290 REVIEWS — SIR WM. HAMILTON'S 



tions of the latter which are apprehended in sensation, possess a sub- 

 jective character. They are felt as affections of self. But when we 

 consider the general relations of extension under which the organism 

 is perceived to exist — relations under which, as body, it necessarily 

 exists — it is plain that as respects these, it has no claim to be viewed 

 as subjective. They do not belong to it as united with the thinking 

 principle, and cannot in any sense be predicated of self. Hence the 

 organism which in sensation is reckoned of the Ego, is in perception 

 accounted Non-Ego. This will probably seem strange doctrine to 

 those to whom it is presented for the first time. That the organism 

 in one aspect, as animated, and the object of sensatkm, should be of 

 the Ego, while in another, as material and the object of perception, 

 it is ignominiously reduced to the rank of Non-Ego — that it should 

 be at once within and without the mind — may, as Sir W. Hamilton 

 confesses, " appear not a paradox merely but a contradiction." But 

 upon any theory, the connection between soul and body is a deep 

 mystery — '' the mystery of mysteries ;" and should a particular 

 doctrine be in other respects agreeable to the imitations of con- 

 sciousness, Sir William Hamilton contends that it is not rendered 

 unworthy of acceptance, merely by being paradoxical or even seem- 

 ingly contradictory [real contradiction being always supposed to be 

 avoided] where it touches upon a matter so obscure. 



Sir William does not admit that distant objects — that is, such as 

 are not in proximate relation to the organism— are perceived. We 

 perceive our body (as a material organism), and also extraorganic 

 objects (not known by consciousness to be material) directly pressing 

 against the organism ; but we perceive nothing else. And indeed 

 a moment's reflection is sufficient to shew that no system in which 

 perception is viewed as an immediate cognition, can, without palpable 

 error, affirm the perception of distant objects ; for such objects are 

 not in presentation to the mind, which never sallies out beyond the 

 organism : and the mind cannot immediately apprehend what is 

 not in presentation to it. Here Dr. Beid is grieviously in fault. 

 His philosophy knows nothing of any such limitation of the range 

 of the perceptive faculty as that described. He claims for percep- 

 tion a capacity of reaching to distant objects ; and classes himself, 

 even ostentatiously, with " the vulgar" who think that they perceive 

 ships and houses, and men, and women, and other external realities 

 which lie confessedly beyond the sphere of proximate relation to 

 their organism. But this is, of course, perfectly absurd, on the 

 supposition that perception is, what Beid every where affirms it to 

 be, an immediate cognition. A book lies upon, the table ; our eyea 



