We have seen in the cases of Stewart, Brown, and Mackintosh what difficulties those trained in the Scottish metaphysics had in comprehending the German philosophy and accepting the truth.Hamilton, we shall find, labored to combine the two.Chalmers, meanwhile, was engrossed with philanthropic work; he did not understand the German language, and it was not till the last year of his life, when he got a little lull in 1847 after the disruption storm, that he became acquainted with the {404} German philosophy, to which he was introduced by Mr.J.D.Morell's well-written and interesting work, " An Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century." He entered on the study with a youthful enthusiasm, and reviewed the work in the " North British Review." " It is long since an), work has made its appearance before a public in a state of greater expectancy and readiness for its lessons." With a mind of similar openness and candor, he is ready to receive whatever truth Kant and the Germans may offer.He confesses his gratification on finding, "amid all these conflicting systems and speculations, that our theology is safe." He rejoices to find profound points of agreement between Reid and Kant, and is willing to take the truth in either form."Now, for comparing the Scottish and German philosophies, whether as it respects their similarities or their differences, it is of importance to mark how these primary beliefs of Dr.Reid are at one with the primitive arguments of Kant, or with his forms of the understanding.They may have been the better named by the latter of these two philosophers he may have probed more deeply into their foundations, or, rather, perhaps, into their method of development; he may have constructed a fuller and more accurate list of them, and, without pronouncing on his scheme for their application, or by which he would bring his categories to bear on the objects of the external world, it might be fully conceded that, altogether, be has enlarged and in some respects amended the philosophy of Dr.Reid.Yet let us not, because of the altered nomenclature, or of the new garb that has been thrown over them, overlook the substantial identity, and that, in respect of almost all, between the principles of the Scottish school and those from which Kant has earned his chief reputation." It is clear that he was not sufficiently far advanced in his knowledge of Kant and of the German philosophy to discover that there was a subtle scepticism in the philosophy which made the forms of the reason merely subjective; whereas Reid gave them an objective validity, an external validity when they related to external objects.
With great shrewdness he seizes on an incipient error, which has since grown into a formidable error."We demur to the proposed substitution of Mr.Morell for Dr.Reid's account {405} of perception, that it is altogether an act of the mind.He affirms that the very essence of perception consists in the felt relation between mind and matter.And what we affirm is, that matter might be perceived, and, with the strongest sense and conviction in the mind of its reality, when the mind itself is altogether out of the reckoning." " It is not more necessary to be conscious of the mind in the business of perceiving than to be conscious of the eye in the business of seeing." " We can perceive without thinking of the mind, as we can perceive without thinking of the eye; and he complains of the " undue mixing up of the subjective with the objective, in which chiefly it is that the erratic movements of the German philosophy have taken rise." He here opposes at the entrance that doctrine of relativity which was developed by Hamilton, and has been applied by Herbert Spencer.
He also makes good use of the distinction, as drawn by M.Cousin, between the spontaneous and the reflex exercises of the human understanding."We have long been in the habit of recognizing these under the title of the mind's direct and reflex processes, and we shall continue so to name them." Though it be only by looking inwardly or looking back upon ourselves that we take cognizance of our various beliefs, these beliefs must be formed so as to exist ere they can be recognized or reflected on." So he blames Mr.
Morell for constantly " mixing up consciousness and the facts of consciousness," and M.Cousin for finding the ground of our belief in an external world in a subjective act."He looks for it, and imagines that he has got his first hold of it among the reflections of the psychological tablet within, whereas, if it is to be had at all, spontaneous as it is, it will be the primary act of looking direct on that radiance that cometh from the object of contemplation without." In following this train of thought he comes near to, and yet does not reach, a distinction on which I set great value, -- the distinction between our primitive apperceptions or intuitions as they spontaneously act and as they are generalized into maxims, axioms, or fundamental truths by the metaphysician.Considered under the first aspect, they act whether we observe them or no, and act best when, like the physiological processes of breathing, they are not noticed, and they cannot in any circumstances be supposed to err; whereas under the other {406} aspect they are the result of a discursive process of abstraction and generalization, in which there may be much error, by our adding to, or taking from, or mutilating the spontaneous process in the reflex account given of it by those who would put what is concrete and individual into a universal form.
This was one of the last compositions of Thomas Chalmers, who was found dead in his bed on the morning of May 31, 1847.His soul was transparently ready for the new truth to be disclosed to him in heaven, where what he saw as through a glass darkly on earth, appeared to him face to face.