An enquiry into the formation of habit in man / by Alfred T. Schofield.

Alfred Taylor Schofield

Date:: [1893]

Credit: An enquiry into the formation of habit in man / by Alfred T. Schofield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$our life we preserve the consciousness of the same personality. This cannot be through the medium of the body, which is not the same, but must be through an independent mind. The mind does not produce physical energy, but it guides and directs it, like a man on a horse. Dr. Carpenter says, “ The influence of a great idea, conceived by a thinker in his closet in controlling the action of an entire nation, is utterly dis- proportionate to any conceivable play of molecular forces that can be exerted by the physical agency of the thinker putting his idea into speech or writing.” There may be automatic thinkers, in whom the will is absent or undeveloped, but though the dominant power is absent, even such have mind as well as body. The existence of mind therefore and the freedom of the will may be said to be axiomatic truths. And now to return to Dr. Clifford as to the relation of this mind with matter. Professor Ladd, in his Physiological Psychology, says : “ The human brain is a vast collection of material molecules, whose constitution and arrangement is such as to connect them with certain forms of external physical energy. “ But they are also capable of standing in a yet more sur- prising and unique relation to a being of a different nature from their own, i.e., the mind. These latter relations involve a causal connection, as truly as do the relations of the natural physical forces. That material molecules and a being of the kind called mind can be causally connected is indeed a mysterious fact; but because of its mystery it is not less to be acknowledged as a fact. The assumption that the mind is a real being which can be acted on by the brain, and which can act on the body through the brain, is the only one compatible with all facts of experience.” Neuroses, or nerve actions, produce psychoses, or mind actions; thus a prick produces pain. The light on the eye is a physical action, the impression on the sight centre a physio- logical one, the perception of it a psychical one. the ordinary condition ot the nervous system is that of a moderately charged battery that can be discharged by the completion of the circuit and re-charged by the blood. The will can complete this charged circuit. Mental causes can as we have said, produce physical effects, and physical causes can produce mental effects. “We have every reason to believe,'’ says Professor Bain, “that with all our mental processes there is an unbroken natural succession.” V\e must notice however, carefully, as to automatic$

An enquiry into the formation of habit in man / by Alfred T. Schofield.

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