Hamilton has deprived himself of the power of using the arguments from our belief in causation and infinity by what I regard as a defective and mutilated account of both these intuitions.He has nowhere stated the moral argument which he trusts in.I suspect that the criticism which cuts down the argument from intelligence, needs only to be carried a step further to undermine the argument from our moral nature.This process has actually taken place in German), and I have no desire to see it repeated among metaphysical youths in this country.It is on this account, mainly, that I have been so anxious to point out the gross defects in the account given by Hamilton of our necessary convictions.
(2) I dispute his doctrine of causation.It is so lamentably defective in the view taken of the nature of cause, and so perversely mistaken in the theory grounded on this view, that several of his most distinguished disciples have been obliged to abandon it.The following is his account of effect and cause " An effect is nothing more than the sum or complement of all the partial causes, the concurrence of which constitutes its existence." I remember no eminent philosopher who has given so inadequate a view of what constitutes cause.It leaves out the main element, --the power in the substance, or, more frequently, substances, acting as the cause to produce the effect.It leads him to represent the effect as an emanation from previously existing elements, a doctrine which he turns to no pantheistic use, but which has, undoubtedly, a pantheistic tendency.Taking such a view it is no wonder that he should represent creation as inconceivable; for the only creation which he can conceive, according to his theory, is not a creation of a new substance by God, but a creation out of God.Thus defective is his view of cause in itself.His view of the internal principle, which leads us, when we discover an effect to look for a cause is equally inadequate.
According to him it is a mere <impotence> to conceive that there should not be something out of which this effect is formed; and, to complete the insufficiency of his theory, he makes even this a law of thought and not of things.Surely all this is in complete opposition to the consciousness to which he so often appeals.Our conviction as to cause is not a powerlessness, but a power; not {447} an inability, but an ability.It is an intuitive and necessary belief that this effect, and every other effect, must have a cause in something with power to produce it.
(3) I dispute his theory as to our conviction of infinity.We are," he says, "altogether unable to conceive space as bounded-as finite; that is, as a whole beyond which there is no farther space." " On the other hand, we are equally power less to realize in thought the possibility of the opposite contradictory: we cannot conceive space infinite or without limits." (VOL."., P.369, 370.) The seeming contradiction here arises from the double sense in which the word " conceive " is used.In the second of these counter propositions the word is used in the sense of imaging or representing in consciousness, as when the mind's eye pictures a fish or a mermaid.In this signification we cannot have an idea or notion of the infinite.But the thinking, judging, believing power of the mind is not the same as the imaging power.The mind can think of the class fish, or even of the imaginary class mermaid, while it can not picture the class.Now, in the first of the opposed propositions the word "conceive" is taken in the sense of thinking, deciding, being convinced.We picture space as bounded, but we cannot think, judge, or believe it to be bounded.When thus explained all appearance of contradiction disappears indeed all the contradictions which the Kantians, Hegelians, and Hamiltonians are so fond of discovering between our intuitive convictions, will vanish if we but carefully inquire into the nature of these convictions.Both propositions, when rightly understood, are true, and there is no contradiction.They stand thus: -- "We cannot image space as without bounds:" "we cannot think that it has bounds or believe that it has bounds." The former may well be represented as a creature impotency; the latter is, most assuredly, a creature potency, is one of the most elevated and elevating convictions of which the mind is possessed, --and is a conviction of which it can never be shorn.
It will be seen from these remarks that I refuse my adherence to his peculiar theory of relativity, and to his maxim that " positive thought lies in the limitation or conditioning of one or other of two opposite extremes, neither of which, as unconditioned, can be realized to the mind as possible, and yet {448} of which, as contradictions, one or other must, by the fundamental laws of thought, be recognized as necessary." (Reid's " Works," P.743.) It fails as to causation and as to infinity, and he has left no formal application of it to substance and quality, where, as Kant showed, there is no such infinite <regressus>, as in infinite time and space or cause.He would have found himself in still greater difficulties had he ventured elaborately to apply his theory to moral good.As I believe him to have been on the wrong track, I scarcely regret that he has not completed his system and given us a doctrine of rational psychology or ontology.Indeed I have no faith whatever in a metaphysics which pretends to do any more than determine, in an inductive manner, the laws and faculties of the mind, and, in doing so, to ascertain, formalize, and express the fundamental principles of cognition, belief, judgment, and moral good.The study of logic began to revive from the time that Archbishop Whately constrained it to keep to a defined province.The study of metaphysics would be greatly promoted if the science would only learn to be a little more humble and less pretending, and confine itself to that which is attainable.
