BROWN, John, D.D., an English divine and author, was born at Rothbury, Northumberland, in November 1715. He was the son of John Brown, a descendant of the Browns of Coalstown near Haddington, who at the time of his son’s birth was curate of Rothbury. He was educated at St John’s, Cambridge; and after graduating as B.A. with great distinction, he returned to his father’s house at Wigton, received deacon’s and priest’s orders from Sir George Fleming, bishop of Carlisle, and in 1739 went to Cambridge to take his Μ. A. degree. In 1745 he distinguished himself as a volunteer, and was soon afterwards appointed one of his chaplains by Dr Osbaldeston, on his admission to the bishopric of Carlisle. It was probably during his residence at Carlisle that Brown wrote his poem entitled Honour, inscribed to Lord Lonsdale. His next poetical production was his Essay on Satire, addressed to Dr Warburton, to whom it was so acceptable, that he took Brown into his friendship. He also introduced him to Ralph Allen, of Prior Park, near Bath, to whom in 1751 Brown dedicated his Essay on the Characteristics of Lord Shaftesbury. In 1754 he was promoted by the earl of Hardwicke to the living of Great Horkesley in Essex, and in the following year he took the degree of doctor of divinity at Cambridge. In this year also he published his tragedy of Barbarossa, which, under the management of Garrick, was acted with considerable applause, though it was sharply censured when published. This tragedy was followed by a second, entitled Athelstane, which was represented at Drury Lane theatre. This was also well received by the public, but did not become so popular as Barbarossa. Among the most remarkable of his other productions are the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times, a bitter satire; the Additional Dialogue of the Dead, which was a vindication of Chatham’s policy; and the Dissertation on the Rise, Union, and Power, <kc., of Poetry and Music. Dr Brown, who had an hereditary tendency to insanity, and from early life had been subject at times to fits of excessive melancholy, committted suicide on the 23rd of September 1766.
BROWN, John, author of the Self-Interpreting Bible, was born at Carpow, in Perthshire, in 1722. He was almost entirely self-educated, having acquired a knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew while employed as a shepherd. He was, for a great part of his life, minister of the Burgher branch of the Secession Church in Haddington, and also discharged the duties of professor of divinity. Though ho had not enjoyed the advantages of a regular education, he mastered the classical tongues, as well as several modern and Oriental languages, and gained a just reputation for learning and piety. He died in 1787. The best of his works, which are very numerous, are his Self Interpreting Bible and Dictionary of the Bible, works that were long very popular in Scotland. He also wrote a valuable Body of Divinity.
BROWN, John, the founder of the Brunonian theory of physic, was born in 1735 at Lintlaws or at Preston, Berwickshire. He was originally destined for the employment of a weaver, but the boy’s talents attracted the attention of his schoolmaster, through whose endeavours his parents were encouraged to allow him to begin study for the church. At the age of twenty he came to Edinburgh and entered the classes at the university, supporting himself by private tuition. In 1759 he seems to have discontinued his theological studies, and to have begun the study of medicine. He soon attracted the notice of Dr Cullen, who engaged him as private tutor to his family, and treated him in some respects as an assistant professor. Brown, however, thought that Cullen did not advance his candidature for a vacant chair, and the friendship between the two was soon completely broken. In 1780 appeared the Elementa Medicinoe, expounding the new, or as it was then called the Brunonian, theory of medicine. The fundamental idea of this theory was the division of diseases into two classes, sthenic and asthenic, the one caused by excess, the other by deficiency of excitement, and the consequent method of treatment by debilitating or stimulating medicines. That Brown’s ideas should have excited the discussion they did seems now incredible. Shortly after the publication he obtained the degree of M.D. at St Andrews, and in 1786 he set out for London in the hope of bettering his fortunes. He died of apoplexy in October 1788. A Life of Brown by Beddoes was published in 1801. An edition of his works, with notice of his life by his son, W. C. Brown, appeared in 1804.
BROWN, John, D.D., an eminent Scottish divine, son of the Rev. John Brown of Whitburn, and grandson of the Rev. John Brown of Haddington, was born at Whitburn, Linlithgowshire, on the 12th July 1784. He studied at Glasgow university, and afterwards at the divinity hall of the “Burgher” branch of the “Secession” Church at Selkirk, under the celebrated Lawson. In 1806 he was ordained minister of the Burgher congregation at Biggar, Lanarkshire, where he continued to labour for sixteen years with growing popularity. Transferred in 1822 to the charge of Rose Street church, Edinburgh, he at once took a high rank as a preacher. Deficient in imagination and in spontaneity of utterance, he had nearly all the other qualities of a pulpit orator,—a powerful and flexible voice, a presence at once winning and commanding, clear and persuasive reasoning, and a habitual earnestness, rising not unfrequently into fervour. In 1829 he succeeded Dr Hall in the pastoral charge of Broughton Place church, Edinburgh, where his congregation speedily became one of the largest in the city. In 1835 he was appointed one of the professors in the theological hall of the Secession Church, and, great as was his ability as a preacher and pastor, it was probably in this sphere that he rendered his most valuable service to his own denomination and the church at large. He had been the first in Scotland to introduce in his pulpit ministrations what is known as the exegetical method of exposition of Scripture, and he fully availed himself of his position as a professor to illustrate the method and extend its use. To him probably more than to any other man is due the abandonment of the radically vicious principle of interpretation according to the “analogy of faith,” which practically subordinated the Bible to the Creed. To his favourite task of exegesis, which he himself described as the main object of his public life, Dr Brown brought a rare critical sagacity, exact and extensive scholarship, unswerving honesty, and a clear, logical style. His expository works, noted below, have accordingly a permanent value. Dr Brown was naturally of a retiring disposition, but the strength of his convictions forced him to take a prominent part in the chief religious and political discussions of his time. He had a considerable share in the Apocrypha controversy, and he was throughout life a vigorous and consistent upholder of anti-state-church or “voluntary” views. His two sermons on The Law of Christ'respecting civil obedience, especially in the payment of tribute, called forth by a local grievance from which he had personally suffered, were afterwards published with extensive additions and notes, and are still regarded as an admirable statement and defence of the voluntary principle. In a discussion which agitated his denomination for several years in regard to the nature and extent of the atonement, Dr Brown took a part which led to a formal charge of heresy being preferred against him. In 1845, after the to him peculiarly painful ordeal of a somewhat protracted trial, he was acquitted by the Synod. From that time he enjoyed the thorough confidence of his denomination (after 1847 “the United Presbyterian Church”), of which in his later years he was generally regarded as the leading representative. Dr Brown died on the 13th October 1858.
Dr Brown’s chief works were— Expository Discourses on First Peter (1848); Exposition of the Discourses and Sayings of our Lord (1850); Exposition of our Lord's Intercessory Prayer (1850); The Resurrection of Life (1851); Exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians (1853); and Analytical Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans (1857). See Memoir of John Brown, D.D., by John Cairns (1860).
BROWN, John, an American abolitionist, celebrated as the originator of the Harper’s Ferry insurrection, was born in Torrington, Connecticut, on the 9th May 1800. Originally intended for the church, he was compelled to give up study for this purpose on account of inflammation in the eyes. He then took up the business of a tanner, which he carried on for twenty years. Not being very successful in trade, he started business as a wool-dealer in Ohio in 1840. Failing also in this he removed to Essex county, New York, in 1849, and began to reclaim a large tract of land which had been granted to him. After two years he returned to Ohio and resumed his business as a wool-dealer. In 1855, with his four sons, he migrated to Kansas, and at once took a prominent position as an anti-slavery man. He became renowned in the fierce border warfare which was carried on for some years in Kansas and Missouri, and gained particular celebrity by his victory at Ossowattomie. About this time he seems to have formed the idea of effecting slave liberation by arming the slaves and inciting them to rise in revolt against their oppressors. As the first step in this scheme, he designed to seize the arsenal of Harper’s Ferry, where an immense stock of arms was kept. On the night of the 10th October 1859, he, with a handful of well-armed and resolute companions, overpowered the small guard and gained possession of the arsenal. During the next morning he made prisoners of some of the chief men of the town, but there was no rising of slaves as had been expected. The townsmen, too, recovered from their astonishment at the audacity of the act, and a bold attack was made on the arsenal. Fresh assailants poured in from the country round, and on the morning of the 18th the arsenal was recaptured, and Brown, severely wounded, was taken prisoner. On the 27th October he was tried at Charlestown for treason and murder, and was found guilty. The sentence passed upon him, death by hanging, was carried into execution on the 2d December. His fate made an extraordinary impression on the excited feelings of the Americans, and his name has become a household word among the Abolitionists.
BROWN, Robert, the founder of the Brownists, a numerous sect of dissenters in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was born in 1550. He was the son of Anthony Brown of Tolthorp in Rutlandshire, whose father obtained, by a charter of Henry VIII., the singular privilege of wearing his cap in the king’s presence. Robert was educated at Cambridge, and was afterwards a schoolmaster in Southwark. About the year 1580 he began to promulgate his principles of dissent from the Established Church; and the following year he preached at Norwich, where he soon attracted a numerous congregation. His unmeasured assaults upon the Church of England form of government gained for him many followers. His sect daily increasing, Dr Freake, bishop of Norwich, with other ecclesiastical commissioners, called him before them. Being insolent to the court, he was committed to the custody of the sheriff’s officer, but was released at the intercession of his relative the Lord Treasurer Burghley. Brown now left the kingdom, and with permission of the States, settled at Middleburg in Zealand, where he formed a church after his own plan, and preached without molestation. The removal of persecution, however, broke up the unity of the party; numerous sects appeared, and Brown soon returned to England. He fixed his residence at Northampton, where, for his indiscreet attempts to gain proselytes, he was cited by the bishop of Peterborough, and, refusing to appear, was finally excommunicated for contempt. The solemnity of this censure, we are told, immediately effected his reformation. He moved for absolution, which he obtained, and from that time became a dutiful member of the Church of England. T hishappened about the year 1590; and, in a short time afterwards, Brown was preferred to a rectory in Northamptonshire, where he kept a curate, and where he might probably have died in peace; but having some dispute with the constable of his parish relative to the payment of rates, he proceeded to blows, and was afterwards so insolent to the justice, that he was committed to Northampton jail, where he died in 1630, aged eighty. Brown boasted on his death-bed that he had been confined in thirty-two different prisons. He wrote a Treatise of Reformation without tarrying for any, and two other pieces, making together a thin quarto, published at Middleburg in 1582. See Brownists.
BROWN, Robert, a celebrated botanist, who may be said to be the founder of the modern science of vegetable physiology, and to have placed the natural system of the classification of plants, originally introduced by Jussieu, upon that sure and ever-widening basis on which it has ever since remained. With the exception of the early years of his life his career was uneventful. His private life is little known; and though his researches were familiar to the learned members of nearly all the European and American academies, which numbered him among their members, his very existence, until the journals of the day proclaimed his decease, was almost unsuspected by the fashionable world of the great city in which he had passed upwards of half a century. His biography may be best read in his works,—a very few words sufficing to record the salient points of his life. Robert Brown was the second and only surviving son of the Rev. Jas. Brown, Episcopalian minister of Montrose, by Helen, daughter of the Rev. Robert Taylor, and was born on the 21st December 1773. He was educated at the grammar school of his native town, where he had as contemporaries, among others less known to fame, Joseph Hume and James Mill. In 1787 he entered Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he soon distinguished himself. Two years afterwards, his father quitting Montrose for Edinburgh, Brown removed to the university of that city, and there continued his studies for several years, but without taking a degree, though destined for the medical profession. In 1791 his father died, and in 1816 his mother; both are interred in the Canongate churchyard, in the burying ground belonging to Bishop Keith. It was about 1790 that young Brown’s taste for botany attracted the attention of Dr Walker, then professor of natural history in the university. His first contribution to the science of which he was destined to be so eminent a cultivator was made on the 26th June 1792, in the shape of a paper on the plants of Forfarshire, read before the Natural History Society; the MS. is still contained in the archives of the Royal Physical Society (Journal of Botany, 1871, p. 321). During his student days he also discovered many plants new to Scotland, which were communicated to Withering for his Arrangement of British Plants.
In 1795 he obtained a commission in the Forfarshire regiment of Fencible Infantry as “ensign and assistant surgeon,” and while serving in the North of Ireland steadily pursued his botanical studies, and had the advantage of the companionship of Capt. Dugald Carmichael of Appin, afterwards well known as an investigator of the lower orders of plants. Having occasion to pass several months of 1798 and of subsequent years in London, he studied in the library and museum of Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S., whose acquaintance he had been fortunate enough to make by the discovery of a rare moss, Glyphomitrwn Daviesii. The result of this friendly intercourse was that he was recalled from Ireland, and in the summer of 1801 quitted his not altogether congenial medico-military pursuits, to take the more agreeable post of naturalist to the expedition fitted out under Capt. Flinders for the survey of the then almost unknown coasts of New Holland. Ferdinand Bauer, afterwards familiarly associated with Brown in his botanical discoveries, was draughtsman; Wm. Westall was landscape painter; and among the midshipmen was one afterwards destined to rise into fame as Sir John Franklin. The narrative of that expedition is part of the biography of its botanist. In 1805 the expedition returned to England, having obtained, among other acquisitions, nearly 4000 species of dried plants, many of which were new. Brown was almost immediately appointed librarian of the Linnean Society, of which learned body he had been an associate since 1798, and to the presidency of which he afterwards attained. In this position, though one of no great emolument, he had abundant opportunities of pursuing his studies; but it was not until 1810 that the first volume of his great work, in Latin, the Prodromus Florae Novoe Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen, appeared. It at once revolutionized systematic botany, not only by the great number of new species it described, but also by the novel views of the general affinities of plants which were promulgated in its pages. Almost immediately it took the rank it has ever since maintained as one of the canons of botanical science. Humboldt soon after its publication dedicated his well-known work on the plants of the New World to Brown (Roberto Brownio, Britanniarum glori<e atque ornamento, totam Botanices Scientiam ingenio mirifico complectant!) , and long after, in his Kosmos, styled him facile princeps botanicorum. The Prodromus is now rare in its original edition, the author having suppressed it, hurt at the Edinburgh Review having fallen foul of its Latinity; it is chiefly known through a German reprint. With the exception of a supplement published in 1830, no more of the work appeared. In 1810 Brown became librarian to Sir Joseph Banks, who on his death in 1820 bequeathed to him the use and enjoyment of his library and collections for life. In 1827 an arrangement was made by which these were transferred to the British Museum, with Brown’s consent and in accordance with Sir Joseph’s will. Brown now became keeper of this new botanical department, an office which he held until his death thirty years afterwards. Soon after Banks’s decease he resigned the librarianship of the Linnean Society, and in 1849 became president, in which office he continued until 1853. His subsequent life was occupied with numerous brilliant discoveries and researches in vegetable anatomy, physiology, and classification; these are familiar to every student, and may be read in any botanical text-book. Long before his death they secured his fame as the first botanist of the day. Honours flowed thickly in upon him. In addition to being a fellow of the Royal Society he received its Copley Medal in 1839. In 1833 he was elected one of the five foreign associates of the Institute of France,—the other competitors, nearly all of whom afterwards attained the same honour, being Bessell, Von Buch, Faraday, Herschel, Jacobi, Meckel, Mitscherlich, Oersted, and Plana. He was also a member of nearly all the learned societies and academies of this and other countries, D.C.L. of Oxford, LL.D, of Edinburgh, and knight of numerous orders, among others of the Order “pour le Mérite” of Prussia. In the “Academia Caesarea Naturae Curiosorum” he sat under the cognomen of Ray.
On the 10th June 1858 he died in the 85th year of his age, in his house in Soho Square, bequeathed to him by Sir Jos. Banks. His. place in botanical science has long been fixed; it is not necessary now to discuss it. His works are all standards, being distinguished by their thoroughness and conscientious accuracy, and displaying powers at once of minute detail and of broad generalization, —qualities rarely combined. Indeed, so careful was he in preparing his discoveries for the press that he directed in his will that, should any of his writings be republished, they should be printed verbatim et literatim. In private life he was exceedingly modest, and he shrank from notoriety of every kind. Sensationalism and self-seeking he despised; fame came to him unsought. His reserved manner to those not intimately acquainted with him could never make him universally popular; but few will deny his warmheartedness to his friends, the singleness of his purpose, and the purity of his life. Those who knew him in his most intimate relations bear witness that in mind he was simple, truthful, and upright, and that he was wise and faithful in council.
In 1825-34 Dr Brown’s works up to that date were collected and published in four divisions by Nees von Esenbeck, in German, under the title of Vermischte botanische Schriften (Leipsic and Nuremberg). In 1866 the Ray Society reprinted, under the editorship of his friend and successor in the keepership of the Botanical Department of the British Museum, Mr J. J. Bennet, his complete writings, the Prodromus alone excepted. In these Miscellaneous Works (2 vols., with atlas of plates), the history of his discoveries can be best followed. No special biography of him is ever likely to appear, as his career contained few of the elements essential to a continuous narrative of general interest. In the necrologies of the societies and academies which numbered him among their members, there will, however, be found sketches of his life more or less complete.
BROWN, Samuel, chemist, poet, and essayist, was born at Haddington on the 23d February 1817, and died 26th September 1856. He was the son of Dr Samuel Brown, the founder of itinerating libraries, and grandson of the author of the Self-Interpreting Bible. In 1832 he entered the university of Edinburgh, and almost from the first devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to the study of chemistry. The ultimate problems of the science spe cially attracted his attention, and he came to be persuaded that elements usually regarded as chemically simple and primary were transmutable into each other. Believing that he could demonstrate this in the case of carbon and silicon, he became a candidate for the chair of chemistry in Edinburgh university in 1843; but he withdrew his application on finding his proof inconclusive. In 1849 he delivered in Edinburgh a series of lectures of great value on the history of chemistry from the earliest times to Lavoisier. In 1850 he published the tragedy of Galileo, which had considerable merit. He was also an occasional contributor of articles on general literature as well as on subjects connected with his favourite science to the leading reviews. His time, however, was chiefly spent in his laboratory; and at the date of his death in 1856 he believed that he was within a very little of demonstrating the great fundamental theory in which his own faith had never wavered. Though his work was thus left incomplete, he did enough to entitle him to a place in the foremost rank of those who have cultivated the higher chemistry. An interesting collection of his essays and papers, which display general literary power of a very high order, was published in two volumes in 1858.
BROWN, Thomas, of facetious memory, as Addison designates him, was the son of a farmer at Shiffnal in Shropshire, and was born in 1663. He was entered at Christ Church College, Oxford, whence he was soon obliged to abscond on account of the irregularities of his life. He was for some time schoolmaster at Kingston-on-Thames, and afterwards went to London, where he had recourse to the usual refuge of half-starved wits—scribbling for bread. He published a great variety of poems, letters, dialogues, &c., full of humour and erudition, but coarse and indelicate. Though a good-natured man, he had the unhappy quality of preferring rather to lose his friend than his joke. He died in 1704, and was interred in the cloister of Westminster Abbey. An incomplete edition of his works was published in 1707, in 4 vols. 12mo.
BROWN, Dr Thomas, one of the most original and subtle of Scottish psychologists, was born on the 9th January 1778, at Kirkmabreck, Kirkcudbright, of which parish his father was the clergyman. In 1780 the family removed to Edinburgh, but he was not placed at any of the schools in that city. At the age of seven he was sent to London, and began his regular education at a school in Camberwell, from which he was soon afterwards removed to Chiswick. At Chiswick he was thoroughly grounded in classics, and began to give promise of great ability, particularly in the department of verse composition, one of his school poems being deemed worthy of insertion in a magazine. He was a boy of a refined, gentle nature, intensely studious, a devourer of literature of all kinds, and much loved by his companions. After attending two other schools at Bromley and Kensington, he returned to Edinburgh, and in 1792 began his course at the university by joining the logic class, then conducted by Professor Finlayson. During the summer of 1793 he made acquaintance with Dugald Stewart’s Philosophy of the Human Mind, and found himself irresistibly attracted towards metaphysical speculation. He joined Stewart’s class, that of moral philosophy, in the following session, and quickly introduced himself to the professor’s notice by reading to him a paper of objections to one of his theories, marked by great acuteness and ability. His attendance on the classes at the university seems to have been somewhat desultory; it does not appear that he ever passed through the regular curriculum of arts studies. But he carried on his reading with great vigour, and while still a student made his first appearance in the arena of philosophical disputation. His attention had been drawn towards Darwin’s Zoonomia, which was then exciting a lively sensation in the literary world. His remarks on this book were published in 1798, and were received with great approval as one of the best and most mature examinations of the theory. His next contribution to literature was an article in the second number of the Edinburgh Review on the philosophy of Kant. It is acute, like all that Brown ever wrote, but it shows neither sufficient knowledge nor adequate appreciation of the philosopher it handled. Meantime he had been devoting himself to the study of medicine, having relinquished that of law, to which for a while he had applied. His graduation thesis, De Somno, which was thought worthy of being published, is a fine piece of psychologico-medical analysis. A few months later appeared two volumes of his poems, which were not received with much favour. Nor did his later poetical efforts attain much popularity, with the partial exception of the Paradise of Coquettes. They all show refined feeling and sweetness of diction, but they are wanting in the elements of true poetry. They are faint echoes of Akenside and Beattie, neither of whom can stand much dilution. Brown’s real strength lay altogether in metaphysical analysis, and a favourable opportunity for calling it forth soon presented itself. Some captious objections had been raised against the appointment of the celebrated Leslie to the professorship of mathematics, on the ground that he had approved of Hume’s doctrine of causality. The Humian theory was believed to lead inevitably to scepticism and infidelity, and these consequences were, of course, charged upon Leslie. Brown undertook the defence not of Leslie but of Hume, and in his examination of Hume’s doctrine showed that in reality the theory was in no way inimical to the interests of true religion or theology. This examination, at first but a pamphlet, swelled out in its third edition (1818) into a bulky treatise, Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, containing not merely a criticism of Hume, but an elaborate theory of the causal relation. This relation Brown regards as nothing but constancy of antecedence and sequence, while at the same time he admits an intuitive belief in the permanency or universality of the causal connection. The work is a fine specimen of Brown’s faculty of analysis, which it exhibits in its very best aspect.
As early as 1806 Dr Brown had engaged in practice as a physician, having been received into partnership with Dr Gregory; but though very successful in his profession, he was by nature more strongly attracted towards a literary life. He had twice failed in his application for a professorship in the university of Edinburgh, when in the session 1808-9 he was called upon to deliver a few lectures to the class of moral philosophy, in consequence of the temporary illness of Dugald Stewart. In the following year, Stewart’s health still incapacitating him from active exertion, Dr Brown delivered the lectures for the greater part of the session. His success in conducting the class was unequivocal; the enthusiasm of the students was such as one reflects on with a little wonder. They were fascinated not more by the splendid rhetoric of the lecturer than by the novelty and ingenuity of the views presented. In the summer of 1810 it was resolved to appoint Brown as colleague to Dugald Stewart, and in the ensuing session he began his course as professor of moral philosophy. During the few remaining years of his life he published only his poems, but he was busily engaged in preparing an abstract of his lectures to serve as a handbook for the class. His health, never strong, gave way completely under the pressure of his work. A voyage to London, which had been recommended, proved of no avail, and he died on the 2d April 1820, at the early age of forty-two. After his death were published the first part of his proposed text-book, Physiology of the Human Mind, and the Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 4 vols., of which the Physiology is an abstract. The fame achieved by the Lectures when published surpassed even what they had attained when delivered. It is no exaggeration to say that never before or since has a work of metaphysics been so popular. In 1851 the book had reached its 19th edition in England, and in America its success was perhaps greater. Since that time, however, its popularity has declined with almost equal rapidity; judgments on its merits are now as severe as they were formerly favourable, and the name of Brown may be said to be a dead letter in the annals of philosophy. It is interesting to inquire how far this extravagant laudation and neglect are justifiable; and it is of importance to know exactly what were Brown’s contributions to mental science, and how far his system is consistent and true.
Some part of Brown’s popularity is no doubt to be accounted for from the fact that he was the leader of a revolt against the established system of philosophical thought in Scotland. It had come to be looked upon as established that in the common sense philosophy of Reid alone were metaphysical truth and soundness to be found. Brown not only showed that in many points of detail the earlier Scottish psychology was in fault, above all in their crucial doctrine of perception, but changed the whole aspect of the science by treating itfrom a thoroughly new and original standpoint. Still more of his fame was due to the lively impression made by his brilliant rhetorical powers. It was a novelty to find the most subtle analysis expounded in the most richly poetical language. Philosophical diction had been dry enough in Reid, and though Dugald Stewart was a master of literary exposition, his eloquence was of a chaste and elegant kind. Brown’s, on the other hand, is florid and ornamental to excess, and one soon wearies of the copious quotations from poets like Akenside, Beattie, or Young. Yet the style had, and still has, a certain fascination. But in addition to these extraneous causes, one cannot help acknowledging as the main reason for Brown’s quick accession to fame, his undeniable acuteness and originality. His mind was extraordinarily quick and active; there is not one of his lectures which does not contain either some addition to the older doctrine, or some new and striking application of it. What a mind of such fertility and subtility might have achieved had the thinker been spared a little longer, it would be hard to say. But it must not be forgotten in estimating his merits, that we possess only part of his system, and that he had not brought his psychology to bear upon the deeper problems of metaphysics.
Of positive contributions made by him to mental science, the following are perhaps the most important:—(1.) General conception of the object and method of psychology. According to him mental phenomena are to be treated by the recognized methods of physical science. Complex mental facts are to be resolved into their simple elements; and sequences of such facts are to be analyzed so as to bring out the general laws of their connection. Analysis is thus the one instrument to be employed. (2.) View of mental processes and rejection of the ordinary doctrine of faculties. Just as physical science has to analyze and trace the connections of the various phenomena or modes of appearance of matter, without ever reaching the essence which lies behind them, so psychology treats all mental facts as states or modes or modifications of the mind. Perceptions, abstractions, emotions, or desires are simply the mind in the several states of perceiving, abstracting, feeling, or desiring. The so-called faculties are nothing but the various modes in which mental activity manifests itself. Consciousness is not to be distinguished from the several mental states. Mental modifications may be classified according to what gives rise to them; they spring up either after some internal cause, or after some other mental mode. In the first case they may be called external states, in the second, internal. The internal may be again divided into intellectual and emotional. (3. ) Analysis of touch into touch proper and the muscular sense. This is perhaps the most valuable of Brown’s contributions. There are no doubt anticipations of the division, particularly in De Tracy, whom Brown had studied, but his originality is, we think, beyond question. The analysis has since been carried out much more perfectly than by Brown. (4.) Theory of extension. Brown was one of the first to attempt the resolution of our knowledge of extension into a series of muscular feelings, successive in time. His analysis is exceedingly acute, though in many points it must now be looked upon as erroneous. (5.) Doctrine of perception. According to him, all that we know of the external world consists of the feelings of resistance, outness, and extension, which are combined into one complex state; but our intuitive belief in the causal principle compels us to postulate a real existence as Tying behind and giving rise to these feelings. (6.) Prominence given to the doctrine of suggestion or association. All internal intellectual states may be reduced to simple suggestions, i.e., where one state arises in consequence of another, and to relative suggestion, where the relation between two states gives rise to a third state. Brown analyzes with great skill the powers of suggestion or association, and illustrates very fully the primary and secondary states. Undeι∙ the head of relative suggestion, he discusses at great length the perception of resemblance or similarity, and draws out an elaborate theory of generalization, intended to supplement the defective view of the Nominalist and to reduce to its proper sphere the supposed abstract idea of the Conceptualist. The analysis was highly popular in its time, but has little of real novelty in it. (7.) Ethical doctrine. To this Brown added little; indeed, the weakest part of his psychology is that bearing upon the will, which he identifies with desire. With regard to conscience, he postulates the existence of a primitive susceptibility to moral emotion; i.e., a certain ethical feeling is infallibly excited by those actions of agents which are right or wrong.
On the whole, it will be seen from this brief statement of what was new in Brown’s philosophy, that it occupies an intermediate place between the earlier Scottish school and the later analytical or associational psychology. . To the latter Brown really belonged, but he had preserved certain doctι⅛es of the older school which were out of harmony with his fundamental view. He still retained a small quantum of intuitive beliefs, and did not appear to see that the very existence of these could not be explained by his theory of mental action. This intermediate or wavering position accounts for the comparative neglect into which his works have now fallen. They did much to excite thinking, and advanced many problems by more than one step, but they did not furnish a coherent system, and the doctrines which were then new have since been worked out with greater consistency and clearness.
For a severe criticism of Brown, see Sir W. Hamilton’s Discussions and Lectures on Metaphysics; and for a high estimate of his merits, see J. S. Mill's Examination of Hamilton. The only German writer who seems to have known anything of Brown is Beneke, who found in him anticipations of some of his own doctrines. See Die Neue Psychologie, pp. 320-330.
BROWN, UlyssesMaximilian, a celebrated general in the imperial armies, son of Ulysses, Baron Brown and Camus, a colonel of cuirassiers, was descended of an ancient Irish family, and was born at Basel in 1705. After studying at Limerick, Rome, and Prague he entered the army, becoming in 1723 captain in the regimeht of his uncle, Couut George Brown, and in 1725 lieutenant-colonel. He served with great distinction in Corsica and Italy, and in 1739 was made field-marshal-lieutenant, and counsellor in the aulic council of war. After the death of the Emperor Charles VI. he became one of the foremost generals in the army of the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa, and gained a high reputation for military skill. On the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, Count Brown, with the rank of fieldmarshal, assembled his army in Bohemia, and repulsed the Prussians at the battle of Lowositz. He was mortally wounded at the great battle of Prague, and was carried into the town, where he expired on the 20th June 1757.
BROWN, William Laurence, born at Utrecht, January 7, 1755, was the son of the Rev. William Brown, minister of the English church in that city. The father, having been appointed professor of ecclesiastical history at St Andrews, returned to Scotland in 1757, and his son was in due time sent to the grammar school of that city. At the age of twelve he entered the university, and after passing through the classes of divinity, removed in 1774 to the university of Utrecht, where he combined with the study of theology that of the civil law. In 1777 he was appointed to the charge of the English church in Utrecht, which had been previously held by his father and uncle. About 1788 he was appointed to the professorship of moral philosophy and ecclesiastical history in the university of Utrecht, to which was soon added the professorship of the law of nature. The war which followed the French Revolution finally drove Dr Brown from the place of his nativity. In January 1795 he made his escape to England. In London he experienced such a reception as was due to his literary talents and moral worth; and in 1795 the magistrates of Aberdeen appointed him to the chair of divinity on the retirement of Dr George Campbell, and soon after he was made principal of Maπschal College. In the year 1800 he was appointed chaplain in ordinary to the king, and in 1804 dean of the chapel royal, and of the Order of the Thistle. He died on the 11th of May 1830, in the seventy-sixth year of his age.
II is most widely known works were an Essaτj on the Natural Equality of Men, 1793, which gained the Teyler Society’s prize; a treatise On the Existence of the Supreme Creator, 1816, to which was awarded the first Burnet prize of £1250; and Λ Comparative View of Christianity, and of the other Forms of Religion which have existed and still exist in the World, particularly with regard to their Moral Tendency, 1826.
