In Professor Calderwood's account of Hume we find that sympathetic treatment which marks a scholar and a man of broad tolerance. Such a spirit is manifested especially in the author's criticism of Hume's religious views in Chapter VII; and the following quotation from the preface also illustrates it in a marked manner: "Notwithstanding Hume's vast ability and many services, his name has hitherto awakened the dislike of the majority of his fellow countrymen, because of his openly avowed skepticism concerning views reverently cherished by Christian men. At this date, however, we may claim to have reached the period when it is possible to survey the writings with more of the historic spirit, or, at least, with that 'freedom from prejudice' for which Hume pleads; with enlarged views as to liberty of thought, and with perhaps greater indifference to the disturbing influence of the opinions so characteristic of the historian.… So readers may be willing to consider afresh the scepticism, and the religious faith, and they may even be able to find in Hume a witness for Christianity whose testimony is, in some respects, the more valuable since beset with so many and such grave doubts. Going further than this, it is probable that a renewed study of Hume's writings may lead us to a fairer interpretation of the attitude of those, in our own day, whose averred doubts have induced earnest men to classify them amongst the irreligious."
In his exposition of Hume's philosophy, the author is especially happy; he gives a just and appreciative estimate of Hume's influence upon his contemporaries, and upon the succeeding generations of philosophical thinkers. He shows, moreover, how to that influence there may be traced, through a reactive tendency, the beginnings of the common sense philosophy, the rise of Kant, and the birth of the modern transcendental philosophy.
Professor Fraser's account of Reid is also satisfactory and suggestive. The man in his setting receives at the author's hands the color of reality; with strong and vivid touches there is depicted for the reader the life of the boy in the valley of the Dee, the making of a scholar at Mareschal College, the self-sacrificing years of service in the parish of New Machar, Reid's vocation as a champion of the common-sense philosophy at the challenge of David Hume, and finally his career as author and teacher in Old Aberdeen and in Glasgow. In the concluding chapter, Professor Fraser describes Reid's influence upon the subsequent development of the Scottish philosophy, and also upon the writings of Collard and Cousin, and through them upon the philosophy of France. The author moreover insists that Reid's teachings are in accord with the modern tendencies in German philosophy, affirming that "a humanized Hegelianism, which seeks to restore or retain the often dormant faith in the perfectly good God, and thus in the future of man, may even be taken as in line with Reid, under the altered intellectual conditions at the end of the nineteenth century."
| John Grier Hibben |
| Princeton University. |
