Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy of the Conditioned [pp. 472-510]

Philosophy of the Conditioned.
meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very
remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the
difficulties that rose on every side. After we had a while
puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of
those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that
we took a wrong course; and that before we set ourselves upon
inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own
abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were
not fitted to deal with." Accordingly he announces that it
was a purpose to "take a survey of our own understandings,
examine our own powers, and see to what things they were
adapted," which gave rise to the Essay concerning the Understanding. He concludes that we have two fountains of experience-external sensible objects and ourselves. Besides the
power of observing objects (ideas) simply, we also observe them
as modes (qualities), and as having certain relations-cause
and effect, identity and diversity, time, place, power, proportion, social relations, moral relations, and an infinity of
others. Ideas in these relations constituting complex ideas, or
the relations themselves as abstractions, having been experienced,
may afterwards themselves become objects of thought, or ideas;
but no ideas are innate. Relations may be perceived intuitively,
demonstratively, or by sensation. The distinction now familiar
under the names Subjective and Objective was not much in
Locke's mind: his opinions of ideas in this respect are vague
and vacillating, but it seems certain that he did not distinctly
and fixedly perceive that the action of the mind is in any case
such as to presuppose an implicit possession of any truth prior
to experience; the pure capacity of perceiving a relation was
a sufficient account of the subjective part of the process;-it
never involved a prior conception of the relation. The practical
result was, as he intended, that his followers looked to experience as the only source of knowledge, and considered the mind
not as a closed book, but as blank paper. The following are his
opinions on those subjects which are specially treated in the doctrine of the Conditioned. He thinks the ideas of space and eternity are an indefinite repetition of ideas of perceived extension
and time: we have "ever growing ideas" of quantity, but not
an idea of an infinitely grown quantity. Our idea of infinity
1860.]
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