Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/84

it is entitled, "Plan of Education in the Marischal College and University of Aberdeen, with the Reasons of it, drawn up by order of the Faculty," printed at Aberdeen in 1755; a little work of admirable perspicuity and sound logical reasoning. The rationale of the ancient system was founded on the presumption, that, as it is by the use of logic and the other metaphysical sciences alone, that we can arrange, digest, and reason upon the facts which come under our observation, these must be committed to the mind as rules of management, before any facts collected can be applied to their proper purposes, and that before any knowledge of nature, as it exists, is stored in the intellect, that intellect must be previously possessed of certain regulations, to the criterion of which the knowledge gained must be submitted. A quotation from Dr Gerard's little work will afford one of the best specimens of the now pretty generally understood confutation of this fallacy; speaking of logic, he says:—"This is one of the most abstruse arid difficult branches of philosophy, and therefore quite improper to begin with. It has a strict dependence on many parts of knowledge: these must of consequence be premised, before it can be rightly apprehended,—the natural history of the human understanding must be known, and its phenomena discovered; for without this, the exertions of the intellectual faculties, and their application to the various subjects of science will be unintelligible. These phenomena must be not only narrated, but likewise, as far as possible, explained: for without investigating their general laws, no certain and general conclusions concerning their exercise can be deduced: nay, all sciences, all branches of knowledge whatever, must be premised as a groundwork to genuine logic. History has one kind of evidence, mathematics another; natural philosophy, one still different; the philosophy of nature, another distinct from all these; the subordinate branches of these several parts, have still minuter peculiarities in the evidence appropriated to them. An unprejudiced mind will in each of these be convinced by that species of argument which is peculiar to it, though it does not reflect how it comes to be convinced. By being conversant in them, one is prepared for the study of logic; for they supply them with a fund of materials: in them the different kinds of evidence and argument are exemplified: from them only those illustrations can be taken, without which its rules and precepts would be unintelligible." * * * "In studying the particular sciences, reason will spontaneously exert itself: if the proper and natural method of reasoning is used, the mind will, by the native force of its faculties, perceive the evidence, and be convinced by it; though it does not reflect how this comes to pass, nor explicitly consider according to what general rules the understanding is exerted. By afterwards studying these rules, one will be farther fitted for prosecuting the several sciences; the knowledge of the grounds and laws of evidence will give him the security of reflection, against employing wrong methods of proof, and improper kinds of evidence, additional to that of instinct and natural genius."The consequence of this acknowledgment of the supremacy of reason and practice over argumentation and theory, was the establishment of a course of lectures on natural and civil history, previously to inculcating the corresponding sciences of natural and mental philosophy; an institution from which,—wherever the former part consists of anything better than a blundering among explosive combustibles, and a clattering among glass vessels, or the latter is anything superior to a circumstantial narrative of ancient falsehoods and modern dates,—the student derives a basis of sound and useful information, on which the more metaphysical sciences may or may not be built, as circumstances or inclination admit. It is a striking instance of the propensity to follow with accuracy the beaten track, or to deviate only when some powerful spirit leads the way, that the system has never advanced further than