[1058] Fol. 18. This is continually told of dogs; but does any sensible sportsman confirm it by his own experience? I ask for information only.
[1059] Fol. 4.
23. These are, as far as I know, the only works deserving of commemoration in the history of speculative philosophy. A few might easily be inserted from the catalogues of libraries, or from biographical collections, as well as from the learned labours of Morhof, Brucker, Tennemann, and Buhle. It is also not to be doubted, that in treatises of a different character, theological, moral, or medical, very many passages, worthy of remembrance for their truth, their ingenuity, or originality, might be discovered, that bear upon the best methods of reasoning, the philosophy of the human mind, the theory of natural religion, or the general system of the material world.
Logic of Ramus; its success. 24. We should not however conclude this chapter without adverting to the dialectical method of Ramus, whom we left at the middle of the century, struggling against all the arms of orthodox logic in the university of Paris. The reign of Henry II. was more propitious to him than that of Francis. In 1551, through the patronage of the Cardinal of Lorraine, Ramus became royal professor of rhetoric and philosophy; and his new system which, as has been mentioned, comprehended much that was important in the art of rhetoric, began to make numerous proselytes. Omer Talon, known for a treatise on eloquence, was among the most ardent of these; and to him we owe our most authentic account of the contest of Ramus with the Sorbonne. The latter were not conciliated, of course, by the success of their adversary; and Ramus having adhered to the Huguenot party in the civil feuds of France, it has been ascribed to the malignity of one of his philosophical opponents, that he perished in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He had however already, by personally travelling and teaching in Germany, spread the knowledge of his system over that country. It was received in some of the German universities with great favour, notwithstanding the influence which Melanchthon’s name retained, and which had been entirely thrown into the scale of Aristotle. The Ramists and Anti-Ramists battled it in books of logic through the rest of this century, as well as afterwards; but this was the principal period of Ramus’s glory. In Italy he had few disciples; but France, England, and still more Scotland and Germany were full of them. Andrew Melville introduced the logic of Ramus at Glasgow. It was resisted for some time at St. Andrew’s, but ultimately became popular in all the Scottish universities.[1060] Scarce any eminent public school, says Brucker, can be named, in which the Ramists were not teachers. They encountered an equally zealous militia under the Aristotelian standard; while some, with the spirit of compromise, which always takes possession of a few minds, though it is rarely very successful, endeavoured to unite the two methods, which in fact do not seem essentially exclusive of each other. It cannot be required of me to give an account of books so totally forgotten, and so uninteresting in their subjects as these dialectical treatises on either side. The importance of Ramus in philosophical history is not so much founded on his own deserts, as on the effect he produced in loosening the fetters of inveterate prejudice, and thus preparing the way, like many others of his generation, for those who were to be the restorers of genuine philosophy.[1061]
[1060] M’Crie’s Life of Melville, ii. 306.
[1061] Brucker, v. 576. Buhle, ii. 601.
CHAPTER XIII.
HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE, FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Sect. I.—On Moral Philosophy.