The Scottish Philosophy [218]
and admitted minister of the Abbey Church, Paisley, in 1783. He was appointed professor of philosophy in Glasgow College in 1797, resigned on the 3d and died on the 21st Of September, 1839. His business was to preach or provide preachers for the students in the college chapel. The students felt his preaching and that of his substitutes to be cold, and regarded him as secretly a rationalist or a Socinian. After the revival of evangelical faith in the city of Glasgow under Chalmers, loud complaints were uttered as to the doctrine taught in the college chapel.
Opposed to the national creed of Scotland, and an adherent of liberal principles, he was regarded as a dangerous man by the government of the day. On Sunday, March 26, 1815, news came of the escape of Bonaparte from Elba, and in the chapel he happened to give out the paraphrase used in the Scotch worship, " Behold, be comes ! your leader comes! " and it was interpreted as a welcome to the restored emperor, and he was subjected to a prosecution by the Lord Advocate. He answered with spirit in a pamphlet, " Statement of the Facts connected with a Precognition taken in the College on March 30 and 31, 1815." He speaks of Bonaparte as "a man whom he had long regarded with sentiments of the deepest abhorrence and detestation, not only as the disturber of the peace and happiness of nations, but as the greatest enemy to the civil and political liberties of mankind."
His philosophy was a sufficiently simple one: he made it very clear, and he saw no difficulties. There are three, and only three, faculties of the mind, -- sensation, memory, and judgment. With certain explanations he adopts the principle "nihil in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu." He sees that it may be necessary to have a separation of the senses usually represented as touch, gone sense to receive sensations from solids, and another from such qualities as heat. He does not get rid of memory so readily as Brown and Mill. He opposes the theory of the French philosophers who affirm that memory is a mere modification of former impressions, and from Hume who makes conceptions differ merely in degrees from sensation. The eye, indeed, after long looking at a bright object, when shut retains {366} the brightness; but this, lie argues, is a proof that memory is not a sensation, for frequently, at the very time the spectrum, as it is called, remains in the eye, we can remember that it is not the same. He is obliged to make judgment a separate faculty; but then it consists merely in perceiving the difference of feelings. He starts the question, whether our ideas are images of external objects, and answers that external objects are rather pictures of our sensations. He distinguishes between ideas and sensations. An idea is a feeling in the mind which it has distinguished and recognized as different from the other feelings, and feeling becomes an idea as soon as this distinction is made.
It seems to him easy to explain all the operations of the mind by these three faculties. He accounts for attention by showing that some of our sensations and feelings are more strong and lively than others. He thinks the laws of association may be reduced to two, -- contiguity and (taking the hint from Stewart) relationship. As most of our perceptions are furnished in combinations, no wonder that they are again brought together before the mind in combination. But the associations of relationship are much more numerous than those of contiguity. Abstraction is nothing more than the attention directed in a particular way. He explains the peculiarity of habit by the circumstance that, by the frequent repetition of an action, we become acquainted with all the means necessary towards its accomplishment. This is surely not the whole truth, for habit is often carried on without any exercise of will; but there may be some truth in his idea that there may be volitions which are not remembered. Feelings are nothing but modifications of sensation, -- the effect of sensations. Conscience is a decision of the judgment, accompanied
Opposed to the national creed of Scotland, and an adherent of liberal principles, he was regarded as a dangerous man by the government of the day. On Sunday, March 26, 1815, news came of the escape of Bonaparte from Elba, and in the chapel he happened to give out the paraphrase used in the Scotch worship, " Behold, be comes ! your leader comes! " and it was interpreted as a welcome to the restored emperor, and he was subjected to a prosecution by the Lord Advocate. He answered with spirit in a pamphlet, " Statement of the Facts connected with a Precognition taken in the College on March 30 and 31, 1815." He speaks of Bonaparte as "a man whom he had long regarded with sentiments of the deepest abhorrence and detestation, not only as the disturber of the peace and happiness of nations, but as the greatest enemy to the civil and political liberties of mankind."
His philosophy was a sufficiently simple one: he made it very clear, and he saw no difficulties. There are three, and only three, faculties of the mind, -- sensation, memory, and judgment. With certain explanations he adopts the principle "nihil in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu." He sees that it may be necessary to have a separation of the senses usually represented as touch, gone sense to receive sensations from solids, and another from such qualities as heat. He does not get rid of memory so readily as Brown and Mill. He opposes the theory of the French philosophers who affirm that memory is a mere modification of former impressions, and from Hume who makes conceptions differ merely in degrees from sensation. The eye, indeed, after long looking at a bright object, when shut retains {366} the brightness; but this, lie argues, is a proof that memory is not a sensation, for frequently, at the very time the spectrum, as it is called, remains in the eye, we can remember that it is not the same. He is obliged to make judgment a separate faculty; but then it consists merely in perceiving the difference of feelings. He starts the question, whether our ideas are images of external objects, and answers that external objects are rather pictures of our sensations. He distinguishes between ideas and sensations. An idea is a feeling in the mind which it has distinguished and recognized as different from the other feelings, and feeling becomes an idea as soon as this distinction is made.
It seems to him easy to explain all the operations of the mind by these three faculties. He accounts for attention by showing that some of our sensations and feelings are more strong and lively than others. He thinks the laws of association may be reduced to two, -- contiguity and (taking the hint from Stewart) relationship. As most of our perceptions are furnished in combinations, no wonder that they are again brought together before the mind in combination. But the associations of relationship are much more numerous than those of contiguity. Abstraction is nothing more than the attention directed in a particular way. He explains the peculiarity of habit by the circumstance that, by the frequent repetition of an action, we become acquainted with all the means necessary towards its accomplishment. This is surely not the whole truth, for habit is often carried on without any exercise of will; but there may be some truth in his idea that there may be volitions which are not remembered. Feelings are nothing but modifications of sensation, -- the effect of sensations. Conscience is a decision of the judgment, accompanied