important sphere for us to follow them out into every sub-category of what is after all a technical branch of literature. We shall therefore only include the names of a few living writers who may be regarded as representative men, and if we err in our selection, we beg those contributors to philosophical literature whom we may have omitted to make allowances for the difficulties of

our task. Again, we cannot of course speak so largely of the living as of the dead. Mill's famous examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy was prefaced by an expression of regret that there was now no possibility of his attack eliciting one of those swashing blows for which the great Scottish philosopher had a not unmerited reputation, and this we at once recognise as the feeling natural to every manly controversialist; but the position of the chronicler who has to review all that has been done even in the history of one man's thought has other difficulties and other duties. There is in a book, we think, of Mr. Thomas Hughes, a lover who, in answer to his future father-in-law's objection to his political opinions, pleads that these have changed once already during his life, and that as he is still a young man, it is quite possible that they may change again. This possibility is of wide application. Even if we leave out all question of possible conversion from one view to another, there is with every real thinker

a constant process of maturing going on, which may lead to the most startling results. Would it have been fair, for instance, for a writer of the time to have reviewed Ferrier's system on the ground supplied by his first remarkable article on the Philosophy of Consciousness?

Perhaps the most remarkable figure in the philosophical world at the commencement of the Victorian era was that of Sir William Hamilton, the second founder of the Scotch common-sense school. William Stirling Hamilton was born at Glasgow in 1788, of a good Lothian family, which, however, was hardly then in its best days. His great-uncle and his grandfather had been successively Professors of Anatomy at Glasgow University, where young William Hamilton himself received his first education after leaving the grammar school of that city. From Glasgow he went to Balliol, through the medium of one of those Snell exhibitions, of which Lockhart also held one at the time when his friend, Hamilton, went up to Oxford. Hamilton was at this time known as much for his love of study and the extraordinary range of his reading as for his equally great athletic powers; when he went up for his final honour schools, the list of books which he offered to be examined in was so extensive and remarkable that the examiner-the well-known scholar, Thomas Gaisford-preserved a copy of

it.

On leaving the University he at first took up the study of medicine, but subsequently relinquished it for the Bar, to which he was called in 1815; his only success as an advocate appears to have been when arguing in his own cause for the baronetcy of Hamilton of Preston, which was subsequently adjudged to him. He had a great reputation for erudition, especially in antiquarian subjects, and for knowledge of the systems of philosophy; and was one of the little society in which the wild squibs of the early numbers of Blackwood were composed, though he hardly seems to have contributed anything himself, beyond one verse of the "Chaldee Manuscript." In 1820 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the vacant Chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh, to which Wilson was elected, as was well known, on purely political grounds. Had this not been acknowledged, it would have appeared, what it certainly was, a gross injustice to Hamilton, who, however, neither made any break in his friendship with Wilson nor bore malice against any of those who had brought about his defeat. He was more successful in obtaining the professorship of Civil History in the next year, which, however, he was required to share with William Fraser Tytler, the previous holder; and was afterwards appointed Solicitor of the Teinds, a legal office with little work and less pay. In 1836 he obtained the

post in which he made his principal mark, that of Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in Edinburgh University.

Meanwhile he had begun to come before the world as a writer in the Edinburgh Review, his first production being an attack on Cousin's theory of the knowledge of the Absolute. In this article was first brought forward his own distinctive theory that all our knowledge is relative; a knowledge of things in themselves apart from phenomena, was to him an impossibility. We venture to quote as a specimen of his style the striking image by which this great proposition was illustrated.

The universe (he said) may be conceived as a polygon of a thousand, or a hundred thousand sides or facets, and each of these sides or facets may be conceived as representing one special mode of existence. Now, of these thousand sides or modes, all may be equally essential, but three or four only may be turned towards us or be analogous to our organs. One side or facet of the Universe, as holding a relation to the organ of sight, is the mode of luminous or visible existence; another as proportional to the organ of hearing, is thè mode of sonorous or audible existence; and so on.

The discourse is somewhat too heavily shotted for the ordinary reader, but the vivid simile shows a decided proportion of literary power. Jeffrey, however, declared the article unreadable, and scolded his successor, Napier, vehemently for publishing it; Cousin, on the other hand, against

the essay.

whom it was directed, gave a generous praise to Hamilton, after this, continued to write for the Edinburgh for some years, on various subjects. Among his most successful articles were the "Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum," dealing with the early period of the Reformation, and many articles directed against the English Universities, Oxford in particular.

It was, however, by his lectures on psychology, metaphysics, and logic that Hamilton won his immense reputation, as it is by the published form of these that he comes into our province. They probably lose somewhat by appearing in print; old pupils who had heard him, gave such wonderful accounts of his striking and impressive delivery, heightened as it was by the aspect of his noble presence presence and the singular beauty of his face, especially when lighted up by the enthusiasm of teaching. In print the lectures are not lively reading, and the style is apt to be heavy and occasionally pedantic. They were published after his death by two of his disciples, of whom we shall have to speak later, Professor (afterwards Dean) Mansel and Professor Veitch. Into a full discussion of the views put forth therein it is not our part to go deeply. Hamilton called himself a natural realist, believing in the existence of an actual world outside our own ideas of it, and of which we have immediate knowledge, or as he