Note (return) — Chapter VII

It is not, however, in any of these precise forms that Hamilton holds the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge. He assumes a middle place between Reid and Kant, and endeavors to blend the subjective idealism of the latter with the realism of the former. "He identifies the phenomenon of the German with the quality of the British philosophy," 306 and asserts, as a regulative law of thought, that the quality implies the substance, and the phenomenon the noumenon, but makes the substratum or noumenon (the object in itself) unknown and unknowable. The "phenomenon" of Kant was, however, something essentially different from the "quality" of Reid. In the philosophy of Kant, phenomenon means an object as we envisage or represent it to ourselves, in opposition to the noumenon, or a thing as it is in itself. The phenomenon is composed, in part, of subjective elements supplied by the mind itself; as regards intuition, the forms of space and time; as regards thought, the categories of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Modality. To perceive a thing in itself would be to perceive it neither in space nor in time. To think a thing in itself would be not to think it under any of the categories. The phenomenal is thus the product of the inherent laws of our own constitution, and, as such, is the sum and limit of all our knowledge. 307