Cerebral psychology : read at a meeting of the Psychological Society of Great Britain / by Charles Bray.

  • Charles Bray
Date:
[1877?]
Catalogue details

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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    not I” Kant also says “ that there is an illusion inherent in our constitutions that we cannot help conceiving as belonging to things themselves—attributes with which they are only clothed by the laws of our sensitive and intellectual nature.” We are told, however, by the Realistic School, “ that man is brought into relation with external objects by means of faculties, each one of which corresponds with a special property of the object.” Thus, that objects have form, size, weight, colour, number, &c., and that man has organs or faculties by means of which he perceives these attributes. But it is impossible to conceive how an external property or force can have any possible likeness to an. internal feeling or idea. As Mill says, “ A cause does not, as such, resemble its effect; an east wind is not like the feeling of cold, nor heat like the steam of boiling water; why, then, should matter resemble our sensations ? Why should the inmost nature of fire or water resemble the impressions made by these objects on our senses ?” A few simple impressions received from without are worked up in the brain itself into a picture which we believe to be the external world, and this picture has no existence anywhere but in brains similarly constituted. An impression is made by the senses on the brain that lies immediately over the superciliary ridge, and we have ideas of form, size, colour, &c.; and by our organ of Individuality we attach these qualities to individual existences; we perceive the number and locality of such existences, and conceive of them as existing in space; motion and succession give us our idea of time; we trace also resemblances and differences, and rela- tions of causality, and congruity or adjustment. Only some of these faculties have direct relation to external objects, and others have relation to the ideas furnished by such objects ; so that only part of our knowledge can be said to come through the senses. Our faculty of individuality [213]
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