George Croom Robertson

In 1857 he gained a bursary at Marischal College[?], and graduated M.A. in 1861, with the highest honours in classics and philosophy. In the same year he won a Fergusson scholarship of £100 a year for two years, which enabled him to pursue his studies outside Scotland. He went first to ppUniversity College, London[[; at Heidelberg he worked at German; at Berlin he studied psychology, metaphysics and also physiology under Emil du Bois-Reymond, and heard lectures on Hegel, Kant and the history of philosophy, ancient and modern. After two months at Göttingen, he went to Paris in June 1863. In the same year he returned to Aberdeen and helped Alexander Bain with the revision of some of his books.

In 1864 he was appointed to help Professor Geddes with his Greek classes, but he gave up the vacations to philosophical work. In 1866 he was appointed professor of philosophy of mind and logic at University College, London. This post he retained until ill-health compelled him to resign a few months before his death. He lectured on logic, deductive and inductive, systematic psychology and ethical theory.

He left little published work. A comprehensive work on Hobbes was never completed, though part of the materials were used for an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and another portion was published as one of Blackwood's "Philosophical Classics." Together with Bain, he edited Grote's Aristotle, and was the editor of Mind from its foundation in 1876 till 1891.

He was keenly interested in German philosophy, and took every opportunity of making German works on English writers known in the United Kingdom. In philosophy he followed mainly Mill and Bain, but he was acquainted with all philosophical literature. He was associated with his wife (a daughter of Mr Justice Crompton) in many kinds of social work; he sat on the Committee of the National Society for Women's Suffrage, and was actively associated with its president, John Stuart Mill. He warmly supported the admission of women students to University College.

Reference

• This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.