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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    PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. In preparing this second edition the author has en- deavoured to profit by the criticisms bestowed upon the first. Although he cannot concur with them all, he thankfully acknowledges the candour and generosity with which several of liis most com- petent critics have dissented from his views. He has chiefly endeavoured to make the work more complete, by giving a wider application to the great correlative laws of organisation, evolution, and unity; and for this purpose has re-written the exposition of the fundamental laws of life and consciousness contained in chapter xiii. part iii. In the first edition the law of evolution was chiefly applied to psychological and biological facts; in the new chapter it is applied to the correlations of molecular forces, and vis nervosa and vital energy are shown to be the result of the evolution, conservation, and accumulation of chemical energy. Chemical affinity is thus differentiated from the other molecular forces as an evolutional and regulative force. This doctrine has enabled the author to give some entirely new views of the rela- tions of chemical and vital changes to the phenomena of memory and thought generally ; in short, to show that there is a real correlation between the genesis of