Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/245

 his books. After his illness he became rather irritable, and at all periods was an uncompromising, and when his pugnacity was aroused an unsparing antagonist. He began to collect books as early as 1804, collecting more freely after 1820. At his death he left nine or ten thousand volumes. A collection of manuscripts from a monastery at Erfurt chiefly theological treatises was given to him by an old pupil, Mr. Broad, and after his death presented to the Bodleian. The richest part of his own collection was of the older metaphysical works, treatises on logic, and the early commentaries on Aristotle. He kept elaborate commonplace books, arranged on the principle described by Locke, and was rather too fond of emptying them into his writings. Hamilton's learning was very great, and included many obscure subjects. He was especially familiar with the period of the revival of learning. But he often uses his knowledge with too little discrimination, and often cites 'authorities' with much indifference to the context or to their relative importance. The effect produced upon contemporaries by Hamilton's philosophy was due to his commanding character, as well as to his wide reading and great dialectical power. His influence has declined partly from the fragmentary nature of his writings, and partly from his peculiar position as a thinker. A thorough Scot, he carried on the tradition of the national philosophy of common sense with much wider knowledge than his predecessors, and with logical faculties sharpened by his Aristotelian studies. His acquaintance with German philosophy was applied by him rather to fortify than to modify his opinions. His inconsistencies, real or alleged, are probably due chiefly to the attempt to combine divergent systems. He endeavoured to give more precision to the fundamental principle of the veracity of consciousness by setting forth as tests of our original cognitions their necessity, simplicity, and so forth. He attacked the developments of Kant's successors, especially Schelling and Cousin, which would have taken him outside the Scottish tradition. He pronounced the absolute and infinite to be unknowable, and his teaching led to the agnosticism which Mr. Herbert Spencer professes (preface to First Principles) to have developed from the writings of Hamilton and his disciple Mansel (see also Professor Huxley in Nineteenth Century for February 1889). His theory was assailed from the orthodox side in Professor Calderwood's 'Philosophy of the Infinite,' 1854 ; second and enlarged edition, 1861. A letter from Hamilton in answer to the first edition is given in an appendix to his 'Lectures on Metaphysics.' Hamilton's arguments are borrowed from Kant's antinomies of the pure reason ; but he especially valued himself on having so modified the argument as to obviate a sceptical conclusion (Lectures, i. 402). Our faculties are 'weak, not deceitful;' and while leaving us in presence of 'contradictory inconceivables,' he permits us to accept the alternative justified by our 'moral and religious feelings' (, Philosophy of the Conditioned, p. 39 n.) We can thus, for example, believe in the freedom of the will although 'inconceivable,' as, according to him, the necessary foundation of ethics. Hamilton's own reasoning, however, is chiefly negative, though the sincerity of his religious belief is beyond question. A similar difficulty occurs in regard to his favourite doctrine of the 'relativity of knowledge,' which according to Mansel (ib. p. 67) is a 'modification of Kant's theory' of the forms of intuition. Although recognising a subjective element in all knowledge, Hamilton declared himself to be a 'natural realist,' as admitting the testimony of consciousness to an outside world. He holds that nearly all modern philosophers are 'cosmothetic idealists,' that is, maintain that the external realty is known through 'representation' only. Though Hamilton's followers consider his teaching to be consistent, most critics have found it difficult to reconcile his 'natural realism' with the doctrine of the 'relativity of knowledge.' The theory of perception to which it leads has been severely criticised by Mr. Hutchison Stirling. Hamilton thus employing weapons from Kant in defence of Reid's philosophy, was equally opposed to the Hegelian school and to the empiricism of Mill, and has been attacked on both sides. It is not disputed, however, that he gave a great stimulus to speculative thought and the study of German philosophy, and made many interesting contributions to psychology and to logic, such as his theory of the association of ideas, of unconscious mental modifications, and of the inverse relation of perception and sensation. His doctrine of the 'quantification of the predicate,' which led to a sharp controversy with De Morgan, was original, though of disputed value. In the ' Bampton Lectures' for 1858 Dean Mansel applied Hamilton's theories in a discussion of the 'limits of religious thought.' In 1865 J. S. Mill criticised Hamilton elabo- rately as the chief representative of the 'intuitional' school, in his 'Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy.' In the preface to the 4th edition (1874) is a list of many publications upon the question. The chief are : 'Sir W. Hamilton ; the Philosophy of Perception,' by J. Hutchison Stirling, 1865 ; 'Recent British Philosophy,' by David