The Scottish Philosophy [217]
we have derived from the contemplation of infinite space and endless duration, and hence we clothe with the attributes of immensity and eternity the awful Being whose existence has been proved by a more vigorous process of investigation." Brougham, it is evident, was ignorant of the terrible criticism to which the theistic argument bad been subjected half a century before by Kant, with whose philosophy he seems to have been utterly unacquainted. He does not see clearly what Kant bad proven, that the principle of cause and effect is involved in the argument from design. We look on design as an effect, and infer a designer as a cause, on the principle that every effect has a cause. At the same time he treats of cause and effect. " Whence do we derive it? I apprehend only from our consciousness. We feel that we have a will and a power; that we can move a limb. and effect, by our own powers excited after our own volition, a change upon external objects. Now from this consciousness we derive the idea of power, and we transfer this idea and the relation on which it is founded, between our own will and the change produced, to the relations between events wholly external to ourselves, assuming them to be connected as we feel our volition and our movements are mutually connected. If it be said that this idea by no means involves that of necessary connection, nothing can be more certain. The whole is a question of fact, -- of contingent truth." This statement is exposed to criticism. Whence this transference of what we feel, or rather the legitimate application of it, to the objective world? If there be not a necessary principle involved, how are we entitled to argue that world-making, of which we have no experience, implies a world-maker. He argues in behalf of the immortality of the soul, and that it is quite possible to prove a miracle. It has to be added that be has some papers on instinct, on which he throws no great light as he had not caught the idea that instinct is the beginning of intelligence, and that it is capable, within a limited degree, of being cultivated and made hereditary.
XLVIII.-- JAMES MYLNE. IT is a curious circumstance that systems of philosophy so like each other should have been formed, simultaneously in the end of last century, and propounded at the beginning of this, by three men so different in temperament as James Mylne of Glasgow, Thomas Brown of Edinburgh, and James Mill of London. But the phenomenon can be explained. They could not have borrowed from each other, but they felt a common influence. All felt that Hume had undermined a great many received principles, that Hartley had resolved into association many operations of the mind before referred to independent faculties; all three, but especially Mylne and {365} Brown, were acquainted with the analyses of Condillac, De Tutt Tracy, and the ideologists of France; and all lived under the reaction against the excessive multiplication of first principles by Reid and Stewart. Of the three, Brown had the greatest genius and the keenest analytical power; Mill, of London, the greatest tenacity of purpose, of consistency, and in the end of influence: but, Mylne, of Glasgow, had quite as much of searching ability as either of the others. He died without publishing any philosophic work but for upwards of forty years he delivered to large classes in Glasgow a course of lectures which set many minds a working There was nothing attractive, certainly nothing stimulating, in his manner, his language, or his system; but the author of this work remembers him, as he lectured every winter morning at half-past seven in the dingy old class- room in Glasgow College, as the very embodiment and personification of wisdom, which had viewed a subject on all sides and looked it through and through.
He was the son of the Rev. James Mylne, of Kinnaird, near Dundee; was born in the same shire as James Mill of London; was licensed to preach in 1779; was soon after ordained as deputy chaplain Of 83d Foot;
XLVIII.-- JAMES MYLNE. IT is a curious circumstance that systems of philosophy so like each other should have been formed, simultaneously in the end of last century, and propounded at the beginning of this, by three men so different in temperament as James Mylne of Glasgow, Thomas Brown of Edinburgh, and James Mill of London. But the phenomenon can be explained. They could not have borrowed from each other, but they felt a common influence. All felt that Hume had undermined a great many received principles, that Hartley had resolved into association many operations of the mind before referred to independent faculties; all three, but especially Mylne and {365} Brown, were acquainted with the analyses of Condillac, De Tutt Tracy, and the ideologists of France; and all lived under the reaction against the excessive multiplication of first principles by Reid and Stewart. Of the three, Brown had the greatest genius and the keenest analytical power; Mill, of London, the greatest tenacity of purpose, of consistency, and in the end of influence: but, Mylne, of Glasgow, had quite as much of searching ability as either of the others. He died without publishing any philosophic work but for upwards of forty years he delivered to large classes in Glasgow a course of lectures which set many minds a working There was nothing attractive, certainly nothing stimulating, in his manner, his language, or his system; but the author of this work remembers him, as he lectured every winter morning at half-past seven in the dingy old class- room in Glasgow College, as the very embodiment and personification of wisdom, which had viewed a subject on all sides and looked it through and through.
He was the son of the Rev. James Mylne, of Kinnaird, near Dundee; was born in the same shire as James Mill of London; was licensed to preach in 1779; was soon after ordained as deputy chaplain Of 83d Foot;