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Matter and Force considered in relation to Mental and Cerebral Phenomena

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

J. Thompson Dickson
J. Thompson Dickson*
Affiliation:
St. Luke's Hospital
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Extract

Well sang the Psalmist: “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, God is there.” Thou too, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing God only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least Force is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not when it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; already on the wings of the north wind it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without force, and utterly dead?

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 15 , Issue 70 , July 1869 , pp. 217 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1869 

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References

∗ In the discussion upon my paper on Vitality considered as a Mode of Motion, read last year (1868) before the British Association at Norwich, objection was made to the use of the term vitality, on the ground that it was a word of metaphysical import, and therefore ought not to be employed in a physical enquiry. I answered then that my reason for using it was that it expressed the idea I wished to convey, and was generally understood, while physical science had not yet provided a substitute to express the idea of the principle of animation. I feel the force of the objection, yet still must give the same answer—the word is used, however, as a term expressing a mode of motion and significant only in its employment as expressing motion in the same degree as light or heat are employed to the same end.Google Scholar

∗ I am duly sensible that I am at this spot bordering upon ground too soft to bear almost the lightest foot tread. Nor have I any wish here to enter upon a metaphysical controversy, as such is far removed from the objects of this paper. I have, however, been asked to define the pronoun we used in the above passages, a question which is an evidence of the great difficulty there is in throwing off that feeling of individuality which has so complicated the various systems of mental philosophy. It is, however, essential in a purely scientific inquiry to shake off the shackles of metaphysical mysticism, to free ourselves of the notion of an ego, and, regarding ourselves as we do the lower animals, we may make observations on our physical and psychical attributes.Google Scholar

It has been argued that if the mind be alone dependent upon changes in the material brain, that we can have no control over our thoughts and passions, and that we are, therefore, irresponsible beings, but this has been met by granting that we have the powers of volition. We avoid running into danger we are conscious of, i.e., of which we have experience. Volition thus comes to be a dependent of experience, and results like it from the operation of impressions of things without. Again, that which we term conscience is but the standard of comparison of right and wrong, formed by experience in the mind of the individual. Almost the earliest impressions instilled into the infant by its fondling mother are coercive separations of right and wrong, as defined by her own conscience, separating in the infant mind on opposite sides of the standard line ideas of right and wrong often most puerile and not antithetical; as the child grows and the basis of his experience enlarges, his standard of comparison advances. Many of the puerile wrongs of infancy and childhood appear as wrong no longer, and his line of separation, i.e., his conscience becomes fixed in accordance with the moral and civil laws of the polity in which he is placed.Google Scholar

∗ There is ample reason to believe that the seat of intellectual impressions is the surface of the brain, since its internal parts are ganglia presiding over special and definite functions. It is almost unnecessary to state that these cells vary in their form and in the number of fibres they give off, that they are connected together by fibres, and also that certain of the fibres which they give off form the white matter or material of connection between surface and ganglia.Google Scholar

† This idea has been objected to on the ground that electricity passes with equal rapidity through all kinds of brain matter, whether diseased or not. It must, however, at once be seen that such objection is untenable and illogical. Vitality is not electricity, and an atrophic or fatty cell certainly has not the same amount of potential energy as one that is healthy and intact.Google Scholar

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