frequently repeating them; so it is that all our knowledge is
accumulated; and so it is that all our thinking is conducted.
A wholly new field of inquiry is thus opened up. By using our own
consciousness as a physiological instrument of the greatest delicacy, we
are able to learn a great deal about the dynamics of brain-action
concerning which we should otherwise remain in total ignorance. But the
field of inquiry thus opened up is too large for me to enter upon
to-day. I will therefore merely observe, in general terms, that although
we are still very far from understanding the operations of the brain in
thought, there can be no longer any question that in these operations of
the brain we have what I may term the objective machinery of thought.
'Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently,' said
Hobbes. Starting from this fact, modern physiology has clearly shown why
it is a fact; and looking to the astonishing rate at which the science
of physiology is now advancing, I think we may fairly expect that within
a time less remote than the two centuries which now separate us from
Hobbes, the course of ideas in a given train of thought will admit of
having its footsteps tracked in the corresponding pathways of the brain.
Be this, however, as it may, even now we know enough to say that,
whether or not these footsteps will ever admit of being thus tracked in
detail, they are all certainly present in the cerebral structures of
each one of us. What we know on the side of mind as logical sequence, is
on the side of the nervous system nothing more than a passage of nervous
energy through one series of cells and fibres rather than through
another: what we recognize as truth is merely the fact of the brain
vibrating in tune with Nature.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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