Stewart characterizes them as fundamental laws of human thought and belief.Brown makes them intuitions simple and original.Hamilton views them under a great many aspects, but seems {7} to contemplate them most frequently and fondly after the manner of Kant, as <a priori> forms or conditions.
But whatever minor or major differences there may be in the fulness of their exposition, or in the favorite views which they individually prefer, all who are truly of the Scottish school agree in maintaining that there are laws, principles, or powers in the mind anterior to any reflex observation of them, and acting independently of the philosophers'
classification or explanation of them.While the Scottish school thus far agrees with the rational and <a priori>
systems, it differs from them most essentially, in refusing to admit any philosophic maxims except such laws or principles as can be shown by self-inspection to be in the very constitution of the mind.It has always looked with doubt, if not suspicion, on all purely abstract and rational discussions, such as that by which Samuel Clarke demonstrated the existence of God; and its adherents have commonly discountenanced or opposed all ambitious <a priori>
systems, such as those which were reared in imposing forms in Germany in the end of last, and the beginning of the present, century.
These three characters are found, in a more or less decided form, in the works of the great masters of the school.I am not sure indeed whether they have been formally announced by all, nor whether they have always been consistently followed out.I allow that the relation of the three principles one to another, and their perfect congruity and consistency, have not always been clearly discerned or accurately expressed.In particular, I am convinced that most of the Scottish metaphysicians have not clearly seen how it is that we must ever proceed in mental science by observation, while there are at the same time in the mind laws superior to and independent of observation; how it is that while there are <a priori> principles in the mind, it is yet true that we cannot construct a philosophy by <a priori> speculation.But with these explanations and deductions, it may be maintained that the characters specified are to be found, either announced or acted on, in the pages of all the writers of the school, from Hutcheson to Hamilton.Whenever they are discovered in the works of persons connected with Scotland, the writers are to be placed among the adherents of the school.Wherever there is the total absence of any one of them, we cannot allow the author a place in the fraternity.{8}