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GERARD, ALEXANDER, D.D., an
eminent divine and writer, was the eldest son of the reverend Gilbert
Gerard, minister of the chapel of Garioch, a parish in Aberdeenshire,
where he was born on the 22nd of February, 1798. He was removed
at the period destined for the commencement of his education, to the
parish of Foveran, in the same county, the humble schoolmaster of which
appears to have possessed such superior classical attainments, that the
reverend gentleman felt justified in delivering his son up to his care, -
a preference which the future fame of that son, founded on his correctness
of acquisition and observation, must have given his friends cause to
regret. At the age of ten, on the death of his father, he was removed to
the grammar school of Aberdeen, whence he emerged in two years, qualified
to enter as a student of Marischal college. Having there performed his
four years of academical attendance in the elementary branches, he
finished his career with the usual ceremony of "the graduation,"
and appeared before the world in the capacity of master of arts at the age
of sixteen, - not by any means the earliest age at which that degree is
frequently granted, but certainly at a period sufficiently early to
entitle him to the character of precocious genius. Immediately after
finishing these branches of education, he commenced in the divinity hall
of Aberdeen his theological studies, which he afterwards finished in
Edinburgh.
In 1748, he was a licensed
preacher of the church of Scotland, and about two years thereafter, Mr D.
Fordyce, professor of natural philosophy in Marischal college, having gone
abroad, he lectured in his stead; and on the regretted death of that
gentleman, by shipwreck on the coast of Holland, just as he was returning
to his friends, Mr Gerard was appointed to the vacant professorship. At
the period when Mr Gerard was appointed to a chair in Marischal college,
the philosophical curriculum, commencing with logic, proceeded immediately
to the abstract subjects of ontology and pneumatics, the course gradually
decreasing in abstruseness with the consideration of morals and politics,
and terminating with the more definite and practical doctrines of natural
philosophy. Through the whole of this varied course it was the duty of
each individual to lead his pupils; mathematics and Greek being alone
taught by separate professors. The evils of this system suggested to the
professors of Marischal college, the formation of a plan for the radical
alteration of the routine, which has since been most beneficially
conducive to the progress of Scottish literature. A very curious and now
rare pamphlet, from the pen of Dr Gerard, exists on this subject; it is
entitled, "Plan of Education in the Marischal College and University
of Aberdeen, with the Reasons of it, drawn up by order of the
Faculty," printed at Aberdeen in 1755; a little work of admirable
perspicuity and sound logical reasoning. The rationale of the ancient
system was founded on the presumption, that, as it is by the use of logic
and the other metaphysical sciences alone, that we can arrange, digest,
and reason upon the facts which come under our observation, these must be
committed to the mind as rules of management, before any facts collected
can be applied to their proper purposes, and that before any knowledge of
nature, as it exists, is stored in the intellect, that intellect must be
previously possessed of certain regulations, to the criterion of which the
knowledge gained must be submitted. A quotation from Dr Gerard’s little
work will afford one of the best specimens of the now pretty generally
understood confutation of this fallacy; speaking of logic, he says:—"This
is one of the most abstruse and difficult branches of philosophy, and
therefore quite improper to begin with, it has a strict dependence on many
parts of knowledge: these must of consequence be premised, before it can
be rightly apprehended,— the natural history of the human understanding
must be known, and its phenomena discovered; for without this, the
exertions of the intellectual faculties, and their application to the
various subjects of science will be unintelligible. These phenomena must
be not only narrated, but likewise, as far as possible, explained:
for without investigating their general laws, no certain and general
conclusions concerning their exercise can be deduced: nay, all sciences,
all branches of knowledge whatever, must be premised as a groundwork to
genuine logic. History has one kind of evidence, mathematics another;
natural philosophy, one still different; the philosophy of nature, another
distinct from all these; the subordinate branches of these several parts,
have still minuter peculiarities in the evidence appropriated to them. An
unprejudiced mind will in each of these be convinced by that species of
argument which is peculiar to it, though it does not reflect how it comes
to be convinced. By being conversant in them, one is prepared for
the study of logic; for they supply them with a fund of materials:
in them the different kinds of evidence and argument are
exemplified: from them only those illustrations can be taken,
without which its rules and precepts would be unintelligible." * *
"In studying the particular sciences, reason will spontaneously exert
itself: if the proper and natural method of reasoning is used, the mind
will, by the native force of its faculties, perceive the evidence, and be
convinced by it; though it does not reflect how this comes to pass, nor
explicitly consider according to what general rules the understanding is
exerted. By afterwards studying these rules, one will be farther fitted
for prosecuting the several sciences; the knowledge of the grounds and
laws of evidence will give him the security of reflection, against
employing wrong methods of proof, and improper kinds of evidence,
additional to that of instinct and natural genius." The
consequence of this acknowledgment of the supremacy of reason and practice
over argumentation and theory, was the establishment of a course of
lectures on natural and civil history, previously to inculcating the
corresponding sciences of natural and mental philosophy; an institution
from which, wherever the former part consists of anything better than a
blundering among explosive combustibles, and a clattering among glass
vessels, or the latter is anything superior to a circumstantial narrative
of ancient falsehoods and modern dates,—the student derives a basis of
sound and useful information, on which the more metaphysical sciences may
or may not be built, as circumstances or inclination admit, it is a
striking instance of the propensity to follow with accuracy the beaten
track, or to deviate only when some powerful spirit leads the way, that
the system has never advanced further than as laid down by Dr Gerard ;—according
to his system, jurisprudence and politics are to be preceded by
pneumatology and natural theology, and is to be mixed up "with the
perusal of some of the best ancient moralists." Thus the studies of
jurisprudence and politics, two sciences of strictly modern practical
origin, are to be mixed with the dogmas of philosophers, who saw
governments but in dreams, and calculated political contingencies in the
abstract rules of mathematicians; and the British student finds, that the
constitutional information, for which he will, at a more advanced period
of life, discover that his country is renowned, is the only science from
which the academical course has carefully excluded him, and which he is
left to gather in after-life by desultory reading or miscellaneous
conversation and practice. The change produced by Dr Gerard was
sufficiently sweeping as a first step, and the reasons for it were a
sufficient victory for one mind over the stubbornness of ancient
prejudice. It is to be also remembered, that those admirable
constitutional works on the government and constitutional laws of England,
(which have not even yet been imitated in Scotland,) and that new science
by which the resources of governments, and the relative powers of
different forms of constitutions are made known like the circumstances of
a private individual—the work of an illustrious Scotsman—had not then
appeared. It will be for some approaching age to improve this admirable
plan, and to place those sciences which treat of men—in the methods by
which, as divided in different clusters through the earth, they have
reduced abstract principles of morals to practice—as an intermediate
exercise betwixt the acquisition of mere physical facts, and the study of
those sciences which embrace an abstract speculation on these facts;
keeping the mind chained as long as possible to things which exist in the
world, in morals as well as in facts—the example of the tyrannical
system never deviated from till the days of Bacon and Des Cartes— and of
many reasonings of the present day, which it might be presumption to call
absurd, showing us how naturally the mind indulges itself in erecting
abstract edifices, out of proportions which are useless when they are
reduced to the criterion of practice. In 1756, a prize offered by the
philosophical society of Edinburgh, for the best essay on taste, was
gained by Dr Gerard, and in 1759, he published this essay, the best and
most popular of his philosophical works. It passed through three English
editions and two French, in which language it was published by Eidous,
along with three dissertations on the same subject by Voltaire, D’Alembert,
and Montesquieu. This essay treats first of what the author calls taste,
resolved into its simple elements, and contains a sort of analytical
account of the different perceptible qualities, more or less united, to be
found in any thing we admire: he then proceeds to consider the progress of
the formation of taste, and ends with a discussion on the existence of a
standard of taste. The author follows the system of reflex senses,
propounded by Hutchinson. The system of association, upon which Mr Alison
afterwards based a treatise on the same subject, is well considered by
Gerard, along with many other qualifications, which he looks upon as the
sources of the feeling—qualifications which other writers, whose ideas
on the subject have not yet been confuted, have referred likewise to the
principles of association for their first cause. Longinus,
in his treatise on sublimity, if he has not directly maintained the
original influence of association—or in other words, the connexion of
the thing admired, either through cause and affect, or some other tie,
with what is pleasing or good - as an origin of taste, at least in his
reasonings and illustrations, gives cause to let it be perceived that he
acknowledged such a principle to exist. [This is particularly remarkable
at the commencement of the 7th section.] The first person,
however, who laid it regularly down and argued upon it as a source of
taste, appears to have been Dr Gerard, and his theory was admitted by Sir
Joshua Reynolds, in as far as maintaining that beauty consists in an
aptness of parts for the end to which they are assigned, may be considered
an admission of the principle of association, at a period when one of an
inversely opposite nature was supported by Burke and Price. To those who
have followed these two, the name of Dugald Stewart has to be added; while
that eminent scholar and great philosopher, Richard Payne Knight, has,
amidst the various and rather ill-arranged mass of useful information and
acute remark, accumulated in his inquiry into the principles of taste,
well illustrated the theory propounded by Dr Gerard, and it has been
finally enlarged and systematized by Dr Alison, and the author of a
criticism on that work in the Edinburgh Review, one of the most beautiful
and perfect specimens of modern composition. At the period when Dr Gerard
produced this work, he was a member of a species of debating institution
half way betwixt a society and a club, subject neither to the pompous
state of the one, nor the excess of the other. This society is well known
in Scottish literary history, as embracing among its members many of the
first men of the time. More or less connected with it were the classical
Blackwell, and Gregory, and Reid, the parent of that clear philosophy
which has distinguished the country, and Beattie, who, though his merits
have perhaps been too highly rated, was certainly fit to have been an
ornament to any association of literary men. The use of literary societies
has been much exaggerated; but still it cannot be denied, that wherever a
spot becomes distinguished for many superior minds, there is one of these
pleasing sources of activity and enjoyment to be found. That it is more
the effect than the cause may be true. Such men as Gerard, Reid, and
Blackwell would have been distinguished in any sphere of life; but if the
principle should maintain itself in no other science, it is at least true
of philosophy, that intercommunication and untechnical debate, clear and
purify the ideas previously formed, and ramify them to an extent of which
the thinker had never previously dreamed. It must have been grateful
beyond conception to the members of this retired and un-ostentatious body,
to have found learning and elegance gradually brightening under their
influence, after a dreary and unlettered series of ages which had passed
over their university and the district,—to feel that, though living
apart from the grand centres of literary attraction, they had the
enjoyments these could bestow beside their own retired hearths and among
their own professional colleagues,—and to be conscious that they
bestowed a dignity on the spot they inhabited, which a long period of
commercial prosperity could never bestow, and gave a tone to the
literature of their institution which should continue when they were gone.
In June 1760, Dr Gerard was chosen professor of divinity in Marischal
college, being at the same time presented with the living of the Grey
Friars’ church, in Aberdeen. During his tenure of these situations, he
published his "Dissertations on the Genius and Evidences of
Christianity," a subject which he treated with more soundness,
reason, and gentlemanly spirit, than others of the same period have chosen
to display. In June 1771, he resigned both these situations, and accepted
the theological chair of King’s college, and three years afterwards
published "An Essay on Genius;" this production is stamped with
the same strength of argument, and penetrating thought, every where to be
found in the productions of the author. The heads of the subject are laid
down with much philosophical correctness, and followed out with that
liberal breadth of argument peculiar to those who prefer what is
reasonable and true, to what supports an assumed theory. The language is
not florid, and indeed does not aim at what is called elegant writing, but
is admirably fitted to convey the ideas clearly and consistently, and
seems more intended to be understood than to be admired. It commences with
a discussion on the nature of "genius," which is separated from
the other mental powers, and particularly from "ability," with
which many have confounded it. Genius is attributed in the first process
of its formation to imagination, which discovers ideas, to be afterwards
subjected to the arbitration of judgment; memory, and the other
intellectual powers, being considered as subsidiary aids in instigating
the movements of imagination. Dr Gerard afterwards presented to the world
two volumes of sermons, published in 1780-82. He died on his 67th
birth-day, 22d February, 1795. A sermon was preached on his funeral, and
afterwards published, by his friend and pupil, Dr Skene Ogilvy of Old
Aberdeen, which, along with the adulation common to such performances,
enumerates many traits of character which the most undisguised flatterer
could not have dared to have attributed to any but a good, able, and much
esteemed man. A posthumous work, entitled "Pastoral Care," was
published by Dr Gerard’s son and successor in 1799.
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