68 SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 



no more than a statement of the fact of perception as it appears in the 

 consciousness of every man. Sir W. Hamilton, however, mistakes this 

 statement for a concession of the very point at issue between him and 

 the great majority of his antagonists, and it is on the ground of such a 

 mistaken concession that he declares the testimony of consciousness to 

 be in favour of his theory. 



3. But the most conclusive evidence that Sir W. Hamilton has in the 

 present instance forgotten the conditions which make an appeal to the 

 testimony of consciouiSness valid, is the fact that he makes such an 

 appeal at all. For such an appeal is altogether needless, if the condi- 

 tion under which alone it maybe made is fulfilled. To make the appeal 

 allowable, the fact appealed to must be shown to be an absolutely 

 elementary fact in human consciousness; and when this is done with 

 regard to perception, the whole question at issue between the Natural 

 Realists and their opponents is set at rest. It is wholly unnecessary to 

 plead the veracity of the primitive beliefs, out of which the phenomena 

 of human consciousness have been generated; for the controversy, 

 raised by the opposition to Natural Realism, is not, whether it is legiti- 

 mate to set aside any of these beliefs, but whether the conviction, 

 involved in external perception, is to be reckoned in the number of such 

 beliefs at all. 



To appreciate Sir W. Hamilton's position fully, however, we must 

 consider this question in the state in which he took it up. It had from 

 the first been urged against the philosophy of Common Sense, that it is 

 only a retreat from unpalatable conclusions of science to the unscrutinised 

 beliefs of mankind; and Sir W. Hamilton, referring to this charge, 

 acknowledges that it comes home to some philosophers of the Common 

 Sense school. " la this country in particular," he says,* " some of 

 those who opposed it (the argument of Common Sense) to the sceptical 

 conclusions of Hume did not sufficiently counteract the notion which 

 the name might naturally suggest; they did not emphatically proclaim 

 that it was no appeal to the undeveloped beliefs of the unreflective 

 many ; and they did not inculcate that it presupposed a critical exami- 

 nation of these beliefs by the philosophers themselves. On the con- 

 trary, their language and procedure might even sometimes warrant an 

 opposite conclusion." It cannot therefore be pleaded in Sir William 

 Hamilton's favour, that the rock, on which he has struck, is one whose 



*Jieid's Works, ]^. '752. 



