The Origin and Nature of the Emotions; Miscellaneous PapersCrile, George Washington
Science
The Origin and Nature of the Emotions; Miscellaneous Papers
Crile, George Washington
Emotions; Psychophysiology
Our experiments have proved conclusively that whether we call a person
fatigued or diseased, the brain-cells undergo physical deterioration,
accompanied by loss of mental power (Figs. 40 to 43). Even to the minutest
detail we can show a direct relationship between the physical state
of the brain-cells and the mental power of the individual, that is,
the physical power of a person goes _pari passu_ with his mental power.
Indeed, it is impossible to conceive how any mental action,
however subtle, can occur without a corresponding change in the
brain-cells. It is possible now to measure only the evidences of
the effects on the brain-cells of gross and violent mental activity.
At some future time it will doubtless be possible so to refine
the technic of brain-cell examinations that more subtle changes
may be measured. Nevertheless, with the means at our disposal
we have shown already that in all the conditions which we
have studied the cells of the cortex show the greatest changes,
and that loss of the higher mental functions invariably accompanies
the cell deterioration.
A MECHANISTIC VIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY[*]
[*] Address delivered before Sigma Xi, Case School
of Science, Cleveland, Ohio, May 27, 1913, and published
in _Science_, August 29, 1913.
Traditional religion, traditional medicine, and traditional psychology
have insisted upon the existence in man of a triune nature.
Three "ologies" have been developed for the study of each nature
as a separate entity--body, soul, and spirit--physiology, psychology,
theology; physician, psychologist, priest. To the great minds
of each class, from the days of Aristotle and Hippocrates on,
there have come glimmerings of the truth that the phenomena
studied under these divisions were interrelated. Always, however,
the conflict between votaries of these sciences has been sharp,
and the boundary lines between them have been constantly changing.
Since the great discoveries of Darwin, the zoologist, biologist,
and physiologist have joined hands, but still the soul-body-spirit
chaos has remained. The physician has endeavored to fight the gross
maladies which have been the result of disordered conduct;
the psychologist has reasoned and experimented to find the laws
governing conduct; and the priest has endeavored by appeals to an
unknown god to reform conduct.
The great impulse to a deeper and keener study of man's relation,
not only to man, but to the whole animal creation, which was given
by Darwin, has opened the way to the study of man on a different basis.
Psychologists, physicians, and priests are now joining hands as never
before in the great world-wide movement for the betterment of man.
The new science of sociology is combining the functions of all three,
for priest, physician, and psychologist have come to see that man
is in large measure the product of his environment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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