The characteristic distinction and professed aim of the old Scottish philosophy is, as we have seen, the refutation of Hume's scepticism, and the recovery of the First Principles of knowledge out of the ruin which it had occasioned. Dr. Reid himself, in an often (quoted passage of one of his letters to Dr. Gregory, asserts indeed that his peculiar merit lies "in having called in question the common theory of ideas or images in the mind being the only objects of thought." But the two statements are not opposed, and it may be interesting to some of our readers to have the opportunity of reflecting upon their coincidence. The course of thought along which we propose to conduct them with a view to afford this opportunity, as it implies an intelligent apprehension of the Scottish refutation of philosophical scepticism, may also suggest in its progress some important questions regarding the value of a philosophical vindication
found in the notes on Reid's "Brief Account of Aristotle's Logic" which are remarkable for the severe precision and accuracy of the notices they contain, of the nature and province of that science which may be designated Formal Logic,—or the theory of the laws of thought regarded in abstraction from the things about which thought may be exercised. Here Sir W. Hamilton differs, in his estimate of the Aristotelian doctrine, from the older Scottish school—especially Campbell, Stewart, and Brown—and indeed from the general current of opinion in Scotland on this subject from the Reformation downwards. The Peripatetic doctrines were dislodged in a great measure from their place of authority in our Universities by Andrew Melville, and the Ramist Logic was in his time introduced into Glasgow, St. Andrews, and Edinburgh. Although the popularity of Ramus soon declined, Aristotle has never since recovered his former influence in this country. See M'Crie's "Life of Melville," vol. ii. ch. 12. In Germany, the fortune of Aristotle has been different, and the logical treatises of the Kantian school should be consulted in connexion with the notes on Reid, to assist the apprehension of the limits and development of the science there referred to.
