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    1070 THE LEADER. _____ [Saturday,

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    'The revolution in Spain has had the eff...

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    SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS, PAST ANE> PRESENT....

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    Mormonism. Is Developing Itself More And...

    The Messrs . Biackwood of Edinburgh announce as forthcoming a collected edition of the Works of Professor Wixson , by his son-in-law , Professor Ferbier , of St . Andrews , -whose Institutes of Metaphysic we notice in another column . There is no announcement yet of Wilson ' s * Life , " by his other son-in-law , Professor Aytoun . Messrs . Low , of Edinburgh , have sold 25 , 000 copies of Mrs . Stowe's Sunny Memories , notwithstanding that there have been eight rival editions in the British market . The American issue of the work consisted of 30 , 000 copies ; and more are wanted . A monument to the philosopher Schf , t . t . utg is to be erected in Eagaz , where he died , by the King of Bavabia . The Americans are on " the tiptoe of anxious expectancy" for the Autobiography of the migfcty Barjtum , which

    is ready . The trade in America had ordered 66 , 000 copies - , hut a quarrel between Babnum and the publisher has delayed the appearance of the work . Meanwhile , we see Barnum has been giving snatches of his history at public meetings in America ; particularly at one , where , proposing the toast of " Humbug , " he analysed his own career , and told all about the Woolly Horse , the Tom Thumb speculation , and so on . Babotdm ' s Autobiography ¦ will be a great book . In Berlin they seem to have found a liteTary mine in recent British politics . We have been hearing of the extraordinary success-, on the Berlin stage , of a drama entitled Pitt and Fox ; and now , under the title of ' Morton Varneg , a Madame ScHtrcHTKBuix has produced a novel bringing in the Canning , Peex ., and Melbott & njb administrations , and in which King Wmlmam the Fourth , Queen Victoria , and tlie Duke of Wellington figure . The hero of the book is a liberal and popular

    politician , who crushes a conspiracy for the establishment of the Salic Law in England , places her present Majesty on the throne , and dies before he can be Premier . Robert Owen goes on with his New Existence of Man upon the Earth , in the present part of which he quotes letters from the la . te Duke of Kent , and a passage from a work of the Rev . j . Bird . Sttmneb , now Archbishop of Cantbbbxtut , showing the intei ^ st which these personages , amongst others , took in his early career at iNew Lanark . The opening sentence of the present part of the simple old Socialist ' s work is worth quoting . " Under the only system , " he says , " which has hitherto existed among men , truths of the highest importance to the well-being and happiness of the human race have been to this period opposed , and often even to the most cruel death of the parties who were filled with the holy desire to promulgate those truths . " The " parties , " of course , are Socrates , Htiss , and Co .

    1070 The Leader. _____ [Saturday,

    1070 THE LEADER . _____ [ Saturday ,

    'The Revolution In Spain Has Had The Eff...

    'The revolution in Spain has had the effect of a revival ia literature-Journalism , of course , felt the first shock of life , and all phases of opinion were soon represented "by their organs in the press . For a time the style ol the writing was rather declamatory—an outburst after long restraint . But by degrees the tone has subsided into calmness and concentration of thought and purpose . Political and administrative questions are handled with a force and precision that would not discredit the most distinguished veterans of the European press . As the opening of the Cortes approached the light artillery of political satire opened its fire . Three new flying sheets of the Charivari order , to be edited by writers of approved wit and of known liberal opinions , are announced .

    Scottish Metaphysics, Past Ane> Present....

    SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS , PAST ANE > PRESENT . The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart , JSsq ., F . R . 8 . S ., < fc , $ c . Edited by Sir William Hamilton , Bart ., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh . Tola . 1 and 2 . Edinburgh . Thomas Constable and Co . Institutes of Metaphysic : the Theory of Knowing and Being . By James F . Ferrier , A . B ., Oxon , Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy , St . Andrew ' s . Edinburgh . Blackwood . The aptitude of the Scottish mind for philosophical speculation is a fact well known . Ab far back as the middle ages , and still more conspicuously after the Reformation , Scotchmen bore a part in the philosophical activity of Europe far excewding what might have been expected from their numerical proportion among the nations . The latter half of the last and the

    betrinninoof the » resent century have been usually regarded , however , as the flourishing period of Scottish philosophy . To that period belong Hume , Smith , Reid , Stewart , Brown , and others , usually , though somewhat confusedly , classed together as the philosophers of the Scottish school . Nearer our own dny , but still reputed as labourers in the same voin of Scottish thought , are such men as Mackintosh and James Mill . Till recently , however , a popular impression has been , that with the last of those men the list of Scottish philosophex's closed . Wo havo heard James Mill spoken of as , in this sense , Ultimas Scotorum . _ The impression , however , has been altogether erroneous . Scottish metaphysics are not and never have been dead . The two works , ¦ whose titles we subjoin , arc but pavt of a good deal of evidence , proving that

    the present generation of Scotchmen arc neither indifferent to tho labours of their predecessors ir * this department , nor unproductive thennsolvcB in it . Tho Scottish philosophy of tho jprescnfc time , however , is certainly very different from tho old urUolo of Bold and Stewart ; and henco , perhaps , the mistake we Iiavo alluded to . The fact is that , after Reid , the genuine apostolic succession in metaphysics is to bo traced not in Scotland , but in Germany . At tho -very time whon Ktiidwnnputting together his Philosophy of Common Same , by way of corrective to tho scepticism of Iiumo , Kant took up the same problem in Germany , and , proceeding after a , vory different method , sought to lay a solid foundation for human belief on tho vacant apace which had been cleared by tho ruthlcsa reasoning of tho bland Caledonian David . Then followed Jueobi , Horbart , Fichto , SchoUing , Hopel and all the rest of them , improving on Knnt , jjickiug holes in Kunt , carrying out Kant to Uia consequences , and accumulating a quantity of thought unu

    but child ' s play . It was destined , however , that Scotland should recover the true tradition— -that Scottish philosophy should come into rapport with the great German movement of thought that had been so long going on , and , without being staggered out of her national course by the shock of the contact , should yet reinforce herself with a competent knowledge of the main results of that movement , and proceed with the advantage of that knowledge in her own farther development . The author of this great change—the father of the new Scottish philosophical movement , if we may call it such—is undoubtedl y Sir William Hamilton , the present Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh . It is to this profound thinker—whose name , after thirty years of labour , is now recognised as that of a man hardly paralleled among his British contemporaries—that Scotland owes it that she has resumed her career

    logomachy , before which the English mind of the present day stands appalled , preferring to attack and take any number of Sebastopols rather than have anything to do with such battlements and fastnesses of printed uniatelligibility . Coleridge and one or two others took a look at them and into them , and brought back reports . Meanwhile , Scottish thinkers , all unconscious of the stream of German metaphysical speculation , which had flowed out of Kant ' s grand reconsideration of the problems discussed by their countryman Hume , were plodding on in their own style , commentino- On Reid , fortifying Reid , or differing from Held . ° Thus Scottish philosophy , as represented by Stewart , Brown , and their successors , though , it answered British purposes , no longer contained the true thread or tradition of European metaphysics . To a Tichte or a Hegel , what such men -were doing would have seemed , philosophically speaking ^

    of philosophical speculation under new auspices . By his philosophical writings in the Edinburgh Review ., beginning as far back as 1827 , and since republished ; by his influence as a teacher in Edinburgh University ; and lastly by his wonderful annotations to his edition of Reid ' s works—he has virtually ^ added to Scottish philosophy all that was wanting to bring it up to the point where ifc could feel itself to be abreast of the philosophy of the Continent , and able to give ¦ and : take " with that philosophy ; . Slowly , under his influence , the old medley of odds and ends , which in Scotland passed under the general name of the " Science of the Human . Mind , " or , sometimes under that of" Metaphysics , " has partitioned itself distinctly into various separate departments— " Metaphysics , " for example , assuming its proper character as the science of the relations of Reason to Being ; * ' Logic , " starting forth clear , as the science of the necessary or formal laws of thought ; ¦ while " Psychology , " as the general science of mental phenomena , has been kept apart from . both . And now , in a generation junior to Sir William

    Hamilton , there are not a few—either his pupils , or men who have been less directly affected by his influence—who accept his definitions and divisions , and take his doctrines as starting-points for their own independent investigations . In fact a vigorous young philosophy is again rising in Scotland . It is characteristic of Sir William Hamilton—as a philosopher singularly fond of linking his own speculations to the history of the speculations of hispredecessors—that be has consented to be the editor "both , of Reid and of Stewart . Perhaps the most profound contributions he has yet made tophilosophy are those which he has put forth in the modest form of disquisitions and elucidations appended to his text of Reid . In the present issue of Dugald Stewart's works , there is to be no such interpolation ,

    or addition of original philosophical matter . Sir William simply undertakes to collect all Dugald Stewart ' s -writings , arrange them , and publish a correct text of them , with verifications of the quotations aud references We certainly wish that , instead of expending his force on this labour of mere editorship , Sir William were going on with his unfinished Notes on Reid , or with some other work presenting to the public the results of his own thinking ; . For & connected exposition of Sir William Hamilton ' s philosophy , however , we fear we must wait till his class-lectures shall be accessible ; and . meanwhile , the effect of Sir William ' s occupation in the inferior labour of editing Stewart is , that we shall have a splendid and complete edition of Stewart's works to place in our libraries .

    With all the growing activity of the new generation of Scottish philosophers , Mr . Femer's Institutes of Metaphysic is certainly a novelty in literature . It is a single , stout , octavo volume of some five hundred pages divided into an " Introduction , " and three " Books" or " Sections . " The " Introduction , " which consists of seventy pages , contains preliminary observations , and explains tho aim and method of the book . Mr . Ferrier aims at nothing less than establishing a connected system of metaphysical truths , which shall take the place of , ov at least modify , all that has been taught hitherto as philosophy by everybody else , since the beginning of time . Thus : — - The general character of this system is , that it ia a body of necessary truth . It starts from a single proposition which , it is conceived , is un essential axiom of all reason , and one which cannot l > a denied without running against a

    contradiction-The axiom may not bo self-evident in au instant ; bat that , us has been remarked , is no criterion . A . moderate degree of reflection , coupled with the observations by which tho proposition is enforced , may satisfy any one that itH nature is such as hns been stated . From , this single proposition the whole system ia deduced in a Beriea of demonstrations , ench of which professes to bo ns strict / is nny demonstration in Euclid , whilo the whole of thorn taken together constitute one great demonstration . If this rigovoua necessity is not their-character to tho very letter , —if there is a single weak point in tho system , —if there bo any one premiss or any one conclusion which is not as certain ns that two and two mnko four , the- whole- scheme fulls to pieces , and must bo given up , root and branch . Everything ia perilled on tho pretension that tho scheme is rigidly demonstrated throughout ; for a philosophy is not entitled to exist , unless it am mako good this claim .

    And again : — All other systems controvert each other largely , und at many points . This system in incontrovertible , it in cauuuivutl , in every point , ; but , at tho very utmost , it in coutrovcsrtiblo only ia Us starting-point , itn fundamental position . This , therefore , hucihh to ha no Httla gain to philosophy , to concerntrnto nil possible controversy upon a single point—to gather into one foous all tho riivorging lances of the i ' w , and direct them on n single topio , Tho syHtom , an has boon remarked , holds l . hiu point , no lens Hum all tho others , to bo indisputable ; but should this bo doubted , it cannot be doubted that it is tho only disputable point . Iloneo tho hvnUhu humbly piquns itself on having abridged tho grounds of philoBophicul controversy—on having , if not uboliehed , ut any rate reduced tliom to their narrowest possible limito .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 11, 1854, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_11111854/page/14/