A treatise on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé ; the medical part revised and corrected, with numerous additions by Alfred Stillé.

  • Francis Wharton
Date:
1860
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé ; the medical part revised and corrected, with numerous additions by Alfred Stillé. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    § 84] PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY. [BOOK I. same time, as will hereafter be more fully shown, (Mr) there is in the mass of cases of insane convicts such an amount of responsibility as to require the infliction of a degree of punishment which, though different from that imposed on the sane, will yet be accompanied with a corrective as well as a preventive discipline. § 83. The intermediate theory is that to which the soundest psychologists now tend. In the first place, says Sir William Hamilton, there is no good ground to suppose that the mind is situated solely in the brain, or exclusively in any one part of the body. On the contrary, the supposition that it is really present wherever we are conscious that it acts—in a word, the Peripatetic aphorism, the soul is all in the whole and all in every part—is more philo- sophical, and consequently more probable, than any other opinion. It has not been always noticed, even by those who deem themselves the chosen champions of the immortality of the soul, that we materialize mind when we attribute to it the relations of matter. Thus, we cannot attribute a local seat to the soul without clothing it with the properties of extension and place, and those who suppose this seat to be but a point only aggravate the difficulty. Admitting the spirituality of mind, all that we know of the relation of soul and body is that the former is connected with the latter in a way of which we are wholly ignorant; and that it holds relations, different both in degree and kind, with different parts of the organism. We have no right, however, to say that it is limited to any one part of the organism; for even if we admit that the nervous system is the one to which it is proximately united, still the nervous system is itself universally ramified throughout the body; and we have no more right to deny that the mind feels at the finger-points, as consciousness assures us, than to assert that it thinks exclusively in the brain. The sum of our know- ledge of the connection of mind and body is, therefore, this: that the mental modifications are dependent on certain corporeal conditions; but of the nature of these conditions we know nothing. For example, we know, by experience, that the mind perceives only through certain organs of sense, and that through these different organs it perceives in a different manner. But whether the senses be instruments, whether they be media, or whether they be only partial outlets to the mind incarcerated in the body, on all this we can only theorize and conjecture.(7) § 84. The intermediate theory has at least not been rejected by standard Christian theologians. The resurrection, says Bishop Pearson, is not only in itself possible, so that no man with any reason can absolutely deny it, but it is also upon many considerations highly probable, so that all men may very rationally expect it. If we consider the principles of humanity, the parts of which we all consist, we cannot conceive this present life to be proportion- able to our composition. The souls of men, as they are immaterial, so they are immortal; and being once created by the Father of spirits, they receive a subsistence for eternity; the body is framed by the same God to be a corn- argues in favor of a discrimination of punishment between the malicious and the unconscious insane criminal. Mayo, &c, 50, 51. (kk) Post, §§ 259-276. (/) Sir William Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 356.
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