SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHY

“The Scotch School of Philosophy was established by Thomas Reid, born in 1704. He was a professor at Aberdeen and afterwords at Glasgow . He founded the School: Dugald Stewart illustrated its theories and the clear sighted Sir William Hamilton added the touch of perfection. Reid and Stewart saw alike, and Hamilton took up their principles and set them forth in clear light. Reid laid down principles of ‘common sense’ as he calls them, meaning those convictions that force themselves irresistibly upon our credulity [tendency to be too ready to believe that something is real or true]. Hence the Scotch school was known as the School of Common Sense. According to Hamilton the mind is immediately conscious of the affections of the body, through corresponding affections of its own . Here is begotten a consciousness of extension of self; and the power of locomotion and the exterior resistance thereto are a consciousness of external objects, which become known as extended. Thus we become acquainted with ourselves, and through this acquaintance with the phenomenal world. “The scholarly Bishop Berkeley of Ireland, maintained that there was nothing material; that sensible objects were only impressions made on the mind by an act of God , according to certain invariable laws of nature. Of this Lord Byron observed in verse, “When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, And proved it, ‘‘twas no matter what he said.’” P.36-38, SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS by Rufus Lewis Milford Hope Perry (1918) [to which profound philosophical speculations, I was moved to opine that: we, all the living, are spiritual dimension correlates with material things, being divine spirit endued in matter, whence comes & goes life .]