Mental Science : A Text-Book for Schools and Colleges

New York: Robert Carter and Brothers. Good with no dust jacket. 1886. Hardcover. Cloth sun and dampstain, front free endpaper REMOVED, dampstains to text top and fore-edge margins, toned, underlining and pencil margin notes, notes on rear flyleaves, shelfwear, otherwise light wear. Solid hardcover. ; Hamilton offers his metaphysical philosophy of Perceptionalism. "For some such term may properly designate a form of philosophy which maintains, from an analytical and theoretical point of view, that mankind are not deluded in claiming that they perceive fact and truth, and that what they call their perceptions are true perceptions of those very things which they say that they perceive. ... The word "perception: is sometimes limited in its application: we now use it in its most unrestricted meaning. For we have perceptions of simple fact and perceptions of necessary relations; presentational perceptions and inferential perceptions; the perceptions of sense and of consciousness, and perceptions concomitant of these; the perceptions of the intuitive, and those of the discursive, reason : we perceive what is true actualistically and what is true hypothetically; we perceive the possible and the necessary, and the contingent and the probable. Our doctrine is that all these perceptions, when made by a sound mind and under proper conditions, are trustworthy; and our philosophy finds justification for this doctrine in the critical investigation of every mode of human cognition or conviction." - Preface. Hamilton, also a Presbyterian minister, advocated Perceptionalism as an alternative to materialism or idealistic agnosticism, and his work was well received in religious periodicals of his time. ; viii, 416, 8 ad pages .