Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training and discipline of the mind and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter.

  • William Benjamin Carpenter
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training and discipline of the mind and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    in consciousness.*—Professor Huxley'spronunciamento was soon followed by that of an able Mathematician, who brought to that profoundly difficult problem of Body and Mind which has exercised the greatest intellects from Aris- totle to J. S. Mill, the training of a skilled athlete, who knocks down with one vigorous blow any opponent unpre- pared for his peculiar mode of attack. Eelying exclusively upon Physical experiences, Professor Clifford affirmed without the smallest hesitation,f that as the only thing which can possibly be conceived to influence Matter is either the position or the motion of surrounding matter, the state- ment that the Will influences Matter is simply non- sense; an affirmation which assumes that Professor Clifford knows all about matter and its dynamical relations, and therefore has an unquestionable right to say that Mankind at large are wrong in the conviction that the movements of their Bodies are in any way directed by their Minds. From the confidence with which what are asserted to be the inevitable conclusions of Physiological science, are now advanced in proof of the doctrine of Human Automatism, it might be supposed that some new facts of peculiar impor- tance had been discovered, or some more cogent deductions drawn from the facts previously known. But after an atten- tive re-examination of the whole question, I find nothing in the results of more recent researches to shake the convic- tion at which I arrived nearly forty years ago,! of the * Fortnightly Eeview, November, 1874, p. 577. t Fortnightly Review, December, 1874, p. 728. % On the Voluntary and Instinctive Actions of Living Beings,' in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, No. 132 (1837).
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