sophers, as they affirm or deny the authority of con"sciousness in guaranteeing a substratum or substance "to the manifestation of the ego and non-ego, are "divided into Realists or Substantialists, and into "Nihilists or Non-Substantialists. Of positive or "dogmatic Nihilism there is no example in modern philosophy. . . . But as a sceptical conclusion from "the premises of previous philosophers, we have an "illustrious example of Nihilism in Hume; and the celebrated Fichte admits that the speculative prin'ciples of his own idealism would, unless corrected by "his practical, terminate in this result."

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The Realists, or Substantialists, those who do believe in a substratum, but reject the testimony of consciousness to an immediate cognisance of an Ego and a Non-ego, our author divides into two classes, according as they admit the real existence of two substrata, or only of one. These last, whom he denominates Unitarians or Monists, either acknowledge the ego alone, or the non-ego alone, or regard the two as identical. Those who admit the ego alone, looking upon the non-ego as a product evolved from it (i.e. as something purely mental) are the Idealists. Those who admit the non-ego alone, and regard the ego as evolved from it (i.e. as purely material) are the Materialists. The third class acknowledge the equipoise of the two, but deny their antithesis, maintaining "that mind and matter are only phenomenal "modifications of the same common substance. This is "the doctrine of Absolute Identity, a doctrine of which "the most illustrious representatives among recent "philosophers are Schelling, Hegel, and Cousin." *

There remain those who admit the coequal reality of the Ego and the Non-ego, of mind and matter, and also their distinctness from one another, but deny that they are known immediately. These are Dualists, "but are t "distinguished from the Natural Dualists of whom we formerly spoke, in this-that the latter establish the "existence of the two worlds of mind and matter on the * Lectures, i. 296–297. + Ibid. 295-296.

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"immediate knowledge we possess of both series of 'phenomena a knowledge of which consciousness "assures us; whereas the former, surrendering the veracity of consciousness to our immediate knowledge "of material phenomena, and consequently, our imme"diate knowledge of the existence of matter, still endeavour, by various hypotheses and reasonings, to "maintain the existence of an unknown external world. "As we denominate those who maintain a Dualism as "involved in the fact of consciousness, Natural Dualists; so we may style those dualists who deny the evidence "of consciousness to our immediate knowledge of aught "beyond the sphere of mind, Hypothetical Dualists, or "Cosmothetic Idealists.

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"To the class of Cosmothetic Idealists, the great majority of modern philosophers are to be referred. Denying an immediate or intuitive knowledge of the "external reality, whose existence they maintain, they, “of course, hold a doctrine of mediate or representative perception; and, according to the various modifications "of that doctrine, they are again subdivided into those "who view, in the immediate object of perception, a representative entity present to the mind, but not a "mere mental modification, and into those who hold "that the immediate object is only a representative "modification of the mind itself. It is not always easy to determine to which of these classes some philosophers belong. To the former, or class holding the "cruder hypothesis of representation, certainly belong "the followers of Democritus and Epicurus, those Aris"totelians who held the vulgar doctrine of species "(Aristotle himself was probably a natural dualist), and "in recent times, among many others, Malebranche, "Berkeley, Clarke, Newton, Abraham Tucker, &c. To "these is also, but problematically, to be referred, Locke. "To the second, or class holding the finer hypothesis "of representation, belong, without any doubt, many "of the Platonists, Leibnitz, Arnauld, Crousaz, Con"dillac, Kant, &c., and to this class is also probably to

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"be referred Descartes." In our own country the best known and typical specimen of this mode of thinking, is Brown; and it is upon him that our author discharges most of the shafts which this class of thinkers, as being the least distant from him of all his opponents, copiously receive from him."*

With regard to the various opinions thus enumerated, I shall first make a remark of general application, and shall then advert particularly to the objects of Sir W. Hamilton's more especial animadversion, the Cosmothetic Idealists.

Concerning all these classes of thinkers, except the Natural Realists, Sir W. Hamilton's statement is, that they deny some part of the testimony of consciousness, and by so doing invalidate the appeals which they nevertheless make to consciousness, as a voucher for

*In one of the Dissertations on Reid (Dissertation C.) Sir W. Hamilton gives a much more elaborate, and more minutely discriminated enumeration and classification of the opinions which have been or might be held respecting our knowledge of mind and of matter. But the one which I have quoted from the Lectures is more easily followed, and sufficient for all the purposes for which I have occasion to advert to it. I shall only cite from the latter exposition a single passage (p. 817) which exhibits in a strong light the sentiments of our author towards philosophers of the school of Brown.

"Natural Realism and Absolute Idealism are the only systems worthy "of a philosopher; for, as they alone have any foundation in conscious'ness, so they alone have any consistency in themselves. . . . Both build upon the same fundamental fact, that the extended object immediately "perceived is identical with the extended object actually existing ;-for "the truth of this fact, both can appeal to the common sense of mankind; "and to the common sense of mankind Berkeley did appeal not less con"fidently, and perhaps more logically than Reid. The scheme of "Hypothetical Realism or Cosmothetic Idealism, which supposes that "behind the non-existent world perceived, lurks a correspondent but un"known world existing, is not only repugnant to our natural beliefs, but "in manifold contradiction with itself. The scheme of Natural Realism "may be ultimately difficult-for, like all other truths, it ends in the "inconceivable, but Hypothetical Realism-in its origin-in its develop"ment-in its result, although the favourite scheme of philosophers, is "philosophically absurd."

Sir W. Hamilton may in general be depended on for giving a perfectly fair statement of the opinion of adversaries; but in this case his almost passionate contempt for the later forms of Cosmothetic Idealism has misled him. No Cosmothetic Idealist would accept as a fair statement of his opinion, the monstrous proposition that a "non-existent world" is "perceived."

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their own doctrines. If he had said that they all run counter, in some particular, to the general sentiment of mankind—that they all deny some common opinion, some natural belief (meaning by natural, not one which rests on a necessity of our nature, but merely one which, in common with innumerable varieties of false opinion, mankind having a strong tendency to adopt); had he said only this, no one could have contested its truth; but it would not have been a reductio ad absurdum of his opponents. For all philosophers, Sir W. Hamilton as much as the rest, deny some common opinions, which others might call natural beliefs, but which those who deny them consider, and have a right to consider, as natural prejudices; held, nevertheless, by the generality of mankind in the persuasion of their being self-evident, or, in other words, intuitive, and deliverances of consciousness. Some of the points on which Sir W. Hamilton is at issue with natural beliefs, relate to the very subject in hand—the perception of external things. We have found him maintaining that we do not see the sun; but an image of it, and that no two persons see the same sun; in contradiction to as clear a case as could be given of natural belief. And we shall find him affirming, in opposition to an equally strong natural belief, that we immediately perceive extension only in our own organs, and not in the objects we see or touch. Beliefs, therefore, which seem among the most natural that can be entertained, are sometimes, in his opinion, delusive; and he has told us that to discriminate which these are, is not within the competence of everybody, but only of philosophers. He would say, of course, that the beliefs which he rejects were not in our consciousness originally. And nearly all his opponents say the same thing of those which they reject. Those, indeed, who, like Kant, believe that there are elements present, even at the first moment of internal consciousness, which do not exist in the object, but are derived from the mind's own laws, are fairly open to Sir W. Hamilton's criticism. It is not my

business to justify, in point of consistency, any more than of conclusiveness, the reasoning, by which Kant, after getting rid of the outward reality of all the attributes of Body, persuades himself that he demonstrates the externality of Body itself. But, as regards all existing schools of thought not descended from Kant, Sir W. Hamilton's accusation is without ground.

There is something more to be said respecting the mixed multitude of metaphysicians whom our author groups together under the title of Cosmothetic Idealists, and whose mode of thought he judges more harshly than that of any other school. He represents them as holding the doctrine that we perceive external objects, not by an immediate, but by a mediate or representative perception. And he recognises three divisions of them,t according to three different forms in which this hypothesis may be entertained. The supposed representative object may be regarded, first, as not a state of mind, but something else; either external to the mind, like the species sensibiles of some of the ancients, and the "motions of the brain" of some of the early moderns; or in the mind, like the Ideas of Berkeley. Secondly, it may be regarded as a state of mind, but a state different from the mind's act in perceiving or being conscious of it: of this kind, perhaps, are the Ideas of Locke. Or, thirdly, as a state of mind, identical with the act by which we are said to perceive it. This last is the form in which, as Sir W. Hamilton truly says, the doctrine was held by Brown.

Now, the first two of these three opinions may fairly be called what our author calls them-theories of mediate or representative perception. The object which, in

In the Lehrsatz of the 21st Supplement to the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft; the Lemma at p. 184 of Mr. Heywood's Translation. See also, in Heywood, the note at p. xxxix. of the Second Preface; being Supplement II. in Rosenkranz and Schubert's edition of the collected works, vol. ii. p. 684. This reasoning of Kant, to my mind, strangely sophistical, nevertheless does not place the externality of Bodies out of the mind. It is "externality in Space," and Space, in his philosophy, does not exist out of the mind.

+ Discussions, p. 57.

Ibid. P. 58.