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.

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    operations upon the organization and functional activity of our Nervous System, we must also admit that there is something heyond and above all this, to which, in the fully-developed and self-regu- lating Intellect, that activity is subordinated : whilst, in rudely trampling on the noblest conceptions of our Moral Nature as mere delusions, the purely Materialistic hypothesis is so thoroughly re- pugnant to the intuitive convictions of Mankind in general, that those who really experience these are made to feel its fallacy, with a certainty that renders logical proof unnecessary. 6. Let us turn now to the opposite doctrine held by Spiritualists * in regard to the nature and source of Mental phenomena; and consider this in its Physiological relations. To them the Mind appears in the light of a separate Immaterial existence, mysteriously connected, indeed, with a Bodily instrument, but not dependent upon this in any other way for the conditions of its operation, than as deriving its knowledge of external things through its Organs of Sense, and as making use of it to execute its determinations—so far as these are accomplished by Muscular effort. On this hypothesis, the operations of the Mind itself, having no dependence whatever on those of Matter, are never themselves affected by conditions of the Bodily organism; whose irregularities or defects of activity only pervert or obscure the outward manifestations of the Mind, just as the light of the brightest lamp may be dimmed or distorted by passing through a bad medium : while, further, as the Mind is thus independent of its Material tenement, and of the circumstances in which this may chance to be placed, but is endowed with a complete power of Self-government, it is responsible for all its actions, which must be judged-of by certain fixed standards. 7. Now this doctrine fully recognizes all that is ignored in the preceding; but, on the other hand, it ignores all that it recognized * This term is here used in its older or Philosophical sense ; not as designating modern “Spiritualists ” (or rather “ Spirit-rappers ”), who have little in common with those whose name they have adopted.