James Rush

Background

James Rush was born in Philadelphia, seventh of the thirteen children of Dr. Benjamin Rush and his wife, Julia Stockton and brother of Richard Rush.

Education

He graduated from the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1805, and was granted the degree of M. D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1809. He then followed his father's example by continuing his medical training at Edinburgh, where he was as much influenced by current philosophical thought as by strictly professional interests.

Career

Upon returning to Philadelphia in 1811, Rush began to practise medicine, and gave some private lectures, though, contrary to certain statements regarding him, he never held a regular chair. Personally attractive and of some means, he gave considerable time to social life.

Rush gradually gave up his practice and came to devote himself largely to social and scientific interests. In 1827 he published in Philadelphia The Philosophy of the Human Voice, in which a medical approach to the subject was followed by a detailed treatise on elocution.

In 1834 he published Hamlet, a Dramatic Prelude, in Five Acts. During his younger years, he had worked occasionally on psychological studies, only to abandon them in middle age. In 1857 he retired from social life and returned to his earlier interests. He finally published his magnum opus, a two-volume Brief Outline of an Analysis of the Human Intellect (1865), which proved to be a learned and rather original work, but one that was verbose and almost unreadable. It is of some interest, however, in that it expressed a relatively early American concern with the development of psychology as an objective science.

Rush really represented that mid-stage in the modernization of a science in which one theorizes about avoiding theory and establishing facts; and he was apparently unaware that the final stage, that of systematic inductive procedures, was already being attained by the German psycho-physicists of the time.

Rush died, a childless, embittered recluse, in his old home on Chestnut Street in 1869; his last book, Rhymes of Contrast on Wisdom and Folly (1869), expresses ironic condemnation of the younger generation and all its wicked works. He left his estate to the Library Company of Philadelphia, to establish the Ridgway Branch of that institution, stipulating that every ten years during the half-century following his death, the Library Company should publish an edition of 500 copies of each of his books, to be sold at cost. He added, furthermore (Ibid. , p. 27), "Let it not keep cushioned seats for time-wasting and lounging readers, nor places for everyday novels, mind-tainting reviews, controversial politics, scribblings of poetry and prose, biographies of unknown names, nor for those teachers of disjointed thinking, the daily newspapers. "

Achievements

• James Rush's fame rested chiefly on his two publications: "The Philosophy of the Human Voice", which achieved popularity in an age of declamation, and went through six editions by 1867; and "Brief Outline of an Analysis of the Human Intellect" (1865).

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Philosophy of the Human Voice: Embracing Its Physiological History; Together With a System of Principles, by Which Criticism in the Art of ... Comprehensive; To Which Is Added a Brief A

    (Excerpt from The Philosophy of the Human Voice: Embracing...)

  • Brief Outline of an Analysis of the Human Intellect: Intended to Rectify the Scholastic and Vulgar Perversions of the Natural Purpose, and Method of Thinking

    (This work has been selected by scholars as being cultural...)

  • A Beilby odyssey

    (With 106 color illustrations and 42 black and white.)

  • Hamlet, a dramatic prelude: in five acts.

    (Title: Hamlet, a dramatic prelude : in five acts. Author...)

Views

Quotations: "The mind, " he observed, "has been and still is regarded as the working of a spiritual something in the brain, and therefore not to be investigated, as a physical function of the senses and the brain conjoined. This appears to be the principal cause why the problem of the mind has not been finally solved, on the clear and assignable data of observation and experiment: for who has ever experimented upon Spirit? And certainly Thinking and Wrangling, in the metaphysical way of demonstration, have never been able to show any thing within, or round about it" (vol. II, p. 475).

Connections

On October 19, 1819, Rush married Phoebe Anne Ridgway, daughter of Jacob Ridgway, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant. She eventually inherited an estate of more than a million dollars and became something of a leader in local society, though tradition has it that, having come from "north of Market Street, " she always experienced some opposition in her social aspirations. She died in October 23, 1857.

Father:

Benjamin Rush

Mother:

Julia Stockton

Spouse:

Phoebe Anne Ridgway

Brother:

Richard Rush