Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/396

382 of thought. Hence, philosophy, if viewed as more than a science of the conditioned, is impossible. How he demonstrates this, and proves that reason is weak without being deceitful, and that its testimony is valid so far as it goes—how he enforces the salutary lesson that the capacity of thought is not to he constituted into the measure of existence, nor the domain of our knowledge to be recognised as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon of our faith—and how he deduces from the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, a justifiable belief in the existence of something unconditioned, beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality—how, in short, he confronts M. Cousin's doctrine of the Absolute and the Infinite on one hand, and the hopeless negations of Positivism on the other, will be examined with real profit and interest, if only with diligence and docility, by every the mmutest shareholder in common.

In further illustration of this doctrine, should be studied the Appendices entitled "Conditions of the Thinkable Systematised," and "Philosophical Testimonies to the Limitation of our Knowledge from the Limitation of our Faculties." In them, it has been said, we have a kind of guarantee that the age is not becoming wholly shallow.

Another appendix is assigned to Logic—and is incomparably harder to read, and, to ordinary readers, next to impossible to digest. Sir William, in this section, treats of Syllogism and its varied functions—of Affirmation and Negation—of Prepositional Forms, &c. As a Reformer in logical details much of his celebrity has been won. There are cases in which, says Mr. de Quincey, he is the "very first revealer of what had lurked unsuspected even to the most superstitious searchers of Aristotle's text." To him men still look with hope for a comprehensive treatise on every part of logic, "adapted to the growing necessities of the times." Should this hope come to nought—should the construction of an "edifice of so much labour and fatigue " be declined by this potent master-builder—yet, thus much is evident, adds the critic just named, "that whensoever, and by whomsoever, such an edifice shall be raised, the amplitude and the beauty of the superstructure will depend largely upon foundations already laid, and ground plans already traced out, by the admirable labours of Sir William Hamilton." One other publication we may more definitely expect from him—and one of exceeding value—namely, his Lectures before his classes in Edinburgh.

It is a becoming Lenten reflection, suggestive of mortifying ideas, that in such a paper as we have just perpetrated, on such a subject, no subscriber to the New Monthly may have cared to follow us. Albeit, we have the consolation of knowing that we are sure of an audience of three—which is a number not to be sneezed at, as times go. Do turbulent sceptics dun us with shouts of Name! Name!—Well; the triad consists of no other than Editor, Compositor, and Reader to the Press. True—their perusal of us may be ex officio, and in the quality of nolentes volentes: but to analyse men's motives is sometimes to inquire too curiously for one's comfort and peace of mind. And here a triumphant thought strikes us—causing the addition of a glorious Fourth to the severely scrutinised list: Sir William Hamilton reads everything; needs there syllogism to show, then, that he will read, or has read, us?—And "put us down " again with a portentous, thorough-bass Bah!