Studies in philosophy and theology

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

STUDIES

Part I. — Studies Is Philosophy. Page

I. PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON ... 9

II. MILL VERSUS HAMILTON 72

III. THE MORAL FACULTY 116

IV. PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 182 V. THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL 210

Part II. — Studies In Theology. '

I. NATURAL THEOLOGY 23T

II. THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 295

III. THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE— ITS DIGNITY AND VALUE 347

IV. PLACE AND VALUE OF MIRACLES IN THE CHRIS-

TIAN SYSTEM 376

V. SIN, AS RELATED TO HUMAN NATURE AND THE

DIVINE MIND . 429

VI. ARIANISM — THE NATURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE

VIEWS HELD BY THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS . 483

v

PART I.

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY.

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, AND ITS RECENT THEOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS. 1

In October, 1829, appeared, in the Edinburgh Review, an article sharply criticizing the Cours de Philosophie (then recently published) by Victor Cousin. This article, by its profound and masterly analysis, its critical sharpness, its combined candor and fearlessness, its remarkable erudition, at once attracted attention as the work of no ordinary mind. It was understood to be from the pen of Sir William Hamilton, Baronet, of the ancient family of that name, a lawyer by profession, at that time filling the chair of Civil Law and Universal History in the University of Edinburgh ; known to the literary circles of the metropolis as a man of extensive and varied acquisition, but not previously of established repute in the world of letters. A few years previously he had been an unsuccessful competitor with Wilson for the chair of Moral Philosophy in the university.

On the continent, at the time of which we speak, few names were more illustrious in the world of letters and philosophy than that of Victor Cousin, then in the

1 From the Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1861, Vol. xviii. No. 69.

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height of his fame as Professor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Letters at Paris. His personal history, his learning, his reputation as a critic and an author, his familiar acquaintance with systems of philosophy, ancient and modern, his clearness of thought, united with a beautiful transparency of style and a glowing fervor of delivery, rendered him as a lecturer peculiarly attractive. Audiences of two thousand persons not unfrequently thronged his lecture-room to listen to the discussion of themes not usually considered attractive by the multitude.

To assail the favorite theory of a philosopher so distinguished might seem hazardous ; but the masterly ability with which the attack was made placed the writer in the front rank of philosophical critics. 1

This article was followed in the succeeding year by another, on the Philosophy of Perception, in review of Jouffroy's edition of the Works of Reid, in which the leading principles of the author's doctrine of perception were first promulged, and the merits of other systems, particularly the doctrines of Brown, subjected to the most severe and rigid criticism. Three years later appeared, in the same Quarterly and from the same pen, the famous article on logic, in which the English logicians, and especially Whately, are somewhat severely handled. The reputation of the writer, as at once a formidable critic and a most profound and original thinker, was now fully established ; and in 1836 he was elected to the chair of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, which he filled until his death, in 1856.

Of the general characteristics of Hamilton as a phi-

PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON.

losopliical writer, there is little need to speak, since they are already so widely known. Since Kant, the world has seen no greater thinker than this man ; nor was even the sage of Konisberg his superior. One knows not which most to admire, his wonderful power of analysis, or his erudition, equally wonderful — qualities which in combination render him at once the most formidable critic of other systems, and the most clear and far-seeing discerner of truth in matters of subtile speculation, that has appeared since the revival of letters. His range of information was almost literally boundless, comprehending not merely matters connected with philosophy, but all topics of general knowledge. More widely conversant with metaphysical literature than perhaps any other man living, he seemed equally familiar with the whole range of theological, historical, and classical lore. After the manner of Leibnitz and of Aristotle — to both of whom, in other respects also, his mind bore a marked resemblance — he seems to have made himself master of what the human mind had as yet in its progress attained, as the preparatory step toward the enlargement of those boundaries by contributions of his own. To that power of philosophic analysis by which he was able, as by intuition, to resolve the most intricate and complicated problem of thought into its simple and primary elements, and that remarkable erudition by which he was able to take in at a glance the whole range of previous thought and labor on any subject, we have but to add a style almost without a parallel for precision, definiteness, and strength, and we have the chief elements of this man's power as a thinker and winter.

Nor was he wanting in that attribute inseparable

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from true greatness — candor towards those from whom he differed. Terrible as were the weapons of his criticism, no man knew better how to respect an antagonist, even while demolishing his opinions. Thus, for example, he speaks of Cousin : . " a philosopher, for whose genius and character I already had the warmest admiration — an admiration which every succeeding year has only augmented, justified, and confirmed. Nor, in saying this, need I make any reservation ; for I admire even where I dissent ; and were M. Cousin's speculations on the absolute utterly abolished, to him would still remain the honor of doing more himself, and of contributing more to what has been done by others, in the furtherance of an enlightened philosophy than any other living individual in France — I might say, in Europe."

In personal appearance Hamilton was dignified and prepossessing, of somewhat commanding form and bearing, resembling in some respects our countryman, the late Daniel Webster. There was the same lofty and massive brow, the same repose and majesty of the features, and that certain stateliness of manner which marks a kingly soul conscious of its own power. In the later years of his life his natural reserve was increased by a difficulty of utterance, resulting from a partial paralysis of the vocal organs. Under these circumstances, a stranger on first introduction would hardly feel at ease ; while at the same time he could not fail to be impressed with the whole appearance and conversation of the man. In the respects mentioned, Hamilton contrasted strongly with Schelling, whom in those days, not long before his death, one might have seen at Berlin, — a lean and shrivelled old man, but full of vivacity and fire, bowed and worn with the labors of years, but retaining all the enthusiasm of younger days, — busily engaged to the very last in elaborating his second system of philosophy, and to this end combating his own former views ; pleasantly remarking that he found himself and his own former pupils the most difficult of all his antagonists to refute.

As a psychologist, Hamilton should not be judged merely by the Lectures on Metaphysics published since his death. Interesting and able as they undoubtedly are, and containing much that is profound and original, they are not the measure of his strength, nor are they the result of his maturer studies. Prepared, in the first instance, merely for the class-room, thrown off in haste during the progress of the session at the rate of three per week, — each lecture usually on the night preceding its delivery, and the whole course within the period of five months, — never subsequently rewritten, nor even revised for publication by the author, they are by no means to be taken as the final and careful statement of his views. As such he did not himself regard them. They were the earlier and (it is not too much to say) the cruder productions of his mind. Taken as a system of mental science they are singularly incomplete — dwelling at undue length on preliminary matters, and elaborating in detail certain portions of the science, as, for example, the doctrine of perception, to the almost entire exclusion of other and equally important topics ; giving but a meagre outline of the sensibilities, and nothing, or almost nothing, upon the will. These features, together with occasional inconsistencies and inadvertencies of statement, are the natural result of the circumstances under which the

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work was originally prepared. It is not to these lectures, consequently, but to the notes and dissertations appended to his edition of Reid, and the articles in the Edinburgh Review, subsequently collected and published under his own eye, entitled " Discussions on Philosophy and Literature," that we should refer for the real system and the true strength of the man.

Even in these, it must be confessed, the system lies fragmentary and incomplete. It is to be regretted that we have not from his own pen, and as the result of his riper and later studies, a carefully prepared treatise on psychology.

It is not, however, merely or chiefly as a psychologist that Hamilton is to be regarded. His mind was logical rather than metaphysical, we should judge, in its natural bias. It is from the point of view and with the eye of a logician that he usually looks at the problems of philosophy, little given to and little believing in the speculations of a pure ontology, nor, on the other hand, in his observation of the mind, content with merely reviewing the given facts and phenomena of consciousness, but seeking to reduce them if possible to order under those great laws of thought of which logic is with him the expression and the science. It was to logic, as is well known, that the chief strength and principal studies of his later years were directed ; and it was upon his labors in this department that he wished his reputation chiefly to rest.

The tendency to a logical explanation of psychological phenomena and metaphysical problems is shown, for example, in the manner in which he deals with the doctrine of the infinite and absolute, as held by transcendental writers; educing the general law that all thought lies in the interval between two extremes, unconditioned and inconceivable, but of which extremes one or the other must, by law of the excluded middle, be true ; deriving thus the grand principle that all thought is conditioned, and all knowledge limited and relative ; and finally, reducing to this general law the principle of causality, which by Leibnitz, Kant, Reid, Stewart, Cousin, and the great body of English and French philosophers has been held to be an original principle or datum of the human mind.

With these remarks of a general nature upon the character of Hamilton as a philosopher, we proceed to notice more particularly some specific features of his system.

Were we required to point out the peculiarities of his system, — in what chief aspects the Scotch philosophy as held by this great master presents itself as compared with other and previous systems, — passing by the whole science of logic, which he claims to have reconstructed and amplified, and confining ourselves to psychology, we should name first and chiefly the Doctrine of Perception, with the closely related topic of consciousness ; while as a general principle, underlying the whole system and fundamental to it, appears the doctrine of the relativity and consequent limitation of human thought, or, as it may be termed, the Doctrine of the Conditioned. To these points our attention will be chiefly directed in the present article.

A brief survey of the state of philosophical speculation in Europe at the time when Hamilton appeared, will best enable us to appreciate his labors and his contributions to philosophy in respect to the points now named.

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The earlier part of the present century witnessed a peculiar awakening and activity of the philosophic mind in Europe. The previous century had closed, and the present opened, with the philosophy of Locke in the ascendant ; as indeed it had long been, both in Great Britain and in France. In the latter country that philosophy was known, indeed, chiefly through the medium of Condillac, who, in developing, may be said to have corrupted, the doctrines of Locke. In England, also, Hume, embracing the general principles of the system which Locke had advanced, and carrying them to their extreme but legitimate conclusions, had laid the foundations of a wide and dangerous scepticism in philosophy. Alarmed by these results, there had already arisen, at the close of the last century, a reaction of the public mind in certain quarters. Simultaneously in Germany and in Britain did such reaction manifest itself ; and in both as the result of Hume's speculations ; Kant in the former and Reid in the latter maintaining that, above and beyond the ideas derived from experience and observation, there are in the mind, connate, if not innate, certain great principles, universal and necessary, prior to, and the foundation of, all experience. Such, in brief, was the philosophic life of the last half of the eighteenth century — Condillac in France and Hume in England carrying out to false positions the principles of Locke ; Reid in Scotland and Kant in Germany laying, each in his own way, the foundations of a better system.

The influence of Kant became speedily predominant in Germany ; and before his death, in 1804, he was acknowledged as the master mind of Europe in the domain of speculative thought ; while, in turn, the sober, common-sense philosophy (as it has been termed) of the Scotch school was gradually attracting attention and gaining influence both in Britain and France. To this result, as regards the latter country, the labors of Hoyer Collard (who advocated this system) and subsequently of Jouffroy (who gave to his countrymen an excellent edition of the Works of Reid, and of the Moral Philosophy of Stewart) greatly contributed.

Such were the intellectual influences predominant in the department of philosophic science in the early part of the present century — the period when Sir William Hamilton, then passing from childhood to those years when the mind usually receives its first impulses and impressions in this direction, may be supposed to have commenced his studies in philosophy. Fichte had then come into notoriety as professor in the leading university of Germany. Schelling and Hegel were just coming upon the stage. It is easy to see the influence which would be exerted upon a youthful and inquisitive mind by the leading theories and the philosophic spirit of the time. Adopting in the main, and as the basis of his views, the ground-principles of Reid, he is at the same time an admirer, if not in some sense a disciple, of Kant ; and in the general spirit and drift of his philosophy, as well as in some of its specific doctrines, may be traced the influence of the sage of Konisberg. In the grand doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge, and the consequent denial of the possibility of knowing the absolute and infinite, he is with Kant as against Schelling and Cousin. In the rejection, in fact, of the whole scheme of transcendental and rationalistic philosophy, he follows Kant. He adopts the Kantian division (then just coming into use) of the powers of

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the mind into three great classes — the faculties of knowledge, of feeling, and of will and desire; which latter are classed together under the title of conative powers. He adopts, also, the Kantian notion of freedom.

Passing now to notice more particularly the doctrine of perception and its connected topics, as held by Hamilton, we need hardly remark that, so far as psychology is concerned, it is here that his chief labor has been expended and his chief laurels won. It was precisely at this point that philosophy was just then most at fault, and most needed the clear discrimination and decision of a master mind. It had long been the prevalent doctrine of the schools, widely divergent as they were on other points, that the mind is immediately cognizant only of its own ideas, and not directly of external objects ; the latter being known, so far as they were held to be known at all, only through the medium of the mind's ideas, and not immediately or face to face. This doctrine, under a great variety of modifications, had passed, as to its essential principle, virtually unchallenged for centuries, and had been the belief, in fact, of the great body of philosophers, ancient and modern. To Reid belongs the honor of announcing positively and maintaining boldly, though not without occasional inconsistency, the opposite doctrine of the immediate cognizance of external objects in the act of perception. But while he saw clearly the true doctrine, he had not given it, in all respects, its full development or its ablest statement. Particularly, he had failed to discriminate between the various forms which the opposite doctrine had at different times and in the different schools assumed, and had therefore failed to

PHILOSOPHY OF StR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 19

give due sharpness and precision to the statement of the trfte theory. This it remained for Hamilton to do ; _nd this he has done, fully, completely, and once for all. The doctrine which Reid had left incomplete he elucidates and perfects, shows it to be the true and only tenable position, and that its rejection, logically and consistently carried out, leads to absolute idealism, or the denial of all objective and external reality. By a masterly analysis he reduces to a system and gives a complete classification of the various theories that may be and have been held in regard to perception, draws the dividing line between presentative and representative knowledge, and maintains that we know the external world, as we know the operations of our own minds, by immediate and intuitive perception.

" If we interrogate consciousness concerning the point in question, the response is categorical and clear. When I concentrate my attention in the simplest act of perception, I return from my observation with the most irresistible conviction of two facts, or rather, two branches of the same fact — that / am, and that something different from me exists. In this act I am conscious of myself as the perceiving subject, and of an external reality as the object perceived ; and I am conscious of both existences in the same indivisible moment of intuition. The knowledge of the subject does not precede nor follow the knowledge of the object ; neither determines, neither is determined by, the other. The two terms of correlation stand in mutual counterpoise and equal independence ; they are given as connected in the synthesis of knowledge, but as contrasted in the antithesis of existence. Such is the fact of perception as revealed in consciousness,

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and as it determines mankind in general in their equal assurance of the reality of an external world and of the existence of their own minds. Consciousness declares our knowledge of material qualities to be intuitive" 1

According as the truth of this testimony of consciousness is unconditionally admitted, or in part or wholly rejected, there result divers possible and actual systems of philosophy, thus classified by Hamilton. If the veracity of consciousness be fully admitted, and the antithesis of mind and matter as given in perception be taken as real, we have the system of natural realism. If the reality of the antithesis be denied, we have the scheme of absolute identity, mind and matter being mere phenomenal modifications of one common substance. If, further, we deny the independence of one or the other of the two original factors, the subject or the object, as given in perception, making the subject the original and deriving the object from it, we have idealism ; making the object the original and deriving - the subject from it, materialism. Or if, again, we deny the reality of both subject and object as given in the act of perception, consciousness being regarded as merely a phenomenon, we obtain nihilism. There is still another course possible, that is, with the idealist, to deny the immediate cognizance of an external world in the act of perception ; while at the same time we do not, with the idealist, deny the actual existence of that world, but, on the contrary, assume its existence on the ground of an irresistible and universal belief in its reality. This system, the most illogical and inconsequent of all, yet in fact adopted by the great majority

1 Discussions on Phil, and Lit. (Am. ed.), P- 60.

of philosophers, from the ancients to Descartes, and from Descartes to Brown, is termed by Hamilton, cosmothetic realism, or hypothetical realism.

It is against this system, accordingly, that Sir William directs his chief attack, tracing it to its source, and showing it to be without the shadow of a foundation. It rests upon the tacitly assumed principle — a principle that has strangely passed unchallenged through successive schools of philosophy for centuries — that the relation of knowledge implies the analogy of existence ; in other words, that like knows like, or that what is known must be similar to that which knows — a principle that lies at the basis of all systems which deny the immediate cognizance of external objects in perception. To this principle may be traced the intuitional species of the schools, the ideas of Descartes, the preestablished harmony of Leibnitz, the vision in Deity of Mallebranche, the phenomena of Kant, the external states of Brown. This principle Hamilton characterizes as k4 nothing more than an irrational attempt to explain what is in itself inexplicable. How the similar or the same is conscious of itself is not a whit less inconceivable than how one contrary is immediately percipient of another. It at best only removes our admitted ignorance by one step back ; and then, in place of our knowledge simply originating from the incomprehensible, it ostentatiously departs from the absurd." 1

The theory of representative perception is shown by Hamilton to be unnecessary, destructive of itself, and destructive of all evidence of the existence of an external world, — unnecessary, inasmuch as it undertakes to assign a reason for that which requires and admits

1 Discussions, etc., p. 68.

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of no explanation beyond the simple fact ; while the reason assigned is itself no less incomprehensible than the theory which it proposes to explain, it being just as inexplicable how an unknown external object can be represented to the mind as how it can be immediately perceived, i.e. without representation ; — destructive of itself, inasmuch as it denies the veracity of consciousness, which testifies to our immediate perception of an external world, and thus subverts the foundation and destroys the possibility of all knowledge. " The first act of hypothetical realism is thus an act of suicide ; philosophy thereafter is at best but an enchanted corpse, awaiting only the exorcism of the sceptic to relapse into its proper nothingness." The theory is, moreover, destructive of all evidence that an external world really exists ; since the only evidence we have of such a reality is the testimony of consciousness in the act of perception, and that is by the theory deliberately set aside as unreliable ; thus rendering problematical the existence of the very facts which it undertakes to account for.

We cannot follow in detail the arguments by which Sir William proceeds to demolish the theory of representative perception in its various forms. It is sufficient to say that the work is most effectually done, and the question, it would seem, put at rest for the present, if not for all time.

The precise relation of perception and sensation to each other is clearly pointed out by Hamilton. Perception is only a special mode of knowledge, and sensation is a special mode of feeling. The relation is therefore a generic one — the relation which holds universally between knowledge and feeling. These are always

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2-3 co-existent, yet always distinct, and thus it is with respect to perception and sensation. " A cognition is objective, that is, our consciousness is then relative to something different from the present state of the mind itself; a feeling, on the contrary, is subjective, that is, our consciousness is exclusively limited to the pleasure or pain experienced by the thinking subject. Cognition and feeling are always co-existent. The purest act of knowledge is always colored by some feeling of pleasure or pain ; for no energy is absolutely indifferent, and the grossest feeling exists only as it is known in consciousness. This being the case of cognition and feeling in general, the same is true of perception and sensation in particular. Perception proper is the consciousness, through the senses, of the qualities of an object known as different from self ; sensation proper is the consciousness of the subjective affection of pleasure or pain which accompanies that act of knowledge. Perception is thus the objective element in the complex state — the element of cognition ; sensation is the subjective element — the element of feeling." 1

The great law which regulates the phenomena of perception and sensation in their reciprocal relation to each other — a law which Kant had indeed already indicated — is first clearly and prominently announced by Hamilton. It is this : Knowledge and feeling, perception and sensation, though always co-existent, are always in the inverse ratio of each other — a law at once simple and universal, yet overlooked hitherto by the great body of psychologists. That this is the law of mental action is shown by reference to the several senses, in which it appears that in proportion as any

1 Lectures, Metaphysics, p. 335.

n

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given sense has more of the one element it has less of the other. In sight, for example, perception is at the maximum, sensation at the minimum. Hearing, on the other hand, while less extensive in its sphere of knowledge than sight, is more intensive in its capacity of sensation. We have greater pleasure and greater pain from single sounds than from single colors. So also with regard to touch : in those parts of the body where sensation predominates perception is feeble ; and the reverse.

The relation of perception and sensation is closely connected with the relation of the primary and secondary qualities of matter — the primary qualities being those in which perception, or the objective element, is dominant; the secondary, those in which sensation, the subjective element, rises superior. But on this we cannot now enter.

Closely related to the doctrine of perception is that of consciousness, in the Hamilton ian system. It is regarded, not as a distinct faculty, but as involved in, and the basis of, all the specific faculties ; co-extensive with intelligence, cognizance, knowledge. Consciousness and perception, according to this view, are not different things, but the same thing under different aspects. As in geometry the sides of the triangle suppose the angles, and the angles suppose the sides, and sides and angles are in reality indivisible from each other, while yet we think and speak of them as distinct, so in the philosophy of mind we may contemplate the same thing now under one, now under another of its aspects, distinguishing in thought and expression what in nature are one and indivisible. Thus with respect to consciousness and knowledge. To know is to know that we know ; yet it is convenient to distinguish, and so we call the latter consciousness. The distinction is logical, and not psychological. So far as regards the action of the mind, to know and to know that we know are one and the same thing.

It is a singular fact, and' coincides with the view now given, that until a comparatively recent date there was no term in general use to denote what we now understand by consciousness. Prior to the time of Descartes the term eomcienlia had, with few exceptions, been employed in a sense exclusively ethical, corresponding to our term " conscience/' The ethical is the primitive and the psychological the derivative meaning. Thus in the various modern languages of Romaic origin, in which the ethical and the psychological ideas are expressed by the same word — as in the French, the Italian, the Spanish — the employment of these terms in a psychological sense is of recent date. Nor was it until the decline of philosophy that the Greek language appropriated a distinct term for this idea. Plato and Aristotle have no single word by which to express our knowledge of our own mental states. The term avvalaBriois, in the sense of self-consciousness, was first introduced by the later Platonists and Aristotelians ; nor did they appropriate this term to the action of any specific faculty, but regarded it as the general attribute of intelligence.

As thus regarded, consciousness is not limited, in the Hamiltonian philosophy, to the operations of our own minds, as in self-knowledge, self-consciousness, but extends to external objects. We are conscious of the external world, no less than of our own mental states. Whatever we know or perceive, that we are

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conscious of knowing or perceiving ; and to be conscious of knowing or perceiving an object is to be conscious of the object as known or perceived. We cannot know that we know without knowing what we know — cannot know that we remember the contents of a chapter or a volume without knowing what those contents are. To be conscious of perceiving the volume before me is to be conscious of an act of perception in distinction from all other mental acts, and also to be conscious that the object perceived is a book and not some other external object, and that it is this book and not some other one. But how can this be, if consciousness does not embrace within its sphere the object thus designated ?