He groups all our senses, faculties, and
impulses together, and says: "All these things Moral Philosophy observes,
and, observing, adores the Being from whence they proceed."
Having thus defined his subject, the lecturer goes on, in his second and
third lectures, to trace the history of Moral Philosophy, from Pythagoras
to Mrs. Trimmer. Plato is praised for beauty of style, and blamed for
mistiness of doctrine. Aristotle is contrasted, greatly to his
disadvantage, with Bacon. "Volumes of Aristotelian philosophy have been
written which, if piled one upon another, would have equalled the Tower of
Babel in Height, and far exceeded it in Confusion." But to Bacon "we are
indebted for an almost daily extension of our knowledge of the laws of
nature in the outward world; and the same modest and cautious spirit of
enquiry, extended to Moral Philosophy, will probably give us clear,
intelligible ideas of our spiritual nature."
The remaining lectures of this course are those which suffered most
severely from the flames, and are indeed in so fragmentary a condition as
to render any close criticism of them impossible. But enough has been
quoted to show that Sydney Smith, so far as he was in any sense concerned
with philosophy, was a sworn foe to mysticism and ideality, and a
worshipper of Baconian common-sense even in the sphere of mind and soul.
He was never tired of poking fun at his philosophical friends in Edinburgh.
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