Open the book again! The exercise was worth while; but it was not quite
fair. For the fact is that these great comprehensive words that we all
use and all understand cannot be rigorously defined; they are too old;
they have lived through too many changes; they have gathered about them
too many conflicting associations. They pass muster in our everyday
discourse only because we take them for granted and do not scrutinise
them too closely. The expert alone can say what common sense means by
mind; and even the expert must speak in general terms, qualifying and
with reservations.
It seems, however, that the prime factor in =the common-sense notion
of mind= is the idea of activity. We ascribe to mind the same sort of
voluntary and purposeful activity that we ascribe to our fellow-men;
and we distinguish this activity from the blind necessity of cause and
effect. We find ourselves, and those about us, deliberating, intending,
resolving, planning, recalling, doubting; and we say that these and
similar activities are activities of mind. We also find ourselves,
and those about us, breathing, secreting, moving; but here we draw
distinctions. Breathing, we say, is a physical affair, though we may
hold the breath by an act of will. Secretion results from some physical
or chemical cause; only if we cry for sorrow or sweat for fear is mind
influencing body. Walking and blinking may be physical only; but if we
turn our steps by intention into a certain path, or blink on purpose to
clear our sight, the physical movements become subject to the action of
mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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