Dugald Stewart was educated in Edinburgh at the
Royal High School and the University, where he read mathematics and
moral philosophy under
Adam Ferguson. In
1771, in the hope of gaining a Snell exhibition and proceeding to
Oxford to study for the English Church, he went to
Glasgow, where he attended the classes of
Thomas Reid. While he owed to Reid all his theory of
morality, he repaid the debt by giving to Reid's views the advantage of his admirable style and academic eloquence. In Glasgow Stewart boarded in the same house with
Archibald Alison, author of the
Essay on Taste, and a lasting friendship sprang up between them.
After a single session in Glasgow, Dugald Stewart, at the age of nineteen, was summoned by his father, whose health was beginning to fail, to conduct the mathematical classes in the
University of Edinburgh. After acting three years as his father's substitute he was elected professor of mathematics in conjunction with him in
1775. Three years later
Adam Ferguson was appointed secretary to the commissioners sent out to the
American colonies, and at his urgent request Stewart lectured as his substitute. Thus during the session
1778 -
1779, in addition to his mathematical work, he delivered an original course of lectures on morals. In
1783 he married Helen Bannatyne, who died in
1787, leaving an only son, Colonel Matthew Stewart. In his early years he was influenced by
Lord Monboddo, with whom he corresponded.
In
1785 he succeeded Ferguson in the chair of moral philosophy, which he filled for twenty-five years, making it a centre of intellectual and moral influence. Young men were attracted by his reputation from
England, and even from the Continent and America. Among his pupils were
Sir Walter Scott, Francis Jeffrey, Henry Thomas Cockburn, Francis Homer, Sydney Smith, Lord Brougham, Dr. Thomas Brown, James Mill, Sir James Mackintosh and
Sir Archibald Alison. The course on moral philosophy embraced, besides
ethics proper, lectures on
political philosophy or the theory of government, and from
1800 onwards a separate course of lectures was delivered on political economy, then almost unknown as a science to the general public. Stewart's enlightened political teaching was sufficient, in the times of reaction succeeding the
French Revolution, to draw upon him the undeserved suspicion of disaffection to the constitution. The summers of 1788 and 1789 he spent in France, where he met
Suard, Degbrando, Raynal, and learned to sympathize with the revolutionary movement.
In
1790 Stewart married Helen D'Arcy Cranstoun, daughter of a lawyer and judge and the neice of the infamous
William Henry Cranstoun was involved with the trial of
Mary Blandy . His second wife was well-born and accomplished, and he was in the habit of submitting to her criticism whatever he wrote. They had a son and a daughter, but the son's death in
1809 was a severe blow to his father, and brought about his retirement from the active duties of his chair. Before that, however, Stewart had not been idle as an author. As a student in Glasgow he wrote an essay on
Dreaming. In 1792 he published the first volume of the
Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind; the second volume appeared in 1814, the third not till 1827. In 1793 he printed a textbook,
Outlines of Moral Philosophy, which went through many editions; and in the same year he read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh his account of the
Life and Writings of Adam Smith.
Similar memoirs of Robertson the historian and of Reid were afterwards read before the same body and appear in his published works. In
1805 Stewart published pamphlets defending
John Leslie against the charges of unorthodoxy made by the presbytery of Edinburgh. In 1806 he received in lieu of a pension the nominal office of the writership of the
Edinburgh Gazette, with a salary of £300. When the shock of his son's death incapacitated him from lecturing during the session of 1809-1810, his place was taken, at his own request, by Dr Thomas Brown, who in 1810 was appointed conjoint professor. On the death of Brown in 1820 Stewart retired altogether from the professorship, which was conferred upon
John Wilson, better known as "Christopher North".
From 1809 onwards Stewart lived mainly at Kinneil House, Linlithgowshire, which was placed at his disposal by the
Duke of Hamilton. In 1810 appeared the
Philosophical Essays, in 1814 the second volume of the
Elements, in 1811 the first part and in 1821 the second part of the "Dissertation" written for the
Encyclopaedia Britannica Supplement, entitled "A General View of the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Philosophy since the Revival of Letters."
In
1822 he was struck with
paralysis, but recovered a fair degree of health, sufficient to enable him to resume his studies. In 1827 he published the third volume of the
Elements, and in 1828, a few weeks before his death,
The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers. He died in Edinburgh, where a
monument to his memory was erected on
Calton Hill.
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