ertion that within a
certain sphere there are no laws. A physiologist might as well admit
that some vital processes are uncaused.

Brown thus illustrates the gravitation of the 'common-sense'
philosophy to pure empiricism. He was the last in the genuine line of
Scottish common-sense philosophers. When after what may be called the
unphilosophical interregnum which followed Brown's death, Hamilton
became professor, the Scottish tradition was blended with the very
different theories derived from Kant. Upon Brown's version, the
Scottish philosophy had virtually declared itself bankrupt. The
substance of his teaching was that of the very school which his
predecessors had attempted to confute, carefully as the fact might be
hidden by dexterous rhetoric and manipulation of technical terms. He
agrees with Hume's premises, and adopts the method of Condillac. This
was perceived by his most remarkable hearer. Carlyle went to Edinburgh
at the end of 1809. Brown, 'an eloquent, acute little gentleman, full
of enthusiasm about simple suggestions, relative, etc.,' was 'utterly
unprofitable' to him, disspiriting 'as the autumn winds among withered
leaves.'[504] In _Signs of the Times_ (1829) Carlyle gave his view of
the Scottish philosophy generally. They had, he says, started from the
'mechanical' premises suggested by Hume. 'They let loose instinct as
an indiscriminatory bandog to guard them against (his) conclusions':
'they tugged lustily at the logical chain by which Hume was so coldly
towing them and the world into bottomless abysses of Atheism and
Fatalism. But the chain somehow snapped between them, and the issue
has been that nobody now cares about either--any more than about
Hartley's, Darwin's, or Priestley's contemporaneous doings in
England.'[505] The judgment goes to the root of the matter. The method
of Reid inevitably led to this result. Consider the philosophy as
based upon, if not identical with, an inductive science of psychology,
and the end is clear. You may study and analyse the phenomena as
carefully as you please; and may, as the Scottish professors did,
produce, if not a scientific psychology, yet a mass of acute
prolegomena to a science. But the analysis can only reveal the actual
combinations, chemical or mechanical, of thought. The ultimate
principles which the teachers profess to discover are simply
provisional; products not yet analysed, but not therefore incapable of
analysis. It was very desirable to poin