(2) Resemblance or Difference.
(3) Degree.
(4) Proportion.
(5) Comprehension (whole and parts).
II.SUCCESSION.
(6) Casual Priority.
(7) Causal Priority.
{331} This classification is worthy of being placed along side that of Locke and Hume.It may be compared with Kant's " Categories of the Understanding; " but it should be observed that the German metaphysician makes his categories forms imposed by the mind on things, whereas the Scotch psychologist simply gives to the mind the power of discerning the relations in things.The arrangement of Brown is superior to that of Hamilton, to be afterwards discussed, and vastly more comprehensive and just than that of those later physiological psychologists who reduce the relations which the mind can perceive to the single one of resemblance and difference, thus restricting the powers of intelligence within far narrower limits than have been assigned by nature, and all to make it somewhat easier to account for the whole on materialistic principles.
(6) His biographer declares his account of the general notion to be a great advance on all that had been proposed by previous philosophers.Brown states the process to be the following: "We perceive two or more objects, -- this is one state of the mind.We are struck with the <feeling> of their resemblance in certain respects, -- this is a second state of the mind.We then, in the third stage, give a name to these circumstances of felt resemblance, a name which is, of course, applied afterwards only where this relation of similarity is felt." He has here seized some of the characteristic steps in the process of forming the general notion.He is right in giving a prominent place to the discovery of resemblance, but he should have called it a perception of resemblance, and not a feeling of resemblance, -- language which seems to ascribe the whole to the emotive rather than the cognitive part of our nature.And he has missed, after all, the essential, the consummating step,-the placing of the objects under a head or in a class which embraces all the objects possessing the resembling qualities, to which class thus formed the name is given.He has a searching review of nominalism, which be charges with overlooking the resemblance.He asks, " Why do I class together certain objects, and exclude certain others from the class which I have formed? " He shows that the infant must reason before it has acquired language, " He has already calculated distances long before he knew the use of a single word expressive of distance."(7) He has some fine remarks on beauty.He separates from {332} Alison, who resolves it into the general feelings of our nature, and argues resolutely that there is an original and unresolvable class of feelings excited by the beautiful.He remarks that in the emotion of beauty, "by a sort of reflex transfer to the object which excited it, we identify or combine our agreeable feeling with the very conception of the object, whether present or absent." He is able to come to the conclusion: " It is mind alone that is the living fountain of beauty, because it is the mind which, by reflection from itself, embodies in the object or spreads over it its own delight." He overlooks, however, the objective beauty arising from the harmony of sounds and colors, and from proportion and harmony.
(8) Some place higher than any of his other excellencies his eloquent exposition of the emotions,-- an exposition which called forth the laudations both of Stewart and Chalmers, the latter of whom wrote a preface to that part of his lectures which treats of the feelings.He is particularly successful in showing that man is not by his nature and constitution a selfish being, but is possessed of social and benevolent affections.His lectures on the emotions are radiant all over with poetry, and will repay a careful reading much better than many of the scholastic discussions or anatomical descriptions which are furnished in some of the chairs of mental science.
(9) It would be injustice not to add that he has some very splendid illustrations of natural theism, fitted at once to refine and elevate the soul.I have never heard of any youth being inclined towards scepticism or pantheism, or becoming prejudiced against Christian truth, in consequence of attending or reading the lectures of Brown.In note E, appended to his work on " Cause and Effect, " he has a powerful argument in favor of the possibility of a miracle, showing that it is not inconsistent with the intuitive law of cause and effect." There is no violation of a law of nature, but there is a new consequent of a new antecedent."Over against these excellencies I have to place certain grave deficiencies and errors.
(1) I take exception to the account which he gives of the very object and end of mental science.According to him, it is to analyze the complex into the simple, and discover the laws of the succession of our mental states.There is a great {333} and obvious oversight here.The grand business of the science of the human mind is to observe the nature of our mental states, with the view of co-ordinating them and rising to the discovery of the laws which they obey and the faculties from which they proceed.Taking this view, analysis becomes a subordinate though of course an important instrument; and we have to seek to discover the faculties which determine the nature of the states as well as the laws of their succession.
