PART II.
AN EXAMINATION OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PROPOSITION OF THE LIMITISTS, AND OF CERTAIN GENERAL COROLLARIES UNDER IT.
It has been attempted in the former pages to find a valid and final basis of truth, one which would satisfy the cravings of the human soul, and afford it a sure rest. In the fact that God made man in his own image, and that thus there is, to a certain extent, a community of faculties, a community of knowledge, a community of obligations, and a community of interests, have we found such a basis. We have hereby learned that a part of man's knowledge is necessary and final; in other words, that he can know the truth, and be sure that his knowledge is correct. If the proofs which have been offered of the fact of the Pure Reason, and the statements which have been made of the mode of its activity and of its functions, and, further, of the problem of the Universe, and the true method for solving it, shall have been satisfactory to the reader, he will now be ready to consider the analysis of Sir William Hamilton's fundamental proposition, which was promised on an early page. We there gave, it was thought, sufficiently full extracts for a fair presentation of his theory, and followed them with a candid epitome. In recurring to the subject now, and for the purpose named, we are constrained at the outset to make an acknowledgment.
It would be simple folly, a childish egotism, to pass by in silence the masterly article on this subject in the "North American Review" for October, 1864, and after it to pretend to offer anything new. Whatever the author might have wrought out in his own mental workshop,—and his work was far less able than what is there given,—that article has left nothing to be said. He has therefore been tempted to one of two courses: either to transfer it to these pages, or pass by the subject entirely. Either course may, perhaps, be better than the one finally chosen; which is, while pursuing the order of his own thought, to add a few short extracts therefrom. One possibility encourages him in this, which is, that some persons may see this volume, who have no access to the Review, and to whom, therefore, these pages will be valuable. To save needless repetition, this discussion will presuppose that the reader has turned back and perused the extracts and epitome above alluded to.
Upon the very threshold of Sir William Hamilton's statement, one is met by a logical faux pas which is truly amazing. Immediately after the assertion that "the mind can know only the limited and the conditionally limited," and in the very sentence in which he denies the possibility of a knowledge of the Infinite and Absolute, he proceeds to define those words in definite and known terms! The Infinite he defines as "the unconditionally unlimited," and the Absolute as "the unconditionally limited." Or, to save him, will one say that the defining terms are unknown? So much the worse, then! "The Infinite," an unknown term, may be represented by x; and the unconditionally unlimited, a compound unknown term, by ab. Now, who has the right to say, either in mathematics or metaphysics, in any philosophy, that x=ab? Yet such dicta are the basis of "The Philosophy of the Unconditioned." But, one of two suppositions is possible. Either the terms infinite and absolute are known terms and definable, or they are unknown terms and undefinable. Yet, Hamilton says, they are unknown and definable. Which does he mean? If he is held to the former, they are unknown; then all else that he has written about them are batches of meaningless words. If he is held to the latter, they are definable; then are they known, and his system is denied in the assertion of it. Since his words are so contradictory, he must be judged by his deeds; and in these he always assumes that we have a positive knowledge of the infinite and absolute, else he would not have argued the matter; for there can be no argument about nothing. Our analysis of his theory, then, must be conducted upon this hypothesis.
Turn back for a moment to the page upon which his theory is quoted, and read the last sentence. Is his utterance a "principle," or is it a judgment? Is it an axiom, or is it a guess. The logician asserts that we know only the conditioned, and yet bases his assertion upon "the principles," &c. What is a principle, and how is it known? If it is axiom, then he has denied his own philosophy in the very sentence in which he uttered it. And this, we have no hesitation in saying, is just what he did. He blindly assumed certain "fundamental laws of thought,"—to quote another of his phrases—to establish the impotence of the mind to know those laws as fundamental. Again, if his philosophy is valid, the words "must," "necessary," and the like are entirely out of place; for they are unconditional. In the conditioned there is, can be, no must, no necessity.
From these excursions about the principle let us now return to the principle itself. It may be stated concisely thus: There are two extremes,—"the Absolute" and the "Infinite." These include all being. They are contradictories, that is, one must be, to the exclusion of the other. But the mind can "conceive" of neither. What, then, is the logical conclusion? That the mind cannot conceive of anything. What is his conclusion? That the mind can conceive of something between the infinite and the absolute, which is neither the one nor the other, but a tertium quid—the conditioned. Where did this tertium quid come from, when he had already comprehended everything in the two extremes? If there is a mean, the conditioned, and the two extremes, then "excluded middle" has nothing to do with the matter at all.
To avoid the inevitable conclusion of his logic as just stated, Hamilton erected the subterfuge of mental imbecility. To deny any knowledge to man, was to expose himself to ridicule. He, therefore, and his followers after him, drew a line in the domain of knowledge, and assigned to the hither side of it all knowledge that can come through generalizations in the Understanding; and then asserted that the contradictions which appeared in the mind, when one examined those questions which lie on the further side of that line, resulted from the impotency of the mind to comprehend the questions themselves. This was, is, their psychology. How satisfactory it may be to Man, a hundred years, perhaps, will show. But strike out the last assertion, and write, Both are cognizable; and then let us proceed with our reasoning. The essayist in the North American presents the theory under four heads, as follows:—
"1. The Infinite and Absolute as defined, are contradictory and exclusive of each other; yet, one must be true.