BROWN, THOMAS. 



BROWNE, SIR THOMAR 



through the mass. Wb*n we >peak of all the povtr* of 

 consider it u existing in a variety of oiiminis4siiim, and 

 at the mm* time all the changes, that an or may be in thew 



**lsjim4aBces, it* immediate .fleets. When we speak of all the 

 qualities of a body wo mean nothing more and we mean nothing 

 lea*." In on* respect this esuy had a very unusual suooess ; it con- 

 vinced on on* point the person at whom it aimed. On the question 

 whether even after experience we are able to infer the relation of 

 cause and effect a* to the phenomena of the inertia of matter, the 

 composition of forces, and such like, Professor Playfair declared him- 

 self completely convinced by his arguments. 



In 1800 Dr. Brown became the partner of the eminent Dr. Gregory 

 in hi* large practice. Bat his bias was to a literary life. In 1799 he 

 was a candidate for the Rhetoric chair, and on the death of Dr. Kin- 

 lanon for the Logic, bat in both cases unsuccessfully. Owing to the 

 decline of hi* health Mr. Stewart required a substitute in the Moral 

 Philosophy class who could read lecture* of his own. This Brown 

 undertook, and lectured for a short time in session 1808-9. A similar 

 request in the ensuing session led him to deliver a series of lectures, 

 which were honoured by the attendance of many distinguished mem- 

 ber* of the bench, bar, and pulpit When Mr. Stewart resumed bis 

 lectures, the students appointed Lord John Russell and others of their 

 number to congratulate him on his recovery, and express their admi- 

 ration of his substitute Stewart, anxious to have Brown with him 

 in the chair a* auistent and successor, personally solicited every 

 member of the town-council in bis behalf, and accordingly on the 

 Tyrant**"* **"" of Dr. Gregory, Professor Playfair, and Lord Meadow- 

 bank, he was elected in May 1810. 



Devoting himself to the cultivation of his health by air and exercise 

 during the vacation. Dr. Brown made no preparation for the labours of 

 the winter. He seldom began to write his lectures until after tea on 

 the evening before the day on which he was to deliver them ; he then 

 wrote until two or three o'clock, slept a few hours, and, resuming his 

 work, wrote until twelve, when he hurried off to his class. Light 

 reading or a walk occupied the time until the recommencement of 

 this routine. His lecture and theory of avarice were begun after one 

 o'clock in the morning, and finished before twelve next day. Under 

 colour of disagreeing with Dr. Reid he covered his difference* with 

 Stewart, his colleague. Nearly all the lectures contained in the first 

 three volumes were written during his first session, and all the rest in 

 the next They have been published almost verbatim. The following 

 an the more important of the peculiar and new opinions which they 

 i : All physical inquiry has one of two ends in view either to 

 the part* of which bodies are made up, or to ascertain the 

 they undergo the elements which compose them, and their 

 i and effects in relation to each other. Bodies which, in relation 

 to our sight, are one, are in reality many ; they appear simple only 

 hsesnst we cannot see the spaces which intervene between the cor- 

 puscles of which they are made up. What we can now perceive only 

 by means of chemical and mechanical decomposition, finer powers of 

 perception would perceive without them. But no perfection of the 

 ssnifs could enable us to foresee the second object of physical inquiry 

 the change* of bodies in the relations of the parts to each other, 

 and of the whole to other bodies ; and on this point reason is equally 

 incapable <1 priori of assisting us. More we can never know of any 

 substance than the part* of which it is compounded, and the changes 

 which it undergoes. 



Every one will admit that the changes of the mind are as capable 

 of investigation as the change* of a material object ; but some will 

 not see so readily how the mind which is simple and indivisible, can 

 be considered in ite elementary part*. But the inquiry is not into the 

 part* and change* of the mind itself, viewed as a substance, for this is 

 quite inscrutable ; the object of investigation is thought, which being 

 both changeful and complex, may be examined either as to the causes 

 of it* changes or the parte of ite combinations. 



The phenomena of mind, which may be considered either as suc- 

 cessive or complex, as causes and effects, or as subjects of analysis, are 

 the qualities, states, and affections of the mind of which we are 

 conscious, such a* perception, memory, reason, and emotion. Since 

 the states of the mind are made known by consciousness, and relate 

 to H**lf, a consideration of them involves an examination of conncious- 

 nees and personal identity. Consciousness is a general name for all 

 the states of which toe phenomena of mind consist The supposition 

 of the existence of the mind hi two separate states, sensation and con- 

 rioueosei, at the same moment, is absurd. The proposition, " I am 

 enueiout of a tauutton," involves, beside* the feeling of the sensation, 

 lehrene* to sell When it mean* more than the present feeling, it 

 add* to it a retrospect of some pott feeling and the relation of bvlk to 

 the mind. Belief in our personal identity he resolves into intuition. 



Brown divide* the states of mind, according to their causes, into 

 external and internal state* or affections ; the external an the per- 

 ception* or seoeations of bodies affecting the senses ; the internal 

 mftftmu be subdivides into two great classes, the intellectual state* 



'kjl ! * 1 ' ' i ' ' H 



Dr. Reid define* perception to be the feeling of the organ of sens* 

 and the reference of H to ite external object. In opposition to this, 



that the sensation is referred to ite object by the 

 powtff of association, and not by a peculiar mental power. 



The! 



he divides into two generic capacities, timpU 



and retattw suggestion. Simple suggestion is the name be gives to the 

 and con 



connexions of ideas and emotions, which occur accord- 

 ing to certain primary and secondary lawt. The primary are resem- 

 blance, contrast, and nearneas in time or plaoe : the secondary, by 

 which the former are modified, are, 1st, the length of time of their 

 co-existence ; 2nd, degree of liveliness ; 3rd, frequency ; 4th, repent- 

 ness; 5th, exclusiveness of oo-existenoe ; 6th, original constitutional 

 differences ; 7th, differences of temporary emotion ; 8th, change* on 

 the state of the body; 9th, general tendency produced by prior 

 habits. 



The supposed faculties of conception, memory, imagination, and 

 habit, be reduces to simple suggestion. The arguments by which he 

 resolve* memory into simple suggestion are these : Remembrance* 

 are conceptions of the past ; the state of mind U complex the con- 

 ception and ite relation of antecedence to the present time ; conceptions 

 and suggestions are the same, and the feeling of priority is a judgment 

 on succession in time, attributable therefore to the capacity of relative 

 suggestion. When combined with desire, perception become* attention, 

 and memory become* recoUtctiun ; and a similar difference is produced 

 on the phenomena of imagination, as it occurs with or without desire. 

 Imagination without desire is reverie, and with it, combined with 

 simple suggestion and the feeling of relation, all iU phenomena are 

 produced. Habit is suggestion and nothing more, since the increased 

 tendency to certain motions by repeating them is explained by ite 

 primary and secondary lawn. 



Relative suggestion U the feeling which arise* in the mind when 

 two or more objects are perceived or conceived, which Brown divides 

 into relations of co-existence and succession. The relations which do 

 not involve any regard to time he subdivides according to the notions, 

 1st, of position ; 2nd, resemblance or difference ; 3rd, of degree ; 4th, 

 of proportion ; 5th. of comprehensiveness, or the relation of the whole 

 to the parts it includes. The relation of resemblance U the source of 

 classification and definition. The process of reasoning he defines to be 

 the succession of analyses. Judgment, reason, and abstraction, aro 

 reduced to relative suggestion. 



In 1814 Dr. Brown finished his ' Paradise of Coquettes,' which he 

 had begun six years before. It was published anonymously in London. 

 Anxious to learu it* fate, he came to London, and was received into 

 the society of the principal persons connected with the Whigs in 

 politics. In the winter of 1815 lie published another volume of 

 poetry under the name of 'The Wanderer in Norway.' After the 

 rising of his class he generally spent the summer in some rural rrtn-ut. 

 Near Dunkeld, in Perthshire, he wrote his ' Bower of Spring ' in the 

 autumn of 1816. In 1817 he gave his opinion on a case of great 

 difficulty the accusation of child-murder brought against a woman 

 who was born deaf; and in the summer, while living ut the manse of 

 Balmaclellan, he wrote his poem of ' Agnes,' which was published in 

 1818. In the end of autumn 1819, on his return to Edinburgh, in 

 high health and spirits, being anxious to publish outlines of hu lectures, 

 he engaged in the preparation of them with great ardour. After 

 Christmas he felt unwell, and wits obliged to find a substitute to read 

 his lectures to his class. His illness increasing, his medical advisers 

 recommended him to take a voyage to London, He died at Brompton, 

 near London, in 1820. 



Brown's metaphysical genius was of a high order, for he possessed 

 to a considerable degree ite moat essential faculty, the power of analysis. 

 But he did not sufficiently think out his conclusions, and hence there 

 is with a great semblance of profundity often real want of depth. His 

 style is bad in the estimation of persons of chastened taste ; but ite 

 very exuberance has given such a degree of popularity to his lectures 

 that they have passed through more editions than any other meta- 

 physical work ever did in the same time, and thus the most subtle and 

 analytic has also become the most popular and stimulating of meta- 

 physical writers. It i* not likely however that the fame of Brown as 

 a metaphysician will be permanent As a poet he is already nearly 

 forgotten. 



(Welsh, Life of Brown.) 



BROWNK, SIR THOMAS, a learned and able antiquary and phy- 

 sician, has had the good fortune to find a biographer in Dr. Johnson, 

 whose memoir we shall do little more than compress, making of course 

 such corrections as Wilkins and later writers have indicated, or our 

 own reading may suggest Browne was born in St. Michael's, Cheap- 

 side, October 19, 1605. During his childhood bin father (a merchant 

 of ancient family at Upton in Cheshire) died, leaving him what in 

 those day* was considered an ample fortune. He was educated at 

 Winchester, and afterwards entered as a gentleman commoner at 

 Broadgate Hall (now Pembroke College), Oxford. Having graduated, 

 he entered on the study of medicine, and practised for a short time in 

 Oxfordshire. He then visited Ireland with his father-in-law, Sir 

 Thomas Ihitton, who had some public employment in the inspection 

 of the fortifications of that country; and after having rambled through 

 France and Italy be took the degree of Doctor of Medicine at Leyden 

 in 1633. His first work, 'Religio Medici,' which appeared anony- 

 mously in 1642, is supposed to have been written about seveu years 

 before, on his return to London from the continent It had great 

 success, and wu translated into Latin, Italian, German, Dutch, and 

 French. Alter bis return he established himself as a physician at 



