208 SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 



accordingly endeavour to give, in the present article, such an outline 

 of the Scottish philosophy in its history and its most 'prominent 

 characteristics, as seems requisite for the explanation of Sir William 

 Hamilton's speculations; and in doing so, I must of course limit 

 myself exclusively to the most prominent of the problems on which 

 these speculations touch. 



The earliest impulse to philosophical speculation is probably to be 

 traced in Scotland, as in most other countries in modern Europe, to 

 the general intellectual revival which mingled, at one time as cause, 

 at another as effect, with the reformation of the church in the 16th 

 century. A powerful influence must have been exerted in the earlier 

 part of the century by John Mair, especially through his opinions on 

 civil and ecclesiastical polity,* which he had probably thought out 

 when, as a student at the University of Paris, he became acquainted 

 with the claims of the Galilean church, and which, it is equally pro- 

 bable, gave a direction to the lives of his pupils, Knox and Buchanan, 

 as well as to the reform which they were the principal means of intro- 

 ducing. But in those departments of philosophy, in which the Scot- 

 tish school became afterwards famous, Mair attained no emancipation 

 from the traditional forms of thought whose trammels were beginning 

 to be felt throughout Europe ; and accordingly when the last quarter 

 of the century opened, it was still an axiom in St. Andrew's, Absur- 

 dxim est dicere errasse Aristotelem, which could not be questioned 

 without a riot,* and the denial of which by the Principal in the 

 University of Glasgow, was sure to excite, in one of the regents, dis- 

 respectful manifestations of ill temper.f The Principal of that Uni- 

 versity at the time was Andrew Melville. Melville had in earlier life 

 attended the lectures of Ramus at the University of Paris, and not 

 only his immediate assault on the dominant Aristotelianism in the 

 Universities of his native country, but his whole teaching, as far as 

 may be gathered from the text books which he introduced,* seema 

 but the natural issue of the stimulus which he had received from the 

 great leader of the revolt against Aristotelian authority in France. 

 The learning and eloquence and argumentative ability, with which 

 Melville led his successful inroad upon the old routine of thought in 



• For these, see McCrie's Life of Knox. 



* Autobiography and Diary of Mr. James Melville, pp. 123-4. 

 t Ibid., p. 67. 



•Ibid , p. 49. 



