The Scottish Philosophy [206]
a little faint expectation, a state of mind in which my wonder that they should be realized would not be so great as it rationally ought to be. The indulgence of this dreaming propensity produces good and bad consequences. It produces indolence, improvidence, cheerfulness; a study is its favorite scene; and I have no doubt that many a man, surrounded by piles of folios and apparently engaged in the most profound researches, is in reality often employed in distributing the offices and provinces of the empire of Constantinople." {347} The instruction he received at school was loose and far from accurate. " Whatever I have done beyond has been since added by my own irregular reading But no subsequent circumstance could make up for that invaluable habit of vigorous and methodical industry which the indulgence and irregularity of my school life prevented me from acquiring, and of which I have painfully felt the want in every part of my life." In 1780 he went to college at Aberdeen. " I bought and read three or four books this first winter, which were very much out of the course of boys of fifteen anywhere, but most of all at Aberdeen. Among them was Priestley's " Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion," and Beattie's " Essay on Truth," which confirmed my disposition to metaphysical inquiries, and Warburton's " Divine Legation," which delighted me more than any book I had yet read, and which perhaps tainted my mind with a fondness for the twilight of historical hypothesis, but which certainly inspired me with that passion for investigating the history of opinions which has influenced my reading through life. At the college he formed an intimacy with a most engaging and promising youth, Robert Hall, who afterwards became the most brilliant preacher of his age. " His society and conversation had a great influence on my mind; our controversies were almost unceasing. We lived in the same house, and we were both very disputatious. He led me to the perusal of Jonathan Edwards's book on Free Will, which Dr. Priestley had pointed out before. I am sorry that I never got the other works of that most extraordinary man, who, in a metaphysical age or country, would certainly have been deemed as much the boast of America as his great countryman Franklin." In their joint studies the two youths read much of Xenophon and Herodotus and more of Plato; and so well was this known -- exciting admiration in some, in others envy- that it was not unusual, as they went along, for their class-fellows to point at them and say: " There go Plato and Herodotus." But the arena in which they met most frequently was that of morals and metaphysics. "After having sharpened their weapons by reading, they often repaired to the spacious sands upon the sea-shore, and still more frequently to the picturesque scenery on the banks of the Don above the old town, to discuss with eagerness the various subjects to which their attention had been directed. There was scarcely an important {348} position in Berkeley's "Minute Philosopher," or Butler's " Analogy," or in Edwards on the Will, over which they had not thus debated with the utmost intensity. Night after night, nay month after month, for two seasons, they met only to study or dispute, yet no unkindly feeling ensued." (Gregory's " Memoir of Robert Hall.")
In 1784 he entered on the study of medicine, and was under the famous Dr. Cullen, but attached himself to the fancies of John Brown, author of the Brunonian system, which had its little day. At Edinburgh he became a member of the famous Speculative Society, which did so much to stimulate the intellectual life of young men. He is able to testify of Edinburgh University, " that it is not easy to conceive a university where industry was more general, where reading was more fashionable, and where indolence and ignorance were more disreputable. Every mind was in a state of fermentation. The direction of mental activity will not indeed be universally approved. It certainly was very much, though not exclusively,
In 1784 he entered on the study of medicine, and was under the famous Dr. Cullen, but attached himself to the fancies of John Brown, author of the Brunonian system, which had its little day. At Edinburgh he became a member of the famous Speculative Society, which did so much to stimulate the intellectual life of young men. He is able to testify of Edinburgh University, " that it is not easy to conceive a university where industry was more general, where reading was more fashionable, and where indolence and ignorance were more disreputable. Every mind was in a state of fermentation. The direction of mental activity will not indeed be universally approved. It certainly was very much, though not exclusively,