Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3)Brown, Thomas
Philosophy
Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3)
Brown, Thomas
Philosophy; Psychology
In my Lecture yesterday, after some further elucidation of the _triple
division_ which we formed of the mental phenomena, as external
or sensitive affections of the mind, intellectual states of the
mind,--emotions,--I proceeded to consider the first of these divisions,
of which the characteristic distinction is, that the phenomena included
in it have their causes or immediate antecedents _external_ to the
mind itself. In this division, I comprehended, together with the
feelings which are universally ascribed to certain organs of sense,
many feelings, which, though unquestionably originating in states of
our bodily organs, as much as our other sensations, are yet commonly
ranked as a different order--such as our various appetites, or
rather that elementary uneasiness which is only a part, but still an
essential part of our appetites, and which is easily distinguishable
from the mere desire, which is the other element; since, however
rapid the succession of them may be, we are yet conscious of them as
successive. The particular uneasiness, it is evident, must have been
felt as a sensation before the desire of that which is to relieve the
uneasiness could have arisen. To the same class, too, I referred the
various organic feelings, which constitute the animal pleasure of good
health, when every corporeal function is exercised in just degree;
and in a particular manner, our _muscular_ feelings, whether of mere
general lassitude or alacrity; or those fainter differences of feelings
which arise in our various motions and attitudes, from the different
muscles that are exercised, or from the greater or less contraction
of the same muscles. These muscular feelings, though they may be
almost unnoticed by us, during the influence of stronger sensations,
are yet sufficiently powerful, when we attend to them, to render us,
independently of sight and touch, in a great measure sensible of
the position of our body in general, and of its various parts; and
comparatively indistinct as they are, they become,--in many cases, as
in the acquired perceptions of vision, for example, and equally too, as
I conceive, in various other instances, in which little attention has
been paid to them by philosophers,--_elements_ of some of the nicest
and most accurate judgments which we form.
It is, however, to that widest and most important order of our external
affections, which comprehends the feelings more commonly termed
_sensations_, and universally ascribed to particular organs of sense,
that we have now to proceed. In these, we find the rude elements of
all our knowledge, the materials on which the mind is ever operating,
and without which, it seems to us almost impossible to conceive that
it could ever have operated at all, or could, even in its absolute
inactivity, have been conscious of its own inert existence.
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