With all Hamilton's claims to respect,there was a very weak side to his character.A queer vein of pedantry ran through the man.A Philosopher ought surely not to spend two years unearthing a baronetcy.Hamilton stickled for his rights in other cases in a way which one feels to have been scarcely worthy of him.His real magnanimity was combined with mental rigidity which made him incapable of compromise.He is undeniably candid and always speaks generously of his opponents;but his own logic always appears to him to be infallible,and neither in practical matters nor in argument would he yield a jot or a tittle of his case.His self-confidence was unfailing,and he speaks even in his first article with the air of an intellectual dictator.He was resolved,it seems,to justify his position by knowing everything that had ever been written upon philosophy.Like Browning's old grammarian,he would 'know all,'both text and comment,and when the 'little touch'of paralysis came,he was still preparing and accumulating.He had read a vast mass of obscure literature and helped a powerful memory by elaborate commonplace books.His passion for imbibing knowledge,indeed,was out of proportion to his giving out results.He has left comparatively little,and much of that is fragmentary.His writings are all included in the Discussions (from the Edinburgh Review and elsewhere),the often elaborate notes to his edition of Reid,and the Lectures.The two first volumes of these lectures (on Metaphysics),as we are told by the editors,were written in the course of five months for his first session.They were repeated for twenty years without serious alteration.The lectures upon logic,filling two volumes more,were written in the same way for the second session.
Writing in such haste,Hamilton naturally eked out his work by making very free use of his commonplace book,and,in the course upon logic,by long quotations from previous textbooks.The notes to Reid consist in part of long chains of quotations.They show one palpable weakness.The extracts,detached from their context,lose their true significance.He gives a list of 101authorities from Hesiod to Lamennais,with quotations,in which an appeal of some kind is made to 'common-sense.'He might have collected a thousand;but instead of showing the approval of the special Scottish doctrine,they really show that phrase may be used more or less freely by holders of every doctrine.He seems to share is opinion of old writers that every statement in a printed book is an 'authority.'The results are sometimes grotesque.It was natural enough that Hamilton should note an unfavourable opinion of mathematical study expressed by Horace Walpole;but a grave citation of Horace Walpole as an studies would have amused authority upon mathematical nobody more than Walpole himself.On such a method the fuel too often puts out the fire,and Hamilton's direct expositions are few and his opinions often to be inferred from fragmentary criticisms.They naturally vary as he places himself at different points of view;and we are left to guess how he would have tried to combine them.
Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-1871),(5)Hamilton's most noteworthy interpreter,was a typical Oxford don,as became his birth.He was the descendant of an old family of country-gentlemen,the younger members of which had entered the army or navy or held the family living.He had been a brilliant schoolboy,had distinguished himself in Oxford examinations,and became known as a wit in common-rooms,a writer of vivacious squibs,and a sound Tory and high Churchman.He had a clear intellect,a forcible style,and had studied theology and German metaphysics with remarkable energy.He apparently began as a Kantian;but he was greatly impressed by Sir William Hamilton,with whom he had no personal relations;and he adopted from Hamilton the peculiar theory which was to enlist Kant in the service of the church of England.His Bampton Lectures in 1858made him famous as a champion of orthodoxy.In 1868,he was appointed to the deanery of St Paul's;but his labours had been too much for his brain,and he died suddenly in 1871.
Hamilton started under the double influence of the Scottish philosophy and of Aristotle.Formal logic was to him the most congenial of studies.He would have been thoroughly in his element in the medieval schools,syllogising to the death.
According to an enthusiastic pupil,he laid the top stone on the fabric founded by the 'master hand of the Stagirite.'(6)He was in his element when dividing,subdividing,and cross-dividing all manner of philosophical tenets.The aim was admirable.To have all opinions properly articulated and correlated would be the final result of a history of philosophy and a step to further progress.The danger of accepting such a classification prematurely is equally obvious.The technical terms of metaphysics have the most provoking habit of shifting their meaning;they shade off imperceptibly into each other,and sometimes even change places;they represent aspects of truth caught from a particular point of view,which become inapplicable or carry different implications as the point of view imperceptibly shifts.What appear to be contradictory utterances may be merely qualifications of each other,or may mean the same thing in different dialects.A system built of such unsubstantial and slippery materials is apt to crumble into mere chaos without extreme care and penetration.Hamilton,most fully aware of this in general terms,was nevertheless not sufficiently on his guard.
