The Scottish Philosophy [163]
observation; whereas Kant inaugurated the critical method, as distinguished from the dogmatic method of Descartes on the one hand, and the empirical method of Locke on the other. The critical method takes upon itself to criticise all principles; but it can do so only by other principles, {274} avowed, or more frequently unavowed, -- and the question is started: How are these other principles to be judged? by other principles, and these by other principles without end? Or, if we must stop somewhere, the question is, Where? and, Why there? Every German metaphysician plants himself on his own stand-point, which he says cannot be disputed: but his neighbor disputes it or selects another; and there is a perpetual criticism, and an endless building, but without an undisputed foundation. In one respect, indeed, the two, the Scotch and German philosophies, were alike: both stood up for principles which did not derive their authority from experience. But the Scottish metaphysicians discovered these by a careful inquiry into the operations of the human mind; Kant, by a process of logical discussion. On another point they differed: the Scottish metaphysicians make our primitive perceptions or intuitions look at realities -- , whereas Kant stands up for principles, which regulate experience and have only a subjective validity. Having allowed idealism to enter, there was no means of arresting its career. As Kant had made time and space, substance and cause, mere forms in the mind, Fichte was only advancing a few steps farther on the same road when he made the whole universe a projection of the mind -- , and, in the succeeding age, Schelling made it an intellectual intuition, and Hegel a logical process. Even as the French sensationalism led to atheism, so the German idealism culminated in pantheism. Every one will allow that the German philosophy had a much more elevated character, and a much more elevating tendency, than the French. Its influence on the great body of the German people may not have been so great as that of the Scottish philosophy on the Scottish thought. On the other hand, its influence has been vastly greater on literature, to which it has imparted a high ideal character, as seen especially in the poetry of Germany, and of other countries which have borrowed from it. {275}
XL.-DUGALD STEWART.[81] D/UGALD\ S/TEWART\ was born in the old college buildings, Edinburgh, on November 22, 1753. His father was Dr. Matthew Stewart, at one time minister at Roseneath, and afterwards successor to Maclaurin in the mathematical chair in Edinburgh, and still known as one of those British mathematicians, who were applying, with great skill and beauty, the geometrical method, while the continental mathematicians were far outstripping them by seizing on the more powerful instrument of the calculus. His mother was the daughter of an Edinburgh writer to the signet. He was thus connected on the part of his father (and also of his grandfather, who had been minister of Rothesay), with the Presbyterian ministry, and on the part of his mother with the Edinburgh lawyers, -- the two classes which, next to the heritors, held the most influential position in Scotland.
Dugald was a feeble and delicate infant. He spent his boyish years partly in Edinburgh, and partly in the maternal mansion-house of Catrine, which I remember as being, when I paid pilgrimage thither many years ago, a whitewashed, broad-faced, common-place old house, situated very pleasantly in what Wordsworth calls expressively the "holms of bonnie Ayr," but unpleasantly near a cotton-mill and a thriving village, which, as they rose about 1792, destroyed to Stewart the charms of the place as a residence. Stewart entered, at the age of eight, the High School of Edinburgh, where he had, in the latter years of his attendance, Dr. Adam for his instructor, and where he was distinguished for the elegance of his translations, and early acquired that love for the prose and poetical works of ancient Rome which continued
XL.-DUGALD STEWART.[81] D/UGALD\ S/TEWART\ was born in the old college buildings, Edinburgh, on November 22, 1753. His father was Dr. Matthew Stewart, at one time minister at Roseneath, and afterwards successor to Maclaurin in the mathematical chair in Edinburgh, and still known as one of those British mathematicians, who were applying, with great skill and beauty, the geometrical method, while the continental mathematicians were far outstripping them by seizing on the more powerful instrument of the calculus. His mother was the daughter of an Edinburgh writer to the signet. He was thus connected on the part of his father (and also of his grandfather, who had been minister of Rothesay), with the Presbyterian ministry, and on the part of his mother with the Edinburgh lawyers, -- the two classes which, next to the heritors, held the most influential position in Scotland.
Dugald was a feeble and delicate infant. He spent his boyish years partly in Edinburgh, and partly in the maternal mansion-house of Catrine, which I remember as being, when I paid pilgrimage thither many years ago, a whitewashed, broad-faced, common-place old house, situated very pleasantly in what Wordsworth calls expressively the "holms of bonnie Ayr," but unpleasantly near a cotton-mill and a thriving village, which, as they rose about 1792, destroyed to Stewart the charms of the place as a residence. Stewart entered, at the age of eight, the High School of Edinburgh, where he had, in the latter years of his attendance, Dr. Adam for his instructor, and where he was distinguished for the elegance of his translations, and early acquired that love for the prose and poetical works of ancient Rome which continued