OF THE

UNIVERSITY

HAMILTON'S CONSCIOUSNESS, ETC.

LIBRARY CALIFORNIA

action itself involves. It seems, indeed, never to have struck Hamilton that presentationism is noumenalism, and therefore the logical contradictory of phenomenalism. Nowhere does he seem aware that he may appear to have committed the contradiction of directly identifying these opposites. Nowhere do we find in him any show of explanation, nowhere any apology, nowhere even an acknowledgment. He seems to have viewed it as a matter of course that he might consistently maintain at once the phenomenalism of the philosophers and the presentationism of Reid. 'To obviate misconception,' that he should be known simply to say so and so, appeared enough to him, even though what he said should be that, when he said. noumenalism, he meant phenomenalism-that when he said the one, he meant the other that when he said this, he meant that! Here we go round by the rule of contrairey. When I say Ay, you say No; and when say Hold fast, you let go! Boys, we know, play at this game with perfect satisfaction, though, unlike Hamilton, they are not only conscious of the fact of the action, but of its contradiction as well.

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But of these subordinate contradictions, perhaps, however small, the most characteristic and striking, as well as the most illustrative of the main one, is this: if, as is readily seen on reference to the preceding quotations, Hamilton, by way of coup de grâce, applies to his own enemy, the representationist, the wellknown line from the eighth Eneid,

'Miratur; Rerumque ignarus, Imagine gaudet,'

en revanche, he applies it-and with a similar repre

sentative and summarising force-twice to his own self! After this we are not surprised that he should joyfully avail himself of Brown's insight and industry as regards the Micromégas of Voltaire, and should appropriate to himself the warmth of a nest from which, with cuckoo-like regardlessness, he had but just extruded the offspring of its own constructor.

Such another point is this, that, while in the extract (Disc. p. 54), he asserts that not only 'nothing is known, but nothing is, except those phases [i.e. not only is there nothing known, but nothing is, except phases—appearances!] of being which stand in analogy to our faculties of knowledge,' we have but to turn the leaf to find several consecutive pages devoted to a long polemic against the principle that the relation of knowledge implies an analogy of existence'!

Very marked contradiction is to be found in the last extract of the second series, whether this extract be considered for itself, or in the quotations by which it is so profusely shored. The first aspect we pass, as amounting only to that unexceptive and trenchant phenomenalism which constitutes, with reference to Hamilton's professed noumenalism, the main contradiction thus far. But as regards the second aspect, the shoring quotations, namely, we shall permit ourselves a word or two.

As is matter of familiar knowledge, the leading industry of Hamilton, in all his most important works, is a polemic-sharp, keen, cutting, headlong-for Reid and against the 'Ideal System,' or for Presentative Realism and against Representative Idealism. Now

HAMILTON'S APPEAL TO HIS ENEMIES.

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we have but to think of this polemic, and of the distinguished champions in the opposite ranks whom we recollect to have expressly fallen to the spear of Hamilton, to become all at once even startled by the incongruity and absurdity that seem, in such quotations, almost to mock us. That Sir William Hamilton should make tearful appeal ad misericordiam of the very corpses himself had made! That he should summon to the proof the very foes whose bodies are not yet cold on that fierce battle-field which he has just so triumphantly abandoned! That he should seek to re-animate them, and just for that for which he slew them! In a word, that, as phenomenalist, he should be forced to set up what, as noumenalist, he has but just thrown down! It is not easy to set bounds to one's surprise here, at the same time that it is quite impossible to resist the evidence of the fact. The reference to Kant alone is quite conclusive. Kant is not only a representationist-or Kant is not only universally recognised as such, but he is expressly so recognised, expressly so classed, expressly so fought by Hamilton. Yet to this same Kant, direct appeal is now made, by this same Hamilton, and in behalf of the very doctrine for which he but this instant hacked and hewed at him! Such is the testimony of Kant,' he says, and a hundred others to the same truth might be adduced from the philosopher of Konigsberg, of whose doctrine it is, in fact, the foundation'! No one doubts but a hundred, but a thousand testimonies might be adduced from Kant by the easy process of turning over his pages; but everybody must feel

astounded that Hamilton should have even dreamed of an appeal to a single one of them.

Nor, as regards the other authorities, is the incongruity less. In themselves they are generally only less weighty than a Kant, and Hamilton has not been subjected to any difficulty in finding them. To that, indeed, he had but to count the opposite camp-a camp he could not well miss, either, inasmuch as the stream of writers in general directly led to it. This, at all events, is the confession of Reid, who owns to the company of the vulgar, but complete desertion on the part of the philosophers. Now, for the gaining of votes, to count one's enemies - one must at all events acknowledge the gallantry of the expedient. Consider them! Boethius; and the object is not known from its nature.' Leo Hebræus; and 'it is not the thing in its dignity that is known.' Julius Cæsar Scaliger; and 'we only know the shadow, the glass not the contents, only external accidents.' Bruno; and we know things, not in themselves, but in another, which other is a species, a simulacrum, an image, a sign.' Bacon; and the senses are not adequate to things.' Spinoza; and 'we know ideas only.' In short, the Ideal System'!! It is really curious. Did Hamilton, then, wish us to believe that he knew 'ideas' only, that perception is not adequate to things, that we perceive and know but 'signs,' 'images,' 'species,'' simulacra'? Really, one has to think of Hamilton's reputation, to justify to oneself one's own pains in things so glaring. In the simplest and most gratuitous fashion, indeed, contradiction follows con

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HAMILTON ON PROTAGORAS AND BACON.

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tradiction, and of inconsistency, discrepancy, and confusion, one can find no end. Why, for instance, should Hamilton appeal to- of all men that ever breathed Protagoras? Why, of all doctrines that ever were enunciated, should it be precisely this heathen's that a disciple of Reid should covet? Protagoras, as everybody knows, was the representative Sophist, or Sceptic, and his doctrine, 'Man is the measure of all things,' is the very brief' of that materialistic school which maintains the senses to be the all-in-all both of knowledge and conduct, and with this addition, that, as one man's senses differ from another's, that is true and right for one which is true and right for nobody else. Would Hamilton really have wished us to suppose this principle his, either on the theoretical or the moral side? And again, had he really wished this, why incoherently have made further appeal to Bacon? Protagoras, as quoted by Hamilton, says, 'Man is [for himself] the measure of all things;' and Bacon, as quoted by the same Hamilton, says, 'The information of sense is always from the analogy of man, not from the analogy of the universe, and it is wholly a great error to assert that sense is the measure of all things.' Now to Protagoras 'man' was only the particular sense of each particular man: we may say, then, that while Protagoras asserts man or sense to be the measure of all things, Bacon perfectly contra-asserts man or sense not to be the measure of all things. The one assertion is logically the contradictory of the other, and it is eminently characteristic of Hamilton that he should seek to

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