SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's phslosophy. 219 



the modesty, with the reverence for traditional modes of thought and 

 life, which one should expect in the character of a conscientious and 

 benevolent country clergyman. This is not the place to attempt a 

 mediation between the opposite extremes in the estimate of Reid, which 

 have been maintained even in recent times by Hamilton and Cousin on 

 the one hand, by Ferrier and Buckle on the other. In his quiet obser- 

 vation of such phenomena as his range of inquiry brought within his 

 reach, in his unpretending classifications of such as he observed, in his 

 timid groping after inferences whicli his observations seemed to legiti- 

 mate, there was no danger of falling into those extravagancies in which 

 the flights of genius are doomed to land, often, like that of Icarus, from 

 the very height to which they rise; but he would probably have 

 accepted, as but a dubious compliment, the ascription to him of those 

 sublime anticipations, which direct the labours of subsequent inquirers 

 till they are established in literal accordance with the rules of scientific 

 induction.* 



Dr. Reid, in a well known letter to Dr. Gregory, (20th x\ugust, 

 1790), acknoM'ledges that the discovery of the fundamental and dis- 

 tinctive principle of his philoso'phy was owing more to Berkelev and 

 Hume than to himself.f From the evidence already adduced of the 

 influence which Berkeley's writings had exerted in Scotland while 

 Reid was still a young man, we are not surprised to learn, as we do 

 from the philosopher himself,J that he had at one time adopted the 

 whole of the idealist's theory. According to the same account, it 

 was not till the conclusions of Hume's Treatise, "which gave him 

 more uneasiness than the want of a material world," were seen to 

 follow inevitably from the principle on which idealism is built, that he 

 was arrested to question whether that principle is not an unfounded 

 hypothesis. § The principle referred to is that which Reid supposed 

 to be the universal opinion of philosophers, that " the only objects of 

 thought are ideas or images in the mind ; " and he claims for iiiraself 

 notiiing that is strictly his ovku in philosophy, except his having 

 called this hypothesis in question.* We shall have to consider im- 

 mediately whether Reid was correct in selecting this as the fundamen- 

 tal pecuharity of his philosophy; but there will be seen to be little 



*See Intellectual Powers, Essay I., Chap, 3. 



fStewart's Jlccount of Reid ^ p. 22, a (Hamiltoii's*edition of Reid's Works.) 



jWorks, p. 283. 



§See the above mentioned letter to Dr. Gregory. 



