A prominent Scottish-American theologian; born in Carskeoch, Ayrshire, Scotland, April 1, 1811; died in Princeton, N. J., in 1894. He came to America in 1865, was president of Princeton College (1868–88), and was one of the foremost men of his day in university life. His principal works include: “Christianity and Positivism” (1871); “A Reply to Prof. Tyndall’s Belfast Address” (1875); “The Development Hypothesis” (1876); “The Emotions” (1880); “Herbert Spencer’s Philosophy as Culminating in his Ethics” (1885).

Personal

  The personality of Dr. McCosh is thoroughly Scotch, and his address very impressive—not to say aggressive. With a massive but spare frame, which, when his mind is roused, abandons its scholarly stoop and towers above expectation, is combined an unusual nervous force which often manifests itself in vigorous gestures. His head and brow are even more expressive of power; even to the usual observer the broad forehead and keen eyes bring into prominence his well-known capacity for an impetuous, unyielding, intellectual onset. But in repose the philosopher and the divine stand revealed in the bowed and meditative attitude which is customary, and in the wrapt, abstracted expression of the features, and in the contemplative poise of the head so familiar to all who have paused to observe him in his daily walks…. There is no need to fill in the outlines of the familiar picture. Its colors, like those of the old masters, mellow and soften with age. But it will be somber and dusky enough to some of us when we make our annual pilgrimage and miss the familiar form of the master from among his colleagues and his boys. We will forget his austerity in the faithfulness with which he reproved the vitium regere non posse impetum. Our awe will melt with affection, and our respect for his wisdom and knowledge will awaken memories both lasting and beneficent.

  Dr. McCosh was one of the organizers of the Free Church, and he regarded this as the greatest event of his life. Perhaps his most distinguishing characteristic was an absolute devotion to truth. In its service he was utterly unselfish, and the straightforward way in which he describes his labours in aid of the new movement is very impressive…. A very striking trait was his open-mindedness. He always turned his face toward the light, kept watch of the signs of the times, and was ready to take up his stakes and set them further along. There was a vein of sentiment in his nature, and his sighs over a young man hardened in vice were those of a father, and tears of joy sprang unbidden to his eyes on the return of a prodigal.

  To have seen a century rise and wane; to have spent threescore years of active, influential life in its very noon; to have moulded in some degree the thought of two generations in three lands; to have shared in Scotland’s latest struggle for religious liberty; to have wrought in the great enterprise of Ireland’s intellectual emancipation; to have led a powerful educational movement in America, and to have regenerated one of her most ancient universities,—these are the titles of James McCosh to public distinction. He was a philosopher, but no dreamer; a scholar, but no recluse; a preacher, but no idealogue; a teacher, but no martinet; he was a thinker, public leader, and a practical man of affairs.

General

  Though in many respects original, [“Intuitions of the Mind”] professing to follow no school, and in reality independent in its spirit of all authority but that of the religious truths in behalf of which it is written, this work is nevertheless substantially a development from the Scottish school…. It is to be regretted that the author does not give us a more explicit account of what he means by such expressions as “primitive particular convictions carrying necessity with them, and a consequent universality in their very nature.” In all the definitions of necessity with which we are acquainted, we have nowhere found it extended beyond the facts and the logical consequences of the facts in which it is supposed to exist primitively. That the universal does not follow logically from the particular or from any number of particulars, is what the author strenuously maintains.

  His life work as a teacher and writer began when in his forty-first year he accepted the chair of Logic and Metaphysics in Queen’s College, Belfast. From that time forward his contributions to philosophical and religious literature have not ceased to grow in number and importance, and his seventy-fifth year finds his mind and pen in constant activity. The work which spread his fame most widely and put him among the leaders of the Intuitional School was written at Belfast. In the “Intuitions of the Mind Inductively Investigated” the author is at his best both as a thinker and a writer. His reasoning is vigorous and his logic unassailable, if his premises be once granted; while his style is direct, easy, and elegant and, without being florid, adorned and enlivened by abundant metaphor and illustration.

  A chapter on Dr. McCosh’s travels in Germany [“Autobiography”] is surprising from a certain feebleness of stroke where he is writing of Humboldt, Bunsen, and others famous in the walks of science and theology. His own account of his philosophical career is extremely slight, as if his mind had lost its grip on the studies which had formerly engrossed it.

  McCosh is said to have been an effective lecturer and preacher, and his simplicity and perspicuity of style render this extremely probable. His philosophy, however, had never an appreciable influence of English thought. To the defects of the Scottish school he was by no means blind, but his early training had included no systematic study of transcendentalism, and a visit to Germany in 1858 led to no result. It may even be doubted whether he had apprehended the earlier forms of idealism. At any rate his polemical works evince no adequate appreciation of the positions which he attacked, and his own “intuitional” theory is a mere ignoratio elenchi.