Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/586

This page needs to be proofread.

564 GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA. Scottish School ; Bentham is known as the advocate of utilitarianism ; Mill, an exponent of the traditional empiri- cism of English thinking, develops the theory of induction and the principle of utility; Spencer combines an agnostic doctrine of the absolute and thoroughgoing evolution in the phenomenal world into a comprehensive philosophical system.* In recent years there has been a reaction against empirical doctrines on the basis of neo-Kantian and neo- Hegelian principles. Foremost among the leaders of this movement we may mention T. H. Green. The Scottish philosophy has been continued in the nine- teenth century by James Mackintosh {Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, 1830, 3d ed., 1863), and William Whewell {History of the Inductive Sciences, 3d ed., 1857; Philosophy of the Indtictive Sciences, 1840, 3d ed., 1858-60). Its most important representative is Sir William Hamiltonf of Edinburgh (1788-1856), who, like Whewell, is influenced by Kant. Hamilton bases philos- ophy on the facts of consciousness, but, in antithesis to the associational psychology, emphasizes the mental activity of discrimination and judgment. Our knowledge is relative, and relations its only object. Consciousness can never transcend itself, it is bound to the antithesis of subject and object, and conceives the existent under relations of space and time. Hence the unconditioned is inaccessible to knowledge and attainable by faith alone. Among Hamil- ton's followers belong Mansel {Metaphysics, 2,^. ed., 1875 ; Limits of Religious Thought, 5th ed., 1870) and Veitch. The Scottish doctrine was vigorously opposed by J. F. Ferricr Kurella, 1889 ; David Masson, Recent British Philosophy, 1865, 3d ed., 1877 ; Ribot, La Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine, 1870, 2d ed., 1875 [English, 1874] Guyau, La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine, 1879 [Morris, British Thought and Thinkers, 1880 ; Porter, "On English and American Philosophy," Ueberweg's History, English translation, vol. ii. pp. 348-460 ; O. Pfleiderer, Developmtnt of Theology, 1890, book iv. — Tr.].

  • Cf. on Mill and Spencer, Bernh. Piinjer, Jahrbiicher fiir protestantischt

Theologie, 1878.

Hamilton : Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, 1852, 3d ed. , r866 ; 

Lectures on Metaphysics, 2d ed., i860, and on Logic, 2d ed., 1866, edited by his pupils, Mansel and Veitch ; Reid's Works, with notes and dissertations, 1846,. 7th ed., 1872. On Hamilton cf. Veitch, 1882, 1883 [Monck, iSSi].