H/E is the most learned of all the Scottish metaphysicians.Not that the Scottish school ought to be described, as it has sometimes been, as ignorant.Hutcheson was a man of learning, as well as of accomplishment, and visibly experienced great delight in quoting the Greek and Roman philosophers, as he walked up and down in his class-room in Glasgow.Adam Smith had vast stores of information;and the ground-plan which he has left of departments of ancient philosophy, and the sketch of the sects which he has given in his " Moral Sentiments," show that he was more competent, had he devoted his attention to the subject, than any man of his age to write a history of philosophy.Hume had extensive philosophic, as well as historical, knowledge;but he was so accustomed to twist it to perverse uses, that we cannot trust his candor or accuracy.Reid was pre-eminently a well-informed man.His first printed paper was on quantity.He taught in Aberdeen College, according to the system of rotation which continued even to his day, natural as well as moral philosophy; and continued, even in his old age, to be well read on all topics of general interest.
Beattie and Campbell were respectable scholars, as well as elegant writers; and the former was reckoned at Oxford, and by the English clergy, as the great expounder, in his day, of sound philosophy.Lord Monboddo was deeply versed in the Greek and Roman philosophies, and in spite of all his paradoxes has often given excellent accounts of their systems.Dugald Stewart was a mathematician as well as a metaphysician; and, if not of very varied, was of very correct, and, altogether, of very competent, ripe, and trustworthy scholarship.Brown was certainly not widely or extensively read in philosophy; but, besides a knowledge of medicine, he had an acquaintance with Roman and with modern French literature.Sir James Mackintosh was familiar with men and manners, was learned in all social questions, {416}
and had a general, though certainly not a very minute or correct, knowledge of philosophic systems.But, for scholarship, in the technical sense of the term, and, in particular, for the scholarship of philosophy, they were all inferior to Hamilton, who was equal to any of them in the knowledge of Greek and Roman systems, and of the earlier philosophies of modern Europe -- and vastly above them in a comprehensive acquaintance with all schools; and standing alone in his knowledge of the more philosophic fathers, such as Tertullian and Augustine; of the more illustrious schoolmen, such as Thomas Aquinas and Scotus; of the writers of the Revival, such as the elder Scaliger; and of the ponderous systems of Kant, and the schools which ramified from him in Germany.
When he was alive, he could always be pointed to as redeeming Scotland from the reproach of being without high scholarship.Oxford had no man to put on the same level.
Germany had not a profounder scholar, or one whose judgment in a disputed point could be so relied on.Nor was his the scholarship of mere words: he knew the history of terms, but it was because he was familiar with the history of opinions.
In reading his account, for example, of the different meanings which the word " idea" has had, and of the views taken of sense-perception, one feels that his learning is quite equalled by his power of discrimination.No man has ever done more in clearing the literature of philosophy of commonplace mistakes, of thefts and impostures.He has shown all of us how dangerous it is to quote without consulting the original, or to adopt, without examination, the common traditions in philosophy; that those who borrow at second hand will be found out; and that those who steal, without acknowledgment, will, sooner or later, be detected and exposed.He experiences a delight in stripping modern authors of their borrowed feathers, and of pursuing stolen goods from one literary thief to another, and giving them back to their original owner.For years to come, ordinary authors will seem learned by drawing from his stores.In incidental discussions, in foot-notes, and notes on foot-notes, he has scattered nuts which it will take many a scholar many a day to gather and to crack.It will be long before the rags which shine from him will be so scattered and diffused through philosophic literature as the sunbeams are through the atmosphere-that they shall {417} become common property, and men shall cease to distinguish the focus from which they have come.
The only other decided lineament of his character that I shall mention is his logical power, including therein all such exercises as abstraction, generalization, division, definition, formal judgment, and deduction.In this respect he may be placed along side of those who have been most distinguished for this faculty such as, Aristotle, Saint Thomas, Descartes, Spinoza, Samuel Clarke, Kant, and Hegel.
In directing his thoughts to a subject, he proceeds to divide, distribute, define, and arrange, very much in the manner of Aristotle: take, as an example, his masterly analysis of the primary qualities of matter.He pursues Much the same method, in giving the history of opinions, as on the subjects of the principles of common sense and perception.No man ever displayed such admirable examples of Porphyry's tree, reaching from the <summum genus> to the <infirma species>.It is quite clear that, had he lived in the days of the schoolmen, he would have ranked with the greatest of them, -- with Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Abelard, -- and would have been handed down to future generations by such an epithet as Doctor Criticus, Doctor Doctissimus, or Doctor Indomitabilis.