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

  • Alexander Bain
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    that they would be found to have some kind of mutual co-operation ; that the ongoings of the one would be often a clue to the ongoings of the other. The form of the interrogation that the foregoing remarks are designed to answer, may be objected to as purely rhetorical and in some measure unfair. If the matter of the brain were the only substance that mental functions could be attributed to, all the knowledge that we possess of that organ might not avail us much in laying down laws of connexion between mind and body. But such is not the fact. The entire bodily system, though in varying degrees, is in intimate alliance with mental functions. To confine our study to the nervous substance would be to misrepresent the connexion; and the knowledge of that substance, however complete, would not suffice for the solution of the problem. Looking at a child’s cut finger, we can divine its feelings; if we see a smiling countenance, we know something of the mental tone of the individual. It might seem that we must yet be a long way from understanding an organ so minute and so complicated as the Brain. If we were to confine ourselves to the one mode of post-mortem dissection, we should probably attain but a small measure of success. But another road is open. We can begin at the outworks, at the organs of sense and motion, with which the nervous system communicates ; we can study their operations during life, as well as examine their intimate structure ; we can experimentally vary all
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