第48章 PHILOSOPHY(2)

These phrases may possibly be interpreted in a sense less paradoxical than the obvious one.Tooke's philosophy,if so it is to be called,was never fully expounded.He burned his papers before his death,and we do not know what he would have said about 'verbs,'which must have led,one would suppose,to some further treatment of relations,nor upon the subject,which as Stephens tells us,was most fully treated in his continuation,the value of human testimony.

If Tooke was not a philosopher he was a man of remarkably shrewd cynical common-sense,who thought philosophy idle foppery.His book made a great success.Stephens tells us(11)that it brought him £4000or £5000.

Hazlitt in 1810published a grammar professing to incorporate for the first time Horne Tooke's 'discoveries.'The book was admired by Mackintosh,(12)who,of course,did not accept the principles,and had a warm disciple in Charles Richardson (1775-1865),who wrote in its defence against Dugald Stewart and accepted its authority in his elaborate dictionary of the English language.(13)But its chief interest for us is that it was a great authority with James Mill.Mill accepts the etymologies,and there is much in common between the two writers,though Mill had learned his main doctrines elsewhere,especially from Hobbes.What the agreement really shows is how the intellectual idiosyncrasy which is congenial to 'nominalism'in philosophy was also congenial to Tooke's matter of fact radicalism and to the Utilitarian position of Bentham and his followers.

II.DUGALD STEWART

If English philosophy was a blank,there was still a leader of high reputation in Scotland.Dugald Stewart (1753-1828)had a considerable influence upon the Utilitarians.He represented,On the one hand,the doctrines which they thought themselves specially bound to attack,and it may perhaps be held that in some ways he betrayed to them the key of the position.Stewart(14)was son of a professor of mathematics at Edinburgh.He studied at Glasgow (1771-72)where he became Reid's favourite pupil and devoted friend.In 1772he became the assistant,and in 1775the colleague,of his father,and he appears to have had a considerable knowledge of mathematics.In 1785he succeeded Adam Ferguson as professor of moral philosophy and lectured continuously until 1810.He then gave up his active duties to Thomas Brown,devoting himself to the completion and publication of the substance of his lectures.Upon Brown's death in 1820,he resigned a post to which he was no longer equal.

A paralytic stroke in 1822weakened him,though he was still able to write.

He died in 1828.

If Stewart now makes no great mark in histories of philosophy,his personal influence was conspicuous.Cockburn describes him as of delicate appearance,with a massive head,bushy eyebrows,gray intelligent eyes,flexible mouth and expressive countenance.His voice was sweet and his ear exquisite.Cockburn never heard a better reader,and his manners,though rather formal,were graceful and dignified.James Mill,after hearing Pitt and Fox,declared that Stewart was their superior in eloquence.At Edinburgh,then at the height of its intellectual activity,he held his own among the ablest men and attracted the loyalty of the younger.Students came not only from Scotland but from England,the United States,France and Germany.(15)Scott won the professor's approval by an essay on the 'Customs of the Northern Nations.'Jeffrey,Horner,Cockburn and Mackintosh were among his disciples.His lectures upon Political Economy were attended by Sydney Smith,Jeffrey and Brougham,and one of his last hearers was Lord Palmerston.Parr looked up to him as a great philosopher,and contributed to his works an essay upon the etymology of the word 'sublime,'too vast to be printed whole.Stewart was an upholder of Whig principles,when the Scottish government was in the hands of the staunchest Tories.The irreverent young Edinburgh Reviewers treated him with respect,and to some extent applied his theory to politics.Stewart was the philosophical heir of Reid;and,one may say,was a Whig both in philosophy and in politics.

He was a rationalist,but within the limits fixed by respectability;and he dreaded the revolution in politics,and believed in the surpassing merits of the British Constitution as interpreted by the respectable Whigs.

Stewart represents the 'common-sense'doctrine.That name,as he observes,lends itself to an equivocation.Common-sense is generally used as nearly synonymous with 'mother wit,'the average opinion of fairly intelligent men;and he would prefer to speak of the 'fundamental laws of belief.'(16)There can,however,be no doubt that the doctrine derived much of its strength from the apparent confirmation of the 'average opinion'by the 'fundamental laws.'On one side,said Reid,are all the vulgar;on the other all the philosophers.

'In this division,to my great humiliation,I find myself classed with the vulgar.'(17)Reid,in fact,had opposed the theories of Hume and Berkeley because they led to a paradoxical scepticism.If it be,as Reid held,a legitimate inference from Berkeley that a man may as well run his head against a post,there can be no doubt that it is shocking to common sense in every acceptation of the word.The reasons,however,which Reid and Stewart alleged for not performing that feat took a special form,which I am compelled to notice briefly because they set up the mark for the whole intellectual artillery of the Utilitarians.Reid,in fact,invented what J.S.Mill called 'intuitions.'