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THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED

Reprinted, with Additions, from "The Contemporary Review."

Comprising some Remarks on Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and on Mr. J.S. Mill's Examination of that Philosophy

BY H.L. MANSEL, B.D.

WAYNFLETE PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER LONDON AND NEW YORK 1866

MUIR AND PATERSON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

PREFACE

The circumstance that the following remarks were originally published as an anonymous article in a Review, will best explain the style in which they are written. Absence from England prevented me from becoming acquainted with Mr. Mill's Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy till some time after its publication; and when I was requested to undertake the task of reviewing it, I was still ignorant of its contents. On proceeding to fulfil my engagement, I soon discovered, not only that the character of the book was very different from what the author's reputation had led me to expect, but also that my task would be one, not merely of criticism, but, in some degree, of self-defence. The remarks on myself, coming from a writer of Mr. Mill's ability and reputation, were such as I could not pass over without notice; while, at the same time, I felt that my principal duty in this instance was the defence of one who was no longer living to defend himself. Under these circumstances, the best course appeared to be, to devote the greater portion of my article to an exposition and vindication of Sir W. Hamilton's teaching; and, in the additional remarks which it was necessary to make on the more personal part of the controversy, to speak of myself in the third person, as I should have spoken of any other writer. The form thus adopted has been retained in the present republication, though the article now appears with the name of its author.

My original intention of writing a review of the entire book was necessarily abandoned as soon as I became acquainted with its contents. To have done justice to the whole subject, or to Mr. Mill's treatment of it, would have required a volume nearly as large as his own. I therefore determined to confine myself to the Philosophy of the Conditioned, both as the most original and important portion of Sir W. Hamilton's teaching, and as that which occupies the first place in Mr. Mill's Examination.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.

The reader of Plato's Republic will readily recall to mind that wonderful passage at the end of the sixth book, in which the philosopher, under the image of geometrical lines, exhibits the various relations of the intelligible to the sensible world; especially his lofty aspirations with regard to "that second segment of the intelligible world, which reason of itself grasps by the power of dialectic, employing hypotheses, not as principles, but as veritable hypotheses, that is to say, as steps and starting-points, in order that it may ascend as far as the unconditioned ([Greek: mechri tou anypothetou]), to the first principle of the universe, and having grasped this, may then lay hold of the principles next adjacent to it, and so go down to the end, using no sensible aids whatever, but employing abstract forms throughout, and terminating in forms."

This quotation is important for our present purpose in two ways. In the first place, it may serve, at the outset of our remarks, to propitiate those plain-spoken English critics who look upon new terms in philosophy with the same suspicion with which Jack Cade regarded "a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear," by showing that the head and front of our offending, "the Unconditioned," is no modern invention of Teutonic barbarism, but sanctioned even by the Attic elegance of a Plato. And in the second place, it contains almost a history in miniature of the highest speculations of philosophy, both in earlier and in later times, and points out, with a clearness and precision the more valuable because uninfluenced by recent controversies, the exact field on which the philosophies of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned come into collision, and the nature of the problem which they both approach from opposite sides.

What is the meaning of this problem, the solution of which Plato proposes as the highest aim of philosophy--"to ascend to the unconditioned, and thence to deduce the universe of conditioned existence?" The problem has assumed different forms at different times: at present we must content ourselves with stating it in that in which it will most naturally suggest itself to a student of modern philosophy, and in which it has the most direct bearing on the subject of the present article.

All consciousness must in the first instance present itself as a relation between two constituent parts, the person who is conscious, and the thing, whatever it may be, of which he is conscious. This contrast has been indicated, directly or indirectly, by various names--mind and matter; person and thing; subject and object; or, lastly, in the distinction, most convenient for philosophy, however uncouth in sound, between self and not self--the ego and the non-ego. In order to be conscious at all, I must be conscious of something: consciousness thus presents itself as the product of two factors, I and something. The problem of the unconditioned is, briefly stated, to reduce these two factors to one.

For it is manifest that, so long as they remain two, we have no unconditioned, but a pair of conditioned existences. If the something of which I am conscious is a separate reality, having qualities and modes of action of its own, and thereby determining, or contributing to determine, the form which my consciousness of it shall take, my consciousness is thereby conditioned, or partly dependent on something beyond itself. It is no matter, in this respect, whether the influence is direct or indirect--whether, for instance, I see a material tree, or only the mental image of a tree. If the nature of the thing in any degree determines the character of the image--if the visible form of a tree is different from that of a house because the tree itself is different from the house, my consciousness is, however remotely, influenced by something different from itself, the ego by the non-ego. And on the other hand, if I, who am conscious, am a real being, distinct from the things of which I am conscious--if the conscious mind has a constitution and laws of its own by which it acts, and if the mode of its consciousness is in any degree determined by those laws, the non-ego is so far conditioned by the ego; the thing which I see is not seen absolutely and per se, but in a form partly dependent upon the laws of my vision.

The first step towards the reduction of these two factors to one may obviously be made in three different ways. Either the ego may be represented as a mode of the non-ego, or the non-ego of the ego, or both of a tertium quid, distinct from either. In other words: it may be maintained, first, that matter is the only real existence; mind and all the phenomena of consciousness being really the result solely of material laws; the brain, for example, secreting thought as the liver secretes bile; and the distinct personal existence of which I am apparently conscious being only the result of some such secretion. This is Materialism, which has then to address itself to the further problem, to reduce the various phenomena of matter to some one absolutely first principle on which everything else depends. Or it may be maintained, secondly, that mind is the only real existence; the intercourse which we apparently have with a material world being really the result solely of the laws of our mental constitution. This is Idealism, which again has next to attempt to reduce the various phenomena to some one immaterial principle. Or it may be maintained, thirdly, that real existence is to be sought neither in mind as mind nor in matter as matter; that both classes of phenomena are but qualities or modes of operation of something distinct from both, and on which both alike are dependent. Hence arises a third form of philosophy, which, for want of a better name, we will call Indifferentism, as being a system in which the characteristic differences of mind and matter are supposed to disappear, being merged in something higher than both.

In using the two former of these terms, we are not speaking of Materialism and Idealism as they have always actually manifested themselves, but only of the distinguishing principle of these systems when pushed to its extreme result. It is quite possible to be a materialist or an idealist with respect to the immediate phenomena of consciousness, without attempting a philosophy of the Unconditioned at all. But it is also possible, and in itself natural, when such a philosophy is attempted, to attempt it by means of the same method which has approved itself in relation to subordinate inquiries; to make the relation between the human mind and its objects the type and image of that between the universe and its first principle. And such attempts have actually been made, both on the side of Materialism and on that of Idealism; and probably would be made oftener, did not counteracting causes frequently hinder the logical development of speculative principles.

In modern times, and under Christian influences, these several systems are almost necessarily identified with inquiries concerning the existence and nature of God. The influence of Christianity has been indirectly felt, even in speculations prosecuted in apparent independence of it; and the admission of an absolute first principle of all things distinct from God, or the acknowledgment of a God separate from or derived from the first principle of all things, is an absurdity which, since the prevalence of Christianity, has become almost impossible, even to antichristian systems of thought. In earlier times, indeed, this union of philosophy with theology was by no means so imperative. A philosophy like that of Greece, which inherited its speculations from a poetical theogony, would see no difficulty in attributing to the god or gods of its religious belief a secondary and derived existence, dependent on some higher and more original principle, and in separating that principle itself from all immediate connection with religion. It was possible to assume, with the Ionian, a material substance, or, with the Eleatic, an indifferent abstraction, as the first principle of things, without holding that principle to be God, or, as the only alternative, denying the existence of a God; and thus, as Aristotle has observed, theologians endeavoured to evade the consequences of their abstract principles, by attributing to the chief good a later and derived existence, as the poets supposed the supreme God to be of younger birth than night and chaos and sea and sky. But to a Christian philosophy, or to a philosophy in any way influenced by Christianity, this method of evasion is no longer possible. If all conditioned existence is dependent on some one first and unconditioned principle, either that principle must be identified with God, or our philosophical speculations must fall into open and avowed atheism.

Metaph., xiv. 4.

But at this point the philosophical inquiry comes in contact with another line of thought, suggested by a different class of the facts of consciousness. As a religious and moral being, man is conscious of a relation of a personal character, distinct from any suggested by the phenomena of the material world,--a relation to a supreme Personal Being, the object of his religious worship, and the source and judge of his moral obligations and conduct. To adopt the name of God in an abstract speculation merely as a conventional denomination for the highest link in the chain of thought, and to believe in Him for the practical purposes of worship and obedience, are two very different things; and for the latter, though not for the former, the conception of God as a Person is indispensable. Were man a being of pure intellect, the problem of the Unconditioned would be divested of its chief difficulty; but he is also a being of religious and moral faculties, and these also have a claim to be satisfied by any valid solution of the problem. Hence the question assumes another and a more complex form. How is the one absolute existence, to which philosophy aspires, to be identified with the personal God demanded by our religious feelings?

Shall we boldly assume that the problem is already solved, and that the personal God is the very Unconditioned of which we were in search? This is to beg the question, not to answer it. Our conception of a personal being, derived as it is from the immediate consciousness of our own personality, seems, on examination, to involve conditions incompatible with the desired assumption. Personal agency, similar to our own, seems to point to something very different from an absolutely first link in a chain of phenomena. Our actions, if not determined, are at least influenced by motives; and the motive is a prior link in the chain, and a condition of the action. Our actions, moreover, take place in time; and time, as we conceive it, cannot be regarded as an absolute blank, but as a condition in which phenomena take place as past, present, and future. Every act taking place in time implies something antecedent to itself; and this something, be it what it may, hinders us from regarding the subsequent act as absolute and unconditioned. Nay, even time itself, apart from the phenomena which it implies, has the same character. If an act cannot take place except in time, time is the condition of its taking place. To conceive the unconditioned, as the first link in a chain of conditioned consequences, it seems necessary that we should conceive something out of time, yet followed by time; standing at the beginning of all duration and succession, having no antecedent, but followed by a series of consequents.

Philosophical theologians have been conscious of this difficulty, almost from the earliest date at which philosophy and Christian theology came in contact with each other. From a number of testimonies of similar import, we select one or two of the most striking. Of the Divine Nature, Gregory Nyssen says: "It is neither in place nor in time, but before these and above these in an unspeakable manner, contemplated itself by itself, through faith alone; neither measured by ages, nor moving along with times." "In the changes of things," says Augustine, "you will find a past and a future; in God you will find a present where past and future cannot be." "Eternity," says Aquinas, "has no succession, but exists all together." Among divines of the Church of England, we quote two names only, but those of the highest:--"The duration of eternity," says Bishop Pearson, "is completely indivisible and all at once; so that it is ever present, and excludes the other differences of time, past and future." And Barrow enumerates among natural modes of being and operation far above our reach, "God's eternity without succession," coupling it with "His prescience without necessitation of events." But it is needless to multiply authorities for a doctrine so familiar to every student of theology.

C. Eunom., i., p. 98, Ed. Gretser.

In Joann. Evang., tract. xxxvii. 10.

Summa, pars. i., qu. x., art. 1.

Minor Theol. Works, vol. i., p. 105.