The claims of psychology to a place in the circle of the sciences / sessional address of the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Edward William Cox
Date:
[1878]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The claims of psychology to a place in the circle of the sciences / sessional address of the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox. 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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    how one mental faculty might be the outcome of another or others ; and in the suiwivals of manners and customs he finds traces of a time when they had a real life and meaning, and which, although their uses are outgrown, linger still in habits that have quite lost their meaning now. Turning from the past to the future, a new region opens to Psychology. What man was—what he is—suggests at once the reflection what will he he‘I Without raising for the present the much disputed question, “ If there is for him a life after the dissolution of his body?” the Psychologist encounters the too-neglected question of Heredity. To what extent does the child resemble the parent ? Is rumd inherited ? If so, is it, as the popular belief is, derived from the mother ? Why sometimes are there resemblances to both parents—sometimes to one only—sometimes to neither ? Again. What causes a likeness to some remote ancestor to crop out suddenly in a far following gene- ration, or why ^ould only one feature be preserved (as in some families) the single surviving index of their race ? These and a hundred other queries of equal interest and importance it is the proper province of Psychology to answer, or endeavour to do so—not by theorising merely, but by observation and collection of facts. Lastly comes the question, greatest of all, is the Mechanism of Man constructed of anything other than the body we see and the brain we dissect ? Is that brain the ultimate Intelligence ? Are all our Inspirations and Aspira- tions merely secretions from that wonderful pulp ? Is Consciousness of individuality, of unity, of being ourselves, nothing more than a succession of molecular conditions which we mistake for identity ? Although, let me say it here, it is difficult to understand how any succession of independent cause consciousness, I ask again, as I have asked before. What is the thing that is conscious of the molecular action that by no stretch of imagination can bo c^ceived to bo conscious of itself. This is tho true battle [249]