the Scriptures. We are not without fear that polite literature is, in too many instances, supplying the place of a faithful study of divinity, properly so called; that fanciful conjectures are substituted for solid reasoning; that a kind of poetical enthusiasm is mistaken for the ardor of piety; that the impassioned writers of extravagant fiction are preferred to such men as the reformers, and Owen, Baxter, Howe, Charnock and Edwards; that the dreams of a false philanthropy are interposed between the conscience and the terrors of avenging justice; and that worldly science, which, when unperverted, always bears testimony, indirect it may be, but clear and decided, to the divine origin of Christianity, is tortured in opposition to some of its highest, grandest, most transforming principles of faith and duty.

We would earnestly plead with theological teachers and their pupils; with young preachers and with those advanced in age, to see that they are themselves well established in the truth, defending it distinctly, fearlessly, and in the tenderest pity to the souls of their fellow-men; and that, as hastening to the last tribunal, in view of eternal joy or eternal pain, the certain inheritance of every human being, they utter such a voice of warning, expostulation, and entreaty, as will divest the unbeliever of every excuse, and, by the blessing of God, rouse a slumbering world.

Let Associations, Ecclesiastical Councils, and Presbyteries, remember their responsibility, in introducing co-laborers into the vineyard of the Lord. "Lay hands suddenly on no man." Excessive caution here, though not to be approved, is yet far less dangerous than the opposite extreme, which has been the source of immeasurable evils in all past ages of the Christian church, and menaces the present peace of some communities among us, that were once flourishing in all the beauties of holiness. Wo to those, to whom the admonitions of history afford no needed lessons of instruction and alarm.

ART. VII.-HAMILTON'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE.

By Prof. HENRY B. SMITH.

Reid's Collected Writings. Preface, Notes, and Supplementary Dissertations. By Sir WILLIAM HAMILTON, Bart., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. 3d ed. 1852.

Discussions in Philosophy, Literature, etc. By Sir WILLIAM HAMILTON. New-York. 1853.

Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic. By Sir WILLIAM HAMILTON. Edited by Rev. H. L. MANSEL, and JOHN VEITCH. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. Metaphysics. 1859. Vol. II. Logic. 1860. Pp. 738, 751. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

In the excellent and convenient Boston edition of the Lectures of Sir William Hamilton, we have the philosophical legacy of the ablest representative of the Scottish school of philosophy, and of one of the most illustrious thinkers of the nineteenth century. Incomplete as he has left many of his works, they yet give abundant evidence of that logical acuteness, firm grasp of thought, and historical learning on recondite themes, which have made his name famous. His new Analytic is not fully developed; but his Lectures on Logic are the most complete treatise on that subject in English literature. His Philosophy of the Conditioned is not systematically unfolded; but its principles are laid down in a distinct and definite manner, and in sharp contrast with the German speculations. His Notes to Reid's Collected Writings are a store-house of acute criticism, and multifarious and precise learning, and have made Reid's works to have a double value; few authors find such an editor. His articles in the Edinburgh Review on metaphysical subjects, accomplished a work to which hardly a parallel can be found in periodical literature. They made all

England conscious of the philosophical relation of the Scotch to the continental schools. When others were dumb with amazement or trepidation in view of the transcendental schemes of Teutonic speculation, this intrepid and acute thinker presented himself within the lists, and threw down the gauntlet against all comers-to vindicate, on philosophical grounds, the philosophy of common sense in face of the proud pretensions of the philosophy of the absolute. His name and fame, in the annals of philosophy, are identified with this work. Besides this, as a teacher of philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, he revived the study of logic and metaphysics at a time when logic was neglected and metaphysics every where spoken against; and he created an enthusiastic school, which has able advocates in England and America, as well as in Scotland. His system has now become a part of the history of philosophy; and it deserves to be studied, not only because he was one of the most vigorous of thinkers, but because his speculations bear upon the relation between the Scotch and the German schools, and enter into the very heart of the controversy between philosophy and faith.

The events of Sir William Hamilton's outward life were few and simple; nor are his published works voluminous in comparison with those of most of the great thinkers. He was born in Glasgow, March 8, 1788, a descendant of a noble family. In the university of Glasgow, he stood first in philosophy. Becoming a student in Oxford (Baliol College), he there attained an unrivalled knowledge of the ancient systems. As a candidate for honors in 1812, he professed himself ready to be examined upon all the extant works of Greek and Roman philosophy-Plato, Aristotle, the New-Platonists, etc. With the chief scholastic systems, and the works of Descartes and Leibnitz, he was already familiar. He began the practice of law; but general learning was his chosen field. His first contribution to philosophy was a series of papers against the phrenological hypotheses of Combe, read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1826, the fruit of a minute investigation of craniological facts. In 1829 appeared his first elaborate metaphysical article, against Cousin and all the Germans, pro

nouncing the philosophy of the Absolute to be an hallucination; and laying down his fundamental position, that our ideas of the Infinite and Absolute are negative, the product of an im becility of the mind. In 1830, in the Edinburgh Review, he published an essay on the Philosophy of Perception, reducing Reid's doctrine to a more definite statement, and severely criticising the philosophy of Brown. In 1833 he wrote his article on Logic, exposing the inaccuracies of Whately, and other writers, and showing a marvellous acquaintance with the literature of the subject. In these three articles, the fundamental positions of his philosophy are already stated. His system was matured; and he was prepared to enter upon the post of Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, to which he was chosen, not without a hard struggle, in 1836. Sixteen years before he had been an unsuccessful candidate for the professorship of Moral Philosophy, to succeed Dr. Brown - John Wilson being elected in his stead. He addressed himself with ardor to his new office, and in two years wrote out his courses on Metaphysics and Logic, in substance as now published. This great task could only have been performed on the basis of such a preparation as he had made in almost all departments of learning. He infused a new spirit into the lecture-room, and trained his students to independent thought: "On earth there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind"—was the motto, which each one saw on entering his class. He was now in the fulness of his mental vigor; and began at once an edition of Reid's works, first published in 1846, and not yet completed, breaking off in the midst of a note. The Supplementary Dissertations gave a new phase to the philosophy of common sense, and illustrated it with prodigal learning.

In these Dissertations, and in the articles already referred to in the Edinburgh Review, we find the height of his speculative development; what is added in the notes to his Lectures is chiefly in the way of explanation and defence. His metaphysical system, as such, was never fully carried out. The most of an attempt in this direction, is perhaps found in the Appendix to his Discussions on the "Conditions of the Thinkable

Systematized; an Alphabet of Human Thought." His general theory of knowledge is there applied to the principle of Causality, as it had been to the Infinite and Absolute. The same work contains all his other chief papers-on Collier's Idealism; on the Study of Mathematics, rating it below logic as a mental discipline; a series of articles on Education, in which the abuses of the English system are unsparingly exposed; a thorough discussion of the authorship of the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, etc. But with all his vast learning, dialectic skill, and critical sagacity, he has left us only fragments of the system which he intended to rear. Parts of the edifice are complete; the whole is incomplete; and the architect is no more. It may be, that on his principles, the task was superhuman. On moral philosophy, we find only a few scattered hints; æsthetics, as a science, he never seems to have studied; of metaphysics, as distinct from psychology, he does not give any clear conception; to the philosophy of history, there is scarcely an allusion in all his works; on the relation between philosophy and faith, a topic to which all his speculations seemed inevitably to lead him, there are only the most general and indefinite statements. Where he speaks of theological points with confidence, it is usually apparent, that he had not made them matters of thorough study. Nothing can be more incorrect, e. g., than his strong statements about the Assurance of Faith, as being the essence of the Protestant doctrine; and on the relation of freedom and decrees, he does not get beyond the commonplaces of popular instruction. And, in fact, on the general principles of Hamilton's system, as we may see in the course of the discussion, it is well nigh impossible to construct a science, either of ethics, or of theology; for absolute right and absolute being are to him simply inconceivable; and all that can remain in either department is a body of practical and regulative truths, but not a science,

*

* See the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, October, 1856, for a thorough refutation of Sir William's misconceptions and misstatements on this point. He even went so far as to say, that the doctrine of assurance being abandoned, there remained only a verbal dispute about justification between Roman Catholics and Protestants.