CHAPTER XIII

, section 52. It is difficult to see how Hamilton could

regard himself as a "natural" realist (the word is employed by him). See his "Lectures on Metaphysics," VIII, where he develops his doctrine. He seems to teach, in spite of himself, that we can know directly only the impressions that things make on us, and must infer all else: "Our whole knowledge of mind and matter is, thus, only relative; of existence, absolutely and in itself, we know nothing."

Whom may we regard as representing the three kinds of "hypothetical realism" described in the text? Perhaps we may put the plain man, who has not begun to reflect, in the first class. John Locke is a good representative of the second; see the "Essay concerning Human Understanding," Book II, Chapter VIII . Herbert Spencer belonged to the third while he wrote Chapter V of his "First Principles of Philosophy."

Section 53. I have said enough of the Berkeleian idealism in the notes on