The Scottish Philosophy [182]
to have completed it. Stewart everywhere proclaims that it is to be done by the combined efforts of successive inquirers, pursuing the same method for ages.
Reid and Stewart nowhere profess to give a full list, or even a rigid classification, of the intuitive convictions of the mind. All that they affirm is, that those principles which they have seized for the purpose of meeting the scepticism of Hume, are and must be intuitive. They do not even pretend to give a full account of these, or to express them in their ultimate form. They vacillate in the account which they give of them, and in the nomenclature which they employ to denote them. They draw no definite distinction between cognitions, beliefs, and judgments. They treat of the faculties, and also of the principles of common sense, but they do not tell us how the two stand related to each other. And here I may be permitted to observe, that I look on these fundamental laws as being the necessary laws of the faculties regulating all their exercises, but not as laws or principles before the consciousness; and they are to be reflexly discovered as general laws only by the induction of their individual acts. Reid and Stewart do not even tell us what are the tests by which their presence may be detected: these I hold to be, first, as Aristotle and Locke have shown, self-evidence; and, second, as Leibnitz and Kant have shown, necessity and universality. Such defects as these they were quite willing to confess in that spirit of modesty which was one of their highest characteristics; and to any one complaining that they had not settled every point, they would, {307} as it were, say, Go on in the path which we have opened; we are sure that there is more truth yet to be discovered, and rejoice we must and will if you succeed where we have failed and raise a little higher that fabric of which we have laid the foundation.
XLI -- WILLIAM LAWRENCE BROWN. I/N\ 1785, Mr. Burnett, a merchant in Aberdeen, bequeathed certain sums to be expended at intervals of forty years in the shape of two premiums for the best works furnishing "evidence that there is a Being, all powerful, wise, and good, by whom every thing exists: and particularly to obviate difficulties regarding the wisdom and goodness of the Deity; and this, in the first place, from considerations independent of written revelation, and. in the second place, from the revelation of the Lord Jesus, and from the whole to point out inferences most necessary for and useful to mankind." This endowment has not called forth any one great work; but, on each of the two occasions on which it has been competed for, it has been the means of publishing two excellent treatises. On the first competition, the first prize was awarded to Principal Brown of Aberdeen, and the second to the Rev. John Bird Sumner, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
Dr. Brown was born at Utrecht, 1755, and became minister of the Scotch church there. He removed to Scotland in 1795, became professor of divinity in Aberdeen, and afterwards principal of Marischal College. He lived till 1830. When in Holland he wrote an " Essay on the Folly of Scepticism." His Burnett Prize Essay, "On the Existence of a Supreme Creator," was given to the world in 1816. The work did not produce much impression in its own age, and is now all but forgotten. People wonder that so large a sum (upwards of l 1,200) did not call forth a more brilliant production; but the truth is, that money cannot produce an original work, which can come only from the spontaneous thoughts of the man of genius, that prize essays are commonly respectably good and nothing more. and, while they may serve a good purpose in their own day, are seldom valued as a legacy by posterity. The book is in many respects the perfection of a prize essay. It conforms rigidly to the conditions imposed by the donor; it is supremely judicious; it did not startle the judges by any eccentricity or even novelty, and certainly not by any profundity; and altogether is
Reid and Stewart nowhere profess to give a full list, or even a rigid classification, of the intuitive convictions of the mind. All that they affirm is, that those principles which they have seized for the purpose of meeting the scepticism of Hume, are and must be intuitive. They do not even pretend to give a full account of these, or to express them in their ultimate form. They vacillate in the account which they give of them, and in the nomenclature which they employ to denote them. They draw no definite distinction between cognitions, beliefs, and judgments. They treat of the faculties, and also of the principles of common sense, but they do not tell us how the two stand related to each other. And here I may be permitted to observe, that I look on these fundamental laws as being the necessary laws of the faculties regulating all their exercises, but not as laws or principles before the consciousness; and they are to be reflexly discovered as general laws only by the induction of their individual acts. Reid and Stewart do not even tell us what are the tests by which their presence may be detected: these I hold to be, first, as Aristotle and Locke have shown, self-evidence; and, second, as Leibnitz and Kant have shown, necessity and universality. Such defects as these they were quite willing to confess in that spirit of modesty which was one of their highest characteristics; and to any one complaining that they had not settled every point, they would, {307} as it were, say, Go on in the path which we have opened; we are sure that there is more truth yet to be discovered, and rejoice we must and will if you succeed where we have failed and raise a little higher that fabric of which we have laid the foundation.
XLI -- WILLIAM LAWRENCE BROWN. I/N\ 1785, Mr. Burnett, a merchant in Aberdeen, bequeathed certain sums to be expended at intervals of forty years in the shape of two premiums for the best works furnishing "evidence that there is a Being, all powerful, wise, and good, by whom every thing exists: and particularly to obviate difficulties regarding the wisdom and goodness of the Deity; and this, in the first place, from considerations independent of written revelation, and. in the second place, from the revelation of the Lord Jesus, and from the whole to point out inferences most necessary for and useful to mankind." This endowment has not called forth any one great work; but, on each of the two occasions on which it has been competed for, it has been the means of publishing two excellent treatises. On the first competition, the first prize was awarded to Principal Brown of Aberdeen, and the second to the Rev. John Bird Sumner, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
Dr. Brown was born at Utrecht, 1755, and became minister of the Scotch church there. He removed to Scotland in 1795, became professor of divinity in Aberdeen, and afterwards principal of Marischal College. He lived till 1830. When in Holland he wrote an " Essay on the Folly of Scepticism." His Burnett Prize Essay, "On the Existence of a Supreme Creator," was given to the world in 1816. The work did not produce much impression in its own age, and is now all but forgotten. People wonder that so large a sum (upwards of l 1,200) did not call forth a more brilliant production; but the truth is, that money cannot produce an original work, which can come only from the spontaneous thoughts of the man of genius, that prize essays are commonly respectably good and nothing more. and, while they may serve a good purpose in their own day, are seldom valued as a legacy by posterity. The book is in many respects the perfection of a prize essay. It conforms rigidly to the conditions imposed by the donor; it is supremely judicious; it did not startle the judges by any eccentricity or even novelty, and certainly not by any profundity; and altogether is