Alexander Bain, the Scottish philosopher and psychologist, was the son of a weaver. He was mainly self-educated but managed to attend Marischal College, in his native city of Aberdeen. After graduating he assisted the philosophy professor there from 1841 to 1844. A confirmed radical, Bain established close contacts with utilitarian circles in London, helping John Stuart Mill in the revisions of his unpublished System of Logic in 1842 and helping Edwin Chadwick with his sanitation reforms from 1848 to 1850. During the next decade, supporting himself by journalism, he produced his magnum opus in two installments, titled The Senses and the Intellect (London, 1855) and The Emotions and the Will (London, 1859). Appointed professor of logic and rhetoric at Aberdeen in 1860, he published his Manual of Rhetoric (London, 1864) and his Logic, Deductive and Inductive (London and New York, 1870). On the proceeds of these and other textbooks he founded Mind in 1876, choosing...