The metaphysics of Sir William Hamilton : collected, arranged and abridged for the use of colleges and private students / by Francis Bowen.

  • Hamilton, William, Sir, 1788-1856.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The metaphysics of Sir William Hamilton : collected, arranged and abridged for the use of colleges and private students / by Francis Bowen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    Wherein the moral agency of man consists. — But in what does the character of man as a moral agent consist ? Man is a moral agent only as he is accountable for his actions, — in other words, as he is the object of praise or blame; and this he is, only inasmuch as he has prescribed to him a rule of duty, and as he is able to act, or not to act, in conformity with its precepts. The possibiUty of morality thus depends on the possibility of liberty; for, if man be not a free agent, he is not the author of his actions, and has, therefore, no responsibUity, — no moral personahty at all. How philosophy, establishes human liberty. — Now the study of Philosophy, or mental science, operates in three ways to establish that assurance of human liberty, which is necessary for a rational belief in our own moral nature, in a moral world, and in a moral ruler of that world. In the first place, an atten- tive consideration of the phaenomena of mind is requisite in order to a luminous and distinct apprehension of liberty as a fact or datum of intelligence. For though, without philosophy, a natu- ral conviction of free agency lives and works in the recesses of every human mind, it requires a process of philosophical thought to bring this conviction to clear consciousness and scientific cer- tainty. In the second place, a profound philosophy is necessary and it is only on the hypothesis of a soul within us, that we can assert the reality of a God above us. In the hands of the materialist, or physical necessitarian, every argument for the existence of a Deity is either annulled or reversed into a demonstra- tion of atheism. In his hands, with the moral worth of man, the inference to a moral ruler of a moral universe is gone. In his hands, the argument from the adaptations of end and mean, everywhere apparent in existence, to the primar}' causality of intelligence and liberty, if applied, establishes, in fact, the primary causality of necessity and matter. For, as this argument is only an extension to the universe of the analogy observed in man; if in man, design, intelligence, be only a phenomenon of matter, only a reflex of organization; this consecution of first and second in us, extended to the universal order of things, reverses the absolute priority of intelligence to matter; that is, subverts the fundnmental condition of a Deity. Thus it is, that our theology is necessarily founded on our psychology; that we jnust tecognize a God in our own viinds, before we can detect a God in the imiverse ofnaturp,.] —Discussions.