Note (return) — Chapter VII

It is manifest, however, that Hamilton does employ these terms as synonymous, and this we apprehend is the first false step in his philosophy of the conditioned. "All our knowledge is of the relative or phenomenal." Throughout the whole of Lectures VIII. and IX., in which he explains the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge, these terms are used as precisely analogous. Now, in opposition to this, we maintain that the relative is not always the phenomenal. A thing may be "in relation" and yet not be a phenomenon. "The subject or substance" may be, and really is, on the admission of Hamilton himself, correlated to the phenomenon. The ego, "the conscious subject" 302 as a "self-subsisting entity" is necessarily related to the phenomena of thought, feeling, etc.; but no one would repudiate the idea that the conscious subject is a mere phenomenon, or "series of phenomena," with more indignation than Hamilton. Notwithstanding the contradictory assertion, "that the subject is unknown," he still teaches, with equal positiveness, "that in every act of perception I am conscious of self, as a perceiving subject." And still more explicitly he says: "As clearly as I am conscious of existing, so clearly am I conscious, at every moment of my existence, that the conscious Ego is not itself a mere modification [a phenomenon], nor a series of modifications [phenomena], but that it is itself different from all its modifications, and a self-subsisting entity." 303 Again: "Thought is possible only in and through the consciousness of Self. The Self, the I, is recognized in every act of intelligence as the subject to which the act belongs. It is I that perceive, I that imagine, I that remember, etc.; these special modes are all only the phenomena of the I." 304 We are, therefore, conscious of the subject in the most immediate, and direct, and intuitive manner, and the subject of which we are conscious can not be "unknown." We regret that so distinguished a philosophy should deal in such palpable contradictions; but it is the inevitable consequence of violating that fundamental principle of philosophy on which Hamilton so frequently and earnestly insists, viz., "that the testimony of consciousness must be accepted in all its integrity".