The Scottish Philosophy [260]
does not satisfy, the future alone is the object which engages us." "What man holds of matter does not make up his personality. They are his, not be; man is not an organism, -- he is an intelligence served by organs." "I do not mean to assert that all materialists deny or actually disbelieve a God. For in very many cases this would be at once an unmerited compliment to their reasoning, {431} and an unmerited reproach to their faith." "Wonder has been contemptuously called the daughter of ignorance; true, but wonder we should add is the mother of knowledge" "Woe to the revolutionist who is not him self a creature of the revolution ! If he anticipate he is lost, for it requires what no individual can supply, a long and powerful counter- sympathy in a nation to untwine the ties of custom which bind a people to the established and the old." The following is his tabular view of the distribution of philosophy:-
Mind or Consciousness Facts -- Phaenomenology, Empirical Psychology Cognitions, Feelings Conative Powers (Will and Desire) Laws -- Nomology, Rational Psychology Cognitions -- Logic Feelings -- Aesthetic Conative Powers Moral Philosophy Political Philosophy Results -- Ontology, Inferential Psychology Being of God Immortality of the Soul, &c.
I set little value on this division. The same topics would require to be discussed under more than one head. In his lectures Sir William has taken up only one of the three grand general groups, viz., Empirical Psychology, and even this he has discussed only in part. A portion of the second group is treated of in his lectures on logic. On the others he never entered.
It will be seen from the above table that he followed Kant in giving a threefold distribution of the mental faculties into the Cognitive, the Emotive, and the Conative. This is an improvement on the old division by Aristotle into the cognitive and motive, or of that of the schoolmen into the understanding and the will. Still it is not complete and exhaustive. He is obliged to include the imagination in the first head, and yet it can scarcely be called a cognitive power, though, of course, it implies a previous cognition. The conscience comes in under the conative powers; but, in fact, the conscience partakes of the nature both of a cognitive and conative power. It is one of the defects of the arrangement that it does not allot a clearly separate place to the conscience.
The following is his division of the cognitive powers: --
1. Presentative External -- Perception. Internal -- Self-Consciousness 2. Conservative Memory 3. Reproductive Without Will -- Suggestion With Will -- Reminiscence 4. Representative Imagination 5. Elaborative Comparison -- Faculty of Relation 6. Regulative Reason -- Common sense {432}
The account of the cognitive powers in the first 332 pages of the second volume, down to the regulative powers, not included, will be regarded in the end, if I do not mistake, as the most valuable part of Sir William Hamilton's metaphysics. His pupils will probably fix on the very part I have designedly excepted, viz., the regulative faculties, as being the most important. Farther on in this article I mean to show that he has greatly misapprehended the nature of these regulative powers. Meanwhile let us look at the account which he has given of the other mental faculties.
I. Like the Scotch metaphysicians he paid great attention to the Senses. His views were first given to the world in his article in the " Edinburgh Review," republished in the Discussions, and have been expanded in his notes on Reid and in his class lectures. He has a famous arrangement of the various forms which have been taken by the ideal theory of sense-perception. Realists are either
Mind or Consciousness Facts -- Phaenomenology, Empirical Psychology Cognitions, Feelings Conative Powers (Will and Desire) Laws -- Nomology, Rational Psychology Cognitions -- Logic Feelings -- Aesthetic Conative Powers Moral Philosophy Political Philosophy Results -- Ontology, Inferential Psychology Being of God Immortality of the Soul, &c.
I set little value on this division. The same topics would require to be discussed under more than one head. In his lectures Sir William has taken up only one of the three grand general groups, viz., Empirical Psychology, and even this he has discussed only in part. A portion of the second group is treated of in his lectures on logic. On the others he never entered.
It will be seen from the above table that he followed Kant in giving a threefold distribution of the mental faculties into the Cognitive, the Emotive, and the Conative. This is an improvement on the old division by Aristotle into the cognitive and motive, or of that of the schoolmen into the understanding and the will. Still it is not complete and exhaustive. He is obliged to include the imagination in the first head, and yet it can scarcely be called a cognitive power, though, of course, it implies a previous cognition. The conscience comes in under the conative powers; but, in fact, the conscience partakes of the nature both of a cognitive and conative power. It is one of the defects of the arrangement that it does not allot a clearly separate place to the conscience.
The following is his division of the cognitive powers: --
1. Presentative External -- Perception. Internal -- Self-Consciousness 2. Conservative Memory 3. Reproductive Without Will -- Suggestion With Will -- Reminiscence 4. Representative Imagination 5. Elaborative Comparison -- Faculty of Relation 6. Regulative Reason -- Common sense {432}
The account of the cognitive powers in the first 332 pages of the second volume, down to the regulative powers, not included, will be regarded in the end, if I do not mistake, as the most valuable part of Sir William Hamilton's metaphysics. His pupils will probably fix on the very part I have designedly excepted, viz., the regulative faculties, as being the most important. Farther on in this article I mean to show that he has greatly misapprehended the nature of these regulative powers. Meanwhile let us look at the account which he has given of the other mental faculties.
I. Like the Scotch metaphysicians he paid great attention to the Senses. His views were first given to the world in his article in the " Edinburgh Review," republished in the Discussions, and have been expanded in his notes on Reid and in his class lectures. He has a famous arrangement of the various forms which have been taken by the ideal theory of sense-perception. Realists are either