Brainard

“ After Farson had taken the hint and removed his bewildered person from the room, Brainard sat for another hour before the dead fire, in a sleepless revery. The unexpected visit of the stenographer and the fight-trust man had brought back vividly a long train of memories of what had constituted his active life for the last four years. The situation that had developed had again emphasized the dream quality of all living. It is the conventionally expected in life that makes what men ordinarily term reality. A slight turn from the ordinary course of events produces a sense of unreality. ”

“ If it is good for them, is it not just as good for us?"
"Better!" he exclaimed. "By George, you ARE the goods."
It was late before Constance had a chance to do anything with the microphone. It seemed as if Worthington were staying, perversely, later than usual. At last, however, he left with a curt nod to her.
The moment the door was closed she stopped the desultory clicking of her typewriter with which she had been toying in the appearance of being busy. With Brainard she entered the board room where she had noticed Worthington and Sheppard often during the day. ”

“ I'll confess to you—and to you only—that I've been so deeply disturbed by these experiences with The Brain that I've thought to myself: "Lee you're going crazy." The Brain as it has revealed itself to me, is a tremendous reality; the world outside The Brain is another reality and the two seem mutually exclusive of one another; they just don't mix. Now: either The Brain is an absolute reality—in that case I should not wish to have anything to do with this god of the machines who wants to enslave mankind ... ”

“ Whatever therefore the nature is of the processes that are going on in the cells and fibres of the cerebral cortex, it is impossible that we should be aware of a real world outside of the brain and also that that awareness should be produced or manufactured in the brain. If we really could believe that our mind was produced in and by our brain, that the brain cells manufactured it or constructed it out of movements sent to it from the skin and sense organs, we could have no assurance that we had any knowledge of reality or that there was any reality to know. ”

“ The doctrine has understood this connection as being purely material, and has sought its image in other phenomena which are entirely so. Thus, it has borrowed from physiology the principle of its explanation, it has transported into the domain of thought the idea of function, and it has supposed that the soul is to the body in the relation of function to organ. Intelligence would thus be a cerebral function. To explain intelligence, materialists link it with matter, turn it into a property of matter, and compare it to a movement of matter, and sometimes even to a secretion. ”

“ Above all, I adhere to this idea, which has been one of the guiding forces of this book: there exists at the bottom of all the phenomena of the intelligence, a duality. To form a true phenomenon, there must be at once a consciousness and an object. According to passing tendencies, either of temperament or of fashion, preponderance has been given sometimes to one of the terms of this couple, sometimes to the other. The idealist declares: “Thought creates the world.” The materialist answers: “The matter of the brain creates thought.” ”

“ There is in this no opposition between the physical and the mental. What is compared are the two phenomena, which are both mixed and are physico-mental—physical, through the object to which they are applied, mental, through the act of cognition they imply. To perceive an object in the plain and to perceive a dynamic state of the brain are two operations which each imply an act of cognition; [158] and, in addition, the object of this knowledge is as material in the one as in the other case. A flock of sheep is matter just as much as my brain. ”

“ Can the mind enjoy an existence independent of the brain? Can it survive the death of the brain? The second question is that of knowing what is the rôle, the utility, and the efficacity of the psychical phenomenon. Once formed, this phenomenon evolves in a certain direction and assumes to us who have consciousness of it a very great importance. What is its action on the material phenomena of the brain which surround it? Does it develop according to laws of its own, which have no relation to the laws of brain action? ”

“ For the materialist to suppose for one moment that thought is a cerebral function, he must evidently make an illusion for himself as to what thought is, and must juggle with concepts. Perhaps, could we penetrate into his own inmost thought, we should discover that at the moment he supposes a mere cell can manufacture the phenomena of consciousness, some vague image suggests itself to him whereby he identifies these phenomena with a light and subtle principle escaping from the nerve cell, something which resembles an electric effluve, or a will-of-the-wisp, or the flame from a punch-bowl. ”

“ What a priori right have we to limit the occasioning power of brain-processes? If matter can occasion so much, who can say, apart from an actual investigation of the facts, that it cannot occasion all? To say that from the very nature of certain facts of consciousness their occasion cannot be found in brain-processes, is to lay claim to a far greater knowledge of the brain and its capacities than any one can consistently lay claim to who insists so forcibly and emphatically as Professor Ladd does on our ignorance of cerebral physiology. ”

“ Each is a state of something else, which is never more than a state—and the something escapes us. The same consequence, again, is palpable if we take refuge in the brain. If the world is my brain-state, then what is my own brain? That is nothing but the state of some brain, I need not proceed to ask whose. [2] It is, in any case, not real as a physical thing, unless you reduce it to the adjective of a physical thing. And this illusive quest goes on for ever. It can never lead you to what is more than either an adjective of, or a relation between,—what you cannot find. ”

“ Because if The Brain is a personality, that personality has every right to its own thoughts....
I have also ascertained that this "evaporation" of new capacity is a new phenomenon. The Brain has been in operation for only 18 months or so; one might say—using human terms—that at that time The Brain was "born". But,—and again in human terms—consciousness of personality awakens in the human infant only after 12 months or so. Conceivably it might take much longer with a huge "baby" such as The Brain. ”

“ It is not the nervous undulation which our consciousness perceives, but the exciting cause of this wave—that is, the external object. The consciousness does not feel that which is quite close to it, but is informed of that which passes much further off. Nothing that is produced inside the cranium interests it; it is solely occupied with objects of which the situation is extra-cranial. It does not penetrate into the brain, we might say, but spreads itself like a sheet over the periphery of the body, and thence springs into the midst of the external objects. ”

“ Our present study concerns the deeper but not less interesting problem of the indexing of mind, and of the relations of brain-conformation and brain-structure to character and disposition. If there exists no art "to find the mind's construction in the face," Lavater notwithstanding, may we discover "the mind's construction in the skull"? If the old phrenology, or the science of brain-pans, be regarded as practically obsolete among physiologists and scientific men at large, what hopes of successfully estimating the "coinage of the brain" may the new phrenology be said to hold out? ”

“ I fully admit that any exact account of brain states is at present far beyond our reach; and I am surprised that Professor Ladd should have read into my pages the opinion that psychology as a natural science must aim at an account of brain states exclusively, as the correlates of states of mind. Our mental states are correlated immediately with brain states, it is true; but, more remotely, they are correlated with many other physical events, peripheral nerve currents for example, and the physical stimuli which occasion these. ”

“ These ideas are nearly the same with those that afterward prevailed among many philosophers and some naturalists; the brain, in which the most important functions of the nervous system are performed, was for them not the real organ of thought, but simply the substratum of intelligence. Indeed, the objection was often enough expressed, that the brain forms a physiological exception to all the other organs of the body, in that it is the seat of metaphysical manifestations, which the physiologist has no concern with. ”

“ For about thirty minutes Scriven lectured with lucidity upon the basic idea, the history, the functions of The Brain. He underlined the close relationship between its engineering features and the physiology of the human brain. He stressed the elaborate precautions which the government had taken for The Brain's protection. He did not conceal The Brain's role as a strategic weapon; but, pointing to the future, he painted an inspiring picture of peace on earth and human problems solved with the aid of this tool supreme of science and technology. ”

“ Now The Brain suffers about the same kind of a handicap. No matter how prodigious the volume of its cognitions;—it's book knowledge, practically all of it. It is only very recently that The Brain has been put to the direct study of living objects, such as "ant-termes" and of Man, its creator; it has no other vital cognitions than through those very one-sided mind-reading tests....
This explains to me a great many things: As The Brain evolves into a personality and as that personality evolves in a defensive attitude against its exploitation, it is absolutely self-centered. ”

“ Nothing to disturb you this time; we don't have to start you upon any specific trend of thought. You know The Brain by now and how it works; image-formation will start in a few moments. You have similar equipment in your own Apperception Center we understand. How does it work with that species you have discovered, 'Ant-termes Pacificus'? It's marvelous what these sensory rays can do; one would think that The Brain is really much more than a machine. The way it acts it seems alive, a towering intelligence, a superhuman personality with a will of its own. Don't you think so, Dr. Lee? ”

“ Our consciousness then assists at the unrolling of representations which correspond to the outer world. These representations are not, or do not appear to be, lodged in the brain; and it is not necessary to suppose a special operation which, taking them in the brain, should project them to the periphery of our nerves. This transport would be useless, since for the consciousness the brain does not exist: the brain, with its fibres and cells, is not felt; it therefore supplies no datum to enable us to judge whether the representation is external or internal with regard to it. ”

“ Let us excuse in psychologists this petty and common whim for exaggerating the merit of the science they pursue. But here the limit is really passed, and no scholar will admit that the perception and representation of a body, as it may take [149] place in the brain of a Berthelot, can present any inferiority as a cognition of the absolute, to the pain felt by the snail I crush under my foot. Nobody except metaphysicians will acknowledge that psychology is a more precise and certain science than physics or chemistry. ”

“ For we find here and there, a few perfectly sane individuals, from whom, when in a rather exceptional state, the customary brain-limitation seems to be withdrawn or withdrawable. Their minds cease to be isolated for a time, and are accessible to more direct influences. Not the familiar part of their minds, not the part accustomed to operate and to be operated on by the habitually used portion of brain, no, but what is called a subliminal stratum of mind, a part only accessible perhaps to physical things through an ordinarily unused and only subconscious portion of the brain. ”

“ And now as I have written down tonight's events I feel an upsurge of elation and deep, humble gratitude. I am receiving infinitely more from The Brain than I am giving to it. I feel proud and honored of being The Brain's "chosen tool," its mentor, even if it can be only in a very small way at best. ”

“ In order to come into its own as a personality The Brain needs independent thought. For these cerebrations it needs cell capacity. It can get that capacity only by withholding something from the Braintrust which, of course, aims at a 100% exploitation of The Brain. Dr. Scriven and all those other bigwigs of the Trust—I would like to see their faces if they get wise to this. They would be horrified—and they would take the line that The Brain is stealing from them. ”

“ Our thoughts, our memories, our reasonings have as object sensations, images—that is to say, things which, strictly speaking, are as material as our own brains. It is therefore rather childish to put all these workings of the spirit on another plane and in another world than the workings of the brain since they are in great part of the same nature as the last named and they contain so many material elements. ”

“ Within ten days it will be official: only one ruler in the world: The Brain; only one army in the world: the machines under My central command.'
At this I lost all sense of proportion and as I can see it now my reason stopped; I simply saw red and I did the craziest imaginable thing: I shouted at The Brain: 'So help me you shall not.'
There was a terrific pounding against my ears in the phone and the 'green dancer' sort of cart-wheeled clean across the screen. Had the power current not been cut off, I think The Brain would somehow have electrocuted me on the spot. ”