The brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian. With 184 illustrations.

  • Bastian, H. Charlton.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian. With 184 illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    ceive a being possessed of feeling and desire, and, at the pame time, without a knowledge of any object upon which his aflfections may be employed, and without a conscious- ness of these affections themselves. Some highly significant facts have, indeed, already been mentioned, tending to show that mere orgamc discrimina- tions or_jCognitions may be manifested by plants, lower animals, or even parts of animals under conditions in which it is not warrantable to assume the co-existence of anything like that which we know as Consciousness or Feeling. We have seen some and shall find more reason for believing that Feeling, in its ordinaiy acceptation, is gradually superadded, in higher forms of animal life, as a newly-begotten accompaniment of nerve actions which hitherto, in lower forms, have been unendowed with any distinct subjective phasis. At first we may have the exist- / ence of unconscious impressions and mere organic dis- / criminations; while afterwards, during the evolution of j the animal series, and consequently of nerve centres, we i suppose the superaddition to some nervous actions of a more and more definite subjective phasis, answering to lower grades of what each of us knows in himself only— during processes of Sensation or Perception more especially. We must now look, from our human point of view, to itfjulka. what is included under these latter terms. James Mill gays,*— What we commonly mean when we use the terms Sensation or phenomena of Sensation, are the feelings which we have by the five senses—Smell, Taste, Hearing, Touch, and Sight. These are the feeHngs from which we derive our notions of what we denominate the external world—the things by which we are surrounded. When we smell a rose there is a particular feeling, a particular consciousness, distinct from all others, * Analysis of the Human Mind, 1829, vol. i. pp. 3 and 7.