A full exposition of Sir William Hamilton's views of Faith in its connection with Philosophy would have been deeply interesting to us, and it would have filled up a gap in the interpretation of his system. The question naturally presents itself, how would he have discriminated between faith and knowledge, so as to assign to each its province? If our notion of the Infinite Being rests entirely upon faith, then upon what ultimate ground does faith itself rest? On the authority of Scripture, of the Church, or of reason? The only explicit statement of his view which has fallen in our way is a note in his edition of Reid. [344] "We know what rests upon reason; we believe what rests upon authority. But reason itself must rest at last upon authority; for the original data of reason do not rest upon reason, but are necessarily accepted by reason on the authority of what is beyond itself. These data are, therefore, in rigid propriety, Beliefs or Trusts. Thus it is that, in the last resort, we must, per force, philosophically admit that belief is the primary condition of reason, and not reason the ultimate ground of belief."
[Footnote 344: ][ (return) ] P. 760; also Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, p. 61.
Here we have, first, an attempted distinction between faith and knowledge. "We know what rests upon reason;" that is, whatever we obtain by deduction or induction, whatever is capable of explication and proof, is knowledge. "We believe what rests upon authority;" that is, whatever we obtain by intellectual intuition or pure apperception, and is incapable of explication and of proof, is "a belief or trust." These instinctive beliefs, which are, as it were, the first principles upon which all knowledge rests, are, however, indiscriminately called by Hamilton "cognitions," "beliefs," "judgments." He declares most explicitly "that the principles of our knowledge must themselves be knowledges;" [345] and these first principles, which are "the primary condition of reason," are elsewhere called "à priori cognitions;" also "native, pure, or transcendental knowledge," in contradistinction to "à posteriori cognitions," or that knowledge which is obtained in the exercise of reason. [346] All this confusion results from an attempt to put asunder what God has joined together. As Clemens of Alexandria has said, "Neither is faith without knowledge, nor knowledge without faith." All faith implies knowledge, and all knowledge implies faith. They are mingled in the one operation of the human mind, by which we apprehend first principles or ultimate truths. These have their light and dark side, as Hamilton has remarked. They afford enough light to show that they are and must be, and thus communicate knowledge; they furnish no light to show how they are and why they are, and under that aspect demand the exercise of faith. There must, therefore, first be something known before there can be any faith. [347]
[Footnote 345: ][ (return) ] Ibid., p. 69.
[Footnote 346: ][ (return) ] "Lectures on Metaphysics," vol. ii. p. 26.
[Footnote 347: ][ (return) ] M'Cosh, "Intuitions," pp. 197, 198; Calderwood, "Philosophy of the Infinite," p. 24.
And now we seem to have penetrated to the centre of Hamilton's philosophy, and the vital point may be touched by one crucial question, Upon what ultimate ground does faith itself rest? Hamilton says, "we believe what rests upon authority." But what is that authority? I. It is not the authority of Divine Revelation, because beliefs are called "instinctive," "native," "innate," "common," "catholic," [348] all which terms seem to indicate that this "authority" lies within the sphere of the human mind; at any rate, this faith does not rest on the authority of Scripture. Neither is it the authority of Reason. "The original data of reason [the first principles of knowledge] do not rest upon the authority of reason, but on the authority of what is beyond itself." The question thus recurs, what is this ultimate ground beyond reason upon which faith rests? Does it rest upon any thing, or nothing?
[Footnote 348: ][ (return) ] Philosophy of Sir Wm. Hamilton, pp. 68, 69.
The answer to this question is given in the so-called "Law of the Conditioned," which is thus laid down: "All that is conceivable in thought lies between two extremes, which, as contradictory of each other, can not both be true, but of which, as mutual contradictories, one must." For example, we conceive space, but we can not conceive it as absolutely bounded or infinitely unbounded. We can conceive time, but we can not conceive it as having an absolute commencement or an infinite non-commencement. We can conceive of degree, but we can not conceive it as absolutely limited or as infinitely unlimited. We can conceive of existence, but not as an absolute part or an infinite whole. Therefore, "the Conditioned is that which is alone conceivable or cogitable; the Unconditioned, that which is inconceivable or incogitable. The conditioned, or the thinkable, lies between two extremes or poles; and each of these extremes or poles are unconditioned, each of them inconceivable, each of them exclusive or contradictory of the other. Of these two repugnant opposites, the one is that of Unconditional or Absolute Limitation; the other that of Unconditional or Infinite Illimitation, or, more simply, the Absolute and the Infinite; the term absolute expressing that which is finished or complete, the term infinite that which can not be terminated or concluded." [349]
"The conditioned is the mean between two extremes--two inconditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of which can be conceived as possible, but of which, on the principle of contradiction, and excluded middle, one must be admitted as necessary. We are thus warned from recognizing the domain of our knowledge as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon of our faith. And by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and the finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality." [350] Here, then, we have found the ultimate ground of our faith in the Infinite God. It is built upon a "mental imbecility," and buttressed up by "contradictions!" [351]