UNIVERS 239Y OF

GEORGE CAMPBELL.

ART. XXX.]

CALIFORNIA.

WE are still in an age in which young men belonging to county families devoted themselves to the work of the ministry of the gospel. George Campbell was the son of the Rev. John Campbell, a minister in Aberdeen, and one of the Campbells of Westhall, who claimed to be cadets of the house of Argyll. He was educated at the grammar-school, Aberdeen, and at Marischal College; and, being destined by his family to the law, he was apprenticed to a writer to the signet in Edinburgh. But he had a strong disposition towards the church, and he attended divinity lectures first in Edinburgh, and then in Marischal and in King's, Aberdeen. He was licensed to preach the gospel in 1746, and was settled as minister of Banchory-Ternan on the banks of the Dee in 1748. He was translated to a church in Aberdeen in 1757, and there (in 1758) became a member of the famous Philosophical Society, and contributed papers which were afterwards elaborated into volumes. In 1759, he was made principal of Marischal College, and every one felt that he was worthy of the office and fitted for it. In 1771, he was appointed professor of divinity in the same college, as successor to Gerard. In his opening lecture he says: "It is supposed that I am to teach you every thing connected with the study of divinity." "I am to teach you nothing; but, by the grace of God, I will assist you to teach yourselves every thing." He now resigned his city charge; but, as minister of Grayfriars, an office conjoined with the professorship, he preached every Sunday in one of the churches.

It is a curious coincidence that as Reid succeeded the Rev. John Bissett in Old Machar, so Campbell succeeded him in Aberdeen the earnest evangelical giving way in both cases to the cultured moderate. From his entrance into Aberdeen he was much admired by the educated and refined. The story is that some one told Gerard that he must now look to his laurels, whereupon the old professor replied that the incomer was indolent, a remark which was reported to Campbell, who

1 Life, by Rev. Dr. Keith. MS. Papers in possession of Andrew Farquharson of Whitehouse, kindly lent me.

profited by it, and became remarkable for his diligence. It is certain that in his later years he showed amazing industry in his literary pursuits. From time to time he gave to the press sermons characteristic of the age: calm, dignified, elegant, and moral, full of reverence, and carefully free from all extravagance and fanaticism. One feels as if he should have been a bishop delivering charges to his clergy, fitted to sustain the dignity of the Church of England. His speaking is thus described: "The closeness, the force, the condensed precision of his reasoning exceed the power of description. Not a single superfluous word was used, no weak or doubtful argument introduced."

But he gave to the world more elaborate works. Hume's influence was now beginning to be felt, and in 1763, Campbell publicly entered the lists against him, in "A Dissertation on Miracles." Before publishing the work, he transmitted through Dr. Blair a copy to Hume, who writes him in his usual pleasant manner, not entering into controversy, but stating how his own argument had occurred to him when a Jesuit was plying him with some "nonsensical miracle." In answering the sceptic, Campbell proposes to prove that testimony hath a natural and original influence on belief antecedent to experience. He may be right in saying that there is such a tendency, — I believe it to be hereditary in children; but this can serve him very little in his argument, as it is not of the nature of a necessary principle, and he is obliged to admit that testimony often deceives, so that we are brought back, as Hume maintains, to experience. But he is more successful when he shows that experience can prove a miracle, and this notwithstanding that nature is uniform. "For this purpose I make the following supposition. I have lived for some years near a ferry. It consists with my knowledge that the passage-boat has a thousand times crossed the river, and as many times returned safe. An unknown man, whom I have just now met, tells me in a serious manner that it is lost, and affirms that he himself saw the passengers carried. down the stream and the boat overwhelmed. No person who is influenced in his judgment of things, not by philosophical subtleties, but by common sense, a much surer guide, will hesitate to declare that in such a testimony I have probable evidence of the fact asserted." The last work published by him was "The

Four Gospels, translated from the Greek, with Preliminary Dissertations, and Notes Critical and Explanatory," 1789. The translation, though elegant, is not idiomatic; but the dissertations show a fine critical spirit. After his death, his "Lectures on Ecclesiastical History," his "Lectures on Systematic Theology and Pulpit Eloquence," and his "Lectures on the Pastoral Character," were published. But in this work we have to look merely at the philosophical discussions in his work on the Philosophy of Rhetoric," which was commenced at Banchory, and published in 1776.

We have seen all throughout this history that the Scottish metaphysicians following Shaftesbury were fond of speculating about beauty and taste, and that all the Scottish thinkers at this time were anxious to acquire an elegant style. Adam Smith for several years read lectures with great eclat on rhetoric and belles-lettres in Edinburgh, under the patronage of Lord Kames, and afterwards did the same in the class of logic in Glasgow University. Lord Kames himself discussed like subjects in his " Elements of Criticism." The elegant preacher Dr. Hugh Blair lectured on the subject in the university of Edinburgh, and his "Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-lettres" is one of the most useful books ever published on the art of composition. These works were used for several ages, not only in Scotland, but even in England, and helped to make rhetoric a leading branch of study in all the American colleges. Among all the works, Campbell's "Philosophy of Rhetoric" is perhaps the most philosophical, or is, at least, the one in which there is the most frequent discussion of philosophic problems.1

He opens: "In speaking, there is always some end in view, or some effect which the speaker intends to produce on the hearer." The word eloquence, in its greatest latitude, denotes that art or talent by which the discourse is adapted to its end. In speaking of oratory suited to light and trivial matters, he endeavors to define wit. "It is the design of wit to excite in

1 This may be the most appropriate place for referring to Ogilvie's "Philosophical and Critical Observations on the Nature, Character, and Various Species of Composition," 1774. The author was born 1737, became minister of Midmar in Aberdeenshire, and died in 1814. He was a miscellaneous writer in poetry and prose. In "The Theology of Plato compared with the Principles of Oriental and Grecian Philosophy," he treats of topics not usually discussed by the Scottish metaphysicians.

the mind an agreeable surprise, and that arising not from any thing marvellous in the subject, but solely from the imagery she employs, or the strange assemblage of related ideas presented to the mind." This end is effected in one or other of these three ways, first, in debasing things pompous or seemingly grave;" "secondly, in aggrandizing things, little and frivolous; thirdly, in setting ordinary objects by means not only remote, but apparently contrary, in a particular and uncommon point of view."

He enlarges, as most of the Scottish metaphysicians have done, on the different kinds of evidence. He begins with intuitive evidence, which, he says, is of different sorts. "One is that which results purely from intellection. Of this kind is the evidence of these propositions: 'One and four make five;' 'things equal to the same thing are equal to one another;' 'the whole is greater than a part;' and, in brief, all in arithmetic and geometry. These are in effect but so many different expositions of our own general notions taken in different views." "But when the thing, though in effect coinciding, is considered under a different aspect, when what is single in the subject is divided in the predicate, and conversely, or when what is a whole in the one is regarded as a part of something in the other, such propositions lead to the discovery of innumerable and apparently remote relations." Under this head he also places, secondly, consciousness, "whence every man derives the perfect assurance which he hath of his own existence." He mentions, thirdly, common sense, giving to Buffier the credit of first noticing this principle as one of the genuine springs of our knowledge, whereas Shaftesbury had previously given it a special and important place. That he has not a definite idea of what common sense is as a philosophic principle, is evident from his stating that "in different persons it prevails in different degrees of strength," thus confounding the common principles of intelligence in all men with the sound sense possessed only by certain persons. He mentions a number of such principles, such as "whatever has a beginning has a cause;" "when there is in the effect a manifest adjustment of the several parts to a certain end, there is intelligence;" "the course of nature will be the same to-morrow that it is to-day." He tries to draw distinctions between different kinds of intuitive truth. Thus,

in regard to primary truths of the third class, " it may be urged that it cannot be affirmed of them all at least, as it may be of the axioms in mathematics, or the assurances we have from consciousness, that the denial of them implies a contradiction." It is necessary, I believe, to draw some such distinctions as these between the various kinds of first truths; some of them seem to me to be of the nature of primitive cognitions, others of primitive judgments. But it is doubtful whether Campbell has been able to enunciate the nature of the difference. That he has no clear ideas of the relation of our primary perceptions to realities is evident from his statement. "All the axioms in mathematics are but the enunciations of certain properties in our abstract notions, distinctly perceived by the mind, but have no relation to any thing without themselves, and cannot be made the foundation of any conclusion concerning actual existence; as if the demonstrations of Archimedes as to conic sections had not been found to apply to the elliptic orbits of the comets as discovered by Kepler.

In speaking of deductive evidence, he distinguishes between scientific and moral. 1. "The subject of the one is abstract, independent truth, or the unchangeable and necessary relation of ideas; that of the other, the real but often changeable and contingent connections that subsist among things actually existing." 2. Moral evidence admits degrees, demonstration doth not. 3. In the one there never can be any contrariety of proofs; in the other, there not only may be, but almost always is. 4. The one is simple, consisting of only one coherent series; whereas moral evidence is generally complicated, being in reality a bundle of independent proofs. Under moral reasoning he treats of experience, analogy, testimony, calculation of chances, &c. He discusses the nature and use of the scholastic art of syllogizing. He has no idea of the syllogism being merely an analysis of the process which passes through the mind in all ratiocination. His objections have been satisfactorily answered by Whately.

He has a very interesting chapter on the cause of that pleasure which we receive from objects or representations that excite pity and other painful feelings, criticising the explanations by others, and unfolding one of his own, which is rather complicated. We are not concerned to follow him when he en