The Brain

“ Everything seems, therefore, to happen as if consciousness sprang from the brain, and as if the detail of conscious activity were modeled on that of the cerebral activity. In reality, consciousness does not spring from the brain; but brain and consciousness correspond because equally they measure, the one by the complexity of its structure and the other by the intensity of its awareness, the quantity of choice that the living being has at its disposal. ”

“ If you say the Brain immits and directs these Spirits, how can that so freely and spontaneously move it self or another that has no Muscles? besides, Anatomists tell us, that though the Brain be the instrument of sense, yet it has no sense at all of it self; how then can that that has no sense direct thus spontaneously and arbitrariously the Animal Spirits into any part of the Body? an act that plainly requires determinate sense and perception. ”

“ For whether, indeed, thought is regarded as a mere function of the brain and the state of consciousness as an epiphenomenon of the state of the brain, or whether mental states and brain states are held to be two versions, in two different languages, of one and the same original, in either case it is laid down that, could we penetrate into the inside of a brain at work and behold the dance of the atoms which make up the cortex, and if, on the other hand, we possessed the key to psycho-physiology, we should know every detail of what is going on in the corresponding consciousness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Take them in their union and we see at once what the brain is—a great exchange office or switchboard, where the stimuli that come from the outer world are received and switched on to their responsive movements. We see also what the mind is, it is the whole scheme of our activity, and we see how it functions by bringing the field of our activity to consciousness. ”

“ There is no more interesting subject of inquiry open just now than that of the interaction between the thoughts of the mind and the configuration of the brain. The fair conclusion appears to be that each is greatly the cause of the other; that the character of the persistent thoughts actually shapes the cerebrum, while on the configuration of this organ depends in turn the manner of thoughts we think. Now, thought is, for the most part, automatic. We think, without intention or effort, as we have been accustomed to think, just as we walk or write without any conscious arrangement of muscles. ”

“ All that we can discover by help of our senses and by reasoning upon their information is the existence of a wonderful [73] piece of Mechanism—the brain—by which the functions of Mind are performed and whose structure regulates the entire character of the Mind.
It is conclusively established that the individual Self, in its normal state of relationship to the body, can receive and convey impressions only through the medium of the brain. Remove the brain and mind ceases to be, although life may linger long. ”

“ For everything is within consciousness, and no way can be devised of issuing forth from it. We say that the brain is external to consciousness, and that the cranium encloses the brain, which in turn is enveloped by space luminous and airy, space filled with beautiful plants and beautiful animals; yet the fact remains that brain and skull and everything else are the potential or actual object of our thinking faculty, and cannot but remain therefore within that consciousness to which for a moment we supposed them to be external. ”

“ The physiologists have made it absolutely plain that the brain is concerned with thinking. Nay, more, that thought may go on without any volition on the part of the thinker. Further, that much of our best work in art and literature is the result of what is called unconscious cerebration. Now, we must admit one of two things. Either thought is a process of the material brain, one more 'mode of motion,' as the materialists contend, or the material brain is the agent of the spiritual thought, which acts upon it, let us say, as the fingers of a player upon the keys of his instrument. ”

“ Every one has long known that, without the brain, intelligence is not possible, but experiment has discovered exactly the part that is played by each portion of the organ. It teaches us that consciousness, or intelligence properly so called, resides in the cerebral lobes, while the lower portions of the brain contain nervous centres destined for organic functions of a lower kind. ”

“ But it is not only by experiments such as this that we make the discovery that there is a close and intimate relation between the mind and the brain, a relation which makes the mind dependent on the brain. ”

“ Once we recognise that in the thinking of a thought there is as distinct motion set up in some tract of the brain as there is in the muscles of the hand employed in writing a sentence, we shall see that the behaviour of the grey nerve-substance of the cerebrum should afford the one possible key to certitude and system in our attempts at education, using the word in the most worthy sense—as its concern is the formation of character. ”

“ Or rather why, if the figuration of one part of the Brain be communicated to all the rest, does not the same Object seem situated both behinde us and before us, above and beneath, on the right hand and on the left, and every way as the Impress of the Object is reflected against all the parts of the Brains? ”

“ 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? ”

“ The importance of the brain as the seat of the faculties of the mind, is pre-eminent in the animal economy. Hence, the avidity with which its structure and functions have been studied in our time; for, although much remains to be explained, much has certainly been accomplished. We have reason to believe, not only that the brain is the center of the whole series of mental manifestations, but that its several parts are so many organs, each one of which performs its peculiar and distinctive office. ”

“ The scalpel of the anatomist can nowhere discover in the full-grown brain an organ of veneration, or of hope, or of language, or of destructiveness, or of any other mental feature: nor can his microscope detect in nature's wondrous process of fashioning the brain any reason for the belief that the organ of mind is a collection of parts each devoted to the exercise of a special quality of mind. The arrangement which appears so clear on the phrenologist's bust is nowhere represented in the brain itself. ”

“ When the brain is said to be essential, as the organ or instrument of the mind in its relations with the external world, not only to the [Pg 171] perception of sensations, but to the subsequent intellectual acts, and especially to the memory, of things which have been the objects of sense—it is asked, how can the brain be the organ of memory when you suppose its substance to be ever changing? ”

“ It must be frankly confessed that in no fundamental sense do we know where our successive fields of consciousness come from, or why they have the precise inner constitution which they do have. They certainly follow or accompany our brain states, and of course their special forms are determined by our past experiences and education. But, if we ask just how the brain conditions them, we have not the remotest inkling of an answer to give; and, if we ask just how the education moulds the brain, we can speak but in the most abstract, general, and conjectural terms. ”

“ Surely no one who is cognisant of the facts of the case, nowadays, doubts that the roots of psychology lie in the physiology of the nervous system. What we call the operations of the mind are the functions of the brain, and the materials of consciousness are products of cerebral activity. ”

“ When we emerge from this necessary field of labor, we come to those functions peculiar to the proper brain. Here all is continual action. Thought, imagination, will, the conflicting passions, language, and even articulation, claim their first impulse from the nervous centre. The idlest reverie, as well as the most profound study, taxes the brain. ”

“ In the case of the higher functions involving thought, the upper part of the brain, which performs these functions, seems to be a sort of duplex machine, so that we have two brains capable of thinking, just as we have two eyes capable of seeing. It is a remarkable fact that the areas of the brain which are appropriated to the lowest and most instinctive functions, which appear first, lie lowest, and as the functions rise the position of their nerve-centres rises with them. ”

“ Let us hear what the two leading nervous physiologists, of this country, have to say upon this point:
'The brain is not, strictly speaking, the organ of the mind, for this statement would imply that the mind exists as a force, independent of the brain; but the mind is produced by the brain substance; and intellectual force, if we may term the intellect a force, can be produced only by the transmutation of a certain amount of matter ”

“ In ordinary discourse we use the words brain and mind as interchangeable terms, because it is quite evident that where there is lack of intelligence there is deficiency in the brain and where there is a high degree of intelligence there is a correspondingly high development of brain. The immense advance in recent times in our knowledge of the physiology of cerebral process serves more and more to emphasize the entire and absolute dependence of mind on brain, and particularly of the higher processes of mind on the development of the cells and fibres of the cerebral cortex. ”

“ And it seems impossible to doubt that it is the brain that produces the mind and not the mind that produces the brain, because the brain is an organ that develops continually throughout life and performs a multitude of other functions besides that of turning the excitation of its cells and fibres into sensations and perceptions, a function that seems to be intermittent and only called into activity at definite times and in special circumstances. ”

“ It is the lower or vegetative brain that may still exist and keep life intact when the functions of the cerebrum are destroyed. We can say, then, of the brain as a whole that it is the organ of the mind, the sine qua non of the mind, the apparatus for the registration of sense impressions. ”

“ Even if the knowledge of the topography of the brain were immeasurably more advanced than it now is, even though we could observe the vast network of nerve-fibres and filaments of which the brain is composed, and could discern the actual changes in brain-cells under nerve stimulations, we should still be a long way off from understanding the nature and genesis of ideas which can only be known to us as immediate in their own quality. ”

“ But more wonderful, a thousand fold, is their ability to follow the course of thought in a living cerebrum after the brain has been made visible by a light more potent than the X ray. After this exposure the operator, with his wizard magnifying lens, watches the tiny tremulous brain cells in their infinitesimal quivering, as they carry messages from the soul to the world of sense and being. ”

“ Functionally, also, the importance of the brain has been unduly emphasized by certain anthropologists. There is far less direct connection between intelligence and brain mass and form than was at one time presumed. It is true that the cerebral lobes are the seat of consciousness; but the brain is no more essential to intelligence than is the circulation, or digestion, or the liver. Intelligence is the mediation of action, and all organs and tissues which cooperate in forming an association, are equally important with the brain. ”

“ The use of the brain along chosen lines will, on well-known physiological principles, increase its organization and therefore its power for manifesting psychic phenomena. These two factors will continue to act and react in the future as they have in the past, increased psychical activity enlarging the brain, and the more highly organized brain augmenting the psychic phenomena. What is true of the mind in general is also true of its varied manifestations. ”

“ But considered simply in itself and according to the rules we apply to all our deductions and inferences, if the mind is simply a product of the brain it is then something potentially present in the brain or present in the materials supplied to the brain before it is actually produced, and this something cannot be what is happening outside the brain or that did or will happen outside the brain. ”

“ That is our first reason for saying the mind cannot be produced by the brain. The brain is a certain group of material particles, or a certain equilibrium of physical forces, occupying a definite position in space, which responds to movements by transmitting movements. ”