Boris Sidis

“ Now it is the mental states of the corporeal individual that psychology investigates and studies.
In our last discussion we have come to the conclusion that consciousness depends on the corporeal individual and can only be known from physical, bodily manifestations. Each living being manifests some activity in its reactions to the stimuli of the external environment. Now what are the reactions characteristic of consciousness? ”

“ Psychology is the science of psychic states both as to content and form, regarded from an objective standpoint, and brought in relation to the living corporeal individual. ”

“ We know of the thoughts, of the emotions, of our companions, by the muscular expressions of the face, by the changes in the brilliancy of the eye, by the general bodily state, such as quietness or restlessness, by their gestures, by many other physical expressions, but principally by means of those physical manifestations known as speech. Were all those concomitant physical processes absent, there would have been no means whatever of knowing of the very existence of external states of consciousness. ”

“ As an empirical science psychology studies only such states of consciousness as are connected with physical reality, or truer to say with some individualized physical being. In short, psychology treats of states of consciousness as dependent on or connected with the corporeal individual.
The meaning of the concept "corporeal individual" must not be left in a vague state. From a purely mechanical standpoint we may say, that a corporeal individual is a closely interrelated system of material parts forming a more or less stable equilibrium. ”

“ Wherever, therefore, we meet with life, there some form of psychic state, however primitive and elementary, must be present. Psychic states stand in the most intimate relationship to life activity. The two in fact cannot be separated. Psychosis is concomitant with biosis. ”

“ The stone on the road changes its place according to the influences of incident forces; the grain of dust is blown hither and thither by the wind; they do not show a more or less definite purposive activity under changing circumstances. The disturbance of their equilibrium does not stimulate them to induce changes in the external environment, changes that would tend to restore that lost equilibrium: They, therefore, have no purpose. ”

“ Psychologists as well as physiologists all agree thus far, that there is no psychosis without neurosis; some go further and affirm that there is no neurosis without psychosis; I think, we are closer to the truth, if we advance still further and assume, that there is no biosis without psychosis. ”

“ The man in running after the car has purpose, so has the cat in chasing the mouse, so has the deer in fleeing from the hunter. The very amoeba, that lump of protoplasm, in extending its pseudopodia to draw in the bit of nutriment, possesses the germ of purposive activity, and some primitive psychic state must therefore be ascribed to it. Life is essentially purposive in its nature. ”

“ Were even such a thing possible, we could not know of it, because the only way we come to know of other thoughts is through their physical activities perceived by our sense organs. We know of the existence of other individual hate, love, anger, friendship, kindness by the physical expressions of those feelings, by the acts that accompany them. ”