The Scottish Philosophy [16]
more bracing atmosphere in the regions without and beyond; and this is now to rush into Scotland. From the time of the revival of letters in the sixteenth century, almost every great and original thinker had thought it necessary to protest against the authority of Aristotle and the schoolmen. Bacon left Cambridge with a thorough contempt for the scholastic studies pursued there; and the grand end aimed at in his "Novum Organum," was to carry away men's regards from words and notions, to which they had paid too exclusive attention, and to fix them on things. In respect of a disposition to rebel against Aristotle and the schoolmen, Descartes was of the same spirit as Bacon; and Gassendi and Hobbes agreed with Descartes, with whom they differed in almost every thing else. It would be easy to produce a succession of strong testimonies against the Stagyrite and the Mediaevals, spread over the whole of the seventeenth century. The rising sentiment is graphically expressed by Glanvil in his "Scepsis Scientifica," published in 1665. He declares that the " ingenious world is grown quite weary of qualities and forms-," he declaims against "dry spinosities, lean notions, endless altercations about things of nothing; " and he recommends a " knowledge of nature, without which our hypotheses are but dreams and romances, and our science mere conjecture and opinion; for, while we have schemes of things without consulting the phenomena, we do but build in the air, and describe an imaginary world of our own making, that is but little akin to the real one that God made."
The realistic reaction took two different but not totally divergent directions in the seventeenth century, and both the streams reached Scotland in the following century. In the works of Grotius and Puffendorf, an elaborate attempt was made to determine the laws of nature in regard to man's political and social conditions, and apply the same to the examination and rectification of national and international laws. This was thought by many to be a more profitable and promising theme than the perpetual discussion of the nature of being and universals. This school had undoubtedly its influence in Scotland, where Carmichael, in 1718, edited and annotated Puffendorf, {27} and where Hutcheson, and Hume, and A. Smith, and Ferguson, and D. Stewart, combined juridical and political with moral inquiries, and became the most influential writers of the century on all questions of what has since been called social science.
But a stronger and deeper current was setting in about the same time,-a determination to have the experimental mode of investigation applied to every department of knowledge. This method had already been applied to physical science with brilliant results. And now there was a strong desire felt to have the new manner adopted in the investigation of the human mind. In 1670, John Locke and five or six friends are conversing in his chamber in Oxford on a knotty topic, and quickly they find themselves at a stand; and it occurred to Locke that, before entering " on inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with." He pondered and wrote on this subject for twenty years, at the close of which (in 1690) he published his immortal " Essay on the Human Understanding." In this work he would banish for ever those innate ideas which had offered such obstacles to the progress of thought; and, by an inquiry into the actual operations of the human mind, he would trace the ways in which mankind attain ideas and knowledge, and settle the bounds imposed on the human understanding. Locke's Essay was hailed with acclamation by all who were wearied of the old scholastic abstractions and distinctions, and who had caught the new spirit that was abroad.
Still Locke's Essay was not allowed to take possession of the thinking minds of the country without a vigorous opposition. Locke was met in his own day by Stillingfleet, the Bishop of Worcester, who argued resolutely that
The realistic reaction took two different but not totally divergent directions in the seventeenth century, and both the streams reached Scotland in the following century. In the works of Grotius and Puffendorf, an elaborate attempt was made to determine the laws of nature in regard to man's political and social conditions, and apply the same to the examination and rectification of national and international laws. This was thought by many to be a more profitable and promising theme than the perpetual discussion of the nature of being and universals. This school had undoubtedly its influence in Scotland, where Carmichael, in 1718, edited and annotated Puffendorf, {27} and where Hutcheson, and Hume, and A. Smith, and Ferguson, and D. Stewart, combined juridical and political with moral inquiries, and became the most influential writers of the century on all questions of what has since been called social science.
But a stronger and deeper current was setting in about the same time,-a determination to have the experimental mode of investigation applied to every department of knowledge. This method had already been applied to physical science with brilliant results. And now there was a strong desire felt to have the new manner adopted in the investigation of the human mind. In 1670, John Locke and five or six friends are conversing in his chamber in Oxford on a knotty topic, and quickly they find themselves at a stand; and it occurred to Locke that, before entering " on inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with." He pondered and wrote on this subject for twenty years, at the close of which (in 1690) he published his immortal " Essay on the Human Understanding." In this work he would banish for ever those innate ideas which had offered such obstacles to the progress of thought; and, by an inquiry into the actual operations of the human mind, he would trace the ways in which mankind attain ideas and knowledge, and settle the bounds imposed on the human understanding. Locke's Essay was hailed with acclamation by all who were wearied of the old scholastic abstractions and distinctions, and who had caught the new spirit that was abroad.
Still Locke's Essay was not allowed to take possession of the thinking minds of the country without a vigorous opposition. Locke was met in his own day by Stillingfleet, the Bishop of Worcester, who argued resolutely that