The Reviewer.

Sir William Hamilton: being the Philosophy of Perception. An Analysis. By JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.

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THIS is the work of a man who is emphatically a thinker. James Hutchison Stirling has written a treatise on "The Secret of Hegel" -which, we regret to say, we have not read. There is, however, in this harsh-spoken, trenchant, and incisive critique, proof enough of ability to give new, fresh, vigorous thought to the problems of philosophy. The vision and the insight of the man is acute and accurate. The argument against Sir William Hamilton's tenets is put in a more telling form than it has been presented by its author's more distinguished contemporary, Mr. Mill;" and as it is less discursive it is more cogent. The eye with which Mr. Stirling has perused the scattered writings of Hamilton has been lynx-like in its fault-seeing. The selective faculty which culled the pertinent extracts to which he refers as embodying the distinct utterances of the doctrine of Hamilton has been choicely gifted with a sleuthhound's infallibility of pursuit and seizure, despite of all dodges and evasions. The logical power by which comparisons have been made between passage and passage, thought and thought, is cultured and sharpened to the finest, while the language employed in the discussion is terse, animated, varied, well arranged, and most effectively put together.

It would be difficult indeed to mistake the signification of any sentence in the book. Without being so pedantically scholastic, it is as translucent as Hamilton's. The grasp of his mind is tense, the heat of his passion intense, and the language in which he expresses both is sententious, graphic, and precise. We may at once illustrate the subject on which the book treats, and prove what we have advanced regarding the thinking and style of the author by an extract, such as the following:

"Consciousness is veracious; consciousness is not mendacious; the facts of consciousness must be accepted; consciousness is our ultimate standard. In order to try consciousness, another consciousness were demanded: the facts of consciousness are mutually congruent and coherent; the consciousness is itself false, and the whole edifice of knowledge-society itself-topples; the root of nature is a lie; God is a deceiver; unconditional scepticism is the melancholy result; our personality, our immortality, our moral liberty-in short, man is the dream of a shadow, God is the dream of that dream.' No reader of Hamilton but knows these utterances well. How constantly, how unexceptively they are repeated! Yet the pole on which they turn all of them is a sophism, a fallacy 'probably

without a parallel," as Hamilton himself says of Brown, 'in the whole history of philosophy, and this portentous error is prolific-chimera chimeram parit. Were the evidence of the mistake less unambiguous, we should be disposed rather to question our own perspicacity than to tax so subtle an intellect with so gross a blunder.'-(Disc. p. 57.) But the evidence is not ambiguous. Hamilton has started with the fallacia accidentis, and entangled himself in error ever the deeper the farther. Why, were consciousness inviolable in the sense in which it must be understood to legitimate the conclusion of Hamilton in regard to the evidence of perception, then the tale of history is a dream, for that whole tale is but the transcendence of error after error, and these errors were the errors of consciousness. For what are all our reformatories, refuges, asylums-for what are missions, to what use schools, if special need not the correction of universal consciousness? History! why, what is it else than this? What is it else than the transcendence, morally, æsthetically, and intellectually of sense? Morally, for example, the good is now above the personal, and aesthetically the beautiful is above the sapid; but was either so when mankind belched (munched?) the acorn? Then, intellectually, what original facts of consciousness, so far as sense, so far as perception is consciousness have not been changed? The earth is no longer a plane; the firmament over it has gone into immensity-its lights are worlds. History has, in a manner, fixed the sun; and yet that in the morning he rises in the east and in the evening sets in the west, if false to intellect is true to sense, if false to consciousness, is true to perception" (pp. 55-57).

To this we may usefully add another well-laid paragraph:

"The problem is, How can the mind know an external object? The first answer is, We have senses by which to smell it, taste it, touch it, hear it, and see it. Yes, is the rejoinder; but analysis and consideration will demonstrate that sense in each of these five modes is adequate to no more than the excitation in the mind of a passion, affection, or subjective feeling, which-as in the mind and cccupying the mind, and, so to speak, colouring the mind in a manner nowise distinguishable from that in which a variety of confessedly internal elements-grief, joy, hate, &c., is capable of occupying and so to speak, colouring the mind-is evidence of its own self, and for its own self, but not possibly of or for anything else besides. A sensation is only intensive, it is only a passion; the mind, for the time, is this passion, and this passion is it: there is no limit in it of anything but itself; there is not the slightest suggestion in it of any transition whatever. Give the mind light only,-it fills it, the mind is it, and it is the mind; but what else is there, or what else can it suggest? Give the mind sound only; is it conceivable that the mind could disjoin it from itself any more than it could disjoin from itself anger or hope or fear? And as it is with these senses (sight and hearing), so also is it with the others. But if it be so with each singly, so also must it be with all together; for no addition of subjective to subjective can ever make an objective, no addition of internal to internal can ever thicken it to an external" (p. 92).

These quotations will, we hope, amply justify our commendations of the author's literary and philosophical ability. If he is, as the preface to the book seems to hint, "already grey with work," it is a pity that his work should have constrained a thinker of such excellence from an earlier opportunity of entering the field of philosophical warfare. We know from another source than his book that the writer has spent long and laborious years in the study of the great thinkers of Germany "buried" in a solitude of reflectiveness,

although within easy reach of one of the busiest capitals of thought in Europe. The fruitage of his mind is perhaps richer and riper because of this long delay and sedulous culture, and we hope that the protracted patience of the writer may not have been such as to hinder him from such reward as such devotedness to thought especially deserves-effective influence on thinking minds.

The book under notice is a polemic against the theory of presentation, of which Hamilton was the reputed champion and advocate. It is only part of a larger work-forming about a third of the whole-of which we have the following outline in the preface:"I. The philosophy of perception, containing as subsections under it-1. Hamilton both presentationist and phenomenalist; 2. The testimony of consciousness, or Hamilton's ori; 3. The analysis of philosophy, or Hamilton's dióri; and 4. The principle of common sense. II. The philosophy of the conditioned, containing as subsections under it-1. The absolute; 2. Hamilton's knowledge of Kant and Hegel; and 3. The law of the conditioned. III. Logic. And IV. A general conclusion." The other parts are for the present suppressed in submission to the temper of the times, and in consideration of the appearance of Mr. Mills' book-noticed in the paper by the present critic on "Controversies on Philosophy," in October, 1865, in this serial.

The questions raised in this book go to the very core of philosophy. Is presentationism or phenomenalism most accordant with the teachings of consciousness? Is consciousness reliable? Do sensations excite ideas in us and reveal themselves to us, or do we project our ideas out upon the world of sense, and so construct all this wondrous world we see? All physical, as opposed to psychical science is an investigation of the outward external universe. It proceeds on an undoubting assumption that matter is external to the mind and possessed of certain discoverable qualities. The irresistible beliefs of men harmonize with these assumptions of physical science. All the acquisitions of science are said to be gained in the outlying fields of experience, and are possible only on the assumption that the qualities of bodies are such as men commonly believe them to be. But are the results of science reliable? Do men perceive things as they are in themselves, or do they see them only in shadows-in appearances. Are things presented or represented; are they realities that we perceive, or are our perceptions only and solely interpretations of our own consciousness and modifications of our percepient energies? If they are only appearances, how is science possible does its very existence not imply realism? Introspection can only reveal to us that which it looks at—if always that. It cannot reveal to us the outward. Are things, then, only imagined in or consciousness, or are we able to see through or beyond consciousness? Is consciousness a sensitive mirror or a window? and is self an unrescuable prisoner within the senses without either inlet or outlet of truth except through their agency? If so, presentation is impossible and phenomenalism alone can be trustworthy as a

philosophy. But if phenomenalism thus preserves philosophy, does it not destroy science which founds itself expressly on realism and presentationism? This is a question to which neither Mill nor Stirling have given themselves. To Mr. Mill's opinions the reply of Professor Grote in his "Exploratio Philosophica" (p. 163), is relevant, viz., "Mind and its sensations, i. e., the revelation of its consciousness must take precedence of phenomenalism, and be presupposed to it, not be put by the side of it, subject to a logic derived from it, and considered as what may be conceivably reduced to it." But to Mr. Stirling this is no reply. He accepts consciousness as first, prime, and inviolable; yet he affirms the phenomenal character of all its revelations, and that beyond phenomena man cannot get, and so shows philosophy to be possible. But what of science then? Unless the real objects of our mental impressions are given to con sciousness, how comes it that all our treatment of externals leads to such results as imply their correct presentation to our minds? If presentationism is wrong, is not "science falsely so called "it be knowledge, can it give truth? Mr. Stirling does not afford us any clue, in this work, as to how he would reconcile the assump tion of presentationism by science so fertile in results with the denial through philososophy of the possibility of anything else than phenomenal experience. It may be that " The Secret of Hegel" supplies the key to the riddle. However, this is our great initial difficulty in regard to any theory of perception which opposes common sense, supported by the long results of science all tending to prove the reality not the ideality of things.

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It is, however, as a contribution to "controversies in philosophy" that the book comes before us; and as a polemical work, it is singularly able. The accusation against Sir William Hamilton of being contradictory and self-willed is so far established unescapably except, as we think, through one open space. But this is of higher moment to his immediate disciples than for us. The outlet we think possible lies here. Sir William Hamilton wrote both as a metaphysician and as a logician. As the former, he required to accept consciousness and interpret it from the inner side of self (connaître); as the latter he was compelled to look upon consciousness as played upon by phenomena and as working among these for the acquisition of truth (savoir), confirming his view, or at least his expression of his views-to the single matter in hand he seems to be as a metaphysician a phenomenalist, as a logician a presentationist. But if so, he has left us to guess his point of junction, and how he would have shown the unity of his logic and metaphysics. However this is, Mr. Stirling has contributed to the fulfilment of Sir William Hamilton's highest aim, which was to make philosophy a gymnasium for thought, and has given to literature a book full of acute thought and clear reasonings, written in a transparent style.

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Primary Beliefs. By RICHARD LOWNDES. London: Williams and Norgate.

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S metaphysical theories have led to much controversy. In this they have been highly serviceable to philosophy. He was above most men a stimulating thinker. Although personally, at least latterly, inclined to look with somewhat more than just favour on those who professed themselves to be his disciples, yet he never lost sight of the principle that any science of mind to be useful must be able to excite controversy. Jejune inanity may escape debateability, but any thought which takes a strong hold on men's minds must induce them to doubt or controvert the opinions opposed to them. Hamilton seems in this particular to have taken a new lease of life. It has taken the general public ten years nearly to get itself educated up to the comprehension of the important topics of thought he bequeathed to humanity as his life's legacy. The subduing influence of his thoughts have been felt by Richard Lowndes, who commenced this work with the intent of making it an epitome of that learned and vigorous thinker's theories and the results of his researches into the dim-lit recesses of the mind. He has not, however, rested in statu pupilari, but has become an investigator, and now assumes the position of a teacher.

Mr. Lowndes has somewhat painstakingly read and thought himself up to his subject. Perhaps for philosophic readers he is, in the earlier part of his book, a little too elementary, but this is an advantage to readers unpractised in the perusal of works on mental phenomena. He proceeds right onward from the plainest fundamental facts stated in the most simple language to the most recondite of the conclusions to which the reach of the book extends. He began his work with the design of making it a popular epitome of the theories of Sir Wm. Hamilton, but he soon learned, as almost all thoughtful students do, to suspect that Sir William Hamilton's forms of statement, though placed so vigorously, reliantly before the reader, will not fall into or form a consistent theory, and a sense of disagreement arose in him. This was farther complicated by the (perhaps) injudicious extension theology-wards which Mr. Mansel gave Hamilton's doctrines, and at last he who commenced as a disciple with gladness took with sorrow the position of an aggressor. Admitting the destructiveness of the youthful intellect as a considerable element in thinking, it scarcely explains the constant outbreak of dissent in theological and philosophical circles, which are both terribly sectarian.

Mr. Lowndes believes in the uncommon sense of the commonsense philosophers, and he rechristens the common sense of Reid "the Groundwork of Belief implanted in Man," or, more shortly, 'Primary Beliefs," and in the earlier portion of this volume he does little else than "arrange, systematize, and express in somewhat less technical language Sir Wm. Hamilton's doctrines of primary

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