note) I am bound to do, a part of the outward object, I should be undoing everything which my system professes to have accomplished; for, in that case, a mere outward object (part of it being the "me"), would be admitted to be apprehensible, a position which is contradictory, and diametrically adverse to the whole tenor of my speculations.
Still harping on this point he again says:—"Mr Ferrier only gains an apparent triumph, by making the mind, which is an inward object in perception, a part of the material or outward object; by which confusion alone, he can affirm that matter existing without the mind—that is, without a part of itself—is a contradiction." I answer that I gain a real triumph, by doing exactly the reverse of this, namely, by not "making the mind, which is an inward object in perception, a part of the material or outward object;" and that if I had made it this, not only would I not have gained so much as an "apparent triumph;" but I would have proved my own incompetency to deal with any metaphysical topic.
Mr Cairns would perhaps have acted more prudently for himself if he had not taxed me with being ignorant of anything in the writings of Sir William Hamilton. It is possible that I know these quite as intimately as he does. He expresses his surprise that I should charge Sir William with holding, in regard to mind and matter, "that each of these objects is a separate unit of knowledge, while all that he (Sir W.) holds is that each is a separate unit of existence." I am quite aware that Hamilton and others are ambiguous and vacillating on this point (and I have expressed myself to that effect in the Institutes, prop. III., obs. 11). But I maintain that Hamilton in his argument against the idealists, must be held to assert (when his argument is drawn fully out) that matter is a separate unit of knowledge, and that upon this ground, and upon it alone, can he contend that it is a separate unit of existence: for what conclusiveness would there be in saying, matter is no separate unit of cognition, therefore it is a separate unit of existence; in other, and plainer, words,—matter is never known to have an independent existence, therefore it has an independent existence. What
