Mind and body : the theories of their relation / by Alexander Bain.

  • Bain, Alexander, 1818-1903.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mind and body : the theories of their relation / by Alexander Bain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    triumphed ; the utmost limit of abstraction in the line of dualism had been reached. Coming down now to modem times, we have to recog- nize Descartes as, by pre-eminence, the philosopher of Immaterialism (the word Spirituality is not used by him). Still, it is not unlikely that John Calvin, who preceded him by a century, had a considerable share in making this the creed of religious orthodoxy. Calvin substantially adopted the settlement of Aquinas. His views are found in his Institutes, and in a short treatise On the Sleep of the Soul, written against the doctrine that the soul is unconscious between death and the resurrection, a view that some of the Keformers were inclined to, in their opposition to purgatory. We follow Calvin's phraseology in the Institutes. The Soul is an immortal essence, the nobler part of man ; it is a creation out of nothing, not an emanation ; it is essence without motion, not motion without essence. Its power of distinguishing good and evil, the swiftness and wide range of its faculties (so opposed to the brutes), the power of conceiving the invisible God,—are evidences that it is incorporeal, being incompatible with body. Then as to the vexed connexion with space : the soul is not properly bounded by space; still it occupies the body as a habi- tation,-animating its parts and endowing its organs for then- several functions. The strength of Calvin's reasoning is still the point-of-honour argument.