FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7TH, 1908. 
Card's Idea of Criticism, 
BY 
Rev. Dr. JEFFREY JOHNSTONE, F.R.G.S. 
T is perfectly clear from a study of Dr. Caird’s works that 
although he was quite familiar with the “common sense School 
of Philosophy ” of Scotland, founded by the famous son of King’s 
College, Aberdeen,—Thomas Reid ; and the English Empirical 
School, founded by the illustrious Bacon of Verulum, yet he appears 
in no way to have been influenced by them ; while the fact that 
he has written a most significant essay on ‘‘ Cartesianism,” Ze., 
the Rationalistic School founded by de Cartes, and published an 
important book on the “Religion and Social Philosophy of 
Comte,” shows, at least, his deep interest in that rationalistic 
philusophy which developed into the Pantheism of Spinoza, with 
its divine immanence on the one hand and that positive philosophy 
which developed into the synthetic philosophy of Herbert 
Spencer on the other. In the case of the great Greek School of 
Philosophy, we discover everywhere in Dr. Caird’s writings his 
indebtedness to those early thinkers and devout and eager 
searchers after truth ; the influence of Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, 
Aristotle—and in a lesser degree—the Stoics, is especially con- 
spicuous in all his books. The Alexandrian School of Philosophy, 
founded by Philo, has influenced him not a little ; it is here that 
he discovers the meeting and the mingling of Occidental and 
Oriental thought, the thought of Greece and the thought of 
Palestine, philosophy and Christianity expressed in the term— 
Logos, “‘ thought made flesh”; while Plotin, the greatest of the 
Neo-Platonists, is in no sense a negligible quantity with Dr. Caird. 
But it is not to Africa, Greece, France, England, or Scotland that 
we must look if we would discover the real source of our author’s 
inspiration, and the influence which has operated so powerfully 
on his mind; it is to Germany,—to the University town of 
Konigsberg, to the great modern School of Critical Philosophy, 
for ever associated with the renowned name of Emmanuel Kant, 
and his later distinguished follower Hegel ; it is to these wells we 
must turn if we would identify the fountains of Dr. Caird’s 
largest inspirations, and the influences that have most powerfully 
affected the drift of his thought. 
