and Germany, do indeed profess to attend to observation, but it is after the manner of the empiricists, described by Bacon as beginning with experience, but immediately abandoning it for premature hypotheses. It will be seen, as we advance, that Kant followed the critical and not the inductive method. Hutcheson and Turnbull, and especially Reid and Stewart, have the credit of announcing unambiguously, that the human mind is to be studied exclusively by the method of observation, and of consistently employing this mode of procedure in all their investigations.

LL. It employs self-consciousness as the instrument of observation. It may thus be distinguished from some other schools with which it has been confounded. Bacon, we have seen, did believe in the applicability of his method to all the mental sciences. But he had no clear apprehension of the agency by which the observation is to be accomplished; he supposed it to be by "the history and tables concerning anger, fear, modesty, the memory, composition, division, judgment, and the like." In respect of the means of observation, philosophy is greatly indebted to Descartes, who taught men, in studying the human mind, to seize on great internal ideas. The questions started by Locke, and his mode of settling them, tend towards the same issue; he dwells fondly on reflection as the alone source of the ideas which we have of the workings of the human mind, and ever appeals to the internal sense as an arbiter in discussions as to the origin of ideas. But the Scottish philosophers took a step in advance of any of their predecessors, inasmuch as they professed to draw all the laws of mental philosophy indeed, their whole systems - from the observations of consciousness.

By this feature they are at once distinguished from those who would construct a science of the human mind from the observation of the brain or nerves, or generally from animal physiology. Not indeed that the Scottish philosophy is required, by its manner or its principles, to reject the investigation of the functions of the bodily frame, as fitted to throw light on mental action. Certain of the masters of the school, such as Reid, Brown, and Hamilton, were well acquainted with physiology in its latest discoveries in their day, and carefully employed their knowledge to illustrate the operations of the human mind.

There is nothing in the method, or the spirit, or the cherished. doctrines of the school tending to discountenance or disparage a painstaking experimental investigation of the parts of the bodily frame most intimately connected with mental action. Possibly the next great addition may be made to psychology, when internal observation of the thoughts and feelings, and external observation of the brain and nerves and vital forces, are in circumstances to combine their lights. But in the days of the great masters of the Scottish school, physiology was not in a state, nor is it yet in a position, to furnish much aid in explaining mental phenomena. The instrument employed by them was the internal sense; and they always maintained that it is only by it that we can reach an acquaintance with mind proper and its various operations, and that the knowledge acquired otherwise must ever be regarded as subordinate and subsidiary. They might have admitted that the occasion of the production, and the modifications of our mental states, could so far be influenced by the cerebro-spinal mass, or the forces operating in it; but they strenuously maintained that we can know what our perceptions, and judgments, and feelings, and wishes, and resolves, and moral appreciations are, not by the senses or the microscope, not by chemical analysis, or the estimation of the vital forces, but solely through our inward experience revealed by consciousness.

But let us properly understand what the Scottish school intend when they maintain that a science of the human mind can be constructed only by immediate consciousness. They do not mean that the study of the mind can be prosecuted in no other way than by looking in for ever on the stream of thought as it flows on without interruption. The operation of introspection is felt to be irksome in the extreme if continued for any length of time, and will certainly be abandoned when thought is rapid or feeling is intense; and those who trust to it exclusively are apt to fix their attention on a few favorite mental states, and omit many others no less characteristic of the human mind. He who would obtain an adequate and comprehensive view of our complex mental nature must not be satisfied with occasional glances at the workings of his own soul: he must take a survey of the thoughts and feelings of others so far as he can gather them from their deeds and from their words; from the

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acts of mankind generally, and of individual men, women, and children; from universal language as the expression of human cogitation and sentiment; and from the commerce we hold with our fellow-men by conversation, by writing, or by books. Reid in particular is ever appealing to men's actions and language, as a proof that there must be certain principles, beliefs, and affections in the mind. Still this evidence ever carries us back to consciousness, as after all both the primary witness and the final judge of appeal; as it is only by it, and by what has passed through our own minds, that we can come to discern and appreciate the feelings of our brother men.1

III. By the observations of consciousness, principles are reached which are prior to and independent of experience. This is another grand characteristic of the school, distinguishing it, on the one hand, from empiricism and sensationalism; and, on the other hand, from the dogmatism and a priori speculation of all ages and countries. It agrees with the former in holding that we can construct a science of mind only by observation, and out of the facts of experience; but then it separates from them, inasmuch as it resolutely maintains that we can discover principles which are not the product of observation and experience, and which are in the very constitution of the mind, and have there the sanction of the Author of our nature. These are somewhat differently apprehended and described by the masters of the school, some taking a deeper and others a more superficial view of them. Hutcheson calls them senses, and finds them in the very constitution of the mind. Reid designates them principles of common sense, and represents them as being natural, original, and necessary. Stewart characterizes them as fundamental laws of human thought and belief. Brown makes them intuitions simple and original. Hamilton views them under a great many aspects, but seems

1 Mr. Buckle, in his "History of Civilization," vol. ii., professes a deep acquaintance with the Scottish metaphysicians of last century, who are represented by him as proceeding in the deductive, and not in the inductive, method. He adds, that in Scotland "men have always been deductive." But Mr. B. was never able to understand the difference between the method of deduction on the one hand, and the method of induction with consciousness as the agent of observation, on the other: the former derives consequences by reasoning from principles, the latter reaches principles by internal observation. That his whole views on this subject were confused is evident, from the circumstance that he represents women as proceeding (like Scotchmen) by deduction!

to contemplate them most frequently and fondly after the manner of Kant, as a priori forms or conditions. But whatever minor or major differences there may be in the fulness of their exposition, or in the favorite views which they individually. prefer, all who are truly of the Scottish school agree in maintaining that there are laws, principles, or powers in the mind anterior to any reflex observation of them, and acting independently of the philosophers' classification or explanation of them. While the Scottish school thus far agrees with the rational and a priori systems, it differs from them most essentially, in refusing to admit any philosophic maxims except such laws or principles as can be shown by self-inspection to be in the very constitution of the mind. It has always looked with doubt, if not suspicion, on all purely abstract and rational discussions, such as that by which Samuel Clarke demonstrated the existence of God; and its adherents have commonly discountenanced or opposed all ambitious a priori systems, such as those which were reared in imposing forms in Germany in the end of last, and the beginning of the present, century.

These three characters are found, in a more or less decided form, in the works of the great masters of the school. I am not sure indeed whether they have been formally announced by all, nor whether they have always been consistently followed out. I allow that the relation of the three principles one to another, and their perfect congruity and consistency, have not always been clearly discerned or accurately expressed. In In particular, I am convinced that most of the Scottish metaphysicians have not clearly seen how it is that we must ever proceed in mental science by observation, while there are at the same time in the mind laws superior to and independent of observation; how it is that while there are a priori principles in the mind, it is yet true that we cannot construct a philosophy by a priori speculation. But with these explanations and deductions, it may be maintained that the characters specified are to be found, either announced or acted on, in the pages of all the writers of the school, from Hutcheson to Hamilton. Whenever they are discovered in the works of persons connected with Scotland, the writers are to be placed among the adherents of the school. Wherever there is the total absence of any one of them, we cannot allow the author a place in the fraternity.

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× The Scottish metaphysicians and moralists have left their impress on their own land, not only on the ministers of religion, and through them upon the body of the people, but also on the whole thinking mind of the country. The chairs of mental science in the Scottish colleges have had more influence than any others in germinating thought in the minds of Scottish youth, and in giving a permanent bias and direction to their intellectual growth. We have the express testimony of a succession of illustrious men for more than a century, to the effect that it was Hutcheson, or Smith, or Reid, or Beattie, or Stewart, or Jardine, or Mylne, or Brown, or Chalmers, or Wilson, or Hamilton, who first made them feel that they had a mind, and stimulated them to independent thought. We owe it to the lectures and writings of the professors of mental science, acting always along with the theological training and preaching of the country, that men of ability in Scotland have commonly been more distinguished by their tendency to inward reflection. than inclination to sensuous observation. Nor is it to be omitted that the Scottish metaphysicians have written the English language, if not with absolute purity, yet with propriety and taste, some of them, indeed, with elegance and eloquence, and have thus helped to advance the literary cultivation of the country. All of them have not been men of learning in the technical sense of the term, but they have all been well informed in various branches 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,