See Discussions, p. 29. Of course by this is not meant that no duration can be conceived except in a duration equally long—that a thousand years, e.g., can only be conceived in a thousand years. A thousand years may be conceived as one unit: infinity cannot; for an unit is something complete, and therefore limited. What is meant is, that any period of time, however long, is conceived as capable of further increase, and therefore as not infinite. An infinite duration can have no time before or after it; and thus cannot resemble any portion of finite time, however great. When we dream of conceiving an infinite regress of time, says Sir W. Hamilton, “we only deceive ourselves by substituting the indefinite for the infinite, than which no two notions can be more opposed.” This caution has not been attended to by some later critics. Thus, Dr. Whewell (Philosophy of Discovery, p. 324) says: “The definition of an infinite number is not that it contains all possible unities; but this—that the progress of numeration, being begun according to a certain law, goes on without limit.” This is precisely Descartes’ definition, not of the infinite, but of the indefinite. Principia, i. 26: “Nos autem illa omnia, in quibus sub aliqua consideratione nullum finem poterimus invenire, non quidem affirmabimus esse infinita, sed ut indefinita spectabimus.” An indefinite time is that which is capable of perpetual addition: an infinite time is one so great as to admit of no addition. Surely “no two notions can be more opposed.”
The cardinal point, then, of Sir W. Hamilton’s philosophy, expressly announced as such by himself, is the absolute necessity, under any system of philosophy whatever, of acknowledging the existence of a sphere of belief beyond the limits of the sphere of thought. “The main scope of my speculation,”[Q] he says, “is to show articulately that we must believe, as actual, much that we are unable (positively) to conceive as even possible.” It is, of course, beyond the range of such a speculation, by itself, to enter on an examination of the positive evidences in support of one form of belief rather than another. So far as it aims only at exhibiting an universal law of the human mind, it is of course compatible with all special forms of belief which do not contradict that law; and none, whatever their pretensions, can really contradict it. Hence the service which such a philosophy can render to the Christian religion must necessarily, from the nature of the case, be of an indirect and negative character. It prepares the way for a fair examination of the proper evidences of Christianity, by showing that there is no ground for any à priori prejudice against revelation, as appealing, for the acceptance of its highest truths, to faith rather than to reason; for that this appeal is common to all religions and to all philosophies, and cannot therefore be urged against one more than another. So far as certain difficulties are inherent in the constitution of the human mind itself, they must necessarily occupy the same position with respect to all religions alike. To exhibit the nature of these difficulties is a service to true religion; but it is the service of the pioneer, not of the builder; it does not prove the religion to be true; it only clears the ground for the production of the special evidences.
Letter to Mr. Calderwood. See Lectures, vol. ii, p. 534.
Where those evidences are to be found, Sir W. Hamilton has not failed to tell us. If mere intellectual speculations on the nature and origin of the material universe form a common ground in which the theist, the pantheist, and even the atheist, may alike expatiate, the moral and religious feelings of man—those facts of consciousness which have their direct source in the sense of personality and free will—plead with overwhelming evidence in behalf of a personal God, and of man’s relation to Him, as a person to a person. We have seen, in a previous quotation, Hamilton’s emphatic declaration that “psychological materialism, if carried out fully and fairly to its conclusions, inevitably results in theological atheism.” In the same spirit he tells us that “it is only as man is a free intelligence, a moral power, that he is created after the image of God;”[R] that “with the proof of the moral nature of man, stands or falls the proof of the existence of a Deity;” that “the possibility of morality depends on the possibility of liberty;” that “if man be not a free agent, he is not the author of his actions, and has therefore no responsibility, no moral personality at all;”[S] and, finally, “that he who disbelieves the moral agency of man, must, in consistency with that opinion, disbelieve Christianity.”[T] We have thus, in the positive and negative sides of this philosophy, both a reasonable ground of belief and a warning against presumption. By our immediate consciousness of a moral and personal nature, we are led to the belief in a moral and personal God: by our ignorance of the unconditioned, we are led to the further belief, that behind that moral and personal manifestation of God there lies concealed a mystery—the mystery of the Absolute and the Infinite; that our intellectual and moral qualities, though indicating the nearest approach to the Divine Perfections which we are capable of conceiving, yet indicate them as analogous, not as identical; that we may naturally expect to find points where this analogy will fail us, where the function of the Infinite Moral Governor will be distinct from that of the finite moral servant; and where, consequently, we shall be liable to error in judging by human rules of the ways of God, whether manifested in nature or in revelation. Such is the true lesson to be learnt from a philosophy which tells us of a God who is “in a certain sense revealed, in a certain sense concealed—at once known and unknown.”
Lectures, vol. i., p. 30.
Lectures, vol. i, p. 33.