Somatopsychonoologia: showing that the proofs of body, life and mind ... cannot be deduced from physiology ... being an examination of the controversy concerning life carried on by Laurence [sic], Abernethy, Rennell, and others / By Philostratus [i.e. T.I.M. Forster].

  • Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster
Date:
[1824]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Somatopsychonoologia: showing that the proofs of body, life and mind ... cannot be deduced from physiology ... being an examination of the controversy concerning life carried on by Laurence [sic], Abernethy, Rennell, and others / By Philostratus [i.e. T.I.M. Forster]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [4 arguments contained in the ensuing pages ; and this mode of pro¬ ceeding has been deemed particularly necessary in the present in¬ stance, because I have all along neglected the trouble of submitting to a second perusal, before going to press, a manuscript which was not originally intended for publication. It is not, therefore, in order to solicit the reader to anticipate the result, and wave the discussion, but to assist him throughout in forming an estimate of the real force and bearing of each argument employed, that I am induced to forewarn him of the conclusion at which I have arrived, and to state distinctly my own opinion, and my reasons for enter¬ taining it. _ After an almost unremitted attention to the anatomy and func¬ tions of the animal machine, for many years, it seems to me, tnat physiology can be correctly employed only to represent our per¬ ception of the various phenomena of living bodies, considered in their mutual relations to each other: that this perception. of phenomena leads to the inevitable conclusion, that every vital action, as well as every propensity, every intellectual and re¬ flective faculty, and every sentiment of the mind, is the necessary consequence of the active state of an appropriate material organ. This opinion is the result of such a uniform, and consistent experience of the relation between each organic part and its proper faculties, that I have long regarded it as an. incontrovertible maxim of physiology. At the same time, our single conscious¬ ness with a duplicity of organs, as well as the individualisation of objects whose various qualities having no apparent affinity are per¬ ceived by different organs of sense and intellect, together with the power we are conscious of possessing to direct our attention to various sensations and to exert our will accordingly, naturally force on our minds the belief in some common centre of sensation. Correct analogy obliges me to regard such a centre as existing in the brain, and being, like the other organs, a modification of But though physiology leads me no farther for a cause of vital intellectual phenomena than to appropriate organs, I am neverthe¬ less conscious of a personal identity, which no argument can annul. I have always believed, and do still believe, that I am something distinct from the circumexistent matter of the universe, of which my body forms a part, and that I am likewise distinct from the moving principle of the surrounding universe, of which my vitality may be a modification. This consciousness of being is, however, no deduction from physiology *, it is an intuitive feeling, and re¬ solves itself, after all the vain attempts of philosophers to explain it, into a conditional principle of existence. I beiieve that this very consciousness of a distinct being is itself dependent on the
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