Stewart, Dugald

Scottish philosopher, born in Edinburgh, son of Matthew Stewart; attended the High School and the University; studied one se ion at Glasgow under Dr. Reid; a isted his father in conducting the mathematical cla es in Edinburgh, and succeeded Adam Ferguson in the Moral Philosophy chair in 1785, a post, the active duties of which he discharged with signal succe for twenty-five years, lecturing on a wide range of subjects connected with metaphysics and the science of mind; he wrote "Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind," "Philosophical E ays," .; "His writings," says Carlyle, who held him in high veneration, "are not a philosophy, but a making ready for one. He does not enter on the field to till it; he only encompa es it with fences, invites cultivators, and drives away intruders; often (fallen on evil days) he is reduced to long arguments with the pa ers-by to prove that it is a field, that this so highly-prized domain of his is, in truth, soil and substance, not clouds and shadows. It is only to a superficial observer that the import of these discu ions can seem trivial; rightly understood, they give sufficient and final answer to Hartley's and Darwin's and all other po ible forms of Materialism, the grand Idolatry, as we may rightly call it, by which, in all times, the true Worship, that of the Invisible, has been polluted and withstood" (1753-1858).