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THE

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE

REVIEW.

JULY, 1846.

Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind. By the late THOMAS BROWN, M.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Sixteenth Edition. Tait, Edinburgh.

Or the various metaphysical works, published in Great Britain, Dr. Brown's "Lectures" have been, beyond comparison, the most popular. Few fashionable novels have secured a larger circulation than these disquisitions on abstruse questions have, without pause or intermission, commanded, during the last quarter of a century. The opinions of Dr. Brown have, in fact, exercised a remarkable measure of influence on the present generation; yet, strangely enough, Dr. Brown's writings have been but little noticed by professional critics and commentators. Dr. Parr, indeed, (as we learn from Mr. Tait's advertisement,) pronounced the volume before us to be "an inestimable book." Dugald Stewart, Dr. Brown's colleague, was, on the other hand, induced, after Dr. Brown's death, to denounce Dr. Brown's writings as shallow, and of little value;—while, in his Dissertation, prefixed to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Sir James Mackintosh, after bearing testimony to Dr. Brown's genius, expressed himself with some degree of hesitation (in excuse for which he pleaded the difficulty which he experienced, at a late period in life, in forcing his thoughts into new channels) as to the merits of Dr. Brown's system.

These, if we mistake not, constitute the most remarkable of the criticisms, which the writings of Dr. Brown have called forth.

Dr. Welsh, the biographer of Dr. Brown, has, indeed, favoured his readers with an ample commentary on the system of Dr.

VOL. III.

B

Brown, and on the character of Dr. Brown's genius. Dr. Welsh regards Dr. Brown with admiration the most intense; and in Dr. Welsh's conclusions on the subject, the great majority of the students of Dr. Brown's writings will, we apprehend, be found

to concur.

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In the philosophic love of truth, and in the patient investigation of it,' says Dr. Welsh, Dr. Brown may be pronounced as at least equal, and in subtlety of intellect, and powers of analysis, as superior to any metaphysician that ever existed. Or if there ever was any philosopher who might dispute with him the palm for any one of these qualities, of this, at least, I am certain, that no one ever combined them all in equal perfection. In the quickness and subtlety of intellect, of which the power of analyzing is compounded, and which, whatever may be the estimation in which they are held by men of merely practical understandings, are so indispensably necessary to the philosopher of mind, there cannot be named after Dr. Brown any one who can be considered aut similis aut secundus. States of mind that had been looked upon for ages as reduced to the last degree of simplicity, and as belonging to those facts in our constitution which the most sceptical could not doubt, and the most subtle could not explain, he brought to the crucible, and evolved from them simpler elements.

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'A capacity for analyzing like his was not, perhaps, to be expected at an earlier age of the world. As this is the last quality that displays itself in the individual, so it is the last feature that is exhibited in the literature of a country. No ancient nation, probably, cultivated letters sufficiently long to bring them to this point in their intellectual progress. Certain it is, that we should look in vain among the ancients for any extraordinary display of dexterous analysis. Dr. Brown's comprehensiveness, though not equally remarkable, was almost equally remarkable with his acuteness.'

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Dr. Brown was, undoubtedly, a man of extraordinary talents. He was a subtle reasoner. He was endowed with great powers of fancy. He was eminently eloquent. He was animated by a strong love of truth. Whether his rank among philosophers be, however, as high as Dr. Welsh assumes it to be, may, assuredly, admit of doubt. Whether Dr. Brown himself did not somewhat misapprehend the character and value of his contributions to philosophy, may, moreover, form a legitimate subject of speculation.

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The fame of Dr. Brown rests, chiefly, on the assumed discovery of what he described as simpler views of causation,' and of various mental processes, which, in his opinion, the inquirers of antiquity, and of the middle ages, altogether misapprehended. If, however, it can be shown, that Dr. Brown knew very imperfectly the doctrines which the great thinkers of Greece inculcated, as to the sources of human knowledge ;-if, moreover, it can be shown, that, in many instances, he utterly mistook the character and tendencies of their systems;-even the most

enthusiastic of Dr. Brown's admirers may, perhaps, incline to abate some portion of that contempt, with which their master has taught them to regard the Pythagorean and Platonic theories.

We have seen that Dr. Brown's biographer believes the philosophers of Greece to have been sadly defective in the faculty of 'dexterous analysis.' It may be not uninstructive to mark the tone which Dr. Brown himself employs, when treating of the writings of Aristotle.

'How much,' he observes, the mere materialism of our language has itself operated in darkening our conceptions of the nature of the mind, and of its various phenomena, is a question which is obviously beyond our power to solve; since the solution of it would imply, that the mind of the solver was itself free from the influence which he traced and described. But of this, at least, we may be sure, that it is almost impossible for us to estimate the influence of it too highly; for we must not think that its effects have been confined to the ranks of philo sophers. It has acted, much more powerfully, in the familiar discourse and silent reflections of multitudes, that have never had the vanity to rank themselves as philosophers-thus incorporating itself, as it were, with the very essence of human thought. In that rude state of social life, in which languages had their origin, the inventor of a word probably thought of little more than the temporary facility which it might give to himself and his companions, in communicating their mutual wants, and concerting their mutual schemes of co-operation. He was not aware, that with this faint and perishing sound, which a slight difference of breathing produced, he was creating that, which was, afterwards, to constitute one of the most imperishable of things, and to form in the minds of millions, during every future age, a part of the complex lesson of their intellectual existence-giving rise to lasting systems of opinion, which, perhaps, but for the intervention of this single word, never could have prevailed for a moment, and modifying sciences, the very elements of which had not then begun to exist. The inventor of the most barbarous term may thus have had an influence on mankind, more important than all which the most illustrious conqueror could effect by a long life of fatigue, and anxiety, and peril, and guilt. Of the generalship of Alexander, aud the valour of his armiesof all which he suffered, and planned, and executed—what permanent vestiges remain but in the writings of historians? In a very few years after the termination of his dazzling career, everything on the earth was almost as if he had never been. A few phrases of Aristotle achieved a much more extensive and lasting conquest; and are, perhaps, even at this moment, exercising no small sway on the very minds which smile at them with scorn; and which, in tracing the extent of their melancholy influence on the progress of science, in centuries that are past, are unconscious that they are describing and lamenting prejudices, of which they are themselves still, in a great measure, the slaves. How many truths are there, of which we are ignorant, merely because one man lived!'-Pp. 82, 83.

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To" smile with scorn" at the philosophy of Aristotle may be no difficult achievement. It will, undoubtedly, be easiest to those who may happen to suffer most deeply under what Plato has described as double ignorance'-ignorance that they are ignorant. The writers and talkers who happen to know least of Aristotle's system, will, assuredly, be most easily tempted to 'smile' at its assumed imperfections, and to glorify themselves, by implication, on the possession of those more profound and more enlightened' views, to which they have been assisted by Locke and Brown, and by all the enquirers who have filled up the period, which divides the English and the Scotch metaphysician from each other.

6

On reading Dr. Brown's lamentation for the loss of those truths, of which, if the Scotch professor may be believed, Aristotle has robbed us, we are reminded of the correspondence which took place between Alexander and his preceptor, after the publication of Aristotle's acroamatic writings. The letters are curious:

Αλεξανδρος Αριστοτελει ἐυπραττειν. ουκ όρθως ἐποίησας έκδους τους ἀκροαματικους των λόγων. Τινι γαρ ἐτὶ διοισομεν ημεις των άλλων, ἐι καθ' ους ἐπαιδευθημεν λόγους, ουτοι παντων ἐσονται κοινοι; έγω δε βονλοιμην ἀν ταις περι τα άριστα ἐμπειριαις ἢ ταις δυνάμεσι διαφέρειν. αυτος ταδε ἀντεγραψεν. Αριστοτελης βασιλει ̓Αλεξανδρῳ ἐνπραττειν. έγραψας μοι περι των ἀκροαματικων λόγων, διόμενος δειν αυτους φυλαττειν ἐν ἀπορρητοις. ίσθι ουν αυτους καὶ ἐκδεδομενους καὶ μη ἐκδεδομένους. συνετοι γαρ εισι μόνοις τοις ἡμων ακουσασιν. έρρωσο.

So far as the vast majority of his contemporaries was concerned, Aristotle declared, in short, his acroamatic writings to be, at once, published and unpublished. They were, in other words, published but not understood. As, again, Locke and his followers never, it is clear, took the trouble to read Aristotle's acroamatic treatises, their means of understanding these writings have not, we may safely assume, been greater than those possessed by Aristotle's contemporaries. It may be doubted, for instance, whether Dr. Brown ever perused one line of the Prior and Posterior Analytics, or of the Physics and Metaphysics. He seems, in fact, to have borrowed his notions of Aristotle's philosophy from the most flippant and shallow among the opponents of the schoolmen-from Fontenelle, and even from Martinus Scriblerus. Dr. Brown indulges, at all events, in the gravest misrepresentations of Aristotle's opinions-misrepresentations which accord, in all respects, with those descriptions of the Peripatetic Philosophy, which may be met with in the writings of the faithful commentators, from whose disquisitions Dr. Brown has, in his "Lectures," quoted so copiously.

In criticising the opinions of Plato and Aristotle, Dr. Brown

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