224 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



the inherent common - sense, on the other the ideal 

 demands of our nature. 



There can be no doubt which of the two courses was 

 mainly favoured by those teachers of philosophy begin- 

 ning with Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) and ending 

 with Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856), who together 

 24. form the Scottish school of philosophy.^ They all 



Philosophy 



of common- appealed to what was early called by them common- 

 sense, a term which the historian of Scottish philosophy, 

 James M'Cosh, has traced to the writings of Shaftesbury. 

 With some correctness it may be said that the opposition 

 to the theoretical movement in English philosophy which 

 began with Locke and was continued by Berkeley and 



^ The history of this school has 

 been written by James M"Cosh, who 

 gives a very complete account of 

 the different members and their 

 teaching. He traces the beginnings 

 of this school back to Bacon, Locke, 

 and Shaftesbury in England, and 

 includes a great number of names 

 of local importance, but little known 

 outside of their own country. The 

 Scottish school, though it educated 

 James Mill, led to an independent 

 development when the latter left 

 Scotland for London, where he 

 came under the influence of Hart- 

 ley's philosophy and Bentham's 

 political theories. Besides, "it is 

 not uncommon for Scotchmen, when 

 they bury themselves in London, 

 to lose their religious faith, which 

 is so sustained by public opinion — 

 as Mill would have said, by associa- 

 tion of ideas — in their native land " 

 (M'Cosh, loc. cit., p. 372). He also 

 abandoned Scottish metaphysics for 

 the more fruitful and practical prob- 

 lems of economics and political phil- 

 osophy. The other development 

 which led Scottish thought out of 

 the precincts of the native school 

 came through Sir Wm. Hamilton 



who adopted some of Kant's doc- 

 trines and prepared the way for 

 that more recent school of thought 

 which centres in the names of T. H. 

 Green and Edward Caird. In Ger- 

 many the Scottish school is known 

 only through the scanty informa- 

 tion which Kant possessed of some 

 — and these not the most important 

 — of Hume's and Reid's writings. 

 This was, however, enough to start 

 in him an independent line of 

 reasoning, so diti'erent from that 

 of the Scottish thinkers that for 

 German thinkers, with the excep- 

 tion of Beneke, Scottish philosophy 

 lost all interest and attractiveness. 

 As to the relation at the Scottish 

 universities between theological 

 and philosophical teaching, M'Cosh 

 singles out Thos. Chalmers (1780- 

 1847) as the principal thinker in 

 whom the reconciliation between 

 Scottish philosophy and Scottish 

 theology was effected. Before his 

 time there existed " a severance, at 

 times an opposition, if not avowed 

 yet felt, between the Scottish phil- 

 osophy and the Scottish theology " 

 {loc. cit., p. 393). 



