Nobody's 'consciousness,'we may be sure,ever told him that he perceived not the sun but the action of rays of light on his eye.
Hamilton has diverged from a consideration of the consciousness itself to a consideration of the physical conditions of consciousness.Having started with Reid,he next admits Kant to be conclusive,and ends by escaping to what is only expressible in terms of materialism.The deliverance of consciousness has come to be a statement that my fingers are different from my toes,and that,as I am fingers and toes,I am aware of the fact.
I will not ask whether it is possible by any interpretation to put a tenable construction upon Hamilton's language.Hamilton begins by discarding the philosopher's crotchet that the difference between mind and matter prevents them from affecting each other;and now he seems to admit its force so fully that he conceives of the nervous organism as a kind of amalgam of mind and matter.(61)I have followed Hamilton so far in order to illustrate the way in which,by superposing instead of reconciling two different sets of dogma,he became hopelessly confused.The old Scottish doctrine really becomes bankrupt in his version.Hamilton is still struggling with Reid's old problem,and attacking the 'cosmothetic idealism'as Reid attacked the ideal system.How are we to cross the gulf between mind and matter,especially when we know nothing about either mind or matter taken apart from matter or mind?The problem is insoluble on these terms because it is really meaningless.The answer suggested by Kant was effective precisely --as I take it --because it drew the line differently,and therefore altered the whole question.Kant did not provide a new bridge,but pointed out that the chasm was not rightly conceived.To try to settle whether the 'primary qualities'belong to 'things external to the mind'is idle.It leads to the inevitable dilemma.If the 'primary qualities'belong to the things or the object,geometry becomes empirical and deducible only from particular experiments,like other physical sciences.Then we cannot account for its unique character and its at least apparent 'necessity.'If,on the other hand,the primary qualities belong to the mind,we can understand how the mind evolves or constructs,but it is at the cost of admitting them to be after all unreal,because 'subjective,'or deriving knowledge of fact from a simple analysis of thought.But the dilemma is really illusory.We cannot say that the truths of geometry refer either to things 'out of the mind'or to things 'in the mind.'They are 'subjective'in the sense that they are constructed by the mind in the very act of experiencing.They are not subjective in the sense of varying from one experience to another or from one mind to another.They belong to perception as perception,or to the perceiver as perceiving.It is,therefore,meaningless to ask whether they are 'objective'or 'subjective,'if that is to be answered by deciding,as Hamilton would decide,what part is due to the subject and what part to the object.That feat could only be performed if we could get outside of our minds,which we always carry about with us,or outside of the universe to which we are strictly confined.Then we might perhaps understand what each factor is,considered apart from the other.
As it is,we can only say that the truths are universal as belonging to experience in general,and necessary as corresponding to identical modes of combining our experience.But we must abandon the fruitless attempt to separate object from subject,and then to construct a bridge to cross the gulf we have made.
III.MILL ON THE EXTERNAL WORLD
Upon this I have spoken sufficiently in considering Mill's Logic.Mill's failure to appreciate the change in the real issues made by the Kantian doctrine in this and other questions is a source of perplexity in his criticism of Hamilton.(62)His straightforward statement of his own view is a relief after Hamilton's complex and tortuous mode of forcibly combining inconsistent dogmas.He is able,moreover,to expose very thoroughly some of Hamilton's inconsistencies.But though he can hit particular errors very hard,he has not a sufficient clue to the labyrinth.Metaphysicians for him are still divided into two great schools --intuitionists and empiricists,or,as he here says,the 'introspective'and the 'psychological'school.(63)The Scottish and the Kantian doctrines are still lumped together,and therefore more or less misunderstood.Hence in treating of our belief in an external world he is still in the old position.
Kant,according to him,supposes the mind not to perceive but itself to 'create'attributes,and then by a natural illusion to ascribe them to outward things.(64)The mind,on this version,does not simply organise but adds to,or overrides,experience.
Consequently the external world would become subjective or unreal;and unless we admit a quasi-miraculous intuition,we are under a necessary illusion.Mill substantially starts from Berkeley's position.The distinction between the primary and secondary qualities is,he holds,illusory.We know nothing of 'object'or 'subject,''mind'or 'matter'in themselves.(65)Our knowledge is therefore 'subjective.'Our whole provision of material is necessarily drawn from sensations.The problem occurs,how from mere sensations we make an (at least)apparently external world.Mill endeavours to show that this is possible,though he thinks that Berkeley's attempt was inadequate.(66)We can leap the gulf without the help of any special machinery invented for the purpose,such as Reid's 'intuitions'or Kant's forms of perception.He offers his own theory as an 'antagonist doctrine to that of Sir William Hamilton and the Scottish school,'(67)and it certainly has the advantage of simplicity.
