The Scottish metaphysicians and moralists have left their impression 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, {9} and an active philosophic school at Oxford has built on the foundation laid b Hamilton.The United States of America especially the writers connected with the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches, have felt pleasure in acknowledging-, their obligations to the Scottish thinkers.It is a most interesting circumstance, that when the higher metaphysicians of France undertook, in the beginning of this century, the laborious work of throwing back the tide of materialism, scepticism, and atheism which had swept over the land, they called to their aid the sober and well-grounded philosophy of Scotland.Nor is it an unimportant fact in the history of philosophy, that the great German metaphysician, Emmanuel Kant, was roused, as he acknowledges, from his dogmatic slumbers by the scepticism of David Hume.
But the great merit of the Scottish philosophy lies in the large body of truth which it has -- if not discovered --at least settled on a foundation which can never be moved.
It has added very considerably to our knowledge of the human mind, bringing out to view the characteristics of mental as distinguished from material action; throwing light on perception through the senses; offering valuable observations on the intellectual powers, and on the association of ideas; furnishing, if not ultimate, yet very useful provisional classifications of the mental faculties;unfolding many of the peculiarities of man's moral and emotional nature, of his conscience, and of his taste for the beautiful; resolving many complex mental phenomena into their elements; throwing aside by its independent research a host of traditional errors which had been accumulating for ages; and, above all, establishing certain primary truths as a foundation on which to rear other truths, and as a breakwater to resist the assaults of scepticism.
In comparing it with other schools, we find that the transcendental speculators of Germany have started discussions which they cannot settle, and followed out their principles to extravagant consequences, which are a <reductio ad absurdum> of the whole method on which they proceed.Again, the physiologists have failed to furnish any explanation of consciousness, of thought, of moral approbation, or of any other peculiar mental quality.
Meanwhile, the philosophy of consciousness has coordinated many facts, ascertained many mental laws, {10} explained many curious phenomena of our inward experience, and established a body of intuitive truths.By its method of careful observation, and by it alone, can the problems agitated in the rival <a priori> schools be solved, so far as they can be solved by the human faculties.Whatever aid physiological research as it advances may furnish to psychology, it must always be by the study, not of the brain, and nerves, and vital forces, but of our conscious operations, that a philosophy of the human mind is to be constructed.Whether the Scottish philosophy is to proceed exclusively in its old method, and go on co-ordinating facts with ever-increasing care, and expressing them with greater and greater precision, or whether it is to borrow from other schools, -- say to resolve in its own way the questions started by Schelling and Hegel, or to call in physiology to account for the rise of mental states, -- it is at least desirable that we should now have a combined view of what has been accomplished by the philosophy of consciousness.
This is what is attempted in this work.
It should be freely admitted that the Scottish school has not discovered all truth, nor even all discoverable truth, in philosophy; that it does not pretend to have done so is one of its excellencies, proceeding from the propriety of its method and the modesty of its character.Among the writings of the Scottish school, it is only in those of Sir William Hamilton that we find some of the profoundest problems of philosophy, such as the conditions of human knowledge and the idea of the infinite discussed; and the majority of the genuine adherents of the school are inclined to think that on these subjects his conclusions are too bare and negative, and that he has not reached the full truth.
Reid and Stewart are ever telling us that they have obtained only partial glimpses of truth, and that a complete science of the human mind is to be achieved solely by a succession of inquirers prosecuting the investigation through a series of ages.Brown and Hamilton make greater pretensions to success in erecting complete systems, but this is one of the defects of these great men, arising, as we shall see, from their departing from the genuine Scottish method, and adopting, so far, other and continental modes of philosophizing, the one betaking himself to the empirical analysis of the French sensational school, and the other adopting the critical method {11} of Kant; and it is to be said in behalf of Brown, that he never mounts into a re.-lion of cloudy speculation; and in favor of Hamilton, that his most vigorous efforts were employed in showing how little can be known by man.All the great masters of the school not only admit, but are at pains to show, that there are mysteries in the mind of man, and in every department of human speculation, which they cannot clear up.This feature has tempted some to speak of the whole school with contempt, as doing little because attempting little.They have been charged with their country's sin of caution, and the national reproach of poverty has been unsparingly cast upon them.Let them not deny, let them avow, that the charge is just.Let them acknowledge that they have proceeded in time past in the patient method of induction, and announce openly, and without shame, that they mean to do so in time to come.Let it be their claim, that if they have not discovered all truth, they have discovered and settled some truth -- while they have not promulgated much error, or wasted their strength in rearing showy fabrics, admired in one age and taken down the next.It is the true merit of Scotchmen that, without any natural advantages of soil or climate, they have carefully cultivated their land, and made it yield a liberal produce, and that they have been roused to activity, and stimulated to industry, by their very poverty.Let it, in like manner, be the boast of the Scottish philosophy, that it has made profitable use of the materials at its disposal, and that it has by patience and shrewdness succeeded in establishing a body of fundamental truth, which can never be shaken, but which shall stand as a bulwark in philosophy, morals, and theology, as long as time endures.
