Volume 1

Mind and brain, or, The correlations of consciousness and organisation; systemically investigated and applied to philosophy, mental science and practice / by Thomas Laycock.

Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mind and brain, or, The correlations of consciousness and organisation; systemically investigated and applied to philosophy, mental science and practice / by Thomas Laycock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Its principles, and its methods of observation and inquiry may be taught in the class-room; its practical uses, its analyses and manipulations, must be learned and prac- tised in the great laboratory of the world, by each man in his own sphere of action. - But, under all circumstances, and amidst all conditions, the phenomena to be finally exa- mined are the phenomena of life and organisation, mani- fested in the brain and nervous system, and of which the physiology of the brain, considered as the organ of mind, takes scientific cognisance. Hence the student of mental science, if he would be a successful student, must concentrate his researches upon the laws of action of the brain and nervous system, as they correlate the laws of thought and volition, and must eschew all efforts to develop it by simple meditation on his own states of consciousness, or by the processes of logical art, to the exclusion of observation and experi- mental research on the subject-matter of his science. No one, Kant observes, by means of logic alone can venture to predicate anything of or decide concerning, obiects, unless he has obtained, independently of logic, well-grounded information about them.* And he adds, as a safe and useful warning, that general logic, con- sidered as an organon, must always be a logic of illu- sion- and that any attempt to use it as an instrument, in order to extend and enlarge the range of our know- ledge, must end in prating; any one being able to main- tain or oppose, with some appearance of truth, any single assertion whatever. _ Nevertheless, a knowledge of true logic and metaphy- sics is of as great importance in scientific research, as of cbse and accurate observation of phenomena. There can * Kritik der Rein : VernmfL Introduction.