Counsel to parents on the moral education of their children / by Elizabeth Blackwell.

  • Blackwell, Elizabeth, 1821-1910.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Counsel to parents on the moral education of their children / by Elizabeth Blackwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    system through the intelligence and Will. But when inordinately excited, or when not kept in restraint by the Will, they will at once call into play respondent movements, which are then to be regarded as purely automatic. This is the case in some forms of disease in the human subject, and is probably the mode of operation in the lower animals. In cases in which this sensation is excited in unusual strength, it may completely over-master all motives to the repression of the propensity, and may even entirely remove the actions from volitional control. A state of a very similar kind exists in many idiots, in whom the sexual propensity exerts a dominant power, not because it is in itself peculiarly strong, but because the Intelligence, being undeveloped, it acts without restraint or direction from the Will.” * The mental power exercised by the Will, is strikingly shown in the control exerted by human beings over the strongest of all individual cravings—the craving of hunger. The exigencies of human society have caused this tremendous power of hunger, to be kept so completely in check, that the gratification of it, except in accordance with the established laws (of property, &c.), is con- sidered as a crime. In spite of the terrible temptation which the sight of food offers to a starving man, society punishes him if he yield to it. Still stronger than the established laws, are those unwritten laws which are enforced by “public opinion,” in obedience to which, countless people, in all civilized countries, suffer constant deprivation—even starving, more or less, slowly to death—rather than transgress universally-accepted principles, and subject themselves to social condemnation, by taking the food which does not belong to them. Another curious and important illustration of mental action, is shown in the accumulating instances of self-deception, of contagious hallucination, and of emotional influence acting upon the physical and mental organization, so strikingly depicted by Hammond, and other writers, in the accounts of pretended miracles, ecstasies, visions, &c. See Carpenter’s Physiology.