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"pretends to accomplish the discovery of the laws of the human mind by contemplating it in itself; that is, by separating it from causes and effects." (Miss Martineau's Translation, p. 11.) Again, he says: "In order to observe, your intellect must pause from activity; yet it is this very activity that you want to observe. If you cannot effect the pause, you cannot observe; if you do effect it, there is nothing to observe. The results of such a method are in proportion to its absurdity." (Ibid. p. 11.)

3 (p. 12)." But the truth is, that they are not the highest instances which give the best or securest information, as is expressed, not inelegantly, in the common story of the philosopher, who, while he gazed upon the stars, fell into the water; for if he had looked down, he might have seen the stars in the water, but, looking aloft, he could not see the water in the stars."-De Augment. Scient. B. ii.

4 (p. 14)-Individual Psychology Bacon set down as wanting; he enforces its study, "so that we may have a scientific and accurate dissection of mind and characters, and the secret dispositions of particular men may be revealed, and that from the knowledge thereof better rules may be framed for the treatment of the mind."-De Augment. Scient. B. vii.

6 (p. 23). "It is to be regretted that he (Dugald Stewart) had not studied (he even treats it as inconceivable) the Leibnitzian doctrine of what has not been well denominated obscure perceptions or ideas—that is, acts and affections of mind, which, manifesting their existence in their effects, are themselves out of consciousness or apperception. The fact of such latent modifications is now established beyond all rational doubt; and on the supposition of their reality, we are able to solve various psychological phenomena otherwise inexplicable. Among these are many of those attributed to habit." (Sir W. Hamilton, in his edition of Reid, p. 551.)

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Ich sehe nicht," says Leibnitz, "dass die Cartesianer jemals beweisen haben oder beweisen können, dass jede Vorstellung von Bewusstsein begleitet ist." And again :-" Darin nämlich haben die Cartesianer sehr gefehlt, dass sie die Vorstellungen, deren man sich nicht bewusst ist, für nichts rechneten. Das war auch der Grund, warum sie glaubten, dass nur die Geiste Monaden waren, und dass es keine Seelen der Thiere oder andere Entelechien gebe."-Leibnitz als Donker. Auswahl seiner kleinern Aufsätze. By G. Schelling.

Pp. 108 and 115.

Fichte, in his Bestimmung des Menschen-" In jedem Momente ihrer Dauer ist die Natur ein zusammenhängendes Ganze; in jedem Momente

muss jeder einzelne Theil derselbe so sein wie er ist, weil alle übrigen sind wie sie sind; und du könntest kein Sandkörnchen von seiner Stelle verrücken, ohne dadurch vielleicht alle Theile des unermesslichen Ganzen hindurch etwas zu verändern. Aber jeder Moment dieser Dauer ist bestimmt durch alle abgelaufenen Momente, und wird bestimmen alle künftigen Momente, und du kannst in dem gegenwärtigen keines Sandkörne Lage anders denken als sie ist, ohne dass du genöthigt würdest die ganze Vergangenheit ins Unbestimmte hinauf, und die ganze Zukunft ins Unbestimmte herab dir anders zu denken."-Sämmtliche Werke, ii. 178.

It is only right to add, that the fullest exposition of unconscious mental action is to be found in Beneke's works. A summary of his views is contained in his Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft.

(p. 37).-Since this chapter was written, and, indeed, separately published, Mr. J. S. Mill has made a powerful defence of the so-called Psychological Method. In his criticism of Comte in the Westminster Review for April 1865, and in his "Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy," he has said all that can be said in favour of the Psychological Method, and has done what could be done to disparage the Physiological Method. This he had already done many years ago in the second volume of his "System of Logic," and he is now only consistent in returning to the charge. Nevertheless, the admirers of Mr. Mill may well experience regret to see him serving with so much zeal on what is a so desperately forlorn hope. Physiology seems never to have been a favourite study with Mr. Mill-in none of his writings does he exhibit any indications of being really acquainted with it; for it is hardly possible to conceive that any one having a knowledge of the present state of this science, would disparage it as he has done, and exalt so highly the psychological method of investigating mental phenomena. The wonder is, however, that he who has done so much to expound the system of Comte, and to strengthen and complete it, should on this question take leave of it entirely, and follow and laud a method of research which is so directly opposed to the method of positive science. Of course, I speak now strictly of the

thod, not of Comte's application of it in his unfounded phreno1ical speculations, which are scarcely less wild and absurd than his religious delirium appears to be. I wever, though one may suspect J. Mill to be unfortunate in his igrance, or entirely mistaken in 1. estimate, of the physiological method, one cannot fail to profit by t study of his arguments on bel of the psychological method, a by his exposition of its merits. By paraling the whole force

I

of the reasons in favour of it, he has exhibited, not so much its strength as its weakness, and has undesignedly given important assistance to the physiological method. For the reasons why he has not been convincing, and why this chapter has been left unmodified, may refer to the arguments set forth in a review of his "Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy" in the Journal of Mental Science for January 1866. "Mr. Mill," it is there said, "has a high opinion of the psychological method of inquiry into mental phenomena, and thinks Comte to have committed a great error in discarding it. Whether that be true or not is not the question now; we may admit it to be true, and still ask whether it is a sufficient reason for ignoring those important results of the physiological method of research which bear vitally on psychology; whether, in fact, because a certain method has some worth, it can therefore afford to dispense entirely with the aid furnished by other methods."

And again :-"The present complaint against Mr. Mill is that he takes no notice of the effects of recent scientific conceptions on the questions referred to philosophy; that he goes on exactly as he might have gone on if he had lived in the days of Aristotle; that at a time when a new method, highly fertile in fact and of more fruitful promise, was available, he persists in trying to do, by the old method, what Plato, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and a host of others have not done. Now, we have not the slightest faith that ten thousand Mills will, following the same method, do what these great men have not done; but there can be no question that, had Mr. Mill chosen to avail himself of the new material and the new method, which his great predecessors had not in their day, he would have done what no other living man could have done."

CHAPTER II.

THE MIND and the NERVOUS SYSTEM.

That which perceives is a part of nature as truly as the objects of perception which act on it, and, as a part of nature, is itself an object of investigation purely physical. It is known to us only in the successive changes which constitute the variety of our feelings: but the regular sequence of these changes admits of being traced, like the regularity which we are capable of discovering in the successive changes of our bodily frane. There is a Physiology of the Mind, then, as there is a Physiology of the Body-a science which examines the phenomena of our spiritual part simply as phenomena, and from the order of their succession, or other circumstances of analogy, arranges them in classes, under certain general names; as, in the physiology of our corporeal part, we consider the phenomena of a different kind which the body exhibits, and reduce all the diversities of these under the names of a few general functions.”—Sketch of a System of Philosophy of the Human Mind, by T. Brown, M.D.

TH

HE crude proposition of Cabanis,* that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile, has been a subject of much ridicule to those who have not received it with outcries of disapprobation and disgust. Assuredly it is not an exact expression of the facts; one may rightly admit the brain to be the principal organ of the mind, without accepting the fallacious comparison of mental action with biliary secretion. Here as elsewhere, confusion is bred by the common use of the word "secretion" to express, not only the functional process but the secreted product, both the insensible vital changes and the tangible results of them. It is of great importance to try to fix, with as much precision as possible, what we mean by mind.

In the first place, mind, viewed in it scientific sense as a natural force, caunot be observed and handled and dealt with as a palpable object; like electricity, or gravity, or any other

• "Non- oncluous avec la même certitude que le cerveau digere en quelque sort les impressions; qu'il fait organiquement la sécrétion de la pensée.”— Rapport du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme, par P. J. G. Cobanis.

of the natural forces, it is appreciable only in the changes of matter which are the conditions of its manifestation. Few, if any, will now be found to deny that with each display of mental power there are correlative changes in the material substratum; that every phenomenon of mind is the result, as manifest energy, of some change, molecular, chemical, or vital, in the nervous elements of the brain. Chemical analysis of the so-called extractives of nerve testifies to definite change or "waste" through functional activity; for there are found, as products of a retrograde metamorphosis, lactic acid, kreatin, uric acid, probably also hypoxanthin, and, representing the fatty acids, formic and acetic acids. These products are very like those which are found in muscle after its functional activity: in the performance of an idea, as in the performance of a movement, there is a retrograde metamorphosis of organic element; the display of energy is at the cost of the highly-organized matter, which undergoes degeneration or passes from a higher to a lower grade of being; and the retrograde products are, so far as is at present known, very similar in muscle and nerve. While the contents of nerves, again, are neutral during rest in the living state, they become acid after death, and after great activity during life: the same is the case also with regard to muscle. Furthermore, after prolonged mental exercise, the products of the metamorphosis of nerve element, into the composition of which phosphorus enters largely, are recognised in an increase of phosphates in the urine; while it is only by supposing an idea to be accompanied by a correlative change in the nerve-cells that we can explain the exhaustion following excessive mental work and the breaking down of the brain in extreme cases. These things being so, what is it which in a physiological sense we designate mind? Not the material products of cerebral activity, but the marvellous energy which cannot be grasped and handled. Here, then, is made manifest a fallacy of the axiom propounded by Cabanis: it is plain that the tangible results of the brain's activity, the waste matters which pass into the blood for assimilation by tissues of a lower kind, and for ultimate excretion from the body, might not less rightly be called the secretion of the brain, and be compared to the bile, than the intangible energy revealed in the mental phenomena.

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