76 SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 



hindrance to his success by his inexact use of the terms, ego and non- 

 eo'o. We are not surprised, therefore, to find him so far astray as to 

 assert that we know nothing of the mind except as a series or succes- 

 sion of feelings, although he acknowledges that "our notion" of mind 

 involves in it the conception of something that remains unchanged 

 amid the changes of feeling through which alone we know it ; and this 

 conception, he thinks, may arise from the same laws as the equivalent 

 conception in our notion of matter. His words are,* " We have no 

 conception of mind itself, as distinguished from its conscious manifes- 

 tations. We neither know nor can imagine it, except as represented by 

 the succession of manifold feelings which metaphysicians call by the 

 name of states or modifications of mind. It is nevertheless true that our 

 notion of mind, as well as of matter, is the notion of a permanent some- 

 thing, contrasted with the perpetual flux of the sensations and other 

 feelings or mental states which we refer to it ; a something which we 

 figure as remaining the same, while the particular feelings through 

 which it reveals its existence, change. The attribute of Permanence, 

 supposing that there were nothing else to be considered, would admit of 

 the same explanation when predicated of mind, as of matter. The 

 belief I entertain that my mind exists, when it is not feeling, nor 

 thinking, nor conscious of its own existence, resolves itself into the 



belief of a Permanent Posssibility of these states Thus 



far, there seems to be no hindrance to our regarding mind as nothing 

 but the series of sensations (to which must now be added our internal 

 feelings), as they actually occur, with the addition of infinite possibili- 

 ties of feeling requiring for their actual realization conditions which 

 may or may not take place, but which as possibilities are always in 

 existence, and many of them present. The Permanent Possibility of 

 feeling, which forms my notion of myself," — and so on. There is scarcely 

 a point in this statement to which exception must not be taken, if we 

 'Understand by mind, self or ego simply me. So far am I from knowing 

 myself always and only as a series or succession of feelings, that I never 

 'know nor can conceive myself as such ; and the assertion, that I am a 

 •series of feelings, is a contradiction in terms; it is tantamount to the 

 •assertion, that I am not I. What I am in reality, is not considered 

 here ; but I am never conscious of myself as being what I am repre- 

 sented to be in the above description of Mr. Mill. It is true, Mr. Mill 



* Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosopliy, pp. 205-6. 



