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 <transcendentalism>; 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 <a priori> " 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 <between> the cause and its effect."The <substances> that exist in a train of phenomena are still, and must always be, the whole constituents of the train." If the cause be A and the effect B, there is not a third thing x necessary in order to A being followed by B.He agrees with Hume, in representing the relation as consisting merely in invariable antecedence and consequence.In this he has been guilty of a glaring oversight.It may be all true, that there is nothing coming <between> the cause and its effect, and yet there may be, what he has inexcusably overlooked, a power or property in the substances acting as the cause to produce the effect.
He calls in substances, we have seen." The cause must always be a substance existing in a certain state, and the effect, too, a substance existing in a certain state; " --he does not see that in material action there are substances two or more in the cause, and substances two or more in the effect.But he fails to enquire what is involved in substances, and the qualities of substance, and does not discover that power is involved in substance and properties.
It is but justice to Brown to add, that, in one very important particular, he differs from Hume; that is, in regard to the mental principle which leads us to believe in the relation.This, according to Hume, is mere custom;whereas, according to Brown, it is an irresistible intuitive belief.By this doctrine, he attached himself to the school of Reid, and saved his system from a sceptical tendency, with which it cannot be justly charged.This irresistible be lief, he shows, constrains us to believe that the universe, as an effect, must have had a cause.It is to be regretted that he did not inquire a little more carefully into the nature of this intuitive belief which he is obliged to call in, when he would have found that it constrains us to believe not only in the invariability of the relation but in the potency of the substances operating as causes to produce their effects.
We are not concerned to follow him in his medical career, in which he became the associate of the famous Dr.
Gregory in 1806.We are approaching a more momentous epoch in his life.Dugald Stewart being in a declining state of health, {322} Brown lectured for him during a part of sessions 1808-9 and 1809-10; and, in the summer of 1810, Stewart having expressed a desire to this effect, Brown was chosen his colleague, and, from that time, discharged the whole duties of the office of Professor of Moral Philosophy.