deliberately composed and revised for publication. His lectures, as we have them, appear with all the imperfections of being prepared for oral delivery to a class of students; and it may fairly be assumed that if he had himself prepared them for publication, he would have weeded out most of the poetical quotations, the repetitions, and other blemishes. His reduction of all the special faculties of cognition to simple and relative suggestion are unfortunate attempts. Conception, memory, and imagination are reduced to simple suggestion; and judgment, reason, and abstraction, to relative suggestion. He possessed several of the qualities of a good expositor. His conception of method was clear, his analytic power conspicuous; and he had the command of a great store of illustrations. His style is florid, and brilliant to excess; though some fine touches of pathos and eloquent passages occur in his lectures. His choice of words and phrases is sometimes ridiculously inappropriate; such as these— "tribes of our sensations," "nameless tribes of sensations." In truth, he had not a great command of subjective language; in this respect he fell far behind Adam Smith. His lectures, however, have furnished many hints to the association school of psychologists; and in this direction his influence has been considerable. SECTION II. Mackintosh. Sir James Mackintosh was a native of Inverness-shire, 14 and was educated at King's College, Aberdeen; thence, in 1784, he proceeded to Edinburgh, and entered on the study of medicine. After taking his medical degree in 1788, he went to London to push his fortune; but not having obtained a satisfactory practice in the medical profession, he abandoned it. He seems to have entered warmly into the politics and stormy movements of the time, listened with intense interest to the speeches of the leading orators, and soon became a political writer himself. In the spring of 1791, his Vindiciae Gallicæ appeared, which is a glowing defence of the French Revolution against the vehement Reflections of Burke. The style of this pamphlet 14 He was born at Aldourie, on the banks of the Ness, seven miles from Inverness, in 1765, and died in 1832. is animated, but rather diffuse; yet it soon attained a wide circulation. Shortly after, he betook himself to the study of the law, and was called to the bar in 1795. In 1799, he delivered a course of thirtynine Lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations, which were subsequently published. He greatly distinguished himself in 1803 by his defence of M. Peltier against a prosecution for libel on Bonaparte. His speech on this occasion was a great effort of forensic eloquence, and seems to have brought him into public notice. Like many other talented and warm-hearted young men, he cherished ambitious literary projects which were never realised. In 1804, he was appointed Recorder of Bombay. He resided eight years in India; and returned to England in 1812, with an impaired constitution. He was elected a member of Parliament for the county of Nairn, and in the House of Commons he advocated liberal measures. He was appointed professor of law in the East Indian College at Haileybury in 1818. But his literary projects, though not entirely abandoned, made little progress, owing to a variety of circumstances: his good nature, pleasant humour, wide knowledge, and great conversational power made him a favourite in every society; and thus he was diverted from his real work. He wrote articles for the Edinburgh Review; an abridgment of English History down to the Reformation; a Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, for the Encyclopædia Britannica; and a fragment which he left on the Causes of the Revolution of 1688; which was intended to be his masterpiece, and he had collected a large quantity of materials for it. It is, however, only his Ethical Dissertation which comes properly within the range of this section. Mackintosh's "Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy" is chiefly limited to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although it presented a brief review of earlier systems, and included Stewart and Brown. After a luminous introduction, he devotes a section to preliminary observations on the nature of ethical science, and the methods of examining it. He put the main ethical questions into a definite form; and after remarking on the universality of the distinction between right and wrong, he observes that in the inquiry as to the foundation of morals, the two distinct questions-touching (1) the Moral Faculty, and (2) the Standard of Morality, have seldom been fully discriminated.15 The first of these problems embraces 15 Disst., p. 62. 1837. ethical theory, and also involves certain questions of pure psychology; the second problem relates to the standard or test of morality-of right and wrong in action-the ultimate end. Other important questions arise in the province of morality; but he insists strongly on the necessity of keeping these two chief distinctions steadily in view. His own criticisms of moral systems proceed throughout upon these lines, which gives to them a clearness and simplicity rarely found in ethical disquisition. He gives a brief sketch of ancient ethics, and of scholastic ethics; and began his account of modern ethics with Grotius and Hobbes. Grotius' work, which was published in 1625, presented the most authentic statement of the general principles of morals which prevailed in Europe, before the writings of Hobbes had occasioned those ethical controversies which more especially belong to modern times. He appreciates Hobbes very fairly; though, of course, he exposes the fundamental errors of his ethical system. Hobbes was the real instigator of most of the ethical inquiries instituted in Britain, till through the early part of the eighteenth century; and the answers to the Leviathan alone would form a library. 16 He then gives an exposition of the views concerning the moral faculties and the social affections, and examines the systems of Cumberland, Cudworth, Clarke, Shaftesbury, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Edwards, and others. The main cause of the imperfect views of morality exhibited in the writings of most of those philosophers was the want of a clear and discriminative insight into the position and significance of the sentiments and feelings in relation to ethical philosophy. Some of them insisted that reason alone was the supreme principle of morality, an assumption long since shown to be utterly untenable. Those philosophers who are regarded as laying the foundations of a more just theory of ethics, embracing Butler, Hutcheson, Berkeley, Hume, Price, Hartley, Tucker, Paley, Bentham, Stewart, and Brown, were next treated. He gives comparatively short but candid and valuable sketches of the systems of these philosophers; while he introduced his own criticisms under separate headings. Mackintosh was an able, amiable, and mild-tempered man; and I have seen it stated that his critical authority was weakened, "by an amiable propensity to eulogistic declamation." But this, like many other sayings,; 16 Disst., pp. 112-133. is only half true; as bearing on the point, as well as for its historic interest, I will quote his opening remarks on Bentham and his school : "The disciples of Mr. Bentham are more like the hearers of an Athenian philosopher than the pupils of a modern professor, or the cool proselytes of a modern writer. They are in general men of competent age, of superior understanding, who voluntarily embrace the laborious study of useful and noble sciences; who derive their opinions not so much from the cold perusal of his writings, as from familiar converse with a master from whose lips these opinions are recommended by simplicity, disinterestedness, originality, and vivacity; aided rather than impeded by foibles not unamiable, enforced of late by the growing authority of years and fame, and at all times strengthened by that unbounded reliance on his own judgment which mightily increases the ascendant of such men over those who approach him. As he and they deserve the credit of having abandoned vulgar prejudices, so they must be content to incur the imputation of falling into the neighbouring vices of seeking distinction by singularity; of clinging to opinions because they are obnoxious; of wantonly wounding the most respectable feelings of mankind; of regarding an immense display of method and nomenclature as a sure token of a corresponding increase of knowledge, and of considering themselves as a chosen few, whom an initiation into the most secret mysteries of philosophy entitles to look down with pity, if not with contempt, on the profane multitude. .. Mr. Bentham has at length been betrayed into the unphilosophical hypothesis, that all the ruling bodies who guide the community have conspired to stifle and defeat his discoveries. He is too little acquainted with doubts to believe the honest doubts of others, and he is too angry to make allowance for their prejudices and habits. He has embraced the most extreme party in practical politics; manifesting more dislike and contempt towards those who are more moderate supporters of popular principles than towards their most inflexible opponents." 17 This is among the warmest statements in his Dissertation. Indeed, the spirit in which he criticises the systems of philosophers is unusually calm, just, and candid. I will briefly indicate his own views on some of the chief points of morality. 1. He considered conscience to be a derived faculty-gradually 17 Disst., pp. 285, 286. formed, the result of a series of associations. He notes the primary feelings that enters into it, the principal of which are gratitude, sympathy, resentment, remorse, and shame; the secondary causes of its development are education, imitation, general opinion, laws and government. He traces and explains its developments, and finally, conscience attains its distinctive character, and appears in close relation with the will. 2. Touching the standard, he is in favour of utility, with some limitations. Utility is the final justification of right actions, but not the immediate motive in the mind of the agent. He says: "The laws prescribed by a benevolent Being to His creatures must necessarily be founded on the principle of promoting their happiness. It would be singular, indeed, if the proofs of the goodness of God, legible in every part of nature, should not, above all others, be most discoverable and conspicuous in the beneficial tendency of His moral laws." He remarks that to calculate the general tendency of every kind of human action is a possible and common operation. The general good effects of temperance, justice, fortitude, prudence, benevolence, gratitude, and many others, are the subjects of calculations which, when taken as generalities, are unerring.18 3. The supreme good, or theory of happiness, is embodied in his doctrine of the delightfulness of virtuous conduct, by which he proposes to effect the reconciliation of our own good with that of others. "Virtue is an inward fountain of pure delight, and the pleasure of benevolence, if it could become lasting and intense, would convert the heart into a heaven. They alone are truly happy or truly virtuous, that have no need of a motive in regard to outward consequences." 18 Disst., pp. 229-230, 350-365. |