and modification are to him simply self-evident; and he never suspects, in their regard, even the possibility of doubt. This, then, so far, is very loose: it is but a loose appeal to the consciousness of the reader, or an appeal still looser to some presupposed philosophy. Assertion, then, being certainly always equal to assertion, there is the same right to another to assert the substantial, irrelative, and unmodified cognition of existence that there is to Hamilton to assert the contrary. Such assertion of a substantial, irrelative, and unmodified cognition is not far to seek, indeed-if we but return to Hamilton's own first series!

As for the testimony of consciousness and the analysis of philosophy, they occur to be considered at full elsewhere; and are here, so far, conceded. That is, we accept the contradiction they offer, and only consider it as offered and in itself.

There remains before us now, then, but the single difficulty: How can we possibly understand with Hamilton phenomenal and presentative perception to be one and the same? for, as we know, presentationism is noumenalism. Noumenally to perceive is to perceive a thing in itself, and as it is; phenomenally to perceive is to perceive, on the contrary, a thing as it is in another, and as it seems. These are Hamilton's own definitions of presentationism and representationism. The one, then, is identical with noumenalism and the other with phenomenalism. Of this we are not allowed to doubt; or doubt itself were at once quashed by an instant's reference to Kant. The contradiction of the two, then, which to Hamilton are one, is sheer.

THE MAIN CONTRADICTION.

29

One might be apt to suspect weakness on the part of Hamilton here what we might call, perhaps, the weakness of both sides. One might be apt to picture Hamilton, that is, loudly and ostentatiously to take up his position with the 'vulgar;' but, after a while, wistful and penitent, softly to quit his place, quietly to slip over the way, and insinuatingly to whisper the 'philosophers:' I am a phenomenalist all the same! In all probability, however, the facts of the case are differently situated.

That Hamilton was not without satisfaction in his double position we doubt not at all; for, as we have seen, his inadvertence in its regard had no reference whatever to the fact of this duplicity. Of that fact, rather, he must be held to have possessed a clear and complete consciousness. No; any inadvertence of Hamilton here concerned, probably, only the burthen of the fact -only the contradiction which the peculiar duplicity involved. This we cannot attribute to design-this we must attribute to oversight. And, surely, it is much more natural to believe in the accident of a mistake than in the possibility of Hamilton-with his eyes open-asserting himself to perceive a phenomenon that was also a noumenon. Noumenalism (the 'vulgar') with a rider of phenomenalism (the 'philosophers'),-this, indeed, were a device too weak to be imputed to such an intellect. Presentationism, on such an assumption as this, were, to a consciousness fully awake, no longer presentationism at all, nor representationism any longer representationism. Should the external reality be conceived, indeed, to be pre

sented but in a phenomenon, then it were not presented, it were represented. But of this more fully again.

Mistake or no mistake, however, Hamilton's answer is really what the penultimate period above implies : to him the external reality is presented in a phenomeHowever phenomenally wrapt up, the non-ego is actually presented to the ego. Presentation of a phenomenon is Hamilton's conviction: what dominates him is, that the non-ego is actually there.

non.

But is, then, the representationist, even in this respect, and in his answer generally-so very different? To Kant, for example,-in whom representationism certainly culminated-not only was the non-ego present, but the element of a non-ego was absolutely indispensable.*

For proof here, we point, firstly, to the Kritik of Judgment and that harmony of faculties which gives rise to the cognition and emotion of Beauty; and, secondly, to the Kritik of Pure Reason where the element of a non-ego is held to declare itself on occasion of every sensational state whatever.

Kant certainly holds that, though the fact of beauty indicate an adaptation of outer to inner, or of non-ego to ego, and though the fact of sensation indicate the actuality of this outer, of this non-ego, what we know is still really our own state. The non-ego is indispensable antecedent and necessary stimulus or exciting cause, but then it is not this antecedent, this

* I hold the second edition of the Kritik of Pure Reason to supersede the first.

REPRESENTATION NOT PORTRAITURE.

31

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. f§ 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