Let us test the validity of this majestic deliverance. No man is justified in making this assertion unless, 1. He knows things as they exist; 2. He knows things not only as they exist but as they appear; 3. He is able to compare things as they exist with the same things as they appear. Now, inasmuch as Sir William Hamilton affirms we do not know things as they exist, but only as they appear, how can he know that there is any difference between things as they exist and as they appear? What is this "_thing in itself_" about which Hamilton has so much to say, and yet about which he professes to know nothing? We readily understand what is meant by the _thing_; it is the object as existing--a substance manifesting certain characteristic qualities. But what is meant by _in itself_? There can be no _in itself_ besides or beyond the _thing_. If Hamilton means that "the thing itself" is the thing apart from all relation, and devoid of all properties or qualities, we do not acknowledge any such thing. A thing apart from all relation, and devoid of all qualities, is simply pure nothing, if such a solecism may be permitted. With such a definition of Being _in se_, the logic of Hegel is invincible, "Being and Nothing are identical." And now, if "the thing in itself" be, as Hamilton says it is, absolutely _unknown_, how can he affirm or deny any thing in regard to it? By what right does he prejudge a hidden reality, and give or refuse its predicates; as, for example, that it is conditioned or unconditioned, in relation or aloof from relation, finite or infinite? Is it not plain that, in declaring a thing in its inmost nature or essence to be inscrutable, it is assumed to be partially _known_? And it is obvious, notwithstanding some unguarded expressions to the contrary, that Hamilton does regard "the thing in itself" as partially known. "The external reality" is, at least, six elements out of twelve in the "total object of consciousness."[310] The primary qualities of matter are known as in the things themselves; "they develop themselves with rigid necessity out of the simple datum of _substance occupying space_."[311] "The Primary Qualities are apprehended as they are in bodies"--"they are the attributes of _body as body_," and as such "are known immediately in themselves,"[312] as well as mediately by their effects upon us. So that we not only know by direct consciousness certain properties of things as they exist in things themselves, but we can also deduce them in an _à priori_ manner. "The bare notion of matter being given, the Primary Qualities may be deduced _à priori_; they being, in fact, only evolutions of the conditions which that notion necessarily implies." If, then, we know the qualities of things as "in the things themselves," "the things themselves" must also be, at least, partially known; and Hamilton can not consistently assert the relativity of _all_ knowledge. Even if it be granted that our cognitions of objects are only in part