BROWN, Thomas.

Observations on the Nature and Tendency of the Doctrine of Mr. Hume, concerning the Relation of Cause and Effect.

Edinburgh,: Printed for Mundell and Son, 1806. SECOND EDITION TP + Errata page+ [5]- 220, Octavo. Second Edition. This second edition is essentially an entirely new work. The first edition from the previous year [1805] was a mere 46-pages while this edition has been expanded to 220 pages. The final enlargement occurring in 1818. This is one of two principle works by Brown - the other being his four-volume work, Lectures in the Philosophy of Mind published in 1820. This book is an important analysis of Hume's theory of causation, inspired by a famous controversy over the appointment of a new professor of mathematics at Edinburgh University. Brown, whom the DNB calls "the last of the Scottish school of metaphysicians," reduces Hume's approach to five separate propositions, analyses them, and concludes that Hume suggests an impossibility: that "in the knowledge of any past sequence, even of that of our own thoughts, [there is] a prototype of the feeling of future invariable sequence." By this means Brown avoids the problem of Hume's theological skepticism. (Chuo University, David Hume, p. 280, no. 54, describing only this second edition.) Brown graduated the University of Edinburgh in medicine - where he attended classes by Dugald Stewart - but quickly became prominent for his philosophical writings. An early contributor to the Edinburgh Review, he attacked Kant in the second issue. "In 1810 he was appointed conjoint professor of moral philosophy with Stewart and took over the teaching duties of the chair. His lectures were a dazzling success, they were published after his death and went through many editions in a few years." (EP, Vol. 1, p. 401) The general tenor of Brown's work was to proceed "further in the empiricist direction. Indeed, he may be regarded as a link between the Scottish philosophy of commons sense and the nineteenth-century empiricism of J. S. Mill and Alexander Bain." (Copelston, vol. 5, part II, p. 185) Brown is in many senses the culmination of the Scottish Common Sense School which began in opposition to Hume and the conclusions of his rigorously applied empiricism but "gradually came nearer, on several important points, to [Hume's] philosophy…" so that "from some of Brown's positions to the position of J. S. Mill there was no great step to be taken." (Copelston, vol. 5, part II, p. 193) Original blue boards, expertly rebacked and lettered in manuscript. (So expertly that this looks like a completely original binding. Only very close inspection reveals the recent work.) Two bookplates to verso of front cover (R. T. Lithgow & Edward, Frederick Sanderson). Contemporary brown ink number ("119") on front free end paper. Contemporary brown ink ownership inscription above the text on the title page ("R-T-Lithgow / Belfast / No 119"). This is a completely untrimmed copy. Overall, a beautiful copy of rare book. PHOTOS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.

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