his philosophy seems made up of scraps from several conflicting metaphysical systems—­All this is literally and amply borne out by the many inconsistencies and contradictions which Mr Mill has brought to view in the preceding chapters.  It would appear that the controversial disposition was powerful with Sir W. Hamilton, and that a present impulse of that sort (as has been said respecting Bayle, Burke, and others) not only served to provoke new intellectual combinations in his mind, but also exercised a Lethaean influence in causing obliviscence of the old.  But we can hardly follow Mr Mill in ascribing the defect to ’excessive absorption of time and energy by the study of old writers’ (p. 551).  If this study did no other good, it at least kept the memory in exercise.  Now, what surprises us most in Sir W. Hamilton’s inconsistencies, is the amount of self-forgetfulness which they imply.

While the laborious erudition of Sir W. Hamilton cannot be fairly regarded as having produced any of his intellectual defects, it undoubtedly stamped upon him his special title of excellence as a philosopher.  This is fully recognized by Mr Mill; though he treats it as belonging not so much to a philosopher as to an historian of philosophy.  He concludes (pp. 552—­554):—­

’It is much to be regretted that Sir W. Hamilton did not write the history of philosophy, instead of choosing, as the direct object of his intellectual exertions, philosophy itself.  He possessed a knowledge of the materials such as no one, probably for many generations, will take the trouble of acquiring again.  Independently of the great interest and value attaching to a knowledge of the historical development of speculation, there is much in the old writers on philosophy, even those of the middle ages, really worth preserving for its scientific value.  But this should be extracted, and rendered into the phraseology of modern thought, by persons as familiar with that as with the ancient, and possessing a command of its language:  a combination never yet so perfectly realized as in Sir W. Hamilton.  This, which no one but himself could have done, he has left undone, and has given us, instead, a contribution to mental philosophy, which has been more than equalled by many not superior to him in powers, and wholly destitute of erudition.  Of all persons in modern times entitled to the name of philosophers, the two, probably, whose reading on the subject was the scantiest, in proportion to their intellectual capacity, were Archbishop Whately and Dr Brown.  Accordingly they are the only two of whom Sir W. Hamilton, though acknowledging their abilities, speaks with some tinge of superciliousness.  It cannot be denied that both Dr Brown and Whately would have thought and written better than they did, if they had been better read in the writings of previous thinkers; but I am not afraid that posterity will contradict me when I say, that either of them has done far greater service to the world in