BROWN, THOMAS (1778-1820). A Scottish metaphysician. born at Kilmabreck. Kirkcud brightshire. He went to Edinburgh in 1792. but without completing the course in arts he began the study of law, and shortly abandoned it for medicine. On completing his medical studies in 1803, he became (1806) the partner of Dr. Greg ory in his large practice. But his strong bent was for literature and philosophical speculation. At the age of 20 he had published a refutation of Darwin's Zoonomie, and he contributed at the outset to the Edinburgh Review. In 1804 ap peared his Inquiry Into the Relation of Cause and Effect, in which he holds that there is noth ing in a cause but the fact of immediate and invariable antecedence to the change called its effect. Dugald Stewart, professor of moral phi losophy in the university, being obliged, from bad health, to retire in 1810, got Brown appoint ed associate, and later as his successor, which office Brown continued to discharge till his death. lie was popular as a professor, and his Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind went through a great many editions. He also
wrote some commonplace poetry. In some im portant respects Brown represented a reaction from the anti-human philosophy of Reid and Stewart in the direction of Ilume's views, but without liume's skepticism. Indeed, he claimed that Reid and Hume were not far apart, except in that the former emphasized the need of a faith in an external world the existence of which could not be proved. Brown followed Berkeley in making the consciousness of spatial external ity a development out of temporal experience, and in general was true to the traditions of the Associationists, making much of 'suggestion.' He is credited with having differentiated for the first tune the important class of muscular !de a t ion s. In his Lectures on Ethics (ed. by Dr. Chalmers, 1856), he derived the moral feeling from the social instincts.