greater number of these
belated wanderers in the paths of philosophy, enter through the portals
of religion. How could it be otherwise? Religion and philosophy touch at
so many points--have so many problems in common--that the first moment
the good man bethinks him he will be profound, sees him plunged in all
the darkest enigmas of speculative thought, there to lose himself in we
know not what heretical delusions.

Therefore, there is no one thing on which we are more disposed to
congratulate Scotland than on her chairs of philosophy. Occupied by her
most distinguished men, and teaching a sound system of psychology, they
early train her youth to the severest and most useful discipline of
thought. They have given its tone and its strength to the intellect of
Scotland. They teach it to face all difficulties manfully, and to turn
with equal manliness from vain and presumptuous speculations, which,
under a boastful show of profundity, conceal invariably an arrant
dogmatism. We turn with hearty satisfaction from the tissue of false
subtleties which the German professor lays before his youth, to the
careful and modest analysis of mental phenomena by which a professor in
our northern universities at once enlightens and fortifies the mind.
Scotland, may well be proud of the position she has now long held in the
philosophical world. Her oscillations of error she, too, has no doubt
exhibited--a necessary condition this of vitality and progress--but
nowhere has a body of philosophers so systematically adhered to the
sound canons of reasoning and research, and that upon a subject where
there is the greatest facility and temptation to depart from them.

M. Cousin, and others who take that discursive light-tripping
philosopher for their guide, have represented the Scotch as a sort of
half Germans, and have both praised them, and praised them coldly, on
this very account, that they have travelled half-way, and only half-way,
towards the region of "high _a priori_" speculation. With M. Cousin's
permission, the Scotch come of quite another house. His praise we should
beg leave to decline: he may carry it to Alexandria, if he will. The
method of philosophising pursued in Germany is fundamentally different
from that which happily obtains in Scotland. No two schools of
philosophy could resemble each other less. For ourselves, we regard the
whole history of modern German speculation--the most remarkable
instance, in our judgment, of great