Hygiene of nerves & mind in health and disease / August Forel ; translated from the German by Austin Aikins.

  • Auguste Forel
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hygiene of nerves & mind in health and disease / August Forel ; translated from the German by Austin Aikins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    two should be neglected. By physiological psychol- ogy we understand the study of the relation of the outer phenomena to the inner and of the inner to the outer. The investigations of the last decade, con- tinually more fundamental and profound, show more and more that all mental phenomena are only the inner side of brain activities. Thus they confirm the identity hypothesis, and allow us gradually to pene- trate deeper into the laws of the mental processes. But, on the ground of what has been set forth above, we can say quite as well that all brain activities are only the outer side of mental processes. That amounts to exactly the same thing.^ From the standpoint of psychology, or the study of the mind, we must state that dualism, which sup- poses a mind independent of or separable from the body, necessarily leads us to insoluble contradictions and this for the following reasons: A mind conceived of dualistically must be thought of either as dependent upon, or independent of, the law of the conservation of energy. If it is thought of as containing energy \i.e., as subject to the law], dualism is only playing with words, for a mind obedi- ent to this law and yet independent of the body 1 The identity hypothesis or scientific monism leads easily to a monistic conception of the world, according to which God and the world are re- garded as one and the same unknown Omnipotent, because the idea of God existing apart from Nature assumes that God and man are alike, and that man's mind is independent of natural laws. It is not our busi- ness here to meddle with metaphysics, world-views, and religion, and we must say at once that such questions are quite beyond the sphere of human knowledge. 6
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