intuitively, feel our sensations in a place which, in the
case of an amputated limb, is not only outside our body, but may be at a
distance of one or two feet from it : and this seat of sensation in the space
outside our bodies follows us wherever we go. This is what Dr. M'Cosh
would rather believe, than that the reference of the feeling to such a place
is an illusion produced by association. In support of his opinion he
refers to a case mentioned by Professor Valentin (along with three others
of a similar character) in which a girl whose left hand was congenitally
imperfect, said she had the internal sensation of a palm of the hand and
five fingers (which she did not possess) as perfectly in her left hand as in
her right. But what does this prove, except that she had the same sensa-
tions in the nerves of her left hand as in those of her right, which of
course, therefore, carried the same association. Dr. M'Cosh should show
a case in which sensations were referred to non-existent fingers when there
were no real fingers to suggest the notion.
According to Dr. M'Cosh, the reference of sensations to a lost limb
contradicts not his but the association theory ; since the lapse of years
after the loss of the limb would be sufficient to destroy the old association.
And this, in the great majority of cases, it probably does. B\it it is a
frequent experience that a sensation exactly like one we have formerly felt,
and like nothing else, revives even after many years a long forgotten
remembrance. Again, Dr. M'Cosh says that in the case of the new nose, the
affection, according to the association theory, " should have been felt in
" the forehead, not till the isthmus was cut, but till the old association was
" gone ; and this," according to me, " might not have been for twenty
" years." This overlooks an important feature in the case. When not
only the old nervous connexion has been cut off, but a new one formed,
between the new nose and the nervous trunk which connected the old nose
with the brain, the sensations become identical with those which were
referred to the old nose when it existed ; and the reference of them to the
nose is thus supported by as old and strong an association as the previous
reference of them to the forehead : with the difference that while every
day helps to dissolve the one association, every day strengthens and rivets
the other.
The only further case referred to by Dr. M'Cosh, is one mentioned by
Schopenhauer* on the authority of Frorieps; that of " Eva Lauk, an Estho-
* Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ed. 1844, vol. ii. p. 40.
NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER. 313
' nian girl, fourteen years old,born without arms or legs, but who, according
' to her mother, had developed herself intellectually quite as rapidly as her
' brothers and sisters, and without the use of limbs had reached a correct
' judgment concerning the magnitude and distance of visible objects, quite
' as quickly as they." This, unfortunately, is all the information which
Schopenhauer gives on this interesting case. In Dr. M'Cosh's judgment, it
entirely disproves the opinion " that a sweep of the arm or leg, considered
merely as a group of sensations without extension," could give the idea of
extension. He means, probably, that it proves that the idea can be acquired
without any use of arms or legs. But we do not know of what nature the
girl's idea of extension was. What we are told is, that she had notions of
magnitude and distance, which she applied to objects with the same
correctness as other people. But her notion of distance may have been
only such as could be formed by the time expended in being carried to
the spot f and her notion of magnitude may have been acquired when
objects were in contact with her body perhaps still by means of muscular
feelings of pressure and motion. Above all, it must be remembered that
the girl was surrounded by people possessing legs and arms, and had.
their aid in associating the discriminating sensations of sight with the
facts, of touch and of the muscles, to which they correspond. Such assis-
tance is a great help even to children who have the ordinary complement
of legs and arms ; they all must acquire the association much more
quickly through the help given them by the acts and words of other
people. It may be confidently assumed that Eva Lauk had this help,
probably in more than usual measure, and did not find out wholly by her-
self that a greater mass of visual sensation indicated a greater mass of
tactual sensation answering to it.
I believe I have noticed every plausible objection to Mr. Bain's and my
own analysis of Extension, which has a sufficiently individual character
to require an answer by itself. The subject is in need of further study
before all its obscure corners will be completely lighted up ; but this it
can hardly fail to receive, now that highly competent thinkers are engaged
in extending our knowledge of the Mind by the application of the Psycho-
logical Method, grounded on the Laws of Association.
314 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
CHAPTER XIV.
HOW SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL DISPOSE
OF THE LAW OF INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION.
IT has been obvious in the preceding discussions, and is
known to all who have studied the best masters of what
I have called the Psychological, in opposition to the
merely Introspective method of metaphysical enquiry,
that the principal instrument employed by them for
unlocking the deeper mysteries of mental science, is the
Law of Inseparable Association. This law, which it
would seem specially incumbent on the Intuitive school
of metaphysicians to take into serious consideration,
because it is the basis of the rival theory which they
have to encounter at every point, and which it is necessary
for them to refute first, as the condition of establishing
their own, is not so much rejected as ignored by them.
Reid and Stewart, who had met with it only in Hartley,
thought it needless to take the trouble of understanding
it. The best informed German and French philosophers
are barely aware, if even aware, of its existence.* And
in this country and age, in which it has been employed
by thinkers of the highest order as the most potent of
all instruments of psychological analysis, the opposite
school usually dismiss itwith a few sentences, so smoothly
gliding over the surface of the subject, as to prove that
* As lately as the year 1864 has been published the first work (I believe)
in the French language, which recognises the Association Psychology in
its modern developments : an able and instructive " Etude sur 1' Associa-
tion des Jdees," by M. P. M. Mervoyer. Since then, the excellent
introductory discourses prefixed by M. Gazelles to his translations from
the English psychologists, and the remarkable work of M. Taine, " De
1'Intelligence," have, it is to be hoped, permanently naturalized the
Association Psychology among French thinkers and students.
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. M ANSEL. 315
}' have never, even for an instant, brought the powers
of their minds into real and effective contact with it.
Sir W. Hamilton has written a rather elaborate Dis-
sertation on the Laws of Association; and the more
elementary of them had engaged a considerable share of
his attention.* But he nowhere shows that he had the
smallest suspicion of this, the least familiar and most
imperfectly understood of these laws. I find in all his
writings only two or three passages in which he touches,
* In this Dissertation, which originally broke off abruptly, but the con-
clusion of which has recently been supplied from the author's papers, he
attempts to simplify the theory of Association ; reducing Association by
Resemblance, not indeed to Association by Contiguity, but to that com-
bined with an elementary law, for the first time expressly laid down by
Sir W. Hamilton, though implied in all Association and in all Memory :
viz ,that a present sensation or thought suggests the remembrance of what
he calls the same sensation or thought (meaning one exactly similar) ex-
perienced at a former time. This leaves Resemblance of simple sensations
as a distinct principle of association, the foundation of all the rest, while
it resolves resemblance of complex phenomena into that simple principle
combined with the law of Contiguity.
By virtue of this speculation, Sir W. Hamilton thinks it possible to
reduce Association to a single law : " Those thoughts suggest each other,
" which had previously constituted parts of the same entire or total act of
" cognition." (Lectures, ii. 238, and the corresponding passages of the
Dissertation.) This appears to me, I confess, far from a happy effort of
generalization ; for there is no possibility of bringing under it the elemen-
tary case of suggestion, which our author has the merit of being the first
to put into scientific language. The sweet taste of to-day, and the similar
sweet taste of a week ago which it reminds me of, have not " previously
constituted parts of the same act of cognition ;" unless we take literally the
expression by which they are spoken of as the same taste, though they
are no nv>re the same taste than two men are the same man if they happen
to be exactly alike. It is a further objection, that the attempted simplifi-
cation, even if otherwise correct, would merely unite two clear notions
into one obscure one ; for the notion of feelings which suggest one
another because they resemble, or because they have been experienced
together, is universally intelligible, while that of forming parts of the
same act of cognition involves all the metaphysical difficulties which sur-
round the ideas of Unity, Totality, and Parts.
After thus, as he fancies, reducing all the phsenomena of Association to
a single law, Sir W. Hamilton asks, how is this law itself explained ?
and justly observes that it may be an ultimate law, and that ultimate laws
are necessarily unexplainable. But he nevertheless quotes, with some
approbation, an attempt by a German writer, H. Schtnid, to explain it by
an a priori theory of the human mind, which may be recommended to
notice as a choice specimen of a school of German metaphysicians who
have remained several centuries behind the progress of philosophical
enquiry, having never yet felt the influence of the Baconian reform. See
Lectures, ii. 2W-243.
316 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
even cursorily, on this mode of explaining mental phae-
nomena. The first and longest of these occurs in the
treatment, not of any of the greater problems of mental
philosophy, but of a very minor question ; whether, in
the perception of outward objects, our cognition of
wholes precedes that of their component parts, or the
contrary. More fully ; " whether, in Perception, do we
" first obtain a general knowledge of the complex wholes
" presented to us by sense, and then, by analysis and
" limited attention, obtain a special knowledge of their
" several parts ; or do we not first obtain a particular
" knowledge of the smallest parts to which sense is
" competent, and then, by synthesis, collect them into
" greater and greater wholes ?"* Sir W. Hamilton
declares for the first theory, and quotes as supporters of
the second, Stewart and James Mill ; to the latter of
whom, more than to any other thinker, mankind are
indebted for recalling the attention of philosophers to
the law of Inseparable Association, and pointing out
the important applications of which it is susceptible.
Through the coniiict with Mr. Mill on the very sub-
ordinate question which he is discussing, Sir W. Hamil-
ton is led to quote a part of that philosopher's exposition
of Inseparable Association ; and it is a sign how little
he was aware of the importance of the subject, that a
theory of so wide a scope and such large consequences
should receive the only recognition he ever gives it in a
bye corner of his work, incidentally to one ot the smallest
questions therein discussed. I shall extract the very
passages which he quotes from Mr. Mill, because, in a
small space, they state and illustrate very happily the
two most characteristic properties of our closest associa-
tions : that the suggestions they produce are, for the
time, irresistible ; and that the suggested ideas (at least
when the association is of the synchronous kind as
distinguished from the successive) become so blended
together, that the compound result appears, to our con-
sciousness, simple.
* Lectures, ii. 144.
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 317
" Where two or more ideas," says Mr. Mill,* " have
" been often repeated together, and the association has
" become very strong, they sometimes spring up in such
" close combination as not to be distinguishable. Some
" cases of sensation are analogous. For example, when
" a wheel, on the seven parts of which the seven pris-
" matic colours are respectively painted, is made to re-
" volve rapidly, it appears not of seven colours, but of
" one uniform colour, white. By the rapidity of the
" succession, the several sensations cease to be distin-
" guishable ; they run, as it were, together, and a new
" sensation, compounded of all the seven, but apparently
" a single one, is the result. Ideas, also, which have
u been so often conjoined, that whenever one exists in
" the mind, the others immediately exist along with it,
" seem to run one into another, to coalesce, as it were,
" and out of many to form one idea; which idea, how-
" ever in reality complex, appears to be no less simple
" than any one of those of which it is compounded. . . .
" It is to this great law of association that we trace
" the formation of our ideas of what we call external
" objects ; that is, the ideas of a certain number of sensa-
" tions received together so frequently that they coalesce,
" as it were, and are spoken of under the idea of unity.
" Hence what we call the idea of a tree, the idea of a
" stone, the idea of a horse, the idea of a man.
" In using the names, tree, horse, man, the names o^
" what I call objects, I am referring, and can be referring,
" only to my own sensations ; in fact, therefore, only
" naming a certain number of sensations, regarded as in
" a particular state of combination ; that is, of con-
" comitance. Particular sensations of sight, of touch, of
" the muscles, are the sensations, to the ideas of which,
" colour, extension, roughness, hardness, smoothness,
" taste, smell, so coalescing as to appear one idea, I give
" the name idea of a tree.
" To this case of high association, this blending to-
" gether of many ideas, in so close a combination that
* Analysis of the Human Mind, i. 68-75.
318 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
"' they appear not many ideas, but one idea, we owe, as
" I shall afterwards more fully explain, the power of
" classification, and all the advantages of language.
" It is obviously, therefore, of the greatest moment,
'* that this important phenomenon should be well
" understood.
" Some ideas are by frequency and strength of asso-
" ciation so closely combined that they cannot be sepa-
" rated. If one exists, the other exists along with it, in
" spite of whatever effort we may make to disjoin them.
" For example; it is not in our power to think of
" colour, without thinking of extension ; or of solidity,
" without figure. We have seen colour constantly in
" combination with extension, spread, as it were, upon a'
" surface. We have never seen it except in this co'n-
" nexion. Colour and extension have been invariably
" conjoined. The idea of colour, therefore, uniformly
" comes into mind, bringing that of extension along
" with it ; and so close is the association, that it is not in
" our power to dissolve it. We cannot, if we will, think
" of colour, but in combination with extension. The
" one idea calls up the other, and retains it, so long as
" the other is retained.
" This great law of our nature is illustrated in a rnan-
" ner equally striking by the connexion between the ideas
" of solidity and figure. We never have the sensations
" from which the idea of solidity is derived, but in con-
" junction with the sensations whence the idea of figure
" is derived. If we handle anything solid it is always
" either round, square, or of some other form. The ideas
" correspond with the sensations. If the idea of solidity
" rises, that of figure rises along with it. The idea of
" figure which rises is, of course, more obscure than that
" of extension ; because, figures being innumerable, the
" general idea is exceedingly complex, and hence, of
" necessity, obscure. But such as it is, the idea of figure
" is always present when that of solidity is present ; nor
"can we, by any effort, think of the one without think-
" ing of the other at the same time."
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 319
Other illustrations follow, concluding 1 with these words :
" The following of one idea after another, or after a sen-
" sation. so certainly that we cannot prevent the com-
" bination, nor avoid having the consequent feeling as often
" as we have the antecedent, is a law of association, the ope-
" ration of which we shall afterwards find to be extensive,
" and bearing a principal part in some of the most impor-
" tant phenomena of the human mind." And the promise
of this sentence is amply redeemed in the sequel of the
treatise.
The only remark which this highly philosophical ex-
position suggests to Sir W. Hamilton, is a disparaging
reflection on Mr. Mill's philosophy in general. He
says that Mr. Mill, in his "ingenious" treatise, "has
" pushed the principle of Association to an extreme which
" refutes its own exaggeration, analysing not only our
" belief in the relation of effect and cause into that prin-
" ciple, but even the primary logical laws," so that it is no
wonder he should " account for our knowledge of com-'
" plex wholes in perception, by the same universal prin-
" ciple." Having, on the strength of this previous
verdict of exaggeration, dispensed with enquiring how
much the law of Inseparable Association can really
accomplish, he makes no use of its most obvious appli-
cations, even while transcribing them into his own pages.
One of the psychological facts stated in the passage
quoted, the impossibility, to us, of separating the idea
of extension and that of colour, is a truth strongly in-
sisted on by Sir W. Hamilton himself. In the very
next Lecture but one to that from which I have been
quoting, he strenuously maintains, that we can neither
conceive colour without extension, nor extension without
colour. Even the born blind, he thinks, have the sensa-
tion of darkness, that is, of black 'colour, and mentally
clothe all extended objects with it.* Except the last
position, which has no evidence and no probability, f the
* Lectures, ii. 168-172.
f According to the doctrine of all advanced psychologists, to which. Sir
W. Hamilton gives an express adhesion, it is impossible to have a conscious-
320 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
doctrine is undoubtedly true, and the fact is so obviously
a case of the law of association, that even Stewart, little
partial as he was to that mode of explaining mental
phenomena, does not dream of attributing it to anything
else. " In consequence," says Stewart, " of our always
" perceiving extension at the same time at which the
" sensation of colour is excited in the mind, we find it
" impossible to think of that sensation without conceiving
" extension along with it." He gives this as one of the
instances " of very intimate associations formed between
" two ideas which have no necessary connexion with one
" another." A mental analysis by way of association
which was sufficiently obvious to recommend itself to
Stewart, will scarcely be charged with " pushing the
principle to an extreme." In fact, if an association can
ever become inseparable by dint of repetition, how
could the association between colour and extension fail
of being so? The two facts never exist but in imme-
diate conjunction, and the experience of that conjunction
is repeated at every moment of life which is not spent
in darkness. Yet after transcribing this explanation
both from Stewart and from Mill, Sir W. Hamilton
remains as insensible to it as if it had never been given ;
t
and without a word of refutation, composedly registers
the inseparablene ;s of the two ideas as an ultimate men-
tal fact proving t lem both to be original perceptions of
the same organ, the eye. Sir W. Hamilton's authority
can have little weight against the doctrine which ac-
counts for the more complex parts of our mental consti-
tution by the laws of association, when it is so evident
that he rejected that doctrine not because he had ex-
ness of darkness without having had a consciousness of light. Besides,
it is a notorious optical fact that a completely black object occupying the
whole sphere of vision is invisible : it reflects no light. Blackness, therefore,
(the complete blackness of absolute darkness,) is not a sensation, but the
total absence of sensation ; it is, in fact, nothing at all ; and to say that a
person born blind cannot imagine extension without clothing it with
nothing at all, is to assert something not very intelligible. In the case
of a person who has become blind, it might have a meaning ; for blackness
to him, like darkness to us, does not stand for mere inability to see, but
for the usual effort to see, not followed by the usual consequence.
BY SIR WILLTAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 321
amined it and found it wanting, but without examining
it; having taken for granted that it did not deserve
examination.*
How imperfect was his acquaintance with the secondary
laws, the axiomata media of association, is plainly seen
in his argument against Stewart and Mill on the compara-
tively insignificant question with which he started. The
thesis he is asserting is, that " in place of ascending up-
" wards, from the minimum of perception to its maxima,
" we descend from masses to details."
" If the opposite doctrine" (says Sir W. Hamilton)!
" were correct, what would it involve ? It would involve
* In one of the unfinished dissertations left among his papers, and
intended for his edition of Reid (in which it now stands as note E)
Sir W. Hamilton did attempt to disprove the doctrine that our incapacity to
conceive colour without extension is an effect of association. His argu-
ments (pp. 919, 920), are first, that of D'Alembert (discussed in a former
chapter), that when two colours meet we must be conscious of the line
which separates them ; and the junction, therefore, of two colours cannot
be conceived apart from extension. But suppose that we are only per-
ceiving a single colour, which occupies the whole field of vision : our invari-
ably seeing this as extended cannot be explained by something which
only happens when we see two colours ; unless the impression received
from the two adheres to the one by association. Sir W. Hamilton,
therefore, is reduced to say that the field of vision " has a right and a left,
an upper and an under side, and may be divided into halves, quarters,
&c., indefinitely," an argument which begs the question, since it assumes
that the homogeneously coloured field is already perceived as composed of
parts, that is, as extended.
Sir W. Hamilton's other argument is that " we cannot be conscious of
" a colour without being conscious of that colour in contrast to, and
" therefore out of, another colour, without, therefore, being conscious of
" the extended." This seems an assumption without grounds. If a
single colour occupies the whole field of vision, it can surely be recognised
as colour. The contrast, which is essential to consciousness, needs not be
between one colour and another : it may be between colour and the absence
of sensation, or between colour and a sensation of some other sense. I am
supposing the sensation of colour to be intermittent ; or if it were con-
stant, I admit that it would cease to ba felt at all.
The converse incapacity to conceive extension without colour, Sir W.
Hamilton deals with very summarily (p. 917), by saying that tliere is no
object of vision, either actual or conceivable, which is not coloured. This
is the very explanation given by the Association theory. All objects of
vision are coloured, counting black as a colour, which when it stands in
contrast with positive colours, we may legitimately do ; by the laws of
Association, therefore, what is always seen as coloured is always conceived
as coloured. In combating, as he thinks, the Association theory, Sir W.
Hamilton is obliged to have recourse to it.
t Lectures, ii. 149, 150.
322 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
" as a primary inference, that, as we know the whole
" through the parts, we should know the parts better
" than the whole. Thus, for example, it is supposed
" that we know the face of a friend, through the
" multitude of perceptions which we have of the different
" points of which it is made up ; in other words, that
" we should know the whole countenance less vividly
" than we know the forehead and eyes, the nose and
" mouth, &c., and that we should know each of these
" more feebly than we know the various ultimate points,
" in fact, unconscious minima of perception, which go
" to constitute them. According to the doctrine in
" question, we perceive only one of these ultimate points
" at the same instant, the others by memory incessantly
" renewed. Now let us take the face out of perception
" into memory altogether. Let us close our eyes, and
" let us represent in imagination the countenance of our
" friend. This we can do with the utmost vivacity ; or,
" if we see a picture of it, we can determine with a con-
" sciousness of the most perfect accuracy, that the portrait
" is like or unlike. It cannot, therefore, be denied that
" we have the fullest knowledge of the face as a whole,
" that we are familiar with its expression, with the
" general results of its parts. On the hypothesis, then,
" of Stewart and Mill, how accurate should be our know-
" ledge of these parts themselves. But make the ex-
*'* periment. You will find, that unless you. have analysed,
" unless you have descended from a conspectus of the
" whole face to a detailed examination of its parts, with
" the most vivid impression of the constituted whole,
" you are almost totally ignorant of the constituted parts.
" \ou may probably be unable to say what is the colour
" of the eyes, and if you attempt to delineate the mouth
" or nose, you will inevitably faiL Or look at the por-
<c trait. "You may find it unlike, but unless, as I said,
" you have analysed the countenance, unless you have
" looked at it with the analytic scrutiny of a painter's
" eye, you will assuredly be unable to say in what respect
" the artist has failed, you will be unable to specify
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 323
" what constituent he has altered, though you are fully
" conscious of the fact and effect of the alteration. What
" we have shown from this example may equally be done
" from any other a house, a tree, a landscape, a concert
" of music, &c."* ti*j
I have already made mention of a very important part
of the Laws of Association, which may he termed the
Laws of Obliviscence. If Sir W. Hamilton had suffi-
ciently attended to those laws, he never could have
maintained, that if we knew the parts before the whole,
we must continue to know the parts better than the
whole. It is one of the principal Laws of Obliviscence,
that when a number of ideas suggest one another by
association with such certainty and rapidity as to coalesce
together in a group, all those members of the group
which remain long without being specially attended to,
have a tendency to drop out of consciousness Our con-
sciousness of them becomes more and more faint and
evanescent, until no effort of attention can recall it into
distinctness, or at last recall it at all. Any one who
observes his own mental operations will find this fact
exemplified in every day of his life. Now the law of
attention is admitted to be, that we attend only to that
which, either on its own or on some other account,
interests us. In consequence, what interests us only
momentarily we only attend to momentarily; and do not
go on attending to it, when that, for the sake of which
alone it interested us, has been attained. Sir W. Hamil-
ton would have found these several laws clearly set forth,
and abundantly exemplified, in the work of Mr. Mill
which he had before him. It is there shown how large
a proportion of all our states of feeling pass off without
having been attended to, and in many cases so habitually
* Those who are acquainted with Mr. Bailey's attempt to disprove
Berkeley's Theory of Vision, will be reminded by this passage of an
exactly similar argument employed by that able thinker and writer, to
prove the intuitive character of what philosophers almost unanimously
consider as the acquired perceptions of sight. I have given the same
answer to Mr. Bailey on another occasion, which I give to Sir W.
Hamilton here.
T 2
324 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
that we become finally incapable of attending to them.
This subject was also extremely well understood by
Beid, who, little as he had reflected on the principle of
Association, was much better aquainted with the laws
of Obliviscence than his more recent followers, and has
excellently illustrated and exemplified some of them.*
Amonr those which he has illustrated the most success-
O
fully, one is, that the very great number of our states of
feeling which, beinar themselves neither painful nor
pleasurable, are important to us only as signs of some-
thing else, and which by repetition have come to do
their work as signs with a rapidity which to our feelings
is instantaneous, cease altogether to be attended to ; and
through that inattention our consciousness of them
either ceases altogether, or becomes so fleeting and in-
distinct as to leave no reliable trace in the memory.
This happens, even when the impressions which serve
the purpose of signs are not mere ideas, or reminiscences,
of sensation, but actual sensations. After reading a
chapter of a book, when we lay down the volume do we
remember to have been individually conscious of the
printed letters and syllables which have passed before
us ? Could we recall, by any effort of mind, the visible
aspect presented by them, unless some unusual circum-
stance has fixed our attention upon it during the perusal?
Yet each of these letters and syllables must have been
present to us as a sensation for at least a passing moment,
or the sense could not have been conveyed to us. But
the sense being the only thing in which we are interested
or, in exceptional cases, the sense and a few of the
words or sentences we retain no impression of the
separate letters and syllables. This instance is the
more instructive, inasmuch as, the whole process taking
place within our means of observation, we know that
our knowledge begins with the parts, and not with the
whole. We know that we perceived and distinguished
* See his Inquiry into the Human Mind, chap. v. sections 2 and 8 ;
chap. vi. sects, "i, 3, 4, 7, 8, 19 ; Intellectual Powers, Essay ii. chaps. 16
and 17.
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. M ANSEL. 325
letters arid syllables before we learnt to understand
words and sentences ; and the perceptions could not, at
that time, have passed unattended to ; on the contrary,
the effort of attention of which those letters and syllables
must have been the object, was probably, while it lasted,
equal in intensity to any which we have been called
upon to exercise in after life. Were Sir W. Hamilton's
argument valid, one of two things would follow. Either
we have even now, when we read in a book, a more vivid
consciousness of the letters and syllables than of the
words and sentences, (and by parity of reason a more
vivid consciousness of the words and sentences than of
the general purport of the discourse) : or else, we could
read sentences off hand at first, and only by subsequent
analysis discovered the letters and syllables. If ever
there was a reductio ad absurdum, this is one.
The facts on which Sir W. Hamilton's argument
rests, are obviously accounted for by the laws which he^
ignores. In our perceptions of objects, it is generally
the wholes, and the wholes alone, that interest us. In
his example, that of a friend's countenance, it is (special
motives apart) only the friend himself that we are
interested about ; we care about the features only as
signs that it is our friend whom we see, and not another
person. Unless therefore the face commands our atten-
tion by its beauty or strangeness, or unless we stamp
the features on our memory by acts of attention directed
upon them separately, 'they pass before us, and do their
work as signs, with so little consciousness that no distinct
trace may be left in the memory. We forget the details
even of objects which we see every day, if we have no
motive for attending to the parts as distinguished from
the wholes, and have cultivated no habit of doing so.
That this is consistent with having known the parts
earlier than the wholes, is proved not only by the case of
reading, but by that of playing on a musical instrument,
and a hundred other familiar instances ; by everything,
in lact, which we learn to do. Wiien the wholes alone
are interesting to us, we soon forget our knowledge of
J ,^^ywv. ,
326 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
the component parts, unless we purposely keep it alive
by conscious comparison and analysis.
This is not the only fallacy in Sir W. Hamilton's argu-
ment. Considered as a reply to Mr. Mill's explanation
of the origin of our ideas of objects, it entirely misses
the mark If the argument and examples had proved
their point, which it has been seen that they do not,
they would have proved that we perceive and know, to
some extent or other, the. object as a whole, before
knowing its integrant parts. But it is not of integrant
parts that Mr. Mill was speaking ; and he might have
admitted all that Sir W. Hamilton contends for, without
surrendering his own opinion. The question does not
relate to parts in extension. It does not concern Mr.
Mill's theory whether we know, or do not know, a man
as such, before we distinguish, in thought or in perception,
his head from his feet. What Mr. Mill said was, that
jour idea of an object, whether it be of the man, or of his
head, or of his feet, is compounded by association from
our ideas of the colour, the shape, the resistance, &c.,
which belong to those objects. These are what philoso-
phers have called the metaphysical parts, not the integrant
part, of the total impression. Now I have never heard
of any philosopher who maintained that these parts were
not known until after the objects which they characterize ;
that we perceive the body first, and its colour, shape, form,
&c., only afterwards. Our senses, which on all theories
are at least the avenues through which our knowledge of
bodies comes to us, are not adapted by nature to let in
the perception of the whole object at once. They only
open to let pass single attributes at a time. And this is
as much Sir W. Hamilton's opinion as any one's else,
except where he is sustaining an argument which makes
him blind to it.
As is often the case with our author, the conclusion
he is maintaining is worth more than his argument to
prove it, and though not the whole truth, has truth in
it. That we perceive the whole before the parts will not
stand examination as a general law, but is very often true
VTXV-*- -i . VA*/TVI V 'r\ r\jcs*f^*e \JlS*St/\AS (V w rvA-~* v*-*w
"
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 327
as a particular fact : our first impression is often that of
a confused mass, of which all the parts seem blended,
and our subsequent progress consists in elaborating this
into distinctness. It was well to point out this fact : but
if our author had paid more attention to its limits, he
might have been able to give us a complete theory of it,
instead of leaving it, as he has done, an empirical
observation, which waits for some one to raise it into a
scientific law.
The same want of comprehension of the power of an
inseparable association, which was shown by Sir W.
Hamilton in the case of Colour and Extension, is ex-
hibited in the only other case in which he adduces any
argument to prove that an idea was not produced by
association. The case is that of causality, and the argu-
ment is the ordinary one of metaphysicians of his school.
" The necessity* of so thinking cannot be derived from a
" custom of so thinking. The force of custom, influential
" as it may be, is still always limited to the customary ;
"and the customary never reaches, never even approaches
" to the necessary." If this were so, not only could an
inseparable association generate no necessity of belief, but
there could be no such thing as inseparable association ;
no entirely irresistible conjunction between two mental
states. The paviour, however, who cannot use his
rammer without the accustomed cry, the orator who had
so often while speaking twirled a string in his hand
that he became unable to speak when he accidentally
dropped it, are, it seems to me, examples of a
" customary" which did approach to, and even reach,
the "necessary." "Association may explain a strong
"and special, but it can never explain a universal and
"absolutely irresistible belief." Not when the con-
junction of facts which engenders the association, is
itself universal and irresistible? " Whatf I cannot but
' " think, must be a priori, or original to thought : it
" cannot be engendered by experience upon custom." As
* Discussions, Appendix i. on Causality, p. 615.
f .Lectures, ii. lyl.
328 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
if experience, that is to say, association, were not
perpetually engendering both inabilities to think, and
inabilities not to think. " We can* think away each
" and every part of the knowledge we have derived
" from experience." Associations derived from experience
are doubtless separable by a sufficient amount of contrary
experience ; but, in the cases we are considering, no con-
trary experience is to be had. On the theory that the
belief in causality results from association, " whenf asso-
" ciation is recent, the causal judgment should be weak,
11 and rise only gradually to full force, as custom becomes
" inveterate." And how do we know that it does not?
The whole process of acquiring our belief in causation
takes place at an age of which we have no remembrance,
and which precludes the possibility of testing the matter
by experiment : and all theories agree that our first type
of causation is our own power of moving our limbs ;
which is as complete as it can be, and has formed as strong
associations as it is capable of forming, long before the
child can observe or communicate its mental operations.
It is strange that almost all the opponents of the
Association psychology should found their main or sole
argument in refutation of it upon the feeling of neces-
sity ; for if there be any one feeling in our nature which
the laws of association are obviously equal to producing,
one would say it is that. Necessary, according to Kant's
definition, and there is none better, is that of which the
negation is impossible. If we find it impossible, by any
trial, to separate two ideas, we have all the feeling of
necessity which the mind is capable of. Those, therefore,
who deny that association can generate a necessity of
thought, must be willing to affirm that two ideas are
never so knit together by association as to be practically
inseparable. But to affirm this is to contradict the most
familiar experience of life. Many persons who have
been frightened in childhood can never be alone in the
dark without irrepressible terrors. Many a person is
* Lectures, iv. 74, f Discussions, ut supra.
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. M ANSEL. 329
unable to revisit a particular place, or to think of a par-
ticular event, without recalling acute feelings of grief or
reminiscences of suffering. If the facts which created
these strong associations in individual minds, had been
common to all mankind from their earliest infancy, and
had, when the associations were fully formed, been for-
gotten, we should have had a necessity of Thought
one of the necessities which are supposed to prove an ob-
jective law, and an a priori mental connexion between
ideas * Now, in all the supposed natural beliefs and
necessary conceptions which the principle of Inseparable
Association is employed to explain, the generating causes
of the association did begin nearly at the beginning of
life, and are common either to all, or to a very large
portion of mankind. f
* Dr. Ward (p. 291) takes exception to these instances, as exemplifying
not a necessity of thought but a necessity of feeling which has never been
affirmed to prove an objective law, or an a priori connexion between
ideas. 1 answer that what I sought to prove by the instances, was that
two ideas may be " so knit together by association as to be practically
inseparable." And I added, not that a necessity of feeling proves a neces-
sity of thought, but that under certain conditions it would generate one.
If the person in whose mind a given spot is associated with terrors, had
entirely forgotten the fact by which it came to be so ; and if the rest of
mankind, or even only a great number of them, felt the same terror on
coming to the same place, and were equally unable to account for it;
there would certainly grow up a conviction that the place had a natural
quality of terribleness, which would probably fix itself in the belief that
the place was under a curse, or was the abode of some invisible object of
terror. Feelings common to many persons, which are at once irresistible
and unaccountable, almost always pass into equivalent judgments and
beliefs. Indeed, this is the precise way in which the fact of our sensa-
tions is translated into belief in an external world ; and we should, in the
case supposed, seem to have the same evidence of the terrific quality,
which we have of any of the qualities of objects.
t I find it necessary here to correct a misunderstanding to which I
never should have suspected myself to be liable. Dr. M'Cosh employs
nearly the whole of his ninth chapter (Judgment or Comparison) in pro-
testing against the doctrine, that an inseparable association necessarily
produces belief; and concludes with a solemn appeal to the young to raise
themselves above the influence of mere association, and learn "that it is
" our duty to found our beliefs on a previous judgment" and " to base our
" beliefs on an inspection of realities and actualities." (Pp. 214, 215.) In
all of which, aimed as it is at myself, Dr. M'Cosh is preaching not only to
a person already converted, but to an actual missionary of the same doc-
trine. I have certainly called attention to the important psychological
truth, not unrecognised by Dr. M'Cosh, that a strong mental association
between two facts, even short of inseparability, has a great tendency to
330 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
The beggarly account now exhibited, is, I believe, all
that Sir W. Hamilton has anywhere written against the
Association psychology. But it is not all that has been
said against that psychology from Sir W. Hamilton's
point of view. In this as in various other cases, to
supply what Sir W. Hamilton has omitted, recourse
may advantageously be had to Mr. Mansel.
Mr. Mansel, though in some sense a pupil of Sir W.
Hamilton, is a pupil who may be usefull}/ consulted even
after his master. Besides that he now and then sees
things which his master did not see, he very often fights
a better battle against adversaries. Moreover, as I before
remarked, he has a decided taste for clear statements and
definite issues ; and this is no small advantage when the
object is, not victory, but to understand the subject.
Mr. Mansel joins a distinct issue with the Association
psychology, and brings the question to the proper test.
" It has been already observed," he says, in his Prolego-
mena Logica,* " that whatever truths we are com-
" pelled to admit as everywhere and at all times neces-
" sary, must have their origin, not without, in the laws
" of the sensible world, but within, in the constitution
" of the mind itself. Sundry attempts have, indeed,
" been made to derive them from sensible experience and
" constant association of ideas ; but this explanation is
" refuted by a criterion decisive of the fate of all hypo-
" theses : it does not account for the phenomena. It
" does not account for the fact that other associations, as
"frequent and as uniform, are incapable of producing a
make us believe in a connexion between the facts themselves ; bat I thought
that if there ever had been a writer who was assiduous in warning people
against this tendency (to which, in my Logic, I have given a conspicuous
place in the enumeration of Fallacies) and exhorting them to ground their
beliefs exclusively on the evidence, that writer was myself. Dr. M'Cosh's
work is unimpeachable in point of candour and fairness; but this instance
shows how little he is to be relied on for correctly apprehending the
maxims and tendencies of a philosophy different from his own.
Dr. M'Oosh, in his reply, interprets the phraseology of this Note as if I
had accused him of "preaching" in some disparaging sense. 1 was merely
alluding to the almost proverbial expression, "precher un convert!,"
which I thought that Dr. M'Cosh would have understood.
* Beginning of chap. iv. p. 90.
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 331
" higher conviction than that of a relative and physical
" necessity only"
This is coming to the point, and evinces a correct ap-
prehension of the conditions of scientific proof. If other
associations, -as close and as habitual as those existing
in the cases in question, do not produce a similar feeling
of necessity of thought, the sufficiency of the alleged cause
is disproved, and the theory must fall. Mr. Mansel is
within the true conditions of the Psychological Method.
But what are these cases of uniform and intimate
association, which do not give rise to a feeling of mental
necessity ? The following is Mr. Mansel's first example
of them :* " I may imagine the sun rising and setting
" as now for a hundred years, and afterwards remaining
" continually fixed in the meridian. Yet my experiences
" of the alternations of day and night have been at least
" as invariable as of the geometrical properties of bodies.
" I can imagine the same stone sinking ninety-nine times
" in the water, and floating the hundredth, but my expe-
" rience invariably repeats the former phenomenon only."
The alternation of day and night is invariable in our
experience; but is the phenomenon day so closely linked
in our experience with the phenomenon night, that we
never perceive the one, without, at the same or the imme-
diately succeeding moment, perceiving the other ? That
is a condition present in the inseparable associations
which generate necessities of thought. Uniformities of
sequence in which the phenomena succeed one another
only at a certain interval, do not give rise to inseparable
associations.! There are also mental conditions, as well
* Prolegomena Logica, pp. 96, 97.
f Mr. Mahaffy has misunderstood (p. xxiv.) the meaning of this state-
ment, which is certainly too incautiously expressed. The phenomena
which must have been simultaneous or immediately successive to create
an inseparable association, need not have been actual perceptions : an
association, and even an inseparable association, may be created between
two ideas, if they have been habitually present together, or in immediate
succession, merely in thought. This truth is so universally recognised by
writers on Association, that it did not seem to require statement. But
the succession which generates an inseparable association, must, either in
fact or in thought, be an immediate succession; or rather, one without any
conscious or perceptible interval.
832 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
as physical, which are required to create such an associa-
tion. Let us take Mr. Mansel's other instance, a stone
sinking in the water. We have never seen it float, yet
we have no difficulty in conceiving it floating. But, in
the first place, we have not been seeing stones sinking
in water from the first dawn of consciousness, and in
nearly every subsequent moment of our lives, as we have
been seeing two and two making four, intersecting
straight lines diverging instead of enclosing a space,
causes followed by effects and effects preceded by causes.
But there is a still more radical distinction than this.
No frequency of conjunction between two phsenomena
will create an inseparable association, if counter-associa-
tions are being created all the while. If we sometimes
saw stones floating as well as sinking, however often we
might have seen them sink, nobody supposes that we
should have formed an inseparable association between
them and sinking. We have not seen a stone float, but
we are in the constant habit of seeing either stones or
other things which have the same tendency to sink, re-
maining in a position which they would otherwise quit,
being maintained in it by an unseen force. The sinking
of a stone is but a case of gravitation, and we are abun-
dantly accustomed to see the force of gravity counteracted.
Every fact of that nature which we ever saw or heard of,
is pro tanto an obstacle to the formation of the inseparable
association which would make a violation of the law of
gravity inconceivable to us. Resemblance is a principle
of association, as well as contiguity: and however contra-
dictory a supposition may be to our experience in hdc
materid, if our experience in alia materid furnishes us
with types even distantly resembling what the supposed
phenomenon would be if realized, the associations thus
formed will generally prevent the specific association
from becoming so intense and irresistible, as to disable
our imaginative faculty from embodying the supposition
in a form moulded on one or other of those types.*
* In an able manuscript critique on "the Experience Hypothesis" which
has been communicated to me, the familiar truth that tire burns is given
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 333
Again, says Mr. Mansel,* " experience lias uniformly
" presented to me a horse's body in conjunction with a
" horse's head, and a man's head with a man's body ;
"just as experience has uniformly presented to me space
" inclosed within a pair of curved lines and not within
" a pair of straight lines :" yet I have no difficulty in
imagining a centaur, but cannot imagine a space
inclosed by two straight lines. " Why do I, in the
" former case, consider the results of my experience as
" contingent only and transgressible, confined to the
as an example of an uniform sequence which does not generate a necessity
of thought. No one (the writer observes) will say that we have a more
frequent perception of the fact that parallel lines do not inclose a space,
than we have of the fact that fire burns : yet we can without difficulty
imagine human beings remaining unburnt in a fiery furnace ; nay, we may
even believe it, if we admit the supposition either of magic or of a miracle.
No doubt : but this is fully explained by the counter-associations. Though
we have never seen a human being in the fire nnburnt, being in the fire is
not inseparably associated with destruction, for we have seen abundance
of other objects, immersed in intense fire, yet resisting its action. The
conception of a man in the same position, is within the limits of the power
characteristic of imagination, of varying (only slightly in this instance)
our mental combinations of the elements given by experience. The writer
asks, why then cannot imagination produce all combinations? The only
ones it cannot produce are precisely those which are prevented by asso-
ciations really irresistible, associations that have never been counteracted
by counter-associations, and by the operation of which, elements with
which certain combinations in imagination would be incompatible, are
forced into our mental representations.
The same writer says, we believe by a necessity of thought that a tan-
gent touches a circle at one point only, yet this necessary belief, far from
being the result of uniform experience, is contradicted by uniform expe-
rience, since the tangents and circles of experience touch one another at
more than one point coalesce in an appreciable portion of their extent.
I answer, that the circle in our imagination is copied from those only,
among the circles of our experience, in which sense can detect no variation
from the definition of a circle, i.e. whose radii are not perceptibly unequal.
Now, if the radii are, to our perception, equal, a line which is to our per-
ception straight, will touch the circle in what is to our perception a single
point. And there are many such circles, not perhaps in nature, but cer-
tainly in the products of mechanical art. The belief therefore does not
conflict, but accords, with an uniform experience. And even on the con-
trary supposition even if there were no circles in experience but sach as
are appreciably different from the geometrical ideal, our senses would no
less inform us that in the degree in which a visible circle and straight line
approximate to the definitions, the extent of their contact with one
another approximates to a point : which, by the principles of Induction,
makes the ultimate truth as much a trntk of experience, as if it were
directly cognised by the senses.
* Prolegomena Logica, pp. 99, 100.
334 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
" actual phenomena of a limited field, and possessing 1
" no value beyond it; while in the latter I am compelled
" to regard them as necessary and universal ? Why can
" I give in imagination to a quadruped body what expe-
" rience assures me is possessed by bipeds only? And
" why can I not, in like manner, invest straight lines
" with an attribute which experience has uniformly pre-
" sented in curves?"
I answer: Because our experience furnishes us with
a thousand models on which to frame the conception of
a centaur, and with none on which to frame that of two
straight lines enclosing a space. Nature, as known in
our experience, is uniform in its laws, but extremely
varied in its combinations. The combination of a horse's
body with a human head has nothing, primd facie, to
make any wide distinction between it and any of the
numberless varieties which we find in animated nature.
To a common, even if not to a scientific mind, it is within
the limits of the variations in our experience. Every
similar variation which we have seen or heard of, is a
help towards conceiving this particular one ; and tends
to form an association, not of fixity but of variability,
which frustrates the formation of an inseparable associa-
tion between a human head and a human body exclusively.
We know of so many different heads, united to so many
different bodies, that we have little difficulty in imagining
any head in combination with any body. Nay, the
mere mobility of objects in space is a fact so universal in
our experience, that we easily conceive any object what-
ever occupying the place of any other; we imagine
without difficulty a horse with his head removed, and a
human head put in its place. But what model does our
experience afford on which to frame, or what elements
from which to construct, the conception of two straight
lines enclosing a space ? There are no counter associa-
tions in that case, and consequently the primary associa-
tion, being founded on an experience beginning from
birth, and never for many minutes intermitted in our
waking hours, easily becomes inseparable. Had but
BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 335
experience afforded a case of persistent illusion, in which
two straight, lines after intersecting had appeared again
to approach, the counter association formed might have
been sufficient to render such a supposition imaginable,
and defeat the supposed necessity of thought. In the
case of parallel lines, the laws of perspective do present
such an illusion : they do, to the eye, appear to meet in
both directions, and consequently to inclose a space : and
by supposing that we had no access to the evidence
which proves that they do not really meet, an ingenious
thinker, whom I formerly quoted, was able to give the
idea of a constitution of nature in which all mankind
might have believed that two straight lines could inclose
a space. That we are unable to believe or imagine it in
our present circumstances, needs no other explanation
than the laws of association afford : for the case unites
all the elements of the closest, intensest, and most inse-
parable association, with the greatest freedom from con-
flicting counter-associations which can be found within
the conditions of human life.*
In all the instances of phsenomena invariably conjoined
which fail to create necessities of thought, I am satisfied
it would be found that the case is wanting in some of
the conditions required by the Association psychology,
as essential to the formation of an association really
* Mr. Mahaffy says that I need not have gone beyond our present world
for illusions which, according to my doctrine, ought to have made it pos-
sible to conceive something that is contradictory to a mathematical axiom :
and proceeds to mention illusions the illusory character of which is at once
seen, from the immediate accessibility of the evidence which disproves
them ; double vision, and the apparent crookedness of a stick in the water
(p. xxvii). As a protection against future irrelevances of this kind, I have
inserted in the text the word " persistent " before " illusion." Mr. Mahaffy
argues as if the illusions in our experience never got corrected by contrary
experience, but would permanently deceive us unless overridden by an
a priori conviction. " Every child," he says, " who looks down a long
' street, sees two paralled right lines converging, and we very rarely pro-
' ceed to verify or question the result. . . . Most assuredly no child has
' verified for himself that the very long parallel lines which he has met,
' and sees to be equidistant, as far as he can easily judge, and which he
' sees do not change their direction suddenly that these parallel lines do
' not meet." Does a child, then, never walk down a street ? or does Mr.
Mahaffy think it necessary to the child's enlightenment that he should
walk down every street ?
336 INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION IGNORED
inseparable. It is the more to be wondered at that Mr.
Mansel should not have perceived the easy answer which
could be given to his argument, since he himself comes
very near to giving the same explanation of many impos-
sibilities of thought, which is given by the Association
theory. " We can only," he says,* " conceive in thought
what we have experienced in presentation j" and no
other reason is necessary for our being unable to conceive
a thing, than that we have never experienced it. He
even holds that the stock example of a necessity of
thought, the belief in the uniformity of the course of
O ' v
nature, can be accounted for by experience, without any
objective necessity at all. " We cannot conceive," he
says,f "a course of nature without uniform succession,
" as we cannot conceive a being who sees without e}^es
" or hears without ears ; because we cannot, under exist-
" ing circumstances, experience the necessary intuition.
" But such things may nevertheless exist ; and under
" other circumstances, they might become objects of
" possible conception, the laws of the process of concep-
" tion remaining unaltered." I am aware that when
Mr. Mansel uses the words Presentation and Intuition,
he does not mean exclusively presentation by the senses.
Nevertheless, if he had only written the preceding pas-
sage, no one would have suspected that he could have
required any other cause for our inability to conceive a
bilineal figure, than the impossibility of our perceiving
one. It is sufficient, in his opinion, | to constitute any
propositions necessary, that " while our constitution and
" circumstances remain as they are, we cannot but think
" them." It is superabundantly manifest that many
propositions which all admit to be grounded only on
experience, are necessary under this definition. Mr.
Mansel even asserts a more complete dependence of our
possibilities of thought upon our opportunities of experi-
ence than there appears to me to be ground for : since
he affirms that " we can only conceive in thought what
* Prolegomena Logica, p. 112.
f Ibid. p. 149. I Ibid. p. 160.
BF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL. 337
we have experienced in presentation," while in reality
it is sufficient that we should have experienced in pre-
sentation things bearing some similarity to it.
NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.
Dr. Ward, one of the ablest living defenders of the intuitional meta-
physics, has, in the Dublin Review for October 1871, made a vigorous
attack upon the doctrines of this chapter. His arguments in part
coincide (though with a difference in the illustrations) with those already
noticed, of Mr. Mansel : several of them, however, are distinct : and as I
believe that in answering them, I am answering the best that is likely to
be said by any future champion, I will take up Dr. Ward's points one
by one
Dr. Ward thus expresses the test of necessary truth : " If in any case I
' know by my very conception of some ens, that a certain attribute, not
' included in that conception, is truly predicable of that ens, such predica-
' tion is a self-evidently necessary proposition. Take, for instance, the
' axiom that all trilateral figures are triangular. If, by my very concep-
' tion of a trilateral figure, I know its triangularity . . . then I know
' infallibly that a trilateral non-triangular figure is an intrinsically repug-
' nant chimera ; that in no possible region of existence could such a figure
'be found; that not even an Omnipotent Being could form one."
Consequently " the triangularity of all trilateral figures is cognizable as
"a self-evidently necessary truth;" not grounded on, nor deriving its
evidence from, experience.
It is not denied, nor deniable, that there are properties of things which
we know to be true (as Dr. Ward expresses it) by our " very conception "
of the thing. But this is no argument against our knowing them solely by
experience, for (as is truly and aptly said by Professor Bain in his Logic)
these are cases in which in the very process of forming the conception, we
have experience of the fact. It is not likely that Dr. Ward has returned
to the notion (so long abandoned and even forgotten by intuitionists) of
ideas literally innate, and thinks that we bring with us into the world the
conception of a trilateral figure ready made. He doubtless believes that
it is at least suggested by observation of objects. Now, the fact of three
sides and that of three angles are so intimately linked together in external
nature, that it is impossible for the conception of a three-sided figure to
get into the mind without carrying into the mind with it the conception
of three angles. Therefore, when we have once got the conception of a
trilateral, we have no need of further experience to prove triangularity.
The conception itself, which represents all our previous experience, suffices.
And if the Association theory be true, it must follow from it, that when-
ever any property of external things is in the relation to the things which
is required for the formation of an inseparable association, that property
will get into the conception, and be believed without further proof. Dr.
Ward will say that triangularity is not included in the conception of a
trilateral. But this is only true in the sense that triangularity is not in
the connotation of the name. Many attributes not included in the defi-
tion are included in the conception. Dr. Ward cannot but see that on the
experience hypothesis, this not only may, but must be the case.*
* The belief, however, when grounded on the conception without a fresh
Z
338 NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.
Dr. "Ward goes on to deny that uniformity of experience can produce
the belief that the truth thus uniformly experienced is necessary. If it
could, he says, the fact itself of the uniformity of nature the fact that
phenomena succeed each other according to uniform laws resting on a
broader basis of experience than any particular law of nature, has all the
conditions for being regarded as a necessary truth, and must produce " a
" practical necessity of fancying that in every possible region of existence
" phenomena succeed each other by uniform laws ;"* now, we are under no
such necessity, as I myself have strenuously maintained. But my answer
to Mr. Mansel's instances is applicable to this of Dr. Ward's. Is it
seriously that he compares our experience of the uniformity of nature, in
point of obviousness and familiarity, with our experience of the straight-
ness of straight lines ? The uniformity is, in the first stages of our
experience, an actual paradox ; first appearances are against it ; they
seem to show that some events do indeed succeed each other with an,
approach, though only an approach, to iiniformity, but that a far greater
number have no fixed order whatever. How can it be maintained that
we have, at that early period of our observations, such experience of this
universal truth, as to incorporate it in our conception of every object in
nature, and create an irresistible association of uniformity of sequence
with all possible events ? As we gradually learn the correct interpretation
of our experience, and become aware that uniformity of sequence is an
universal truth, a powerful, though even then, not an irresistible asso-
ciation, does grow up ; accordingly the law that whatever begins to exist
lias a cause, is classed by most of the intuitional philosophers as a neces-
sary truth, though (strange to say) a necessary truth with an exception.
But Dr. Wardf contends (Dr. M'Cosh had already said the same
thing) J that there is a fallacy of ambiguity in the phrase " necessity of
thought." He charges me with using the phrase "in two senses funda-
' mentally different. A necessity of thought may, no doubt, be most
; intelligibly understood to mean a law of nature whereby under certain
circumstances I necessarily think this, that, and the other judgment.
' But it may also be understood to mean a law of nature whereby I think
' as necessary this, that, and the other judgment." He agrees with me
' that from a necessity of thought in the former sense, no legitimate
' argument whatever can be deduced for a necessity of objective truth.
' Supposing I felt unusually cold a few moments ago, it is a necessity
' of thought that I should now remember the circumstance. Yet that
' past experience was no necessary truth. It is a necessity of thought
appeal to experience when got at, as Dr. Ward expresses it, not by ob-
servation, of external nature, but of our own mind is only justified
exactly so far as we are entitled to assume that the conception in our
mind represents the facts of outward experience. Only if space itself is
everywhere what we conceive it to be, can our conclusions from the con-
ception be everywhere objectively true. The truths of geometry are valid
wherever the constitution of space agrees with what it is within our
means of observation. That space cannot anywhere be differently con-
stituted, or that almighty power could not make a different constitution
of it, we know not. This may serve as an answer to some other remarks
of Dr. Ward (pp. 301 to 303). to which it would tax the reader's patience
too much to give a fuller reply.
* P. 290.
f P. 292. t Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill's Philosophy (pp. 43, 44.)
NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER. 339
" again that I expect the sun to rise to-morrow : and many similar
" instances could be adduced. The only necessity of thought which proves
" the self-evident necessity of objective truth, is the necessity of thinking
" that such truth is self-evidently necessary."
Not denying the validity of this distinction, I maintain that it does not
affect the argument ; because the one necessity is always proved by the
other. The evidence always given, and the only evidence which I believe
can be given, that we must think anything as necessary, is that we
necessarily think it. This, under various names, a Fundamental Law of
Belief, the Inconceivability of the Opposite, and so on, is the staple of the
Intuitionist argument. Surely, if I disprove the necessity of thinking the
thing at all, I disprove that it must be thought as necessary. What
other proof can be given of the necessity of a truth, I confess myself
ignorant. The consensus of mankind will not do, since that is disproved
by being disputed; and Dr. Ward's argument, that a truth must be
independent of experience if it can be deduced from the conception, has
been met by showing that it is deduced from the conception only after
experience has put it there.
Dr. Ward says* that " mere constant and uniform experience cannot
" possibly account for the mind's conviction of self-evident necessity."
Nor do I pretend that it does. The experience must not only be constant
and uniform, but the juxtaposition of the facts in experience must be
immediate and close, as well as early, familiar, and so free from even the
semblance of an exception that no counter association can possibly arise.
Dr. Ward gives two contrasted examples : " I have never even once
" experienced the equality of 2 + 9 to 3 + 8, and yet am convinced that
" not even Omnipotence could overthrow that equality. I have most
" habitually experienced the warmth-giving property of fire, and yet see
" no reason for doubting that Omnipotence can at any time suspend or
" remove that property. That which I have never experienced I regard
" as necessary ; that which I have habitually and unexceptionably expe-
" rienced I regard as contingent."
To the first example I answer, that if the equality of 2 + 9 and 3 + 8
does not come to us in the first instance by direct experience (though fully
ratified by it), neither does it come by direct intuition. It is gained by a
succession of steps, each resting on actual trial. True, it may be but a
mental trial; as by merely fancying myself "holding two pebbles in one
" hand and nine in the other, and then transferring one pebble from the
" larger to the smaller group." But the mere imagination of this transfer
would not, and ought not to carry conviction to me, if I had not previously
observed that change of place makes no difference in the number of objects.
All reasoning from conceptions is open to, and finally rests upon, an appeal
to the sensations. With respect to the warmth-giving property of fire,
the instance is not happily chosen ; for warmth is so much the differentia
of fire, the principal connotation of the word, that what was believed not
to warm would certainly not be called fire. But (disregarding this) Dr.
Ward's illustration may be met in the same manner in which I have met
the similar illustrations of Mr. Mansel. Fire, it is true, will always, under
certain needful conditions, give warmth ; but the sight of fire is very
often unattended with any sensation of warmth. It is not concomitance
of the outward facts that creates the association, but concomitance of the
sensible impressions. The visible presence of fire and the sensation of
* Pp. 298, 299.
z 2
340 NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.
warmth are not in that invarible conjunction and immediate juxtaposition,
which might disable us from conceiving the one without the other, and
might therefore lead ns to suppose their conjunction to be a necessary
truth.
Dr. "Ward's criticisms on the view I take of the Law of Causation belong
not to the present work, but to my System of Logic. One more of his
objections, nowever, may be noticed here. He says,* that while I account
for the " power of ascertaining axioms by mere mental experience" from
" one of the characteristic properties of geometrical forms," viz., that they
can be painted in the imagination with a distinctness equal to reality, I
entirely leave out of account arithmetical and algebraic axioms, though
these, equally with geometrical, can be arrived at by merely mental
experimentation. I do not leave them out of account, but have assigned,
in my Logic, another and equally conclusive reason why they can be
studied in our conceptions alone, namely, that arithmetical and algebraic
truths being true not of any particular kind of things, but of all things
whatever, any mental conceptions whatever will adequately represent
them.
P. 302.
341
CHAPTER XV.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S DOCTRINE OF UNCONSCIOUS
MENTAL MODIFICATIONS.
THE laws of Obliviscence noticed in the preceding
chapter, are closely connected with a question raised by
Sir W. Hamilton, and discussed at some length in his
Lectures : Whether there are unconscious states of
mind : or, as he expresses it in the eighteenth Lecture,
" Whether the mind exerts energies, and is the subject
" of modifications, of neither of which it is conscious."
Our author pronounces decidedly for the affirmative, in
opposition to most English philosophers, by whom, he
says, " the supposition of an unconscious action or passion
" of the mind, has been treated as something either
" unintelligible or absurd ;" and in opposition, no less,
to at least one expression of opinion by our author
himself.* This is one of the numerous inconsistencies
in Sir W. Hamilton's professed opinions, which a close
examination and comparison of his speculations brings
to light, and which show how far he was in reality
from being the systematic thinker which, on a first
impression of his writings, he seems to be. In one
point of view, these self-contradictions are fully as
much an honour as a discredit to him; since they
frequently arise from his having acutely seized some
important psychological truth, greatly in advance of his
general mode of thought, and not having brought the
* " Every act of mind is an act of consciousness" (Lectures, ii. 277).
Another statement to the same effect which i erroneously quoted in former
editions (Lectures, ii. 73) does not belong to Sir W. Hamilton.
342 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S DOCTRINE OF
remainder of his philosophy up to it. Instead of having
reasoned out a consistent scheme of thought, of which
every part fits in with the other parts, he seems to have
explored the deeper regions of the mind only at the
points which had. some direct connexion with the con-
clusions he had adopted on a few special questions of
philosophy: and from his different explorations he
occasionally, as in the 'present case, brought back
different results. But, in the place where he treats
directly of this particular question, he decides unequi-
vocally for the existence of latent mental modifications.
The subject is in itself not unimportant, and his
treatment of it will serve as an example by which to
estimate his powers of thought in the province of pure
psychology.
Sir W. Hamilton recognises three different kinds, or,
as he calls them, degrees, of mental latency. Two of
these will be seen, on examination, to be entirely
irrelevant.
The first kind of latency, is that which belongs to all
the parts of our knowledge which we are not thinking
of at the very moment. " I know a science of lan-
" guage, not merely while I make a temporary use of it,
" but inasmuch as I can apply it when and how I will.
" Thus the infinitely greater part of our spiritual treasures
" lies always beyond the sphere of consciousness, hid in
" the obscure recesses of the mind."* But this stored-
up knowledge, I submit, is not an " unconscious action
or passion of the mind." It is not a mental state, but a
capability of being put into a mental state. When I am
not thinking of a thing, it is not present to my mind at all.
It may become present when something happens to recall
it; but it is not latently present now; no more than any
physical thing which I may have hoarded up. I may
have a stock of food with which to nourish myself here-
after; but my body is not in a state of latent nourish-
ment by the food which is in store. I have the power
* Lectures, i. 339.
UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL MODIFICATIONS. 343
to walk across the room, though I am sitting in my
chair ; but we should hardly call this power a fatent act
of walking. What required to be shown was, not that
I may possess knowledge without recalling it, but that
it can be recalled to my mind, I remaining unconscious
of it all the time.*
" Thef second degree of latency exists when the mind
" contains systems of knowledge, or certain habits of
* Sir W. Hamilton deliberately rejects this obvious distinction, and in
his Lecture on Memory (Lect. xxx.) maintains that all v the knowledge
we possess, whether we are thinking of it or not, is at all times present to
us, though unconsciously. " This is certainly," (he says) " an hypothesis,
" because whatever is out of consciousness can only be assumed ; but it
" is an hypothesis which we are not only warranted, but necessitated by
' the phaenomena, to establish." (Lectures, ii. 209.) This confident asser-
tion is supported only by a passage from an author of whom the reader
has already heard something, H. Schmid (Versuch einer Metaphysik) ; by
whom, however, the conclusion is not elicited from " the phenomena," but
drawn, d, priori, from the assertion that the act of knowledge is " an energy
" of the self-acting powers of a subject one and indivisible ; consequently
" a part of the ego must be detached or annihilated if a cognition once
" existent be again extinguished." This palpable begging of the whole
point in dispute (which Schmid makes no scruple of propping up by half-
a-dozen other arbitrary assumptions) of course makes it necessary to ex
plain how anything can be forgotten ; which Schmid resolves by declaring
that nothing ever is ; it merely passes into latency. Of all this, not a
shadow of evidence is exhibited ; anything being set down as fact, which
can be educed from the idea of the Ego evolved by Schmid out of the
depths of his moral consciousness. His style of philosophizing may be
judged from the following specimen : " Every mental activity belongs to
"the one vital activity of mind in general; it is, therefore, indivisibly
" bound up with it, and can be neither torn from, nor abolished in it."
Therefore he has only to call every impression in memory a " mental acti-
vity " to prove that when we have once had it, we can never more get
rid of it. If he had but happened to call it a mental act, it would have
been all over with his argument ; for there may surely be passing acts of
one permanent activity. Schmid further argues, from the same premises,
that feelings, volitions, and desires, are retained in the mind without the
medium of memory, that is, we retain the states themselves, not the no-
tions or remembrances of them : from which it follows, that 1 am at this
moment desiring and willing to rise from my bed yesterday morning, and
every previous morning since I began to have a will. Schmid has an easy
answer to all attempts at explaining mental phaenomena by physiological
hypotheses, viz., that " Mind, howbeit conditioned by bodily relations, still
ever preserves its self-activity and independence." As if to determine
whether it does so or not, was not the very point in dispute between him
and the physiological hypotheses. These reasonings are quite worthy of
Schmid ; but it is extremely unworthy of Sir W. Hamilton to accept and
endorse them.
f Lectures, i. 339-346.
344 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S DOCTRINE OF
" action, which it is wholly unconscious of possessing" in
" its ordinary state, but which are revealed to conscious-
" ness in certain extraordinary exaltations of its powers.
" The evidence on this point shows that the mind fre-
" quently contains the whole systems of knowledge, which,
" though in our normal state they have faded into abso-
" lute oblivion, may, in certain abnormal states, as mad-
" ness, febrile delirium, somnambulism, catalepsy, &c.,
" flash out into luminous consciousness, and even throw
" into the shade of unconsciousness those other systems
" by which they had, for a long period, been eclipsed
"and even extinguished." He then cites from various
authors some of the curious recorded cases " in which
" the extinct memory of whole languages was suddenly
" restored, and, what is even still more remarkable, in
" which the faculty was exhibited of actually repeating,
" in known or unknown tongues, passages which were
" never within the grasp of conscious memory in the
" normal state." These, however, are not cases of latent
states of mind, but of a very different thing of latent
memory. It is not the mental impressions that are
latent, but the power of reproducing them. Every one
admits, without any apparatus of proof, that we may
have powers and susceptibilities of which we are not
conscious ; but these are capabilities of being affected,
not actual affections. I have the susceptibility of being
poisoned by prussic acid, but this susceptibility is not
a present phaenomenon, constantly taking place in
my body without my perceiving it. The capability of
being poisoned is not a present modification of my
body ; nor is the capability I perhaps have of recollect-
ing, should I become delirious, something which I have
forgotten while sane, a present modification of my
mind. These are future contingent states, not present
actual ones. The real question is, can I undergo a
present actual mental modification without being aware
of it?
We come, therefore, to the third case, which is the
only one really in po^nt, and enquire, whether there are,
UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL MODIFICATIONS. 345
in our ordinary mental life, "mental* modifications, i.e.
" mental activities and passivities, of which we are un-
" conscious, but which manifest their existence by effects
" of which we are conscious ?" Sir W. Hamilton decides
that there are : and even " that what we are conscious of
" is constructed out of what we are not conscious of;"
.that " the sphere of our conscious modifications is only
" a small circle in the centre of a far wider sphere of
" action and passion, of which we are only conscious
" through its effects." f
His first example is taken from the perception of ex- "n*^
ternal objects. The facts which he adduces are these. ^
1st. Every minimum visibile is composed of still smaller
parts, which are not separately capable of being objects
of vision; "they are, severally and apart, to conscious-
" ness as zero." Yet every one of these parts "must by
" itself have produced in us a certain modification, real
" though unperceived," since the effect of the whole can
only be the sum of the separate effects of the parts.
2nd. " When we look at a distant forest, we perceive a
" certain expanse of green. Of this. as an affection of
" our organism, we are clearly and distinctly conscious.
" Now, the expanse of which we are conscious is evidently
" made up of parts of which we are not conscious. No leaf,
" perhaps no tree, may be separately visible. But the
'' greenness of the forest is made up of the greenness of
" the leaves ; that is, the total impression of which we are
" conscious, is made up of an infinitude of small impres-
" sions of which we are not conscious. 3rd. Our sense of
hearing tells the same tale. There is a minimum audibile ;
the faintest sound capable of being heard. This sound,
however, must be made up of parts, each of which must
affect us in some manner, otherwise the whole which
they compose could not affect us. When we hear the
distant murmur of the sea, "this murmur is a sum
" made up of parts, and the sum would be as zero if the
" parts did not count as something .... If the noise
" of each wave made no impression on our sense, the
* Lectures, i. 347-349.
346 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S DOCTRINE OF
" noise of the sea, as the result of these impressions,
" could not be realized. But the noise of each several
"wave, at the distance we suppose, is inaudible; we
" must, however, admit that they produce a certain
" modification beyond consciousness, on the percipient
" subject ; for this is necessarily involved in the reality
" of their result/'*
It is a curious question how Sir W. Hamilton failed
to perceive that an unauthorized assumption has slipped
into his argument. Because the minimum visibile con-
sists of parts (as we know through the miscroscope), and
because the minimum visibile produces an impression on
our sense of sight, he jumps to the conclusion that each
one of the parts does so too. But it is a supposition
consistent with what we know of nature, that a certain
quantity of the cause may be a necessary condition to the
production of any of the effect. The minimum visibile
would on that supposition he this certain quantity; and
the two halves into which we can conceive it divided,
though each contributing its half to the formation of
that which produces vision, would not each separately
produce half of the vision, the concurrence of both being
necessary to produce any vision whatever. And so of the
distant murmur of the sea : the agency which produces
it is made up of the rolling of many different waves,
each of uhich, if sufficiently near, would affect us with
a perceptible sound; but at the distance at which they
are, it may require the rolling of many waves to excite
an amount of vibration in the air sufficient, when en-
feebled by extension, to produce any effect whatever on
our auditory nerves, and, through them, on our mind.
The supposition that each wave affects the mind sepa-
rately because their aggregate affects it, is therefore, to
say the least, an unproved hypothesis.
The counter-hypothesis, that in order to the production
of any quantity whatever of the effect, there is needed
a certain minimum quantity of the cause, it is the more
extraordinary that Sir W. Hamilton, should have over.
* Lectures, i. 349-351.
UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL MODIFICATIONS. 347
looked, since he has not only himself adopted a similar
supposition in some other cases,* but it is a necessary
part of his theory in this very case. He will not admit
as possible, that less than a certain quantity of the ex-
ternal agent, produces no mental modification; but he
himself supposes that less than a certain quantity of
mental modification produces no consciousness. Yet if
his a priori argument is valid for the one sequence, it is
valid for the other. If the effect of a whole must be
the sum of similar effects produced by all its parts, and
if every state of consciousness is the effect of a modifi-
cation of mind which is made up of an infinitude of
small parts, the state of consciousness also must be made
up of an infinitude of small states of consciousness,
produced by these infinitely small mental modifications
respectively. We are not at liberty to adopt the one
theory for the first link in the double succession, and the
other theory for the other link. Having shown no reason
why either theory should be preferred, our author would
have acted more philosophically in not deciding between
them. But to accommodate half the fact to one theory
and half to the other, without assigning any reason for
the difference, is to exceed all rational license of scientific
hypothesis.
After these examples from Perception, our author
passes to cases of Association : and as he here states some
important mental phenomena well and clearly, I shall
quote him at some length, f
" It sometimes happens, that we find one thought
" rising immediately after another in consciousness, but
" whose consecution we can reduce to no law of associa-
" tion. Now in these cases we can generally discover
" by an attentive observation, that these two thoughts,
* " In the internal perception of a series of mental operations, a certain
' time, a certain duration, is necessary for the smallest section of conti-
' nuous energy to which consciousness is competent. Some minimum of
' time must be admitted as the condition of consciousness." (Lectures, i.
369.) And again (Lectures, ii. 102) : " It cannot certainly be said, that
' the minimum of sensation infers the maximum of perception ; for per-
' ception always supposes a certain quantum of sensation."
f Lectures, i 352, 353.
348 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S DOCTRINE OF
" though not themselves associated, are each associated
" with certain other thoughts ; so that the whole conse-
" cution would have been regular, had these intermediate
" thoughts come into consciousness, between the two
" which are not immediately associated. Suppose, for
" instance, that A, B, C, are three thoughts, that A
" and C cannot immediately suggest each other, but
" that each is associated with B, so that A will naturally
" suggest B, and B naturally suggest C. Now it may
" happen, that we are conscious of A, and immediately
" thereafter of C. How is the anomaly to be explained ?
" It can only be explained on the principle of latent
" modifications. A suggests C, not immediately, but
" through B ; but as B, like the half of the minimum
" visibile or minimum audibile, does not rise into con-
" sciousness, we are apt to consider it as non-existent.
'*: You are probably aware of the following fact in
" mechanics. If a number of billiard balls be placed in a
" straight row and touching each other, and if a ball
" be made to strike in the line of the row, the ball at
"one end of the series, what will happen? The motion
" of the impinging ball is not divided among the whole
"row ; this, which we might a priori have expected, does
" not happen, but the impetus is transmitted through
" the intermediate balls which remain each in its place to
'' the ball at the opposite end of the series, and this ball
"," alone is impelled on. Something like this seems often
" to occur in the train of thought. One idea immediately
" suggests another into consciousness the suggestion
" passing through one or more ideas which do not them-
" selves rise into consciousness. The awakening and
" awakened ideas here correspond to the ball striking
" and the ball struck off; while the intermediate ideas
" of which we are unconscious, but which carry on the
"suggestion, resemble the intermediate balls which re-
". main moveless, but communicate the impulse. An
" instance of this occurs to me with which I was recently
*' struck. Thinking of Ben Lomond, this thought was
" immediately followed by the thought of the Prussian
UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL MODIFICATIONS. 349
" system of education. Now conceivable connexion be-
" tvveen these two ideas in themselves, there was none.
" A little reflection, however, explained the anomaly.
" On my last visit to the mountain, I had met upon its
" summit a German gentleman, and though I had no
" consciousness of the intermediate and unawakened
" links between Ben Lomond and the Prussian schools,
" they were undoubtedly these, the German, Ger-
" many, Prussia, and, these media being admitted, the
" connexion between the extremes was manifest."
Though our author says that the facts here described
can only be explained on the supposition that the inter-
vening ideas never came into consciousness at all, he is
aware that another explanation is conceivable, namely
that they were momentarily in consciousness, but were
forgotten, agreeably to the law of Obliviscence. already
spoken of: which, in fact, is the explanation given by
Stewart. The same two explanations may be given of
his final example, drawn from a class of phenomena also
governed by laws of association, " our acquired dexterities
and habits."* When we learn any manual operation,
suppose that of playing on the pianoforte, the operation
is at first a series of conscious volitions, followed by
movements of the fingers : but when, by sufficient repe-
tition, a certain facility has been acquired, the motions
take place without our being able to recognise afterwards
that we have been conscious of the volitions which pre-
ceded them. In this case, we may either hold with Sir
W. Hamilton, that the volitions (to which must be added
the feelings of muscular contraction, and of the contact
of our fingers with the keys) are not, in the practised
performer, present to consciousness at all ; or, with
Stewart, that he is conscious of them, but for so brief an
interval, that he has no remembrance of them after-
wards. The motions, in this case, are said by Hartley
to have become secondarily automatic, which our author
supposes to be a third opinion, but the difference, if
* Lectures, iii. 355.
350 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S DOCTRINE OF
difference it was, between this and Stewart's theory, is
not material to the present enquiry.
Let us now consider the reasons given by Sir W.
Hamilton for preferring his explanation to Stewart's.
The first and principal of them is, that to suppose a state
of consciousness which is not remembered,* "violates
" the whole analogy of consciousness." " Consciousness
" supposes memory ; and we are only conscious as we are
" able to connect and contrast one instance of our intel-
" lectual existence with another." " Of consciousness,
" however faint, there must be some memory, however
" short. But this is at variance with the phenomenon,
" for the ideas of A and C may precede and follow each
" other without any perceptible interval, and without
" any the feeblest memory of B."
Here again I am obliged, not without wonder, to
point out the inconclusive character of the argument.
When Sir W. Hamilton says that consciousness implies
memory, he means, as his words show, that we are
only conscious by means of change ; by discriminating
the present state from a state immediately preceding.
Granting this, as with proper explanations I do, all it
proves is, that any conscious state of mind must be re-
membered long enough to be compared with the mental
state immediately following it. The state of mind,
therefore, which he supposes to have been latent, must, if
it passed into consciousness, have been remembered until
one other mental modification had supervened ; which
there is assuredly not a particle of evidence that it was
not : for our having totally forgotten it a minute after, is
no evidence, but a common consequence of the laws of
Obliviscence. It is perhaps true that all consciousness
must be followed by a memory, but I see no reason why
an evanescent state of consciousness must be followed, if
by any, by a more than evanescent memory. " It is a
" law of mind," our author says further on,f "that the
" intensity of the present consciousness determines the
* Lectures, i. 354, 355. f Lectures, i. 368, 369.
- v f
UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL MODIFICATIONS. 351
" vivacity of the future memory. Vivid consciousness,
" long memory ; faint consciousness, short memory."
Well, then : in the case supposed, the intensity of consci-
ousness is at a minimum, therefore on his own showing
the duration of memory should be so too. If the con-
sciousness itself is too fleeting to fix the attention, so, a
fortiori, must the remembrance of it. In reality, the re-
membrance is often evanescent when the consciousness is
by no means so, but is so distinct and prolonged as to be
in no danger whatever of being supposed latent. Take
the case of a player on the pianoforte while still a
learner, and before the succession of volitions has at-
tained the rapidity which practice ultimately gives it. In
this stage of progress there is, beyond all doubt, a con-
scious volition, anterior to the playing of each particu-
lar note. Yet has the player, when the piece is finished,
the smallest remembrance of each of these volitions, as
a separate fact? In like manner, have we, when we
have finished reading a volume, the smallest memory of
our successive volitions to turn the pages ? On the con-
trary, we only know that we must have turned them, be-
cause, without doing so, we could not have read to the
end. Yet these volitions were not latent : every time
we turned over a leaf, we must have formed a conscious
purpose of turning ; but, the purpose having been in-
stantly fulfilled, the attention was arrested in the pro-
cess for too short a time to leave a more than momen-
tary remembrance of it. The sensations of sight, touch,
and the muscles, felt in turning 'the leaves, were as vivid
at the moment as any of our ordinary sensible impres-
sions which are only important to us as means to an end.
But because they had no pleasurable or painful interest
in themselves ; because the interest they had as means
passed away in the same instant by the attainment of
the end ; and because there was nothing to associate the
act of reading with these particular sensations, rather
than with other similar sensations formerly experienced ;
their trace in the memory was only momentary, unless
something unusual and remarkable connected with the
352 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S DOCTRINE OF
particular leaves turned over, detained them in remem-
brance.
If sensations which are evidently in consciousness
may leave so brief a memory that they are not felt to
leave any memory whatever, what wonder that the same
should happen when the sensations are of so fugitive
a character, that it can be debated whether they were in
consciousness at all? However true it may be that
there must be some memory wherever there is consci-
ousness, what argument is this against a theory which
supposes a low degree of consciousness, attended by just
the degree of memory which properly belongs to it ?
Imagine an argument in physics, corresponding to
this in metaphysics. Some of my readers are probably
acquainted with the important experiments of M.
Pasteur, which appear to have finally exploded the ancient
hypothesis of Equivocal Generation, by showing that
even the smallest microscopic animalcules are not pro-
duced in a medium from which their still more micro-
scopic germs have been effectually excluded. What
should we think of any one who deemed it a refutation
of M. Pasteur, that the germs are not discernible by the
naked eye? who maintained that invisible animalcules
must proceed, if from germs at all, from visible germs ?
This reasoning would be an exact parallel to that of Sir
W. Hamilton.
The only other argument of our author against
Stewart's doctrine, is confined to the phenomenon of
acquired habits, in which case, he says,* the supposition
of real but forgotten consciousness " would constrain
our assent to the most monstrous conclusions :" since,
in reading aloud, if the matter be uninteresting, we may
be carrying on a train of thought (even of " serious
meditation") on a totally different subject, and this, too,
" without distraction or fatigue :" which, he says, would
be impossible, if we were separately conscious of, or (as he
rather gratuitously alters the idea), separately attentive
to, " each least movement in either process." Sir W.
* Lectures, i. 360.
UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL MODIFICATIONS. 353
Hamilton here loses sight of a part of his own philoso-
phy, which deserves his forgetfulness the less as it is a
very valuable part. In one of the most important
psychological discussions in his Lectures,* he forcibly
maintains that we are capable of carrying on several
distinct series of states of consciousness at once ; and
goes so far as to contend not only that our consciousness,
but what is more than consciousness, our "'concentrated
consciousness, or attention," is capable of being divided
among as many as six simultaneous impressions. f Re-
turning to the same subject in another place, he quotes
from a modern French philosopher, Carda iliac (in a work
entitled Etudes Elementaires de Philosophic], an excellent
and conclusive passage, showing the great multitude of
states more or less conscious, which often coexist in the
mind, and help to determine the subsequent trains of
thought or feeling ; and illustrating the causes that
determine which of these shall in any particular case
predominate over the rest.j Our consciousness, there-
fore, according to Sir W. Hamilton, ought not to have
much difficulty in finding room for the two simultaneous
series of states which he quarrels with Stewart's hypo-
thesis for requiring: and we are not bound, under the
penalty of " monstrous conclusions," to consider one
of these series as latent. Sir W. Hamilton indeed
says truly, that " the greater the number of objects to
" which our consciousness is simultaneously extended, the
" smaller is the intensity with which it is able to con-
* Lectures, i. 238-251. f Ibid. p. 254.
J Lectures, ii. 250-258. From this long exposition I shall only extract
a single passage (p. 258), but I recommend the whole of it to the attentive
consideration of readers.
" Thus, if we appreciate correctly the phaenomena of Reproduction or
' Reminiscence, we shall recognise, as an incontestable fact, that our
' thoughts suggest each other not one by one successively, as the order to
' which language is restricted might lead us to infer ; but that the com-
' plement of circumstances under which we at every moment exist,
' awaken simultaneously a great number of thoughts ; these it calls into
' the presence of the mind, either to place them at our disposal, if we find
' it requisite to employ them, or to make them co-operate in our delibe-
' rations, by giving them, according to our nature and our habits, an.
' influence, more or less active, on our judgments and consequent acts."
Lectures, i. 237.
A A
354 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S DOCTRINE OF
" sider each ;" but the intensity of consciousness neces-
sary for reading aloirl with correctness in a language
familiar to us, not being very considerable, a great
part of our power of attention is disposable for " the
train of serious meditation" which is supposed to be
passing through our minds at the same time. For all
this, I would not advise any person (unless one with the
peculiar gift ascribed to Julius Caesar) to stake any-
thing on the substantial value of a train of thought
carried on by him while reading aloud a book on an-
other subject. Such thoughts, I imagine, are always
the better for being revised when the mind has nothing
else to do than to consider them.
It is strange, but characteristic, that Sir W. Hamil-
ton cannot be depended on for remembering, in one part
of his speculations, the best things. which he has said, in
another ; not even the truths into which he has thrown
so much of the powers of his mind, as to have made
them, in an especial manner, his own.
Notwithstanding the failure of Sir W. Hamilton to
adduce a single valid reason for preferring his hypothesis
to that of Stewart, it does not follow that he is not, at
least in certain cases, in the right. The difference be-
tween the two opinions being beyond the reach of expe-
riment, and both being equally consistent with the facts
which present themselves spontaneously, it is not easy
to obtain sure grounds for deciding between them. The
essential part of the phenomenon is, that we have, or
once had, many sensations, and that many ideas do, or
once did, enter into our trains of thought, which sensa-
tions and ideas we afterwards, in the words of James
Mill, are "under an acquired incapacity of attending
to :"* and that when our incapacity of attending to them
has become complete, it is, to our subsequent conscious-
ness, exactly as if we did not have them at all : we are
incapable, by any self-examination, of being aware of
them. We know that these lost sensations and ideas,
for lost they appear to be, leave traces of having existed ;
* Analysis of the Human Mind, i. 33.
*V*JL*1/WJU>
UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL MODIFICATIONS. 355
they continue to be operative in introducing other ideas
by association. Either, therefore, they have been con-
sciously present long enough to call up associations, but
not long enough to be remembered a few moments later;
or they have been, as Sir W. Hamilton supposes, un-
consciously present ; or they have not been present at
all, but something instead of them, capable of producing
the same effects. I am myself inclined to agree with
Sir W. Hamilton, and to admit his unconscious mental
modifications, in the only shape in which I can attach
any very distinct meaning to them, namely, unconscious
modifications of the nerves. There are much stronger
facts in support of this hypothesis than those to which
Sir W. Hamilton appeals facts which it is far more
difficult to reconcile with the doctrine that the sensations
are felt, but felt too momentarily to leave a recognisable
impression in memory. In the case, for instance, of a
soldier who receives a wound in battle, but in the excite-
ment of the moment is not aware of the fact, it is diffi-
cult not to believe that if the wound had been accom-
panied by the usual sensation, so vivid a feeling would
have forced itself to be attended to and remembered.
The supposition which seems most probable is, that the
nerves of the particular part were affected as they would
have been by the same cause in any other circumstances,
but that, the nervous centres being intensely occupied
with other impressions, the affection of the local nerves
did not reach them, and no sensation was excited. In
like manner, if we admit (what physiology is rendering
more and more probable) that our mental feelings, as well
as our sensations, have for their physical antecedent par-
ticular states of the nerves; it may well be believed that
the apparently suppressed links in a chain of association,
those which Sir W. Hamilton considers as latent, really
are so ; that they are not, even momentarily, felt ; the
chain of causation being continued only physically, by one
organic state of the nerves succeeding another so rapidly
that the state of mental consciousness appropriate to
each is not produced. We have only to suppose, either
AA 2
? i
\
*
3 00 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S DOCTRINE OF
that a nervous modification of too short duration does not
produce any sensation or mental feeling at all, or that
the rapid succession of different nervous modifications
makes the feelings produced by them interfere with each
other, and become confounded in one mass. The
former of these suppositions is extremely probable, while
of the truth of the latter we have positive proof. An
example of it is the experiment which Sir W. Hamilton
quoted from Mr. Mill, and which had been noticed be-
fore either of them by Hartley. It is known that the
seven prismatic colours, combined in certain proportions,
produce the white light of the solar ray. Now, if the
seven colours are painted on spaces bearing the same
proportion to one another as in the solar spectrum, and
the coloured surface so produced is passed rapidly before
the eyes, as by the turning of a wheel, the whole is seen
as white. The physiological explanation of this phse-
nomenon may be deduced from another common experi-
ment. If a lighted torch, or a bar heated to luminous-
ness, is waved rapidly before the eye, the appearance
produced is that of a ribbon of light; which is universally
understood to prove that the visual sensation persists for
a certain short time after its cause has ceased. Now, if
ihts happens with a single colour, it will happen with a
series of colours: and if the wheel on which the prismatic
colours have been painted, is turned with the same
rapidity with which the torch was waved, each of the
seven sensations of colour will last long enough to be
contemporaneous with all the others, and they will
naturally produce by their combination the same colour
as if they had, from the beginning, been excited simul-
taneously. If anything similar to this obtains in our
consciousness generally (and that it obtains in many
cares of consciousness there can be no doubt) it will
follow that whenever the organic modifications of our
nervous fibres succeed one another at an interval shorter
than the duration of the sensations or other feelings cor-
responding to them, those sensations or feelings will,
so to speak, overlap one another, and becoming simul-
UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL MODIFICATIONS. 357
taneous instead of successive, will blend into a state of
feeling, probably as unlike the elements out of which it
is engendered, as the colour white is unlike the prismatic
colours. And this may be the source of many of those
states of internal or mental feeling which we cannot dis-
tinctly refer to a prototype in experience, our experience
only supplying the elements from which, by this kind of
mental chemistry, they are composed. The elementary
feelings may then be said to be latently present, or to
be present but not in consciousness. The truth, how-
ever, is that the feelings themselves are not present, con-
sciously or latently, but that the nervous modifications
which are their usual antecedents have been present,
while the consequents have been frustrated, and another
consequent has been produced instead.*
* These considerations may serve as an answer to Dr. M'Cosh, when
he maintains, with many other of the intuitive philosophers, that associa-
tion cannot generate a mental state specifically distinct from the elements
out of which it is composed ; which amounts to a denial of the possibility
of mental chemistry. I had thought that such an experiment as that of
the wheel with the seven colours, in which seven sensations, following
one another very rapidly, become, or at least generate, one sensation, and
that one totally different from any of the seven, sufficiently proved the
possibility of what Dr. M'Cosh denies ; but he writes as if he had never
heard of that experiment. " I can discover," he says (p. 185), " no evidence
" that two sensations succeeding one another will ever be anything else
" than two sensations." The analogous facts in the case of ideas cannot
be appealed to, for they are the very matter disputed ; but there is abun-
dance of similar instances in sensation. Dropping succession of colours,
let Dr. M'Cosh look at an ordinary wheel revolving with the rapidity
which is often seen in machinery, and he will have a sensation which is
not one of rotatory motion at all, but a dizzy spectrum apparently
stationary, with thf exception of a slight degree of tremulous movement.
Dr. M'Cosh, in his reply, says he was perfectly aware of the experi-
ments of the luminous ring and the wheel with the seven colours. He
does not seem to have known of the other fact which I mentioned, that a
wheel may be in such rapid rotation as to seem stationary ; for he offers
instead of it " a wheel in rapid motion appearing stationary when made
visible by instantaneous electric light," of which he gives the true explana-
tion that, seeing the wheel only for the instant, we do not really see it
move. The wheel in my example is rotating in broad daylight.
But these examples of mental chemistry, being taken from sensation,
are (says Dr. M'Cosh) merely organic. He requires me to produce
examples from purely mental affections. And how do we know that our
mental affections are not also organic, having for their immediate ante-
cedents states of the nerves and brain ? This is not only possible, but
the progress of science has rendered it almost certain, even to thos
who are far from being Materialists in the ordinary sense of the term.
358 UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL MODIFICATIONS.
There are, however, abundant proofs that association can generate new
mental affections. Let us take, as one of the obvious examples, the love
of money. Does any one think that money has intrinsically, by its own
nature, any more value to us than the first shining pebbles we pick up,
except for the things it will purchase ? Yet its association with these
things not only makes it desired for itself, but creates in many minds a
passionate love of it, far surpassing the desire they feel for any of the
uses to which it can be put. Not only the love of money, but the love of
acquisition, of possession, of accumulation, is a feeling created by associa-
tion. "What is desired for itself is the use and enjoyment of individual
objects : the possession of a store of them is at first desired as a means to
that ; but after it has been long pursued as a means, it becomes itself an
end the object of the passion of appropriation, or property, a passion
sui generis, and (as life has hitherto been carried on) one of the principal
moving powers in human affairs. These, Dr. M'Cosh may say, are feelings,
and what I want is intellectual states ; I desiderate examples of " the
power of association to generate new ideas, and to produce belief." As an
example, then, of new ideas, take the idea of infinity. Infinity is not a fact
of intuition, nor of consciousness. We do not perceive space (for example)
to be infinite. But every object we see or touch, and every portion of
space that we cognise, is cognised along with something beyond it. We hence
become incapable of conceiving any object or space without something
beyond ; that is, we conceive space as infinite. And along with this new
idea a belief is generated ; for it has been, and is, the general belief of man-
kind, without any other evidence of it, that space is actually infinite. As
a further example of a belief generated by association, take the acquired
perceptions of sight. On the lowest estimate of these which is made by
any psychologist, we spontaneously believe that we see much which we
only infer : the ideas of the inferred facts are so blended by the power
of association with the sensations which suggest them, that the ideas are
confounded with sensations, and believed to be direct perceptions of sight.
359
CHAPTER XVI.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S THEORY OF CAUSATION.
SIR W. HAMILTON commences his treatment of the
question of Causation, by warning the reader against
" some philosophers who, instead of accommodating
their solutions to the problem, have accommodated the
problem to their solutions." It might almost have been
supposed that this expression had been invented to be
applied to Sir W. Hamilton himself. He has defined
the problem in a manner in which it had been defined by
no one else, for no visible reason but to adapt it to a
solution which no one else had thought of.*
" When we are aware," he says,f " of something
" which begins to exist, we are, by the necessity of our
" intelligence, constrained to believe that it has a Cause.
" But what does this expression, that it has a cause,
" signify ? If we analyse our thought, we shall find
" that it simply means, that as we cannot conceive any
" new existence to commelfce, therefore, all that now is
" seen to arise under a new appearance, had previously
" an existence under a prior form. We are utterly
" unable to realize in thought, the possibility of the
" complement of existence being either increased or
" diminished. We are unable, on the one hand, to con-
" ceive nothing becoming something, or, on the other,
" something becoming nothing. When God is said to
" create out of nothing, we construe this to thought by
" supposing that he evolves existence out of himself; we
* When I say no one else, I ought perhaps to except Krng, from whom
in another place (Lectures, iv. 135) our author quotes a sentence, contain-
ing at least the germ of his own theory.
f Lectures, ii. 377, 378.
360 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
" view the Creator as the cause of the universe. ' Ex
" nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti,' expresses, in
" its purest form, the whole intellectual phenomenon of
" causality.
" There is thus conceived an absolute tautology be-
" tween the effect and its causes. We think the causes
" to contain all that is contained in the effect, the effect
" to contain nothing which was not contained in the
" causes. Take as example : A neutral salt is an effect
" of the conjunction of an acid and an alkali. Here we
" do not, and here we cannot, conceive that, in effect,
" any new existence has been added, nor can we con-
" ceive that any has been taken away. Put another
" example : Gunpowder is the effect of a mixture of
" sulphur, charcoal, and nitre, and those three substances
" are again the effect, result, of simpler constituents,
" either known or conceived to exist. Now, in all this
" series of compositions we cannot conceive that aught
" begins to exist. The gunpowder, the last compound,
" we are compelled to think, contains precisely the same
" quantum of existence that its ultimate elements con-
" tained prior to the combination. Well, we explode
" the powder. Can we conceive that existence has been
" diminished by the annihilation of a single element
" previously in being, or increased by the addition of a
" single element which was not heretofore in nature?
" ' Omnia mutantur ; nihil interit,' is what we think
" what we must think. This then is the mental phse-
" nomenon of causality, that we necessarily deny in
" thought that the object which appears to begin to be,
" really so begins ; and that we necessarily identify its
" present with its past existence."
This being Sir W. Hamilton's idea of what Causality
means, he thinks it unnecessary to suppose, with most
of the philosophers of the intuitive school, a special
principle of our nature to account for our believing that
every phenomenon must have a cause. The belief is
accounted for, " not* from a power, but from an impo-
* Lectures, ii. 397.
THEORY OF CAUSATION. 361
tence of mind," namely, from the Law of the Conditioned ;
or in other words, from the incapacity of the human
mind to conceive the Absolute. We are unable to con-
ceive and construe to ourselves an absolute commence-
ment. Whatever we think, we cannot help thinking as
existing; and whatever we think as existing, we are
compelled to think as having existed through all past,
and as destined to exist through all future, time. It
does not at all follow that this is really the fact, for
there are many things inconceivable to us, which not
only may, but must be, true. Accordingly it may be
true that there is an absolute commencement; it may
not be true that every phenomenon has a cause. Human
volitions in particular may come into existence uncaused,
and, in Sir W. Hamilton's opinion, they do so. But
to us a beginning and an end of existence are both
inconceivable. " We are* unable to construe in thought,
" that there can be an atom absolutely added to, or an
" atom absolutely taken away from, existence in general.
" Make the experiment. Form to yourselves a notion of
" the universe ; now, can you conceive that the quantity
" of existence, of which the universe is the sum, is either
" amplified or diminished ? You can conceive the
" creation of the world as lightly as you can conceive
" the creation of an atom. But what is creation ? It is
" not the springing of nothing into something. Far
" from it : it is conceived* and is by us conceivable,
" merely as the evolution of a new form of existence,
" by the fiat of the Deity. Let us suppose the very
" crisis of creation. Can we realize it to ourselves, in.
" thought, that the moment after the universe came into
" manifested being, there was a larger complement of existence
" in the universe and its Author together, than there was the
" moment before, in the Deity himself alone? This we
" cannot imagine. What I have now said of our concep-
" tions of creation, holds true of our conceptions of annihila-
" tion. We can conceive no real annihilation no absolute
" sinking of something into nothing. But, as creation
* Lectures, ii. 405, 406.
362 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
" is cogitable by us only as an exertion of divine power,
" so annibilation is only to be conceived by us as a with-
" drawal of the divine support. All tbat there is now
" actually of existence in the universe, we conceive as
" having virtually existed, prior to creation, in the
" Creator; and in imagining the universe to be anni-
" hilated by its Author, we can only imagine this as the
" retraction of an outward energy into power."
Had this extraordinary view of Causation proceeded
from a thinker of less ability and authority than Sir
W. Hamilton, I think there are few readers, who, on
reading the sentence which 1 have marked by italics,
would not have set down the entire speculation as a
mauvaise plaisanterie,
But since any opinion, however strange, of Sir W.
Hamilton, must be believed to be serious, and no serious
opinion of such a man ought to be dismissed unexamined,
I shall proceed to enquire, whether the problem of which
he propounds this solution, is the problem of Causation,
and whether the solution is a true one. To take the
last question first ; is it a fact that we cannot conceive a
beginning of existence? Is it true that whenever we
conceive a thing as existing, we are incapable of con-
ceiving a time when it did not exist, or a time when it
will exist no longer?
If, by incapacity to conceive an absolute commence-
ment, were only meant that we cannot imagine a time
when nothing existed; and if our incapacity of conceiv-
ing annihilation, only means that we cannot represent to
ourselves an universe devoid of existence ; I do not deny
it. Whatever else we may suppose removed, there always
remains the conception of empty space : and Sir W.
Hamilton is probably right in his opinion, that we cannot
imagine even empty space without clothing it mentally
with some sort of colour or figure. Whoever admits the
possibility of Inseparable Association, can scarcely avoid
thinking that these are cases of it ; and that we are un-
able to imagine any object but as occupying space, or to
imagine it removed without leaving that space either
THEORY OF CAUSATION. 363
vacant, or filled by something else. But we can conceive
both a beginning and an end to all physical existence.
As a mere hypothesis, the notion that matter cannot be
annihilated arose early ; but as a settled belief, it is the
tardy result of scientific enquiry. All that is necessary
for imagining matter annihilated is presented in our
daily experience. We see apparent annihilation when-
ever water dries up, or fuel is consumed without a visible
residuum. The fact could not offer itself to our imme-
diate perceptions in a more palpable shape, if the anni-
hilation were real. Having an exact type on which to
frame the conception of matter annihilated, the vulgar
of all countries easily and perfectly conceive it. Those
to whom, if to anybody, it is inconceivable, are philoso-
phers and men of science, who having formed their
familiar conception of the universe on the opposite theory,
have acquired an inseparable association of their own,
which they cannot overcome. To them the vapour which
has succeeded to the water dried up by the sun, the gases
which replace the fuel transformed by combustion, have
become irrevocably a part of their conception of the entire
phenomenon. But the ignorant, who never heard of
these things, are not in the least incommoded by the want
of them ; and if they were not told the contrary, would
live and die without suspecting that the water, and the
wood or coal, were not destroyed.
All this is not denied by Sir W. Hamilton ; but
his answer to it is ; that if the universe were to perish
it would still remain capable of existing, which, it seems,
amounts to the same thing. We conceive it as having
" virtually existed before it was created," and as virtually
existing after it is destroyed. We cannot conceive that
there was, at the moment after creation, " a larger
" complement of existence in the universe and its Author
" together, than there was the moment before in the
" Deity himself alone." Creation is to us merely the
conversion of power into outward existence ; annihila-
tion only "the retraction of an outward energy into
power." So that potential existence is exactly the same
364 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
thing as actual existence ; the difference is formal only.
Not only is power a real entity, but the power to
create an universe is the universe : all created things are
but a part of its substance, and can be reabsorbed into it.
And this is presented to us, not as a recondite ontological
theory, forced upon philosophers as an escape from an
otherwise insuperable difficulty, but as a statement of
what we all think, and cannot but think, from the very
constitution of our thinking faculty. Is this the fact?
Does any one, except Sir W Hamilton, think that in
computing the sum total of existence, worlds which God
might have created but did not, count for exactly as
much as they would if he had really created them?
There is a corollary from this doctrine which also
deserves attention. If the sum of potential and actual
existence is always the same, then with every increase
of actual existence, there must be a diminution of
power : for if there was once the power without the
universe, and is now the same quantity of power and
also the universe, what our author nautically terms the
" complement of existence" has been increased : which
is contrary to the theory. By every exercise, therefore,
of creative power, God is less powerful : he has less
power now, by a whole universe, than before his power
of creating the universe had been transmuted into act;
and were he to "retract" the actual existence into
potential, he would be more powerful than he now is,
by that exact amount. Is this what all mankind think,
and are under an original necessity of thinking? Is
this the mode in which, by the " law of the Condi-
tioned/' every one of us is absolutely necessitated to
construe the idea of Creation? Sir W. Hamilton says
it is.
By a desperate attempt to put an intelligible meaning
into the theory, somebody may interpret it to mean
that before the universe existed in fact, it existed as a
thought in the Divine Mind; and that the idea of an
universe, complete in all its details, is equivalent in the
" complement of existence" to an actual universe. This
THEORY OF CAUSATION. 365
is not, perhaps, incapable of being maintained ; but it
affords no escape from the difficulty. For, this idea in
the Divine Mind is the Divine Mind now denuded of
it? Has the Deity forgotten the universe, from the time
when the divine conception was reduced into act ? If
not, there are now both the universe and the idea of the
universe ; that is, a double " complement of existence"
instead of a single.*
Bat were it ever so true that we are incapable of
conceiving a commencement of anything, and are neces-
sitated to believe that whatever now exists must have
existed in the same or another shape through all past
time : that Sir W. Hamilton should imagine this to be
the law of Cause and Effect, must be accounted one of the
most singular hallucinations to be found in the writings
of any eminent thinker. According to Sir W. Hamilton,
when we say that everything must have a cause, we
mean that nothing begins to exist, but everything has
always existed. I ask any one, either philosopher or
common man, whether he does not mean the exact
reverse ; whether it is not because things do begin to
exist, that a cause must be supposed for their existence.
The very words in which the axiom of Causation is com-
monly stated, and which our author, in the first words
of his exposition, adopts, are, that everything which
begins to exist must have a cause. Is it possible that
this axiom can be grounded on the fact that we never
* The curious notion that potential existence is tantamount to actual
reappears in the Appendix to the Discussions (p. 620). "The creation a
" Nihilo means only, that the universe, when created, was not merely put
into form, an original chaos, or complement of brute matter, having
preceded a plastic energy of intelligence ; but that the universe was
called into actuality from potential existence by the Divine fiat. The
Divine fiat therefore was the proximate cause of the creation ; and the
Deity, containing the cause, contained, potentially, the effect."
It is so frequent in our author's writings to find doctrines of a very
decided character laid down in one page, and implicitly or even directly
denied in another, that so strange a doctrine as the one in question could
not be expected to escape that fate. Accordingly, in p. 703 of the same
volume, " the Potential" is defined to be, " what is not at this, but may be
at another time." If so, the universe, when it only existed potentially,
was not : and did not count as part of the " complement" of present
existence.
366 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
suppose anything to begin to exist? Does not he who
takes away a beginning of existence, take away all causa-
tion, and all need of a cause ? Sir W. Hamilton entirely
mistakes what it is, which causation is called in to
explain. The Matter composing the universe, whatever
philosophical theory we hold concerning it, we know by
experience to be constant in quantity ; never beginning
or ending, only changing its forms. But its forms have
a beginning and ending : and it is its forms, or rather its
changes of form the end of one form and beginning of
another which alone we seek a cause for, and believe to
have a cause. It is events, that is to say, changes, not
substances, that are subject to the law of Causation.
The question for the psychologist is not why we believe
that a substance, but why we believe that a change in
the form of a substance, must have a cause. Sir W.
Hamilton, in a tardy defence of his theory against objec-
tions,* is forced, in a sort of way, to admit this, and
virtually to acknowledge that all which we really con-
sider as caused, we consider as beginning to exist.
Nothing is caused but events : and it will hardly be
said that we conceive an event as having never had a
beginning, but been in existence as an event just as
much before it happened as when it did happen. An
event then being the only thing which suggests the
belief or the idea of having or requiring a cause, Sir W.
Hamilton may be charged with the scientific blunder
which he imputes, far less justly, to Brown : he " pro-
" fesses to explain the phenomenon of causality, but pre-
" viously to explanation evacuates the phenomenon of
" all that desiderates explanation.''!
Sir W. Hamilton was familiar with the teaching of
the Aristotelian schools concerning the four Causes or
rather the four meanings of the word Cause, for syno-
nymy and homonymy were, in their classifications, very
often confounded : 1, Materia. 2, Forma. 3, Efficiens.
4, Finis: Efficiens being the only one of these which
* Appendix on Causation, Lectures, ii. 538.
f Lectures, ii. 384.
THEORY OF CAUSATION. 367
answers either to the common, or to the modern philo-
sophical notion of Cause. Sir W. Hamilton confounds
Materia with Efficiens ; or rather ignores Efficiens alto-
gether, and imagines that when the rest of the world
are speaking of Efficiens, they mean Materia. It is the
very thing which they pre-eminently do not mean. Sir
W. Hamilton may choose to call nothing Existence ex-
cept the permanent element in phenomena ; but it is the
changeable element, and no other, which is referred to a
cause, or which could ever have given the notion of
causation.
Sir W. Hamilton says* that the total cause that the
" concurring or co-efficient causes, in fact, constitute the
" effect." And again, f " an effect" is " nothing more than
" the sum or complement of all the partial causes, the
" concurrence of which constitutes its existence." " An
" effect J is nothing but the actual union of its constituent
" entities ;" " causes always continue actually to exist
" in their effects." Because the orginal matter continues
to exist in the matter transformed, the Efficiens which
transformed it continues to exist in the fact of the change !
Of course he takes as his example a case in which the
material is the prominent thing, that of a salt, compounded
of an acid and an alkali. " Considering the salt as an
" effect, what are the concurrent causes, the co-efficients,
" which constitute it what it is? There are, first,
" the acid, with its affinity to the alkali ; secondly, the
" alkali, with its affinity to the acid ; and thirdly, the
" translating force (perhaps the human hand) which
" made their affinities available, by bringing the two bodies
" within the sphere ot mutual attraction. Each of these
" three concurrents must be considered as a partial cause ;
" for abstract any one, and the effect is not produced."
Strange that even this first degree of analysis should not
have opened his eyes to the fact, that the moment he
admits into causa efficiens anything more than materiel,
his theory is at an end. For he will indeed find in the
* Lectures, i. 59. t Ibid. p. 97.
J Ibid. ii. p. 540. Ibid. i. p. 59.
363 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
salt, two of his three "co-efficients," the acid and the
alkali, with their affinity ; but where will he find in it
" the translating force, perhaps the human hand ?" This
essential " concause" does not embarrass him at all ; it
costs him nothing to make away with it altogether.
" This last," he says,* " as a transitory condition and
" not always the same, we shall throw out of account."
If we throw out of account all that is transitory, we
have no difficulty in proving that all that is left is per-
manent. But the transitory conditions are as much a
part of the cause as the permanent conditions. Our
author has just before said that he takes the term causes
" as synonymous for all without which the effect would
" not be ;" and if the effect is " the sum or complement"
of all the causes, the transitory as well as the permanent
elements must be found in it. To exclude all the transi-
tory part of the cause, is to exclude the whole cause,
except the materials. Suppose the effect to be St. Paul's :
in assigning its causes, the will of the government, the
mind of the architect, and the labour of the builders, are
all cast out, for they are all transitory, and only the stones
and mortar remain. f
It will have been remarked, that in propounding this
* Lectures, i. 97.
f On the same shoal is stranded an argument appended to the same
discussion, which our author seems to think of considerable value in
the establishment of a First Cause. The progress from cause to effect, he
says, (Lectures, i. 59, 60,) is from the simpler to the more complex. " The
" lower we descend in the series of causes, the more complex will be the
" product ; the higher we ascend, it will be the more simple." To prove
this, he appeals to his example, the composition of a salt. Now, the salt
is indeed more complex than either of its chemical ingredients, the acid
and the alkali ; but need it be, or is it, more complex than the remaining
" co-efficient," the human hand, or whatever power, natural or artificial,
brings the acid and alkali together P The event which causes, may be in any
degree whatever a more complex fact, than the event which is caused by it.
Professor Bain (Logic, ii. 36) considers Sir W. Hamilton's theory of
Causation to be an anticipation of the scientific doctrine of the Conserva-
tion of Force. There is, doubtless, some analogy between them, but they
seem to me radically different. Force is the principle of Change, and is,
therefore, really the leading ingredient in causation : but the conservation
in Sir W. Hamilton's theory is conservation of the element which has
nothing to do with change. It is only equivalent to the old established
fact of the unchangeableness in the quantity of Matter, in other words, of
Resistance.
THEORY OF CAUSATION. 369
theory of the belief in Causation, Sir W. Hamilton gives
up Causation as a necessary law of the universe ; main-
taining that a fact is not to be supposed impossible to
Nature because we are impotent to conceive it, and
indeed regarding the free acts of an intelligent being as
an exception to the universality of the law of Cause and
Effect. But while in one place he pays this homage to
his own principles, in another he entirely takes leave of
them, and glides back into the beaten path of the school
of thought which, erecting human capacities of concep-
tion into the measure of the universe, maintains that
causes must be, because we are incapable of conceiving
phenomena without them. Alter describing the process
of ascending from cause to cause, quite gratuitously, as a
progress towards unity, Sir W. Hamilton says,* " Philo-
" sophy thus, as the knowledge of effects in their causes,
" necessarily tends, not towards a plurality of ultimate
" or first causes, but towards one alone. This first cause,
" the Creator, it can indeed never reach, as an object of
" immediate knowledge; but, as the convergence towards
" unity in the ascending series is manifest in so far as
" that series is within our view" (here he confounds
convergence from many to few with convergence towards
one) "and as it is even impossible for the mind to suppose
" the convergence not continuous and complete, it follows,
" unless all analogy be rejected unless our intelligence
" be declared a lie, that we must, philosophically, believe
" in that ultimate or primary unity which, in our present
" existence, we are not destined in itself to apprehend."
A deliverance more radically at variance with the
author's own canons, could scarcely have been made.
For, first, one of the principal of them is, that our in-
ability to conceive a thing as possible, is no argument
whatever against its being true. In the second place,
the alleged impossibility oi conceiving any of the pheno-
mena of the universe to be uncaused, applies equally, on
his own showing, to the First Cause itself. For, though
he here talks only of one inconceivability, we are, if his
* Lectures, i. 60.
B fi
370 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
theory be correct, under the pressure of two counter-
inconceivabilities being equally unable to conceive an
uncaused beginning, or an infinite regress from effect to
cause : it is equally inconceivable to us that there should,
as that there should not, be a First Cause. In this
difficulty, by what right does he (I mean merely as
a philosopher, and on his own principles) select one of
the rival inconceivabilities as the real interpreter of
Nature, in preference to the other? And, having
selected it, why apply it up to a certain point, and there
stop ? Why must all the phenomena of experience be
referred to a single Cause, because we cannot conceive
anything uncaused, and that single cause be proclaimed
uncaused, notwithstanding the same impossibility? An
argument by Sir W. Hamilton would not be complete
unless it wound up with his tiresome final appeal, " unless
our intelligence be declared a lie." It is time to under-
stand, once for all, what this means. Does it mean that
if our intelligence cannot conceive one thing apart from
another, the one thing cannot exist without the other ? If
yes, what becomes of the Philosophy of the Conditioned?
If no, what becomes of the present argument ?
* It has been suggested to me by a correspondent to whom I have more
than once adverted, as an explanation of Sir W. Hamilton's conflicting
language respecting conceivability as a test of truth, that he probably
distinguished between what may be termed unilateral and bilateral incon-
ceivableness. I state the distinction in the words of my able correspondent.
" Bilateral inconceivableness is no test of truth, for the obvious reason
" that it applies equally to two contradictory propositions. But Hamilton
" thought unilateral inconceivableness an inconceivableness limited to
" one side of a question only a proof of a positive deliverance of con-
" sciousness on the other side. Hamilton therefore frequently employs
" the principle that what is unilaterally inconceivable must be false, while
" he invariably denies that bilateral inconceivableness is any test of
" falsehood."
Sir W. Hamilton may have had some such distinction in his mind,
though if he had, it would not have been going out of his way to have
stated it, instead of constantly enunciating the doctrine that things incon-
ceivable to us may be true, in language which recognises no difference
between the two cases. But the distinction, if he made it, is of no service
to him. If it is possible for anything to be true which is inconceivable to
us, the inconceivability of a supposition cannot be a deliverance of
consciousness against it. On the contrary, the fact that both sides of an
alternative which has no third side may be inconceivable, is a reductio ad
absurdum of the opinion that inconceivability is an evidence of falsehood.
THEORY OF CAUSATION. 371
Sir W. Hamilton makes a far better figure when
arguing against other theories of Causation, than when
maintaining his own. He is usually acute in finding
the weak points in other people's philosophies ; and he
brings this talent into play, effectively enough, on. the
present subject. He is not, indeed, at all successful in
combating the doctrine (substantially that of Hume and
Brown) that it is experience which proves the fact of
causation, and association which generates the idea : for
against this he only has to say, that experience and asso-
ciation cannot account for necessity. Now, as to real
necessity, we do not know that it exists in the case. Sir
W. Hamilton himself is of opinion that it does not,
and that there are phsenomena (the volitions of rational
intelligences) which do not depend on causes. And
as for the feeling of necessity, or what is termed a
necessity of thought, it is (as I have already observed),
of all mental phenomena positively the one which an
inseparable association is the most evidently competent
to generate. I cannot, therefore, attribute any value to
Sir W. Hamilton's discussion of this point ; but in his
refutation of some of the theories of causation which
have originated in his own hemisphere of the intellectual
world, he is very felicitous. Take, for example, the
doctrine of Wolf and the Leibnitzians (though not of
Leibnitz), which "attempts to establish the principle
" of Causality upon the principle of Contradiction."
" Listen," says our author,* " to the pretended demon-
" stration : Whatever is produced without a cause, is
" produced by nothing ; in other words, has nothing for
" its cause. But nothing can no more be a cause than
" it can be something. The same intuition which makes
" us aware, that nothing is not something, shows us that
" everything must have a real cause of its existence.
" To this, it is sufficient to say, that the existence
" of causes being the point in question, the existence
" of causes must not be taken for granted, in the very
' reasoning which attempts to prove their reality. In
* Lectures, ii 396, 397.
B B 2
372 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
" excluding causes, we exclude all causes ; and conse-
" quently we exclude Nothing, considered as a cause; it
" is not, therefore, allowable, contrary to that exclusion,
" to suppose Nothing as a cause, and then from the
" absurdity of that supposition to infer the absurdity of
" the exclusion itself. If everything must have a cause, it
" follows that, upon the exclusion of other causes, we must
" accept of Nothing as a cause. But it is the very point
" at issue, whether everything must have a cause or not;
" and therefore it violates the first principles of reasoning
" to take this quaesitum itself as granted. This opinion,"
adds our author, " is now universally abandoned."
But there is another theory of Causation which is not
abandoned, but has formed for some time past the strong-
hold of the Intuitive school. This is, that we acquire
both our notion of Causation, and our belief in it, from
an internal consciousness of power exerted by ourselves,
in our voluntary actions : that is, in the motions of our
bodies, for our will has no other direct action on the out-
ward world. This relation of the act of will to the
bodily movement, it is maintained, is " not a simple
" relation of succession. The will is not for us a pure
" act without efficiency ; it is a productive energy ; so
" that in volition there is given to us the notion of
" cause ; and this notion we subsequently transport
" project out from our internal activities, into the changes
" of the external world."
To this doctrine Sir W. Hamilton gives the following
conclusive answer.* " This reasoning, in so far as re-
" gards the mere empirical fact of our consciousness of
" causality, in the relation of our will as moving and of
" our limbs as moved, is refuted -by the consideration,
" that between the overt fact of corporeal movement of
" which we are cognisant, and the internal act of mental
" determination of which we are also cognisant, there
" intervenes a numerous series of intermediate agencies
" of which we have no knowledge ; and consequently,
" that we can have no consciousness of any causal con-
* Lectures, ii. 391, 392.
THEORY OF CAUSATION. 373
" nexion between the extreme links of this chain, the
" volition to move and the limb moving, as this hypo-
" thesis asserts. No one is immediately conscious, tor
"example, of moving his x arm through his volition.
' Previously to this ultimate movement, muscles, nerves,
" a multitude of solid and fluid parts must be set in
" motion by the will, but of this motion we know, from
" consciousness, actually nothing. A person struck with
" paralysis is conscious of no inability in his limb, to
" fulfil the determination of his will ; and it is only after
" having willed, and finding that his limbs do not obey
" his volition, that he learns by this experience, that the
" external movement does not follow the internal act.
' But as the paralytic learns after the volition that his
' limbs do not obey his mind ; so it is only after the
:l volition that the man in health learns that his limbs
" do obey the mandates of his will."*
With this reasoning, borrowed as our author admits
from Hume, I entirely agree ; and I wonder that it did
not prove to Sir W. Hamilton how little the objection
to a doctrine, that it is opposed to our natural beliefs,
deserves the exaggerated value he sets upon it ; for if
there is a natural belief belonging to us, I should sup-
* The same argument is restated in the Dissertations on Reid (pp. 866'
867) with some additional development. " Volition to move a limb, and
" the actual moving of it, are the first and last in a series of more than
" two successive events, and cannot, therefore, stand to each other, imme-
' diately, in the relation of cause and effect. They may, however, stand
' to each other in the relation of cause and effect, mediately. But then,
' if they can be known in consciousness as thus mediately related, it is a
' necessary condition of such knowledge, that the intervening series of
' causes and effects, through which the final movement of the limb is sup-
' posed to be mediately dependent on the primary volition to move, should
' be known to consciousness immediately under that relation. But this
intermediate, this connecting series is confessedly unknown to conscious-
ness at all, far less as a series of causes and effects. It follows there-
' fore a fortiori, that the dependency of the last on the first of these events,
' as of an effect upon its cause, must be to consciousness unknown. In
' other words : having no consciousness that the volition to move is the
' efficacious force (power) by which even the event immediately conse-
' quent on it (say the transmission of the nervous influence from brain to
' muscle) is produced, such event being, in fact, itself to consciousness
" occult ; multo minus can we have a consciousness of that volition being
" the efficacious force by which the ultimate movement of the limb is
" mediately determined."
fl
374 sni WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
pose it to be, that we are directly conscious of ability to
move our limbs. It is, nevertheless, our author's opinion
that the belief is groundless, and that we learn even a
fact so closely connected with us, in the way in which
any bystander learns it; by outward observation.*
Mr. Mansel, who agrees with Sir W. Hamilton in so
' ~
many of his opinions, separates from him here, and
adopts a modified form of the Volitional Theory. He
acknowledges the validity of Hume's and Sir W. Hamil-
ton's argument, and does not derive the idea of Power
or Causation from mind acting upon body from my
will producing my bodily motions but from myself
producing my will. " Inf every act of volition, I am
" fully conscious that it is in my power to form the reso-
" lution or to abstain ; and this constitutes the presenta-
" tive consciousness of free will and of power." And the
sole notion we have of causation in the outward uni-
verse, as anything more than invariable antecedence and
. ; consequence, is thatj of a relation between two objects,
At^\ " similar to that which exists between ourselves and our
" volitions." Thus interpreted, continues Mr. Mansel,
^ it is " an interesting illustration of the universal ten-
" dency of men to identify, as far as may be, other agents
" with themselves, even when the identification tends to
" the destruction of all clear thinking : furnishing a
" psychological explanation of a form of speech which
" lias prevailed and will continue to prevail among all
" people in all times, but not properly to be called a
" necessary truth, nor capable of any scientific application ;
" inasmuch as, in any such application, it may be true or
" false, without our being able to determine which, as
" the object of which it treats never comes within the
" reach of our faculties. What is meant by power in a
* Sir W. Hamilton adds, as a further objection to the theory, that it
does not account for that, in our notion of causation, which is the sole
ground for rejecting the Experience theory of it : its " quality of necessity
and universality." And this is true : the philosophers who combat the
Experience theory of causation by the Volitional one, deprive themselves
of a very bad, but still the best argument on their side of the question.
f Prolegomena Logica, p. 139.
I Ibid. p. 140. Ibid. pp. 142, 143.
THEORY OF CAUSATION. 375
" fire to melt wax ? How and when is it exerted, and in
" what manner does it come under our cognizance ? Sup-
" posing such power to be suspended by an act of Omni-
" potence, the Supreme Being at the same time producing
" the succession of pheenomena by the immediate inter-
position of his own will, could we in any way detect
:: the change? Or suppose the course of nature to be
" governed by a pre-established harmony, which ordained
" that at a certain moment fire and wax should be in the
" neighbourhood of each other, that, at the same moment,
" fire by itself should burn, and wax by its own laws
" should melt, neither affecting the other, would not
" all the perceptible phenomena be precisely the same as
" at present? These suppositions may be extravagant,
" though they are supported by some of the most emi-
" nent names in philosophy ; but the mere possibility of
" making them shows that the rival hypothesis is not a
" necessary truth ; the various principles being opposed,
" only like the vortices of Descartes and the gravitation
" of Newton, as more or less plausible methods of account-
" ing for the same physical phseuomena." Mr. Mansel
recognises the possibility that in some other portion of
the universe, phenomena may succeed one another at
random, without laws of causation, or by laws which are
continually changing. We cannot, he says, conceive this
state of things, but we can suppose it ; and this very in-
ability to conceive a phenomenon as taking place without
a cause in other words, this subjective necessity of the
law of cause and effect results, in his opinion, merely
from the conditions of our experience. If we were asked,
why a physical change must have a cause, " we* should
" probably reply Because matter cannot change of
" itself. But why cannot we think of matter as changing
" itself? Because power, and the origination of change, or
" self-determination, have never been given to us, save
" in one form, that of the actions of the conscious self.
" What I am to conceive as taking place, I must con-
" ceive as taking place in the only manner of taking
* Prol. Log. p. 148.
376 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
" place in which it has ever been presented to me."
(Here Mr. Mansel exaggerates one of the consequences
of the law of Inseparable Association, through his having
reached the consequence only empirically, and not ana-
lysed it by means of the law.) " This reduces the law
" of Causality, in one sense indeed to an empirical prin-
" ciple, but to an empirical principle of a very peculiar
" character ; one namely, in which it is psychologically
" impossible that experience should testify in more than
" one way. Such principles, however empirical in their
" origin, are co- extensive in their application with the
" whole domain of thought."
And further on,* "To call the principle of Causality
" as thus explained a Law of Thought, would be incor-
" rect. We cannot think the contrary, not because the
" laws of thought lorbid us, but because the material for
" thought is wanting. Thought is subject to two diffe-
" rent modes of restriction : firstly, from its own laws,
" by which it is restricted as to its form ; and secondly,
" from the laws of intuition, by which it is restricted as
" to its matter. The restriction, in the present instance,
" is of the latter kind. We cannot conceive a course of
" nature without uniform succession, as we cannot con-
" ceive a being who sees without eyes or hears without
" ears ; because we cannot, under existing circumstances,
" experience the necessary intuition. But such things
" may, notwithstanding, exist ; and under other circum-
" stances, they might become objects of possible concep-
" tion, the laws of the process of conception remaining
" unaltered."
In this exposition, which, I do not hesitate to say,
contains more sound philosophy than is to be found on
the same subject in all Sir W. Hamilton's writings, I
must, nevertheless, take exception to the main doctrine
that the type on which we frame our notion of Power
or Causation in general, is the power, not of our volitions
over matter, but of our Self over our volitions. In com-
mon with one half of the psychological world, I am
* ProL.Log. p. 149.
THEORY OP CAUSATION. 377
wholly ignorant of my possessing any such power. I
can indeed influence my own volitions, but only as
other people can influence my volitions, by the em-
ployment of appropriate means. Direct power over my
volitions I am conscious of none. However possible it
may be that I possess this power without knowing it, a
fact of consciousness contestable and contested cannot
well be the source and prototype of an idea common
to all mankind. I agree, however, with Mr. Mansel in
the opinion which he shares with Comte, James Mill, and
many others who see nothing in causation but invariable
antecedence ; that we naturally, and unavoidably, form
our first conception of all the agencies in the universe
from the analogy of human volitions. The obvious
reason is, that nearly everything which is interesting to
us, comes, in our earliest infancy, either from our own
voluntary motions, or (a consideration too much neg-
lected) from the voluntary motions of others ; and, among
the few sequences of phenomena which at that time fall
within the scope of our perceptions, scarcely any others
afford us the spectacle of an apparently absolute com-
mencement ; of one thing setting others in motion with-
out being in motion itself or originating changes in
other things, while not itself undergoing any visible
change. But as I do not believe, any more than Sir W.
Hamilton or Mr. Mansel, that the state ot mind called
volition carries with it a prophetic anticipation, which
can inform us prior to experience that volition will be
followed by an effect; I conceive that, no more in this
than in any other case of causation, have we evidence of
anything more than what experience informs us of: and
it informs us of nothing except immediate, invariable,
and unconditional sequence.
It is allowed on ail hands that part, at least, of our
idea of power, is the expectation we feel, that when the
cause exists, we shall perceive the eflest ; but Hume him-
sell admits that in the common notion of power there is
an additional element, an animal nisus, as he calls it,
which would be more properly termed a conception of
Jc o. t** to*'
37S SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
effort. That this idea of effort enters into our notion of
Power, is to my mind one of the strongest proofs that
this notion is not derived from the relation of ourselves
to our volitions, but from that of our volitions to our
actions. The idea of Effort is essentially a notion derived
from the action of our muscles, or from that combined
with affections of our brain and nerves. Every one of
our muscular movements has to contend against resis-
tance, either that of an outward object, or the mere fric-
tion and weight of the moving organ ; every voluntary
motion is consequently attended by the muscular sensa-
tion of resistance, and if sufficiently prolonged, by the
additional muscular sensation of fatigue. Effort, con-
sidered as an accompaniment of action upon the outward
world, means nothing, to us, but those muscular sensa-
tions. Since we experience them whenever we voluntarily
move an object, we by a mere act of natural generaliza-
tion, the unconscious result of association, on beholding
the same object moved by the wind or by any other
agent, conceive the wind as overcoming the same ob-
stacle, and figure it to ourselves as putting forth the
same effort. Children and savages sincerely mistake it
for a conscious effort. We outgrow that belief; but
it is not conformable to the mode of action of the human
intellect that it should pass uno saltu, from a complete
assimilation of the two phenomena, to conceiving them
as totally different. The " natural tendency of men" so
justly characterized by Mr. Mansel, " to identify, as far as
may be, other agents with themselves," does not admit
itself baffled and give up the attempt after the first
failure. The consequents being the same, when the
mind is no longer able to suppose an exact parity in the
antecedents, it still thinks that there must be something
in common between them ; and when obliged to admit
that there is volition in one case, and a mere unconscious
object in the other, it interposes between the antecedent
and the consequent an abstract entity, to express what
is supposed common to the animate and the inanimate
agency through which they both work, and in the ab-
- <Hk L &Ai&><. W^
THEORY OF CAUSATION. 379
sence of which nothing would be effected. This purely /
subjective notion, the product of generalization and ab-
straction acting on the real feeling of muscular or nervous
effort, is Power. And this, I conceive, is the psycholo-
gical rationale of Comte's great historical generalization,
that the metaphysical conception (as he terms it) of the
universe succeeds by a natural law to the Fetish con-
ception, and becomes the agent by which the Fetish
theory is transformed into Polytheism, this into Mono-
theism, and Monotheism itself is frittered away into
energies and attributes of Nature, and other subordinate
abstractions.
Thus much respecting Causation as a conception of
the mind. The law of Cause and Effect in its objective
aspect, as the fundamental principle in the order of the
universe, the basis of most of our knowledge, and the
guide of all our action, has been so fully treated in its
numerous bearings in my System of Logic, that it is
needless for me to speak further of it here.
380
CHAPTER XVIT.
THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS, OR GENERAL NOTIONS.
WE now arrive at the questions which form the transi-
tion from Psychology to Logic from the analysis and
laws of the mental operations, to the theory of the as-
certainment of objective truth : the natural link between,
the two being the theory of the particular mental ope-
rations whereby truth is ascertained or authenticated.
According to the common classification, from which Sir
W. Hamilton does not deviate, these operations are three :
Conception, or the formation of General Notions ; Judg-
ment ; and Reasoning. We begin with the first.
On this subject two questions present themselves : first,
whether there are such things as General Notions, and
secondly, what they are. If there are General Notions,
they must be the notions which are expressed by general
terms ; and concerning general terms, all who have the
most elementary knowledge of the history of metaphysics
are aware that there are, or once were, three different
opinions.
The first is that of the Realists, who maintained that
General Names are the names of General Things. Be-
sides individual things, they recognised another kind of
Things, not individual, which they technically called
Second Substances, or Universals a parte rei. Over and
above all individual men and women, there was an entity
called Man Man in general, which inhered in the in-
dividual men and women, and communicated to them its
essence. These Universal Substances they considered to
be a much more dignified kind of beings than individual
substances, and the only ones the cognizance of which
CONCEPTS OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 331
deserved the names of Science and Knowledge. Indi-
vidual existences were fleeting and perishable, but the
beings called Genera and Species were immortal and
unchangeable.
This, the most prevalent philosophical doctrine of the
middle ages, is now universally abandoned, but remains
a fact of great significance in the history of philosophy ;
being one of the most striking examples of the tendency
of the human mind to infer difference of things from
difference of names, to suppose that every different class
of names implied a corresponding class of real entities to
be denoted by them. Having two such different names
as " man" and " Socrates," these inquirers thought it
quite out of the question that man should only be a
name for Socrates, and others like him, regarded in a
particular light. Man, being a name common to many,
must be the name of a substance common to many, and
in mystic union with the individual substances, Socrates
and the rest.
In the latter middle ages there grew up a rival school
of metaphysicians, termed Nominalists, who repudiating
Universal Substances, held that there is nothing general
except names. A name, they said, is general, if it is
applied in the same acceptation to a plurality of things ;
but every one of the things is individual The dispute
between these two sects of philosophers was very bitter,
and assumed the character of a religious quarrel : autho-
rity, too, interfered in it, and as usual on the wrong side.
The Realist theory was represented as the orthodox
doctrine, and belief in it was imposed as a religious duty.
It could not, however, permanently resist philosophical
criticism, and it perished. But it did not leave Nomi-
nalism in possession of the field. A third doctrine
arose, which endeavoured to steer between the two.
According to this, which is known by the name of Con-
ceptualism, generality is not an attribute solely of names,
but also of thoughts. External objects indeed are all
individual, but to every general name corresponds a
General Notion, or Conception, called by Locke and
382 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
others an Abstract Idea. General Names are the names
of these Abstract Ideas.
Realism being no longer extant, nor likely to be re-
vived, the contest at present is between Nominalism and
Conceptualism ; each of which counts illustrious names
among its modern adherents. Sir W. Hamilton pro-
fesses allegiance to both, affirming* "that the opposing
parties are really at one." But his general mode of
thought, and habitual phraseology, are purely Concep-
tualist. This is already apparent in the passage I shall
first quote, which contains his statement of the fact to
be explained. It is preceded by a remark on Abstraction
which is perfectly just, and throws great light on the
processes of human thought. Abstraction, he says,f is
simply the concentration of our attention on a particular
object, or a particular quality of an object, and diversion
of it from everything else. There may be abstraction,
therefore, without generalization. " The notion of the
" figure of the desk before me is an abstract idea, an
" idea that makes part of the total notion of that body,
" and on which I have concentrated my attention, in
" order to consider it exclusively. This idea is abstract,
" but it is at the same time individual ; it represents the
" figure of this particular desk, and not the figure of any
" other body."
There are, therefore, " individual abstract notions ;"
but there are also " Abstract General Notions." These
are formed " when,J comparing a number of objects, we
seize on their resemblances , when we concentrate our
attention on these points of similarity, thus abstracting
the mind from a consideration of their differences ; and
when we give a name to our notion of that circum-
stance in which they all agree. The general notion is
thus one which makes us know a quality, property,
power, notion, relation ; in short, any point of view
under which we recognise a plurality of objects as a
unity. It makes us aware of a quality, a point of
* Lectures, ii. 286 ; and foot-note on Reid, p. 412.
f Ibid. ii. 287. J Ibid. pp. 287-290.
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 3S3
" view, common to many things. It is a notion of re~^
" semblance ; hence the reason why general names or
" terms, the signs of general notions, have been called
" terms of resemblance (termini similitudinis). In this
" process of generalization, we do not stop short at a
" first generalization. By a first generalization we have
" obtained a number of classes of resembling individuals.
" But these classes we can compare together, observe
" their similarities, abstract from their differences, and
" bestow on their common circumstance a common name.
" On these second classes we can again perform the same
" operation, and thus ascending the scale of general no-
" tions, throwing out of view always a greater number
" of differences, and seizing always on fewer similarities
" in the formation of our classes, we arrive at length at
" the limit of our ascent in the notion of being or exis-
" fence. Thus placed on the summit of the scale of
" classes, we descend by a process the reverse of that by
" which we have ascended ; we divide and subdivide the
u classes, by introducing always more and more cha-
" racters, and laying always fewer differences aside ; the
" notions become more and more composite, until we at
" length arrive at the individual.
" I may here notice that there is a twofold quantity to
" be considered in notions. It is evident that, in pro-
" portion as the class is high, it will, in the first place,
" contain under it a greater number of classes, and in
" the second, will include the smallest complement of
" attributes. Thus being or existence contains under it
" every class ; and yet when we say that a thing exists,
" we say the very least of it that is possible. On the
" other hand, an individual, though it contain nothing
" but itself, involves the largest amount of predication.
" For example, when I say this is Richard, I not only
" affirm of the subject every class from existence down
" to man, but likewise a number of circumstances proper
" to Richard as an individual. Now, the former of these
" quantities, the external, is called the Extension of a
" notion ; the latter, the internal quantity, is called its
384 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
" Comprehension or Intension The internal and ex-
" ternal quantities are in the inverse ratio of each other.
" The greater the extension, the less the comprehension ;
" the greater the comprehension, the less the extension."
As a popular account of Classification, for learners, to
be followed by a more scientific exposition, this fully
answers its purpose ; but it is expressed in the common
language of Conceptualists, and we should naturally con-
clude from it that the author was a Conceptualist. He
however asserts the doctrine of the Nominalists, that
there are no general notions, and that the notion sug-
gested by a general name is .always singular or indivi-
dual, to be " not only true but self-evident. '"' And he
quotes as "irrefragable" the argument of Berkeley,
directed against the very possibility of Abstract Ideas.
The passage from Berkeley is in the Introduction to his
" Principles of Human Knowledge," and is as follows :
" It is agreed, on all hands, that the qualities or modes
" of things, do never really exist each of them apart by
" itself, and separated from all others, but are mixed, as
" it were, and blended together, several in the same
" object. But, we are told, the mind, being able to con-
" sider each quality singly, or abstracted from those other
" qualities with which it is united, does by that means
" frame to itself abstract ideas. For example, there is
" perceived by sight an object extended, coloured, and
" moved ; this mixed or compound idea the mind resolv-
" ing into its simple constituent parts, and viewing each
" by itself, exclusive of the rest, does frame the abstract
" ideas of extension, colour, and motion. Not that it is
" possible for colour or motion to exist without exten-
" sion ; but only that the mind can frame to itself by
" abstraction the idea of colour exclusive of extension,
" and of motion exclusive of both colour and extension.
" Again, the mind having observed that in the par-
" ticular extensions perceived by sense, there is some-
" thing common and alike in all, and some other things
* Lectures, ii. 298.
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 385
" peculiar, as this or that figure or magnitude, which
" distinguish them one from another ; it considers apart
" or singles out by itself that which is common, making
" thereof a most abstract idea of extension, which is
" neither line, surface, nor solid, nor has any figure or
" magnitude, but is an idea entirely prescinded from all
" these. So, likewise, the mind, by leaving out of the
" particular colours perceived by sense, that which dis-
" linguistics them one from another, and retaining that
" only which is common to all, makes an idea of colour
" in abstract, which is neither red, nor blue, nor white,
" nor any other determinate colour. And, in like man-
" ner, by considering motion abstractedly not only from
" the body moved, but likewise from the figure it de-
" scribes, and all particular directions and velocities, the
" abstract idea of motion is framed ; which equally cor-
" responds to all particular motions whatever that may
" be perceived l>y sense.
" Whether others have this wonderful faculty of ab-
" stracting their ideas, they best can tell ; for myself I
" find, indeed, I have a faculty of imagining, or repre-
" senting to myself the ideas of those particular things
" I have perceived, and of variously compounding and
" dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads,
" or the upper part of a man joined to the body of a
" horse. I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose,
" each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of
" the body. But then whatever hand or eye I imagine,
" it must have some particular shape and colour. Like-
" wise the idea of man that I frame to myself, must be
" either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or
" a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I
" cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract
" idea above described. And it is etpally impossible
" for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct
" from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor
" slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear ; and the like may be
" said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever. To
" be plain, I am myself able to abstract in one sense, as
. c c
386 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
" when T consider some particular parts or qualities
" separated from others, with which though they are
41 united in some object, yet it is possible they may
" really exist without them. But I deny that I can
" abstract one from another, or conceive separately, those
" qualities which it is impossible should exist so sepa-
" rated ; or that I can frame a general notion by ab-
" stracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid.
" Which two last are the proper acceptations of abstrac-
" Hon. And there are grounds to think most men will
" acknowledge themselves to be in my case." It is
evident, indeed, that the existence of Abstract Ideas
the conception of the class-qualities by themselves, and
not as embodied in an individual is effectually pre-
cluded by the law of Inseparable Association.
In what manner, Sir W. Hamilton manages to com-
bine two theories, which in words are, and in substance
have always been believed to be, directly contradictory
of one another, we learn only from his Lectures on
Logic. The hearers of those on Metaphysics^ unless the
Professor supplied oral elucidations which do not appear
in the text, must have been considerably puzzled bv
finding the task of reconciling the two doctrines thrown
entirely on themselves. In the Lectures on Logic, how-
ever, an attempt is made to perform it for them. It is
there stated,* that the General Notion, which Sir W.
Hamilton terms a Concept, and which is the notion we
form of some " point of similarity" between individual
objects, " is not cognizable in itself, that is, it affords no
" absolute or irrespective object of knowledge, but can
" only be realized in consciousness by applying it as a
" term of relation, to one or more of the objects, which
" agree in the point or points of resemblance which it
." expresses. . . The moment we attempt to represent
'' to ourselves any of these concepts, any of these ab-
(f stract generalities, as absolute objects, by themselves,
' and out of relation to any concrete or individual
' realities, their relative nature at once reappears ; for
* Lectures, iii. 128, 129.
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 387
" we find it altogether impossible to represent any of the
" qualities expressed by a concept, except as attached to
" some individual and determinate object, and their whole
" generality consists in this, that though we must realize
" them in thought under some singular of the class, we
" may do it under any. Thus, for example, we cannot
" actually represent the bundle of attributes contained
" in the concept man as an absolute object by itself, and
" apart from all that reduces it from a general cognition
" to an individual representation. We cannot figure in
" imagination any object adequate to the general notion
" or term man ; for the man to be here imagined must
" be neither tall nor short, neither fat nor lean, neither
" black nor white, neither man nor woman, neither young
" nor old, but all and yet none of these at once. The
" relativity of our concepts is thus shown in the contra-
" diction and absurdity of the opposite hypothesis."
This is sound doctrine but it is pure Nominalism;
as the passage first quoted from our author was pure Con-
ceptualism. It is very necessary that I should quote
the additional elucidations given in the succeeding Lec-
ture.* A Concept or (General) Notion, he there says,
is in this distinguished from a " Presentation of Per-
" ception, or Representation of Phantasy," that ' : our
" knowledge through either of the latter is a direct, ira-
" mediate, irrespective, determinate, individual, and ade-
" quate cognition ; that is, a singular or individual object
" is known in itself, by itself, through all its attributes,
" and without reference to aught but itself. A concept,
" on the contrary, is an indirect, mediate, indeterminate,
" and partial cognition of any one of a number of objects,
" but not an actual representation either of them all, or
" of the whole attributes of any one object
" Formed by comparison," concepts " express only a
" relation. They cannot, therefore, be held up as an
" absolute object to consciousness they cannot be repre-
" sented as universals, in imagination. They can only
" be thought of in relation to some one of the individual
* Lectures, iii. 131-137.
c c 2
388 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
" objects they classify, and when viewed in relation to it
" they can be represented in imagination ; but then, as
" actually represented, they no longer constitute general
" attributions, they fall back into mere special determi-
" nations of the individual object in which they are
" represented. Thus it is, that the generality or uni-
" versality of concepts is potential, not actual. They
" are only generals inasmuch as they may be applied to
" any of the various objects they contain ; but while they
" cannot be actually elicited into consciousness, except in
" application to some one or other of these, so they
" cannot be so applied without losing, pro tanto, their
" universality. Take, for example, the concept horse.
" In so far as by /torse we merely think of the word, that
" is, of the combination formed by the letters h, o, r, s, e,
" this is not a concept at all, as it is a mere representa-
" tion of certain individual objects. This I only state
" and eliminate, in order that no possible ambiguity
" should be allowed to lurk. By /torse, then, meaning
" not merely a representation of the word, but a concept
" relative to certain objects classed under it, the con-
" cept /torse, I say, cannot, if it remain a concept, that is,
" a universal attribution, be represented in imagination ;
" but, except it be represented in imagination, it cannot
" be applied to any object, and except it be so applied, it
" cannot be realized in thought at all. You may try to
" escape the horns of the dilemma, but you cannot. You
" cannot realize in thought an absolute or irrespective
" concept, corresponding in universality to the application
" of the word ; for the supposition of this involves nu-
" merous contradictions. An existent horse is not a
" relation, but an extended object possessed of a deter-
" miiiate figure, colour, size, &c. ; horse, in general, cannot,
" therefore, be represented, except by an image of some-
" thing extended and of a determinate figure, colour,
" size, &c. Here now emerges the contradiction. If,
" on the one hand, you do not represent something ex-
" tended, and of a determinate figure, colour, and size,
" you have no representation of any horse. There is,
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 3S9
" therefore, in this alternative, nothing which can be
" called the actual concept or image of a horse at all. If,
" on the other hand, you do represent something ex-
" tended, and of a determinate figure, colour, and size,
" then you have, indeed, the image of an individual
" horse, but not a universal concept coadequate with horse
" in general For how is it possible to have an actual
" representation of a figure, which is not a determinate
" figure ? but if of a determinate figure, it must be that
" of some one of the many different figures under which
" horses appear; but then if it be only of one of these,
" it cannot be the general concept of the others, which
" it does not represent. In like manner, how is it
" possible to have the actual representation of a thing
" coloured, which is not the representation of a de-
" terminate colour, that is, either white, or black, or
" g re y> or brown, &c. ? but if it be any one of these,
'' it can only represent a horse of this or that particular
" colour, and cannot be the general concept of horses of
" every colour. The same result is given by the other
" attributes ; and what I originally stated is thus mani-
" fest that concepts have only a potential, not an actual,
" universality, that is, they are only universal, inasmuch
" as they may be applied to any of a certain class of
" objects, but as actually applied, they are no longer
" general attributions, but only special attributes."
But if, as our author says, concepts are " incapable of
being realized in thought at all," except as representa-
tions of individual objects, how are they, even potentially,
universal ? Being mere mental creations, they are nothing
except what they can be thought as being ; and they
cannot be thought as being universal, but only as being
part of the thought of an individual object, though the
individual object needs not always be the same. This
is not a potential universality, though it is an universal
potentiality. If, then, the Nominalists are thus com-
pletely right, how can it be that the Conceptualists are
not wrong ?
Our author thinks that the apparent difference between
390 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
them is a mere case of verbal ambiguity ; arising- from
" the employment of the same terms to express the
" representations of Imagination, and the notions or con-
" cepts of the Understanding." " A relation/' he says,*
" cannot be represented in imagination. The two
" terms, the two relative objects, can be severally
" imaged in the sensible phantasy, but not the relation
" itself. This is the object of the Comparative Faculty,
" or of Intelligence Proper. To objects so different as
" the images of sense and the unpicturable notions of
" intelligence, different names ought to be given/' " In
" Germanyf the question of nominalism and concep-
" tualism has not been agitated, and why ? Simply
" because the German language supplies terms by which
" concepts (or notions of thought proper) have been con-
" tradistinguished from the presentations and representa-
" tions of the subsidiary faculties."! We are therefore
to understand that although Imagination cannot figure
to itself anything general or universal, Thought Proper,
or the Comparative Faculty, or the Understanding, can.
But I do not believe that Berkeley, whose argument our
author declares "irrefragable," or any other of the great
^Nominalist thinkers whom he enumerates, would have
accepted this distinction. They would, I apprehend,
have denied that the attributes included in the so-called
General Notion can be thought separately, any more
than they can be imaged separately. But why do I
talk of Berkeley? Sir W. Hamilton has himself nega-
tived the distinction in the very passage just quoted,
when he says, " the concept horse cannot, if it remain a
" concept, that is, a universal attribution, be represented
" in imagination ; but, except it be represented in imayi-
" nation, it cannot be applied to any object, and except
" it be so applied, it cannot be realized in thought," The
simple question is, Can the attributes of hor^e as a class
be objects of thought, except as part of a representation
* Lectures, ii. 312. f Ibid. iii. p. 136.
J The words he means are Begriff and Anschauung. See foot-note to
Eeid, p. 412.
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 391
of some individual horse? If the Concept cannot exist
in the mind except enveloped in the miscellaneous attri-
butes of an individual which is the truth, and fully
recognised as such in the passages quoted from Sir W.
Hamilton, then it can no more be thought separately
by the intellect than depicted separately in the imagina-
tion.
This notion of a Concept as something which can be
thought, but " cannot in itself be depicted to sense or
" imagination,"* is supported, as we saw, by calling it
a relation. " As the result of a comparison," a concept
" necessarily! expresses a relation :" and a " relation
cannot be represented in imagination." If a concept
is a relation, what relation is it, and between what?
*' As the result of a comparison," it must be a relation
of resemblance among the things compared. I might
observe that a concept, which is defined by our author
himself " a bundle of attributes," does not signify the
mere fact of resemblance between objects ; it signifies our
mental representation of that in which they resemble ;
of the " common circumstance" which Sir W. Hamilton
spoke of in his exposition of Classification. The attri-
butes are not the relation, they are the fundamentum
relationix. This objection, however, I can afford to wave.
However inappropriate the expression, let us admit that
a concept is a relation. But if a relation cannot be
represented in imagination, our author has just said that
" the two terms, the two relative objects." can. The
relation, according to him, though it cannot be imagined,
can be thought. But can a relation be thought without
thinking the related objects between which it exists?
Assuredly, no : and this impossibility can the less be
denied by Sir W. Hamilton, as it is the basis on which he
* Mansel, Prolegomena Logica, p. 15. What a mere play upon words
the distinction is, is shown by Mr. Mansel's saying, a tew pages later,
(p. 29), " In every complete act of conception, the attributes forming the
concept are contemplated as co-existing in a possible object of intuition."
So that they are "depicted to imagination;" only they are not depicted
separately.
f Lectures, iii. 128.
392 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
founds his theory of Consciousness of the direct appre-
hension of the Ego and the Non-ego. Consequently,
when we think a relation, we must think it as existing
between some particular objects which we think along
with it : and a Concept, even if it be the apprehending
of a relation, can only be thought as individual, not as
general.
The true theory of Concepts needs not, I think, be
sought farther off than in our author's own account of
their origin. " In the formation," he says,* "of a con-
" cept or notion, the process may be analysed into four
" momenta. In the first place, we must have a plurality
" of objects presented or represented by the subsidiary
" faculties. These faculties must furnish the rude ma-
" terial for elaboration. In the second place, the objects
" thus applied are, by an act of the Understanding, com-
" pared together, and their several qualities judged to be
" similar or dissimilar. In the third place, an act of
" volition, called Attention, concentrates consciousness
" on the qualities thus recognised as similar ; and that
" concentration, by attention, on them, involves an
" abstraction of consciousness from those which have
" been recognised and thrown aside as dissimilar ; for
" the power of consciousness is limited, and it is clear or
" vivid precisely in proportion to the simplicity or one-
" ness of the object. Attention and Abstraction are the
" two poles of the same act of thought: they are like the
" opposite scales in a balance, the one must go up as the
" other goes down. In the fourth place, the qualities,
" which by comparison are judged similar, and by at-
" tention are constituted into an exclusive object of
" thought, these are already, by this process, identified
"in consciousness; for they are only judged similar,
" inasmuch as they produce in us indiscernible effects.
" Their synthesis in consciousness may, however, for
" precision's sake, be stated as a fourth step in the pro-
" cess. But it must be remembered, that at least the
" three latter steps are not in reality, distinct and inde-
* Lectures, iii., 132, 133.
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 393
i
" pendent acts, but are only so distinguished and stated,
" in order to enable us to comprehend and speak about
" the indivisible operation in the different aspects in
" which we may consider it." Let me remark, in pass-
ing, the fresh recognition in the last sentence, of an
important principle, already several times adverted to,
in the theory of Naming.
The formation, therefore, of a Concept, does not con-
sist in separating the attributes which are said to com-
pose it, from all other attributes of the same object,
and enabling us to conceive those attributes, disjoined
from any others. We neither conceive them, nor think
them, nor cognise them in any way, as a thing apart, but
solely as forming, in combination with numerous other
attributes, the idea of an individual object. But, though
thinking them only as part of a larger agglomeration, we
have the power of fixing our attention on them, to the
neglect of the other attributes with which we think
them combined. While the concentration of attention
actually lasts, if it is sufficiently intense, we may be tem-
porarily unconscious of any of the other attributes, and
may really, for a brief interval, have nothing present to
our mind but the attributes constituent of the concept.
In general, however, the attention is not so completely
exclusive as this ; it leaves room in consciousness for
other elements of the concrete idea : though of these the
consciousness is faint, in proportion to the energy of the
concentrative effort ; and the moment the attention re-
laxes, if the same concrete idea continues to be con-
templated, its other constituents come out into con-
sciousness. General concepts, therefore, we have, properly
speaking, none ; we have only complex ideas of objects
in the concrete : but we are able to attend exclusively to
certain parts of the concrete idea : and by that exclusiveat-
tention, we enable those parts to determine exclusively the
course of our thoughts as subsequently called up by asso-
ciation; and are in a condition to carry on a train of medi-
tation or reasoning relating to those parts only, exactly as
if we were able to conceive them separately from the rest.
394 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
What principally enables us to do this is the employ-
ment of signs, and particularly the most efficient and
familiar kind of signs, viz. Names. This is a point
which Sir W. Hamilton puts well and strongly, and
there are many reasons for stating it in his own lan-
guage.*
" The concept thus formed hy an abstraction of the
" resembling from the non-resembling qualities of ob-
jects, would again fall back into the confusion and
" infinitude from which it has been called out, were it
" not rendered permanent for consciousness, by being
" fixed and ratified in a verbal sign. Considered in
" general, thought and language are reciprocally de-
" pendent; each bears all the imperfections and per-
" fections of the other ; but without language there could
" be no knowledge realized of the essential properties
" of things, and of the connexion of their accidental
" states."
The rationale of this is, that when we wish to be able
to think of objects in respect of certain of their attri-
butes to recall no objects but such as are invested with
those attributes, and to recall them with our attention
directed to those attributes exclusively we effect this by
giving to that combination of attributes, or to the class
of objects which possess them, a specific Name. We
create an artificial association between those attributes
and a certain combination of articulate sounds, which
guarantees to us that when we hear the sound, or see
the written characters corresponding to it, there will be
raised in the mind an idea of some object possessing
those attributes, in which idea those attributes alone
will be suggested vividly to the mind, our consciousness
of the remainder of the concrete idea being faint. As
the name has been directly associated only with those
attributes, it is as likely, in itself, to recall them in any
one concrete combination as in any other. What com-
bination it shall recall in the particular case, depends on
recency of experience, accidents of memory, or the in-
* Lectures, iii. 137.
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 395
fluence of other thoughts which have been passing, or
are even then passing 1 , through the mind : accordingly, the
combination is far from being always the same, and sel-
dom gets itself strongly associated, with the name which
suggests it ; while the association of the name with the
attributes that form its conventional signification, is
constantly becoming stronger. The association of that
particular set of attributes with a given word, is what
keeps them together in the mind by a stronger tie than
that with which they are associated with the remainder
of the concrete image. To express the meaning in Sir
W. Hamilton's phraseology, this association gives them
an unity* in our consciousness. It is only when this
has been accomplished, that we possess what Sir W.
Hamilton terms a Concept ; and this is the whole of the
mental phenomenon involved in the matter. We have
a concrete representation, certain of the component ele-
ments of which are distinguished by a mark, designating
them for special attention ; and this attention, in cases
of exceptional intensity, excludes all consciousness of
the others.
Sir VV. Hamilton thinks, however, that we can form,
though scarcely preserve, concepts without the aid of
signs. " Language/'t he says, "is the attribution of
" signs to our cognitions of things. But as a cognition
" must have been already there, before it could receive a
" sign; consequently, that knowledge which is denoted
" by the formation and application of a word, must have
* One of the best and profoundest passages in all Sir W. Hamilton's
writings, is that in which he points out (though only incidentally) what
are the conditions of our ascribing Unity to any aggregate. " Though it
" is only by experience we come to attribute an external unity to aught
" continuously extended, that is, consider it as a system or constituted
" whole ; still, in so far as we do so consider it, we think the parts as held
' together by a certain force, and the whole, 'therefore, as endowed with a
' power of resisting their distraction. It is, indeed, only by finding that
' a material continuity resists distraction, that we view it as more than a
' fortuitous aggregation of many bodies, that is, as a single body. The
' material universe, for example, though not de facto continuously ex-
" tended, we consider as one system in so far, but only in so far, as we
" find all bodies tending together by reciprocal attraction." Disserta-
tions on Reid, pp. 852, 853.
t Lectures, iii. 138-140.
396 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
" preceded the symbol which denotes it." A sign, how-
ever, he continues, in one of his happiest specimens of
illustration, " is necessary to give stability to our intel-
" lectual progress, to establish each step in our advance
" as a new starting point for our advance to another be-
" yond. A country may be overrun by an armed host,
, " but it is only conquered by the establishment of for-
" tresses. 'Words are the fortresses of thought. They
" enable us to realize our dominion over what we have
" already overrun in thought ; to make every intellectual*
'" conquest the basis of operations for others still beyond.
" Or another illustration : You have all heard of the pro-
" cess of tunnelling of tunnelling through a sand-bank.
" In this operation it is impossible to succeed, unless
" every foot, nay almost every inch in our progress, be
" secured by an arch of masonry, before we attempt the
" excavation of another. Now, language is to the mind
" precisely what the arch is to the tunnel. The power of
" thinking and the power of excavation are not depen-
" dent on the word in the one case, on the mason-work
" in the other; but without these subsidiaries, neither
" process could be carried on beyond its rudimentary
" commencement. Though, therefore, we allow that
" every movement forward in language must be deter-
" mined by an antecedent movement forward in thought ;
" still, unless thought be accompanied at each point of
" its evolution, by a corresponding evolution of language,
" its further development is arrested. .... Admitting
" even that the mind is capable of certain elementary
" concepts without the fixation and signature of lan-
" guage, still these are but sparks which would twinkle
" only to expire, and it requires words to give them pro-
" minence, and by enabling us to collect and elaborate
*' them into new concepts, to raise out of what would
" otherwise be only scattered and transitory scintillations,
" a vivid and enduring light."
Mr. Mansel, who agrees with Sir W. Hamilton in the
essentials of his doctrine of Concepts, goes beyond him
on this point, being of opinion that without signs we
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 397
could not form concepts at all. The objection, that we
must have had the concept before we could have given it
a name, he meets by the suggestion that names when
first used are names only of individual objects, but being
extended from one object to another under the law of
Association by Resemblance, they become specially asso-
ciated with the points of Resemblance, and thus gene-
rate the Concept. In Mr. Mansel's opinion,* no one,
" without the aid of symbols," can advance " beyond the
" individual objects of sense or imagination. In the pre-
" sence of several individuals of the same species, the
" eye may observe points of similarity between them ;
" and in this no symbol is needed; but every feature
" thus observed is the distinct attribute of a distinct indi-
" vidual, and however similar, cannot be regarded as
" identical. For example : I see lying on the table be-
'' fore me a number of shillings of the same coinage.
" Examined severally, the image** and superscription of
" each is undistinguishable from that of its fellow ; but
" in viewing them side by side, space is a necessary con-
" dition of my perception, and the difference of locality
" is sufficient to make them distinct, though similar in-
" dividuals. The same is the case with any representa-
" tive image, whether in a mirror, in a painting, or in
" the imagination, waking or dreaming. It can only be
" depicted as occupying a certain place ; and thus as an
" individual, and the representative of an individual. It
" is true that I cannot say that it represents this particu-
" lar coin rather than that ; and consequently it may be
" considered as the representative of all, successively but
" not simultaneously. To find a representative which
" shall embrace all at once, I must divest it of the con-
" dition of occupying space; and this, experience assures
" us can only be done by means of xymbuls, verbal or
" other, by which the concept is fixed in the undei stand-
" ing. Such, for example, is a verbal description of the
" coin in question, which contains a collection of attributes
" freed from the condition of locality, and hence from all
* Prolegomena Logica, pp. 15-17.
398 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
" resemblance to an object of sense. If we substitute
" Time for Space, the same remarks will be equally appli-
" cable to the objects of our internal consciousness.
" Every appetite and desire, every affection and volition, as
"presented, is an individual state of consciousness, distin-
" guished from every other by its relation to a different
" period of time. States in other respects exactly similar
" may succeed one another at regular intervals ; but the
" hunger which I feel to-day is an individual feeling as
" numerically distinct from that which I felt yesterday
" or that which I shall feel to-morrow, as a shilling lying
" in my pocket is from a similar shilling lying at the
" bank. Whereas my notion of hunger, or fear, or voli-
" tion, is a general concept, having no relation to one
" period of time rather than to another, and, as such,
" requires, like other concepts, a representative sign.
" Language, taking the word in its widest sense, is thus
" indispensable, not merely to the communication, but to
" the formation of Thought."
This is a step in advance of Sir W. Hamilton's doc-
trine, but is open to the same criticism, namely, that
after showing all Concepts to be concrete and individual,
it endeavours to make out by an indirect process, a
sort of abstract existence for them. According to Mr.
Mansel, signs are necessary to concepts, because signs
alone can give this abstract existence. Signs are wanted,
to emancipate our mental apprehension from the condi-
tions of space and time which are in all our concrete
representations. The other miscellaneous attributes
which have to be cast out, do not, he seems to think,
embarrass the formation of the Concept ; but it is ham-
pered by the conditions of space and time, and only by
means of a sign can we get rid of these. But do we >
get rid of them by employing signs ? To take Mr.
Mansel's own instance : When we establish our concept
of a shilling by a verbal description of the coin, does
the description enable us to conceive a shilling as not
occupying any space? When we think of a shilling,
either by name or anonymously, is not the circumstance
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 399
of occupying space called up as an inevitable part of the
mental representation ? Not, indeed, the circumstance
of occupying a given part of space ; but if that is what
Mr. Hansel means, it would follow that we need signs
to enable us to form a mental representation even of an
individual object, provided it be moveable : for the same
object does not always occupy the same part of space.
The truth is, that the condition of space cannot be ex-
cluded ; it is an essential part of the concept of Body,
and of every kind of bodies. But any given space, or
any given time, is not a part of the concept, any more
than any of the slight peculiarities in which one shil-
ling differs from another are part of the concept of a
shilling. Some space and time, arid some individual
peculiarities, are always thought along with the concept,
and make up the whole, of which it can only be thought
as a part : but these are not directly recalled by the
class-name, and the attributes composing the concept
are. Mr. Mansel, therefore, has not, I conceive, hit the
mark : but in the passages which follow, there is real
power of metaphysical discrimination.
" Observe* what actually takes place in the formation
" of language and thought among ourselves. To the
" child learning to speak, words are not the signs of
"thoughts, but of intuitions:! the words man and horse
" do not represent a collection of attributes, but are only
" the name of the individual now before him. It is not
" until the name has been successively appropriated to
" various individuals, that reflection begins to inquire
"into the common features of the class. Language,
" therefore, as taught to the infant, is chronologically
" prior to thought and posterior to sensation. In inquir-
" ing how far the same process can account for the
" invention of language, which now takes place in the
" learning it, the real question at issue is simply this.
" Is the act of giving names to individual objects of sense
* Prolegomena Logica, pp. 19, 20, and 29-31.
f By intuitions Mr. Mansel means the Anschauungen of Kant, or what
Mr. Mansel himself otherwise calls Presentations of Sense, to which he
adds Representations of Imagination.
400 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
" a thing so completely beyond the power of a man
" created in the full maturity of his faculties, that we
" must suppose a Divine Instructor performing precisely
" the same office as is now performed for the infant by
" his mother or his nurse ; teaching him, that is, to
" associate this sound with this sight ? . All con-
" cepts are formed by means of signs which have
" previously been representative of individual objects
" only. . . . Similarities are noticed earlier than dif-
" ferences : and our first abstractions may be said to be
" performed for us, as we learn to give the same name
" to individuals presented to us under slight, and at first
" unnoticed, circumstances of distinction. The same
" name is thus applied to different objects, long before
" we learn to analyse the growing powers of speech and
" thought, to ask what we mean by each several instance
" of its application, to correct and fix the signification
" of words used at first vaguely and obscurely. To
" point out each successive stage of the process by which
" signs of intuition become gradually signs of thought,
" is as impossible as to point out the several moments
" at which the growing child receives each successive
" increase of his stature."
These remarks of Mr. Mansel remove, as it seems to
me, the only real argument for the supposition that Con-
cepts, or what are called General Notions, are formed
without the aid of signs. But the counter-doctrine
must be received with an important reservation. Signs
are necessary, but the signs need not be artificial ; there
are such things as natural signs. The only reality there
is in the Concept is, that we are somehow enabled and
led, not once or accidentally, but in the common course
. of our thoughts, to attend specially, and more or less
exclusively, to certain parts of the presentation of sense
or representation of imagination which we are conscious
of. Now, what is there to make us do this ? There must
be something which, as often as it recurs either to our
senses or to our thoughts, directs our attention to those
particular elements in the perception or in the idea : and
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 401
whatever performs this office is virtually a sign ; but it
needs not be a word ; the process certainly takes place,
to a limited extent, in the inferior animals ; and even
with human beings who have but a small vocabulary,
many processes of thought take place habitually by
other symbols than words. It is a doctrine of one of
the most fertile thinkers of modern times, Auguste
Comte, that besides the logic of signs, there is a logic
of images, and a logic of feelings. In many of the
familar processes of thought, and especially in uncul-
tured minds, a visual image serves instead of a word.
Our visual sensations perhaps only because they are
almost always present along with the impressions of our
other senses have a facility of becoming associated with
them. Hence, the characteristic visual appearance of an j ^ ,
object easily gathers round it, by association, the ideas of
all other peculiarities which have, in frequent experience,
coexisted with that appearance : and, summoning up
these with a strength and certainty far surpassing that
of the merely casual associations which it may also
raise, it concentrates the attention on them. This is an
image serving for a sign the logic of images. The
same function may be fulfilled by a feeling. Any strong
and highly interesting feeling, connected with one attri-
bute of a group, spontaneously classifies all objects ac-
cording as they possess or do not possess that attribute.
We may be tolerably certain that the things capable
of satisfying hunger form a perfectly distinct class in the
mind of any of the more intelligent animals ; quite as
much so as if they were able to use or understand the
word food. We here see in a strong light the impor-
tant truth, that hardly anything universal can be affirmed
in psychology except the laws of association. As almost
all general propositions which can be laid down respect-
ing Mind, are consequences of these laws, so do these
ultimate laws, in varying cases, generate different deriva-
tive laws ; and are continually raising up excep-
tions to the empirical generalizations yielded by
direct psychical observation, which, so far as true,
DD
402 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
being mere cases of the wider laws, are always limited
by them.
We have now attained a theory of Classification, of
Class Notions, and of Class Names, which is clear, free
from difficulties, and, in its essential elements, understood
and assented to by Sir W. Hamilton. With the excep-
tion of a few minor matters, I find no fault in his theory.
It is where his theory ends and his practice begins, that
I am obliged to diverge from him. His theory is a com-
plete condemnation of his practice. His theory is that
of Nominalism ; but he affirms, in opposition to every
Conceptualist, that Nominalism and Conceptualism are
the same, and on this justification expounds all the
operations of the intellect in the language, and on the
assumptions, of Conceptualism. If a Concept does not
exist as a separate or independent object of thought, but
is always a mere part of a concrete image, and has
nothing that discriminates it from the other parts except
a special share of attention, guaranteed to it by special
association with a name; what is meant by the para-
mount place assigned to Concepts in all the intellectual
processes ? Can it be right to found the whole of Logic,
the entire theory of Judgment and Reasoning, upon a
thing which has merely a fictitious or constructive
existence ? Is it correct to say that we think by means
of Concepts ? Would it not convey both a clearer and
a truer meaning, to say that we think by means of ideas
of concrete phenomena, such as are presented in experi-
ence or represented in imagination, and by means of
names, which being in a peculiar manner associated with
certain elements of the concrete images, arrest our atten-
tion on those elements ? Sir W. Hamilton has told us
that a concept cannot, as such, be " realized in thought,"
or " elicited into consciousness." Can it be, that we think
and reason by means of that which cannot be thought,
of which we cannot become conscious ? Of course Sir
W. Hamilton did not mean, nor do I, that we cannot
think or be conscious of the attributes which are said to
compose the concept ; but we can only be conscious of
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 403
them as forming a representation jointly with other
attributes which do not enter into the concept. And the
difference between the parts of the same representation
which are inside and those which are outside what is
called the concept, is not that the former are attended to
and the latter not, for neither of these is always true.
It is, that foreseeing that we shall frequently or occa-
sionally desire to attend only to the former, we have made
for ourselves, or have received from our predecessors, a
contrivance for being reminded of them, which also
serves for fixing our exclusive attention upon them
when called to mind. To say, therefore, that we think
by means of concepts, is only a circuitous and obscure
way of saying that we think by means of general or
class names.* To give an intelligible idea of the fact,
we always need to translate it out. of the former language
into the latter. It is possible, no doubt, so to define
the terms that both expressions shall mean the same
thing. But the less appropriate language has the im-
mense disadvantage, that it cannot be used without
tacitly assuming that these mere parts of our complex
concrete perceptions and ideas have a separate mental
existence, which is admitted not to belong to them. No
one, more fully than Sir W. Hamilton, recognises the
true theory ; but the acknowledgment only serves him
* It is for want of apprehending this view of the matter that Sir W.
Hamilton (Lectures, iii. 31, 32) brings a charge of self-contradiction against
Archbishop Whately, because, having in the commencement and through-
out his treatise ou Logic, represented Reasoning as the object-matter of
that science, he, in certain passages, says that Logic is entirely conversant
with the use of language. This is a contradiction only from Sir W.
Hamilton's point of view. If Archbishop Whately's had been the same
if he had thought as Sir W. Hamilton did respecting Concepts, considered
as the object-matter of Reasoning he would have been justly liable to the
imputation cast upon him. But the Archbishop's two statements are
perfectly consistent, if we suppose his opinion to have been, that the for-
mation of Concepts, and the subsequent process of combining them in
arguments, are themselves processes of language. This doctrine (which >=
in fact Mr. Mansel's) Sir W. Hamilton deems too absurd to be imputed
to the Archbishop (Discussions, p. 13*). Yet he fancies himself a Nomi-
nalist, and does understand and assent to all the arguments of Nominalism.
Unfortunately an intelligent assent to one of two conflicting doctrines is
in his case no guarantee against holding, for all practical purposes of
thought, the other.
D D 2
404 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
as an excuse for delivering himself up unreservedly to
all the logical consequences of the false theory. To read
the account which he and Mr. Mansel, in common with
the great majority of modern logicians, give of our intel-
lectual processes which they always make to consist
essentially of some operation practised upon concepts no
one would ever imagine that concepts were not complete,
rounded off, distinct and separate possessions of the
mind, habitually dealt with by it quite apart from any-
thing else ; and this, in the general opinion of Concep-
tualists, they are : but according to Sir W. Hamilton
and Mr. Mansel, they are secretly, all the while, inca-
pable of being thought except as parts of something else
which has always to be dealt with along with them, but
which these philosophers, in their expositions, suppress
as completely, as if they had forgotten that its necessary
presence is part of their theory. For these and other
reasons, I think that the words Concept, General Notion,
and other phrases of like import, convenient as they are
for the lighter and every-day uses of philosophical dis-
cussion, should be abstained from where precision is re-
quired. Above all, I hold that nothing but confusion
ever results from introducing the term Concept into
Logic, and that instead of the Concept of a class, we
should always speak of the signification of a class name.*
The signification of a class name has two aspects, cor-
responding to the distinction to which Sir W. Hamilton
attaches so much importance, between the Extension and
* Dr. M'Cosh says (p. 276), " I think it desirable to have a phrase to
" denote, not the ' signification of a class name,' but the thing signified by
" the class name : and the fittest I can think of is Concept." But the
" thing signified" by the class name is the class ; the various objects called
by the name : and class is a sufficient name for these, nor has the word
Concept, to my knowledge, ever been predicated of them, but only of Sir
W. Hamilton's " bundles of attributes." Dr. M'Cosh's use of the word
Concept, for the thing conceived, not the conception, is, I believe, peculiar
to himself.
I must add, that the chapter of Dr. M'Cosh from which I am now
quoting, that headed, " The Logical Notion," contains much sound phi-
losophy, and little with which I disagree except the persistent impression
which the author keeps up throughout the chapter that I do disagree
with him.
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 405
the Comprehension of a concept ; which is merely a bad
expression for the distinction between the two modes of
signification of a concrete general name. Most names
are still, what according to Mr. Mansel they all were
originally, names of objects; and do not cease to be so
by becoming class names ; but, though names of objects,
they become expressive of certain attributes of those
objects, and when predicated of an object, they affirm of
it those attributes. The name is said, in the language
of logicians, to denote the objects arid connote the attri-
butes. W/dte denotes chalk and other white substances,
and connotes the particular colour which is common to
them. Bird denotes eagles, sparrows, crows, geese, and
so forth, and connotes life, the possession of wings, and
the other properties by which we are guided in applying
the name. The various objects denoted by the class
name are what is meant by the Extension of the con-
cept, while the attributes connoted are its Comprehen-
sion. It must be remarked, however, that the Extension
is not anything intrinsic to the concept; it is the sum of
all the objects, in our concrete images of which, the concept
is included : but the Comprehension is the very concept
itself, for the concept means nothing but our mental repre-
sentation of the sum of the attributes composing it.
And here it is important to take notice of a psycho-
logical truth, which forms an additional reason for pre-
ferring the expression that we think by general names,
to that of thinking by concepts. Since the concept only
exists as a part of a concrete mental state ; if we say
that we think by means of it, and not by the whole
which is a part of it, it ought at least to be the part by
which we think. Since that is the only distinction be-
tween it and the remainder of the presentation or repre-
sentation in which it is imbedded, at least that distinc-
tion should be real : all which enters into the concept
ought to be operative in thought. So far is this from,
being true, that in our processes of thought, seldom
more than a part, sometimes a very small part, of what
is comprehended in the concept, is attended to, or comes
406 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
into play. This is forcibly stated, though in Concep-
tualist phraseology, by Mr. Mansel. "We can," he says,*
" and in the majority of cases do, employ concepts as
" instruments of thought, without submitting them to
" the test of even possible individualization. ... I can-
" not conceive a triangle which is neither equilateral, nor
" isosceles, nor scalene; but I can judge and reason about
" a triangle without at the moment trying to conceive it
" at all. This is one of the consequences of the repre-
" sentation of concepts by language. The sign is substi-
" tutedfor the notion signified-, a step which considerably
" facilitates the performance of complex operations of
" thought ; but in the same proportion endangers the
" logical accuracy of each successive step, as we do not,
" in each, stop to verify our signs. Words, as thus em-
" ployed, resemble algebraical symbols, which, during
" the process of a long calculation, we combine in various
" relations to each other, without at the moment thinking
" of the original signification assigned to each." The
attempt to stand at once on two incompatible theories,
leads to strange freaks of expression. Mr. Mansel de-
cribes us as thinking by means of concepts which we
are incapable of forming, and do not even attempt to
form, but use the signs instead. Yet he will not consent
to call this thinking by the signs, but insists that it is
the concepts which are even in this case the " instru-
ments of thought." It is surely a very twisted logical
position which, when he is so entirely right in what he
has to say, compels him to use so strangely contorted a
mode of saying it.
The same important psychological fact is excellently
illustrated by Sir W. Hamilton in one of the very best
chapters of his works, the Tenth Lecture on Logic, in
which it is stated as follows :f " As a notion or con-
'" cept is the fictitious whole or unity made up of a plu-
" rality of attributes, a whole, too, often of a very
" complex multiplicity ; and as this multiplicity is only
" mentally held together, inasmuch as the concept is
* Prolegomena Logica, pp. 31, 32. f Lectures, iii. 171.
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 407
" fixed and ratified in a sign or word ; it frequently hap-
" pens tliat, in its employment, the word does not sug-
" gest the whole amount of thought for which it is the
" adequate expression, but, on the contrary, we frequently
" give and take the sign, either with an obscure or indis-
" tinct consciousness of its meaning, or even without an
" actual consciousness of its signification at all." The
word does not always serve the purpose of fixing our
attention on the whole of the attributes which it con-
notes ; some of them may be only recalled to mind faintly,
others possibly not at all : a phenomenon easily to be
accounted for by the laws of Obliviscence. But the part
of the attributes signified which the word does recal,
may be all that is necessary for us to think of, at the
time and for the purpose in hand; it may be a sufficient
part to set going all the associations by means of which
we proceed through that thought to ulterior thoughts.
Indeed, it is because part of the attributes have gene-
rally sufficed for that purpose, that the habit is acquired
of not attending to the remainder. When the attributes
not attended to are really of no importance for the end
in view, and if attended to would not have altered the
results of the mental process, there is no harm done :
much of our valid thinking is carried on in this manner,
and it is to this that our thinking processes owe, in a
great measure, their proverbial rapidity. This kind of
thinking was called, by Leibnitz, Symbolical. A passage
of one of the early writings of that eminent thinker, in
which it is brought to notice with his accustomed clear-
ness, is translated by Sir W. Hamilton, from whom I
re-quote it.*
" For the most part, especially in an analysis of any
" length, we do not view at once (non simul intuemur)
" the whole characters or attributes of the thing, but in
" place of these we employ signs, the explication of which
" into what they signify we are wont, at the moment of
" actual thought, to ouiit, knowing or believing that we
" have this explication always in our power. Thus, when
* Lectures, iii. 181.
408 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
" I think a chiliagon (or polygon of a thousand sides) I
" do not always consider the various attributes of the
" side, of the equality, and of the number or thousand,
" but use these words (whose meaning is obscurely and
" imperfectly presented to the mind) in lieu of the notions
" which I have of them, because I remember, that I
" possess the signification of these words, though their
" application and explication I do not at present
" deem to be necessary : this mode of thinking, 1 am.
" used to call blind or symbolical: we employ it in Algebra
" and in Arithmetic, but in fact universally. And cer-
" tainly when the notion is very complex, we cannot
" think at once all the ingredient notions : but where
" this is possible, at least, inasmuch as it is possible,
" I call the cognition intuitive. Of the primary elements
" of our notions, there is given no other knowledge than
" the intuitive : as of our composite notions there is, lor
" the most part, possible only a symbolical."*
Yet the elements which are thus habitually left out,
and of which in the case of a composite notion, if Leib-
nitz is right, some must be left out, are really parts of
the signification of the name, and if the word. Concept
has any meaning, are parts of the concept. Leibnitz
* It will be remarked that Leibnitz here employs the word Intuitive in
a sense entirely different from that which British metaphysicians, and Sir
W. Hamilton himself, attach to the word. In Leibnitz's sense, we cognise
a thing intuitively in as far as we are conscious of the attributes ot the
thing itself ; symbolically in as far as we merely think of its name, as
standing for an aggregate of attributes, without having all, or perhaps any,
of those attributes present to our mind. I cannot help being surprised
that Sir W. Hamilton should have regarded this distinction of Leibnitz as
coinciding with that of Kant and the modern German thinkers between
Begriff and Anschauung, in other words, Concept and Presentation. Sir
W. Hamilton considers Begriff to be a name for " the symbolical notions
of the understanding," in contrast with Anschauung, which means " the
intuitive presentations of Sense and representations of Imagination."
(Lectures, iii. Ib3.) He is right as to Anschauung, but as for " symbolical
notions of the understanding," our thinking is called by Leibnitz symbolical
exactly in so far as it takes place without any " notions," any concept or
Begriff at all, by virtue of the mere knowledge that there is a Begriff which
the word represents, and which we could recal if we wanted it. When
thinking is completely symbolical, the meaning of the word is eliminated
from thought, and only the word remains : as in Leibnitz's own illustration
from algebra.
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 409
accordingly knew better than to say, as Mr. Mansel says
and Sir W. Hamilton implies, that even in these cases
we think by means of the concept. According to him
we sometimes think entirely without the concept, gene-
rally only by a part of it, which may be the wrong part,
or an insufficient part, but which may be, and in all
sound thinking is, sufficient. On this point, therefore,
a false apprehension of the facts of thought is conveyed
by the doctrine which speaks of Concepts as its instru-
ment. Leibnitz would perhaps have said, that the name
is the instrument in one of the two kinds of thinking,
and the concept in the other. The more reasonable
doctrine surely is, that the name is the instrument in
both ; the difference being, that in one case it does the
whole, and in the other only a part, perhaps the minimum,
of the work for which it is intended and fitted, that of
reminding us of the portions of our concrete mental
representations which we expect that we shall have need
of attending to.
In summary ; if the doctrine, that we think by con-
cepts, means that a concept is the only thing present to
the mind along with the individual object which (to use
Sir W. Hamilton's language) we think under the con-
cept, this is not true : since there is always present a
concrete idea or image, of which the attributes compre-
hended in the concept are only, and cannot be conceived
as anything but, a part. Again, if it be meant that the
concept, though only a part of what is present to the
mind, is the part which is operative in the act of thought,
neither is this true : for what is operative is, in a great
majority of cases, much less than the entire concept,
being that portion only which we have retained the habit
of distinctly attending to. In neither of these senses,
therefore, do we think by means of the concept : and all
that is true is, that when we refer any object or set of
objects to a class, some at least of the attributes included
in the concept are present to the mind ; being recalled
to consciousness and fixed in attention, through their
association with the class-name.
410 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
Before leaving this part of the subject, it seems neces-
sary to remark, that Sir W. Hamilton is by no means
consistent in the extension which he gives to the signifi-
cation of the word Concept. In most cases in which he
uses it, he makes it synonymous with General Notion,
and allows concepts of classes only, not of individuals.*
It is thus that he expressly defines the term. " A Con-
" cept," he says,f " is the cognition or idea of the gene-
" ral character or characters, point or points, in which a
" plurality of objects coincide." " Concept," he says
again,j "is convertible with general notion, or more cor-
" rectly, notion simply." He speaks of the extending of
the term to our direct knowledge of individuals, as an
"abusive employment" of it. He also saysj "No-
" tions and Concepts are sometimes designated by the
" style of general notions, general conceptions. This
" is superfluous, for in propriety of speech, notions and
" concepts are, in their very nature, general." In cer-
tain places, however, he speaks of concepts of indivi-
duals. ".If I think^[ of Socrates as son of Sophroniscus,
" as Athenian, as philosopher, as pugnosed, these are
" only so many characters, limitations, or determinations
" which I predicate of Socrates, which distinguish him
" from all other men, and together make up my notion
" or concept of him." And again,** " When the Exten-
" sion of a concept becomes a minimum, that is, when it
" contains no other notions under it, it is called an indi-
" vidual." And further on,ff " It is evident that the
" more distinctive characters the concept contains, the
" more minutely it will distinguish and determine, and
" that if it contain a plenum of distinctive characters, it
" must contain the distinctive, the determining cha-
" racters of some individual object. How do the two
" quantities now stand ? In regard to the comprehen-
" sion or depth, it is evident that it is here at its maxi-
" mum, the concept being a complement of the whole
* Lectures, iii. 119, 121, 127, 128, 130, cum multis aliis.
f Ibid. p. 122. J Discussions, p. 283.
Lectures, iii. 121. || Ibid. p. 212. f Ibid. p. 78.
** Ibid. p. 146. ft Ibid. p. 148.
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 411
" attributes of an individual object, which, by these attri-
" butes, it thinks and discriminates from every other.
" On the contrary, the extension or breadth of the con-
" cept is here at its minimum ; for, as the extension is
" great in proportion to the number of objects to which
" the concept can be applied, and as the object here is
" only an individual one, it is evident that it could not
" be less without ceasing to exist at all." But, in the
sequel of the same exposition, he again seems to sur-
render this use of the word Concept as an improper one,
saying,* " If a concept be an individual, that is, only
" a bundle of individual qualities, it is ... not a proper
" abstract concept at all, but only a concrete represen-
" tation of Imagination." And indeed, no other doctrine
is consistent with the proposition elsewhere laid down
by our author (though founded, as I think, on an error),
that " the words Conception, Concept, Notion, should
" be limited to the thought of what cannot be repre-
" sented in imagination, as the thought suggested by
" a general term."t
Mr. Mansel, on the contrary, justifies the phrase, con-
cept of an individual, maintaining that " the subjects of
all logical judgments are concepts."]: "The man," he
says, " as an individual existing at some past time, can-
" not become immediately an object of thought, and
" hence is not, properly speaking, the subject of any
" logical proposition. If I say, Caesar was the conqueror
" of Pompey, the immediate object of my thought is not
" Csesar as an individual existing two thousand years
" ago, but a concept now present in my mind, compris-
" ing certain attributes which I believe to have coex-
" isted in a certain man. I may historically know that
" these attributes existed in one individual only ; and
" hence my concept, virtually universal, is actually singu-
" lar, from the accident of its being predicable of that
" individual only. But there is no logical objection to
" the theory that the whole history of mankind may be
* Lectures, iii. p. 152. f Foot-note to Reid, p. 360.
+ Prolegomena Logica, p. 63. Ibid. p. 62.
412 THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTS
" repeated at recurring intervals, and that the name and
" actions of Caesar may be successively found in various
" individuals at corresponding periods of every cycle."
If this be so, one of two things follows. Either, if
I met with a person who exactly corresponded to the
, concept I have formed of Caesar, I must suppose that
this person actually is Ca9sar, and lived in the century
preceding the birth of Christ ; or else, I cannot think of
Caesar as Caesar, but only as a Caesar ; and all those which
are mistakenly called proper names are general names,
the names of virtual classes, signifying a set of attributes
which carry the name with them, wherever they are found.
Either ^theory seems to be sufficiently refuted by stating
it. Surely the true doctrine is that of Sir W. Hamilton,
that what is called my concept of Caesar is the presenta-
tion in imagination of the individual Caesar as such. Mr.
Mansel might have learnt better from Eeid, who says:
" Most words (indeed all general words) are the signs of
" ideas : but proper names are not : they signify indivi-
" Idual things, and not ideas."* And again, soon after :f
" The same proper name is never applied to several indi-
" viduals on account of their similitude, because the
" very intention of a proper name is to distinguish one
" individual from all others ; and hence it is a maxim in
" grammar that proper names have no plural number.
" A proper name signifies nothing but the individual
" whose name it is; and when we apply it to the indivi-
" dual, we neither affirm nor deny anything concerning
" him." The whole of Reid's doctrine respecting names
and general notions is not only far more clear, but nearer
to the true doctrine of the connotation of names, than Sir
W. Hamilton's or Mr. Mansel's.J
* Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Works, p. 404. By ideas Reid
here means (as he fully explains) attributes.
f Ibid. p. 412.
J Accordingly, when Sir "W. Hamilton (foot-note to p. 691) contends, in
opposition to Eeid, that there are definitions which are not nominal but
notional, since they have for their object "the more accurate determination
of the contents of a notion," there is no real difference of meaning between
them : the contents of a notion being simply the connotation of a name.
Sir W. Hamilton enters, at some length, into the explanation of what
OR GENERAL NOTIONS. 413
is meant by the clearness, and the distinctness, of Concepts. A concept,
according to him, is clear, if we can distinguish it as a whole from other
concepts ; distinct, if we can discriminate the characters or attributes of
which it is the sum (Lectures, iii. 158). The last statement is intelligible,
but what does the first mean P If we do not know of what characters
the concept is composed, seeing that it has no existence but in those cha-
racters, how can we know it so as to distinguish it from other concepts ?
Our author certainly had not a clear conception of what makes a con-
ception clear ; and the proof is, that he adopts as part of his text a quota-
tion from Esser's Logic, in which Esser makes the clearness of a concept
to depend on our being able to distinguish, not the concept itself, but the
objects included under it; on our being able, in short, to apply the class-
name correctly. According to Esser, " a concept is said to be clear, when
" the degree of consciousness by which it is accompanied is sufficient to,
" discriminate" not itself from other concepts, but "what we think in and
" through it, from what we think in and through other notions :" and
" notions absolutely clear" are " notions whose objects" (not as Sir W.
Hamilton says, themselves) cannot " possibly be confounded with aught else,
whether known or unknown." (Lectures, iii. 160, 161.) So that, according
to Esser, the clearness of a concept has reference to its Extension, the
distinctness to its Comprehension. This is not the only instance in which
our author helps out his own expositions by passages from other authors,
written from a point of view more or less different from his own.
414
CHAPTEE XVIII.
OF JUDGMENT.
THOUGH, as has appeared in the last chapter, the pro-
position that we think by concepts is, if not positively
untrue, at least an unprecise and misleading expression
of the truth, it is not, however, to be concluded that
Sir W. Hamilton's view of Logic, being wholly grounded
on that proposition, must be destitute of value. Many
writers have given good and valuable expositions of the
principles and rules of Logic, from the Conceptualist
point of view. The doctrines which they have laid
down respecting Conception, Judgment, and Eeasoning,
have been capable of being rendered into equivalent
statements respecting Terms, Propositions, and Argu-
ments ; these, indeed, were what the writers really had
in their thoughts, and there was little amiss except a
mode of expression which attempted to be more philo-
sophical than it knew how to be. To say nothing of
less illustrious examples, this is true of all the properly
logical part of Locke's Essay. His admirable Third
Book requires hardly any other alteration to bring it up
to the scientific level of the present time, than to be
corrected by blotting out everywhere the words ^Abstract
Idea, and replacing them by "the connotation of the
class name."
We shall, accordingly, proceed to examine the expla-
nation of Judgment, and of Eeasoning, which Sir W.
Hamilton has built on the foundation of the doctrine of
Concepts.
" To judge," he says,* " is to recognise the relation
* Lectures, iii. 225, 226.
415
" of congruence or of confliction in which two concepts,
" two individual things, or a concept and an individual,
" compared together, stand to each other. This recog-
" nition, considered as an internal consciousness, is called
" a Judgment ; considered as expressed in language, it
" is called a Proposition or Predication."
To be certain of understanding this, we must inquire
what is meant by a relation of congruence or of con-
fliction between concepts. To consult Sir W. Hamilton's
definitions of words is, as we have seen, not a sure way
of ascertaining the sense in which he practically uses
them ; but it is one of the ways, and we are bound to
employ it in the first instance. A few pages before, he
has given a sort of definition of these terms.* " Con-
" cepts, in relation to each other, are said to be either
" Congruent or Agreeing, inasmuch as they may be con-
" nected in thought ; or Conjlictwe, inasmuch as they
" cannot. The connection constitutes the Opposition of
" notions." This Opposition is twofold. " 1. Lnme-
" diate or Contradictory Opposition, called likewise Uepug-
t( nance; and 2. Mediate or Contrary Opposition. The
" former emerges when one concept abolishes directly,
" or by simple negation, what another establishes ; the
" latter, when one concept does this not directly, or by
" simple negation, but through the affirmation of some-
" thing else."
Congruent Concepts, therefore, does not mean concepts
which coincide, either wholly or in any of their parts,
but such as are mutually compatible ; capable of being
predicated of the same individual ; of being combined
in the same presentation of sense or representation of
imagination. This is more clearly expressed in a pas-
sage from Krug, which our author adopts as part of his
own exposition. f " Identity is not to be confounded
" with Agreement or Congruence, nor Diversity with
" Confliction. All identical concepts are, indeed, con-
" gruent, but all congruent notions are not identical.
" Thus learning and virtue, beauty and riches, magnanimity
* Lectures, iii. 213, 214. f Ibid. p. 214.
416 JUDGMENT.
" and stature, are congruent notions, inasmuch as, in
" thinking a thing, they can easily be combined in the
" notion we form of it, although themselves very dif-
" ferent from each other. In like manner all conflicting
" notions are diverse or different notions, for unless dif-
" ferent, they could not be mutually conflictive ; but, on
" the other hand, all different concepts are not conflic-
" tive ; but those only whose difference is so great that
"each involves the negation of the other; as for ex-
" ample, virtue and vice, beauty and deformity, wealth and
" poverty'' Thus interpreted, our author's doctrine is,
that to judge, is to recognise whether two concepts, two
things, or a concept and a thing, are capable of coexist-
ing as parts of the same mental representation. This I
will call Sir W. Hamilton's first theory of Judgment ;
I will venture to add, his best.
But he soon after proceeds to say,* "When two or
" more thoughts are given in consciousness, there is in
" general an endeavour on our part to discover in them,
" and to develop, a relation of congruence or of conflic-
'' tion ; that is, we endeavour to find out whether these
" thoughts will or will not coincide may or may not
" be blended into one. If they coincide, we judge, we
" enounce, their congruence or compatibility : if they do
" not coincide, we judge, we enounce, their confliction or
" incompatibility. Thus, if we compare the thoughts,
"' water, iron, and rusting, find them congruent, and
" connect them into a single thought, thus water rusts
" iron in that case we form a judgment.
" But if two notions be judged congruent, in other
" words, be conceived as one, this their unity can only
" be realized in consciousness, inasmuch as one of these
" notions is viewed as an attribute or determination of
" the other. For, on the one hand, it is impossible
" for us to think as one two attributes, that is, two
" things viewed as determining, and yet neither deter-
" mining or qualifying the other ; nor, on the other
" hand, two subjects, that is, two things thought as
* Lectures, iii. 226, 227.
JUDGMENT. 41 7
" determined, and yet neither of them determined or
" qualified by the other."
In this regress from ignolum to ignotius, the next tiring
to be ascertained is, what relation between one thought
and another is signified by the verb "to determine."
Such explanation as our author deemed it necessary
to give, may be found a few pages further back. He
there stated,"* that by determining a notion, he means
adding on more characters, by each of which " we limit
" or determine more and more the abstract vagueness or
" extension of the notion ; until at last, if every attri-
" bute be annexed, the sum of attributes contained in
" the notion becomes convertible with the sum of attri-
" butes of which some concrete individual or reality is the
" complement." Substituting, then, the definition for what
it defines, we find our author's opinion to be, that two
notions can only be congruent, that is, capable of being
blended into one, if we conceive one of them as adding
on additional attributes to the other. This is not yet
very clear. We must have recourse to his illustration.
" For example,! we cannot think the two attributes elec-
" trical and polar as a single notion, unless we convert
" the one of these attributes into a subject, to be deter-
" mined or qualified by the other." Do we ever think
the two attributes electrical and polar as a single notion ?
We think them as distinct parts of the same notion, that
is, as attributes which are constantly combined. " But
" if we do, if we say, what is electrical is polar, we at
" once reduce the duality to unity ; ice judge t/tat polar
" is one of fhe constituent characters of the notion electrical,
" or that what is electrical is contained under the class of
" things, marked out by the common character of polarity"
The last italics are mine, intended to mark the place
where an intelligible meaning first emerges. " We may, J
" therefore, articulately define a judgment or proposi-
" tion to be the product of that act in which we pro-
" nounce that of two notions, thought as subject and ag
* Lectures, iii. 104. f Ibid. p. 227.
id. p. :
E E
418 JUDGMENT.
" predicate, f/te one does or does wot constitute a part of t/ie
" other, either in the quantity of Extension, or in the
" quantity of Comprehension."
This is Sir W. Hamilton's second theory of Judgment,
enunciated at a distance of exactly three pages from the
first, without the smallest suspicion on his part that they
are not one and the same. Yet they differ by the whole
interval which separates a part of from along with. Ac-
cording to the first theory, concepts are recognised as
congruent whenever they are not mutually repugnant ;
when they are capable of being objectively realized along
with one another ; when the attributes comprehended in
both of them can be simultaneously possessed by the
same object. According to the second theory, they are
only congruent when the one concept is actually a part
of the other. The only circumstance in which the two
theories resemble is, that both of them are unfolded out
of the vague expression " capable of being connected in
thought." They are, in fact, two different and conflicting
interpretations of that expression. How irreconcilable
they are, is apparent when we descend to particulars.
Krug's examples, learning and virtue, beauty and riches,
&c., are congruent in the first sense, since they are attri-
butes which can be thought as existing together in the
same subject. But is the concept learning a part of the
concept virtue, the concept beauty a part of the concept
riches, or vice versa ? Sir W. Hamilton would scarcely
affirm that they are in a relation of part and whole in
Comprehension ; and such relation as they have in Ex-
tension is not a relation between the concepts, but be-
tween the aggregates of real things of which they are
predicable. One of those aggregates might be part of
the other, though it is not ; but one of the concepts can
never be part of the other. No one can ever find the
notion beauty in the notion riches, nor conversely.
Our author having thus gently slid back into the com-
mon Conceptualist theory of judgment, that it consists in
recognising the identity or non-identity of two notions,
adheres to it thenceforward with as much consistency
u
JUDGMENT. 419
as we need ever expect to find in him. We may consider
as his final theory of Judgment, on which his subse-
quent logical speculations are built, that a judgment is
a recognition in thought, a proposition a statement in
words, that one notion is or is not a part of another.
He makes use of 'the word notion (doubtless) to include
the case in which either of the terms of the proposition
is singular. The two notions, one of which is recognised
as being or not being a part of the other, may be either
Concepts, that is, General Notions, or one of them may
be a mental representation of an individual object.
The first objection which, I think, must occur to any
one, on the contemplation of this definition, is that it
omits the main and characteristic element of a judgment
and of a proposition. Do we never judge or assert any-
thing but our mere notions of things ? Do we not make
judgments and assert propositions respecting actual
things? A Concept is a mere creation of the mind: it
is the mental representation formed within us of a phae-
nomenon ; or rather, it is a part of that mental repre-
sentation, marked off by a sign, for a particular purpose.
But when we judge or assert, there is introduced a new
element, that of objective reality, and a new mental fact,
Belief. Our judgments, and the assertions which express
them, do not enunciate our mere mode of mentally con-
ceiving things, but our conviction or persuasion that the
facts as conceived actually exist : and a theory of Judg-
ments and Propositions which does not take account of
this, cannot be the true theory. In the words of Reid,"""
" I give the name of Judgment to every determination
" of the mind concerning what is true or what is false.
" This, I think, is what logicians, from the days of
" Aristotle, have called judgment." And this is the
very element which Sir W. Hamilton's definition omits
from it.
I am aware that Sir W. Hamilton would have an
apparent answer to this. He would, I suppose, reply, that
the belief of actual reality, implied in assent to a proposi-
* Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Works, p. 415.
2
420 JUDGMENT.
tion, is not left out of account, but brought to account
in another place. The belief, he would say, is not
inherent in the judgment, but in the notions which are
the subject and predicate of the judgment ; these being
either mental representations of real objects, which if
represented in the mind at all, must be represented as
real, or Concepts formed by a comparison of real objects,
which therefore exist in the mind as concepts of realities.
Accordingly, when we judge and make assertions respect-
ing objects known to be imaginary, the judgments are
accompanied with no belief in any real existence except
that of the mental images ; what our author calls the
" presentations of phantasy." When, indeed, a judg-
ment is formed or an assertion is made respecting
something imaginary which is supposed to be real, as for
instance concerning a ghost, there is a belief in the real
existence in more than the mental image ; but this belief
is not anything superadded to the comparison of con-
cepts ; it already existed in the concepts ; a ghost was
thought as something having a real existence.
This, at least, is what might be said in behalf of Sir
W. Hamilton, though he has not himself said it. But
though it escapes from the objection against omitting the
element Belief from the definition of Judgment, it does
so by an entire inversion of the logical process of defini-
tion. The element of Belief, or Reality, may indeed be
in the concepts ; but it never could have got into the
concepts if it had not first been in the judgments by
which the concepts were constructed. If the belief of
reality had been absent from those judgments originally,
it never could have come round to them through the
concepts. Belief is an essential element in a judgment ;
it may be either present or absent in a concept. Our
author, and those who agree with him, postpone this part
of the subject until they are treating of the distinction
between True and False Propositions. They then say,
that if the relation which is judged to exist between the
notions, exists between the corresponding realities, the
proposition is true, and if not, false. But if the opera-
JUDGMENT. 421
tion of forming a judgment or a proposition includes
anything at all, it includes judging that the judgment or
the proposition is true. The recognition of it as true is not
only an essential part, but the essential element of it as a
judgment; leave that out, and there remains a mere
play of thought, in which no judgment is passed. It is
impossible to separate the idea of Judgment from the
idea of the truth of a judgment ; for every judgment
consists in judging something to be true. The element
Belief, instead of being an accident which can be passed in
silence, and admitted only by implication, constitutes the
very difference between a judgment and any othar intel-
lectual fact, and it is contrary to all the laws of Definition
to define Judgment by anything else. The very meaning
of a judgment, or a proposition, is something which is
capable of being believed or disbelieved ; which can be
true or false ; to which it is possible to say yes or no.
And though it cannot be believed until it has been con-
ceived, or (in plain terms) understood, the real object of
belief is not the concept, or any relation of the concept,
but the fact conceived. That fact need not be an outward
fact ; it may be a fact of internal or mental experience.
But even then the lact is one thing, the concept of it is
another, and the judgment is concerning the fact, not the
concept. The fact may bo purely subjective, as that I
dreamed something last night ; but the judgment is not
the cognition of a relation between the presentation f
and the concept having dreamed, but the cognition of the
real memory of a real event.
This first, and insuperable objection, the force of which
will be seen more and more the further we proceed, is
applicable to the Conceptualist doctrine of Judgment,
howsoever expressed, and to Sir W. Hamilton's as one
of the modes of expressing that doctrine. There are
other objections special to Sir W. Hamilton's form of it.
In what I have called Sir W. Hamilton's first theory
of judgment, we found him saying that the comparison,
ending in a recognition of congruence or confliction, may
be between " individual things" as well as between con-
422 JUDGMENT.
cepts. But in his second theory, one at least of the terms
of comparison must be a concept. For a judgment, accord-
ing to this theory, is " the product of that act in which
" we pronounce that of two notions, thought as subject
" and predicate, the one does or does not constitute a
" part of the other." Now a concept, that is, a bundle
of attributes, may be a part of another concept, and
may be a part of our mental image of an individual
object; but one notion of an individual object cannot be
a part of another notion of an individual object. One
object may be an integrant part of another, but it
cannot be a part in Comprehension or in Extension, as
these words are understood of a Concept. St. Paul's is an
integrant part of London, but neither an attribute of it,
nor an object of which it is predicable.
Since, therefore, a judgment, in Sir W. Hamilton's
second theory, is the recognition of the relation of part
and whole, either between two concepts, or between a con-
cept and an. individual presentation; the theory supposes
that the mind furnishes itself with concepts, or general
notions, before it begins to judge. Now this is not only
evidently false, but the contrary is asserted, in the most
decisive terms, by Sir W. Hamilton himself. He affirms,
and it is denied by nobody, that every Concept is built
up by a succession of judgments. We conceive an object
mentally as having such and such an attribute, because
we have first judged that it has that attribute in reality.
Let us see what our author says on this point in his
Lectures on Metaphysics. He says that there is a judg-
ment involved in every mental act.
" The fourth* condition of consciousness, which may
" be assumed as very generally acknowledged, is that it
" involves judgment. A judgment is the mental act by
" which one thing is affirmed or denied of another. It
" may to some seera strange that consciousness, the
" simple and primary act of intelligence, should be a
"judgment, which philosophers in general" (including
Sir W. Hamilton in his second theory) " have viewed as
* Lectures, i. 204.
JUDGMENT. 423
" a compound and derivative operation. This is, how-
" ever, altogether a mistake. A judgment is, as I shall
" hereafter show you, a simple act of mind, for every act
" of mind implies a judgment. Do we perceive or imagine
" without affirming, in the act, the external or internal
" existence of the object ? Now these fundamental affir-
" mations are the affirmations, in other words, the judg-
" ments, of consciousness."
And in a subsequent part of his Course : " You will*
" recollect that, when treating of Consciousness in general,
' I stated to you that consciousness necessarily involves
" a judgment ; and as every act of mind is an act of
" consciousness, every act of mind, consequently, involves
" a judgment. A consciousness is necessarily the con-
" sciousness of a determinate something, and we cannot
" be conscious of anything without virtually affirming -
" its existence, that is, judging it to be. Consciousness
" is thus primarily a judgment or affirmation of existence. ;
" Again, consciousness is not merely the affirmation of
" naked existence, but the affirmation of a certain quali-
" fied or determinate existence. We are conscious that
" we exist, only in and through our consciousness that
" we exist in this or that particular state that we are
" so and so affected, so and so active : and we are only
" conscious of this or that particular state of existence,
" inasmuch as we discriminate it as different from some
" other state of existence, of which we have been previously
" conscious and are now reminiscent ; but such a dis-
" crimination supposes, in consciousness, the affirmation.
" of the existence of one state of a specific character, and
" the negation of another. On this ground it was that
" I maintained, that consciousness necessarily involves,
" besides recollection, or rather a certain continuity of
" representation, also judgment and comparison ; and
" consequently, that, so far from comparison or judgment
11 being a process always subsequent to the acquisition oj
" knowledge through perception and self -consciousness, it is
" involved as a condition of the acquisitive process" But
* Lectures, ii. 277, 278.
424 JUDGMENT.
if judgment is a comparison of two concepts, or of a
concept and an individual object, and a recognition that
one of them is a part of (or even merely congruent with)
the other, it must be a process " always subsequent to
the acquisition of knowledge/' or, in other words, to
the formation of Concepts. The theory of Judgment
in the third volume of the Lectures, belongs to a dif-
ferent mode of thinking altogether from the theory of
Consciousness in the first and second ; and when Sir W.
Hamilton was occupied with either of them, he must
have temporarily forgotten the other.
But in the third volume itself the same inconsistency
is obtruded on us still more openly. We are there told
in plain words,* " Both concepts and reasonings may be
" reduced to judgments : for the act of judging, that is,
" the act of affirming or denying one thing of another
" in thought, is that in which the Understanding or Fa-
" culty of comparison is essentially expressed. A con-
" cept is a judgment : for, on the one hand, it is nothing
" but the result of a foregone judgment or series of judgments
" fixed and recorded in a word,asign, and it is only amplified
" by the annexation of a new attribute, through a con-
" tinuance of the same process. On the other hand, as a
" concept is thus the synthesis or complexion, and the record,
" 7 may add, of one or more prior acts oj judgment, it can,
" it is evident, be analysed into these again ; every con-
" cept is, in fact, a judgment or a fasciculus of judgments,
" -these judgments only riot explicitly developed in
" thought, and not formally expressed in terms."
That the same philosopher should have written these
words, and a little more than a hundred pages alter
should have defined a judgment as the result of a com-
parison of concepts, either between themselves, or with
individual objects, is, I think, the very crown of the self-
contradictions which we have found to be sown so thickly
in Sir W. Hamilton's speculations. Coming from a
thinker of such ability, it almost makes one despair
of one's own intellect and that of mankind, and feel as
* Lectures, iii. 117.
JUDGMENT. 425
if the attainment of truth on any of the more compli-
cated subjects of thought were impossible.
It is necessary to renounce one of these theories or
the other. Either a concept is not the " synthesis and
record of one or more prior acts of judgment," or a judg-
ment is not, at least in all cases, the recognition of a
relation of which one or both of the terms are Concepts.
The least that could be required of Sir W. Hamilton
would be so to modify his doctrine as to admit two kinds
of judgment: the one kind, that by which concepts are
formed, the other that which succeeds their formation.
When concepts have been formed, and we subsequently
proceed to analyse them, then, he might say, we form
judgments which recognise one concept as a whole, of
which another is a part. But the judgments by which
we constructed the concepts, and every subsequent judg-
ment by which, to use his own words, we amplify them
by the addition of a new attribute, have nothing to do
with comparison of concepts : it is the Anschauungen,
the intuitions, the presentations of experience, which we
in this case compare and judge.*
Take, for instance, Sir W. Hamilton's own example
of a judgment, " Water rusts iron :" and let us suppose
this truth to be new to us. Is it not like a mockery to
say with our author, that we know this truth by com-
paring "the thoughts, water, iron, and rusting?" Ought
* This mode of escape from contradiction is the one which has, in sub-
stance, been resorted to by Mr. Mansel. He distinguishes what he teims
Psychological from what he denominates Logical judgments. Psycholo-
gical judgments merely assert that some object of consciousness, either
external or internal, is present : they " may be generally stated in the
proposition, This is here." These are the only judgments which are
implied in, and necessary to, the formation of Concepts : and these judg-
ments, as they assert a matter of present consciousness, are necessarily
true. " But the psychological judgment must not be confounded with the
' logical. The former is the j udgment of a relation between the conscious
' subject and the immediate object of consciousness: the latter is the
' judgment of a relation which two objects of thought bear to each
' other. . . . The logical judgment necessarily contains two concepts, and
' hence must be regarded as logically and chronologically posterior to the
' conception, which requires one only." (Prolegomena Logica, pp. 53-o6).
But the operation by which a concept is built up, supposes much more
than a cognition of the present existence of a fact or facts of conscious-
fl (X W-CCU-Acnv. , OL Cfr^UWUviUL , 0^1 (X
426 JUDGMENT.
he not to have said the facts, water, iron, and rusting ?
and even then, is comparing the proper name for the
mental operation ? We do not examine whether three
tli oughts agree, but whether three outward facts coexist.
If we lived till doomsday we should never find the pro-
position that water rusts iron in our concepts, if we had
not first found it in the outward phenomena. The
proposition expresses a sequence, and what we call a
causation, not between our concepts, but between the
two sensible presentations of moistened iron and rust.
When we have already judged this sequence to exist out-
side us, that is, independently of our intellectual combi-
nations, we know it, and once known, it may find its way
into our concepts. But we cannot elicit out of a con-
cept any judgment which we have not first put into it ;
which we have not consciously assented to, in the act of
forming the concept. Whenever, therefore, we form a
new judgment judge a truth new to us the judgment
is not a recognition of a relation between concepts, but
of a succession, a coexistence, or a similitude, between
facts.
This is the smallest sacrifice on the part of Sir W.
Hamilton's theory of judgment, which would satisfy
his theory of Consciousness. But when thus reconciled
with a part of his system with which it now conflicts, it
would not be the better founded. It might still be
chased from point to point, unable to make a stand any-
where. For let us next suppose, that the judgment is
not new ; that the truth, Water rusts iron, is known to
us of old. When we again think of it, and think it
ness, and a judgment in the form, " This is here." It supposes the whole
process of comparing 1'acts of consciousness, and recognising, or in other
words, judging, in what points they resemble. It implies that the mind,
in its ' psychological" judgments, does to the Intuitions or Presentations
everything which it is supposed to do to the Concepts in the " logical"
ones. Consequently the distinction between Mr. Mansel's two kinds of
judgments is in their matter only, not in the mental operation, and is
therefore, as he would say, extra-logical ; to which I will add, insignificant,
it will be shown in the text that there is no psychological difference
between the two, and that the discrimination of one class of judgments as
conversant with Presentations and another with Concepts, and the attribu-
tion to the latter class of the name of logical, are founded on a false theory.
<A U-*^ .
\\ JUDGMENT. 427
as a truth, and assent to it, should we even then give a
correct account of what passes in our mind, by calling
this act of judgment a comparison of our thoughts our
concepts our notions of water, rust, and iron ? We
do not compare our artificial mental constructions, but
consult our direct remembrance of facts. We call to
mind that we have seen, or learned from credible testi-
mony, that when iron is long in contact with water, it
rusts. The question is not one of notions, but of beliefs ;
belief of past and expectation of future presentations of
sense. Of course it is psychologically true that when E
believe, I have a notion of that which I believe ; but the
ultimate appeal is not to the notion, but to the presenta-
tion or intuition. If I am in any doubt, what is the
question I ask myself' 3 Is it Do I think of, or figure
to myself, water as rusting iron ? or is it Did I ever
perceive, and have other people perceived, that water
rusts iron ? There are persons, no doubt, whose crite-
rion of judgment is the relation between their own con-
cepts, but these are not the persons whose judgments
the world has usually found worth adopting. If the
question between Copernicus and Ptolemy had depended
on whether we conceive the earth moving and the sun at
rest, or the sun moving and the earth at rest, I am
afraid the victory would have been with Ptolemy.
But, again, even if judging were entirely a notional
operation, consisting of the recognition of some relation
between concepts, it remains to be proved that the rela-
tion is that of Whole and Part. Could it, even then, be
said, that every judgment in which I predicate one thing
of another, on the faith of previous judgments recorded,
as our author says, in the concepts, consists in recog-
nising that one of the concepts includes the other as a
part of itself? When I judge that Socrates is mortal,
or that all men are mortal, does the judgment consist
in being conscious that my concept mortal is part of my
representation of Socrates, or of my concept man ?
This doctrine ignores the i'amous distinction, admitted,
I suppose, in some shape or other, by all philosophers,
428 JUDGMENT.
but most familiar to modern metaphysics in the form in
which it is stated by Kant the distinction between
Analytical and Synthetical judgments. Analytical judg-
ments are supposed to unfold the contents of a concept ;
affirming explicitly of a class, attributes which were
already part of the corresponding concept, and may be
brought out into distinct, consciousness by mere analysis
of it. Synthetical judgments, on the contrary, affirm of
a class, attributes which are not in the concept, and
which we therefore do not and cannot judge to be a part
of the concept, but only to be conjoined in fact with the
attributes composing the concept This distinction,
though obtruded upon our author by many of the writers
with whom he was familar, has so little in common with
his mode of thought, that he only slightly refers to it,
in a very few passages of his works : in one of these,
however,* he speaks of it as of something very impor-
tant, expresses his preference for the terms Explicative
and Ampliativfi as names for it, and discusses, not the
distinction itself, but its history ; apparently unconscious
that his own theory entirely does away with it. Accord-
ing to that, all judgments are analytical, or, as he pre-
fers to say, explicative. Even giving up so much of his
theory as contradicts his own doctrine on the formation
of concepts, the part remaining would compel him to
maintain that all judgments which are not new are
analytical, and that synthetical judgments are limited to
truths, or supposed truths, which we learn for the first
time.
This discrepancy between our author and almost all
philosophers, even of his own general way of thinking,
(including, among the rest, Mr. Mansel), arises from the
fact, that he understands by concept something different
from what they have usually understood by it. The
concept of a class, in Sir W. Hamilton's acceptation of
the term, includes all the attributes which we have
judged, and still judge, to be common to the whole class,
it means, in short, our entire knowledge of the class.
* Dissertations on Reid, pp. 787, 788.
JUDGMENT. 429
But, with philosophers in general, the concept of the
class as such, my concept of man, for example, as dis-
tinguished from my mental representation of an indivi-
dual man, includes, not all the attributes which I
ascribe to man, but such of them only as the classifica-
tion is grounded on, and as are implied in the meaning
of the name. Man is a living being, or Man is rational,
they would call analytical judgments, because the attri-
butes of life and rationality are of the number of those
which are already given in the concept Man: but Man
is mortal, they would account synthetical, because, fa-
miliar as the fact is, it is not already affirmed in the
very name Man, but has to be superadded in the pre-
dicate.
It is quite lawful for a philosopher (though seldom
prudent) to alter the meaning of a word, provided he
gives fair notice of his intention ; but he is bound, if he
does so, to remain consistent with himself in the new
meaning, and not to transfer to it propositions which are
only true in the old. This condition Sir W. Hamilton
does not observe. It often happens that different opinions
of his belong to different and inconsistent systems of
thought, apparently through his retaining from former
writers some doctrine, the grounds of which he has, by
another doctrine, subverted. His whole theory of Con-
cepts being infected by an inconsequence of this descrip-
tion, the retention of all the Conceptualist conclusions
along with Nominalist premises, it is no wonder if
further oversights of the same kind meet us in every
part of the details. The following is one of the most
palpable. As we just mentioned, the concept of a class
in our author's sense, includes all the attributes of the
class, so far as the thinker is acquainted with them ; the
whole of the thinker's knowledge of the class. This is
Sir W. Hamilton's own doctrine ; but along with it he
retains a doctrine belonging to the other meaning of
Concept, which I have contrasted with his. "The*
" exposition of the Comprehension of a notion is called
* Lectures, iii. 143.
430 JUDGMENT.
" its Definition :" and again* "Definition is the analysis
" of a complex concept into its component parts or
" attributes." But a thing is not analysed into its com-
ponent parts if any of the parts are left out. The two
opinions taken together lead, therefore, to the remark-
able consequence, that the definition of a class ought to
include the whole of what is known of the class. Those
who mean by the concept not all known attributes of
the class, but such only as are included in the connota-
tion of the name, may be permitted to say of a Defini-
tion that it is the analysis of the concept : but to Sir W.
Hamilton this was not permissible. To crown the incon-
sistency, he still presents! the stock example, Man
is a rational animal, as a gocd definition, and a typical
specimen of what a Definition is ; as if the notions
animal and rational exhausted the whole of the concept
Man, according to his meaning of Concept the entire
sum of the attributes common to the class. It would
hardly be believed, prior to a minute examination of his
writings, how much vagueness of thought, leading to
the unsuspecting admission of opposite doctrines in the
same breath, lurks under the specious appearance of
philosophical precision which distinguishes him.}
To return, from Sir W. Hamilton's self-contradictions,
to the merits of the question itself; the word Judgment,
by universal consent, is coextensive with the word Pro-
position : a Judgment must be so defined that a Pro-
position shall be the expression of it in words. Now, if
a Judgment expresses a relation between Concepts (which
* Lectures, iii. 151. f Ibid. pp. 143, 144.
J In his non-recognition of the difference between Analytical and
Synthetical judgments, it is already implied that he never recognises the
Connotation of Names ; which in itself is enough to vitiate his whole
logical system, and is a great point of inferiority in him to the best
Conceptualist thinkers, who do recognise it, though in a misleading
phraseology. To the same cause may be ascribed the extremely vulgar
character of the explanation of some of the leading metaphysical terms,
in his eighth Lecture. For example, the distinction between essential and
accidental qualities he defines thus that the essential qualities of a thing
are those " which it cannot lose without ceasing to be." This, which is a
retrogression from Conceptualism to Eealism, does but prove that he
JUDGMKNT. 431
for the purpose of the present discussion I have con-
ceded) the corresponding Proposition represents that
same relation by means of names : the names, therefore,
must be signs of the concepts, and the concepts must be
the meaning of the names. To make this tenable, the
Concept must be so construed as to consist of those
attributes only which are connoted by the name. Cor-
poreity, life, rationality, and any other attributes of man
which are part of the meaning of the word, insomuch
that where those attributes were not, we should with-
hold the name of man these are part of the con-
cept. But mortality, and all the other human attributes
which are the subject of treatises either on the human
body or on human nature, are not in the concept, be-
cause we do not affirm them of any individual by merely
calling him a man ; they are so much additional know-
ledge. The concept Man is not the sura of all the
attributes of a man, but only of the essential attributes
of those which constitute him a man ; in other words,
those on which the class Man is grounded, and which
are connoted by the name what used to be called the
essence of Man, that without which Man cannot be, or
in other words, would not be what he is called. With-
out mortality, or without thirty-two teeth, he would
still be called a man : we should not say, This is not a
man ; we should say, This man is not mortal, or has
fewer than thirty-two teeth.
Instead, therefore, of saying with Sir W. Hamilton,
that the attributes composing the concept of the predi-
cate are part of those which compose the concept of the
simply transcribed his definition from the Realistic Schoolmen. In a
later part of his Lectures (iv. 11) he, more suo, forgets this definition, anl
replaces it by one of his own ; but in this second definition he betrays
that he never saw the genuine meaning which lay under the distinction,
so badly expressed by the schoolmen in the language of a false system.
Sir W. Hamilton, in distinguishing Essential from Unessential properties,
means only the difference between attributes of the whole genus, and
those confined to some of its species. Sir W. Hamilton's knowledge of
the scholastic writings was extraordinary ; but many students of them who
had not a tithe of that knowledge, have brought back and appropriated
much more of the important materials for thought which those writings
abundantly contain.
432 JUDGMENT.
subject, we ought to say, they are either a part, or are
invariably conjoined with them, not in our conception,
but in fact. Propositions in which the concept of the
predicate is part of the concept of the subject, or, to ex-
press ourselves more philosophically, in which the attri-
butes connoted by the predicate are part of those connoted
by the subject, are a kind of Identical Propositions : they
convey no information, but at most remind us of what,
if we understood the word which is the subject of the
proposition, we knew as soon as the word was pro-
nounced. Propositions of this kind are either defini-
nitions, or parts of definitions. These judgments are
analytical : they analyse the connotation of the subject-
name, and predicate separately the different attributes
which the name asserts collectively. All other affirma-
tive judgments are synthetical, and affirm that some at-
tribute or set of attributes is, not a part of those con-
noted by the subject-name, but an invariable accompani-
ment of them.*
There remains something to be said on another very
prominent feature in Sir W. Hamilton's theory of Judg-
ment. Having said, that in every judgment we com-
pare " two notions, thought as subject and predicate,"
* This is perfectly understood by Mr. Mansel, who says (Prolegomena
Logica, p. 5o), " When I assert that A is B, I do not mean that the
attributes constituting the concept A are identical with those constituting
' the concept B, for this is only true in identical judgments ; but that the
' object in which the one set of attributes is found, is the same as that in
which the other is found. To assert that all philosophers are liable to
error is not to assert that the signification of the term philosopher ia
identical with that of liable to error; but that the attributes compre-
' bended in these two distinct terms are in some manner united in the
' same subject." What Mr. Mansel here enunciates distinctly, was
contained, though less distinctly, in Sir W. Hamilton's first theory of judg-
ment, especially as he illustrated it from Krug. In adhering to that first
theory, as well as in limiting the concept to the attributes connoted by the
name for that limitation clearly results from his definition of a Concept
(p. 60), in combination with other passages Mr. Mansel. as it appears to
me, is much nearer the truth than Sir W. Hamilton; and would perhaps
be nearer still, if he were not entangled in the meshes of the Hamiltonian
phraseology.
An example how that phraseology controls him, in his strange assertion
(pp. 184, 185) that every concept " must contain a plurality of attributes"
as a condition of its conceivabihty ; for a simple idea, like a summum genus,
JUDGMENT. 433
and pronounce that "the one does or does not constitute
a part of the other," he adds, " either in the quantity of
Extension, or in the quantity of Comprehension."* He
developes this distinction as follows :f
" If the subject or determined notion be viewed as
" the containing whole, we have an Intensive or Com-
" prehensive proposition ; if the Predicate or determining
" notion be viewed as the containing whole, we have an
" Extensive proposition The relation of subject
" and predicate is contained within that of whole and
" part, for we can always view either the determining or
" the determined notion as the whole which contains the
" other. The whole, however, which the subject consti-
" tutes, and the whole which the predicate constitutes,
" are different, being severally determined by the oppo-
" site quantities of comprehension and of extension;
"and as subject and predicate necessarily stand to each
" other in the relation of these inverse quantities, it is
" manifestly a matter of indifference, in so far as the
" meaning is concerned, whether we view the subject as
" the whole of comprehension which contains the predi-
is by itself inconceivable." Inconceivable it truly is, but not in any sense
in which conceivability is required of a concept : only in the sense of not
being conceivable separately. " Simple ideas are never conceived as such,
but only as forming parts of a complex object;" in other words, they are
inconceivable in the sense in which, according to Sir W. Hamilton's
doctrine and Mr. Hansel's own, all concepts are inconceivable.
From a similar entanglement, although his account of Definition and
Division is decidedly better than Sir W. Hamilton's, he follows that philo-
sopher in treating the latter logical operation as a division of the Concept :
as if the concept were divided by dividing the things which it is predicable
of (pp. 191-194).
Dr. M'Cosh thinks (p. 291) that there are judgments (other than those
in which the predicates are proper names) which do not affirm or deny
attributes, viz. those in which we compare what he terms " mere Abstracts."
" We cannot call such attributive; thus, there would be no propriety in
" saying that 4 is an attribute of 2+2." But is not making 4, an attribute
of 2+2 ? Further on (p. 333) he says, that the predicate in this class of
propositions "has no quantity or extension, for it is not a class notion.
" When we say that 3x3 = 9, neither subject nor predicate has an in-
" definite number of objects embraced in- it." The objects embraced in 9
are nine apples, nine marbles, nine hours, nine miles, and all the other
aggregations of which nine can be predicated. Every numeral is the
name of a class, and a most comprehensive class, consisting of things of
all imaginable qualities. And the same observation applies to 3 X 3.
* Lectures, iii. 229. f Ibid. pp. 231-233,
r r
434 JUDGMENT.
" cate, or the predicate as the whole of extension which
" contains the subject. In point of fact, in single pro-
" positions it is rarely apparent which of the two wholes
"is meant; for the copula is, est, &c., equally denotes
" the one form of the relation or the other. Thus, in the
" proposition man is two-legged, the copula here is con-
" vertible with comprehends or contains in it, for the pro-
" position means man contains in it two-legged, that is, the
" subject man as an intensive whole or complex notion,
" comprehends as a part the predicate two-legged. Again, in
" the proposition, man is a biped, the copula corresponds
" to contained under, for this proposition is tantamount
" to man is contained under biped, that is, the predicate
" biped, as an extensive whole or class, contains under
"it as a part the subject man. But in point of fact,
" neither of the two propositions unambiguously shows
" whether it is to be viewed as of an intensive or of an
"extensive purport; nor in a single proposition is this
" of any moment. All that can be said is that the one
" form of expression is better accommodated to express
" the one kind of proposition, the other better accommo-
" dated to express the other. It is only when proposi-
tions are connected into syllogisms, that it becomes
" evident whether the subject or the predicate be the
" whole in or under which the other is contained ; and
" it is only as thus constituting two different two con-
trasted, forms of reasoning forms the most general,
" as under each of these every other is included, that
"the distinction becomes necessary in regard to concepts
" and propositions."
I shall not insist on such of the objections to this
passage as have been sufficiently stated ; the impropriety,
tor instance, of saying that the notion Man contains the
predicate two-legged, when that attribute is evidently
not part of the signification of the word ; or that the
meaning of a proposition is, that an attribute is part
of a notion : which, the first time it is observed, it cannot
possibly be, and at no time is this the thing asserted by
a proposition, unless by those which are avowedly defiiii-
JUDGMENT. 435
tions. All these considerations I at present forego : and
I will even give our author's theory its necessary cor-
rection, by restoring to Propositions the alternative
meaning which belongs to them, namely, that a certain
attribute is either part of a given set of attributes, or
invariably coexists with them. Having thus dissociated
the doctrine in the quotation from all errors which are
incidental and not essential to it, we may state it as
follows : Every proposition is capable of being under-
stood in two meanings, which involve one another, inas-
much as if either of them is true the other is so, but
which are nevertheless different ; of which only one may
be, and commonly is, in the mind ; and the words used
do not always show which. Thus, All men are bipeds,
may either mean, that the objects called men are all of
them numbered among the objects called bipeds, which
is interpreting the proposition in Extension ; or that the
attribute of having two feet is one of, or coexists with,
the attributes which compose the notion Man : which is
interpreting the proposition in Comprehension.
I maintain, that these two supposed meanings of the
proposition are not two matters of fact or of thought,
reciprocally in Terrible from one another, but one and the
same fact, written in different ways ; that the supposed
meaning in Extension is not a meaning at all, until in-
terpreted by the meaning in Comprehension; that all
concepts and general names which enter into Proposi-
tions, require to be construed in Comprehension, -and
that their Comprehension is the whole of their meaning.
That the meaning in Extension follows if the mean-
ing in Comprehension is granted, is a point which both
sides are agreed in. If the attribute signified by biped
is either one of, or always conjoined with, the attributes
signified by man, we are entitled to assert that the class
Man is included in, is a part of, the class Biped. But
my position is, that this second assertion is not a conclu-
sion from, but a mere repetition of, the first. For what is
the second assertion, if we leave out of it all reference to
the attributes? It can then only mean, that we have
F g 2
JUDGMENT.
ascertained the fact independently of the attributes that
is, that we have examined the aggregate whole " all men,"
and the still greater aggregate whole " all bipeds," and
that all the former were found among the latter. Now,
do we assert this ? or would it be true ? Assuredly no
one of us ever represented or contemplated, even with
his mind's eye, either of these wholes : still less did we
ever compare them as realities, and ascertain that the
fact is as stated. Neither could this be done, by anything
short of infinite power : for all men and all bipeds, ex-
cept a comparatively few, have either ceased to exist, or
have not yet come into existence. What, then, do we
mean by making an assertion concerning all men? The
phrase does not mean, all and each of a certain great num-
ber of objects, known or represented individually. It
means, all and each of an unascertained and indefinite
number, mostly not known or represented at all, but
which if they came within our opportunities of know-
ledge, might be recognised by the possession of a certain
set of attributes, namely, those forming the connotation
of the word. " All men," and " the class man/' are
expressions which point to nothing but attributes ; they
cannot be interpreted except in comprehension. To say,
all men are bipeds, is merely to say, given the attributes
of man, that of being a biped will be found along with
them ; which is the meaning in Comprehension. If the
proposition has nothing to do with the concept Man ex-
cept. as to its comprehension, still less has it with the
concept Biped. When I say, All men are bipeds, what
has my assertion to do with the clas biped as to its Ex-
tension? Have I any concern with the remainder of
the class, after Man is subtracted from it? Am I neces-
sarily aware even whether there is any remainder at all ?
I am thinking of no such matter, but only of the attri-
bute two-footed, and am intending to predicate that. I am
thinking of it as an attribute of man, but of what else
it may happen to be an attribute does not concern me.
Thus, all propositions into which general names enter,
and consequently all reasonings, are in Comprehension
JUDGMENT. 437
(only. Propositions and Reasonings may be written in
'Extension, but they are always understood in Compre-
hension. The only exception is in the case of propositions
which have no meaning in Comprehension, and have
nothing to do with Concepts those of which both the
subject and the predicate are proper names ; such as,
Tully is Cicero, or, St. Peter is not St. Paul. These
words connote nothing, and the only meaning they have
is the individual whom they denote. But where a
meaning in Comprehension, or, in other words, in Conno-
tation, is possible, that is always the one intended. And
Sir W. Hamilton's distinction (though he lays great
stress on it) between Reasoning in Comprehension and
Reasoning in Extension, will be found (as we shall see
hereafter) to be a mere superfetation on Logic.
It is worth while to add, that even could it be admitted
that general propositions have a meaning in Extension
capable of being conceived as different from their mean-
ing in Comprehension, Sir W. Hamilton would still be
wrong in deeming that the recognition of this meaning
depends on, or can possibly result from, a comparison of
the Concepts. The Extension of a concept, as I have
before remarked, is not, like the Comprehension, intrinsic
and essential to the concept ; it is an external and wholly
accidental relation of the concept, and no contemplation
or analysis of the concept itself will tell us anything
about it. It is an abstract name for the aggregate of
objects possessing the attributes included in the concept:
and whether that aggregate is greater or smaller does
not depend on any properties of the concept, but on the
boundless productive powers of Nature.
438
CHAPTER XIX.
OF REASONING.
IN common with the majority of modern writers on Logic,
whose language is generally that of the Conceptualist
school, Sir W. Hamilton considers Reasoning, as he con-
siders Judgment, to consist in a comparison of Notions :
either of Concepts with one another, or of Concepts with
the mental representations of individual objects. Only,
in simple Judgment, two notions are compared imme-
diately ; in Reasoning, mediately. Reasoning is the
comparison of two notions by means of a third. As
thus :* " Reasoning is an act of mediate Comparison or
" Judgment ; for to reason is to recognise that two
" notions stand to each other in the relation of a whole
" and its parts, through a recognition that those notions
" severally stand in the same relation to a third." The
foundation, therefore, of all Reasoning is " the self-evi-
" dentf principle that a part of the part is a part of the
" whole." " WithoutJ reasoning we should have been
" limited to a knowledge of what is given by immediate
" intuition ; we should have been unable to draw any
" inference from this knowledge, and have been shut
" out from the discovery of that countless multitude of
" truths, which, though of high, of paramount impor-
" tance, are not self-evident." This recognition that we
discover a " countless multitude of truths," composing
a vast proportion of all our real knowledge, by mere rea-
soning, will be found to jar considerably with our author's
theory of the reasoning process, and with his whole view
of the nature and functions of Logic, the science of
* Lectures, iii. 274. f !** p. 271. J Ibid. p. 277.
REASONING. 439
Reasoning: but this inconsistency is common to him
with nearly all the writers oil Logic, because, like him,
they teach a theory of the science too small and narrow
to contain their own facts.
Notwithstanding the great number of philosophers
who have considered the definition cited above to be a
correct account of Reasoning, the objections to it are so
manifest, that until after much meditation on the sub-
ject, one can scarcely prevail on oneself to utter them :
so impossible does it seem that difficulties so obvious
should always be passed over unnoticed, unless they
admitted of an easy answer. Reasoning, we are told, is
a mode of ascertaining that one notion is a part of
another; and the use of reasoning is to enable us to
discover truths which are not self-evident. But how is
it possible that a truth, which consists in one notion
being part of another, should not be self-evident? The
notions, by supposition, are both of them in our mind.
To perceive what parts they are composed of, nothing
surely can be necessary but to fix our attention on them.
We cannot surely concentrate our consciousness on two
ideas in our own mind, without knowing with certainty
whether one of them as a whole includes the other as a
part. If we have the notion biped and the notion man,
and know what they are, we must know whether the
notion of a biped is part of the notion we form to our-
selves of a man. In this case the simply Introspective
method is in its place. We cannot need to go beyond
our consciousness of the notions themselves.
Moreover, if it were really the case that we can coin-
pare two notions and fail to discover whether one of
them is a part of the other, it is impossible to under-
stand how we could be enabled to accomplish this by
comparing each of them with a third. A, B, and 0, are
three concepts, of which we are supposed to know that
A is a part of B, and B of C, but until we put these two
propositions together we do not know that A is a part of
0. We have perceived B in C intuitively, by direct com-
parison : but what is B ? By supposition it is, and is
440 REASONING.
perceived to be, A and something more. We have there-
fore, by direct intuition, perceived that A and something
more is a part of C, without perceiving that A is a part
of C. Surely there is here a great psychological diffi-
culty to be got over, to which logicians of the Concep-
tualist school have been surprisingly blind.
Endeavouring, not to understand what they say, for
they never face the question, but to imagine what they
might say, to relieve this apparent absurdity, two things
occur to the mind. It may be said, that when a notion is
in our consciousness, but we do not know whether some-
thing is or is not a part of it, the reason is that we have
forgotten some of its parts. We possess the notion, but
are only conscious of part of it, and it does its work in
our trains of thought only symbolically. Or, again, it
may be said that all the parts of the notion are in our
consciousness, but are in our consciousness indistinctly.
The meaning of having a distinct notion, according to Sir
W. Hamilton, is that we can discriminate the characters
or attributes of which it is composed. The admitted
fact, therefore, that we can have indistinct notions, may
be adduced as proof that we can possess a notion, and
not be able to say positively what is included in it.
These are the best, or rather the only presentable argu-
ments 1 am able to invent, in support of the paradox in-
volved in the Conceptualist theory of Keasoning.
It is a great deal easier to refute these arguments
than it was to discover them. The refutation, like the
original difficulty, is two deep. To begin ; a notion,
part of which has been forgotten, is to that extent a lost
notion, and is as if we had never had it. The parts
which we can no longer discern in it are not in it, and
cannot therefore be proved to be in it, by reasoning, any
more than by intuition. We may be able to discover by
reasoning that they ought to be there, and may, in con-
sequence, put them there; but that is not recognising
them to be there already. As a notion in part forgotten
is a partially lost notion, so an indistinct notion is a
notion not yet formed, but in process of formation. We
REASONING. 441
have an indistinct notion of a class when we perceive in
a general way that certain objects differ from others, but
do not as, yet perceive in what ; or perceive some of the
points of difference, but have not yet perceived, or have
not yet generalized, the others. - In this case our notion
is not yet a completed notion, and the parts which
we cannot discern in it, are undiscernible because they
are not yet there. As in the former case, the result
of reasoning may be to put them there ; but it cer-
tainly does not affect this by proving them to be there
already.
But even if these explanations had solved the mystery
of our being conscious of a whole and unable to be
directly conscious of its part, they would yet fail to make
intelligible how, not having this knowledge directly, we
are able to acquire it through a third notion. By hypo-
thesis we have forgotten that A is a part of C, until we
again become aware of it through the relation of each of
them to B. We therefore had not forgotten that A is
o
a part of B, nor that B is a part of C. When we con-
ceived B, we conceived A as a part of it ; when we
conceived C, we conceived B as a part of it. In
the mere fact, therefore, of conceiving 0, we were con-
scious of B in it, and consciousness of A is a necessary
part of that consciousness of B, and yet our conscious-
ness of C did not enable us to find in it our conscious-
ness of A, though it was really there, and though they
both were distinctly present. If any one can believe
this, no contradiction and no impossibility in any theory
of Consciousness need stagger him. Let us now substi-
tute for the hypothesis of forgetfulness, the hypothesis
of indistinctness. We had a notion of C, which was
so indistinct that we could not discriminate A from the
other parts of the notion. But it was not too indis-
tinct to enable us to discriminate B, otherwise the
reasoning would break down as well as the intuition.
The notion of B, again, indistinct as it may have been in
other respects, must have been such that we could with
assurance discriminate A as contained in it. Here then
n
442 REASONING.
returns the same absurdity : A is distinctly present in
B, which is distinctly present in C, therefore A, if there
be any force in reasoning, is distinctly present in C ; yet
A cannot be discriminated or perceived in the conscious-
ness in which it is distinctly present : so that, before our
reasoning commenced, we were at once distinctly con-
scious of A, and entirely unconscious of it. There is no
such thing as a reduction to absurdity if this is not
one.
The reason why a judgment which is not intuitively
evident, can be arrived at through the medium of pre-
mises, is that judgments which are not intuitively evi-
dent do not consist in recognising that one notion is part
of another. When that is the case, the conclusion is as
well known to us ab initio as the premises ; which is really
the case in analytical judgments. When reasoning really
leads to the "countless multitudes of truths ' not self-
evident, which our author speaks of that is, when the
judgments are synthetical we learn, not that A is part
of C, because A is part of B and B of C, but that A is
conjoined with C, because A is conjoined with B, and B
with C. The principle of the reasoning is not, a part of
the part is a part of the whole, but, a mark of the mark is
a mark of the thing marked, Nota nota est nota rei ipsius.
It means, that two things which constantly coexist with
the same third thing, constantly coexist with one another;
the things meant not being our concepts, but the facts
of experience on which our concepts ought to be
grounded.
This theory of reasoning is free from the objections
which are fatal to the Conceptualist theory. We cannot
discover that A is a part of C through its being a part of
B, since if it really is so, the one truth must be as much
a matter of direct consciousness as the other. But we can
discover that A is conjoined with C through its being
conjoined with B ; since our knowledge that it is con-
joined with B, may have been obtained by a series of
observations in which C was not perceptible. C, we must
remember, stands for an attribute, that is, not an actual
REASONING. 443
presentation of sense, but a power of producing such pre-
sentations : and that a power may have been present
without being apparent, is in the common course of things,
implyingnothing more than that the conditions necessary
to determine it into act were not all present. This power
or potentiality, C, may in like manner have been ascer-
tained to be conjoined with B, by another set of observa-
tions, in which it was A's turn to be dormant, or perhaps
to be active, but not attended to. By combining the
two sets of observations, we are enabled to discover what
was not contained in either of them, namely, a constancy
of conjunction between C and A, such that one of them
comes to be a mark of the other : though, in neither of
the two sets of observations, nor in any others, may C
and A have been actually observed together ; or, if ob-
served, not with the frequency, or under the experimental
conditions, which would warrant us in generalizing the
fact. This is the process by which we do, in reality,
acquire the greater part of our knowledge ; all of it (as
our author says) which is not " given by immediate in-
tuition." But no part of this process is at all like the
operation of recognising parts and a whole ; or of recog-
nising any relation whatever between Concepts ; which !
have nothing to do with the matter, more than is implied I
in the fact, that we cannot reason about things without ;
conceiving them, or representing them to the mind.
The theory which supposes Judgment and Reasoning
to be the comparison of concepts, is obliged to make the
term concept stand for, not the thinker's or reasoner's
own notion of a thing, but a sort of normal notion,
which is understood as being owned by everybody,
though everybody does not always use it ; and it is this
tacit substitution of a concept floating in the air for the
very concept I have in my own mind, which makes it
possible to fancy that we can, by reasoning, tind out
something to be in a concept, which we are not able to
discover in it by consciousness, because, in truth, that
concept is not in our consciousness. But a concept ot a
thing, which is not that whereby I conceive it, is to
444 REASONING.
me as much an external fact, as a presentation of the
senses can be : it is another person's concept, not mine.
It may be the conventional concept of the world at
large that which it has been tacitly agreed to associate
with the class ; in other words, it may be the connotation
of the class-name ; and if so. it may very possibly con-
tain elements which I cannot directly recognise in it,
but may have to learn from external evidence : but this
is because I do not know the signification of the word,
the attributes which determine its application and what
I have to do is to learn them : when I have done this, I
shall have no difficulty in directly recognising as a part
of them, anything which really is so. But with regard
to all attributes not included in the signification of the
name, not only I do not find them in the concept, but
they do not even become part of it after I have learnt
them by experience ; unless we understand by the con-
cept, not, with philosophers in general, only the essence
of the class, but with Sir W. Hamilton, all its known
attributes. Even in Sir W. Hamilton's sense, they are
not found in the concept, but added to it ; and not until
we have already assented to them as objective facts
subsequently, therefore, to the reasoning by which they
were ascertained.
Take such a case as this. Here are two properties of
circles. One is, that a circle is bounded by a line, every
point of which is equally distant from a certain point
within the circle. This attribute is connoted by the
name, and is, on both theories, a part of the concept.
Another property of the circle is, that the length of its
circumference is to that of its diameter in the approxi-
mate ratio of 3'14159 to I. This attribute was dis-
covered, and is now known, as a result of reasoning.
Now, is there any sense, consistent with the meaning of
the terms, in which it can be said that this recondite
property formed part of the concept circle, before it had
been discovered by mathematicians ? Even in Sir W.
Hamilton's, meaning ot concept, it is in nobody's but a
mathematician's concept even now : and if we concede
REASONING. 445
that mathematicians are to determine the normal con- I - v
cept of a circle for mankind at large, mathematicians
themselves did not find the ratio of the diameter to
the circumference in the concept, but put it there ; and
could not have done so until the long train of diffi-
cult reasoning which culminated in the discovery was
complete.
It is impossible, therefore, rationally to hold both the
opinions professed simultaneously by Sir W. Hamilton
that reasoning is the comparison of two notions
through the medium of a third, and that Reasoning is
a source from which we derive new truths. And the
truth of the latter proposition being indisputable, it is
the former which must give way. The theory of Rea-
soning which attempts to unite them both, has the same
defect which we have shown to vitiate the corresponding
theory of Judgment : it makes the process consist in
eliciting something out of a concept which never was in
the concept, and if it ever finds its way there, does so
after the process, and as a consequence of its having
taken place.
446
CHAPTER XX.
ON SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S CONCEPTION OF LOGIC AS A
SCIENCE. IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF THE LAWS, OR
FORMS, OF THOUGHT?
HAVING discussed the nature of the three psychological
processes which, together, constitute the operations of the
Intellect, and having considered Sir W. Hamilton's theory
of each, we are in a condition to examine the general
view which he takes of the Science or Art, whose pur-
pose it is to direct our intellectual operations into their
proper course, and to protect them against error.
Sir W. Hamilton defines Logic "the Science of the
Laws of Thought as Thought."* He proceeds to justify
each of the component parts of this definition. And first,
is Logic a Science ?
Archbishop Whately says that it is both a Science
and an Art. He says this is an intelligible sense. He
means that Logic both determines what is, and prescribes
what should be. It investigates the nature of the pro-
cess which takes place in Reasoning, and la} r s down
rules to enable that process to be conducted as it ought.
For this distinction, Sir W. Hamilton is very severe on
Archbishop Whately. In the Archbishop's sense of
the words, he says, it never has been, and never could
have been, disputed that Logic is both a Science and an
Art. Butf " the discrimination of art and science is
" wrong. Dr. Whately considers science to be any know-
" ledge viewed absolutely, and not in relation to practice,
" a signification in which every art would, in its doc-
* Lectures, iii. 4.
f Ibid. p. 11 ; see also Discussions, pp. 133, 134.
IS LOGIC AN ART, OR A SCIENCE? 44?
" trinal part, be a science ; and he defines art to be the
" application of knowledge to practice, in which sense
' Ethics, Politics, and all practical sciences, would be
" arts. The distinction of arts and sciences is thus
" wrong. But .... were the distinction correct it would
" be of no value, for it would distinguish nothing, since
" art and science would mark out no real difference be-
" tween the various branches of knowledge, but only
" different points of view under which the same branch
" might be contemplated by us, each being in different
" relations at once a science and an art. In fact, Dr.
" Whately confuses the distinction of science theoretical
" and science practical with the distinction of science
" and art."
But if the difference between science and art is not
the same as that between knowledge theoretical and
practical, we are entitled to ask, what is it? If Arch-
bishop Whately has placed the distinction where it is
not, does his rather peremptory critic and censor tell us
where it is ? He declines the problem. " I am well
" aware that it would be no easy matter to give a gene-
" ral definition of science as contradistinguished from
" art, and of art as contradistinguished from science ;
" but if the words themselves cannot validly be dis-
" criminated, it would be absurd to attempt to dis-
" criminate anything by them." In the only other part
of his Lectures where the distinction between Art and
Science is touched on,* he says that the "apparently vague
" and capricious manner in which the terms art and
" science are applied," is not " the result of some acci-
" dental and forgotten usage," but is founded on a
" rational principle which we are able to trace." But
when the reader is expecting a statement of this rational
principle, Sir W. Hamilton puts him off with a merely
historical explanation. Without stating what the usage
actually is, he derives it from a distinction drawn by-
Aristotle between " a habit productive," and " a habit
practical," which he admits to be " not perhaps beyond
* Lectures, i. 115-119.
443 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
the reach of criticism :" which he does not undertake
to " vindicate," and which he confesses to have been lost
sight of by the moderns ever since they ceased to think
" mechanical" arts " beneath their notice," all these
being called arts without any reference to Aristotle's
supposed criterion.* So that Sir. W. Hamilton cannot
claim even accordance with usage for the distinction
which he seems, but does not distinctly profess, to
patronize. Yet the principal fault he finds with Arch-
bishop Whately's distinction, is that it does not agree
with usage. According to it, he says,f "ethics, politics,
" religion, and all other practical sciences would be
" arts :" and he speaks of the " incongruity we feel in
" talking of the art of Ethics, the art of Religion, &c ,
" though these are eminently practical sciences. "J
Religion may be here placed out of the question, for
if there be incongruity with common feelings in calling
* I give the Aristotelian distinction in Sir W. Hamilton's words : " In
" the Aristotelic philosophy the terms irpa^is and npaKriKot. that is, practice
" and practical, were employed both in a generic or looser, and in a
" special or stricter signification. In its generic meaning, -rrpagis, practice,
" was opposed to theory or speculation, and it comprehended under it,
" practice in its special meaning, and another co-ordinate term to which
' practice, in this its stricter signification, was opposed. This term was
TTOI'TJO-IS, which we may inadequately translate by production. The dis-
tinction of irpatTiiens and iroiijTiaos consisted in this : the former denoted
that action which terminated in action, the latter, that action which
resulted in some permanent product. For example, dancing and music
'are practical, as leaving no work after their performance: whereas
' painting and statuary are productive, as leaving some product over and
' above their energy. Now Aristotle, in formally defining art, defines
' it as a habit productive, and not as a habit practical, eu TrotjjrtKij ^era
" \oyov ; and though he has not always himself adhered strictly to this limi-
" tation, his definition was adopted by his followers, and the term in its ap-
' plication to the practical sciences (the term practical being here used in
' its genuine meaning), came to be exclusively confined to those whose end
' did not result in mere action or energy. Accordingly as Ethics, Politics,
' &c., proposed happiness as their end, and as happiness was an energy,
' or at least the concomitant of energy, these sciences terminated in action,
' and were consequently practical, not productive. On the other hand,
' Logic, Rhetoric, &c , d : d not terminate in a mere an evanescent action,
' but in a permanent an enduring product For the end of Logic was
' the production of a reasoning, the end of Rhetoric the production of an
'oration, and so forth." (Lectures, i. pp. 117, llh.) The English lan-
guage expresses the same distinction by the two verbs, to do and to
make.
f Discussions, p. 134. J Lectures, i. 116.
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 449
Eeligion an art, there is quite as much in calling it a
science, and especially a practical science, as if the
theoretical doctrines of religion were no part of religion.
If religion is either a science or an art, it must be both,
and it is commonly understood to consist preeminently
in things different from either, namely, a state of the
feelings, and a disposition of the will. As for Ethics
and Politics, the one and the other are, like Logic, both
sciences and arts. Ethics, so far as it consists of the
theory of the moral sentiments, and the investigation of
those conditions of human well-being, disclosed by ex-
perience, which the practical part of Ethics has for its
object to secure, is, in all senses of the word, a science.
The rules or precepts of morals are an art. If there is
any reluctance felt to speak of an art of morals, it is
not because people prefer calling morals a science, but
because most people are unwilling to look upon it as
scientific at all, but prefer to regard it as a matter of in-
stinct, or of religious belief, or as depending solely
on the state of the will and the affections. In the case
of Politics there is not, even to the vulgarest apprehen-
sion, any incongruity in the use of the word art : on the
contrary, " the art of government" is the vernacular ex-
pression, and " science of government" a sort of specula-
tive refinement. Philosophic writers on politics have
generally preferred to call their subject a science, in
order to indicate that it is a fit subject for speculative
thinkers, the word art being apt to suggest to modern
ears (it did not to the ancients) something which is the
proper business only of practitioners. In reality Politics
includes both a science and an art. The Science of
Politics treats of the laws of political phenomena ; it is
the science of human nature under social conditions.
The Art of Politics consists (or would consist if it existed)
of rules, founded on the science, for the right guidance
and government of the affairs of society.
But, says Sir W. Hamilton, if the difference between
Science and Art were merely that between affirmations
and precepts, the distinction would be of no value, since
G G
450 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
it would " mark out no real difference between the
" various branches of knowledge, but only different
" points of view under which the same branch might
" be contemplated by us, each being in different rela-
" tions at once a science and an art." Was it from
Sir W. Hamilton we should have expected to hear that
a distinction is of no value, because it does not mark a
difference between two things, but a difference in the
points of view in which we may regard the same thing ?
How often has he told us, of many of the most iniDor-
tant distinctions in philosophy, that they are precisely
of this character ! The remark, moreover, in the par-
ticular case, is so extremely superficial, that, coming
from an author of whom it was by no means the habit
to look only at the surface of things, it is one of the
strongest of the many proofs which appear in his works,
how little thought he had bestowed upon the sciences
or arts, beyond his own speciality. The reason why
systems of precepts require to be distinguished from
systems of truths, is, that an entirely different classifica-
tion is required for the purposes of theoretical know-
ledge, and for those of its practical application. Take
the art of navigation, for example : where is the single
science corresponding to this art, or which could with
any propriety be included under the same name with it?
Navigation is an art dependent on nearly the whole circle
of the physical sciences : on astronomy, for the marks by
which it determines the ship's place on the ocean ; on
optics, for the construction and use of its instruments ;
on abstract mechanics, to understand and regulate the
ship's movements ; on pneumatics, for the la.ws of winds ;
on hydrostatics, for the tides and currents, and the waves
as influenced by winds ; on meteorology, for the weather ;
on electricity, for thunderstorms ; on magnetism, for the
use of the compass ; on physical geography, and so on
nearly to the end of the list. Not only has each one of
all these sciences furnished its contingent towards the
rules composing the one art of navigation, but many
single rules could only have been framed by the
THE LAWS OR FORMS OP THOUGHT? 451
union of considerations drawn from several different
sciences. For the purposes of the art, the rules by
themselves are sufficient, wherever it has been found
practicable to make them sufficiently precise. But
if the learner, not content with knowing and prac-
tising the rules, wishes to understand their reasons,
and so possess science as well as art, he finds no one
science corresponding in its object-matter with the
art ; he must extract from many sciences those truths
of each which have been turned to practical account
for the furtherance of navigation. All this is obvious
to any one (not to say a person of Sir W. Hamil-
ton's sagacity), who has sufficiently reflected on the
sciences and arts, to be aware of the relation between
them. Archbishop Whately's distinction, therefore, in
no way merits the contemptuous treatment which it
receives in the Lectures, and still more in the Dis-
cussions. It is eminently practical, it conforms to
the natural and logical order of thought, and accords
better with the ends and even with the custom of
language, than any other mode -in which Arts can
be distinguished from Sciences. Sir W. Hamilton,
though he condemns it, has not ventured to set up
any competing distinction in its place, but (as we have
seen) almost intimates that no satisfactory one can be
found.
Next after the question whether Logic is a science,
comes the consideration of its object-matter as a science,
namely, "the Laws of Thought as Thought." "The
" consideration of this head," says our author,* " divides
"itself into three questions 1. What is Thought?
" 2. What is Thought as Thought ? 3. What are the
" Laws of Thought as Thought ?" These three ques-
tions are successively discussed.
To the question, " What is Thought ?" Sir W. Hamil-
ton answers It is not the direct perception of an object,
nor its representation in memory or imagination, nor its
mere suggestion by association, but is a product of intel-
* Lectures, iii. 12.
O G 2
roi 'KAwruiUlfc.
rf
452 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
ligence. Intelligence acts only by comparison. "All
" thought* is a comparison, a recognition of similarity or
" difference, a conjunction or disjunction, in other words
" a synthesis or analysis of its objects. In Conception,
" that is, in the formation of Concepts (or general notions)
" it compares, disjoins or conjoins, attributes ; in an act
" of Judgment, it compares, disjoins or conjoins, concepts;
" in Seasoning, it compares, disjoins or conjoins, judg-
" ments. In each step of this process there is one es-
" sential element ; to think, to compare, to conjoin or
"disjoin, it is necessary to recognise one thing through
" or under another, and therefore, in defining Thought
" proper, we may either define it as an act of Comparison,
" or as a recognition of one notion as in or under another.
" It is in performing this act of thinking a thing under
" a general notion, that we are said to understand or
" comprehend it. For example : An object is presented,
" say a book : this object determines an impression, and
" I am even conscious of the impression, but without
" recognising to myself what the thing is ; in that case,
<c there is only a perception, and not properly a thought.
" But suppose I do recognise it for what it is, in other
" words, compare it with and reduce it under a certain
" concept, class, or complement of attributes, which I call
" book ; in that case, there is more than a perception,
" there is a thought."
Further on, he againf defines an act of thought as
" the recognition of a thing as coming under a concept ;
" in other words, the marking an object by an attribute
" or attributes previously known as common to sundry
" objects, and to which we have accordingly given a
" general name." And subsequently,! as " the compre-
hension of a thing under a general notion or attribute ;"
and again, " the cognition of any mental object by
" another in which it is considered as included ; in other
" words, thought is the knowledge of things under concep-
" tions" And again, || "Thought is the Knowledge
* Lectures, iii. 13, 14. f Ibid. p. 15. J Ibid. p. 21.
Ibid. p. 40. || Ibid. p. 43.
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 453
" of a thing through a concept or general notion, or of one
" notion through another."
From these different expressions we may infer, that
the author confines the name Thought to cases where
there is a judgment ; and, it would seem, a judgment
affirming more than mere existence. We think an ob-
ject, or make anything an object of thought, when we
are able to predicate something of it ; to affirm that it
is something in particular ; that it is a certain sort of
thing ; that it belongs to a class has something which
is (or may be) common to it with a number of other
things ; that it has, in short, a certain attribute, or at-
tributes. This is intelligible, and unobjectionable : but
our author's technical expressions, instead of facilitating
the understanding of it, tend, on the contrary, very
much to confuse it. Like the transcendental metaphysi-
cians generally, Sir W. Hamilton, when he attempts to
state the nature of a mental phenomenon with peculiar
precision, does it by a peculiarly unprecise employment
of the common prepositions. What light is thrown upon
the simple process of referring objects to a class, by
calling it the recognition of one thing through, or in, or
under, another ? What distinct signification is con-
veyed by the phrases, " thinking a thing under a general
notion," " reducing it under a concept," " knowing things
under, or through, conceptions ?" To find the meaning
of the explanation we have to resort to the thing ex-
plained. The only passage in which the author speaks
distinctly, is that in which he paraphrases these expres-
sions by the following : " the marking an object by an
" attribute or attributes previously known as common to
" sundry objects, and to which we have accordingly given
" a general name." To think of an object, then, is to
mark it by an attribute or set of attributes, which has
received a name, or (what is much more essential) which
gives a name to the object. It gives to the object the
concrete name, to which its own abstract name, it it has
an abstract name, corresponds : but it is not indis-
pensable that the attribute should have received a name,
*[
b
454 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
provided it gives one to the object possessing it. An
animal is called a bull, in sign of its possessing certain
attributes, but there does not exist an abstract word
bullness. Having, then, in Sir W. Hamilton's language,
thought the object, by marking it with a name derived
from an attribute, it is perhaps an allowable, though an
obscure, expression, to say that we know the thing
through the attribute, or through the notion of the
attribute : but what is meant by saying that we know
it, or think it under the attribute ? We know it and
think it, simply as possessing the attribute. The other
phrase, while seeming to mean more, means less. Again,
when we are asserted to " know one notion through
another ;" when, for example, we think, or judge, that
men, meaning all men, are mortal ; is this to know the
notion Man through the notion Mortal ? The know-
ledge we really have, is that the objects Men have the
attribute mortality ; in other words, that the outward
facts by which we distinguish men, exist along with
subjection to the outward fact, death. If there is a
recommendation I would inculcate on every one who
commences the study of metaphysics, it is, to be always
sure what he means by his particles. A large portion
of all that perplexes and contuses metaphysical thought,
comes from a vague use of those small words.
After this definition of Thought, our author proceeds
to explain what he means by Thought as Thought. He
means,* "that Logic is conversant with the form of
thought, to the exclusion of the matter." We have here
arrived at one of the cardinal points in Sir W. Hamilton's
philosophy of Logic. However he may vary on other
doctrines, to this he is constant, that the province of
Logic is the form, not the matter, of thought. It is a
pity that the only terms he can find to denote the dis-
tinction, are a pair of the obscurest and most contusing
expressions in the whole range of metaphysics. Still
more unfortunate it is, that, thinking it necessary to em-
ploy such terms, he has never, in unambiguous language,
* Lectures, iii. 15.
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 45&
explained their meaning. When Archbishop Whately,
in somewhat similar phraseology, tells us that Logic has
to do with the form of the reasoning process, but not
with its matter, we know what he means. It is, that
Logic is not concerned with the actual truth either of
the conclusion or of the premises, but considers only
whether the one follows from the other ; whether the con-
clusion must be true if the premises are true. Sir W.
Hamilton is not content to mean only this. He means
much more ; but if we wish to know what, the only
information he here gives us is a quotation from a Ger-
man philosopher, Esser. " We are able, by abstraction,
" to distinguish from each other, 1. The object
"thought of; and 2. The kind and manner of think-
" ing it. Let us, employing the old established techni-
" cal expressions, call the first of these the matter, the
" second the form, of the thought. For example, when
" I think that the book before me is a folio, the matter
" of the thought is book and folio, the form of it is a
"judgment/ 3 Thus far Esser. The Form, therefore, of
Thought, with which alone Logic is conversant, is not
the object thought of, but " the kind and manner of
thinking it." It is not necessary to show that this
explanation is insufficient. But to find any other, we
must have recourse, not to Sir W. Hamilton, but to Mr.
Mansel. One of the chapters of Mr. Mansel's " Prole-
gomena Logica" is entitled " On the Matter and Form
of Thought." It commences as follows :*-
" The distinction between Matter and Form in com-
" mon language relatively to works of Art, will serve to
" illustrate the character of the corresponding distinction
" in Thought. The term Matter is usually applied to
" whatever is given to the artist, and consequently, as
" given, does not come within the province of the art
" itself to supply. The Form is that which is given in
" and through the proper operation of the art. In
" Sculpture, for example, the Matter is the marble in its
" rough state as given to the sculptor ; the Form is that
* Prolegomena Logica, pp. 226, 227^
456
" which the sculptor in the exercise of his art communi-
" cates to it." Let me here ask, had the block of marble
no form at all when it came out of the quarry ? " The
" distinction between Matter and Form in any mental
" operation is analogous to this The former includes
" all that is given to, the latter all that is given by, the
" operation. In the division of notions, for example,
" whether performed by an act of pure thinking or not,
" the generic notion is that given to be divided ; the
" addition of the difference in the act of division con-
" stitutes the species. And accordingly, Genus is fre-
'' quently designated by logicians the material, Difference
"the formal, part of the Species." (An illustration
which, whatever else it may do, does not illustrate.)
" So likewise in any operation of pure thinking, the
"Matter will include all that is given to and out of the
"thought; the Form is what is conveyed in and by the
" thinking act itself."
This is a fair account of the meaning of Matter and
Form in the Kantian philosophy, and the philosophies
which descend genealogically from the E^antian. But
this meaning must always be taken with, and inter-
preted by, the characteristic doctrine of the Kantian
metaphysics, that the mind does not perceive, but itself
creates, all the most general attributes which, by a
natural illusion, we ascribe to outward things ; which
attributes, consequently, are called, by that philosophy,
Forms. Extension and Duration, for example, it calls
forms of our sensitive faculty ; Substance, Causality,
Quantity, forms of our Understanding, which is our
faculty of thought. These, however, are not what Sir
W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel mean, when they say that
Logic is the science of the forms of thought. They do
not mean that it is the science of Substance, Causality,
and Quantity. The truth is, that as soon as the word
Form is stretched beyond its proper signification of
bodily figure, it becomes entirely vague : every thinker
uses it in a sense of his own. The only bond connect-
ing its various meanings, is the negative one of oppo-
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 457
sition to Matter. Whenever anything is called Form,
there is something which, relatively to it, is regarded
as Matter: and whenever anything is called Matter,
there is something capable of being superinduced upon
it, which when superinduced will be styled its Form.
How completely the notion of Form accompanies that
of Matter as its relative opposite, we have an illustrious
example in Aristotle, when he defines the soul as the Form
of the Body ; so, at least, Sir W. Hamilton, very freely,
translates wrsX^ia.* It would be quite warranted by the
practice of metaphysicians, to call any compound the form
of its component elements ; water, for instance, the form
of hydrogen and oxygen. And since there is nothing
that may not be regarded as matter relatively to some-
thing which can be constructed out of it, and which is
form relatively to it, but matter relatively to some other
thing, we have form within form, like a nest of boxes.
Kant actually calls the conclusion of a syllogism the
form of it, the premises being its matter: so that in
every train of reasoning, the successive conclusions
pass over one by one from Form to Matter. Without
going this length, Sir W. Hamilton,! after Krug, con-
siders the propositions and terms as the matter of the
syllogism, and the mode in which they are connected as
its form. Yet propositions and terms (i.e. concepts)
are classed by him as Forms of Thought. Thus it
is impossible to draw any line between the - Matter of
Thought and its Form, or to convey any distinct con-
ception of the province of a science by saying that it is
conversant with the one and not with the other. We
may, however, in a general way, understand Sir W.,
Hamilton to mean, that Logic is not concerned with
* See Reid, p. 202, and Sir W. Hamilton's foot-note. A still odder
example is given by Reid in his Essays on the Active Powers (Works,
pp. 649, 650). " In the scholastic ages, an action good in itself was said
<l to be materially good, and an action done with a right intention was
" called formally good. This last way of expressing the distinction is stil
" familiar among theologians."
f Lectures, iii. 287, 288. So also Mr. Hansel, Prolegomena Logics,
p. 235.
458 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
the actual contents of our knowledge with the parti-
cular objects, or truths, which we know but only with
our mode of knowing them : with what the mind does
when it knows, or thinks, irrespectively of the particular
things which it thinks about : with the theory of the act
or fact of thinking, so far as that fact is the same in all
our thought, or can be reduced to universal principles.
But the fact of thinking is a psychological pheno-
menon ; and Logic is a different thing from Psychology.
It is for the purpose of marking this difference that ISir
W. Hamilton adds a third point to his definition of
Logic, calling it the science not simply of Thought as
Thought, but of the Laws of Thought as Thought. For
Psychology also treats of thought, considered merely as
thought ; and professes to give an account of Thought
as a mental operation. In what, then, consists the dif-
ference between the two ? I cannot venture to state it
in any but our author's own words. *
" The phenomena of the formal, or subjective phases
" of thought, are of two kinds. They are either such as
" are contingent, that is, such as may or may not appear ;
" or they are such as are necessary, that is, such as cannot
" but appear. These two classes of phenomena are, how-
" ever, only manifested in conjunction ; they are not
" discriminated in the actual operations of thought ; and
" it requires a speculative analysis to separate them into
" their several classes. In so far as these phsenomena
" are considered merety as phenomena, that is, in so far
" as philosophy is merely observant of them as manifesta-
" tions in general, they belong to the science of Empi-
" rical or Historical Psychology. But when philosophy,
" by a reflective abstraction, analyses the necessary from
" the contingent forms of thought, there results a science,
" which is distinguished from all others by taking for
" its object-matter the former of these classes ; and this
" science is Logic. Logic, therefore, is at last fully and
" finally defined as the science of the necessary forms of
" thought."
* Lectures, iii. 24.
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 459
If language has any meaning, this passage must be
understood to say, that the " laws" or " forms" which
are the province of Logic, are certain " phenomena" of
thought, distinguished from its other phenomena by
being necessarily present in it, " such as cannot but
appear," while the remaining phenomena " may or may
not appear." If this be meant, we are landed in a strange
conclusion. There is a science, Psychology, which is the
science of all mental phsenomena, and among others, of
the phsenomena of Thought, and yet another science,
Logic, is required to teach us its necessary phenomena.
There is a portion of the properties of Thought which
are- expressly excluded from the science which treats of
Thought, to be reserved as the matter of another science,
and these are precisely its Necessary qualities. Those
which are merely contingent, " such as may or may not
appear" the properties which are not common to all
thought, or do not belong to it at all times these, it
seems to be said, Psychology knows something about :
but the Necessary properties, " such as cannot but ap-
pear" the properties which all thoughts possess, which
thought must possess, without the possession of which it
would not be thought these Psychology knows not of,
and it is the office of a different science to investigate
them. We may next expect to be told, that the science
of dynamics knows nothing of the laws of motion, the
composition of forces, the theory of continuous and
accelerating force, the doctrines of Momentum and Vis
Viva, &c. ; it only knows of wind power and water power,
steam power and animal power, and the accidents by
flood and field which accompany them and disturb their
operation.
This, however, supposes that our author means what
he expressly says. It assumes that by the " Laws of
Thought," and the " Necessary Forms of Thought," he
means the modes in which, and the conditions subject to
which, by the constitution of our nature, we cannot but
think. But when we turn over a few pages, to the place
where he is preparing to treat of those laws or necessary
460 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
forms one by one, it appears that this is an entire
mistake. Laws now no longer mean necessities of nature ;
they are laws in a totally different sense ; they mean pre-
cepts : and the " necessary forms of thought" are not
attributes which it must, but only which it ought to
possess. " When* I speak of laws, and of their absolute
'' necessity in relation to thought, you must not suppose
" that these laws and that necessity are the same in
" the world of mind as in the world of matter. For
" free intelligences, a law is an ideal necessity given in
" tlie form of a precept, which we ought to follow, but
" which we may also violate if we please ; whereas, for
" the existences which constitute the universe of nature,
" a law is only another name for those causes which
" operate blindly and universally in producing certain
" inevitable results. By law of thought, or by logical ne-
" cessify, we do not, therefore, mean a physical law, such
" as the law of gravitation, but a general precept which we
" are able certainly to violate, but which if we donot obey,
" our whole process of thinking is suicidal, or absolutely
" null. These laws are, consequently, the primary con-
" ditions of the possibility of valid thought ; and . . . the
" whole of Pure Logic is only an articulate development
" of the various modes in which they are applied. "f
So that, after all, the real theory of Thought the
laws, in the scientific sense of the term, of Thought as
Thought do not belong to Logic, but to Psychology :
and it is only the validity of thought which Logic takes
* Lectures, iii. 78.
f It might have been supposed that the double meaning of the word law,
though in the last century it could blind even a Montesquieu, had been
sufficiently written about since that time, to be understood by minds of
far less calibre than Sir W. Hamilton's : yet in this passage he does not
recognise it, but seems rather to think that the difference between a law
in the scientific, and a law in the legislative or ethical sense, does not turn
on an ambiguity of the word, but on the difference between " the world of
mind" and " the world of matter :" a " free intelligence" knowing only
precepts, which it has power to disobey, and not being ruled, like the phy-
sical world, by laws from which it cannot escape. Yet Sir W. Hamilton
is the same philosopher who is for ever telling us of necessities of thought
which are absolutely irresistible to us from which we can by no mental
effort emancipate ourselves ; and upon this alleged fact the larger half of
his philosophy is grounded. When we find all this forgotten, we almost
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 461
cognisance of. It is not with Thought as Thought, but
only as Valid thought, that Logic is concerned. There
isTnothing to prevent us from thinking contrary to the
laws of Logic : only, if we do, we shall not think rightly,
or well, or conformably to the ends of thinking, but
falsely, or inconsistently, or confusedly. This doctrine
is at complete variance with the saying of our author in
his controversy with Whately, that Logic is, and never
could have been doubted to be, in Whately's sense of the
terms, both a Science and an Art. For the present
definition reduces it to the narrowest conception of an
Art that of a mere system of rules. It leaves Science
to Psychology, and represents Logic as merely offering
to thinkers a collection of precepts, which they are
enjoined to observe, not in order that they may think,
but that they may think correctly, or validly.
It appears to me, however, that our author, though
inconsistent with himself, is much nearer the mark in
this mode of regarding Logic than in the previous one.
I conceive it to be true that Logic is not the theory of
Thought as Thought, but of valid Thought ; not of
thinking, but of correct thinking. It is not a Science
distinct from, and coordinate with, Psychology. So far
as it is a science at all, it is a part, or branch, of Psycho-
logy ; differing from it, on the one hand as a part
differs from the whole, and on the other, as an Art
differs from a Science. Its theoretic grounds are wholly
borrowed from Psychology, and include as much of that
fancy that we have opened a volume of some other writer by mistake.
Treating of the same question in another place, our author remembers his
own philosophy much better. In the Lecture in which he divides mental
science into the " Phaenomenology of Mind" and its "Nomology," the
former a classification and analysis of our mental faculties, the latter an
investigation of their " laws" (Lectures, i. 121, et seqq.), the word Laws
always stands for " necessary and universal facts," " the Laws by which our
faculties are governed," not precepts by which they ought to be governed :
and of these necessary and universal facts it is expressly said that the Laws
of Thought, with which Logic is concerned, are a part. They are classed
with " the Laws of Memory," " the Laws of Association," " the laws which
govern our capacities of enjoyment," all of which are correctly described
as necessary facts, and not as precepts. The whole of this is thrown to the
winds when the time comes for taking up Logic as a separate science.
462 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
science as is required to justify the rules of the art.
Logic has no need to know more of the Science of
Thinking, than the difference between good thinking
and bad. A consequence of this is, that the Ne6essary
Laws of Thought, those which our author in his first
doctrine reserved especially to Logic, are precisely those
with which Logic has least to do, and which belong the
most exclusively to Psychology. What is common to
all thought, whether good or bad, and inseparable from
it, is irrelevant to Logic, unless by the light it may
indirectly throw on something besides itself. The pro-
perties of Thought which concern Logic, are some of
its contingent properties ; those, namely, on the pre-
sence of which depends good thinking, as distinguished
from bad.
1 therefore accept our author's second view of the
province of Logic, which makes it a collection of pre-
cepts or rules for thinking, grounded on a scientific
investigation of the requisites of valid thought. It is
this doctrine which governs his treatment of the details
of Logic, and it is by this that we must interpret the
assertion that Logic has for its only subject the Form of
Thought. By the Form of Thought we must under-
stand Thinking itself; the whole work of the Intellect.
The Matter of Thought is the sensations, perceptions, or
other presentations (intuitions, as Mr. Mansel calls them),
in which the intellect has no share ; which are supplied
to it, independently of any action of its own. What
the mind adds to these, or puts into them, is Forms of
Thought. Logic, therefore, is concerned only with
Forms, since, being rules for thinking, it can have no
authority but over that which depends on thought.
Logic and Thinking are coextensive; it is the art of
Thinking, of all Thinking, .and of nothing but Think-
ing. And since every distinguishable variety of thinking
act is called a Form of Thought, the Forms of Thought
compose the whole province of Logic ; though it would
be hardly possible to invent a worse phrase for expressing
so simple a fact.
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 463
But what are the Forms of Thought ? Kant, as
already observed, gives to that expression a very wide
extent. He holds that every fundamental attribute
which we ascribe to external objects is a Form of
Thought, being created, not simply discerned, by our
thinking faculty. Neither Sir W, Hamilton nor Mr.
Mansel goes this length ; and at all events they do not
consider the theory of the various attributes of bodies to
be a part of Logic. It was incumbent on them, there-
fore, to state clearly what are the Forms of Thought with
which Logic is concerned, and for which it supplies
precepts. This question is never put, in an express
form, by Sir 'W. Hamilton: but the answer which he
rather leaves to be picked up than directly presents,
may be gathered from his classification of our intellec-
tual operations. These he reduces to three, Conception,
Judgment, and Reasoning. He must have recognised,
therefore, that number of general Forms of Thought.
The Forms of Thought are Conception, Judgment, and
Reasoning : Logic is the Science of the Laws (meaning
the rules) of these three operations. If, however, we
rigorously hold our author to this short list, we shall
perpetually mistake his meaning : for (as already ob-
served) the mode in which the word Form is used, allows
of form within form to an unlimited extent. Every
concept, judgment, or reasoning, after having received
its form from the mind, may again be contemplated as
the Matter of some further mental act ; and the product
of that further act (according to Kant), or the relation of
the product to the matter (according to Sir W. Hamilton
and Mr. Mansel), is again a Form of Thought ; as we find,
to our confusion, when we proceed further, and the more
profusely, the further we proceed. We have, first, how-
ever, to consider a proposition of Sir W. Hamilton, which
qualifies his definition of the province of Logic. He
says :*
" Logic considers Thought, not as the operation of
* Lectures, iii. 73.
464 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
" thinking, but as its product ; it does not treat of Con-
" ception, Judgment, and Reasoning, but of Concepts,
" Judgments, and Reasonings."
Let me begin by saying that I give my entire adhe-
sion to this distinction, and propose to reform the defi-
nition of Logic accordingly. It does not, as we now see,
relate to the Laws of Thought as Thought, but to those
of the Products of Thought. Instead of the Laws of
> t V J Conception, Judgment, and Reasoning, we must speak
of the Laws of Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings.
This would be mere nonsense in the scientific sense of
the word law : for a product, as such, can have no laws
but those of the operation which produces it. But un-
derstanding by laws, as it seems we are intended to do,
I Precepts, Logic becomes the science of the precepts for
I the formation of concepts, judgments, and reasonings : or
rather (a science of precepts being an improper expres-
sion) the science of the conditions on which right con-
cepts, judgments, and reasonings depend. Thus, Logic
is the Art of Thinking, which means of correct thinking,
and the Science of the Conditions of correct thinking.
This seems to me a sufficiently accurate definition of it.
But, in attempting a deeper metaphysical analysis of the
distinction he has just drawn, our author raises fresh
difficulties. He says :*
" The form of thought may be viewed on two sides,
" or in two relations. It holds, as has been said, a rela-
" tion both to its subject and to its object, and it may
" accordingly be viewed either in the one of these rela-
" tions or in the other. In so far as the form of thought
" is considered in reference to the thinking mind, to
" the mind by which it is exerted, it is considered as
" an act, or operation, or energy ; and in this relation it
" belongs to Phenomenal Psychology. Whereas, in so
" far as this form is considered in reference to what
" thought is about, it is considered as the product of
" such an act, and in this relation it belongs to Logic.
* Lectures, iii 73, 74.
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 465
Thus Phenomenal Psychology treats of thought proper
" as conception, judgment, reasoning : Logic, or the
" Nomology of the Understanding, treats of thought
" proper as a concept, as a judgment, as a reasoning."
Just when the puzzled reader fancied that he had at
last arrived at something clear, comes an explanation
which throws all back into darkness. The learner who
had been wandering in the mazes of " Thought as
Thought," laws which are not laws, and " Forms of
Thought" in which Form stands for something which he
never before heard of in connexion with that word, at last
descried what seemed to be firm ground: he was told
that Conception, Judgment, and Seasoning are acts of
the mind, that Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings
are products of those acts, and that Psychology is con-
versant with the former and Logic with the latter. And
now it turns out that the products are the acts. The
two series of things are one and the same series. They
are both of them only " Thought proper." The pro-
duct is another word for the act itself, considered in one
of its aspects "in reference to what thought is about.''
It is curious that this should occur only a few pages after
Whately has been rebuked for reducing a distinction to
inutility, by making it coincide with a difference not
between things, but between the aspects in which the
same thing is regarded.
Sir W. Hamilton therefore is of opinion that the
thinking act, though verbally, is not psychologically
different from the thought itself. He does not hold,
with Berkeley, that an Idea is a concrete object distinct
from the mind, and contained in it, like furniture in a
house; nor with Locke (if that was Locke's opinion), that
it is a modification of the mind, but a modification dis-
tinct from the mind's act in cognising it; but with
Brown, that a sensation is only myself feeling, and a
thought only myself thinking. Concepts, Judgments,
and Keasonings, are only acts of conceiving, judging, and
reasoning ; acts of thought, considered not in their rela-
tion to the thinking mind, but to their object, to " what
H H
466 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
thought is about."* But what is thought about ? Not
about Concepts, for all our thoughts are not about the
thinking act. It must be about the objective presenta-
tion, the Anschauung, or Intuition, which the Concept
represents, or from which, it has been abstracted. Ac-
cording, therefore, to the doctrine here distinctly laid
down by Sir W. Hamilton, there are but two things
present in any of our intellectual operations ; on one
hand, the mind itself thinking (that is, conceiving,
judging, or reasoning), and, on the other, a mental
presentation or representation of the phsenornenal
Reality which it conceives, or concerning which it
judges or reasons. I can understand that the thinking
act, or in other words, the mind in a thinking state,
may be contemplated in its relation to the Reality
thought of, and may receive a name which connotes
that Reality ; but how does this entitle us to call it a
product of thought ? How can the act of thought, or
the mind thinking, be looked upon, even hypothetically,
as a product of thinking? How can Concepts, Judg-
ments, and Reasonings be regarded as products of
thought, if they are the thought itself ? Can they be
both the act and something resulting from the act?
Are they results and products of themselves?
I conceive that there is a way out of this difficulty :
a sense in which the two assertions can be reconciled,
though it has not been pointed out by Sir W. Hamilton,
* Sir W. Hamilton holds a corresponding theory in regard to the
identity of an imagination with the imagining act. " A representation
1 considered as an object is logically, not really, different from a represen-
' tation considered as an act. Here object and act are merely the same in-
' divisible mode of mind viewed in two different relations. Considered by
' reference to a mediate object represented, it is a representative object :
' considered by reference to the mind representing and contemplating the
' representation, it is a representative act. A representative object being
' viewed as posterior in the order of nature, but not of time, to the repre-
' sentative act, is viewed as a product; and the representative act being
' viewed as prior in the order of nature, though not of time, to the repre-
' sentative object, is viewed as a producing process." (Dissertations on
Reid, p. 809.) Sir W. Hamilton has not explained how, in the order of
nature, or in any other order, a thing can be prior, or posterior, or prior
and posterior, to itself.
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 467
and is hardly compatible with some of his opinions.
There is a difference between what can properly be called
Acts of the mind, and the other mental phenomena
which may be termed its passive States. And I know
but one way of conceiving the distinction, in which it
can possibly be upheld, namely, by considering as Acts
only those mental phaenomena which are results of
Volition. Now, the first formation of a Concept, and
generally (though not always) any fresh operation of
judgment or reasoning, requires a mental effort, a con-
centration of consciousness upon certain definite objects,
which concentration depends on the will, and is called
Attention. When this takes place, the mind is pro-
perly said to be active. But after frequent repetition of
this act of will, the associations to which it has given rise
are sufficiently riveted to do their work spontaneously; the
effort of attention, after becoming less and less, is finally
null, and the operation, originally voluntary, becomes,
in Hartley's language, secondarily automatic. When
this transition has been completed, what remains of the
mental phenomenon has lost the character of an Act,
and become numbered among passive States. It is now
either a mere mental representation of an object, differ-
ing from those copied directly from sense, only in having
certain of its parts artificially made intense and promi-
nent ; or it is a. fasciculus of representations of imagination,
held together by the tie of an association artificially pro-
duced. When the mental phenomenon has assumed
this passive character, it comes to be termed a Concept,
or, more familiarly and vaguely, an Idea, and to be felt
as if it were, not the mind modified, but something in the
mind : and in this ultimate phasis of its existence we may
properly consider it, not as an act, but as the product of
a previous act ; since it now takes place without any con-
scious activity, and becomes a subject on which fresh
activity may be exercised, by an act of voluntary atten-
tion concentrating consciousness on it, or on some par-
ticular part of it. This explanation, which I leave for
the consideration of philosophers, would not have suited
H H 2
468 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
Sir W. Hamilton, since it would have required him to
limit the extent which he habitually gave to the expres-
sion "mental act." Every phenomenon of mind, down
to the mere reception of a sensation, he regards as an
act : therein differing from Kant, and annihilating the
need and use of the word, the sole function of which is
to distinguish what the mind originates, from what some-
thing else originates in the mind.
To return to the definition of Logic, as the science of
the Forms of Thought, considered in relation, not to the
thinking act itself, but, so far as they are distinguishable
from it, to the products of thought. The products of
thought are Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings, and
the Forms of Thought are Conception, Judgment, and
Reasoning. Logic is the science of those Forms, so far as
concerns the rules for the right formation of the products:
or, as our author elsewhere phrases it, the science of the
" formal conditions" of valid thinking. These modes of
expression have a rare power of darkening the subject,
but I am endeavouring to give them an intelligible in-
terpretation, by means of that which they profess to
explain. If, then, all thinking consists in adding, to
given matter, a Form derived from the mind itself, what
shall we say of the division, on which so much stress is
laid, of Thinking itself into t-wo kinds, Formal and Ma-
7 O
terial Thinking, the first of which alone belongs to Logic,
or at all events to pure Logic ? Mr. Mansel has written
a volume for the express purpose of showing that Logic
is only concerned with Formal Thinking ; and Sir W.
Hamilton's division of Logic into Pure and Modified,
agrees with Mr. Mansel's distinction. Yet, according
to the definition we have just considered, all thinking
whatever is Formal Thinking : since all thinking is either
conceiving, judging, or reasoning, and these are the
Forms of Thought. If Logic investigates the conditions
requisite for the right formation of concepts, of judg-
ments, and of reasonings, it investigates all the condi-
tions of right thought, for there are no other kinds of
thought than these ; and if it does all this, what is left
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 469
for the so-called Material Thinking which Logic is said
not to be concerned with ?
The answer to this question affords an additional spe-
cimen of the incurable confusion, in which the processes
of thought are involved by the unhappy misapplication to
them of the metaphorical word Form. Though Concepts,
Judgments, and Reasonings, are said to be the forms of
thought, and the only forms which thought takes, or
rather gives ; the metaphysicians who deal in Forms are
in the habit of using phrases which signify that Con-
cepts, Judgments, and Keasonings, though themselves
Forms, have also, in themselves, a formal part and a
material. Different conpepts, judgments, and reasonings,
have different matter, according to what it is that the
conception, the judgment, or the reasoning, is about:
and as whatever part of anything is not its Matter, is
always styled its Form, whatever is common to all Con-
cepts, or whatever belongs to them irrespectively of all
differences in their matter, is said to be their Form ; and
so of Judgments and of Reasonings. Thus, the difference
between an affirmative and a negative judgment is a
difference of form, because a judgment may be either
affirmative or negative whatever be the matter to which
it relates. The difference between a categorical and an
hypothetical syllogism is a difference of form, because it
neither depends on, nor is it at all affected by, any differen-
ces in the matter. Logic, according to Mr. Mansel pure
Logic, according to Sir W. Hamilton is conversant only
with the Forms of Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings,
not with their Matter. Not only is it concerned exclu-
sively with th Forms of thought, but exclusively with
the Forms of those Forms. And here I fairly renounce
any further attempt to deduce Sir VV. Hamilton's or Mr.
Mansel's conception of Logic from their delinitions of
it. I collect it from the general evidence of their trea-
tises, and I proceed to show why I consider it to be
Logic, Sir W. Hamilton has told us, lays down the
laws or precepts indispensable to Valid Thought ; the
470 is LOGIC THE SCIENCE OP
conditions to which thought is bound to conform, under
the penalty of being invalid, ineffectual, not accom-
plishing its end. And what is, peculiarly and emphati-
cally, the end of Thinking? Surely it is the attainment
of Truth. Surely, if not the sole, at all events the first
and most essential constituent of valid thought, is that
its results should be true. Concepts, Judgments, arid
Reasonings, should agree with the reality of things,
meaning by things the Phenomena or sensible presenta-
tions, to which those mental products have reference.
A concept, to be rightly framed, must be a concept of
something real, and must agree with the real fact which
it endeavours to represent, that is, the collection of attri-
butes composing the concept must really exist in the
objects marked by the class-name, and in no others. A
judgment to be rightly framed, must be a true judg-
ment, that is, the objects judged of must really possess
the attributes predicated of them. A reasoning, to be
rightly framed, must conduct to a true conclusion, since
the only purpose of reasoning is to make known to us
truths which we cannot learn by direct intuition. Even
those who take the most limited view of Logic, allow
that the conclusion must be true conditionally provided
that the premises are true. The most important, then,
and at bottom the only important quality of a thought
being its truth, the laws or precepts provided for the
guidance of thought must surely have for their principal
purpose that the products of thinking shall be true.
Yet with this, according to Mr. Mansel, Logic has no
concern ; and Sir W. Hamilton reserves it for a sort of
appendix to the science, under the title of Modified
Logic. Questions of truth and falsity, according to
both writers, regard only Material Thinking, while
Formal Thinking is the province of Logic. The only
precepts for thinking with which Logic concerns itself,
are those which have some other purpose than the con-
formity of our thoughts to the fact. Yet every possible
precept for thought, if it be an honest one, must have
this for at least its ultimate object. What, then, is ex-
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 471
eluded from Logic, and what is left in it, by the doctrine
that it is only concerned with Formal Thinking? What
is excluded is the whole of the evidences of the validity
of thought. What is included is part of the evidences
of its invalidity.
In no case can thinking be valid unless the concepts,
judgments, and conclusions resulting from it are con-
formable to fact. And in no case can we satisfy our- '
selves that they are so, by looking merely at the relations
of one part of the train of thought to another. We must
ascend to the original sources, the presentations of ex-
perience, and examine the train of thought in its relation,
to these. But we can sometimes discover, without
ascending to the sources, that the process of thought is
not valid ; having been so conducted that it cannot pos-
sibly avail for obtaining concepts, judgments, or con-
clusions in accordance with fact. This, for example, is
the case, if we have allowed ourselves to travel from pre-
mises to a conclusion through an ambiguous term. The
process then gives no ground at all for believing the
conclusion to be true : it is perhaps true, but we have
no more reason to believe so than we had before. Or
again, the concept, the judgment, or the reasoning may
involve a contradiction, and so cannot possibly corre-
spond to any real state of i'acts. It is with this part of
the subject only, in the opinion of these philosophers,
that Logic concerns itself. According to Mr. Mansei,*
Logic " accepts, as logically valid, all such concepts,
" judgments, and reasonings, as do not, directly or in-
" directly, imply contradictions ; pronouncing them thus
" far to be legitimate as thought, that they do not in
" ultimate analysis destroy themselves .... leaving to
" this or that branch of material science to determine
" how far the same products of thought are guaranteed
" by the testimony of this or that special experience."
Mr. Mansei has not here conceived his own view of the
subject with his usual precision. He narrows the field
* Prolegomena Logica, p. 265.
472 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
of Logic more than he intends. That to which he con-
fines the name of Logic, accepts as valid all concepts and
judgments that do not imply contradictions, but by no
means all reasonings. It rejects these not only when self-
contradictory, but when simply inconclusive. It condemns
a reasoning not only if it draws a conclusion inconsistent
with the premises, but if it draws one' which the premises
do not warrant ; not only if the conclusion must, but if it
may, be false though the premises be true. For the notion
of true and false will force its way even into Formal Logic,
whatever pains Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Maiisel give
themselves to make the notions of consistent and incon-
sistent, or of thinkable and unthinkable, do dut}^ instead
of it. The ideas of truth and falsity cannot be eliminated
from reasoning. We may abstract from actual truth,
but the validity of reasoning is always a question of con-
ditional truth whether one proposition must be true if
others are true, or whether one proposition can be true if
others are true. When Judgments or Reasonings are in
question, "the conditions of the thinkable" are simply
the conditions of the believable.
What Mr. Mansel and Sir W. Hamilton really mean,
is to segregate from the remainder of the theory of the
investigation of truth, as much of it as does not require
any reference to the original sufficiency of the ground-
work of facts, or the correctness of their interpretation,
and call this exclusively Logic, or Pure Logic. They
assume that concepts have been formed and judgments
made somehow ; and if there is nothing within the four
corners of the concept or the judgment which proves it
absurd, that is, no self-contradiction, they do not ques-
tion it further. Whether it is grounded on fact or on
mere supposition, and if on Jact, whether the fact is
represented correctly, they do not ask ; but think only
of the conditions necessary for preventing errors from
getting into the process of thought, which were not in
the notions or the premises from whence it started. The
theory of these conditions (of which the doctrine of the
Syllogism is the principal part) Mr. Mansel calls Logic,
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT ? 473
and Sir W. Hamilton Pure Logic. The expression
" Formal Logic," which is sometimes applied to it, is
perhaps as distinctive and as little misleading as any
other, and is that which, for want of a better, I am con-
tent to use. That this part of Logic should be distin-
guished and named, and made an object of consideration
separately from the rest, is perfectly natural. What I
protest against, is the doctrine of Sir W. Hamilton, Mr.
Mansel, and many other thinkers, that this part is the
whole ; that there is no other Logic, or Pure Logic, at
all ; that whatever is more than this, belongs not to a
general science and art of Thinking, but (in the words
of Mr. Mansel) to this or that material science.
This doctrine assumes, that with the exception of the
rules of Formal, that is, of Syllogistic Logic, no other
rules can be framed which are applicable to thought
generally, abstractedly from particular matter : That a
general theory is possible respecting the relations whicli
the parts of a process of thought should bear to one
another, but not respecting the proper relations of all
thought to its matter : That the problem which Bacon
set before himself, and led the way towards resolving, is
an impossible one : That there is not, and cannot be, any
general Theory of Evidence : That when we have takea
care that our notions and propositions concerning Things
shall be consistent with themselves and with one another,
and have drawn no inferences from them but such the
falsity of which would be inconsistent with assertions
already made, we have done all that a philosophy of
Thought can do and the agreement and disagreement
of our beliefs with the laws of the thing itself, is in each
case a special question, belonging to the science of that
thing in particular : That the study of nature, the search
for objective truth, does not admit of any rules, nor its
attainment, of any general test. For if there are such
rules, if there is such a test, and the consideration of it
does not belong to Logic, to what science or study does
it belong ? There is no other science, which, irrespec-
tively of particular matter, professes to direct the intel-
474 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OY
lect in the application of its powers to any matter on
which knowledge is possible. These philosophers must
therefore think that there can be no such rules, or that if
there are, they can only be of the vaguest possible descrip-
tion. Sir W. Hamilton says as much. " If we* abstract
" from the specialities of particular objects and sciences,
" and consider only the rules which ought to govern
" our procedure in reference to the object-matter of the
" sciences in general, and this is all that a universal
" Logic can propose, these rules are few in number, and
" their applications simple and evident. A material or
" Objective Logic, except in special subordination to the
" circumstances of particular sciences, is therefore of very
" narrow limits, and all that it can tell us is soon told."
It is very true that all Sir W. Hamilton can tell us of it
is soon told. Nothing can be more meagre, trite, and
indefinite than the little which he finds to say respecting
what he calls Modified Logic. And no wonder, when
we consider the following extraordinary deliverance,
which I quote from the conclusion of his Thirtieth Lec-
ture on Logic. Speaking of Physical Science generally,
Sir W. Hamilton thus expresses himself :f
" In this department of Knowledge there is chiefly
" demanded a patient habit of attention to details, in
" order to detect phenomena ; and, these discovered, their
" generalization is usually so easy that there is little
" exercise afforded to the higher energies of Judgment
" and Reasoning. It was Bacon's boast that Induc-
" tion, as applied to nature, would equalize all talents,
" level the aristocracy of genius, accomplish marvels by
" co-operation and method, and leave little to be done by
" the force of individual intellects. This boast has been
" fulfilled ; Science has, by the Inductive Process, been
" brought down to minds, who previously would have
" been incompetent for its cultivation, and physical
" knowledge now usefully occupies many who would
" otherwise have been without any rational pursuit."
* Lectures, iv. 232. (Appendix I.) f Ibid. p. 138.
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 475
Sir W. Hamilton had good reason for confining his
own logical speculations to a minor and subordinate
department of the Science and Art of Thinking, when
he was so destitute as this passage proves, of the pre-
liminary knowledge required for making any proficiency
in the other and higher branch. Every one who has
obtained any knowledge of the physical sciences from
really scientific study, knows that the questions of evi-
dence presented, and the powers of abstraction required,
in the speculations on which their greater generalizations
depend, are such as to task the very highest capacities
of the human intellect : and a thinker, however able,
who is too little acquainted with the processes actually
followed in the investigation of objective truth, to be
aware of this fact, is entitled to no authority when
he denies the possibility of a Philosophy of Evidence
and of the Investigation of Nature ; inasmuch as his own
acquirements do not furnish him with the means of
judging whether it is possible or not.*
If any general theory of the sufficiency of Evidence
and the legitimacy of Generalization be possible, this
must be Logic KUT si-o^i/, and anything else called by
the name can only be ancillary to it. For the Logic
called Formal only aims at removing one of the obsta-
cles to the attainment of truth, by preventing such mis-
takes as render our thoughts inconsistent with themselves
or with one another: and it is of no importance whether
* Accordingly all that Sir W. Hamilton has to say concerning the re-
quisites of a legitimate Induction, is that there must be no instances to
the contrary, and that the number of observed instances must be " com-
petent." (Lectures, iv. lb'8, 169.) If this were all that " a Material or
Objective Logic" could " tell us," Sir W. Hamilton's treatment of it would
be quite justified. The point of view of a complete Induction, namely one
in which the nature of the instances is such, that no other result than the
one arrived at is consistent with the universal Law of Causation, had never
risen above Sir W. Hamilton's horizon. The same low reach of thought,
not for want of power, but of the necessary knowledge, shows itself in
every part of the little he says concerning the investigation of Nature.
For example, he implicitly follows the mistake of Kant in affirming an
intrinsic difference between the inferences of Induction and those of
Analogy. Induction, he says (Lectures, iv. lb'5, 16ti), infers that " if a
" number of objects of the same class possess in common a certain attribute,
"... this attribute is possessed by all the objects of that class ;" while
476 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE OF
we think consistently or not, if we think wrongly. It
is only as a means to material truth, that the formal,
or to speak more clearly, the conditional, validity of an
operation of thought is of any value ; and even that
value is only negetive : we have not made the smallest
positive advance towards right thinking, hy merely keep-
ing ourselves consistent in what is, perhaps, systematic
error. This by no means implies that Formal Logic,
even in its narrowest sense, is not of very great, though
purely negative, value. On the contrary, I subscribe
heartily to all that is said of its importance by Sir W.
Hamilton and Mr. Mansel. Jt is good to have our path
clearly marked out, and a parapet put up at all the dan-
gerous points, whether the path leads us to the place we
desire to reach, or to another place altogether. But to
call this alone Logic, or this alone Pure Logic, as if all
the rest of the Philosophy of Thought and Evidence
were merely an adaptation of this to something else, is
to ignore the end to which all rules laid down for our
thinking operations are meant to be subservient. The
purpose of them all, is to enable us to decide whether any-
thing, and what, is proved true. Formal Logic conduces
indirectly to this end, by enabling us to perceive, either
that the process which has been performed is one which
could not possibly prove anything, or that it is one
which will prove something to be true, unless the pre-
mises happen to be false. This indirect aid is of the
greatest importance ; but it is important because the end,
Analogy infers that " if . . . two or more things agree in several internal
" and essential characters . . . they agree, likewise, in all other essential
" characters, that is, they are constituents of the same class." A little
more familiarity with the subject would have shown him that the two kinds
of argument are homogeneous, and differ only in degree of evidence. The
type of them both is, the inference that things which agree with one
another in certain respects, agree in certain other respects. Any argument
from known points of agreement to unknown, is an inference of analogy :
and induction is no more. Induction concludes that if a number of As
have the attribute 13, all things which agree with them in being As agree
with them also in having the attribute B. The only peculiarity of Induc-
tion, as compared with other cases of analogy, is, that the known points of
agreement from which further agreement is inferred, have been summed
up in a single word and made the foundation of a class. For further ex-
planations, see my System of Logic, Book iii. chap. xx.
THE LAWS OR FORMS OF THOUGHT? 477
the ascertainment of truth, is important ; and it is im-
portant only as complementary to a still more funda-
mental part of the operation, in which Formal Logic
affords no help.
I do not deny the scientific convenience of considering 1
this limited portion of Logic apart from the rest the
doctrine of the Syllogism, for instance, apart from the
theory of Induction; and of teaching it in an earlier
stage of intellectual education. It can be taught earlier,
since it does not, like the inductive logic, presuppose a
practical acquaintance with the processes of scientific
investigation ; and the greatest service to be derived
from it, that of keeping the mind clear, can be best
rendered before a habit of confused thinking has been
acquired. Not only, however, is it indispensable that
the larger Logic, which embraces all the general condi-
tions of the ascertainment of truth, should be studied
in addition to the smaller Logic, which only concerns
itself with the conditions of consistency ; but the smaller
Logic ought to be, at least finally, studied as part of the
greater as a portion of the means to the same end ;
and its relation to the other parts to the other means-
should be distinctly displayed. If thought be anything
more than a sportive exercise of the mind, its purpose is
to enable us to know what can be known respecting the
facts of the universe : its judgments and conclusions
express, or are intended to express, &ome of those facts :
and the connexion which Formal Logic, by its analysis
of the reasoning process, points out between one pro-
position and another, exists only because there is a con-
nexion between one objective truth and another, which
makes it possible for us to know objective truths which
have never been observed, in virtue of others which
have. This possibility is an eternal mystery and stum-
bling-block to Formal Logic. The bare idea that any
new truth can be brought out of a Concept that analysis
can ever find in it anything which synthesis has not
first put in is absurd on the face of it : yet this is all
the explanation that Formal Logic, as viewed by Sir
478 IS LOGIC THE SCIENCE, ETC.
W. Hamilton, is able to give of the phenomenon ; and
Mr. Mansel expressly limits the province of Logic to
analytic judgments to such as are merely identical.
But what the Logic of mere consistency cannot do, the
Logic of the ascertainment of truth, the Philosophy of
Evidence in its larger acceptation, can. It can explain
the function of the Ratiocinative process as an instru-
ment of the human intellect in the discovery of truth,
and can place it in its true correlation with the other
instruments. It is therefore alone competent to furnish
a philosophical theory of Reasoning. Such partial ac-
count as can be given of the process by looking at it
solely by itself, however useful and even necessary to
accurate thought, does not dispense with, but points out
in a more emphatic manner the need of, the more com-
prehensive Logic of which it should form a part, and
which alone can give a meaning or a reason of existence
to the Logic vied Formal, or to the reasoning ^rocess
itself.
479
CHAPTER XXI.
THK FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF THOUGHT ACCORDING TO
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON.
HAVING marked out, as the sole province of Logic, the
" Laws of Thought," Sir W. Hamilton naturally pro-
ceeds to specify what these are. The " Fundamental
Laws of Thought," of which all other laws that can be
laid down for thought are but particular applications,
are, according to our author, three in number : the Law
of Identity ; the Law of Contradiction ; and the Law
of Excluded Middle. In his Lectures he recognised a
fourth, "the Law of Reason and Consequent," which
seems to be compounded of the Law of Causation, and
the Leibnitzian " Principle of Sufficient Reason." But
as, in his later speculations, he no longer considered this
as an ultimate law, it needs not be further spoken of.
These three laws he otherwise denominates " The
Conditions of the Thinkable :"* from which it might
have been supposed that he regarded them as Laws of
Thought in the scientific sense of the word law ; condi-
tions to which thought cannot but conform, and apart
from which it is impossible. One would have said, a
priori, that he could not mean anything but this : since
otherwise the expression " Conditions of the Thinkable"
is perverted from its meaning. Nevertheless, this is not
what he means, at least in this place. It is on this
very occasion that he disclaims, as applicable to laws of
thought, the scientific meaning of the term, and declares
* Lectures, iii. 79. In the Appendix to the Lectures (iv. 244, 245) he
calls them the Laws of the Thinkable ; and the laws ot Conception,
Judgment, and Reasoning he distinguishes from them under the name of
" the laws of Thinking in a strict sense."
fW '
4 SO THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF THOUGHT
them to be (like the laws made by Parliament) general
precepts ; not necessities of the thinking act, but in-
structions for right thinking. Yet it would not have
been claiming too much for these three laws, to have
regarded them as laws in the more peremptory sense ;
as actual necessities of thought. Our author could
hardly have meant that we are able to disbelieve that a
thing is itself, or to believe that a thing is, and at the
same time that it is not. He not only, like other people,
constantly assumes this to be an impossibility, but makes
that impossibility the ground of some of his leading
philosophical doctrines ; as when he says that it is im-
possible for us to doubt the actual facts of consciousness
" because the doubt implies a contradiction."* It is
true that a person may, in one sense, believe contra-
dictory propositions, that is, he may believe the affirma-
tive at some times and the negative at others, alternately
forgetting the two beliefs. It is also true that he may
yield a passive assent to two forms of words, which, had
lie been fully conscious of their meaning, he would have
known to be, either wholly or in part, an affirmation and
a denial of the same fact. But when once he is made
to see that there is a contradiction, it is totally impossible
for him to believe it.
Now, to compel people to see a contradiction where
a contradiction is, constitutes the entire office of Logic in
the limited sense in which Sir W. Hamilton conceives
it : and he is quite right in regarding the whole of Logic,
in that narrow sense, as resting on the three laws speci-
fied by him. To call them the fundamental laws of
Thought is a misnomer; but they are the laws of Con-
sistency. All inconsistency is a violation of some one
of these laws ; an unconscious violation, for knowingly
to violate them is impossible.
Something remains to be said respecting the three
Laws considered singly, as well as respecting our author's
mode of regarding them.
The Law or Principle of Identity (Principium Identi-
* Foot-note to Reid, p. 113, and in many other places.
ACCORDING TO SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 481
tatis) is no other than the time-honoured axiom, " What-
ever is, is," or, in another phraseology, " A thing is the
same as itself:" the proposition which Locke, in his
chapter on Maxims, treated with so much disrespect.
Sir W. Hamilton, probably finding it difficult to establish
the " principle of all logical affirmation" on such a basis
as this, presents the axiom* in a modified shape, as an
assertion of the identity between a whole and its parts ;
or rather between a whole Concept, and its parts in
Comprehension the attributes which compose it; for
Logic, as conceived by him, has nothing to do with any
wholes but Concepts, abstracting altogether (as he as-
serts) from the reality of the things conceived.f
Although our author still so far defers to the old
version of the Principle of Identity, as to say that it is
"expressed in the formula A is A, or A=A," I must
admit that while paying this tribute of respect to our
ancient friend, he has taken a very substantial and
useful liberty with him, and has made him mean much
more than he ever meant before. The only fault that
can be found (but that is a serious one) is, that if we
accept this view of the maxim, we shall require many
" principles of logical affirmation" instead of one. For
if we are to make a separate principle for every mode in
which we have occasion to re-affirm the same thing in
different words, we need a large number of them. If we
require a special principle to entitle us, when we have
affirmed a set of attributes jointly, to affirm over again
* Lectures, iii. 79, 80.
f "We here see our author by implication admitting that a Concept
has no parts except its parts in Comprehension ; what he elsewhere calls
its parts in Extension being in no sense parts of the Concept, but parts of
something else, namely, of the aggregate of concrete objects to which the
Concept corresponds. Had Sir W. Hamilton adhered to this rational
doctrine, he must have given up his Judgments in Extension : instead of
which he not only retains them, but considers them as also founded on the
Principle of Identity : though he has expressly limited that principle in a
manner inconsistent with founding any judgments on it save Judgments
in Comprehension. This contradiction was worth pointing out, but is not
worth insisting on, since it may be rectified by extending the scope of the
First Law to the identity of any whole with its parts, instead of limiting
it to the identity of a Concept with its parts in Comprehension only.
I I
J^^d .
482 THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF THOUGHT
the same attributes severally, we require also a long list
of such principles as these : When one thing is before
another, the other is after. When one thing is after
another, the other is before. When one thing is along
with another, the other is along with the first. When
one thing is like, or unlike, another, the other is like
(or unlike) the first : in short, as many fundamental
principles as there are kinds of relation. For we have
need of all these changes of expression in our processes
of thought and reasoning. What is at the bottom of
them all is, that Logic (to borrow a phrase from our
author) postulates to be allowed to assert the same mean-
ing in any words which will, consistently with their
signification, express it. The use and meaning of a
Fundamental Law of Thought is, that it asserts in
general terms the right to do something, which the mind
needs to do in cases as they arise. It is in this sense
that the Dictum de Omni et Nullo is called the funda-
mental law of the Syllogism. But, for this purpose,
it is necessary that the Law or Postulate should be
stated in so comprehensive and universal a manner
as to cover every case in which the act authorized by it
requires to be done. Looked at. in this light, the Prin-
ciple of Identity ought to have been expressed thus :
Whatever is true in one form of words, is true in every
other form of words which conveys the same meaning.
Thus worded, it fulfils the requirements of a First Prin-
ciple of Thought ; for it is the widest possible expres-
sion of an act of thought which is always legitimate, and
continually has to be done.*
Understood in this sense, the Principle of Identity
absorbs into itself a Postulate of Logic on which Sir
W. Hamilton lays great stress, and which he did good
service in making prominent, though we shall hereafter
find that he sometimes misapplies it. He expresses it
* This principle provides for the whole of what Kant terms Conclusions
of Understanding, and Dr. M'Cosh (p. 290) Implied or Transposed Judg-
ments. They are not conclusions, nor fresh acts of judgment, but the
original judgment, expressed in other words.
ACCORDING TO SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 483
as follows :* " The only Postulate of Logic which re-
quires an articulate enouncement is the demand, that
before dealing with a judgment or reasoning expressed
in language, the import of its terms should be fully
understood; in other words, Logic postulates to be
allowed to state explicitly in language, all that is im-
" plicitly contained in the thought." There cannot be a
more just demand: but let us carefully note the terms
in which our author enunciates it, that he may be held
to them afterwards. Everything may be stated ex-
plicitly in language, which is " implicitly contained in
the thought," that is (according to his own interpreta-
tion) in the "import of the terms" used. In other
words, we have a right to express explicitly, what has
already been asserted in terms which really mean, though
they do not explicitly declare it. Observe, what has
been already asserted; not what can be inferred from
something that has been asserted. One proposition may
imply another, but unless the implication is in the very
meaning of the terms, it avails nothing. It may be im-
possible that the one proposition should be true without
the other being true also, and yet Logic cannot " postu-
late" to be allowed to affirm this last ; she must be re-
quired to prove it. Interpreted in this, its true sense,
Sir W. Hamilton's postulate is legitimate, but is only a
particular case of the Principle of Identity in its most
generalized shape. It is a case of postulating to be
allowed to express a given meaning in another form of
words.
As already mentioned, Sir W. Hamilton represents the
Principle of Identity to be " the principle of all logical
affirmation." This I can by no means admit, whether
the Principle in question is taken in Sir W. Hamilton's
narrower, or in my own wider sense. The reaffirmation
in new language of what has already been asserted or
(descending to particulars and adopting our author's
phraseology) the thinking of a Concept through an
attribute which is a part of itself can, as I formerly
* Lectures^ iii. 114.
ii 2
484 THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF THOUGHT
observed, be admitted as a correct account of the nature
of affirmation, only in the case of Analytical Judgments.
In a Synthetical Judgment, the attribute predicated is
thought not as part of, but as existing in a common
subject along with, the group of attributes composing the
Concept : and of this operation of thought it is plain
that no principle of Identity can give any account, since
there is a new element introduced, which is not identical
with any part of what pre-existed in thought. This is
clearly seen by Mr. Mansel, who expressly limits the
dominion of the Law of Identity to analytical judg-
ments ;* and, with perfect consistency, regards these as
the only judgments with which Logic, as such, is con-
cerned. If, then, the Law of Identity is to be upheld
as the principle " of all logical affirmation," we must
understand that logical affirmation does not mean all
affirmation, but only affirmations which communicate no
fact, and merely assert that what is called by a name, is
what the name declares it to be.
If our author had stated the Law of Identity to be the
principle not of " logical affirmation," but of affirmative
Reasoning, he would have said something far more plau-
sible, and which had been maintained by many of his
predecessors. The truth is, however, that as far as that
law is a principle of reasoning at all, it is as much a
principle of negative, as of affirmative reasoning. In
proving a negative, as much as in proving an affirmative,
we require the liberty of exchanging a proposition for
any other that is sequipollent with it, and of predicating
separately of any subject, all attributes which have been
predicated of it jointly. These liberties the mind right-
fully claims in all its intellectual operations. The prin-
ciple of Identity is not the peculiar groundwork of any
special kind of thinking, but an indispensable postulate
in all thinking.
The second of the " Fundamental Laws" is the Law or
Principle of Contradiction (Principium Confradictionis};
that two assertions, one of which denies what the other
* Prolegomena Logica, pp. 196, 197.
ACCORDING TO SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 485
jaffirms, cannot be thought together. Most people would
[have said, cannot be believed together ; but our author
resolutely refuses to recognise belief as any element in
the scientific analysis of a proposition. " This law," he
says, " is the principle of all logical negation and dis-
tinction,"* and " is logically expressed in the formula,
What is contradictory is unthinkable. "f To this he
subjoins, as an equivalent mathematical formula, "A=
not A = o, or A A=o:" a misapplication and perver-
sion of algebraical symbols, not to be omitted among
other evidences how little familiar he was with mathe-
matical modes of thought.
Concerning the name of this law, Sir W. Hamilton
observes! that " as it enjoins the absence of contradiction
" as the indispensable condition of thought, it ought to
" be called, not the Law of Contradiction, but the Law
" of Non-Contradiction, or of non-repuynanlia" It seems
that no extent and accuracy of knowledge concerning
the opinions of predecessors, can preserve a thinker from
giving an erroneous interpretation of their meaning by
antedating a contusion of ideas which exists in his own
mind. The Law of Contradiction does not " enjoin the
absence of contradiction;" it is not an injunction at all.
It those who wrote before Sir W. Hamilton of the Law
or Principle of Contradiction, had meant by those terms
what he did, namely, a rule or precept, it would have
been, no doubt, absurd in them to have given the name
Law of Contradiction, to a Precept of Non-Contradiction.
.But I venture to assert that when they spoke of the Law
of Contradiction (which most of them, I believe, never
did, but called it the Principle) they were no more
dreaming of enjoining anything, than when they spoke
of the Law or Principle of Identity they intended to
enjoin identity. They used those terms in their proper
scientitic, and not, as Sir VV. Hamilton does, in their
moral or legislative sense, .By the Law of Identity they
meant one of the properties of identity, namely, that a
proposition which is identical must be true. And by the
* Lectures, iii. 82. f ll > id - P- 81 - + lbld * P- 82>
486 THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF THOUGHT
Law of Contradiction they meant one of the proper-
ties of contradiction, namely, that what is contradic-
tory cannot be true. We should express their meaning
better if instead of the word Law, we used the expres-
sions, Doctrine of Identity, and Doctrine of Contradiction.
This is what they had in their minds, and even expressed
by their words; for the word Principle, with them, meant
a particular kind of Doctrine, namely, one which is the
groundwork, and justifying authority, of a whole class of
operations of the mind. If the word Law is to be re-
tained, Principium Contradictionis would be better trans-
lated, not Law of Contradiction but Law of Contradictory
Propositions ; were it not for the consideration, that the
principle of Excluded Middle is also a law of contradictory
propositions.
The Law of Contradiction, according to Sir W. Hamil-
ton, is the "principle of all logical negation."' I do not
see how it can be the principle of any negation except the
denial that a thing is the contradictory of itself. That
a sight is not a taste is a negation, and it must be a very
narrow use of the term which refuses it the title of a
logical negation. But there is no contradiction between
a sight and a taste. That blue is not green, involves no
logical contradiction. We could believe that a green
thing may be blue, as easily as we believe that a round
thing may be blue, if experience did not teach us the
incompatibility of the former attributes, and the com-
patibility of the latter. The negative judgment, that a
man is not a horse, may indeed be said to be grounded on
the Principle of Contradiction, inasmuch as the opposite
assertion, that a man is a horse, is in certain of its parts
contradictory, though in others only false. The word
man may be understood as signifying (in precise logical
language, connoting) among the other properties, that of
having exactly two legs the word horse, that of having
four; and in respect of this particular part of the mean-
ing of the terms, the subject and the predicate are con-
tradictory, the one affirming and the other denying the
* Lectures, iii. 82.
ACCORDING TO SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 487
extra number of legs. But suppose the subject and
predicate of the judgment to be names of classes con-
stituted by positive attributes without negative, as
mathematician and moralist, or merchant and philo-
sopher. An affirmation uniting them may then be false,
but cannot possibly be self- contradictory. The Law of
Contradiction cannot be the ground on which it is
asserted that a mathematician is not a moralist, for the
two Concepts are only different, not contradictory, nor
even repugnant.
Others have said, that the Law or Doctrine of Contra-
diction is the principle of Negative Reasoning. But
the obvious truth is, that it is the principle of all Rea-
soning, so far as reasoning can be regarded apart from
objective truth or falsehood. For, abstractedly from that
consideration, the only meaning of validity in reasoning
is that it neither involves a contradiction, nor infers
anything the denial of which would not contradict the
premises. Valid reasoning, from the point of view
of merely Formal Logic, is a negative conception ; it
means, reasoning which is not self- destructive ; which
cannot be discovered to be worthless from its own data.
It would be absurd to suppose that the validity of the
reasoning process itself, either affirmative or negative,
could be proved from the Doctrine of Contradiction ; for
though a given syllogism may be proved valid by show-
ing that the falsity of the conclusion, combined with
the truth of one premise, would contradict the truth of
the other, this can only be done by another syllogism,
so that the validity of Reasoning would be taken for
granted in the attempt to prove it. The Law of Con-
tradiction is a principle of reasoning in the same sense,
and in the same sense only, as the Law of Identity is.
It is the generalization of a mental act which is of con-
tinual occurrence, and which cannot be dispensed with in
I reasoning. As we require the liberty of substituting for a
1 given assertion, the same assertion in different words,
I so we require the liberty of substituting, for any asser-
1 tion, the denial of its contradictory. The affirmation
488 THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF THOUGHT
of the one and the denial of the other are logical
equivalents, which it is allowable and indispensable to
make use of as mutually convertible.
The third "Fundamental Law" is the law or principle
of Excluded Middle (principium Exclusi Medii vel Tertii),
of which the purport is, that, of two directly contradic-
tory propositions, one or the other must be true. I
am now expressing the axiom in my own language, for
the tortuous phraseology* by which our author escapes
from recognising the ideas of truth and falsity, having
already been sufficiently exemplified, may here be disre-
garded. This axiom is the other half of the doctrine of
Contradictory Propositions. By the law of Contradiction,
contradictory propositions cannot both be true ; by the
law of Excluded Middle, they cannot both be false. Or,
to state the meaning in other language, by the law of
Contradiction a proposition cannot be both true and false;
by the law of Excluded Middle it must be either true or
false there is no third possibility.
Sir W. Hamilton says that this law is "the prin-
ciple of disjunctive judgments."! By disjunctive judg-
ments, logicians have always meant, judgments in this
form : Either this is true or that is true. The law of
Excluded Middle cannot be the principle of any dis-
junctive judgment but those in which the subject of
both the members is the same, and one of the predicates
a simple negation of the other : as, A is either B or not
B. That indeed rests on the principle of Excluded
Middle, or rather, is the very formula of that principle.
It is here to be remarked that Sir W. Hamilton, after
Krug, but by a very unaccountable departure from the
common usage of logicians, confines the name of Disjunc-
tive Judgments to those in which all the alternative pro-
positions have the same subject : " D is either B, or C,
or A."} This is not only an arbitrary change in the
meaning of words, but renders the classification of pro-
positions incomplete, leaving two kinds of disjunctive
propositions (Either B, C, or D, is A, and Either A is B
* Lectures, iii. 83. f Ibid. p. 84. J Ibid. p. 239.
ACCORDING TO SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 489
or C is D) unrecognised and without a name. But even
in our author's restricted sense of the word Disjunctive,
I cannot see how the Law of Excluded Middle can be
said to be the principle of all disjunctive judgments.
The judgment that A is either B or not B, is warranted
and its truth certified by the Law of Excluded Middle :
but the judgment that A is either B or C, both B and
C being positive, requires some other voucher than the
law that one or other of two contradictories must be true.
Thus, " X is either a man or a brute," is not a judgment
grounded on the principle of Excluded Middle, since
brute is not a bare negation of man, but includes the
positive attribute of being an animal, which X may
possibly not be.
It might be said, with more plausibility, that the Law
of Excluded Middle is the principle of Disjunctive Rea-
soning. Thus, in the last example, " X is either a man
or a brute'' may be a conclusion from two premises, that
X is an animal, and that every animal is either a man
or a brute : the latter of which is a disjunctive judg-
ment grounded on the Law of Excluded Middle. But
it is not the fact that all disjunctive conclusions are
inferred from premises of this nature. Having been
told that A has lost a son, I conclude that either B, C,
or D (A having no other sons) is dead : what kind of
reasoning is this ? Disjunctive, surely : it has a dis-
junctive premise, and leads to a disjunctive conclusion.
But the disjunctive premise (Every son of A is either B,
C, or D) does not rest on the Law of Excluded Middle,
or on any necessity of thought ; it rests on my know-
ledge of the individual fact.
The third Law, however, like the two others, is one
of the principles of all reasonings, being the generaliza-
tion of a process which is liable to be required in all of
them. As the Doctrine of Contradiction authorizes us
to substitute for the assertion of either of two contra-
dictory propositions, the denial of the other, so the doc-
trine of Excluded Middle empowers us to substitute for
the denial of either of two contradictory propositions,
\
490 ' THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF THOUGHT
the assertion of the other. Thus all the three principles
which our author terms the Fundamental Laws of
Thought, are universal postulates of Reasoning ; and as
such, are entitled to the conspicuous position which our
author assigns to them in Logic : though it is evident
that they ought not to be placed at the very beginning
of the subject, but at the earliest, in its Second Part, the
theory of Judgments, or Propositions : since they essen-
tially involve the ideas of Truth and Falsity, which are
attributes only of judgments, not of names, or Concepts.
It is another question altogether, what we ought to
think of these three principles, considered not as general
expressions of legitimate intellectual processes, but as
themselves speculative truths. Sir W. Hamilton con-
siders them to be such in a very universal sense indeed,
since he thinks we are bound to regard them as true
beyond the sphere of either real or imaginable phe-
nomenal experience to be true of Things in Themselves
of Noumena. " Whatever," he says,* " violates the
" laws, whether of Identity, of Contradiction, or of Ex-
" eluded Middle, we feel to be absolutely impossible,
" not only in thought, but in existence. Thus we cannot
" attribute even to Omnipotence the power of making
" a thing different from itself, of making a thing at
" once to be and not to be, of making a thing neither to
" be nor not to be. These three laws thus determine to
" us the sphere of possibility and of impossibility : and
" this not merely in thought but in reality, not only
" logically but metaphysically." And iruanother place :f
" If the true character of objective validity be univer-
" sality, the laws of Logic are really of that character,
" for those laws constrain us, by their own authority, to
" regard them as the universal laws not only of human
" thought, but of universal reason." A few pages before,
our author took pains to impress upon us that we were
not to regard these laws as necessities of thought, but
as general precepts " which we are able to violate :" but
* Lectures, iii. 98. f Ibid. iv. 65.
ACCORDING TO SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 491
they now appear to be necessities of thought and some-
thing- more.
I readily admit that these three general propositions
are universally true of all phenomena. I also admit
that if there are any inherent necessities of thought,
these are such. I express myself in this qualified man-
ner, because whoever is aware how artificial, modifiable,
the creatures of circumstances, and alterable by circum-
stances, most of the supposed necessities of thought are
(though real necessities to a given person at a given
time), will hesitate to affirm of any such necessities that
they are an original part of our mental constitution.
Whether the three so-called Fundamental Laws are laws
of our thoughts by the native structure of the mind, or
merely because we perceive them to be universally true
of observed phenomena, I will not positively decide :
but they are laws of our thoughts now, and invincibly
so. They may or may not be capable of alteration by
experience, but the conditions of our existence deny to
us the experience which would be required to alter them.
Any assertion, therefore, which conflicts with one of these
laws any proposition, for instance, which asserts a con-
tradiction, though it were on a subject wholly removed
from the sphere of our experience, is to us unbelievable.
The belief in such a proposition is, in the present cou-
stitution of nature, impossible as a mental fact.*
* " When remembering a certain thing as in a certain place, the place
" and the thing are mentally represented together ; while to think of the
" non-existence of the thing in that place, implies a consciousness in which
'the place is represented but not the thing. Similarly, if instead of
' thinking of an object as colourless, we think of it as having colour, the
' change consists in the addition to the concept of an element that was
' before absent from it the object cannot be thought of first as red and
'then as not red, without one component of the thought being totally
' expelled from the mind by another. The law of the Excluded Middle,
' then, is simply a generalization of the universal experience that some
' meatal states are directly destructive of other states. It formulates a
' certain absolutely constant law, that the appearance of any positive
' mode of consciousness cannot occur without excluding a correlative
' negative mode : and that the negative mode cannot occur without ex-
' eluding the correlative positive mode : the antithesis of positive and
' negative being, indeed, merely an expression of this experience. Hence
' it follows that if consciousness is not in one of the two modes, it must
be in the other." Mr. Herbert Spencer, in Fortnightly Review for July
15, 1865.
492 THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF THOUGHT
But Sir W. Hamilton goes beyond this : he thinks
that the obstacle to belief does not lie solely in an
incapacity of our believing faculty, but in objective in-
capacities of existence ; that the " Fundamental Laws
of Thought" are laws of existence too, and may be
known to be true not only of Phenomena but also of
Noumena. Of this, however, as of all else relating to
Noumena, the verdict of philosophy, I apprehend, must
be that we are entirely ignorant. The distinction itself
is but an idle one ; for since Noumena, if they exist, are
wholly unknowable by us, except phenomenally, through
their effects on us ; and since all attributes which exist
for us, even in our fancy, are but phenomena, there is
nothing for us either to affirm or deny of a Noumenon
except phenomenal attributes : existence itself, as we
conceive it, being merely the power of producing phe-
nomena. Now in respect to phenomenal attributes, no
one denies the three " Fundamental Laws" to be uni-
versal^ true. Since then they are laws of all Phe-
nomena, and since Existence has to us no meaning but
one which has relation to Phenomena, we are quite safe
in looking upon them as laws of Existence. This is
sufficient for those who hold the doctrine of the Rela-
tivity of human knowledge. But Sir W. Hamilton, as
has been seen, does not hold that doctrine, though he
holds a verbal truism which he chooses to call by the
same name. His opinion is that we do know something
more than phenomena : that we know the Primary
Qualities of bodies as existing in the Noumena, in the
things themselves, and not as mere powers of affecting
us. Sir W. Hamilton, therefore, needs another kind of
argument to establish the doctrine that the Laws of
Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, are laws
of all existence : and here we leave it :*
" To deny the universal application of the three laws
" is, in fact, to subvert the reality of thought ; and as this
" subversion is itself an act of thought, it in fact annihi-
" lates itself. When, for example, I say that A is, and
* Lectures, iii. 99, 100.
ACCORDING TO SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 493
" then say that A is not, by the second assertion I sub-
" late or take away what, by the first assertion, I posited
" or laid down ; thought, in the one case, undoing by
" negation what, in the other, it had by affirmation
" done." This proves only that a contradiction is un-
thinkable, not that it is impossible in point of fact.
But what follows goes more directly to the mark. " But
" when it is asserted that A existing and A non-existing
" are at once true, what does it imply ? It implies that
" negation and affirmation correspond to nothing out of
" the mind, that there is no agreement, no disagree-
" ment between thought and its objects ; and this is
" tantamount to saying that truth and falsehood are
" merely empty sounds. For if we only think by affirma-
" tion and negation, and if these are only as they are
" exclusive of each other, it follows that unless existence
" and non-existence be opposed objectively in the same
" manner as affirmation and negation are opposed sub-
" jectively, all our thought is a mere illusion. Thus
" it is that those who would assert the possibility of
" contradictions being at once true, in fact annihilate
" the possibility of truth itself, and the whole significance
"of thought."
Of this favourite style of argument with our author
we have already had many specimens, and have said so
much about them, that we can afibrd to be brief in the
present instance. Assuming it to be true that " to deny
the universal application of the three laws" as laws of
existence " is to subvert the reality of thought :" is
anything added to the force of this consideration by
saying that "this subversion is itself an act of thought ?"
If the reality of thought can be subverted, is there any
peculiar enormity in doing it by means of thought itself?
In what other way can we imagine it to be done ? And
if it were true that thought is an invalid process, what
better proof of this could be given than that we could,
by thinking, arrive at the conclusion that our thoughts
are not to be trusted ? Sir W. Hamilton always seems
to suppose that the imaginary sceptic, who doubts the
494 THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF THOUGHT
validity of thought altogether, is obliged to claim a
greater validity for his subversive thoughts than he
allows to the thoughts they subvert. But it is enough
for him to claim the same validity, so that all opinions
are thrown into equal uncertainty.* Sir W. Hamilton, of
all men, ought to know this, fur when he is himself on
the sceptical side of any question, as when speaking of
the Absolute, or anything else which he deems inacces-
sible to the human faculties, this is the very line of
argument he employs. He proves the invalidity, as
regards those subjects, of the thinking process, by show-
ing that it lands us in contradictions.!
But it is entirely inadmissible that to suppose that a
law of thought need not necessarily be a law of existence,
invalidates the thinking process. If, indeed, there were
any law necessitating us to think a relation between
phenomena which does not in fact exist between the
phenomena, then certainly the thinking process would
* The principal extant interpreter of the ancient Scepticism, Sextus
Empiricus, expressly defines as its essence and scope, TO -navrl Xd-yw Xoyoj/
"ia-ov avriKflcrdai. (Pyrrh. Hypot.) It is, indeed, impossible to conceive
Scepticism otherwise. Anything more would not be Scepticism, but
Negative Dogmatism.
t " If I," says our author (Appendix to Lectures, i. 402), " have done
' anything meritorious in philosophy, it is in the attempt to explain the
' phaenomena of these contradictions, in showing that they arise only
' when intelligence transcends the limits to which its legitimate exercise
' is restricted.' "In generating its antinomies, Kant's Reason transcended
' its limits, violated its laws. . . . Ecason is only self-contradictory when
' driven beyond its legitimate bounds." (Appendix to Lectures, ii. 543.)
' It is only when transcending that sphere, when founding on its illegiti-
' mate as on its legitimate exercise, that it affords a contradictory
' result. . . . The dogmatic assertion of necessity of Fatalism, and the
' dogmatic assertion of Liberty, are the counter and equally inconceivable
' conclusions from reliance on the illegitimate and one-sided." (Appendix
to Lectures, i. 403.) To the same effect Mr. Mansel, throughout his
" Limits of Religious Thought."
In one of the Appendices to the Lectures on Metaphysics (ii. 527, 528),
Sir W. Hamilton makes out a long list of contradictions or antinomies (of
which we shall have somethicg to say hereafter) involved, as he thinks, in
the attempt to conceive the Infinite, and which he considers as evidence
that the notion is beyond the reach of the human faculties. Tet he will
not allow that the fact of leading to contradictions, which he habitually
urges as an argument against the validity of some thought, would be ad-
missible as an argument against Thought in general, if it could be brought
home to it. At least he will not allow it in this place : for in his theory
of the veracity of Consciousness he does (Lectures, i. 277).
ACCORDING TO SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 495
be proved invalid, because we should be compelled by it
to think true something which would really be false.
But if the mind is incapable of thinking anything re-
specting Noumena except the Phenomena which it con-
siders as proceeding from them, and to which it can
appeal to test its thoughts ; and if we are under no
necessity of thinking these otherwise than in conformity
to what they really are ; we may refuse to believe that
our generalizations from the Phsenomenal attributes of
Noumena can be applied to Noumena in any other
aspect, without in the least invalidating the operation of
thought in regard to anything to which thought is ap-
plicable. We may say to Sir W. Hamilton what he says
himself in another case:* "I only say that thought is
" limited ; but, within its limits, I do not deny, I do not
" subvert, its truth." As he elsewhere observes, trans-
lating from Esser,f truth consists " solely in the cor-
respondence of our thoughts with their objects." If the
only real object of thought, even when we are nominally
speaking of Noumena, are Phenomena, our thoughts
are true when they are made to correspond with Phae-
nomena : and, the possibility of this being denied by no
one, the thinking process is valid whether our laws of
thought are laws of absolute existence or not.
* Lectures, iii 100. f Ibid. p. 107; see also iv. 61.
496
CHAPTER XXII.
OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED IMPROVEMENTS IJf
FORMAL LOGIC.
OF all Sir "W. Hamilton's philosophical achievements,
there is none, except perhaps his " Philosophy of the
Conditioned," on account of which so much merit has
been claimed for him, as the additions and corrections
which he is supposed to have contributed to the doc-
trine of the Syllogism. These may be summed up in
two principal theories, with their numerous corollaries
and applications ; the recognition of two kinds of Syllo-
gism, Syllogisms in Extension and Syllogisms in Com-
prehension ; and the doctrine of the Quantification of
the Predicate. To the former of these, Sir W. Hamil-
ton ascribed great importance. According to him, all
previous logicians, " with the doubtful exception of
" Aristotle," " have altogether overlooked the reasoning
"in Comprehension" "have marvellously overlooked
" one, and that the simplest and most natural of these
" descriptions of reasoning, the reasoning in the quan-
" tity of comprehension :" and he claims, in directing
attention to it, to have " relieved a radical defect and
vital inconsistency in the present logical system."* For
the other theory, that of the Quantification of the Pre-
dicate, still loftier claims are advanced both by himself
and by others. Mr. Baynes, with an enthusiasm natural
and not ungraceful in a pupil, concludes his Essay on
the subject (which still remains the clearest exposition
of his master's doctrine) with the following words :f
* Lectures, iii. 297, 304, 378. Appendix, iv. 250.
f An Essay on the New Analytic of Logical Forms, being that which
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S IMPROVEMENTS IN LOGIC. 497
1 We cannot, however, close without expressing the true
"joy we feel (though, were the feeling less strong, we
" might shrink from the intrusion), that in our own
" country, and in our time, this discovery has been made.
' We rejoice to know that one has at length arisen, able
" to recognise and complete the plan of the mighty
<: builder, Aristotle, to lay the top-stone on that fabric,
" the foundations of which were laid more than two
" thousand years ago, by the master hand of the Stagi-
" rite, which, after the labours of many generations of
" workmen, who have from time to time built up one part
" here and taken down another there remains substan-
" tially as he left it ; but which, when finished, shall be
' : seen to be an edifice of wondrous beauty, harmony,
" and completeness."
Previous to discussing these additions to the Syllogistic
Theory, it is necessary to revert to a doctrine which has
been briefly stated in a former chapter, but did not then
receive all the elucidation it requires, and which has a
most important bearing on both of Sir W. Hamilton's
supposed discoveries. This is, that all Judgments (ex-
cept where both the terms are proper names) are really
judgments in Comprehension ; though it is customary,
and the natural tendency of the mind, to express most of
them in terms of Extension. In other words, we never
really predicate anything but attributes, though, in the
usage of language, we commonly predicate them by
means of words which are names of concrete objects.
When, for example, I say, The sky is blue ; my mean-
ing, and my whole meaning, is that the sky has that par-
ticular colour. I am not thinking of the class blue, as
regards extension, at all. I am not caring, nor neces-
sarily knowing, what blue things there are, or if there is
any blue thing except the sky. I am thinking only of
the sensation of blue, and am judging that the sky pro-
" gained the prize proposed by Sir William Hamilton in the year 1846 for
" the best exposition of the new Doctrine propounded in his Lectures.
" With an Historical Appendix. By Thomas Spencer Baynes, Translator
" of the Port Eoyal Logic " (p. 80).
K K
498 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED
duces this sensation in my sensitive faculty ; or (to ex-
press the meaning in technical language) that the quality
answering to the sensation of blue, or the power of ex-
citing the sensation of blue, is an attribute of the sky.
When again I say, All oxen ruminate, I have nothing
to do with the predicate, considered in extension. I may
know, or be ignorant, that there are other ruminating
animals besides oxen. Whether I do or do not know
it, it does not, unless by mere accident, pass through rny
mind. In judging that oxen ruminate, I do not, unless
accidentally, think under the notion ruminate (to borrow
Sir W. Hamilton's phraseology) any other notion than
that of an ox. The Comprehension of the predicate
the attribute or set of attributes signified by it are all
that I have in my mind ; and the relation of this attri-
bute or these attributes to the subject, is the entire
matter of the judgment.
In one of the examples above given, the predicate is
an adjective, and in the other a verb, which, in a logical
point of view, is classed with adjectives : but its being a
noun substantive makes no difference. For reasons easily
shown, a substantive is more strongly associated with the
ideas of the concrete objects denoted by it, than an ad-
jective or a verb is. But when we predicate a substan-
tive when we say, Philip is a man, or, A herring is a
fish do the words man and fish signify anything to us
but the bundles of attributes connoted by them ? Do the
propositions mean anything except that Philip has the
human attributes, and a herring the piscine ones? As-
suredly not. Any notion of a multiude of other men,
among whom Philip is ranked, or a variety of fishes
besides herrings, is foreign to the proposition. The pro-
position does not decide whether there is this additional
quantity or no. It affirms the attributes of its own par-
ticular subject, and of no other.
Passing now from the predicate to the subject, we
shall find that the subject also, if a general term or
notion, is always construed in Comprehension, that is,
by the attributes which constitute it, and has no other
IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC. 499
meaning in thought. When I judge that all oxen rumi-
nate, what do I mean by all oxen? I have no image
in my mind of all oxen. I do not, nor ever shall, know
all of them, and I am not thinking even of all those
I do know. "All oxen," in my thoughts, does not
mean particular animals it means the objects, whatever
they may be, that have the attributes by which oxen
are recognised, and which compose the notion of an ox.
Wherever these attributes shall be found, there, as I
judge, the attribute of ruminating will be found also :
that is the entire purport of the judgment. Its meaning
is a meaning in attributes, and nothing else. It supposes
subjects, but merely as all attributes suppose them.
But there is another mode of interpreting the same
proposition, by considering it as a part of the statement
of a classification and mental co-ordination of the objects
which exist in nature. The proposition is then looked
upon as an assertion respecting given objects ; affirming
what other individual objects they are classed among by
the general scheme of human language. Thus interpreted,
the proposition " all oxen ruminate" may be read as
follows : If all creatures that ruminate were collected in
a vast plain, and I were required to search the world
and point out all oxen, they would all be found among
the crowd on that plain, and none anywhere else. More-
over, this would have been the case in all past time, and
will at any future, while the present order of nature
lasts. This is the proposition "All oxen ruminate"
interpreted in Extension. Will any one say that a pro-
cess of thought like this passes in the mind of whoever
makes the affirmation ? It is a point of view in which the
proposition may be regarded ; it is one of the aspects of
the fact asserted in the proposition. But it is not the
aspect in which the proposition presents it to the mind.
It will, however, very naturally be objected If the
meaning in our mind is that the bovine attributes are
always accompanied by the attribute of ruminating, why
do we, except for the purposes of abstract logic or meta-
physics, never say this, but always say " All oxen rumU
K K 2
500 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED
nate ?" The reason is, that we have no other convenient
and compact mode of speaking 1 . Most attributes, and
nearly all large " bundles of attributes," have no names
of their own. We can only name them by a circum-
locution. We are accustomed to speak of attributes not
by names given to themselves, but by means of the names
which they give to the objects they are attributes of.
We do not talk of the phsenomena which accompany
piscinity ; we talk of the phsenomena of fishes'. We do
not frame a definition of piscinity, but a definition of a
fish. The definition, however, of a fish is exactly the
same which the definition of piscinity would be ; it is an
enumeration of the same attributes. Language is con-
structed upon the principle of naming concrete objects
first : it does not always name abstractions at all, and
when it does, the names are almost always derived from
those of concrete objects. The reasons are obvious.
Objects even classes of objects being conceivable by
a much less effort of abstraction than attributes, are in
the necessary order of things conceived and named
earlier, and remain always more familiar to the mind :
attributes, even when they come to be conceived, cannot
be conceived in a detached state, but are always (as may be
said by an adaptation of the Hamiltonian phraseology)
thought through objects of some sort. Consequently all
familiar propositions are expressed in the language which
denotes objects, and not in that which denotes attributes.
NOT is this all. What is primarily important to us in our
sensations and impressions, is their permanent groups.
In our particular and passing sensations (unless in cases
of exceptional intensity) the important thing to us is, not
the sensation itself, but to what group it belongs ; what
concrete object, what Permanent Possibility of Sensation,
it indicates the presence of. The mind consequently
hurries on from the sensible impressions that proceed from
an outward object, to the object itself, and its subsequent
thoughts revolve round that. It is on the concrete
obejct indicated, that the expectation of future sensa-
tions depends ; and the concrete object, consequently, in
IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC, 501
most cases, exclusively engages our thoughts, and stimu-
lates us to mark it by a name. The name, to answer its
purpose, must remind ourselves, and inform others, of
the sensations we or they have to expect : that is, it
must connote an attribute, or set of attributes. And
men did not at first name attributes in any other than
this indirect manner. They gave no direct names to
attributes, because they did not conceive attributes as
having any separate existence. As they began by naming
only concrete objects, so the first names by which they
expressed even the results of abstraction, were not names
of attributes in the abstract, regarded apart from their
objects, but names of concrete objects signifying the pre-
sence of the attributes. Men talked of blue, or of blue
things, before they talked of blueness. Even when they
did talk of blueness, it was originally not as the attri-
bute, but as an imaginary cause of the attribute, which
cause they figured to themselves as itself a concrete
thing, residing in the object.
It thus appears that though all judgments consist in
ascribing attributes, the original and natural mode of ex-
pressing them was by general names denoting concrete ob-
jects, and only connoting attributes ; and by the structure
of language this remains the only concise mode, and the
only one which, addressing itself to familiar associations,
conveys the meaning at once, to minds not exercised in
metaphysical abstraction. But this does not alter the ob-
vious truth, that concrete objects are only known by attri-
butes, are only distinguished by attributes, and that the
concrete names by which we speak of them mean nothing
but attributes, or " bundles of attributes." Oar represen-
tation in thought of a concrete object is but a representa-
tion of attributes, and our concept of a class of concrete
objects is but a certain portion of those attributes, not,
indeed, separately conceived or imaged, but exclusively
attended to. There is, therefore, nothing in our mind
when we affirm a general proposition, but attributes, and
their coexistence or repugnance : and the position is made
out, that all judgments, expressed by means of general
502 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED
terms, are judgments in Comprehension, though always,
unless for some special purpose, expressed in Extension.
If this be the true doctrine of Judgments, what is
meant by saying that there are two sorts of Judgment,
one in Extension, the other in Comprehension, and two
kinds of reasoning corresponding to these, one of which,
that in Comprehension, had been overlooked by all
logicians, except possibly Aristotle, up to the time of
Sir W. Hamilton ? All our ordinary judgments are in
Comprehension only, Extension not being thought of.
But we may, if we please, make the Extension of our
general terms an express object of thought, and this may
be called thinking in Extension, though it is rather
thinking about Extension. When I judge that all oxen
ruminate, I have nothing in my thoughts but the attri-
butes and their coexistence. But when, by reflection, I
perceive what the proposition implies, I remark, that
other things may ruminate besides oxen ; and that the
unknown multitude of things which ruminate form a
mass, with which the unknown multitude of things
having the attributes of oxen is either identical, or is
wholly comprised in it. Which of these two is the
truth I may not know, and if 1 did, took no notice of it
when I assented to the proposition " all oxen ruminate."
But I perceive, on consideration, that one or other of
them must be true. Though I had not this in my mind
when I affirmed that all oxen ruminate, I can have it
now; I can make the concrete objects denoted by each
of the two names an object of thought, as a collective
though indefinite aggregate ; in other words, I can make
the Extension of the names (or notions) an object of
direct consciousness. When I do this, I perceive that
this operation introduces no new fact, but is only a dif-
ferent mode of contemplating the very fact which I had
previously expressed by the words " all oxen rumi-
nate." The fact is the same, but the mode of contem-
plating it is different : the mental operation, the act of
thought, is not only a distinct act, but an act of a
different kind.
There is thus, in all propositions (save those in which
IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC. 503
both terms are Proper, that is, in significant, names) a judg-
ment concerning attributes (called by Sir W. Hamilton a
judgment in Comprehension), which we make as a matter
of course, and a possible judgment in or concerning Ex-
tension, which we may make, and which will be true if
the former is true. Nevertheless (as has just been
shown), the conditions of primitive thought, and subse-
quent convenience, cause us generally to enunciate our
propositions in terms appropriate to the derivative judg-
ment which we seldom make, rather than to the primi-
tive judgment which we always make. And this explains
why, though the meaning of all propositions in which
general terms are used, is in Comprehension, writers on
logic always explain the rules of the Syllogism in refe-
rence to Extension alone. It is because the framers of
the rules did not concern themselves with propositions
or reasonings as they exist in thought, but only as they
are expressed in language. And in this they were
justified. For the syllogism is not the form in which
we necessarily reason, but a test of reasoning: a form
into which we may translate any reasoning, with the
effect of exposing all the points at which any unwar-
ranted inference can have got in. According to this
view of the Syllogism for the justification of which I
must refer to the Second Book of my System of Logic
the syllogistic theory is only concerned with providing
forms suitable to test the validity of inferences ; and it
was not necessary that the forms in which reasoning was
direc ed to be written, should be those in which it is
carried on in thought, so long as they are practically
equivalent, that is, so long as the propositions in words
are always true or false according as the judgments in
thought are so. The propositions in Extension, being,
in this sense, exactly equivalent to the judgments in
Comprehension, served quite as well to ground forms of
ratiocination upon : and as the validity of the forms was
more easily and conveniently shown through the con-
crete conception of comparing classes of objects, than
through the abstract one of recognising coexistence of
attributes, logicians were perfectly justified in taking the
504 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED
course, which, in any case, the established forms of lan-
guage would doubtless have forced upon them. They
are thus deserving of no blame, though their mode of
proceeding has been attended with some practical mis-
chief, by diverting the attention of thinkers from what
really constitutes the meaning of Propositions. It has
also been one of the causes of the prejudice so general
in the last three centuries, against the syllogistic theory.
For a doctrine which denned one of the two great pro-
cesses of the discovery of truth as consisting in the
operation of placing objects in a class and then finding
them there, can never, I think, have really satisfied any
competent thinker, however he may have acquiesced in
it for want of a better. There must always have been
a dormant sense of discontent, an obscure feeling that
this was a description of the reasoning processs by one of
its accidents, though an inseparable accident.*
* Dr. M'Cosh lias some partially just observations on this subject. He ad-
mits (p. 292) that "in by far the greater number of propositions, the primary
"and uppermost sense is in Comprehension." He says, however (p. 294),
that in some, '' the uppermost thought is in Extension. Thus, when the
" young student of Natural History is told that a crocodile is a reptile,
" his idea is of a class, of which he may afterwards learn the marks."
And it is true that when the known purpose of the statement is to declare
what place the object occupies in a classification, a fact of classification is
the real meaning of the proposition. This is emphatically the exception
which proves the rule. Dr. M'Cosh adds, " the mind in its discursive
" operations tends to go on from Comprehension to Extension." This I
admit ; but the thought in Comprehension comes first : the thought in
Extension rests on the thought in Comprehension, and follows it; but is
so closely linked with it that it can hardly help following. The circum-
stance, however, that the proposition is familiarly expressed in concrete
language, does not prove it to be thought in Extension. The practice of
so expressing it must, no doubt, as Dr. M'Cosh says, " proceed from some
law of thought as applied to things ;" but the law of thought it proceeds
from is merely the obvious one, that concrete language, requiring for its
formation a lower degree of abstraction, was earliest formed, took posses-
sion of the field, and is still the most familiar. When Dr. M'Cosh goes
on to say (p. 303) that although " so far as propositions are concerned,
" spontaneous thought is chiefly in Comprehension," the case is " different
" in regard to reasoning, the uppermost thought in which ia always in
" Extension," I cannot agree with him. If the meaning, in consciousness,
of the premises when separate, is in Comprehension, it is not natural that
the derivative and subordinate meaning in Extension should leap to the
front as soon as the premises are brought together. But if, instead of
" in reasoning," Dr. M'Cosh had said " in the artificial formula of Keason-
ing called Syllogism," I think he would have been right.
IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC. 505
Sir W. Hamilton distinguishes two kinds of Syllogism,
Extensive and Comprehensive. " For while* everv syi-
" logism infers that the part of a part is a part of the
" whole, it does this either in the quantity of Extension
" the Predicate of the two notions compared in the
" Question and Conclusion being the greatest whole, and
" the subject the smallest part ; or in the counter quan-
" tity of Comprehension, the subject of these two notions
" being the greatest whole, and the Predicate the smallest
" part." He acknowledges, however, that both syllogisms
are identically the same argument ; " every syllogism in
" the one quantity being convertible into a syllogism ab-
" solutely equivalent in the other quantity." And what
is the difference in form and language between the two
syllogisms? According to our author it is merely a
difference in the order of the premises. The following,t
" Every morally responsible agent is a free agent ;
" Man is a morally responsible agent ;
" Therefore man is a free agent,"
is, according to him, a syllogism in Extension. Trans-
pose the premises, and write it thus,!
" Man is a responsible agent ;
" But a responsible agent is a free agent ;
" Therefore, man is a free agent,"
and we have, according to him, a syllogism in Compre-
hension. Far, however, from constituting two kinds of
reasoning, this does not even supply us with two different
forms of it. He himself says elsewhere, that "the
" transposition of the propositions of a syllogism affords
" no modifications of form yielding more than a super-
" ficial character." And even this superficial difference
he with his own hands abolishes, saying,! that any syllo-
gism whatever " can be perspicuously expressed not only
" by the normal, but by any of the rive consecutions of
" its propositions which deviate from the regular order,"
and that " a syllogism in Comprehension is equally
* Lectures, iii. 286, 287.
f Lectures, iii. p. 270. + Ibid. p. 273.
Ibid. p. 39*. f t Ibid. pp. 397, 398.
506 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED
" susceptible of a transposition of its propositions as a
" syllogism in Extension." So'that the slight distinction
of form which he seemed at first to contend lor, does not
exist ; a Syllogism in Comprehension, and the corre-
sponding Syllogism in Extension, are word for word the
same. Instead of " every syllogism in the one quantity"
being " convertible into a syllogism absolutely equivalent
in the other quantity," every syllogism is already a
syllogism in both quantities.*
The distinction, therefore, is not between two kinds,
or even between two forms, of syllogism, but between
two modes of construing the meaning of the same syllo-
gism. And what are these two modes? Sir W. Ha-
milton says, that they are distinguished by a difference
in the meaning of the copula. " Inf the one process,
" that, to wit, in extension, the copula is, means is con-
" tained under, whereas in the other, it means comprehends
" in. Thus, the proposition God is merciful, viewed as
" in the one quantity, signifies God is contained under
" merciful, that is, the notion God is contained under the
" notion merciful ; viewed as in the other, means, God
" comprehends merciful, that is, the notion God compre-
" hends in it the notion merciful."
I cannot admit this to be a true analysis of the meaning
of the proposition, either in Extension or in Compre-
hension. The statement that Grod is merciful I construe
* It is curious to observe with what facility Sir W. Hamilton drives two
conflicting opinions together in a team. The passages quoted in the text
are destructive of any notion of a different order of the premises in a
Syllogism of Extension and in one of Comprehension. Yet this notion
maintains full possession of our author's mind. We have found him
accusing all logical writers of overL oking Reasoning in Comprehension ;
but he thinks that they exceptionally recognised it in the case of the
Sorites, and that in that case, by a contrary error, they " altogether over-
" looked the possibility of a Reasoning in Extension" (Lectures, iii. 379-384),
solely because, in the Sorites, they inverted the usual order of the premises.
On a similar foundation stands his charge against the Fourth Figure, of
being " a monster undeserving of toleration," because instead of keeping
to one of the two quantities, Extension and Comprehension, it reasons (he
eays) across from one of them to the other. This is merely because the
Fourth Figure, while it draws the same conclusion which might have been
drawn in the First, reverses the order of the premises. (Lectures, iii.
420-128.)
f Lectures, iii. 274.
IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC. 507
as an affirmation not concerning the notion God, but the
Being God. Interpreted in Comprehension I hold it to
mean, that this Being has the attribute signified by the
word merciful, or, in our author's language, comprehended
in the concept. Interpreted in Extension I render it
thus : the Being, God, is either the only being, or one
of the beings, forming the class merciful, or, in other
words, possessing the attribute mercifulness. Thus stated,
who can doubt which of the two is the original and na-
tural judgment, and which is a derivative and artificial
mode of restating it ? The difference between them is
slight, but real, and consists in this, that the second
construction introduces the idea of other possible merciful
beings, an idea not suggested by the first construction.
This suggestion gives rise to the idea of a class merci-
ful, and of God as a member of that class : notions
which are not present to the mind at all when it simply
assents to the proposition that God is merciful. To
make a distinction between Reasoning in Extension and
in Comprehension, when the same syllogism serves for
both, could only be admissible if we employed the same
words having sometimes in our mind the meaning in
Extension, sometimes that in Comprehension : but in
reality all reasoning is thought solely in Comprehension,
except when we, for a technical purpose, periorm a second
act of thought upon the Extension which in general
we do not, and have no need to, consider.
Nor is this the only objection to Sir W. Hamilton's
doctrine. There is another, less obvious, but equally
fatal. The statement in Comprehension is, that A has
the attributes comprehended in B. The statement in
Extension is, that A belongs to the class of things
which have the attributes comprehended in B. These
statements are either, as I affirm them to be, one and the
same assertion in slightly different words, or they are
different assertions. If they are the same assertion, there
is but one judgment, which is both in Extension and in
Comprehension, and but one kind of reasoning, which is
in both. But supposing them, for the sake of argument,
508 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED
to be two different assertions, the judgment respecting
Extension is a corollary from that in Comprehension,
expressing an artificial point of view in which we may
regard the natural judgment. Now, on this supposition,
that the judgment respecting Extension is not the same,
but an additional judgment, it is, like all other judg-
ments, a judgment in Comprehension. "A is part of
class B" must be interpreted thus: The phenomenon
A possesses, or the concept A comprehends, the attribute
of being included in the class B. So that, while every
judgment in Comprehension warrants, by way of imme-
diate inference, a corresponding judgment respecting
Extension, this very judgment respecting Extension is
itself but a particular kind of judgment in Comprehen-
sion. Even, therefore, on the untenable doctrine that
there are two different judgments in the case, the dis-
tinction between judgments in Extension and judgments
in Comprehension is not sustainable ; and the supposed
addition to the theory of the Syllogism is a mere ex-
crescence and incumbrance on it.
How great the incumbrance is, all are able to judge,
who follow our author through the details of the syllo-
gistic logic. He not only finds it necessary to expound
and demonstrate every one of the doctrines twice over,
as adapted to Extension and to Comprehension, but
struggles to express all the fundamental principles in a
manner combining both points of view ; and is thereby
compelled either to state those principles in terms too
wide and abstract for easy apprehension, in order that
what is laid down respecting wholes and their parts may
be applicable to both kinds of wholes (in Extension and in
Comprehension), or else to embarrass the learner with the
necessity of carrying on two trains of thought at once, in
the attempt to apprehend a single principle. I need not
dwell on the additional error, of considering the relation
of whole and parts as the foundation of the Syllogism in
both aspects. To the point of view of Extension that
relation is applicable. In every affirmative proposition, if
true, the object or class of objects denoted by the sub-
IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC. 509
ject is a part (when it is not the whole) of the class of
objects denoted by the predicate. But no similar rela-
tion exists bervveeri the two " bundles of attributes" com-
prehended in the subject and in the predicate, except in
the case of Analytical Judgments, that is, of merely
verbal propositions. In Synthetical Judgments, that is,
in all propositions which convey information about any-
thing except the meaning of words, the relation between
the two sets of attributes is not a relation of Whole and
Part, but a relation of Coexistence.
I now pass to the doctrine of the Quantification of the
Predicate ; examining it by the light of the same prin-
ciples which we have applied to the distinction between
the supposed two kinds of Reasoning.
It will be desirable to state in Sir W. Hamilton's
own words, as first published in 1846, the claims he
prefers in behalf of this doctrine, and the important con-
sequences to which he considers it to lead.*
" The self-evident truth, That we can only ration-
" ally deal with what we already understand, determines
" the simple logical postulate, To state explicitly what is
" thought implicitly. From the consistent application of
"this postulate, on which Logic ever insists, but which
"^Logicians have never fairly obeyed, it follows : that,
"logically, we ought to take into account the quantify,
" always understood in thought, but usually, and for
" manifest reasons, elided in its expression, not only of
" the subject, but also of the predicate of a judgment.
" This being done, and the necessity of doing it will be
" proved against Aristotle and his repeaters, we obtain,
" inter alia, the ensuing results :
" 1. That the preindesignate terms of a proposition,
" whether subject or predicate, are never, on that ac-
" count, thought as indefinite (or indeterminate) in quan-
" tity. The only indefinite, is particular, as opposed to
" definite, quantity ; and this last, as it is either of an
" extensive maximum undivided, or of an extensive mini-
" mum indivisible, constitutes quantity universal (general)
* Discussions, Appendix ii. pp. 650, 651.
510 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED
" and quantity singular (individual). In fact, definite and
" indefinite are the only quantities of which we ought
"to hear in Logic; for it is only as indefinite that
" particular, it is only as definite that individual and
" general, quantities have any (and the same) logical
" avail.
" 2. The revocation of the two terms of a Proposition
" to their true relation ; a proposition being always an
" equation of its subject and its predicate.
" 3. The consequent reduction of the Conversion of
" Propositions from three species to one that of Simple
" Conversion.
" 4. The reduction of all the General Laws of Cate-
" gorical Syllogisms to a Single Canon.
" 5. The evolution from that one canon of all the
" species and varieties of Syllogism.
" 6. The abrogation of all the Special Laws of Syllogism.
"7. A demonstration of the exclusive Possibility of
"Three Syllogistic Figures; and (on new grounds) the
" scientific and final abolition of the Fourth.
" 8. A manifestation that Figure is an unessential
" variation m syllogistic form; and the consequent ab-
" surdity of Reducing the syllogisms of the other figures
" to the first.
" 9. An enouncement of one Organic Principle for
" each Figure.
" 10. A determination of the true number of the
" legitimate Moods, with
" 11. Their amplification in number (thirty -six};
" 12. Their numerical equality under all the figures;
"and
"13. Their relative equivalence, or virtual identity,
" throughout every schematic difference.
" 14. That in the second and third figures, the ex-
" tremes holding both the same relation to the middle
" term, there is not, as in the first, an opposition and
" subordination between a term major and a term minor
" mutually containing and contained, in the counter wholes
" of Extension and Comprehension.
IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC. 511
"15. Consequently, in the second and third figures,
" there is no determinate major and minor premise, and
"there are two indifferent conclusions; whereas, in the
"first, the premises are determinate, and there is a sinyle
"proximate conclusion.
" 16. That the third, as the figure in which Compre-
" tension is predominant, is more appropriate to Induction.
" 17. That the second, as the figure in which Ezten-
" sion i* predominant, is more appropriate to Deduction.
" 18. That i\iQ first, as the figure in which Compre-
" /tension and Extension are in equilibrium, is common to
"Induction and Deduction indifferently."
The doctrine which leads to all these consequences, or
rather, which necessitates all these changes of expression
(for they are no more), is that the Predicate is always
quantified in thought ; that we always think it either as
signifying the whole, or as signifying only a part, of
the objects included in its Extension. " In reality and
" in thought, every quantity is necessarily either all, or
" some, or none."* The proposition, All A is B, must
mean, in thought, either All A. is all B, or All A is some
B. When I judge that all oxen ruminate, it must not
only be true, but I must mean, either that All ox is all
ruminating, or that All ox is some ruminating. Logic,
therefore, postulates to express in words what is already
in the thoughts, and to write all propositions in one
or other of these forms ; which makes it necessary that
all the rules for reasoning should be altered, at least in
expression, and grounded on the relation of exact equality
between the terms.
But if, as I have endeavoured to show, the predicate
B is present in thought only in respect of its Compre-
hension ; if it be an error to suppose that it is thought of
* Discussions, Appendix ii. p. 601. But the whole meaning of this
assertion, as available for our author's purpose, is destroyed by the state-
ment which he is presently obliged to make, that " the Indesignate is
" thought, either precisely, as whole or as part, or vaguely, as the one or
the other, unknown which, but the worse always presumed." The conces-
sion, though fatal to himself , is short of the truth ; for the Indesignate is
not necessarily thought either as a whole, or as part, or as " unknown
which:" it is often not thought in any relation of quantity at all. . *
512 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED
as an aggregate of objects at all; still less is it thought
of as an aggregate with a determinate quantity, as some
or all. I repeat the appeal which I have already made to
every reader's consciousness : Does he, when he judges
that all oxen ruminate, advert even in the minutest degree
to the question, whether there is anything else which
ruminates ? Is this consideration at all in his thoughts,
any more than any other consideration foreign to the
immediate subject? One person may know that there
are other ruminating animals, another may think that
there are none, a third may be without any opinion on
the subject : but if they all know what is meant by
ruminating, they all, when they judge that every ox
ruminates, mean exactly the same thing. The mental
process they go through, as far as that one judgment is
concerned, is precisely identical ; though some of them
may go on further, and add other judgments to it.*
The fact, that the proposition " Every A is B" only
means every A is some B, far from being always present
in thought, is not at first seized without some difficulty
<by the tyro in logic. It requires a certain effort of
thought to perceive that when we say, All As are Bs,
we only identify A with a portion of the class B. When
the learner is first told that the proposition All As are
Bs can only be converted in the form " Some Bs are As,"
* Not only we do not (unless exceptionally for some special purpose)
quantify the predicate in thought, but we do not even quantify the subject,
in the sense which Sir W. Hamilton's theory reqtiires. Even in an uni-
versal proposition, we do not think of the subject as an aggregate whole,
but as its several parts : we do not judge that all A is B, but that all As
are Bs, which is a different thing. That what is true of the whole must
be true of any part, only holds good when the whole means the parts them-
selves, and not when it means the aggregate of them. All A, is a very
different notion from Each A. What is true of A only as a whole, forms
no element of a judgment concerning its parts even concerning all its
parts. Sir W. Hamilton thinks that the relation of quantity in extension
which the class A bears to the class B, is always present in my thoughts
when I predicate B of A. This relation of quantity, however, does not
belong to individual As, but specifically and solely to A as a whole, and
as a whole I am not thinking of it. When I am predicating B of all As
severally, I am not adverting to any property or relation which belongs to
A as their aggregate. Accordingly we do not say, all ox ruminates, but
all oxen ruminate. The distinction is of little importance when A ia only
IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC. 513
I apprehend that this strikes him as a new idea ; and
that the truth of the statement is not quite obvious to
him, until verified by a particular example in which he
already knows that the simple converse would be false,
such as, All men are animals, therefore all animals are
men. So far is it from being true that the proposition,
All As are Bs, is spontaneously quantified in thought as
All A is some B.
The pretension, therefore, of the doctrine of a Quan-
tified Predicate, to be a more correct representation and
analysis of the reasoning process than the common doc-
trine of the syllogism, I hold to be psychologically false.
And this is fatal to the doctrine, if we admit Sir W.
Hamilton's theory that Logic is the science of the laws
according to which we must think in order that our
thought may be valid. But according to the very dif-
ferent view I myself take of Formal Logic, this doctrine
might still be a valuable addition to it : since, in my
view, the Syllogistic theory altogether is not an analysis
of the reasoning process, but only furnishes a test of the
validity of reasonings, by supplying forms of expression
into which all reasonings may be translated if valid, and
which, if they are invalid, will detect the hidden flaw. In
this point of view it might well be, that a form which
always exhibited the quantity of the predicate might be
an improvement on the common form. And I am not
disposed to deny that for occasional use, and for purposes
of illustration, it is so. The exposition of the theory of
coextensive with part of B ; for it' A altogether is but a part, still more
mast this be true of any particular A, and it is indifferent whether
we say all A is some B, or each of the As is some B. But it is quite
another matter when the assertion is that all A is all B. This, if true at
all, is true only of A considered as a whole ; and expresses a relation
between the two classes as totals, not between either of them and its
parts. Now, to affirm that when we judge every A to be a B, we always,
and necessarily, recognise in thought a fact which is not true of every, or
even of any A, but only of the aggregate composed of all As, seems to me
as baseless a fancy as ever implanted itself in the intellect of an eminent
thinker. It is, in short (as observed by one of my correspondents), a
conclusive reason against the assimilation of a judgment to an equation,
that in equations the terms are used collectively, and in judgments mostly
diatributively.
L L
514 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED
the syllogism is made clearer, by pointing out that All As
are B only implies that All A is some B, while No As
are B excludes A from the whole of B. This, in fact,
is taught to all who learn logic in the common way, by
what is called the doctrine of Suppositio ; or (in the many
books which leave this doctrine out) by the theory of
Conversion, and the syllogistic rules against Undistri-
buted Middle, and against proceeding a non distribute
ad distributum. There is no harm, and some little good,
in giving to these essential doctrines the more explicit
expression demanded for them by Sir W. Hamilton.
But to obtain any advantage from it, we must be con-
tent with quantifying such propositions as, in their un-
quantified form, are really asserted and used. To foist in
any others, overlays and confuses, instead of illuminating,
the theory. " All A is some B" is inadmissible, becaus
it is the quantification really implied in All As are B ;
but " All A is all B" is inadmissible, because it is not the
equivalent of any single proposition capable of being
asserted in an unquantified form. As all reasoning,
except in the process of teaching Logic, will always be
carried on in the forms which men use in real life ; and
as the only purpose of providing other forms, is to supply
a test for those which are really used ; it is essential that
the forms provided should be forms into which the pro-
positions expressed in common language can be trans-
lated that every proposition in logical form, should be
the exact equivalent of some proposition in the common
form. Now, there is no proposition capable of being
expressed in the ordinary form, which is equivalent to
the proposition, All A is all B. That form of expres-
sion combines the import of two propositions in common
language, expressive of two separate judgments, All As
are Bs, and all Bs are As.
If this had not been denied, T should have deemed it too
obvious to require either proof or illustration. But Sir
W. Hamilton does deny it, and therefore some enforce-
ment of it is indispensable. When we make an assertion
in the cramped and unnatural form, All man is all
IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC. 515
rational, can anything seem more evident than that to
cover the whole ground occupied by this statement, two
judgments are required ; namely, first, that every man
has the attribute reason ; and secondly, that nothing
which is not man has that attribute, or (which is the
same thing) that every rational creature has the attri-
butes of man ? How is it possible to make only one
judgment, out of an assertion divisible into two parts,
one of which may be unknown and the other known,
one unthought of and the other thought of, one false
and the other true ?*
Unless Sir W. Hamilton was prepared to maintain
that whenever the universal converse of an universal
affirmative proposition would be true, we cannot know
the one without knowing the other, it is in vain for him
to contend that a form which asserts both of them at
once is only one proposition. If in judging that "All
equilateral triangles are equiangular," we judge that all
equilateral triangles are all equiangular, in what con-
dition of judgment is the mind of the tyro to whom it
has just been proved that all equilateral triangles are
equiangular, but who does not yet know the proof of the
converse proposition that all equiangular triangles are
equilateral? If "All equilateral triangles are all equi-
angular" is only one judgment, what is the proposition
that all equilateral triangles are equiangular? Is it halt'
a judgment ?f
* The only answer I can imagine to this is, that having the two concepts
Man and Rational, and being engaged in actually comparing them with
each other, we must perceive and judge whether the one is merely a part
of the other, or a whole coinciding with it. But this answer is not com-
petent to Sir W. Hamilton, or any other Conceptualist, to make. An
adversary of Sir W. Hamilton might make it. I have myself said, and
have offered as a reductio ad absurdum of his analysis of Reasoning, that
if we have two concepts and compare them, we cannot but perceive any
relation of whole and part which exists between them. Sir W. Hamilton
however is precluded from making this reply ; for all Reasoning, even to
the longest process in Mathematics, consists, according to him, in discover-
ing this relation of whole and part by circuitous means, when direct com-
parison does not disclose it. From this point of view, therefore, the argu-
ment is not tenable ; and from mine it has no pertinence, since I do not
admit that Reasoning is a comparison of Concepts at all.
f Sir W. Hamilton goes the length of asserting (Appendix to Lectures,
LL2
516 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED
This is not the only case in which Sir W. Hamilton
insists upon wrapping up two different assertions in one
form of words, and demands that they shall be con-
/
sidered one assertion. He strenuously contends that
the form " Some A is B," or (in its quantified form)
iv. 292, et seqq.) that to a person who knows all trilateral figures to be
triangular, the proposition " all triangles are trilateral" must, it' expressed
as understood, be written " All triangles are all trilateral :" as if every
proposition which I affirm respecting a subject, must include all I know
about it.
Thattbe proposition All A is B is not a single judgment, but compounded
of two, has already been urged against Sir W. Hamilton by Mr. De
Morgan, and we are in possession of Sir W. Hamilton's answer (Discus-
sions, Appendix ii. pp. b'87, b'88). Unhappily Mr. De Morgan (by an over-
sight not usual with that able thinker) gave Sir W. Hamilton an apparent
triumph, by mistaking the two judgments which the pretended single pro-
position is composed of. He appears to have said, that the proposition
" All Xs are all Ys," is compounded of the propositions " All Xs are
some Ys," and " Some Xs are all Ys." Sir W- Hamilton replies, that
these two propositions are (in his own peculiar language) incom possible,
inasmuch as we cannot think X both as some Y, that is a part of Y, and
as the whole. The argument is little better than a quibble, because other
people do not (though Sir W. Hamilton does) mean by some, some only ;
they mean some at least; and if the first of Mr. De Morgan's two
propositions identifies X with only some of Y, the second superadds the
remainder. But in reality the two judgments which go to the composition
of "All A is all B," are not judgments with quantified predicates at all.
They are, All A is B, and all B is A. The one ascribes the attributes of
B to every A, the other the attributes of A to every B. Judgments more
distinct and independent of one another do not exist.
According to Sir W. Hamilton (Appendix to Lectures, iv. 259) " ordi-
" nary language quantifies the Predicate as often as this determination
" becomes of the smallest import." And he cites such, instances as " Virtue
in the only nobility ;" " Of animals man alone is rational," and the like.
The truth is, that ordinary language quantifies the predicate in the rare
cases in which it is quantified in thought, and in no others. And even
then the quantified proposition is an abbreviated expression of two judg-
ments. The German logician Schiebler, to whom our author refers in a
foot-note (Ibid. p. 2t>l), could have set him right here.
""Sir W. Hamilton," says Mr. Grote (Westminster Review, pp. 31, 32),
" insists on stating explicitly, not merely all that is thought implicitly,
" but a great deal more ; adding to it something else, which may, indeed,
" be thought conjointly, but which more frequently is not thought at all.
" He requires us to pack two distinct judgments into one and the same
"proposition: he interpolates the meaning of the Propositio Conversa
" simplicitur into the form of the Propositio Coiivertenda (when an uni-
" versal affirmative) and then claims it as a great advantage, that the
" proposition thus interpolated admits of being converted simpliciter, and
" not merely per aocidens If a man is prepared to give us informa-
" tion on one Quaesitum, why should he be constrained to use a mode of
' speech which forces on his attention at the same time a second and dis-
" tinct Quaasitum, so that he must either give us information about the two
IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC. 517
" Some A is some B," ought in logical propriety to be
used and understood in the sense of " some and some
only?'* No shadow of justification is shown for thus
deviating from the practice of all writers on logic, and
of all who think and speak with any approach to pre-
cision, and adopting into logic a mere sous-entendu of
common conversation in its most unprecise form. If I
say to any one, "I saw some of your children to-day,"
he might be justified in inferring that I did not see
them all, not because the words mean it, but because, if
I had seen them all, it is most likely that I should have
said so : though even this cannot be presumed unless it
is presupposed that I must have known whether the
children I saw were all or not. But to carry this collo-
quial mode of interpreting a statement into Logic, is
something novel. If Some A is B is to be understood
of some only, it is a double judgment, compounded of the
propositions, Some As are Bs, and some As are not Bs.
If quantified in our author's manner, the propositions
would run thus : Some A is some B, and some (other)
A is not any B. If two statements, one of which affirms
and the other denies a different predicate of a different
subject, are not two distinct judgments, it is impossible
" at once, or confess himself ignorant respecting the second ?" Mr. Grote
goes on to cite from Sir W. Hamilton's own collection of authorities, an
excellent passage from a Jewish philosopher of the fourteenth century,
Levi Beii Gerson, which exactly confutes Sir W. Hamilton's doctrine.
' The cause why the quantitative note is not usually joined with the predi-
' cate, is that there would thus be two quaesita at once ; to wit, whether the
' predicate were affirmed of the subject, and whether it were denied of
' everything beside. For when we say. All Man is all Rational, we judge
' that all man is rational, and judge likewise that rational is denied ot
' everything but man. But these are, in reality, two different quaesita ;
' and therefore it has become usual to state them, not in one, but in two
' several propositions. And this is self-evident, seeing that a quassitum
' in itself, asks only Does or does not this inhere in that P and not, Does
' or does not this inhere in that, and at the same time inhere in nothing
' else."
Propositions in Extension have absolutely no meaning but what they
derive from Comprehension. The Logic of the quantified predicate takes
the Comprehension out of them, and leaves them a caput mortuum.
* See, among many other places, Discussions, Appendix ii. pp. 600, 601 ,
where he says, " Every quantity is necessarily either all, or none, or somej
of these, the third is formally exclusive of the other two."
518 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S SUPPOSED
to say what are so. One of the great uses of discipline
in Formal Logic, is to make us aware when something
which claims to be a single proposition, really consists
of several, which, not being necessarily involved one in
another, require to be separated, and considered each by
itself, before we admit the compound assertion. This
separation may be called, with reason, stating explicitly
in words what is implicitly in thought. But it is a
new postulate of Logic to state mplicitly in words what
is explicitly in thought, and I do not think that Logic is
at all enriched by the acquisition.
With these compound propositions falls the whole
pretension of the quantified mode of expression to yield
legitimate inferences which are not recognised by the old
Logic. Whatever can be proved from "All A is all B/'
can be proved in the old form from one or both of its
elements, All As are Bs, and all Bs are As. Whatever
can be proved from " Some, and only some, A is some
(or all) B," can be proved in the .old form from its ele-
ments, Some As are Bs, Some As are not Bs, and (in
the case last mentioned) All Bs are As. If we choose
to alter the forms of all our propositions, the forms of
our syllogisms naturally require alterations too ; and
there may be a greater number of forms in which quan-
tified conclusions can be drawn from quantified premises,
than in which unquantified conclusions can be drawn
from unquantified premises. But there is not a single
instance, nor is it possible in the nature of things that
there should be an instance, in which a conclusion that
is provable from quantified premises, could not be proved
from the same premises unquantified, if we set forth all
those which are really involved. If there could be such
an instance, the quantified Syllogism would be a real
addition to the theory of Logic : if not, not.
As I have already once remarked, it does not follow,
because the quantified Syllogism is not a true expression
of what is in thought, that the occasional writing the
predicate witli a quantification may not be a real help to
the art of Logic. Though not a correct analysis of the
IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC. 519
reasoning process, it may, in some cases, enable us more
readily to see whether the conclusion really follows from
the premises. But without rejecting it as an available
help for this purpose, I must observe that its use in this
capacity appears to me extremely limited; for two reasons.
First ; the problem is, to test the validity of a reasoning
as expressed in the language in which men ordinarily
reason. We do this by taking the propositions as they
are, and measuring the extent of the assertions made in
the two premises and in the conclusion respectively, so
as to ascertain whether the former are broad enough to
cover and include the latter. This it requires some
practice to do, but the task is not avoided by quantify-
ing the predicate ; on the contrary, it must have been
actually performed before the predicate can be correctly
quantified ; so that by quantifying it in expression, no
trouble is saved. My second reason is, that after the
predicate has been quantified, it is often equally or more
difficult to follow the consecution of the thought through
the symbols, than as expressed in ordinary language.
Take one of the common cases of invalid inference, a
syllogism in the first figure with the major premise par-
ticular, such as this :
Some Ms are Ps
All Ss are Ms
Therefore all Ss are Ps ;
the inference fails, because the Ms which are identified
with Ss may not be the same Ms which are Ps, but
other Ms. Let us now quantify the predicates thus :
Some Ms are some Ps
All Ss are some Ms
Therefore all Ss are some Ps ;
is the invalidity of the inference at all clearer ? Does it
require less exertion of thought to perceive that " some
Ms" may not mean the same some in both premises,
than it did to recognise the equivalent truth as to M in
the minor, and "some -M" in the major premise? On
the contrary, the quantified lorm is the more plausibly
misleading of the two, since the middle term, though
520 SUPPOSED IMPROVEMENTS IN FORMAL LOGIC.
really ambiguous, is, in that form, verbally the same,
which in the unquantified form it is not.
The general result of these considerations is, that the
utility of the new forms is by no means such as to com-
pensate for the great additional complication which they
introduce into the syllogistic theory; a complication
which would make it at the same time difficult to learn
or remember, and intolerably tiresome both in the
learning and in the using. The sole purpose of any
syllogistic forms is to afford an available test for the
process of drawing inferences in the common language
of life from premises in the same common language ;
and the ordinary forms of Syllogism effect this purpose
completely. The new forms do not, in any appreciable
degree, facilitate the process, while they are chargeable,
in a far greater degree than the common forms, with
diverting the mind from the true meaning of proposi-
tions (the ascription of attributes to objects considered
severally), and concentrating it upon the highly arti-
ficial, and generally unimportant, consideration of the
relation of extent between classes of objects, considered
not severally, but as collective wholes. The new forms
have thus no practical advantage which can countervail
the objection of their entire psychological irrelevancy ;
and the invention and acquisition of them have little
value, except as one among many other feats of mental
gymnastic, by which students of the science may
exercise and invigorate their faculties. They should, in
short, be dealt with as Sir VV. Hamilton deals with Mr.
De Morgan's forms of " numerically definite" Syllogism,
viz. "taken into account by Logic as authentic forms,
" but then relegated as of little use in practice, and
" cumbering the science with a superfluous mass of
" words."*
* Appendix to Lectures, iv. 355.
521
OP SOME MINOR PECULIARITIES OF DOCTRINE IN SIR
WILLIAM HAMILTON'S VIEW OF FORMAL LOGIC.
THE two theories examined in the preceding chapter are
the only important novelties which Sir W. Hamilton
has introduced into the Science or Art of Logic. But he
has here and there departed from the common doctrine
of logicians on subordinate points. Some of these devia-
tions deserve notice from their connexion with some
principal part of our author's doctrine, others chiefly as
throwing light on the character of his mind. The one
to which I shall first advert is of the former class.
I. Almost all writers on the Syllogistic Logic have
directed attention to the fact, that though we cannot,
while observing the forms of Logic, draw a false con-
clusion from true premises, we may draw a true one
from false premises : in other words, the falsity of the
premises does not prove the falsity of the conclusion ;
nor does the truth of the conclusion prove the truth of
the premises. The warning is needed ; for it is by no
means unusual to mistake a refutation of the reasons from
which a doctrine has been deduced for a disproof of the
doctrine itself; and there is no error of thought more
common than the acceptance of premises because they
lead to a conclusion already assented to as true. Not
only is this caution useful, but it is relevant to Logic,
even in the restricted point of view of Formal Logic.
When it is affirmed that Formal Logic has nothing to
do with Material Truth, all that ought to be meant, is
that in Logic we are not to consider whether the con-
clusion supposed to be proved is true in fact. But we
522 MINOR PECULIARITIES IN SIR W. HAMILTON'S
are to consider whether it is true conditionally, true if
the premises are true : that question is the specific busi-
ness of Formal Logic : if Formal Logic does not teach
us that, there is nothing for it to teach. The theorem,
that in a valid Syllogism the falsity of the premises does
not prove the falsity of the conclusion, is as germane to
Logic as that the truth of the premises proves the truth
of the conclusion. We have therefore reason to be
surprised at finding Sir W. Hamilton delivering himself
as follows :*
" Logic does not warrant the truth of its premises,
" except in so far as these may be the formal conclusions
" of anterior reasonings ; it only warrants (on the hypo-
" thesis that the premises are truly assumed) the truth
" of the inference. In this view the conclusion may, as
" a separate proposition, be true ; but if this truth be not
" a necessary consequence from the premises, it is a false
" conclusion, that is, in fact, no conclusion at all. Now
" on this point there is a doctrine prevalent among
" logicians, which is not only erroneous, but if admitted,
" is subversive of the distinction of Logic as a purely
"formal science. The doctrine in question is in its
" result this, that if the conclusion of a syllogism be
" true, the premises may be either true or false, but
" that if the conclusion be false, one or both of its pre-
" raises must be false : in other words, that it is possible
" to infer true from false, but not false from true. As
" an example of this I have given the following syllo-
" gism :
" Aristotle is a Eomau ;
" A Roman is a European ;
" Therefore, Aristotle is a European.
" The inference, in so far as expressed, is true ; but I would
" remark, that the whole inference which the premises
" necessitate, and which the conclusion, therefore, virtually
" contains, is not true, is false. For the premises of the
" preceding syllogism gave not only the conclusion, Aris-
" totle is a European, but also the conclusion, Aristotle is
* Lectures, iii. 450, 451.
VIEW OF FORMAL LOGIC. 523
" not a Greek ; for it not merely follows from the pre-
" mises, that Aristotle is conceived under the universal
" notion of which the concept Roman forms a particular
" sphere, but likewise that he is conceived as excluded
" from all the other particular spheres which are contained
" under that universal notion. The consideration of the
" truth of the premise, Aristotle is a Roman is, however,
" more properly to be regarded as extralogica. ; but if so,
" then the consideration of the conclusion, Aristotle is a
" European, on any other view than as a mere formal
" inference from certain hypothetical antecedents, is like-
" wise extralogical. Logic is only concerned with the
" formal truth, the technical validity, of its syllogisms,
" and anything beyond the legitimacy of the consequence
" it draws from certain hypothetical antecedents, it does
" not profess to vindicate. Logical truth and falsehood
" are thus contained in the correctness and incorrectness
" of logical inference ; and it was, therefore, with no im-
" propriety that we made a true or correct, and a false or
" incorrect, syllogism convertible expressions."
The statement that a true proposition may be cor-
rectly inferred from false premises, or in other words,
that a true opinion may be supported by false reasons,
is one of which we could hardly have expected to find
the truth disputed, whatever might be said of the con-
nexion of Logic with it. So unlooked-for a paradox
required to be defended by the strongest arguments :
who, then, would expect such shabby, not arguments,
but hints of arguments, as the author presents us with ?
He stops short in the middle of the first, as if afraid that
it would break down if relied upon, and hurries to the
second, which is still more incapable of bearing weight.
" The consideration of the conclusion, Aristotle is a Euro-
" pean, on any other view than as a mere formal inference
" from certain hypothetical antecedents, is extralogical."
Nobody proposes to consider it as anything but a formal
inference from certain hypothetical antecedents. The
gist of the whole question is that it is such an inference,
and consequently that a proposition really true, may be
524 MINOR PECULIARITIES IN SIR W. HAMILTON'S
a formal inference from premises wholly or partially
false : in other words, the falsity of the conclusion does
not follow from the falsity of the premises. It is as
much the business of the theory of " formal inference"
to show what conclusions are not formally legitimate, as
what are. It is not the business of Formal Logic to
determine what is actually true, but it is, to tell what
does or does not follow from what. In the first un-
finished part of his argument, Sir W. Hamilton makes a
faint attempt to show that the conclusion, Aristotle is a
European, is not true. He admits it to be true as tar as
expressed, but says that it virtually contains something
which is false, namely, that Aristotle is not a Greek.
By what analysis can he find this in the proposition,
Aristotle is a European? He does not pretend that it
is in the proposition considered in itself, but only in the
proposition as inferred from " Aristotle is a Koman."
But it is a strange doctrine that a proposition is true or
false not according to what it asserts, but according to
the mode in which the belief of it has been arrived at.
It is a very irrational mode of speaking to say that a
proposition, besides its obvious meaning, contains a
meaning which the words do not convey, which in the
mouths of other people it does not bear, but which is so
essential a part of it as by its falsity to make the pro-
position false which otherwise would be true. Suppose
that the register of a man's birth having been destroyed,
some one to whom the date is of importance, proves it
by a false entry in the parish books : would that make
the man not to have been born on the day he was born
on ? But let us concede this point, however unreason-
able, and admit that the proposition Aristotle is a
European, when inferred from the premise that he is a
Roman, includes that premise as part of its own mean-
ing. Does it therefore contain an implication that he
is 'not a Greek? Suppose that I have never heard of
Greeks ; or that, having heard of them, I suppose a
Greek to be a kind of Eoman, or a Eoman a kind of
Greek. "Will this ignorance or misapprehension on my
VIEW OF FORMAL LOGIC. 525
part, prevent me from concluding, that if a Roman is
a European and Aristotle a Roman, Aristotle must be a
European ; or will it make the inference illegitimate, or
the conclusion false? One sentence in our quotation
from Sir W. Hamilton is a singular illustration of the
length he will go to support a favourite thesis. " The
"premises," he says, " of the syllogism gave not only the
" conclusion, Aristotle is a European, but also the con-
" elusion, Aristotle is not a Greek." Let us try :
Aristotle is a Roman ;
A Roman is a European ;
Therefore, Aristotle is not a Greek.
This is Formal Logic. This is the philosopher who
is so rigidly bent upon excluding from Logic all con-
sideration of what is true or false vi mate-rice. What
.shadow of connexion is there, unless it be vi materia, be-
tween this conclusion, and those premises? Nothing
can explain this aberration in a thinker of Sir W. Hamil-
ton's acuteness, except his dogged determination in no
shape to recognise belief as an element of judgment, or
truth as in any way concerned in Pure Logic.
Sir W. Hamilton has a salvo for all this, though it is
one which would not occur to everybody. According to
him there are two kinds of truth, or rather the word
truth has two meanings, so that it is possible for a pro-
position to be true although it is false. There is Formal
Truth, and Real Truth.* Real Truth is "the har-
mony between a thought and its matter." Formal
Truth is of two kinds, Logical, and Mathematical.
Logical Truth is the " harmony or agreement of our
" thoughts with themselves as thoughts, in other words
"the correspondence of thought with the universal Jaws
" of thinking." And Mathematical Truth is some other
harmony of thought, in which truth of fact is equally dis-
pensed with. In another place, he saysf that if the con-
sequent is correctly " evolved out of" the antecedent, the
conclusion out of the premises, this is " Logical or Formal
" or Subjective truth : and an inference may be sub-
* Lectures, iv. 64-t>8. t Ibid. ii. 343.
526 MINOR PECULIARITIES IN SIR W. HAMILTON'S
" jectively or formally true, which is objectively or really
" false." To support his denial of the common doctrine,
he has to alter the meaning of words, and make false in
the new meaning what cannot be denied to be true
in the old. But I object in toto to such an abuse of
terms as affirming a false proposition to be true, because
it is in such a relation to another false proposition, that
if that false proposition had been true it would have been
true likewise. There is no fitness in the word truth, to
express this mere relation of consecution between false
propositions. No qualification by adjectives, whether
"logical," or "forma]," or "subjective," will make this
assertion anything but a solecism in language, claiming
to be the correction of a philosophical doctrine.
The whole theory of the difference between Formal
and Real Truth is treated as it deserves, in a passage from
one of Sir W. Hamilton's favourite authorities, Esser,
which he quotes, and, strange to say, quotes with appro-
bation.
" One party of philosophers," says Esser,* " defining
" truth in general, the absolute harmony of our thoughts
" and cognitions, divide truth into a formal or logical,
" and into a material or metaphysical, according as that
" harmony is in consonance with the laws of formal
"thought, or over and above, with the laws of real
" knowledge. The criterion of formal truth they place
"in the principles of Contradiction and of Sufficient
" Reason, enouncing that what is non -contradictory
" and consequent is formally true. This criterion, which
" is positive and immediate of formal truth (inasmuch as
" what is non-contradictory and consequent can always
"be thought as possible), they style a negative and
" mediate criterion of material truth : as what is self-
" contradictory and logically inconsequent is in reality
" impossible ; at the same time, what is not self-contra-
" dictory and not logically inconsequent, is not, however,
"to be regarded as having an actual existence. But
" here the foundation is treacherous : the notion of truth
* Lectures, iii. 106, 107.
VIEW OF FORMAL LOGIC. 527
"is false. When we speak of truth, we are not satisfied
" with knowing that a thought harmonizes with a certain
"system of thoughts and cognitions; but, over and
" above, we require to be assured that what we think is
"real, and is as we think it to be. Are we satisfied
" on this point, we then regard our thoughts as true ;
" whereas if we are not satisfied of this, we deem them
"false, how well soever they may quadrate with any
"theory or system. It is not, therefore, in any absolute
"harmony of mere thought, that truth consists, but
" solely in the correspondence of our thoughts with their
" objects. The distinction of formal and material truth
" is thus not only unsound in itself, but opposed to the
" notion of truth universally held, and embodied in all
"languages. But if this distinction be inept, the title
" of Logic, as a positive standard of truth, must be de-
" nied ; it can only be a negative criterion, being con-
" versant with thoughts and not with things, with the
"possibility and not with the actuality of existence."
After all the experience we have had of the facility
with which Sir W. Hamilton forgets in one part of his
speculations what he has thought in another, it remains
scarcely credible that he endorses, in his third volume,
this emphatic protest against the distinction which he
draws, and the opinion which he maintains, in his
second and fourth. " Two opposite doctrines," he says,*
" have sprung up, which, on opposite sides, have over-
" looked the true relations of Logic ;" and one of these is
the doctrine (the " inaccuracy" our author styles it) which
Esser, in this passage, protests against. And he there-
upon quotes Esser's condem nation of his (Sir W. Hamil-
ton's) own doctrine. Truly, if arguments ad hominem
were sufficient, a controversialist who undertakes to
refute Sir W. Hamilton would have an easy task.
II. I have already noticed one unacknowledged depar-
ture by our author from the usage of Logicians as
regards the sense of the word Disjunctive; confining
Disjunctive judgments to those in which all the alterna-
* Lectures, iii. 106.
528 MINOR PECULIARITIES IN SIR W. HAMILTON'S
tive propositions have the same subject : A is either B,
or C, or D. This limitation excludes two other forms of
the assertion of an alternative : that in which the pro-
positions have different subjects but the same predicate,
" Either A, or B, or C, is D ;" and that in which they
have different subjects and different predicates, " Either
A is B, or C is D." The former is exemplified in such
judgments as these, Either Brown or Smith did this act ;
Either John or Thomas is dead. The latter in such as
these: Either the witness has told a falsehood, or the
prisoner has committed a murder; Either Macbeth has
killed all Macduff's children, or Macduff has children
who were not there present. While arbitrarily excluding
both these kinds of assertion from the class and denomi-
nation in which they had always been placed, our author
does not assign to them any other ; so that the effect is
not a mere innovation in language, but a hiatus in his
logical system; these two kinds of judgment having no
place, name, or recognition in it. I have now to point
out a second deviation from the received doctrine of
logicians in connexion with the same subject. In respect
to the class of judgments to which he restricts the name
of Disjunctive, those in which two or more predicates
are disjunctively affirmed of the same subject, he takes
for granted through the whole of his exposition,* that
when we say, A is either B or C, we imply that it can-
not be botn : that we may as legitimately argue, A is
either B or C, but it is B, therefore it is not C, as we
may argue, A is either B or C, but it is not B, there-
fore it is C. This is what enables him to affirm, as he
does, that the principle of Disjunctive Judgments is the
Law of Excluded Middle. The predicates are supposed to
be either explicitly or implicitly contradictory, so that one
or other of them must be true of the subject, but both
of them cannot. I conceive this to be both an incom-
pleteness in his theory, and a positive error in fact. An
incompleteness, because we may judge, and legitimately
judge, that a thing is either this or that, though aware
* Lectures, iii. 326, et seqq.
VIEW OP FORMAL LOGIC. 529
that it may possibly be both. Sir W. Hamilton is so
severe on the ordinary Logic for omitting, as he thinks,
some valid forms of thought, that it was peculiarly
incumbent on him not to commit a similar oversight in
his own exposition of the science. But Sir W. Hamil-
ton does not merely leave unrecognised those disjunc-
tive judgments in which the alternative predicates are
mutually compatible ; he assumes that the disjunctive
form of assertion denies their compatibility, which it
assuredly does not. If we assert that a man who has
acted in some particular way, must be either a knave or
a fool, we by no means assert, or intend to assert, that
he cannot be both. Very important consequences may
sometimes be drawn from our knowledge that one or
other of two perfectly compatible suppositions must be
true. Suppose such an argument as this. To make an
entirely unselfish use of despotic power a man must be
either a saint or a philosopher; but saints and philosophers
are rare ; therefore those are rare, who make an entirely
unselfish use of despotic power. The conclusion follows
from the premises, and is of great practical importance.
But does the disjunctive premise necessarily imply, or
must it be construed as supposing, that the same person
cannot be both a saint and a philosopher? Such a con-
struction would be ridiculous.*
There is a great quantity of intricate and obscure
speculation, in our author's Lectures and their Appen-
dices, relating to Disjunctive and Hypothetical Proposi-
tions. But, much as he had thought on the subject, the
simple idea never seems to have occurred to him (though
he might have found it in Archbishop Whately's Logic),
that every disjunctive judgment is compounded of two or
more Hypothetical ones. " Either A is B, or C is D,"
means, If A is not B, C is D; and if is not D, A is
B. This is obvious enough to most people ; but if Sir
W. Hamilton had thought of it, he probably would
have denied it : its admission .would not have been in
* Mr. Mansel does not fall into this mistake (Prolegomena Logica,
p. 221).
M M
530 MINOR PECULIARITIES IN SIR W. HAMILTON'S
keeping with the disposition he shows in so many places,
to consider as one judgment all that it is possible to
assert in one formula, Again, though he takes much
pains to determine what is the real import of a Hypo-
thetical Judgment, the thought never occurs to him that
it is a judgment concerning judgments. If A is B, C
is D, means, The judgment C is D follows as a conse-
quence from the judgment A is B. Not seeing this, Sir
W. Hamilton tacitly adopts the assertion of Krug, that
the conversion of a hypothetical syllogism into a cate-
gorical " is not always possible."*
III. The next of Sir W. Hamilton's minor innova-
tions in Logic has reference to the Sorites. It is scarcely
necessary to say, that a Sorites is an argument in the
form, A is B, B is C, C is D, D is E, therefore A is E :
an abridged expression for a series of Syllogisms, but not
requiring to be decomposed into them in order to make
its collusiveness visible. Sir W. Hamilton accuses all
writers on Logic of having overlooked the possibility of
a Sorites in the second or third Figure. f By this he
does not mean, one in which the ultimate syllogism,
which sums up the argument, is in the second or third
figure, for this all logicians have admitted. For example,
to the Sorites given above, there might be added the
proposition, No F is E ; in which case, the ultimate
syllogism would be, A is E, but no F is E, therefore A
is not an F : a syllogism in the second figure. Or there
might be added, at the opposite end of the series, A is
G ; when the ultimate syllogism would be in the third
figure ; A is E, but A is G, therefore some G is an E.
These are real Sorites, real chain arguments, and they
conclude in the second and third figures : we may call
them, if we please, Sorites in the second and in the third
figure, the truth being that they are Sorites in which
one of the steps is in the second or third figure, all the
others being in the first. And every one who under-
stands the laws of the second and third figures (or even
the general laws of the Syllogism) can see that no more
* Lectures, iii. 342. f Ibid. Appendix to Lectures, iv. 395.
VIEW OF FORMAL LOGIC. 531
tban one step in either of them is admissible in a Sorites,
and that it must either be the first or the last. About
this, however, Logicians have always been agreed. These
are not the kinds of Sorites which Sir W. Hamilton con-
tends for. By a Sorites in the second or third figure,
he means one in which all the steps are in the second,
or all in the third, figure (a thing impossible in a real
Sorites) and in which, accordingly, instead of a succession
of middle terms establishing a connexion between the two
extremes, there is but one middle term altogether. His
paradigm in the second figure would be, No B is A, No C
is A, No D is A, No E is A, All F is A, therefore no B,
or C, or D, or E, is F. In the third figure, it would be,
A is B, A is C, A is D, A is E, A is F, therefore some
B, and C, and D, and E, are F. One would have thought
that anybody who had the smallest notion of the mean-
ing of a Sorites, must have seen that either of these is
not a Sorites at all. It is not a chain argument. It
does not ascend to a conclusion by a series of steps, each
introducing a new premise. It does not deduce one con-
clusion from a succession of premises, all necessary to
its establishment. It draws as many different conclu-
sions as there are syllogisms, each conclusion depending
only on the two premises of one syllogism. That no B
is F, follows from no B is A, and All F is A ; not from
those premises combined with No C is A, No D is A,
No E is A. That some B is F, follows from A is B
and A is F ; and would be proved, though all the other
premises of the pretended Sorites were rejected. If Sir
W. Hamilton had found in any other writer such a mis-
use of logical language as he is here guilty of, he would
have roundly accused him of total ignorance of logical
writers. Since it cannot be imputed to any such cause
in himself, I can only ascribe it to the passion which
appears to have seized him, in the later years of his life,
lor finding more and more new discoveries to be made
in Syllogistic Logic. If he had transported his ardour
for originality into the other departments of the science,
in which there was so great an unexhausted field lor dis-
M M 2
532 MINOR PECULIARITIES IN SIR W. HAMILTON'S
covery, he might have enlarged the bounds of philosophy
to a much greater extent, than I am afraid he will now
be found to have done.
IV. I next turn to a singular misapplication of logical
language, in which Sir W. Hamilton departs from all
good authorities, and misses one of the most important
distinctions drawn by the Aristotelian logic. I refer
to his use of the word Contrary. He confounds con-
trariety with simple incompatibility. " Opposition of
"Notions," he says,* "is twofold: 1. Immediate or
" Contradictory Opposition, called likewise Repugnance (TO
" avri^ariKwc avTiK^.aBai,a.vTi^aaiq, oppositio immmediata,s\.\Q
" contradictoria, repugnantia) ; and 2. Mediate or Con-
" trary Opposition (TO ivavr'nuq ai'TiKelaOai ivavnorriq, oppo-
" sitio media vel contraria]. The former emerges, when
" one concept abolishes (tollif) directly or by simple ne-
gation, what another establishes, ponit ; the latter,
" when one concept does this not directly or by simple
" negation, but through the affirmation of something
"else."
The exemplification and illustration of thisf is not
of our author's devising, but is a citation from Krug,
who had preceded him in the error. " To speak now of
" the distinction of Contradictory and Contrary Opposi-
" tion, or of Contradiction and Contrariety ; of these
" the former, Contradiction, is exemplified in the oppo-
" sites, yellow, not yellow; walking, not walking. Here
"each notion is directly, immediately, and absolutely,
" repugnant to the other, they are reciprocal negatives.
" This opposition is, therefore, properly called that of
" Contradiction or of Repugnance ; and the opposing no-
" tions themselves are contradictory or repugnant notions,
"in a single word, contradictories. The latter, or Con-
trary Opposition, is exemplified in the opposites,^//ow,
" blue, red, &c., walking, standing, lying, &e."
It can hardly have been imagined by Krug or Sir W.
Hamilton, that this is the meaning of Contrariety in
common discourse, or that any one ever speaks of yellow
* Lectures, iii. 213, 214. f Ibid. pp. 214, 215.
VIEW OF FORMAL LOGIC. 533
or blue as the contrary of red, or even as the opposite of
it. The very phrase, "the contrary," testifies that a thing
cannot have more contraries than one. Black is regarded
as the contrary of white, but no other contrariety is re-
cognised among colours at all. Sir W. Hamilton, versed
as he was in the literature of logic, can hardly have
fancied that the world of logicians, any more than the
common w r orld, was on his side. In the language of
logicians, as in that of life, a thing has only one contrary
its extreme opposite ; the thing farthest removed from
it in the same class. Black is the contrary of white,
but neither of them is the contrary of red. Infinitely
great is the contrary of infinitely small, but is not the
contrary of finite. It is the more strange that Krug
and Sir W. Hamilton should have misunderstood or re-
jected this, as the definition they ignore is the foundation
of the distinction between Contradictory and Contrary
Propositions, in the famous Parallelogram of Opposition.
The contrary proposition to All A is B, is No A is B,
its extreme opposite ; the assertion most widely differing
from it that can be made ; denying, not it merely, but
every part of it. Its contradictory is merely, Some A
is not B. Sir W. Hamilton could not have imagined the
distinction between these negative propositions to be, that
the one denies by simple negation, the other through the
affirmation of something else.
That the teachers of the Syllogistic Logic have taken
this view, and not Sir W. Hamilton's, of the meaning of
Contrariety, might be shown by any number of quota-
tions. I have only looked up the authorities nearest at
hand. I begin with Aristotle : To yap irXtiarov aXXi'iXwv
ot<rr)Kora TWI> tv TW aura> ysvti, ivavria. upiCovrai.
Aristotle again : Ta yap kvavria TUV irXiiorov Sia
Arislutle iv TW Sc/carw TJC 0oAoyiKT)C TTpayfiartlaQ, as
ited bv Ammoiiins HftrmiaB :t ETTH &t $'ia(btpnv tvdivtn
cited by Aminoiiius Hermiae :{ ETTH Bt SlaQtptiv tvdeytrai
* Categorise, cap. 6. t Hepi 'Epfirfvdas, cap. 14.
J Ammonii Hermiae in Aristotelis de Interpretatione Librom Com-
mentarius, ed. Aldi, pp. 175, 176.
534 MINOR PECULIARITIES IN SIR W. HAMILTON'S
a\\r)\wv TO. $ia<f>EpovTa ir\iov Kal fXarrov, fan rig, Kal
CKKpopa, Kal TCLVTIJV Xtyw kvavTiwaiv.
Ammonius himself thereon : 'H rwi> kvavTiwv $ia<j>opa
aAAo>i>, Kal ovfitv
My next extract shall be from a well-known treatise,
which Sir W. Hamilton particularly recommended to his
pupils : Burgersdyk's Institutiones Logicse.
" Oppositorum species sunt quinque : Disparata, con-
" traria, relative opposita, privative opposita, et contra-
" dictoria.
" Disparata sunt, quorum unum pluribus opponitur,
" eodem modo. Sic homo et equus, album et caeruleum,
" sunt disparata : quia homo non equo solum, sed etiam
" cani, leoni, cajterisque bestiarum speciebus, et album,
" non solum cairuleo, sed etiam rubro, viridi, cseterisque
" coloribus mediis, opponitur eodem modo, hoc est, eodem
" oppositorum genere ....
" Contraria sunt duo absolute, qua3 sub eodem genere
" plurimum distant."^
This passage informs us, not only that what Sir W.
Hamilton terms Contraries were not so called by the
Aristotelian logicians, but also what they w r ere called.
They were called Disparates : a term employed by Sir
W. Hamilton, but in a totally different meaning. f
The next is from one of the ablest, and, though in a
comparatively small compass, one of the completest in
essentials, of all the expositions I have seen of Logic
from the purely Aristotelian point of view : Manuductio
ad Logicam, by the Pere Du Trieu, of Douai. J
" Contraria sunt, qua? posita sub eodem genere maxime
"a se invicem distant, eidem subjecto susceptive vicis-
" sim insunt, a quo se mutuo expellunt, nisi alterum
" insit a natura ; ut, album, et nigrum.
" In hac definitione continentur quatuor conditiones,
" sive leges contrariorum.
" Prima, ut sint sub eodem genere. . . .
* Burgersdicii Institutiones Logicae, lib. i. cap. 22 ; Theorema i.
f Lectures, iii. 224. Pars Tertia, cap iii. art. 1.
VIEW 0* FORMAL LOGIC. 535
" Secunda conditio contrariorum est ut sub illo eodem
" genere maxime distent, id est precise repugnent. . .
" Hinc excluduntur disparata."
The next is from Saunderson's Logicse Artis Compen-
dium, one of the best-known elementary treatises on
Logic by British authors.*
" Oppositio Contraria est inter terrainos contraries.
" Sunt autem ea contraria quse posita sub eodem genere
" maxirne inter se distant, et vim habent expellendi se
" vicissim ex eodem subjecto susceptibili."
Crackanthorp :f " Contraria sunt Opposita quorum
" unum alteri sic opponitur ut nulli alteri aut seque
" aut magis opponatur. Sic Albedo Nigredini, Homini
" Brutum, Rationale Irrationali contrarium est. Nam
" nihil est quod seque Albedini opponitur atque Nigredo,
" et sic in reliquis." On the other hand, " Disparata
" sunt Opposita quorum unum uni sic opponitur, ut alteri
" vel seque vel magis opponatur. Sic Liberalitas et Ava-
" ritia disparata sunt. Nam Avaritia magis opponitur
" Prodigalitati quarn Liberalitati. Sic Albedo et Rubedo
" disparata sunt, quia Albedo seque opponitur Viriditati
" atque Rubedini, et magis Nigredini quain ambobus.
" Nam plus inter se semper distant extrema, quam vel
" media inter se, vel medium ab alterutro extreme."
BrerewoodiJ "Contraria a Dialecticis ita definiri
" solent : Sunt Opposita quse sub eodem genere posita
" maxime a se invicem distant, et eodem subjecto sus-
" ceptibili vicissim insunt, a quo se mutuo expellunt,
" nisi alterum insit a natura Sed quoniam hsec
" definitio (quam vis sit prsecipue in Dialecticorum scholis
" authoritans) laborat et tsedio, et summa difficultate,
" placet ex Aristotele faciliorem adducere, et breviorem :
" Contraria sunt quce nub eodem genere posita, maxime
" distant"
Samuel Smith : " Contraria sunt quse sub eodem
* Pars Prima, cap. 15. t Logica, cap. 20.
% Tractatas Quidam Logic! de Praedicabilibus et Praedicamentis. Tracta-
tus Decimus, de Post-Prsedicamentis, Sect. 5 et 6.
Aditus ad Logicam, (OxoniiB, 1656) lib. i. cap. 14.
536 MINOR PECULIARITIES IN SIR W. HAMILTON'S
" genere posita, maxime a se invicem distant, et eidem
" susceptibili vicissim insunt, a quo se mutuo expellunt,
" nisi alterum eorum insit a natura. Ad Contraria igitur
" tria requiruntur : primo ut sint sub eodem genere,
" scilicet Qualitatis : nam solarum qualitatum est con-
" trarietas ; secundo, ut maxime a se invicem distent in
" natura positiva, id est, ut ambo extrema sint posi-
" tiva."
Wallis :* " Contraria definiri solent, quae sub eodem
" genere maxime distant. Ut calidum et frigidum, album
" et nigrum : quae contrariae qualitatis dici solent."
Even Aldrich, right for once, may be added to the
list of Oxford authorities. f " Contraria sub eodem
" genere maxime distant. Non maxime distant omnium;
" magis enim distant quae nee idem genus summum
" habent, magis Contradictoria : sed maxime eorum quae
" in genere conveniunt."
Keckermannj does not employ this, but another de-
finition of Contraries ; not, however, Sir W. Hamilton's :
and all his examples of Contraries are taken from Ex-
treme Opposites.
Casparus Bartholinus : " Contraria sunt, quae sub
" eodem genere maxime distant, eidemque subjecto sus-
" ceptibili a quo se mutuo expellunt, vicissim insunt, nisi
" alterum insit a natura "
Du Hamel : || " Oppositio contraria est inter duo ex-
" trema positiva, quse sub eodem genere posita maxime
" distant, et ab eodem subjecto sese expellunt/'
Grammatica Rationis, sive Institutiones Logicse :^[
" Contraria adversa sunt accidentia, posita sub eodem
" genere, quae maxime distant, et se mutuo pellunt ab
" eodem subjecto in quo vicissim insunt."
Familiar as Sir W. Hamilton was with the whole
* Institutio Logicae, lib. i. cap. 16.
f Artis Logicae Compendium, Quaestionum Logicarum Determinatio,
quaast. 19.
J Systema Logicse.
| Enchiridion Logicae (Lipsiae, 1618) lib. i. cap. 23.
1 1 Philosophia vetus et nova ad usum scholae accommodata ( Amstelodami,
1700) p. 197.
Tf Oxonii, 1673.
VIEW OF FORMAL LOGIC. 537
series of writers on Logic, he cannot have overlooked,
and can hardly have forgotten, such passages as these.
I have not had the fortune to meet with a single passage,
from a single Aristotelian writer, which can be cited in his
support. I presume, therefore, that he intentional! v
made (or adopted from Krug) a change in the meaning
of a scientific term, the inverse of that which it is the
proper office and common tendcncv of science to make.
Instead of giving a more determinate signification to a
name vaguely used, by binding it down to express a
precise specific distinction, he laid hold of a name which
already denoted a definite species, and applied it to the
entire genus, which stood in no need of a name ; leaving
the particular species unnamed. But if he knowingly
took this very unscientific liberty with a scientific term,
diverting it from both its scientific and its popular
meaning, leaving the scientific vocabulary, never too
rich, with one expression the fewer, and an important
scientific distinction without a name, he at Jeast should
not have done so without informing tne reader. He
should not have led the unsuspecting learner to believe
that this was the received use of the term. Remark,
too, that he embezzles not only the English word, but
its Greek and Latin equivalents, exactly as if he agreed
with the writers of the Greek and Latin treatises, and
was only explaining their meaning.
V. One of the charges brought by Sir W. Hamilton
against the common mode of stating the doctrine of the
Syllogism, is that it does not obviate the objection
often made to the syllogism of being a pelilio prindpii,
grounded on the admitted truth, that it can assert
nothing in the conclusion which has not already been
asserted in the premises. This objection, our author
says,* " stands hitherto unrefuted, if not unrefutable."
But he entertains the odd idea, that it can be got rid of
by merely writing the propositions in a different order,
putting the conclusion first. One might almost imagine
that a little irony had been intended here. Putting
* Appendix to Lectures, iv. 401, and Appendix to Discussions, p. 652.
538 MINOR PECULIARITIES, ETC.
the conclusion first, certainly makes it impossible any
longer to say that the syllogism asserts in the conclusion
what has already been asserted in the premises ; and if
any one is of opinion that the logical relation between
premises and a conclusion depends on the order in which
they are pronounced, such an objector, I must allow, is
from this time silenced. But our author can have me-
ditated very little on the meaning of the objection of
petitio principii against the Syllogism, when he thought
that such a device as this would remove it. The diffi-
culty, which that objection expresses, lies in a region far
below the depth to which such logic reaches ; and he
was quite right in regarding the objection as un refuted.
Nor is its refutation, I conceive, possible, on any theory
but that which considers the Syllogism not as a process of
Inference, but as the mere interpretation of the record of a
previous process ; the major premise as simply a formula
for making particular inferences ; and the conclusions of
ratiocination as not inferences from the formula, but in-
ferences drawn according to the formula. This theory,
and the grounds of it, having been very fully stated in
another work, need not be further noticed here.
539
CHAPTER XXIV.
OP SOME NATURAL PREJUDICES COUNTENANCED BY SIR
WILLIAM HAMILTON, AND SOME FALLACIES WHICH HE
CONSIDERS INSOLUBLE.
WE have concluded our review of Sir W. Hamilton as
a teacher of Logic ; but there remain to be noticed a
few points, not strictly belonging either to Logic or
to Psychology, but rather to what is inappropriately
termed the Philosophia Prima. It would be more
properly called ultima, since it consists of the widest
generalizations respecting the laws of Existence and
Activity; generalizations which by an unfortunate,
though at first inevitable mistake, men fancied, that
they could reach uno saltu, and therefore placed them at
the beginning of science, though, if they were ever
legitimate, they could only be so as its tardy and final
result. Every physical science, up to the time of Bacon,
consisted mainly of such first principles as these : The
ways of Nature are perfect : Nature abhors a vacuum ;
Natura non habet saltum : Nothing can come out of
nothing : Like can only be produced by like : Things
always move towards their own place : Things can only
be moved by something which is itself moving ; and so
forth. And the Baconian revolution was far indeed
from expelling such doctrines from philosophy. On the
contrary, the Cartesian movement, which went on for a
full century simultaneously with the Baconian, threw
up many more of these imaginary axioms concerning
things in general, which took a deep root in Continental
philosophy, found their way into English, and are by
no means, even now, discredited as they deserve to be.
540 FALLACIOUS MODES OF THOUGHT
Most of these were fully believed by the philosophers
who maintained them, to be intuitively evident truths
revelations of Nature in the depths of human conscious-
ness, and recognisable by the light of reason alone :
while all the time they were merely bad generalizations
of the vulgarest outward experience ; rough interpreta-
tions of the appearances most familiar to sense, and
which therefore had grown into the strongest associa-
tions in thought ; never tested by the conditions of
legitimate induction, not only because those conditions
were still unknown, but because these wretched first
attempts at generalization were deemed to have a higher
than inductive origin, and were erected into general laws
from which the order of the universe might be deduced,
and to which ever} r scientific theory for the explanation
of phenomena must be required to conform. It is a
material point in the estimation of a philosopher and
of his doctrines, whether he has taken his side for or
against this mode of philosophizing; whether he has
countenanced any of these spurious axioms by his adhe-
sion. Sir W. Hamilton cannot be acquitted of having
done so, in more than one instance.
In treating of the problem of Causality, Sir W.
Hamilton had occasion to argue, that we ought not to
postulate a special mental law in order to explain the
belief that everything must have a cause, since that
belief is sufficiently accounted for by the " Law of the
Conditioned," which makes it impossible for us to con-
ceive an absolute commencement of anything. I do
not mean to return to the discussion of this theory of
Causality ; but let us ask ourselves why we are inter-
dicted from assuming a special law, in order to account
for that which is already sufficiently accounted for by
a general one. The real ground of the prohibition is
what our author terms the Law of Parcimony ; a prin-
ciple identical with the famous maxim of the Nominalists,
known as Occam's Eazor Entia non sunt multiplicanda
prater necessitatem ; understanding by Entia, not merely
substances but also Powers. Sir W. Hamilton, instead
COUNTENANCED BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 541
of resting it on this logical injunction, grounds it on an
ontological theory. His reason is, " Nature never works
" by more and more complex instruments than are neces-
" sary."* He cites,f with approbation, the maxims of
Aristotle, "that Grod and Nature never operate without
" effect (ovStv /jLarriv, OV&EV tXXetTrwc, 7roou<ri) ; they never
" Operate superfluously (/jniStv trf-piepyov 7r/!>trT<uc
" a/oywc) ; but always through one rather than through a
" plurality of means (icaO' iv, paXXov r) Kara TroXXa) :" thus
borrowing a general theory of the very kind which Bacon
exploded, to support a rule which can stand perfectly well
without it. Have we authority to declare that there is
anything which God and Nature never do ? Do we know
all Nature's combinations? Were we called into counsel
in fixing its limits? By what canons of induction has
this theory ever been tried? By what observations has
it been verified ? We know well that Nature, in many
of its operations, works by means which are of a com-
plexity so extreme, as to be an almost insuperable ob-
stacle to our investigations. On what evidence do we
presume to say that this complexity was necessary, and
that the effect could not have been produced in a simpler
manner? If we look into the meaning of words, of what
kind is the necessity which is supposed to be binding oil
God and Nature the pressure they are unable to escape
from ? Is there any necessity in Nature which Nature
did not make ? or if not, what did ? What is this power
superior to Nature and its author, and to which Nature
is compelled to adapt itself?
There is one supposition under which this doctrine
has an intelligible meaning the hypothesis of the Two
Principles. If the universe was moulded into its pre-
sent form by a Being who did not make it wholly, and
who was impeded by an obstacle which he could only
partially overcome whether that obstacle was a rival
intelligence, or, as Plato thought, an inherent incapacity
in Matter ; it is on that supposition admissible, that the
Demiourgos may have always worked by the simplest
* Appendix to Discussions, p. 622. t Ibid. p. 629.
542 FALLACIOUS MODES OF THOUGHT
possible means ; the simplest, namely, which were per-
mitted by the opposition of the conflicting Power, or
the intractableness of the material. This is, in fact, the
doctrine of Leibnitz's Theodicee ; his famous theory that
a world, made by God, must be the best of all possible
worlds, that is, the best world which could be made
under the conditions by which, as it would appear, Pro-
vidence was restricted. This doctrine, commonly called
Optimism, is really Manicheism, or, to call it by its more
proper name, Sabseism. The word " possible" assumes
the existence of hindrances insurmountable by the divine
power, and Leibnitz was only wrong in calling a power
limited by obstacles by the name Omnipotence : for it is
almost too obvious to be worth stating, that real Omni-
potence could have effected its ends totally without
means, or could have made any means sufficient. This
Sabajan theory is the only one by which the assertion,
that Nature always works by the simplest means, can be
made consistent with known fact. Even so, it remains
wholly unproved ; and, were it proved, would be but a
speculative truth of Theology, incapable of affording
any practical guidance. We could never be justified in
rejecting an hypothesis for being too complicated ; it
being beyond our power to set limits to the complication
of the means that might possibly be necessary, to evade
the obstacles which Ahriman or Matter may have per-
versely thrown in the Creator's way.
The " Law of Parcimony" needs no such support ; it
rests on no assumption respecting the ways or proceed-
ings of Nature. It is a purely logical precept ; a case of
the broad practical principle, not to believe anything of
which there is no evidence. When we have no direct
knowledge of the matter of fact, and no reason for be-
lieving it except that it would account for another matter
of fact, all reason for admitting it is at an end when the
fact requiring explanation can be explained from known
causes. The assumption of a superfluous cause, is a
belief without evidence ; as if we were to suppose that
a man who was killed by falling over a precipice, must
COUNTENANCED BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 543
have taken poison as well. The same principle which
forbids the assumption of a superfluous fact, forbids that
of a superfluous law. When Newton had shown that
the same theorem would express the conditions of the
planetary motions and the conditions of the fall of bodies
to the earth, it would have been illogical to recognise
two distinct laws of nature, one for heavenly and the
other for earthly attraction ; since both these laws, when
stripped of the circumstances ascertained to be irrelevant
to the effect, would have had to be expressed in the very
same words. The reduction of each of the two generali-
zations to the expression of only those circumstances
which influence the result, reduces both of them to the
same proposition ; and to decline to do so, would be to
make an assumption of difference between the cases, for
which none of the observations afforded the smallest
ground. The rule of Parcimony, therefore, whether
applied to facts or to theories, implies no theory con-
cerning the propensities or proceedings of Nature. If
Nature's ways and inclinations were the reverse of what
they are supposed to be, it would have been as illegiti-
mate as it is now, to assume a fact of Nature without
any evidence for it, or to consider the same property as
two different properties, because found in two different
kinds of objects.
In another place,* Sir W. Hamilton says that the
Law of Parcimony, which he terms " the most impor-
" tant maxim in regulation of philosophical procedure
" when it is necessary to resort to an hypothesis, has
" never, perhaps, been adequately expressed ;" and he
proposes the following expression for it : " Neither more
" nor more onerous causes are to be assumed, than are
" necessary to account for the phaenomena." This con-
ception of some causes as " more onerous" to the general
scheme of things than others, is a distinction greatly
requiring what our author says it has never yet had
to be " articulately expressed." He does not, however,
articulate it in general terms, but only in its application
* Appendix to Discussions, pp. 628, 631.
544 FALLACIOUS MODES OF THOUGHT
to the particular question of Causality. From this we
may collect, 1st. That a " positive power" is a more
onerous hypothesis than a " negative impotence." 2nd.
That a special hypothesis, which serves to explain only
one phsenomenon, is more onerous than a general one
which will explain many. 3rd. That the explanation
of an effect by cause of which the very existence is
hypothetical, is more onerous than its hypothetical ex-
planation by a cause otherwise known to exist. The
last two of these three canons are but particular cases
of the general rule, that we should not assume an hypo-
thetical cause of a phsenoinenon which admits of being
accounted for by a cause of which there is other evi-
dence.* The remaining canon, that we should prefer
the hypothesis of an incapacity to that of a power, is, I
apprehend, only valid when its infringement would be a
violation of one of the other two rules.
The time-honoured, but gratuitous, assumption, re-
specting Nature, on which I have now commented, is
not the only generality of the pre-Baconian type which
Sir. W. Hamilton has countenanced. He gives his sanc-
tion to the old doctrine that " a thing can act only where
it is." The dictum appears in this direct form in one of
the very latest of his writings, the notes for an intended
memoir of Professor Dugald Stewart.f He has so much
faith in it as to make it the foundation of two of his
favourite theories. One is, that| " the thing perceived,
" and the percipient organ, must meet in place, must be
" contiguous. The consequence of this doctrine is a
" complete simplification of the theory of perception, and
" a return to the most ancient speculation on the point.
* This is what Newton meant by a vera causa, in his celebrated maxim,
" Causas rerum naturalium non pluves admitti debere quam quae et verce
" siid, et earuni phaenoinenis explicandis sufficiant." It is singular that
Sir W. Hamilton does not seem to have understood, that by verce causes
Newton meant agencies the existence of which was otherwise authen-
ticated : for he says (footnote to Reid, p. 230), " In their plain meaning,
" the words et verae sint are redundant ; or what follows is redundant, and
"the whole rule a barren truism." [But in the Appendix to the Dis-
cussions (p. 631) Sir W. Hamilton puts the right interpretation, on
Newton's maxim.]
f Appendix to Lectures, ii. 522. Ibid.
COUNTENANCED BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 545
" All sensible cognition is, in a certain acceptation, re-
" duced to Touch, and this is the very conclusion main-
" tained by the venerable authority of Deraocritus. Ac-
" cording to this doctrine, it is erroneous to affirm that
" we are percipient of distant objects." Conformably
to this, we have seen him not only maintaining, in
opposition to Reid, that we do not see the sun that
we see only an image of it in our eye but also, that we
directly perceive Extension, whether by sight or touch,
only in our own bodily organs : thus preferring the a
priori axiom, that a thing can only act where it is, to
the authority of those " natural beliefs" which he, in
other cases, so strenuously asserts against impugners,
and so often affirms that we ought either to accept as a
whole, or never appeal to at all.
The other theory which our author maintains on the
authority of the same dictum, is that the mind acts
directly throughout the whole body, and not through
the brain only. " There is* no good ground to suppose
" that the mind is situate solely in the brain, or ex-
" clusively in any part of the body. On the contrary,
" the supposition that it is really present wherever we
" are conscious that it acts, in a word, the Peripatetic
" aphorism, The soul is all in the whole, and all in
" every part, is more philosophical, and consequently,
" more probable than any other opinion Even if
" we admit that the nervous system is the part to which
" it is proximately united, still the nervous system is
" itself universally ramified throughout the body ; and
" we have no more right to deny that the mind feels
" at the finger-points, as consciousness assures us, than
" to assert that it thinks exclusively in the brain." Sir
W. Hamilton should at least have shown how this hy-
pothesis can be reconciled with the fact, that a slight
pressure on the nerve at a place intermediate between
the finger and the brain, takes away the mind's power of
feeling in the finger, while at any point above the liga-
ture the feeling is the same as before. If he object that
* Lectures, ii. 127, 128.
N N
' J ? " <
w* f
546 FALLACIOUS MODES OF THOUGHT
the mode in which the pressure impedes sensation need
not be by interrupting the communication between the
finger and the brain, but may be by disturbing the
functions of the nerve itself, we may ask, why is this
disturbance confined to the part of the nerve which is
below the point of pressure, while above that point the
functions remain unimpaired? Many other objections
might be brought against Sir W. Hamilton's theory, if
my object were to discuss the physiological question; but
my object is only to show the amount of evidence which
Sir W. Hamilton will disregard, rather than admit that
one thing can act directly upon another without immediate
contact.* What he would have thought of the appli-
cation of his doctrine to the splar system, he has not
told us (the recent developments of the doctrine of the
Unity of Force being posterior to his time) : but it com-
mits him to the opinion, that gravitation acts through
an intervening medium, which he must postulate, first
as existing, and secondly, as possessed of inscrutable pro-
perties ; in palpable repugnance to his own Law of
Parcimony, and to all the canons grounded thereon.
Descartes postulated his vortices in obedience to the
same axiom.
What, however, is the worth of this doctrine, that
things can only act upon one another by direct contact ?
Mr. Carlyle says, *'a thing can only act where it is;
with all ray heart ; only where is it ?" In one sense of
the word, a thing is wherever its action is: its power is
there, though not its corporeal presence. But to say
that a thing can only act where its power is, would be
the idlest of mere identical propositions. And where is
the warrant for asserting that a thing cannot act when
it is not locally contiguous to the thing it acts upon ?
Shall we be told that such action is inconceivable ? Even
if it was, this, according to Sir W. Hamilton's philo-
sophy, is no evidence of impossibility. But that it is
* In the Lectures, I mean : for, in the Dissertations on Reid (p. 861),
the doctrine, that we feel in the toe, and not in a sensorium commune, is'at
least HO iar retracted, that the possibility of the opposite theory is ex-
plicitly acknowledged.
COUNTENANCED BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 547
conceivable, is shown by every fairy tale, as well as by
every religion. Then, again, what is the meaning of
contiguity? According to the best physical knowledge
we possess, things are never actually contiguous : what
we term contact between particles, only means that they
are in the degree of proximity at which their mutual
repulsions are in equilibrium with their attractions. If
so, instead of never, things always act on one another at
some, though it may be a very small distance. The
belief that a thing can only act where ib is, is a common
case of inseparable, though not ultimately indissoluble,
association. It is an unconscious generalization, of the
roughest possible description, from the most familiar
cases of the mutual action of bodies, superficially con-
sidered. The temporary difficulty found in apprehending
any action of body upon body unlike what people were
accustomed to, created a Natural Prejudice, which was
long a serious impediment to the reception of the New-
tonian theory : but it was hoped that the final triumph
of that theory had extinguished it ; that all educated per-
sons were now aware that action at a distance is intrinsi-
cally quite as credible as action in contact, and that there
is no reason, apart from specific experience, to regard the
one as in any respect less probable than the other. That
Sir W. Hamilton should be an instance to the contrary,
is an example of the obstinate vitality of these idola tribus,
and shows that we are never safe against the rejuve-
nescence of the most superannuated error, if in throwing
it off we have not reformed the bad habit of thought,
the wrong and unscientific tendency of the intellect, from
which the error took its rise.*
* In the course of his speculations our author comes across a fact which
is positively irreconcileable with his axiom ; the fact of repulsion. This
brings him to a dead stand. He knows not whether to advance or recede.
Repulsion, he says (Dissertations on Reid, p. 852) "remains, as ap]<u-
" rently an actio in distans, even when forced upon us as a fact, still
" inconceivable as a possibility." He is soon afterwards obliged to confess
that the same is true of attraction : " As attraction and repulsion seem
" equally actiones in distans, it is not more difficult to realize to ourselves
"the action of the one, than the action of the other." Action from a
distance being " a fact," though inconceivable, this fact would seem to
N N 2
543 FALLACIOUS MODES OF THOUGHT
Though but remotely connected with the preceding
considerations, yet as belonging in common with them
to the subject of Fallacies, I will notice in this place
the curious partiality which our author shows to a par-
ticular group of sophisms, the Eleatic arguments for the
impossibility of motion. He deemed these arguments,
though leading to a false conclusion, to be irrefutable; as
Brown thought concerning Berkeley's argument against
the existence of matter that as a mere play of reason-
ing it was unanswerable, while it was impossible for the
human mind to admit the conclusion ; forgetting that if
this were so it would be a reductio ad alsurdum of the
reasoning faculty. There is no philosopher to whom, I
imagine, Sir W. Hamilton would have less liked to be
assimilated, than Brown ; and he would probably have
defended himself against the imputation, by saying that
the Eleatic arguments do not prove motion to be impos-
sible, but only to be inconceivable by us. Yet if a fact
which we see and feel every minute of our lives, is not
conceivable by us, what is? Our author does not enter at
any length into the question, but expresses his opinion
on several occasions incidentally. " It is," he says,*
" on the inability of the mind to conceive either the
" ultimate indivisibility, or the endless divisibility of
" space and time, that the arguments of the Eleatic
" Zeno against the possibility of motion are founded ;
" arguments which at least show, that motion, however
" certain as a fact, cannot be conceived possible, as it
" involves a contradiction." We have been told in very
emphatic terms by Sir W. Hamilton, that the Law of
Contradiction is binding not on our conceptions merely,
but on Things. If, then, motion involves a contradic-
tion, how is it possible ? and if it is possible, and a fact,
as we know it to be, how can it involve a contradiction?
require of him the retractation of his axiom : yet he does not retract it.
1 need hardly remark that attraction and repulsion are not inconceivable ;
except indeed in another of the numerous senses of that equivocal word ;
that in which it is used when our author tells us that all ultimate facts are
inconceivable, meaning only that they are inexplicable.
* Lectures, ii. 373. To the same effect, iv. 71.
COUNTENANCED BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 549
The appearance of contradiction must necessarily be
fallacious, even were we unable to point out the fallacy.
Our author, apparently, has attempted to resolve it, and
failed. He calls the argument* " an exposition of the con-
tradictions involved in our notion of motion," and says
that its " fallacy has not yet been detected." And, again,f
' The Eleatic Zeno's demonstration of the impossibility
" of motion is not more insoluble than could be framed
" a proof that the present has no reality : for however
" certain we may be of both, we can positively think
" neither." It must, one would suppose, be a great dif-
ficulty, which could appear insoluble to Sir W. Hamil-
ton. The " demonstration," at all events, cannot yet
have been refuted, and superhuman ingenuity must be
needed to refute it. Yet the fallacy in it has been
pointed out again and again ; and the contradictions
which Sir W. Hamilton regards it as an exposure of,
do not exist.
Zeno's reasonings against motion, as handed down by
Aristotle, consist of four arguments, which are stated and
criticised with considerable prolixity by Bayle. Several
of these are substantially the same argument in different
forms, and if we examine the two most plausible of
them it will suffice. The first is the ingenious fallacy
of Achilles and the Tortoise. If Achilles starts a
thousand yards behind the tortoise, and runs a hundred
times as fast ; still, while Achilles runs those thousand
yards, the tortoise will have got on ten ; while Achilles
runs those ten, the tortoise will have run a tenth of a
yard ; and as this process may be continued to infinity,
Achilles will never overtake the tortoise. In our author's
opinion, this argument is logically correct, and evolves
a contradiction in our idea of motion. But it is neither
logically correct, nor evolves a contradiction in anything.
It assumes, of course, the infinite divisibility of space.
But we have no need to entangle ourselves in the meta-
physical discussion whether this assumption is warrant-
able. Let it be granted or not, the argument always
* Foot-note to Reid, p. 102. f Appendix to Discussions, p. 606.
550 FALLACIOUS MODES OF THOUGHT
remains fallacious. The fallacy lies in the assertion that
" this process may be continued to infinity/' Infinity
is here ambiguous. The conclusion drawn is that the
process may be continued for an infinite duration of time.
But the premise is only true in the sense, that it may be
continued for an infinite number of divisions of time. The
argument confounds infinity and infinite divisibility.
It assumes that to pass through an infinitely divisible
I space, requires an infinite time. But the infinite divisi-
bility of space means the infinite divisibility of finite
space : and it is only infinite space which cannot be
passed over in less than infinite time. What the argu-
ment proves is, that to pass over the infinitely divisible
space, requires an infinitely divisible time: but an infi-
nitely divisible time may itself be finite ; the smallest
finite time is infinitely divisible ; the argument, therefore,
is consistent with the tortoise's being overtaken in the
smallest finite time. It is a sophism of the type Igno-
ratio Elenchi, or, as Archbishop Whately terms it, Irre-
levant Conclusion ; an argument which proves a different
proposition from that which it pretends to prove, the
difference of meaning being disguised by an ambiguity
of language.
The other plausible form of Zeno's argument is at
first sight more favourable to Sir W. Hamilton's theory,
being a real attempt to prove that the fact of motion
involves impossible conditions. The usual mode of
stating it is this. If a body moves, it must move either
in the place where it is, or in the place where it is not :
but either of these is impossible : therefore it cannot
move. First of all, this argument, even if we were
unable to refute it, does not exhibit any contradiction
in our " notion" of motion. We do not conceive a
body as moving either in the place where it is, or in the
place where it is not, but from the former to the latter :
in other words, we conceive the bod} 7 - as in the one place
and in the other at successive instants. Where is the
" contradiction" between being in one place at this
moment, and in another at the next ? As for the fallacy
COUNTENANCED BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 551
itself, it is strange that when everybody sees the answer
to it, a practised logician should have any difficulty in
putting that answer into logical forms. It is not necessary
that motion should be in a place. A body must be
in a place ; but motion is not a body it is a change :
and that a change of place should be either in the old
place or in the new, is a real contradiction in terms. To
put the thing in another way ; Place may be understood
in two senses : it may either be a divisible, or an indivi-
sible part of space. If it be a divisible part, as a room,
or a street, it is true that in that sense, every motion
is in a place, that is, within a limited portion of space :
but in this meaning of the term the dilemma breaks
down, for the body really moves in the place where it
is; the room, the field, or the house. If, on the con-
trary, we are to understand by Place an indivisible
minimum of space, the proposition that motion must be
in a place is evidently false ; for motion cannot be in
that which has no parts ; it can only be to or from it.
A parallel sophism might easily be invented, turning
upon Time instead of Space. It might be said that sun-
set is impossible, since if it be possible, it must take place
either while the sun is still up, or after it is down. The
answer is obvious : it is just the change from one to the
other which is sunset. And so it is the change from one
position in space to another which is motion. The
parallelism between the two cases was evidently seen
by Sir W. Hamilton, and the sophism was too hard for
him in both : and this is what he must have meant by
saying that we cannot "positively think' the Present.
That he should have missed the solution of the fallacy
is strange enough : but, as a matter of fact, the assertion
that we have no positive perception, on the one hand
of Motion, on the other, of present time, deserves notice
as one of the most curious deliverances of so earnest an
asserter of " our natural beliefs."
These paralogisms are only part of a long list of
puzzles concerning infinity, which, though by no means
hard to clear up, appear to our author insoluble. 1
552 FALLACIOUS MODES OF THOUGHT
append in a note the entire list.* Many of them are
resolved by the observations already made, their difficulty
being merely that of separating the two ideas of Infinite
and Infinitely Divisible. To our author's thinking, infi-
nite divisibility and the Finite contradict one another.
But even allowing (which, as was seen in a former
chapter, I do not) that infinite divisibility is inconceiv-
able, it does not therefore involve a contradiction. The
remaining puzzles mostly result from inability to con-
ceive that one infinity can be greater or less than another;
a conception familiar to all mathematicians. Our author
refuses to consider that a space or a time which is infinite
in one direction and bounded in another, is necessarily
less than a space or a time which is infinite in every
direction. The space between two parallels, or between
two diverging lines or surfaces, extends to infinity, but
it is necessarily less than entire space, being a part of
it. Not only is one infinity greater than another, but
one infinity may be infinitely greater than another.
* " Contradictions proving the Psychological Theory of the Conditioned.
" 1. Finite cannot comprehend, contain, the Infinite. Yet an inch or
"minute, say, are finites, and are divisible ad infinitum, that is, their 1er-
" minated division incogitable.
" 2. Infinite cannot be terminated or begun. Yet eternity ab ante ends
" now ; and eternity a post begins now. So apply to Space.
" 3. There cannot be two infinite maxima. Yet eternity ab ante and a
"post are two infinite maxima of time.
" 4. Infinite maximum if cut in two, the halves cannot be each infinite,
" for nothing can be greater than infinite, and thus they could not be
"parts; nor finite, for thus two finite halves would make an infinite
" whole.
" 5. What contains infinite quantities (extensions, proteusions, inten-
" sions) cannot be passed through, come to au end. An inch, a minute,
" a degree contains these : ergo, &c. Take a minute. This contains an
" infinitude of protended quantities, which must follow one after another ;
" but an infinite series of successive pretensions can, ex termino, never be
" ended ; ergo, &c.
" 6. An infinite maximum cannot but be all-inclusive. Time ab ante
''and a post infinite and exclusive of each other ; ergo, &c.
" 7. An infinite number of quantities must make up either an infinite or
" a finite whole. I. The former. But an inch, a minute, a degree, contain
" each an infinite number of quantities ; therefore an inch, a minute, a
" degree, are each infinite wholes ; which is absurd. II. The latter. An
" infinite number of quantities would thus make up a finite quantity, which
" is equally absurd.
" 8. If we take a finite quantity (as an inch, a minute, a degree), it would
COUNTENANCED BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 553
Mathematicians habitually assume this, and reason from
it ; and the result always coming out true, the assump-
tion is justified. But mathematicians, I must admit,
seldom know exactly what they are about when they do
this. As the results always prove right, they know em-
pirically that the process cannot be wrong that the pre-
mises must be true in a sense ; but in what sense, it is
beyond the ingenuity of most of them to understand.
The doctrine long remained a part of that mathematical
mysticism, so mercilessly shown up by Berkeley in his
" Analyst," and " Defence of Freethinking in Mathema-
tics." To clear it up required a philosophical mathema-
tician one who should be both a mathematician and a
metaphysician : and it found one. To complete Sir W.
Hamilton's discomfiture, this philosophic mathematician
is his old antagonist Mr. De Morgan, whom he described
as too much of a mathematician to be anything of a
philosopher.* Mr. De Morgan, however, has proved
himself, as far as this subject is concerned, a far better
' appear equally that there are, and that there are not, an equal number
" of quantities between these and a greatest, and between these and a
' least.
" 9. An absolutely quickest motion is that which passes from one point
" to another in space in a minimum of time. But a quickest motion from
" one point to another, say a mile distance, and from one to another, say a
" million million of miles, is thought the same : which is absurd.
"10. A wheel turned with quickest motion; if a spoke be prolonged,
" it will, therefore, be moved by a motion quicker than the quickest. The
" same may be shown using the rim and the nave.
'11. Contradictory are Boscovich Points, which occupy space, and are
" unextended. Dynamism, therefore, inconceivable. E contra.
" 12. Atomism also inconceivable ; for this supposes atoms, minima
" extended but indivisible.
" 13. A quantity, say a foot, has an infinity of parts. A.ny part of this
" quantity, say an inch, has also an infinity. But one infinity is not larger
'' than another. Therefore an inch is equal to a foot.
" 14. If two divaricating lines are produced ad infinitum from a point
" where they form an acute angle, like a pyramid, the base will be infinite,
"and, at the same time, not infinite; 1 . Because terminated by two
" points ; and, 2. Because shorter than the sides ; 3. Base could not be
" drawn, because sides infinitely long.
" lo. An atom, as existent, must be able to be turned round. But if
" turned round, it must have a right and left hand, &c., and these its signs"
[sides ?] " must change their place : therefore, be extended." (Appendix to
Lectures, ii. 527-529.)
* Appendix to Discussions, p. 707.
554 FALLACIOUS MODES OF THOUGHT.
metaphysician than Sir W. Hamilton. He has let the
light of reason into all the logical obscurities and para-
doxes of the infinitesimal calculus. By merely follow-
ing out, more thoroughly than had been done before,
the rational conception of infinitesimal division, as
synonymous with division into as many and as small
parts as we choose, without any limit, Mr. De Morgan,
in his Algebra, has fully explained and justified the con-
ception of successive orders of differentials, each of them
infinitely less than the differential of the preceding, and
infinitely greater than that of the succeeding order.
Whoever is acquainted with this masterly specimen of
analysis, will find his way through Sir W. Hamilton's
series of riddles respecting Infinity, without ever being
at a loss for their solution. I shall therefore trouble the
reader no further with them in this place.
555
CHAPTER XXV.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S THEORY OP PLEASURE AND PATN.
I HAVE now concluded my remarks on the principal
department of Sir W. Hamilton's psychology, that which
relates to the Cognitive Faculties. The remaining two
of the three portions into which he divides the subject,
are the Feelings, and what he terms the Conative Facul-
ties, meaning those which tend to Action. On the Cona-
tive Faculties, however, he barelv touches, in the con-
cluding part of his last lecture ; and of the Feelings he
does not treat at any length. What he propounds on
the subject, chiefly consists of a general theory of Plea-
sure and Pain. Not a theory of what they are in them-
selves, for he is not so much the dupe of words as to
suppose that they are anything but what we feel them
to be. The speculation with which he has presented us,
does not relate to their essence, but to the causes they
depend on ; " the* general conditions which determine
" the existence of Pleasure and Pain .... the funda-
" mental law by which these phenomena are governed
"in all their manifestations."
The inquiry is scientifically legitimate, and of great
interest ; but we must not be very confident that it is a
practicable one, or can lead to any positive result. It is
quite possible that in seeking for the law of pleasure
and pain, like Bacon in seeking for the laws of the sen-
sible properties of bodies, we may be looking for unity
of cause, where there is a plurality, perhaps a multitude,
of different causes. Such attempts, however, even if un-
successful, are far from being entirely useless. They
* Lectures, ii. 434.
556 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
often lead to a more careful study of the phsenomenon
in some of its aspects, and to the discovery of relations
between them, not previously understood, which though
not adequate to the formation of an universal theory of
the phsenomenon, aiford a clearer insight into some of its
forms and varieties This merit must be allowed to Sir
W. Hamilton's theory, in common with several others
which preceded it on the same subject. But, regarded as
a theorem of the universal conditions which are present
whenever pleasure (or pain) is present, and absent when-
ever it is absent, the doctrine will hardly bear investi-
gation. The simplest and most familiar cases are exactly
those which obstinately refuse to be reduced within it.
I shall, as usual, state Sir W. Hamilton's theory in his
own words, though in the present case it is a question-
able advantage, the terms being so general and abstract
that they are scarcely capable of being understood, apart
from the illustrations. " Pleasure," he says,* " is a
"reflex of the spontaneous and unimpeded exertion of
"a power, of whose energy we are conscious. Pain, a
" reflex of the overstrained or repressed exertion of such
" a power." By a " reflex" he has shortly before said
thatf he means merely a "concomitant'," but I think it
will appear that he means at least an effect. At all
events, these are what he regards as the ultimate con-
ditions of pleasure and pain ; the most general expression
of the circumstances in which they occur.
This theory was of course suggested by the pleasures
and pains of intellectual or physical exertion, or, as it is
otherwise termed, exercise. These are the phenomena
which principally afford to it such foundation of fact,
and such plausibility in speculation, as it possesses. As
we all know, moderate exertion, either of body or mind,
is pleasurable ; a greater amount is painful, except when
set in motion by an impulse which renders it, in our
author's meaning of the word, " spontaneous :" and a felt
impediment to any kind of active exertion, when there is
an impulse towards it, is painful. It at first appears as
* Lectures, ii. 440. f Ibid. p. 436.
THEORY OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 557
if Sir W. Hamilton had overlooked the pains and plea-
sures in which the mind and body are passive, as in most
of the organic, and a large proportion of the emotional
pleasures and pains. H^ claims, however, to include all
these in his formula. The " powers" and " energies"
whose free action he holds to be the condition of plea-
sure, and their impeded or overstrained action, of pain,
include our passive susceptibilities as well as our active
energies. Accordingly he suggests a correction of his own
language, saying that " occupation" or " exercise" would
perhaps be fitter expressions than "energy."* "The
" term energy^ which is equivalent to act, activity, or
" operation, is here used to comprehend also ail the mixed
" states of action and passion of which we are conscious ;
" for, inasmuch as we are conscious of any modification
" of mind, there is necessarily more than a mere passivity
" of the subject; consciousness itself implying at least a
" reaction" (what has become of his doctrine that to be
conscious of a feeling is only another phrase for having
the feeling ?) " Be this, however, as it may, the nouns
" energy, act, activity \ operation, with the correspondent
" verbs, are to be understood to denote, indifferently and
" in general, all the processes of our higher and our lower
" life of which we are conscious."
Understanding the theory in this enlarged sense, let
us test it by application to one of the simplest of our
organic feelings, the pleasure of a sweet taste. This
pleasure, according to the theory, arises from the free
exercise, without either restraint or excess, of one of our
powers or capacities: what capacity shall we call it?
That of tasting sweetness ? This will not do ; for if the
capacity of having the sensation of sweet is called into
play in any degree, great or small, the effect is a sweet
taste, which is a pleasure. Besides, instead of a sweet
taste, let us suppose an acrid taste. In this taste the
capacity exercised is that of tasting acridity. But the
result of the exercise of this capacity, neither repressed
nor overstrained, which therefore, according to the theory,
* Lectures, ii. note to p. 435, and p. 4t>6. f Ibid. p. 435.
558 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
should be a pleasure, is an acrid taste, which is a pain.
It must, therefore, be meant that the capacity which
when freely exercised causes pleasure, and when re-
pressed or overstrained, pain, is some more general
capacity than that of sweet or acrid taste say the
power of taste in the abstract : that the power of taste,
the organic action of the gustatory nerves, by its spon-
taneous exercise, yields pleasure, and by its repression,
or its strained exercise, produces pain. The theory
thus entirely turns upon what is meant by spontaneous ;
as is shown still more clearly by our author's comments.
" It has been stated," he observes in a recapitulation of
his doctrine,* " that a feeling of pleasure is experienced,
" when any power is consciously exercised in a suitable
" manner ; that is, when we are neither, on the one hand,
" conscious of any restraint upon the energy which it is
" disposed spontaneously to put forth, nor on the other,
" conscious of any effort in it to put forth an amount of
"energy greater either in degree or in continuance, than
" what it is disposed freely to exert. In other words, we
" feel positive pleasure, in proportion as our powers are
"exercised, but not over-exercised; we feel positive
" pain, in proportion as they are compelled either not
"to operate, or to operate too much. All pleasure, thus,
" arises from the free play of our faculties and capacities ;
" all pain from their compulsory repression or compul-
" sory activity."
All, therefore, depends upon what is meant by " free"
or " spontaneous," and what by " compulsory," activity.
The difference cannot be that which the words suggest,
the presence or absence of will. It cannot be meant,
that pleasure accompanies the process when whollv
involuntary, and that pain begins when a voluntary ele-
ment enters into the exercise of the sensitive faculty.
There is nothing voluntary in the agonies of the rack,
or of an excruciating bodily disease : while, in the case
of a pleasure, the exercise of will, in the only mode
in which it can be exercised on a feeling, namely, by
* Lectures, ii. 477.
THEORT OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 559
voluntarily attending to it, instead of converting it from
a pleasure into a pain, often greatly heightens the plea-
sure. This doctrine, therefore, would be absurd, nor is
Sir W. Hamilton chargeable with it. What he means
by " spontaneous" as applied to the exercise of our capa-
cities of feeling, we gather from the following passage,*
and others similar to it.
" Every power, all conditions being supplied, and all
" impediments being removed, tends, of its proper nature
" and without effort, to put forth a certain determinate
" maximum, intensive and protensive, of free energy.
" This determinate maximum of free energy, it, there-
" fore, exerts spontaneously : if a less amount than this
" be actually put forth, a certain quantity of tendency
" has been forcibly repressed : whereas, if a greater than
" this has been actually exerted, a certain amount of
" nisus has been forcibly stimulated in the power. The
" term spontaneously, therefore, provides that the exertion
" of the power has not been constrained beyond the
" proper limit, the natural maximum, to which, if left
" to itself, it freely springs. Again, in regard to the
" term unimpeded, this stipulates that the conditions
" requisite to allow this spring have been supplied, and
" that all impediments to it have been removed. This
" postulates, of course, the presence of an object."
The spontaneous and unimpeded exercise of a capacity
means, therefore, it would appear, the exercise which
takes place when " all conditions" are " supplied/' and
" all impediments removed." Let us apply this to a
particular case. I taste, at different instants, two dif-
ferent objects ; an orange, and rhubarb. In both cases,
all conditions are supplied; the object is present and in
contact with my organs ; and in both cases, all impedi-
ments are removed to the unstrained and natural action
of the object upon my gustatory organs. Yet the result
is in one case a pleasure, in the other a sensation of
nauseousness. On Sir W. Hamilton's theory, it ought,
in both cases, to have been pleasure : for in neither does
* Lectures, ii. 441.
560 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S
anything interfere with the free action of my sense of
taste.
Sir W. Hamilton can scarcely have overlooked this
objection, and the answer which he may be supposed to
make, is that in the case of the rhubarb, the object itself
was of a nature to disturb the gustative faculty, and
exact from it a greater degree of action (or a less, for I
would not undertake to say which) than is exacted by
the orange. But where is the proof of this ? and what,
even, does the assertion mean ? A greater degree of
what action ? Of the action of tasting ? If so, a pain
should differ from a pleasure only by being more (or
perhaps less) intense. Is the action that is meant, some
occult process in the organ ? But what ground is there
for affirming that there is more action of any kind, on
the part of the organ or the sense of taste, in a dis-
agreeable savour than in an agreeable one? It is per-
haps true that more than a certain quantity of action is
always painful : every sensation intensified beyond a
certain degree may become a pain. But the converse
proposition, that wherever there is a pain there is an
excess of action (or a deficiency, for we are offered
that alternative), I know of no reason for believing.
Moreover, if admitted, it would seem to involve the
consequence, that in every case of pain, a less or a greater
degree of the cause which produces it is pleasurable,
which is certainly not true, however true it may be that
in many cases of organic pleasure (especially tastes
and smells) a less or a greater quantity of the substance
which produces the pleasure is either insipid or posi-
tively disagreeable.
Our author is more than half aware that his theory
breaks down when applied to pleasures or pains that are
heterogeneous to one another ; for he says,* " When it
" is required of us to explain particularly and in detail,
" why the rose, lor example, produces this sensation of
" smell, assaloetida that other, and so forth, and to say
" in what peculiar action does the perfect or pleasurable,
* Lectures, ii. 495.
THEORY OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 561
" and the imperfect or painful, activity of an organ
" consist, we must at once profess our ignorance." He
lays the responsibility of the failure, not upon his theory,
but upon the general inexplicability of ultimate facts.
" But it is the same with all our attempts at explaining
" any of the ultimate phenomena of creation. In
" general, we may account for much ; in detail, we can
" rarely account for anything : for we soon remount to
" facts which lie beyond our powers of analysis and
" observation."
This appears to me a great misconception, on our
author's part, of what may rightfully be demanded from
a theorist. He is not entitled to frame a theory from
one class of phenomena, extend it to another class which
it does not fit, and excuse himself by saying that if we
cannot make it fit, it is because ultimate facts are inex-
plicable. Newton did not proceed in this manner with
the theory of gravitation. He made it an absolute con-
dition of adopting the theory, that it should fit ; and
when, owing to incorrect data, he could not make it fit
perfectly, he abandoned the speculation for many years.
If the smell of a rose and the smell of assafoetida are
ultimate facts, be it so : but in that case, it is useless
setting up a theory to explain them. If we do propound
a theory, we are bound to prove all it asserts : and
this, in the present case, is, that in smelling a rose the
organ is in " perfect" activity, but when smelling assa-
fcetida, in "imperfect," which is either greater or less
than perfect. It is not philosophical to assert this, and
fall back upon the incomprehensibility of the subject as
a dispensation from proving it. What is a hindrance
to proving a theory, ought to be a hindrance to affirm-
ing it.
What meaning, in fact, can be attached to perfect
and imperfect activity, as the phrases are here used?
Perfection or imperlection is treated as a question of
quantity ; activity is called peri'ect when there is exactly
the right quantity, imperfect when there is either more
or less. But what is the test of right or wrong quantity,
o o
562
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S
except the pleasure or pain attending 1 it ? The theory
amounts to this, that pleasure or pain is felt, according
as the activity is of the amount fitted to produce the one
or the other. In this futile mode of explaining the phse-
nomena our author had been preceded by Aristotle, one
of the greatest of recorded thinkers, but who must have
been more than human if, in the state of knowledge and
scientific cultivation in his time, he had avoided slips
which hardly any one, even now, is able completely to
guard against. Aristotle's theory, which, as understood
by our author, differs little from his own, is presented by
Sir W. Hamilton in the following words :* " When a
" sense, for example, is in perfect health, and it is pre-
" sented with a suitable object of the most perfect kind,
" there is elicited the most perfect energy, which, at
" every instant of its continuance, is accompanied with
" pleasure. The same holds good with the function of
" Imagination, Thought, &c. Pleasure is the concomitant
" in every case where powers and objects are in them-
u selves perfect, and between which there subsists a
" suitable relation." The conditions whereon, upon this
showing, pleasure depends, are the healthiness of the
sense, and the perfection of the object presented to it.
This is simply making the faet its own theory. When
is a sense in perfect health, and its object perfect? The
function of a sense is twofold ; as a source of cognition,
and of feeling. If the perfection meant be in the function
of cognition, the doctrine that pleasure depends on this
is manifestly erroneous : according to Sir W. Hamilton,
it is even the reverse of the truth, for he holds that the
knowledge given by an act of sense, and the feeling
accompanying it, are in an inverse proportion to one
another. There remains the supposition that the per-
fection, of which Aristotle spoke, was perfection not in
respect of cognition but of feeling. It cannot, however,
consist in acuteness of feeling, for our acutest feelings are
pains. What then constitutes it ? Pleasurableness of
feeling : and the theory only tells us, that pleasure is the
* Lectures, ii. 452.
THEORY OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 563
result of a pleasurable state of the sense, and a pleasure-
giving quality in the object presented to it. Aristotle
and Sir W. Hamilton did not, certainly, state the doctrine
to themselves in this manner ; but they reduced it to
this, by affirming pleasure or pain to depend on the per-
fect or imperfect action of the sense, when there was no
criterion of imperfect or perfect action except that it
produced pain or pleasure.
The theory of our author, considered as a resume of
the universal conditions of pleasure and pain, being so
manifestly inadequate, this is not the place for sifting
out the detached fragments of valuable thought which
are disseminated through it. Such stray truths may be
gleaned from every excursion through the phenomena
of human nature by a person of ability. What Sir W.
Hamilton says of the different classes of mental pleasures
and pains, though brief, is very suggestive of thought.
To make a proper use of the hints he throws out towards
an explanation of the pleasures derived from sublimity
and beauty, would require much study, and a wide survey
of the subject, as well as of the speculations of other
thinkers regarding it. The question has no direct con-
nexion with any other of those discussed in the present
volume, and but a slight one with Sir W. Hamilton's
merits as a philosopher ; since the brevity with which he
treats it, gives ground for believing that he had not be-
stowed on it the amount of thought which would enable
his opinion to claim the rank of a philosophic theory.
o o 2
564
CHAPTEE XXVI.
ON THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
THE last of the three classes of mental phsenomena, that
of Conation, in other words, of Desire and Will, is barely
commenced upon in the last pages of Sir W. Hamilton's
last lecture : whether it be that in the many years during
which he taught the class, he never got beyond this
point, or that his teaching in the concluding part of the
course was purely oral, and has not been preserved. Nor
has he, in any of his writings, treated ex professo of this
subject ; though doubtless he would have done so, had
his health permitted him to complete the Dissertations
on Reid. We consequently know little of what his
sentiments were on any of the topics comprised in this
branch of Psychology, except the vexata (jutestio of the
Freedom of the Will ; on which he could not help giving
indications, in various parts of his works, both of his
opinion and of the reasons on which he grounded it. The
doctrine of Free-will was indeed so fundamental with him,
that it may be regarded as the central idea of his system
the determining cause of most of his philosophical
opinions ; and, in a peculiar manner, of the two which
are most completely emanations from his own mind,
the Law of the Conditioned, and his singular theory of
Causation. He breaks ground on the subject at the very
opening of his Lectures, in his introductory remarks
on the utility of the study of Metaphysics. He puts
in a claim for .metaphysics, grounded on the free- will
doctrine, of being the only medium " through which our
" unassisted reason can ascend to the knowledge of a
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 565
" God."* He supports this position by a line of argument
which, I think, must be startling to the majority of
believers.
' The Deity," he says, "is not an object of imme-
" diate contemplation ; as existing and in himself, he is
" beyond our reach ; we can know him only mediately
" through his works, and are only warranted in assuming
" his existence as a certain kind of cause necessary to
" account for a certain state of things, of whose reality our
" faculties are supposed to inform us. The affirmation of
" a God being thus a regressive inference, from the exis-
" tence of a special class of effects to the existence of a
" special character of cause, it is evident, that the whole
" argument hinges on the fact, Does a state of things
" really exist, such as is only possible through the agency
" of a Divine Cause? For if it can be shown that such a
" state of things does not really exist, then, our inference
" to the kind of cause requisite to account for it, is
" necessarily null.
" This being understood, I now proceed to show you
" that the class of phenomena which requires that kind
" of cause we denominate a Deity, is exclusively given
" in the phenomena of mind, that the phenomena of
" matter, taken by themselves (you will observe the qua-
" lification, taken by themselves) so far from warranting
" any inference to the existence of a God, would, on the
" contrary, ground even an argument to his negation;
" that the study of the external world, taken with, and
" in subordination to, that of the internal, not only loses
" its atheistic tendency, but, under such subservience,
" may be rendered conducive to the great conclusion
" from which, if left to itself, it would dissuade us/'
The reasoning by which he thinks that he establishes
this position runs as follows. A God is only an inference
from Nature ; a cause assumed, as necessary to account
for phenomena. Now, fate or necessity, without a God,
might account for the phaenomena of matter. It is only
as man is a free intelligence, that to account for his
* Lecture**, i. 25, et seqq.
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
existence requires the hypothesis of a Creator who is a
free intelligence. If our feeling of liberty is an illu-
sion ; if our intelligence is only a result of material
organization ; we are entitled to conclude that in the
universe also, the phenomena of intelligence and design
are, in the last analysis, the products of brute necessity.
Existence in itself being unknown to us, we can only
infer its character from the particular order presented to
us within the sphere of our experience, which in the
case under consideration means observation of our own
minds. If, therefore, our intelligence is produced and
bounded by a blind fate, the like may be concluded to
be true of the Divine Intelligence. If, on the contrary,
intelligence in man is a free power, independent of
matter, we may legitimately conclude the same thing of
the intelligence manifested in the universe. Again, there
is properly no God at all unless there is a moral Governor
of the world. " Now,* it is self-evident, in the first
" place, that if there be no moral world, there can be no
" moral governor of such a world ; and in the second, that
" we have, and can have, no ground on which to believe
" in the reality of a moral world, except in so far as we
" ourselves are moral agents. But in what does
o
" the character of man as a moral agent consist ? Man
" is a moral agent only as he is accountable for his ac-
" tions, in other words, as he is the object of praise or
" blame ; and this he is, only inasmuch as he has pre-
" scribed to him a rule of duty, and as he is able to act,
" or not to act, in conformity with its precepts. The
" possibility of morality thus depends on the possibility
" of liberty ; for if man be not a free agent, he is not the
" author of his actions, and has, therefore, no responsi-
" bility, no moral personality at all."f
Fully to develop all the just criticisms which might
be made on this single thesis, would require a long
chapter. In the first place, the practice of bribing the
* Lectures, i. 3'2, 33.
f See also a passage in the essay on the Study of Mathematics, Discus-
sions, pp. 307, 308.
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 567
pupil to accept a metaphysical dogma, by the promise
or threat that it affords the only valid argument for a
foregone conclusion however transcendently impor-
tant that conclusion may be thought to be is not only
repugnant to all the rules of philosophizing, but a grave
offence against the morality of philosophic enquiry. The
eager attempts of almost every metaphysical writer to
create a religious prejudice in favour of the theory he
patronizes, are a very serious grievance in philosophy.
If I could permit myself, even by way of retort, to
follow so bad an example, I might warn the defenders
of religion, of the danger of sacrificing, in turn, every
one of its evidences to some other. Ifc has been re-
marked, with truth, that there is not one of the received
arguments in support either of natural religion or of
revelation, a formal condemnation of which might not
be extracted from the writings of sincerely religious
thinkers. I am far from imputing this to them as
matter of blame : the rejection of what they deem bad
arguments in a good cause must always be honourable to
them, when led to it by honestly following the prompt-
ings of their reason, and not by an egotistic preference
for their own special modes of proof. But, looking at
the question as one of prudence, it would be wise in
them, whatever else they give up, not to part com-
pany with the Design argument. For, in the first place,
it is the best ; and besides, it is by far the most per-
suasive. It would be difficult to find a stronger argu-
ment in favour of Theism, than that the eye must have
been made by one who sees, and the ear by one who
hears. If, after this, it pleases Sir W. Hamilton or any
other person to say that unless we believe in free will,
the Being who by hypothesis made the ear and the eye
is no God ; or that to regard the goodness of trod as
the result of a necessity, which, from the very meaning
of a First Cause, can only be a necessity of his own
nature, a love of Good which is part of himself and
inseparable from him, is denying him to be a moral
being; there is really nothing left for us but, with
568 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
equal positiveness, to aver the contrary : for the two
parties will never be able to agree about the meauing
of terms.
This is but one specimen among many of the bad
logic which pervades Sir W. Hamilton's attempt to show
that Theism depends on the reception of his favourite
doctrine. He proceeds, throughout, on the assumption
that the falsely called Doctrine of Necessity* is the
same thing with Materialism. He treats those opinions
as precisely equivalent.! Yet no two doctrines can be
more distinct. K-eid, an enemy of both, affirms that
Necessity, " far from being a direct inference," " can re-
ceive no support from" Materialism, j It may be true,
nevertheless, that Materialists are always or generally
Necessitarians ; and it is not denied that many Necessi-
tarians are Materialists : but nearly all the theologians
of the Reformation, beginning with Luther, and the en-
tire series of Calvinistic divines represented by Jonathan
Edwards, are proofs that the most sincere Spiritualists
may consistently hold the dcctriiie of so-called Necessity.
Of such Spiritualists there is an illustrious example in
Leibnitz, to say nothing of Condillac or Brown. They
believe man to be a spiritual being, not dependent on
Matter, but yet, in respect of his actions as iu all other
respects, subject to the law of Causation : his volitions
not being self-caused, but determined by spiritual ante-
cedents (e.g. desires, associations of ideas, &c., all of
* Both Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Hansel sometimes call it by the
fairer name of Determinism. But both of them, when they come to close
quarters with the doctrine, in general call it either Necessity, or, less ex-
cusably, Fatalism. The truth is, that the assailants of the doctrine cannot
do without the associations engendered by the double meaning of the
word Necessity, which, in this application, signifies only invariability, but
in its common employment, compulsion. Vide System of Logic, Book vi.
chap. 2.
t " The atheist who holds matter or necessity to be the original principle
" of all that is." (Lectures i. 26,37.) "Those who do not allow that mind
" is matter who hold that there is in man a principle of action superior
" to the determinations of a physical necessity, a brute or blind fate."
(Ibid. p. 133.) And the entire argument in page 31 of the same volume.
J Keid's Works, Hamilton's edition, p. 635.
That Condillac was a Spiritualist, is shown by the chapter on the Soul,
which stands as the first chapter of his Art de Penser.
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 569
which are spiritual if the mind is spiritual) in such sort
that when the antecedents are the same, the volitions
will always be the same. But to confound necessity
with Materialism, though an historical and psychological
error, is indispensable to Sir W. Hamilton's argument,
which depends for all its plausibility on the picture he
draws of a Grod subject to a " brute necessity" of a
purely material character. For if the necessity predi-
cated of human actions is not a material, but a spiritual
necessity ; if the assertion that the virtuous man is vir-
tuous necessarily, only means that he is so because he
dreads a departure from virtue more than he dreads any
personal consequence ; there is nothing absurd or invi-
dious in taking a similar view of the Deity, and believing
that he is necessitated to will what is good, by the love
of good and detestation of evil which are in his own
nature.
There is also at the root of our author's argument
another logical error that of inferring that whatever is
given by observation and analysis as a law of human
intelligence, must be supposed to be an absolute law ex-
tending to the Divine. He says, truly, that the Divine
Intelligence is but an assumption, to account for the
phsenomena of the universe ; and that we can only be
warranted in referring the origin of those phsenomena
to an Intelligence, by analogy to the effects of human
intellect. But can this analogy be carried up to com-
plete identity in conditions and modes of action between
the human and the Divine intelligence ? Does Sir W.
Hamilton draw this inference in any other case? On
the contrary, he holds us bound to believe that the Deity,
whether as Will or as Intelligence, is Absolute unre-
stricted by any conditions; though, as such, neither
knowable nor conceivable by us. And though I do not
acknowledge the obligation of believing what can neither
be known nor conceived, as little can it be admitted, that
the Divine Will cannot be free unless ours is so ; any
more than that the Divine Intelligence cannot know the
truths of geometry by direct intuition, because we are
570 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
obliged to mount laboriously up to them through the
twelve books of Euclid.
So much for Sir W. Hamilton's attempt to prove that
one who disbelieves free-will, has no business to believe
in a Grod. Let us now consider his view of the doctrine
itself, and of the evidence for it.
His view of the controversy is peculiar, but harmo-
nizes with his Philosophy of the Conditioned, which
seems indeed to have been principally suggested to him
by the supposed requirements of this question. He is of
opinion that Free-will and Necessity are both incon-
ceivable. Free-will, because it supposes volitions to ori-
ginate without cause ;* because it affirms an absolute com-
mencement, which, as we are aware, our author deems
it impossible for the human mind to conceive. On the
other hand, the mind is equally unable to conceive an
infinite regress ; a chain of causation going back to all
eternity. Both the one and the other theory thus in-
volve difficulties insurmountable by the human faculties.
But, as Sir W. Hamilton has so often tuld us, the incon-
ceivability of a thing by us, is no proof that it is objec-
tively impossible by the laws of the universe ; on the
contrary, it often happens that both sides of an alterna-
tive are alike incomprehensible to us, while Irom their
nature we are certain that the one or the other must be
true. Such an alternative, according to Sir W. Hamil-
ton, exists between the conflicting doctrines of Free-will
* Sir W. Hamilton thinks it a fair statement of the Free-will doctrine,
that it supposes our volitions to be uncaused. But the " Inquirer" (p. 45)
considers this a misstatement, and thinks the real free-will doctrine to be
that " I" am the cause. 1 prefer the other language, as being more con-
sistent with the use of the word cause in other cases. If we take the
word, we must take the acknowledged Law of Causation along with it,
viz., that a cause which is the same in every respect, is always followed by
the same effects. But on the free-will theory, the " I" is the same, and
all the other conditions the same, and yet the effect may not only be diffe-
rent, but contrary. For instead of saying that " I" am the cause, the
" Inquirer" should at least say, some state or mode of me, which is diffe-
rent when the effect is different : though what state or mode this could be,
unless it were a will to will (the notion so justly ridiculed by Hobbes), it is
difficult to imagine. I persist, therefore, in saying, with Sir W. Hamilton,
that, on the free-will doctrine, volitions are emancipated from causation,
altogether.
THE FREEDOM OP THE WILL. 571
and Necessity. By the law of Excluded Middle, one or
other of them must be true ; and inconceivability, as
common to both, not operating more against one than
against the other, does not operate against either. The
balance, therefore, must turn in favour of the side for
which there is positive evidence. In favour of Free-will
we have the distinct testimony of consciousness ; perhaps
directly, though of this he speaks with some appearance
of doubt ;* but at all events, indirectly, freedom being
implied in the consciousness of moral responsibility. As
there is no corresponding evidence in favour of the other
theory, the Free-will doctrine must prevail. " Howf
" the will can possibly be free must remain to us, under
" the present limitation of our faculties, wholly incom-
" prehensible. We cannot conceive absolute commence-
" ment ; we cannot, therefore, conceive a free volition.
" But as little can we conceive the alternative on which
" liberty is denied, on which necessity is affirmed. And
" in favour of our moral nature, the fact that we are free
" is given us in the consciousness of an uncompromising
" law of Duty, in the consciousness of our moral account-
" ability; and this fact of liberty cannot be redargued
" on the ground that it is incomprehensible, for the
" doctrine of the Conditioned proves, against the neces-
" sitarian, that something may, nay must, be true, of
" which the mind is wholly unable to construe to itself
" the possibility, whilst it shows that the objection of
" incomprehensibility applies no less to the doctrine of
" fatalism than to the doctrine of moral freedom."
The inconceivability of the Free-will doctrine is main-
tained by our author, not only on the general ground
just stated, of our incapacity to conceive an absolute
commencement, but on the further and special ground,
that the will is determined by motives. In rewriting
the preceding passage lor the Appendix to his " Discus-
sions," he made the following addition to it -4 " A de-
" termimation by motives cannot, to our understanding,
* Foot-notes to Eeid, pp. o99, 602, 624.
f Lectures, ii. 412, 413. J Appendix to Discussions, pp. 624, 625.
572 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
" escape from necessitation. Nay, were we even to
" admit as true, what we cannot think as possible,
" still the doctrine of a motiveless volition would be
" only casualism ; and the free acts of an indifferent,
" are, morally and rationally, as worthless as the pre-
" ordered passions of a determined will.* How, there-
" fore, I repeat, moral liberty is possible in man or God,
" we are utterly unable speculatively to understand.
" But . . . the scheme of freedom is not more inconceiv-
" able than the scheme of necessity. For whilst fatalism
" is a recoil from the more obtrusive inconceivability of
" an absolute commencement, on the fact of which com-
" mencement the doctrine of liberty proceeds ; the fatalist
" is shown to overlook the equal, but less obtrusive, in-
" conceivability of an ^^^non-commencement, on the
" assertion of which non-commencement his own doc-
'" trine of necessity must ultimately rest." It rests on
no such thing, if he believes in a First Cause, which a
Necessitarian may. What is more, even jf he does not
believe in a First Cause, he makes no " assertion of non-
commencement ;" he only declines to make an assertion
of commencement ; and, therefore, is not in the position
of asserting what is inconceivable : which, however, as
Sir W. Hamilton is perpetually declaring, is a position
perfectly tenable, and the position he avowedly chooses
for himself on this very subject. But to resume the
quotation : " As equally unthinkable, the two counter,
" the two one-sided, schemes are thus theoretically
" balanced. But, practically, our consciousness of the
" moral law, which, without a moral liberty in man,
" would be a mendacious imperative, gives a decisive
* To the same effect in another passage : " That, though inconceivable,
" a motiveless volition would, if conceived, be conceived as morally worth-
" less, only shows our impotence more clearly." (Appendix to Discussions,
pp. 614, 615.) And in a foot-note to .Reid (p. 6o2), " Is the person an
" original undetermined cause of the determination of his will ? If he be
" not, then he is not a, free agent, and the scheme of Necessity is admitted.
" If he be, in the first place, it is impossible to conceive the possibility of
" this ; and, in the second, if the fact, though inconceivable, be allowed, it
" is impossible to see how a cause, undetermined by any motive, can be a
" rational, moral, and accountable cause."
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 573
;t preponderance to the doctrine of freedom over the doc-
" trine of fate. We are free in act, if we are account-
" able for our actions."
Sir W. Hamilton is of opinion that both sides are
alike unsuccessful in repelling each other's attacks. The
arguments against both are, he thinks, to the human
faculties, irrefutable. " The champions* of the opposite
" doctrines are at once resistless in assault and impotent
" in defence. Each is hewn down, and appears to die
" under the home thrusts of his adversary ; but each again
" recovers life from the very death of his antagonist, and,
" to borrow a simile, both are like the heroes in Valhalla,
" ready in a moment to amuse themselves anew in the
" same bloodless and interminable conflict. The doctrine
" of Moral Liberty cannot be made conceivable, for we
" can only conceive the determined and the relative. As
" already stated, all that can be done is to show, 1. That,
" for the fact of Liberty, we have immediatelyor mediately,
" the evidence of Consciousness ; and 2. That there are
" among the phenomena of mind, many facts which we
" must admit as actual, but of whose possibility we are
" wholly unable to form any notion. I may merely
" observe that the fact of Motion can be shown to be
" impossible, on grounds not less strong than those on
" which it is attempted to disprove the fact of Liberty."
These " grounds no less strong" are the mere paralogisms
which we examined in a recent chapter, and with regard
to which our author showed so surprising a deficiency
in the acuteness and subtlety to be expected from the
general quality of his mind.
Conformably to these views, Sir W. Hamilton, in his
foot-notes on Reid, promptly puts an extinguisher on
several of that philosopher's arguments against the doc-
trine of so-called Necessity. When Reid affirms that
Motives are not causes that they may influence to action,
but do not act, Sir W. Hamilton observes :f "If Motives
" influence to action, they must co-operate in producing a
Foot-note on Eeid, p. 602. t Ibid. p. 603.
574 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
" certain effect upon the agent ; and the determination to
" act, and to act in a certain manner, is that effect. They
" are thus, on Reid's own view, in this relation, causes, and
" efficient causes. It is of no consequence in the argument
" whether motives be said to determine a man to act, or
" to influence (that is, to determine) him to determine
" himself to act."* This is one of the neatest specimens
in our author's writings of a fallacy cut clean through
by a single stroke.
Again, when Reid says that acts are often done without
any motive, or when there is no motive for preferring the
means used, rather than others by which the same end
might have been attained, Sir W. Hamilton asks,f " Can
" we conceive any act of which there was not a sufficient
" cause or concourse of causes why the man performed
"it and no other? If not, call this cause, or these
" concauses, the motive, and there is no longer a
" dispute."
Reid asks, " Is there no such thing as wilfulness,
caprice, or obstinacy among mankind ?" Sir W. Hamil-
ton, e contra :J "But are not these all tendencies, and
" fatal tendencies, to act or not to act ? By contradistin-
" guishing such tendencies from motives strictly so called,
" or rational impulses, we do not advance a single step
" towards rendering liberty comprehensible."
According to Reid, the determination is made by the
man, and not by the motive. " But," asks Sir W.
Hamilton, "was the man determined by no motive to
" that determination? Was his specific volition to this
" or to that without a cause ? On the supposition that
" the sum of influences (motives, dispositions, and ten-
" dencies) to volition A, is equal to 12, and the sum of
" influences to counter-volition B equal to 8 can we
" conceive that the determination of volition A should
" not be necessary? We can only conceive the volition
" B to be determined by supposing that the man creates
* To the same effect see Discussions, Appendix on Causality, p. 614.
f Foot-note to Eeid, p. 609.
J Ibid. p. 610. Ibid. p. 611.
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 575
" (calls from non-existence into existence) a certain sup-
" plement of influences. But this creation as actual, or
''' in itself, is inconceivable, and even to conceive the
" possibility of this inconceivable act, we must sup-
" pose some cause by which the man is determined to
" exert it. We thus, in thought, never escape determina-
" tion and necessity. It will be observed that I do not
" consider this inability to the notion, any disproof of the
"fact of Free-will." Nor is it: but if, as our author so
strongly inculcates, " every* effort to bring the fact of
" liberty within the compass of our conceptions only
" results in the substitution in its place of some more
" or less disguised form of necessity," it is a strong
indication that some form of necessity is the opinion
naturally suggested by our collective experience of
life.f
Sir W. Hamilton having thus, as is often the case
(and it is one of the best things he does), saved his oppo-
nents the trouble of answering his friends, his doctrine
is left resting exclusively on the supports which he has
himself provided for it. In examining them, let us place
ourselves, in the first instance, completely at his point of
view, and concede to him the coequal inconceivability
of the conflicting hypotheses, an uncaused commence-
ment, and an infinite egress. But this choice of incon-
ceivabilities is not offered to us in the case of volitions
only. We are held, as he not only admits but contends,
to the same alternative in all cases of causation what-
soever. But we find our way out of the difficulty, in
other cases, in quite a different manner. In the case of
every other kind of fact, we do not elect the hypothesis
that the event took place without a cause : we accept
* Lectures, i. 34.
f So difficult is it to escape from this fact, that Sir W. Hamilton himself
gays (Lectures, i. 188), " Voluntary conation is a faculty which can only
" be determined to energy through a pain or pleasure through an estimate
" of the relative worth of objects." If I am determined to prefer inno-
cence to the satisfaction of a particular desire, through an estimate of the
relative worth of innocence and of the gratification, can this estimate,
while unchanged, leave me at liberty to choose the gratification in prefe-
rence to innocence?
576 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
the other supposition, that of a regress, not indeed to
infinity, but either generally into the region of the Un-
knowable, or back to an Universal Cause, regarding
which, as we are only concerned with it in respect of
attributes bearing relation to what it preceded, and not
as itself preceded by anything, we can afford to consider
this reference as ultimate.
Now, what is the reason, which, in the case of all
things within the range of our knowledge except voli-
tions, makes us choose this side of the alternative ?
Why do we, without scruple, register all of them as de-
pending on causes,by which (to use our author's language)
they are determined necessarily, though, in believing
this, we, according to Sir W. Hamilton, believe as utter
an inconceivability as if we, supposed them to take place
without a cause? Apparently it is because the causa-
tion hypothesis, inconceivable as he may think it, pos-
sesses the advantage of having experience on its side.
And how or by what evidence does experience testify to
it? Not by disclosing any nexus between the cause and
the effect, any Sufficient Reason in the cause itself why
the effect should follow it. No philosopher now makes
this supposition, and Sir W. Hamilton positively dis-
claims it. What experience makes known, is the fact of
an invariable sequence between every event and some
special combination of antecedent conditions, in such
sort that wherever arid whenever that union of antece-
dents exists, the event does not fail to occur. Any must
in the case, any necessity, other than the unconditional
universality of the fact, we know nothing of. Still,
this & posteriori " does," though not confirmed by an a
priori " must," decides our choice between the two incon-
ceivables, and leads us to the belief that every event
within the phenomenal universe, except human volitions,
is determined to take place by a cause. Now, the so-called
Necessitarians demand the application of the same
rule of judgment to our volitions. They maintain
that there is the same evidence ior it. They affirm, as
a truth of experience, that volitions do, in point of fact,
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 577
follow determinate moral antecedents with the same
uniformity, and (when we have sufficient knowledge of
the circumstances) with the same certainty, as physical
effects follow their physical causes. These moral ante-
cedents are desires, aversions, habits, and dispositions,
combined with outward circumstances suited to call those
internal incentives into action. All these again are
effects of causes, those of them which are mental being
consequences of education, and of other moral and phy-
sical influences. This is what Necessitarians affirm : and
they court every possible mode in which its truth can be
verified. They test it by each person's observation of
his own volitions. They test it by each person's obser-
vation of the voluntary actions of those with whom he
comes into contact ; and by the power which every one
has of foreseeing actions, with a degree of exactness
proportioned to his previous experience and knowledge
of the agents, and with a certainty often quite equal to
that with which we predict the commonest physical events.
They test it further, by the statistical results of the 'ob-
servation of human beings acting in numbers sufficient to
eliminate the influences which operate only on a few, and
which on a large scale neutralize one another, leaving the
total result about the same as if the volitions of the whole
mass had been affected by such only of the determining
causes as were common to them all. In cases of this
description the results are as uniform, and may be as
accurately foretold, as in any physical enquiries in which
the effect depends upon a multiplicity of causes. The
cases in which volitions seem too uncertain to admit of
being confidently predicted, are those in which our
knowledge of the influences antecedently in operation is
so incomplete, that with equally imperfect data there
would be the same uncertainty in the predictions of the
astronomer and the chemist. On these grounds it is
contended that our choice between the conflicting incon-
ceivables should be the same in the case of volitions
as of all other phsenomena ; we must reject equally in
both cases the hypothesis of spontaneousness, and con-
p P
578 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
sider them all as caused. A volition is a moral effect,
which follows the corresponding moral causes as cer-
tainly and invariably as physical effects follow their phy-
sical causes. Whether.it must do so, I acknowledge
myself to be entirely ignorant, be the phenomenon moral
or physical ; and I condemn, accordingly, the word
Necessity as applied to either case. All I know is, that
it always does.*
This argument from experience Sir W. Hamilton
passes unnoticed, but urges, on the opposite side of the
question, the argument from Consciousness. We are
conscious, he affirms, either of our freedom, or at all
events (it is odd that, on his theory, there should be any
doubt) of something which implies freedom. If this is
true, our internal consciousness tells us that we have a
power, which the whole outward experience of the human
race tells us that we never use. This is surely a veYy
unfortunate predicament we are in, and a sore trial to
the puzzled metaphysician. Philosophy is far from
having so easy a business before her as our author
thinks : the arbiter Consciousness is by no means
invoked to turn the scale between two equally balanced
difficulties ; on the contrary, she has to sit in judgment
between herself and a complete induction from expe-
rience. Consciousness, it will probably be said, is the
best evidence ; and so it would be, if we were always
certain what is Consciousness. But while there are
so many varying testimonies respecting this ; when Sir
W. Hamilton can himself say,f " many philosophers
* The " Inquirer" accuses this argument (p. 45) of " gratuitously as-
suming that free-will is inconsistent with foreknowledge." This is a
misapprehension. That vexed question is not even approached in the text.
All that is maintained is that the possibility to human intelligence, of
predicting human actions, implies a constancy of observed sequence be-
tween the same antecedents and the same consequents, which, in the case
of all events except volitions, is deemed to justify the assertion of a law
of nature (called in the language of the free-will philosophers Necessity).
This constancy of sequence between motives, mental dispositions, and
actions, is a strong reason against admitting free-will as- a fact ; but I
have not meddled, and do not intend to meddle, with the metaphysical
question whether a contingent event can be foreknown.
f Dissertations on Reid, p. 749.
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 579
rt have attempted to establish, on the principles of
" common sense, propositions which are not original
" data of consciousness, while the original data of con-
" sciousness from which these propositions were derived,
" and to which they owed all their necessity and truth,
" these same philosophers were (strange to say) not
" disposed to admit ;" when M. Cousin and nearly all
Germany find the Infinite and the Absolute in Conscious-
ness, Sir W. Hamilton thinking them utterly repugnant
to it; when philosophers, for many generations, fancied
that they had Abstract Ideas that they could, conceive
a triangle which was neither equilateral, isosceles, nor
scalene,* which Sir W. Hamilton and all other people
now consider to be simply absurd ; with all these con-
flicting opinions respecting the things to which Con-
sciousness testifies, what is the perplexed inquirer to
think? Does all philosophy end, as in our author's
opinion Hume believed it to do, in a persistent contra-
diction between one of our mental faculties and another ?
We shall find, there is a solution, which relieves the
human mind from this embarrassment : namely, that the '
question to which experience says yes, and that to which
consciousness says no, are different questions.
Let us cross-examine the alleged testimony of con-
sciousness. And, first, it is left in some uncertainty by
Sir W. Hamilton whether Consciousness makes only
one deliverance on the subject, or two : whether we are
conscious only of moral responsibility, in which free-will
* " Does it not require," says Locke (Essay on the Human Under-
standing, Book iv. chap. 7, sect. 9), " some pains and skill to form the
' general idea of a triangle (which yet is none of the most abstract, com-
' prehensive and difficult ?) for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle,
' neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalene ; but all and none of these at
' once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot exist ; an idea
' wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent ideas are put
' together." Yet this union of contradictory elements such a philosopher
as Locke was able to fancy that he conceived. I scarcely know a more
striking example of the tendency of the human mind to believe that things
can exist separately because they can be separately named ; a tendency
strong enough, in this case, to make a mind like Locke's believe itself
to be conscious of that which by the laws of mind cannot be a subject of
consciousness to any one.
p p 2
580 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
is ynplied, or are directly conscious of free-will. In his
Lectures, Sir W. Hamilton speaks only of the first. In
the notes on Reid, which were written subsequently, he
seems to affirm both, but the latter of the two in a
doubtful and hesitating manner : so difficult, in reality,
does he find it to ascertain with certainty what it is that
Consciousness certifies. But as there are many who
maintain with a confidence far greater than his, that
we are directly conscious of free-will,* it is necessary to
examine that question.
To be conscious of free-will, must mean, to be conscious,
before I have decided, that I am able to decide either
way. Exception may be taken in limine to the use of
the word consciousness in such an application. Con-
sciousness tells me what I do or feel. But what I am
able to do, is not a subject of consciousness. Conscious-
ness is not prophetic ; we. are conscious of what is, not
of what will or can be. We never know that we are
able to do a thing, except from having done it, or some-
thing equal and similar to it. We should not know
that we were capable of action at all, if we had never
acted. Having acted, we know, as far as that experience
reaches, how we are able to act ; and this knowledge,
when it has become familiar, is often confounded with,
and called by the name of, consciousness. But it does
not derive any increase of authority from being mis-
named ; its truth is not supreme over, but depends on,
experience. If our so-called consciousness of what we
are able to do is not borne out by experience, it is a
* Mr. Mansel, among others, makes the assertion in the broadest form
it is capable of, saying, " In every act of volition, I am fully conscious
" that I can at this moment act in either of two ways, and that, all the
" antecedent phaenomena being precisely the same, 1 may determine one
" way to-day and another way to-morrow." (Prolegomena Logica, p. 152.)
Yes, though the antecedent phenomena remain the same : but not if my
judgment of the antecedent phaenomena remains the same. If my con-
duct changes, either the external inducements or my estimate of them
must have changed.
Mr. Mansel (as I have already observed) goes so far as to maintain that
our immediate intuition of Power is given us by the ego producing its own
volitions, not by its volitions producing bodily movements (pp. 139-140,
and 151).
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 581
delusion. It has no title to credence but as an inter-
pretation of experience, and if it is a false interpretation,
it must give way.*
But this conviction, whether termed consciousness or
only belief, that our will is free what is it ? Of what
are we convinced ? I am told that whether I decide to
vdo or to abstain, I feel that I could have decided the
* In answer to the statement that what I am able to do is not a subject
of consciousness, Mr. Alexander says (pp. 22 et seqq.), "'Perhaps it is not;
1 but what I feel I am able to do is surely a subject of consciousness. . . .
' As to ' consciousness is not prophetic, we are conscious of what is, not
' of what will or can be,' it seems enough to say that if we are conscious
' of a free force of volition continuously inherent in us, we are conscious of
' what is." If we can be conscious of a force, and can feel an ability, inde-
pendently of any present or past exercise thereof, the fact has nothing
similar or analogous in all the rest of our nature. We are not conscious
of a muscular force continuously inherent in us. If we were born with a
cataract, we are not conscious, previous to being couched, of our ability to
see. We should not feel able to walk if we had never walked, nor to think,
if we had never thought. Ability and force are not real entities, which
can be felt as present when no effect follows ; they are abstract names for
the happening of the effect on the occurrence of the needful conditions, or
for our expectation of its happening. It is of course possible that this
may be all wrong, and that there may be a concrete real thing called ability,
of which consciousness discloses to us the positive existence in this one
case, though there is no evidence of it in any other. But it is surely, to
say the least, much more probable that we mistake for consciousness our
habitual affirmation to ourselves of an acquired knowledge or belief. This
very common mistake may have escaped the notice of Mr. Alexander, who
(p. 23) considers knowledge to be the same thing as direct consciousness !
but it is a possibility which it will not do to overlook, when one takes for
one's standard (p. 25) the " general consciousness of the race ;" espe-
cially if, with Mr. Alexander, one restricts "the race" to those who are not
philosophers, on the ground that no philosopher " unless he be one of a
thousand," can see or feel anything that is inconsistent with his precon-
ceived opinion. If this be the normal effect of philosophy on the human
mind ; if, nine hundred and ninety-nine times against one, the effect of
cultivating our power of mental discrimination is tc pervert it ; let us close
our books, and accept Hodge as a better authority in metaphysics than
Locke or Kant, and, I suppose, in astronomy than Newton. An appeal
to consciousness, however, to be of. any value, must be to those who have
formed a habit of sifting their consciousness, and distinguishing what
they perceive or feel from what they infer ; to those who can be made to
understand that they do not see the sun move : and, to have attained this
power of criticising their own consciousness on metaphysical subjects,
they must have reflected on those subjects, in a manner and degree which
quite entitle any one to the name of a philosopher.
Mr. Alexander denies that the belief that I was free to act can possibly
be tested by experience a posteriori, since experience only tells me the way
in which I did act, and says nothing about my having been able to act
otherwise. Mr. Alexander's idea of the conditions of proof by experience
582 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
other way. I ask my consciousness what I do feel, and
I find, indeed, that I feel (or am convinced) that I could,
and even should, have chosen the other course if I had
preferred it, that is, if I had liked it better ; but not
that I could have chosen one course while I preferred
the other. When I say preferred, I of course include
with the thing itself, all that accompanies it. I know
that I can, because I know that I often do, elect to' do
on.3 thing, when I should have preferred another in itself,
apart from its consequences, or from a moral law which
it violates. And this preference for a thing in itself,
abstractedly from its accompaniments, is often loosely
described as preference for the thing. It is this unpre-
cise mode of speech which makes it not seem absurd to
say that I act in opposition to my preference ; that I do
one thing when I would rather do another ; that my con-
is not a very enlarged one. Suppose that my experience of myself afforded
two undeniable cases, alike in all the mental and physical antecedents, in
one of which cases I acted in one way, and in the other in the direct
opposite : there would then be proof by experience that I had been able
to act either in the one way or in the other. It is by experience of this
sort I learn that I can act at all, viz., by finding that an event takes place
or not, according as (other circumstances being the same) a volition of
mine does or does not take place. But when this power of my volitions
over my actions has become a familiar fact, the knowledge of it is so con-
stantly present to my mind as to be popularly called, and habitually con-
founded with, consciousness. And the supposed power of myself over my
volitions, which is termed Free-will, though it cannot be a fact of con-
sciousness, yet if true, or even if believed, would similarly work itself into
our inmost knowledge of ourselves, in such a manner as to be mistaken
for consciousness.
It would hardly be worth while to notice a pretended inconsistency dis-
covered by Mr. Alexander between what is here said, and my recognition
in a former work of a "practical feeling of Free Will" "a feeling of Moral
Freedom which we are conscious of," if Mr. Alexander had. not inferred
from it that I " was at one time conscious" of what I now, for the con-
venience of my argument, deny to be a subject of consciousness. Mr.
Alexander himself quotes the words in which I spoke of this practical
feeling of free-will as not one of free-will at all, in a sense implying the
theory; and took pains to describe what it really is, expressly declaring
our feeling of moral freedom to be a feeling of our being able to modify
our own character if we wish. When I applied the words feeling and
consciousness to this acquired knowledge, I did not use those terms in
their strict psychological meaning, there being no necessity for doing so
in that place ; but, agreeably to popular usage, extended them to (what
there is no appropriate scientific name for) the whole of our familiar and
intimate knowledge concerning ourselves.
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 533
science prevails over my desires as if conscience were
not itself a desire the desire to do right. Take any
alternative : say to murder or not to murder. I am
told, that if I elect to murder, I am conscious that I
could have elected to abstain: but am I conscious that
I could have abstained if my aversion to the crime, and
my dread of its consequences, had been weaker than the
temptation ? If I elect to abstain : in what sense am I
conscious that I could have elected to commit the crime?
Only if I had desired to commit it with a desire stronger
than my horror of murder; not with one less strong.
When we think of ourselves hypothetically as having
acted otherwise than we did, we always suppose a diffe-
rence in the antecedents : we picture ourselves as having
known something that we did not know, or not known
something that we did know ; which is a difference in the
external inducements ; or as having desired something,
or disliked something, more or less than we did; which
is a difference in the internal inducements.*
In refutation of this it is said, that in resisting a
desire, I am conscious of making an effort ; that after I
have resisted, I have the remembrance of having made
an effort ; that " if the temptation was long continued,
" or if I have been resisting the strong will of another,
" I am as sensibly exhausted by that effort, as after any
* Preferring, as lie says, a homely instance, Mr. Alexander supposes
(p. 29), that a man puts his finger to his nose, and asks, " Is not he con-
" scious of being able to touch at will either the right side of his nose or
' the left ? Having touched, let us say, the left side, is he not conscious
" he could have touched the right side had he so willed it, and conscious
" that he could have so willed, chosen, or preferred ?" Mr. Alexander's
naif expectation that his opponent's answer will be different because of the
futility of the example, reminds one of the aainus Buridani. I should, on
the supposition which he makes, be aware (I will not say conscious) that
I could have touched the right side had I so willed it ; and aware that I
could, and even should, have so willed, chosen, and preferred, if there had
existed a sufficient inducement to make me do so, and not otherwise. If
any one's consciousness tells him that he could have done so without an
inducement, or in opposition to a stronger inducement, I venture to ex-
press my opinion, in words borrowed from Mr. Alexander, that it is not
his " veritable consciousness." I will not imitate Mr. Alexander in call-
ing it a " fraudulent substitute palmed upon him" by his philosophical
system.
584 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
" physical exertion I ever made :" and it is added, " If
" my volition is wholly determined by the strongest
" present desire, it will be decided without any effort.
" . ; . . When the greater weight goes down, and the
" lesser up, no effort is needed on the part of the scales."*
It is implied in this argument, that in a battle between
contrary impulses, the victory must always be decided in
a moment ; that the force which is really the strongest,
and prevails ultimately, must prevail instantaneously.
The fact is not quite thus even in inanimate nature:
the hurricane does not level the house or blow down the
tree without resistance ; even the balance trembles, and
the scales oscillate for a short time, when the difference
of the weights is not considerable. Far less does victory
come without a contest to the strongest of two moral,
or even two vital forces, whose nature it is to be never
fixed, but always flowing, quantities. In a struggle
between passions, there is not a single instant in which
there does not pass across the mind some thought, which
adds strength to, or takes it from, one or the other of
the contending powers. Unless one of them was, from
the beginning, out of all proportion stronger than the
other, some time must elapse before the balance adjusts
itself between forces neither of which is for any two
successive instants the same. During that interval the
agent is in the peculiar mental and physical state which
we call a conflict of feelings : and we all know that a
conflict between strong feelings is, in an extraordinary
degree, exhaustive of the nervous energies.! The con-
sciousness of effort, which we are told of, is this state
of conflict. The author I am quoting considers what
he calls, I. think improperly, an effort, to be only on one
* The Battle of the Two Philosophies, pp. 13, 14.
f The writer I quote says, " Balancing one motive against another is
not willing but judging." The state of mind I am speaking of is by no
means a state of judging. It is an emotional, not an intellectual state,
and the judging may be finished before it commences. If there were any
indispensable act of judging in this stage, it could only be judging which
of the two pains or pleasures was the greatest : and to regard this as the
operative force would be conceding the point in favour of Necessi-
tarianism.
THE FREEDOM OP THE WILL. 585
side, because he represents to himself the conflict as
taking place between me and some foreign power, which
I conquer, or by which I am overcome. But it is
obvious that " 1" am both parties in the contest ; the
conflict is between me and myself; between (for in-
stance) me desiring a pleasure, and me dreading self-
reproach. What causes Me, or, if you please, my Will,
to be identified with one side rather than with the
other, is that one of the Me's represents a more perma-
nent state of my feelings than the other does. After the
temptation has been yielded to, the desiring "I" will
come to an end, but the conscience-stricken " I " may
endure to the end of life.
I therefore dispute altogether that we are conscious of
being able to act in opposition to the strongest present
desire or aversion. The difference between a bad and a
good man is not that the latter acts in opposition to his
strongest desires ; it is that his desire to do right, and
his aversion to doing wrong, are strong enough to over-
come, and in the case of perfect virtue, to silence, any
other desire or aversion which may conflict with them.
It is because this state of mind is possible to human
nature, that human beings are capable of moral govern-
ment : and moral education consists in subjecting them
to the discipline which has most tendency to bring them
into this state. The object of moral education is to
educate the will: but the will can only be educated
through the desires and aversions; by eradicating or
weakening such of them as are likeliest to lead to evil ;
exalting to the highest pitch the desire of right conduct
and the aversion to wrong ; cultivating all other desires
and aversions of which the ordinary operation is auxiliary
to right, while discountenancing so immoderate an in-
dulgence of them, as might render them too powerful to
be overcome by the moral sentiment, when they chance
to be in opposition to it. The other requisites are, a
clear intellectual standard of right and wrong, that moral
desire and aversion may act in the proper places, and
such general mental habits as shall prevent moral consi-
586 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
derations from being forgotten or overlooked, in cases to
which they are rightly applicable.
Rejecting, then, the figment of a direct consciousness
of the freedom of the will, in other words, our ability to
will in opposition to our strongest preference ; it remains
to consider whether, as affirmed by Sir W. Hamilton, a
freedom of this kind is implied in what is called our
consciousness of moral responsibility. There must be
something very plausible in this opinion, since it is shared,
even by Necessitarians. Many of these in particular
Mr. Owen and his followers from a recognition of the
. fact that volitions are effects of causes, have been led to
deny human responsibilty. I do not mean that they de-
nied moral distinctions. Few persons have had a stronger
sense of right and wrong, or been more devoted to the
things they deemed right. What they denied was the
rightfulness of inflicting punishment. A man's actions,
they said, are the result of his character, and he is not
the author of his own character. It is made for him,
not by him. There is no justice in punishing him for
what he cannot help. We should try to convince or
persuade him that he had better act in a different man-
ner; and should educate all, especially the young, in the
habits and dispositions which lead to well-doing : though
how this is to be effected without any use whatever of
punishment as a means of education, is a question they
have failed to resolve. The confusion of ideas, which
makes the subjection of human volitions to the law of
Causation seem inconsistent with accountability, must
thus be very natural to the human mind; but this may
be said of a thousand errors, and even of some merely
verbal fallacies. In the present case there is more than
a verbal fallacy, but verbal fallacies also contribute their
part.
What is meant by moral responsibility ? Responsi-
bility means punishment. When we are said to have
the feeling of being morally responsible for our actions,
the idea of being punished for them is uppermost in the
speaker's mind. But the feeling of liability to punish-
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 587
merit is of two kinds. It may mean, expectation that if
we act in a certain manner, punishment will actually be
inflicted upon us, by our fellow creatures or by a
Supreme Power. Or it may only mean, knowing that
we shall deserve that infliction.
The first of these cannot, in any correct meaning of
the term, be designated as a consciousness. If we believe
that we shall be punished for doing wrong, it is because
the belief has been taught to us by our parents and
tutors, or by our religion, or is generally held by those
who surround us, or because we have ourselves come to
the conclusion, by reasoning, or from the experience of
life. This is not Consciousness. And, by whatever name
it is called, its evidence is not dependent on any theory
of the spontaneousness of volition. The punishment
of guilt in another world is believed with undoubting con-
viction by Turkish fatalists, and by professed Christians
who are not only Necessitarians, but believe that the
majority of mankind were divinely predestined from all
eternity to sin and to be punished for sinning. ]t
is not, therefore, the belief that we shall be made ac-
countable, which can be deemed to require or presuppose
the free-will hypothesis; it is the belief that we ought
so to be ; that we are justly accountable ; that guilt
deserves punishment. It is here that issue is joined
between the two opinions.
In discussing it, there is no need to postulate any
theory respecting the nature or criterion of moral dis-
tinctions. It matters not, for this purpose, whether the
right and wrong of actions depends on the consequences
they tend to produce, or on an inherent quality of the
actions themselves. It is indifferent whether we are
utilitarians or anti-utilitarians ; whether our ethics rest
on intuition or on experience. It is sufficient if we be-
lieve that there is a difference between right and wrong,
and a natural reason for preferring the former ; that
people in general, unless when they expect personal
benefit from a wrong, naturally and usually prefer what
they think to be right: whether because we are all
588 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
dependent for what makes existence tolerable, upon the
right conduct of other people, while their wrong conduct
is a standing menace to our security, or for some more
mystical and transcendental reason. Whatever be the
cause, we are entitled to assume the fact : and its conse-
quence is, that whoever cultivates a disposition to wrong,
places his mind out of sympathy with the rest of his
fellow creatures, and if they are aware of his disposition,
becomes a natural object of their active dislike. He not
only forfeits the pleasure of their good will, and the
benefit of their good offices, except when compassion for
the human being is stronger than distaste towards the
wrongdoer ; but he also renders himself liable to what-
ever they may think it necessary to do in order to pro-
tect themselves against him ; which may probably include
punishment, as such, and will certainly involve much
that is equivalent in its operation on himself. In this
way he is certain to be made accountable, at least to his
fellow creatures, through the normal action of their
natural sentiments. And it is well worth consideration,
whether the practical expectation of being thus called to
account, has not a great deal to do with the internal
feeling of being accountable ; a feeling, assuredly, which
is seldom found existing in any strength in the absence
of that practical expectation. It is not usually found
that Oriental despots, who cannot be called to account
by anybody, have much consciousness of being morally
accountable. And (what is still more significant) in so-
cieties in which caste or class distinctions are really
strong a state so strange to us now, that we seldom
realize it in its full force it is a matter of daily expe-
rience that persons may show the strongest sense of moral
accountability as regards their equals, who can make
them accountable, and not the smallest vestige of a
similar feeling towards their inferiors who cannot.
This does not imply that the feeling of accountability,
even when proportioned very exactly to the chance of
being called to account, is a mere interested calcula-
tion, having nothing more in it than an expectation
r/iuJL
THE FREEDOM OP THE WILL. 589
and dread of external punishment. When pain has
long been thought of as a consequence of a given fact,
the fact becomes wrapt up in associations which make it
painful in itself, and cause the mind to shrink from it
even when, in the particular case, no painful consequences
are apprehended : just as the dislike to spending money,
which grows up while money can ill be spared, may be
an absorbing passion after the possessor has grown so
rich that the expenditure would not really cause him the
most trifling inconvenience. On this familiar principle
of association it is abundantly certain that even if wrong
meant merely what is forbidden, a disinterested detesta-
tion of doing wrong would naturally grow up, and might
become, in its strength and promptitude, and in the
immediateness of its action, without reflection or ulterior
purpose, undistinguishable from any of our instincts or
natural passions.
Another fact, which it is of importance to keep in
view, is, that the highest and strongest sense of the
worth of goodness, and the odiousness of its opposite,
is perfectly compatible with even the most exaggerated
form of Fatalism. Suppose that there were two peculiar
breeds of human beings, one of them so constituted from
the beginning, that however educated or treated, nothing
could prevent them from always feeling and acting so as
to be a blessing to all whom they approached ; another,
of such original perversity of nature that neither educa-
tion nor punishment could inspire them with a feeling of
duty, or prevent them from being active in evil doing.
Neither of these races of human beings would have free-
will; yet the former would be honoured as demigods,
while the latter would be regarded and treated as noxious
beasts : not punished perhaps, since punishment would
have no effect on them, and it might be thought wrong
to indulge the mere instinct of vengeance : but kept
carefully at a distance, and killed like other dangerous
creatures when there was no other convenient way of
being rid of them. We thus see that even under the
utmost possible exaggeration of the doctrine of Neces-
590 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
sity, the distinction between moral good and evil in con-
duct would not only subsist, but would stand out in a
more marked manner than now, when the good and the
wicked, however unlike, are still regarded as of one
common nature.
An opponent may say, this is not a distinction between
moral good and evil ; and I am far from intending to beg
the question against him. But neither can he be per-
mitted to beg the question, by assuming that the dis-
tinction is not moral because it does not imply free-will.
The reality of moral distinctions, and the freedom of our
volitions, are questions independent of one another.
My position is, that a human being who loves, disinte-
restedly and consistently, his fellow creatures and
whatever tends to their good, who hates with a vigorous
hatred what causes them evil, and whose actions corre-
spond in character with these feelings, is naturally,
necessarily, and reasonably an object to be loved, admired,
sympathized with, and in all ways cherished and en-
couraged by mankind ; while a person who has none of
these qualities, or so little, that his actions continually
jar and conflict with the good of others, and that for
purposes of his own he is ready to inflict on them a
great amount of evil, is a natural and legitimate object
of their fixed aversion, and of conduct conformable
thereto : and this whether the will be free or not, and
even independently of any theory of the difference be-
tween right and wrong ; whether right means productive
of happiness, and wrong productive of misery, or right
and wrong are intrinsic qualities of the actions them-
selves, provided only we recognise that there is a dif-
ference, and that the difference is highly important. What
I maintain is, that this is a sufficient distinction between
moral good and evil : sufficient for the ends of society
and sufficient for the individual conscience: that we need
no other distinction ; that if there be any other distinc-
tion, we can dispense with it ; and that, supposing acts in
themselves good or evil to be as unconditionally deter-
mined from the beginning of things as if they were
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 591
phenomena of dead matter, still, if the determination
from the beginning of things has been that they shall take
place through my love of good and hatred of evil, I am
a proper object of esteem and affection, and if that they
shall take place through my love of self and indifference
to good, I am a fit object of aversion which may rise to
abhorrence. And no competently informed person will
deny that, as a matter of fact, those who have held this
creed have had as strong a feeling, both emotional and
practical, of moral distinctions, as any other people.*
But these considerations, however pertinent to the
subject, do not touch the root of the difficulty. The
real question is one of justice the legitimacy of retri-
bution, or punishment. On the theory of Necessity
(we are told) a man cannot help acting as he does ; and
it cannot be just that he should be punished for what
he cannot help.
Not if the expectation of punishment enables him to
help it, and is the only means by which he can be enabled
to help it ?
To say that he cannot help it, is true or false, accord-
ing to the qualification with which the assertion is accom-
panied. Supposing him to be of a vicious dispositibn,
* Mr. Alexander draws a woful picture of the pass which mankind
would come to, if belief in so-called Necessity became general. All " our
current moralities" would come to be regarded "as a form of superstition,"
all " moral ideas as illusions," by which " it is plain we get rid of them as
" motives :" consequently the internal sanction of conscience would no
longer exist. "The external sanctions remain, but not quite as they were.
" That important section of them which rests on the moral approval or
" disapproval of our fellow-men has, of course, evaporated :' and " in
" virtue of a deadly moral indifference," the remaining external sanctions
" might come to be much more languidly enforced than as now they are,"
and the progressive degradation would in a sufficient time "succeed in re-
" producing the real original gorilla." (pp. 118-121.) A formidable pros-
pect : but Mr. Alexander must not suppose that other people's feelings,
about the matters of highest importance to them, are bound up with
a certain speculative dogma, and even a certain form of words, because, it
seems, his are. As long as guilt is thoroughly regarded as an evil, it
would be quite safe even to hold with Plato, that it is the mental equiva-
lent of bodily disease : people would be none the less anxious to avoid it
for themselves, and to cure it in others. \V hatever else may be an illusion,
it is no illusion that some types of conduct and character are salutary, and
others pernicious, to the race and to each of its members ; and there is no
592 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
he cannot help doing the criminal act, if he is allowed to
helieve that he will be able to commit it unpunished. If,
on the contrary, the impression is strong in his mind that
a heavy punishment will follow, he can, and in most cases
does, help it.
The question deemed to be so puzzling is, how punish-
ment can be justified, if men's actions are determined by
motives, among which motives punishment is one. A
more difficult question would be, how it can be justified
if they are not so determined. Punishment proceeds on
the assumption that the will is governed by motives.
If punishment had no power of acting on the will, it
would be illegitimate, however natural might be the in-
clination to inflict it. Just so far as the will is supposed
free, that is, capable of acting against motives, punish-
ment is disappointed of its object, and deprived of its
justification.
There are two ends which, on the Necessitarian theory,
are sufficient to justify punishment : the benefit of the
offender himself, and the protection of others. The first
justifies it, because to benefit a person cannot be to do
him an injury. To punish him for his own good, pro-
vided the inflictor has any proper title to constitute
himself a judge, is no more unjust than to administer
fear that mankind will not retain the property of their nature by which
they prefer what is salutary to what is pernicious, and proclaim and act
upon the preference. It is no illusion that human beings are objects of
sympathy or of antipathy as they belong to the one type or to the other,
and that the sympathies and antipathies excited in us by others react on
ourselves. The qualities which each man feels to be odious in others, are
odious, without illusion, in himself. The basis of Mr. Alexander's gloomy
prophecy thus fails him. I might add, that even if his groundless antici-
pations came to pass in some other manner, and disinterested love of
virtue and hatred of guilt faded away from the earth ; though the human
race, thus degenerated, would be little worth preserving, it would proba-
bly find the means of preserving itself notwithstanding. The external
sanctions, instead of being more languidly, would probably be far more
rigidly enforced than at present ; for more rigorous penalties would be
necessary when there was less inward sentiment to aid them : and how-
ever destitute of pure virtuous feeling mankind might be, each one of
them would be far too well aware of the importance of other people's
conduct to his own interest, not to exact those penalties without stint,
and without any of the scruples which at present make conscientious men
afraid of carrying repression too far.
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 593
medicine. As far, indeed, as respects the criminal
himself, the theory of punishment is, that by counter-
balancing the influence of present temptations, or ac-
quired bad habits, it restores the mind to that normal
preponderance of the love of right, which many moralists-
and theologians consider to constitute the true definition
of our freedom.* In its other aspect, punishment is a
* " La liberte, complete, reelle, de 1'homme, est la perfection humaine,
" le but a atteindre." From a paper by M. Albert Reville, in the Revue
Germanique for September, 1863, in which the question of free-will is
discussed (though only parenthetically) with a good sense and philosophy
.seldom found in recent writings on that subject.
The " Inquirer" accuses me (pp. 49-51) of throwing aside a " well con-
" aidered and deliberate opinion, because it refuses to fit in with a foregone
" conclusion on another subject," when I affirm that the good of the person
punished can ever be one of the ends of punishment ; and he quotes, on
that subject, my essay on Liberty. I am responsible for the Essay, but
not for this absurd perversion of its doctrines. Does it anywhere assert
that children ought not to be punished for their own good ? that parents,
and even the magistrate, when dealing with that class of delinquents, are.
not entitled to constitute themselves judges of the delinquent's good, and
even bound to make it the principal consideration ? Did I not expre.ssly
leave open, as similar to the case of children, that of adult communities
which are still in the infantine stage of development ? And did I say,
or did any one ever say, that when, for the protection of society, we
punish those who have done injury to society, the reformation of 'the
offenders is not one of the ends to be aimed at, in the kind and mode, at
least, of the punishment?
The " Inquirer" adds (p. 49), " If I deserve punishment, only because
' my love of right is too weak, and my desire for wrong pleasures is too
' strong, and therefore punishment will help me to dislike the latter the
' most, then I equally deserve rewards ; ' by counterbalancing the in-
' fluence of present temptation or bad habits,' rewards ' restore the mind
to the normal preponderance of the love of right ' . . . And the more
wicked I am, the greater reward I deserve For children, and for
' all so far as their own improvement is concerned, rewards for evil-doers
' must be more moral than punishments, as tending directly to diminish
' misery, and increase the sum of human happiness."
Supposing even that the matter of reward were sufficiently plentiful to
allow of compensating everybody for every temptation he foregoes, I sub-
mit that this plan would scarcely fulfil the other, and still more important
end of punishment, the discouragement of future offenders. And even in
the case of children, whose own improvement, as long as their education
lasts, is the main end to be considered, every one knows, though he may
forget it in confuting an adversary, that pain is a stronger thing than
pleasure, and punishment vastly more efficacious than reward. Punish-
ment, too, can alone produce the associations which make the conduct
that incurs it, ultimately hateful in itself, and which by rendering that
which is injurious to society, sincerely distasteful to its individual members,
produces the fellowship of feeling which gives them a sense of common
interest, and enables them to sympathize and cooperate as creatures of
594 THK FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
precaution taken by society in self-defence. To make
this just, the only condition required is, that the end
which society is attempting to enforce by punishment,
should be a just one. Used as a means of aggression
by society on the just rights of the individual, punish-
ment is unjust. Used to protect the just rights of others
against unjust aggression by the offender, it is just. If
it is possible to have just rights, (which is the same
thing as to have rights at all) it cannot be unjust to de-
fend them. Free-will or no free-will, it is just to punish
so far as is necessary for this purpose, as it is just to put
a wild beast to death (without unnecessary suffering) for
the same object.
Now, the primitive consciousness we are said to have,
that we are accountable for our actions, and that if we
violate the rule of right we shall deserve punishment, I
contend is nothing else than our knowledge that punish-
ment will be just: that by such conduct we shall place
ourselves in the position in which our fellow creatures,
one kin. Thus much to show (if it needs showing) that the preference of
punishment to reward as a protection against violations of right, is
no inconsistency in the conception of social justice laid down in the text.
If the objector now asks But, supposing this were not so, and that re-
warding an offender were as effectual a means of improving his own
character and protecting society as punishing him, would it equally com-
mend itself to our feeling of desert ? I answer, no. It would conflict
with that natural, and even animal, desire of retaliation of hurting those
who have hurt us, either in ourselves or in anything we care for which,
as I have elsewhere maintained, is the root of all that distinguishes our
feeling of justice from our ordinary sense of expediency. This natural
feeling, whether instinctive or acquired, though in itself t it has nothing
moral in it, yet when moralized by being allied with, and limited by, regard
for the general welfare, becomes, in my view of the matter, our moral
sentiment of justice. And this sentiment is necessarily offended by re-
warding delinquents, and gratified by their punishment. The sentiment
is entitled to consideration in a world like ours, in which punishment is
really necessary : but granting the absurd supposition of a state of human
affairs in which rewarding offenders would really be more expedient than
punishing them, there would be no need of this particular moral senti-
ment, and, like other sentiments the use of which is superseded by change*
in the circumstances of mankind, it might, and probably would, die away.
The chapter in which I have discussed this question (Utilitarianism,
chap, v.) is quite familiar to Mr. Alexander ; who shows himself extremely
well acquainted with all parts of it, except those which tell against his
own side. Even when he accomplishes (pp. 52 and 59) the great feat of
finding in it the two statements, that justice, in the general mind, has a
THE FREEDOM OP THE WILL. 595
or the Deity, or both, will naturally, and may justly, in-
flict punishment upon us. By using the word justly, I
am not assuming, in the explanation, the thing I profess
to explain. As before observed, I am entitled to postu-
late the reality, and the knowledge and feeling, of moral
distinctions. These, it is both evident metaphysically
and notorious historically, are independent of any theory
concerning the will. We are supposed capable of under-
standing that other people have rights, and all that fol-
lows from this. The mind which possesses this idea, if
capable of placing itself at the point of view of another
person, must recognise it as not unjust that others should
protect themselves against any disposition on his part to
infringe their rights ; and he will do so the more readily,
because he also has rights, and his rights continually re-
quire the same protection. This, I maintain, is our feel-
ing of accountability, in so far as it can be separated
from the associations engendered by the prospect of being
actually called to account. No one who understands the
power of the principle of association, can doubt its suffi-
great deal to do with the notion of desert, and that justice is not synony-
mous with expediency, no one who reads him would suspect that I had
explained in the same chapter what, in my view, the notion of desert is,
and what there is in our idea of justice besides expediency. Mr. Alexan-
der's perpetual insinuations, and more than insinuations, of bad faith,
since he makes a kind of retractation of their grossest meaning in one line
of his essay, I pardon, as one of the incidents of his rollicking style ; but
it is well that he should be aware how easy, if any one were disposed, it
would be to retaliate them.
How far Mr. Alexander understands the first elements of the ethical
system which he denounces, is shown by one of his arguments, which he
is so fond of that he repeats it several times; that if the protection of
society is a sufficient reason for hanging any one, it holds good for hang-
ing an innocent person, or a madman (pp. '. 6. 37, 60, 89). He repeatedly
says, that this has just as deterring an effect as hanging a real criminal;
being of opinion, apparently, that hanging a per.son who is not guilty
gives people a motive to abstain from being guilty. As to the madman,
he asks, (p. 65) " How should the state of mind of the maniac, as uname-
" nable to motive, any way affect the efficacy or our hanging him for mur-
" der, as a means to deter others from murder ?" Mr. Alexander really
has no claim to be answered, until he has got a step or two beyond this.
Perhaps, however, he may be able to see, that all the deterring effect
which hanging can produce on men who are amenable to motive, is pro-
duced by hanging men who are amenable to motive. Hanging, in ad-
dition, those who are not amenable to motive, adds nothing to tne deterring
effect, and is therefore a gratuitous brutality.
QQ2
590 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
ciency to create out of these elements the whole of the
feeling of which we are conscious. To rebut this view of
the case would require positive evidence; as, for example,
if it could be proved that the feeling of accountability
precedes, in the order of development, all experience of
punishment. No such evidence has been produced, or is
producible. Owing to the limited accessibility to obser-
vation of the mental processes of infancy, direct proof
can as little be produced on the other side : but if there
is any validity in Sir W. Hamilton's Law of Parcimony,
we ought not to assume any mental phenomenon as an
ultimate fact, which can be accounted for by other
known properties of our mental nature.
I ask any one who thinks that the justice of punish-
inent is not sufficiently vindicated by its being for the
protection of just rights, how he reconciles his sense of
justice to the punishment of crimes committed iri obedi-
ence to a perverted conscience? Kavaillac, and Balthasar
Gerard, did not regard themselves as criminals, but as
heroic martyrs. If they were justly put to death, the
justice of punishment has nothing to do with the state of
mind of the offender, further than as this may affect the
efficacy of punishment as a means to its end. It is im-
possible to assert the justice of punishment for crimes of
fanaticism, on any other ground than its necessity for
the attainment of a just end. If that is not a justification,
there is no justification. All other imaginary justifica-
tions break down in their application to this case.*
* The force of this argument is attested by the straits to which my most
persevering assailant, Mr. Alexander, is reduced by it (pp. 63, 64). He
finds himself obliged to say that "could we have positive assurance," in
the case of such people, " that their outrage of the obligation to respect
' life was solely an act of self-sacrifice to what they considered a higher
' and more sacred one, we should be obliged to admit that their doom was
' not just in the particular instance." This is very well, but we want
jractica as well as theory. Would you hang them ? Mr. Alexander
makes a halting half-admission that he would. " A dubious point of jus-
' tice dubious, because the true motive of the act must always remain
' obscure may here be allowed to be overridden by a plain and potent
' mandate of expediency." Mr. Alexander therefore would hang men
when it is doubtful whether they deserve it ; would hang them for what
<l may really have been an act of sublime virtue." But what is the amount
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 597
If, indeed, punishment is inflicted for any other reason
than in order to operate on the will ; if its purpose be
other than that of improving the culprit himself, or
securing the just rights of others against unjust viola-
tion, then, I admit, the case is totally altered. If any
one thinks that there is justice in the infliction of pur-
poseless suffering; that there is a natural affinity be-
tween the two ideas of guilt and punishment, which
makes it intrinsically fitting that wherever there has
been guilt, pain should be inflicted by way of retribu-
tion ; I acknowledge that I can find no argument to
justify punishment inflicted on this principle. As a
legitimate satisfaction to feelings of indignation and re-
sentment which are on the whole salutary and worthy
of cultivation, I can in certain cases admit-it; but here
it is still a means to an end. The merely retributive
view of punishment derives no justification from the
doctrine I support. But it derives quite as little from
the free-will doctrine. Suppose it true that the will of
a malefactor, when he committed an offence, was free,
or in other words, that he acted badly, not because he
was of a bad disposition, but from no cause in particular :
it is not easy to deduce from this the conclusion that it
is just to punish him. That his acts were beyond the
command of motives might be a good reason for keep-
ing out of his way, or placing him under bodily re-
of real dubiousness iu cases like these ? Of all acts that a man can do,
those by which he knowingly sacrifices his life, sometimes with the addi-
tion of horrible torments, are the clearest from suspicion of any motived
but honest ones. Mr. Alexander talks of Rrntas and Charlotte Corday,
but I am content with Ravaillac. Is there the smallest reason to doubt
that Ravaillac' s " outrage of the obligation to respect life" was " an act
of self-sacrifice" to what, in his opinion, was " a higher and more sacred
one?" What motive had Ravaillac for his abominable action except a
supposed duty to God, and did he not deem this his highest and most
sacred duty ? As for Mr. Alexander's hint that such a man, if not cul-
pable in the act, was " culpable in the perversion of his conscience which
led to it," it is the old odious assumption of persecutors, that acts which
they cannot show to have been wicked in intention, must have originated
in previous wickedness. The act of Eavaillac simply originated in false
teaching, coming to him from the same quarter from which had come
most of the good teaching which he had received during life. It came
from the fountain of goodness, not of wickedness.
THE FREEDOM 0V THE WILL.
straint; but no reason for inflicting pain upon him,
when that pain, by supposition, could not operate as a
deterring motive.*
While the doctrine I advocate does not support the
idea that punishment in mere retaliation is justifiable,
it at the same time fully accounts for the general and
natural sentiment of its being so. From our earliest
childhood, the idea of doing wrong (that is, of doing what
is forbidden, or what is injurious to others) and the idea
of punishment are presented to our mind together, and
the intense character of the impressions causes the asso-
ciation between them to attain the highest degree of
closeness and intimacy. Is it strange, or unlike the
usual processes of the human mind, that in these cir-
cumstances we should retain the feeling, and forget the
reason on which it is grounded ? But why do 1 speak
of forgetting ? In most cases the reason has never, in
our early education, been presented to the mind. The
only ideas presented have been those of wrong and
punishment, and an inseparable association has been
* Several of Sir W. Hamilton's admissions are strong arguments against
the alleged self-evident connexion between free-will and accountability.
We have found him affirming that a volition not determined by motives
would, if conceived, be conceived as morally worthless ;" that " the free
acts of an indifferent, are, morally and rationally, as worthless as the
preordained passions of a determined will;" and that "it is impossible
to see how a cause, undetermined by any motive, can be a rational, moral,
and accountable cause." If all this be so, there can be no intuitive per-
ception of a necessary connexion between free-will and morality ; it would
appear, on the contrary, that we are naturally unable to recognise an act
as moral, if it is, in the sense of the theory, free.
[Mr. Alexander (p. 80) actually thinks that in these passages, Sir W.
Hamilton is " asserting the determination of the will by motives ;" and
cannot believe that he intended " to assert an absolute commencement as
" the mode under which Freedom, though inconceivable, has yet to be
" believed:" since this " would have been to rush with his eyes open on
" the staring contradictory, of a thing at once caused and uncaused."
Yet, presently after, he himself charges Sir W. Hamilton's doctrine with
requiring belief in two contrary inconceivables. In the present case it
only requires a belief in one of them, an absolute, or uncaused, commence-
ment. Mr. Alexander does not lay claim to much knowledge of Sir W.
Hamilton ; and certainly no one who understood what that philosopher,
and most others who discuss this question, mean by " to determine,"
could fail to see that with him the determination of the will by motives
means Determinism, or as it is commonly called, Necessity.]
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 599
created between these directly, without the help of any
intervening idea. This is quite enough to make the
spontaneous feelings of mankind regard punishment and
a wrongdoer as naturally fitted to each other as a con-
junction appropriate in itself, independently of any con-
sequences. Even Sir W. Hamilton recognises as one of
the common sources of error, that " the associations of
thought are mistaken for the connexions of existence."*
If this is true anywhere, it is truest of all in the asso-
ciations into which emotions enter. A strong feeling,
directly excited by an object, is felt (except when con-
tradicted by the feelings of other people) as its own
sufficient justification no more requiring the support of
a reason than the fact that ginger is hot in the mouth :
and it almost requires a philosopher to recognise the
need of a reason for his feelings, unless he has been
under the practical necessity of justifying them to per-
sons by whom they are not shared.
That a person holding what is called the Necessitarian
doctrine should on that account feel that it would be
unjust to punish him for his wrong actions, seems to me
the veriest of chimeras. Yes, if he really " could not
help" acting as he did, that is, if it did not depend on his
will ; if he was under physical constraint, or even if he
was under the action of such a violent motive that no fear
of punishment could have any effect ; which, if capable of
being ascertained, is a just ground of exemption, and is the
reason why by the laws of most countries people are not
punished for what they were compelled to do by imme-
diate danger of death. But if the criminal was in a state
capable of being operated upon by the tear of punish-
ment, no metaphysical objection, I believe, will make
him feel his punishment unjust. Neither will he feel,
that because his act was the consequence of motives,
operating upon a certain mental disposition, it was not
his own fault. For, first, it was at all events his own
defect or infirmity, for which the expectation of punish-
ment is the appropriate cure. Aud secondly, the word
* Lectures, iii. 47.
600 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
fault, so far from being inapplicable, is the specific name
for the kind of defect or infirmity which he has dis-
played insufficient love of good and aversion to evil.
The weakness of these feelings or their strength is in
every one's mind the standard of fault or merit, of de-
grees of fault and degrees of merit. Whether we are
judging of particular actions, or of the character of a
person, we are wholly guided by the indications afforded
of the energy of these influences. If the desire of right
and aversion to wrong have yielded to a small tempta-
tion, we judge them to be weak, and our disapprobation
is strong. If the temptation to which they have yielded
is so great that even strong feelings of virtue might have
succumbed to it, our moral reprobation is less intense.
If, again, the moral desires and aversions have prevailed,
but not over a very strong force, we hold that the action
was good, but that there was little merit in it ; and our
estimate of the merit rises, in exact proportion to the
greatness of the obstacle which the moral feeling proved
strong enough to overcome.
Mr. Mansel* has furnished what he thinks a reflation
of the Necessitarian argument, of which it is well to
take notice, the more so, perhaps, as it is directed against
some remarks on the subject by the present writer in a
former work :f remarks which were not intended as an
argument for so-called Necessity, but only to place the
nature and meaning of that ill-understood doctrine in a
truer light. With this purpose in view, it was re-
marked that " by saying that a man's actions necessarily
"follow from his character, all that is really meant (for
" no more is meant in any case whatever of causation) is
" that he invariably does act in conformity to his character,
" and that any one who thoroughly knew his character,
" could certainly predict how he would act in any sup-
" posable case. No more than this is contended for by
"any one but an Asiatic fatalist." "And no more
* Prolegomena Logica, Note C at the end.
f System of Logic, Book vi. ch. 2.
I/VOTVJI-^.
THE FREEDOM OP THE WILL. 601
"than this," observes Mr. Mansel, "is needed to con-
struct a system of fatalism as rigid as any Asiatic can
"desire."
Mr. Mansel is mistaken in thinking that the doctrine
of the causation of human actions is fatalism at all, or re-
sembles fatalism in any of its moral or intellectual effects.
To call it by that name is to break down a fundamental
distinction. Real fatalism is of two kinds. Pure, or
Asiatic fatalism, the fatalism of the (Edipus, holds
that our actions do not depend upon our desires. What-
ever our wishes may be, a superior power, or an abstract
destiny, will overrule them, and compel us to act, not as
we desire, but in the manner predestined. Our love of
good and hatred of evil are of no efficacy, and though in
themselves they may be virtuous, as far as conduct is
concerned it is unavailing to cultivate them. The other
kind, Modified Fatalism I will call it, holds that our
actions are determined by our will, our will by our
desires, and our desires by the joint influence of the
motives presented to us and of our individual character ;
but that, our character having been made for us and not
by us, we are not responsiole for it, nor for the actions it
leads to, and should in vain attempt to alter them. The
true doctrine ot the Causation of human actions main-
tains, in opposition to both, that not only our conduct,
but our character, is in part amenable to our will ; that
we can, by employing the proper means, improve our
character ; and that if our character is such that while
it remains what it is, it necessitates us to do wrong, it
will be just to apply motives which will necessitate us to
strive for its improvement, and so emancipate ourselves
from the other necessity. In other words, we are under a
moral obligation to seek the improvement of our moral
character. We shall not indeed do so unless we desire
our improvement, and desire it more than we dislike the
means which must be employed for the purpose. But
does Mr. Mansel, or any other of the free-will philoso-
phers, think that we can will the means if we do not
602 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
desire the end, or if our desire of the end is weaker than
our aversion to the means ?*
Mr. Mansel is more rigid in his ideas of what the free-
will theory requires, than one of the most eminent of
the thinkers who have adopted it. According to Mr.
Mansel, the belief that whoever knew perfectly our
character and our circumstances could predict our actions,
amounts to Asiatic fatalism. According to Kant, in his
Metaphysics of Ethics, such capability of prediction is
quite compatible with the freedom of the will. This
seems, at tirst sight, to be an admission of everything
which the rational supporters of the opposite theory
could desire. But Kant avoids this consequence, by
changing (as lawyers would say) the venue of free- will, from
our actions generally, to the formation of our character.
It is in that, he thinks, we are free, and he is almost
willing to admit that while our character is what it is,
our actions are necessitated by it. In drawing this dis-
tinction, the philosopher of Konigsberg saves incon-
venient facts at the expense of the consistency of his
theory. There cannot be one theory for one kind of
voluntary actions, and another theory for the other
* This vital truth in moral psychology, that we can improve our cha-
racter if we will, is a great stumbling block both to the " Inquirer" and
to Mr. Alexander. They maintain that this fact makes no difference at
all, and that the Causation of human actions is exactly the same thing
with Modified Fatalism. That the " Inquirer" cannot see any difference,
excites no surprise, since he professes himself (p. 4b') unable to understand
" how our conduct is amenable to our will if it is wholly caused by our
" character and circumstances." Is not the very doctrine he is contend-
ing against, that our character and circumstances cause it through our
will ? Both he and Mr. Alexander protest vehemently, and Mr. Alex-
ander at much length, that the Causation doctrine is as incompatible with
Free-will as Fatalism is. As if anybody had denied that. In the very
next paragraph, when arguing against Kant, I expressly affirmed it. But,
if it is not too much to ask, let them try to put their own opinion in abey-
ance, and condescend for a few moments to look at the question from
mine. Suppose (I have as much right to make the supposition as they have)
that a person dislikes some part of his own character, and would be glad
to change it. He cannot, as he well knows, change it by a mere act of
volition. He must use the means which nature gives to ourselves, as she
gave to our parents and teachers, of influencing our character by appro-
priate circumstances. If he is a Modified Fatalist, he will not use those
means, for he will not believe in their efficacy; but will remain passively
discontented with himself, or what is worse, will learn to be contented,
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 603
kinds. When we voluntarily exert ourselves, as it is
our duty to do, for the improvement of our character, or
when we act in a manner which (either consciously on
our part or unconsciously) deteriorates it, these, like all
other voluntary acts, presuppose that there was already
'something in our character, or in that combined with
our circumstances, which led us to do so, and accounts
for our doing so. The person, therefore, who is sup-
posed able to predict our actions from our character as it
now is, would, under the same conditions of perfect
knowledge, be equally able to predict what we should do
to change our character: and if this be the meaning of
necessity, that part of our conduct is as necessary as all
the rest. If necessity means more than this abstract
possibility of being foreseen ; if it means any mysterious
compulsion, apart from simple invariability of sequence,
I deny it as strenuously as any one in the case of human
volitions, but I deny it just as much of all other phae-
nomena. To enforce this distinction was the principal
object of the remarks which Mr. Mansel has criticised.
If an unessential distinction from Mr. Mansel's point of
view, it is essential from mine, and of supreme impor-
tance in a practical aspect.
thinking that his character has been made for him, and that he cannot
make it over again, however willing. If, on the contrary, he is a Moral
Causationist, he will know that the work is not finally and irrevocably
done ; that the improvement of his character is still possible by the proper
means, the only needful condition being that he should desire, what by the
supposition he does desire : consequently if the desire is stronger than the
means are disagreeable, he will set about doing that which, if done, will
improve his character. I cannot suppose my critics capable of maintain-
ing that such a difference as this, between the two thejries, is of no prac-
tical importance ; and I must, with all courtesy, decline to recognise as
entitled to any voice in the question, whoever is not able to seize a dis-
tinction so broad and obvious. . . . . r
Mr. Alexander's curious dictum (pp. 18-20) that a motive is i
an act, can only have a true meaning, or any meaning at all, it unde
stood of this indirect influence of our voluntary acts over our mental
dispositions. That a person can, by an act of will, either give to h
self, or take away from himself, a desire or an aversion, I suppose even
Mr. Alexander will hardly affirm : but we can, by a course of seli-cultt
finally modify, to a greater or less extent, our desires and aversu
which is the doctrine of Moral Causation, as distinguished from M
Fatalism.
604 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
The free-will metaphysicians have made little endea-
vour to prove that we can will in opposition to our
strongest desire, but have strenuously maintained that
we can will when we have no strongest desire. With
this view Dr. Eeid formerly, and Mr. Mansel now, have
thrown in the teeth of Necessitarians the famous asinus
Buridani. If, say they, the will were solely determined
by motives, the ass, between two bundles of hay, exactly
alike, and equally distant from him, would remain un-
decided until he died of hunger. From Sir W. Hamil-
ton's notes on this chapter of Reid,* I infer that he did
not countenance this argument; and it is surprising
that writers of talent should have seen anything in it. I
wave the objection that if it applies at all, it proves that
the ass also has free-will ; for perhaps he has. But the
ass, it is affirmed, would starve before he decided. Yes,
possibly, if he remained all the time in a fixed attitude
of deliberation ; if he never for an instant ceased to
balance one against another the rival attractions, and if
they really were so exactly equal that no dwelling on
them could detect any difference. But this is not the
way in which things take place on our planet. From
mere lassitude, if from no other cause, he would intermit
the process, and cease thinking of the rival objects at
all : until a moment arrived when he would be seeing or
thinking of one only, and that fact, combined with the
sensation of hunger, would determine him to a decision.
But the argument on which Mr. Mansel lays most stress
(it is also one of Reid's) is the following. Necessitarians
say that the w r ill is governed by the strongest motive :
" but I only know the strength of motives in relation to
" the will by the test of ultimate prevalence ; so that
" this means no more than that the prevailing motive
" prevails." I have heretofore complimented Mr. Mansel
on seeing farther, in some things, than his master. In
the present instance I am compelled to remark, that he
has not seen so far. Sir W. Hamilton was not the man
to neglect an argument like this, had there been no
* Pp. 609-611.
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 605
flaw in it. The fact is that there are two. First, those
who say that the will follows the strongest motive, do
not mean the motive which is strongest in relation to
the will, or in other words, that the will follows what
it does follow. They mean the motive which is strongest
in relation to pain and pleasure ; since a motive, beinf
a desire or aversion, is proportional to the pleasantness,
as conceived by us, of the thing desired, or the pain-
fulness of the thing shunned. And when what was at
first a direct impulse towards pleasure, or recoil from
pain, has passed into a habit or a fixed purpose, then
the strength of the motive means the completeness and
promptitude of the association which has been formed
between an idea and an outward act. This is the first
answer to Mr. Mansel. The second is, that even sup-
posing there were no test of the strength of motives but
their effect on the will, the proposition that the will fol-
lows the strongest motive would not, as Mr. Mansel
supposes, be identical and unmeaning. We say, without
absurdity, that if two weights are placed in opposite
scales, the heavier will life the other up ; yet we mean
nothing by the heavier, except the weight which will
lift up the other. The proposition, nevertheless, is not
unmeaning, for it signifies that in many or most cases
there is a heavier, and that this is always the same one,
not one or the other as it may happen. In like manner,
even if the strongest motive meant only the motive
which prevails, yet if there is a prevailing motive if,
all other antecedents being the same, the motive which
prevails to-day will prevail to-morrow and every sub-
sequent day Sir W. Hamilton was acute enough to see
that the free-will theory is not saved. I regret that I
cannot, in this instance, credit Mr. Mansel with the
same acuteness.
Before leaving the subject, it is worth while to remark,
that not only the doctrine of Necessity, but Predestina-
tion in its coarsest form the belief that all our actions
are divinely preordained though, in my view, incon-
sistent with ascribing any moral attributes whatever to
606 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
the Deity, yet if combined with the belief that God
works according to general laws, which have to be learnt
from experience, has no tendency to make us act in any
respect otherwise than we should do if we thought our
actions really contingent. For if God acts according to
general laws, then, whatever he may have preordained, he
has preordained that it shall take place through the causes
on which experience shows it to be consequent : and if
he has predestined that I shall attain my ends, he has
predestined that I shall do so by studying and putting
in practice the means which lead to their attainment.
When the belief in predestination has a paralysing effect
on conduct, as is sometimes the case with Mahomedans,
it is because they fancy they can infer what God has
predestined, without waiting for the result. They think
that either by particular signs of some sort, or from the
general aspect of things, they can perceive the issue
towards which God is working, and having discovered
this, naturally deem useless any attempt to defeat it.
Because something will certainly happen if nothing is
done to prevent it, they think it will certainly happen
whatever may be done io prevent it; in a word, they
believe in Necessity in the only proper meaning of the
term an issue unalterable by human efforts or desires.
607
CHAPTER XXVII.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS ON THE STUDY OP
MATHEMATICS.
No account of Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy could be
complete, which omitted to notice his famous attack on
the tendency of mathematical studies : for though there
is no direct connexion between this and his metaphy-
sical opinions, it affords the most express evidence we
have of those fatal lacuna in the circle of his knowledge,
which unfitted him for taking a comprehensive or even
an accurate view of the processes of the human mind in
the establishment of truth. If there is any pre-requisite
which all must see to be indispensable in one who at-
tempts to give laws to human intellect, it is a thorough
acquaintance with the modes by which human intellect
has proceeded, in the cases where, by universal acknow-
ledgment, grounded on subsequent direct verification, it
has succeeded in ascertaining the greatest number of
important and recondite truths. This requisite Sir W.
Hamilton had not, in any tolerable degree, fulfilled.
Even of pure mathematics he apparently knew little but
the rudiments. Of mathematics as applied to investi-
gating the laws of physical nature ; of the mode in which
the properties of number, extension, and figure, are made
instrumental to the ascertainment of truths other than
arithmetical or geometrical it is too much to say that
he had even a superficial knowledge : there is not a line
in his works which shows him to have had any know-
ledge at all. He had no conception of what the process
is. In this he differed greatly and disadvantageously
from his immediate predecessor in the same school of
608 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS
metaphysical thought, Professor Dug-aid Stewart j whose
works derive a great part of their value from the founda-
tion of sound and accurate scientific knowledge laid
by his mathematical and physical studies, and which his
subsequent metaphysical pursuits enabled him, quite suc-
cessfully to the length of his tether, to clarify and reduce
to principles.
If Sir W. Hamilton had contented himself with say-
ing of mathematics, that it is not, of itself alone, a suf-
ficient education of the intellectual faculties ; that it
cultivates the mind only partially ; that there are im-
portant kinds of intellectual cultivation and discipline
which it does not give, and to which, therefore, if pur-
sued to the exclusion of the studies which do give them,
it is unfavourable ; he would have said something, not
new indeed, but true, not of mathematics alone, but of
every limited and special employment of the mental
faculties ; of every study in which the human mind can
engage, except the two or three highest, most difficult,
and most imperfect, which, requiring all the faculties
in their greatest attainable perfection, can never be re-
commended or thought of as preparatory discipline, but
are themselves the chief purpose for which such prepara-
tion is required. Sir W. Hamilton, however, has as-
serted much more than this. He undertakes to show that
the study of mathematics is not an useful intellectual
discipline at all, except in one comparatively humble par-
ticular, which it has in common with some of the mo^t
despised pursuits ; and that, if prosecuted far, it positively
unfits the mind for the usefulemploymentof its faculties on
any other object. As might be expected from an attempt
to maintain such a thesis by one who, however acute on
other matters, had no sufficient knowledge of the subject
he was writing about, this celebrated dissertation is one
of the weakest parts of his works. He ignores not only
the whole of his adversary's case, but the most important
part of his own ; and has made a far less powerful attack
on the tendencies of mathematical studies, than could
easily be made by one who understood the subject. He
ON THE STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 609
has, in fact, missed the most considerable of the evil
effects to the production of which those studies have
contributed ; and has thrown no light on the intellectual
shortcomings of the common run of mathematicians, so
signally displayed in their wretched treatment of the
generalities of their own science. He finds hardly any-
thing to say to their disadvantage but things so trite and
obvious, that the greatest zealot for mathematics could
afford to pass them by, insisting only on the inestimable
benefits which are to be set against them, and which
alone are really to the purpose ; for it is no objection to
a harrow that it is not a plough, nor to a saw that it is
not a chisel.
For instance, are we much the wiser for being once
more told, at great length, and with a cloud of witnesses
brought to back the assertion, that mathematics, being
concerned only with demonstrative evidence, does not
teach us, either by theory or practice, to estimate pro-
babilities? Did any mathematician, or eulogist of ma-
thematics, ever pretend that it did ? Does the science
to which Sir W. Hamilton assigns a place above all others
as an intellectual discipline does Metaphysics enable
us to judge of probable evidence? If such a claim has
ever been made in its behalf, I am not aware of it ; Sir
W. Hamilton, certainly, was too well acquainted with
the subject to make any such pretension. Metaphysics,
like Mathematics, and all the rest of the fundamental
sciences, demands, not probable, but certain evidence.
The province of Probabilities in science is not the ab-
stract, but what M. Comte terms the concrete sciences ;
those which treat of the combinations actually realized
in Nature, as distinguished from the general laws which
would equally govern any other combinations of the
same elements : zoology and botany, for example, as con-
trasted with physiology ; geology, as opposed to ther-
mology and chemistry. In an abstract science a proba-
bility is of no account ; it is but a momentary halt on
the road to certainty, and a hint for fresh experiments.
Inasmuch as abstract science in general, and mathe-
R u
610 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS
matics in particular, afford no practice in the estimation
of conflicting probabilities, which is the kind of sagacity
most required in the conduct of practical affairs, it fol-
lows that, when made so exclusive an occupation as to
prevent the mind from obtaining enough of this necessary
practice in other ways, it does worse than not cultivate the
faculty it prevents it from being acquired, andjpro tanto
unfits the person for the general business of life. It is na-
tural that people who are bad judges of probability, should
be, according to their temperament, unduly credulous or
unreasonably sceptical ; both which charges our author,
with great earnestness and a heavy artillery of authori-
ties, drives home against the mathematicians. But he
would have made little progress towards proving his
case, even by a much more complete catalogue of the
intellectual defects of a mathematician who is nothing
but a mathematician A person rnay be keenly alive to
these, and may hate them, as M. Comte did, with a per-
fect hatred, while upholding mathematical instruction
as not only an useful but the indispensable first stage of
all scientific education worthy of the name.* Nor can
any reasonable view of the subject refuse to recognise,
in the very faults which our author imputes to mathe-
maticians, the excesses of a most valuable quality. Let
us be assured that for the formation of a well-trained
intellect, it is no slight recommendation of a study, that
it is the means by which the mind is earliest and most
easily brought to maintain within itself a standard of
* I do not know that the logical value of mathematics has ever been
more finely and discriminatingly appreciated than by M. Comte in his latest
work, "Synthese Subjective" (p. 98). " Bornee a son vrai domaine, la raison
*' mathematique y peut admirablement remplir 1'office universel de la saine
' logique : induire pour deduire, afin de construire. B/enoncant a de vaines
' preventions, elle sent que ses meilleurs succes restent toujours incapables
' de nous faire, partout ailleurs, induire, ou meme deduire, et surtout
' construire. Elle se contente de fournir, dans le domaine le plus favo-
' rable, un type de clarte, de precision, et de consistance, dont la contem-
' plation familiere peut seule disposer 1'esprit a rendre les autres concep-
' tions aussi parfaites que le comporte leur nature. Sa reaction generale,
' plus negative que positive, doit surtout consister a nous inspirer partout
' une invincible repugnance pour le vague, 1'incoherence, et 1'obscurite, que
' nous pouvons reellement eviter envera des pense"es quelconqv es, si noug
' y faisous assez d'efforts."
ON THE STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 611
complete proof. A mind thus furnished, and not duly
instructed on other subjects, may commit the error of
expecting in all proof too close an adherence to the type
with which it is familiar. That type may and ought to
be widened by greater variety of culture ; but he who
has never acquired it, has no just sense of the difference
between what is proved and what is not proved : the
first foundation of the scientific habit of mind has not
been laid. It has long been a complaint against mathe-
maticians that they are hard to convince : but it is a far
greater disqualification both for philosophy, and for the
affairs of life, to be too easily convinced; to have too
low a standard of proof. The only sound intellects are
those which, in the first instance, set their standard of
proof high. Practice in concrete affairs soon teaches
them to make the necessary abatement : but they retain
the consciousness, without which there is no sound prac-
tical reasoning, that in accepting inferior evidence be-
cause there is none better to be had, they do not by that
acceptance raise it to completeness. They remain aware
of what is wanting to it.
Besides accustoming the student to demand complete
proof, and to know when he has not obtained it, mathe-
matical studies are of immense benefit to his education
by habituating him to precision. It is one of the pe-
culiar excellences of mathematical discipline, that the
mathematician is never satisfied with an a peupres. He
requires the exact truth. Hardly any of the non-mathe-
matical sciences, except chemistry, has this advantage.
One of the commonest modes of loose thought, and
sources of error both in opinion and in practice, is to
overlook the importance of quantities. Mathematicians
and chemists are taught by the whole course of their
studies, that the most fundamental differences of quality
depend on some very slight difference in proportional
quantity ; and that from the qualities of the influencing
elements, without careful attention to their quantities,
false expectations would constantly be formed as to the
very nature and essential character of the result pro-
R R 2
612 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS
duced. If Sir W. Hamilton's mind had undergone this
improving discipline, we should not have found him
employing the most precise mathematical terras with
the laxity which is habitual in his writings. For in-
stance ; whenever he means that one of two things
diminishes while another increases, he says that they
are in the inverse ratio of one another. He affirms
this of the Extension and Comprehension of a general
notion;* of the number of objects among which our
attention is divided, and the intensity with which it is
applied to each ;f of the knowledge-giving and the
sensation-giving properties of an impression of sense;}
and of the intensity and the prolongation of an energy.
That an inverse ratio is the name of a definite relation
between quantities, seems never to have occurred to
him.
Neither is it a small advantage of mathematical
studies, even in their poorest and most meagre form, that
they at least habituate the mind to resolve a train of
reasoning into steps, and make sure of each step before
advancing to another. If the practice of mathematical
reasoning gives nothing else, it gives wariness of mind;
it accustoms us to demand a sure footing; and though it
leaves us no better judges of ultimate premises than it
found us (which is no more than may be said of almost
all metaphysics) at least it does not suffer us to let in, at
any of the joints in the reasoning, any assumption which
we have not previously faced in the shape of an axiom,
postulate, or definition. This is a merit which it has in
common with Formal Logic, and is the chief ground on
which some have thought that it could perform the func-
tions and supply the place of that science ; an opinion in
which I by no means agree.
That mathematics " do not cultivate the power of
generalization," || which to our author appears so obvious
a truth that he need not give himself the trouble of
* See, among other passages, Lectures, iii. 146, 147.
f Ibid. i. 246. J Ibid. ii. 98.
Ibid. p. 439. || Discussions, p. 282.
ON THE STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 613
proving it, will be admitted by no person of competent
knowledge, except in a very qualified sense. The generali-
zations of mathematics, are, no doubt, a different thing
from the generalizations of physical science ; but in the
difficulty of seizing them, and the mental tension they
require, they are no contemptible preparation for the
most arduous efforts of the scientific mind. Even the
fundamental notions of the higher mathematics, from
those of the differential calculus upwards are products
of a very high abstraction. Merely to master the idea of
centrifugal force, or of the centre of gravity, are efforts
of mental analysis surpassed by few in our author's meta-
physics. To perceive the mathematical law common to
the results of many mathematical operations, even in so
simple a case as that of the binomial theorem, involves
a vigorous exercise of the same faculty which gave us
Kepler's laws, and rose through those laws to the theory
of universal gravitation. Every process of what has
been called Universal Geometry that great creation of
Descartes and his successors, in which a single train of
reasoning solves whole classes of problems at once, and
demonstrates properties common to all curves or sur-
faces, and others common to large groups of them is a
practical lesson in the management of wide generali-
zations, and abstraction of the points of agreement from
those of difference among objects of great and confusing
diversity, to which the most purely inductive science
cannot furnish many superior. Even so elementary an
operation as tiiat of abstracting from the particular con-
figuration of the triangles or other figures, and the rela-
tive situation of the particular lines or points, in the
diagram which aids the apprehension of a common geo-
metrical demonstration, is a very useful, and far from
being always an easy, exercise of the faculty of gene-
ralization so strangely imagined to have no place or part
in the processes of mathematics.
Sir W. Hamilton allows no efficacy to mathematical
studies in the cultivation of any valuable intellectual
habit, except the single one of continuous attention. "Are
614 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS
" mathematics then," he asks,* " of no value as an instru-
" ment of mental culture ? Nay, do they exercise only to
" distort the mind? To this we answer: That their study,
" if pursued in moderation and efficiently counteracted,
" may be beneficial in the correction of a certain vice, and
" in the formation of its corresponding virtue. The vice
" is the habit of mental distraction ; the virtue the habit
" of continuous attention. This is the single benefit, to
" which the study of mathematics can justly pretend, in
" the cultivation of the mind." He adds, truly enough,!
" But mathematics are not the only study which, cultivates
" the attention : neither is the kind and degree of atten-
" tion which they tend to induce, the kind and degree of
" attention which our other and higher speculations
" require and exercise." So that, according to him,
there is no purpose answered by mathematics in general
education, but one which would be better fulfilled by
something else.
Without stopping to express my amazement at the
assertion that the student of mathematics exercises no
mental faculty but that of continuous attention, I will
avail myself of an admission which Sir W. Hamilton
cannot help making, but the full force of which he does
not perceive. " We are far," he says,j "from meaning
" hereby to disparage the mathematical genius which
" invents new methods and formulae, or new and felicitous
" applications of the old Unlike their divergent
" studies, the inventive talents of the mathematician and
" philosopher in fact approximate." Was, then, Sir W.
Hamilton so ill-acquainted with everything deserving
the name of mathematical tuition as to suppose that the
inventive powers which, in their higher degree, constitute
mathematical genius, are not called forth and fostered
in the process of teaching mathematics to the merest
tyro ? What sort of mathematical instruction is it of
which solving problems forms no part? We come,
within a page afterwards, to the following almost incre-
* Discussions, pp. 313, 314. f Ibid. p. 322.
% Ibid. p. 290.
ON THE STUDY OP MATHEMATICS. 615
dible announcement :* " Mathematical demonstration is
" solely occupied in deducing conclusions ; probable
" reasoning, principally concerned in looking out for
" premises." Sir W. Hamilton thinks he can never be
severe enough upon Cambridge for laying any stress on
mathematics as an instrument of mental instruction.
Did he ever turn over, I do not say a volume of Cambridge
Problems, for these, it may be said, test the knowledge
of the pupil rather than his inventive powers, and may
be an exercise chiefly of memory : but did he ever see
two such volumes as Eland's Algebraical and Geometrical
Problems ? Did he really imagine that working these
was not " looking out for premises ?" He seems actually
to have thought that learning mathematics meant
cramming it ; and apparently believed that a mathema-
tical tutor resolves all the equations himself, and merely
asks his pupil to follow the solutions. For in every
problem which the pupil himself solves, or theorem which
he demonstrates, not having previously seen it solved or
demonstrated, the same faculties are exercised which, in
their higher degrees, produced the greatest discoveries in
geometry. Mathematical teaching, therefore, even as
now carried on, trains tha mind to capacities, which, by
our author's admission, are of the closest kin to those of
the greatest metaphysician and philosopher. There is
some colour of truth for the opposite doctrine in the
case of elementary algebra. The resolution of a common
equation can be reduced to almost as mechanical a process
as the working of a sum in arithmetic. The reduction
of the question to an equation, however, is no mechanical
operation, but one which, according to the degree of
its difficulty, requires nearly every possible grade of
ingenuity : not to speak of the new, and in the present
state of science insoluble, equations, which start up at
every fresh step attempted in the application of mathe-
matics to other branches of knowledge. On all this, Sir
W. Hamilton never bestows a thought. It is hardly
necessary to point out that any other study, pursued in
* Discussions, p. 291.
616 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS
the manner in which he supposes mathematics to be,
would as little exercise any other faculty than that of
" continuous attention" as mathematics would. Next
to metaphysics, the study he most patronizes is that of
languages ; of which he has so lofty an opinion, as to
say* that " to master, for example, the Minerva of
" Sanctius with its commentators, is, I conceive, a far
" more profitable exercise of mind than to conquer the
" Principia of Newton :" we may at least say that he
was a better judge of the profit that might be derived
from it. I, also, rate very highly the value, as a discipline
to the mind, of the thorough grammatical study of any
of the more logically constructed languages : but if the
study consisted in learning the Minerva of Sanctius, or
its commentators either, by rote, I believe the benefit
derived would be about the same with that which Sir
W. Hamilton considered to result from the exercise of
" continuous attention" in mathematics.
It is a characteristic fact, that when the paper " on
the Study of Mathematics" originally appeared as an
article in the Edinburgh Review, no mention was made
in it of Mixed or Applied Mathematics : the little which
now appears on that subject being a subsequent addition,
called forth by Dr. Whewell's reply. Dr. Whewell must
have looked down from a considerable height upon an
assault on the utility of Mathematics, in which the part
of it that, in the opinion of its rational defenders, consti-
tutes three-fourths of its utility, was silently overlooked.
When Sir W. Hamilton's attention was called to what
he had previously omitted to think of, this is the way in
which he disposes of it :f " Mathematics can be applied
" to objects of experience only in so far as these are
" measurable ; that is, in so far as they come, or are
" supposed to come, under the categories of extension
" and number. Applied mathematics are, therefore,
" equally limited and equally unimproving as pure. The
" sciences, indeed, with which mathematics are thus as-
" sociated, may afford a more profitable exercise of mind ;
* Discussions, note to p. 268. f Ibid. pp. 334, 335.
ON THE STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 617
" but this is only in so far as they supply the matter of
" observation, and of probable reasoning, and therefore
" before this matter is hypothetically subjected to mathe-
" matical demonstration or calculus."
This passage amounts to proof that the writer simply
did not know what applied mathematics mean. The
words are those of a person who had heard that there
was such a thing, but knew absolutely nothing about
what it was.
Applied mathematics is not the measurement of ex-
tension and number. It is the measurement by means of
extension and number, of other quantities which exten-
sion and number are marks of; and the ascertainment
by means of quantities of all sorts, of those qualities of
things which quantities are marks of.
For the information of readers who are no better in-
formed than Sir W. Hamilton, and the reminding of
those who are, I will illustrate this general statement by
bringing it down to particulars ; which a person, himself
of very slender mathematical acquirements, can do, pro-
vided he has studied the science as every philosophical
student ought to study it, but as Sir W. Hamilton has
not done, with especial reference to its Methods.
The first, and typical example of the application of
mathematics to the indirect investigation of truth, is
within the limits of the pure science itself; the applica-
tion of algebra to geometry ; the introduction of which,
far more than any of his metaphysical speculations, lias
immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the
greatest single step ever made in the progress of the
exact sciences. Its rationale is simple. It is grounded
on the general truth, that the position of every point,
the direction of every line, and consequently the shape
and magnitude of every enclosed space, may be fixed by
the length of perpendiculars thrown down upon two
straight lines, or (when the third dimension of space is
taken into account) upon three plane surfaces, meeting
one another at right angles in the same point. A con-
sequence, or rather a part, of this general truth, is that
618 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS
curve lines and surfaces may be determined by their
equations. If from any number of points in a curve line
or surface, perpendiculars are drawn to two rectangular
axes, or to three rectangular planes, there exists between
the lengths of these perpendiculars a relation of quantity,
which is always the same for the same curve, or surface,
and is expressed by an equation in which these variable
are combined with certain constant qualities. From
this relation, every other property of the curve or surface
may always be deduced. In this way, numbers become
the means of ascertaining truths not numerical. The
periphery of an ellipse is not a number ; but a certain
numerical relation between straight lines is a mark of an
O
ellipse, being proved to be an inseparable accompaniment
of it. The equation which expresses this characteristic
mark of any curve, may be handed over to algebraists,
to deduce from it, through the properties of numbers,
any other numerical relation which depends on it ; with
the certainty that when the conclusion is translated back
again from symbols into words, it will come out a real,
and perhaps previously unknown, geometrical property
of the curve.
In such an example as this, the application of algebra
to geometry appears only in its most elementary form ;
but its extent is indefinite, and its flights almost beyond
the reach of measurement. Its general scheme may be
thus stated : In order to resolve any question, either of
quality or quantity, concerning a line or space, find some-
thing whose magnitude, if known, would give the solu-
tion required, and which stands in some known relation
to the rectangular co-ordinates (for instance, in the pro-
blem of Tangents, the length of the subtangent). Ex-
press this known relation in an equation : it' the equation
can be resolved, we have solved the geometrical problem.
Or it the question be the converse one not what are the
properties of a given line or space, but what line or space
is indicated by a given property ; find what relation be-
tween rectangular co-ordinates that property requires :
express it in an equation, and this equation, or some
ON THE STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 619
other deducible from it, will be the equation of the curve
or surface sought. If it be a known curve or surface,
this process will point it out ; if not, we shall have ob-
tained the necessary starting point for its study.
This application of one branch of mathematics to
another branch, ranks as the first step in Applied Mathe-
matics. The second is the application to Mechanics. The
object-matter of Mechanics is the general laws, or theory,
of Force in the abstract, that is, of forces, considered
independently of their origin. As an extension is not a
number, though a numerical fact may be a mark of an
extension ; so a force is neither a number nor an exten-
sion. But a force is only cognisable through its effects,
and the effects by which forces are best known are effects
in extension. The measure of a force, is the space through
which it will carry a body of given magnitude in a given
time. Quantities of force are thus ascertained, through
marks which are quantities of extension. The other
properties of forces are, their direction (a question of ex-
tension, which has already been reduced to a numerical
relation between co-ordinates), and the nature of the
motion which they generate, either singly or in com-
bination ; which is a mixed question of direction and of
magnitude in extension. All questions of Force, there-
fore, can be reduced to questions of direction and of
magnitude : and as all questions of direction or magni-
tude are capable of being reduced to equations between
numbers, every question which can be raised respecting
Force abstractedly fro in its origin, can be resolved if the
corresponding algebraical equation can.
While the laws of N umber thus underlie the laws of
Extension, and these two underlie the Laws of Force, so
do the laws of Force underlie all the other laws of the
material universe. Nature, as it falls within our ken, is
composed of a multitude of forces, of which the origin
(at least the immediate origin) is different, and the effects
of which on our senses are extremely various. But all
these forces agree in producing motions in space ; and
even those of their effects which are not actual motions,
620 SIR WILLTAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS
nevertheless travel ; are propagated through spaces, in
determinate times : they are all, therefore, amenable to,
and conform to, the laws of extension and number.
Often, indeed, we have no means of measuring these
spaces and times ; nor, if we could, are the resources of
mathematics sufficient to enable us, in cases of great
complexity, to arrive at the quantities of things we
cannot directly measure, through those which we can.
Fortunately, however, we can do this, sufficiently for all
practical purposes, in the case of the great cosmic forces,
gravitation and light, and to a less but still a consider-
able extent, heat and electricity. And here the domain
of Applied Mathematics, for the present, ends. To it
we are indebted, not only for all we know of the laws of
these great and universal agencies, considered as con-
nected bodies of truth, but also for the one complete type
and model of the investigation of Nature by deductive
reasoning ; the ascertainment of the special laws of
nature by means of the general. I will not offer to the
understanding of any one who knows what this opera-
tion is, the affront of asking him if it is all performed
" before" the matter is " hypothetical ly subjected to
mathematical demonstration or calculus."
In being the great instrument of Deductive investi-
gation, applied mathematics comes to be also the source of
our principal inductions, which invariably depend on
previous deductions. For where the inaccessibility or
unmanageableness of the phenomena precludes the ne-
cessary experiments, mathematical deduction often sup-
plies their place, by making us acquainted with points of
resemblance which could not have been reached by direct
observation. Phsenomena apparently very remote from
one another, are found, in the mode of their accomplish-
ment, to follow the same or very similar numerical laws ;
and the mind, grasping up seemingly heterogeneous na-
tural agencies which have the same equation, and classing
them together, often lays a ground for the recognition
of them as having either a common, or an analogous,
origin. What were previously thought to be distinct
ON THE STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 621
powers in Nature, are identified with each other, bv as-
certaining that they produce similar effects according to
the same mathematical laws. It was thus that the force
which governs the planetary motions was shown to be
identical with that by which bodies fall to the ground.
Sir W. Hamilton would probably have admitted that the
original discovery of this truth required as great a reach
of intellect as has ever yet been displayed in abstract
speculation. But is no exercise of intellect needed to
apprehend the proof? Is it like an experiment in
chemistry or an observation in anatomy, which may re-
quire mind for its origination, but to recognise which,
when once made, requires only eyesight ? Is "continuous
attention" the only mental capacity required here ? To
think so would require an ignorance of the subject
greater than can be imputed to any educated mind, not
to speak of a philosopher.
In the achievements which still remain to be effected
in the way of scientific generalization, it is not probable
that the direct employment of mathematics will be to
any great extent available : the nature of the phaeno-
mena precludes such an employment for a long time to
come perhaps for ever. But the process itself the
deductive investigation of Nature ; the application of
elementary laws, generalized from the more simple cases,
to disentangle the phenomena of complex cases ex-
plaining as much of them as can be so explained, and
putting in evidence the nature and limits of the irre-
ducible residuum, so as to suggest fresh observations
preparatory to recommencing the same process with
additional data : this is common to all science, moral and
metaphysical included; and the greater the difficulty,
the more needful is it that the enquirer should come
prepared with an exact understanding of the requisites
of this mode of investigation, and a mental type of its
perfect realization. In the great problems of physical
generalization now occupying the higher scientific minds,
chemistry seems destined to an important and conspi-
cuous participation, by supplying, as mathematics did in
A ' V
622 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS
the cosmic phsenomena, many of the premises of the
deduction, as well as part of the preparatory discipline.
But this use of chemistry is as yet only in its dawn ;
while, as a training in the deductive art, its utmost ca-
pacity can never approach to that of mathematics : and
in the great enquiries of the moral and social sciences,
to which neither of the two is directly applicable, mathe-
matics (I always mean Applied Mathematics) affords the
only sufficiently perfect type. Up to this time, I may
venture to say that no one ever knew what deduction is,
as a means of investigating the laws of nature, who had
not learnt it from mathematics -, nor can any one hope
to understand it thoroughly, who has not, at some time
of his life, known enough of mathematics to be familiar
with the instrument at work. Had Sir W. Hamilton been
so, he would probably have cancelled the two volumes
of his Lectures on Logic, and begun again on a different
system, in which we should have heard less about Con-
cepts and more about Things, less about Forms of
Thought, and more about grounds of Knowledge.
Nor is even this the whole of what the enquirer loses,
who knows not scientific Deduction in this its most per-
fect form. To have an inadequate conception of one of
the two instruments by which we acquire our knowledge
of nature, and consequently an imperfect comprehension
even of the other in its higher forms, is not all. He is
almost necessarily without any sufficient conception of
human knowledge itself as an organic whole. He can
have no clear perception of science as a system of truths
flowing out of, and confirming and corroborating, one
another; in which one truth sums up a multitude of
others, and explains them, special truths being merely
general ones modified by specialities of circumstance.
He can but imperfectly understand the absorption of
concrete truths into abstract, and the additional certainty
given to theorems drawn from specific experience, when
they can be affiliated as corollaries on general laws of
nature a certainty more entire than any direct obser-
vation can give. Neither, therefore, can he perceive how
ON THE STUDY OP MATHEMATICS. 623
the larger inductions reflect an increase of certainty even
upon those narrower ones from which they were them-
selves generalized ,> by reconciling superficial inconsisten-
cies, and converting apparent exceptions into real confir-
mations.* To see these things requires more than a
mere mathematician; but the ablest mind which has
never gone through a course of mathematics has small
chance of ever perceiving them.
In the face of such considerations, it is a very small
achievement to fill thirty octavo pages with the ill-
riatured things which persons of the most miscellaneous
character, through a series of ages, have said about mathe-
maticians, from a sneer of the Cynic Diogenes to a sar-
casm of Gibbon, or a colloquial platitude of Horace
Walpole ; without any discrimination as to how many
of the persons quoted were entitled to any opinion at all
on such a subject ; and with such entire disregard of all
that gives weight to authority, as to include men who
lived and died before algebra was invented, before the
conic sections had been defined and studied by the
mathematicians of Alexandria, or the first lines of the
theory of statics had been traced by the genius of Archi-
medes ; men whose whole mathematical knowledge con-
sisted of a clumsy arithmetic, and the mere elements
of geometry. Had there been twenty times as many of
these testimonies, what proportion of them would have
been of any value ? Until quite recently, the professors
of the different arts and sciences have made it a conside-
* Ignorance of this important principle of the logic of induction, or want
of familiarity with it, continually leads to gross misapplications, even by
able writers, of the logic of ratiocination. For instance, we are constantly
told that the uniformity of the course of nature cannot be itself an induc-
tion, since every inductive reasoning assumes it, and the premise must have
been known before the conclusion. Those who argue in this manner can
never have directed their attention to the continual process of giving and
taking, in respect ot certainty, which reciprocally goes on between this
great premise and all the narrower truths of experience ; the effect of which
is, that, though originally a generalization from the more obvious of the
narrower truths, it ends by having a fulness of certainty which overflows
upon these, and raises the proof of them to a higher level ; so that its rela-
tion to them is reversed, and instead of an inference from them, it become*
a principle from which any one of them may be deduced.
624 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS
rable part of their occupation to cry down one another's
pursuits ; and men of the world and litterateurs have
been, in all ages, ready and eager to join with every set
of them against the rest : the man who dares to know
what they neither know nor care for, and to value him-
self on the knowledge, having always and everywhere
been regarded as the common enemy. Did Sir W.
Hamilton suppose that a person of half his reading
would have any difficulty in furnishing, at a few hours'
notice, an equally long list of amenities on the subject
of grammarians or of metaphysicians? When our
author does get hold of a witness who has a claim to a
hearing, the witness is pressed into the service without
any sifting of what he really says ; it make no diffe-
rence whether he asserts that the study of mathematics
does harm, or only that it does not simply suffice for all
possible good. One of the authorities on whom most
stress is laid is that of Descartes. I extract the impor-
tant part of the quotation as our author gives it, partly
from Descartes himself and partly from Baillet, his bio-
grapher.* The Italics are Sir W. Hamilton's. " It was
" now a long time, says Baillet, since he had been con-
" vinced of the small utility of the mathematics, especially
" when studied on their own account, and not applied to
" other things. There was nothing, in truth, which ap-
" peared to him more futile than to occupy ourselves with
" simple numbers and imaginary figures, as if it were
" proper to confine ourselves to these trifles (bagatelles)
" without carrying our view beyond. There even seemed
" to him in this something worse than useless. His
" maxim was, that such application insensibly disaccustomed
" us to the use of our reason, and made us run the danger
" of losing the path which it traces. The words them-
" selves of Descartes deserve quotation : Eevera nihil
" inanius est, quam circa nudos numeros figurasque iraa-
" ginarias ita versari, ut velle videamur in talium nuga-
" rum cognitione conquiescere, atque superficiariis istis
" demonstrationibus, qua3 casu sa?pius quam arte inveni-
* Discussions, pp. 277, 278.
ON THE STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 625
" unter, et magis ad oculos et imaginationem pertinent,
" quam ad intellectum, sic incubare, ut quodammodo
" ipsa ratione uti desuescamus ; simulque nihil intricatius,
" quam tali probandi modo, novas difficultates confusis
" numeris involutasexpedire." . . . Bail let goes on : "In
" a letter to Mersenne, written in 1630, M. Descartes
" recalled to him that he had renounced the study of ma-
" thematicsfor many years : and that he was anxious not to
" lose any more of his time in the barren operations of oeo-
" metry and arithmetic, studies which never lead fo anything
" important" Finally, speaking; of the general character
of the philosopher, Baillet adds : " In regard to the
" rest of mathematics" (he had just spoken of astro-
" nomy which Descartes thought, " though he dreamt in
" it himself, only a loss of time 1 ) " in regard to the rest of
" mathematics, those who know the rank which he held
" above all mathematicians, ancient and modern, will
" agree that he was the man in the world best qualified
" to judge them. We have observed that, after having
" studied these sciences to the bottom, he had renounced
" them as of no use for the conduct of life and solace of
" mankind."
Whoever reads this passage as if it were all printed in
Roman characters, and declines to submit his under-
standing to the italics which Sir W. Hamilton has intro-
duced, will perceive the following three things. First,
that Descartes was not speaking of the study of mathe-
matics, but of its exclusive study. His objection is to
stopping there, without proceeding to anything ulterior :
conquiescere, incubare. Secondly, that he was speaking
only of pure mathematics, as distinguished from its
applications, and under the belief, how prodigiously
erroneous we now know, that it did not admit of appli-
cations of any importance. Finally, that his disparage-
ment of the pursuit, even as thus limited his repre-
sentation of it as " nuga" as " a loss of time," rested
mainly on a ground which Sir W. Hamilton gave up,
the unimportance of its object-matter. It was a repeti-
tion of the objection of Socrates, whom also our author
s s
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S OPINIONS
thinks it worth while to cite as an authority on such a
question, and who '' did* not perceive of what utility
" they" (mathematical studies) " could be, calculated as
" they were to consume the life of a man, and to turn
" him away from many other and important acquire-
" ments.". Such an opinion, in the days of Socrates, and
from one whose glorious business it was to recal the
minds of speculative men to dialectics and morals, reflects
no discredit on his great mind. But the objection is one
which Sir W. Hamilton, with every thinker of the last
two centuries, disclaims. " The question," he expressly
says,t " does not regard the value of mathematical
" science, considered in itself, or in its objective results,
" but the utility of mathematical study, that is, in its
" subjective effect, as an exercise of mind." All that
Descartes said against it in this aspect (at least in the
passage quoted, which we may suppose to be one of the
strongest) is, that by affording other objects of thought,
it diverts the mind from the use of ipsa ratio, that is,
from the study of pure mental abstractions ; which Des-
cartes, to the great detriment of his philosophy, regarded
as of much superior value to the employment of the
thoughts upon objects of sense, " quse magis ad oculos
" et imaginationem pertinent."
It was by his example, rather than by his precepts,
that Descartes was destined to illustrate the unfavour-
able side of the intellectual influence of mathematical
studies ; and he must have been a still more extra-
ordinary man than he was, could he have really under-
stood a kind of mental perversions of which he is himself,
in the history of philosophy, the most prominent example.
Descartes is the completest type which history presents
of the purely mathematical type of mind that in which
the tendencies produced by mathematical cultivation
reign unbalanced and supreme. This is visible not only
in the abuse of Deduction, which he carried to a greater
length than any distinguished thinker known to us, not
excepting the schoolmen ; but even more so in the cha-
* Discussions, p. 323. f Ibid. p. 266.
ON THE STUDY OP MATHEMATICS. 627
racter of the premises from which his deductions set out.
And here we come upon the one really grave charge
which rests on the mathematical spirit, in respect of the
influence it exercises on pursuits other than mathematical.
It leads men to place their ideal of Science in deriving
all knowledge from a small number of axiomatic premises,
accepted as self-evident, and taken for immediate intui-
tions of reason. This is what Descartes attempted to
do, and inculcated as the thing to be done : and as he
shares with only one other name the honour of having
given his impress to the whole character of the modern
speculative movement, the consequences of his error
have been most calamitous. Nearly everything that is
objectionable, along with much of what is admirable,
in the character of French thought, whether on meta-
physics, ethics, or politics, is directly traceable to the
fact that French speculation descends from Descartes
instead of from Bacon.* All reflecting persons in Eng-
land, and many in France, perceive that the chief
infirmities of French thinking arise from its geometrical
spirit ; its determination to evolve its conclusions, even
on the most practical subjects, by mere deduction from
some single accepted generalization : the generalization,
too, being frequently not even a theorem, but a practical
rule, supposed to be obtained directly from the fountains
of reason : a mode of thinking which erects one-sidedness
into a principle, under the misapplied name of logic, and
makes the popular political reasoning in France resemble
that of a theologian arguing from a text, or a lawyer
from a maxim of law. If this be the case even in France,
* It is but just to add, that the English mode of thought has suffered
in a different, but almost equally injurious manner, by its exclusive
following of what it imagined to be the teaching of Bacon, being in reality
a slovenly misconception of him, leaving on one side the whole spirit and
scope of his speculations. The philosopher who laboured to construct a
canon of scientific Induction, by which the observations of mankind, in-
stead of remaining empirical, might be so combined and marshalled as to
be made the foundation of safe general theories, little expected that his
iiame would become the stock authority for disclaiming generalization,
and enthroning empiricism, under the' name of experience, as the only
solid foundation of practice.
SS 2
628 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS
it is still worse in Germany, the whole of whose specula-
tive philosophy is an emanation from Descartes, and to
most of whose thinkers the Baconian point of view is
still below the horizon. Through Spinoza, who gave to
his system the very forms as well as the entire spirit of
geometry ; through the mathematician Leibnitz, who
reigned supreme over the German speculative mind for
above a generation ; with its spirit temporarily modified
by the powerful intellectual individuality of Kant, but
flying back after him to its unconnected tendencies, the
geometrical spirit went on from bad to worse, until in
Schelling and Hegel the laws even of physical nature
were deduced by ratiocination from subjective delive-
rances of the mind. The whole of German philosophical
speculation has run from the beginning in this wrong
groove, and -having only recently become aware of the
fact, is at present making convulsive efforts to get out of
it.* All these mistakes, and this deplorable waste of
time and intellectual power by some of the most gifted
and cultivated portions of the human race, are effects of
the too unqualified predominance of the mental habits
and tendencies engendered by elementary mathematics.
Applied mathematics in its post-Newtonian develop-
ment does nothing to strengthen, and very much to
correct, these errors, provided the applications are studied
in such a manner that the intellect is aware of what it is
about, and does not go to sleep over algebraical symbols ;
a didactic improvement which Dr. "VVhewell, to his honour
be it said, was earnestly and successfully labouring to
introduce, thus practically correcting the real defects of
mathematics as a branch of general education, at the
very time when Sir W. Hamilton, who had not the
smallest insight into those defects, selected him for the iin-
* The character here drawn of German thought is, I hardly need say,
not intended to apply to such a man as Goethe, or to those who received
their intellectual impulse from him. In him, indeed, not to speak of his
almost universal culture, the intellectual operations were always guided
by an intense spirit of observation and experiment, and a constant refe-
rence to the exigencies, outward and inward, of practical human life. Such
criticism as can justly be made on Goethe as a thinker, rests on entirely
different grounds.
ON THE STDDT OF MATHEMATICS. 629
mediate recipient of an attack on mathematics, which as it
only included what Sir W. Hamilton knew of the subject,
left out everything which was much worth saying.
It is not solely to Mathematical studies that Sir W.
Hamilton professes and shows hostility. Physical in-
vestigations generally, apart from their material fruits,
he holds but in low estimation. We have seen in a
former chapter how singularly unaware he is of the
power and exertion of intellect which they often require.
Touching their effect on the mind, he makes two serious
complaints, which come out at the very commencement
of his Lectures on Metaphysics.* The first is, that the
study of Physics indisposes persons to believe in Free-
will. To this accusation it must plead guilty : physical
science undoubtedly has that tendency. But I maintain
that this is only because physical science teaches people
to judge of evidence. If the free-will doctrine could
be proved, there is nothing in the habits of thought en-
gendered by physical science that would indispose any
one to yield to the evidence. A person who knows only
one physical science, may be unable to feel the force of a
kind of proof different from that which is customary in
his department ; but any one who is generally versed in
physical science is accustomed to so many different modes
of investigation, that he is well prepared to feel the force
of whatever is really proof. Metaphysicians of Sir W.
Hamilton's school, who pursue their investigations
without regard to the cautions suggested by physical
science, are equally catholic and comprehensive in the
wrong way; they can mistake for proof anything or
everything which is not so, provided it tends to form an
association of ideas in their own minds.
The other objection of Sir W. Hamilton to the scien-
tific study of the laws of Matter, is one which we should
scarcely Dave expected from him, namely, that it annihi-
lates Wonder.
" Wonder,t says Aristotle, is the first cause of philo-
" sophy ; but in the discovery that all existence is but
* Lectures, i. 35, 4,2. t Ibid. p. 37.
630 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S OPINIONS
" mechanism, the consummation of science would be an
" extinction of the very interest from which it originally
" sprang. ' Even the gorgeous majesty of the heavens,'
" says a great religious philosopher,* ' the object of a
" kneeling adoration to an infant world,' subdues no more
" the mind of him who comprehends the one mechanical
" law by which the planetary systems move, maintain
" their motion, and even originally form themselves.
" He no longer wonders at the object, infinite as it
" always is, but at the human intellect alone which in a
" Copernicus, Kepler, Gassendi, Newton, and Laplace,
" was able to transcend the object, by science to ter-
" minate the miracle, to reave the heaven of its divinities,
" and to exorcise the universe. But even this, the only
" admiration of which our intelligent faculties are now
" capable, would vanish, were a future Hartley, Darwin,
" Condillac, or Bonnet, to succeed in displaying to us a
" mechanical system of the human mind, as compre-
" hensive, intelligible, and satisfactory as the Newtonian
" mechanism of the heavens." We may be well assured
that no Hartley, Darwin, or Condillac will obtain a hear-
ing, if the " great religious philosopher" can prevent it.
I shall not enter into all the topics suggested by this
remarkable argument. I shall not ask whether, after all,
it is better to be " subdued" than instructed ; or whether
human nature would suffer a great loss in losing wonder,
if love and admiration remained ; for admiration, pace
tantorum virorum, is a different thing from wonder, and
is often at its greatest height when the strangeness,
which is a necessary condition of wonder, has died away.
But I do wonder at the barrenness of imagination of a
man who can see nothing wonderful in the material uni-
verse, since Newton, in an evil hour, partially unravelled
a limited portion of it. If ignorance is with him a neces-
sary condition of wonder, can he find nothing to wonder
at in the origin of the system of which Newton discovered
the laws? nothing in the probable former extension of
the solar substance beyond the orbit of Neptune ? nothing
* F. H. Jacobi. The entire passage is in Discussions, p. 312.
ON THE STUDY OP MATHEMATICS. 631
in the starry heavens, which, with a full knowledge of
what Newton taught, Kant, in the famous passage which
Sir W. Hamilton is so fond of quoting (and quotes in
this very lecture), placed on the same level of sublimity
with the moral law ? If ignorance is the cause of
wonder, it is downright impossible that scientific- ex-
planation can ever take it away, since all which explana-
tion does, in the final resort, is to refer us back to a
prior inexplicable. Were the catastrophe to arrive which
is to expel Wonder from the universe were it con-
clusively shown that the mental operations are depen-
dent upon organic agency would wonder be at an end
because the fact, at which we should then have to wonder,
would be that an arrangement of material particles
could produce thought and feeling ? Jacobi and Sir W.
Hamilton might have put their minds at ease. It is not
understanding that destroys wonder, it is familiarity.
To a person whose feelings have depth enough to with-
stand that, no insight which can ever be attained into
natural phenomena will make Nature less wonderful.
And as for those whose sensibilities are shallow, did
Jacobi suppose that they wondered one iota the more at
the planetary motions, when astronomers imagined them
to take place by the complicated evolutions of " cycle on
epicycle, orb on orb?" A spectacle which they saw
every day, had, we may rely upon it, as little effect in
kindling their imaginations then, as now. Hear the
opinion of a great poet:* not speaking particularly of
wonder, but of the emotions generally which the spec-
tacle of nature excites, and in words which apply to that
emotion equally with the rest.
" Some are of opinion that the habit of analysing, de-
" composing, and anatomising, is inevitably unfavourable
" to the perception of beauty. People are led into this
" mistake by overlooking the fact that such processes
" being to a certain extent within the reach of a limited
" intellect, we are apt to ascribe to them that insensibility
" of which they are, in truth, the effect, and not the cause.
* Wordsworth, in the Biography by his nephew, iL 159.
rw v*j *- > n^
'<rr~* \>f\Shrv\s^ r " ' w
<S i
63.2 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON ON MATHEMATICS.
" Admiration and love, to which all knowledge truly vital
" must tend, are felt by men of real genius in proportion
" as their discoveries in natural philosophy are enlarged ;
" and the beauty, in form, of a plant or an animal, is not
" made less but more apparent, as a whole, by more accu-
" rate insight into its constituent properties and powers."
Hear next one of the most illustrious discoverers in
physical science. Instead of regarding understanding
a* antithetical to wonder, Dr. Faraday complains that
people do not wonder sufficiently at the material uni-
verse, because they do not sufficiently understand it.
" Let us now consider, for a little while, how wonder-
" fully we stand upon this world. Here it is we are
" born, bred, and live, and yet we view these things with
" an almost entire absence of wonder to ourselves re-
" specting the way in which all this happens. So small,
" indeed, is our wonder, that we are never taken by sur-
" prise ; and I do think that, to a young person of ten,
" fifteen, or twenty years of age, perhaps the first sight
" of a cataract or a mountain would occasion him more
" surprise than he had ever felt concerning the means of
" his own existence ; how he came here ; how he lives ;
" by what means he stands upright ; and through what
" means he moves about from place to place. Hence,
" we come into this world, we live, and depart from it,
" without our thoughts being called specifically to con-
" sider how all this takes place ; and were it not for the
" exertions of some few inquiring minds who have looked
" into these things, and ascertained the very beautiful
" laws and conditions by which we do live and stand
" upon the earth, we should hardly be aware that there
" was anything wonderful in it."*
If any additional authority be desired, the greatest poet
of modern Germany was also the keenest scientific na-
turalist in it.
* Lectures on the Forces of Matter, pp. 2, 3. The philosophy of this is
well given by Mr. Lewes in his valuable work on Aristotle (p. 212).
" Surprise starts from a background of knowledge, or fixed belief.
" Nothing is surprising to ignorance, because the mind in that state has
'no preconceptions to be contradicted." J
633
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
IN the examination which I have now concluded of Sir
AV. Hamilton's philosophical achievements, I have un-
avoidably laid stress on points of difference from him
rather than on those of agreement ; the reason being,
that I differ from almost everything in his philosophy
on which he particularly valued himself, or which is spe-
cially his own. His merits, which, though I do not
rate them so high, I feel and admire as sincerely as his
most enthusiastic disciples, are rather diffused through
his speculations generally, than concentrated on any
particular point. They chiefly consist in his clear and
distinct mode of bringing before the reader many of
the fundamental questions of metaphysics ; some good
specimens of psychological analysis on a small scale ;
and the many detached logical and psychological truths
which he has separately seized, and which are scattered
through his writings, mostly applied to resolve some
special difficulty and again lost sight of. I can hardly
point to anything he has done towards helping the more
thorough understanding of the greater mental phaeno-
mena, unless it be his theory of Attention (including
Abstraction), which seems to me the most perfect we
have.* The facts and speculations on Sleep and Dream-
* Even on this subject he has not been able to avoid some fallacies in
reasoning. Thus, in maintaining against Stewart and Brown that we can
attend to more than one object at once, he defends this true doctrine by
some very bad arguments. He says, (Lectures, i. 25'2.) that if the mind
could " attend to, or be conscious of, only a single object at a time," the
conclusion would be involved, "that all comparison and discrimination are
impossible." This assumes that we cannot compare and discriminate any
impressions but those which are exactly simultaneous. May not the cou-
034 CONCLUDING REMARKS.
ing in his Seventeenth Lecture on Metaphysics, have
been credited to him as an acquisition to philosophy,
and are a good specimen of inductive enquiry ; but their
principal merit, both in point of observation and of
thought, is avowedly Jouffroy's.*
dition of discrimination be consciousness not at the same, but at imme-
diately successive instants ? May not discrimination depend on change
of consciousness; the transition from one state to another? This is a
tenable opinion ; it was actually maintained by the philosophers against
whom our author was arguing ; and if he thought it erroneous, he should
have disproved it. Unless he did, he was not entitled to treat a doctrine
shown to involve this consequence, as reduced to absurdity. Another of
his proofs of our ability to attend to a plurality of things at once, is our
perception of harmony between sounds. He argues (Lectures, i. 24-4) that
to perceive a relation between two sounds implies a compai-ison, and that
if this comparison is not between the sounds themselves, simultaneously
attended to, it must be a comparison of ''past sound as retained in memory,
with the present as actually perceived ;" which still implies attending to
two objects at once. His opponents however might say, that if there be a
comparison, it is not between two simultaneous impressions, either sensa-
tions or memories, but between two successive sounds in the instant of
transition. They might add, that the perception of harmony does not
necessarily involve comparison. When a number of sounds in perfect
harmony strike the ear simultaneously, we have but a single impression ;
we perceive but one mass of sound. Analysing this into its component
Earts is an act of intelligence, not of direct perception, and is performed
y fixing our attention first on the whole, and then on the separate ele-
ments, not all at once, but one after another. These objections to his
doctrine our author seems not to have thought of, because those of Stewart,
whom as an opponent he principally had in view, were different ( Lectures,
ii. 145). But they ought to have occurred to him without prompting,
being in complete unison with his doctrine that consciousness of wholes
usually precedes that of their parts ; that " instead of commencing with
minima, perception commences with masses." (Lectures, ii. 327, and many
similar passages.)
Sir W. Hamilton is also inconsistent in affirming (Lectures, i. 237) that
attention is " an act of will or desire," and afterwards (247, 248) that it is
in some cases automatic, " a mere vital and irresistible act." This how-
ever, is only a verbal inaccuracy. He doubtless meant that attention is
generally voluntary, but occasionally automatic.
* I see with regret that what I have said above, or rather perhaps what
I have omitted to say, has given an impression even to friendly critics
that I think considerably less highly of Sir W. Hamilton's intellectual
calibre, and of his general services to mankind, than I do. My business
in this work was to estimate not the man, but the permanent additions
made by him to the sum of speculative philosophy. These I cannot rate
very high, but I join sincerely and heartily in the tribute to his merits, so
justly paid by Mr. Grote in the Westminster Review (pp. 2, 3).
" He kept up the idea of philosophy as a subject to be studied from its
" own points of view : a dignity which in earlier times it enjoyed, perhaps
" to mischievous excess, but from which in recent times it has far too much
" receded, especially in England. He performed the great service of
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 635
With regard to the causes which prevented a thinker
of such abundant acuteness, and more than abundant
industry, from accomplishing the great things at which
he aimed, it would ill become me to speak dogmatically.
It would be a very unwarrantable assumption of superio-
rity over a mind like Sir W. Hamilton's, if I attempted
' labouring strenuously to piece together the past traditions of philosophy,
' to rediscover those which had been allowed to drop into oblivion, and to
' make out the genealogy of opinions as far as negligent predecessors had
' still left the possibility of doing so. We recognise also in Sir W. Hamil-
' ton an amount of intellectual independence which seldom accompanies
' such vast erudition. He recites many different opinions, but he judges
' them all for himself; and, what is of still greater moment, he constantly
' gives the reasons for his judgments. To us these reasons are always of
' more or less value, whether we admit them to be valid or not
' To those who dissent from him, as well as to those who agree with him,
' his reasonings are highly instructive : while the full citations from so
' many other writers contribute materially not only to elucidate the
' points directly approached, but also to enlarge our knowledge of philo-
' sophy generally."
And in the emphatic words of Professor Masson (pp. 308, 309) : " Try
' him even in respect of the importance of his effects on the national
' thought. Whether from his learning or by reason of his independent
' thinkings, was it not he that hurled into the midst of us the very ques-
' tions of metaphysics, and the very forms of those questions, that have
' become the academic theses everywhere in this British age for real
' metaphysical discussion? .... Let it be said of Sir W. Hamilton that,
' simply and by whatever means, he did more than any other man to re-
' instate the worship of Difficulty in the higher mind of Great Britain."
Moreover, as Mr. Grote further observes, " in a subject so abstract, ob-
' scure, and generally unpalatable, as Logic and Metaphysics, the difficulty
' which the teacher finds in inspiring interest is extreme. That Sir \\ .
' Hamilton overcame such difficulty with remarkable success is the affir-
' mation of his two editors," and is proved by the profound impression
eft by the teacher and his teaching on the intellects and feelings of his
mpils. The "Inquirer" (p. 6) charges me with ignoring "that which
' formed the greater part of his work the living teaching he gave to living
' men whereby he has raised up for our age and nation that which we
' most needed, a school of men who can and do think." It would be very
unworthy to ignore so important an item in his services to mankind. I
acknowledge it with a feeling, in which I am surpassed by none, of the
inestimable worth of all such services. But if I had been attempting a
summary of the benefits which the world owes to Sir W. Hamilton, neither
could 1 have ignored his articles on Education, and especially those on the
English Universities, to which it is impossible not to attribute a great in-
fluence in shaming those bodies out of their long-continued selfish betrayal
of their national trust, and putting the new life into them which they
have since manifested and are manifesting, with so much advantage to
the spirit of the time and to the national culture.
Even in the character of a speculative thinker, my estimate of Sir W.
Hamilton is prodigiously misjudged by those who have made themselves,
636 CONCLUDING REMARKS.
to gauge and measure his faculties, or give a complete
theory of his successes and failures. The utmost I venture
on, is to suggest, as simple possibilities, some of the causes
which may have partly contributed to his shortcomings
as a philosopher. One of those causes is so common as
to be the next thing to universal, but requires all the
more to be signalized for its unfortunate consequences :
as they had good right to do, the champions of his philosophic reputation.
I cannot sufficiently protest against such assertions as that of Mr. Mansel
(p. 181), to which there are several equivalent by the " Inquirer," that, if
all is true which I have alleged, " Sir W. Hamilton, instead of being a
" great philosopher, is the veriest blunderer that ever put pen to paper."
Such exaggerations are intelligible in those by whose own estimate he
stands almost at the summit of existing philosophy, and who having
climbed, as they think, by his assistance, to the same pinnacle, think an
inferior eminence unworthy to be counted for anything at all. But some
of the most conspicuous figures in the history of philosophy, distinguished
no less by the power of their intellect than by the greatness of their
influence on subsequent thought, have not, at least in my judgment, left
behind them even so much of positive addition to philosophic truth as Sir
W. Hamilton. Kant, for example, of whose mental powers no one who is
not a disciple probably forms a higher estimate than I do, and who holds
so essential a place in the development of philosophic thought, that until
somebody had done what Kant did, metaphysics according to our present
conception of it could not have been constituted Kant, probably, will be
finally judged to have left no noticeable contribution to philosophy which
was both new and true, except some of his refutations of predecessors.
Kant, it is true, was a more consecutive, and therefore a more consistent
thinker than Sir W. Hamilton, and it is chiefly by that quality that he has
become one of the turning points in the history of philosophy, which Sir
W. Hamilton has no claim to be : but in ability to discern psychological
truths uncoloured by a theory, he seems to me inferior to Sir W. Hamilton.
Perhaps, though of a very different character of mind, the nearest parallel
in philosophic merit to Sir W. Hamilton (apart from erudition, in which
he has probably no parallel among philosophers), was Professor Dugald
Stewart. Neither of them can be numbered among the great original
thinkers who have carried philosophy into one of its indispensable phases,
as did Locke, Descartes, Hume, Kant, and with all his shortcomings, even
Reid. Neither of them saw into the heart of great psychological ques-
tions which had never been f atl omed before, like Berkeley, Hartley,
Brown, or James Mill. Both of them have thrown considerable light on
minor questions : both have gathered, and more or less perfectly assimi-
lated, truths from very opposite quarters : both have committed great
oversights, though Sir W. Hamilton, coming last, and having the benefit
of the Kantian movement, stood on a considerably higher platform of
metaphysical thought. Both had some, though but moderate, powers of
analysis ; their philosophic style, though extremely unlike, was, in both, ex-
cellent : both gave an important stimulus to the national intellect by their
extraordinary power as public teachers ; and both will be remembered as
meritoriously handing on the torch of philosophy, but neither of them, I
venture to say, as among those who have much brightened or fed its flame.
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 637
over-anxiety to make safe a foregone conclusion. The
whole philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton seems to have had
its character determined by the requirements of the doc-
trine of Free-will ; and to that doctrine he clung, be-
cause he had persuaded himself that it afforded the only
premises from which human reason could deduce the
doctrines of natural religion. I believe that in this
persuasion he was thoroughly his own dupe, and
that his speculations have weakened the philosophical
foundation of religion fully as much as they have con-
firmed it.
A second cause which may help to account for his not
having effected more in philosophy, is the enormous
amount of time and mental vigour which he expended on
mere philosophical erudition, leaving, it may be said, only
the remains of his mind for the real business of thinkino-.
Q
While he seems to have known, almost by heart, the
voluminous Greek commentators on Aristotle, and to
have read all that the most obscure schoolman or fifth-
rate German transcendentalist had written on the sub-
jects with which he occupied himself; while, not con-
tent with a general knowledge of these authors, he could
tell with the greatest precision what each of them
thought on any given topic, and in what each differed
from every other ; while expending his time and energy
on all this, he had not enough of them left to complete
his Lectures. Those on Metaphysics, as already remarked,
stopped short on the threshold of what was, especially in
his own opinion, the most important part of it, and never
reached even the threshold of the third and last ot the
parts into which, in an early lecture, he divided
his subject.* Those on Logic he left dependent, for
most of the subordinate developments, on extracts strung
together from German writers, chiefly Krug and Esser ;
often not destitute of merit, but generally so vague, as
* Lectures, i. 123-125. This third part is " Ontology, or Metaphysics
Proper;" "the science conversant about inferences of unknown being from
ita known manifestations;" things not manifested in consciousness, but
legitimately inferrible from those which are.
638 CONCLUDING REMARKS.
to make all those parts of his exposition in which they
predominate, unsatisfactory * sometimes written from
points of view different from Sir W. Hamilton's own,
but which he never found time or took the trouble to
re-express in adaptation to his own mode of thought, f
In the whole circle of psychological and logical specula-
tion, it is astonishing how few are the topics into which he
has thrown any of the powers of his own intellect ; and
on how small a proportion even of these he has pushed
his investigations beyond what seemed necessary for the
purposes of some particular controversy. In consequence,
philosophical doctrines are taken up, and again laid
down, with perfect unconsciousness, and his philosophy
seems made up of scraps from several conflicting meta-
physical systems. The Relativity of human knowledge
is made a great deal of in opposition to Schelling and
Cousin, but drops out or dwindles into nothing in Sir
W. Hamilton's own psychology. The validity of our
natural beliefs, and the doctrine that the incogitable is
not therefore impossible, are strenuously asserted in this
place and disregarded in that, according to the question
in hand. On the subject of General Notions he is
avowedly a Nominalist, but teaches the whole of Logic
as if he had never heard of any doctrine but the Con-
ceptualist ; what he presents as a reconcilement of the
two being never adverted to afterwards, and serving
only as an excuse to himself for accepting the one
doctrine and invariably using the language of the other.
Arriving at his doctrines almost always under the
* This is strikingly the case, among many others, with the Lectures on
Definition and Division. On those subjects our author lets Krug and
Esser think for him. Those authors stand to him instead, not merely of
finding: a fit expression for his thoughts, but apparently of having any
thoughts at all.
f I have already given an example of this from the Lectures, iii. 159-
162. His own idea of Clearness as a property of concepts, is that "a con-
' cept is said to be clear when the degree of consciousness is such as to
" enable us to distinguish it" (the concept) " as a whole from others :"
but this idea is expounded by a passage from Esser, in which it is not the
concept, but the objects thought thwrgh the concept, which, if sufficiently
distinguished from all others, constitute the concept a clear one. I
confess that Esser has here greatly the advantage over Sir W. Hamilton,
who might have usefully corrected his own theory from the borrowed
commentary on it.
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 639
stimulus of some special dispute, he never knows how
far to press them : consequently there is a region
of haze round the place where opinions of different
origin meet. I formerly quoted from him a felicitous
illustration drawn from the mechanical operation of
tunnelling ; that process affords another, justly applicable
to himself. The reader must have heard of that gigantic
enterprise of the Italian Government, the tunnel through
Mont Cenis. This great work is carried on simultane-
ously from both ends, in well-grounded confidence (such
is now the minute accuracy of engineering operations)
that the two parties of workmen will correctly meet in
the middle. Were they to disappoint this expectation,
and work past one another in the dark, they would afford
n likeness of Sir W. Hamilton's mode of tunnelling the
human mind.
This failure to think out subjects until they had been
thoroughly mastered, or until consistency had been at-
tained between the different views which the author took
of them from different points of observation, may, like
the unfinished state of the Lectures, be with great pro-
bability ascribed to the excessive absorption of his time
and energies by the study of old writers. That absorp-
tion did worse ; for it left him with neither leisure nor
vigour for what was far more important in every sense,
and an entirely indispensable qualification for a master
in philosophy the systematic study of the sciences.
Except physiology, on some parts of which his mental
powers were really employed, he may be said to have
known nothing of any physical science. I do not mean
that he was ignorant of familiar facts, or that he may
not, in the course of his education, have gone through
the curriculum. But it must have been as Gibbon did,
who says, in his autobiography, " I was content to receive
" the passive impressions of my professor's lectures, with-
" out any active exercise of my own powers." For any
trace the study had left in Sir W. Hamilton's mind, he
might as well never have heard of it.* ,
* The signs of Sir W. Hamilton's want of familiarity with the physical
ciences meet us in every corner of his works. One, which I have not
640 CONCLUDING REMARKS.
It is much to be regretted that Sir W. Hamilton did
not write the history of philosophy, instead of choosing,
as the direct object of his intellectual exertions, philo-
sophy itself. He possessed a knowledge of the materials
such as no one, probably, for many generations, will take
the trouble of acquiring again; and the erudition of phi-
losophy is emphatically one of the things which it is
good that a few should acquire for the benefit of the
rest. Independently of the great interest and value
attaching to a knowledge of the historical develop-
ment of speculation, there is much in the old writers on
philosophy, even those of the middle ages, really worth
preserving for its scientific value.* But this should be
hitherto found a convenient place for noticing, is the singular view he
takes of analysis and synthesis. He imagines that synthesis always pre-
supposes analysis, and that unless grounded on a previous analysis, syn-
thesis can afford no knowledge. " Synthesis without a previous analysis
" is baseless ; for synthesis receives from analysis the elements which it
" recomposes" (Lectures, i. 98). " Synthesis without analysis is a false
" knowledge, that is, no knowledge at all. ... A synthesis without a
" previous analysis is radically and ab initio null" (Ibid. 99). This
affirmation is the more surprising, as the example he himself selects to
illustrate analysis and synthesis is a case of chemical composition ; a
neutral salt, compounded of an acid and an alkali. Did he suppose that
when a chemist succeeds in forming a salt by synthesis merely, putting
together two substances never actually found in combination, he does not
make exactly the same addition to chemical science as if he had met with
the compound first, and analysed it into its elements afterwards ? Did
Sir W. Hamilton ever read a memoir by a chemist on a newly-discovered
elementary substance ? If so, did he not find that the discoverer invari-
ably proceeds to ascertain by synthesis what combinations the new element
will form with all other elements for which it has any affinity p Sir W.
Hamilton, though he drew his example from physics, forgot all that
related to the example, and thought only of psychological investigation,
in which it does commonly happen that the compound fact is pret>ented
to us first, and we have to begin by analysing it ; our synthesis, if prac-
ticable at all, taking place afterwards, and serving only to verify the
analysis. Therefore, in spite of his own example, Sir W. Hamilton
defines synthesis as being always a recomposition and " reconstruction"
(Lectures, i. 98). Could any one who had the smallest familiarity with
physical science have committed this strange oversight ?
Another example, to which I shall content myself with referring, is
the incapacity of understanding an argument respecting a principle of
Mechanics, shown in his controversy with Dr. Whewell respecting the
law that the pressure of a lever on the fulcrum, when the weights
balance one another, is equal to the sum of the two weights (Discussions,
pp. 338, 339).
* " We set particular value upon this preservation of the traditions of
" philosophy, and upon this maintenance of a known perpetual succes-
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 641
extracted, and rendered into the phraseology of modern
thought, by persons as familiar with that as with the
ancient, and possessing a command of its language ; a
combination never yet so perfectly realized as in Sir W.
Hamilton. It is waste of time for a mere student of
philosophy, to have to learn the familiar use of fifty
philosophic phraseologies, all greatly inferior to that of
his own time ; and if this were required from all thinkers,
there would be very little time left for thought. A man
who had done it so thoroughly as Sir W. Hamilton,
should have made his cotemporaries and successors, once
for all, partakers of the benefit ; and rendered it unneces-
sary for any one to do it again, except for verifying and
correcting his representations. This, which no one but
himself could have done, he has left undone; and has
given us, instead, a contribution to mental philosophy
which has been more than equalled by many not superior
to him in powers, and wholly destitute of erudition. Of
all persons, in modern times, entitled to the name of phi-
losophers, the two, probably, whose reading on their own
subjects was the scantiest, in proportion to their intel-
lectual capacity, were Dr. Thomas Brown and Arch-
bishop Whately : accordingly they are the only two of
whom Sir W. Hamilton, though acknowledging their
abilities, habitually speaks with a certain tinge of super-
ciliousness. It cannot be denied that both Dr. Brown
and Archbishop Whately would have thought and written
better than they did, if they had been better read in the
writings of previous thinkers: but I am not afraid that pos-
' sion among the speculative minds of humanity, with proper comparisons
4 and contrasts. We have found among the names quoted by Sir W.
' Hamilton, and thanks to his care, several authors hardly at all known
4 to us, and opinions cited from them not less instructive than curious.
He deserves the more gratitude, because he departs herein from received
usage since Bacon and Descartes. The example set by these great men
was admirable, so far as it went to throw off the authority of prede-
cessors ; but pernicious so far as it banished those predecessors out of
' knowledge, like mere magazines of immaturity and error. Throughout
4 the eighteenth century, all study of the earlier modes of philosophizing
' was, tor the most part, neglected. Of such neglect, remarkable in-
4 stances are pointed out by Sir W. Hamilton." Mr. Grote, in West-
minster Review, p. 2.
TT
642 CONCLUDING REMARKS.
terity will contradict me when I say, that either of them
has done greater service to the world, in the origination
and diffusion of important thought, than Sir W.Hamilton
with all his learning : because, though indolent readers,
they were, both of them, active and fertile thinkers.*
It is not that Sir W. Hamilton's erudition is not
frequently of real use to him on particular questions of
philosophy. It does him one valuable service : it eh-
ables him to know all the various opinions which can be
held on the questions he discusses, and to conceive and
express them clearly, leaving none of them out. This it
does, though even this not always ; but it does little
else, even of what might be expected from erudition
when enlightened by philosophy. He knew, with ex-
traordinary accuracy, the on of every philosopher's" doc-
trine, but gave himself little trouble about the Store.
With one exception, I find no remarks bearing upon
that point in any part of his writings, f I imagine he
* Mr. Grote, agreeing with me as to Brown, demurs to this judgment as
regards Archbishop Whately ; of which latter comparison Professor Mas-
son, still more naturally, complains. Our difference, I suspect, is not
that I value Sir W. Hamilton less, but Archbishop Whately more. The
result of my reading of many of his multifarious writings is a much higher
estimation than Mr. Grote's seems to be, both of his originality and of
his services to thought. As a metaphysician proper, no one would com-
pare him with Sir W. Hamilton : but I am speaking of him in the more
general character of a thinker, and in respect of the number of true and
valuable thoughts on many various subjects, metaphysics being one, which
he brought into the general stock, and threw into circulation.
Let me add that in speaking of Brown and Whately as active and fer-
tile thinkers, I had no idea that I should be considered as refusing those
attributes to Sir W. Hamilton.
f This solitary exception relates to Hume. Respecting the general
scope and purpose, the pervading spirit, of Hume's speculations, Sir W.
Hamilton does give an opinion, and, I venture to think, a wrong one. He
regards Hume's philosophy as scepticism in its legitimate sense. Hume's
object, he thinks, was to prove the uncertainty of all knowledge. With
this intent he represents him as reasoning from premises " not established
by himself," but " accepted only as principles universally conceded in the
previous schools of philosophy." These premises Hume showed (accord-
ing to Sir W. Hamilton) to lead to conclusions which contradicted the
evidence of consciousness ; thus proving, not that consciousness deceives,
but that the premises generally accepted on the authority of philosophers,
and leading to these conclusions, must be false. (Discussions, pp. 87, 88,
and elsewhere.)
This is certainly the use which has been made of Hume's arguments, by
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 643
would have been much at a loss if he had been required
to draw up a philosophical estimate of the mind of any
great thinker. He rarely seems to look at any opinion
of a philosopher in connexion with the same philoso-
pher's other opinions. Accordingly, he is weak as to
the mutual relations of philosophical doctrines. He
seldom knows any of the corollaries from a thinker's
opinions, unless the thinker has himself drawn them;
and even then he knows them, not as corollaries, but only
as opinions. One of the most striking examples he affords
of this inability is in the case of Leibnitz ; and it is
worth while to analyse this instance, because nothing
Beid and many other of his opponents. Admitting their validity as argu-
ments, Reid considered them, not as. proving Hume's conclusions, but as a
reductio ad absurdum of his premises. That Hume however had any
foresight of their being put to this use, either for a dogmatical or a
purely sceptical purpose, appears to me supremely improbable. If we
form our opinion by reading the series of Hume's metaphysical essays
straight through, instead of judging from a few detached expressions in a
single essay (that "on the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy,") I think
our judgment will be that Hume sincerely accepted both the premises
and the conclusions. It would be difficult, no doubt, to prove this by con-
clusive evidence, nor would 1 venture absolutely to affirm it. In the case
of the freethinking philosophers of the last century, it is often impossible
to be quite certain what their opinions really were ; how far the reserva-
tions they made, expressed real convictions, or were concessions to sup-
posed necessities of position. Hume, it is certain, made such concessions
largely : insincere they can hardly be called, being so evidently intended
to be (jboji/qei/ra, at least a-vveroia-i. I have a strong impression that Hume's
scepticism, or rather his professed admiration of scepticism, was a dis-
guise of this description, intended rather to avoid offence than to conceal his
opinion ; that he preferred to be called a sceptic, rather than by a more
odious name ; and having to promulgate conclusions which he knew would
be regarded as contradicting, on one hand the evidence of common sense,
on the other the doctrines of religion, did not like to declare them as
positive convictions, but thought it more judicious to exhibit them as the
results we might come to, if we put complete confidence in the trust-
worthiness of our rational faculty. I have little doubt that he himself
did feel this confidence, and wished it to be felt by his readers. There is
certainly no trace of a different feeling in his speculations on any of the
other important subjects treated in his works : and even on this subject,
the general tenor of what he wrote pointing one way, and only single
passages the other, it is most reasonable to interpret the latter in the
mode which will least contradict the expression of his habitual tate of
mind in the former.
I cannot but believe, therefore, that Sir W. Hamilton has misunder-
stood the essential character of Hume's mind: but his hearty admira-
tion and honest vindication of him as a thinker are highly honourable to
Sir W. Hamilton, both as a philosopher and as a man.
644 CONCLUDING REMARKS.
can more conclusively show, bow little capable be was of
entering into the spirit of a system unlike his own.
If there ever was a thinker whose system of thought
could without difficulty be conceived as a connected
whole, it was Leibnitz. Hardly any philosopher has
taken so much pains to explain the filiation of all his
main conceptions, in a manner at once satisfactory to
his own mind and intelligible to the world. And there
is hardly any one in whom the filiation is more complete,
these various conceptions being all applications of one
common principle. Yet Sir W. Hamilton understands
them so ill, as to be able to say, after giving an account
of the Pre-established Harmony, that " its author hlrn-
" self probably regarded it more as a specimen of inge-
" nuity than as a serious doctrine."* And again : " It
" is a disputed point whether Leibnitz was serious in
" his monadology and pre-established harmony."! To
say nothing of the injustice done, by this surmise, to
the deep sincerity and high philosophic earnestness of
that most eminent man ; it is obvious to those who
study opinions in their relation to the mind entertaining
them, that a person, who could thus think concerning
the Pre-established Harmony and tie Monadology, how-
ever correctly he may have seized many particular opinions
of Leibnitz, had never taken into his mind a conception
of Leibnitz himself as a philosopher. These theories
were necessitated by Leibnitz's other opinions. They
were the only outlet from the difficulties of the funda-
mental doctrine of his philosophy, the Principle of
Sufficient Reason.
All who know anything of Leibnitz, are aware that
he affirmed it to be a principle of the universe, that no-
thing exists which has not an antecedent ground in
reason, and cognisable by reason ; a ground which, when
.known, gives all the properties of the thing by natural
and necessary consequence. This Sufficient Eeason might
be some abstract property of the thing, serving as the
pattern on which it was constructed, and being the key
* Lectures, i. 304. f Foot-note to Reid, p. 309.
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 645
to all its other attributes. Such, for example, is the pro-
perty by which mathematicians define the circle or the
triangle, and from which, by mere reasoning, the re-
maining properties of those figures are deducible. In
other cases, the Sufficient Reason of a phenomenon is
found in its physical cause. But the mere existence of
the cause as an invariable antecedent, does not constitute
it the Sufficient Reason of the effect. There must be
something in the nature of the cause itself, something
capable of being detected in it, which, once known, ac-
counts for its being followed by that particular effect ;
something which explains the character of the effect,
and, had it been known beforehand, would have enabled
us to foretel the precise effect that would be produced.
To so great a length did Leibnitz carry this doctrine, as
to affirm that God (saving actual miracle, which as a
highly exceptional fact he was willing to admit) could
not, in the exercise of his ordinary providence, conduct
the government of the world except par la nature des
creatures ; through second causes, each containing, in its
own properties, wherewithal to furnish a complete ex-
planation of the phsenomena to which it gives rise.
Setting out with this a priori conception of the order
of the universe, Leibnitz found Mind apparently acting
upon Matter and Matter upon Mind, and was utterly
unable to discover in the nature and attributes of either,
any Sufficient Reason for this action. The two sub-
stances seemed wholly disparate : there was nothing in
them from which action of any kind upon one another
could have been presumed to be so much as possible.
He saw in this one case, what is true, though he
did not see it, in all cases whatever that there is no
nexus, no natural link, between agent and patient, be-
tween cause and effect, and that all we know or can
know of their relation is, that the one always follows the
other. But to accept the mere fact as ultimate, without
craving for a demonstration, could not enter into Leib-
nitz's geometrical mind ; and was positively forbidden by
his Principle of Sufficient Reason. Here was a dilemma !
i
646 CONCLUDING REMARKS.
Happily, however, the difficulty of admitting that Mind
could act upon Matter, disappeared in the case of an
Infinite Mind. In the Omnipotence of the Deity there
lay a Sufficient Reason for the possibility of anything
which the Deity might be pleased to do. It must be
God, therefore, and no subordinate agency, that directly
produces the effects on Matter which seem owing to
Mind, and the effects on Mind which seem owing to
Matter. This being admitted, there were only two pos-
sible theories to choose from. Either God, from the
beginning, wound up Mind and Matter to go together
like two clocks, though without any connexion with one
another; and I see an object, not because the object is
before my eyes, but because it was prearranged from
eternity that the presence of the object and the fact of
my seeing should occur at the same instant ; or else,. at
the moment when the object appears, God intervenes,
and gives me the perception of sight, exactly as if the
object had caused it. The former theory is the Pre-
established Harmony ; the latter is the doctrine of Occa-
sional Causes, to which, as rather the less grotesque
supposition of the two, the Cartesians had been driven by
the pressure of the same difficulty. But this hypothesis,
as it supposed nothing less than a standing miracle, was
wholly inadmissible by Leibnitz. It was inconsistent
with the idea which he had formed to himself of the
perfections of the Deity. He considered it as. assimilat-
ing Providence to a bad workman, whose engines will
not work- unless he himself stands by, and gives them a
helping hand; " a watchmaker, who, having constructed
" a timepiece, would still be obliged himself to turn the
" hands, to make it mark the hours."* Leibnitz could
not find, in the idea of God, any Sufficient Eeason why
so roundabout a mode of governing the universe should
have been chosen by him. He was thus thrown upon
the hypothesis of a Pre-established Harmony, as his only .
refuge ; and there can be no doubt that he accepted it,
with the' full conviction of an intellect accustomed to
* Quoted from Leibnitz by Sir W. Hamilton, Lectures, i. 303.
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 647
pursue given premises to their consequences with all the
rigour of geometrical demonstration.
The doctrine of Monads was as necessary a corol-
lary from Leibnitz's first principle as the Pre-established
Harmony. Everything, whether physical or spiritual,
which has an individual existence, is a compound of
innumerable attributes, between many of which we can-
not seize any connexion, but on Leibnitz's theory it was
not admissible to suppose that no connexion exists.
There must be something, somewhere, which contains in
its own nature the complete theory and explanation of
the combination of attributes, and is the reason of its
being that combination and no other : and what could
this be unless a sort of kernel of the entire Being the
Soul in the case of a spiritual being, a kind of Essence
of the Individual in that of a merely physical object ?
The Monads of Leibnitz do not really differ from the
imaginary Essences of the schoolmen, except in not
being abstractions, but objective realities in the com-
pletest meaning of the word ; which, indeed, the Sub-
stantise Secunda3 of the Realists already were, only that
they were essences of classes, and were conceived as in-
hering simultaneously in numerous individuals, while the
Monads of Leibnitz were lively little beings, the principles
of animation and activity, each of them the real agent
or Force at the bottom of one individual. All this may
seem poor stuff, and a melancholy exhibition of a great
intellect. But as there is nothing in experience which
directly disproves these theories, they are not really more
absurd than many a one which has not so quaint an ap-
pearance : and it is the strength, not the weakness of a
systematic intellect, that it does not shrink from conclu-
sions because they have an absurd look, when they are
necessary corollaries from premises which the thinker,
and probably most of those who criticise him, have not
ceased to regard as true. Leibnitz was led to the Monads
and the Pre-established Harmony by the same logical ne-
cessity, which made Descartes, far more absurdly, affirm
the automatism of animals ; and we might as reasonably
648 CONCLUDING REMARKS.
doubt the seriousness of the latter opinion, as of the
former. The same logical consistency made him a Neces-
sitarian, and an Optimist ; since the doctrine of Sufficient
Reason made Grod the author of all that happens, conse-
quently of all human actions ; and God's attributes could
not be a Sufficient Reason for any world but the best
possible.
Other examples may be given, though none greater
than this, of Sir VV. Hamilton's inability to enter into
the very mind of another thinker. Is it not, for instance,
a surprising thing, that one who knew Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle so well, should attribute* to all of them his
own opinion that (at least in the case of speculative
knowledge) not truth but the search for truth is the
important matter, and that the pursuit of it is not for
the sake of the attainment, but of the mental activity
and energy developed in the search ?f If there have
been three men since speculation began who would have
vehemently rejected such a doctrine, they are the three
who are here placed at the head of the authorities in its
support. Our author arrives at this strange misunder-
standing, by giving a meaning to single expressions,
derived from his own mode of thought and not from
theirs. In Aristotle's case the assertion rests on a mis-
take of the meaning of the Aristotelian word ivipyna,
which did not signify energy, but fact as opposed to possi-
bility, actus to potentia.\ One hardly knows what to say
to a writer who understands TcXoc ov yvuaiq a\\a 7iy>aic,
to mean, " The intellect is perfected not by knowledge
but by activity. "
* Lectures, i. 11, 12.
f " Speculative truth is only pursued and held of value for the sake of
intellectual activity" (Lectures, i. 7), and again (at p. 13) " speculative
truth" is said to be " only valuable as a mean of intellectual activity."
J The very passage quoted from Aristotle by the editors in support of
this representation of him, shows that he was using the word in ms own
and not in Sir W. Hamilton's sense. TeXos 8' fj Zvspysia, <a\ TOVTOV x^P LV V
Xaft/Saverat .... Kat TTJV 6e<apriTiK?)v (e^ovcti'} Iva QeutpSxriv' SAX' ov
iv Iva dtcapqriKTjv f\(a(riv.
Professor Veitch, in the third Appendix to his Memoir of Sir W.
Hamilton, points out that in this last sentence I have done Sir W. Hamil-
ton an injustice. The passage, TeAos ov yvSxris dXAa irpdgis, was not quoted
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 649
We see, from such instances, how much even Sir
W. Hamilton's erudition wanted of what we have a
right to expect from erudition in a superior mind that
it should enter into the general spirit of the things
it knows, not know them merely in their details. Sir
W. Hamilton studied the eminent thinkers of old, only
from the outside. He did not throw his own mind into
their manner of thought ; he did not survey the field of
philosophic speculation from their standing point, and
see each object as it would be seen with their lights, and
with their modes of looking. The opinion of an author
stands an isolated fact in Sir W. Hamilton's pages, with-
out foundation in the author's individuality, or connexion
with his other doctrines. For want of this elucidation
one by another, even the opinions themselves are, as in
the case last cited, very liable to be misunderstood. A
history of philosophy from his hand, unless proposing to
himself a new object had altered his point of view, could
not have been final ; it would not have been a philoso-
phical history of philosophy; but it would have stood in
the same relation to such a work, in which accurate and
complete annals stand to political history: it would have
been an invaluable protection against the mistakes of sub-
sequent historians, and would have prodigiously abridged
their labours. Such, therefore, as his expositions of the
opinions of philosophers are, it is greatly to be regretted
that we have not more of them ; and that his unrivalled
knowledge of all the antecedents of Philosophy has en-
riched the world with nothing but a few selections of
passages on topics on which circumstances had led Sir
W. Hamilton to write. He is known to have left copious
common- place books, without which indeed it would have
been hardly possible that such stores of knowledge could
be kept within easy reference. Let us hope that they
are carefully preserved ; that they will, in some form or
by himself, bnt by his editors, as the nearest they had found to a justifica-
tion of the statement that Aristotle held the opinion attributed to him in
the text. They would have done more wisely by making no reference,
than one which so totally fails to support the inference drawn from it.
U U
650 CONCLUDING REMARKS.
other, be made accessible to students, and will yet do
good service to the future historian of philosophy.
Should this hope be fulfilled, future ages will have greater
cause than, I think, Sir W. Hamilton's published philo-
sophical speculations will ever give them, to rejoice in
the fruits of his labours, and to celebrate his name.
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INDEX
Abbey & Overton's English Church Histo|(r 15
's Photography H
Acton's Modern Cookery 21
Alpine Club Map of Switzerland 18
Alpine Guide (The) 18
A mos's Jurisprudence 5
Primer of the Constitution 5
Anderson's Strength of Materials n
Armstrong's Organic Chemistry n
Arnolds (Dr.) Lectures on Modern History 2
Miscellaneous Works 7
-Sermons 15
(T.) English Literature
Arnott's Elements of Physics
Atelier (The) du Lys .......................
Atherstone Priory .............................
Autumn Holidays of a Country Parson
Ayres Treasury of Bible Knowledge ..
Bacon's Essays, by Abbott ..................... 6
. - by Whately .................. 6
- Life and Letters, by Sfedding ... 5
- Works .................................... 5
Bagehot's Literary Studies ..................... 7
Bailey's Festus, a Poem ........................ 19
Bain's Mental and Moral Science ............ 6
- on the Senses and Intellect ......... 6
- Emotions and Will ..................... 6
Baker s Two Works on Ceylon ............... 17
Balls Alpine Guides ........................... 18
Barry on Railway Appliances ............... n
Beaconsfield' s (Lord) Novels and Tales ... 18
Beesly's Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla ......... 3
Bent's Republic of San Marino ............... 17
Black's Treatise on Brewing .................. 21
Blackley's German- English Dictionary ...... 8
Elaine's Rural Sports ........................... 20
Bloxam's Metals ................................. n
Bolland and Lang's Aristotle's Politics ...... 6
Boultbee on 39 Articles ........................... 15
's History of the English Church..
Bourne's Works on the Steam Engine ...... 14
Bawdier s Family Shakespeare ............... 19
Bramley- Moore' s Six Sisters of the Valleys . 1 9
Brands' s Dictionary of Science, Literature,
and Art .......................................... 12
Brassey's Voyage of the Sunbeam ......... 17
Brian Boru, a Tragedy ........................ 19
Browne's Exposition of the 39 Articles ...... 15
Browning's Modern England ............... 3
Buckles History of Civilisation ............... 2
- Posthumous Remains ............... 7
Buckton's Food and Home Cookery ......... 21
- Health in the House ............... 13
- Town and Window Gardening... 12
Butts Hints to Mothers ........................ 21
- Maternal Management of Children . 21
Bullingcr's Lexicon to the Greek Testa-
ment ............................................. 8
Burgomaster's Family (The) .................. 19
Burkes Vicissitudes of Families ............... 4
Cabinet Lawyer .................................... 21
Capes' s Age of the Antonines .................. 3
Early Roman Empire ............... 3
Cayley's Iliad of Homer
Changed Aspects of Unchanged Truths ..
Chesney's Indian Polity 2
Waterloo Campaign 2
Church's Beginning of the Middle Ages ... 3
Colenso on Moabite Stone &c 17
's Pentateuch and Book of Joshua. 17
Commonplace Philosopher 7
Comte's Positive Polity S
Congreve's Politics of Aristotle 6
Coningtons Translation of Virgil's ^Eneid 19
Miscellaneous Writings 6
Contanseau's Two French Dictionaries ... 8
Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul 16
Cooper's Tales from Euripides 18
Cordery's Struggle against Absolute Mon-
archy 3
Cotta on Rocks, by Lawrence 12
Counsel and Comfort from a City Pulpit... 7
Cox's (G. W.) Athenian Empire 3
Crusades 3
. Greeks and Persians 3
Creighton's Age of Elizabeth 3
England a Continental Power 3
Shilling History of England ... 3
Tudors and the Reformation 3
Cresy's Encyclopaedia of Civil Engineering 14
Critical Essays of a Country Parson 7
Crookes's Anthracen 15
Chemical Analyses 13
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Crump's Manual of Banking 21
Culley's Handbook of Telegraphy 14
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De Caisne and Le Maout's Botany 12
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Dobson on the Ox 20
Dove's Law of Storms 9
DowelTs History of Taxes , 5
Doyle's (R.) Fairyland 13
Drew's Hulsean Lectures 15
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Eastlake's Hints on Household Taste 14
Edwards's Nile 17
Ellicott's Scripture Commentaries 16
Lectures on Life of Christ 15
Elsa and her Vulture 19
Epochs of Ancient History 3
English History 3
Modern History 3
Ewald"s History of Israel 16
Antiquities of Israel 16
Fairbaim's Applications of Iron 14
; Information for Engineers 14
Mills and Millwork 14
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Frobisher's Ijfebyjfotus 4
Froudes Caesar 4
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Goodeve's Mechanics n
Mechanism n
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Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson 7
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Griffin's Algebra and Trigonometry u
Grove on Correlation of Physical Forces... 10
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Hales Fall of the Stuarts 3
Hartwigs Works on Natural History and
Popular Science n
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Hayward's Selected Essays 6
Heer's Primeval World of Switzerland 12
Heine's Life and Works, by Stigand 4
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HerschtTs Outlines of Astronomy 9
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Hullah's History of Modern Music 12
Transition Period 12
Hume's Essays 6
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History of Rome 2
Indian Alps 17
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Patentee's Manual 21
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"Jukes's Types of Genesis 16
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Kalisch's Bible Studies 16
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Animal Chemistry 13
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Philosophy (,
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Lewes' s Biographical History of Philosophy 3
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Lindley and Moore's Treasury of Botany ... 21
Lloyd's Magnetism JQ
Wave-Theory of Light 10
London Series of English Classics 6
Longman's (F. W.) Chess Openings 21
German Dictionary ... 8
(W.) Edward the Third 2
Lectures on History of England 2
Old and New St. Paul's 13
London's Encyclopaedia of Agriculture ... 15
Gardening 15
Plants.-. 12
Luobock's Origin of Civilisation 12
Ludlow's American War 3
Lyra Germanica 17
Macalister's Vertebrate Animals u
Macaulay's (Lord) Clive, by Bowen 6
Essays i
History of England ... i
Lays, Illus. Editions ... 13
Cheap Edition... 19
Life and Letters 4
Miscellaneous Writings 7
Speeches 7
Works i
Writings, Selections from 7
McCulloch's Dictionary of Commerce 8
Macfarren on Musical Harmony 13
Macleods Economical Philosophy 5
Economics for Beginners 21
Theory and Practice of Banking 21
Elements of Banking 21
Mademoiselle Mori 19
Malet's Annals of the Road 19
Manning's Mission of the Holy Spirit 17
Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, by Wagner ... 6
Marshman's Life of Havelock 4
Martineau's Christian Life 17
Hours of Thought 17
Hymns 17
Maunders Popular Treasuries 20
Maxwells Theory of Heat n
May's History of Democracy i
History of England i
Melville's (Whyte) Novels and Tales 19
Memorials of Charlotte Williams-Wynn 4
Mendelssohn's Letters 4
Merivale's Early Church History 15
Fall of the Roman Republic ... 2
General History of Rome a
Roman Triumvirates 3
Romans under the Empire 2
Mem 'field's Arithmetic and Mensuration... n
Miles on Horse's Foot and Horse Shoeing 20
on Horse's Teeth and Stables 20
Mill (J.) on the Mind 5
Mills (J. S.) Autobiography 4
Dissertations & Discussions 5
Essays on Religion 16
Hamilton's Philosophy 5
. Liberty 5
Political Economy 5
Representative Government 5
WORKS published by LONGMANS 6- CO.
Mills (J. S.) Subjection of Women 5
System of Logic 5
Unsettled Questions 5
Utilitarianism 5
Millers Elements of Chemistry 13
^ Inorganic Chemistry n
6* Skertchley's Fenland 18
Mitchell's Manual of Assaying 15
Milton's Paradise Regained, by yerram... 6
Modern Novelist's Library 18-19
Monsells Spiritual Songs 17
Moore's Irish Melodies, Illustrated Edition 13
Lalla Rookh, Illustrated Edition.. 13
Morells Philosophical Fragments 5
Morris's Age of Anne 3
Mozart's Life, by Nohl 4
Mailer's Chips from a German Workshop. 7
Hibbert Lectures on Religion ... 16
Science of Language 7
Science of Religion 16
Mullinger's Schools of Charles the Great ... 6
Neison on the Moon 9
Nevile's Horses and Riding 20
Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua 4
Nicols's Puzzle of Life 12
Noire" s Miiller & Philosophy of Language 7
Northcott's Lathes & Turning 14
O 'Conor's Scripture Commentary 16
Owen's Comparative Anatomy and Phy-
siology of Vertebrate Animals ii
Packe's Guide to the Pyrenees 18
Pattison's Casaubon 4
Payen's Industrial Chemistry 14
Pewtner's Comprehensive Specifier 21
Phillips s Civil War in Wales 2
Pole's Game of Whist 21
Pope's Select Poems, by Arnold 6
Powells Early England 3
Preece & Sivewright's Telegraphy 1 1
Present-Day Thoughts 7
Proctor's Astronomical Works 9
Scientific Essays (Two Series) ... 11
Prothero's De Montfort 2
Public Schools Atlas of Ancient Geography 8
Atlas of Modern Geography 8
Rawlinson's Parthia 3
Sassanians 3
Recreations of a Country Parson 7
Reynardson's Down the Road 19
Rich's Dictionary of Antiquities 8
Rivers' s Orchard House 12
Rose Amateur's Guide 12
Rogers's Eclipse of Faith 15
Defence of Eclipse of Faith 15
Roget's English Thesaurus 8
Ronalds' Fly-Fisher's Entomology 20
Rowley's Rise of the People 3
Settlement of the Constitution ... 3
Rutley's Study of Rocks n
Sandars's Justinian's Institutes 5
Sankeys Sparta and Thebes 3
Schellen's Spectrum Analysis 9
Seaside Musings 7
Scott's Farm Valuer 21
Seebohms Oxford Reformers of 1498 2
Seebohm f Protestant Revolution 3
Sewell 's History of France 2
Passing Thoughts on Religion ... 16
Preparation for Communion 17
Stories and Tales 18
Thoughts for the Age 17
Shelley's Workshop Appliances n
Short's Church History 15
SmilKs (Sydney) Wit and Wisdom 7
(Dr. R. A.) Air and Rain 9
(R. B.)Carthage& the Carthaginians 2
Southey's Poetical Works 19
Stanley's History of British Birds 12
Stephen s Ecclesiastical Biography 4
Stonehenge, Dog and Greyhound 20
Stoney on Strains 14
Stubbs's Early Plantagenets ,... 3
Sunday Afternoons, by A. K. H.B 7
Supernatural Religion 16
Swinbourne's Picture Logic 6
Tancock's England during the Wars,
1778-1820 3
Taylor s History of India 2
Ancient and Modern History ... 3
(Jeremy) Works, edited by Eden 17
Text-Books of Science n
Thomfs Botany ir
Thomson's Laws of Thought 6
Thorpe's Quantitative Analysis 11
Thorpe and Muir's Qualitative Analysis ... 11
Tilden's Chemical Philosophy 11
Todd on Parliamentary Government 2
Trench's Realities of Irish Life 7
Trollope's Warden and Barchester Towers 19
Twiss's Law of Nations 5
Tyndalts ( Professor) Scientific Works ... 10
Unawares 19
Unwin ' s Machine Design n
Ure's Arts, Manufactures, and Mines 14
Ville on Artificial Manures 15
Walker on Whist 21
Walpole's History of England i
Warburton's Edward the Third 3
Watson s Geometery n
Watts's Dictionary of Chemistry 13
Weinhold's Experimental Physics 10
Wellington's Life, by Gleig 4
Whatelys English Synonymes 8
Logic 6
Rhetoric 6
White's Four Gospels in Greek 16
and Riddle's Latin Dictionaries .. 8
Wilcocks' s Sea-Fisherman 20
Williams s Aristotle's Ethics 6
Willich' s Popular Tables 21
Wilson's Resources of Modern Countries... 21
Woods (J. G.) Popular Works on Natural
History n
(J. T.) Ephesus 17
Woodward's Geology 12
Yonge's English-Greek Lexicons 8
Horace 19
Youatt on the Dog 20
on the Horse 20
Zeller's Plato, Socrates, &c 3
Zimmern's Lessing 4
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