210 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S PHILOSOPHY. 



Kirk by his alarm at "the notions getting into the heads of young 

 preachers, that moral duties are preferable to positive, &c."* Al- 

 ready in the earlier years of the century there are not wanting indi- 

 cations of the first beginning of tho-;e efforts, which at a later period 

 became more decided, to explain what had been deemed the pecu- 

 liarities of Christianity in accordance with the natural course of men- 

 tal and material phenomena. In this reawakening of the nation to 

 questions, which it had been precluded from investigating by the 

 circumstances of its history during the previous century, it was natural 

 that the intensely theological bent, which had been already given to 

 it by these circumstances, should direct its efforts still. It may be 

 owing to this, that, as has been noticed by Cousin,f the most eminent 

 guides of the new intellectual movement vrere connected professionally 

 with the national church and that the speculations of the Scottish 

 school, especially in moral philosophy, have uniformly shewn the 

 high moral influence of the old presbyterianism, or, as Hamilton has 

 expressed it, have been uniformly opposed to all destructive systems.;]; 

 Meanwhile a change took place in the constitution of the Uuiver- 

 eities, the influence of which in the impulse given to science and 

 philosophy has never, so far as I am aware, been noticed. This was 

 the institution and endowment of professorships, and the consequent 

 abolition of the practice in accordance with which each regent carried 

 his set of pupils through the studies of the entire curriculum in Arts. 

 The change had in fact to some extent been adopted in the University 

 of Glasgow more than a century before, namely in 1576, under the 

 Principalship of Andrew Melville, § and was subsequently continued, 

 as well as extended ; || but its advantages were in a large measure 

 annihilated by the circumstance, that the salaries attached to the 

 several professorships were on a graduated scale, and that when, any 

 of the higher became vacant, the occupants of the less lucrative were^ 

 advanced.** It was not however till the year 1708 that the old system 

 was abandoned in Edinburgh ;'j"|- and the first appointment, under the 



♦Wodro-iv's Correspondence, Vol. Ill, p. 470. 

 •^PhilosQ-phie Ecossuise, pp. 18-19 (3me. ed.) 

 ^Leclu7-es on MetaphysicHj Ajipendix B. (c.) 

 ^Auiohiogruphy and Diary of J. Melville, p. 54. 



||/?e«d's Account of the University of Glasgow in Hamilton's edition of his 

 Works, p. Tig. 

 **Ibid, p. 730. 

 IfBower's History of the University of Edinburgh, Vol. II., pp. 71-2. 



