trines by one who was the most distinguished of his immediate disciples, all under the auspices of the foremost Scottish philosopher of the present age—a publication which thus associates the names of Reid, Stewart, and Hamilton—is a memorable event in the history of our National Philosophy. It may suggest a brief meditation concerning the new matter now connected by Sir William Hamilton with the text of Reid. Anything like a comprehensive or critical estimate of the contributions of these three Scottish philosophers to the common stock of the world’s speculative knowledge, should be adjourned until the remaining portion of this work shall have appeared. We proceed to offer in the following Essay, a few somewhat miscellaneous observations, which may tend to prepare a portion of the public for the independent study of a book that cannot fail profoundly to interest every lover of abstract speculation.
“That,” says Lord Bacon, “will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and strongly conjoined together than they have been—a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter the planet of civil society and action.” This favourite doctrine and simile of Bacon, so fitting and urgent in an age whose retrospect was the centuries of scholastic speculation, is not less fitting and urgent, although in an opposite application, to the age and country in which we live. If the author of the “Advancement of Learning” proclaimed it in order to
