SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S PHILOSOPHY. 63 



discover tlie illusory character of such appearances by a scientific criti- 

 cism of the elements which constitute human knowledge. 



"What, then, must we suppose, led Sir W. Hamilton to imagine that 

 the statements of antagonistic philosophers, which we have now exa- 

 mined, are to be interpreted as admissions in his favour ? A solution 

 of this question will probably be reached by examining the nature of 

 the belief to which these statements refer, and by considering the 

 manner in which that belief ought to be treated by the scientific student 

 of the human mind. 



II. There cannot be a doubt that a belief, conviction, intuition, 

 knowledge, consciousness, or whatever else one may choose to call it, 

 of something external to, or different from, onese//, must be acknow- 

 ledged to exist in the mind of every man. That in all my conscious- 

 ness I am aware of that which is not I, apprehended as occupying 

 space and as enduring in time, and that I cannot choose but be aware 

 of it except by ceasing to be conscious, — this statement will be admit- 

 ted by every human being to be the expression of a fact in his consci- 

 ousness from the date of his most distant reminiscences down to the 

 latest hour at which reflection is possible. Though it may be generally 

 true, as Sir W. Hamilton more than once asserts after Yarro, that there is 

 no absurdity too great not to have found a supporter among any of the 

 philosophers, I am confident that a special exception must be made in 

 reference to the denial of this mental fact. At least it would have been 

 interesting if Sir W. Hamilton, instead of collecting acknowledgments 

 of this fact, had employed some of that curious learning, which has 

 endeavoured to discover the ''local habitation and the name" of the 

 philosophical sect of Egoists, in hunting out any philosophers by whom 

 the fact has been denied. The truth is, that this is not only one of the 

 facts which the investigator of the human mind must study, but, when 

 properly viewed, it is, as the most obtrusive fact in our mental history, 

 also the prime fact in mental science, the explanation of, which inevita- 

 bly drags in all the general questions suggested by the phenomena of 

 human knowledge. On this account the fact under consideration 

 necessarily occupies the most prominent place in the speculations of 

 schools representing the most antagonistic tendencies of philosophical 

 inquiry; and there are not wanting, in the writings of philosophers, 

 most opposed to Sir W. Hamilton in their interpretation of the fact, 

 statements, quite as explicit as any which he has penned, of the irresis- 

 tibility and the immediacy with which in our ordinary consciousness 



