29 UNIVERSI OF CALIFORNA LECTURE II. I. HAMILTON'S PHILOSOPHY. THE METHOD.—TRUE I HAVE got but one hour this evening to put before you the method and the main results of a great philosophy, the work of a man's lifetime. This is a very abstract philosophy as well. It goes back to the very grounds of human knowledge, to the very essence of reality as we know it. Further, this philosophy has been given to the world in fragments, in a broken, unarranged, indigested form. In the mind of its author there loomed the ideal of a great edifice. We can even see the outlines of the proposed structure. But in his actual writings, there are but the gathered materials for the work. These are very grand and imposing. From the stately parts we can imagine the greatness of the whole, had the master's hand given them union and cohesion. We may regret that so much of his time was given to the reading of books in philosophy; the fruits of which in great measure perished with him, as when a richly laden galleon goes down out of sight into the deep waters. But I am not sure that this failure to complete and systematise a life's work was altogether due to this cause. There was in Hamilton a strong feeling, a feeling too that grew with his years, perhaps with the maturity of his thought, that no system of human knowledge is adequate to the universe of things, to the possibilities of being. The position of all others he would have been unwilling to admit in philosophy, is that thought and being are convertible, meaning especially by that a system of thought in our consciousness, and yet identified with the absolute or divine. haps it was the strength of this feeling with him, which partly restrained his hand. In respect especially to the highest form of reality, he very clearly felt that God dwelleth not in a temple made with hands. Per However greatly on some grounds we may regret the lack of system in Hamilton, I for my part feel, looking at the intellectual narrowness, the exclusiveness, the hurt done to the breadth and freeness of human life and feeling, the unlovely moral spirit, which are apparently inseparable from certain theories of the world and God, -I say I feel a certain relief in contemplating a system of hints and suggestions, especially if these be at the same time reverent, ennobling, and inspiring. Now, looking at the philosophy of Hamilton as we have it, there are three salient points. There is, first, the question of his Method. What was the method he pursued with a view to the solution of the question of human knowledge, the nature of truth and reality for man? Secondly, There is the special question as to the meaning of the term Reality, when applied to the world of the senses, the world of our outward experience, of physical science and its inquiries. Is it real in the sense in which the knower is real? or in what sense can I apply the word to the world around me? Is it more than a display of images or a round of subjective impressions? Thirdly, What is the meaning of reality as applied to what we call the Infinite, the sphere of being which seems at least to be correlative with this finite reality of experience? Ultimately what is God? In what sense is He, or is He real? I seem to hear some one saying, Why ask those questions? Why trouble yourself with them? I answer, first, because I cannot help asking them, because ordinary experience and science suggest them at every turn, because I have already traditionally accepted certain solutions of those questions in the very words I use, and in the daily beliefs on which I act; and it is desirable that I should, if I can, get above, beyond, this blind traditional knowledge, and rise to a clear consciousness about this life of mine, this world, and God. We are all metaphysicians, we all dogmatise about what is. The difference is that some people do know and others do not, when they are stating or acting on their theory of being. And what is the Method of the philosophy of Hamilton? In plain words, it is primarily and essentially the method which Bacon inculcated, and which has accomplished or rendered possible the progress and the triumphs of physical science during the last 250 years. It is an appeal to experience, to our actual knowledge. In brief, it is an appeal to consciousness in man, to that which gives unity to all our knowledge, to that which is the light of all our seeing, and the measure of all our being. The facts or phænomena, and the laws of knowledge are to be investigated, as are the facts and laws of the physical world. This is the method of the Scottish school, from its first hint in Turnbull of Aberdeen, towards the beginning of last century, to the close of the labours of Hamilton. And it is a method which is essential to every philosophy of mind, call itself what it may. It must either openly, adequately, scientifically accept this method, or surreptitiously and imperfectly do so. This means simply that we must first know the facts. And this can be done either openly, as by the Scottish method of psychology, or blindly, by what is ignorantly represented as the method of the Scottish school, irreflective commonsense. But to say that the method is Baconian, while true, is not to say all; for it aims at and it reaches principles higher than any mere generalisation can give, any mere summation of particulars, even guided by a determining idea. The principles it seeks and finds. are not simply general, but strictly universal in our knowledge. Gradually thus, the method of the Scottish school worked out in Reid, but especially in Hamilton, to the method of Descartes, and to his stand-point in philosophy. That was simply the experimental testing by reflection of the possibilities of doubt. This pushed backwards on the principles assumed in ordinary experience, gradually made it clear that there are laws which guarantee themselves by the impossibility of subverting them even in thought. This impossibility or necessity being fully realised in consciousness, gives them universality. For what must be thought, always must be thought-in a word, is universal in consciousThis argument is complete when it is shown that no one can assail those principles without assuming them or their equivalents. ness. About this method there are several points to be noted. First, Hamilton resolutely holds that we cannot go beyond the general fact of consciousness. I am conscious, say, of feeling, perceiving, knowing, willing. This is the first fact for me, and beyond its teachings I cannot go. This guarantees itself; this is the ground of knowledge for me. Then think of the universality of consciousness. For you and for me there is nothing felt, nothing perceived, nothing known, if consciousness be not there. There is no meaning in the word you use, unless you have consciousness of it. There is no meaning in the existence of our fellow-men, unless as we suppose them conscious like ourselves. Nay, history is a blank, the actors in history, their motives, their deeds, unless they stand revealed in the light of conscious meaning, unless we take them into the folds of our conscious thought. All that has been said or done by man was once an invisible consciousness, true and real then ere it was embodied. Reality for you and me is in what we think and feel, rather than in what we do. Out of the heart are the issues of life. But do not understand consciousness narrowly. It is not the mood, the arbitrary or passing mood of the individual. It is the consciousness, the mind of humanity which is studied, |