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; and admitted minister of the Abbey Church, Paisley, in 1783.He was appointed professor of philosophy in Glasgow College in 1797, resigned on the 3d and died on the 21st Of September, 1839.His business was to preach or provide preachers for the students in the college chapel.The students felt his preaching and that of his substitutes to be cold, and regarded him as secretly a rationalist or a Socinian.After the revival of evangelical faith in the city of Glasgow under Chalmers, loud complaints were uttered as to the doctrine taught in the college chapel.