[Footnote 312: ][ (return) ] Ibid., pp. 377, 378.
[Footnote 313: ][ (return) ] Mill's "Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy," vol. i. p. 44.
Admitting the relative character of human thought as a psychological fact, Mr. Martineau has conclusively shown that this law, instead of visiting us with disability to transcend phenomena, operates as a revelation of what exists beyond. "The finite body cut out before our visual perception, or embraced by the hands, lies as an island in the emptiness around, and without comparative reference to this can not be represented: the same experience which gives us the definite object gives us also the infinite space; and both terms--the limited appearance and the unlimited ground--are apprehended with equal certitude and clearness, and furnished with names equally susceptible of distinct use in predication and reasoning. The transient successions, for instance, the strokes of a clock, which we count, present themselves to us as dotted out upon a line of permanent duration; of which, without them, we should have no apprehension, but which as their condition, is unreservedly known." [314]
"What we have said with regard to space and time applies equally tο the case of Causation. Here, too, the finite offered to perception introduces to an Infinite supplied by thought. As a definite body reveals also the space around, and an interrupted succession exhibits the uniform time beneath, so does the passing phenomenon demand for itself a power beneath. The space, and time, and power, not being part of the thing perceived, but its conditions, are guaranteed to us, therefore, on the warrant, not of sense, but of intellect." [315]
"We conclude, then, on reviewing these examples of Space, and Time, and Causation, that ontological ideas introducing us to certain fixed entities belong no less to our knowledge than scientific ideas of phenomenal disposition and succession." [316] In these instances of relation between a phenomenon given in perception and an entity as a logical condition, the correlatives are on a perfect equality of intellectual validity, and the relative character of human thought is not an ontological disqualification, but a cognitive power.
[Footnote 314: ][ (return) ] "Essays," pp. 193,194.
[Footnote 315: ][ (return) ] Ibid., p. 197.
[Footnote 316: ][ (return) ] Ibid., p. 195.
There is a thread of fallacy running through the whole of Hamilton's reasonings, consequent upon a false definition of the Absolute at the outset. The Absolute is defined as that which exists in and by itself, aloof from and out of all relation. An absolute, as thus defined, does not and can not exist; it is a pure abstraction, and, in fact, a pure non-entity. "The Absolute expresses perfect independence both in being and in action, and is applicable to God as self-existent." [317] It may mean the absence of all necessary relation, but it does not mean the absence of all relation. If God can not voluntarily call a finite existence into being, and thus stand in the relation of cause, He is certainly under the severest limitation. But surely that is not a limit which substitutes choice for necessity. To be unable to know God out of all relation--that is, apart from his attributes, apart from his created universe, is not felt by us to be any privation at all. A God without attributes, and out of all relations, is for us no God at all. God as a being of unlimited perfection, as infinitely wise and good, as the unconditioned cause of all finite being, and, consequently, as voluntarily related to nature and humanity, we can and do know; this is the living and true God. The God of a false philosophy is not the true God; the pure abstractions of Hegel and Hamilton are negations, and not realities.
2. We proceed to consider the second fundamental principle of Hamilton's philosophy of the conditioned, viz., that "conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought," and that thought necessarily imposes conditions on its object.