Scottish philosopher, was born March 8, 1788, at Glasgow, where his father and grandfather held the chairs of Anatomy and Botany; in 1816 he made good his claim to the old baronetcy which the Covenanting heir lost in 1688 for refusing the oath of allegiance. After gaining high distinction at Glasgow, he went in 1809 to Balliol College as Snell exhibitioner and graduated in 1810. He was called to the Scottish bar in 1813, but had almost no practice; in 1820 he stood unsuccessfully for the chair of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh; in 1821 he became a professor of History. In 1829 he published in the Edinburgh Review a famous critique of Cousin’s doctrine of the Infinite; this and other articles were collected in 1852 as “Discussions in Philosophy and Literature.” In 1836 he became a professor of Logic and Metaphysics; and on these subjects he lectured in alternate years till the end of his life, gathering around him enthusiastic disciples. His lectures were published in 1859–61 by Mansel and Veitch; his principal work was his edition of Reid (1846; with notes 1862), defending what he believed to be Reid’s sound philosophical doctrine of common sense. Ill-health diminished his power of work; but he edited Dugald Stewart’s works in 1854–55, and was generally able with an assistant to perform the duties of his class till his death 6th May 1856.

Personal

  John Wilson’s triumph is gratifying, and I greatly rejoice in it. His excellent and amiable rival, Sir William Hamilton, is like a fine miniature picture, which cannot be viewed too near, and could bear to be seen through a microscope. He retires most honourably from a contest which has produced testimonies to his virtues and abilities, a contest which forced them into observation, and has thrown aside the veil of scrupulous modesty that shrouded his fine qualities and great attainments.

  Born in Scotland, but educated at Oxford, and afterwards prosecuting his studies on his journeys on the Continent, he has collected a greater store of knowledge than most men I have ever met with, either in Great Britain or elsewhere. His reading is immense, for he has considered no branch of science entirely foreign to his pursuits, and his memory is admirable. He undoubtedly is one of the first classical scholars in Great Britain, and one of the few now living in that country who in Germany would be considered as eminent ones. With a singularly good taste and choice he has studied our own literature, and he is perfectly well acquainted with all that there is best and most solid in it, and, in particular, with our most eminent philosophers. He perhaps is the only Briton who can claim any acquaintance with them at all. After such a description you will conceive that my surprise at meeting with such a gentleman in Scotland was not ill founded. His views are bold, comprehensive, original, like those of a German, yet his judgment clear, and his discourse refined, like that of an Englishman. Every respectable German who arrives in Edinburgh, has a home in his house, and even in intellectual respects he here feels himself at home.

  Sir William has the reputation of being one of the most learned men in England; and you cannot be long in his company till you must be convinced that his knowledge of books is extensive and surprising. But I am of opinion that this prodigious stock of acquired information has been obtained at the cost of some important and valuable intellectual qualities. His mind seems to have been unable to digest the load of matter presented to it, and functional derangement has been induced by the influence of repletion.

  In the year 1814, it was that I became acquainted with Sir William Hamilton…. So exquisitely free was Sir William from all ostentation of learning that, unless the accidents of conversation made a natural opening for display, such as it would have been affectation to evade, you might have failed altogether to suspect that an extraordinary scholar was present. On this first interview with him, I saw nothing to challenge any special attention, beyond an unusual expression of kindness and cordiality in his abord. There was also an air of dignity and massy self-dependence diffused over his deportment, too calm and unaffected to leave a doubt that it exhaled spontaneously from his nature, yet too unassuming to mortify the pretensions of others…. In general, my conclusion was, that at that time I had rarely seen a person who manifested less of self-esteem, under any of the forms by which ordinarily it reveals itself—whether of pride, or vanity, or full-blown arrogance, or heart-chilling reserve…. Here is a man (it will be said by the thoughtful reviewer of his own age), able to have “made the world grow pale” with the enormity of his learned acquisitions, had he been more often confronted with the world, or, when face to face with it, more capable of ostentatious display.

	In Memory of
	SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, Baronet,
	Professor of Logic and Metaphysics,
	In the University of Edinburgh,
	Who died 6th May 1856, age 68 years.
	His aim
	Was by a pure philosophy to teach
	That
	Now we see through a glass darkly,
	Now we know in part.
	His hope
	That, in the life to come,
	He should see face to face,
	And know even as also he is known.

  Perhaps it was in 1824 or 1825. I recollect right well the bright affable manners of Sir William, radiant with frank kindliness, honest humanity, and intelligence ready to help; and how completely prepossessing they were. A fine firm figure of middle height; one of the finest cheerfully-serious human faces, of square, solid, and yet rather aquiline type; a little marked with small-pox—marked, not deformed, but rather the reverse (like a rock rough-hewn, not spoiled by polishing); and a pair of the beautifullest, kindly-beaming hazel eyes, well open, and every now and then with a lambency of smiling fire in them, which I always remember as if with trust and gratitude. Our conversation did not amount to much, in those times; mainly about German books, philosophies and persons, it is like; and my usual place of abode was in the country then…. I did not witness, much less share in, any of his swimming or other athletic prowesses. I have once or twice been on long walks with him in the Edinburgh environs, oftenest with some other companion, or perhaps even two, whom he had found vigorous and worthy: pleasant walks and abundantly enlivened with speech from Sir William. He was willing to talk of any humanly-interesting subject; and threw out sound observations upon any topic started; if left to his own choice, he circled and gravitated, naturally, into subjects that were his own, and were habitually occupying him;—of which, I can still remember animal magnetism and the German revival of it, not yet known of in England, was one that frequently turned up…. He was finely social and human, in these walks or interviews. Honesty, frankness, friendly veracity, courageous trust in humanity and in you, were charmingly visible. His talk was forcible, copious, discursive, careless rather than otherwise; and, on abstruse topics, I observed, was apt to become embroiled and revelly, much less perspicuous and elucidative than with a little deliberation he could have made it.

  On questions of philosophy his opinions uttered in conversation so nearly resembled those delivered in his lectures and other works, that I can add but little…. Looking back on these and such indications of interest in matters higher even than philosophy, and remembering the respectful and even reverential strain of every allusion in speech or writing to Christianity and the Christian Scriptures, it is with a peculiar pleasure that I think of so great a mind as having, in the days of doubt and restless speculation, satisfied itself with that common Christian belief with which so many of the loftiest human intellects have been contented, and as having proved, with a yet deepened sense, its value, as I humbly believe, amid the discipline of affliction and the shadows of death.

  The ground of his nature was simplicity;—its strength was sustained and nourished from this root. All through life there was a singleness of aim, a purity, devotion, and unworldliness of purpose, and a childlike freshness of feeling, which accompanied, guided, and in a great measure constituted his intellectual greatness. To the vulgar ambitions of the world he was indifferent as a child; in his soul he scorned the common artifices and measures of compromise by which they are frequently sought and secured. To be a master of thought and learning, he had an ambition; in this sphere he naturally and spontaneously found the outlet for his powers. But this craving, passionate as it was, never did harm to the moral nature of the man. The increase of years, the growth of learning and fame, took nothing away from the simplicity of his aim, his devotion to its pursuit, or his freshness of heart.

  Neither his ambition nor his success was such as to absorb his time in professional pursuits. His life was mainly that of a student, and the following years, marked by little of outward incident, were filled by researches of all kinds, through which he daily added to his stores of learning, while at the same time he was gradually forming his philosophic system. The outward and visible traces of these researches remain in his common-place books, especially in one which, having been in constant use, is a valuable record of his studies from this time onwards to the close of his life. He did not withdraw himself from society, but his favorite companions were the books of his own and of every library within his reach. Among these he lived in a sort of seclusion, from which only now and then, when stirred by some event of the world around, did he come forth, in vigorous pamphlets, to denounce or protest, or remonstrate, as the case might be.

  Hamilton was much loved by his pupils, and to all who came to him for information he was kind and condescending. His temper, however, was imperious. He was impatient of opposition, and being an ardent reformer, was pretty often opposed; but he was more frequently engaged in a quarrel with some public body than with private individuals. He had all the waywardness of genius…. He was, however, always a strictly honourable, and sometimes even a generous opponent, and he enjoyed the respect and esteem not only of his friends, but of the public up to the last; and if

“He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right,”

we have a strong testimony to the correctness of the Hamiltonian theory…. His philosophical erudition has probably never been equalled, but it was far too vast to be accurate. It would be difficult to name a philosophical author whose system he had thoroughly mastered, with two exceptions—Aristotle and Reid. If he erred in any respect in his exposition of these writers, it was not from want of acquaintance with their works, but from his desire to assimilate their systems to his own. But even as regards Stewart, I think he cannot always be acquitted of errors of another kind. His great erudition had another ill effect. When about to write on any subject, he consulted so many authors, and made so many extracts, that the work soon extended beyond all reasonable dimensions, and unless compelled by the pressure of necessity (as in the case of his lectures) to give the results to the world, he ultimately became disheartened, and abandoned the effort in despair.

  Hamilton made a profound impression upon his hearers. His striking appearance, fine head and piercing eye, his dignity, earnestness, and air of authority, combined with the display of wide reading and dialectical ability to produce admiring sympathy. He introduced various plans for effectually catechising his hearers, called upon them for public recapitulations of his teaching, and frequently entertained them in his own house…. In private life Hamilton showed a most affectionate nature. He was perfect as a son, brother, husband, and father. His power of concentration enabled him to do much work in the room used by his family. He made friends of his children, encouraged their studies, and joined in their games. Besides his serious studies, he was fond of light literature, and had a fancy for the grotesque, and even the horrible, enjoying fairy tales and Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances. He had much mechanical skill, and amused himself by binding his books. After his illness he became rather irritable, and at all periods was an uncompromising, and when his pugnacity was aroused, an unsparing antagonist.

General

  “Cousin,” I pronounce beyond all doubt the most unreadable thing that ever appeared in the Review…. It is ten times more mystical than anything my friend Carlyle ever wrote, and not half so agreeably written. It is nothing to the purpose that he does not agree with the most part of the mysticism, for he affects to understand it and to explain it, and to think it very ingenious and respectable and it is mere gibberish.

  In truth, what characterizes Sir W. Hamilton is precisely the Scottish intellect; and he is only attached to the philosophy of Reid and Stewart because their philosophy is the Scottish intellect itself applied to metaphysics…. Inferior to Reid in invention and originality, and to Stewart in grace and delicacy, he is perhaps superior to both, and certainly to the latter, by the vigour of his dialectic; I add, and by the extent of his erudition. Sir W. Hamilton knows all systems, ancient and modern, and he examines them by the criticism of the Scottish intellect. His independence is equal to his knowledge. He is, above all, eminent in logic. I would speak to you here as a philosopher by profession…. That Sir W. Hamilton has, perhaps, less originality than Reid, Stewart and Brown. Sir W. Hamilton is very superior to Brown, especially as a logician. Were the articles of Sir W. Hamilton collected, we should have a book infinitely more distinguished than the writings—very ingenious, but superficial and diffuse—of Brown. Sir W. Hamilton has not even the very slightest appearance of obscurity. His style is substantial and severe, but of a perfect plainness for every one acquainted with the subject and not incapable of attention. No one is more opposed to, no one is more devoid of, the vagueness and obscurity of the German philosophy in several of its most celebrated authors.

  He seems to have read every writer, ancient and modern, on logic and metaphysics, and is conversant with every philosophical theory, from the lowest form of materialism to the most abstract development of idealism; and yet his learning is not so remarkable as the thorough manner in which he has digested it, and the perfect command he has of all its stores. Everything that he comprehends, no matter how abstruse, he comprehends with the utmost clearness, and employs with the most consummate skill. He is altogether the best trained reasoner on abstract subjects of his time.

  When we advert to the various topics elaborately treated by him, which we cannot so much as enumerate to our readers, and see how slightly we have touched his solid mass of doctrine even at the few points which have attracted us, we are more impressed than ever with profound admiration for his largeness of learning and thoroughness of mind. That the one sometimes tempts to a superfluous display, and the other to an intellectual scorn more merited by his victims than graceful to himself, will be most readily forgiven by those who understand the author and know his writings best. In him the old scholastic spirit seems embodied again; its capacity for work; its vehemence of disputation; its generous intellectual admirations; its fineness of logical apprehension; the want of perspective and proportion in its mental view. Books and thoughts are evidently the population of his world; they form the natural circle of his friendships and his enmities; their reputations touch his sense of equity and honor; their rivalries and delinquencies furnish the needful amusement of a little gossip and scandal. Where the range of knowledge is so vast, this enclosure of the whole intensity of life within the sphere of notional speculation involves no narrowness; but can scarcely fail to impart a warmth of zeal, which others can scarcely believe to be excited by formulas and theories.

  Sir William Hamilton has been chiefly known hitherto by a couple of remarkable articles in The Edinburgh Review—one on the Philosophy of Cousin, and the other on the current Theories of Perception. Nothing can exceed the evidence of logical ability in these papers, nor the easy mastery they exhibit over all the erudition pertaining to their respective subjects. Yet we are inclined to think that these admirable qualities have passed with hasty or inconsiderate readers for more than their worth, serving, indeed, popularly to accredit Sir William with a philosophic prestige to which, as it appears to us, he is by no means indisputably entitled.

  Sir William, though metaphysically the most formidable man in Europe, is an humble Christian; though the most learned of men, he is ready to bow before the spirit that informed the mind of Paul.

  The Scottish Stagirite, the metaphysician of recent Europe.

  By far the greatest metaphysician who has appeared in the British empire during the present century, is Sir William Hamilton. In his union of powerful thinking with profound and varied erudition, he stands higher, perhaps, than any other man whose name is preserved in the annals of modern speculation.

  In the examination which I have now concluded of Sir W. Hamilton’s philosophical achievements, I have unavoidably laid stress on points of difference from him rather than those of agreement; the reason being, that I differ from almost everything in his philosophy on which he particularly valued himself, or which is specially his own. His merits, which, though I do not rate them so high, I feel and admire as sincerely as his most enthusiastic disciples, are rather diffused through his speculations generally, than concentrated on any particular point. They chiefly consist in his clear and distinct mode of bringing before the reader many of the fundamental questions of metaphysics; some good specimens of psychological analysis on a small scale; and the many detached logical and psychological truths which he has separately seized, and which are scattered through his writings, mostly applied to resolve some special difficulty, and again lost sight of. I can hardly point to anything he has done towards helping the more thorough understanding of the greater mental phenomena, unless it be his theory of Attention (including Abstraction), which seems to me the most perfect we have: but the subject, though a highly important, is a comparatively simple one.

  The Natural Realism of Hamilton is as thoroughly opposed to the Dogmatic Idealism of Berkeley as the former himself believed it to be, and that any attempt to identify them would have produced greater surprise in no one, probably, than in Hamilton himself.

  There is no part of the country where his writings have not produced a deep and permanent impression, and where he is not revered as one of the greatest thinkers of our times. He has greatly enlarged the knowledge of multitudes in regard to the reach and importance of the discussions which are recorded in the history of philosophy. He has redeemed the history itself from the contempt and reproach under which it had fallen, as being but a dry catalogue of the disputes of learned triflers and the subtleties of pedantic logomachists…. He has, in fact, done more than any and than all of the writers of his time to waken the historic spirit among our philosophers. At the same time he has guided it most wisely and to the most solid results, teaching it to be critical as well as curious, to be self-reliant as well as reverent. The clearness of his own judgment, the candour of his temper, the sagacity of his interpretations, the vigour and independence of his own critical estimates, as they were constantly exemplified in his treatment of the writers to whom he so often referred, and from whom he so largely quoted, were most salutary to his American readers, who were in danger of being blindly credulous or ignorantly self-reliant—either too contemptuous or too irreverent of the past—either excessively conceited or excessively partisan.

  The greatest British supporter of a priori philosophy in this century…. From the time of his extraordinary examination at Oxford, his erudition and encyclopedic reading became a subject of wonder and exaggerated rumour. He seems to have had something of the same book-devouring turn as Johnson…. Of late years both the extent and the accuracy of Hamilton’s scholarship have been questioned, but with all deductions he still remains what he was represented to De Quincey as being—“a monster of erudition.”—We do not here attempt any outline of his philosophy; and his philosophical abilities are still matter of dispute.—As regards style, he had, with his prodigious memory, a fine command of language; his command of the language of controversy, especially for the purpose of summarily “putting down” an antagonist, is at least as good as his command of the language of philosophical exposition. In both operations he is masterly. He had a taste for antithesis and pithy compression. He was also notably studious of method, of good arrangement; more, apparently, from a love of mechanical symmetry, than from any lively sympathy with the difficulties of the reader.

  As Mill’s is a sweated mind, often entangled in the sudorific blankets, when wanting to move, and incapable of walking, though a splendid rider—of hobbies,—so Sir William Hamilton’s was a swollen mind. The good Sir William was the Daniel Lambert of Philosophy. He had the shark’s, the ostrich’s enormous appetite, with no more power of discrimination than the ostrich or the shark. Quantity was everything, quality nothing. Blending the shark and the ostrich, he could make a decent meal of bricks, empty barrels, copper bolts, and tenpenny nails. He is almost the only learned man that Scotland has had since George Buchanan, and there are no signs that Scotland will ever have a learned man again. But his learning was a pedantic plethora, an apoplectic monstrosity, an asthmatic ventriloquism squeaking and growling through layers and convolutions of fat. It would be difficult to say whether Sir William Hamilton devoured books and systems, or was devoured by them. The result, at all events, was chaotic conglomeration. Little would it have mattered how many books or systems Sir William Hamilton had swallowed, if he had not been tormented by the unhappy yearning to be a creator of systems himself.

  He is the most learned of all Scottish metaphysicians…. When he was alive, he could always be pointed to as redeeming Scotland from the reproach of being without high scholarship. Oxford had no man to put on the same level. Germany had not a profounder scholar, or one whose judgment in a disputed point could be so relied on. Nor was his the scholarship of mere words: he knew the history of terms, but it was because he was familiar with the history of opinions. In reading his account, for example, of the different meanings which the word “idea” has had, and of the views taken of sense-perception, one feels that his learning is quite equalled by his power of discrimination. No man has ever done more in clearing the literature of philosophy of common-place mistakes, of thefts and impostures. He has shown all of us how dangerous it is to quote without consulting the original, or to adopt, without examination, the common traditions in philosophy; that those who borrow at second hand will be found out; and that those who steal, without acknowledgment, will, sooner or later, be detected and exposed. He experiences a delight in stripping modern authors of their borrowed feathers, and of pursuing stolen goods from one literary thief to another, and giving them back to their original owner. For years to come, ordinary authors will seem learned by drawing from his stores.

  Hamilton maintained staunchly, and, as it seems to us, very mistakenly, the doctrine of immediate, direct knowledge of physical objects in perception. The Scottish school, more especially Hamilton, while far in advance of the Lockian philosophy, was most unfavorably affected by it, and was unable to construct a consistent, complete system. We feel more inclined to censure than to praise it.

  Hamilton can scarcely be said to have left a complete and systematic statement or demonstration of his philosophical views. The very multifariousness and minuteness of his scholarship stood partly in the way of this. Still, his philosophical attitude was clearly marked, and his doctrine exerted a wide influence, in America as well as in Great Britain…. Hamilton, now, with reference to the substance of his views, is the child of Reid and Kant. He is superior to Reid in dialectical agility, but far inferior to Kant in the spirit of critical, patient and systematic thoroughness…. The real source of Hamilton’s strength and of his widely diffused and quickening influence is to be found, as in the case of Kant, in his practical, urgent recognition of that dynamic, ideal side of mind and life, which, as an instrument of literal, theoretical cognition, he was unable to turn to any account. To this should be added the contagion of his dialectical ardor and the example of his immense erudition. His defect is, that he does not raise philosophy out of that quagmire of psychology in which (under Kantian inspiration?) he recognized that it was sunk. He complained of the substitution of “superficial psychology” for “metaphysics,” and the complaint holds good against himself.

  I believe that no philosophic writer of the present century has had the same influence in cultivating metaphysical speculation as Sir William Hamilton, nor perhaps is there any other in whose works so many important philosophical problems have been mooted, if not solved. “Prudens interrogatio,” says Bacon, “est dimidium scientiæ;” and if Hamilton does not always propound his theories in the form of interrogations, they are not (even when erroneous) less valuable as steps towards a final solution.

  In moral spirit Hamilton was allied to Reid, not to Hume, and he followed in the line of the earlier Scottish thought as represented by Reid; but he carried this up to far higher issues than had been before dreamt of. Both Reid and Stewart had properly returned to psychology—in a word, to consciousness, as they were forced to do by the meagre analysis on which Hume had proceeded. Hamilton thoroughly accepted their method, that of a scrutiny of consciousness in its fullest integrity; but he was clearer and more precise in his test and criteria. And not satisfied with the somewhat partial and faltering applications of psychological results to metaphysical questions by the earlier thinkers, Hamilton boldly grappled with the highest questions of philosophy regarding our knowledge of being, Infinite and Absolute Reality. Even the manner and style of dealing with the psychological and logical questions took new forms in his hands. He brought the questions nearer to the methods of the learned, and to the treatment of them in other schools.

  Hamiltonianism shows, on the face of it, a mingling of Kantian and Scottish elements. I do not believe that there is any real fusion in Hamilton of these elements, nor need this astonish us, if we consider the incompatibility of the two doctrines. Any attempt to ingraft the Agnostic relativity of the “Critique” upon the Natural Realism of the Scottish philosophy is, I hope to show, contrary to the genius of the latter.

  Hamilton’s learning was very great, and included many obscure subjects. He was especially familiar with the period of the revival of learning. But he often used his knowledge with too little discrimination, and often cites “authorities” with much indifference to the context or to their relative importance. The effect produced upon contemporaries by Hamilton’s philosophy was due to his commanding character, as well as his wide reading and great dialectical power. His influence has declined partly from the fragmentary nature of his writings, and partly from his peculiar position as a thinker. A thorough Scot, he carried on the tradition of the national philosophy of common sense with much wider knowledge than his predecessors, and with logical faculties sharpened by his Aristotelian studies. His acquaintance with German philosophy was applied by him rather to fortify than to modify his opinions. His inconsistencies, real or alleged, are probably due chiefly to the attempt to combine divergent systems. He endeavoured to give more precision to the fundamental principle of the veracity of consciousness by setting forth as tests of our original cognitions their necessity, simplicity, and so forth.

  Sir William Hamilton’s English is bald without simplicity, and severe without impressiveness. The “Lectures,” it is true, contain passages of considerable power and animation when he is making preparations to clinch his argument with an extract from the poets. But in common with the rest of his writings, they are so interwoven with quotations, and these frequently of great length, that the movement of his prose is arrested before any impetus has been acquired, and the curious reader is hurried away from Hamilton to some one else. It is consequently peculiarly difficult to do justice to Hamilton’s style by means of selections. Even at its best, however, it is wholly destitute of the charm which springs from aptly arranged words and nicely balanced sentences. Its supreme merit is clearness.

  Hamilton was a man of vast reading, and though it had been questioned whether his learning was as exact and profound as it appeared to be, there can hardly be a doubt that it was great enough to hamper the free play of his thought, and that it explains two of his characteristic faults. One is the excessive technicality of his diction. His style, otherwise clear and good, is overloaded with words specially coined for the purposes of the logician and metaphysician. The second fault is his inability to resist the temptation of calling a “cloud of witnesses,” without making any serious attempt to weigh their evidence. Hamilton was a disciple of the Scottish school of philosophy, and a great part of his life was devoted to an elucidation of Reid.

  He attained a position in the history of philosophy of which Scotland might well be proud. But he spoke to a studious and a narrow class, and powerful as his influence was, it never guided the nation’s thought, and never attempted to mould her history.

  The strong personality and immense philosophical erudition of Sir William Hamilton.