BAIN, ALEXANDER (1818-1903), Scottish philosopher and educationist, was born in Aberdeen, where he began life as a weaver. In 1836 he entered Marischal College, and towards the end of his arts course became a contributor to the Westminster Review (first article "Electrotype and Daguerreotype," Sept. 5840). This was the beginning of his life-long friendship with John Stuart Mill. In 1841 he acted as substitute for Dr. Glennie, the professor of moral philosophy, and in 1842 helped Mill with the revision of the ms. of his System of Logic. In 1845 he was ap pointed professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in the Andersonian University of Glasgow but resigned in the following year. In 1848 he obtained a post in the London Board of Health, under Edwin Chadwick, and became a prominent member of the brilliant circle which included Grote and J. S. Mill. In 1855 he published The Senses and the Intellect, followed in 1859 by The Emotions and the Will.
In 186o he was appointed to the new chair of logic and Eng lish in the University of Aberdeen. Bain succeeded in raising the standard of education generally in the north of Scotland, and also in forming a school of philosophy and in widely influencing the teaching of English grammar and composition. In 1863, he pub lished the Higher English Grammar, followed in 1866 by the Manual of Rhetoric, in 1872 by A First English Grammar, and in 1874 by the Companion to the Higher Grammar. In 1861, The Study of Character, including an Estimate of Phrenology, ap peared ; but all his philosophical writings were condensed and re touched in his Manual of Mental and Moral Science (1868). In 5870, Bain published his Logic, based partly on J. S. Mill, but distinguished by its treatment of the doctrine of the conservation of energy in connection with causation and the detailed appli cation of the principles of logic to the various sciences. His serv ices to education in Scotland were recognized by an honorary LL.D. from Edinburgh in 1871. Next came two publications in "The International Scientific Series," namely, Mind and Body (1872), and Education as a Science (1879).
In Jan., 1876, appeared the first number of Mind, which Bain had instituted, under the editorship of a former pupil, G. Croom Robertson, of University College, London. To this journal, he contributed many important articles. Bain resigned his profes sorship in 188o and two years later published his Biography of James Mill, together with John Stuart Mill: a Criticism, with Personal Recollections. Next came (1884) a collection of articles and papers, most of which had appeared in magazines, under the title of Practical Essays. This was succeeded (1887, 1888) by a new edition of the Rhetoric, and a book On Teaching English, being an exhaustive application of the principles of rhetoric to the criticism of style; and in 1894 he published a revised edition of The Senses and the Intellect. His remaining years were spent in privacy at Aberdeen, where he died.
Wide as Bain's influence has been as a logician, a grammarian and a writer on rhetoric, his reputation rests on his psychology. He was the first in Great Britain to stress the necessity of clearing psychology of metaphysics, of applying the methods of the exact sciences to psychological phenomena and of referring these phe nomena to their correlates in the nerves and brain. He made a profound study of the physical origin of feeling and emotion, of instincts in relation to mental life and of the laws of association (see PSYCHOLOGY). In ethics, Bain was a utilitarian.
His autobiography, published in 1904, contains a full list of his works, and also the history of the last 13 years of his life by W. L. Davidson, of Aberdeen university, who further contributed to Mind (April, 1904) a review of Bain's services to philosophy. See also J. Seth, English Philosophers (1912); Th. Ribot, La Psychologie anglaise contemporaine (1870); J. T. Merz, Hist. of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century (1912) .
Works of Bain (besides those already mentioned) include an edition, with notes, of Paley's Moral Philosophy (1852) ; Edu cation as a Science (1879) ; Dissertations on leading philosophical topics (1903, mainly reprints of papers in Mind) ; he collaborated with J. S. Mill and Grote in editing James Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1869), and assisted in editing Grote's Aristotle and Minor Works; he also wrote a memoir pre fixed to G. Croom Robertson's Philosophical Remains