Volume 1

Mind and brain, or, The correlations of consciousness and organisation : systematically investigated and applied to philosophy, mental science and practice / by Thomas Laycock.

  • Thomas Laycock
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mind and brain, or, The correlations of consciousness and organisation : systematically investigated and applied to philosophy, mental science and practice / by Thomas Laycock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    changes are clue, as we have seen, to the action of the physical forces upon those tissues in and by which the organism is developed into a conscious state of existence. It therefore designates, thus used, both the hypothetical subtratum or substance, and the causes of motion—i.e., the forces which operate within it. Hence, when used in this sense (and it is the most important of all its uses), the term matter is synonymous with its forces, and not with inert substance. 207. Although the phenomena of creation are neces- sarily dependent upon incessant change, things are seen to be permanent. Hence, permanence and incessant change are two conditions of Existence. The per- manence is hypothetically attributed to the substratum within which the forces induce continual changes or motions to ends. The more consistent theory is, that it is due to the permanence of the cause of the changes ; for without it there would be no phenomena at all. That final cause is Mind (149). Without incessant change there would be no phenomena; without Mind no change. Hence, Mind is the only permanent thing in creation. 208. We can now comprehend better the fundamental conditions of Existence. Motion necessarily implies space, in which it occurs; and change implies succession of phenomena, and therefore time, in which the succes- sive changes take place. Motion also implies relation of two things, and therefore co-existence in time and space. Hence succession and co-existence are the funda- mental conditions of phenomena (that is, of changes) in time and space. 209. Further, motion in space implies a thing moving and moved through space in time, and passing therefore through portions of it. These portions represent units of time and space; their combination of one or more
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