conscious of, in the modes or qualities of self, contrasted with the more direct sort of knowledge of consciousness, suggests a variety of questions, and, among others, an inquiry into the laws according to which those objects of the mind that are at first observed, in a direct experience of the inner and outer world, become, as objects of memory and imagination, converted into mental modes, and pass into the current of our associated thoughts. This field of investigation may, perhaps, be illustrated by the well-known doctrine of Leibnitz, regarding latent states of consciousness, to which Sir William Hamilton often refers in the course of his philosophical writings.
The theory of perception maintained by Sir William Hamilton is not likely, we think, to exhaust discussion in a province which experience has proved to be so fitted to kindle metaphysical genius, and to give scope to speculative ingenuity. The new and revived doctrines of which his philosophy is composed, have uncovered too many unsolved difficulties to permit such a result; and we are inclined to expect an increase rather than an abatement of the intellectual gladiatorship which has hitherto been associated with the theory of our knowledge of matter, as the result of a more diffused acquaintance with the assumptions and arguments of these Dissertations.
It should be remembered, however, that it is as the arena of the struggle with philosophical scepticism, that this region of speculation has attracted combatants,
