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their Scottish pronunciation. A company of authors had sprung up, determined to assert their place among the classical writers of England; and this had been already allowed to Hume, to Robertson, and Smith, and was being allowed to Beattie. Stewart had, no doubt, an ambition to take his place among the classical writers of Scotland.

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words. His lecturing manner was professorial, but gentlemanlike, calm and expository, but rising into greatness, or softening into tenderness, whenever his subject required it. A slight asthmatic tendency made him often clear his throat; and such was my admiration of the whole exhibition, that Macvey Napier told him not long ago that I had said there was eloquence in his very spitting. Then,' said he, I am glad there was at least one thing in which I had no competitor." To me, his lectures were

like the opening of the heavens. I felt that I had a soul. His noble views, unfolded in

While pursuing his studies at Glasgow, he read a paper on "Dreaming," before literary society in connection with the University; and he subsequently read the glorious sentences, elevated me into a higher

same paper to a similar society in Edinburgh. The theory here started, was afterwards embodied in his "Elements," and contains, certainly, not the whole truth on this mysterious subject; but still a truth, namely, that in dreaming, the will is in abeyance, and the mind follows a spontaneous train. In the Edinburgh society he also read papers on "Taste," on "Cause and Effect," and "Skepticism." The fact that such topics were discussed, is a sign of the spirit which prevailed among the youth of Scotland at that time. It is worthy of being noticed, that at Glasgow he boarded in the same house with Mr. Alison, who afterwards, in his Essay on Taste, carried out the theory which had been started by Beattie, in his Dissertation on Imagination, as to the feeling of Beauty being produced by the association of ideas.

Quitting his course of training, we may now view him as delivering his professorial lectures, in the class-room in Edinburgh. By far the liveliest account of him is by Lord Cockburn. It is worthy of being read again by those who may have seen it before:

"He was about the middle size, weakly limbed, and with an appearance of feebleness which gave an air of delicacy to his gait and structure. His forehead was large and bald; his eyebrows bushy; his eyes gray and intelligent, and capable of conveying any emotion from indignation to pity, from serene sense to hearty humor, in which they were powerfully aided by his lips, which, though rather large perhaps, were flexible and expressive. The voice was singularly pleasing; and, as he managed it, a slight burr only made its tones softer. His car both for music and for speech was exquisite; and he was the finest reader I have ever heard. His gesture was simple and elegant, though not free from a tinge of professional formality, and his whole manner that of an academical gentleman.

He lectured standing, from notes which, with their successive additions, must, I suppose, at last have been nearly as full as his spoken

world."

There were hearers who felt that there was a want in his expositions, and there are readers still who feel in the same way. Ardent youths, like Brown and Chalmers, looked on him as timid and over-cautious. Chalmers wrote in 1801:

"I attend his lectures regularly. I must confess I have been rather disappointed. I never heard a single discussion of Stewart's which made up one masterly and comprehensive whole. His lectures seem to me to be made up of detached hints and incomplete outlines, and he almost uniformly avoids every subject which involves any difficult discussion."

Chalmers lived to proclaim him the highest of academic moralists. Still there was ground, in appearance and in reality, for the early criticism. In his writings he adopts the plan which Dr. Robertson took credit for introducing, that of throwing a great deal of his matter into notes and illustrations. This method, carried to the extent to which it has been done by Robertson, Stewart, and M'Crie, is a radically defective one, as it interrupts the flow of the discourse, and, with this, the interest in and comprehension of the whole. He has a most sensitive aversion to all such bold speculations as Leibnitz indulged in, and is jealous of all such deductions as Descartes and Kant have drawn out. He has no ability for sharp analysis, and he looks on a high abstraction with as great terror as some men do on ghosts. He studiously avoids close discussion, and flinches from controversy; he seems afraid of fighting with an opponent, lest it should exhibit him in no seemly attitudes. Seldom does he venture on a bold assertion, and when he does, he always takes shelter immediately after behind an authority. Determined to sustain his dignity and keep up his flow of language, he often takes rounded sentences

and paragraphs to bring out what a more | plishments, fascinating manners, and litdirect mind would have expressed in a erary tastes. His house now became the single clenching clause, or even by an ex-resort of the best society of Edinburgh, pressive epithet. Often does the eager, ingenuous youth, in reading his pages, wish that he would but lay aside ceremony for a very little, and speak out frankly and heartily.

Still we should form a very unjust opinion of Stewart, if, in consequence of these weaknesses, we thought him devoid of originality, independence, or profundity. We certainly do not claim for him the sagacity of Locke, or the speculative genius of Leibnitz, or a power of generalizing details equal to Adam Smith, or the shrewdness of Reid, or the logical grasp of Kant and Hamilton, and we admit that he was inferior to all these men in originality; but he has admirable qualities of his own-in soundness of judgment he is more to be trusted than any of them; and if he is without some of their excellencies, he is also without some of their faults. He has no such rash and unmeasured diatribes as Locke's assault on innate ideas; no such extravagances as the monadical theory of Leibnitz; no such wasting of ingenuity as Smith's theory in his "Moral Sentiments;" he does not commit such gross misapprehensions in scholarship as Reid does; and he never allows any logic to conduct him to such preposterous conclusions as Kant and Hamilton landed themselves in, when they declared causation to be a law of thought and not of things. We have noticed that in many cases Stewart hides his originality, as carefully as others boast of theirs. Often have we found, after going the round of philosophers in seeking light on some abstruse subject, that on turning to Stewart, his doctrine is after all the most profound, as it is the most judicious.

We do not mean to enter into the details of his remaining life. In 1783 he married a Miss Bannatyne, of Glasgow, who died in 1787, leaving an only child, afterwards Colonel Stewart. He spent the summers of 1788 and 1789 on the Continent. In the appendix to the Memoir, there is a selection from the letters which he wrote to his friends at home. Though written in the midst of instructive scenes, and on the eve of great events, they are excessively general and commonplace, and display no shrewdness of observation. In 1790 he married a daughter of Lord Cranston, a lady of high accom

and he himself the center and bond of an accomplished circle, at a time when the metropolis of Scotland in the winter months was the residence of many of the principal Scottish families, and of persons of high literary and scientific eminence. The weekly reunions in his house, which happily blended the aristocracies of rank and letters, bringing together the peer and the unfriended scholar, were for many years the source of an influence that most beneficially affected the society of the capital. His influence was extended by his receiving into his house, as boarders, young men chiefly of rank and fortune. In his classes of Moral Philosophy and of Political Economy, he had under him a greater body of young men who afterwards distinguished themselves, than any other teacher that we can think of. Among them we have to place Lord Brougham, Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Francis Horner, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Jeffrey, Sir Walter Scott, Sydney Smith, Dr. Brown, Dr. Chalmers, James Mill, Sir A. Alison, and many others who have risen to great eminence in politics, in literature, or philosophy; and most of these have acknowledged the good which they derived from his lectures, while some of them have carried out in practical measures the principles which he inculcated. He seems, in particular, to have kindled a fine enthusiasm in the breast of Francis Horner, who ever speaks of him in terms of loftiest admiration, and, though cut off in early life, lived long enough to exhibit the high moral aims which he had imbibed from the lessons of Stewart.

It was in 1792 that the first volume of his Elements was published. In 1793 appeared his Outlines of Moral Philosophy, containing an epitome of the doctrines expanded in his larger writings. His other works appeared after successive intervals; his Account of Adam Smith in 1793, of Robertson in 1796, and of Reid in 1802; his Philosophical Essays in 1810; the second volume of his Elements in 1814; the first part of his Dissertation in 1815, and the second in 1821; the third volume of his Elements in 1827; and the Active and Moral Powers in 1828. The Lectures on Political Economy are now published for the first time.

In 1805 he threw himself, with more

eagerness than he was wont to display in | underlying it, but the criticism is, on the public matters, into the controversy which whole, a fair and just one. Stewart now arose about the appointment of Leslie-a lived, till the close of his life, at Kinman of high scientific eminence, but with niel House, Linlithgowshire-a residence a great deal of the gross animal in his na- placed at his service by the Duke of Hamture to the chair of Mathematics. He ilton. Henceforth he was chiefly employwrote a pamphlet on the subject, and ap-ed in maturing and arranging the philopeared in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, as a Presbyterian elder, to aid the evangelical party, who, under the leadership of Sir H. Moncrieff, were no way inclined to join the moderate party in their attempt to keep out a distinguished man, because he entertained certain views on the subject of physical causation, and to retain the College chairs for themselves. In his speech on the occasion, Stewart does let out feeling for once, and it is mingled with pride and

scorn:

sophical works which he published. The details given of this part of his life are scanty and uninstructive. In 1820 he came forth to support Sir James Mackintosh as successor to Brown; and when Sir James declined the office, Stewart recommended Sir W. Hamilton, who seems ever afterwards to have cherished a feeling of gratitude towards Stewart. The election fell on Professor Wilson, who, while the fittest man living for the chair of Rhetoric and Belles Letters, had no special qualifications for a chair of Philosophy.

In 1822, Mr. Stewart had a stroke of paralysis, from which, however, he partially recovered. Mrs. Stewart describes him, in 1824, as troubled with a difficulty of speech, and a tremor in his hand, as walking two or three hours every day, as cheerful in his spirits, his mind as acute as ever, and as amusing himself with

"After having discharged, for more than thirty years, (not, I trust, without discredit to myself,) the important duties of my academical station, I flatter myself that the House does not think it incumbent on me to descend to philosophical controversies with such antagonists. Such of the members, at least, as I have the honor to be known to, will not, I am confident, easily allow themselves to be persuaded that I would have committed myself rashly and wantonly on a question in which the highest inter-reading on his favorite pursuits, and with

ests of mankind are involved."

In delivering the speech from which the above is an extract, he was called to order, and not being accustomed to such handling, he sat down abruptly. The motion of Sir H. Moncrieff was carried by a majority, which occasioned great joy to the Edinburgh Liberals.

the classics. He had just given to the world his work on the Active Powers, and was on a visit to a friend in Edinburgh, when he died on 11th June, 1828. He was buried in the family vault in the Canongate. There is a monument in honor of him on the Calton Hill; but the fittest memorial of him is to be found, first, in his pupils, who have done a good work in their day, and now in his writings, which may do a good work for ages to come.

In 1806, the Whig party, being in power, procured for him a sinecure office, entitled the Writership of the Edinburgh Gazette, with a salary of £300 a year. If there has been an anxiety felt to In 1809, Mr. Stewart was in a precarious have a memoir of Stewart, there has state of health, much aggravated by the been an equally strong desire to have a death of a son by his second wife, and he complete edition of his works. We do asked Dr. Thomas Brown to lecture for not know what causes may have hindered him. In 1810, Brown, being strongly re- this in time past-we suspect that they commended to the Town Council by must have risen from different parties Stewart, was appointed conjoint profess- having an interest in his published writor, and henceforth discharged all the ings; but this we know, that it was diffiduties of the office. Brown never attack-cult to procure certain of his works, as, ed Stewart, but he openly assailed Reid; and we suppose the intimacy between Stewart and Brown henceforth could not have been great. Stewart delivered his ultimate estimate of Brown in a note appended to the third volume of the Elements. There is evidently keen feeling

for example, the third volume of his Elements, of which there had never been more than the one quarto edition. Every one rejoiced, in these circumstances, to find it intimated, that we were to have the collected words of Stewart, edited by Sir W. Hamilton, the most competent

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man then living for the undertaking. and it should have appeared in its unity, This edition is now all but completed, as Stewart left it. and will ever be the standard one. The

Nevertheless, we must touch on some topics of an interesting and important kind, as discussed by Stewart, and again discussed by later writers on mental science.

The first volume of the collected works contains the Dissertation. We look upon it as the finest of the Dissertations in the Encyclopædia Britannica; and this is no mean praise, when we consider the number of eminent men who have written for that work. We regard it, indeed, as upon the whole the best dissertation which ever appeared in a philosophical serial. As a history of modern philosophy, especially of British philosophy, it has not been superseded, and, we believe, never will be set aside. It is preeminent for its fine literary taste, its high moral tone, its general accuracy, its comprehensiveness of survey, and its ripeness of wisdom. When we read it, we feel as if we were breathing a pure and healthy atmosphere, and that the whole spirit of the work is cheering, as being so full of hope in the progress of knowledge. Its critical strictures are ever candid, generally mild, very often just, and always worthy of being noted and pondered. The work is particularly pleasing in the account given of those who have contributed by their literary works to diffuse a taste for metaphysical studies, such as Montaigne, Bayle, Fontenelle, and Addison. should be admitted that the author has scarcely done justice to Grotius, and failed to fathom the depth of such minds as Leibnitz and Jonathan Edwards. We agree, moreover, with those who regret that he should ever have been tempted to enter on a criticism of Kant, whose works he knew only from translations and imperfect compends.*

We do not propose to criticise these editor has not enriched it with such notes ten massive volumes. This would be a as he has appended to his edition of Reid heavy work to ourselves and to our read. -notes distinguished for the very quali-ers: it would almost be equivalent to ties which Reid was deficient in, exten- a criticism of all modern philosophy. sive scholorship and rigid analysis. Sir W. Hamilton, in undertaking the work, stipulated that Mr. Stewart's writings should be published without note or comment. We rather think that Hamilton had not such a sympathy with the elegant and cautious disciple as with the shrewd and original master. Besides, elaborate notes to Stewart must have been very much a repetition of his notes to Reid. In this edition Hamilton is tempted at times to depart from his rule; he does give us a note or comment when the subject is favorite one, such as the freedom of the will; and often must he have laid a restraint on himself, in not pruning or amending to a greater extent. But the value of this edition consists in its being complete, in its having references supplied, and one index after another, and in its containing additions from Stewart's manuscripts, and these of ten of great value, both in themselves and as illustrating Stewart's philosophy. Sir W. Hamilton was cut off before the edition was completed, but Mr. Veitch has carried on the work in the same manner and spirit. Having said so much of this fine edition, we must protest against the occasional translation of the language and views of Stewart into those of Hamilton, in places where it is purported to give us Stewart himself. Thus, in Index, vol. iv., p. 408, Stewart is represented as, in a place referred to, discussing the question as to whether some of our notions be not "native or à priori," but, on looking up the page, no such language is used; and the same remark holds good of vol. v., p. 474, where Stewart is spoken of as describing our notions both of matter and mind as merely "phænomenal," a view thoroughly Kantian and Hamiltonian, and not sanctioned by Stewart. We must be allowed, also, to disapprove of the liberty taken with the Outlines of Moral Philosophy, which is cut up into three parts, and appears in three distinct volumes. This is the most condensed and direct of all Stewart's writings; it contains an abridgment of his whole doctrines: it is one of the best text-books ever written, VOL. XLIV.-NO. IV.

It

*In regard to histories of philosophy, we have now three Parts of Mr. Maurice's work, in all of which we have huge sunlit objects, seen, as it were, in a fog, raised by the heat of a dreamy, feverish, sultry day in summer. The great defect of all his works is, that he seldom utters a clear categorical proposition. Mr. Lewes has published a library edition of his Biographical History of Philosophy. The work is clever and acute, but is not profound,

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ing the mind on a present object. He does not seem to know what to make of Reason, as a distinct faculty; and, as defined by him, it ought to include abstraction, which is certainly a rational exercise. But, if the work is defective in logical grasp, it excels in its descriptions of concrete operations, and in its explanations and elucidations of phenomena presenting themselves in real life. All his works are replete with those "intermediate axioms" which Bacon commends as most useful of all, as being removed equally from the lowest axioms, which differ but little from particulars, and from the highest and most general, which are notional, abstract, and of no weight; whereas the "intermediate are true, solid, full of life, and upon them depend the business and fortune of mankind." The fine reflection and lofty eloquence of Stewart come out most pleasingly and instructively in all those passages in which he treats of association and imagination.

The next three volumes contain the objects as well, as, for example, ourselves Elements of the Philosophy of the Hu- or others in joy or sorrow. In a later man Mind, and are introduced by a por- age, Hamilton has confined the term in tion of the Outlines. In the first volume an opposite direction to the logical or of the Elements and in the opening of the general notion. Stewart's classification second, he spreads out before us a classifi- is also redundant. Attention is not a cation of the intellectual powers-as Per- separate faculty, but is an exercise of will ception, Attention, Conception, Abstrac-roused, it may be, by feeling, and fixtion, Association of Ideas, Memory, Imagination, and Reason. The list is at once defective and redundant. Stewart acknowledges Self-consciousness, which is an inseparable concomitant of all the present operations of the mind, to be a separate attribute; and in this he seems to be right, inasmuch as it looks at a special object, namely, self in the existing state, and gives us a distinct class of ideas, namely, the qualities of self, such as thinking and feeling. Yet it is curious, that while he gives it half a page in his Outlines, it has no separate place in the Elements. It is also a singular circumstance that Reid dismisses it in the same summary way. An inductive observation, with an analysis of the precise knowledge given us by self-consciousness, would give a solid foundation for the doctrine of human personality, and clear away the greater part of the confusion and error lingering in the metaphysics of our day. Nor is there any proper account given in the Elements of that important group of faculties which discover relations among the objects known by Sense-Perception and Consciousness. The omission of this class of attributes has led him into a meager nominalism, very unlike the general spirit of his philosophy. He restricts the word Conception to the mere imaging power of the mind, and even to the picturing of bodily objects, as if we could not represent mental

and is thoroughly sophistic. He has no sympathies with humble, cautious, and practical truth-seekers, such as Socrates and Thomas Reid. His appreciation is of the Arabs of philosophy, such as the Sophists and David Hume, and of thought-bewildered men, such as Spinoza, of whose Ethics he threatens to give us a translation; and his end is to show us that philosophy can yield no truth, and thus to shut us up to a miserable Comtism, in which is omitted the religion (if religion it can be called,) which the late M. Comte declared to be the most essential part of his system. In his "Politique Positive," M. Comte speaks of those in this country who have adopted the other parts of his system, and rejected his religious worship, as guilty either of an impotency of intellect, or an insufficiency of heart, or, most commonly, of both.

On one important point, discussed frequently in the Elements, the school of Reid and Stewart was led into error by their excessive caution, and by being awed so much by the authority of Locke. Reid maintained, in a loose way, that we do not know substance but qualities, and Stewart wrought this view into a system. We are not, he says, properly speaking, conscious of self or the existence of self, we are merely conscious of a sensation or some other quality, which by a subsequent suggestion of the understanding, leads to a belief in that which exercises the quality. (Phil. Essays, p. 58, etc.) This we must regard as a radically defective doctrine. We do not know intuitively a quality of self apart from self; we know both in one primitive, concrete act, and it is only by a subsequent operation that we separate in thought the quality which may change in its action from the self or substance which abideth. Descartes erred, we think, when he represented the mental process as being "cogito ergo sum," the primitive cognition is of the ego cogitans. But we look on Stewart as equally erring

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