On the principles and method of a practical science of mind : a reply to a criticism / by Thomas Laycock.

  • Thomas Laycock
Date:
1862
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the principles and method of a practical science of mind : a reply to a criticism / by Thomas Laycock. 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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    2U law in sup])ort, e.g., of a. prosecution fur adultery, robbery, or murder (and the frequency of sucli an occurrence is certainly greater than the recorded cases seem to imply), the question is too serious to be left for solution to vague speculation. We want precise information as to the morbid conditions of the enccphalon under which such hallucinations arise, so that the probability of their being given by a witness as evidence of facts may be estimated. Now it is generally found that the less the hallucinations diverge from the ordinary course of nature the more difficult it is to detect their true character, or discover the morbid conditions on which they depend. Does the old method help us here ? Dr. Bushnan will doubtless object in common with his school, that this kind of doctrine is subversive of all knowledge and all belief. He Avill ask if a man cannot believe his own senses and his own consciousness, what is there left for Mm to trust to ? Such, mdeed, is the argument of every mysticist. In all the voluminous AA'ritings of the spii'itualists, we are clamorously called upon to admit that the illusions, hallucinations, and delusions upon which their doctrines rest, are facts, because testified in this maimer. Indeed, there is no kmd of experience, the truths of which are not'more or less vitiated in this way. The religious experiences in particular, of every sect abound with such facts; nor is science exempt from these errors. For many ages, astronomical science was based upon certain visual illusions, the chief of which is the apjiarent motion of the sun round the earth, and which was a part of the creed of Christendom until withm the last three centuries. Now science recognising the imperfections of man's nature in this respect is essentially sceptical. It thus teaches him the first lesson of all greatness, namely humility, and enables kim to bow to the majesty of iacts. AVhat then is the scientific method of deducing the amount of truth contained in our intuitions ? Let us take for incpiry, the most fundamental intuition of all, namely that by wliich we know we are one, and one and the same. According to my principle, every, intuitive act of thought has its coiTclative vital or biological law. We have already seen that the correlative vital law of the intuition of mental unity—the ego—is the physiological or vital unity of the body, as determined by observation ; now it is in the agreement of the two laws or generalisations that we have the proof of the truth of both. This unity of the body has certainly been denied, (by Virchow, I think amongst others), but the exceptional instances brought for- ward do not destroy the generalisation as to a concrete ego, any more than the intuition of a duplex consciousness in certain morbid states, or in dreaming, falsifies the intuition upon which the metaphysician builds his doctrine of an immaterial ego. The whole of organic life is in fact so much an illustration of the law that an organism can only be defined on the basis that it is one thing. It is very true.