Handbook of psychology / by J. Clark Murray.

  • John Clark Murray
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of psychology / by J. Clark Murray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    expressive of the first person as the nonego or Jiotself, while the counterpart of subject is object In recent times mental phenomena are frequently distinguished from physical by the term psychical,—a term of some advantage from its being cognate with the name of the science. The phenomena of the self or mind are distinguished from those of matter by a very marked characteristic. Any material thing whether organic or inorganic, whether at rest or in motion or undergoing any internal change, is wholly unaware of its own condition. It is not so with lite. I may be ignorant of innumerable actions and processes going on in my own body and in other bodies; but of what I myself do or suffer I must be cognisant, else it could not be said to be done or suffered by me. If I feel a pleasure or a pain, I must know that I feel it; and to deny my knowledge of the feeling would be to deny its existence. In like manner, when I see or hear, remember or imagine, believe or disbelieve, love or hate, I must know that I do so. Now, this knowledge of what is passing within me is called conscimtsness ; and it forms the distinctive attribute of the mind or self. To avoid misapprehensions, it may be observed that we often speak of doing an action z^;2consciously. This seems to contradict the assertion that consciousness characterises all the actions we perform. But the truth is, that, when we use this expression, we mean that such an action is in reality done, not by ourselves, but by those notselves,—those material things which we call our muscles, nerves, and brains. When a muscle twitches, or a nerve or brain-fibre thrills, without the movement being willed or intended by me, it is not I that produce the movement. It will be shown, in fact, that nervous and muscular actions often simulate strikingly the
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