presentationist, has hitherto insured his instant retreat. It is the roundabout of steps, says Hamilton, which, offering opportunity of analysis, constitutes our whole difficulty. This we must get rid of-steps we must efface-intermediation we must thrust from before us, and set down immediation instead. Process is the presentationist's impossibility-process there must be

none.

But again, says Hamilton, not only has it been usual to assert process, but it has been equally usual to refuse to believe what consciousness might say. Now would we establish a direct cognition of externality, not only must we deny the process which has hitherto been assumed, but we must deny also, what always hitherto has likewise been assumed, the right on our part at all to question consciousness. In short, it must be ours to maintain that consciousness clutches externality, that consciousness says so, and that consciousness cannot lie.

It is not difficult to see that, with these concessions, Hamilton has a won game before him. If consciousness supply a direct report, and if consciousness cannot be questioned, then presentationism is inevitable. We doubt not, then, that Hamilton, on the whole, must have often enough surveyed with complacency his own success thus far. Nor can we well overestimate the gallantry of the logical coup de main, of the logical surprise displayed in every circumstance of his extraordinary argumentation. We readily grant to Hamilton that consciousness must be co-extensive with perception, and we cannot deny this same con

CONSCIOUSNESS IDENTIFIED WITH PERCEPTION. 49

No

sciousness to be the ultimate standard of appeal. sooner do we admit as much, however, than, by an instant sleight of hand, that, under a cover of words, would evade detection, we are astonished into the belief that consciousness and perception are numerically one-nay, by a still more rapid sleight of hand, we are astonished into the belief that consciousness cannot at all be questioned-neither in any function, nor on any occasion, nor at any time.

All now, then, is changed, says Hamilton; it is no longer with perception, it is no longer with sense that we have at all to do. Organs-with all their blunders, all their subreptions-have disappeared. As said, the ghosts are laid. It is now with consciousness we have to do, and with consciousness alone. But consciousness is not sense. You cannot dispute consciousness. If you do, it is at once tainted throughout, and it and you and all of us are logically defunct, and there is an end of everything. Take consciousness, but take it wholly, and there is an external world. Reject a tittle of it, and you annihilate your own self and the whole business you follow.

But the mere jugglery, the mere logical blind show of this, must be held all the time as quite conspicuous. The subreptions of sense, plainly, if covered, are not by any means removed; and it is equally plain that it is either an extraordinary self-delusion, or a no less extraordinary abuse of speech, to aver that the facts of consciousness cannot be questioned.

Sir William Hamilton has, in this country, been proclaimed the greatest logician since Aristotle, never

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error.

theless it is certain that he has filled-' prince of philosophers,' and prince of logicians, as he may bethe most important sections of his most important works with the elaborate enunciation of a simple fallacy. This fallacy is the fallacia accidentis, and on both of its sides. Whether it is reasoned that, perception being consciousness, consciousness is perception, or that, consciousness being inviolable, perception is inviolable, Hamilton commits indeed this technical It is perfectly true, for example, that perception is consciousness; but it is wholly untrue to aver that consciousness is perception-in the sense that all consciousness is perception. When consciousness is spoken of in reference to the cognition of external objects, it is consciousness in the form of perception, it is consciousness secundum quid, or, as Hamilton himself might say it, it is only some consciousness that is meant. Again, when it is affirmed that consciousness is inviolable, the consciousness implied is universal consciousness, not consciousness secundum quid, but consciousness simpliciter. But we cannot reason, whether from the essential to the accidental, or from the accidental to the essential, without the risk of committing sophisms. Thus to assert, with Hamilton, that, perception being consciousness, what is true of perception is true of consciousness, is to commit the fallacy of reasoning à dicto secundum quid. ad dictum simpliciter; while, again, to assert, with Hamilton, that, consciousness being perception, what is true of consciousness is true of perception, is to

HAMILTON'S FALLACIA ACCIDENTIS.

51

commit the converse fallacy of reasoning à dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid.

Hamilton's general syllogism here, in fact, seems pretty much this :-Consciousness is inviolable; but perception is consciousness; therefore, perception is inviolable. Now here the middle term is consciousness; but, in the major proposition, it is universal consciousness, consciousness simpliciter; while, in the minor, it is a particular consciousness, consciousness secundum quid, or only some consciousness. In this way, then, the syllogism contains a quaternion of terms; or there are two middle terms, and thus, the extremes not being compared with the same thing, the conclusion is false. Special consciousness is, in short, not universal consciousness, and, contrary to the dictum of Hamilton, both must be accurately discriminated. We may legitimately express some surprise, then, at the simple manner in which a professed logician has technically committed himself. Remembering, indeed, that Hamilton was not only prince of philosophers but high priest of the Quantification of the Predicate, we might, by pointing out that this his own operation was the single necessity in the case before us, have brought home to him his error through neglect of the same, in a manner much more keen and cruel. This will appear at once if the true proposition, perception is consciousness, be converted not per accidens, not through quantification of the predicate, but simpliciter, into the false proposition, consciousness is perception. All perception is only

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some consciousness, only some consciousness is all perception.

Hamilton's presto trick is not, then, so glorious for him after all. Fancy such reasoning as this:-Consciousness is perception; but memory is consciousness; therefore memory is perception! Yet to such reasoning we have a perfect warrant in the procedure of Sir William Hamilton. And by such reasoning is there any difference whatever that could not be identified with its opposite-so far, at least, as consciousness and consciousnesses are concerned?

It is not to escape notice either, that the identification of consciousness with perception does not remove the difficulty of how perception, constituted and conditioned as it is, can possibly be conceived capable of a direct cognition of external things. Call it consciousness if you will, it is still a process consisting of sundry stages and steps which afford us a variety of occasions for instituting experiments to try it and test it. Perception is consciousness, and sight is perception; but there is nothing in this statement to preclude us from the examination of the process of vision, both physiologically and psychologically; and if the results of this examination tend to show the impossibility of any immediate knowledge, through sight, of any outward object, and, moreover, should this result repeat itself in the case of all the other senses, it will be quite in vain for Sir William Hamilton to call out, even with his most peremptory pretentiousness, Consciousness, consciousness; for it is quite competent to us to call out, equally peremptorily,