352 REVIEWS — RATIONAL PHILOSOPHY IN HISTORY, ETC. 



our readers should imagine that we are doing him injustice, we may 

 observe that in the law of metaphysical presumption, laid down for 

 the criticism of our common beliefs, and of those transcendental be- 

 liefs (among the rest), to which Mr. Fraser thinks that our persuasion 

 of the ultimate infinity of the Real is due, it is clearly implied that 

 certainty in the strict and proper sense of the term is not regarded as 

 a necessary character of our common beliefs. Is the validity, for in- 

 stance, of the causal belief absolute ? Mr. Fraser would answer, as 

 Sir "W. Hamilton did before him : the belief must be presumed true, 

 until it is disproved. This is a very different thing from saying that 

 the belief is absolutely valid. It seems to us, in fact, to be virtually 

 saying that the belief is not absolutely valid. "We do not give a very 

 absolute testimony to a man's honesty, when we declare that he must 

 be presumed honest till he is proved a thief. Sir "W. Hamilton's 

 fullv developed doctrine is, that the primary beliefs of mankind, re- 

 garded as testimonies to matters beyond their own subjective reality, 

 are not essentially " above the reach of question." They must be 

 presumed true in the first instance. But their validity may intelligi- 

 bly and legitimately be made the subject of argument. It is con- 

 ceivable that they may be disproved, or at least discredited. This 

 has never yet been done ; and, consequently, the original presump- 

 tion in their favor is confirmed. Professor Eraser does not enter 

 into detail, like Sir William ; but his sentiments here are manifestly 

 the same in the main with those of his distinguished mas|:er„ On 

 such a view, however, it is apparent that we can have no ^triet and 

 perfect certainty of anything beyond the transient phenomena of the 

 ego. We may, from a spontaneous impulse, believe in a sipstantive 

 Self, in a material world, in Grod ; but these beliefs may (coiiceivably 

 at least) turn out to be unwarrantable. " As philosophy now 

 stands" (the expression is Sir William Hamilton's) they haje a claim 

 upon our acceptance ; but this very mode of putting the case im- 

 plies that (conceivably at least) the verdict of metaphysic ans, fifty 

 years hence, may be : " as philosophy now stands " the validty of the 

 natural beliefs of mankind must be abandoned. We are fulV entitled 

 therefore, to say, that, in whatever terms Mr. Fraser maj at times 

 speak of the confidence due to our common beliefs, his t|eory for- 

 bids us to exercise an absolutely perfect confidence in tljem ; and, 

 among other consequences of this, compels us to admit not only 

 that the real, as distinguished from its temporal mauifesiations, is 

 inconceivable, but also (a widely different thing) that tlere is no 



