extent a fusion of the spirit and doctrines of Reid and Kant, wrought by an independent and highly speculative mind, and adapted to the stage in the progress of the theory of knowledge which follows the last seventy years of German thinking. The philosophy of Reid was pointed against a scepticism that, as we shall afterwards show, was the result of a doctrine of representational perception. The philosophy of Sir William Hamilton is fitted besides this to meet the virtual scepticism of the German absolutists, by a demonstration of the necessary limitation of all possible human knowledge to what is relative and conditional. The old Scottish philosophy maintained, against those who deny that science is possible, the existence of a body of vital beliefs, which are sufficient to infuse reality into our knowledge. The new Scottish philosophy uses the original beliefs and notions of the mind, at once against the sceptics, and against the philosophers who arrogate to man a knowledge of the infinite and the absolute. In the eighteenth century the citadel of human knowledge, and the ultimate foundations of human action, were assailed by Hume, on the principles taught by Locke and adorned by Berkeley. In the nineteenth century the assault is conducted by Schelling, Hegel, and the Continental transcendentalists, on principles suggested by Kant and Fichte. The Notes and Dissertations of Sir W. Hamilton are a refinement of our older national philosophy, and an expansion of its basis, fitted to adapt its doctrines to the rational defence of the knowledge that is gained by man, in his progress of inductive research along that via media between Pyr-
