The absurdity of any mind-body relation : delivered on 19 May 1932 at University College London / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The absurdity of any mind-body relation : delivered on 19 May 1932 at University College London / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    happenings, events, or acts in a space-time continuum. Why then, we may well ask, is it necessary to separate conscious activity and cerebral activity ? Surely not— in face of this conclusion—because of the apparently wide difference between consciousness and living brain- matter, but merely because the former is only known to us individually and personally, whereas the beha¬ viour (i.e. the activity) of the latter consists of public properties amenable to scientific treatment and partly common to the properties of non-living matter. In¬ deed, the primd facie difference between all mind and protoplasm, between ‘spirit’ and living ‘matter’, dis¬ appears as soon as we deny substance to either and conceive each as consisting in mere activity. But although both mind and living matter and life¬ less matter consist merely in activity, what I am here endeavouring to urge is {a) that living matter differs from dead and lifeless matter not merely in certain differences of mechanical activity, but owing to the possession by the living individual of directive activities inherent in the organism, whereas in the lifeless world directive activity is external to matter; and {h) that the common characteristics of all matter (substance, colour, &c.) depend on individual conscious experi¬ ence due to the interaction between the mechanical activities of matter and the directive activities of living nervous matter. i Once again I find myself in close agreement with I Hobhouse’s standpoint. For Hobhouse believed that ! what he termed a ‘ Central Mind ’, which courses through the universe, must have operated long before life and individual minds made their appearance and is responsible for the order, direction, and wholeness