those ascetic habits of abstract and mystical meditation which seem to have been, in all ages, congenial to their constitutional temperament. Of such habits, an Idealism, approaching to that of Berkeley and Malebranche, is as natural an offspring, as Materialism is of the gay and dissipated manners, which, in great and luxurious capitals, are constantly inviting the thoughts abroad.

To these remains of ancient science in the East, the attention of Europe was first called by Bernier, a most intelligent and authentic traveller, of whom I formerly took notice as a favourite pupil of Gassendi. But it is chiefly by our own countrymen that the field which he opened has been subsequently explored; and of their meritorious labours in the prosecution of this task, during the reign of our late Sovereign, it is scarcely possible to form too high an estimate.

Much more, however, may be yet expected, if such a prodigy as Sir William Jones should again appear, uniting, in as miraculous a degree, the gift of tongues with the spirit of philosophy. The structure of the Sanscrit, in itself, independently of the treasures locked up in it, affords one of the most puzzling subjects of inquiry that was ever presented to human ingenuity. The affinities and filiations of different tongues, as evinced in their corresponding roots and other coincidences, are abundantly curious, but incomparably more easy in the explanation, than the systematical analogy which is said to exist between the Sanscrit and the Greek, (and also between the Sanscrit and the Latin, which is considered as the most ancient dialect of the Greek,) in the conjugations and flexions of their verbs, and in many other particulars of their mechanism; an analogy which is represented as so complete, that, in the versions which have been made from the one language into the other, "Sanscrit," we are told, "answers to Greek, as face to face in a glass."1 That the Sanscrit did not grow up to the perfection which it now exhibits, from popular and casual modes of speech, the un

1 Letter from the Reverend David Brown, Provost of the College of Fort William, about the Sanscrit Edition of

the Gospels, (dated Calcutta, September 1806, and published in some of the Literary Journals of the day.)

exampled regularity of its forms seems almost to demonstrate; and yet, should this supposition be rejected, to what other hypothesis shall we have recourse, which does not involve equal if not greater improbabilities? The problem is well worthy of the attention of philosophical grammarians; and the solution of it, whatever it may be, can scarcely fail to throw some new lights on the history of the human race, as well as on that of the human mind.

[*"I have long harboured a suspicion that some, perhaps much, of the Indian science was derived from the Greeks of Bactriana."-(Gibbon's Rom. Hist. vol. vii. 294.) This is also the opinion of the very learned and judicious Meiners.—(Hist. Doctrinæ de vero Deo, pp. 122, seq.) Meiners refers to some arguments in support of it in Bayer's Historia Regni Græcorum Bactriani, p. 165.1 As this author is often quoted by Gibbon, it is not unlikely that he derived the hint from him.— See Robertson's India, pp. 33, 34.]

SECT. VIII.-METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY OF SCOTLAND.

Ir now only remains for me to take a slight survey of the rise and progress of the Metaphysical Philosophy of Scotland; and if, in treating of this, I should be somewhat more minute than in the former parts of this Historical Sketch, I flatter myself that allowances will be made for my anxiety to supply some chasms in the literary history of my country, which could

*Restored.-On Mr. Stewart's speculations touching the Sanscrit, see of this collection, vol. iv.-Editor.

[The following account of Bayer's Book is given by Klotzius in an epistle prefixed to Bayeri Opuscula ad Historiam Antiquam, &c. Spectantia, Halæ, 1770" Imprimis vero lectoribus persuadere conatur, Indos a Græcis numerorum nomina et mathematicas disciplinas accepisse, et vias, quibus Græcæ artes cum Oriente communicatæ fuerint,

indagat. Qua in re multum tribui conjecturis, ipse vir olim doctissimus non negavit. Odiosum hoc est saepe suspicari inquit, attamen, ut mea opinio fert, in tempore et loco necessarium atque utile, ut enim in obscurissimis quæstionibus primum est, suspicari, ita, si nihil proficiamus amplius, exstare et cognosci suspiciones nostras convenit, quibus fortasse aliis occasio præbeatur, aut hoc ipsum, aut novum, et diversum îter sibi muniendi, quo proxime ad veritatem perveniatur."]

not be so easily, nor perhaps so authentically, filled up by a younger hand.

The Metaphysical Philosophy of Scotland, and, indeed, the literary taste in general, which so remarkably distinguished this country during the last century, may be dated from the lectures of Dr. Francis Hutcheson, in the University of Glasgow. Strong indications of the same speculative spirit may be traced in earlier writers; but it was from this period that Scotland, after a long slumber, began again to attract general notice in the republic of letters.2

The writings of Dr. Hutcheson, however, are more closely connected with the history of Ethical than of Metaphysical

1 See Note BBB.

2 An Italian writer of some note, in a work published in 1763, assigns the same date to the revival of letters in Scotland. "Fra i tanti, e si chiari Scrittori che fiorirono nella Gran Bretagna a' tempi della Regina Anna, non se ne conta pur uno, che sia uscito de Scozia. Francesco Hutcheson venuto in Iscozia, a professarvi la Filosofia, e gli studii di umanità, nella Universita di Glasgow, v'insinuò per tutto il paese colle istruzione a viva voce, e con egregie opere date alle stampe, un vivo genio per gli studii filosofici, e literarii, e sparse qui fecondissimi semi, d'onde vediamo nascere sì felice frutti, e sì copiose."-Discorso sopra le Vicende della Letteratura, del Sig. Carlo Denina, p. 224, Glasgow edition, 1763.

I was somewhat surprised to meet with the foregoing observations in the work of a foreigner; but wherever he acquired his information, it evinces, in those from whom it was derived, a more intimate acquaintance with the traditionary history of letters in this country than has fallen to the share of most of our own authors who have treated of that subject. I have heard it conjectured, that the materials of his section

on Scottish literature had been communicated to him by Mr. Hume.

Another foreign writer, much better qualified than Denina to appreciate the merits of Hutcheson, has expressed himself upon this subject with his usual precision. "L'école Ecossaise a en quelque sorte pour fondateur Hutcheson, maître et prédécesseur de Smith. C'est ce philosophe qui lui a imprimé son caractère, et qui a commencé à lui donner de l'éclat." In a note upon this passage, the author observes,-" C'est en ce seul sens qu'on peut donner un chef à une école de philosophie qui, comme on le verra, professe d'ailleurs la plus parfaite indépendance de l'autorité."-See the excellent reflections upon the posthumous works of Adam Smith, annexed by M. Prévost to his translation of that work.

Dr. Hutcheson's first course of lectures at Glasgow was given in 1730. He was a native of Ireland, and is ac

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cordingly called by Denina un dotto Irlandese;" but he was of Scotch extraction, (his father or grandfather baving been a younger son of a respectable family in Ayrshire,) and he was sent over when very young to receive his education in Scotland.

Science; and I shall, accordingly, delay any remarks which I have to offer upon them till I enter upon that part of my subject. There are, indeed, some very original and important metaphysical hints scattered over his works; but it is chiefly as an ethical writer that he is known to the world, and that he is entitled to a place among the philosophers of the eighteenth century.1

Among the contemporaries of Dr. Hutcheson, there was one Scottish metaphysician (Andrew Baxter, author of the Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul) whose name it would be improper to pass over without some notice, after the splendid eulogy bestowed on his work by Warburton. "He who would see the justest and precisest notions of God and the soul may read this book, one of the most finished of the kind, in my humble opinion, that the present times, greatly advanced in true philosophy, have produced.”2

To this unqualified praise, I must confess, I do not think Baxter's Inquiry altogether entitled, although I readily acknowledge that it displays considerable ingenuity as well as learning. Some of the remarks on Berkeley's argument against the existence of matter are acute and just, and, at the time when they were published, had the merit of novelty.

1 One of the chief objects of Hutcheson's writings was to oppose the licentious system of Mandeville; a system which was the natural offspring of some of Locke's reasonings against the existence of innate practical principles.

As a moralist, Hutcheson was a warm admirer of the ancients, and seems to have been particularly smitten with that favourite doctrine of the Socratic school which identifies the good with the beau tiful. Hence he was led to follow much too closely the example of Shaftesbury, in considering moral distinctions as founded more on sentiment than on reason, and to speak vaguely of virtue as a sort of noble enthusiasm: but he was led, at the same time, to connect with his ethical speculations some collateral inquiries concerning Beauty and Har

mony, in which he pursued, with considerable success, the path recently struck out by Addison in his Essays on the Pleasures of the Imagination. These inquiries of Hutcheson, together with his Thoughts on Laughter, although they may not be very highly prized for their depth, bear everywhere the marks of an enlarged and cultivated mind, and, whatever may have been their effects elsewhere, certainly contributed powerfully, in our Northern seats of learning, to introduce a taste for more liberal and elegant pursuits than could have been expected so soon to succeed to the intolerance, bigotry, and barbatism of the preceding century.

2 See Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated, p. 395 of the first edition.

One of his distinguishing doctrines is, that the Deity [himself] is the immediate agent in producing the phenomena of the Material World; but that, in the Moral World, the case is different,―a doctrine which, whatever may be thought of it in other respects, is undoubtedly a great improvement on that of Malebranche, which, by representing God as the only agent in the universe, was not less inconsistent than the scheme of Spinoza with the moral nature of Man. "The Deity (says Baxter) is not only at the head of Nature, but in every part of it. A chain of material causes betwixt the Deity and the effect produced, and much more a series of them, is such a supposition as would conceal the Deity from the knowledge of mortals for ever. We might search for matter above matter, till we were lost in a labyrinth out of which no philosopher ever yet found his way. This way of bringing in second causes is borrowed from the government of the moral world, where free agents act a part; but it is very improperly applied to the material universe, where matter and motion only (or mechanism, as it is called) comes in competition with the Deity."1

Notwithstanding, however, these and other merits, Baxter has contributed so little to the advancement of that philosophy which has since been cultivated in Scotland, that I am afraid the very slight notice I have now taken of him may be considered as an unseasonable digression. The great object of his studies plainly was, to strengthen the old argument for the soul's immateriality, by [* the doctrine of the inertia of matter, which had recently attracted general attention, as one of the fundamental principles of the Newtonian Philosophy.] To the intellectual and moral phenomena of Man, and to the laws by which they are regulated, he seems to have paid but little attention.2

1 Appendix to the first part of the Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul, pp. 109, 110.

*Mr. Stewart had substituted the following for "the new lights furnished by Newton's discoveries."-Ed.

2 Baxter was born at Old Aberdeen, in 1686 or 1687, and died at Whittingham, in East Lothian, in 1750. I have not been able to discover the date of the first edition of his Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul, but the