displaying your good sense. It will be thought you assume a superiority over the rest of the company. But if you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret, especially from the men, who generally look with a jealous and malignant eye on a woman of great parts and a cultivated understanding."

XXXV. JAMES GREGORY.

JAMES GREGORY, the third of this name, was the son and the successor in the chair of medicine in Edinburgh of John Gregory. He was born in Aberdeen in 1753, and died in 1821. For many years he stood at the head of his profession as a physician in Edinburgh. He published a number of medical works. His "Conspectus Medicinæ Theoretica," written in good Latin, was long used as one of the works on which the candidates for medical degrees were examined. He comes before us as author of "Philosophical and Literary Essays," dated Jan. 1st, 1790, and published 1792. He dedicates the work to Reid, and acknowledges that he had taken a principal argument from one of Reid's observations in the essays on the "Intellectual Powers of Man." The most important essay is "On the difference between the Relation of Motive and Action and that of Cause in Physics, on Physical and Mathematical Principles." In an introduction in which he is long in coming to the point, he dwells on the looseness and ambiguity of the word "cause," and remarks that if "there should be occasion to attend to the more minute or specific differences among the several things comprehended under the genus 'cause,' it would be highly expedient or rather absolutely necessary to give to each of them a specific name, were it only an addition to the generic name cause." He has a glimpse of there being more than one agent involved in cause. "No substance is of itself a physical cause; this depends on its relation to some other substance, and implies the tendency to change in the latter." "The substance in which the change is observed is considered as the subject, the other as the cause; and as change occurs generally in both or all of the substances so related, though it be not always of the same kind in them all, it depends on the circumstance of our attention being directed first and chiefly to one or other of them, and on our opportunities of observing the changes that occur in them, which of them we shall regard as the subject and which as the cause, as in the example of the communication and the loss of motion, of mutual gravitation, of the solution of salt and saturation of water, the melting of ice, or the boiling of water and the absorption of heat." This is a vague anticipation of the doctrine started in our day as to their being two or more agents in all material causation, — a doctrine, I may add, not yet followed out to its consequences in regard to mechanical, chemical, and physiological action. He insists that there is in mind a certain independent self-governing power which there is not in body; in consequence of which there is a great difference between the relation of motive and action and that of cause

and effect in physics; and by means of which a person in all cases may at his own discretion act, either according to or in opposition to any motive or combination of motives applied to him; while body in all cases irresistibly undergoes the change corresponding to the cause or combination of causes applied to it. "I propose to demonstrate the falsity and absurdity of the doctrine of necessity on mathematical principles, in mathematical form, partly by means of algebraic formulæ, partly with the help of diagrams," and he uses mathematical formulæ and others invented by himself. He endeavors to show by an indirect demonstration that the doctrine of necessity must be false, as it leads to false conclusions. He takes the case of a porter carrying a burden: "If a guinea should be offered for carrying it in the direction of A B, and half a guinea for carrying it in the direction A C, and let him be assured that if he can earn the guinea he cannot earn the half guinea, and that if he earn the half guinea he cannot earn the guinea; will he go in the direction of A B or A C, or remain at rest in A?" He answers, that if the principle on which the necessity is founded be true, he must move in the diagonal A D. "But as it must be acknowledged that the porter will not move in that direction, experience proving the fact, then it follows that the law of physical causes and that of motives do not coincide, and that the relation between motives and actions is not necessary as between physical causes and their effects." Dr. Crombie attacked Dr. Gregory's reasoning, Sir W. Hamilton says "with much acrimony and considerable acuteness." There subsequently appeared letters from Dr. James Gregory, of Edinburgh, in defence of his essay on the "Difference of the Relation between Motive and Action and that of Cause and Effect in Physics; with Replies by the Rev. Alexander Crombie, LL.D." London: 1819. "It is much to be regretted that Dr. Gregory did not find leisure to complete his answer to Messrs Crombie, Priestley, and Co., of which five hundred and twelve pages have been printed, but are still unpublished." (Coll. Works of Reid, by Hamilton, p. 87.) We are reminded that the clearest defence by Reid of the doctrine of the freedom of the will is contained in letters to Dr. Gregory, and published in Hamilton's edition of his works. At a time when the Calvinistic faith of Scotland might have led theologians into perilous necessarian doctrines, it was of great moment to have the essential liberty of will (which Calvin never denied) defended by such philosophers as Reid and Gregory.

He was born in Aberdeen in 1760, and lived till 1842. He became a Presbyterian minister in London, and a schoolmaster at Highgate and afterwards at Greenwich. He wrote a number of educational works of value, as "Etymology and Syntax of the English Language," and "Gymnasium sive Symbola Critica." He has two philosophical works, -one on "Philosophical Necessity," dated Newington Green, 1793, and another on Natural Theology," in 1829. In the preface to the first of these works, he tells us

that he was initiated in the principles of moral science by Dr. Beattie; that when he was a student in divinity the question was debated in a theological society, "Is man a free or necessary agent?" that he was then attached to the libertarian system, and continued to be so till he read Priestley's “Illustrations;" and that he was confirmed in the change of view by Hartley's "Observations." He answers Gregory's argument and illustration quoted above: "This demonstration of the essayist's is founded in error. It proceeds on the supposition that the two motives are not directly but indirectly repugnant, which is obviously false; any reconciliation between them being absolutely impossible." "If a guinea is offered to carry a letter ten miles east, and another to carry a letter ten miles south; and if I know I cannot earn both; if I know also that by taking any intermediate road I shall receive nothing, then my situation is precisely the same as if the directions, instead of being eastward and southward, had been to points diamet rically opposite." He admits "that a necessarian, consistently with his principles, cannot feel that remorse which is founded on the conviction that he has acted immorally, and might have acted otherwise; but by the law of his nature he feels pain from that state of mind which is connected with a vicious conduct." "A necessarian should feel no remorse, no painful sentiment for any past action, as he knows it was necessary for general happiness." The opponents of necessity argue that these are the logical consequences of the system, in order to land it in a reductio ad absurdum: but scarcely any of the defenders have allowed this. It is evident that the necessity he expounds is very different from that of Edwards. His work on "Natural Theology" is a clear and judicious one. He argues that no metaphysical argument such as Clarke's, and no metaphysical principle such as Reid's common sense, can of itself prove the existence of God. The question is: "Are or are there not conclusive proofs in the phenomena of nature that they must be productions of an intelligent author?" "Wherever we find order and regularity obtaining, either uniformly or in a vast majority of instances, where the possibilities of disorder are indefinitely numerous, we are justified in inferring from this an intelligent cause." He argues against materialism, and in favor of the immateriality of the

soul

XXXVII. - ARCHIBALD ARTHUR.

He was born at Abbot's Inch in the parish of Renfrew in 1774, and died in 1797. He became assistant and successor to Dr. Reid, in the chair of moral philosophy, in Glasgow. There is a posthumous volume by him, entitled "Discourses on Theological and Literary Subjects," 1803, edited by Professor Richardson, and containing an account of his life. His views do not seem profound or original, but his style is elegant, and he has some good remarks on cause and effect, and on beauty.

He was born in 1744, and died in 1826. He published a little book for the use of his students, - "First Principles of Philosophy, by John Bruce, A.M., Professor of Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh." It reached a second edition in 1781. It consists of mere notes or heads. Logic has a wide enough field: - it is "the comprehensive science which explains the method of discovering and applying the laws of nature." He makes the sources of human knowledge to be sensation, understanding, and consciousness. He has another work, "Elements of the Science of Ethics, on the Principles of Natural Philosophy." He defines the moral faculty as "the power of perceiving the objects which regard the happiness or enjoyments of human nature." If we ask in what the physical law of gravitation consists, the answer is, in the uniformity of the effect in material nature. If we ask in what the moral law consists, the answer is, in the uniformity of the effect "that the observation of rights is the source of enjoyment." Mr. Bruce does not sound the depths of any subject of which he treats.

XXXIX. — REVIEW OF THE CENTURY.

By the close of the century, the fathers and elder sons of the family have passed away from the scene; and we may be profited by taking a glance at the work they have done. The Scottish metaphysicians have had an influence on their country, partly by their writings, but still more by the instruction which they imparted in the colleges to numerous pupils, afterwards filling important offices in various walks of life, and scattered all over the land. I cannot do better here than quote from the chapter in which M. Cousin closes his criticism of Reid. "By his excellencies as well as his defects, Reid represents Scotland in philosophy." "It would be impossible to write a history of Scotland in the last half of the eighteenth century, without meeting everywhere in the numerous and remarkable productions of the Scotch genius of this epoch, the noble spirit which that genius has excited, and which, in its turn, has communicated to it a new force. In face of the authority

of Hume, and despite the attacks of Priestley, the philosophy of common sense spread itself rapidly, from Aberdeen to Glasgow, and from Glasgow to Edinburgh; it penetrates into the universities, among the clergy, into the bar, among men of letters and men of the world; and, without producing a movement so vast as that of the German philosophy, it exercised an influ-. ence of the same kind within narrower limits." We have the testimony of a succession of eminent men, to the effect that the chairs of mental philosophy, taken along with the essaywriting which the professors holding these chairs demanded, exercised a greater influence than any others in the colleges; and sent forth a body of youths capable of thinking, and of expressing their thoughts in a clear and orderly manner. From an old date, a reverence for the Roman law; and, at a later date, the judicial training of many youths in Holland · had given a logical form to the pleadings at the Scottish bar, and the decisions of the bench: and now the philosophy widened the comprehension of the Edinburgh lawyers, and gave to their law papers a philosophical order scarcely to be found in those of England or Ireland.1 The Scottish philosophy never attempted, as the German philosophy did (greatly to the injury of religion), to absorb theology into itself; but keeping to its own field, that of inductive psychology, it allowed the students to follow their own convictions, evangelical or rationalistic, but training all to a habit of skilful arrangement and exposition. It enabled and it led the theological professors to dwell on the relation between the truths of God's Word, and the fundamental principles of human nature; to lay a

1 Not a few of the Edinburgh lawyers wrote philosophical treatises. Thus, "Essays, Moral and Divine," by Sir William Anstruther, of Anstruther, one of the Senators of the College of Justice, 1701. He treats of atheism, providence, learning and religion, trifling studies, stage-plays and romances, incarnation, Jesus Christ, and redemption of mankind. He opposes Locke with some ability, and shows that the idea of a Perfect Being is simple and innate, imprinted on our minds by God in our creation. Then in Sir George Mackenzie's (the bloody Mackenzie) "Works," two vols. folio, 1716, we have an essay on happiness. He shows that nothing without us, not even philosophy, can make us happy, that religion alone can do so. He treats of atheism, of moral gallantry, of the moral history of frugality. He begins with an address to fanatics. He would act the religious stoic, and holds that solitude is to be preferred to public employment. We have also, "Some Thoughts concerning Religion, Natural and Revealed, with Reflections on the Sources of Incredulity with regard to Religion," by Rt. Hon. Duncan Forbes, of Culloden, 1750.