died at Aberdeen on 18 Sept. 1903, and was buried there.
Bain was married twice: (1) in 1855 to Frances A. Wilkinson, who died in 1892; and (2) in 1893 to Barbara Forbes. He had no issue. His portrait by (Sir) George Reid was presented to him in 1883 and hangs in Marischal College. In 1892 his bust by Mr. Bain Smith was presented to the public library of Aberdeen.
Bain was an ardent promoter of education, advocating reform in methods of teaching natural science and the claims of modern languages to a larger place in the curriculum. But his chief claim to notice rests on his work as a psychologist and as an advocate of the application of ‘physiology to the elucidation of mental states.’ One of the first in this country to apply to psychology the results of physiological investigations, he greatly advanced and popularised the science as it is usually understood.
Bain was a conspicuous exponent of what is sometimes termed the a posteriori school of psychology, whose foundation was laid by Hobbes and Locke while its tenets were carried to their extreme consequences by David Hume. The so-called Scottish philosophy of Reid and Dugald Stewart (which was carried on alongside the idealistic system of the German philosophers whose origin may be traced to Descartes) represented a reaction against this school, and James Mill by way of a counter-reaction stoutly maintained that a return must be once more made to Locke. In this conviction he was supported by Bain, who developed more fully the ideas which Mill propounded. He felt that the old psychology which regarded the mind as though it were divided up into separate compartments must be discarded, and, like Mill, he argued that the laws of the human intellect necessarily correspond with the objective laws of nature from which they may be inferred.
Bain and his followers admit that there are certain notions such as extension, solidity, time, and space, which are constructed by the mind itself, the material alone being supplied to it, but they make it their work to trace the process by which the mind constructs its ideas, and believe that the laws by which it operates will be found not to be anything remote or inexplicable, but simply the actual working out of well-known principles. Thus Bain's conclusion is (1) that the phenomena of the mind which seem the more complicated are formed out of the simple and elementary; and (2) that the mental laws by means of which the formation takes place are the laws of association. Bain considers that these laws extend to everything, and he proceeds to inquire how much of the apparent variety of the mental phenomena they are capable of explaining. Then he endeavours to determine the ultimate elements that remain in the mind when everything that can be accounted for by the law or laws of association is deducted, and he proceeds by means of these elements to determine how the remainder of the mental phenomena can be built up with the aid of these same laws. It must not be forgotten, however, that in his later years he laid considerable stress on the part played by heredity in accounting for the facility with which the individual acquires knowledge.
Bain's system of philosophy has been termed materialistic because it endeavours to ascertain the material condition of our mental operations and the connection that exists between mind and body, and also to follow out the development of the higher mental states from the lower. He expounded the association psychology with which his name is connected with lucidity and in great detail, for he possessed an exceptional gift of methodical exposition. He applied natural history methods of classification to psychical phenomena in a manner which gave scientific value to his work, and a knowledge of the physical sciences unusual to a philosopher of his day, conjoined with remarkable analytic powers, enabled him to present his system with effect.
In ethics Bain was a utilitarian, and for the confirmation of his views his appeal was made frankly to experience. He claimed indeed in his psychology to have purged himself of metaphysics, of which, especially in its idealistic development, he had the greatest distrust, regarding metaphysics as having separated itself from the experimental test which he regarded as all-important.
[Autobiography, ed. W. L. Davidson, with bibliography by P. J. Anderson, 1904; Dissertations and Discussions, by John Stuart Mill, 1867; Th. Ribot, La Psychologie anglaise contemporaine, 1870; Blackwood's Mag., July 1904; Mind, April 1904, vol. xiii (new series) by W. L. Davidson; Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edit.; and Hastings' Encyc. Religion and Ethics, ii.]
BAIN, ROBERT NISBET (1854–1909), historical writer and linguist, born in London on 18 November 1854, was eldest son of David Bain, Cape and India merchant (still living in 1912), by his wife
