The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

Realistic Idealism.
The soberest and best form of idealism, which is indeed also realism,
recognizes the external world as a real thing, but holds that we can have
cognition of it, not as it is in itself, but as it is phenomenally, and that we
reach a "mediate knowledge" of the phenomena by the direct cognition of
consciousness. The mind is really modified by these phenomenal causes,
and its inference, that its own states presuppose ultimate substantial
realities without which these phenomena would not be, is a just inference.
Hamilton calls this class "Hypothetical Dualists," or cosmothetic idealists,
and says that to it "the great majority of modern philosophers are to be
referred." It is an idealism which acknowledges realities which transcend
the sphere of the senses, and which is thus compelled to admit that natural
faith can challenge for its verities as just, if not as positive, an assurance as
is given by direct cognition. All that the human mind immediately and
absolutely knows is its own states of consciousness--everything else is
inference, intuitive conviction, irresistible faith. "Mediate knowledge" is
only intellectual faith.
The greatest representative of another school in effect admits all this.
Sir William Hamilton says: "The existence of God and immortality are not
given us as phenomena, as objects of immediate knowledge."
Metaphysics: Lect. VII. "The existence of an unknown substance is only
an inference we are compelled to make from the existence of known
phenomena." "Of existence absolutely and in itself, we know nothing."
"All we know is known only under the special conditions of our faculties."
"In the perception of an external object, the mind does not know it in
immediate relation to itself, but mediately in relation to the material organs
of sense." Lect. VIII. "Consciousness is a knowledge solely of what is
now and here present to the mind...comprehends every cognitive act;
whatever we are not conscious of, that we do not know." Dissert.
Supplem. to Reid. "Consciousness is the condition of all internal
phenomena...comprises within its sphere the whole phenomena of mind."
Lect. X. "Consciousness is an immediate, not a mediate, knowledge. We
know the mental representation...immediately...the past