224 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S PHILOSOPHY. 



these a separate set of first principles.* Among the first principles 

 of the latter, he enumerates the two which have just been mentioned ; 

 and it is not because they are first principles, it is because they are 

 not contingent, but necessary truths, that he regards them as tran- 

 scending experience. 



With this doctrine of first principles, it is not to be wondered 

 that Reid has been so unsuccessful in what ought to have been the 

 most prominent excellence of his system. "We have probably in this 

 an explanation of the circumstance, that, although he recognises the 

 importance of an accurate system of the facts which are primal in 

 human knowledge, his detail of them, especially when compared with 

 their exhibition in Kant's Critique, appears rather an enumeration at 

 random than even an attempt at systematic classification. It is further 

 remarkable, as possibly traceable to the same source, that, although 

 the analysis of the idea of cause in the Treatise of Human Nature 

 led him to the theory of its a priori character, he failed to see the 

 conclusion which his own principles should have inferred from the 

 analysis in the same work of the ideas of space and time. 



In Reid is included all that is distinctive of Scottish metaphysical 

 philosophy previous to Hamilton. "We have indeed contributions of 

 various value from others : in the writings of Dugald Stewart, the 

 whole field traversed in the works of Reid, as well as numerous colla- 

 teral departments of interest and importance, is illustrated with more 

 elaborate fulness, with the elegance of a wider and more refined aes- 

 thetic culture, with a superior command of the English language, and 

 an infinitely superior erudition, if not with a more comprehensive 

 grasp of principles, or any bolder originality in their application ; but 

 we have no considerable addition to the substance, no new trait in the 

 character of the philosophy. 



"We are now better prepared for understanding the exact point at 

 which Sir "William Hamilton found the philosophy of his country and 

 the nature of the task which was laid before him. In my next article 

 I shall give an exposition of Sir William's own system ; and I shall 

 thereafter proceed to estimate his success in solving the problems 

 which he took in hand. 



*Intellectual Powers, Essay VI., Chapters 5-6. 



