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HAMILTON A PRESENTATIONIST.

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numerically different from itself. An immediate cognition, inasmuch as the thing known is itself presented to observation, may be called a presentative; and inasmuch as the thing presented, is, as it were, viewed by the mind face to face, may be called an intuitive, cognition. A mediate cognition, inasmuch as the thing known is held up or mirrored to the mind in a vicarious representation, may be called a representative cognition. (Reid's Works, p.805.) To be known immediately, an object must be known in itself. (Disc. p. 50.) Mind and Matter are both equally known to us as existent and in themselves. (Disc. p. 52.) Knowledge of mind and matter equally immediate. (Disc.p.54.) Consciousness declares our knowledge of material qualities to be intuitive-this the natural conviction of mankind. (Disc. p. 55.) Knowledge and existence are then only convertible when the reality is known in itself; for then only can we say, that it is known because it exists, and exists since it is known. And this constitutes an immediate, presentative, or intuitive cognition, rigorously so called. (Disc. p. 58.) The external reality itself constitutes the immediate and only object of perception. The very things which we perceive by our senses do really exist. (Disc. p. 59.) The object known convertible with the reality existing. (Disc. p. 93-4.) Immediate knowledge of external objects... if we hold the doctrine of immediate perception, the necessity of not limiting consciousness to our subjective states. (Meta. i. 229.) Consciousness, a knowledge of the object of perception, meaning by that object the unknown reality itself. (Meta. i. 231.) The material reality is the object immediately known in perception. (Meta. i. 279.) Those things

we immediately perceive are the real things. (Meta. i. 289.) In perception we immediately know the external reality in its own qualities, as existing... knowledge and existence convertible ... the reality is known in itself [bis]... the external reality itself constitutes the immediate and only object of perception. . . . Intuitive or immediate knowledge is that in which there is only one object, and in which that object is known in itself or as existing. In an immediate

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cognition, the object in consciousness and the object in existence are the same; the esse intentionale or representativum coincides with the esse entitativum, the two objects both in representative knowledge. (Meta. ii. 80, 81, 82, 87, 88, 69.) The Hypothetical Realist [otherwise called also the 'Representationist' or the 'Cosmothetic Idealist'] contends that he is wholly ignorant of things in themselves, and that these are known to him, only through a vicarious phenomenon, of which he is conscious in perception;

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Rerumque ignarus, imagine gaudet.' (Disc. p. 57.)

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The last of these extracts adds the light of the antithesis to that of the thesis so abundantly present in the rest; and only two points, perhaps, give a moment's pause. Firstly, the quotation from page 755 of Reid's Works asserts an immediate cognition of matter, while that from page 809 substitutes for matter the phenomena of the same; and in this way the two contradictories of noumenal and phenomenal knowledge would seem to be identified. Secondly, the quotation, Meta. i. 231, talks of the object of cognition as the unknown reality itself, and thus, so far as the words go, seems on the part of a presentationist-to whom, necessarily, the reality itself is not unknown-a contradiction in terms. Neither difficulty, however, is of any moment as it stands. The term phenomena is used, not always as in relation to cognition, and so, therefore, as opposed to noumena, but frequently also just as event in general; while the phrase the unknown reality itself is too plainly a mere allusion to a common parlance of the opposite school, to cause a moment's hesitation. These extracts, then,

*In the above, the italics are Hamilton's own.

HAMILTON A PHENOMENALIST.

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will, without difficulty, be received as definitively demonstrative of that appeal to consciousness and common sense,—of that presentationism, realism, dualism, -of that acceptance of the position of Reid generally, —which we have already attributed to Hamilton. Two opinions on the matter, indeed, cannot well be conceived possible: this is Hamilton's overt and publicly known position. Nevertheless, we have now to see, as already hinted, that if, in the extracts above, Hamilton has asserted presentationism and appealed to common sense, he has, in these others below, asserted phenomenalism and appealed to the philosophers,— and this, too, as it would seem, with equal conviction, equal decision:

Whatever we know is not known as it is, but only as it seems to us to be. (Meta. i. 146.) Mind and matter exist to us only in their qualities: and these qualities exist to us only as they are known by us, i. e. as phenomena. (Disc. p. 61.) The universe and its contents,-these are known to us, not as they exist, but as our mind is capable of knowing them. (Meta. i. 61.) Existence is not cognisable absolutely and in itself, but only in special modes; because these modes can be known only if they stand in a certain relation to our faculties; and because the modes, thus relative to our faculties, are presented to, and known by, the mind only under modifications determined by these faculties themselves. (Meta. i. 148.) Although, therefore, existence be only revealed to us in phenomena, and though we can, therefore, have only a relative knowledge either of mind or of matter; still by inference and analogy we may legitimately attempt to rise above the mere appearances which experience and observation afford. (Meta. i. 125.) [At page 143 of this volume, he avails himself, in his own support, of the same passages from the Micromégas of Voltaire

which he finds quoted by Brown in support of Representationism; and, indeed, Brown in this seems to have reason, for a man with a thousand senses, or even a single additional sense, would have a very different world from ours.] The distinction of two substances (mind and matter) is only inferred from the seeming incompatibility of the two series of phenomena to co-inhere in one, &c.-[and winds up again with]

Rerumque ignarus, imagine gaudet.' (Meta. i. 138.)

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To obviate misconception, we may here parenthetically observe, that all we do intuitively know of self,—all that we may intuitively know of not-self, is only relative. Existence absolutely and in itself is to us as zero; and while nothing is, so nothing is known to us, except those phases of being which stand in analogy to our faculties of knowledge. These we call qualities, phenomena, properties, &c. When we say, therefore, that a thing is known in itself, we mean only that it stands face to face, in direct and immediate relation to the conscious mind; in other words, that, as existing, its phenomena form part of the circle of our knowledge,—exist, since they are known, and are known because they exist. (Disc. p. 54.) [From p. 60 of the same work, there follows, for several consecutive pages, a long polemic against the principle that the relation of knowledge implies an analogy of existence,' which analogy,' nevertheless, the above citation seems to assert.] What we know is not a simple relation [yet in the citation above, it is called a direct and immediate relation'] apprehended between the object known and the subject knowing,-but every knowledge is a sum made up of several elements, and the great business of philosophy is to analyse and discriminate these elements, and to determine whence these contributions have been derived. (Meta. i. 146.) The sum of our knowledge of the connection of mind and body is, therefore, this, that the mental modifications are dependent on certain corporeal conditions; but of the nature of these conditions we know nothing. For example, we know, by experience, that the

HAMILTON A PHENOMENALIST.

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On

mind perceives only through certain organs of sense, and that, through these different organs, it perceives in a different manner. But whether the senses be instruments, whether they be media, or whether they be only particular outlets to the mind incarcerated in the body,-on all this we can only theorise and conjecture. We have no reason whatever to believe, contrary to the testimony of consciousness, that there is an action or affection of the bodily sense previous to the mental perception; or that the mind only perceives in the head, in consequence of the impression on the organ. the other hand, we have no reason whatever to doubt the report of consciousness that we actually perceive at the external point of sensation, and that we perceive the material reality-not absolutely and in itself, [however, as he goes on to remark. No:] the total and real object of perception is [he says] the external object under relation to our sense and faculty of cognition. [But it is still] no representation, -no modification of the ego, it is the non-ego modified and relative, it may be, but still the non-ego. For example [he continues], the total object perceived being 12, the external reality may contribute 6, the material sense 3, and the mind 3 [or, as he gives it slightly changed elsewhere, Meta. i. 147], the full or adequate object perceived being equal to 12, this amount may be made up of 3 several parts,-of 4, contributed by the object,—of 4, contributed by all that intervenes between the object and the organ, and of 4, contributed by the living organ itself: this may enable you [he tells his students] to form some rude conjecture of the nature of the object of perception. [Surely, he might have added, and a very rude conjecture, indeed, of an immediate perception!] (Meta. ii. 128.) Our whole knowledge of mind and of matter is relative,-conditioned,―relatively conditioned. Of things absolutely or in themselves, be they external, be they internal, we know nothing, or know them only as incognisable; and become aware of their incomprehensible existence only as this is indirectly and accidentally revealed to us, through certain qualities related to our

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