Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon].

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    351/408 page 343
    One of the first and simplest functions of mind is to give consciousness — consciousness of our identity and of our existence. ‘This, apparently, is independent of the senses, which are simply media, and, as Locke has shewn, the only media, through which ideas respecting the external world reach the brain. The access of such ideas to the brain is the act to which the metaphysicians have given the name of perception. Gall, however, has shewn, by induction from a vast number of actual cases, that there is a part of the brain devoted to perception, and that even this is sub- divided into portions which are respectively dedi- cated to the reception of different sets of ideas, as those of form, size, colour, weight, objects in their totality, events in their progress or occurrence, time, musical sounds, &c. The system of mind in- vented by this philosopher—the only one founded upon nature, or which even pretends to or admits of that necessary basis—shews a portion of the brain acting as a faculty of comic ideas, another of imitation, another of wonder, one for discrimi- nating or observing differences, and another in which resides the power of tracing effects to causes.. There are also parts of the brain for the sentimental part of our nature, or the affections,
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