The physiology of mind : being the first part of a third edition, revised enlarged and in great part rewritten, of "The physiology and pathology of mind" / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Maudsley, Henry, 1835-1918.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physiology of mind : being the first part of a third edition, revised enlarged and in great part rewritten, of "The physiology and pathology of mind" / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    times converted this impotence into a superconscious faculty of mind to which they have given a big name, such as Intuition of the Absolute or the like; but although we may think it probable, or feel certain, that there is existence beyond human consciousness, which is no more knowable by us than are moral relations by the oyster or the infusory animalcule, we are not entitled to make a positive cognitive faculty out of what is a negation. Whence do we derive the assurance we have of existence transcending human consciousness, if all we know, feel, and believe are states of consciousness ? I cannot but look upon it as the utterance or blind pro- phecy of an instinct which will have conscious develop- ment hereafter; in other words, as the prompting of that impulse of evolution working in us which has been from the beginning, and still is, and through which it may well come to pass, ages hence, that much or something of what now lies beyond the range of human consciousness will come within the consciousness of new or more highly developed faculties of superior beings; nature thus going on in her evident progress to attain to more complete self-consciousness. Products of die mighty past, we forefeel dimly, as it were, the mighty future, of humanity. Thus much concerning the historical evolution of the inductive method. But now comes the important ques- tion whether it is available for the study of the whole of nature. Can we apply the true inductive and objec- tive method to the investigation of psychical as well as of physical nature? In the latter case it has long re- ceived universal sanction; but in the study of a man's mind it is still a question what method should rightly be employed. Plainly, it is not possible by simple ob- servation of others to form true inductions concerning their mental phenomena; the defects of an observation which reaches only to the visible results of invisible