Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation / Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer

by Jesse Henry Jones

In Sir William Hamilton's behalf it should be stated, that there is just a modicum of truth underlying his theory,—just enough to give it a degree of plausibility. The Sense, as faculty for the perception of physical objects, or their images, and the Understanding as discursive faculty for passing over and forming judgments upon the materials gathered by the Sense, lie under the shadow of a law very like the one he stated. The Sense was made incapable of perceiving an ultimate atom or of comprehending the universe. From the fact that the Sense never has perceived these objects, the Understanding concludes that it never will. Only by the insight and oversight of that higher faculty, the Pure Reason, do we come to know that it never can. It was because those lower faculties are thus walled in by the conditions of Space and Time, and are unable to perceive or conceive anything out of those conditions, and because, in considering them, he failed to see the other mental powers, that Sir William Hamilton constructed his Philosophy of the Unconditioned.

2. Neither of them can be conceived as possible.

Literally, this is true. The word "conceive" applies strictly to the work of the Understanding; and that faculty can never have any notion of the Infinite or Absolute. But, assuming that "conceive" is a general term for cognize, the conclusion developed just above is inevitable. If all being is in one or the other, and neither can be known, nothing can be known.

3. They cannot be known, because of mental imbecility. If man can know nothing because of mental imbecility, why suppose that he has a mental faculty at all? Why not enounce, as the fundamental principle of one's theory, the assertion, All men are idiots? This would be logically consistent. The truth is, the logician was in a dilemma. He must confess that men know something. By a false psychology he had ruled the Reason out of the mind, and so had left himself no faculty by which to form any notion of absoluteness and infinity; and yet they would thrust themselves before him, and demand an explanation. Hence, he constructed a subterfuge. He would have been more consistent if he had said, There is no absolute and infinite. The conditioned is the whole of existence; and this the mind knows.

"4. As opposite extremes, they include everything conceivable between them."

What the essayist in the North American says upon this point is so apt, and so accords with our own previous reflections, that we will not forbear making an extract. "The last of the four theses will best be re-stated in Hamilton's own words; the italics are his. '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 principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one must be admitted as necessary.' This sentence excites unmixed wonder. To mention in the same breath the law of excluded middle, and two contradictions with a mean between them, requires a hardihood unparalleled in the history of philosophy, except by Hegel. If the two contradictory extremes are themselves incogitable, yet include a cogitable mean, why insist upon the necessity of accepting either extreme? This necessity of accepting one of two contradictories is wholly based upon the supposed impossibility of a mean; if the mean exists, that may be true, and both the contradictories false. But if a mean between the two contradictories be both impossible and absurd, (and we have hitherto so interpreted the law of excluded middle,) Hamilton's conditioned entirely vanishes."

Upon a system which, in whatever aspect one looks at it, is found to be but a bundle of contradictions and absurdities, further criticism would appear to be unnecessary.

Having, impliedly at least, accepted as true Sir William Hamilton's psychological error,—the rejection of the Reason as the intellectual faculty of the spiritual person,—and having, with him, used the terms limit, condition, and the like, in such significations as are pertinent to the Sense and Understanding only, the Limitists proceed to present in a paradoxical light many questions which arise concerning "the Infinite." They take the ground that, to our view, he can be neither person, nor intellect, nor consciousness; for each of these implies limitation; and yet that it is impossible for us to know aught of him, except as such. Then having, as they think, completely confused the mind, they draw hence new support for their conclusion, that we can attain to no satisfactory knowledge on the subject. The following extracts selected from many will show this.

"Now, in the first place, the very conception of Consciousness, in whatever mode it may be manifested, necessarily implies distinction between one object and another. To be conscious, we must be conscious of something; and that something can only be known as that which it is, by being distinguished from that which it is not. But distinction is necessarily a limitation; for, if one object is to be distinguished from another, it must possess some form of existence which the other has not, or it must not possess some form which the other has. But it is obvious that the Infinite cannot be distinguished, as such, from the Finite, by the absence of any quality which the Finite possesses; for such absence would be a limitation. Nor yet can it be distinguished by the presence of an attribute which the Finite has not; for as no finite part can be a constituent of an infinite whole, this differential characteristic must itself be infinite; and must at the same time have nothing in common with the finite....

"That a man can be conscious of the Infinite, is thus a supposition which, in the very terms in which it is expressed, annihilates itself. Consciousness is essentially a limitation; for it is the determination of the mind to one actual out of many possible modifications. But the Infinite, if it is conceived at all, must be conceived as potentially everything, and actually nothing; for if there is anything in general which it cannot become, it is thereby limited; and if there is anything in particular which it actually is, it is thereby excluded from being any other thing. But again, it must also be conceived as actually everything, and potentially nothing; for an unrealized potentiality is likewise a limitation. If the infinite can be that which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection. If it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else, and discerned as an object of consciousness....