Self-control and how to secure it = (L'éducation de soi-même) / by Paul Dubois ; Authorized translation by Harry Hutcheson Boyd.

  • Paul Charles Dubois
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Self-control and how to secure it = (L'éducation de soi-même) / by Paul Dubois ; Authorized translation by Harry Hutcheson Boyd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    knowing how. We join them together when we perceive them by that insight which is our conscience. This is a phenomenon still unex- plained, though sure, and which differentiates not man alone, but the animal, from a simple machine. Taine and Karl Vogt have used very coarse and false examples, the one saying,' * The soul is a product like sugar or vitriol; the other, The brain secretes thoughts as the liver secretes bile. As a result of chemical reactions, we get the material products sugar and vitriol, while thought is, so to speak, functioning power made conscious; a machine which was conscious of the product that it distilled would have a soul. The liver is not conscious of its secretion; it is a work of pure chem- istry. Is the difficulty that we have in conceiv- ing thought, in understanding its mechanism or essence, a reason for admitting two sub- stances thoroughly distinct—the one material and perishable, the other immaterial and im- mortal ! I do not think so, and in any case it would only be an hypothesis. [327]