John "Walking" Stewart (19 February 1747 – 20 February 1822) was an English

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and

traveller Traveler(s), traveller(s), The Traveler(s), or The Traveller(s) may refer to: People Generic terms *One engaged in travel *Explorer, one who searches for the purpose of discovery of information or resources *Nomad, a member of a community withou ...

. Stewart developed a unique system of

materialistic Materialism is the view that the universe consists only of organized matter and energy. Materialism or materialist may also refer to: * Economic materialism, the desire to accumulate material goods * Christian materialism, the combination of Chris ...

pantheism.Fairer, David. (2009). ''Organising Poetry: The Coleridge Circle, 1790-1798''. Oxford University Press. p. 53.

Travels

Known as 'Walking' Stewart to his contemporaries for having travelled on foot from

Madras Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

, India (where he had worked as a clerk for the East India Company) back to Europe between 1765 and the mid-1790s, Stewart is thought to have walked alone across Persia, Abyssinia, Arabia, and Africa before wandering into every European country as far east as Russia. Over the next three decades Stewart wrote prolifically, publishing nearly thirty philosophical works, including ''The Opus Maximum'' (London, 1803) and the long verse-poem ''The Revelation of Nature'' (New York, 1795). In 1796,

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...

's portrait-painter, James Sharples, executed a pastel likeness of Stewart for a series of portraits which included such sitters as

William Godwin William Godwin (3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836) was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism and the first modern proponent of anarchism. Godwin is most famous for ...

, Joseph Priestley, and Humphry Davy, suggesting the intellectual esteem in which Stewart was once held. After his travels in East India, Stewart became a vegetarian. He was also a

teetotaler Teetotalism is the practice or promotion of total personal abstinence from the psychoactive drug alcohol, specifically in alcoholic drinks. A person who practices (and possibly advocates) teetotalism is called a teetotaler or teetotaller, or i ...

.Taylor, Harvey. (1997). ''A Claim on the Countryside: A History of the British Outdoor Movement''. Keele University Press. p. 56.

Materialistic pantheism

During his journeys, he developed a unique system of

materialist Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialis ...

philosophy which combines elements of Spinozistic pantheism with yogic notions of a single indissoluble consciousness. Stewart began to promote his ideas publicly in 1790 with the publication in two volumes of his works ''Travels over the most interesting parts of the Globe'' and ''The Apocalypse of Nature'' (London, 1790). Historian David Fairer has written that "Stewart expounds what might be described as a panbiomorphic universe (it deserves an entirely new term just for itself), in which human identity is no different in category from a wave, flame, or wind, having an entirely modal existence."

Retirement

After retiring from travelling, Stewart eventually settled in London where he held philosophical soirées and earned a reputation as one of the city's celebrated

eccentric Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to: * Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal" Mathematics, science and technology Mathematics * Off-center, in geometry * Eccentricity (graph theory) of a v ...

s.Timbs, John. (1875)
''English Eccentrics and Eccentricities''
London: Chatto and Windus. pp. 300-304 He was often seen in public wearing a threadbare Armenian military uniform.

John Timbs John Timbs (; 17 August 1801 – 6 March 1875) was an English author and antiquary. Some of his work was published under the pseudonym of Horace Welby. Biography Timbs was born in 1801 in Clerkenwell, London. He was educated at a private school ...

described Stewart as one of London's famous eccentrics.

Death

On 20 February 1822, the morning after his seventy-fifth birthday, 'Walking' Stewart's body was found in a rented room in Northumberland Place, near present-day Trafalgar Square, London. An empty bottle of

laudanum Laudanum is a tincture of opium containing approximately 10% powdered opium by weight (the equivalent of 1% morphine). Laudanum is prepared by dissolving extracts from the opium poppy (''Papaver somniferum Linnaeus'') in alcohol (ethanol). Red ...

lay beside him.

Literary influence

After Walking Stewart's travels came to an end around the turn of the nineteenth century, he became close friends with the English essayist and fellow-Londoner Thomas De Quincey, with the radical pamphleteer Thomas Paine, and with the Platonist

Thomas Taylor Thomas Taylor may refer to: Military *Thomas H. Taylor (1825–1901), Confederate States Army colonel *Thomas Happer Taylor (1934–2017), U.S. Army officer; military historian and author; triathlete *Thomas Taylor (Medal of Honor) (born 1834), Am ...

(1758-1835). In 1792, while residing in Paris in the weeks following the September Massacres, he made the acquaintance of the young

Romantic Romantic may refer to: Genres and eras * The Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries ** Romantic music, of that era ** Romantic poetry, of that era ** Romanticism in science, of that e ...

poet William Wordsworth, who later concurred with De Quincey in describing Stewart as the most eloquent man on the subject of Nature that either had ever met. Recent scholarship by Kelly Grovier has suggested that Stewart's persona and philosophical writings had a major influence on Wordsworth's poetry.

References

External links

John Stewart's "Sensate Matter" in the Early RepublicThe Most Unlikely Man to Influence A Generation of Writers: Walking Stewart
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Stewart, Walking 1747 births 1822 deaths 18th-century British writers 18th-century philosophers 19th-century British writers 19th-century British philosophers English philosophers Materialists Pantheists