Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ESSAY III. SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS: THEORY OF CAUSATION. ESSAY III. SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS: THEORY OF CAUSATION. It seems a common opinion that there is little connexion between the subtle reasonings of recluse thinkers, devoted to abstract speculation, and the actions, or even the discoveries which are important to mankind. Books of Metaphysics are thus cast aside as void of human interest. The philosopher, notwithstanding, pursues his vocation, without expecting to convert the multitude to his manner of life. In each generation we find meditative minds, struggling to obtain the most comprehensive survey of the boundaries of knowledge, the deepest insight of the foundation of human beliefs, and the truest interpretation of the life of man. And when we look beneath the " show of things," into the great heart of literature and social life, we find also that the intellectual agitation of these recluses has not really been unconnected, as it seemed to be, with the pulsations of that heart; that, on the contrary, those who have maintained the vitality of philosophical discussion have—as by a social law—contributed the force which has kept the sciences in movement. The small band of labourers on these remote mountain summits of thought, have guided opinions and affairs among the busy multitude in the valleys below. Their adventures and employments on the misty margin of human knowledge, whatever its success may have been in adding to the store of definite and immediately applicable information concerning the grand objects of the survey, will not be overlooked by a profound student of the literature and institutions of a generation. Abstract Philosophy—the expression of the deepest thought of the present, and the pioneer of popular opinion in the future—is a permanent intellectua...