revive and to associate with philosophy external activity, philosophers may proclaim it now in order to revive and associate with action elevated contemplation. Although in these Dissertations there is an apparent, there is not, we think, a real variance with the doctrine of Bacon, for there is probably all that the principle of the division of intellectual labour will permit a single mind, of exclusive tendencies, to offer towards the creation of a spirit of contemplative activity.
Perhaps the quality of a general kind that is most impressive in the aspect of Sir William Hamilton’s portion of this volume is the singular purity of its speculative character, and the exclusively speculative ends which the author seems to have aimed at in his compositions. The phenomenon here exhibited of an immense mass of wonderfully subtle logical distinctions, and profound metaphysical principles, produced and collected apparently by means of the energy of a love of thinking for its own sake, and a love of truth without regard to any of its nearer or more remote applications, is one which cannot fail to impress any intelligent observer of our British literature, were it only in virtue of its present novelty, in this age of extraordinary outward bustle, and in this island whose inhabitants are noted for the extremely palpable and concrete character of the objects that induce them to think and act. The many natural motives, distinct from the love of knowledge on its own account, that incline men to seek for truth, together with the various acquired tendencies having the same direction, which are fostered by the complicated social relations
