German philosophy." "It is vain to despise them.Their opinions will, on account of their number and novelty, occupy more pages in the history of philosophy than those of us humble disciples of Locke and Hartley.Besides, their abilities are not really contemptible.It seems to me that Iam bound not only to combat these new adversaries, but to explain the principle and ground of their hostility, which is in itself a most curious confutation in detail."He discharges the duties of his office, and instituted the Literary Society at Bombay and had a plan for forming a comparative vocabulary of Indian languages, read a great number and variety of books, and often writes critiques upon them, some of them distinguished by great ability and worthy of being preserved in a more permanent form than in the memoir written by his son.In philosophy, he reads Reinhold, Tiedemann, and says: " I shall begin with Descartes"`Meditations' and `Objections,' Spinoza, Hobbes on `Human Nature,' Berkeley's `Principles' and `Dialogues,' Hume on `Human Nature,' then Kant." " The German philosophy, under its present leader Schelling, has reached a degree of darkness in comparison of which Kant was noonday.Kant, indeed, perplexed all Europe; but he is now disdainfully rejected by his countrymen as a superficial and popular writer "! While engaged in this reading, he says: " My nature would have been better consulted, if I had been placed in a quieter situation, where speculation might have been my business, and visions of the fair and good my chief recreation." I venture to affirm that, if be had been placed in such a position, he would not have remained in it a month.He {352} remembers the feelings and projects of his youth, when "my most ardent ambition was to have been a professor of moral philosophy." He writes to Dugald Stewart:
" I am now employed in attempting to throw into order some speculations, on the origin of our notions of space and time, of poor Tom Wed wood." "I am very desirous of seeing what you say on the theory of ethics.I am now employed on what the Germans have said on that subject.They agree with you in rejecting the doctrine of personal or public interest, and in considering the moral principle as an ultimate law.I own to you that I am not a whit more being a Kantian than I was before; yet I think much more highly of Kant's philosophical genius than I did when I less comprehended his writings." He reads one hundred pages of Fichte's Lectures on " The Characteristic Features of the present Age," " a very ingenious book with most striking parts." " Finished Fichte, -- a book, certainly, of extraordinary merit, but so mysterious and dogmatical as to be often unintelligible and often offensive.Read one hundred pages of Kieswetter's I Introduction to the Kantian Philosophy.' It is the first clear book on this subject which I have seen." I have given so many extracts from his journal and letters, because they exhibit so vividly the process through which in that age many a young mind had to pass, in trying to cross from the British to the German philosophy.
Thus did he pass eight years of his life.He returned to England in 1812; and, as his opinions had undergone consider able modification since he wrote against Burke, he had flattering political offers from Perceval and Canning.
But he conscientiously stuck by his whig friends and whig principles.He was soon in the whirl of London society, the charms of which he could not resist.He and Madame de Stael became for a season the most brilliant conversers in the literary and political circles." She treats me as the person whom she most delights to honor: I am generally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans and bacon; Ihave in consequence dined with her at the houses of nearly all the cabinet ministers." Through the influence of his whig friends, he became M.P.for the County of Nairn, and in the House of Commons promoted every liberal measure, and, from time to time, made speeches of a very high order,-- in thought, expression, in tone, far above the {353} ordinary level of statesmen.He also wrote miscellaneous articles in the " Edinburgh Review." But what of his cherished work? He had not formally abandoned it.But he had not the courage to resist the pleasures of society, and the excitement of politics, and devote himself to what he knew to be his proper sphere.
Two opportunities presented themselves for returning to his favorite philosophic pursuits.In 1818 he was appointed professor of law and general politics in the college instituted for the education of the civil servants of the East India Company at Haileybury.There he treated of moral science, dividing it into ethics and jurisprudence; and of law, civil, criminal, and constitutional.He did not commit his lectures to writing, and nothing is preserved of them but the barest outline.Another opportunity, and the last, presented itself.On the death of Thomas Brown in May, 1820, he was offered the chair of moral philosophy, in the university of Edinburgh.It was the very place for him.He would have been one of the three mighty men in the capital of Scotland, the others being Walter Scott and Francis Jeffrey.He would have been constrained to complete his philosophical reading, and thoroughly work out his system, and might have left works worthy of being ranked with those of Reid, Stewart, and Hamilton, though not equal to the first and last of these in originality.But he is sucked back into the amenities of London society and the agitations of politics.