Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training of the mind, and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter.

  • Carpenter, William Benjamin, 1813-1885.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training of the mind, and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/810 (page 9)
    —a topic of the greatest importance in reference to the value of all Testimony given under a Mental preconception. And, in like manner, I have done no more than enumerate a large proportion of those principal modes of Mental activity, which are commonly designated as Intellectual Faculties, Propensities, and Emotions; in order that I might have space to bring into clear view that distinction between their automatic and their volitional operation, which has long appeared to me the only sound basis, on the one hand, for Education and Self-discipline, and, on the other, for that Scientific study of the various forms of abnormal Mental activity, which, rightly cultivated, is probably the most promising field of Psychological inquiry. It would be ungrateful were I not to take this opportunity of renewing the expression of the special obligations I owe, in the original construction of my “fabric of thought” on this great subject, to the writings and conversation of my valued friends the late Sir Henry Holland, Professor Lay- cock, Dr. J. D. Morell, and Dr. Noble.—To the first of these it had been my intention to dedicate this Treatise, the title of which he had kindly permitted me to borrow from one of his own ; and I have gladly, therefore, complied with the wish of his Family, that I should dedicate it to his Memory. No one can know the wonderful suggestiveness of Sir H. Holland’s scientific writings, who has not had the occasion (which has often occurred to myself) to trace back to them some of the best of the thoughts which he had honestly believed to be his own. This I have found