ect on which, in my old days of Benthamism, I had
bestowed much study. But the chief product of those years was the
_Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_. His _Lectures_,
published in 1860 and 1861, I had read towards the end of the latter
year, with a half-formed intention of giving an account of them in a
Review, but I soon found that this would be idle, and that justice could
not be done to the subject in less than a volume. I had then to consider
whether it would be advisable that I myself should attempt such a
performance. On consideration, there seemed to be strong reasons for
doing so. I was greatly disappointed with the _Lectures_. I read them,
certainly, with no prejudice against Sir William Hamilton. I had up to
that time deferred the study of his _Notes to Reid_ on account of their
unfinished state, but I had not neglected his _Discussions in
Philosophy_; and though I knew that his general mode of treating the
facts of mental philosophy differed from that of which I most approved,
yet his vigorous polemic against the later Transcendentalists, and his
strenuous assertion of some important principles, especially the
Relativity of human knowledge, gave me many points of sympathy with his
opinions, and made me think that genuine psychology had considerably
more to gain than to lose by his authority and reputation. His
_Lectures_ and the _Dissertations on Reid_ dispelled this illusion: and
even the _Discussions_, read by the light which these throw on them,
lost much of their value. I found that the points of apparent agreement
between his opinions and mine were more verbal than real; that the
important philosophical principles which I had thought he recognised,
were so explained away by him as to mean little or nothing, or were
continually lost sight of, and doctrines entirely inconsistent with them
were taught in nearly every part of his philosophical writings. My
estimation of him was therefore so far altered, that instead of
regarding him as occupying a kind of intermediate position between the
two rival philosophies, holding some of the principles of both, and
supplying to both powerful weapons of attack and defence, I now looked
upon him as one of the pillars, and in this country from his high
philosophical reputation the chief pillar, of that one of the two which
seemed to me to be erroneous.

Now, the difference between these two schools of philosophy, that of
Intuition, and that of Experience