Sir William Hamilton, Bart.

“ Intelligence is conversant with truth; truth, as necessary and universal, is not the creature of my volition; and reason, which, as the subject of truth, is also universal and necessary, is consequently impersonal. We see, therefore, by a light which is not ours, and reason is a revelation of God in man. The ideas, therefore, of which we are conscious, belong not to us, but to absolute intelligence. They constitute, in fact, the very mode and manner of its existence. For consciousness is only possible under plurality and difference, and intelligence is only possible through consciousness. ”

“ Thought cannot transcend consciousness; consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and object of thought, known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other; while, independently of this, all that we know either of subject or object, either of mind or matter, is only a knowledge in each of the particular, of the different, of the modified, of the phenomenal. We admit that the consequence of this doctrine is, that philosophy, if viewed as more than a science of the conditioned, is impossible. ”

“ He saw, that if he pitched the absolute so high, it was impossible to deduce from it the relative; and he felt that the intellectual intuition—a stumbling-block to himself—would be arrant foolishness in the eyes of his countrymen. Cousin and Schelling agree, that as philosophy is the science of the unconditioned, the unconditioned must be within the compass of science. They agree that the unconditioned is known, and immediately known; and they agree that intelligence as competent to the unconditioned, is impersonal, infinite, divine. ”

“ In this act of knowledge, which, after Fichte, Schelling calls the Intellectual Intuition, there exists no distinction of subject and object,—no contrast of knowledge and existence,—all difference is lost in absolute indifference,—all plurality in absolute unity. The intuition itself—reason—and the absolute—are identical. The absolute exists only as known by reason, and reason knows only as being itself the absolute. ”

“ But an absolute cause is not only dependent on the effect for its perfection—it is dependent on it even for its reality. For to what extent a thing exists necessarily as a cause, to that extent it is not all-sufficient to itself; for to that extent it is dependent on the effect, as on the condition through which alone it realizes its existence; and what exists absolutely as a cause, exists therefore in absolute dependence on the effect for the reality of its existence. An absolute cause, in truth, only exists in its effects: it never is, it always becomes. ”

“ While the lower sciences are of the relative and conditioned, Philosophy, as the science of sciences, must be of the absolute and unconditioned. Philosophy, therefore, supposes a science of the absolute. If the absolute is beyond our knowledge, philosophy is itself impossible. ”

“ What reflection is to the individual, history is to the human race. The difference of an epoch consists exclusively in the partial developement of some one element of intelligence in a prominent portion of mankind; and as there are only three such elements, so there are only three grand epochs in the history of man.
A knowledge of the elements of reason, of their relations and of their laws, constitutes not merely philosophy, but the conditions of a history of philosophy. ”

“ Man is the microcosm of existence; consciousness, within a narrow focus, concentrates a knowledge of the universe and of God; psychology is thus the abstract of all science, human and divine. As in the external world the action and reaction of all phenomena may be reduced to two great laws; so, in the internal, all the facts of consciousness may be reduced to one fundamental fact, comprising in like manner two principles and their correlation; and these principles are again the one or the infinite, the many or the finite, and the connexion of the infinite and finite. ”

“ On the principle of this doctrine, it is in Reason alone that truth and reality are to be found. Experience affords only the occasions on which intelligence reveals to us the necessary and universal notions of which it is the complement; and these notions afford at once the foundation of all reasoning, and the guarantee of our knowledge of existence. Kant, indeed, pronounced the philosophy of Rationalism to be a mere fabric of delusion. He declared that a science of existence was beyond the compass of our faculties ”

“ The history of human reason, or the history of philosophy, must be rational and philosophic. It must be philosophy itself, with all its elements, with all their relations, and with all their laws, represented in striking characters by the hands of time and of history, in the visible progress of the human mind. The discovery and enumeration of all the elements of intelligence enables us to survey the progress of speculation from the loftiest vantage ground; it discovers to us the laws by which the developement of reflection or philosophy is determined ”

“ In his Critique, Kant undertakes a regular survey of consciousness. He professes to analyse the conditions of human knowledge—to mete out its limits—to indicate its point of departure,—and to determine its possibility. That Kant accomplished much, it would be prejudice to deny; nor is his service to philosophy the less, that his success has been more decided in the subversion of error than in the establishment of truth. ”

“ The unconditionally unlimited, or the infinite, the unconditionally limited, or the absolute, cannot positively be construed to the mind; they can be conceived at all only by a thinking away, or abstraction, of those very conditions under which thought itself is realized; consequently, the notion of the unconditioned is only negative,—negative of the conceivable itself. For example, on the one hand we can positively conceive neither an absolute whole, that is, a whole so great, that we cannot also conceive it as a relative part of a still greater whole ”

“ In Scotland, a philosophy had sprung up, which, though professing, equally with the doctrine of Condillac, to build only on experience, did not, like that doctrine, limit experience to the relations of sense and its objects. Without vindicating to man more than a relative knowledge of existence, and restricting the science of mind to an observation of the fact of consciousness, it, however, analysed that fact into a greater number of more important elements than had been recognised in the school of Condillac. ”

“ Founded by Fichte, but perfected by Schelling, this doctrine regards experience as unworthy of the name of science; because, as only of the phenomenal, the transitory, the dependent, it is only of that which, having no reality in itself, cannot be established as a proper basis of certainty and knowledge. Philosophy must, therefore, either be abandoned, or we must be able to seize the one, the absolute, the unconditioned, immediately and in itself ”

“ We cannot conceive the infinite regress of time; for such a notion could only be realized by the infinite addition in thought of finite times, and such an addition would, itself, require an eternity for its accomplishment. If we dream of effecting this, we only deceive ourselves by substituting the indefinite for the infinite, than which no two notions can be more opposed. The negation of a commencement of time involves likewise the affirmation, that an infinite time has at every moment already run; that is, it implies the contradiction, that an infinite has been completed. ”

“ To those who cannot rise beyond a philosophy of reflection, Schelling candidly allows that the doctrine of the absolute can appear only as a series of contradictions; and he has at least the negative merit of having clearly exposed the absurdity of a philosophy of the unconditioned, as founded on a knowledge by difference, if he has utterly failed in positively proving the possibility of such a philosophy, as founded on a knowledge in identity, and through an absorption into the absolute. ”

“ In every act of consciousness we distinguish a self or ego, and something different from self, a non-ego; each limited and modified by the other. These, together, constitute the finite element. But at the same instant that we are conscious of these existences, plural, relative, and contingent, we are conscious likewise of a superior unity in which they are contained, and by which they are explained;—a unity absolute as they are conditioned, substantive as they are phenomenal, and an infinite cause as they are finite causes. ”

“ Thus every positive notion (the knowledge of a thing by what it is) suggests a negative notion (the knowledge of a thing by what it is not) ; and the highest positive notion, the notion of the conceivable, is not without its corresponding negative in the notion of the inconceivable. But though these mutually suggest each other, the positive alone is real; the negative is only an abstraction of the other, and in the highest generalisation is even an abstraction of thought itself. ”

“ Departing from the particular, we admit that we can never, in our highest generalizations, rise above the finite; that our knowledge, whether of mind or matter, can be nothing more than a knowledge of the relative manifestations of an existence which in itself it is our highest wisdom to recognise as beyond the reach of philosophy:—Cognoscendo ignorari, et ignorando cognosci. ”

“ The two ideas are thus connected together as cause and effect; each is only realised through the other; and this their connexion constitutes the third integrant element of intelligence.
Reason, or intelligence, in which these ideas appear, and which, in fact, they constitute and determine, is not individual, is not ours, is not even human; it is absolute, it is divine. What is personal to us, is our free and voluntary activity; what is not free and not voluntary, is adventitious to man, and does not constitute an integrant part of his individuality. ”

“ But though no converts to his philosophy, and viewing with regret what we must regard as the misapplication of his distinguished talents, we cannot disown a strong feeling of interest and admiration for those qualities, even in their excess, which have betrayed him, with so many other aspiring philosophers, into a pursuit which could end only in disappointment—we mean his love of truth, and his reliance on the powers of man. ”

“ But as, in the spontaneous intuition of reason, there is nothing voluntary, and consequently nothing personal; and as the truths which intelligence here discovers, come not from ourselves; we have a right, up to a certain point, to impose these truths on others as revelations from on high: while, on the contrary, reflection being wholly personal, it would be absurd to impose on others, what is the fruit of our individual operations. ”

“ In like manner, annihilating consciousness in order to reconstruct it, Schelling has never yet been able to connect the faculties conversant about the conditioned, with the faculty of absolute knowledge. One simple objection strikes us as decisive, although we do not remember to have seen it alleged. 'We awaken,' says Schelling, 'from the intellectual intuition as from 'the state of death, we awaken through reflection.' [3] We cannot, at the same moment, be in the intellectual intuition and in common consciousness ”

“ Speculative reason, on Kant's own admission, is an organ of mere delusion. The idea of the unconditioned, about which it is conversant, is shown to involve insoluble contradictions, and yet to be the legitimate product of intelligence. Hume has well observed, that it is of little consequence whether we possess a false reason, or no reason at all. 'If the light that leads astray be light from heaven,' what are we to believe? ”

“ For the three ideas constitute the nature of the Deity, and the nature of ideas is to be conceived. God, in fact, exists to us only in so far as he is known, and the degree of our knowledge must always determine the measure of our faith. The relation of God to the universe is therefore manifest, and the creation easily understood. To create, is not to make something out of nothing, for this is contradictory, but to originate from self. ”

“ The primitive unity, supposing no distinction, admits of no error; reflection in discriminating the elements of thought, and in considering one to the exclusion of others, occasions error, and a variety in error. He who exclusively contemplates the element of the infinite, despises him who is occupied with the idea of the finite; and vice versa. It is the wayward developement of the various elements of intelligence, that determines the imperfections and varieties of individual character. ”

“ The force which compels this must be external and hostile, for nothing operates to its own deterioration; and, as superior to the pretended God, is either itself the real deity, if an intelligent cause, or a negation of all deity, if a blind force or fate.
The second is equally inadmissible—that God, passing into the universe, passes from a state of comparative imperfection, into a state of comparative perfection. The divine nature is identical with the most perfect nature, and is also identical with the first cause. ”

“ For the same reasons we are unable to conceive an infinite progress of time; while the infinite regress and the infinite progress, taken together, involve the triple contradiction of an infinite concluded, of an infinite commencing, and of two infinites, not exclusive of each other. Thought is equally powerless in realizing a conception either of the absolute totality, or of the infinite immensity, of space. ”

“ The universe created, the principles which determined the creation are found still to govern the worlds of matter and mind. Two ideas and their connexion explain the intelligence of God; two laws in their counterpoise explain the material universe. The law of expansion is the movement of unity to variety; the law of attraction, the return of variety to unity.
In the world of mind the same analogy is apparent. The study of consciousness is psychology. ”