[Footnote 300: ][ (return) ] Ibid., vol. i. p. 137.
[Footnote 301: ][ (return) ] "Discussions," p. 21.
It is manifest, however, that Hamilton does employ these terms as synonymous, and this we apprehend is the first false step in his philosophy of the conditioned. "All our knowledge is of the relative or phenomenal." Throughout the whole of Lectures VIII. and IX., in which he explains the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge, these terms are used as precisely analogous. Now, in opposition to this, we maintain that the relative is not always the phenomenal. A thing may be "in relation" and yet not be a phenomenon. "The subject or substance" may be, and really is, on the admission of Hamilton himself, correlated to the phenomenon. The ego, "the conscious subject" [302] as a "self-subsisting entity" is necessarily related to the phenomena of thought, feeling, etc.; but no one would repudiate the idea that the conscious subject is a mere phenomenon, or "series of phenomena," with more indignation than Hamilton. Notwithstanding the contradictory assertion, "that the subject is unknown," he still teaches, with equal positiveness, "that in every act of perception I am conscious of self, as a perceiving subject." And still more explicitly he says: "As clearly as I am conscious of existing, so clearly am I conscious, at every moment of my existence, that the conscious Ego is not itself a mere modification self-subsisting entity." [303] Again: "Thought is possible only in and through the consciousness of Self. The Self, the I, is recognized in every act of intelligence as the subject to which the act belongs. It is I that perceive, I that imagine, I that remember, etc.; these special modes are all only the phenomena of the I." [304] We are, therefore, conscious of the subject in the most immediate, and direct, and intuitive manner, and the subject of which we are conscious can not be "unknown." We regret that so distinguished a philosophy should deal in such palpable contradictions; but it is the inevitable consequence of violating that fundamental principle of philosophy on which Hamilton so frequently and earnestly insists, viz., "that the testimony of consciousness must be accepted in all its integrity".
[Footnote 302: ][ (return) ] Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton (edited by O.W. Wight), p. 181.
[Footnote 303: ][ (return) ] "Lectures on Metaphysics," vol. i. p. 373.
[Footnote 304: ][ (return) ] Ibid., vol. i. p. 166.
It is thus obvious that, with proper qualifications, we may admit the relativity of human knowledge, and yet at the same time reject the doctrine of Hamilton, that all human knowledge is only of the phenomenal.
"The relativity of human knowledge," like most other phrases into which the word "relative" enters, is vague, and admits of a variety of meanings. If by this phrase is meant "that we can not know objects except as related to our faculties, or as our faculties are related to them," we accept the statement, but regard it as a mere truism leading to no consequences, and hardly worth stating in words. It is simply another way of saying that, in order to an object's being known, it must come within the range of our intellectual vision, and that we can only know as much as we are capable of knowing. Or, if by this phrase is meant "that we can only know things by and through the phenomena they present," we admit this also, for we can no more know substances apart from their properties, than we can know qualities apart from the substances in which they inhere. Substances can be known only in and through their phenomena. Take away the properties, and the thing has no longer any existence. Eliminate extension, form, density, etc., from matter, and what have you left? "The thing in itself," apart from its qualities, is nothing. Or, again, if by the relativity of knowledge is meant "that all consciousness, all thought are relative," we accept this statement also. To conceive, to reflect, to know, is to deal with difference and relation; the relation of subject and object; the relation of objects among themselves; the relation of phenomena to reality, of becoming to being. The reason of man is unquestionably correlated to that which is beyond phenomena; it is able to apprehend the necessary relation between phenomena and being, extension and space, succession and time, event and cause, the finite and the infinite. We may thus admit the relative character of human thought, and at the same time deny that it is an ontological disqualification. [305]
It is not, however, in any of these precise forms that Hamilton holds the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge. He assumes a middle place between Reid and Kant, and endeavors to blend the subjective idealism of the latter with the realism of the former. "He identifies the phenomenon of the German with the quality of the British philosophy," [306] and asserts, as a regulative law of thought, that the quality implies the substance, and the phenomenon the noumenon, but makes the substratum or noumenon (the object in itself) unknown and unknowable. The "phenomenon" of Kant was, however, something essentially different from the "quality" of Reid. In the philosophy of Kant, phenomenon means an object as we envisage or represent it to ourselves, in opposition to the noumenon, or a thing as it is in itself. The phenomenon is composed, in part, of subjective elements supplied by the mind itself; as regards intuition, the forms of space and time; as regards thought, the categories of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Modality. To perceive a thing in itself would be to perceive it neither in space nor in time. To think a thing in itself would be not to think it under any of the categories. The phenomenal is thus the product of the inherent laws of our own constitution, and, as such, is the sum and limit of all our knowledge. [307]