Page:(1856) Scottish Philosophy—The Old and the New.pdf/12

12 accounts, although not on account of its first principles, is what may be readily conceded.

Another point of difference—indeed the fundamental difference—between the two Scottish philosophies, the Old and the New, is this, that while I hold that philosophy exists for the sole purpose of correcting the natural inadvertencies of loose, ordinary thinking—that this is her true and proper vocation; the old school, on the contrary, are of opinion that philosophy exists for the very purpose of ratifying, and, if possible, systematising these inadvertencies. This is held by Reid and his followers to be the proper business of metaphysical science. It may easily be seen what a vast difference in our respective modes of treatment and inquiry this fundamental discrepancy must give rise to. Yet, amid all the opposition which my system has provoked, no one has ventured to deny what I have proclaimed to be the true vocation of philosophy. A not unfavourable inference is suggested by this significant admission.

It has been asserted, that my philosophy is of Germanic origin and complexion. A broader fabrication than that never dropped from human lips, or dribbled from the point of pen. My philosophy is Scottish to the very core; it is national in every fibre and articulation of its frame. It is a natural growth of old Scotland's soil, and has drunk in no nourishment from any other land. Are we to judge of the productions of Scotland by looking merely to what Scotland has hitherto produced? May a philosopher not be, heart and soul, a Scotsman—may he not be a Scotsman in all his intellectual movements, even although he should have the misfortune to differ, in certain respects, from Dr Reid and Sir William Hamilton? To expatriate a man and his works on such grounds, would be rather a severe sentence, and one which the country, I take it, would be very slow to confirm. If my system presents points of contact or coincidence with the speculations of foreign thinkers, I cannot help that. Is a man to reject the truth which he has discovered by his own efforts, because a person in another country has touched upon something like it? The new Scottish philosophy would have been exactly what it is, although Germany and the whole