Brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian.

  • Henry Charlton Bastian
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    706/762 page 688
    can be taken with any chance of success in this direction till the preliminary enquiries to which we have been devoting our attention have been reduced to a more settled condition. The foundations of the subject must clearly be laid before we can begin to rear a superstructure. Yet that every higher Intellectual and Moral Process—just as much as every lower Sensorial or Perceptive Process— involves the activity of certain related cell-and-fibre net- works in the Cerebral Cortex, and is absolutely dependent upon the functional activity of such networks, the writer firmly believes. He, however, as decidedly rejects the notion which some would associate with such a doctrine, viz., the supposition that Human Beings are mere ‘ Con- scious Automata.’ It must be conceded that if Conscious States or Feelings have in reality no bond of kinship with the molecular movements taking place in certain Nerve Centres; if they are mysteriously appearing phenomena, differing absolutely from, and lying altogether outside, the closed ‘ circuit of motions ’ with which they coexist, no way seems open by which such Conscious States could be conceived to affect or alter the course of such Motions. The -logic of -this seems irresistible. The conclusion can, indeed, only be avoided by a repudiation of the premises: and this the writer does. He altogether rejects the doctrine that there is no kinship between States of Consciousness and Nerve Actions, and consequently would deny the view that the ‘ causes’ of Conscious States lie altogether outside the cir- cuits of Nerve Motions. Consciousness or Feeling must be a phenomenon having a natural origin, or else it must be a non-natural, non- material entity. For reasons which have been set forth in various parts of the present volume the writer adopts the former of these views.
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