Medical psychology : comprising a brief exposition of the leading phenomena of the mental states, and of the nervous apparatus through which they are manifested with a view to the better understanding and elucidation of the mental phenomena or symptoms of disease / by Robert Dunn.

  • Dunn, Robert, 1799-1877.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical psychology : comprising a brief exposition of the leading phenomena of the mental states, and of the nervous apparatus through which they are manifested with a view to the better understanding and elucidation of the mental phenomena or symptoms of disease / by Robert Dunn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rence, inspired and awakened by objects of sublimity, grandeur, vastness, and mystery. Lastly, arise the intellectual intuitions—our primitive beliefs and primitive judgments. Such our belief is in our own conscious and abiding existence, in our per- sonal identity, and in the existence of an external world. Among our primitive judgments, instantaneously and intuitively formed, we may instance those in relation to the differences in objects or things when compared together; such as that the whole is greater than a part; that for every known effect there must be a cause; that it is impossible for a thing to exist and not to exist at the same time; etc. After birf,h—that is, as soon as embryonic life is passed, and an independent individuality is established, with the organic vital powers of nutrition, development, and growth—the animal functions, and their allied appe- tites and instincts, come into action; and then, too, the nascent consciousness becomes awakened, but which is purely sensational at first, for man is at birth the mere creature of sensation and instinct. And thus his outer life begins with consciousness, and with consciousness it ends ; but, as for consciousness itself, that is an ulti- mate fact, beyond which we cannot penetrate. It is an essential attribute of animal life, and the primary and universal condition of intelligence—in a word, it implies mental existence. It is equivalent to the knowledge that we possess of our own personal identity, for it is in- volved in every sensation which we experience, and every mental act that we perform, in feeling, perceiving, thinking, and willing. Eeid and Dugald Stewai't were clearly in error in restricting the functions of conscious- ness to that of a particular faculty co-ordinate with the other intellectual powers, instead of regarding it, as it manifestly ought to be, as the universal condition of in- telligence. The great and fundamental mystery of life, indeed, consists in the relations of consciousness, and of that dynamical agency, or intellectual force, which we call volition, or the will, to the functions of the special