then philosophy is equally necessary to convince me that I can have no knowledge beyond what is contingent—that is, which may not at some future time be error and delusion. Every branch of human knowledge, he contends again, if generalised to its full extent, brings as into the region of metaphysical research; as the chemist finds when investigating matter—the mechanician when engaged with the laws of dynamics, involving the notion of Power—the physiologist when examining the idea of life. Mental philosophy is declared by one of its leal and laborious champions in our day, to be the portal through which all must pass who would enter the inner temple of intellectual treasures, and though not itself the sum of all knowledge, it is the "necessary instrument in the successful prosecution of other branches of human wisdom. Without it," adds this devout believer in sceptical times, "every man is a child, an intellectual imbecile, and can have nothing valuable or abiding in him."[1] He is sanguine, we may add, as to the projects of his favourite study—in spite of the Positivists and their predictions—and, as one deeply impressed with the absolute utility and importance of metaphysical researches, he calls it cheering "to witness so many indications of their progress and extension in every direction to which we can turn the intellectual eye. We know that great ideas are never lost; and we consequently feel an inward and firm conviction that the advances which we are in this age effecting in the first of all branches of human knowledge, will never be effaced by any future retrograde movements whatever in the minds of individuals or of nations. The whole progress of human society speaks loudly against any such catastrophe." Metaphysics in some guise or other will never say die.
The metaphysical department of the Edinburgh Review owes whatever prestige it enjoys to the contributions of Sir William Hamilton. This may be the least popular of the sections in that journal's division of labour. Yet it were hard to name among all the able coadjutors on its staff, a contributor of superior weight and vigour. The Jubilee year of Buff and Blue is past; her age hath attained the matronly lot of fifty, making her a "lady oi a certain age:" but of all the distinguished worthies who have written to her profit and her praise—from the time when she was dandled, an infant of days, on the plump knees of Sydney Smith, and thence transferred to the surveillance of Jeffrey, to the sober maturity of her adult renown when superintended by Macvey Napier, and rendered somewhat heavy and sleepy under the regimen of Professor Empson (may Mr. Cornwall Lewis have the art to renew her youth, even in her sixth decade!)—of all the "braw, braw lads" who have espoused her cause with the pen of ready writers, we know not one, in calibre and erudition, to top the Edinburgh Professor of Logic. No candidate in the Blue and Yellow interest comes before us of bigger, burlier figure, though many may wear their colours with a more jaunty air, and win the electors by smarter and smoother speechification. In the arena of the Review, from first to last, there is hardly one gymnasiarch but must yield to the prowess, however he may exceed the grace and agility, of this massively framed and rigorously disciplined athletes. We remember who have disported themselves on the same platform ; we are not unmindful of such contributors, avowed or unavowed, as Brougham,
- ↑ R. Blakey's "History of the Philosophy of Mind," vol. i.
