But Witherspoon was a man of action, rather than reflection. His administration of the college seems to have been successful. Following the original theory of the American college, Princeton college was placed in a village supposed to be away from the temptations of great cities. "It is not," Witherspoon says, "in the power of those who are in great cities to keep the discipline with equal strictness where boys have so many temptations to do evil, and can so easily and effectually conceal it after it is done. With us, they live all in college, under the inspection of their masters; and the village is so small that any irregularity is immediately and certainly discovered, and therefore easily corrected." The rules of government which he explained to the tutors are admirable. “Govern, govern always, but beware of governing too much. Convince your pupils, for you may convince them, that you would rather gratify than thwart them; that you wish to see them happy; and desire to impose no restraints but such as their real advantage, and the order and welfare of the college, render indispensable. Put a wide difference between youthful follies and foibles, and those acts which manifest a malignant spirit or intentional insubordination. Do not even notice the former, except it be by private advice. Overlook them entirely, unless they occur in such a public manner that it is known that you must have observed them. Be exceeding careful not to commit your own authority or that of the college, in any case that cannot be carried through with equity. But having pursued this. system, then, in every instance in which there has been a manifest intention to offend or resist your authority, or that of the college, make no compromise with it whatever put it down absolutely and entirely. Maintain the authority of the laws in their full extent, and fear no consequences."

But his influence was exerted and felt far beyond the college walls. As might have been expected from his love of liberty, and his impetuous spirit, and the part he took in Scotland, he early threw himself into the struggle for independence, and he was elected a representative in Congress for the State of New Jersey, in 1776, and declared there the way by which he had been led. "We were contending for a restoration of certain privileges under the government of Great Britain, and were praying for a reunion with her. But in the beginning of July, with the universal approbation of all the States now united, we renounced this conviction, and declared ourselves free and independent." His is one of the names the most honored of any in America- attached to the Declaration of Independence, and his portrait adorns Independence Hall. I rather think that - if we except Washington, Franklin, and perhaps half a dozen others - none had so important an influence as Witherspoon in guiding the American Revolution. It will be remembered that one of the decisive battles of the war was fought at Princeton; and, in 1783, the Congress sat for months in the college, presided over by one of the trustees, and with Witherspoon as a member. When in Congress, he exerted himself to secure a firm, central government, and a gold instead of a paper standard. He retired from Congress in 1783, to give himself to his college work. He died, Nov. 15, 1794.

From the picture of him by the elder Peale in Princeton college, and the account given by Ashbel Green, we learn that "his stature was of middle size, with some tendency to corpulence. His limbs were well-proportioned, and his complexion was fair. His eyes were strongly indicative of intelligence. His eyebrows were large, hanging down at the ends next his temples, occasioned, probably, by a habit he had contracted of pulling them when he was under excitement." His whole air is that of a man of strong character; and we see traces of his being naturally a man of strong passion, which,however, he was able to subdue. Scotland did not allow him, what would have been for her good, to become a leader of men; and Scotland's loss became America's gain.

XXIV. JAMES BALFOUR.

He was a member of the Scotch bar, and one of the many Edinburgh lawyers who devoted themselves to philosophy. He was one of the first to write against the ethical principles of Hume, which he did in his "Delineations of the Nature and Obligations of Morality," published anonymously, 1752 or 1753. He sets out with the principle that private happiness must be the chief end and object of every man's pursuit; shows how the good of others affords the highest happiness; and then to sanction natural conscience he calls in the authority of God, who must approve of what promotes the greatest happiness. This theory does not give morality a sufficiently deep foundation in the constitution of man or the character of God, and could not have stood against the assaults of Hume. In 1754, he was appointed professor of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, the chair which David Hume had wished to fill some years before, and continued to hold it till 1764, when he became professor of the law of nature and nations, and held the office till about 1779. In 1768, he published a second work, written against Hume and Lord Kames and in defence of active power and liberty. Like all enlightened opponents of the new scepticism, he felt it necessary to oppose the favorite theory of Locke, that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection. "It may indeed be allowed that the first notions of things are given to the mind by means of some sensation or other; but then it may also be true that after such notions are given the mind, by the exertion of some inherent power, may be able to discover some remarkable qualities of such things, and even things of a very different nature, which are not to be discovered merely by any sense whatever." He published “Philosophical Dissertations," in 1782.

He was born in 1705, and died 1795. His father was a merchant in Edinburgh, and his mother a daughter of Hamilton of Airdrie, from which family Sir William Hamilton was descended. He seems to have received his education first in Edinburgh College, and then, like so many scholars of the preceding ages, at Leyden.

He was the son of the minister of a parish, called the chapel of Garioch, in Aberdeenshire, and was born in 1728. In July, 1752, he was admitted professor of moral philosophy in Marischal College. In August, 1755, he submits in a printed paper an improved plan of education for the college. He argues powerfully against the established practice of teaching logic in the early years of the course. He recommends that the curriculum consist: First year, classics; second year, history and elementary mathematics; third year, natural philosophy, with belles-lettres and mathematics; fourth year, pneumatology, or natural philosophy of spirit, including the doctrine of the nature, faculties, and states of the human mind, and natural theology; moral philosophy, containing ethics, jurisprudence, and politics, the study of these being accompanied with a perusal of some of the best ancient moralists; logic, or the laws and rules of inventing, proving, retaining, and communicating knowledge; and metaphysics. This is, in many respects, an enlightened course, but confines the attention of every student too exclusively to one department for the year, whereas the mind works better with some variety, and does not give a sufficient space to classics and English. This course was substantially adopted by the college, which thus came to differ from the other Scotch universities.

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It is indicative of a strong desire on the part of an enlightened body of men to promote elegance and refinement in their country, that the Edinburgh Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Sciences, Manufactures, and Agriculture offered a premium for the best essay on "Taste," the phrase taste" having come unfortunately into use as the translation of the French "goût." The prize was gained by Gerard, and the work was published in 1759, the publisher adding three dissertations by Voltaire, D'Alembert, and Montesquieu. Anxious to promote the objects of the above-named society, he offered through it a gold medal on style in composition. In the same year, he was chosen professor of divinity in Marischal, and, in 1773, he became professor of divinity in King's College, and his attention was thus called away from philosophy. In 1766, he published “Dissertations on Subjects relating to the Genius and Evidences of Christianity." Still cherishing his old tastes, he published, in 1774, an "Essay on Genius," meant to be the complement of his work on "Taste." He wrote also "Sermons," in two volumes; "The Pastoral Care;" and "The Evidences of the Christian Religion."

He is best known by his work on "Taste." He enlarges the number of senses or tastes far beyond what Hutcheson or any other has done, — illustrating the sense or taste of novelty, sublimity, beauty, imitation, harmony, oddity and ridicule, and virtue, and shows how they all enter into fine taste. He calls them internal or reflex senses, as distinguished from external senses. He does not enter upon a searching inquiry into their psychologi cal nature, nor seek to determine what objective reality is implied in them: he contents himself with a graceful, pleasant exposition and illustration.

In his other philosophical work, he describes genius as the faculty of invention, treats of such interesting subjects as the influence of habit and passion on association, and quotes largely from the best writers of Greece and Rome, France and England; but shows little analytic or metaphysical acumen. By his lectures and works, he helped to create and foster a literary taste in the region of which Aberdeen claims to be the capital, and is believed to have had influence on the studies and teaching of Beattie. Beattie is said to allude to him, when he speaks of a person who "by two hours' application could fix a sermon in his mind so effectively as to be able to recite it in public without the change, omission, or transposition of a single word." He died in 1795.1

If he was not the founder, he is the fit representative of the Scottish philosophy. He is in every respect, a Scotchman of the genuine type: shrewd, cautious, outwardly calm, and yet with a deep well of feeling within, and capable of enthusiasm ; not witty, but with a quiet vein of humor. And then he has the truly philosophic spirit: seeking truth modestly, humbly, diligently; piercing beneath the surface to gaze on the true nature of things; and not to be caught by sophistry, or misled by plausible representations. He has not the mathematical consecutiveness of Descartes, the speculative genius of Leibnitz, the sagacity of Locke, the spirituel of Berkeley, or the

1 I may mention, as belonging to the same age, "An Essay on Virtue and Harmony, wherein a Reconciliation of the Various Accounts of Moral Obligation is attempted," by William Jameson, M.A. minister of Rerick, 1749. He shows that man is endowed with various senses, but especially with a moral sense; and, "as several parts or strains of music and different musical instruments do compose a concert, so the various sorts of beauty, order, proportion, and harmony in the vegetable kingdom, in the animal, and in the intellectual system, constitute one universal harmony or concert: in that grand concert, every man is bound to perform his part in a proper key, as it were, or in just consonance with the whole which can only be done by the order and harmony of his affections, and the beauty and regularity of his actions." The scepticism of Hume cast aside these inquiries into senses and tastes, and led to the profounder philosophy of Reid.

2 "Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Reid," by Dugald Stewart; "The Works of Thomas Reid," by Sir William Hamilton; MS. letters in possession of the late Alexander Thomson of Banchory (used by Hamilton); Papers of Dr. Reid in possession of Francis Edmond of Aberdeen.

detective skill of Hume; but he has a quality quite as valuable as any of these, even in philosophy; he has in perfection that common-sense which he so commends, and this saves him from the extreme positions into which these great men have been tempted by the soaring nature of their inexorable logic. "It is genius, and not the want of it, that adulterates philosophy." He looks steadily and inquires carefully into the subjects of which he is treating; and if he does not go round them he acknowledges that he has not done so; and what he does see, he sees clearly and describes honestly. "The labyrinth may be too intricate, and the thread too fine to be traced through all its windings; but if we stop when we can trace it no farther, and secure the ground we have gained, there is no harm done, and a quicker eye may at times trace it farther." Speculative youths are apt to feel that, because he is so sober, and makes so little pretension, he cannot possibly be far-seeing or profound; but this is at the time of life when they have risen above taking a mother's counsel, and become wiser than their fathers; and, after following other and more showy lights for a time, they may at last be obliged to acknowledge that they have here the true light of the sun, which it is safer to follow than that of the flashing meteor. M. Cousin, in his preface to the last edition of his volume on the Scottish philosophy, declares that the true modern Socrates has not been. Locke, but Reid. "Kant," he says, "has commenced the German philosophy, but he has not governed it. It early escaped him, to throw itself in very opposite directions. The name of Kant rests only on the ruins of his doctrines. pressed on the Scottish mind a movement less grand, but this movement has had no reactions." "Yes," he adds, "Reid is a man of genius, and of a true and powerful originality; so we said in 1819, and so we say in 1857, after having held long converse with mighty systems, discovered their secret, and taken their measure." There is profound truth in this; but it is scarcely correct to say that there have been no reactions against Reid in Scotland. There was a reaction by Brown against his indiscriminate admission of first principles. Again, there is a reaction in the present day on the part of those who dislike his appeal to consciousness as revealing to us a certain. amount of truth, and who deal, in consequence, solely with

Reid has im