The Scottish Philosophy [6]
of knowledge (it is to a Scottish metaphysician we owe the "Wealth of Nations"); several of them have had very accurate scholarship; and the last great man among them was not surpassed in erudition by any scholar of his age. Nor has the influence of the Scottish philosophy been confined to its native soil. The Irish province of Ulster has felt it quite as much as Scotland, in consequence of so many youths from the north of Ireland having been educated at Glasgow University. Though Scotch metaphysics are often spoken of with contempt in the southern part of Great Britain, yet they have had their share in fashioning the thought of England, and, in particular, did much good in preserving it, for two or three ages towards the end of last century and the beginning of this, from falling altogether into low materialistic and utilitarian views; and in this last age Mr. J. S. Mill got some of his views through his father from Hume, Stewart, and Brown, {9} and an active philosophic school at Oxford has built on the foundation laid b Hamilton. The United States of America especially the writers connected with the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches, have felt pleasure in acknowledging-, their obligations to the Scottish thinkers. It is a most interesting circumstance, that when the higher metaphysicians of France undertook, in the beginning of this century, the laborious work of throwing back the tide of materialism, scepticism, and atheism which had swept over the land, they called to their aid the sober and well- grounded philosophy of Scotland. Nor is it an unimportant fact in the history of philosophy, that the great German metaphysician, Emmanuel Kant, was roused, as he acknowledges, from his dogmatic slumbers by the scepticism of David Hume.
But the great merit of the Scottish philosophy lies in the large body of truth which it has -- if not discovered -- at least settled on a foundation which can never be moved. It has added very considerably to our knowledge of the human mind, bringing out to view the characteristics of mental as distinguished from material action; throwing light on perception through the senses; offering valuable observations on the intellectual powers, and on the association of ideas; furnishing, if not ultimate, yet very useful provisional classifications of the mental faculties; unfolding many of the peculiarities of man's moral and emotional nature, of his conscience, and of his taste for the beautiful; resolving many complex mental phenomena into their elements; throwing aside by its independent research a host of traditional errors which had been accumulating for ages; and, above all, establishing certain primary truths as a foundation on which to rear other truths, and as a breakwater to resist the assaults of scepticism.
In comparing it with other schools, we find that the transcendental speculators of Germany have started discussions which they cannot settle, and followed out their principles to extravagant consequences, which are a of the whole method on which they proceed. Again, the physiologists have failed to furnish any explanation of consciousness, of thought, of moral approbation, or of any other peculiar mental quality. Meanwhile, the philosophy of consciousness has coordinated many facts, ascertained many mental laws, {10} explained many curious phenomena of our inward experience, and established a body of intuitive truths. By its method of careful observation, and by it alone, can the problems agitated in the rival schools be solved, so far as they can be solved by the human faculties. Whatever aid physiological research as it advances may furnish to psychology, it must always be by the study, not of the brain, and nerves, and vital forces, but of our conscious operations, that a philosophy of the human mind is to be constructed. Whether the Scottish philosophy is to proceed exclusively in its old method, and go on co-ordinating facts with ever-increasing care, and expressing them with greater and greater precision, or whether it is
But the great merit of the Scottish philosophy lies in the large body of truth which it has -- if not discovered -- at least settled on a foundation which can never be moved. It has added very considerably to our knowledge of the human mind, bringing out to view the characteristics of mental as distinguished from material action; throwing light on perception through the senses; offering valuable observations on the intellectual powers, and on the association of ideas; furnishing, if not ultimate, yet very useful provisional classifications of the mental faculties; unfolding many of the peculiarities of man's moral and emotional nature, of his conscience, and of his taste for the beautiful; resolving many complex mental phenomena into their elements; throwing aside by its independent research a host of traditional errors which had been accumulating for ages; and, above all, establishing certain primary truths as a foundation on which to rear other truths, and as a breakwater to resist the assaults of scepticism.
In comparing it with other schools, we find that the transcendental speculators of Germany have started discussions which they cannot settle, and followed out their principles to extravagant consequences, which are a