HAMILTON, Sir WILLIAM, PUILOSOPHY OF, may, within the narrow limits of this article, be most clearly exhibited by a brief outline of Ins Lectures on Metaphysics. given as far as in Ids own language. Philosophy is the study of the. nature of things. Its paramount object of consideration is the mind, arid, in its stricter meaning, it is limited to the knowledge of mind and of objects relating to that. It has regard to three points: the facts to be observed; the laws which regulate them; and the true results which are to be drawn from them. There are three great classes of mental facts: those of the cognitive faculties, those of the feelings, and those of the will and desire. The laws which regulate the first constitute logic; those which guide the second are called esthetics; and those which control the third are known as moral and political science. Among the results to be drawn from these facts are proofs of the being of God and of the immortality of man. Psychology is the science conversant with the facts of the mind. All human knowledge, and, therefore, all philosophy are of the relative or con ditioned as opposed to the absolute. This is true of matter, certain qualities of which are known; itself, or, as we commonly say, its substance, is unknown. It is true of mind; certain mental states of knowing, feeling, willing, and desiring are known, but. the mind itself is unknown. It is true of existence; certain manifestations of it we know, but of absolute existence we know nothing. Our knowledge of existence is limited by our faculties. Nothing exists for us except asit is known to us; and is known to us except certain properties or modes of existence which are analogous. to our. faculties. Yet, as we are warranted to assert the existence only of what we know, so we are not warranted to deny the existence of what we do not know. The ternrmind, in the rigid employment of it, denotes the self-knowing principle alone. We cannot conceive of mind as existing without consciousness. The term conscious subject is sometimes used as a comprehensive definition of the mind itself or the thinking prin ciple. The great problem of philosophy is to analyze the contents of our cognitions or acts of knowledge; to distinguish what elements are contributed by the mind and what by the object of our knowledge. The general conditions of consciousness are that it is an actual knowledge; is immediate and discriminating; includes judgment; and requires. memory. It is eo-extensive also with our knowledge. Consciousness is the source of philosophy of mind. The possibility of philosophy implies the veracity of consciousness which as a criterion is naturally clear and unerring. In order to secure the full value of it, three laws for its government must be observed. 1. The law of parsimony. The facts of consciousness adduced must be primary, universal, necessary, and given on the ground of belief only. 2. The law of integrity. The whole facts of consciousness must be taken without hesitation or reserve. 3. The law of harmony. Nothing but the facts of consciousness must be admitted. When all these laws are observed the absolute and universal veracity of consciousness must be maintained. Activity and passivity are
always conjoined in manifestations of the mind. The mind is never directly conscious of passivity; is never wholly inactive; and we are never wholly unconscious of its activity. The mind may be unconsciously modified. Our whole knowledge is made up• of the unknown and incognizable. There are three principal facts of consciousness: 1. Of self-existence; 2. Of individuality; 3. Of personal identity. There are various cogni tive faculties. 1. The presentative, including perception and self-consciousness; 2._ The conservative, or memory proper; 3. The reproductive, that is the faculty of recover-. ing the absent thought from unconsciousness; 4. The 'representative, that is the imagina tion; 5. The elaborative, that is comparison; consisting of analysis and synthesis, and leading to generalization or conception, to judgment, which is the direct comparison of two things or notions, and to reasoning, which is the comparison of two through a third. '1 his last is thought strictly so called, corresponding to dianoia, of the Greek philosophy; diseursus of the Latin, and verstand of the German. Its laws are the object of logic; 6. The regulative faculty, which is reason or common sense. There are cognitions in the mind which are not contingent but necessary, and presupposed by thought as its fundamental condition. They are not derived from experience but are native to the mind, and are the laws by which it is governed. They are similar in character, and are to be collected into a class. To the power possessed by the mind. of manifesting these the name regulative faculty is given. It corresponds in some measure with the nous of Aristotle's philosophy, with. the vernuft (reason) in the philosophy of Kant, Jac(;bi, and other recent Germans; and probably with Reid's, certainly with Stewart's Common Sense. Among the uses of philosophy may be specified the fact that. it satisfies the conditions of the proof that there is a God. These conditions are: 1. That intelligence is first in the order of existence. 2. That the universe is governed by moral laws. The phenomena of the material world are subjected to immutable laws. The phenomena of man are, in parf subjected to the laws of the external universe. But what he holds of matter do not nitike up his personality. They are his not he. He is not an organism, but an intelligence served by organisms. his intelligence reveals principles of action, absolute and universal, in the law of duty. It is only as he is a free intelligence, a moral power, that he is created in the image of God; and it is only as a spark of divinity glows in us, as the life of our life, that we can rationally believe in an intelligent creator and moral governor of the universe. This has been welt expressed by Dr. Henry More: Nullus in microcosmo spiritus Nullus in macrocosm° Deus.
If there be no moral world there can be, of course, no moral governor; and we have no ground to believe in the reality of a moral world except as we ourselves are moral