Mr Mansel and Mr Veitch, the editors of Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, posthumously published, say in their preface (p. xiii.)—
'For twenty years—from 1836 to 1856—the courses of logic and metaphysics were the means through which Sir William Hamilton sought to discipline and imbue with his philosophical opinions the numerous youth who gathered from Scotland and other countries to his classroom; and while, by these prelections, the author supplemented, developed, and moulded the national philosophy, leaving thereon the ineffaceable impress of his genius and learning, he, at the same time and by the same means, exercised over the intellects and feelings of his pupils an influence which, for depth, feeling, and elevation, was certainly never surpassed by that of any philosophical instructor. Among his pupils there are not a few who, having lived for a season under the constraining power of his intellect, and been led to reflect on those great questions regarding the character, origin, and bounds of human knowledge, which his teaching stirred and quickened, bear the memory of their beloved and revered instructor inseparably blended with what is highest in their present intellectual life, as well as in their practical aims and aspirations.'
We are happy to find such high authorities as Dr Whewell, Mr Samuel Bailey, and Sir John Herschel concurring in this estimation of the new logical point of view thus opened by Mr Mill. We will not call it a discovery, since Sir John Herschel thinks the expression unsuitable.—See the recent sixth edition of the 'System of Logic,' vol. i. p. 229.
See Sir William. Hamilton's 'Lectures on Logic' (Lect. xvii. p. 320, 321; also Appendix to those Lectures, p. 361). He here distinguishes also formal induction from, material induction, which latter he brings under the grasp of syllogism, by an hypothesis in substance similar to that of Whately. There is, however, in Lecture xix. (p. 380), a passage in a very different spirit, which one might almost imagine to have been written by Mr Mill: 'In regard to simple syllogisms, it was an original dogma of the Platonic school, and an early dogma of the Peripatetic, that science, strictly so called, was only conversant with, and was exclusively contained in, universals; and the doctrine of Aristotle, which taught that all our general knowledge is only an induction from an observation of particulars, was too easily forgotten or perverted by his followers. It thus obtained almost the force of an acknowledged principle that everything to be known must be known under some general form or notion. Hence the exaggerated importance attributed to definition and deduction; it not being considered that we only take out of a general notion what we had previously placed therein, and that the amplification of our knowledge is not to be sought for from above but from below—not from speculation about abstract generalities, but from the observation of concrete particulars. Bat however erroneous and irrational, the persuasion had its day and influence, and it perhaps determined, as one of its effects, the total neglect of one half, and that not the least important half of the reasoning process.'