The two volumes on the "Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers " were published by Stewart immediately before his death.The leading ideas unfolded in them had been given, in an epitomized form, in the "Outlines," published many years before.They are somewhat too bulky for all the matter they contain, and they want somewhat of the freshness of his earlier works; but they are characterized by profound wisdom, by a high moral tone, by a stately eloquence, and the felicitous application of general principles to the elucidation of practical points.He begins with the instinctive principles of action, which he classifies as appetites, desires, and affections.The arrangement is good in some respects, but is by no means exhaustive.As the next step in advance in this department of mental science, an attempt must be made to give a classification of man's motive principles, or of the ends by which man may be swayed in desire and action.Among these will fall to be placed, first of all pleasure and pain; that is, man has a natural disposition to take to pleasure and avoid pain.But this is far from being the sole motive principle in man's mind.
There are many others.There is, for example, the tendency of every native faculty to act, and this irrespective of pleasure or pain.Again, there are particular natural appetencies, which look to ends of their own, towards (to use the language {298} of Butler) particular external things of which the mind hath always a particular idea or perception, towards these things themselves, such as knowledge, power, fame, and this independent of the pleasure to be derived from them.Higher than all, and claiming to be higher, is the moral motive, or obligation to do right.Aclassification of these motive principles, even though only approximately correct, would serve most important purposes in philosophy generally, and more especially in ethics and all the social sciences.Very low and inadequate views have been taken of these motive principles of humanity, especially by those who represent man as capable of being swayed only by the prospect of securing pleasure or avoiding pain.It should never be forgotten, that the emotive part of man's nature may be excited by a great many other objects as well as pleasure and pain, by all the objects, indeed, which are addressed to the motive principles of man.It is the apprehension of objects as about to gratify the motive principles of the mind -- whatever they be -- which stirs up the emotions.Thus, the apprehension of a coming object, which is to gratify a motive principle, excites hope, which is strong in proportion to the strength of the apprehension, and the strength of the particular motive principle; while the apprehension of a coming object, which is to disappoint this motive principle, stirs up fear.It is strange that Stewart nowhere treats of the emotions in his " Philosophy of the Active Powers."Stewart's view of the moral power in man, and of moral good, seems to me to be substantially correct.In treating of these subjects, he avows his obligations to Butler and Price.His doctrine has been adopted, with some modifications, which are improvements, by Cousin.Stewart and Cousin are the most elevated of all the moralists who treat of ethics on grounds independent of the Word of God.Iam convinced that they never could have given so pure a morality, had they not lived in the midst of light shed abroad on our earth by a super natural religion.I have always felt it to be a strange circumstance, that Stewart and Cousin, in giving so high a view of the moral faculty, are never led to acknowledge that it condemns the possessor;and after presenting moral good in so rigid a form, are not constrained to acknowledge that the moral law has not been kept by man.Taking their own high principles {299} along with them, neither could have looked within, without discovering sin to be quite as much a reality as virtue.
Stewart could not have gone out of his dwelling in the old College or the Canongate, nor could Cousin have gone out of his chambers in the Sorbonne, without being obliged to observe how far man and woman have fallen beneath the ideal picture which they have drawn in their lectures.At the very time when the Scottish metaphysicians were discoursing so beautifully of moral virtue, there was a population springing up around their very colleges in Edinburgh and Glasgow, sunk in vice and degradation, which appalled the good men of the next age the age of Chalmers -- to contemplate, which the men of this age know not how to grapple with, and which is not to be arrested by any remedy which the mere philosophic moralists have propounded.Iacknowledge most fully, that Stewart's lectures and writings have tended, directly or indirectly, to carry several important measures which are calculated to elevate the condition of mankind, such as reform in the legislature, prison improvement, and the abolition of tests and of restrictions on commerce.But the institutions which aim at lessening the sin and misery of the outcast and degraded such as missions, ragged schools, and reformatories, -- have proceeded from very different influences; and a philosophy embracing the facts which they contemplate, must dive deeper into human nature, and probe its actual condition more faithfully, than the academic moralists of Scotland ever ventured to do.