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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    demonstrably efficient. Hence, as I have already ob- served elsewhere,* with reference to the law of unity, just as the great law of matter is applicable to the countless suns and systems that for countless ages have swept, and that still sweep, through space, whether they be already discovered or are still to become visible—so also this great law of Life is applicable to all life, whether animal or vegetable; to all functions, whether compre- hended or yet to be discovered ; to life in all epochs ; to all living things, of the past as well as of the present. The Eev. Baden Powell has treated this question in an admirable manner: Throughout all formations, he observes, with reference to the past, the grand truth to which every accession of geological discovery bears wit- ness, is the unity of plan continually exemplified in all the varieties of organic structure disclosed. Even the most seemingly monstrous and incongruous forms of ani- mated existence in past times are all, without exception, constituted according to a common plan, and with parts, organs, and functions, related by the closest analogies to each other, so that no sooner is a new form discovered tlian it is instantly assimilated with some known type, and found to hold an assignable place in the system.f And, in reference to the conditions of existence and the external world, to which organisms are both adapted and adaptable, he adds, Of organised life, we find some of the conditions equally unchanged [as the physical condi- tions]. The animals and plants of those remote epochs were, like those now existing, subject to the same general physiological laws of respiration and circulation, digestion and nutrition, locomotion and instincts; their eyes and * On the Principles and Methods of Medical Observation and Re- search, by T. Laycock, M.D. (1860), p. 182. t The Unity of Worlds, p. 337.
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