226 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



tion of the philosophical or psychological problem in a 

 single principle. It is true that they frequently seemed 

 content with a description where others would seek for 

 explanations, and that, as for instance in the lectures of 

 Thomas Brown, — who, however, approximated, on many 

 points, to the English school, — rhetoric frequently takes 

 the place of argument. 



In this country the labours of the Scottish school 

 of psychology were to a great extent cast into the 

 shade by the more critical and penetrating writings of 

 James and John Stuart Mill, and by the new phase 

 of thought which has its beginning in the last repre- 

 sentative of the Scottish school. In the writings of 

 Hamilton, and those of his disciple Mansel, the slowly 

 elaborated arguments of the English and Scottish schools 

 came into contact with the foundations of religious 

 belief. The Bampton Lectures on the " Limits of Reli- 

 gious Thought " put an end, once for all, to that truce 

 which Bacon had established between philosophical 

 or scientific and spiritual knowledge.^ But outside of 



^ The history of the earlier school 

 of Scottish philosophy down to its 

 latest representative, Sir Wm. Ham- 

 ilton, has been written by Prof. 

 Pringle-Pattison (Andrew Seth) in 

 the first part of his Balfour Lec- 

 tures. He there very lucidly deals 

 with that special problem through 

 which Scottish philosophy came 

 into contact M'ith German thought : 

 the problem of knowledge. It is, 

 therefore, not so much the psy- 

 chology of the school, in which we 

 are for the moment mostly inter- 

 ested, that he discusses. It is rather 

 the problem of knowledge, which will 



fluence of Kant upon Hamilton 

 signifies a departure from the 

 genuine spirit which pervades the 

 earlier representatives of the Scot- 

 tish school — notably the writings of 

 Thos. Reid, — and he maintains that 

 the agnostic conclusions of Hamil- 

 ton and Mansel led " Scottish 

 philosophers (to) set about a more 

 careful revision of their premises " 

 (A. Seth, 'Scottish Philosophy,' 

 1885; 3rd ed. 1899, p. 186). 

 How this led, through a study of 

 Hegel, to a philosophical position 

 not unlike that occupied by Lotze 

 in Germany, I shall have oppor- 



occui)y us in one of the following tunities of showing in the sequel 

 chapters. He shows that the in- of this History. 



