HAMILTON MISUNDERSTANDS KANT'S SPACE. 73

exclude the à posteriori perception. (Reid's Works, p. 126, note.) Our cognitions of extension and its modes are not wholly ideal; although space be a native, necessary, à priori form of imagination, and so far, therefore, a mere subjective state, there is, at the same time, competent to us, in an immediate perception of external things, the consciousness of a really existent, of a really objective extended world. (Reid's Works, p. 841.) The doctrine of Kant [with which Hamilton concurs]-that time is a fundamental condition, form, or category of thought. (Reid's Works, p. 124, note.) On this principle [Necessity], as first evolved,—at least, first signalised by Kant, space and time are merely modifications of mind. (Disc. p. 273.) [See also Reid's Works, pp. 343, 847, and Meta. i. 403; ii. 114, 166–170.]

Now, it is quite certain that Kant would not have rejected these expressions of Hamilton in regard to our having through sense an empirical perception of something extended, of a really objective extended world, &c. To Kant, as little as to Hamilton, were our cognitions of extension wholly ideal; and no more to the latter than to the former did the à priori conception exclude the à posteriori perception.

We are not left any room to doubt, then, of the state of Hamilton's mind in reference to the mentioned doctrines of Kant. Conceptively, he accepts them: perceptively, he-not rejects them-but knows them not. Hamilton, in fact, has never dreamed that the time and space of Kant are perceptive and not—we may, indeed, say this-conceptive. To him, time as understood by Kant is only a condition, form, or category of thought;' space, similarly, is only a condition of thought, a form of imagination,' ' an à priori conception, not an à posteriori perception.' He, for

his part, and as, in his own idea, opposed to Kant, holds that space and time, as given, are real forms of thought and-conditions of things' (Meta. i. 403); and (same page), he says of Kant: 'if he does not deny, he will not affirm the existence of a real space external to our minds.' It is in a similar frame of mind that, referring to Kant as holding the subjective nature of space, he adds, but in this he varies,'meaning, evidently, that he knows of Kant speaking at times as if he held space to be objectively existent. Now, if he had not insinuated, but openly announced this, he would only have stated the truth. Kant, in fact, always says this, and varies never.

เ

In short, Hamilton knows only the subjective, intellectual, and conceptive side of Kant's space and time; he knows only one side, he knows not the other; he knows not that these intellectual, à priori forms are, in actual, empirical fact, sensuously or à posteriori presentant;-he knows not that there is a provision in the theory of Kant whereby they become externalised, materialised, realised, or, as Hamilton might say, objectivised - though their veritable source and seat be subjective, ideal, internal, all the same. It is from this misconception and mistake that he finds Kant to 'vary,' and that he can come to say of him, if he does not deny, he will not affirm,' &c.

But this side existing in the theory of Kant, Hamilton's supposed complement is perceived at once to be neutralised and negated even by its own excess; and for excision of the excrescence, Kant himself (quite as

KANT'S SPACE AND TIME.

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much as, and in priority to, Hamilton) will extend to us the law of parsimony-Occam's razor!

But this side does exist in the theory of Kant. We are not called upon to demonstrate here: it is sufficient to indicate. Kant's time and space are of this nature, then, that, ideal, perceptive forms, native to the mind-sensuous spectra, optical discs-they, on hint of the stimuli of special sense, present themselves to the mind by or through special sense, as external recipients in which these stimuli (or their effects) dispose themselves before us in such manner that the peculiarity of their arrangement in space and time is due to their own secret nature, at the same time that the general fields of space and time are really furnished to them by the mind itself.

There is no occasion, then, to burthen such a space and time with the superfluity of Hamilton's addition. The empirical side which is all that that addition proposes to extend to them—this they already possess in themselves; and Hamilton would never have thought of it, had he at all seen the true scope of the theory. Not only, then, has Hamilton perpetrated a glaring blunder in respect to Kant, not only has he with a most redundant prodigality carried coals to a Newcastle already filled, but he has done worse: he has exposed himself to the edge of Occam's razor, and not only in that respect but also in this, that he has granted Kant's doctrine to be a demonstrated doctrine, and yet has generously given it in gift the very articles it supposed itself to have abolished and supplanted! Why—in the name of all parsimony, in the name of

all rational economy!—should time and space have been laboriously built into the mind (as Hamilton admits), if (as Hamilton adds) they were there on the outside, actual objects, for the apprehension of which we possessed our own special five senses?

Had Hamilton, indeed, been duly awake here, he would have seen at once that Kant's reine Anschauung, possessing no matter but these à priori sensuous forms of space and time, was, feature for feature, identical with his own perception proper, possessing no matter but those primary qualities which he himself acknowledged to derive from-to be but modes of, space and time. Nay, duly awake, he would have perceived that Kant, not only in naming these forms perceptions (and as against conceptions), but in proving them perceptions (and as against conceptions), actually contemplated their empirical use, or as Hamilton might say, their objective presentation,—and this, their necessary, mental, à priori nature notwithstanding. But to have perceived this-and in a demonstrated doctrine-would have been to have perceived also the supererogatoriness of his own addition. The eyes to a reality of actual outer space which he desiderated in the doctrine of Kant, that doctrine already abundantly possessed; and his own proffered surgery, therefore, was obviously quite uncalled for. In short, the complement of Hamilton is refuted by a reductio ad absurdum.

But, in confutation of Hamilton, we are not limited to his resolution, on the one hand, of his primary qualities into space; and to his adoption, on the other,

of

THE PRIMARY QUALITIES LIKE SPACE.

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space itself as shown to be constituted by Kant;we can readily accomplish the same result by a consideration of these primary qualities themselves. For this purpose, we supplement the quotations already made by a few others, and in the more restricted reference:

Aristotle enumerates five percepts common to all or to a plurality of the senses,-viz.: Magnitude (extension), figure, motion, rest, number; but virtually admits, that these (the common) are abusively termed sensibles at all, and are (in one place he even says they are only apprehended per accidens), in fact, within the domain of sense, merely as being the concomitants, or consequents (ἀκολουθοῦντα, ἑπομένα) of the proper.... St. Thomas, showing that the common sensibles do not, primarily and of themselves, act upon and affect the sense, carries them all up into modifications of quantity.. Sensibilia communia omnia pertinent aliquo modo ad continuum.... The several common sensibles are in reality apprehended by other and higher energies than those of sense

are not so much perceptions of sense (in so far as sensible perception depends on corporeal affection) as concomitant cognitions to which the impression on the organ by the proper sensible only affords the occasion. (Reid's Works, pp. 828–830.) [Kant's time and space can be characterised by precisely the same words. Hutcheson holds that] extension, figure, motion, and rest seem to be more properly ideas accompanying the sensations of sight and touch than the sensations of either of these senses. (Reid's Works, pp. 124, 829.) [Reid himself says], upon the whole, it appears that our philosophers have imposed upon themselves and upon us in pretending to deduce from sensation the first origin of our notions of external existences, of space, motion, and extension, and all the primary qualities of body-that is, the qualities whereof we have the most clear and distinct conception... they have no resemblance to any sensation, or to any operation of our minds; and, therefore, they cannot be ideas