the rights of person and property, or what is termed jurisprudence, (b) rectitude of actions, or what is termed morals, (c) politics, or duties domestic and public.

3. Mind in its absolute form, as belonging not to the individual but the race, comprising in its several stages of development, (a) art or æsthetics, (b) religion, (c) philosophy.

Such is the single brief outline of the complete system of philosophy as marked out by Hegel.

With regard to revealed religion, Hegel carries his system fully out in the explanation of the leading doctrines of revelation, making a complete rational theology. The personality of God in our sense of the word, is not admitted, however; for God is the absolute, and to make the absolute a person would be a contradiction in terms. He is not a person, but rather the absolute, total personality, as realized in every individual mind and consciousness of man. The Trinity finds its rational explanation by his threefold law. The Father is pure thought and selfexistence. The Son is this pure thought, or existence, objectified, manifest in the flesh. The Spirit is the reunion of the two. Redemption is the reunion of man's spirit, as individualized, with the Spirit of eternal truth. By faith we become mystically one with God, members of his spiritual body.

The great contest of Hegelianism has been a theological contest, questions of this nature absorbing every other in the system. The followers of Hegel are themselves divided in opinion on these questions.

The right, the centre, and the left, as these divisions are termed, hold views widely divergent from each other. The right is the least rationalistic-regards our religious consciousness, our intuitive perceptions of religious truth, as of equal validity and authority with the deductions of reason. Of this class are Gabler, Erdmann and others. The centre makes these religious feelings and intuitions of secondary importance, uses them to illustrate the logical

conclusions of reason-no more. nore. Rosenkrans and Marheineke are of this class. The left discards these entirely, is purely pantheistic and rational. Of this class are Strauss, Bauer, Feuerbach. The results of this rationalism have been disastrous in the extreme. It were unfair, however, to charge these results upon Hegel himself, or even upon his philosophy as a system, for many most excellent and evangelical men have been firm adherents of that philosophy. Its tendencies, however, and its final results have been most pernicious in Germany and on the continent.

The lectures of Hegel were published after his deathaccording to his desire-by some of his most distinguished pupils, and they have also done much to defend and illustrate the system, but it is now on the wane, and what will be the next type of German philosophy is known only to him who knows the future.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE RECENT PHILOSOPHY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Two opposing schools may just now be said to be disputing the empire of British thought; that of the Scotch philosophy, as represented by Sir William Hamilton, and that of the positive, or as it is often termed the material philosophy, as represented by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, as also by Bain, Maudsley, Huxley and others of that class, men of great learning and industry, devoted chiefly to scientific pursuits.

§ 1. SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY.

This most distinguished of modern metaphysicians was born in Glasgow in 1788. He was educated at Baliol College, Oxford; in 1821 appointed Professor of History in the University of Edinburgh, and in 1836 called to the

chair of Logic and Metaphysics in the same institution, which position he held till his death in 1856. He first attracted the attention of the philosophic world by a brilliant and searching review of the philosophy of Cousin, which appeared in the Edinburgh Review in October, 1829, and which drew from Cousin himself the highest encomium. This was followed in the succeeding year by an article in the same magazine on the philosophy of perception; and three years after by the famous review of Whateley and the English logicians. His fame as a critic and philosophical writer were now fully established. No one can peruse either of these articles and not be struck with these two things, the distinguishing peculiarities of Sir William Hamilton, as shown in all his writings,-his immense erudition, which seems to have laid the whole world of learning under contribution, and his remarkable power of analysis. The most subtle and perplexed problems of thought seem to resolve themselves at once into their simple elements before his clear and searching glance. With these qualities. he combines a precision and elegance of style, that command the admiration of the reader. Cousin pronounces him "the greatest critic of our age; " (Fragmens Philosophiques); and M. Persse, the French translator of his principal essays, says of him "there is not perhaps in Europe a man who possesses a knowledge so complete and so minute, so profound an understanding of the books, the systems, the philosophers of Germany." (Fragmens de Philosophie par Sir W. Hamilton.)

In personal appearance, Hamilton was dignified and commanding-I speak from recollection of him as seen at his house in High-King street, Edinburgh, in 1854, two years before his death-in stature somewhat above ordinary, and with a countenance at once prepossessing and impressive. That lofty brow and that repose of manner seemed to indicate a kingly soul conscious of its power; while yet

a genuine modesty and Christian humility marked all his deportment.

As the

A glance at the prevalent philosophy of Europe at the time when Hamilton came upon the stage may enable us the better to estimate his position and his influence. At the close of the last and the beginning of the present century, as we have seen, the philosophy of Locke, as carried out by Condillac in France, and, as to its general principles, by Hume in England, had led in its prevalence to results which at once awakened and alarmed the public mind, both in Great Britain and on the Continent. result there came naturally, almost necessarily, a reaction. Kant in Germany, and Reid in Scotland, working quite independently of each other, but with the same spirit and to the same end, had laid the foundations of a different philosophy. The fame of the former already, at his death, in 1804, filled all Europe; while the works of the latter, though less famous, philosopher, as edited by Jouffroy and advocated by Royer Collard, in France, were exerting no inconsiderable influence on the Continent, as well as in England. Such were the influences prevalent in the philosophic world at the time when Hamilton was first turning his attention to the great problems which in all ages have profoundly exercised the human mind. Fichte had followed Kant; Schelling and Hegel were just coming into notice; Cousin in France was attracting the gay and pleasure-loving Parisians by thousands to his eloquent expositions. At this juncture appeared the articles in the Edinburgh Review, of which I have already spoken, and which indicated the rising of a new star of the first magnitude on the philosophic horizon.

In the main Sir William Hamilton may be said to be a disciple of Reid and the Scotch school; yet not more a disciple of Reid in reality than of Kant; and not more of either than of Aristotle. These three were his chief masters, while he sat also at the feet of all antiquity. It is

to be regretted that he left no work in which his own system is fully and methodically developed. His lectures on metaphysics, designed for the class room, and written, currente calamo, often on the night preceding their delivery, never subsequently rewritten, nor even revised for publication by the author, but given to the public since his death, cannot, valuable as they are, be regarded as the results of his mature and later thought, but rather of his earlier and cruder speculations. His dissertations appended. to his edition of the works of Reid, contain his more elaborate statements; yet even in these most admirable essays his doctrines are rather indicated than fully and systematically developed.

In common with the great body of modern philosophers Hamilton adopts the threefold division of the powers of the mind into intellect, sensibility, and will; classing, however, the desires with the will under the head of conative powers. Consciousness he regards, not as a distinct faculty of the mind, but as involved in all intelligence, and the basis of all. We are conscious, he holds, not of self alone, but of the external world as well, of the non-ego just as really as of the ego. Attention, he regards as a mere modification of consciousness; the voluntary direction of consciousness to a particular object. He does not, however, make consciousness co-extensive with knowledge, or with all our mental states and operations, but holds that there are modifications of mind which do not come within the sphere of consciousness, latent states and operations of which we are not cognizant except in their effects. This unconscious mental activity, he maintains, shows itself in our acquired habits, as the knowledge of a language or a science which we are not at the moment making use of; in acquisitions of former years, which though long since passed out of the recollection come back to consciousness in certain abnormal states, as in delirium, somnambulism, and the like; and also in the operations of the senses