Walking Stewart

Who was Walking Stewart?

John "Walking" Stewart was an English traveller and philosopher.

Known as 'Walking' Stewart to his contemporaries for having travelled on foot from Madras, India 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.

During his journeys, he developed a unique brand of materialist 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 of his treatise Travels over the most interesting parts of the Globe.

Over the next three decades Stewart wrote prolifically, publishing nearly thirty philosophical works, including The Opus Maximum and the long verse-poem The Revelation of Nature.

Stewart's works exhibit a naive arrogance, frequently asserting that their author is the "only child of nature" to have ever lived. In 1796, George Washington's portrait-painter, James Sharples, executed a pastel likeness of Stewart for a series of portraits which included such sitters as William Godwin, Joseph Priestley, and Humphry Davy, suggesting the intellectual esteem in which Stewart was once held.