The Scottish Philosophy [190]
of facts to support it, by his illustrious grandson, Charles Darwin. Brown read it at the age of eighteen, was irritated by its materialistic tendency, and scribbles notes upon it; these ripen into a volume by the time he is nineteen, and were published by the time he was twenty, -- " Observations on the Zoonomia of Erasmus Darwin, M. D." Brown was an excellent physiologist for his day; but both the original work and the reply proceed on principles now regarded as antiquated. But Brown's criticism is a remarkable example of intellectual precocity. In the midst of physiological discussions, most of the metaphysical ideas which he developed in future years are to be found here in the bud. He considers the phenomena of the mind as mental states, speaks of them as "feelings," delights to trace them in their succession, and so dwells much on suggestion, and approaches towards the theory of general notions, and the theory of causation, expounded in his subsequent works. It should be added, that the book committed him prematurely to principles which he was indisposed to review in his riper years. It appears from a letter to Darwin, that, at the age of nineteen, he had a theory of mind which he is systematizing.
Out of the " Academy of Sciences " arose, as is well known, the " Edinburgh Review," in the second number of which there was a review, by Brown, of Viller's "Philosophie de {320} Kant." The article is characterized by acuteness, especially when it points out the inconsistency of Kant in admitting that matter has a reality, and yet denying this of space and time, in behoof of the existence of which we have the very same kind of evidence. But the whole review is a blunder, quite as much as the reviews of Byron and Wordsworth in the same periodical. He has no appreciation of the profundity of Kant's philosophy, and no anticipation of the effects which it was to produce, not only on German but on British thinking. Immersed as he was in medical studies, fond of French literature, and tending towards a French sensationalism, he did not relish a system which aimed at showing how much there is in the mind independent of outward impression. The effects likely to be produced on one who had never read Kant, and who took his views of him from that article, are expressed by Dr. Currie " I shall trouble myself no more with; I consider it a philosophical hallucination." It is a curious instance of retribution, that, in the succeeding age, Brown's philosophy declined before systems which have borrowed their main principles from the philosophy of Kant, and deal as largely with " forms," " categories," and " ideas," as Brown did with " sensations," " suggestions," and " feelings."
We feel less interest than he did himself in two volumes of poetry, which he published shortly after taking his medical degree in 1803. His next publication was a more important one. The chair of mathematics in Edinburgh was vacant, and Leslie was a candidate. The city ministers attached to the court party wished to reserve it for themselves, and urged that Leslie was incapacitated, inasmuch as he had expressed approbation of Hume's doctrine of causation. It was on this occasion that Brown wrote his " Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect," -- at first a comparatively small treatise, but swolen, in the third edition (of 1818), into a very ponderous one It is divided into four parts, -- the first, on the import of the relation; the second, on the sources of the illusion with respect to it; the third, on the circumstances in which the belief arises; and the fourth, a review of Hume's theory. The work is full of repetitions, and the style, though always clear, is often cumbrous, and wants that vivacity and eloquence which so distinguish his posthumous lectures. It is characterized {321} by great ingenuity and power of analysis. He has dispelled for ever a large amount of confusion which had collected around the relation; and, in particular, he has shown that there is no link coming the cause and its effect.
Out of the " Academy of Sciences " arose, as is well known, the " Edinburgh Review," in the second number of which there was a review, by Brown, of Viller's "Philosophie de {320} Kant." The article is characterized by acuteness, especially when it points out the inconsistency of Kant in admitting that matter has a reality, and yet denying this of space and time, in behoof of the existence of which we have the very same kind of evidence. But the whole review is a blunder, quite as much as the reviews of Byron and Wordsworth in the same periodical. He has no appreciation of the profundity of Kant's philosophy, and no anticipation of the effects which it was to produce, not only on German but on British thinking. Immersed as he was in medical studies, fond of French literature, and tending towards a French sensationalism, he did not relish a system which aimed at showing how much there is in the mind independent of outward impression. The effects likely to be produced on one who had never read Kant, and who took his views of him from that article, are expressed by Dr. Currie " I shall trouble myself no more with
We feel less interest than he did himself in two volumes of poetry, which he published shortly after taking his medical degree in 1803. His next publication was a more important one. The chair of mathematics in Edinburgh was vacant, and Leslie was a candidate. The city ministers attached to the court party wished to reserve it for themselves, and urged that Leslie was incapacitated, inasmuch as he had expressed approbation of Hume's doctrine of causation. It was on this occasion that Brown wrote his " Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect," -- at first a comparatively small treatise, but swolen, in the third edition (of 1818), into a very ponderous one It is divided into four parts, -- the first, on the import of the relation; the second, on the sources of the illusion with respect to it; the third, on the circumstances in which the belief arises; and the fourth, a review of Hume's theory. The work is full of repetitions, and the style, though always clear, is often cumbrous, and wants that vivacity and eloquence which so distinguish his posthumous lectures. It is characterized {321} by great ingenuity and power of analysis. He has dispelled for ever a large amount of confusion which had collected around the relation; and, in particular, he has shown that there is no link coming