BAIN, ban, ALEXANDER ( 1S18-190:3). An Eng lish psychologist. Be was born at Aberdeen, Scotland, and studied at Mnrischal College, from 1836 to 1840, obtaining the degree of ALA. He taught moral and natural philosophy at this in stitution from 1841 to 1845, and afterwards be came successively professor of natural philoso phy at Anderson's University, Glasgow; assist ant secretary to the Metropolitan Sanitary Com mission, from 1847 to 1855; secretary of the General Board of Health, from 1848 to 1850; ex aminer in logic and moral philosophy at the Uni versity of London. from 1857 to 1802; examiner in moral science for the India Civil Service. from 1S5S to 1S60, and in 1803; professor of logic. and English literature in the University of Aberdeen, from 1800 to 1880; and lord rector of the Univer sity of Aberdeen, in 1881. Ile received the degree of LL.D. from Edinburgh University in 1859. From the year 1540, Bain was a frequent con tributor to the Westminster Reriew and Cham bers's Papers for the People, and information for the People. In these publications he became well known both for 11 is exceptionally apt popu larizations and for his own researches in fields of applied science. But his enduring fame will be associated with his treatises on psychology. His best-known works are: The Senses and the Intel lect (1855) ; The Emotions and the Will (1859) ; The Study of Character (1861) : Mental and Moral Science; A Compendium of Psychology and Ethics (1868) ; Logic, Deductive and I»ductive (1870); The Relation of Mind and Body (1873); Education as a Science (1S79). Bain also edited Paley's Moral Philosophy (1852).published a biog raphy of James Mill (1881). a criticism of .J. S. Mill (1882). assisted in editing Grote's Aristotle, edited Grote's Minor Works, and wrote several authoritative works on composition and rhetoric.
Bain was a stanch empiricist. emphatically op posed to all transcendental and a priori meth ods of procedure. Following Hartley's lead, be
sought to supply a physiological basis for all psychical facts. Perhaps the host characteriza tion of his place in psychology is given by S. Mill in Dissertations and Discussions (1874). "Bain has stepped beyond all his prckleces6ors and has produced an exposition of the mind of the School of Locke and Hartley . . . which deserves to take rank as the foremost of its class, and as marking the most advanced point which the a posteriori psychology has reached." "Those who have the highest appreciation and the warmest admiration of his predecessors are likely to be the most struck with the great ad vance which this treatise (The Senses and Intellect) constitutes over what those predeces sors had done. and the improved position in which it places their theory." "With analytic powers comparable to those of his most distin guished predecessors, he combines a range of appropriate knowledge still wider than theirs; having made a more accurate study than perhaps any previous psychologist of the whole round of physical sciences." The most important modifi cation made by Bain in the doctrine of associa tion was the introduction of a new element in mental development—the tendency to spontaneous movement. "He holds that the brain does not act solely in obedience to impulses, but is also a self-acting instrument; that the nervous in fluence which . . . excites the muscles into ac tion is generated automatically in the brain itself; not, of course, lawlessly and without a eause, but under the organic stimulus of nutri tion." His work is marked by a spirit of precise analysis and zealous accuracy. It represents the high - water mark of English associationism. Consult: Mill. Dissertations and Discussions (New York, 1874) ; Ribot, Contemporary English Psychology (New York, 1873).