374 SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 



eral doctrine forms so essential a part of his Philosophy of the Condi- 

 tioned, that it is unnecessary to adduce any passages to justify the 

 ascription of it to him ; but it may be worth while in the present 

 connection to cite a single statement, inasmuch as it contains a special 

 application of the doctrine which will help us to understatid his 

 analysis of consciousness. "In so far," he says, "as mind is the 

 the common name for the states of knowing, willing, feeling, desiring, 

 etc., of whfch I am conscious, it is only the name for a certain series 

 of connected phenomena or qualities, and, consequently, expresses 

 only what is known. But in so far as it denotes that subject or 

 substance in which the phenomena of knowing, willing, etc., inhere, — 

 something behind or under these phenomena, — it expresses what, in 

 itself or in its absolute existence, is unknown.. Thus mind and mat- 

 ter, as known or knowable, are only two different series of phenomena 

 or qualities.'"* 



Certainly Sir William Hamilton cannot be charged with any tend- 

 ency towards Empiricism ; yet it is impossible to read such a passage 

 sis the above without remembering that, to his greatest critic also, the 

 mind, so far, at least, as it is known and probably so far as it exists, 

 is but a "series of feelings." This is also, it will be observed, iden- 

 tical with the account of the mind, of which a brief notice was given 

 in the first article of the present series as the doctrine of David Hume. 

 There is, however, an essential difference between the theory of Ham- 

 ilton and that of Hume and Mill. It is, therefore, necessary to 

 explain this difference, in order to comprehend the exact purport of 

 Hamilton's doctrine. 



To both theories there belongs a common view of the original and 

 essential nature of mental phenomena. To them, mental phenomena 

 are not originally states in which a mind knows or is conscious of 

 itself as acting or affected in particular modes ; they are merely 

 phenomena which, in accordance with their own laws, generate the 

 idea of a real or illusory substance to which they belong. The point, 

 at which the two theories diverge, is in their explanation of the mode 

 in which this idea is generated. According to every empirical theory 

 the idea is the growth of a more or less prolonged experience ; and this 

 general doctrine admits of manifold modifications in accordance with 

 its account of the various steps in the process through which the idea 

 rises to maturity. On the other hand, in the theory of Sir William 



• Led. on Metaph., Vol. I, p. 138. 



