calmest devotion my soul can offer up-these are the only questions that I must answer; and at their each successive solution, at each successive period of my existence, I may

rest.

I. V.

ART. XVI.

The Utility of Mental Philosophy.

Lectures on Metaphysics. By Sir William Hamilton, Bart. Edited by the Rev. Henry Longueville Mansel, B. D., and John Veitch, M. A. Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1859. 8vo. pp. 738.

THE appearance of this volume-with the promise of another containing the author's Lectures on Logic-gives us a degree and kind of pleasure such as we seldom experience on receiving a new book. By common consent, Hamilton stood at the very head of modern philosophers-in acuteness of thought second to none; in erudition before all others; in power of analysis judged by high authorities never to have had his equal in either ancient or modern times. No other writer has done so much towards putting readers in a position to solve, whatever admits of solution, in the "hard problems." For example, his philosophy of the "Conditioned" has thrown more light on the vexing question of Causality, with its concomitant of "Free Will," than any other production of the human mind. Personally, we feel that we owe to him a debt of gratitude, alike for the discipline and the pleasure we have derived from his productions, far beyond our sense of obligation towards any other master in the world of speculative thought.

We are glad to receive a new work from the foremost man in his department of mental labor; but we have a special reason for satisfaction in the appearance of the Lectures named at the head of this article. We need not hesitate to admit, that in Hamilton's "Notes" on Reid, and more particularly in his "Supplementary Dissertations,"

and his "Discussions," we have found matter fully equal to our most vigorous attempts in the way of comprehension. To say nothing of his philosophy of "Common Sense" and of "Perception," his philosophy of "The Conditioned "to our view his master-piece-is sufficient to establish his reputation as the deepest thinker of his age. There are not a few paragraphs in the production last named that we have adjourned to another attempt, when the mood for hard work comes upon us. Hitherto he has had no mercy on his readers. He has never "come down" to the undisciplined capacity. Often have we wished that he would take us by the hand and gently and gradually lift us to his eminence of vision. But we have been forced to scale the way as best we could, and not unfrequently to rest content with very imperfect success.

But now we have his Lectures to Students; and we are made glad to find him the most considerate and condescending of teachers. All along, he is properly mindful of the fact that, as yet, we are not his equals; that we need not merely subject-matter for our comprehension, but occasional assistance in the way of deciphering what the subject-matter means; and he is kindly sparing in the use of those hard technicalities which, in his works for disciplined thinkers, are so formidable to the uninitiated. The peculiar circumstances under which the Lectures on Metaphysics were composed, will best explain their character:

"Sir William Hamilton (we quote from the Editors' Preface) was elected to the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics," in the University of Edinburgh, "in July, 1836." On his appointment, he "experienced considerable difficulty in deciding on the character of the course of Lectures on Philosophy, which, while doing justice to the subject, would at the same time meet the wants of his auditors, who were ordinarily composed of comparatively young students, in the second year of their university curriculum. The author of the articles on Cousin's Philosophy, on Perception, and on Logic,' had already given ample proof of those speculative accomplishments, and that profound philosophical learning which, in Britain at least, were conjoined in an equal degree by no other man of his time. But those very qualities which placed him in the front rank of speculative thinkers, joined to his love of pre

1 The articles first appeared in the Edinburgh Review.

cision and system, and his lofty ideal of philosophical composition, served but to make him the more keenly alive to the requirements of his subject, and to the difficulties that lay in the way of combining elementary instruction in Philosophy with the adequate discussion of is topics. Hence, although even at this period, if his methodized stores of learning were ample and pertinent, the opening of the college Session found him still reading and reflecting, and unsatisfied with even the small portion of matter which he had been able to commit to writing. His first course of Lectures (Metaphysical) thus fell to be written during the currency of the Session (1836-7). The author was in the habit of delivering three lectures each week, and each lecture was usually written on the day, or, more properly, on the evening and night preceding its delivery. The course of Metaphysics, as it is now given to the world, is the result of this nightly toil, unremittingly sustained for a period of five months. These Lectures were thus designed solely for a temporary purposethe use of the author's own classes; they were, moreover, always regarded by the author himself as defective as a complete Course of Metaphysics; and they never were revised by him with any view to publication, and this chiefly for the reason that he intended to make use of various portions of them which had not been incorporated in his other writings, in the promised Supplementary Dissertations to Reid's Works-a design which his failing health did not permit him to complete." 2

This explanation of the origin of the Lectures, while it forestalls very severe criticism upon their form, at once invites readers who might with reason turn away from his more elaborate productions. They will prove, as they were designed to prove to those who first heard them, proper stepping stones towards the more symmetrical structure of the author's matured system of philosophy. To those who are learners, and even those who have made considerable advance in speculative thought, there could not be a more welcome book.

Much credit is due the editors for the diligence with which they have traced the authorities referred to by the lecturer. The notes thus added will prove valuable "as indications of sources of philosophical opinions, which, in many cases, are but little, if at all known," in Great Britain or this country. They have also been careful to add, in the form of notes, 2 pp. 6-8.

every thing that could be collected as coming originally from their lamented author-preserving the mere jottings on his manuscript, and even his oral interpolations recovered from the note-books of students. Valuable notes have been

added by the editors. In every case of added notes, however, the source is carefully designated. We should add that we have, in the Appendix, among other fragments, a portion of Hamilton's physiological lecture, in which he attempts to refute the pretensions of Phrenology; and this, too, with a degree of plausibility which some years since would have given us not a little trouble. As it is, we have, in the present conveniently arranged and handsomely printed edition of the Lectures, a much better book than Hamilton himself could have made of the same materials; for though foremost as a thinker and writer, he deserved the reputation of being a very awkward book-maker.3

Sir William Hamilton is distinguished among modern philosophers more particularly for his doctrines pertaining to Perception, Consciousness and Causality. He belongs to what he calls the school of Natural Realists; whose fundamental proposition, taken from Reid, is, that our knowledge of the external world is presentative-that in the act of perception, self and not-self, or, to use Hamilton's terms, the ego and the non-ego, stand face to face. The notion, constantly appearing in Locke, that every thing external to self is seen through the medium of ideas, and which, through the logic of Berkeley and Hume, became the ground of universal skepticism, was first emphatically set aside by the school of Reid. The spontaneous belief of the unlearned, that our knowledge of external verities is direct, was accepted as a first truth in the philosophy of Common Sense; and Hamilton leads among the advocates of this system. Vitally connected with his reasoning on the subject of Perception, is his theory of Consciousness, in which it is maintained that, as the bases of belief, the facts given in Consciousness are to be received as ultimate, infallible, and conclusive. As a somewhat distinct theory, is his philosophy of The Conditioned, in which the judgment of causality is referred to

3 For example, his edition of Reid, with his Notes and Dissertations, containing nearly a thousand ungainly pages, breaks off in the middle of a sentence without even a comma to mark the termination!

"mental importance"-the inability, in one direction, of the mind to conceive of a phenomenon except in the relation of cause and effect, and an equal inability, in an opposite direction, to conceive of an infinite regression of causes; the conceivable being thus a mean between these contradictories, one of which must necessarily be true; it being thus made obvious that the mind's inability to conceive of a cause without an antecedent, is no ground for assuming that there cannot be a cause without an antecedent-a cause which is is not itself an effect. Directly or mediately the bulk of the Lectures on Metaphysics treats of these three points: Perception, Consciousness, and Causation.

A class in our denomination are, at present, specially interested in Hamilton's views of Consciousness and Causation, as together presenting the pivot on which turn the ever prominent questions of Necessity and Free-will. It has for some time been our wish to give, in this periodical, a statement of Hamilton's theorizing on both of the subjects named. We wish to present his theory of Consciousness, because, as it now seems to us, his views on this subject, in some particulars, have been misapprehended to prejudicial results.5

4" The conditioned is the mean between two extremes-two in-conditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of which can be conceived as possible, but of which, on the principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one must be admitted as necessary. On this opinion, therefore, reason is shown to be weak, but not deceitful. The mind is not represented as conceiving two propositions subversive of each other, as equally possible; but only, as unable to understand as possible, either of two extremes; one of which, however, on the ground of their mutual repugnance, it is compelled to recognize as true. We are thus taught the salutary lesson, that the capacity of thought is not to be constituted into the measure of existence; and are warned from recognizing the domain of our knowledge as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon of our faith. And by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensive reality." (Philosophy of the Conditioned, Wight's Edition of the Philosophy of Hamil ton, p. 457.)

5 It is not improbable that, as an exception to his usual precision, Hamilton has made an inconsistent statement, occasioning some confusion in the minds of his readers. We might indeed deem it prudent to suspect that the supposed defect is chargeable to our failure rightly to interpret the author's words, were we not emboldened by a recent work from an author of established repute, in which a similar charge against