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stimulus, this cause, but only the consequent, the result, the effect, that the ego knows. This effect is only its own sensuous affection. The non-ego, it is true, is the occasion of this affection, but this intervening affection being all that is in the ego, the nonego is also, consequently, concealed even by that

which alone reveals it.

Now, Hamilton's understanding of this, we remark in passing, is insecure. To him the representationist knows only a 'vicarious phenomenon' in which the object itself is but 'mirrored;' or he knows only a 'vicarious representation,' 'imagine gaudet.' He says (Meta. ii. 137), representationism 'supposes that the mind can represent that of which it knows nothing—that of which it is ignorant;' and elsewhere (Disc. p. 66) he conceives the cosmothetic idealist, and Kant as one, to hold the 'mind either to know the reality of what it represents . . . or to represent and truly to represent the reality which it does not know.' The object of the representationist would thus appear to be conceived by Hamilton as only an unknown object's likeness, its picture, its portrait, its reflection. But this is an error. Represent to the representationist, to Kant, means simply to stand in lieu of. Of images Kant does not at all speak; of likeness or unlikeness, he asserts nothing, he denies nothing; mirror-like reflection has no place in his thought; he only says that what he knows is but his own affection, which, though due to a non-ego, and testifying to the existence of the same, cannot add in its regard a single predicate further. That picture

on the wall is a representation, a likeness of Pekin; but my perception of the water in this glass (be it a likeness or be it no likeness of that I know nothing, and likeness is certainly not by any means required) only stands for, and so represents, the unknown external thing that excites that sentient state of my own known to me, and referred out by me, as water. The skin knows the scratch, it knows nothing of the thorn. Even what the eye knows of the thorn will be found on reflection to be to the eye precisely what the scratch was to the skin, and not by any means the thorn itself. The thorn itself-meaning by the word only the unknown external thing which, acting on my sentiency variously through my special senses, gives rise to the compound perception of my own so named-is certainly there without, undeniably present, an undeniable non-ego that undeniably affects the skin thus and the eye so; but also an absolutely unknown thing in itself, in regard to which I know only that it does affect the skin thus and the eye so. On all this, Kant has not left us the slightest room to doubt, and we might quote in proof a thousand passages. For a single instance, see the latter half of the last sentence of § 3 in the Kritik of Pure Reason. To regard the representation of Kant, therefore, as referring to portraiture is simply to mis-represent.

To Kant, then, the non-ego is present in perception quite as truly as it is to Hamilton, and Kant, like Hamilton, perceives a phenomenon only: in what, then, are we to conceive their difference to lie? Or how shall we find any difference between 'the un

known thing in itself' of Kant, and the 'incomprehensible, incognisable, unknown thing in itself' of Hamilton, or between the cognition 'as it affects our sentiency' of the one and the cognition as it is under relation to our faculties' of the other?

We may conceive, indeed, Hamilton to reply here: My actually there is a degree more there than the actually there of Kant; and this is the difference. To Kant, for instance, the non-ego is present only so far as sensation proper is concerned; it is not present in perception proper; to me, on the other hand, it is present in both. Kant infers a non-ego, while I perceive one. True, I perceive only phenomenally: true, the external reality, even to the very philosophy that analyses and discriminates its presence, remains incognisable, unknown, zero: still, nevertheless, I

know this presence. The book we perceive, for example, is made up of, (A) elements due to the external reality itself, (B) elements due to all that intervenes between the book and the organ, (C) elements due to the material sense or organ itself, (D) elements due to the mind; and I call myself a presentationist because, to the analysis of philosophy and the testimony of consciousness, A is actually there—a veritable ingredient, but phenomenally.

Kant, again, is not without such an answer as this: How can you perceive immediately, and intuitively, and face to face, what you declare to be unknown and incognisable? How can you perceive it at all? Or how can you perceive what you admit to be present only in a sum, a complex, a compound, a fused

úvoλov-an other? Your reason pro is my reason con. What I perceive being A+B+C+D, it is evident that I cannot perceive A itself, or in itself, or intuitively, or face to face, or immediately, or at all. In simple truth, I am a representationist just for this, that, having no means of getting at A, and B, and C, and D, in the disjunct, I am compelled to take them in the conjunct; or just for this, that what I perceive is not A, but A+B+C+D-not the external reality in itself and as it is, but the external reality as it is in another, as it is 'in or through something numerically different from itself." In short, A presented but in a phenomenon, is not presented, it is represented; or if A is only phenomenally there, it is also only representatively there.

It is useless, Kant may continue, for you here to refer to philosophy, &c., isolating A; for even with this, on your own confession, A remains still a phenomenon. A 'mode,' at first, the faculties have added to it, besides 'relativity,' 'a modification determined by themselves.' It comes forward thus, still not in itself, but in or with an other or others; and from these it cannot be separated. It is a triple phenomenon even now, the cube of a phenomenon, but, were it only a simple phenomenon, it were still not in itself, but in an other, in something 'numerically dif ferent from itself.' In short, the A which philosophy pretends to analyse and discriminate, is admitted by this same philosophy, not to be A after all, but, as it were A'+A"+A"", or mode + relativity +modification. You are thus still a representationist like myself.

To this Hamilton at once retorts:-The testimony of consciousness is that the non-ego is actually there present, and I accept the testimony of consciousness as infallible;-otherwise God is a deceiver, the universe is a lie, our personality, our immortality, our moral liberty-in fact chaos!

Consciousness, Kant may be allowed to rejoin, is to me, just as it is to you, the seat and the source and the test of truth; but, whereas you merely subjectively assert the testimony of this consciousness to be on your side, I not only similarly subjectively assert that, on the contrary, it is on my side, but I give you my reasons as well.

Reasons! we may conceive the sharp and querulous Hamilton to break in, and have I not given my reasons too? If I have asserted that the testimony of consciousness proves the fact of the case as it has been stated by myself, have I not demonstrated as well that you cannot impeach consciousness in a single instance without equally impeaching it in all-falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus; the root of our nature is then a lie, God is a deceiver, our personality, our immortality, our moral liberty, our—our—

Of course, if a man will not hear reason, but just keep doggedly asserting and asserting, we must simply leave him alone. We may conceive the good Kant to retire here, then, with such thoughts in his heart, but muttering to himself, perhaps,-Why, it is just the business of man as man to question consciousness. You, yourself, for the discrimination of A, call in philosophy: you do not trust consciousness as con

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