William Hamilton

“ William Hamilton was one of the wealthiest men of his day and loved display and the rôle of a lavish host. Maintaining a large retinue of servants and living in a style surpassing that of most of his neighbors, his dinner parties and other social gatherings were attended by the most eminent personages of the time. A man of culture and refinement, he accumulated many valuable paintings and rare books, and his gardens, greenhouse and grounds were his particular pride and joy. To a large collection of native American plants and shrubs he added many exotic trees and plants. ”

“ Sir William Hamilton is, however, a firm believer in the a priori character of many axioms, and of the sciences deduced from them; and is so far from considering those axioms to rest on the evidence of experience, that he declares certain of them to be true even of Noumena—of the Unconditioned—of which it is one of the principal aims of his philosophy to prove that the nature of our faculties debars us from having any knowledge. ”

“ We say frequent and considerable, because no historian of philosophy is exempt from the defect more or less; or rather (to pass out of the self-confidence of the Absolute into the modesty of the Relative) we seldom find any historian whose estimate of great philosophical thinkers does not often differ from our own. Hence we are glad when ample original extracts are produced, enabling us to test the historian, and judge for ourselves—a practice which Sir W. Hamilton would have required no stimulus to enforce upon him. ”

“ In consequence probably of his singularly high ideal of what is required in philosophical authorship, the metaphysical writings of Sir William Hamilton have hitherto been less frequent and copious than his extraordinary attainments demand, or than his wide-spread reputation might seem to presume. Until the appearance of these Notes and Dissertations, his metaphysical and logical doctrines were communicated to the world almost exclusively through the medium of the essays contributed by him, within the last twenty years, to the Edinburgh Review ”

“ If the sentence which we have quoted above be intended to deny the predicate, 'active and fertile thinker,' of Sir W. Hamilton, we cannot acquiesce in it. His intellect appears to us thoroughly active and fertile, even when we dissent from his reasonings—nay, even in the midst of his inconsistencies, when a new growth of opinions is unexpectedly pushed up on ground which we supposed to be already pre-occupied by another both older and different. And we find this same judgment implied in the discriminating remarks upon his philosophical procedure made by Mr Mill himself— (pp. 271, 272) . ”

“ Whether this estimate was right or wrong in the main may be a matter of question: we think it wrong. His genius, in our view, lay rather in pictorial passion than in ratiocination. At all events, as a teacher of philosophy, it appears to us that his conception of the duties of his office, and his style of teaching, were far inferior to those of his competitor and subsequent associate, Sir William Hamilton. The one taught like a trumpet-tongued poet, and the other like an encyclopaedic philosopher. ”

“ For ourselves we embrace the theory of Mr Mill: [13] yet we are aware that the remark just cited from Sir W. Hamilton represents the dissatisfaction entertained towards it by many objectors. The unscientific and antiscientific yearnings, prevalent among mankind, lead them to put questions which no sound theory of Causation will answer; and they are ready to visit and trust any oracle which professes to deliver a confident affirmative solution of such questions. Among all the terms employed by metaphysicians, none is used in a greater variety of meanings than the term Cause. ”

“ From 1761 to 1764 he was member of parliament for Midhurst, but in the latter year he was appointed envoy to the court of Naples, a post which he held for thirty-six years—until his recall in 1800. During the greater part of this time the official duties of the minister were of small importance. It was enough that the representative of the British crown should be a man of the world whose means enabled him to entertain on a handsome scale. Hamilton was admirably qualified for these duties, being an amiable and accomplished man, who took an intelligent interest in science and art. ”

“ Hamilton heard the wrongs of the colonies discussed without any of the excitement or pyrotechnical brilliancy to which he had become accustomed. New York was not only the hot-bed of Toryism, but even such ardent Republicans as William Livingston, George Clinton, and John Jay were aristocrats, holding themselves fastidiously aloof from the rank and file that marched and yelled under the name of Sons of Liberty. To Hamilton the conflict had been spectacular rather than real, until he met and moved with these sombre, undemonstrative, superficially unpleasing men of Boston ”

“ The state of his health compelled him, however, to live abroad, and he died at Lyons on the 25th of March 1754. He was buried in the Abbey Church of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh. He was twice married—“into families of distinction” says the preface of the authorized edition of his poems.
Hamilton left behind him a considerable number of poems, none of them except “The Braes of Yarrow” of striking originality. The collection is composed of odes, epitaphs, short pieces of translation, songs, and occasional verses. The longest is “Contemplation, or the Triumph of Love” (about 500 lines) . ”

“ Hamilton, Sir William, a metaphysician, the most acute logician and most learned philosopher of the Scottish school, was born in 1788 at Glasgow, where his father and grandfather in succession held the chairs of anatomy and botany. Having studied with distinction at Glasgow, in 1809 he entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he gained first-class honors. In 1813 he was admitted to the Scottish bar, but never acquired a practice in his profession, his taste lying much more toward the study of philosophy, in which he had already made extensive researches. ”

“ Moreover, the living force of philosophy, as directress of human intelligence, depends upon keeping up in each of her devotees a full mastery of many divergent and opposite veins of reasoning—a knowledge, negative and affirmative, of the full case of opponents as well as of his own.
It is to Philosophy alone that our allegiance is sworn; and while we concur mostly with Mr Mill's opinions, we number both him and Sir W. Hamilton as a noble pair of brethren, serving alike in her train. ”

“ While still a young man he was a gentleman of the privy chamber to Charles I, and was knighted. He sat in the parliaments of 1630 and 1633 as commissioner for Lanarkshire, and was appointed lord of the articles on 20 June 1633. He did not sit in the parliament of 1641, probably on account of his adherence to the Marquis of Hamilton. In 1644, and again in 1645, he contested Lanarkshire against Sir William Hamilton, and on the second occasion with success. ”

“ They hold that we know things partly as they are in themselves, partly as they are merely in relation to us.
This discrimination of the various schools of philosophers is highly instructive, and is given with the full perspicuity belonging to Mr Mill's style. He proceeds to examine in what sense Sir W. Hamilton maintained the Relativity of Human Knowledge. He cites passages both from the 'Discussions on Philosophy' and from the Lectures, in which that doctrine is both affirmed in its greatest amplitude, and enunciated in the most emphatic language— (pp. 17, 18, 22, 23) . ”

“ Hamilton became a member of the provincial council in 1746. He was residing in London in 1748, when he was commissioned by the sons of William Penn as lieutenant-governor of the province and territories. He resigned in 1754, and when the news of Indian outrages reached Philadelphia in the autumn of 1755, entered actively on the work of defence, and reported to the assembly that a chain of garrisoned forts and block-houses was nearly completed from Delaware river to the Maryland line. ”

“ In so far as Mr Mill controverts Sir W. Hamilton, we think him perfectly successful, though there are some points in his reasoning in which we do not fully concur.
In our opinion, as in his, the Absolute alone (in its sense as opposed to relative) can be necessarily unknowable, inconceivable, incogitable. Nothing which falls under the condition of relativity can be declared to be so. ”

“ The name is not fifty years old, and twenty years ago Hamilton had less than 4000 inhabitants. Its growth bears no comparison with that of some American cities, but it is still very remarkable, and its wealth, importance, and defencelessness are quite sufficient to make it an object of attack. The houses are built of stone. Banks, hotels, manufactories, churches—well constructed and handsome—give proof of the prosperity of the community; and the residence there of Sir Alan MacNab, who lived somewhere in the vicinity in a brand new mediæval castle, should be some guarantee for their loyalty. ”

“ From the third son, Claud, descends the duke of Abercorn, heir male of the house of Hamilton.
The first marquess of Hamilton had a natural son, Sir John Hamilton of Lettrick, who was legitimated in 1600 and was ancestor of the lords Bargany. His two legitimate sons were James, 3rd marquess and first duke of Hamilton, and William, who succeeded his brother as 2nd duke and was in turn succeeded under the special remainder contained in the patent of dukedom, by his niece Anne, duchess of Hamilton, who was married in 1656 to William Douglas, earl of Selkirk. ”

“ HAMILTON, WILLIAM GERARD (1729-1796) , English statesman, popularly known as “Single Speech Hamilton,” was born in London on the 28th of January 1729, the son of a Scottish bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. He was educated at Winchester and at Oriel College, Oxford. Inheriting his father’s fortune he entered political life and became M.P. for Petersfield, Hampshire. His maiden speech, delivered on the 13th of November 1755, during the debate on the address, which excited Walpole’s admiration, is generally supposed to have been his only effort in the House of Commons. ”

“ Now it is precisely on this point that issue is here taken with Sir W. Hamilton. Mr Mill denies altogether (p. 437) that the quantity of the predicate is always understood or present in thought, and appeals to every reader's consciousness for an answer:—
'Does he, when he judges that all oxen ruminate, advert even in the minutest degree to the question, whether there is anything else that ruminates? ”

“ In August 1689 he was sent by the governor and officers of Enniskillen as their agent to King William and Queen Mary, with a certificate stating that Hamilton had been a member of their association from its inauguration on 9 Dec. 1688; that he had raised a troop of horse and a company of foot; that a force under the Duke of Berwick had burnt his houses in ten villages, and carried off over a thousand cows, two hundred horses, and two thousand sheep from him and his tenants ”

“ He was excessively precise and hard to please with reference to the final polish of his own works for publication; and it was probably for this reason that he published so little compared with the extent of his investigations.
Like most men of great originality, Hamilton generally matured his ideas before putting pen to paper. “He used to carry on,” says his elder son, William Edwin Hamilton, “long trains of algebraical and arithmetical calculations in his mind, during which he was unconscious of the earthly necessity of eating ”

“ He was obliged by ill-health and pecuniary difficulties to leave the school to his teachers, and went on to Washington, and then to Boston, where he could only obtain four pupils. A professor at the Boston University attacked him as a charlatan, but a committee examined and approved his four pupils, and he soon had two hundred. Hamilton also taught at the colleges of Schenectady, Princeton, Yale, Hartford, and Middleburg, and often had the teachers as well as their pupils in his classes. ”

“ In 1792 he made a good finish to his labours by an excavation, in conjunction with Prince Marco Antonio Borghese, on the territory of the ancient Gabii (marbles found there by him are now in the Louvre) . The excavations at Hadrian's villa were undertaken by Hamilton with James Byres and Thomas Jenkins. With the last named Hamilton often acted in partnership. Hamilton sold the antiquities which he discovered or bought up, but did not adopt the lax trading principles of the Roman art-dealers of his day. ”

“ Hamilton had a good instinct and, as a rule, good luck in making discoveries. He began in 1769 with his well-known excavation of Hadrian's villa below Tivoli. He found sixty marbles (chiefly busts) , ‘some of the first rank.’ In 1771 he found many statues while excavating on the Via Appia in the ‘tenuta del Colombaro.’ He also excavated at Prima Porta and in the country round the Alban mountains. Some fine antiquities were discovered by him at Monte Cagnuolo, the villa of Antoninus Pius, near the ancient Lanuvium (cp. Ancient Marbles in Brit. Mus. pl. 45, x. frontisp. and pl. 25, 26) . ”

“ These differences seem to have been adjusted, and Hamilton died quietly at his Piccadilly house at 10.10 a.m. on 6 April 1803. His wife was at his bedside, and Nelson held his hand. He was buried at Milford Haven. In character Hamilton is described (Southey, Life of Nelson) as being a mild and amiable man. From studying antiquities he had learnt (he said) 'the perpetual fluctuation of everything,' and that the present hour was the sweetest in life. 'Do all the good you can upon earth, and take the chance of eternity without dismay.'
Hamilton had no child by his second wife. ”