Matter and spirit / read by Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Edward William Cox
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Matter and spirit / read by 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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    0 MATTER AND SPIRIT. But the question is sure to recur continually in the papers and debates of the Society. Matter and Spirit are the bases of almost all psychological science. Controversy must be endless and worthless unless the disputants first agree upon some common meaning to be given to the terms used in their arguments. We shall have these ques- tions presenting themselves again and again in this Society, and they will produce the same unsatisfactory waste of words unless once for all we assign to them a sense in which they are to be taken for the purposes of debate in this room and of use in our published papers. But let it not go forth that what we propose is to dictate a definition, to be received as being in itself a perfect one. That would be an impertinence. Nothing more is designed than to indicate the sense in which the words should be taken in the discussions and papers of “ The Psychological •Society,” with a view to keeping them more directly to the ’mint at issue, and to prevent the loss of time and labour it must always result when disputants are without <. itual knowledge of the fact that they are using the same wards in different senses. This indeed is the source of nine-tenths of all the controversies that ever have been. If the same words were always used by all in the same sense, the majority of the disputes of the world would be instantly extinguished. We cannot as a Society attempt to impose our own meaning of terms upon others. But we may well and worthily recognise it among ourselves. I know of nothing that would more promote the objects of such an asso- ciation as this. There are many terms that must be of continual use in our science, by strictly defining which at the beginning we may immensely abbreviate our own researches. Remember that the special work of this Society—that indeed for which alone it exists—is to collect [124]