We pause in the narrative, in order to look at the circumstances which combined to influence the youth, to determine his career, and to fit him for the good work which he performed.First we have a mind, not certainly of bright original genius, or of great intellectual force, but with a blending of harmonious qualities, a capacity for inward reflection, and a disposition toward it, a fine taste, and consummate judgment.From his youth he breathed the air of a college.He was early introduced to Roman literature, and made it his model.Stevenson used Wynne's " Abridgment of Locke's Essay " as a text-book, and from it the student may have caught the fresh and observational spirit which Locke had awakened, while, at the same time, he was kept from what Cousin describes as the common defect of the British philosophy -- being "insular" by the other text-books employed, namely, the "Elementa Philosophiae" of Heineccius, and the " Determinationes Ontologicae " of De Vries; works which discussed, in a more abstract and scholastic method, the questions agitated on the continent posterior to the publication of the philosophy of Descartes.A still greater influence was exercised over the youth by Ferguson, who, with no great metaphysical ability, but in an altogether Roman and in a somewhat pagan manner, discussed, with great majesty and sweep, the topics -- of which the pupil was ever after so fond -- lying between mental science on the one hand, and jurisprudence on the other.From his own father and through his own academical teaching, he acquired a taste for the Geometrical method, so well fitted to {278} give clearness and coherency to thought, and to teach caution in deduction.He thus became one of those metaphysicians (and they are not few) who have been mathematicians likewise, in this respect resembling (no, to go back to Thales, Pythagoras, and Plato, in ancient times) Descartes, Leibnitz, Samuel Clarke, Reid, and Kant.In the class of natural philosophy he was introduced to the Newtonian physics, which had been taught at an early date in Scotland, and caught an enthusiastic affection for the inductive method and for Bacon, which continued with him through life, and is his characteristic among metaphysicians.But the teacher influencing him most, and, indeed, determining his whole philosophic career, was Thomas Reid, who, in a homely manner, but with unsurpassed shrewdness, and great independence and originality, was unfolding the principles of common sense, and thus laying a foundation for philosophy, while he undermined the scepticism of Hume.
Stewart has found in Reid the model instructor, and it may be added that Reid has found in Stewart the model disciple.
This whole course was an excellent training for a metaphysician: it would have been perfect if, along with his knowledge of natural philosophy, his somewhat dull apprehension had been whetted by an acquaintance -- such as that of Locke in an earlier, and that of Brown in a later age -- with the more fugitive and complicated phenomena of the physiology of the body; and if, in addition, his over-cautious temper had been raised heavenward by an intimacy with the lofty spirit of Plato, or, better still, by an appreciation of the deep theological discussions which had collected around them so much of the English and Scottish speculative intellect of the two preceding centuries.
Like every other man not altogether self-contained, Stewart must have felt the spirit of his age, which, as coming in from every quarter, like air and sunshine, commonly exercises a greater influence on young men than individual teachers can possibly do through the special channels open to them.Hume had stirred the thoughts of thinkers to their greatest depths; and this was now the age in which Hume had to be met.Stewart was born fourteen years after the publication of the great sceptical work of modern times, the "Treatise on Human Nature" and two years after the publication of the {279} work from which all modern utilitarianism has sprung, the "Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals." At the time when the youth was forming his convictions, Hume was living in Edinburgh, and the centre of an influence radiating round the man, who was a mixture of the lively, good-natured animal and of the intellectual giant, but with a terrible want of the high moral and spiritual.The original disposition of Stewart did not tempt him to daring speculation; his domestic training must have prepossessed him against infidelity; and he had been placed, in Glasgow, under the only opponent worthy of Hume, who had appeared; and so these earthquake shocks just made him look round for a means of settling fast the foundations of the temple of knowledge.
