LITERARY LEAFLET S. BY SIR NATHANIEL. NO. VI. SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON: "DISCUSSIONS ON PHILOSOPHY." WERE I designing a Literaturblatt for some transcendental Deutsch journal-some koenigsbergische magazine or weimarische gazetteinstead of a "literary leaflet" for the New Monthly, I might plume myself in complacent anticipation on a host of readers-perhaps all of them graduated and salaried Professors who would steadily wade through whatever sloughs and bogs of metaphysics I might guide them to. Be it true or no, to use a current phrase, that England loves not coalitions, true it is, past all gainsaying, that England loves not metaphysics. A political hotch-potch, after the recipe of "Cauld Kail in Aberdeen," she can swallow, with more or less of eupeptic ease; but a feast of Ontology is with her equivalent to a cannibal déjeuner-self-introspective philosophy is tantamount to a "feed" of human flesh and blood-the analysis of personal consciousness is as alien from her creeds and canons as a "smoked little boy in the bacon rack," or a "cold missionary on the sideboard." Virtually she accepts as faithful types of the metaphysical class, the subjects of Mat Prior's satirics, when he tells, in "Alma," how and how One old philosopher grew cross, Who could not tell what motion was: Chrysippus, foil'd by Epicurus, and once more, how Malebranche had an odd conceit As ever entered Frenchman's pate- Of matter or of spirit find, That we by guess at least may gather Only to exceptional minds is it given to be content, in studies of this order, to find no end in wandering mazes lost if the end must remain an undiscovered bourn, people-in England at least-will resolve on * For, Professors, according to Mr. Lewes, are the only real students and upholders of metaphysics even in metaphysical Germany. It is a mistake, he affirms, to suppose that Philosophy has any existence there, apart from the Universities; for, though the jargon, indeed, of metaphysics infects the very daily newspapers, so little hold has any doctrine upon the national mind, that if the Professorships were abolished, "we should soon cease to hear of Philosophy." So at least thinks this zealous disciple of Positivism and M. Comte. His position is, that inasmuch as Philosophy is a profession in Germany, it will always, on that condition, find a certain number of professors anxious to magnify its merits, and to increase its influence; and to this fact he refers as explaining the prolonged manifestation in Germany of certain activity in a pursuit long since abandoned by England. See "Biographical History of Philosophy," vol. iv., p. 237. ignoring the means. Béralde may well be an infidel in the ways of materia medica, when his conviction is, " que les ressorts de notre machine sont des mystères, jusqu'ici, où les hommes ne voient goutte; et que la nature nous a mis au-devant des yeux des voiles trop épais pour y connaître quelque chose."* A like conviction, uttered or unexpressed, definite or indefinite, pervades the popular mind in the case of metaphysics, the veil which covers their secrets is pronounced impenetrable-as dense a fog of mystery as one of those November visitations which, however, have the advantage of being sensible to an oyster-knife. Long ago Mr. Carlyle deplored the condition of the two great departments of knowledge; the outward, cultivated exclusively on mechanical principles-the inward, or metaphysical, finally abandoned, because, cultivated on such principles, it is found to yield no result: and he pointed with alarm to the growing persuasion that, except the external, there are no true sciences-that to the inward world, if there be any,† our only conceivable road is through the outward; that, in short, what cannot be investigated and understood mechanically, cannot be investigated and understood at all. "Among ourselves," he affirms, "the Philosophy of Mind, after a rickety infancy, which never reached the vigour of manhood, fell suddenly into decay, languished, and finally died out with its last amiable cultivator, Professor Stewart." Cultivators, amiable or otherwise, of the Philosophy of Mind, nevertheless exist amongst us. If that philosophy died out with Dugald Stewart, it was not finally. It has had its resurrection-if to nothing better than another rickety infancy. And, with all respect for the memory of the Edinburgh professor in question, we submit that there is far more of the vigour of manhood-its bone and muscle, its condensed energy, its firm grasp, its piercing vision-in Sir William Hamilton, * "Le Malade Imaginaire," iii., 3. Similarly, Mat Prior concludes, in a confidential sort of way, "Faith, Dick, I must confess, 'tis true (But this is only entre nous), That many knotty points there are, Which all discuss, but few can clear; As Nature slily had thought fit, For some by-ends, to cross-bite wit."-" Alma," c. iii. Only here and there may we look for a mind 66 — né propre aux elevations Où montent des savants les spéculations." "If there be any." Not a needless expression of incertitude in behalf of those of the Cabanis sect, who show that man's highest conceptions, as Religion "and all that," are, in very truth, a mere "product of the smaller intestines." So our old friend Matthew declares of the Mind, that "The plainest man alive may tell ye, Her seat of empire is the belly”— and compares her to a watch, averring that ""Tis the stomach's solid stroke That tells our being what's o'clock;" and that you may, indeed, tamper with other and minor points of mechanism, however delicate and transcendental "But spoil the organ of digestion, And you entirely change the question." 66 than in him we once heard irreverently styled, in the Glasgow Baillie's lingo, "that Dougal creatur." Other cultivators of note and ability, and of more or less enthusiasm in their vocation, might be named-some of them at no immeasurable distance from the royal Stewart dynasty-in the persons of Professors Ferrier and De Morgan, John Stuart Mill and Thomas de Quincey, Samuel Bailey and J. D. Morell, Macdougal and Whewell. In fact, a final dying out of the Philosophy of Mind, even in this nation of shopkeepers, seems possible or probable, only in connexion with the dying out of minds to philosophise. As the sparks fly upwards, so does the spirit of man-meditative, speculative, imaginative-on philosophic thoughts intent. "Qui," asks Madame de Staël, " peut avoir la faculté de penser, et ne pas essayer, à connaître l'origine et le but des choses de ce monde ?" We are told, indeed, that the gros bon sens--the plain praetical reasoning of the English public pronounces philosophy unworthy of study, and neglects it: Let steady progress in positive science be our glory; metaphysical speculation we can leave to others." We are told that the annals of philosophy teach but the vanity of ontological speculation-that scepticism is the terminus ad quem, scepticism the gulf which yawns at the end of all consistent metaphysics. We are summoned to thank and admire David Hume for having brought philosophy to this pass-for destroying the "feeble pretension that metaphysics can be a science." And we are referred to the oracular utterance of Goethe: "Man is not born to solve the mystery of existence." Yes: but the oracle does not end there. Goethe continues: "But he must, nevertheless, attempt it, that he may learn to know how to keep within the limits of the Knowable." In this way, necessity is laid upon him: an irresistible attraction draws him. The centre of truth is far above, out of his reach the assurance that he is not born to penetrate it, is a centrifugal force tending to alienate him from its neighbourhood; but the inevitable longing to penetrate it, in its light to see light, is a centrepetal force urging him to pierce into the heart of its mystery; and between these antagonist forces, he is whirled round amid the music of the spheres, ever journeying, even though doomed to make no advance towards the centre - -ever hoping, even though destined to an eternally baffled hope-ever learning, even though never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. "Sans cesse attiré vers le secret de son être, il lui est également impossible, et de le découvrir, et de n'y pas songer toujours." And supposing one mind to be eventually disgusted by a recurring series of disappointments, and consequently to renounce the study as futile and worse; still, there is generation after generation to follow, whose thinkers repudiate thought by proxy, and must vex for their own relief the old vexed questions, and come by a read of their own cutting to the goal Vanitas vanitatum. The wisdom of their forefathers will not satisfy a new generation which knows not Locke and grins at Berkeley. Absolute truth may be absolute moonshine; and to extract the essence of the one may be classed with extracting the other from cucumbers: yet is the metaphysician absolutely resolved on casting in his lot with the "foolish people and unwise" who pursue this art de s'égarer avec méthode. If there be such absolute truth, he contends it must be elicited by philosophical thinking; if there be not, See Morell's Introduction to his "Speculative Philosophy of Europe." then philosophy is equally necessary to convince me that I can have no knowledge beyond what is contingent-that is, which may not at some future time be error and delusion. Every branch of human knowledge, he contends again, if generalised to its full extent, brings us into the region of metaphysical research; as the chemist finds when investigating matter-the mechanician when engaged with the laws of dynamics, involving the notion of Power-the physiologist when examining the idea of Life. Mental philosophy is declared by one of its leal and laborious champions in our day, to be the portal through which all must pass who would enter the inner temple of intellectual treasures, and though not itself the sum of all knowledge, it is the "necessary instrument in the successful prosecution of other branches of human wisdom. Without it," adds this devout believer in sceptical times, "every man is a child, an intellectual imbecile, and can have nothing valuable or abiding in him."* He is sanguine, we may add, as to the projects of his favourite study-in spite of the Positivists and their predictions—and, as one deeply impressed with the absolute utility and importance of metaphysical researches, he calls it cheering "to witness so many indications of their progress and extension in every direction to which we can turn the intellectual eye. We know that great ideas are never lost; and we consequently feel an inward and firm conviction that the advances which we are in this age effecting in the first of all branches of human knowledge, will never be effaced by any future retrograde movements whatever in the minds of individuals or of nations. The whole progress of human society speaks loudly against any such catastrophe." Metaphysics in some guise or other will never say die. This The metaphysical department of the Edinburgh Review owes whatever prestige it enjoys to the contributions of Sir William Hamilton. may be the least popular of the sections in that journal's division of labour. Yet it were hard to name among all the able coadjutors on its staff, a contributor of superior weight and vigour. The Jubilee year of Buff and Blue is past; her age hath attained the matronly lot of fifty, making her a "lady of a certain age:" but of all the distinguished worthies who have written to her profit and her praise-from the time when she was dandled, an infant of days, on the plump knees of Sydney Smith, and thence transferred to the surveillance of Jeffrey, to the sober maturity of her adult renown when superintended by Macvey Napier, and rendered somewhat heavy and sleepy under the regimen of Professor Empson (may Mr. Cornwall Lewis have the art to renew her youth, even in her sixth decade!)-of all the "braw, braw lads" who have espoused her cause with the pen of ready writers, we know not one, in calibre and erudition, to top the Edinburgh Professor of Logic. No candidate in the Blue and Yellow interest comes before us of bigger, burlier figure, though many may wear their colours with a more jaunty air, and win the electors by smarter and smoother speechification. In the arena of the Review, from first to last, there is hardly one gymnasiarch but must yield to the prowess, however he may exceed the grace and agility, of this massively framed and rigorously disciplined athletes. We remember who have disported themselves on the same platform; we are not unmindful of such contributors, avowed or unavowed, as Brougham, * R. Blakey's "History of the Philosophy of Mind,” vol. i. Malthus, Allen, Horner, Thomas Brown, Thomas Moore, Thomas Campbell, Thomas Chalmers, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Arnold (the Toms are in great force), Romilly, Payne Knight, Palgrave, George Ellis, Walter Scott, Malcolm Laing, James Mill, Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, Macaulay, Mackintosh, Playfair, Stephen, H. Rogers, et cæteros, et cæteros. William is as true a son of Anak as any of them. His head is as high, his shoulders are as broad, his port is as manly, as the best of them can affect; and woe to the best of them who should rashly challenge him to a wrestling-bout, or venture to initiate him into a new mystery in the noble art of self-defence. To have a ton of a man "down upon you," with a view to punishment,-a man, too, so versed in the science in all its ramifications, that, like Mrs. Quickly, you know not where to have him, is no laughing matter. In erudition he is an acknowledged prodigy,-a very Monstrum horrendum, -ingens,—but no; that quotation won't do, because of the exquisite inapplicability of the informe and of the cui lumen ademptum. The medieval scholarship of those omnivorous book-worms whom we regard, after the lapse of centuries, much as we regard certain pre-Adamite mammalia, is revived in this Modern Antique. Whatever is knowable, he seems to know; and most things that are unintelligible, to understand. His learning is literally de omnibus rebus, and, as panting common-place, that toils after him in vain, is driven and goaded (in bull fashion) to add, de quibusdam aliis. The junior soph in the Cambridge stage, who was so harassed and disgusted by being snapped up, every time he cited a line from the classics, by his fellow-traveller Porson, and requested to prove its existence, as per quotation, in the author to whom he had too recklessly attributed it-each author in succession, from Homer and Hesiod down to Plutarch and Lucian being produced, for verification, from Porson's capacious pockets-that junior soph might have enjoyed a sweet revenge, we surmise, could he have booked a third inside place for Sir William, and pitted him against the boozy, musty old classic (honoured be his manes!). Lord Jeffrey, who was not easily frightened within the sphere of belles lettres, avowed himself fairly frightened by the "immensity" of Sir William's erudition: "He is a wonderful fellow," added his lordship," and I hope may yet be spared to astonish and over-awe us for years to come."* He has been compared with Magliabecchi, the Italian librarian, who, as a facetious critic describes his peculiar genius, could (by dint of trotting and cantering over all pages of all books) not only "repeat verbatim et literatio any possible paragraph from any conceivable book, and, letting down his bucket into the dark ages, could fetch up for you any amount of rubbish that you might call for, but could even tell you on which side, dexter or sinister, starboard or larboard, the particular page might stand, in which he had been angling." And in polyglot powers, Sir William has been classed with Cardinal Mezzofante, who is said to have radically mastered, so as to speak familiarly, thirty-four languages. Forty years ago, he was regarded by a distinguished contemporary, akin to himself in breadth and intensity of intellectual character, as possessing a pancyclopædic acquaintance with every section of knowledge that could furnish keys for unlocking man's inner nature. "The immensity of Sir William's attainments," testifies his fellow-philosopher and friend, "was best laid open Letter to Professor Empson, 1848. See "Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey," vol. ii., 422. |