Scottish philosophy

“ But one thing is certain, that the first principles of philosophy are not the elementary truths which have been enunciated as such by our old Scottish philosophy. These, I conceive, must be set aside, as good for nothing in science, however indispensable they may be in life. That our antecedent philosophy is valuable on other accounts, although not on account of its first principles, is what may be readily conceded. ”

“ The avowed aim of the author was to shake to the foundation the distinctive principles of the Scottish philosophy, and to prove that the common dicta of consciousness are to be repudiated as false, instead of being accepted as the source and groundwork of all true mental science. ”

“ In philosophy, the Scottish school represents the same effort of thought to reduce reality to terms of touch. The real external world which this school of philosophy so bravely defends, and tries so hard to express, is not a world known by some inexplicable divine intuitive act of consciousness as they thought, but the single, and hitherto unattended to, phenomena of the special sense of touch. ”

“ Since 1745, Scotland has quadrupled her population. The commercial prosperity of Scotland, with all that this involves, dates from the same period. It is since that period that Scotland has sent forth most of that series of eminent men who have left their names memorable in the various walks of active and industrial life, at home and abroad. From that period, with some allowance for those numerous Scottish thinkers who taught philosophy in the European Universities in earlier centuries, dates the rise and development of what is known as the Scottish Philosophy. ”

“ As for myself I honour and esteem the Scottish nation and I must say that I have found more liberal ideas and more sound philosophy among individuals of that nation than among those of any other, and it is a tribute I owe to them loudly to proclaim my sentiments ”

“ This early Scottish influence, conveyed through both theory and example, was especially potent with the founders of New England, the Puritans in Old England, and the Pilgrims who, in the Dutch Republic, received tremendous reinforcement.
In philosophy—which is greater than armies or navies—to no other land or people were the beginners of the American nation more indebted than to the Scotch. ”

“ The Scottish vulgar, without having any very defined notion of their attributes, believe in the existence of an intermediate class of spirits residing in the air, or in the waters; to whose agency they ascribe floods, storms, and all such phenomena as their own philosophy cannot readily explain. ”

“ Yet it is of such unreason, if unreason it be, that the warp and the woof of the historic annals of Scotland have been spun: it is this defiance of what the utilitarian philosopher calls the rules of common sense, as applied to human conduct, that has given the Scottish race their unique position among the tribes of men. ”

“ It is since Scottish writers have abandoned the search of a lost political history, have dropped their enthusiasm for a timid and turbulent ecclesiastical history, and have been content to depict the domestic annals of the people, to enter their shops and their houses, to follow them in the streets and the fields, and to record their everyday life—their eating and their drinking, their dress, their pleasures, their marriages, their wealth and their science—that Scottish history has become an enticing study. ”

“ But though the nature of this primitive life in early Scottish days could not hinder the appearance of men of thought, and even helped their development as soon as they began to show the movements of active intellect, yet on the other hand Scotland had not reached that culture which affords such natures their due and full opportunity. ”

“ There is more in this Scottish antithesis of the real and fantastic than is to be explained by the familiar rules of rhetoric. This mingling, even of the most eccentric kind, is an indication to us that the Scot, in that mediæval fashion which takes all things as granted, is at his ease in both ‘rooms of life,’ and [23] turns to fun, and even profanity, with no misgivings. For Scottish literature is more mediæval in habit than criticism has suspected, and owes some part of its picturesque strength to this freedom in passing from one mood to another. ”

“ In the sedulous cultivation of the Scottish spirit there is nothing alien, and, still more emphatically, nothing harmful, to the institutions under which we live. The things that nourish the one, engender attachment and loyalty to the other. So, as we cherish the memories of the Motherland, keep in touch with the simple annals of our childhood's home, or the home of our kin, bask in the fireside glow of its homely humor, or dwell in imagination amid the haunts of old romance, we are the better Americans for the Scottish heritage from which heart and mind alike derive inspiration and delight. ”

“ For myself, you know how I love England—all that belongs to her—all that makes her what she is—scarcely more—surely not less—Scotland. The ground of the Scottish Form is the overbearing consciousness, that religion is immediately between man and his Maker. All hallowing of things outward is to that consciousness a placing of such earthly things as interpositions and separating intermediates in that interval unavoidable between the Finite and the Infinite, but which should remain blank and clear for the immediate communications of the Worshipper and the Worshipped. ”

“ Had our race been distinguished only for its care of the bawbees, for its indomitable perseverance, its capacity to endure hardship, its adaptiveness, and its enterprise, I trow that the passionate pilgrim would not turn so eagerly to Scotland to cull the flowers of poesy and breathe the air of romance. And remember, our Scottish people are rather what the country has made them, than the country is what it has been made by them. ”

“ The Scottish mind, he said, was made up of poetry and strong common sense; and the very strength of the latter gave perpetuity and luxuriance to the former. It was a strong tenacious soil, into which, when once a seed of poetry fell, it struck deep root and brought forth abundantly. "You will never weed these popular stories and songs and superstitions out of Scotland," said he. "It is not so much that the people believe in them, as that they delight in them. They belong to the native hills and streams of which they are fond, and to the history of their forefathers, of which they are proud." ”

“ This is the last blessing which we desire for Scotland, that has so many virtues that we cannot but wish that she might abound in this grace also. Even with this imperfection, we love her country and her people. Whoever has had access to Scottish homes, must have been struck with their beautiful domestic character, with the attachment in families, with the tenderness of parents, and the affectionate obedience of children. A country in which the scenes of "The Cotter's Saturday Night" are repeated in thousands of homes, we cannot help loving as well as admiring. ”

“ The young lawyer was, indeed, unwittingly preparing for his mission to paint Scottish scenery so vividly, and Scottish character so charmingly, that he may almost be said to have created a new country which succeeding generations delight to visit. No man was ever a greater benefactor to Scotland, whose glories and beauties he was the first to reveal, showing how the most thrifty, practical, and parsimonious people may be at the same time the most poetic. ”

“ This is to our mind singularly characteristic of our per-fervid Scotsman. If we may indulge our conceit, we would paraphrase it thus. His eloquence was like a flooded Scottish river,—it had its origin in some exalted region—in some mountain-truth—some high, immutable reality; it did not rise in a plain, and quietly drain its waters to the sea,—it came sheer down from above. He laid hold of some simple truth—the love of God, the Divine method of justification, the unchangeableness of human nature, the supremacy of conscience, the honourableness of all men ”

“ The finest critical and artistic skill would be inadequate to insinuate into the mind so keen and vivid a perception of Scottish characteristics as escape unconsciously from the simple statements of this true Scotchman, who is in hearty sympathy with his countrymen. ”

“ It belongs to the character and antecedents of Scotsmen that the attribute of national independence should take so high a place among the objects of human effort and desire. It was because Scotland settled for all time, six hundred years ago, her place as an independent State that she proved herself capable of begetting men like John Knox, Robert Burns and Walter Scott. It is because the vigor of the Scottish race and the adaptiveness of the Scottish genius remain to-day unimpaired, that the lustre of Scottish-names shone so brilliantly during the World War. ”

“ But may there not be an epilogue to the sensational acts of Scottish history? As Saxondom overcame the plaided and kilted clans, is not Scotland in turn destined to overlie the rest of the island? Here we approach a delicate subject of consideration. In this enlightened age when, as a great Scotsman says, “the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about with more or less effect for five thousand years and upwards,” the truly philosophic mind should be capable of rising above the pettiness of national prejudice. ”

“ But they do demand sincerity, and integrity, and resolution, and independence, and an open front, and an eye that fears not to look in the face of clay! And have not the grave and thoughtful Scottish people always regarded with more especial affection those who have struggled with adversity—who have been tried by temptations from without or from within—now triumphant, now overcome—but, alike in victory or defeat, testifying by their conduct that they were animated by no other desire so steadily as by love of their country and its people’s good? ”

“ And to the outward presence corresponded the mind within; for rarely have qualities so varied been blended in such marvellous and harmonious union. The culture of English scholarship had softened the more rugged features of his Scottish education. The knowledge of life, and sympathy with all its forms, from the highest to the lowest, had steadied the views and corrected the sentimental vagueness of the poetical temperament: a strong and practical sagacity pervaded, and gave reality to, all the creations of his imagination. ”

“ Who can fully estimate all the world owes to Providence and nature in propagating the fervid Scottish race? They are found in every continent, climbing from the three-legged stool in an office, or from any other subordinate position. They toil upward with caution and perseverance. They always aim at the top of the tree, and multitudes of them succeed. ”

“ I partake very strongly, I am aware, in the feeling which most of my own countrymen have little shame in avowing, that no novel of his where neither scenery nor character is Scottish, belongs to the same pre-eminent class with those in which he paints and peoples his native landscape. ”

“ At such moments one felt that the man who was charming but perplexing Englishmen by his subtlety and ingenuity was not himself an Englishman in mental quality, but had the love for abstractions and refinements and dialectical analysis which characterizes the Scotch intellect. He had also a large measure of that warmth and vehemence, called in the sixteenth century the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum, which belong to the Scottish temperament, and particularly to the Celtic Scot. ”

“ We must advert to a peculiarity of our Scottish countrymen, which can be set down only on the credit side of their character—their sympathy with each other when they meet as wanderers in foreign countries. Scotland is just a small enough country to cause a certain unity of feeling amongst the people. Wherever they are, they feel that Scotsmen should stand, as their proverb has it, shoulder to shoulder. ”

“ Association of ideas leads me to think how the distinctively Scottish genius has manifested itself in alien fields, however inhibited it may have been at home. My main purpose here is not to discuss the lets and hindrances which have prevented the development of modern arts in Scotland, nor will my space permit me to analyse the complexities of Scottish character and circumstances responsible for our comparative failure to find expression on the higher levels of culture. ”

“ Any one who is at all acquainted with life among the lower classes, must admit that these descriptions are true to nature, and that a study of them is necessary before we can know thoroughly upon what the present superstructure of Scottish civilisation has been built. Graham, perhaps unintentionally, has held ‘the mirror up to nature,’ has shown ‘virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.’
It would be difficult, again, to over-estimate the value of Dougal Graham’s works as affording illustrations of the folk-lore of Scotland. ”

“ Men's minds were not allowed to remain in the torpid condition of a past generation. 2d. The aesthetic movement in religion, which some years since was made in England, has, of course, had its influence in Scotland; and many who showed little concern about religion, whilst it was merely a question of doctrines, of precepts, and of worship, threw themselves keenly into the contest when it became associated with ceremonial, and music, and high art. New ecclesiastical associations have been presented to Scottish tastes and feelings. ”