348 REVIEWS— RATIONAL PHILOSOPHY IN HISTORY, ETC. 



unseasonable. A reviewer may ordinarily feel himself excused from 

 giving anything more than a passing notice — if even so much — to a 

 provisional substitute for a syllabus of a Professor's lectures ; but the 

 present case is somewhat exceptional. Mr. Fraser's tract is the only 

 work hitherto published which contains a concise and faithful sketch 

 of the modern Scottish philosophy. In the scattered notes, indeed, 

 of the late Sir William Hamilton, the leading doctrines presented in 

 the work before us are found ; but, though set forth there clearly 

 enough, it is in too fragmentary a manner, and in rather too esoteric 

 language : objections, the former of which at least we hope to see re- 

 moved when Sir "William's lectures, now in course of publication, have 

 been given to the world. Inasmuch, therefore, as the treatise under 

 review supplies an important desideratum in philosophical literature, 

 while it is also possessed of great intrinsic merit, we regard it as 

 worthy of more attention than is usually accorded to works of a like 

 description. 



Before adverting more particularly to Professor Fraser's metaphysi- 

 cal system, a word regarding that part of his treatise in which he 

 touches on the history of philosophy. The treatise is entitled, " Ra- 

 tional Philosophy in History and System ;" and those who are in the 

 habit of joining in the common outcry against speculative philosophy 

 — that its history is nothing but a record of mutually destructive 

 systems of thought, contrasting in this respect so unfavorably with the 

 various branches of physical science, which, since their origin, have 

 been always steadily progressing — would do well to ponder our author's 

 profound remarks on this subject. He is fully warranted, we conceive, 

 in saying that when success is measured by the highest standard, " no 

 sphere of mental labour can record a longer series of illustrious suc- 

 cesses than Rational Philosophy." But let it be understood what the 

 true standard of judgment is. "A discovery, by means of reflection 

 and mental experiment, of the limits of knowledge, is the highest and 

 most universally applicable discovery of all ; it is the one through 

 which our intellectual life most strikingly blends with the moral and 

 intellectual part of our nature. Progress in Jcnowledge is often para- 

 doxically indicated by a diminution in the apparent bulk of what we 

 know. "Whatever helps to work off the dregs of false opinion, and to 

 purify the intellectual mass — whatever deepens our convictions of our 

 infinite ignorance — really adds to, though it sometimes seems to . 

 diminish, the rational possessions of man." To one who is able to 

 interpret it aright, the phenomenon, so obtrusive on the surface of 



