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By Root 3024 0

and especially those of a metaphysical taste, received a stimulus of a very lofty kind from his lectures, and these examinations and essays. I suspect that some of the duller and idler passed through the class without getting much benefit. In his whole intercourse with young men there was great courtesy and kindness, and a readiness to appreciate talent and independent thinking wherever he found it. For a number of years before his death, Sir William was oppressed with infirmities, and had to employ an assistant; and it was characteristic of him that he was in the habit of selecting for the office some one of those who had been his more distinguished students. We may now look at his metaphysics and his logic.

. The first of the volumes is on philosophy generally and on mental philosophy in particular. He begins by recommending the study, gives the definitions, unfolds the divisions, explains the terms with amazing erudition and unsurpassed logical precision, and dwells largely on consciousness, its laws and conditions. The reading of this volume will prove as bracing to the mind as a run up a hill of a morning on a botanical or geological excursion is to the body. We especially recommend the study of it to those whose pursuits are usually of a different character, as, for example, to those who are dissipating their minds by light literature, or whose attention has been directed exclusively to physical facts, and who have thus been cultivating one set of the faculties which God has given them, to the neglect of others, and have thus been putting their mental frame out of proper shape and proportion, -- as the fisher, by strengthening his chest and arms in rowing, leaves his lower extremities thin and slender. There is a fine healthy tone about his defence of the liberal as against the more lucrative sciences, which latter Schelling called , {430} which Hamilton wittily translates, . He quotes with approbation the well-known sentiment of Lessing, " Did the Almighty, holding in his right hand Truth, and in his left , deign to tender me the one I might prefer,-in all humility, but without hesitation, I would request Search after Truth." But we should concur in such statements as these only with two important explanations or qualifications; the one is, that the search be after truth, which we must value when we find it; and the other is, that it be after attainable and useful truth. It has been the great error and sin of speculative philosophy that it has been expending its strength in building in one age ingenious theories which the next age takes down. I maintain that such activity wastes the energy without increasing the strength. He who thus fights is like one beating the air, and his exertion ends, not in satisfaction, but in weariness and restlessness. The admirable test of Bacon here comes in to restrain all such useless speculation, viz., that we are to try them by their fruits. Had this been the proper place we could have shown that Bacon's doctrine on this subject has often been misunderstood. He does not say that science is to be valued for its fruits, but it is to be tested by its fruits; just as faith, which, however, is of value in itself, is to be tried by the good works to which it leads. Thus limited and thus understood, there is profound wisdom in the caution of Bacon, which will not discourage an inductive inquiry into the human mind, its laws and fundamental principles, but will lay a restraint on the profitless metaphysical theories which have run to seed prematurely in Germany, where thinkers are sick of them, and are now being blown into our country and scattered over it like the down of thistles.

This volume is full of brief and sententious maxims. Take the following as examples: --

"It is ever the contest that pleases us, and not the victory. Thus it is in play; thus it is in bunting; thus it is in the search after truth; thus it is in life. The past does not interest, the present