Sir William Hamilton's Fragments of FMosophy. 81 



Reason, in which these three principles appear, is not personal nor indi- 

 vidual, it is absolute and divine ; it is the true manifestation of God in 

 man. The ideas of whicli we are conscious, place us in immediate re- 

 lation with God, and which affords us a meaus of knowing him ; thus 

 God may be conceived of by us, tlic relation of God to the universe may 

 be manifested to our intelligence. God, the absolute and independent 

 cause of all that exists, may, and must, create ; creation thus becomes 

 necessary, and affords to our ej-es the striking proof of the existence and 

 action of the Divinitj\ These ontologieal principles are likewise those 

 which govern the moral and material world. Every where these two 

 elements again appear, — the finite, the infinite, and their common rela- 

 tion which forms the third element. In psychology, the essence and 

 point of departure of every science, human and divine, we likewise meet 

 with three terms of the same phenomenon : l.y^. The idea of me and of not 

 me as finite ; Id, The idea of some other tiling, as infinite; 3rf, The idea 

 of the relation of the finite to the infinite element. "What constitutes 

 psychological science, likewise constitutes the science of the history of 

 philosophy itself, for the latter is just the history of human reason, with 

 all its relations, its laws, and vicissitudes. Four systems or partial views 

 of human intelligence divide history and include all opinions ; these sys- 

 tems are, Sensualism, Idealism, Scepticism, and 3fysticism. A'one of them 

 is false, but in as far as it is incomplete ; thus, all are true, inasmueli as 

 they affirm, and false, inasmuch as they deny ; the electism founded by 

 M. Cousin should reconcile them, and bring together the portion of truth 

 which each presents, without having the power of itself to shew it en- 

 tire. 



Sir William Hamilton has illustrated and discussed what we have liere 

 reduced to a mere skeletou, but the subject has been so often noticed 

 and commented on by the journals of the time, that this will be sufficient 

 to recall it to the mind of every reader in any degree familiar with the 

 progress of philosophical ideas in our times. Sir William Hamilton re- 

 views the most celebrated professed opinions on the subject of the theory 

 of the infinite, as the immediate object of knowledge and thought. These 

 opinions, according to him, arc reducible to four : that of the author, that 

 of Kant, that of Schelling, and that of Cousin. The Scotch Professor 

 compares them, and makes use of this comparison to remove the faults 

 and imperfections of those in which he does not concur. He makes an 

 attack, chiefly in reference to M. Cousin, on the definition of the abso- 

 lute by absolute cause, undertakes to demonstrate the falsity of his 

 rational theology, and combats, in particular, his theory of liberty. Ac- 

 cording to the whole of his observations, he considers it impossible to 

 realize the attempt of establishing a general harmony among all the sj's- 

 tems ; but, rendering justice to the talents of the author, he pardons him 

 for the bold and vigorous attempt, common to all men devoted to the 

 cultivation of thought, and who, wishing to overpass the limits of our in- 

 VOL. XXXIV. NO. LXVII. JANUARY 1843. P 



