(Dr John), author of the Elementa Medici, &c., was born in the village of Dunle, or, as some say, Lintlaw, in the county of Berwick, in the year 1735. His parents were of mean condition, but much respected in the neighbourhood for the integrity of their lives. His father gained his livelihood in the humble capacity of a day-labourer; while his mother contributed her share towards the support of the family by the profits arising from a milch cow.

Such were the persons who, in an obscure part of the country, gave birth to a son destined, at a future period, to make a distinguished figure in the republic of letters; and from whom originated a system of the animal economy, which, whatever be its real merits, has undoubtedly produced a considerable revolution in the practice of medicine.

At the age of three or four years, young Brown was put to a reading school in Dunle, which he himself commemorates as the place rather of his education than of his nativity. Here, under the tuition of an old woman, he very early began to exhibit marks of that strength of mind for which he was afterwards so eminently distinguished. In the short period of a year he became able to read with facility any part of the Bible, and acquired over his class-fellows that superiority which he ever after maintained both at school and college.

It was almost immediately after his entrance into this school, that his insatiable desire of reading commenced, and to unremitting was his application, that he is said never to have been found, even at those hours which children much more advanced in life devote to amusement, without a book in his hand.

While he was making this rapid progress in the rudiments of literature, he suffered what must have appeared to be a very heavy loss in the death of his father; but his mother soon afterwards married a worthy man of the same name, whose care and attention supplied the place of a father to her son. This man being a weaver, designed to educate his son-in-law to the same business, and began to instruct him in his art when he was about nine years of age; but the taste which young Brown had already acquired for letters, made him look with disgust on the insipid employment of a weaver. His stepfather was no tyrant, and his mother was affectionate. They were both proud of the talents which at so early a period of life had appeared in their son, and they felt no inclination to struggle with the invincible aversion which he expressed to the business for which they intended him.

Another circumstance, however, contributed in no small degree to make them recall their original resolution. They were both of that sect of religiousists which in Scotland are called Seceders (see SECEDERS, Encycl.), and it was suggested to them by some persons of their own persuasion, who had remarked the uncommon abilities of the boy, that he might one day prove an able support and promoter of their tenets as a preacher. He Brown was accordingly, much to his satisfaction, taken away from the business to which he had conceived such a distaste, and sent to the grammar-school of Dunfermline, which was taught at that time by a gentleman of the name of Cruickshank, eminent for his grammatical knowledge. Here he appears to have spent some years with uncommon advantage and happiness; during which he was esteemed by all the country round as a kind of prodigy. Like Johnson, and many other men of the highest celebrity, he united in the same person uncommon powers of mind, with so less strength of body, as indeed his appearance indicated; and in his youth he insured his own personal importance among his schoolfellows, by excelling them not less in athletic exercises than in the tasks prescribed by their master. He was particularly fond, when a boy, of practising the pugilistic art; and indeed until the last period of his life he was observed by his friends always to view an exhibition of that kind with peculiar relish. He also prided himself much in being a stout walker; and mentions his having, in one day, accomplished, when but fifteen years of age, a journey of fifty miles between Berwick-upon-Tweed and Morpeth in Northumberland. When farther advanced in life, he travelled on foot from four in the afternoon of one day to two in the afternoon of next day, with the short interval of one hour's rest! But as one of his biographers very justly observes, "we have seen that he could make a more rational use of his strength than merely to flake it against time and space."

His early years while at school were marked by the most rigid attachment to his feet. So strict indeed were his religious sentiments, if a boy of ten or eleven can be said to have any sentiments deserving to be called religious, that he would have conceived the holding of any communion with the established church as a kind of profanation. An event, however, happened, some time between the eleventh and thirteenth years of his age, which produced a total and unexpected revolution in his religious opinions. At a meeting of the provincial synod of Morpeth and Jedburgh, he was prevailed upon, though not without manifesting much reluctance, to accompany a party of his schoolfellows to the parish church of Dunfermline. The consequence of this transgression, as he had dreaded, was an immediate summons to appear before the session of the Seceding congregation; to which, through pride, not choosing to attend, in order to preclude a formal expulsion, he voluntarily abjured their tenets, and openly avowed his apostacy to the establishment.

All changes in religion which are not the consequence of candid investigation are dangerous. He who leaves one feet he knows not why, will quickly abandon, with as little reason, that to which in a fit of passion he had hasty joined himself. From the moment of his quitting the communion of the Seceders, Brown's religious ardour suffered a gradual abatement; and though, to please his mother, he continued to prosecute his studies with a view to the office of a clergyman in the church of Scotland, his opinions became daily more and more lax, and his life of course less and less regular. It was, however, a considerable time before he admitted, in their full extent, those principles of irreligion which he afterwards avowed; for upon his first perusing the Essays of Mr. Hume, though his own zeal was then much cooled, he expressed great indignation at their dangerous tendency.

At the age of twelve years he had been employed by Mr. Cruickshank as a kind of usher in the school of Dunfermline; and that gentleman having declared that his knowledge of the Latin language was equal to his own, his fame as a scholar was so spread over the country, that at the age of thirteen he was entrusted with the education of a gentleman's son in the neighbourhood, when he quitted the school and his beloved matter. In his new situation, however, he remained not long. Dr Beddoes conjectures, that to the stiffness of pedantry he added the journies of a bigot, and was therefore a disagreeable inmate of the family. That a boy of thirteen, proud of his talents, and prouder of his learning, should have the stiffness of a pedant, is indeed extremely probable; it was the natural consequence of the praise with which he had been honoured by Mr. Cruickshank; but there is reason to believe that of his original bigotry few traces now remained. The real cause of his dismission from the family, we are assured, was his pride; and as it must have been the pride of parts, it confirms the first part of Dr Beddoes's conjecture.

It seems he was much displeased that, when company were at dinner, he was not desired to remain after the cloth was removed; and yet it he was then only thirteen years of age, it is not easy to conceive for what purpose he should have laid. He could not possibly know much of the world, or of any thing likely to employ the conversation of country gentlemen; and we cannot help thinking, that the matter of the house would have treated his guests with rudeness had he detained among them a raw boy to listen to every unguarded expression which might escape them over their wine. It would appear, however, that he was not unwilling to give the tutor of his son an opportunity of displaying his abilities, when such subjects were introduced as he knew him to have studied; for a dispute having arisen, one day after Brown had retired to his own room, concerning the decrees of Providence, he sent to request his opinions on that abstract subject. By the messenger Brown returned a verbal answer, that "the decrees of Providence are very unjust, for having made blockheads heirs."

Mr Cruickshank had some time before requested him to return to the situation which he had formerly held in the school of Dunfermline; and we cannot wonder that, immediately after making this insolent answer, he found it convenient to comply with his request. He was now about fifteen, and he continued in the school till the twentieth year of his age; during which time, from the constant habit of teaching the Latin and Greek languages, he acquired a wonderful facility in reading both these languages, and in writing the former, though he wrote not with taste.

About this time it occurred to him that he might turn his classical acquirements to more account, by becoming a private teacher of languages in Edinburgh. To that city he accordingly repaired, where, while he obtained a livelihood as a teacher, he proposed at the same time to pursue his theological studies at the university. But an accident happened to him here which made him altogether change the plan he had come upon; and the death of his mother, after a residence of some time in Edinburgh, absolved him, as he thought, from the promise which which he had made to her of appearing one day in the pulpit. Shortly after an unsuccessful competition for one of the chairs then vacant in the high-school, an application was made to a friend of his for a proper person to turn a medical thesis into Latin. Brown was recommended. He was limited to a certain time; within which it appeared scarcely practicable to perform the task. He accomplished it, however, and in such a style of grammatical correctness and purity as far exceeded the general run of such productions. On this being remarked to him by his friends, he observed, "that he now knew his strength, and was ambitious of rising in his carriage as a physician." He therefore determined to apply himself with ardour to the study of medicine, to which this accidental circumstance alone directed his attention. Accordingly, at the commencement of the next winter session, he addressed a Latin letter to each of the medical professors, and by them was presented with tickets of admittance to their several classes.

From such a favourable beginning, being of a very fawning disposition, he conceived the most flattering expectations of his future success; and indeed for some time he seems to have lived in affluent circumstances. His attainments were so various, and in such request in Edinburgh, that as a single man he could scarcely fail to gain a competent living; for during the last five years of his residence under Mr. Cruickshank, to a thorough acquaintance with ancient history, he had added a very considerable knowledge of mathematics; in which, among other branches of science, he never had any objection to give instructions. In the acquisition of that variety of knowledge which he possessed, he was greatly assisted by a most tenacious memory; to the retention of which an old school-fellow bears testimony, by affirming, that "after once reading over the lesson, consisting of two octavo pages in Latin, he would lay aside the book, and perlect the whole over without mistaking a single word."

Brown, already in easy circumstances for an individual, saw, or thought he saw, in the establishment of a boarding-house for students a resource which would enable him to maintain a family; and in expectation of realizing this prospect, he married, in 1765, the daughter of a respectable tradesman in Edinburgh. The distinguished attention at that time paid him by Dr. Cullen, in whose family he had become a necessary person, contributed in all probability to strengthen his hopes that his house would be filled with proper boarders through the Doctor's recommendation. His success in this way for some time answered his most fawning expectations; and his circumstances at one period were so flourishing, that he is said to have kept a one-horse chaise.

It was, perhaps, the greatest misfortune that could have befallen Brown, that he possessed, in a high degree, those talents which make a man's company sought after by the gay and the dissipated. He was capable of "setting the table in a roar." We need not therefore wonder at his frequently neglecting more necessary pursuits to enjoy the conviviality of the numerous friends who courted his company; or that drinking and dissipation became habitual to him. He was as deficient in point of prudence as he excelled in genius. His house was filled with respectable boarders; but as he lived too splendidly for an income at best but precarious, he became gradually involved in debt, and his affairs were still more embarrassed by the burden of a numerous family. Soon after he began to be involved in these difficulties, he suffered an additional loss in being deprived of the patronage of Dr. Cullen, in consequence of a disagreement that had taken place between them. This enmity, which had for some time before secretly subsisted, probably from mutual jealousy, was at length excited into an open rupture; first, by Dr. Cullen's not exerting his interest in procuring for Brown the theoretical chair of medicine, then vacant in consequence either of the death or resignation of Dr. Alexander Monto-Drummond; and, secondly, by his rejecting, some time after, Brown's petition for admittance into the Edinburgh Philosophical Society.

In 1776 Brown was elected president of the Medical Society; and the same honour was again conferred on him in 1780. He was led on, in the gradual manner he himself describes in his matterly preface to the Elementa Medicine, to the discovery of his new doctrine; which, on dropping all correspondence with his former friend and benefactor, he now, for the first time, began to illustrate in a course of public lectures; and in these he displayed equal ingenuity and philosophical profusion. Much about the time of which we now speak, he published the first edition of the Elementa Medicine; a work which certainly proves its author to have been a man of uncommon genius and originality of thought. The circumstances in which this work was composed reflect great honour on his abilities. He never retired to his study; but, totally absorbed in his own ideas, wrote with the greatest tranquillity amidst the noise of ten children, occasionally settling their childish differences.

In the year 1779, though he had studied medicine ten or twelve years at the university of Edinburgh, he was prevailed upon by his friends to take a degree at St. Andrews, where he gave a conspicuous proof of his facility in Latin composition. He wrote a thesis, or inaugural dissertation, in the tavern while the cloth was laying for dinner; and one of his companions, who was fingering beside him, having uttered a false note, or sung out of tune, Mr. Brown, in the middle of his writing, flopped to show him how the song ought to be sung, and then instantly proceeded in his thesis.

His family having now become so numerous as to render keeping a boarding-house inconvenient, he had already for some time given it up, and depended for support entirely on his practice as a physician and his public lectures. At this time, the disputes between the Cullenians and the Brunonians (as the young men now styled themselves) were carried on with such acrimony on both sides, in the different societies, that it was not unusual for them to terminate in duels; and there exists at this day, on the records of the Medical Society, a law which it was thought expedient to enact, by which a member who challenges another for anything said in public debate incurs the penalty of expulsion.

Observing the students of medicine frequently to seek initiation into the mysteries of free-masonry, Dr. Brown thought their youthful curiosity afforded him a chance of profiteers. In 1784, he instituted a meeting of that fraternity, and intitled it the Lodge of the Roman Eagle. The business was conducted in the Latin language, which he spoke with the same fluency as Scotch; and he displayed much ingenuity in turning into Latin all the terms used in masonry. As the terms on which he lived with his brethren of the faculty were such that he obstinately avoided meeting them even in consultation, we may conclude that his own private practice was but limited. His friends affirmed, perhaps without sufficient proof, that cabals were formed against him, and every advantage taken of the errors he was led to commit by his own imprudence. After a long series of struggles, therefore, hoping to meet with that encouragement among the English of which he had been disappointed in his own country, he put into practice a plan upon which he had long meditated, and removed in 1786 with part of his family to London. Immediately on his arrival, an incident befell him, which Dr Beddoes says he has heard the late Mr Murray, bookseller in Fleet-street, relate as a proof of his simplicity. The peculiarity of his appearance, as he moved along (a short square figure, with an air of dignity, in a black suit, which heightened the scarlet of his cheeks and nose) fixed the attention of some gentlemen in the street. They addressed him in the dialect of his country. His heart, heavy as it must have been, from the precariousness of his situation, and distance from his accustomed haunts, expanded at these agreeable sounds. A conversation ensued; and the parties, by common consent, adjourned to a tavern. Here the stranger was kindly welcomed to town; and, after the glass had circulated for a time, something was proposed by way of sober amusement—a game at cards, or whatever the Doctor might prefer. The Doctor had been too civilly treated to demur; but his purse was scantily furnished, and it was necessary to quit his new friends in search of a supply. Mr Murray was the person to whom he had recourse; the reader will not wonder that his interference should have spoiled the adventure.

A London sharper, of another denomination, afterwards tried to make advantage by the Doctor. This was an ingenious speculator in public medicines. He thought a composition of the most powerful stimulants might have a run, under the title of Dr Brown's exciting pill; and, for the privilege of his name, offered him a sum in hand by no means contemptible, as well as a share of the contingent profits. Poor Brown, needy as he was, spurned at the proposal.

After this period, his life affords little variety of incident. Like Avicenna, his time seems to have been spent between his literary pursuits and his pleasures. A splendid manner of living, without an income to support it, had become habitual to him: The consequence was, that, from inability to discharge certain debts he had contracted, he was thrown into the king's bench prison; from which, however, he was, not long afterwards, released by the exertions of a few firm friends, particularly Mr Maddison of Charing-cross, a gentleman universally respected for his well-known benevolence. As a proof of the activity he was still capable of exerting, it will be sufficient to mention, that he accomplished the translation of his Elements, with the addition of the supplementary notes, within 23 days, having been informed that a translation of the same was about to be published by another person.

Shortly before his death, the ambassador of the king of Prussia, in the name of his master, made Dr Brown an offer of a settlement in the court of Berlin; during the negociation of which, he was unexpectedly cut off by an apoplexy early in the morning of the 7th of October 1788, the day succeeding that on which he had delivered to a company of thirteen gentlemen the greater part of the introductory lecture to his second course. At his death, he was between 52 and 53 years of age. His remains were interred in the churchyard of St James's, Piccadilly; and the only monument left behind him to transmit his name to posterity is his own works; which, when personal prejudice no longer shall prevail against their ingenious author, cannot fail to procure him all that deserved celebrity which they have already, in part, obtained in the different countries of Europe.

In 1787, he published his "Observations," without his name, which he afterwards, however, refers to in the Elements as his own. The "Enquiry," said to be written by Dr Jones, and which was composed in as short a time as the generality of men would transcribe a work of its extent, we can affirm, from undoubted authority, to be his production.

This sketch of the life of the unfortunate Dr Brown would be of very little value, if not followed by a view of his system; but to give a complete view of that system would far exceed the limits within which, in a work like this, such articles must be confined. We trust, therefore, that our readers will be satisfied with an abstract; and as we are neither the partisans nor opponents of the Doctor, and not very partial to any medical system whatever, we shall content ourselves with inserting, in this place, the view which Dr Beddoes has given of Dr Brown's fundamental propositions in the valuable observations which he has prefixed to his edition of the Elements of Medicine.

"The varied structure of organized beings (says Dr Beddoes), it is the business of anatomy to explain. Consciousness, afflired by common observation, will distinguish animated from inanimate bodies with precision more than sufficient for all the ends of medicine. The cause of gravitation has been left unexplored by all prudent philosophers; and Brown, avoiding all useless disquisition concerning the cause of vitality, confines himself to the phenomena which this great moving principle in nature may be observed to produce. His most general propositions are easy of comprehension.

"1. To every animated being is allotted a certain portion only of the quality or principle on which the phenomena of life depend. This principle is denominated excitability.

"2. The excitability varies in different animals, and in the same animal at different times. As it is more intense, the animal is more vivacious or more susceptible of the action of exciting powers.

"3. Exciting powers may be referred to two classes. 1. External; as heat, food, wine, poisons, contagions, the blood, seereted fluids, and air. 2. Internal; as the functions of the body itself, muscular exertion, thinking, emotion, and passion.

"4. Life is a forced state; if the exciting powers are withdrawn, death ensues as certainly as when the excitability is gone.

"5. The excitement may be too great, too small, or in just measure.

"6. By too great excitement, weakness is induced; because the excitability becomes defective; this is indicated debility; when the exciting powers or stimulants are..." are withheld; weakness is induced; and this is direct debility. Here the excitability is in excess.

7. Every power that acts on the living frame is stimulant, or produces excitement by expending excitability. Thus, although a person, accustomed to animal food, may grow weak if he lives upon vegetables, still the vegetable diet can only be considered as producing an effect, the same in kind with animals, though inferior in degree. Whatever powers, therefore, we imagine, and however they vary from such as are habitually applied to produce due excitement, they can only weaken the system by urging it into too much motion, or suffering it to sink into languor.

8. Excitability is seated in the medullary portion of the nerves, and in the muscles. As soon as it is anywhere affected, it is immediately affected everywhere; nor is the excitement ever increased in a part, while it is generally diminished in the system; in other words, different parts can never be in opposite states of excitement.

I have already spoken of an illustration, drawn up by Mr Christie from a familiar operation, to facilitate the conception of Brown's fundamental positions. I introduce it here as more likely to answer its purpose than if separately placed at the end of my preliminary observations. Suppose a fire to be made in a grate, filled with a kind of fuel not very combustible, and which could only be kept burning by means of a machine containing several tubes, placed before it, and constantly pouring streams of air into it. Suppose also a pipe to be fixed in the back of the chimney, through which a constant supply of fresh fuel was gradually let down into the grate, to repair the waste occasioned by the flame, kept up by the air machine.

The grate will represent the human frame; the fuel in it, the matter of life—the excitability of Dr Brown, and the sensorial power of Dr Darwin; the tube behind, supplying fresh fuel, will denote the power of all living systems, constantly to regenerate or reproduce excitability; while the air machine, of several tubes, denotes the various stimuli applied to the excitability of the body; and the flame drawn forth in consequence of that application represents life, the product of the exciting powers acting upon the excitability.

As Dr Brown has defined life to be a forced state, it is fitly represented by a flame forcibly drawn forth from fuel little disposed to combustion, by the constant application of streams of air poured into it from the different tubes of a machine. If some of these tubes are supposed to convey pure or dephlogisticated air, they will denote the highest class of exciting powers, opium, musk, camphor, spirits, wine, tobacco, &c., the diffusive stimuli of Dr Brown, which bring forth for a time a greater quantity of life than usual, as the blowing in of pure air into a fire will temporarily draw forth an uncommon quantity of flame. If others of the tubes be supposed to convey common or atmospheric air, they will represent the ordinary exciting powers, or stimuli, applied to the human frame, such as heat, light, air, food, drink, &c., while such as convey impure and inflammable air may be used to denote what have formerly been termed sedative powers, such as poisons, contagious maladies, foul air, &c.

The reader will now probably be at no loss to understand the seeming paradox of the Brunonian system; that food, drink, and all the powers applied to the body, though they support life, yet consume it; for he knows, will see, that the application of these powers, though it brings forth life, yet at the same time it wastes the excitability or matter of life, just as the air blown into the fire brings forth more flame, but wastes the fuel or matter of fire. This is conformable to the common saying, "the more a spark is blown, the brighter it burns, and the sooner it is spent." A Roman poet has given us, without intending it, an excellent illustration of the Brunonian system, when he says,

"Balsae, vina, Venus, consumunt corpora nostra; Sed vitam faciunt balsae, vina, Venus. Wine, warmth, and love, our vigour drain; Yet wine, warmth, love, our life sustain."

Or to translate it more literally,

"Baths, women, wine, exhaust our frame; But life itself is drawn from them."

Equally easy will it be to illustrate the two kinds of debility, termed direct and indirect, which, according to Brown, are the cause of all diseases. If the quantity of stimulus, or exciting power, is proportioned to the quantity of excitability, that is, if no more excitement is drawn forth than is equal to the quantity of excitability produced, the human frame will be in a state of health, just as the fire will be in a vigorous state when no more air is blown in than is sufficient to consume the fresh supply of fuel constantly poured down by the tube behind. If a sufficient quantity of stimulus is not applied, or air not blown in, the excitability in the man, and the fuel in the fire, will accumulate, producing direct debility; for the man will become weak, and the fire low. Carried to a certain degree, they will occasion death to the first, and extinction to the last. If, again, an over proportion of stimulus be applied, or too much air blown in, the excitability will soon be wasted, and the matter of fuel almost spent. Hence will arise indirect debility, producing the same weaknesses in the man, and lowness in the fire, as before, and equally terminating, when carried to a certain degree, in death and extinction.

As all the diseases of the body, according to Dr Brown, are occasioned by direct or indirect debility, in consequence of too much or too little stimuli, to all the defects of the fire must arise from direct or indirect lowness, in consequence of too much or too little air blown into it. As Brown taught that one debility was never to be cured by another, but both by the more judicious application of stimuli, so will be found the case in treating the defects of the fire. If the fire has become low, or the man weak, by the want of the needful quantity of stimulus, more must be applied, but very gently at first, and increased by degrees, lest a strong stimulus applied to the accumulated excitability should produce death; as in the case of a limb benumbed with cold (that is, weakened by the accumulation of its excitability in consequence of the abstraction of the usual stimulus of heat), and suddenly held to the fire, which we know from experience is in danger of mortification, or as in the case of the fire becoming very low by the accumulation of the matter of fuel, when the feeble flame, assailed by a sudden and strong blast of air, would be overpowered and put out, instead of being nourished and increased. Again, if the man or the fire have been rendered rendered indirectly weak, by the application of too much stimulus, we are not suddenly to withdraw the whole, or even a great quantity of the exciting powers or air, for then the weakened life and diminished flame might sink entirely; but we are by little and little to diminish the overplus of stimulus, so as to enable the excitability, or matter of fuel, gradually to recover its proper proportion. Thus a man who has injured his constitution by the abuse of spirituous liquors is not suddenly to be reduced to water alone, as is the practice of some physicians, but he is to be treated as the judicious Dr Pitcairn of Edinburgh is said to have treated a Highland chieftain, who applied to him for advice in this situation. The Doctor gave him no medicines, and only exacted a promise of him, that he would every day put in as much wax into the wooden gusset, out of which he drank his whisky, as would receive the impression of his arms. The wax thus gradually accumulating, diminished daily the quantity of the whisky, till the whole gusset was filled with wax; and the chieftain was thus gradually, and without injury to his constitution, cured of the habit of drinking spirits.

These analogies might be pursued farther; but my object is solely to furnish some general ideas, to prepare the reader for entering more easily into the Brunonian theory, which I think he will be enabled to do after perusing what I have said. The great excellence of that theory, as applied, not only to the practice of physic, but to the general conduct of the health, is, that it impresses on the mind a sense of the impropriety and danger of going from one extreme to another. The human frame is capable of enduring great varieties, if time be given it, to accommodate itself to different states. All the mischief is done in the transition from one state to another. In a state of low excitement we are not rashly to induce a state of high excitement, nor when elevated to the latter, are we suddenly to descend to the former, but step by step, and as one who from the top of a high tower descends to the ground. From hasty and violent changes, the human frame always suffers; its particles are torn asunder, its organs injured, the vital principle impaired, and disease, often death, is the inevitable consequence.

I have only to add, that though in this illustration of the Brunonian system (written several years ago), I have spoken of a tube constantly pouring in fresh fuel, because I could not otherwise convey to the reader a familiar idea of the power possessed by all living systems, to renew their excitability when exhausted; yet it may be proper to inform the student, that Dr Brown supposed every living system to have received at the beginning its determinate portion of excitability; and, therefore, although he spoke of the exhaustion, augmentation, and even renewal of excitability, I do not think it was his intention to induce his pupils to think of it as a kind of fluid substance existing in the animal, and subject to the law by which such substances are governed. According to him, excitability was an unknown something, subject to peculiar laws of its own, and whose different states we were obliged to describe (though inaccurately) by terms borrowed from the qualities of material substances.

The Brunonian system has frequently been charged with promoting intemperance. The objection is serious; but the view already given of its principles shews it to be groundless. No writer had insisted so much upon the dependence of life on external causes, or so strongly stated the inevitable consequences of excess. And there are no means of promoting morality upon which we can rely, except the knowledge of the true relations between man and other beings or bodies. For by this knowledge we are directly led to shun what is hurtful, and pursue what is salutary; and in what else does moral conduct, as far it regards the individual, consist? It may be said that the author's life disproves the justness of this representation; his life, however, only shews the superior power of other causes, and of bad habits in particular; and I am ready to acknowledge the little efficacy of instruction when bad habits are formed. Its great use consists in preventing their formation; for which reason popular instruction in medicine would contribute more to the happiness of the human species, than the complete knowledge of everything which is attempted to be taught in education, as it is conducted at present. But though the principles of the system in question did not correct the propensities of its inventor, it does not follow that they tend to produce the same propensities in others.