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]
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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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    biting to US tbe consequences of paralysis or disorder of any one or more of them. More curious still are tbe phenomena of Somnambulism— that strange condition in which the senses are sealed, or their communication with the Conscious Self suspended, and we are enabled to witness the phenomenon of the Mind receiving its impressions of the external world through some other medium than the nerve system. Psychology has not yet determined what is that substituted medium. But the almost certain conclusion is that the Self—or Soul—severed from its ordinary channel of communication with the external world’ through the mechanism of the senses, per- ceives by some other medium, jirobably by such perceptive power as it might be supposed to possess, if the body were to fall from it and it should have a new existence under new conditions. Fortunately for Science, Somnambulism, which is a rare natural product, may be induced artificially, not with a few but with a great number of persons, and, indeed, in almost every family circle. If any person can examine these phenomena without having his faith in Materialism shaken, he must be^prepossessed'” indeed—the veritable victim of a “ dominant Me_a^^ ! “Then come the phenomena of Mental Sympathy and Gommunio^i, of which so many interesting cases have been reported to the Society, and of which we hope to be favoured with many more. The first question as to this is, if it be effected by transmission of mechanical motion from t^e fibres of one brain to the fibres of another brain, as harp strings vibrate in unison,—or if it be a capacity of the C^scious Self or Soul, in certain conditions of the mechanism of the body, to communicate by some sensual medium with others subject to the same conditions with itself ? “Lastly, we have the multitude of phenomena that have been called Psychic by those who object to a name that embodies a “foregone conclusion,” and who pi-efer to wait the [252]