The metaphysics of Sir William Hamilton : collected, arranged and abridged for the use of colleges and private students / by Francis Bowen.

  • Hamilton, William, Sir, 1788-1856.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The metaphysics of Sir William Hamilton : collected, arranged and abridged for the use of colleges and private students / by Francis Bowen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    aloof from practice, a waking error is better than a sleeping truth. — Neither, in point of fact, is there found any proportion between the possession of truths, and the development of the mind in which they are deposited. Every learner in science is now familial with more truths than Aristotle or Plato ever dreamt of knowing; yet, compared with the Stagirite or the Athenian, how few, even of our masters of modern science, rank higher than intellectual barbarians ! Ancient Greece and modern Europe prove, indeed, that the march of intellect is no inseparable concomitant of the march of science ; — that the cultivation of the individual is not to be rashly confounded with the progress of the species.] — Discussions. Philosophy best entitled to be called useful. — But if specula- tive truth itself be only valuable as a mean of intellectual activity, those studies which determine the faculties to a more vigorous exertion, will, in every liberal sense, be better entitled, absolutely, to the name of useful, than those which, with a greater complement of more certain facts, awaken them to a less intense, and consequently to a less improving exercise. On this ground I would rest one of the preeminent utihties of mental philosophy. That it comprehends all the sublimest objects of our theoretical and moral interest; — that every (natural) conclusion concerning God, the soul, the present worth and the future destiny of man, is exclusively deduced from the philosophy of mind, will be at once admitted. But I do not at present found the importance on the paramount dig- nity of the pursuit. It is as the best gymnastic of the mind, — as a mean, principally, and almost exclusively, conducive to the highest education of our noblest powers, that I would vindicate to these speculations the necessity which has too frequently I een denied them. By no other intellectual application is the mind thus reflected on itself, and its faculties aroused to such independent, vigorous, unwonted, and continued energy ; — by none, therefore, are its best capacities so variously and intensely evolved. By turning, says Burke, the soul inward on itself, its forces are concentred, and are fitted for greater and stronger flights of science; and in this pursuit, whether we