Address of Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, ... the president, delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, on Wednesday, November 30, 1859.

  • Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address of Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, ... the president, delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, on Wednesday, November 30, 1859. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ]0 views on the subject, before other sciences began to partake of this movement, and when they did so, it seems not possible to doubt that it was the result of the impulse which the rapid growth of the physical sciences had communicated to them. That such was the opinion of David Hume as to the influence thus exercised on one class of inquiries in which he was himself engaged, I have already shown. But long before Hume wrote, the same impression had existed on the mind of Locke, as will be suffi- ciently obvious to anyone on reading the Introductory Chapter of his ‘Essay on the Human Understanding.’ In fact Locke had originally directed his attention to Natural Philosophy and Medicine, and his researches in Moral and Intellectual Philosophy were engrafted on his earlier studies. So in the case of Dr. Berkeley : his treatise on ‘ Vision ’ contains the essential part of those doctrines which he after- wards published in his ‘ Treatise on the Principles of Human Know- ledge ; ’ and it is easy to see how, step by step, these gradually arose out of his former studies of Natural Philosophy. I make no reference to the modern German school of metaphysicians, and indeed am quite incompetent to do so. Neither do I refer to another order of meta- physicians, one of whom informs us how ideas and emotions and volitions are produced by big and little vibrations of the molecules of the nervous system ; while another undertakes to explain “ the action of material ideas in the mechanical machines of the brain.” But with regard to the more eminent of our English writers on these subjects, and what has been called the Scotch school of metaphysicians, including Reid, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, and Brown, it may be truly asserted that the advantage which they have had over the dreamy metaphysicians of former times is to be attributed to their having in their mode of inquiry followed the example which had been set them in the study of the physical sciences. 'I must not exhaust your patience by going on to explore so wide a field as that on which I have just entered. The subject is one to which justice cannot be done without a much more ample discussion than would be convenient on an occasion like the present. All that I shall say besides may be comprised in a very few words. In composing his ‘ Essays’ on what is now called Political Economy, we may presume that David Hume’s mind was influenced by the same
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