HAMILTON AND KANT.

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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

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úvoλov-an other? Your reason pro is my reason 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 different 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.

HAMILTON AND KANT.

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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 consciousYou, yourself, for the discrimination of A, call in philosophy: you do not trust consciousness as con

ness.

sciousness, and uninstructed, there. You do yourself, in very truth then, thus question consciousness.

At this a light falls on Hamilton, and his doggedness thaws, as he suddenly recalls Kant with, That is true; consciousness, on one aspect, says only A is there, and shows it not; while, on another aspect, it is only philosophy that brings the naked fact in final appeal to consciousness. Consciousness, however, even by this appeal, remains mistress of the situation; and from this situation, consciousness declares the object of its cognition to be not the ego, but 'the nonego, modified and relative, it may be, but still the non-ego.'

Should Kant have relented and returned, we may conceive him to respond:-It is, at bottom, but by subterfuge, then, that you would claim for your consciousness the authority of common consciousness; but of common consciousness, your consciousness has yet to abide the question. Meantime, and in reference to your modified non-ego, I may say that an outer object is to you like a parcel of tea tied up in so much sheet-lead and brown paper. The paper is yours, the lead is yours, the string is yours; the tea alone is not yours. You strip off what is yours, the three former then, and you have the tea. But this tea is not yet the naked tea; for you admit the naked tea to be still concealed from you by the relativity and modifiedness, &c., fallen on it from your own faculties. After all, it is not the tea you know. So little, indeed, is there now left you to know even of it, that it is hardly worth mentioning, especially in such circum

stances. This 'little' itself, however, your own admissions shall now definitively remove.

An apparatus of outer and objective substrates (the primary qualities), to be clothed into the variegated universe by the inner and subjective secondary qualities:-this is your hypothesis, and it is mine. To me, however, these primary qualities have their seat and their source, quite as much, or more than, the secondary, within. Not the less, on that account, however, are they to me, as they are to you, really without, and presentant from without. This peculiarity is due to a demonstrated provision in my space. You yourself identify your primary qualities with space, and you accept my space. Your primary qualities are also, then, within. But the primary qualities were the 'little' of a non-ego still left you. Your own admissions, then, have now removed this 'little' into the ego. Your ascription, indeed, of the primary qualities to the non-ego, but resulted from failure to understand my space and your own primary qualities; but of this ascription, in view of my demonstrated space, Occam's razor would compel the recall.

Presentationism, on such a small ground as the mere assertion of so scanty and equivocal a non-ego, was always almost absurd in you-so perfect a phenomenalist otherwise; but now the last filament of the already transparent septum has vanished from between us, and we are one-Kant and Hamilton are one-in cosmothetic idealism!

You always knew, not A, but A+B+C+D. Even when isolated, A was still a phenomenon, into which