BAIN, ALEXANDER. - Scottish philosopher and pedagogist, b. in Aberdeen in 1818, d. there in 1903. He taught at the Universities of Glasgow, London, and Aberdeen.
Principal works, besides various popularizations of science and literary publications: *The Senses and the Intellect*, Oxford 1855; *The Emotions and the Will*, 1859; *The Study of Character*, 1861; *Compendium of Psychology and Ethics*, London 1868; *Logic Deductive and Inductive*, 1870; *The Relations of Mind and Body*, 1873; *Education as a Science*, 1879, etc. In 1876 he founded the journal *Mind*, in which he published various essays.
B. is the last great representative and foremost systematic exponent of the classical associationist school. His thought is the direct continuation of that of J. Stuart Mill, his teacher and friend, and may be summarized in his having extended the principle of association to the processes of willing, in the recognition of the importance of physiological factors, and in the constructive function that the sensation of muscular effort has in the genesis of perceptions (Fabo). In associations he distinguishes two basic forms: of contiguity and of similarity. Yet, by admitting attention among the factors under whose influence associations are formed, he weakens the mechanicity of associationism. B. also concerned himself with pedagogy, naturally in a positivistic sense, dealing exclusively with questions of teaching and school discipline. B. marks a transitional phase in the history of psychology. He sought to give his researches a more decisively experimental importance, so as to be defined as the epigone of philosophical psychology and the herald of experimental-philosophical psychology.