When body is dead, mind, so far as its reactions to the world we know
are concerned, ceases to act. But when the conscious mind is "dead" the
body may yet live as a vegetable lives, with all its distinctively human
functions lost. Motionless, save for the beating of the heart and the
reaction of the lungs to air, the body may still be alive, though the
mind long since has ceased all earthly activity.
So we discover that an organ of mind is an essential, here, to life of
mind, and that mind only can induce this organ to any action above the
vegetative stage. But, on the other hand, we find that life can exist
without conscious mind, even if untended by others, for a limited time.
If the direct nerve connections between the brain and the hand, the
brain and the foot, or the brain and the trunk are cut off, the mind
henceforth realizes nothing of that part except as the sense of sight
reports upon it; for the optic nerves relate the hand and mind, through
this sense, as truly as the motor nerves which carry the mind's message
for motion to the hand, and the sensory nerves which carry back to the
mind the hand's pain. But let the optic nerve be inert, the sensory and
motor connections broken between brain and hand, or foot and trunk, or
brain and trunk, and the hand or foot may be amputated and the mind
never sense the fact; the trunk may be severely injured and the mind be
serenely unconscious. So the brain in man is "the one immediate bodily
condition of the mental operations." Take away all the brain and man's
body is a useless mass of protoplasm.
The brain's varied and intricate nerve connections with all parts of the
body, through nerves branching from the main trunks in the spinal cord,
we shall not discuss, for you know them through your study of anatomy.
For the purpose of our psychology we need consider only two of the main
divisions of the brain--the _cerebrum_, which includes what we call the
right and left hemispheres, and the _cerebellum_.
THE CEREBRUM OR FOREBRAIN
For convenience the various lobes of the cerebrum are known as frontal,
temporal, parietal, and occipital, according to the parts of the brain
referred to: as forehead, temples, crown, or occiput. The cerebellum, or
hind brain, is also divided into two hemispheres, and is situated behind
and below the hemispheres of the cerebrum.
A system of localization has been roughly mapped out, the result of
careful laboratory work on animals and of studying the loss of various
functions in human beings as related to the location of brain injuries.
From these experiments it seems proved that consciousness belongs only
to the cortex or surface of the upper brain, and that the vast realm of
the unconscious belongs to the lower brain centers. Hence the cortex is
the organ of consciousness, and the lower centers are the repository of
the unconscious until it again becomes conscious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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