that doctrine is both affirmed in its greatest amplitude, and enunciated
in the most emphatic language--(pp. 17, 18, 22, 23). But he also
produces extracts from the most elaborate of Sir W. Hamilton's
'Dissertations on Reid,' in which a doctrine quite different and
inconsistent is proclaimed--that our knowledge is only partially, not
wholly, relative; that the secondary qualities of matter, indeed, are
known to us only relatively, but that the primary qualities are known to
us as they are in themselves, or as they exist objectively, and that
they may be even evolved by demonstration _à priori_--(pp. 19-26, 30).
The inconsistency between the two doctrines, professed at different
times, and in different works, by Sir W. Hamilton, is certainly
manifest. Mr Mill is of opinion that one of the two must be taken 'in a
non-natural sense,' and that Sir W. Hamilton either did not hold, or had
ceased to hold, the doctrine of the full relativity of knowledge (pp.
20-28)--the hypothesis of a flat contradiction being in his view
inadmissible. But we think it at least equally possible that Sir W.
Hamilton held both the two opinions in their natural sense, and enforced
both of them _at different times_ by argument; his attention never
having been called to the contradiction between them. That such
forgetfulness was quite possible, will appear clearly in many parts of
the present article. His argument in support of both is equally
characterized by that peculiar energy of style which is frequent with
him, and which no way resembles the qualifying refinements of one
struggling to keep clear of a perceived contradiction.

From hence Mr Mill (chap. iv.) proceeds to criticise at considerable
length what he justly denominates the celebrated and striking review of
Cousin's philosophy, which forms the first paper in Sir W. Hamilton's
'Discussions on Philosophy.' According to Mr Mill--