222 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



it becomes inevitable that subjects have to be treated 

 and matters discussed, for which an assembly of 

 even the greatest scholars cannot guarantee adequate 

 and equal treatment. Du Bois - Beymond, the great 

 physiologist of Berlin, has truly and honestly admitted 

 this fact in saying that the teacher of physiology has 

 indeed to teach a great many things which he does not 

 know. We may express this fact, which has exerted an 

 enormous influence upon the development of philosophic 

 systems, and, indeed, on all comprehensive doctrines, by 

 saying that the position of an official teacher imposes 

 upon him obligations which the unofficial and extramural 

 scholar has never to face. These demands, which the 

 position of a university professor officially imposes, 

 made themselves felt when the Scotch universities took 

 up the teaching of moral and mental philosophy in the 

 eighteenth century ; l they were accentuated when that 



1 " The Parliamentary Cominis- it prescribes rules for rightly appre- 



sion for visiting the Universities, bending, judging, and arguing, 



appointed in 1690 and following . . . Metaphysics are said to be 



years, directed in 1695 the Pro- defined by some as a science of 



fessors of Philosophy in St Andrews being as being ; by others as a 



to prepare the heads of a system of speculative science, which considers 



Logic, and the corresponding Pro- being in general and its properties 



fessors in Edinburgh to prepare a and kinds as abstracted from 



course of Metaphysics. The com- matter. The benefits arising from 



pends drawn up in consequence the study of metaphysics are said to 



were passed from one college to be, that treating of undoubted 



another for revision ; there is no truths and axioms we are enabled 



evidence that they were finally by their assistance the better to 



sanctioned, but they may be ac- discover truths generally and avoid 



cepted as giving a fair idea of the errors. . . . That ... it aids the 



instructions in philosophy conveyed understanding in every kind of 



in the universities of Scotland at learning, and specially in theology, 



the close of the seventeenth cen- in which use is made of meta- 



tury at the very time when physical terms. . . . Such was the 



Locke's Essay was finding its way pabulum on which college youths 



so rapidly over the three kingdoms. fed during the century " (M'Cosh, 



Logic is called the instrument to 'The Scottish Philosophy,' 1875, 



acquire other sciences, inasmuch as pp. 22, et seq. ) 



