216 SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 



is, also, in the main, identical with that of Locke ; but the conclu- 

 sions which he draws with regard to our most important ideas, as well 

 as with regard to the nature ot ideas in general, from his analysis of 

 their origin, diverge as widely as is conceivable from the conclusions 

 of the corresponding analysis in the Essay Concerning Human Under- 

 standing. Setting out with the theory, that all ideas originate in the ex- 

 perience of each human organism from the commencement of its exis- 

 tence, or at least from the commencement of the consciousness associ- 

 ated with it, he refuses to recognise in any idea a single element which 

 cannot be traced to this origin ; and there is no belief exalted to so lofty 

 a height in human reverence, that he fears to direct against it the 

 assaults which logically issue from his theory, nor does he weary in 

 piling argument upon argument if he hopes to succeed in dethroning 

 it trom the eminence which he believes it to have usurped. There 

 was much in the character of the man who undertook this Titanic 

 task, which qualified him for carrying it out. The retirement of his 

 early life, and the thoughts with which his early studies constantly 

 occupied his mind, combined probably with the peculiarities of his 

 physical temperament* to create in his very boyhood a wish to " for- 

 tify himself with reflections against death, and poverty, and shame, 

 and «11 the other calamities of life ;"f and the result of this may be 

 observed in an inability to appreciate the passionate enthusiasm which 

 has carried many to their noblest deeds, as well as in a distaste, if not 

 an incapacity, for those feverish longings and endeavours which 

 trouble the lives of men who are driven into the struggle of human 

 existence by the tyranny of external circumstances or by the equally 

 resistless tyranny of nervous irritability. With all this there was a 

 native kindliness of disposition, a humility under his own speculative 

 convictions regarding the littleness of human reason and its liability 

 to error, which produced in him such an indifference to varieties of 

 opinion, such an absence of pugnacious dogmatism and even such 

 generosity towards antagonists,^ as have been reached by few. "When 

 such a character was united to an intellect which saw from afar the 

 dim terminations in which all lines of thought inevitably end, which 

 untied with delicate touch the most complicated knots of speculation, 



•See the remarkable letter to a physician in Burton's Life and Correspondence 

 of D. Hume, Vol. I., pp- 30-38. 



t Ibid. 



*See Ills letter to Reid, with Reid's reply, in Burton's Lije and Correspondence 

 of D. Hume, Vol. II., pp. 153-6. 



