more adequate, the more consistent, and the more satisfactory theory. To declare the primary qualities (space) his own state, did not for Kant dispossess these of the advantage they might offer as outer supports. They really, by reflexion, stood around him without, and thus really performed for the secondary qualities the very same function that Hamilton desiderated in his own unknown substrates.

Certainly the theory is exceedingly ingenious, but it is subjected, at the same time, to a variety of very serious objections. Must we not say, for example, that it is, after all, a beginning at the wrong end? If we are allowed to start at once as accomplished physiologists with the whole anatomy of the nervous system before us, have we not an easy game from the first? And as to that, indeed, are there not always too many physiological elements present to suit interests which concern psychology alone? Had Hamilton deduced his materials, physiological elements included, from any necessary and demonstrated basis, as is now always the indispensable preliminary of philosophy, both objections would fall; but such deduction fails. Then the direct presence of the mind to its own nervous organism must be regarded as a gratuitous assumption, unsupported by proof, and unillustrated by consciousness.

But, supposing this, how is it that the mind is not at once conscious of that which, ex hypothesi, it is directly present to? This would be immediate knowledge, and it is immediate knowledge which Hamilton would establish. Instead of this, how is it that the

mind, to reach the knowledge in question, has still to wait for the addition of yet another element, which would seem rather thus to mediate knowledge?

The problem is, How can the mind know an external object? The first answer is, We have senses by which to smell it, taste it, touch it, hear it, and see it. Yes, is the rejoinder; but analysis and consideration will demonstrate that sense in each of these five modes is adequate to no more than the excitation in the mind of a passion, affection, or subjective feeling, which as in the mind, and occupying the mind, and, so to speak, colouring the mind in a manner nowise distinguishable from that in which a variety of confessedly internal elements, grief, joy, hate, &c., is capable of occupying and, so to speak, colouring the mind is evidence of its own self, and for its own self, but not possibly of or for anything else beside. A sensation is only intensive, it is only a passion; the mind, for the time, is this passion, and this passion is it: there is no hint in it of anything but itself, there is not the slightest suggestion in it of any transition whatever. Give the mind light only -it fills it, the mind is it, and it is the mind; but what else is there, or what else can it suggest? Give the mind sound only,-is it conceivable that the mind could disjoin it from itself, any more than it could disjoin from itself anger, or hope, or fear? And as it is with these senses (sight and hearing), so also is it with the others. But if it be so with each singly, so also must it be with all together; for no addition of subjective to subjective can ever make an objective—

no addition of internal to internal can ever thicken into an external.

It is here, however, that Hamilton suggests, The mind does not and cannot perceive anything external to itself; but it becomes aware of its own sentient organism on condition of a colour, or a vibration (say), being excited in that organism by one, or other, or all, of the stated five modes; and the remaining world of cognition is thereafter built up by process of experiment, inference, and reasoning. To Hamilton, then, it appears that, though it might be difficult to understand how the mind, with no production before it but a subjective colouring of its own, should be able to perceive outer objects, no such difficulty would exist if the perception concerned, not outer objects, but the nervous system. But it is easy to see that if the nervous system have the advantage of nearness over the outer objects understood here, it is still, even as much as they, an other, an outer; and so, consequently, still separated from the mind, like them, by the whole diameter of being. Nearness in such circumstances is but as the grain of sand that is removed from the mountain while the surveyor measures it. In relation to the nervous system, the subjective affection is no more than it is in relation to other outer objects; and that it is known is intelligible, for it is evidence for itself; but that anything else because of it can-without any further evidence -be added as known, is unintelligible. Let the vibration-to call by that name each of the five respective affections-be A; we acknowledge that we

know A; but is that any reason that we should be credited with a knowledge of B as well? A, the sensation, is evidence for A; but the perception B is a new act, and in its nature very different from, nay, the reverse of, A, and we have still a right to ask, Where is the evidence for this new act B, and how was it performed, or how was its information attained to? To say the mind perceived B because it felt A, is only to say; it is not to reason.

But Hamilton would have said, perhaps, A and B, as referring to the same sentient organism, are in reality identical and not different; the subjective sensation and the objective perception coincide and coinhere in the same identical unit. Yes, we may rejoin, but, when the mind acknowledges that unit as under sensation, it is present to it as to its self; whereas, when the mind acknowledges that unit as under perception, it is absent from it as from its not-self (for to have distinguished it as not-self is equivalent to such estrangement), and the cleft remains as impassable as ever. We acknowledge arrival at the hither side of this cleft-we acknowledge experience of the subjective moment; but we cannot see that arrival at the hither, is equivalent to arrival also at the further side, or that the subjective moment is identical with the objective. There are the two terms still-and apart still: what we want is nexus and connexus; and we want it as much as ever. There is no secondary quality-no sensation-other to Hamilton himself than a mere subjective feeling, and a subjective feeling takes no further than itself. That the mind should undergo

passions-passion after passion-this is conceivable ; but how there should add itself to this passion any nisus on the part of the mind to sally out and cognise its own nervous organism as extended, divided, &c.— or how it should require this passion, and be unable to sally out without this passion-this is inconceivable. Nay, this passion itself is really in the mind; it is not in the tissue, and any question of the tissue would, so far, seem not to have any place. But let us say, that, in the passion, the mind absorbs into itself the nervous net as its and it; how is it then that it (the mind) is immediately forced, by perception, to reject this same net from itself as neither its nor it, but an other, a non-ego? Knowing the sentient organism as the ego, that we should be enabled, so contrariously, to know it as the non-ego, or accepting it in the sensation as A, that we should reject it, at the same time, in the perception as B—it is this recoil of mind back from matter on to itself, or it is this reflexion from mind to matter this transmutation of non-ego into ego, and again of ego into non-ego-it is this, so to speak, presto-trick that constitutes the difficulty; and, if Hamilton seems to simplify it by moving the two terms nearer each other, he in reality only complicates it by the introduction of a third-a third which only adds its own difficulty, and demands a new explanation of its own.

But Hamilton's favourite sense is sight, and his illustration by predilection light. As we saw on page 85, he considers the sensation the light by which the nervous organism is 'exhibited' in perception;