Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton Bart

y.] g IV. On THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERS BY WHICH THE PRINCIPLES Of Common Sense Are Discriminated. It now remains to consider what are the essential notes or characters by which we are enabled to distinguish our original from our derivative convictions. These characters, I think, may be reduced to four;?1, their Incomprehensibility?2, theii Simplicity?3, their Necessity and absolute Universality?4, their comparative Evidence and Certainty. 1. In reference to the first;?A conviction is incomprehensible when there is merely given us in consciousness?That its object is (ciVi trfri) ; and when we are unable to comprehend through a higher notion or belief, Why or How it is (oidn s'rfri). When we are able to comprehend why or how a thing is, the belief of the existence of that thing is not a primary datum of consciousness, but a subsumption under the cognition or belief which affords its reason. 2. As to the second;?It is manifest that if a cognition or belief be made up of, and can be explicated into, a plurality of cognitions or beliefs, that, as compound, it cannot be original. 3. Touching the third;?Necessity and Universality may be regarded as coincident. For when a belief is necessary it is, eo ipso, universal; and that a belief is universal, is a certain index that it must be necessary. (See Leibnitz, Nouveaux Essais, L. i. § 4, p. 32.) To prove the necessity, the universality must, however, be absolute; for a relative universality indicates no more than c...