Ta.
 
 THE EEVIVAL OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 1st Player I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir 
 Hamlet reform it altogether. * * * Go make you ready.
 
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 [ MARK LANE! |'
 
 Ex Librig 
 r K. OGDEN 
 
 REFLECTIONS 
 HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL, 
 
 THE REVIVAL OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 BY 
 
 C. M. INGLEBY, M.A., LL.D., 
 
 rOUEIGN SECRETARY TO THE ROYAt SOCIETY OF LITERATURE. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 J. HA.LI, A.ND SO 1ST. 
 
 1870. 
 
 [All rights reserved.']
 
 D LIBRARY 
 
 CT 2> UNIVERSITY OF CA UFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 THIS LITTLE VOLUME 
 
 JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING, 
 
 LL.D. & F.R.C.S., EDIN 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE SECRET OF HEGEL," ETC. 
 
 In recognition of his helping hand 
 
 Outstretcht to guide and hearten him, whose way 
 
 Lies through the perplext paths of this drear wood, 
 
 The awful maze of metaphysic lore, 
 
 The nodding horrour of whose shady brows 
 
 Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN the last century a decent modicum of Philo- 
 sophy, principally drawn from three sterling English 
 writers, Locke, Butler, and Clarke, was required of 
 candidates for academical honours at Cambridge. 
 This modicum, once representing substantial know- 
 ledge, dwindled down to a mere form and pretence, 
 which mocked and wearied questionist and examiner 
 alike. Two plain courses of reform were open to 
 the University authorities, i.e. the Senate, and its 
 Caput : to revive the comatose reality, or simply to 
 abolish the deadly-lively semblance. They elected 
 the latter alternative. Philosophy, even in the last 
 stage of collapse, and abandoned to the tender 
 mercies of physicians, who were both ignorant and 
 unfriendly, and who, like Timon's associates, throve 
 and gave her over, seemed disposed to contest the 
 Academical grace, and, if die she must, to die hard. 
 Like the fever-stricken sailor, in the story, who
 
 6 
 
 remonstrating with the person commissioned to 
 heave him over, inly muttered " Stop, I ain't dead 
 yet," she would have heen considered outrageously 
 fastidious, had she been particular to half an hour. 
 Her decease (from inanition) was formally certified 
 in the books of the Senate, on March 20, 1827, by 
 Messrs. Wood, French, Peacock, Gwatkin, Whewell, 
 Graham, Chevallier, and King. The reign of Mathe- 
 matics and Physics, divorced, however, from experi- 
 ment, was now absolute. 
 
 But despite this formality Philosophy was not 
 dead ! The authors of The Student's Guide assure us 
 that the new Tripos for the encouragement of Phi- 
 losophy " was not the introduction of a new thing 
 at Cambridge, but merely the revival and reformation 
 of what under one form or other [i.e. another] had 
 always existed there : " " all which I most power- 
 fully and potently believe." Stricken down she was 
 by a rigid catalepsy which simulated death to the life. 
 But the antiquated Cambridge clairvoyante was not 
 dead. Her unmanifested vitality was recognised, 
 not by the University, but within the precincts of 
 certain Colleges ; where Butler, Paley, Stewart, Cud- 
 worth, and Price, and in later times Whewell, formed 
 the material of what was still done under the names 
 of Metaphysics and Ethics. Jammed in and foulee
 
 between the dominant monopolies of Mathematics 
 and Theology, the former of which assumed her 
 very name (with an ironical prefix), and the latter 
 not a few of her functions, she could scarcely draw 
 her breath. 
 
 This monstrous state of things was maintained 
 with complacency in the face of the great German 
 movement, whose authors first laid firm and sure 
 for aye the foundations of mental and moral science. 
 
 In 1851 the Moral Sciences Tripos was established. 
 Nunc demum redit animus. After nineteen years of 
 the new regime it is time to take our bearings. Where 
 are we, and whither are we sailing ? Whither are 
 we bound 1 is the more important inquiry. Perhaps 
 our course is a great circle, to find ourselves at 
 length in statu quo anno 1851, which would be a de- 
 plorable consummation for all concerned. 
 
 To reply to these questions is the object of the 
 following pages. My work will be threefold ; his- 
 torical, critical, and didactic. My purpose is to 
 trace the rise of the new regime ; to examine into its 
 working and results ; and to make suggestions for 
 its material improvement. It is further my intention 
 to supplement the first and practical part of my 
 work, by a theoretical discussion of the more impor-
 
 8 
 
 tant topics embraced by the Moral Sciences Tripos. 
 Primarily, then, I address myself to the Board of 
 Moral Sciences Studies, and to the Examiners in 
 that Tripos; secondarily, to students of the Uni- 
 versity who are reading for the Moral Sciences 
 Honours.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE MONOPOLY OF MATHEMATICS. 
 
 IN every University, and in every College, there is 
 a constant tendency towards the monopoly of some 
 special department of education. At Oxford the 
 monopoly has long been Classics ; at Cambridge, 
 Mathematics ; at Edinburgh, Metaphysics, Logic, 
 and Ethics. But the good sense of the academical 
 authorities has, from time to time, applied some 
 corrective or counterpoise to the exclusive cultivation 
 of one kind of study, though such reforms have 
 generally fallen short of the end contemplated, and, 
 in some instances, have proved miserable failures. 
 
 The establishment of the Classical Tripos in 1824 
 was a laudable and successful attempt to restore the 
 balance between Mathematics and Classics at Cam- 
 bridge, but it was not till 1857 that it was placed on 
 the same footing as the Mathematical Tripos. But 
 this reform had but little, if any effect, on the degree 
 or extent to which Philosophy was cultivated in the 
 University. At no time in this century was Philo- 
 sophy in any of its branches a prominent study at 
 Cambridge. To be sure, a partial and inadequate 
 encouragement was given it at some of the Colleges; 
 but up to very recent times Locke's Essay concerning 
 Human Understanding, and Paley's Moral and Political
 
 10 
 
 Philosophy were the only philosophical books that 
 entered into the University Course ; and an acquain- 
 tance with these was required for the Common 
 Degree only. Logic was not taught at all, and 
 Ethics (save in the perverted sense of Paley) was 
 equally neglected. 
 
 We may safely say, then, that in 1833, when Pro- 
 fessor Sedgwick put forth his able Discourse on the 
 Studies of the University, Philosophy (save what little 
 might be gleaned from Locke) was at a discount at 
 Cambridge. Unfortunately Professor Sedgwick's 
 work did not mend matters there. Half a loaf is 
 better than no bread ; and though Locke's Essay is 
 beyond controversy at once the most unreadable and 
 the most vacillating treatise ever printed in England 
 on the Philosophy of Mind, yet there is good work 
 to be done upon it, and a vigorous intellect might 
 make it the platform of a true system. Even at 
 this day an expurgated Locke, with a condensed 
 running commentary from the hand of a Kantian, 
 would be a valuable text-book. It was not that 
 Professor Sedgwick argued the metaphysical question 
 amiss, or that, having argued it well, he lacked 
 influence to bring his argument to bear, and to 
 translate theory into practice. He had both the 
 rights of it, and the influence in the counsels of the 
 Caput. It was, by no means, difficult to prove that 
 the study of Locke, et-prceterea nihil, was useless, and 
 even damaging, to the education of the student. 
 Professor Sedgwick did this, and more. But his 
 work was almost wholly negative ; and his influence
 
 11 
 
 was wholly so. In short, he, and the authorities 
 who agreed with him, swept Locke away, but put 
 nothing in his place ! Paley still dragged on a sickly 
 and waning existence in the curriculum for the 
 " Poll " ; so that we may say that, from the epoch of 
 Locke's banishment, the University required of its 
 students no Metaphysics or Logic of any kind, and 
 no Ethics of the right kind. Philosophy was 
 thenceforth a dead letter ; though it had, here and 
 there, a bare collegiate recognition, it had no locus 
 standi in the University. Such was the true state 
 of the case when Sir William Hamilton, of Edin- 
 burgh, came to the rescue. The " desperate hook" 
 of Richard Bentley seemed to have been appropri- 
 ated by the Northern Professor ; slashing would have 
 described him as accurately as it did Bentley. 
 Learned beyond all his contemporaries, boorishly 
 ignorant of Mathematics, he conceived a hatred of 
 mathematicians worthy of Goethe. All he wanted 
 was a decent excuse for taking the field; and the 
 coveted opportunity was soon furnished by the pub- 
 lication, in 1835, of the late Professor Whewell's 
 pamphlet, entitled Thoughts on the Study of Mathematics 
 as a Part of a Liberal Education. Eagerly did Sir 
 William seize the occasion ; and forthwith appeared, 
 what had been, doubtless, long prepared mine pro 
 tune, his famous article on the study of Mathematics, 
 in the Edinburgh Review (January, 1836). He here 
 asserted that the University of Cambridge, by their 
 partial, not to say exclusive, encouragement of mathe- 
 matical and physical pursuits, had "exactly reversed
 
 12 
 
 every principle of academical policy." Five grounds 
 are specified. He then proceeds to suggest reform^ 
 " With all its defects, there is, even now, in the spirit 
 of the place, what, were its mighty means all as well 
 directed as some already are, would raise it in every 
 faculty, in every department, to the highest rank 
 among the European Universities. Some parts of 
 the reform are difficult, and must be accomplished 
 from without. Others are comparatively easy, and, 
 it is not too much to hope, may be determined from 
 within. Of these, the first and most manifest im- 
 provement would be the establishment of three Tri- 
 poses of co-ordinate and independent honours ; of which 
 one should comprise the different departments of 
 philosophy proper, ancient and modern." This w r as 
 the suggestion; but it was not realised till nearly 
 sixteen years afterwards. 
 
 In reply to this article, which Mr. De Morgan 
 calls "a curious and powerful exhibition of weak- 
 ness," Professor Whewell contributed a letter to the 
 Edinburgh Review (April, 1836), which he republished 
 at the end of his work On the Principles of English 
 University Education, 1837. He had, in his pamphlet, 
 incautiously made the statement that Mathematics is 
 a better means of forming logical habits than Logic 
 itself ; on this issue Sir William Hamilton thought 
 to snatch an easy victory, by demonstrating that 
 Mathematics was but an applied logic, Logic applied 
 to necessary matter ; and forasmuch as Logic might 
 be applied to contingent matter, resulting in philo- 
 sophical science and common reasoning, it is plain
 
 13 
 
 that Mathematics is but one of two applied logics, 
 and is the one which educates the fewer faculties. 
 He therefore contended that there is no more con- 
 trast between Mathematics and Logic, as instruments 
 of education, than between a part and a whole. 
 
 In his haste to convict his opponent of an over- 
 sight, Hamilton strangely overlooked one of the most 
 obvious distinctions in the world. He points out, 
 indeed, that Logic applied to contingent matter is just 
 as much Logic, as Logic applied to necessary matter ; 
 but for once he failed to discriminate between the 
 necessity of the illative process, and the necessity of 
 the premises. Logic, as logic, is a necessary science. 
 Its study has as little to do with the truth or false- 
 hood of any proposition that is not a truism, as with 
 the psychological laws on which it rests. Accordingly, 
 when Dr. Whewell says that its operation is best illus- 
 trated by geometrical deductions, it is no answer to 
 say that the logic of Geometry does not educate the 
 Intuitive Intellect, the faculty which furnishes pre- 
 mises for reasoning, and laws of psychology ; for no 
 logic can do that. A logical induction is just as 
 necessary a piece of reasoning as a logical deduction ; 
 and there is as entire an acceptance of the premises 
 in the one as in the other. Hamilton's answer, then, 
 was, so far, no answer at all. It was not enough for 
 him to aver, that the logic of Mathematics was a partial 
 and inadequate instrument of educating the Keason, 
 for all logic is that; but he was bound to have gone 
 further, and shown that logical habits of mind are 
 better acquired from the study of theoretical logic,
 
 14 
 
 than from the study of one of two applied logics- 
 Mathematics ; or to allow his opponent, on the issue 
 of Logic v. Mathematics, to take the palm pro con- 
 fesso. He did neither; but gave his powerful and 
 well-stored mind to the task of proving (what had 
 not been expressly denied) that the study of Mathe- 
 matics is not, what Philosophy is, a means of edu- 
 cating the perceptive faculty. Judgment on the former 
 issue must have gone against him by default, but 
 for an oversight of his opponent. Dr. Whewell, not 
 satisfied with a good position, had gone a step too 
 far; he had asserted that Geometry presented the 
 student with "the most natural fallacies," on which 
 account its study was a good logical exercise. Now 
 the " fantastic tricks" of words, 'the idolafori, are the 
 chief bane of general reasoning. ' ' For one instance of 
 logomachy," writes Coleridge, " I have met with ten 
 instances of logodcedaly, or verbal legerdemain." This 
 besetting vice infects everything but Mathematics. 
 There it cannot intrude ; for the language of Mathe- 
 matics being exact and precise, and having no 
 " second intention," is strictly convertible with 
 thought. Accordingly all sophistry is, by the nature 
 of the case, driven out of the terms into the forms 
 of reasoning, and there it is necessarily detected. 
 Hence it is plain that the most accomplished and 
 advanced student of Geometry is as little upon his 
 guard against, as little able to detect, the chief fal- 
 lacies of ordinary reasoning, as before he had read 
 a page of Euclid. For such an end, a thorough 
 analysis of the more famous sophisms of the Ancients
 
 15 
 
 would be of more service than a knowledge of all the 
 Geometry in the world. Mercilessly did Sir William 
 Hamilton expose Dr.Whewell's mistake; yet, strange 
 to say, Dr. Whewell repeats it in his tract Of a 
 Liberal Education in General with as innocent a con- 
 fidence in its correctness as if Sir William Hamilton 
 had not utterly refuted it ten years before. 
 
 But if Whewell is thus at variance with Hamilton 
 on the question of Geometrical Mathematics, he is 
 entirely with him on that of Analytical Mathematics. 
 Where Hamilton's argument is absolutely conclu- 
 sive, there Whewell affects to ignore him : but 
 where Hamilton writes without either knowledge or 
 reason, there Whewell, equally slighting him., is so 
 enamoured of his cause, that he wrests the weapons 
 from the hands of his opponent, and does battle on 
 the same side. (Of a Liberal Education in General, 
 pp. 40 and 41, 1845.) This is no mere metaphor. For 
 instance : Whewell coolly appropriates Hamilton's 
 imagery of railroad travelling, to express the utter 
 inutility of the analytical method in Mathematics, 
 either as a gymnastic or as a cathartic of the student's 
 intellect. "If," says he, " the attempt be made to 
 so employ it, it will not only be worthless, but highly 
 prejudicial to men's minds." (Ibid. p. 55.) By this 
 the late Master of Trinity apparently meant to assert 
 that Analytical Mathematics cannot do the work 
 with which he credits Geometrical Mathematics : 
 viz. the education of the Discursive Intellect. But 
 is this a valid objection to making the study of 
 Algebra a principal means to a liberal education ? Is
 
 1C 
 
 it not as plain as a pikestaff that Discourse is but a 
 crutch for Intuition ? To a really strong intellect, a 
 proposition of Euclid, the demonstration of which 
 is made to depend on a long and tedious series of 
 axioms and theorems, may be quite as self-evident 
 as an axiom. There are many men to whom the 
 47th is instantly seen to be true by the aid of a 
 special diagram, without the knowledge of a single 
 foregoing proposition. To such a mind the practice 
 of ratiocination is not only superfluous but injurious 
 just as injurious as the use of crutches would be 
 to a man who had the use of his limbs. The Eeason 
 in its higher functions is, at least, not strengthened 
 by this wearisome routine of discursive reasoning. 
 So, then, it is no objection to Analytical Mathe- 
 matics, that they do not do this work. Now the 
 theorems of Algebra are, for the most part, imme- 
 diate inferences from intuitional data, as Dr. Whewell 
 virtually allows. He says, indeed, that every step 
 in an Algebraical demonstration may be viewed as a 
 syllogism, of which the major is, " Things that are 
 equal to the same thing are equal to one another;" 
 and the minor, the statement that two quantities 
 or expressions are equal to a third. That is correct. 
 But it would be a most unnatural and preposterous 
 mode of analysing the reasoning of an algebraical 
 demonstration ; for in such a syllogism the only 
 reasoning material to the science would be shut up 
 in one of the premises ! It would be just as rational 
 to say, that all mediate reasoning proceeds by a syllo- 
 gism of which the major is Aristotle's dictum de omni
 
 17 
 
 et nullo ; and the minor, a statement of two premises 
 conformably to the dictum. 
 
 The only correct analysis of the mediate reason- 
 ing of Algebra is one which assumes the Transitive 
 Principle : viz. If A is B, and B is C, C is D ; first 
 enunciated by Mr. De Morgan. (Syllabus of a 
 Proposed System of Logic, 1860, p. 47.) Interesting 
 as such analysis is, it is of less importance than 
 the intuitive principles according to which the imme- 
 diate inferences of Algebra proceed. It is just because 
 the algebraist does not bring into prominence the 
 discursive operations of his mind that the study of 
 Algebra is so important; for it thereby stimulates 
 the energy of the Intuition to discover the principles 
 of immediate inference. The more productive is the 
 Intellect of the student, the less does he require 
 demonstration ; and conversely, the less he finds 
 himself dependent upon demonstration, the greater 
 assurance he has that his Intellect is undergoing 
 progressive improvement. It is, then, no inherent 
 quality of Geometry which unfits that science for 
 serving as a first-rate intellectual gymnastic ; it is 
 the accident of the method by which it is taught ; and 
 accordingly Analytical Geometry is, in some respects, 
 a better athletic of the Reason than Pure Analysis. 
 
 The danger attending the study of Analytical 
 Mathematics consists in the constant temptation held 
 out to the student (who has, of course, to learn its 
 formulae by rote) to believe that an equation is true, 
 without perceiving the reason of its truth, simply be- 
 cause, as a rule of art, it is found to yield true results in 
 
 c
 
 18 
 
 practice : and this danger is fully set forth both by Sir 
 William S. Hamilton, of Edinburgh, in the article 
 already described, and by Sir William E. Hamilton, of 
 Dublin, in his admirable treatise on Conjugate Functions. 
 (Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xvii.)* 
 But the Scotch Hamilton was not satisfied with 
 the attempt to disprove the utility of Mathematics as 
 
 * "The study of Algebra may be pursued in three very 
 different schools, the Practical, the Philological, or the Theore- 
 tical, according as ease of operation, or symmetry of expres- 
 sion, or clearness of thought (the agere, the fari, or the sapere), 
 is eminently prized and sought for. The Practical person 
 seeks a Rule which he may apply, the Philological person seeks 
 a Formula which he may write, the Theoretical person 
 seeks a Theorem on which he may meditate. The felt imper- 
 fections of Algebra are of three answering kinds. The 
 Practical Algebraist complains of imperfection when he finds 
 his Instrument limited in power ; when a rule, which he could 
 happily apply to many cases, can be hardly or not at all 
 applied by him to some new case ; when it fails to enable him 
 to do or to discover something else, in some other Art or 
 in some other Science, to which Algebra with him was 
 but subordinate, and for the sake of which and not for its own 
 sake, he studied Algebra. The Philological Algebraist com- 
 plains of imperfection, when his language presents him with 
 an Anomaly ; when he finds an exception disturb the simplicity 
 of his Notation, or the symmetrical structure of his Syntax ; 
 when a Formula must be written with precaution, and a Sym- 
 bolism is not universal. The Theoretical Algebraist com- 
 plains of imperfection, when the clearness of his Contemplation 
 is obscured; when the Reasonings of his Science seem any- 
 where to oppose each other, or become in any part too 
 complex or too little valid for his belief to rest firmly upon 
 them ; or when, though trial may have taught him that 
 a rule is useful, or that a formula gives the results, he cannot 
 prove that rule, nor understand that formula : when he 
 cannot rise to intuition from induction, or cannot look beyond 
 the signs to the things signified." pp. 293-4.
 
 19 
 
 an instrument of education ; but he set up Philoso- 
 phy as the study which could securely effect the very 
 results ignored by Mathematics, and on this ground 
 denounced its neglect at Cambridge. Now every 
 man of common sense, who has had the slightest ex- 
 perience of tuition, knows that it is not enough to state, 
 or even to prove, that a particular subject of reasoning 
 is, by its very nature, a first-rate gymnastic of the 
 Intellect. To recommend a study, with no further 
 assistance, is like the excellent advice sometimes given 
 by the medical practitioner to his indigent patient, to 
 live generously and drink plenty of old port wine. Dr. 
 Whewell, in his letter to the Edinburgh Review, allow- 
 ing pro certo the Keviewer's plea on behalf of Mental 
 Science, and actually then having in mind the practi- 
 cability of establishing a Philosophy Tripos at Cam- 
 bridge, asked him to specify the work or works in 
 which Philosophy might be taught with the same 
 security, or promise of success, as Mathematics are 
 taught at Cambridge by the aid of certain well-known 
 works of credit. Hamilton in effect, speaking meta- 
 phorically, recommended Whewell to leave off dram- 
 drinking, and for the future to drink only the Elixir 
 of Life. " But where, in the name of common sense, 
 can I procure this Elixir ? " demands the sensible Ma- 
 thematician of the Common Sense Philosopher. For 
 myself, I can never read Hamilton's reply without 
 laughing. He shuffles and evades the question : the 
 demand, he says, is ill-timed, is founded on a mis- 
 take as to the issue raised, &c. &c. The Elixir of Life 
 is to Hamilton a nectar which flows not exclusively 
 
 c 2
 
 20 
 
 from this or that spring, like your Mathematics, but 
 trickles in countless rills, in various volumes, and in 
 various degrees of purity. Dr. Whewell, in fact, had 
 no business to ask so impertinent a question. Im- 
 pertinent it would doubtless have been, if premature : 
 but, if premature, so also was the suggestion, which 
 Hamilton himself had made, for the establishment 
 of a Philosophy Tripos. No one felt greater assu- 
 rance than Hamilton himself that none of those rills 
 could be depended on for yielding the liquor free 
 from foreign admixture ; nor did he believe that 
 the great toxicologist had yet arisen who possessed 
 the secret of eliminating or neutralising the perni- 
 cious ingredients. On the whole one may be pretty 
 sure, that the drink, which might in irony be called 
 Hamilton's Entire, was the particular elixir which 
 the great Celt had in view, with which we are at 
 length made thoroughly familiar, and which in its 
 turn has been tested by Mill, Stirling, Boulton, and 
 many others, and which has been found utterly 
 worthless. This, however, he would certainly have 
 recommended, but for the untoward fact that he had 
 never succeeded in prevailing on himself to go 
 through the necessary drudgery of composition (not 
 to insist on the severe toil of redintegration, if 
 that were possible), and so to commit himself to 
 a complete system of Philosophy. His notes on 
 Eeid were then and still remain fragmentary; his 
 Lectures were then only in manuscript ; and his 
 Philosophical contributions to the Edinburgh Review 
 were upon special and subordinate topics, not then,
 
 21 
 
 nor since, gathered up into one concatenated scheme. 
 Evasion, then, instead of recommendation, was all 
 Dr. Whewell got by his inquiry. Thenceforth, 
 like a wise man, as he was, he eschewed discussion 
 with one whose sole strength seemed to lie in 
 profitless controversy. He returned to the subject 
 in various works,* but with the exception of a 
 passing allusion in his Principles of University Educa- 
 tion, he eschewed the man in dealing with the 
 subject. On other subjects, however, Dr. Whewell 
 did not disdain to give Hamilton's views systematic 
 
 * These are 
 
 Principles of University Education, 1837. 
 Of a Liberal Education in General, 1845. 
 The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences: Book XIII. 
 Chapter III. The first of these contains the reprint of 
 
 I. Whewell's Letter to the Edinburgh Reviewer. Besides 
 this, Hamilton's Review received other replies. 
 
 II. The Study of Mathematics, as conducive to the Deve- 
 lopment of the Intellectual Powers. By Professor Chevallier, 
 of Durham. 
 
 III. A section of Mr. Devy's Logic. (Bohn, 1854, p. 
 374.) 
 
 IV". Fragmentary remarks in Mr. De Morgan's Formal 
 Logic (1847), and in his papers contributed to the Trans- 
 actions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society ; especially that 
 On the Syllogism, No. V. ; his Notes in Notes and 
 Queries (2nd Series, Vol. VI. pp. 125, 209 and 292) ; 
 his Syllabus of a Proposed System of Logic (1860, pp. 43- 
 44) ; a Review of Hamilton's Lectures in the Athenaeum 
 (Nov. 10 and 24, 1860), acknowledged by Mr. De 
 Morgan ; and some other communications to that perio- 
 dical. 
 
 V. A correction of Hamilton's assertion respecting the 
 TO on and ro 2ion of Aristotle, in the late Professor Boole's 
 Mathematical Analysis of Logic, 1847.
 
 22 
 
 refutation : as in the History of Scientific Ideas and 
 the Philosophy of Discovery. In the former work 
 (vol. ii. p. 37, book vi. chap. iii. note) he likens 
 Hamilton's " barren ontological distinctions " to 
 " the speculations of the eminent schoolmen of the 
 most sterile periods of the dark ages " ; and the 
 substance of this censure takes a still more depre- 
 ciatory form in Chapter xxvi. of the Philosophy of 
 Discovery.
 
 23 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE EECOGNITION OF MENTAL AND MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 THE famous Edinburgh polemic, against the Study 
 of Mathematics as a means of mental culture, pro- 
 voked, as we have seen, the self-complacent, not 
 to say contemptuous, criticism of the late Master 
 of Trinity : yet, curious to relate, it was by Dr. 
 Whewell's influence that the practical suggestion of 
 Hamilton was at length adopted and realised. In 
 1851 the Moral Sciences Tripos was instituted, and 
 as a special encouragement to the cultivation of 
 Moral Philosophy, Dr. Whewell offered three prizes, 
 two of 15 each, and one of .20, to be awarded 
 in every year of his Professorship to those ques- 
 tionists who should exhibit the greatest proficiency 
 in that subject ; the two former to Commencing 
 Bachelors, the latter to Middle Bachelors a dis- 
 tinction which prevailed in the Class Lists of that 
 Tripos till the remarkable epoch of 1860. 
 
 In 1855 our late lamented Master resigned his 
 Professorship, and was succeeded therein by the late 
 Rev. John Grote ; and on the death of that excel- 
 lent scholar and worthy man in 1866, the present 
 Professor, the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, 
 M.A., of Exeter College, Oxford, was elected to that 
 Chair. The appointment of a distinguished philo-
 
 24 
 
 sopher and divine of the sister-University to a 
 Cambridge Professorship, was calculated to provoke 
 the most opposite feelings. To import a stranger 
 into a University office has the air of a very humili- 
 ating confession. Given that Cambridge, among all 
 her graduates, did not possess the right man for the 
 place, or possessing, could not discover him, or 
 having discovered, did not promote him, such an 
 appointment must, on its own merits, have given the 
 liveliest satisfaction to all concerned. First, it was 
 a direct acknowledgment of that catholicity and 
 community which ought ever to unite the two leading 
 Universities, who are at once coadjutors and corrivals 
 in the great work of raising and strengthening the 
 English mind and character ; and also, indirectly, a 
 repudiation (I do not say renunciation) of that 
 exclusiveness which is so common and so pardon- 
 able in the great centres of education. Secondly, it 
 reciprocated the policy of the sister-University, in 
 choosing (in the preceding year) a Cambridge man, 
 Professor Clifton, to fill the Chair of Experimental 
 Philosophy at Oxford. Thirdly, it conferred at once 
 a high honour and an important trust upon a 
 divine who, for upholding a perfectly legitimate 
 doctrinal distinction, had been treated with mon- 
 strous injustice and shameful indignity " in another 
 place"; and who had subsequently drawn the sword 
 with such telling effect in defence of the very basis 
 of our Religious Philosophy, and therefore of our 
 Religion, against the shallow and pretentious dialec- 
 tics of the Bampton Lecturer of 1858.
 
 25 
 
 But, alas ! these several grounds of satisfaction 
 rested on the assumption that Philosophy was at a 
 discount on the banks . of the Cam. If Cambridge 
 had a sufficiently good man for the place, the 
 appointment of a stranger was surely inexpedient : 
 if Cambridge had not a sufficiently good man for 
 the place, her insolvency was deplorable, though 
 the appointment of a stranger was inevitable. Satis- 
 faction, then, resting on dissatisfaction is the only 
 " frame of mind" into which this appointment can 
 be received. At best, we can only say, we rejoice 
 in Mr. Maurice's success, because had Cambridge 
 not gone so far she would have fared worse ! 
 
 The University of Cambridge, then, possesses an 
 efficient lecturer on Mental and Moral Science, and 
 a Tripos for testing the merits of those who have 
 profited by his lectures. What else ? Why, I am 
 sorry to say, not much. At the present time there are 
 but two prizes at Cambridge for the direct encourage- 
 ment of philosophical studies ; viz. the Burney Prize 
 and the Hare Prize. Of these the latter cannot be 
 awarded for an exercise on any philosophical subject 
 save "the History of Greek or Roman Philosophy"; 
 and the former may be awarded to an exercise in Divi- 
 nity. However, the examiners have shown a wise dis- 
 position to make these, and even the Hulsean Prize, 
 rewards for excellence in philosophical subjects. 
 
 Of prizes for the encouragement of logical studies 
 there are none. This paragraph is so far like the 
 chapter on snakes in Horrebow's Natural History 
 (Norway), or that in Pontoppidan's Iceland.
 
 26 
 
 The Moral Sciences Tripos now embraces four 
 great subjects Moral Philosophy, Mental Philosophy, 
 Logic, and Political Economy. At first, and for five 
 years after, an exactitude was attempted in the 
 classification of questionists, which has since been 
 abandoned. The intrusion of Modern History, 
 Jurisprudence, and English Law into this Tripos (by 
 the side of Moral Philosophy) perhaps rendered it 
 expedient to prefix (as was done) numbers to the 
 names of the questionists, referring to footnotes 
 which indicated who were distinguished in each 
 branch. The expediency was based on an inex- 
 pediency: for three of the four subjects had no 
 business there at all. "When the Tripos was re- 
 constituted in 1856, and Moral Philosophy, Mental 
 Philosophy, Logic, and Political Economy became 
 the co-ordinate subjects of the Tripos, the refinement 
 which had been previously attempted was wisely dis- 
 continued. In fact, the practice, which was always 
 objectionable as burdening the Class Lists with an 
 abortive running commentary, must have become 
 more and more intolerable as the lists grew bigger. 
 However, the equally absurd practice of furnishing 
 separate Lists of Middle Bachelors and Commencing 
 Bachelors was adopted in 1852, and continued down 
 to 1860, when a merciful providence intervened. Not 
 a single candidate of either status presented himself 
 in that year ! So the baffled examiners were unable, ex 
 necessitate, to continue the prescribed division, simply 
 because they had nothing to divide. In that memo- 
 rable year none was distinguished, not even by his
 
 27 
 
 absence, for none was present. Had but one well- 
 prepared questionist presented himself, though un- 
 fortunately he could not be both a Middle and a 
 Commencing Bachelor at once, he would have enjoyed 
 the rare distinction of a class to himself, unmolested 
 by invidious or contumelious criticism. 
 
 The disconcerted authorities then changed their 
 tactics. Having found by experience that one Tripos 
 Examination in the year was too much, they forth- 
 with established two; one in February, and one in 
 November ! The new plan, however, disappointed 
 their expectations, and it was abandoned in 1862 ; 
 from which time the authorities, made wise by expe- 
 rience, have uniformly done what they should have 
 done from the first, viz. held one examination in 
 each year, the questionists who pass it being arranged 
 in three classes. There they stand without note or 
 comment, until in after years they distinguish them- 
 selves in public life,' education, literature, science, or 
 art. 
 
 After various reverses, then, the Tripos, if not 
 a great, is an accomplished fact. It has held on its 
 way, with variable fortunes, into its twentieth year. 
 During that period 159 students have obtained its 
 honours in nineteen examinations; that is to say, 
 82 in the First Class (the names of two occurring 
 twice, i.e. as Commencing Bachelors and as Middle 
 Bachelors), 45 in the Second Class (the name of 
 one occurring twice), and 32 in the Third Class. 
 
 We may say that a decided success has been 
 achieved ; but it is nevertheless true that the Moral
 
 28 
 
 Sciences Tripos has not yet taken the rank it deserves, 
 and which, I feel sure, it is destined to take. At 
 present it has to contend with three classes in the 
 University ; those who do not believe in the possi- 
 bility of Metaphysical Science, are therefore opposed 
 to any provision for its culture : those who are quite 
 indifferent to its pretensions and its demands : and 
 those who take up with a sort of philosophical syn- 
 cretism, founded for the most part on physiology. 
 I am not sure whether the first or the third is the 
 class most detrimental to the success of Philosophy 
 at Cambridge. The majority of the leading mathe- 
 maticians of the United Kingdom belong to one or 
 other of these classes. If I may judge from those of 
 my own personal acquaintance, (and they include 
 many of the oldest and the most famous,) I should 
 say that the majority do not believe in Metaphysics 
 at all : and yet even some of these are solicitous to 
 promote the culture of Logic, and are not averse to 
 a temperate dose of philosophical literature, as a 
 factor in liberal education : the rest of that majority 
 rejoice in the breach that is believed to exist between 
 the mathematician and the metaphysician, and are 
 not backward to widen it. As an instance of what 
 I mean, I may refer to a discussion which followed 
 the reading of a paper written by Mr. W. R. Smith, 
 at a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 
 towards the close of 1868, in which the attack and 
 defence were equally deplorable. I am not aware 
 whether the Cambridge Philosophical Society is ever 
 discredited by such a display of acrimony and un-
 
 29 
 
 fairness as was " aired " on that occasion. I should 
 think not : and yet I am confident that the materials 
 for it are not far to seek. 
 
 Be that as it may, of this we may be sure, that so 
 long as Mathematics and Classics are the beaten 
 tracks to the goal of a College Fellowship, and Meta- 
 physics is but a squirrel run, by following out which 
 the student will find himself " up a tree," whence he 
 can command a wide range of speculation, but is 
 none the nearer to the modest object of his wishes : 
 few undergraduates will care to purchase their phi- 
 losophy at so great a personal sacrifice. 
 
 Let us apply to this question a simple test. What 
 College Fellowships are or have been held by those 
 whose names are in the Moral Sciences Tripos ? 
 
 The following table will answer this inquiry in 
 full : 
 
 Name of Fellow. 
 
 His College. 
 
 His place in 
 Math. Tri. 
 
 Ditto in 
 Clas. Tri. 
 
 Ditto in 
 Mo. Sc.T. 
 
 Year of 
 last. 
 
 Hort 
 Gorham 
 Simmon* 
 Mayor 
 Perceval 
 Ellis 
 Seeley 
 Shield 
 Droop 
 Webster 
 Manley 
 Cobb 
 Pearson 
 Myers 
 Taylor 
 Mansel 
 Maccoll 
 Cox . 
 
 Is 
 
 
 
 
 Trinity . 
 
 
 Jesus 
 St. John's 
 Trinity Hal 
 Trinity . 
 
 Jesus . 
 
 . 
 
 53 Jun. Op. 
 14 Wr. 
 28 Wr. 
 
 , 5 
 0,4 
 
 a, 2 
 
 ] 
 
 ] 
 ] 
 
 n 
 
 E 
 I 
 
 ] 
 ] 
 
 , 4 
 , 2 
 ,3 
 ,2 
 ,1&2 
 ,2 
 , 3 
 , 1 
 ,1 
 ,4 
 , 1 
 , 1 
 , 1 
 , 2 
 , 1 
 
 I.i 
 
 1,4 
 
 :,3 
 
 [ , 4 
 I , 1 
 
 1851 
 1852 
 
 1852 & 3 
 1853 
 
 1855 
 
 1856 
 1858 
 1861 
 1863 
 1864 
 1865 
 1866 
 
 1867 
 1868 
 
 9 Jun. Op. 
 6 Wr. 
 
 a, 9 
 a, 16 
 a , 13 
 
 a ,'5 
 'a,' 11 
 , 3 
 
 Trinity . 
 
 Clare 
 Trinity . 
 
 
 3 Wr. 
 14 Jun. Op. 
 21 Wr. 
 
 St. John's . 
 Trinity . 
 
 
 Clare . . 
 
 
 Trinity . . 
 Downing . 
 St. John's . 
 
 36 Wr. 
 8 Wr. 
 
 o , 6 
 0, 5 
 a, 6 
 a, 10 
 0, 19 
 
 Gwatkin 
 Verdon . 
 

 
 30 
 
 The First Classes in the Moral Sciences Tripos 
 give us, as I have said, eighty-two names. Of 
 these, twenty are late or present Fellows of Col- 
 leges. But, as appears by the foregoing table, 
 two of these twenty gentlemen were double-first- 
 classmen, in Mathematics and in Classics ; and, in 
 the whole, there are seven Wranglers, and eleven first- 
 classmen, Classics ; so that there are exactly sixteen, 
 of whom we may safely assert that their Mathematics 
 or their Classics, or both, was the favouring gale 
 which wafted them into the comfortable haven of a 
 College Fellowship. I am not here denying that 
 a certain amount of philosophical power is implied 
 in a high mathematical degree, nor that a certain 
 amount of philosophical erudition is implied in a 
 high classical degree. Grant that it is so; and con- 
 sequently that, though the Moral Sciences degree was 
 not the cause of their College Fellowships, it may 
 have been to some extent a consequence of their 
 mathematical or classical excellence. But the table 
 authorises no presumption whatever that the Moral 
 Sciences degree was the moving consideration to the 
 Fellowship, unless, perhaps, in the cases of two 
 gentlemen, of St. John's and Clare respectively, who 
 did not take the usual Honours. The reasonable infe- 
 rence is that, of these twenty, sixteen obtained their 
 Fellowships for Mathematics or for Classics, or for 
 both; that one obtained his Fellowship for Civil Law; 
 and that two, at most, obtained theirs for their philo- 
 sophical attainments. Two out of eighty-two first- 
 classmen in the Moral Sciences Tripos have found,
 
 31 
 
 let us hope, that Tripos to be a by-way to pro- 
 motion ! It is just so that the philosophia prima is 
 recognised by the Colleges of this University. 
 
 In point of fact, of so little worldly advantage is it 
 to a student to be distinguished in the new Tripos 
 that sometimes, even with the concurrence of mathe- 
 matical or classical proficiency, he cannot obtain a 
 College Fellowship. Messrs. Sharpe, Lloyd, Mounsey, 
 Gedge, and others, were first-classmen in the Moral 
 Sciences, and each was a Wrangler or a first-class- 
 man in Classics ; but their names are not found 
 among the late or present Fellows of Colleges. In 
 the case of some of these gentlemen, there may have 
 been other reasons for this want of success ; yet the 
 cumulative evidence convinces me that their devotion 
 to Philosophy was bought very dear. It has long 
 been thought shady to go out in Law : it is, I fear, 
 thought still shadier to go out in Morals ; for the 
 highway to preferment is evidently quite other than 
 that. At Cambridge, Moral Philosophy, like virtue, 
 is its own reward. It is in vain to look for either 
 thoroughly efficient teaching and training, or large 
 class-lists in the Moral Sciences Tripos till this state 
 of things is at an end. It is on the Colleges, rather 
 than the University, that the chief blame should be 
 cast ; as theirs is the duty and the power of efficient 
 reform. Unfortunately the chance is small of co- 
 operation among them, with this or any other object, as 
 is shown by their answers to the Syndicate appointed 
 to consider the means of establishing a working 
 Professorship of Experimental Physics, the existing
 
 32 
 
 Professorship being that merely in name. The Col- 
 leges will do little or nothing for Natural Science ; 
 and we may be sure they will do nothing for 
 Philosophy. Meanwhile let us bear in mind 
 that the wealth of the University is locked up 
 in the Colleges ; and it is intolerable that the 
 Master, Seniors and Fellows of a College should 
 constitute a close corporation, existing out of rela- 
 tion to the crying wants of the University. The 
 editor of Nature (April 7, 1870) well remarks on the 
 recent obstructiveness of the Colleges in the matter 
 of Experimental Physics, " It makes us seriously 
 think whether the time has not come when the 
 State should exercise more control over the enormous 
 revenues of these old Colleges, which seem deter- 
 mined to go on in the old track." The time is not 
 yet come : public opinion has not yet been brought 
 to bear on the College authorities : but in the event 
 of their proving inaccessible to that influence, as 
 they seem to be at present to the demands of 
 common sense, it may well happen that the Legis- 
 lature will force upon them an administration of 
 their vast resources according to the pressing wants 
 of the Academical Community. 
 
 It is to be hoped, however, that the Senate will 
 discharge its own simple duty, and establish a 
 Professorship, co-ordinate with, or accessory to, the 
 Knightbridge . Professorship of Moral Philosophy, 
 embracing the departments of Metaphysics and Logic. 
 
 The conduct of the Moral Sciences Tripos is com- 
 mitted by the Senate to a kind of Syndicate, called
 
 33 
 
 " The Board of Moral Sciences Studies." Its 
 business is to nominate Examiners, select books for 
 study and examination, and generally to regulate 
 the Tripos. Under the present system, four Examiners 
 being actually appointed, two go out by rotation, 
 and two fresh ones are nominated by the Board 
 and elected by the Senate. The Board consists of 
 the Regius Professor of Civil Law, the Professors 
 of Moral Philosophy, Modern History, and Political 
 Economy, the Examiners for the Moral Sciences 
 Tripos in the current and preceding years, and three 
 members of the Senate elected by Grace ; one of 
 these three retires by rotation on November 20th in 
 every year, and his place is supplied by election 
 at the next ensuing Congregation. The Professor of 
 Moral Philosophy is the chairman of the Board, or, 
 if you will, the foreman of the jury. 
 
 We judge of the efficiency of this tribunal by its 
 resolutions. These concern (1) the Examiners nomi- 
 nated by them ; (2) The List of Books approved by 
 them ; (3) the Examination-papers to which they 
 implicitly give their sanction. These three points 
 I shall now consider seriatim.
 
 34 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CHOICE OF EXAMINERS IN THE MORAL SCIENCES 
 TRIPOS. 
 
 As a rule, the proclivities of an Examiner may be 
 inferred from the character of his Examination- 
 papers. Except in the case of elaborate dissimula- 
 tion, a paper set by a mathematician would show 
 traces of the mathematical mind, and one set by a 
 classic would bear the impress of scholarly research. 
 The fault of such papers would just consist in this, 
 that the best logician, as such, or the best metaphysi- 
 cian, as such, would not be able to obtain the highest 
 number of marks ; but, the papers being in effect 
 framed with a mathematical or a classical bias, a 
 second-rate logician or metaphysician, whose know- 
 ledge and power were supplemented by mathematics 
 or classics, would be able to work the papers with a 
 decided advantage over his betters. 
 
 In the Examination-papers in Moral Philosophy, 
 of 1868, the following questions occur : 
 
 " ' This objection hits the Cyrenaics sharply. It 
 does not touch Epicurus/ Explain the difference 
 between the Cyrenaics and Epicurus as to the nature 
 of Pleasure." 
 
 "By what argumentum ad hominem does Cicero endea- 
 vour to confute the opinion of his friend Torquatus,
 
 35 
 
 that Pleasure and Pain are the ultimate objects of all 
 pursuit ? How does Torquatus answer the argument ? 
 Do you remember any passages from any modern 
 authors which may illustrate the charge or the 
 defence?" 
 
 The only exception that can be taken to them is 
 one having reference to economy. The number of 
 questions in this subject being limited to some 
 twenty-five, or at most thirty, it stands to reason 
 that there is but little margin for questions like 
 these, which only touch the outskirts of the main 
 topic, and are rather a test of classical reading than 
 of philosophical thought. In one paper seven such 
 questions occur in succession ! Now the danger 
 of entrusting the Examination to classical scholars, 
 as such, is just that of overcharging the papers with 
 questions of that kind, so as to crowd out the essen- 
 tials of the subject. In the papers of 1868 we have 
 the corresponding vice i.e. the danger realised. 
 
 In the Examination-papers in Logic, of 1869, the 
 following questions occur : 
 
 "Explain to what extent a rigid and symbolical 
 language, like that of Algebra, may be made useful, 
 or is permissible, in scientific and philosophical 
 investigation." 
 
 " ' To find the chance of the recurrence of an 
 event already observed, divide the number of times 
 the event has been observed, increased by one, by 
 the same number increased by two.' What logical 
 objections may be made to this rule of succession ?" 
 
 In justice, let me say, that in those papers the 
 
 D 2
 
 danger which these questions suggest is not realised, 
 and the sample I have given, with two others, con- 
 stitutes the whole stock of such questions. Nor can 
 these two be objected to : nay, as to the latter, I rejoice 
 to know that students are invited to the consider- 
 ation of the eminently interesting branch of specu- 
 lation to which it belongs. The sample, however, 
 will fulfil the purpose of illustrating my meaning 
 in asserting that the Examination-papers gain or 
 lose efficiency according to the bent of the Examiner. 
 Questions of either kind being allowed to overcharge 
 the papers, the result must be adverse to the meta- 
 physical expert, and the more adverse in proportion 
 to the amount of his special qualifications ; while 
 the classic or the mathematician, with a smattering 
 of philosophy, will easily win his way to a first 
 class. The dangers I have indicated spring of 
 course out of the selection of Examiners in the 
 Moral Sciences who are not known to be proficient in 
 the specialities of the Tripos. In all probability the 
 Board of Moral Sciences Studies has never seriously 
 considered the matter in this light. It is too much 
 the habit with educated men to look upon philosophy 
 as an old-fashioned or a new-fangled game, which 
 may serve admirably as a diversion from the primary 
 studies of the University, but cannot be allowed to 
 compete with Mathematics and Classics, as if it 
 were a self-supporting science. At most, it is 
 regarded as a laudable -napep-yov or by-icork for men 
 whose best energies have been engrossed with the 
 dead languages, or with Mathematics and Physics.
 
 37 
 
 It is thought sufficient if the gentlemen nominated 
 by the Board are distinguished for their classical 
 learning and sound scholarship, or for their mathe- 
 matical training ; especially so, if they are known 
 to have plowtered in the shallows of philosophical 
 literature, either as authors on their own account, or 
 as contributors to the periodical press. 
 
 It is high time to awake out of that childish 
 dream. It is not enough that the Examiner can con- 
 strue with some precision and intelligence his Plato 
 and his Aristotle, or that he can solve a differential 
 equation and evaluate a definite integral. The 
 expenditure of intellectual power, in the diligent 
 prosecution of either of those two departments of 
 knowledge which now constitute the great business 
 of college life, is incompatible with high philoso- 
 phical excellence, except in a few extraordinary 
 cases, such as those of Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, and 
 perhaps Sir W. S. Hamilton. But, even in reference 
 to these instances, somewhat may be said for a 
 strict limitation of the field of study. Hamilton 
 assuredly might have been a much greater abstract 
 thinker, had his learning been less encyclopaedic. 
 Be that as it may, it is a matter of fact that neither 
 the classical nor the mathematical expert does, as a 
 rule, acquire philosophical power ; and consequently 
 classical scholars, as such, and mathematicians, as 
 such, are primd facie disqualified for the office of 
 Examiners in Philosophy. Besides this, there is a 
 subordinate reason why the choice of the Board 
 should not, as a rule, fall upon them, viz. the impor- 
 tance of inspiring the confidence of the world with-
 
 38 
 
 out both in the nominors and in the nominees. In- 
 competency or partiality might, on the strength of 
 such nominations, be charged on the Board, espe- 
 cially when the nomination falls on some of its own 
 members ; otherwise, it might be reasonably contended 
 that the Moral Sciences Tripos is a mere adjunct to 
 the Classical Tripos, answering to science in the 
 Liter ce Humaniores at Oxford. 
 
 The principle I am now contending for has been 
 always observed in the Mathematical and Classical 
 Triposes. In the former, with the view of ensuring 
 an effective personnel, and also of inspiring confidence 
 in its efficiency, it has from very early times been 
 an inflexible rule with the authorities, that the 
 Moderators and Examiners should be selected from 
 those who have obtained very high places among the 
 Wranglers. Generally the Moderator or Examiner 
 is a senior, second, or third Wrangler. Two cases 
 only have occurred of a seventh Wrangler being ap- 
 pointed to that office viz. in 1839 and 1840-1, and 
 one case only of an eighth Wrangler being appointed 
 to it viz. the eminent private tutor and author, 
 Mr. Walton. The line is drawn there ; and it is 
 most unlikely that his case will be made into a pre- 
 cedent. Custom founded on ancient precedent and 
 sound reason disqualifies all below the seventh place 
 from taking part in the examinations of the Mathe- 
 matical Tripos. This custom is surely, on all 
 accounts, most wise and salutary. It is the great 
 security, as well of efficiency as of fairness. When 
 has either of those indispensable qualities been called 
 in question ? I never heard the faintest inuendo that,
 
 39 
 
 in any examination, the papers had been faulty, or 
 the arrangement of the questionists unfair. The 
 utmost that has ever been said, in the way of adverse 
 criticism, is, that book-work (which any man of good 
 memory can cram) is usually too highly marked, and 
 that the divisions of the classes are sometimes arbi- 
 trary or partial. It is certain that book-work alone 
 can give a man a good place in the Wranglers. I 
 call to mind the case of Mr. W , who obtained 
 a place within the first ten Wranglers by force of a 
 monstrous memory. A friend of mine was astonished 
 by his own confession that he got both his place and 
 his fellowship on the strength of that alone, and that 
 he could not solve an easy problem. " Here," 
 said Mr. W- , handing my friend Airy's Tracts, 
 " do you just try me. Turn to any page you like, 
 and put me on at any line." The result was most 
 satisfactory ; Airy's Tracts had been learnt by rote. 
 
 The Mathematical Tripos is not intended to meet 
 exceptional cases. It is a test of working pou-er, and 
 nothing else ; and a capital test it is. The expert can 
 there beat the genius ; as in the cases of Griffin 
 and Sylvester, Parkinson and Thomson, Niven and 
 Clifford. Such are the only charges which have 
 ever been made against this happy institution ; and 
 what is the guarantee, but the inflexible rule by which 
 the Examiners are chosen on their demonstrated 
 merits ? 
 
 In the Classical Tripos a similar rule prevails; but it 
 is somewhat flexible. Besides Fellows of King's, who 
 have distinguished themselves as University Scholars 
 or Prizemen, two gentlemen have served as Exa-
 
 40 
 
 miners who have not taken Classical Honours viz. 
 the late John Wordsworth, who was Porson Prize- 
 man, and the Kev. J. J. S. Perowne, who was Junior 
 Bell's Scholar and Members' Prizeman. This Tripos 
 never suffered in disrepute but once, when an attempt 
 was made by an Examiner, a Fellow of Christ's, to 
 give unjust precedence to a member of his own college 
 over a Trinity man ; in which case the Examiner was 
 disgraced by a non placet when his candidature next 
 came before the Senate. 
 
 Now, the fact is, that no such custom regulates the 
 nomination or election of the Examiners of the Moral 
 Sciences Tripos. They are usually gentlemen dis- 
 tinguished for their Classics, their Mathematics, or 
 both ; rarely, and only exceptionally, distinguished, 
 either by their places in the Moral Sciences Tripos, or 
 by their published writings on any of the subjects of 
 the Tripos. To speak plainly, this matter may one 
 day become a grave scandal, throwing discredit on 
 the whole concern. It sounds passing strange and 
 well nigh incredible, and yet it is the fact, that since 
 the reconstruction of the Moral Sciences Tripos in 
 1861, only five graduates whose names are found in 
 that Tripos have officiated as its Examiners. This 
 looks like publishing to the world that the Tripos 
 has been a failure. The Board seem to be proclaim- 
 ing that the crop of philosophers and logicians it has 
 reared has been so light, or so poor, that very few 
 can be found, even in its first classes, to whom the 
 work of examination can be safely entrusted. The 
 only other interpretation is one that throws discredit 
 on the Board itself. The Board of Moral Sciences
 
 41 
 
 Studies must accept one reading or the other. Pro- 
 bably they never troubled their heads on the matter ; 
 but their acts, in nominating Classics and Mathema- 
 ticians, who have never given any public evidence 
 of philosophical proficiency, to do the work in these 
 examinations, cannot elude criticism, and even the 
 most friendly criticism, if at all fair, cannot escape 
 both interpretations. 
 
 Before the epoch of 1861 the Examiners were, ex 
 officio, the Professors of Moral Philosophy, Political 
 Economy, the Laws of England, and English His- 
 tory, with an additional Examiner for each year. 
 During this initiatory decade forty-six names occur 
 in the first classes, out of which it ought to have 
 been easy to find competent Examiners for the next 
 years. Easy or difficult, the task could not have 
 been attempted. Only two of those forty-six have 
 been Examiners since that epoch ! 
 
 The following table, from which I have excluded 
 the Professors of Moral Philosophy, whose office is 
 the guarantee of their fitness, gives a complete list 
 of the Examiners of the Moral Sciences Tripos from 
 1861 to 1869, showing the number of times each 
 has served, and their places in the three Triposes. 
 To this information I have added remarks on the 
 public acts of those gentlemen in connection with 
 philosophical or other subjects : as to which I can 
 only regret that the facts I have obtained are so few. 
 I think it is not impertinent to add, that not one of 
 them, save Mr. Cope and Mr. Venn, is known to 
 fame as a metaphysician or logician, though all are 
 men of very great ability in other respects.
 
 42 
 
 E 
 
 
 S S- 
 
 
 - 
 
 ' 
 
 PH 
 
 > 
 
 II! 
 
 s 
 
 
 = 
 
 Is 
 
 111 
 
 .5 & 32 
 
 Ill 
 
 r-l lO 
 
 a a 
 
 I.P1 
 
 m 
 
 a 
 
 ' c 
 
 H 
 
 M 
 
 36
 
 43 
 
 This table contains eleven first-classmen in Classics, 
 of whom four are Wranglers. It also contains six 
 Wranglers who did not go out in Classics. The 
 preponderance of classical men in this list is no- 
 ticeable, and is explained by the fact that so much 
 of the examination turns on the Ancient History of 
 Philosophy, though that subject has been omitted 
 from the curriculum.
 
 44 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SELECTION OP TEXT-BOOKS, AND INDICATION OF 
 THE COUESE OF STUDY. 
 
 AMONG the Rules of the Moral Sciences Tripos are 
 the following : 
 
 That the questions in all the departments shall 
 be in part of a special kind, having reference 
 to books on the subjects ; and in part of a 
 general kind, having reference to the subjects 
 themselves. These latter questions may take 
 the form of theses for essays. 
 That it shall be the duty of the Board to mark 
 out lines of study in the several subjects be- 
 fore mentioned : and to publish a List of Books 
 in relation to which questions shall be set ; 
 modifying the same from time to time as 
 occasion shall require. 
 
 We are now concerned with the boohs recommended, 
 and the " line of study " thereby prescribed; not with 
 the special subjects thereby embraced. From the 
 establishment of the Moral Sciences Tripos until 
 the Grace of March 28, 1867, Jurisprudence and the 
 History of Philosophy were (as I have said) included 
 in the curriculum ; but that grace did not take effect 
 till the examination of 1869. Accordingly it is with 
 the Revised List of Books, approved by the Senate
 
 45 
 
 on that day, that we are chiefly concerned. This I 
 will now subjoin, pointing out, in parenthetical 
 remarks, the changes which this grace made in the 
 first list agreed to by the Board of Moral Sciences 
 Studies on May 25, 1860 : in addition, I shall set 
 out the titles of those books which directly concern 
 the existing curriculum, but are no longer recom- 
 mended by the Board. 
 
 LIST or KEVISED BOOKS APPROVED BY GRACE OF THE 
 SENATE, DATED MARCH 28, 1867. 
 
 1. MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Plato, Eepublic. 
 
 Aristotle, Ethics. 
 
 Cicero, De Officiis. 
 
 Butler, Three Sermons on Human Nature. 
 
 Kant, Einleitung in die \ Summarised in 1860 
 Metaphysik der Sitten. > as " Kant's Ethical 
 
 Kant, Tugendlehre. j System." 
 
 Stewart, Philosophy of the Active and Moral 
 Powers of Man. (Books L, II.) 
 
 Whewell, Elements of Morality, including Polity. 
 
 *Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, 
 and Principles of the Civil Code. 
 
 2. MENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Descartes, Discours de la Methode (except physical 
 speculations). 
 
 Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding 
 (except Book III.)
 
 46 
 
 Cousin, Philosophie de Locke. 
 Cousin, Philosophie de Kant. 
 Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics. 
 *Ferrier, Institutes of Metaphysic. 
 *Bain, The Senses and the Intellect. 
 
 3. LOGIC. 
 
 *Mansel, Prolegomena Logica. 
 
 Hamilton, Lectures on Logic. 
 
 Whately, Elements of Logic. 
 
 Thomson, Laws of Thought. 
 
 Bacon, Noyum Organon (meaning his N. Organum). 
 
 Whewell, Novum Organon Kenovatum. 
 
 Mill, System of Logic. 
 
 4. POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. 
 
 Ricardo, Philosophy of Political Economy and 
 Taxation. 
 
 Mill, Principles of Political Economy. 
 
 *Cairnes, Character and Logical Method of Poli- 
 tical Economy. 
 
 ^Bastiat, Harmonies Economiques. 
 Those books marked * were not in the list of 1860. 
 
 The following books were agreed to on March 25, 
 1860, but discontinued in 1867 : 
 
 1. MOKAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Plato, The Moral Dialogues. 
 Cicero, De Finibus.
 
 47 
 
 Clarke, On the Attributes, and on Unchangeable 
 Morality. 
 
 Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy. 
 
 Whewell's Lectures on the History of Moral 
 Philosophy. 
 
 Fichte's Ethical System (translated works, Vol. I.) 
 
 2. MENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Plato's Theaetetus. 
 
 Aristotle, De Anima. 
 
 Reid's Philosophy (Hamilton's Notes and Disserta- 
 tions). 
 
 Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft (In Bohn's 
 Series). 
 
 Cousin's Philosophe du XVIII. Siecle. [The parts 
 relating to Locke and Kant retained.] 
 
 3. LOGIC. 
 
 Aristotle's Categories and Analytics. 
 Trendelenburg's Elementa Logices Aristotelicae. 
 Aldrich, with Mansel's Notes. 
 
 4. POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 The works of Malthus, McCulloch, Jones, Carey, 
 and Chevallier. 
 
 Both lists are faulty in their very nature. A 
 general direction is of very little use to students, 
 especially in respect to authors that are not " fami- 
 liar in their mouths as household words." Greater 
 precision should have been observed in specifying
 
 48 
 
 the particular works recommended. Supposing the 
 Board to have had an adequate knowledge both of 
 subjects and of books, they should, as a rule, have 
 specified editions, and recommended particular trans- 
 lations. As it is, the Eevised List, like its prede- 
 cessor, is loose and slovenly, and mainly of use for the 
 direction of the Examiners. The changes introduced 
 into it are on the whole judicious, though some of 
 them are quite the reverse. In Moral Philosophy, the 
 substitution of Bentham for Fichte is unfortunate on 
 all grounds. In Mental Philosophy, to banish Kant's 
 Critic of the Pure Reason, the head and source of all 
 that is worthy of the name of Philosophy, and to 
 retain the feeble, dilute, and often most erroneous 
 exposition of Cousin, was an act of sheer fatuity and 
 ignorance, which no policy can excuse. The selec- 
 tions in Logic and Political Economy are commend- 
 able. It is difficult to select without a standard: and 
 evidently this is what the Board found themselves 
 under the necessity of doing. 
 
 "Whether any given Mathematical work," writes 
 Whewell, in his tract, Of a Liberal Education in 
 General, 1845, p. 69, " can properly be distinguished 
 as one of the capital works of the subject, is a matter 
 to be decided by the general and permanent judg- 
 ment of the mathematical world." He does not say 
 how long we are to wait for that cecumenical verdict, 
 nor what we are to do in the meantime. As to 
 Mathematics, the verdict has long since been re- 
 turned. The list it sanctions is well known ; and an 
 adequate selection from it is given by Whewell at
 
 49 
 
 page 66 of that little work. Now I candidly confess, 
 that in the present stage of philosophical develop- 
 ment it is impossible to select text-books for the 
 Moral Sciences Tripos by such an appeal. But 
 it is, surely, self-evident that a work in any depart- 
 ment of science must be a sound objective treatise 
 before it can be such " by the general and permanent 
 judgment of the [philosophical] world." There must 
 always be a time when the minority of that world are 
 right, and the majority wrong. It is always so: the 
 less is more than the greater, before the greater is 
 more than the less : a paradox of which the history 
 of science affords a continual series of examples 
 in point. The crystal spheres of George Purbach 
 remained triumphant, distracting and perplexing the 
 students of every European Academy, long after 
 their doom had been sealed by the tranquil Monk 
 of Thorn. The Vortices of Descartes maintained 
 their ascendancy in every French College for fifty 
 years after the promulgation of Newton's Principia. 
 Yet, in neither case do we pretend that the new had 
 not virtually superseded the old at the moment of 
 innovation. Every objective treatise must win its way 
 to the acceptance of the subjectivities, whose congruent 
 opinions will thereafter, not through the worth of 
 opinion, but by the weight of congruence, be the 
 test of its fitness to serve as a basis of education. 
 
 Next to the banishment of Kant's great work in 
 favour of his commentator Cousin, the retention of 
 certain books, and the absence of others, are points 
 calculated to provoke the gravest dissatisfaction. It
 
 50 
 
 is no dislike of empirical psychology that induces 
 me to single out from the list Professor Bain's 
 work on The Senses and the Intellect for special 
 blame. Whatever may be its merits, it is, me 
 judice, quite unfit to serve as a text-book; nor is 
 any one of those formidable bales of mental goods, of 
 which he is the reputed packer, to be recommended 
 to the student as either wholesome or useful. The 
 plan upon which they are compiled is as simple as it 
 is useless. Professor Bain finds in his mind some 
 schema of his subject ; what it is he does not reveal ; 
 but from this he selects a form of classification, ac- 
 cording to which he amasses his undigested materials, 
 and the result is not a treatise, but a cento. In this 
 proceeding he follows, but with more daring and less 
 shrewdness, the lead of Mr. J. S. Mill. His end 
 appears to be, to furnish forth the concrete materials 
 of his subject in the minutest detail, and yet with the 
 utmost economy of particular expression, while the 
 theory, which alone could afford the excuse for this 
 ostentation of facts, is confined to his own conscious- 
 ness. In these days of learned display and intellectual 
 poverty, such books obtain for their authors great re- 
 pute. Whilst I demur to the popular verdict in this 
 regard, I am quite aware that it is not in my power to 
 disturb it. I may, indeed, hope that my voice may be 
 heard at the Board of Moral Sciences Studies, and 
 that The Senses and the Intellect may be struck off the 
 list. But I am not so sanguine as to expect this 
 result ; and should not be astonished if the candi- 
 dates for Honours were to be further abused by the
 
 51 
 
 addition of another of Professor Bain's works to 
 the prescribed books of the Tripos. Whilst I am 
 writing this censure, my attention is called to a 
 review of his last work his Logic in the Edinburgh 
 Evening Courant, April 19, 1870, from which I make 
 a short extract in support of what I have said : 
 
 " In his various writings, Professor Bain does not so much 
 provide us with the tree of knowledge as, so to speak, with its 
 bush. The tree he seems to keep to himself, and for his own 
 private purposes. Bush they are or scrub immitigable scrub. 
 How we wander in them, lost, lifting weary foot after weary 
 foot, without the slightest glimpse of cessation of any outlet 
 anywhere ! Did any mortal not peculiarly compelled thereto 
 ever read any one of them through ? Did any mortal, who at 
 any time did read in them, not find himself waking up from 
 vacancy to ask ' What is this ? Have I got a single idea, a 
 single particle of information out of all this ? Clear sentences, 
 yes ; but what is in them, and what is the effect of the whole ? 
 Why, nightmare !' Movements, sensations, discriminations, assi- 
 milations, recurrences, emotions, volitions. Well, that is the 
 subjective side, and all beaten on his tree into absolute inanity. 
 But even then, when we are trembling in his clutch with 
 very nervousness, he seems to thank a bountiful Providence 
 for enabling him to detain us actually twice as long yet 
 with the objective side ; the same tree is applied to the 
 whole outward, and everything in heaven and on earth, 
 whether of work-day or feast-day distinction, whether com- 
 mon or illustrious trade, commerce, art, science, literature, 
 government, what not, endlessly is intruded on our attention 
 with a pertinacity of insistence which, in exact proportion to 
 the sober dulness of the material, needs only the addition of 
 perception of the sober self-complacency of the writer to 
 achieve at length our utter and complete prostration. 
 
 These are unpleasant experiences, but, as recorded on our 
 part, they are perfectly true and honest ones. Nevertheless, 
 we cannot say that the reading of the work before us was 
 attended by all of them, and in the same degree. To us, at 
 least, Mr. Bain's Logic is not as heavy as his Senses and 
 Intellect, or his Ernotivns and Will ; certainly not by a great 
 
 E 2
 
 52 
 
 many degrees as heavy as that bog, named Compendium of 
 Psychology and Ethics, into which it has been his will recently 
 to plunge both works together hopelessly out of sight." 
 
 Every word of this is as true as the Gospel ; yet 
 this Compendium, crude and indigest beyond its fel- 
 lows, this morass, which has absorbed in its quaking 
 bulk two of its predecessors, deserves some praise for 
 its Appendix. Among the many fables told of the 
 beaver is that which concerns the functions of its 
 tail. That appendage is said to possess a medicinal 
 virtue, as well as to serve its owner as truck and 
 trowel ; and I have somewhere read that it has 
 been known, when pursued by the dogs, to bite off 
 its tail, and leave it, as a trophy, to its pursuers. 
 Happy would the students of Bain's Compendium be, 
 if its tail should remain in their hands, after the 
 useless trunk had escaped to the burrow of oblivion.* 
 
 * It is the rumour in London, that the most valuable sec- 
 tions of this Appendix were written by Mr. Grote. I heard 
 this asserted by one who had the best means of knowing its 
 truth. De Quincey gives an amusing account of Coleridge's 
 everlasting praise of Ball and Bell, Bell and Ball, in perplex- 
 ing reiteration. I find the general public are similarly per- 
 plexed by Bain and Baynes ; and now that each is a Scotch 
 Professor, and a logical author and editor, the confusion 
 will be worse confounded. The late Bishop Phillpotts used 
 to speak of the Bishop of Worcester as his " singular 
 brother." Let it be clearly understood that my stricture's do 
 not concern Professor Baynes, whose New Analytic of 
 Logical Forms and translation of the Port Royal Logic are 
 works of great merit. He is, in some important respects, an 
 abler man than his " singular brother/' whatever may be 
 the state of public opinion on the matter. The former of these 
 works also contains so valuable an Appendix on the History 
 of Logic as to justify its addition to the Revised List of Books.
 
 53 
 
 Locke's Essaij, too, might also be spared. It is 
 obsolete, besides being in the last degree cumber- 
 some and perplexing to the student. Yet, in view 
 of the History of Philosophy, he may well, ex abun- 
 danti cauteld, have recourse to select portions of the 
 Essay. The omissions are more serious. In the first 
 place Hume's philosophical works ought to be in- 
 cluded. His relation to Kant is even more important 
 than that of Fichte ; for it is necessary to understand 
 Hume, in order to appreciate the initiatory step of 
 Kant; whereas Fichte is required, rather as an 
 outcome of Kant, than as a preparation for Hegel. 
 On this relation of Hume and Kant, Dr. J. H. Stirling 
 has written with even more than his usual felicity of 
 expression. Here is his dictum : 
 
 " Hume, with infinite fertility, surprised us, it may be said, 
 perhaps, into attention on a great variety of points which had 
 hitherto passed unquestioned ; but, even on these points, his 
 success was of an interrupted, scattered, and inconclusive 
 nature. He set the world adrift, but he set man too, reeling 
 and miserable, adrift with it. Kant again, with gravity and 
 reverence, desired to refix, but in purity and truth, all those 
 relations and institutions which alone give value to existence 
 which alone are humanity, in fact but which Hume, with 
 levity and mockery, had approached to shake. Kant built up 
 again an entire new world for us of knowledge and duty, and, 
 in a certain way, even belief; whereas Hume had sought to 
 dispossess us of every support that man as man could hope 
 to cling to. In a word, with at least equal fertility, Kant was, 
 as compared with Hume, a graver, deeper, and, so to speak, 
 a more consecutive, more comprehensive spirit. Graces there 
 were indeed, or even, it may be, subtleties, in which Hume 
 had the advantage, perhaps. He is still in England an un- 
 surpassed master of expression this, certainly, in his History, 
 if in his Essays he somewhat baffles his own self by a certain 
 laboured breadth of conscious fine writing, often singularly
 
 64 
 
 inexact and infelicitous. Still Kant, with reference to his 
 products, must be allowed much the greater importance. In 
 the history of Philosophy he will probably always command 
 as influential a place in the modern world as Socrates in the 
 ancient ; while as probably Hume will occupy at best some 
 such position as that of Heraclittis or Protagoras." (As 
 Regards Protoplasm, 1869, pp. 4 and 5.) 
 
 According to my judgment, Hume is the only 
 author before Kant with whom the student of Modern 
 Philosophy has any need to he conversant. Locke, 
 Gondillac, Leibnitz, Berkeley, and Wolff may be dis- 
 pensed with. Accordingly, Hume's Treatise on 
 Human Nature, and his Essays, should be added to 
 the Kevised List. New editions of both, by Messrs. 
 T. H. Green, and T. H. Grose, of Balliol College, 
 Oxford, are at press, and will shortly be published 
 by Longmans & Co. 
 
 There is but one portal to Modern Philosophy, and 
 but one key to Ancient Philosophy; that portal is 
 Kant, and that key is furnished by the greatest out- 
 come of Kant's Philosophy, viz. Hegel. I am not 
 disposed to dogmatise on these matters. I assert 
 a self-evident fact, that for the advanced student of 
 Metaphysics no other door stands open. To employ 
 Dr. Stirling's figure of speech, no teacher that comes 
 after Kant should be listened to, unless it be certified 
 that he has emptied Kant's vessel into his own. 
 
 No other philosophy, but what derives from Kant, 
 explains for us the source of apodeictic judgments. 
 Many writers deny that we have such, unless they 
 are truisms. To Cambridge men such writers waste 
 their breath. Kant's sole aim and end was to account
 
 for this fact, that we make apodeictic judgments on 
 matters whereof the reality is empirical. Clearly, 
 whatever a system of Mental Philosophy may do, it 
 is false if it deny those judgments ; it is useless if 
 it fail to account for them. No other philosophy, 
 but what derives from Kant, explains for us the 
 nature of unconditioned obligation. Many writers deny 
 that we have such. May that time be far distant, 
 nay, may Cambridge be a lichened ruin ere the 
 day dawn, when the learning she has fostered shall 
 shake the dominion of Immutable Morality and 
 Eeligious Faith. Equally clearly, whatever a system 
 of Moral Philosophy may be, it is an iniquity if it 
 ignore unconditioned obligation ; it is an impertinence 
 if it fail to systematise it. 
 
 The paramount value of Kant's Speculative 
 Philosophy was not overlooked by Whewell. He 
 founded upon Kant : some say foundered. I know 
 not any English writer who has attempted to ex- 
 pound or popularise Kant that has not, at one time 
 or another, been accused of making a " stumble at 
 the threshold," of misconceiving some doctrine, or of 
 misunderstanding some technicality. Such charges 
 fell as light as snow-flakes on the Platonic shoulders 
 of Whewell. Stumbled every student has, and 
 every expert was a student once. Most, to speak 
 truly, never get beyond the threshold, and ought to 
 think themselves very fortunate if they can live in 
 the rarefied air and dry light of the Categories. A 
 complete catalogue of such stumbles, gathered in 
 from Coleridge, Hamilton, Whewell, Lewes, Mansel,
 
 56 
 
 &c., if it could be done in all sweetness and i 
 so as not to wound the feelings of the most sensi- 
 tive, would be a welcome help to students and a good 
 in itself, serving both for present guidance and for 
 future history. My own contribution should be at 
 the service of such a work ; for, happily, one may 
 speak of a difficulty surmounted, without shame, and 
 without rebuke. The chief hindrance to the real- 
 isation of this project would be occasioned by those 
 who have mistaken the way, and journeyed on too 
 far to retrace their steps without some shame and 
 inconvenience. The meanings of a transcendental 
 deduction ; of a synthetical judgment ; of the intuition 
 of Space and Time ; of the functions of apperception 
 (i.e. the Categories), &c. &c., have been very generally 
 mistaken and misstated. "Whewell has a few sins 
 of the kind to answer for. He owed somewhat to 
 Kant ; but in no way can he be considered, any 
 more than Coleridge, a guide to Kant. He, like 
 Coleridge, was too deficient in recipiency to serve 
 such a purpose ; and, unlike Coleridge, he was quite 
 insufficient in subtlety to make a philosopher. Truth 
 to say, he had a lurking dislike and suspicion of 
 Metaphysics, and this is unconsciously manifested in 
 all his attempts to weld the Natural Philosophy of 
 England with the Metaphysics, or Philosophy 
 proper, of Germany. An example will not be out 
 of place here. He taught that the proposition, " The 
 pressure on the fulcrum is equal to the sum of the 
 weights," was an axiom of mechanics, a necessary, 
 self-evident truth. Nothing could come of such
 
 57 
 
 blundering as that. What else can it be called ? 
 First, the proposition (with its necessary qualification) 
 is not an axiom at all ; but a theorem, admitting of, 
 and requiring, proof ; and, Secondly, the proposition, 
 read quite trocken, is false. The necessary quali- 
 fication is, as Hamilton pointed out (Discussions, 
 1852, p. 324), "together with the weight of the 
 lever." The omission of that was an oversight, the 
 fruit of that carelessness which gave our late Master 
 so much trouble, and so little concern. But let it 
 be given in, as a subaudition. Well, what then ? 
 Why, then, as De Morgan showed (Formal Logic, 
 1847, p. 180), the truth of the proposition is, indeed, 
 unquestionable, but only as a deduction from the 
 law of action and reaction; for the upward and 
 downward attractions of the weights and the respec- 
 tive parts of the lever have to be taken into con- 
 sideration, and it is found that they exactly balance 
 each other. 
 
 That which goes under the name of philosophy, 
 in Whewell, is indeed a miserable and attenuated 
 fragment. It consists in the assertion and illustra- 
 tion of a few necessary and inseparable antitheses, 
 such as Fact and Idea, and in stating and exem- 
 plifying their correlations. " Knowledge requires 
 ideas. Reality requires things." These with Whewell 
 were ultimate truths ! The Master, bred in a mixed 
 atmosphere of Scholasticism and Mathematics, and 
 subsequently trained (some say very inadequately) 
 in Physics, thought it no impertinence in himself 
 to opine that on a matter, which had occupied the
 
 58 
 
 greatest intellects in the world, there was nothing 
 to be discovered. He did not declare the complete 
 or ultimate explanation of such correlations to be 
 impossible, as others with greater assurance and 
 less knowledge have done, but that it " appears to 
 be beyond our reach." De Morgan, like Whewell, 
 allows the fact that we do exercise apodeictic 
 judgments, (and in these days of empiricism, we 
 ought to be thankful for so small a mercy,) but 
 adds, " Why a judgment is apodeictic, it is not 
 within our power to say." (Formal Logic, 1847, p. 33.) 
 It is but fair to read that assertion as a personal 
 confession; quasi dicat, nostro judicio. To take it 
 otherwise would amount to an imputation on his self- 
 knowledge ; for De Morgan never pretended to have 
 mastered Kant, still less to have ascended to a higher 
 tower of speculation, and to have superseded Kant's 
 Transcendental Science by Transcendent Nescience. 
 The simple fact is, Kant's force has never been 
 excelled, and his scope has never been enlarged by 
 any but Hegel. No other man's horizon has ever 
 reduced Kant's to a foreground. No other author has 
 ever swallowed up Kant, and reproduced him in the 
 form of new tissue. To Hamilton or Mansel, or any 
 other herbivorous feeder, who, having sniffed at 
 some of Kant's orts, pretends that he has done that 
 feat, the great sage may borrow the geologist's 
 reply to the ramping and roaring owner of the " tail, 
 horns and hoofs " 
 
 " You know you can't eat ME ! 
 Why you're a ruminating graminivorous animal !"
 
 59 
 
 Just as soon should we believe that an ox had 
 devoured a lion. 
 
 Whewell, then, is, as I have said, no guide at all 
 to Kant. His fundamental position is essentially 
 different from Kant's. To Whewell the matter 
 presented to the senses is a thing in itself; to 
 Kant a phenomenon. Accordingly Whewell, whether 
 he stumbled at the threshold or not, most assuredly 
 did not get beyond the threshold, and little threshing 
 of any sort did he do there : so that his philosophy 
 is of the smallest. Such as it is, it is in logical, if 
 not vital, connection with the physical edifice he 
 reared upon it ; and his positions are taken with 
 such clearness, and illustrated with such fulness, 
 that I for one should be glad to see his History of 
 Scientific Ideas and a portion of his Philosophy of 
 Discovery included in the Revised List of the Moral 
 Sciences Tripos, as it already is in that of the Natural 
 Sciences Tripos. In the presence of Whewell's three 
 works, Mill's Logic might be struck off the list. Of 
 course Kant's three Kritiken should be added to it. 
 In reading the first, the student might consult Mr. 
 Meildejohn's English version of that work, and a 
 portion of the third translated by the late Mr. Semple 
 in his version of Kant's Metaphysic of Ethics, will be 
 considerable use. In addition, the list should in- 
 clude Kant's Religion innerhalb den Grenzen der bloszen 
 Vernunft, of which, also, a fair version was published 
 by Mr. Semple. (Copies of both of Mr. Semple 's 
 translations may be had of Messrs. T. & T. Clark, 
 Edinburgh.)
 
 60 
 
 The History of Philosophy is, of course, an indis- 
 pensable study; but, for some reason which I cannot 
 divine, the subject is no longer expressly included in 
 the curriculum, the Second Rule of May 24, 1859, 
 having been annulled on May 25, 1860. However, as 
 questions on the History are still set, the List of 
 Books ought (if only to avoid stultification) to include 
 some work on that subject. It would be too much 
 to ask every student to take the pains of Mr. Norman 
 Maccoll, who, for his excellent Hare Prize Essay, 
 1868, had recourse to Hegel's Lectures, the Histories 
 of Philosophy of Eitter, Brandis, Schwegler, Erdmann, 
 and Zeller, as well as Prantl's History of Logic. We 
 have in English a considerable assortment of such 
 works, original and translated. For the purposes of 
 the Moral Sciences Tripos, I should give the pre- 
 ference to Schwegler's Handbook of Philosophy, trans- 
 lated by Dr. J. H. Stirling. The annotations, by 
 Dr. Stirling, are fully as important as the text of the 
 work, and are almost of equal bulk. 
 
 Schwegler's Handbook is not only indispensable, 
 but sufficient ; still I may as well indicate here what 
 is our materiel in this regard. Besides the Histories 
 of Dr. J. D. Morell and Mr. Robert Blakey, there are 
 several translated works of merit. Foremost of these 
 are the three volumes of Zeller' s History of the 
 Philosophy of the Greeks, two of which have been 
 translated for us by the Rev. 0. J. Reichel, Vice 
 Principal of Cuddesden College, viz. Socrates and the 
 Socratic Schools, and The Stoics, Epicureans, and Scep- 
 tics ; the translation of the intermediate volume, viz.
 
 61 
 
 Aristotle and the Later Peripatetics, by Mr. John Adding- 
 ton Symonds, of Queen's College, Oxford, being at 
 press. Another book of sterling value is a volume 
 of Professor Kuno Fischer's History of Modern Philo- 
 sophy, translated into English by Mr. J. P. Mahaffy, 
 Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Dublin. It is 
 entitled A Commentary on Kant's Critick of the Pure 
 Reason. All these four works are published by 
 Longmans & Co. 
 
 I cannot recommend the Historical Survey of Specu- 
 lative Philosophy from Kant to Hegel, by Professor 
 H. M. Chalybaus. However, for those who care to 
 possess it in English, I may say that it has been 
 twice translated, viz. by the Rev. Alfred Edersheim, 
 formerly of Aberdeen, now Professor in the Uni- 
 versity of Kiel (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1853), 
 and Mr. Alfred Tulk (Longmans & Co. 1854). Both 
 versions are said, on good authority, to be excellent. 
 
 Schwegler's Handbook has also been translated, in 
 the United States of America, by Mr. Seelye. He 
 used the first edition ; while Dr. Stirling more wisely 
 translated the more accurate fifth edition of that 
 work. 
 
 The addition of Hegel to the list will sooner or 
 later be inevitable, but I hesitate to advise it, for 
 want of an elementary text-book of the Hegelian 
 system, intelligible to advanced students. Those, 
 however, who have struggled with Kant may with 
 advantage attack Dr. J. H. Stirling's Secret of Hegel, 
 2 vols , Longmans & Co., 1865, which contains 
 a translation of the Logic, with an ample commen-
 
 62 
 
 tary on both the Quality and the Quantity. But, 
 apart from Hegel, that splendid work affords the only 
 trustworthy English commentary on Kant. For the 
 sake of the third and fifth chapters alone, The Secret of 
 Hegel should be added to the Eevised List. 
 
 In this chapter I have been particular in mention- 
 ing translations from Greek and German authors. 
 What I have written has been prompted by the 
 strongest conviction of the great utility of reading 
 their works in English. 
 
 " The respectable and sometimes excellent translations of 
 Bonn's Library," writes Emerson (Society and Solitude, Essay 
 on Books), "have done for literature what railroads have done 
 
 for internal intercourse The Italians have a 
 
 fling at translators, i traditori tradutiori ; but I thank them. 
 I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes 
 not a French book, in the original, which I can procure in a 
 good version. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan 
 English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every 
 region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming 
 across Charles river, when I wish to go to Boston, as of 
 reading all my books in originals, when I have them ren- 
 dered for me in my mother tongue." 
 
 Yet on the other hand, in studying a special 
 philosophical system, the translation is never quite 
 enough, the original never wholly dispensable. In 
 general literature Emerson's assertions hold good 
 with little or no qualification. Dr. Newman, speak- 
 ing of classical scholarship, writes on this wise 
 (Grammar of Assent, 1870, p. 20) : 
 
 " Hence in literary examinations it is a test of good 
 scholarship to be able to construe aright, without the aid of 
 understanding the sentiment, action, or historical occurrence 
 conveyed in the passage thus accurately rendered, let it be a
 
 63 
 
 battle in Livy, or some subtle train of thought in Virgil or 
 Pindar. And those who have acquitted themselves best in 
 the trial, will often be disposed to think they have most 
 notably failed, for the very reason that they have been too 
 busy with the grammar of each sentence, as it came, to have 
 been able, as they construed on, to enter into the facts or the 
 feelings, which, unknown to themselves, they were bringing 
 out of it." 
 
 But the case of a difficult philosophical author is 
 quite different from those contemplated by the gifted 
 Oratorian. A Greek or German word and its English 
 synonym may be compared, as was done by De 
 Quincey, to two intersecting circles, the common 
 area being the basis of exact interpretation, the 
 other areas containing the sources of misprision. 
 But the primary and derivative meanings of a word 
 in the original may go to make up the entire extent 
 and intent which it stood to cover; while the 
 English equivalent not only excludes some of those 
 meanings, but connotes others that are impertinent : 
 and in the statement of a philosophical system 
 exactitude of expression is the sinon non. 
 
 But, while allowing the full force of this view of 
 the case, it is, nevertheless, true, that very few 
 students acquire such familiarity with Greek or 
 German, or in fact any foreign tongue, dead or 
 living, as to read a difficult work in that language 
 with the same facility of comprehension as they read 
 an English book. Hence arises the imperative 
 necessity of using an English translation alongside 
 of the German or Greek text. In fact, it hardly 
 appears as if the best scholarship is sufficient 
 for the full understanding of Aristotle or Plato.
 
 64 
 
 The finest scholars of my own College were, not 
 many years ago, divided as to the meaning of a 
 passage in the Posterior Analytics, Book II. ; one side 
 contended that the words nav axo\o contained a 
 textual error, the other were for giving a special 
 interpretation to the traditional text. A well-known 
 scholar " nourished on mood and figure in the 
 cloisters of Oxford " was called in to arbitrate be- 
 tween the disputants. He summarily disallowed 
 the surgery contemplated by the one party, and as 
 summarily rejected the diagnosis attempted by 
 the other. He showed them that -nav a x o\ov was 
 necessary to the vital sense of the passage according 
 to which the Stagirite was expounding a special kind 
 of syllogism applicable to Induction only. The 
 Cambridge scholarship was great ; but the intelli- 
 gence was inversely proportional to the scholarship. 
 The remedy for such a state of things lies in a 
 judicious use of translations.
 
 65 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE EXAMINATION-PAPERS OF THE MORAL SCIENCES 
 
 TRIPOS. 
 
 THE papers set in the past eighteen examinations 
 are now mere things of the past, which have no 
 interest for any one but the critic of the Tripos ; of 
 course, I never dreamed of attempting so quixotic a 
 proceeding as unearthing a mass of papers, which 
 might constitute a ponderous blue-book, in order to 
 make them the basis of an exhaustive criticism. In 
 fact, I have seen only the examination-papers of 1868 
 and 1869, and even these are far too voluminous for 
 my purpose. Those of 1868 were founded on the 
 Eules and superseded List of 1860, while those of 
 1869 belong to the first year of the Eules and Revised 
 List of 1867 ; so that, together, they form a sufficient 
 representative of the entire system. Having selected 
 these papers, there still remained the task of select- 
 ing subjects or questions. As a preliminary, I deter- 
 mined to dismiss from consideration the History of 
 Philosophy, General Jurisprudence, and Political 
 Philosophy ; the two former being no longer a .part 
 of the curriculum, and the latter but a subordinate 
 and unessential part of Moral Philosophy. On a 
 review of the residue, composing the essentials of the 
 last subject, Mental Philosophy, Political Economy
 
 66 
 
 and Logic, I could see no occasion for occupying 
 space with either Political Economy, or Logic ; for 
 the papers in both seemed to me, on the whole, 
 satisfactory, showing an adequate knowledge in the 
 questioners, and being well calculated to test that of 
 the questionists. So far forth I felt that the con- 
 ductors of this Tripos were to be congratulated on 
 having done their work remarkably well. 
 
 I therefore propose to comment on a few of the 
 questions in Moral and Mental Philosophy; and 
 these shall be such as belong to Modern Philosophy; 
 for not only is the German movement the most im- 
 portant in the entire History of Philosophy, but it 
 is the works of French, English and German authors, 
 rather than those of the Greeks and Romans, that 
 promise a satisfactory test of the Examiners' know- 
 ledge and capability. It would surprise me to find 
 them tripping in Plato ; it would surprise me more 
 if they did not trip in Kant. 
 
 But, in the first place, taking these papers as a 
 whole, I must say that greater strictness in the dis- 
 tribution of questions should have been observed. 
 For instance, we find in the papers of 1868, in 
 Mental Philosophy, two questions which certainly 
 belong to Logic, viz : 
 
 " Explain clearly the chief uses and abuses of language. 
 Show, with examples, how apparent disputes about words are 
 often really disputes about things." 
 
 "Explain distinctly, with examples, how far and on what 
 grounds etymology is a safe guide to the meaning of an 
 abstract term. Give the rationale of other means of inter- 
 pretation. Show which must ultimately be the supreme 
 authority."
 
 07 
 
 On the other hand, we find in those of 1869, in 
 Logic, two questions which as certainly belong to 
 Mental Philosophy, viz. : 
 
 " Explain the dispute between Mansel and Mill on Mathe- 
 matical Necessity. Why can we not conceive that two 
 straight lines should enclose a space ? Is this an Analytical 
 or a Synthetical Judgment ?" [Which ?] 
 
 " It is often [sic] said that two and two make four. Is this 
 an identical proposition or a definition of the word ' four ' ? 
 Or does it express a truth recognised by intuition, or arrived 
 at as the result of experience ? Is it in any sense inconceiv- 
 able that two and two should make five ?" 
 
 Again, we find in the papers of 1869, in Mental 
 Philosophy, one question which, in strictness, should 
 have been classed with those in Moral Philosophy, 
 viz.: 
 
 " ' Liberty cannot be an attribute of the will.' What does 
 Locke mean by this statement ? Compare his opinion on this 
 subject with that of Mill." 
 
 I observe, too, a want of proportion in these papers. 
 Unimportant authors are too prominent : leading 
 constructive minds are slighted or ignored ; and this 
 quite irrespective of the presence of either in the 
 Revised List. Everywhere we see a preponderance 
 of History (or Philosophical Biography) over Philo- 
 sophy proper. The Rules, indeed, do not provide 
 against it, and in this they are right ; for it is a 
 matter in which the Examiners should be left un- 
 shackled. But their common sense should have told 
 them that the science is the first requirement, and 
 the literature of the science a quite secondary, if not 
 indifferent, matter. Take for illustration the case of
 
 68 
 
 a mathematical examination (as that for Smith's 
 Prizes) : what would be thought if the Examiners 
 should ask such a question as this : 
 
 " State and discuss Professor Tait's views on Sir William 
 Rowan Hamilton's curt refutation of the differential theory 
 of Lagrange in the T. R, I. A." 
 
 Yet in the papers of 1869, in Mental Philosophy, 
 the following question is proposed : 
 
 " Explain and discuss Cousin's assertion that Leibnitz was 
 the first to seize the weak side of Cartesianism. In what 
 respects, if any, do you consider Leibnitz to have contributed 
 to the sound progress of philosophy ?" 
 
 Surely that is de trop. Who is the better for 
 knowing that Cousin rejoiced in a certain critique 
 of Leibnitz on a particular doctrine of Descartes ? 
 It is bad enough for a student to have to get up 
 the critique of Leibnitz on a point where Descartes 
 and Leibnitz are wholly and irrecoverably superseded. 
 There is too much of this in these papers, e.g. What 
 are Hamilton's views on Descartes, and on Bacon ? 
 What is Whe well's critique on Bentham ? What is 
 Cousin's critique on Locke ? &c. &c. The student 
 in the Moral Sciences cannot do everything ; and 
 surely the minor details of the history of Philosophy 
 should not be allowed to occupy a prominent place 
 in these examinations. 
 
 One other point, and I conclude these preliminary 
 strictures. The papers of 1869 have a glut of what 
 may be called technological questions : for instance 
 we have the following in Moral Philosophy :
 
 69 
 
 " Distinguish the following terms : liberty, power, action, 
 will, volition, intention, inclination, disposition, wish, desire, 
 resolution, firmness, obstinacy." 
 
 And the following in Mental Philosophy : 
 
 " Explain the following terms : Substratum, Mode, Proper, 
 Sensible, Sensus Communis, Pre-established Harmony, Forms 
 of Consciousness, Presentation and Representation, Cosmothetic 
 Idealism" 
 
 The papers of 1868 contrast favourably with their 
 successors in this respect. At this rate the exami- 
 nation will result in imposing on the candidates the 
 requirement of compiling a philosophical dictionary. 
 The extraordinary hodge-podge of puerilities in 
 some of these questions cannot be read without 
 laughter, reminding one of De Morgan's skit on a 
 passage in Mr. S. Warren's Diary of a Late Physician, 
 which would make a capital question in Latin 
 Grammar : viz. 
 
 " Explain the following terms : Propria qua? maribus ; 
 botherum; tempus fugit ; hie, hcec, hoc; nominatiuo." (Notes 
 and Queries. 2nd Series, xii. 237.} 
 
 11 Nun lasst uns zu unserer Aufgabe fortgehen," 
 as Kant says, after a tedious prelusion. Of the 
 three operations, setting a paper for examination, 
 working it for marks, and criticising it on its merits, 
 the last alone is thankless, and that presents the 
 greatest difficulty. The criticism is twofold : it has 
 to determine the efficiency of the Examiner, and the 
 efficacy of the paper ; it has to answer two ques- 
 tions : (1) How far is the paper calculated to try 
 the knowledge of the candidates ? (2) How far does
 
 70 
 
 it certify the knowledge of the Examiner in the sub- 
 ject of which it treats ? and there are the residual 
 questions, whether that subject is suitable for the 
 occasion, and, if so, whether it is treated at a 
 length, or with a detail, disproportionate to other 
 subjects of higher claims. Clearly, a question which 
 betrays the ignorance of the Examiner can only by 
 a lucky chance serve the purpose of the examination. 
 Equally plain is it that, as a test of the candidates' 
 proficiency, the questions must be taken as evidence 
 of the kind of knowledge that is required of them. 
 If nearly half a paper consist of questions on Cicero 
 (as was actually the case in 1869), it must be pre- 
 sumed that the Examiners attach a proportionable 
 value to the works of that author. If there are, say, 
 ten questions on Cicero to one on Kant, in a paper in 
 Moral Philosophy, I should infer that the ques- 
 tioner considers the De Officiis and De Finibus ten 
 
 t-V 
 
 times more valuable than the Kritik der praktischen 
 Vernunft and the Metaphysik der Bitten ! One can 
 only make a note of admiration and pass on. 
 
 Questions which eschew particularisation of a 
 doctrine, on which something is demanded, and 
 those which give, in that regard, the ipsissima verba of 
 the author, can testify nothing as to the Examiner's 
 comprehension. On the other hand, those questions 
 which require the student to expound or elucidate 
 an express doctrine of a particular author, without 
 giving it in verba magistri, may bear witness for or 
 against the Examiner. Of course, either, indiffe- 
 rently, may be good searching questions for the 
 examinees, or the reverse, as the case may be.
 
 71 
 
 To take a hypothetical example : if I were to set 
 the following question : 
 
 " ' Kant will not affirm the existence of a real space ex- 
 ternal to our minds.' Explain and discuss this allegation 
 of Sir W. S. Hamilton's." 
 
 On this the critic may, indeed, question Hamilton's 
 knowledge of Kant ; but he cannot question my 
 knowledge of Hamilton, for those are Hamilton's 
 very words. 
 
 Again : if I were to set this question : 
 
 "Kant says, 'The things we perceive are not, in themselves, 
 what we take them for, nor their relations so constituted in 
 themselves, as they appear to us.' Does this statement jus- 
 tify Mansel in saying, that here Kant ' contradicts his own 
 fundamental hypothesis ' ? " 
 
 On this the critic may possibly (but unwisely) 
 except to the translation of Kant's own words ; but, 
 admitting the passage to be correctly rendered, he 
 cannot impugn my knowledge either of Kant or of 
 Mansel : for I do not commit myself to a single gloss 
 on either. 
 
 But if, on the other hand, I propose this question : 
 
 " ' From the Categories alone no synthetical proposition can 
 be made.' Reconcile this assertion of Kant's with the doc- 
 trine of the Critic, that all synthesis is derived, a priori, from 
 the Categories." 
 
 Now here the critic, while he cannot impugn 
 my knowledge of Kant as to the assertion quoted 
 verbatim, may put me on my trial as to the doctrine 
 which I have ventured to summarise. This is the 
 test I propose to apply to the papers of 1868 and 
 1869 in the two selected subjects.
 
 72 
 
 I find there but thirty questions (out of about a 
 hundred) containing express doctrines attributed to 
 particular authors. Of these, nine only dispense 
 with marks of quotation (inverted commas, or italics), 
 and give the statement, with more or less freedom, 
 from the Examiner's point of view. Here are the 
 nine expressions of doctrine, two in Moral and seven 
 in Mental Philosphy : 
 
 SUMMARY OF DOCTRINE. 
 
 Attributed to 
 
 A conflict between utility and virtue is impossible 
 
 Cicero. 
 
 Moral Philosophy may take the form of a theory either 
 of Duty, or of Virtue, or of Good 
 
 Schleiermacher. 
 
 The mind has perceptions independent of the organs 
 of sensation 
 
 Plato. 
 
 
 
 True opinion is not knowledge ... 
 
 Pkto. 
 
 
 
 A sensuous intuition is necessarily true 
 
 Epicurus. 
 
 Matter does not exist 
 
 Berkeley. 
 
 
 
 Space is a condition of our minds, not existing in the 
 objects we behold 
 
 Kant. 
 
 
 
 Experience is the first product of the understanding . . . 
 
 Kant. 
 
 The fundamental controversy of philosophy was waged 
 between the efficient and the final cause 
 
 T rendelenburg. 
 
 There are but three of these attributions which 
 can be disputed : viz. those which concern Berkeley 
 and Kant. On strict inquiry, however, it will be 
 found that the Examiners' positions are unassailable, 
 save in one case ; and there they are demonstrably,
 
 73 
 
 and indeed culpably, wrong in the attempted summary 
 of doctrine. 
 
 Of Kant's predecessors in modern times, whose 
 works are not included in the Revised List, Berke- 
 ley, Eeid, Leibnitz, Spinosa, and Hartley, and of his 
 successors, Coleridge and Mr. Herbert Spencer, are 
 mediately or immediately brought on the scene ; 
 Berkeley and Leibnitz playing, as was meet, the 
 principal parts. In fact, if the papers are open to 
 exception on the score of range, as opposed to thorough- 
 ness, I would say that their range is historically 
 exorbitant, and a stricter limitation of authors 
 would have been a great improvement. But I must 
 waive the further consideration of the lesser lights 
 in the philosophical firmament, and what I shall 
 further say will be restricted to Berkeley and Kant : 
 and on these I shall speak with the utmost con- 
 densation. 
 
 The test, then, by which I am to try the issue 
 which respects the competency of the Examiners is 
 (fortunately for my space) remarkably brief, con- 
 sisting of one question on Berkeley and two on 
 Kant. The former is in these terms : 
 
 "Explain accurately Berkeley's denial of the existence of 
 matter. ' There is nothing easier than to imagine trees in a 
 park or books in a closet, and nobody by to perceive them.' 
 What account does (1) Berkeley, (2) Mill, give of this belief 
 that objects exist independently of our perception of them ? " 
 Mental Philosophy, 1869. 
 
 The adoption here of the vulgar belief of " Berke- 
 lev's denial of the existence of matter," would
 
 74 
 
 certainly be objected to by Messrs. Fraser and Simon ; 
 but, even if inaccurate, I am quite prepared to 
 justify it in this connection : for the very object of 
 the question is to invite the student to clear up 
 an intentional ambiguity ; so that, regarded in this 
 light, we may see in it an evidence of the Examiners' 
 intelligence and tact. After all, it is by no means 
 to be allowed that the expression, "denial of the 
 existence of matter," is an inaccuracy. It admits 
 equally of justification and of refutation, according 
 as it is read. Berkeley's percipi was esse ; and the 
 matter which he denies as an externality, which 
 affects us as one external independent object does 
 another, he admits as an internality affecting us icithin. 
 Nevertheless, this very coadequation of perception and 
 existence perceived, does practically amount to deny- 
 ing the objective existence of the very thing which 
 the vulgar understand by the term matter. To the 
 student, who knows the theory of Berkeley, and " the 
 effects of his writings upon subsequent speculation " 
 (asked for, together with his debts and originalities, 
 elsewhere) the question must have been welcome. He 
 doubtless availed himself of the occasion to exhibit 
 both readings of the doctrine, and of entering on a 
 consideration of the serious-looking objection, that 
 Berkeley first assumes matter to be an externality, in 
 order to reduce its qualities to a pure subjectivity, 
 and then, from the subjectivity of those qualities, 
 proves matter to be a mere internality : thus sawing 
 through the plank he is bestriding. Here, too, 
 the student had a rare chance of exposing Mr. J. S.
 
 75 
 
 Mill's misrepresentation of Berkeley's argument 
 (Logic, 1843, vol. ii. p. 451). Instead of quoting 
 Berkeley's words, which would not have furnished 
 Mr. Mill with the leverage he wanted, he gives his 
 own summary of the argument, and, perhaps con- 
 sciously, makes it absurd and ridiculous, while, cer- 
 tainly unintentionally, he utterly perverts it.* 
 
 We now proceed to consider the two questions on 
 Kant. They are respectively in the papers of 1868 
 and 1869 in Mental Philosophy : 
 
 " How does Kant answer the objection that by treating 
 Space as a condition of our minds, not as existing in the 
 objects we behold, he makes all phenomena illusory ? " 
 
 An objection answered by Kant himself should be 
 
 * Only a few pages earlier, Mr. Mill serves up in the 
 same amusing, but reprehensible, fashion, a much greater 
 man than even Berkeley, viz. Descartes, the originator and 
 founder of Modern Philosophy, as he is accurately described 
 by Schwegler. (See Mill's Logic, 1843, vol. ii. p. 447.) 
 Prima facie it is simply incredible that even a tenth-rate specu- 
 lator, (say, a vapid brassy leader of the Revulsion,} should have 
 written the trash here imputed to Descartes ; and after due 
 research I venture to assert that nothing like this summary can 
 be found in any of the works of Descartes. As a fact, there is 
 nothing of the sort (w r here, if anywhere, it should be) either 
 in the Fourth Part of the Discours, or in the Fifth Meditation. 
 It is an awakening piece of evidence, attesting the poverty- 
 stricken state of English intelligence, that this work of Mr. 
 Mill's, which teems with material mistakes and perversions, 
 such as are contained in no other work of the kind, should 
 have ever been received as a standard treatise on Logic. It is, 
 how r ever, constructed with considerable art, and written with 
 an imposing breadth of style. These are excellent qualities 
 in themselves ; but what if they only serve to cover poverty 
 of thought and random assertion ?
 
 76 
 
 stated as Kant states it. Space differs from odour, 
 colour, &c., as being a form of general sense, and so 
 valid for all sentient beings. As such, it is a sub- 
 jective condition of mind in one of its kinds, viz. 
 Anschauung, or figurate perception ; usually rendered 
 by the word intuition. Accordingly the phrase " as 
 a condition of our minds," though not incorrect, 
 lacks speciality, for it fits the Harniltonian view of 
 space, viz. that a priori space is a form of mental ac- 
 tivity (discursive), i.e. a form or condition of thought 
 as thought, as well as the Kantian view of space, viz. 
 that it is a form of mental receptivity (intuitive), and 
 not a form or condition of thought. Here, then, is 
 an insufficiency in the expression of the question, 
 which argues a looseness of apprehension in the 
 Examiner. 
 
 But when it is said that Kant treats space as not 
 existing in the objects we behold, he is mis-stating 
 Kant's doctrines altogether. The empirical existence 
 of what we behold is involved in the transcendental 
 ideality of space ; and space is, in that regard, an 
 empirical condition of phenomena, and so does em- 
 pirically exist in the objects we behold. If Kant 
 denied this, which he does not, he would indeed be 
 making all phenomena illusory. An Examiner who 
 had an accurate knowledge of Kant's ^Esthetic, 
 simply could not have committed himself to such a 
 question. The student who should read it literally 
 and answer it intelligently would lose marks. This 
 would be his answer : Kant does not answer the objection; 
 for it is an objection to Berkeley, and Kant implicitly
 
 77 
 
 alloics its validity. The other question is as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 " Explain Kant's saying that experience is the first product 
 of the understanding. How does his method differ from that 
 of previous psychologists? How would you distinguish the 
 constituent elements of (philosophical) experience ? " 
 
 Does Kant say so quite trocTcen ? Whether or not 
 the question is a good one, likely to broach any 
 knowledge the student may have on the Kantian 
 doctrine of Synthesis before Analysis. The two follow- 
 ing inquiries follow naturally, and will serve. If 
 the student knows the double role played by Ima- 
 gination in Kant's system, he will assuredly set forth 
 that knowledge on the hint of the last inquiry. How- 
 ever, the word " (philosophical) " seems introduced 
 for no other purpose than to baffle the examinee. 
 " Transcendental " is the right word there ; was the 
 Examiner afraid of it ? 
 
 The remaining three questions on Kant in the 
 papers of 1868 in Mental Philosophy do not remove 
 the impression occasioned by these two, that the 
 Examiners were not au fait with this philosophical 
 system. The most important of these is as follows : 
 
 " Geometry is a science which determines the properties of 
 space synthetically, and yet a priori." Illustrate this sentence 
 from Sir W. Hamilton's statement of the method in [i.e. on] 
 which all philosophical inquiries must be pursued." 
 
 Now here we have Kant's own words in the Tran- 
 scendental ^Esthetic : so far, then, I have nothing to 
 object. But the doctrine thus correctly rendered 
 cannot be properly illustrated from Sir W. Hamilton's
 
 78 
 
 doctrine of method : and for this simple reason, that 
 Hamilton, so far as he understood Kant's doctrine, 
 (and this was not far,) rejected it : in fact, he rejected 
 it wholly and utterly, without being quite aware of 
 it. Hamilton taught that all synthesis is based on 
 analysis ; and that we always analyse before we 
 synthesyse. His doctrine is thus summed up by 
 himself, " Synthesis without a previous analysis is 
 baseless." (Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. i. p. 98.) 
 Kant, on the contrary, founded his metaphysical 
 system for no other conceivable end than to prove 
 that a priori (transcendental) synthesis of under- 
 standing necessarily precedes all (empirical) analysis; 
 and that it is thus that we get " synthetical judg- 
 ments a priori." Here, then, is a yawning abyss 
 between Kant and Hamilton, of which the 
 Examiners do not seem to have been at all aware. 
 However, despite this abyss, Kant and Hamilton 
 (borrowing of Kant in all blindness) teach that 
 Geometry is a science which starts with its own 
 axiomatic conceptions and definitions, and works 
 from those generals down to the particular and 
 even the individual ; and that all philosophical 
 investigations must be pursued on the opposite 
 method, i.e. starting with particulars and working 
 up to general conceptions and propositions (what 
 Lord Bacon called axioms), and ending with defini- 
 tions. To call the latter an illustration of the 
 former is simply misleading. We usually illus- 
 trate like by like, not unlike by unlike. 
 
 If the question have another meaning which
 
 79 
 
 has escaped my scrutiny, I can only say, it is 
 very strangely worded, and no student would be 
 likely to make his marks out of it, save by the 
 special indulgence of the Examiner : an indulgence 
 accorded rather to the author of the question than 
 to the questionist. Another is as follows : 
 
 " Why do Esthetics occupy the first place in Kant's 
 Critique of the Pure Reason ? What topics are included 
 under that title ? What is his next division ?" 
 
 It is a fair question. The student ought most 
 clearly to apprehend the synthetic form of Kant's 
 work, which is developed in the order of nature, and 
 not in that of experience, i.e. ^Esthetic before Logic, 
 Logic before Dialectic ; and also the transcendental 
 before the empirical, and the immanent before the 
 transcendent. The second question follows natu- 
 rally, but is insignificant. The third is trifling, 
 unless it is intended to elicit a comparison between 
 Theil and Abtheilung ; for the next Part is the other 
 Part ; and the next Division is but itself a part of a 
 Part. 
 
 And lastly we have this, which is a transparent 
 catch-question : 
 
 " What do Kant and Hamilton affirm as to the possibility 
 of our knowing any things as they are in themselves ?" 
 
 It is, at any rate, on all accounts, very safely 
 worded. 
 
 With these five questions in Mental Philosophy, 
 having reference to the Critic of Pure Reason, may be 
 compared the following five questions on the same
 
 work, which occur in a paper set by Mr. Mahaffy, 
 Tutor of Trinity College, Dublin, in the Moderator- 
 ship Examination, of last Michaelmas Term, in that 
 University. I suppose it is owing to the Examiners 
 being, for the most part, Irishmen, that these 
 questions occur in a paper on Ethics, and that it is 
 customary in the University of Dublin to attach the 
 note of interrogation to a mere assertion, as in the 
 fifth question following : 
 
 " 1. What does Kant mean by a schema? Into what error 
 has Mr. Mansel fallen on this point ? 
 
 2. How did Kant criticise Hume's doctrine of causality ? 
 
 3. Explain Kant's use of the words judgment, reflection and 
 idea. 
 
 4. Explain the statement that his doctrine of Space and 
 Time is based on a transcendental distinction. 
 
 5. ' Gigni de nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti.' This 
 proposition is applied more cautiously by Kant than by 
 Hamilton ? " 
 
 The third is a sterile question, and the fourth, to 
 say the least, very oddly worded. Whose statement ? 
 Not Kant's I think ; nor yet Professor Kuno 
 Fischer's, whose work on Kant was probably in the 
 mind of the Examiner. 
 
 The last would have been more fruitful had it 
 inquired on what grounds Hegel denounced the 
 enunciated maxim as a truism. On the whole, these 
 five questions do not show to great advantage beside 
 the five set by the Cambridge Examiners. This is 
 the more remarkable, as Dublin possesses some very 
 good metaphysicians of the Kantian school, such as 
 Mr. Mahaffy, Mr. Abbott, and Mr. Stanley -Monck.
 
 81 
 
 In the Cambridge papers of 1869, in Moral Philo- 
 sophy, appear five questions on Kant's Ethics. They 
 are as follow : 
 
 " Compare the doctrines of Butler and of Kant respecting 
 Self-love. 
 
 " What is Kant's definition of a Free Will ? How does he 
 distinguish negative from positive Freedom ? 
 
 " Explain the words Autonomy and Heteronomy according 
 to Kant's use of them. 
 
 " How does Kant distinguish Legality from Morality ? Do 
 you remember any attempts to distinguish them in other 
 writers ? Kant says that ' a dog or a horse may be an object 
 of affection, a wild beast or the sea of dread? What does he 
 affirm to be the only objects of Reverence ? 
 
 " How did Kant propose to deal with the antitheses per- 
 fection and happiness, self and others ? What philosophers had 
 he chiefly in mind in this adjustment ? What new point of 
 view did he supply himself?" 
 
 The second and third relate to the same topic, 
 and might be answered together in a breath : the 
 enquiry nevertheless is proper, and the other ques- 
 tions, if less important, are well enough. I find no 
 fault with these five questions : but I am surprised 
 that they should not have been supplemented (or 
 even superseded, if space and time were want- 
 ing,) by questions touching the principles of Kant's 
 Ethical system. The defect I feel in this regard is 
 not so noticeable in the questions on Plato and 
 Aristotle, where one is used to the dry " inductive 
 lights," and expects, as of course, the usual exter- 
 nalities of the schools. 
 
 In this one word, externalities, is summed up the 
 manifold deficiencies of these Cambridge Examina- 
 
 o
 
 82 
 
 tion-papers, as well in Mental as in Moral Philosophy. 
 The questions are the mere apergus of outsiders. An 
 Examiner who had placed himself at the centre of a 
 philosophical system could hardly help showing, by 
 the ring or form of his questions, some evidence of 
 his intellectual mastery and grasp. Few of the ques- 
 tions in these papers show anything of the kind ; and 
 the best of them is nervous with the temerity or 
 timidity of minds who are as empty of the central 
 intelligence as they are as full of " the literature of 
 the subject." 
 
 If, however, it is just this latter, and hardly at 
 all the former, that they look for in the candidates, 
 and which the Board looks for in the Examiners 
 themselves, it is, then, for the Professor of Moral 
 Philosophy to impose upon all three a higher view 
 of their vocations. Philosophy, like any of its 
 subordinate sciences, is necessarily rooted in the 
 past, and has its history and its literature, which no 
 student can with impunity neglect. But, like them, 
 Philosophy is the subject of an a priori organon, and 
 the one business of the philosopher is to render it 
 perfect. The student, who is to become a phi- 
 losopher, should not be taught to " walk ever with 
 reverted eves." 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SANTA BARBARA
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Puge 59, prefix to 1. 26 the word of. 
 79 ,', 14 Analytical. 
 
 82 ,, 8, for is read ai'e.
 
 tion-papers, as well in Mental as in Moral Philosophy. 
 The questions are the mere aper$us of outsiders. An 
 Examiner who had placed himself at the centre of a 
 philosophical system could hardly help showing, by 
 the ring or form of his questions, some evidence of 
 his intellectual mastery and grasp. Few of the ques- 
 tions in these papers show anything of the kind ; and 
 the best of them is nervous with the temerity or 
 ~ f minds who are as empty of the central 
 
 " Alw * li+prature of 
 
 themselves, it i, ^^~, 
 
 Philosophy to impose upon all three a lngner >^,, 
 of their vocations. Philosophy, like any of its 
 subordinate sciences, is necessarily rooted in the 
 past, and has its history and its literature, which no 
 student can with impunity neglect. But, like them, 
 Philosophy is the subject of an a priori organon, and 
 the one business of the philosopher is to render it 
 perfect. The student, who is to become a phi- 
 losopher, should not be taught to " walk ever with 
 reverted eves." 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CATTFORNIA 
 SANTA BARBARA
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 MKIIWCDCITV r\n r* A i i 
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed.