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
Of the nature of the connexion of this great sensorial organ with the
sentient mind, we never shall be able to understand more than is
involved in the simple fact, that a certain affection of the nervous
system precedes immediately a certain affection of the mind. But,
though we are accustomed to regard this species of mutual succession of
bodily and mental changes, as peculiarly inexplicable, from the very
different nature of the substances which are reciprocally affected,
it is truly not more so than any other case of succession of events,
where the phenomena occur in substances that are not different in their
properties, but analogous, or even absolutely similar; since, in no
one instance of this kind, can we perceive more than the uniform order
of the succession itself; and of changes, the successions of which are
all absolutely inexplicable, or, in other words, absolutely simple, and
unsusceptible, therefore, of further analysis, none can be justly said
to be more or less so than another. That a peculiar state of the mere
particles of the brain, should be followed by a change of state of the
sentient mind, is truly wonderful; but if we consider it strictly, we
shall find it to be by no means more wonderful, than that the arrival
of the moon, at a certain point of the heavens, should render the
state of a body on the surface of our earth, different from what it
otherwise would naturally be or that the state of every particle of our
globe, in its relative tendencies of gravitation, should be instantly
changed, as it unquestionably would be, by the destruction of the most
distant satellite of the most distant planet of our system, or probably
too, by the destruction even of one of those remotest of stars, which
are illuminating their own system of planets, so far in the depth of
infinity, that their light,--to borrow a well-known illustration of
sidereal distance,--may never yet have reached our earth, since the
moment at which they darted forth their first beams, in the creation
of the universe. We believe, indeed, with as much confidence, that one
event will uniformly have for its consequent another event, which we
have observed to follow it, as we believe the simple fact that it _has_
preceded it, in the particular case observed. But the knowledge of the
present sequence, as a mere fact, to be remembered, and the expectation
of future similar sequences, as the result of an original law of our
belief, are precisely of the same kind, whether the sequence of changes
be in mind, or in matter singly, or reciprocally in both.
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