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tainment of most of the ends of life, artistic rather than scientific knowledge is necessary, and no individual is more likely to be subject to irresolution and exposed to illusion than he from whose mind all the blind and irrational principles of action, which are meant to supplement reason, have been extracted, by the power of the habit of philosophizing, and who submits to the influence only of motives which are regulated by pure intelligence. Without the gravitation of forces such as those we have indicated, the spirit of unmixed speculation would (unless in the case of a genius of extraordinary strength) quit its hold of the lower and more palpable departments of universal knowledge, and find sufficient occupation among the most abstract, and general relations of things. Contemplating the frame-work which contains knowledge more than the knowledge which the frame-work contains, the mind is apt to lose a direct acquaintance with the actual and the individual, in the splendid theory of the possible.

The world of speculative reason differs from the actual world of living men, for man, as he is, differs from man as he ought to be. Philosophical theories are the nourishment of the purely rational principle; but they tend, unless the influence is counteracted by strength of mind, and an attentive experience of the infinite variety of the existing modifications of the instincts, affections, and other irrational causes of action, to deaden, or at least to distort, the keen perception of the common mechanism of man's practical nature; and they may in this way expose the retired student of abstract metaphysics, like the astronomer of Rasselas who fancied that he ruled the stars, to the influence of ludicrous, or even of dangerous illusions, in the conduct of life, and in intercourse with living men. The machinery of society is regulated in a great measure by habits and desires, that are only indirectly, if at all, influenced by the operations of the understanding. The moving world of human beings often does not coincide with the hypotheses of human reasoning, while there exists in it much that cannot fail to be overlooked by the man of mere contemplation. His dreams are thus broken, from time to time, by unexpected collisions with living society, and by contact with modes of character which his speculations had not prepared him to expect.

It may be added that, except in the highest order of minds, this excessive development of the scientific faculty-this truthseeking, only for the sake of knowing truth as such, and with little or no extra tendency to the knowledge of particular departments of truth-is apt to leave uncultivated an order of sentiments which, in the best men, are always mingled with philosophical speculation. The motives of religion and duty, which

find their highest appropriate stimulus in the department of truth which regards God and our relations to Him, ought not to be separated from a love for abstract truth. But, on the other hand, it is possible to speculate without any impulse from the conscience, and to find materials of science, among the objects of religious faith, which pervade the whole region of the higher philosophy, without forming the habit of converting the scientific knowledge into practice. An habitual employment, merely as the ministers of pure speculation, of those objects which, of all others, are most fitted to alter the character for good, is appropriately punished in the agonies of religious scepticism.

Another general characteristic of these Notes and Dissertations, hardly less remarkable than the one which has supplied a text for the observations contained in the preceding paragraphs, is the enormous accumulation of the materials of exact learning and historical research which they contain. Sir William Hamilton has long possessed a European reputation for extraordinary erudition. The evidences of his varied and accurate reading which this volume contains are not confined to one province of literature, although they are of course especially conspicuous in all that is in any way within the margin of the history of philosophy, and particularly of the speculations of the Peripatetics, the Schoolmen, and the modern Germans. No preceding British philosopher, with whose writings we are at all acquainted, makes any approach to the extent and minuteness of this sort of knowledge by which these pages are characterized. Indeed, with the exception of Bacon and Cudworth, in the seventeenth century, and Stewart and Sir James Mackintosh, in the nineteenth, our more distinguished metaphysicians and moralists have been conspicuously deficient in this important accomplishment. Locke, Butler, Hume, and Reid, made no pretension to a complete and exact acquaintance with the history of speculation.

Reading is valuable to the philosopher chiefly as one means for exciting his own power of thinking. Only a few minds, however, possess sufficient independent force to convert what they read into a source of intellectual nourishment; and even great intellects have been averse from an extensive acquaintance with books, from an apprehension of their tendency to fetter the independent working of the mental faculties. "If I had read as much as other men, I had been as ignorant as they," is a wellknown and memorable saying of Hobbes. But in these Dissertations the vigour of original speculation is preserved amid a boundless accumulation of materials collected out of what is contained in books. Leibnitz and Sir William Hamilton are to be noted among modern philosophers for the mental strength which can unite extraordinary reading with a ceaseless energy

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of thinking. But the mind of the German philosopher is perhaps more ready, by a species of mental chemistry, to fuse among the productions of its own intelligence, as the elements of a new and distinctive creation, the materials that are thus presented to it; while in the writings of the Scottish philosopher, the treasures of learned research are oftener permitted to remain in mechanical juxtaposition with the results of his own intellectual activity, in which they are, as it were, visibly embedded like the fossil remains of a stratum of geology.

In both the qualities to which we have referred, as generally characteristic of this recent contribution to our philosophical literature, there is a remarkable deficiency in the current publications in Great Britain. Our literature indicates, for the most part, little exact acquaintance with the ancient or contemporary doctrines which it attempts to criticise; and original speculation is almost unknown. Vague doctrines, assumed to be the productions of recent German thinking, supply its nourishment to the greater part of the philosophical mind of this country. Glimpses of Germany engaged in speculation are, however, no substitute for original thought about matters such as those on which the Germans in these times, and Reid, Locke, and Bacon in Britain, in other times, have displayed the highest qualities of intellect. If these specimens, by Sir William Hamilton, of what historical knowledge of opinion really is, incite some men to an exact study of the books of foreign countries and of former generations, they are also fitted to rouse the still more dormant spirit that seeks direct and independent intellectual contact with the real problems themselves, which have afforded nourishment to the high philosophy of the great thinkers of other ages. It is not the repetition of a faint echo from Germany or France that constitutes the substance of what is contained in the immortal works of the British philosophers whom we have named, who created for us a national philosophy, with certain invaluable characteristics peculiarly its own. But a chasm intervenes between their age and ours. Notwithstanding symptoms of a revived attention to certain metaphysical questions, often vaguely enough apprehended, it remains true, that during this generation there is hardly any trace in this island of profound and exact thought respecting those abstract topics which are implied in the discussion of the first principles of knowledge. Our repose from effort in the direction of philosophy is now interrupted by this volume, which seasonably presents to us the written results of the life-labours of a sagacious and truly Scottish mind, in the company of fragments which offer a tolerable indication of the more important principles of the ScotoGerman philosophy of the great living thinker, by whom the doctrines of Reid have been rendered more refined and definite, and his basis of philosophy made more comprehensive.

Though somewhat an excrescence upon the discussion of metaphysical topics, we cannot dismiss without some notice the ninety pages of the "Life and Letters of Reid," which occupy the opening part of the volume, and which, introducing us as they do to the genius and peculiarities of an individual man, and associating these with the exercise of abstract speculation, may prove to many readers not the least interesting section of its contents.

The letters addressed by Reid to several of his distinguished contemporaries, form the most important supplementary matter appended by Sir William Hamilton to the biography by Stewart. Nearly all of this correspondence may be included in three parcels (1.) Thirteen letters, written by Reid during the first six years after his removal from Aberdeen to Glasgow, to Drs. A. and D. Skene, physicians in Aberdeen. These interesting documents were furnished by Mr. Thomson of Banchory, and have not before been published. They contain some amusing pictures of Glasgow University in the last century, and “afford what was perhaps wanting to Mr. Stewart's portraiture of Reid -they shew us the philosopher in all the unaffected simplicity of his character, and as he appeared to his friends in the familiar intercourse of ordinary life." (2.) Nine letters addressed to Lord Kames, and already published in Lord Woodhouselee's memoirs of that philosopher. These afford some suggestive thoughts on what we may style the metaphysics of physical science. This and the former body of letters, also illustrate Reid's intelligent interest in the sciences of external nature, such as chemistry and mechanics, on their own account. (3.) A selection from upwards of twenty of Reid's letters to his kinsman, the late Dr. James Gregory, Professor of the Practice of Medicine. in the University of Edinburgh. Of these the most curious parts relate to the controversy on free-will, and to the theory of causation.

Stewart's "Account of the Life and Writings of Reid," is a work so well known to most of those in this country who are even moderately versed in the history of recent philosophy, that we need hardly occupy our readers upon anything like an abstract of its contents. A life of which the greater part was passed in the humble but agreeable seclusion of academical office successively in two Scottish provincial universities, cannot be expected to offer incident for the gratification of the lovers of brilliant external adventure, and must derive its interest from the peculiarities of the mental phenomena which it manifests, and the circumstances by which these were called forth, or amid which they struggled into action. Himself born in the commencement of the eighteenth century, Dr. Reid's ancestors by the father's side

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It may readily be concluded that the qualities to which we have referred are on the whole unfavourable to the popularity, and (in many cases) to the intelligibility of these Notes and Dissertations, among general readers. Such condensed results of the highest generalization, and jets of thought cast forth without the amplification and ornament of popular eloquence, and with little reference to any of their various possible applications, are ill-fitted to coalesce with the prevailing mental habits. Most men are unwilling to consent to grope their way, in the lowest depths of intellectual abstraction, where the light of evidence is hardly sufficient for steady progress, and where they must ever be on their guard against the illusion of vague formulas, susceptible of almost any meaning, which occasion that dangerous collapse of the mind upon itself, that is often experienced after an intense effort of thinking with scanty materials about which to think. There seems to be an intellectual necessity that, in the present age of unscholastic and ill-disciplined philosophical taste, this remarkable addition to our literature shall slowly, if at all, find direct admission for its doctrines, possessing, as it does, a selection and arrangement of words unsurpassed among the books of the English language for precision and consistency-a formal clearness and distinctness of method-a singular incapacity to rest contented with a partial or isolated view of any great doctrine-a depth of thought and a refinement of distinction, the very apprehension of which implies the exercise of mental functions hardly ever in these times called into action, and a copiousness of pure argument unrelieved by those lighter graces and ornaments of fancy which are usually needed to seduce men to an exertion of the higher powers of mind. Even students of speculative science may confess the existence of a wish that, amid themes so ennobling and kindred with the most suitable objects of imaginative emotion, the metaphysician had given occasional vent, through the mass of subtile distinctions and profound principles, and the accumulation of passages extracted from his stores of unequalled reading, to the living copious eloquence of which such themes are susceptible, and in which the literature of philosophy supplies so many illustrious examples. The gorgeous imagery of Bacon has done much to illuminate the ages that followed him with the light of his great doctrines, and his exquisite adaptations to philosophical purposes of the "winged words" of common language, have helped to waft his philosophy down the stream of time.

We must now, however, refer more particularly to the materials proper to philosophy itself that are contained in the work which has occasioned the preceding remarks.