Calderwood, Henry

CALDERWOOD, HENRY: United Presbyterian Church of Scotland; b. at Peebles (21 m. s. of Edinburgh) May 10, 1830; d. at Edinburgh Nov. 19, 1897. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and the theological hall there of the United Presbyterian Church; was ordained minister of Greyfriars Church, Glasgow, 1856; was appointed professor of moral philosophy, Edinburgh, 1868. As a philosopher "he tried to discover and explain the bearings of physiological science on man's mental and moral nature. . . . He believed it to be demonstrated by physiology that the direct dependence of mind on brain was confined to the sensory-motor functions, the dependence of the higher forms of mental activity being, on the other hand, only indirect. He endeavored to establish the thesis that man's intellectual and spiritual life, as we know it, is not the product of natural evolution, but necessitates the assumption of a new creative cause." His interests were not confined to his professional work; he was chairman of the Edinburgh school board, chairman of the North and East of Scotland Liberal Unionist Association, was a member of the mission board of his Church, and advocated temperance reform, Presbyterian union, and other philanthropic and religious movements. He edited The United Presbyterian Magazine, and published The Philosophy of the Infinite (London, 1854), a criticism of Sir William Hamilton prepared during his student days; Handbook of Moral Philosophy (1872); On Teaching, its Means and Ends (1874); The Relations of Mind and Brain (1879); The Parables of our Lord (1880); The Relations of Science and Religion, Morse lectures before Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1880 (1881); Evolution and Man's Place in Nature (1893; enlarged ed., 1896); several of these works have appeared in many editions.

Bibliography: His Life was written by his son, W. L. Calderwood, with David Woodside, with chapter on his philosophical works by A. S. Pringle-Pattison, London, 1900.