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SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON:

THE MAN AND HIS PHILOSOPHY.

TWO LECTURES

DELIVERED BEFORE

THE EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION,
JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 1883

BY

JOHN VEITCH, LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND RHETORIC IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBURGH AND LONDON

MDCCCLXXXIII

2265.

All Rights reserved

PREFATORY NOTE.

THESE Lectures are printed almost as they were delivered. To the Second, that more specially on the Philosophy, I have added a few passages omitted in speaking, owing to the limit of time, but fitted to develop some of the points more fully. J. V.

THE COLLEGE, GLASGOW,

February 1883.

LECTURE I.

I. PHILOSOPHY IN SCOTLAND BEFORE HAMILTON.
THE REGENTING AND THE PROFESSORIATE.

THE study of Mental Philosophy has long been a highly characteristic feature of the university system of Scotland. Logic, Physics, and Ethics formed the almost exclusive subjects of instruction in the Arts' Faculty of the pre-Reformation universities-viz., St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen-at their foundation in the fifteenth century, and for a long time afterwards. During the fifteenth, sixteenth, and even the seventeenth centuries, there was hardly a university on the continent of Europe at any time, which did not contain,-I might almost say, was not made famous by—a Scottish Regent or Professor of Philosophy, who had learned his dialectic in his native university. Just as the mediæval Scot sought service and fame on foreign battle-fields, so his poorer compatriot sought the laurel of learning in foreign universities. "The Scots," said Erasmus, "take a natural delight in dialectical subtleties; and the names of Major, Lockhart, and Wedderburn in the

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