Dugald Stewart

“ The writings of Dugald Stewart have been unfortunate in more than that state of exhaustion and syncope into which metaphysical science continued to sink during the lapse of more than half a generation after the death of their author, and the commencement of which had been remarked by Jeffrey more than half a generation before. From some peculiar views––founded, we believe, on an overweening estimate of their pecuniary value––the son and heir of the philosopher tabooed their publication ”

“ Rev. John Maclachlan of Kilchoan, ‘chaplain general of the clans,’ friend and correspondent of Bishop Forbes. Writing to the Bishop in 1748, he says, ‘I live for the most part now like a hermite, because all my late charge almost were kill’d in battle, scatter’d abroad or are cow’d at home. (L. in M., ii. 210.)
[282] Dugald Stewart, 8th chief of Appin and last of the direct male line. Although a Jacobite, and created a peer, as Lord Appin, by James, in 1743, he did not join Prince Charles. His clan, one of the first to rise, was led out by his kinsman Charles Stewart, 5th of Ardshiel. ”

“ Eccentricity Lord Dudley had inherited from his father, and perhaps from his mother, who in her later days was intemperate. He was always shy, but as he grew older his manner became noticeably strange. He was given to soliloquies—a habit said to have been caught from Dugald Stewart—and as he rehearsed to himself what he was going to say to others in two voices, a gruff and a shrill one (Moore, Memoirs, iv. 87) , it was said, ‘It is only Dudley talking to Ward.’ His absence of mind, even when entertaining friends, as he constantly did, gave rise to numberless stories. ”

“ He sided with the popular party, and his appointment to a post in the Ministry by Louis XVI., after Necker’s return, was well received. He was accused, however, of favouring the reactionaries, and resigned his office and Bishopric in 1790. He remained abroad until the establishment of the Consulate.
[29] Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) , son of Matthew Stewart, Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University. He assisted his father in his later years with his mathematical classes, and in 1785 was appointed to the chair of Moral Philosophy. ”

“ He does not hold that all sensation is a percept involving extension and much else—involving, indeed, existence.
Following upon Reid, Dugald Stewart obtained a very considerable reputation, and he was living and writing at the time Ferrier was a young man. His main idea would, however, seem to have been to guard his utterances carefully, and enter upon no keen discussions or contentions: when a bold assertion is made, it is always under shelter of some good authority. ”

“ Philosophic disquisition—which this of Dugald Stewart does not—should sedulously hold them apart. You may judge of a man's Common Sense by hearing him criticise the character and conduct of his neighbour. To learn in what hand the Sceptre of the Will is, you must enter his own doors. The proneness of the Poet, easy, kind, frank—except in his Art, artless—compassionate, generous, and, large-thoughted—heaven-aspiring—to neglect, like the lover, (and what else is he but the perpetually enthralled lover of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful?) ”

“ Of Stewart.—Dugald Stewart makes two classes, the instinctive or implanted, and the rational or governing principles, under the former including appetites, desires, and affections, under the latter, self-love and the moral faculty. The desires are distinguished from the appetites, in that they do not, like the former, take their rise from the body, nor do they operate, periodically, after certain intervals, and cease after the attainment of their object. ”

“ The taste which Dugald Stewart had implanted in him, governed him more than any other at the outset of his career; and may often have contributed not a little, though quite unconsciously, to lift the aspiring young metaphysician somewhat too ambitiously above the level of the luckless author summoned to his judgment seat. Before the third year of the review had opened, he had broken a spear in the lists of metaphysical philosophy even with his old tutor, and with Jeremy Bentham, both in the maturity of their fame; he had assailed, with equal gallantry, the opposite errors of Priestley and Reid ”

“ Sir James Mackintosh says of Dugald Stewart, and we can scarcely conceive of a higher eulogium, that ‘few men ever lived perhaps who poured into the breasts of youth a more fervid and yet reasonable love of liberty, of truth and of virtue. ”

“ Dugald Stewart, the excellent and accomplished wife of the celebrated professor of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh. Her maiden name was Helen D'Arcy Cranstoun, and she was the daughter of the Hon. ”

“ Like the fantastic and giant shapes which, in a thick fog, the imagination lends to a block of stone or to the stump of a tree, they produce, while the illusion lasts, the same effect with truths and realities ”

“ Dugald Roy then led forward the youth whom he had brought prisoner to Curgarf, of whose very existence Sir Patrick Stewart had lost all recollection, amidst the tumult of joy in which he had been so continually kept by his approaching nuptials. The Lady Catherine Forbes started with surprise when she beheld him; but the countenance of Murdoch Stewart turned as pale as a linen sheet at the sight of him.
“What hast thou to say, young man, to the [224] clearing up of this dark and cruel mystery?” demanded the Lord of Curgarf. ”

“ Thus metaphysics and geometry are, of all the sciences belonging to Reason, those in which Imagination has the greatest share. I ask pardon for this observation from those men of taste, who, little aware of the near affinity of geometry to their own pursuits, and still less suspecting that the only intermediate step between them is formed by metaphysics, are disposed to employ their wit in depreciating its value. The truth is, that, to the geometer who invents, Imagination is not less essential than to the poet who creates. ”

“ The long interval, commonly known by the name of the middle ages, which immediately preceded the revival of letters in the western part of Europe, forms the most melancholy blank which occurs, from the first dawn of recorded civilisation, in the intellectual and moral history of the human race. ”

“ Before concluding this preface, I shall subjoin a few slight strictures on a very concise and comprehensive division of the objects of Human Knowledge, proposed by Mr. Locke, as the basis of a new classification of the sciences. Although I do not know that any attempt has ever been made to follow out in detail the general idea, yet the repeated approbation which has been lately bestowed on a division essentially the same, by several writers of the highest rank, renders it in some measure necessary, on the present occasion, to consider how far it is founded on just principles ”

“ When an inveterate prejudice is destroyed by extirpating the casual associations on which it was grafted, how powerful is the new impulse given to the intellectual faculties of man! Yet how slow and silent the process by which the effect is accomplished! Were it not, indeed, for a certain class of learned authors, who from time to time heave the log into the deep, we should hardly believe that the reason of the species is progressive. In this respect, the religious and academical establishments in some parts of Europe are not without their use to the historian of the human mind. ”

“ Nor must it be forgotten, to the glory of his genius, that what lie failed to accomplish remains to this day a desideratum in science,—that the intellectual chart delineated by him is, with all its imperfections, the only one of which modern philosophy has yet to boast;—and that the united talents of D'Alembert and of Diderot, aided by all the lights of the eighteenth century, have been able to add but little to what Bacon performed. ”

“ Be [209] persuaded to go elsewhere, until the false and weak foundations of this most traitorous accusation fail beneath it, and the mists drop from men’s eyes. Who can say for certain that my beloved master, Sir Walter, is dead? I cannot believe in so great a calamity. What proof is there that he is dead? There is no news that his body hath been found.”
“Nay,” replied Neil, “he is only amissing as I said.”
“Thou dost well advise me, Dugald,” said Patrick Stewart after a moment’s thought. “There is, as thou say’st, no proof that my brother, Sir Walter, is dead. ”

“ In none of his writings does he exhibit any marks of that lively sympathy with the fortunes of the human race, or of that warm zeal for the interests of truth and justice, without the guidance of which, the highest mental endowments, when applied to moral or to political researches, are in perpetual danger of mistaking their way. What is still more remarkable, he seems to have been altogether blind to the mighty changes in human affairs, which, in consequence of the recent invention of printing, were about to result from the progress of Reason and the diffusion of Knowledge. ”

“ But it is a question whether the revolutions that are past, or those which must hereafter take place, have been, or can be, of any utility to the human race. Will they add to the tranquillity, to the enjoyments, and to the happiness of mankind? ”

“ The establishment of the Copernican system, beside the new field of study which it opened to Astronomers, must have had great effects on philosophy in all its branches, by inspiring those sanguine prospects of future improvement, which stimulate curiosity and invigorate the inventive powers. It afforded to the common sense, even of the illiterate, a palpable and incontrovertible proof, that the ancients had not exhausted the stock of possible discoveries; and that, in matters of science, the creed of the Romish Church was not infallible. ”

“ No writer, certainly, either in ancient or in modern times, has ever united, in a more remarkable degree, a greater variety of the most dissimilar and seemingly the most discordant gifts and attainments;—a profound acquaintance with all those arts of dissimulation and intrigue, which, in the petty cabinets of Italy, were then universally confounded with political wisdom ”

“ The part of this task which has fallen to my share is certainly, upon the whole, the least splendid in the results which it has to record; but I am not without hopes that this disadvantage may be partly compensated by its closer connexion with (what ought to be the ultimate end of all our pursuits) the intellectual and moral improvement of the species. ”

“ To the same circumstance it is owing, that improvements in moral and in political science do not strike the imagination with nearly so great force as the discoveries of the mathematician or of the chemist. ”

“ Nous sommes trop convaincus de l'arbitraire qui régenera toujours dans une pareille division, pour croire que notre système soit l'unique ou le meilleur; il nous suffira que notre travail ne soit pas entièrement désapprouvé par les bons espirits. ”

“ Locke, "the first and most general, as well as natural, division of the objects of our understanding; for a man can employ his thoughts about nothing but either the contemplation of things themselves, for the discovery of truth, or about the things in his own power, which are his own actions, for the attainment of his own ends ”

“ For us who have been accustomed, from our infancy, to the use of books, it is not easy to form an adequate idea of the disadvantages which those laboured under, who had to acquire the whole of their knowledge through the medium of universities and schools;—blindly devoted as the generality of students must then have been to the peculiar opinions of the teacher, who first unfolded to their curiosity the treasures of literature and the wonders of science. ”

“ It is only, too, in such a state of society, that education and books are likely to increase the sum of human happiness; for while these advantages are confined to one privileged description of individuals, they but furnish them with an additional engine for debasing and misleading the minds of their inferiors. ”

“ The object of a public teacher is no longer to inculcate a particular system of dogmas, but to prepare his pupils for exercising their own judgments; to exhibit to them an outline of the different sciences, and to suggest subjects for their future examination. ”

“ By wandering through the wilds of experience, his disciples sometimes stumble upon useful discoveries, not by reason, but by accident; whence rashly proceeding to form theories, they carry the smoke and tarnish of their art along with them, and, like childish operators at the furnace, attempt to raise a structure of philosophy with a few experiments of distillation. ”

“ The influence, indeed, of the Reformation on the practical doctrines of ethics appears to have been great and immediate. We may judge of this from a passage in Melanchthon, where he combats the pernicious and impious tenets of those theologians who maintained, that moral distinctions are created entirely by the arbitrary and revealed will of God. ”

“ Is not the one the appropriate field and province of observation,—a power habitually awake to all the perceptions and impressions of the bodily organs? and does not the other fall exclusively under the cognizance of reflection,—an operation which inverts all the ordinary habits of the understanding, abstracting the thoughts from every sensible object, and even striving to abstract them from every sensible image? ”

“ The study of the Roman Law, which, from a variety of causes, natural as well as accidental, became, in the course of the twelfth century, an object of general pursuit, shot a strong and auspicious ray of intellectual light across the surrounding darkness. No study could then have been presented to the curiosity of men, more happily adapted to improve their taste, to enlarge their views, or to invigorate their reasoning powers ”