Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training and discipline of the mind and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter.
- William Benjamin Carpenter
- Date:
- 1881
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training and discipline of the mind and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter. 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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![Physical antecedents, we cannot help recognizing in it the principle of Causation by character and circumstances ; and that without the power of prediction which we derive from organized experience, as is well stated by Mr. Sidgwick (Op. cit. p. 48), social life would be impossible. But while every one admits the existence of Uniformities in Human action which constitute the basis of our Social fabric, every one also admits that the closest observation of these Uniformities, and the most sagacious analysis of their conditions, does not justify anything more than a fore- cast of the course of action, either of individuals or of communities, in any given contingency. Who would have thought that he would have done such a thing? is our frequent exclamation in regard to some one of whom we considered that we had a most intimate knowledge: that the unexpected [in Politics] is what always happens, has passed into a proverb. It is, of course, open for the Automatist to assert that the element of uncertainty here arises, as in the case of weather-forecasts, from the complexity of the con- ditions, and from our imperfect acquaintance with them ; and he might fairly urge, on general grounds, that if wft could grasp the whole of the antecedents, and measure the potency of each, no unconditioned or self-orio-inatin°- element would be found to have interfered with the regular sequence of cause and effect. But he has no right whatever to assume this. The whole history of Science shows that the investigation of residual phenomena has been a most fertile means of discovery in regard to agencies not pre- viously suspected. And until it shall have been proved that b 2](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21292887_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
