[Footnote 333: ][ (return) ] "Discussions," Appendix I. p. 567.
[Footnote 334: ][ (return) ] "Logic," pp. 54, 55.
It is barely conceivable that Hamilton might imagine himself possessed of this singular power of "performing an act of negative thought"--that is, of thinking and not thinking at once, or of "thinking something" that "becomes nothing;" we are not conscious of any such power. To think without an object of thought, or to think of something without any qualities, or to think "something" which in the act of thought melts away into "nothing," is an absurdity and a contradiction. We can not think about nothing. All thought must have an object, and every object must have some predicate. Even space has some predicates--as receptivity, unity, and infinity. Thought can only be realized by thinking something existing, and existing in a determinate manner; and when we cease to think something having predicates, we cease to think at all. This is emphatically asserted by Hamilton himself. [335] "Negative thinking" is, therefore, a meaningless phrase, a contradiction in terms; it is no thought at all. We are cautioned, however, against regarding "the negation of thought" as "a negation of all mental ability." It is, we are told, "an attempt to think, and a failure in the attempt." An attempt to think about what? Surely it must be about some object, and an object which is known by some sign, else there can be no thought. Let any one make the attempt to think without something to think about, and he will find that both the process and the result are blank nothingness. All thought, therefore, as Calderwood has amply shown, is, must be, positive. "Thought is nothing else than the comparison of objects known; and as knowledge is always positive, so must our thought be. All knowledge implies an object known; and so all thought involves an object about which we think, and must, therefore, be positive--that is, it must embrace within itself the conception of certain qualities as belonging to the object." [336]
[Footnote 335: ][ (return) ] "Logic," p. 55.
[Footnote 336: ][ (return) ] "Philosophy of the Infinite," p. 272.
The conclusion of Hamilton's reasoning in regard to "negative thinking" is, that we can form no notion of the Infinite Being. We have no positive idea of such a Being. We can think of him only by "the thinking away of every characteristic" which can be conceived, and thus "ceasing to think at all." We can only form a "negative concept," which, we are told, "is in fact no concept at all." We can form only a "negative notion," which, we are informed, "is only the negation of a notion." This is the impenetrable abyss of total gloom and emptiness into which the philosophy of the conditions leads us at last. [337]
[Footnote 337: ][ (return) ] Whilst Spencer accepts the general doctrine of Hamilton, that the Ultimate Reality is inscrutable, he argues earnestly against his assertion that the Absolute is a "mere negation of thought."
"Every one of the arguments by which the relativity of our knowledge is demonstrated distinctly postulates the positive existence of something beyond the relative. To say we can not know the Absolute is, by implication, to affirm there is an Absolute. In the very denial of our power to learn what the Absolute is, there lies hidden the assumption that it is; and the making of this assumption proves that the Absolute has been present to the mind, not as nothing, but as something. And so with every step in the reasoning by which the doctrine is upheld, the Noumenon, everywhere named as the antithesis of the Phenomenon, is throughout thought as actuality. It is rigorously impossible to conceive that our knowledge is a knowledge of appearances only, without, at the same time, conceiving a Reality of which these are appearances, for appearances without reality are unthinkable.
"Truly to represent or realize in thought any one of the propositions of which the argument consists, the unconditioned must be represented as positive, and not negative. How, then, can it be a legitimate conclusion from the argument that our consciousness of it is negative? An argument, the very construction of which assigns to a certain term a certain meaning, but which ends in showing that this term has no meaning, is simply an elaborate suicide. Clearly, then, the very demonstration that a definite consciousness [comprehension] of the Absolute is impossible, unavoidably presupposes an indefinite consciousness of it [an apprehension]."--"First Principles," p. 88.
Still we have the word infinite, and we have the notion which the word expresses. This, at least, is spared to us by Sir William Hamilton. He who says we have no such notion asks the question how we have it? Here it may be asked, how have we, then, the word infinite? How have we the notion which this word expresses? The answer to this question is contained in the distinction of positive and negative thought.