if again she chanceth, amidst the agitation of strong fancies and wild affections, to spring upwards, a second relapse speedily succeeds into this region of darkness and dreams."

Religion and metaphysics presented themselves as the two ways in which the spirit of man finds satisfaction, in the "region of darkness and dreams" in which it is left by logical understanding, when confined to the meagre data of empirical science. In religion the complex constitution of man-emotional, active, and intelligent -is found in ultimate practical relation to the Power universally at work, the Mens divina agitans molem, the Spirit that animates the universe. In metaphysic, intellect in man tries to express in thought our ultimate relation to the Supreme Reality. The sceptical negations and ideal constructions which appear in the history of philosophy are the inadequate issues of this trial.

Exercises in logic and in psychological introspection thus brought us at last into the metaphysical region in which the perplexities of human thought converge. The exercises were meant to place the student in the attitude that is appropriate to a limited experience and finite intelligence. Consciously or unconsciously, we must

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all be metaphysicians. Not least those who treat metaphysic as illusion; for if they are reasonable, they must do this for a supposed reason, and this reason is their unconscious metaphysic. But all need not be metaphysical experts, who think out their final intellectual position. Most persons are contented to accept their ultimate premisses on authority. A few desire to test the authority. So in 1865 I opened separate lectures for any so disposed. In the following quarter of a century more than 400 students entered in this class. In those lectures I avoided final system, and unfolded some of the great philosophies of the past, destructive and constructive; in the faith that human thinkers differ, not totally, but in the degree of their approach to the perfect philosophy that is fully reached by none. The history of metaphysics is in much like the history of poetry or art; yet the collisions of metaphysicians represent gradual advancement on the whole. And now the young aspirants, by going into the river, and "moving up and down in its depths and shallows," each bestirring himself as he best could, were able in the end to discover something.

This attempt to educate independent thinkers

was not unsuccessful. The young metaphysicians of the university soon formed themselves into a Society for weekly discussions, and the class-room, aided latterly by this "Philosophical Society," has sent not a few professors and books of philosophy into the world, in the later decades of the nineteenth century. It has given two professors of philosophy to Edinburgh, two to Glasgow, three to Aberdeen, two to St Andrews; one to Oxford, and another to Cambridge; besides a still larger number to American universities, and to colleges in India and Japan and Australia. Others are distinguished in Parliament, or on the judicial bench, and in the Church. The young metaphysicians were occasionally encouraged and directed by addresses delivered, among others, by Mr Balfour, the present Prime Minister, Sir Alexander Grant, Professors Henry Sidgwick, Knight, Bosanquet, Jones, and the late Professor Wallace of Oxford.

But I must leave the class-room, to look at the University of Edinburgh, as it was in those years.

CHAPTER VI.

THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

1859-1889.

"If we were asked for what end endowed Universities exist, we should answer, To keep alive Philosophy. All things in which the public are adequate judges of excellence are best supplied when the stimulus of individual interest is most active; and that is where pay is in proportion to exertion. But there is an education of which it cannot be pretended that the public are competent judges, the liberal education by which great minds are formed. To rear up minds with aspirations and faculties above the common herd, capable of leading their countrymen to greater achievement in virtue, intelligence, and social wellbeing; and likewise so to educate the leisured classes generally that they may participate in the qualities of these superior spirits, and be prepared to appreciate them, and follow their steps-these are purposes that require educational instructions placed above dependence on the immediate pleasure of the very multitude whom they are meant to elevate."-J. S. MILL.

My class for metaphysicians was inaugurated under happier academical conditions than when Hamilton made the experiment in 1838. The 'Sixties and the two following decades of the nineteenth century are memorable in the history of Edinburgh University. They saw the "Town's College," till then a chaotic aggregate of students and professors governed by the Town Council,

transformed into a self-governed society of graduates, and reconstituted on this foundation. In the middle of the nineteenth century graduation in the fundamental or Arts faculty had been dormant in Edinburgh for more than a hundred years, and graduation in law and divinity was unknown. The European fame of the undeveloped university rested on the eminence of the professors in two preceding centuries, in mathematics, metaphysics, and medicine; and on the occasional emergence of a literary, scientific, or political celebrity from the ranks of its alumni. Monro, Cullen, Black, Bell, Christison, and Simpson were names of European repute among its medical teachers. The Gregories, Colin Maclaurin, Playfair, and Leslie were celebrated mathematical professors. Ferguson, Dugald Stewart, Brown, and Hamilton were historical figures in psychology and ethics. The College had enrolled David Hume, Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, and Charles Darwin, also Brougham and Palmerston, Lord John Russell and Lord Henry Petty, among its students. Robertson, an eminent representative of historical literature, had presided over professors and students as Principal. Nevertheless, with the advance of the nineteenth