In estimating the influences exercised from without on Brown, we must further take into account, that ever since the days of Hartley there had been a great propensity in Britain to magnify the power and importance of the association of ideas.Not only habit but most of our conceptions and beliefs had been referred to it: Beattie and Alison, followed by Jeffrey, ascribed to it our ideas of beauty; and, in a later age, Sir James Mackintosh carried this tendency the greatest length, and helped to bring about a reaction, by tracing our very idea of virtue to this source.It is evident that Brown felt this influence largely.Our intelligence is resolved by him into simple and relative suggestion.There is a flagrant and inexcusable oversight here.All that association, or, as he designates it, suggestion, can explain, is the order of the succession of our mental states; it can render no account of the character of the states themselves.It might show, for example, in what circumstances a notion of any kind arises, say our notion of time, or space, or extension, but cannot explain the nature of the notion itself.
But it will be necessary to enter a little more minutely into the system of Brown.From the affection which I bear to his memory, and remembering that his views have never been used by himself or others to undermine any of the great principles of morality, I would begin with his excellences.{327}
(1) In specifying these, I am inclined to mention, first, his lofty views of man's spiritual being.He everywhere draws the distinction between mind and body very decidedly.In this respect, he is a true follower of the school of Descartes and Reid, and is vastly superior to some who, while blaming Locke and Brown for holding views tending to sensationalism, or even materialism, do yet assure us that the essential distinction between mind and matter is now broken down.
(2) I have already referred to the circumstance, that Brown stands up resolutely for intuitive principles, and in this respect is a genuine disciple of the Scottish school.
He calls them by the very name which some prefer as most expressive, -- " beliefs; " and employs the test which Leibnitz and Kant have been so lauded as introducing into philosophy.He everywhere characterizes them as "irresistible,"-a phrase pointing to the same quality as "necessary,"-the term used by the German metaphysicians.No one, not even Cousin, has demonstrated, in a more effective manner, that our belief in cause and effect is not derived from experience." When we say, then, that B will follow Ato-morrow, because A was followed by B to-day, we do not prove that the future will resemble the past, but we take for granted that the future is to resemble the past.We have only to ask ourselves why we believe in this similarity of sequence; and our very inability of stating any ground of inference may convince us that the belief, which it is impossible for us not to feel (observe the appeal to necessity, but it is an appeal to a necessity of feeling), is the result of some other principle of reasoning." ("Cause and Effect," P.111.) " In ascribing the belief of efficiency to such a principle, we place it, then, on a foundation as strong as that on which we suppose our belief of an external world, and even of our own identity, to rest.
What daring atheist is he, who has ever truly disbelieved the existence of himself and others? For it is he alone who can say, with corresponding argument, that he is an atheist, because there is no relation of cause and effect." " The just analysis, then, which reduces our expectation of similarity in the future trains of events to intuition, we may safely admit, without any fear of losing a single argument for the existence of God." By this doctrine he has separated himself for ever from sensationalists, and given great trouble to those classifiers {328} of philosophic systems who insist, contrary to the whole history of British philosophy, that all systems must either be sensational or ideal.It is quite obvious that such men as Butler, Brown, and Chalmers, cannot be included in either of the artificial compartments, and hence one ground of their neglect by the system-builders of our age.
(3) His account of sensation is characterized by fine analysis: in particular, his discrimination of the sensations commonly ascribed to touch, and his separation of the muscular sense from the sense of touch proper.About this very time Charles Bell was establishing the distinction of the nerves of sensation and motion." I was finally enabled," says Sir Charles, to show that the muscles had two classes of nerves; that on exciting one of these the muscles contracted, that on exciting the other no action took place.
The nerve which had no power to make the muscle contract was found to be a nerve of sensation." Contemporaneously, Brown was arguing, on psychological grounds, that by the muscular sense we get knowledge which cannot be had from mere feeling or touch."The feeling of resistance is, I conceive, to be ascribed not to our organ of touch but to our muscular frame." Hamilton, by his vast erudition, has been able (note appended to Reid's works) to detect anticipations of these views; but they were not so clearly stated, and they were not conclusively demonstrated.Brown started, and carried a certain length, those inquiries regarding the variety of sensations commonly ascribed to touch, which have ever since had a place in psycho logical treatises.