Some ingenious observations on attention and abstraction, wise remarks on the use and abuse of the habit of generalization, and an interesting review of some of the practical applications of the laws of mental association, may be found in the first volume, which is confined chiefly to the faculties of presentation and representation. Reason was reserved for the following volume, which appeared in 1814, and which treats of demonstration, with the theory of inductive and deductive reasoning—the elements, in short, of the "rational logic" at which he aimed. The third volume, published in 1827, contains some supplementary disquisitions on language, and on the varieties of intellectual character, including a comparison between the faculties of man and those of the lower animals. These volumes are certainly more conspicuous for good sense, knowledge of the world and of books, and literary elegance, than for metaphysical originality. In conjunction with the volume of "Philosophical Essays," which appeared in 1810, and which includes disquisitions on the origin of knowledge, the idealism of Berkeley, and the principles of taste and criticism, they propose some modifications of Reid's doctrine of external perception and of the nature of our knowledge of matter, and offer interesting suggestions on the theory of causation. In 1793, the year following the publication of the first volume of his "Elements," Stewart issued a small volume of "Outlines" of intellectual, moral, and political philosophy, which was meant "to exhibit such a view of the arrangement of his lectures, as might facilitate the studies of those to whom they are addressed," and which Jouffroy has described as "a text-book of meditations on the most important points of the science of man." In the same year he read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh his "Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith," in which, as in the "Account of the Life and Writings" of Principal Robertson (1796), and of Dr. Reid(1802), he has described the intellectual features of some of the most distinguished of his early contemporaries. In 1805 he was induced, along with his friends Playfair and Thomas Brown, to take a public part in the celebrated Leslie controversy, which touched in some important relations the liberties of universities, and was occasioned by the alleged adoption by Leslie, the professor-elect of mathematics, of Hume's opinions on causation. According to Stewart, Brown, and other philosophical defenders of Leslie, all physical science is confined to the interpretation of invariable coexistences and sequences among phenomena, and with Stewart power or efficiency is an attribute of mind alone. In connection with this affair he published "A short statement of some important facts relative to the late election of a professor of mathematics in the university of Edinburgh;" and later in the same year, "A postscript to the statement of facts." Stewart's state of health, at no time robust, did not permit him to lecture during a great part of the session 1809-10, when Dr. Thomas Brown, at his request, acted as his substitute. He finally withdrew from active professorial duty at the end of this session, and devoted the remaining eighteen years of his life, in literary retirement, to the preparation of those works by which philosophy, after the type of Reid, has been so gracefully recommended to the European public. In 1810 Dr. Thomas Brown was appointed conjoint-professor of moral philosophy. From this period until the close of his life Stewart lived in the beautiful retreat of Kinneil house in Linlithgowshire (about twenty miles from Edinburgh), placed at his disposal by the duke of Hamilton. From Kinneil issued in 1810 the "Philosophical Essays;" in 1814 the second volume of the "Elements;" in 1815 the first, and in 1821 the second part of the "Dissertation exhibiting the progress of metaphysical, ethical, and political philosophy since the revival of letters in Europe"—perhaps the most interesting of all his writings; in 1827 the third volume of the "Elements;" and in 1828, a few weeks before his death, the "Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers"—his principal work in ethics proper, and the relative discussions. These works were, shortly after their publication, translated into French, and have long been in extensive circulation on the continent of Europe and in America. In 1855 the "Lectures on Political Economy" were published under the editorial care of Sir W. Hamilton, completing Stewart's published exposition of doctrine in Psychology, Ethics, and Politics. "Amid excellencies of the highest order," says Sir James Macintosh, in a judgment of the voluminous works of Stewart, "these writings, it must be confessed, leave some room for criticism. He took precautions against offence to the feelings of his contemporaries, more anxious and frequent than the impatient searcher for truth may deem necessary. For the sake of promoting the favourable reception of philosophy itself, he studies perhaps too visibly to avoid whatever might raise up prejudices against it. His gratitude and native modesty dictated a superabundant care in softening and excusing his dissent from those who had been his own instructors, or who were the objects of general reverence. Exposed by his station, both to the assaults of political prejudice and to the religious animosities of a country where a few sceptics attacked the slumbering zeal of a Calvinistic people, it would have been wonderful if he had not betrayed more wariness than would have been necessary or becoming in a very different position. The fulness of his literature seduced him too much into multiplied illustrations. Too many of the expedients happily used to allure the young, unnecessarily swell these volumes. Perhaps a successive publication in separate parts made him more voluminous than he would have been if the whole had been at once before his eyes. A peculiar susceptibility and delicacy of taste produced forms of expression, in themselves extremely beautiful, but of which the habitual use is not easily reconcilable with the condensation desirable in works necessarily so extensive. If, however, it must be owned that the caution incident to his temper, his feelings, his philosophy, and his station, has somewhat lengthened his composition, it is not less true that some of the same circumstances have contributed towards those peculiar beauties which place him at the head of the most adorned writers on philosophy in our language."
Stewart resigned the chair of moral philosophy in June, 1820, a few weeks after the death of his colleague, Dr. Brown. In 1822 he had an attack of paralysis, which for a time disabled him from study, leaving his understanding unimpaired. He died at Edinburgh (when on a visit at 5 Ainslie Place), on the 11th June, 1828, after a fresh shock of paralysis. He was buried on the west side of the Canongate churchyard, near the grave of Adam Smith, not far from the tomb in which David Hume had been laid half a century before, nor from the other at the west-end of Edinburgh, in which Hamilton found rest nearly thirty years after—names these which must ever be associated with the philosophical fame of the Scottish metropolis.—A. C. F.
STEWART, Sir James, of Coltness, Baronet, was born in 1713. His father was solicitor-general, and his grandfather lord-advocate for Scotland; his mother was a daughter of Sir Hew Dalrymple, president of the court of session. Sir James was educated at the university of Edinburgh, and was admitted to practice at the bar in 1734. His family had long been staunch whigs, but he was converted to the jacobite cause by the duke of Ormond, the earl of Mar, and other friends of the exiled dynasty, with whom he became acquainted during a tour on the continent, and who introduced him to Prince Charles Stewart at Rome. When the prince entered Edinburgh in 1745 Sir James joined his standard, and paid the penalty of his jacobitism by an exile of eighteen years. He was permitted to return home in 1763. During his residence on the continent he published, in 1758, a vindication of Newton's chronology of the Greeks, in French; and a treatise on German coins, in the German language. After his return to his own country he published, in 1767, his "Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy," in 2 vols. 4to—the first considerable work on this subject published in Britain. His "Considerations on the Interests of the County of Lanark" appeared in 1769, under the assumed name of Robert Frame. His other works are—"The Principles of Money applied to the present state of the Coin of Bengal;" "Observations on Beattie's Essay on Truth;" "Critical Remarks on the Atheistical Falsehoods of Mirabaud's System of Nature;" a "Dissertation concerning the Nature of Obedience to the Law of God;" and a "Plan for introducing Uniformity of Weights and Measures." Sir James died in 1780, leaving an only son by Lady Frances, daughter of the earl of Wemyss. His works were pubfished in 1806, in 6 vols., with a memoir by his son.—J. T.
STEWART, Matthew, a Scottish mathematician and doctor of divinity, was born at Rothesay in the isle of Bute in 1717, and died in Edinburgh on the 23rd of January, 1785. He was the son of the parish minister of Rothesay. He studied arts, and afterwards theology, at the university of Glasgow, where he was one of the pupils of Simson, noted for his skill in the ancient geometry.—(See Simson, Robert.) After completing his course of theology, he went to Edinburgh for the sake of further
