one to the other. If not, the divine attribute, whatever else it may be, is not goodness, and ought not to be called by the name. Unless there be some human conception which agrees with it, no human name can properly be applied to it; it is simply the unknown attribute of a thing unknown; it has no existence in relation to us, we can affirm nothing of it, and owe it no worship. Such is the inevitable alternative.*

To conclude: Mr. Mansel has not made out any connection between his philosophical premises and his theological conclusion. The relativity of human knowledge, the uncognoscibility of the Absolute, and the contradictions which follow the attempt to conceive a Being with all or without any attributes, are no obstacles

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Mr. Mansel says (p. 175), "The question really at issue is not whether "the Rationalist argument is licit or illicit, but whether, in its lawful use, it is to be regarded as infallible or fallible." If this were all, there would be nothing for him and the Rationalists to quarrel about; for who ever asserted, of any human reasoning, that it is infallible? Neither, I believe, would any "Rationalist" dissent from Mr. Mansel's view of the "lawful use "of the argument, which he declares throughout his Eighth Lecture to be only admissible (as one argument among others) on the question of the authenticity of a Revelation. No Rationalists, I should suppose, believe that what they reject as inconsistent with the Divine Goodness was really revealed by God. They do not both admit it to be revealed and believe it to be false. They believe that it is either a mistaken interpretation, or found its way by human means into documents which they may nevertheless consider as the records of a Revelation. They concede, therefore, to Mr. Mansel (and unless the hypothesis were admitted of a God who is not good, they cannot help conceding) that the moral objections to a religious doctrine are only valid against its truth if they are strong enough to outweigh whatever external evidences there may be of its having been divinely revealed. But when the question is, how much weight is to be allowed to moral objections, the difference will be radical between those who think that the Divine Goodness is the same thing with human goodness carried to the infinite, and Mr. Mansel, who thinks that it is a different quality, only having some analogy to the human. Indeed it is hard to see how any one, who holds the latter opinion, can give more than a nominal weight to any such argument against a religious doctrine. For, if things may be right according to divine goodness which would be wrong according to even an infinite degree of the human, and if all that is known is that there is some analogy between the two, while no one pretends to have any knowledge how far the analogy reaches, and it may be presumed to be as distant as the remainder of the Divine Nature is from the human, it is impossible to assign any determinate weight to an argument grounded on contradiction of such an analogy. It becomes a mere dialectical locus communis: an argument to be taken up and laid down as suits convenience, and which different men will hold valid in different cases, according to their fancies or prepossessions.

to our having the same kind of knowledge of God which we have of other things, namely not as they exist absolutely, but relatively. The proposition, that we cannot conceive the moral attributes of God in such a manner as to be able to affirm of any doctrine or assertion that it is inconsistent with them, has no foundation in the laws of the human mind: while, if admitted, it would not prove that we should ascribe to God attributes bearing the same name as human qualities, but not to be understood in the same sense; it would prove that we ought not to ascribe any moral attributes to God at all, inasmuch as no moral attributes known or conceivable by us are true of him, and we are condemned to absolute ignorance of him as a moral being.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF CONSCIOUSNESS, AS UNDERSTOOD BY SIR WILLIAM

HAMILTON.

In the discussion of the Relativity of human knowledge and the Philosophy of the Conditioned, we have brought under consideration those of Sir W. Hamilton's metaphysical doctrines which have the greatest share in giving to his philosophy the colour of individuality which it possesses, and the most important of those which can be regarded as belonging specially to himself. On a certain number of minor points, and on one of primary importance, Causation, we shall again have to examine opinions of his which are original. But on most of the subjects which remain to be discussed, at least in the psychological department (as distinguished from the logical), Sir W. Hamilton is merely an eminent representative of one of the two great schools of metaphysical thought; that which derives its popular appellation from Scotland, and of which the founder and most celebrated champion was a philosopher whom, on the whole, Sir W. Hamilton seems to prefer to any other, Dr. Reid. For the future, therefore, we shall be concerned less with Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy as such, than with the general mode of thought to which it belongs. We shall be engaged in criticising doctrines common to him with many other thinkers; but in doing so we shall take his writings as text-books, and deal with the opinions chiefly in the form in which he presented them. No other course would be so fair to the opinions themselves not only because they have not, within the last half century, had so able a teacher, and never one

so well acquainted with the teachings of others, but also because he had the great advantage of coming last. All theories, at their commencement, bear the burthen of mistakes and inadvertences not inherent in the theories themselves, but either personal to their authors, or arising from the imperfect state of philosophical thought at the time of their origin. At a later period, the errors which accidentally adhered to the theory are stript off, the most obvious objections to it are perceived, and more or less successfully met, and it is rendered, at least apparently, consistent with such admitted truths as it at first seemed to contradict. One of the unfairest, though commonest tricks of controversy, is that of directing the attack exclusively against the first crude form of a doctrine.* Whoever should judge Locke's philosophy as it is in Locke, Berkeley's philosophy as it is in Berkeley, or Reid's as it in Reid, would often condemn them on the ground of incidental misapprehensions, which form no essential part of their doctrine, and from which its later adherents and expositors are free. Sir W. Hamilton's is the latest form of the Reidian theory; and by no other of its supporters has that theory been so well guarded, or expressed in such discriminating terms, and with such studious precision. Though there are a few points on which the earlier philosopher seems to me nearer the truth, on the whole it is impossible to pass from Reid to Sir W. Hamilton, or from Sir W. Hamilton back to Reid, and not be struck with the immense progress which their common philosophy has made in the interval between them.

All theories of the human mind profess to be interpretations of Consciousness: the conclusions of all of them are supposed to rest on that ultimate evidence, either immediately or remotely. What Consciousness directly reveals, together with what can be legitimately inferred from its revelations, composes, by universal

This, for example, is the secret of most of the apparent triumphs which are so frequently gained over the population theory of Malthus, and the political economy of Ricardo.

admission, all that we know of the mind, or indeed of any other thing.When we know what any philosopher considers to be revealed in Consciousness, we have the key to the entire character of his metaphysical system.

*

There are some peculiarities requiring notice, in Sir W. Hamilton's mode of conceiving and defining Consciousness. The words of his definition do not, of themselves, indicate those peculiarities. Consciousness, he says, is "the recognition by the mind or ego of its own acts or affections;" and in this, as he truly observes, "all philosophers are agreed." But all philosophers have not, by any means, meant the same thing by it. Most of them (including Reid and Stewart) have meant, as the words naturally mean, Self-consciousness. They have held, that we can be conscious only of some state of our own mind. The mind's "own acts or affections" are in the mind itself, and not external to it: accordingly we have, in their opinion, the direct evidence of consciousness, only for the internal world. An external world is but an inference, which, according to most philosophers, is justified, or even, by our mental constitution, compelled: according to others, not justified.

Nothing, however, can be farther from Sir W. Hamilton's mind than he declares this opinion to be. Though consciousness, according to him, is a recognition of the mind's own acts and affections, we are nevertheless conscious of things outside the mind. Some of the mind's acts are perceptions of outward objects; and we are, of course, conscious of those acts: now, to be conscious of a perception, necessarily implies being conscious of the thing perceived. "It is t palpably impossible that we can be conscious of an act, without being conscious of "the object to which that act is relative. This, however, is what Dr. Reid and Mr. Stewart maintain. "They maintain that I can know that I know, without "knowing what I know,-or that I can know the know"ledge without knowing what the knowledge is about: Lectures, i. 193 and 201.

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+ Ibid. i. 212.