H/E was for a time " professor of pneumatology and ethical philosophy " in Edinburgh University.The pneumatics are divided into the following parts: (1) A physical inquiry into the nature of such subtle and material substances as are imperceptible to the senses, and known only front their operations; (2) The nature of immaterial substances connected with matter, in which is demonstrated, by natural evidence, the immortality of the human soul (3) The nature of immaterial created beings not connected with matter (4)Natural theology, or the existence and attributes of God demonstrated front the light of nature.Ethics or moral philosophy is divided into the theoretical and practical parts, in treating of which the authors lie chiefly uses are Cicero, Marcus Antoninus, Puffendorf, and Lord Bacon.He had lectures explaining the origin and principles of civil government, illustrated with an account of the rise and fall of the ancient governments of Greece and Rome, and a view of that form of government which took its rise from the irruptions of the northern nations.His students have also discourses presented to them upon some important heads of pneumatical or moral philosophy, which are delivered before the principal with open doors.Pringle was by no means so thorough an instructor as Stevenson.Carlyle describes him "as an agreeable lecturer, though no great master of the science he taught." " His lectures were chiefly a compilation from Lord Bacon's works, and had it not been for Puffendorf's small book, which he made his text, we should not have been instructed in the rudiments of the science."Nevertheless, we see that he discussed topics which must issue, sooner or later, in a scientific jurisprudence and political economy.We see, in the case both of Stevenson and Pringle, how much attention was paid in the Scottish universities to the practice of English composition.
Pringle's taste did not lie specially in metaphysics.
He was born in Roxburghshire, in 1707, and became a physician.He settled in Edinburgh about 1734; and after 1748, resided in London, where be was elected president of the Royal Society in 1773.He died in 1782
