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Born in Aberdeen on the
11th June, 1818, Professor Alexander Bain was in the eighty-sixth year
of his age when he died, at Ferryhill Lodge, in his native city, on the
18th September, 1903. The length of his life was a marvel to those who
knew him in earlier days; for he was then fragile and delicate in
health, and few who were acquainted with him when he returned to
Aberdeen in 1860 to occupy the Chair of Logic at the University would
have predicted for him a life of more than a few years’ duration. The
secret of it was his indomitable spirit and his deliberate acceptance of
a strict regimen, not to be interfered with save for the most cogent
reasons and on the rarest occasions. His daily life, at any rate from
the beginning of his professorial days, was portioned out in the most
methodical manner. There was a time for work and a time for exercise, a
time for diet and a time for rest, to which he adhered, not only when he
lived at home, but when he travelled abroad and when he visited friends.
A pure holiday, in the sense of absolute cessation for the meantime from
the usual task, was unknown to him; and the fulness of his life was
conditioned by the regularity and simlpicity of his habits.
In boyhood he had a hard struggle. His father, who had been a soldier,
was a handloom weaver, and the son, when he got beyond the message-boy
stage, had to help in his occupation. This continued even during Bain’s
student days at the University; and people still living remember the
eager intellectual youth, after returning from Marischal College,
doffing the red academic gown, throwing it on the loom, and proceeding
with the manual duty, albeit having a book open before him. It is the
story of genius asserting itself. When attending Gilcomston School as a
boy, he attracted the notice of one of the Marischal College professors
(Dr. Cruickshank), who was surprised, on examining him, to find the
extent and accuracy of his knowledge. The result was that, somewhat
later on, he was taken by the hand by Dr. Cruickshank, through whose
encouragement and that of several other cultured Aberdonians young Bain
was able to enter Marischal College at the age of eighteen, in 1836.
Previously to this, however, he had given proof of his mental faculty to
a band of aspiring youths with whom he associated, and who all
recognised in him a leading spirit. The result was that, when a
political dinner was given to James Adam, editor of the Aberdeen Herald
(the local Liberal paper of the time), young Bain’s reputation for able
speaking was such that, although he had only just entered his first year
at Marischal College (or, in northern academic phraseology, he had
become a bajan), he was selected to return thanks for the toast of
Principal Dewar and Marischal College, and did so in a speech (a report
of which is still extant) that gave no uncertain indication of the
psychological and dialectical power that he was yet to display.
His University course was a brilliant one; and he graduated M.A. with
highest honours, having carried off, in the previous year, the blue
ribbon of the Gray mathematical bursary of £30, tenable for two years.
Perhaps, however, the main significance of his student days lay here,
that he came under the influence of two very strong men — Dr.
Cruickshank, Professor of Mathematics, and Professor Thomas Clark, the
Chemist, — to whom he often referred in after-life with much
appreciation, and to whom he was not slow to acknowledge his
indebtedness; and he derived also a lasting stimulus from Dr. William
Knight, Professor of Natural Philosophy, in whose subject he excelled.
He was, further, the first man of his time in the class of Moral
Philosophy, under Dr. Glennie—for whom he was presently to act as a
substitute during four years of the Professor’s illness. It was this
combination of mathematical and scientific knowledge with philosophical
acquirements that early laid the foundation of that ready faculty of
illustrating logical principles and psychological processes from the
departments of science that was to characterise his writings later on.
There is no need for me to pursue the narrative in detail. It was during
his University course also that by a criticism of Sir John Herschell he
was first brought into contact with J. S. Mill, through John Robertson,
a fellow-Aberdonian, then joint-editor of the London and Westminster
Review; and thus began an acquaintence which ripened into a close
friendship that ceased only with death.
After various annual summer visits to London, Bain settled there for a
time, having received an appointment under the Board of Health, where
his chief was his intimate friend, Edwin Chadwick. He soon came into
close contact with the leaders of thought, including George Grote and
George Henry Lewes. He was now fully on his way to intellectual
eminence. His first work—The Senses and the Intellect—appeared in 1855,
and marked what may almost be designated an epoch in British psychology.
Those who know what psychology was before the appearance of this
treatise and what it by-and-by became, in great measure through this
presentation of a new standpoint and the application of a new method,
are aware of the immense debt that psychology owes to Bain. It was not
only that he improved the subject—he revolutionized it. And when, four
years later, The Emotions and the Will appeared, psychological workers
in our country felt they had now got a real advance in a department of
investigation whose methods had lain under the imputation of being loose
and non-scientific. The effect was soon apparent. The principles
enunciated were taken up and applied in many directions; and the abiding
tribute to the worth of the treatises lies in this, that what is best in
them has been assimilated by more recent psychologists, and that, even
when the debt is unacknowledged, no psychologist at the present moment
can free himself from the influence of them—he works, of necessity, in
the atmosphere they created.
But it is a mistake to suppose that Bain’s psychology is confined to his
two great psychological treatises. His educational volumes too are
permeated by his psychological views. Not a few teachers have complained
that his Education as a Science is dry and hard to master, and so have
set themselves to decry it. They could scarcely have expected to do
otherwise. Only one of two courses was open to them—either to submit
themselves to be taught scientifically on psychological lines or else to
oppose. But the value of the book is not to be estimated by counting
heads. The educational work has yet to be written that surpasses it in
clear insight into the psychological principles that underlie education
and in the masterly application of these principles to the case in hand.
In like manner, psychology permeates his Rhetoric—more especially in the
latest two-volumed edition. The analysis of the intellectual and of the
emotional qualities of style is psychological to a degree; the very
figures of speech are grouped under the two psychological headings of
Similarity and Contiguity; and, if a full and adequate idea is to be
obtained of Bain’s handling of the Emotions, it is to be got only by
adding to the presentation in The Emotions and the Will the analysis and
treatment in this latest form of the Rhetoric.
Nor is Bain’s psychology to be estimated solely by the earlier
presentment of it. In some of the notices that have appeared since his
death, his doctrines have been criticised on the basis of the first or
the second edition of his writings; and some have even expressed their
surprise that he had so little appreciation of the doctrine of
Evolution. The best answer to any such criticism is to refer the critic
to the third edition of
The Emotions and the Will, and to the fourth
edition of The Senses and the Intellect and the
Dissertations on Leading
Philosophical Topics (mainly reprints from Mind). It is there that
Bain’s fullest and maturest views are to be found; and it is by these
that his teaching should be judged.
As a logician, Bain followed J. S. Mill; but not without many
emendations, restrictions, and additions. His early intimacy with the
writings of Comte led him to place stress on the classification of the
sciences; and so he introduced a section in his Logic on this very
subject. In like manner, his scientific knowledge and his wide
scientific interest constrained him to view Causation in the light of
the Conservation of Energy, and made possible the detailed handling of
the logical aspects of the Sciences that we find in Book V. of the
Logic. His dissent, on the other hand, from the claim that Mill’s theory
of reasoning had bridged the chasm between induction and deduction led
him to expound his own views of the function and value of the syllogism.
But the logician comes out also in other of his writings than those
devoted specially to logic. In particular, it is conspicuous in his
treatises on Grammar. Indeed, his
English Grammar has recently been
designated the only logical grammar in the English language. That
certainly is its merit, though it will be regarded as its defect by
those who maintain that logic has nothing to do with grammar. Logic has
to do with every department of knowledge, according to Bain; and he revelled in the practical applications of logical doctrines. He was a
master of method in the best sense of the term—not only preaching the
theory but amply exemplifying the practice.
It was thus that he was able to revolutionise the teaching of English in
the Northern Counties of Scotland—which he did in the sixties partly by
his published writings and partly by his prelections in the Chair of
Logic (for, in those days, English was taught, in Aberdeen University,
by the Professor of Logic). Lennie and the contemporary authorities had
to be superseded, and the wooden method of dinning into thee pupil a
number of rules to be learned by rote without perception of their real
meaning, had to be replaced by the method of awakening in the pupil
intelligent appreciation of the principles involved and of creating,
through practice, a ready and accurate use of them. The plan and the
procedure were distinctively logical, and they had their limitations;
but testimony to their value is borne by the fact that hundreds of
Aberdeen graduates scattered throughout the world, many of them
occupying high educational positions, are forward to acknowledge their
indebtedness to the English teaching that they received from Dr. Bain in
their University days.
As a teacher in the class, Bain occupied a unique position. He was a
strict disciplinarian (an inheritance, no doubt, from Professor
Cruickshank and Knight) but his own personality commanded respect and
obedience. His gestures, as well as his voice, were very significant,
and told with effect upon his audience; and, as his expositions were
always lucid and methodical and aided by unlimited supply of appropriate
illustrations drawn from all the provinces of literature and science,
the interest of the student was secured, and his attention easily
maintained. Moreover, the impression that he made upon his pupils was
that of a master of his subject. He was no mere follower even in his
mode of lecturing: everything he did had a touch of individuality, and
his examination papers (especially in English) were drawn up in a manner
different from that of everybody else.
In University affairs, he was always in the van of reform. He had a keen
appreciation of the defects, and a definite perception of how they might
be remedied. Nor could he rest satisfied till some attempt were made to
remedy. Nor could he rest satisfied till some attempt were made to
remedy. Hence, he advocated strenuously in the Senatus and in the
General Council (and, later, in the University Court), and at first
almost alone, the necessity for a Royal Commission, which should
legislate for the widening of the curriculum, making provision for
certain options, and giving science and modern languages their due place
(as against the practical monopoly enjoyed by the classics) in a
University education. For years, he was a voice crying in the
wildnerness; but undaunted he went on, and, when the change actually
came in 1890, on the lines that he had advocated, he had the
satisfaction of feeling that he had all along been on the side of
progress.
But his educational energy was not confined to matters academic. In his
early days, when as a lad he was educating himself, he had found immense
help in the Mechanics’ Institute of Aberdeen, where lectures were given
to youths struggling to improve their minds and eager to acquire some
knowledge of science and its advance. To this Institution he attached
himself and took active and practical interest in its welfare to the
very last. Similarly, he was a moving spirit in the matter of Free
Public Libraries, and continued a member of Committee of the Aberdeen
Public Library from its beginning till advancing years rendered his
attendance at evening meetings impossible. So also he was an active
member of the first School Board of Aberdeen, on which was laid the task
of starting the new system on right lines. The same educational zeal led
him, not unfrequently, to deliver lectures to scholastic
bodies—sometimes in England, sometimes in Scotland—usually with the view
of initiating discussion, but also for the purpose of imparting
guidance. In this way, his influence came to be felt in many directions
and in diverse quarters. Often he discoursed on educational topics to
the Aberdeen Philosophical Society (the successor of that which Thomas
Reid originated in the eighteenth century), of which he was for many
years president, and to which some of his earliest scientific
contributions were made—going back to the year 1843.
Untiring energy was his characteristic. Possessed of original ideas, he
lost no time in formulating them and spared himself no pains in
spreading a knowledge of them and, if need were, in defending them. He
had also a living interest in the ideas of others, and wished to have
them duly discussed. Hence his noble act of originating this journal
(Mind) and of remaining its sole proprietor during the first sixteen
years of its existence. He was a born controversialist, and delighted in
discussion. He was not seen at his best till he had an opponent directly
to meet. It was then that the keen logical intellect showed its full
strength and manifested a power of dialectic worthy of Aristotle.
But the usually unimpassioned nature had a fount of emotion in it. This
was known only to a select few. It certainly could hardly be gathered
from his writings. His was a manly nature, which scorned to do mean
things; but it was also a generous nature, and a nature interested in
the welfare and thoughtful even for the comforts of others. The few
favourite pupils who came to have intimate relations with him know how
untiring he was in promoting their interests, and how unselfish he was
in helping them in their work to whatever extent they might draw upon
him. Their success gave him unbounded satisfaction. But to his friends
in general (always a limited number) he had an open heart. He entered
alike into their joys and into their sorrows; and, though not
demonstrative, his sympathy was always sincere.
In Dr. Bain’s death, psychology has sustained a great loss; but so too
has education and practical reform. It is rare to find a philosopher who
combines philosophical with educational and practical interests, and who
is also an active force in the community in which he dwells. Such a
combination was here. Let us not fail to appreciate it.
William L. Davidson.
Autobiography
By Alexander Bain, M.A
Edited by William L. Davidson (1904) (pdf)
An English Grammar
By Alexander Bain, M.A. (1863) (pdf)
A First English
Grammar
By Alexander Bain, LL.D. (1872) (pdf)
English
Composition and Rhetoric Manual
By Alexander Bain, M.A. (1863) (pdf)
Logic
By Alexander Bain, M.A.
Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen
Part First |
Part Second (pdf)
The Emotions and the Will
Third Edition by Alexander Bain, LL.D. (1875) (pdf)
Mind Journal
The journal was established in 1876 by the Scottish philosopher Alexander
Bain (University of Aberdeen) with his colleague and former student George
Croom Robertson (University College, London) as editor-in-chief. Volume 1 -
1876 (pdf)
Access to other issues are available
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