The Catholic World, Vol. 20, October 1874‐March 1875Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 20, October 1874‐March 1875
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
_Reader._ The term is known, but it is used more or less properly by
different persons. Our minds may deal with either sensible or intellectual
objects. When we have seen a mountain, we may think of it, because we have
received from it an impression in our senses which leaves a vestige of
itself in our organism, and enables us to represent to ourselves the
object we have perceived. In this case our _thought_ is an exercise of our
imagination. When, on the contrary, we think of some abstract notion or
relation which does not strike our senses, and of which no image has been
pictured in our organic potencies, then our _thought_ is an exercise of
intellectual power. In both cases our brain has something to do with the
thought. For in the first case our thought is an act of the sensitive
faculty, which reaches its object as it is pictured, or otherwise
impressed, in our organic potencies, of which the headquarters are in the
brain. In the second case our thought is an act of the intellectual
faculty, which detects the intelligible relations existing between the
objects already perceived, or between notions deduced from previous
perceptions; and this act, inasmuch as it implies the consideration of
objects furnished to the mind by sensible apprehension, cannot but be
accompanied by some act of the imaginative power making use of the images
pictured in the organic potencies. Now, doctor, when you say that “the
brain is the seat and organ of thought,” do you mean that both the
intellectual and the imaginative thought reside in the brain and are
worked out by the brain?
_Büchner._ Of course. For “comparative anatomy shows that through all
classes of animals, up to man, the intellectual energy is in proportion to
the size and material quality of the brain” (p. 107).
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