of conscience in the human constitution, is either altogether unknown in Germany, or referred to by such writers as Tholuck only to show that he is not understood or appreciated. The only Scottish metaphysician thoroughly known in Germany is David Hume. Reid is occasionally spoken of, only to be disparaged in his system and its results. Stewart is scarcely ever named. I must be allowed to regret this. Such a body of carefully inducted fundamental truth as we have in the philosophy of Reid and Stewart is precisely what was and is needed to preserve thought from the extravagances of the transcendental schools in the last age, and now, in the natural recoil which has taken place, since 1848, from the tide of materialism which is setting in so strongly, and with no means or method of meeting it. The philosophy of Germany must ever go by oscillations, by actions and reactions, till the critical method of Kant is abandoned, and the inductive method is used to determine the rule and law of those a priori principles of which so much use is made, while there has been so little careful inquiry into their precise nature and mode of operation.

This may be the proper place for referring to the relation in. which Stewart stood toward Kant. I have already expressed my regret that Stewart should have entered on a criticism of Kant without a deeper acquaintance with his system. No doubt it might be retorted, that the criticisms of Stewart upon Kant are not more ignorant and foolish than those of the disciples of Kant upon Reid; but it is better to admit that Stewart committed a blunder in his review of the Kantian system. Some have supposed that, if he had known more of Kant, he would have formed a totally different opinion of his philosophy. And I admit that a further acquaintance with Kant's works would have raised Kant in his estimation; would have kept him from describing his nomenclature as "jargon," and his philosophy as "incomprehensible," from affirming that Kant has "thrown no new light on the laws of the intellectual world;" would have shown him many curious points of correspondence between the views of Kant and the profoundest of his own doctrines, and have enabled him, when he did depart from Kant, to give fair and valid reasons, and thus to help in what must be one of the tasks of philosophy in this age, the work of taking from Kant what is good and true, and casting away

what is evil, because false. While I admit all this, I am convinced at the same time that Stewart would never have given an adhesion to the peculiarities of Kantism. He would have said, "My method of induction is better than your method of criticism, and my account of the intuitive convictions of the mind is correct when I represent them as fundamental laws of thought and belief; whereas you are giving a wrong account of them when you represent them as a priori forms imposing on the objects in all cognition something which is not in the objects." I cannot conceive him, in any circumstances, allowing to Kant (as Hamilton unfortunately did) that space and time and causation are laws of thought and not of things, and may have merely a subjective existence. His caution, his good sense, and his careful observation, would have prevented him from ever falling into a system of nescience such as that to which the relentless logic of Hamilton has carried him, founding, I acknowledge, on premises which Stewart as well as Kant had furnished. He would have adhered, after knowing all, to his decision: We are irresistibly led to ascribe to the thing itself (space) an existence independent of the will of any being." It is an "incomprehensible doctrine which denies the objective reality of time." "That space is neither a substance, nor an accident, nor a relation, may be safely granted; but it does not follow from this that it is nothing objective." "Our first idea of space or extension seems to be formed by abstracting this attribute from the other qualities of matter. The idea of space, however, in whatever manner formed, is manifestly accompanied with an irresistible conviction that space is necessarily existent, and that its annihilation is impossible," etc. He adds, "To call this proposition in question, is to open a door to universal scepticism." (" Diss.,” pp. 596, 597.)

The great work which the school of Reid has done consists in its careful investigation, in the inductive manner first, of the faculties of the mind; and, secondly, and more particularly, of man's primary and intuitive convictions. For this they ought to be honored in all time. Kant did a work similar to this last, but in a different manner. Rejecting (as Reid had done) the combined dogmatic and deductive method of Descartes, he introduced the critical method, affirming that reason can criticise itself, and proceeding to criticise reason by a kind of

logical process of a most unsatisfactory kind. Criticism has succeeded criticism, each new critic taking a new standing-point, or advancing a step farther, till Hegel's system became the reductio ad absurdum of the whole method of procedure inaugurated by Kant. I admit that Kant was right in affirming that a priori principles should be examined before they are assumed in philosophical investigation. We are not at liberty to assume a first truth till we have shown it to be a first truth; and we have no right to use it in argument or deduction till we have determined its precise nature and law; but this is to be done, I maintain, in the inductive manner, with its accompanying analysis and exclusions. The Scottish school commenced this work, but they do not profess to have completed it. Stewart everywhere proclaims that it is to be done by the combined efforts of successive inquirers, pursuing the same method for

ages.

Reid and Stewart nowhere profess to give a full list, or even a rigid classification, of the intuitive convictions of the mind. All that they affirm is, that those principles which they have seized for the purpose of meeting the scepticism of Hume, are and must be intuitive. They do not even pretend to give a full account of these, or to express them in their ultimate form. They vacillate in the account which they give of them, and in the nomenclature which they employ to denote them. They draw no definite distinction between cognitions, beliefs, and judgments. They treat of the faculties, and also of the principles of common sense, but they do not tell us how the two stand related to each other. And here I may be permitted to observe, that I look on these fundamental laws as being the necessary laws of the faculties regulating all their exercises, but not as laws or principles before the consciousness; and they are to be reflexly discovered as general laws only by the induction of their individual acts. Reid and Stewart do not even tell us what are the tests by which their presence may be detected: these I hold to be, first, as Aristotle and Locke have shown, self-evidence; and, second, as Leibnitz and Kant have shown, necessity and universality. Such defects as these they were quite willing to confess in that spirit of modesty which was one of their highest characteristics; and to any one complaining that they had not settled every point, they would,

as it were, say, Go on in the path which we have opened; we are sure that there is more truth yet to be discovered, and rejoice we must and will if you succeed where we have failed and raise a little higher that fabric of which we have laid the foundation.

XLI.—WILLIAM LAWRENCE BROWN.

IN 1785, Mr. Burnett, a merchant in Aberdeen, bequeathed certain sums to be expended at intervals of forty years in the shape of two premiums for the best works furnishing "evidence that there is a Being, all powerful, wise, and good, by whom every thing exists: and particularly to obviate difficulties regarding the wisdom and goodness of the Deity; and this, in the first place, from considerations independent of written revelation, and, in the second place, from the revelation of the Lord Jesus, and from the whole to point out inferences most necessary for and useful to mankind." This endowment has not called forth any one great work; but, on each of the two occasions on which it has been competed for, it has been the means of publishing two excellent treatises. On the first competition, the first prize was awarded to Principal Brown of Aberdeen, and the second to the Rev. John Bird Sumner, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr. Brown was born at Utrecht, 1755, and became minister of the Scotch church there. He removed to Scotland in 1795, became professor of divinity in Aberdeen, and afterwards principal of Marischal College. He lived till 1830. When in Holland he wrote an "Essay on the Folly of Scepticism." His Burnett Prize Essay, "On the Existence of a Supreme Creator," was given to the world in 1816. The work did not produce much impression in its own age, and is now all but forgotten. People wonder that so large a sum (upwards of £1,200) did not call forth a more brilliant production; but the truth is, that money cannot produce an original work, which can come only from the spontaneous thoughts of the man of genius, that prize essays are commonly respectably good and nothing more, and, while they may serve a good purpose in their own day, are seldom valued as a legacy by posterity. The book is in many respects the perfection of a prize essay. It conforms rigidly to the conditions imposed by the donor; it is supremely judicious; it did not startle the judges by any eccentricity or even novelty, and certainly not by any profundity; and altogether is a clear and able defence of natural and revealed religion. It interests us to notice that the principles of the Scottish philosophy are here employed to support the great truths relating to the being of God and the destiny of man.

XLII. · ARCHIBALD ALISON.

He was born in Edinburgh in 1757, studied at Glasgow University, went thence to Oxford, where he matriculated in Baliol College. Taking orders in the Church of England in 1784, he received several preferments; such as, a prebendal stall in Salisbury, and the perpetual curacy of Kenley in Shropshire. He married a daughter of John Gregory, and thus became more closely identified with Edinburgh, where he continued usually to reside, and where he discharged the duties of an Episcopal clergyman in the Cowgate chapel from the year 1800 down to the time of his death in 1839. He was distinguished for his excessive politeness. He published a volume of sermons, which had the good fortune (or the bad, for the “Edinburgh" had never a great reputation as a critic of sermons) to get a laudatory notice in the Edinburgh Review, where they were compared to the "Oraisons Funèbres" of Bossuet, and it was said of them: "We do not know any sermons so pleasing or so likely to be popular, and do good to those who are pleased with them. All the feelings are generous and gentle, all the sentiments liberal, and all the general views just and ennobling." But the work which lives is "Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste," which was published in 1790, but seems to have passed very much out of sight till the booksellers in 1810 told him that there was a wish expressed for the second edition, which was reviewed by Francis Jeffrey in 1811, and afterwards had an extensive circulation in various countries.

The arrangement and manner of the work are admirable. The style is distinguished by infinite grace, and is worthy of being compared to that of Addison: - indeed I am not sure if we have a more beautiful specimen of the last-century manner of composition, moulded on the "Spectator," on the French classics, and the wits of Queen Anne. Every word is appropriate, and is in its appropriate place; and the sentences glide along like a silvery stream. The descriptions of natural scenery, which are very numerous, are singularly felicitous and graceful: that word graceful ever comes up when we would describe his manner. He does not seem to have had an equal opportunity