The force of the mind, or, The mental factor in medicine / by Alfred T. Schofield.
- Alfred Taylor Schofield
- Date:
- 1902
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The force of the mind, or, The mental factor in medicine / by Alfred T. Schofield. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.
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![officers and discipline. The unity is an aggregate of forces, not a presiding force.' This makes the body a confederation or a sjmdicate, not a unity; and thus stops just short of the truth. I may now, with advantage, quote Professor James's exact words (to which I have ah'eady alluded) in his description of a science erected on an artificial basis, and ignoring the essential unity that underlies all mental action. These are the words : ^ * Psychology Professor is but a strmg of raw facts, a little gossip and wrangle LTcTmeut about opinions, a little classification and generalisation '^°']- on the mere descriptive level, a strong prejudice that psycho- we have states of mind, and that our brain conditions them; but not a single law in the sense in which physics shows us laws. At present psychology is in the condition of physics before Galileo and the laws of motion, or of chemistry before Lavoisier.' Dr. J. Macpherson, of Edinburgh, points out the The reason of this chaos 'The futility of psychology to TaL account for the majority of mental reactions is largely due to the attempt to explain these by terms of consciousness.' A psychology so hide-bound lands us in endless difficulties. Bastian cogently remarks that» ' if we are, as so many philosophers tell us, to regard the sphere of mind as coextensive with the sphere of explained consciousness, we shall find mind reduced to a mere SLckenzie imperfect disjointed series of agglomerations of feel- ^''^'^ mgs, and conscious states of various kmds—while a multitude of initial or intermediate nerve actions ^ W. James, Principles of Psyclwlogy, i. 468. 3 p' p^' '^^'^^P^e'^son- Cental Affections (1899), p. 97. C. Bastian, Brain as an Organ of Mind, p. 146. Bastian. D](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21510738_0053.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
