Note 45 — Chapter XXVIII · THEÆTETUS.

The elaborate Dissertation of Sir William Hamilton, on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned (standing first in his ‘Discussions on Philosophy’), is a valuable contribution to metaphysical philosophy. He affirms and shows, “That the Unconditioned is incognisable and inconceivable: its notion being only a negation of the Conditioned, which last can alone be positively known and conceived” (p. 12); refuting the opposite doctrine as proclaimed, with different modifications, both by Schelling and Cousin.

In an Appendix to this Dissertation, contained in the same volume (p. 608), Sir W. Hamilton not only re-asserts the doctrine (“Our whole knowledge of mind and matter is relative, conditioned — relatively conditioned. Of things absolutely or in themselves, be they external, be they internal, we know nothing, or know them only as incognisable,” &c.) — but affirms farther that philosophers of every school, with the exception of a few late absolute theorisers in Germany, have always held and harmoniously re-echoed the same doctrine.

In proof of such unanimous agreement, he cites passages from seventeen different philosophers.

The first name on his list stands as follows:— “1. Protagoras — (as reported by Plato, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus, Diogenes Laertius, &c.) — Man is (for himself) the measure of all things”.

Sir William Hamilton understands the Protagorean doctrine as I understand it, and as I have endeavoured to represent it in the present chapter. It has been very generally misconceived.

I cannot, however, agree with Sir William Hamilton, in thinking that this theory respecting the Unconditioned and the Absolute, has been the theory generally adopted by philosophers. The passages which he cites from other authors are altogether insufficient to prove such an affirmation.