notion, the fabrication of the intellect, and not a datum of sense.1 This reduction involves a difficulty. What, and how solved. Space known a priori; Extension a posteriori. Thus, then, we have reduced all primary qualities to Extension and Solidity, and we are, moreover, it would seem, beginning to see light, inasmuch as the primary qualities are those in which perception is dominant, the secondary those in which sensation prevails. But here we are again thrown back: for extension is only another name for space, and our notion of space is not one which we derive exclusively from sense, not one which is generalized only from experience; for it is one of our necessary notions, -- in fact, a fundamental condition of thought itself. The analysis of Kant, independently of all that has been done by other philosophers, has placed this truth beyond the possibility of doubt, to all those who understand the meaning and conditions of the problem. For us, however, this is not the time to discuss the subject. But, taking it for granted that the notion of space is native or a priori, and not adventitious or a posteriori, are we not at once thrown back into idealism? For if extension itself be only a necessary mental mode, how can we make it a quality of external objects, known to us by sense; or how can we contrast the outer world, as the extended, with the inner, as the unextended world? To this difficulty, I see only one possible answer. It is this: It cannot be denied that space, as a necessary notion, is native to the mind; but does it follow, that, because there is an a priori space, as a form of thought, we may not also have an empirical knowledge of extension, as an element of existence? The former, indeed, may be only the condition through which the latter is possible. It is true that, if we did not possess the general and necessary notion of space anterior to, or as the condition of, experience, from experience we should never obtain more than a generalized and contingent notion of space. But there seems to me no reason to deny, that because we have the one, we may not also have the other. If this be admitted, the whole difficulty is solved; and we may designate by the name of extension our empirical knowledge of space, and reserve the term space for space considered as a form or fundamental law of thought. This matter 1 In this reduction of the primary qualities to Extension and Solidity, the author follows Royer-Collard, whose remarks will be found quoted in Reid's Works, p. 844. From the notes appended to that quotation, it will be seen that Sir W. Hamilton's final opinion differs in some respects from that expressed in the present text. - ED. 2 Here, on blank leaf of MS., are jotted the words, "So Causality." [Causality depends, first, on the a priori necessity in the mind to think some cause; and, second, on experience, as revealing to us the particu'ar cause of any effect.]- Oral Interpolation, lat not at this passage.-ED. will, however, come appropriately to be considered, in treating of the Regulative Faculty. - The following is the result of what I think an accurate analysis would afford, though there are no doubt many difficulties to be explained. That our knowledge of all the qualities of matter is merely relative. But though the qualities of matter are all known only in relation to our faculties, and the total or absolute cognition in perception General result. - In the Primary Qualities, Perception predomi nates; in the Secondary, Sensation. - is only matter in a certain relation to mind, and mind in a certain relation to matter; still, in different perceptions, one term of the relation may predominate, or the other. Where the objective element predominates, where matter is known as principal in its relation to mind, and mind only known as subordinate in its correlation to matter, we have Perception Proper, rising superior to sensation; this is seen in the Primary Qualities. Where, on the contrary, the subjective element predominates, where mind is known as principal in its relation to matter, and matter is only known as subordinate in its relation to mind, - we have Sensation Proper rising superior to perception; and this is seen in the Secondary Qualities. The adequate illustration of this would, however, require both a longer, and a more abstruse, discussion than we can afford.1 1 Cf. Reid's Works, Notes D and D*. — ED. LECTURE XXV. THE PRESENTATIVE FACULTY. 1. PERCEPTION. OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL REALISM. Objections to the doctrine of Natural Realism. FROM Our previous discussions, you are now, in some measure, prepared for a consideration of the grounds on which philosophers have so generally asserted the scientific necessity of repressing the testimony of consciousness to the fact of our immediate perception of external objects, and of allowing us only a mediate knowledge of the material world: a procedure by which they either admit, or cannot rationally deny, that Consciousness is a mendacious witness; that Philosophy and the Common Sense of mankind are placed in contradiction; nay, that the only legitimate philosophy is an absolute and universal skepticism. That conscious The testimony of Consciousness in perception, notorious, and acknowledged by philosophers of all classes. Hume quoted. ness, in perception, affords us, as I have stated, an assurance of an intuitive cognition of the non-ego, is not only notorious to every one who will interrogate consciousness as to the fact, but is, as I have already shown you, acknowledged not only by cosmothetic idealists, but even by absolute idealists and skeptics. "It seems evident," says Hume, who in this concession must be allowed to express the common acknowledgment of philosophers, "that when men follow this blind and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the very images, presented by the senses, to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion, that the one are nothing but representations of the other. This very table, which we see white, and which we feel hard, is believed to exist, independent of our perception, and to be something external to our mind, which perceives it. Our presence bestows not being on it: our absence does not annihilate it. It preserves its existence, uniform and entire, independent of the situation of intelligent beings, who perceive or contemplate it. But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are received, without being ever able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object."1 The discussion divided into two parts. In considering this subject, it is manifest that, before rejecting the testimony of consciousness to our immediate knowledge of the non-ego, the philosophers were bound, in the first place, to evince the absolute necessity of their rejection; and, in the second place, in substituting an hypothesis in the room of the rejected fact, they were bound to substitute a legitimate hypothesis, - that is, one which does not violate the laws under which an hypothesis can be rationally proposed. I shall, therefore, divide the discussion into two sections. In the former, I shall state the reasons, as far as I have been able to discover them, on which philosophers have attempted to manifest the impossibility of acquiescing in the testimony of consciousness, and the general belief of mankind; and, at the same time, endeavor to refute these reasons, by showing that they do not establish the necessity required. In the latter, I shall attempt to prove that the hypothesis proposed by the philosophers, in place of the fact of consciousness, does not fulfil the conditions of a legitimate hypothesis, in fact, violates them almost all. I. Reasons for rejecting the testimony of Consciousness in perception, detailed and criticized. As In the first place, then, in regard to the reasons assigned by philosophers for their refusal of the fact of our immediate perception of external things, of these I have been able to collect in all five. they cannot be very briefly stated, I shall not first enumerate them together, and then consider each in detail; but shall consider them one after the other, without any general and preliminary statement. The first, and highest, ground on which it may be held, that the object immediately known in perception is a modification of the mind itself, is the following: Perception is a cognition or act of knowledge; a cognition is an immanent act of mind; but to suppose the cognition of anything external to the mind, would be to suppose an act of the mind going out of itself, in other words, a transeunt act; but action supposes existence, and nothing can act where it is not; therefore, to act out of self is to exist out of self, which is absurd.2 The first ground of rejection. 1 Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, xii., Essays, etc. [Of the Academical or Skeptical Philosophy, Essays, p. 367, edit. 1758. Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 177.- ED.] 2 See Biunde, Versuch einer systematischen Behandlung der empirischen Psychologie, vol. i. § 31, p. 139. [Biunde refers to Fichte as holding the principle of this argument. ED.] Cf. Schulze, Anthropologie, § 53, p. 107, (edit. 1826.) [Cicero, Acad. Quæst., iv. 24. — ED.] Refuted. 1. Our inability to conceive how the fact of consciousness is possible, no ground for denying its possibility. 2. The reason adduced involves a general absurdity. This argument, though I have never met with it explicitly announced, is still implicitly supposed in the arguments of those philosophers who hold, that the mind cannot be conscious of aught beyond its own modifications. It will not stand examination. It is very true that we can neither prove, nor even conceive, how the ego can be conscious or immediately cognitive of the nonego; but this, our ignorance, is no sufficient reason on which to deny the possibility of the fact. As a fact, and a primary fact, of consciousness, we must be ignorant of the why and how of its reality, for we have no higher notion through which to comprehend it, and, if it involve no contradiction, we are, philosophically, bound to accept it. But if we examine the argument a little closer, we shall find that it proves too much; for, on the same principle, we should establish the impossibility of any overt act of volition,nay, even the impossibility of all agency and mutual causation. For if, on the ground that nothing can act out of itself, because nothing exists out of itself, we deny to mind the immediate knowledge of things external; on the same principle, we must deny to mind the power of determining any muscular movement of the body. And if the action of every existence were limited to the sphere of that existence itself, then, no one thing could act upon any other thing, and all action and reäction, in the universe, would be impossible. This is a general absurdity, which follows from the principle in question. But there is a peculiar and proximate absurdity into which this theory runs, in the attempt it makes to escape the inexplicable. It is this:-The cosmothetic idealists, who found their doctrine on the impossibility of mind acting out of itself, in relation to matter, are obliged to admit the still less conceivable possibility of matter acting out of itself, in relation to mind. They deny that mind is immediately conscious of matter; and, to save the phanomenon of perception, they assert that the non-ego, as given in that act, is only an illusive representation of the non-ego, in, and by, the ego. Well, admitting this, and allowing them to belie the testimony of consciousness to the reality of the non-ego as perceived, what do they gain by this? They surrender the simple datum of consciousness, that the external object is immediately known; and, in lieu of that real object, they substitute a representative object. But still they hold (at least those who do not fly to some hyperphysical hypothesis) that the mind is determined to this 3. Involves a special absurdity. |