8IE WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 37i 



being reconciled with the two other statements, but the reconciliation: 

 must be one which I am unable to conceive. These statements are 

 not passing allusions which it might have been thought unnecessary 

 to qualify with exact limitations ; they are selected from passages 

 which are intended as expositions of the doctrine regarding the 

 relation of consciousness to the various forms of mental activity. If 

 anywhere, it must be in such passages that we are to look for a 

 statement on the subject, with all the necessary limitations ; yet we- 

 find no limitation whatever to the assertion that mental action or 

 passion without consciousness is impossible. It is, therefore, difficult 

 to explain the qualifications which I have noticed as intended to limit 

 the sphere of consciousness to certain states of mind considered as 

 phenomena or manifestations ; and this difficulty is increased by the 

 consideration, that the statements containing these qualifications 

 would, on such an interpretation, reduce themselves to the unimpor- 

 tant proposition, that consciousness is the necessary condition of 

 those mental states of which, as phenomena, we are conscious. 



At the very starting point of Hamilton's philosophy we are thus 

 brought face to face with a dilemma which spreads a much wider 

 perplexity than may at first sight appear. For (I) if consciousness is 

 the essential quality by which states of mind may be distinguished 

 from those of matter, what is to be understood by certain states which 

 are described as being destitute of this quality and yet as mental ? 

 and (2) if there may be states of mind without consciousness, what is 

 the quality that forms the difference between a mental fact and a 

 physical 1 The former alternative of this dilemma is one which will 

 turn up again in the criticism of Hamilton's doctrine of latent mental 

 modifications ; I confine myself at present to the point invoh^ed in 

 the latter alternative, that, in consequence of explaining certain facts 

 beyond the sphere of consciousness by the agency of mind, he has 

 left us in doubt as to the property by which mental and physical 

 facts are to be distinguished from one another. la treating of 

 psychology as a distinct branch of science it is implied that he recog- 

 nised the facts, which are investigated in that science, as forming a 

 group by themselves, distinguished by some characteristic from all 

 other facts within our experience ; but what, in Hamilton's opinion, 

 that characteristic is, I am unable to discover. It is certainly a 

 serious deficiency in the exposition of a science, that the distinctive 

 nature of the objects, with which the science is occupied, is left 



