Cerebral psychology : read at a meeting of the Psychological Society of Great Britain / by Charles Bray.
- Charles Bray
- Date:
- [1877?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cerebral psychology : read at a meeting of the Psychological Society of Great Britain / by Charles Bray. 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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![“ And words of learned length and thundering sound, Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around, And more they gazed, and more their wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew.”—Goldsmith. That our individual consciousness is all we know, or can know, is now generally recognised as a fact, and the wonder of it, that “one small head” should carry it all, is not confined to the “ rustics.” I propose to examine what that knowledge is we thus carry about in our heads, and how it gets packed there. If, putting aside the prejudice we have derived from “our mothers,” founded on old women's tales that have come down to us from the infancy of our race, we open the Book of Nature, we shall find there many pages very clearly written of facts easily verified. Passing the “ fiery mist ” or nebulous matter, where all forms of life are said to have lain “ latent ” and “ potential,” as a fact not very easily verifiable, let us go on through countless ages to the time when the earth was capable of bearing, not only Life, but Sensibility. Till then it was practically non-existent, for a world without feeling or consciousness is the same as no world at all. By Con- sciousness I mean any kind of feeling or sensibility, and b 2 [209]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22443940_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
