Brain

“ I have already said that if we suppose causation to proceed from brain to mind, we must suppose this essential requirement of equivalency between the cerebral causes and the mental effects to be satisfied somewhere. ”

“ How do we know that there is a world outside of our body of which the body is a part? Because a certain process has taken place in a certain portion of our brain. And how do we know that this process has taken place? ”

“ 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. ”

“ I merely speak of the relation of the brain to the mind, as the instrument through which the mind operates and expresses itself. We all know that it is in virtue of the impressions carried to the brain, through the nerves proceeding from the different sensory organs in various parts of the body, that we become conscious of what is taking place around us. And, again, that it is through the nerves proceeding from the brain that we are able to execute those movements which the Will prompts and dictates, or which arise from the play of the Emotions. ”

“ All physiologists and philosophers regard the brain as the organ of the mind. Although it is not befitting here to give a particular description of this complicated organ, still it may be well further to premise that, by nearly universal consent, it is regarded as the immediate seat of the intellectual faculties not only, but of the passions and moral feelings of our nature, as well as of consciousness and every other mental act. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The brain may be said to be the organ of the mind, but we do not know what is the true relation between them; that is, how the brain is acted upon by the mind, or how the action of the mind affects the brain. Brain is matter, and very solid matter as well, mind is immaterial, or spiritual, and the exact connection between something material and something spiritual has never been made out and never will be. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, in order that we may have a really scientific conception of the doctrine I would present to you, I must take you into an inquiry with regard to some of the simpler functions of our bodies, from which we shall rise to the simpler actions of our minds. You all know that the Brain, using the term in its general sense, is the organ of our Mind. ”

“ it ought to underlie her silks and embroideries, but not to show itself too staringly on the outside.—You don't know, perhaps, but I will tell you; the brain is the palest of all the internal organs, and the heart the reddest. Whatever comes from the brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace. ”

“ Admitting, then, that the brain is the organ of mind—the instrument by which we are rendered cognisant of our own mental operations and conceptions—it must be evident that, for the purpose of making them known to others, of carrying them into effect, certain other parts become necessary, the conception requiring instruments for its execution. This important duty is intrusted to the care of the senses, and for this reason they have been correctly termed the hand-maidens of the intellect, as it is through their agency that the brain receives and transmits impressions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet the brain is material substance—so many cells and fibers, a pulpy protoplasmic mass weighing some three pounds and shut away from the outside world in a casket of bone. The mind is a spiritual thing—the sum of the processes by which we think and feel and will, mastering our world and accomplishing our destiny. ”

“ In a word, the brain has its pathological anatomy exactly as all the organs of the economy have, and the pathology of the brain has its special series of symptoms, just as the other organs have theirs. In mental alienation we observe the most remarkable disturbances of the reason, furnishing in their study a rich mine for the researches of the physiologist and the philosopher ”

“ 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. ”

“ Amidst the maze of perplexities which lies between [92] physiology and psychology, there is, however, one fact which stands out clear and bold: the brain can create nothing. We have seen how matter is taken into the body and matter is cast off from the body. ”

“ Modern psychologists of Europe generally say that the material substance of brain is the seat of mind; and that past subjective experiences, which can he recalled by memory, and which in their totality constitute what is called individuality, exist therein in the shape of certain unintelligible mysterious impressions and changes in the nerves and nerve-centres of the cerebral hemispheres. ”

“ Our senses tell us what lies about us, that we may move and act, and do this wisely and safely. The sense-organs are the brain's only teachers so far as we know, the muscles are its only servants. But there are many orders which may be issued to these servants. Out of the many sensations, memories, imaginations, how shall the brain choose? ”

“ WHATEVER that thing, fact, function, or idea which we call mind may be, or whether the brain, as is generally believed, is or is not its sole organ of manifestation, it is universally admitted that varying bodily conditions are accompanied by related variations of mental states. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Go on!” implored the artists, writers, lawyers, and physicians.
“I suppose,” my friend continued, “that every one of us will concede that the human brain has always been made of the same material, that ages ago it was composed of the same parts, that its actions were governed by the same laws, that its surface was composed of the same convolutions, and that ages ago even there was deposited in these convolutions that wonderful gray matter, surrounded with white matter and composed of nerve-cells, which modern physiologists designate as the seat of thought, reason, judgment, and talent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What need has she of internal lungs, when her whole sensitive surface is in living commerce with the atmosphere that clings to it?
The organ that gives us most trouble is the brain. All the consciousness we directly know seems tied to brains.—Can there be consciousness, we ask, where there is no brain? But our brain, which primarily serves to correlate our muscular reactions with the external objects on which we depend, performs a function which the earth performs in an entirely different way. ”

“ As the brain is the organ of the mind, it is by and through the brain that we think, reason, memorize, learn. For its healthy and vigorous action, a full supply of pure blood is an imperious necessity. ”

“ There are, in fact, people who appear to think only with the brain, or with whatever may be the specific thinking organ; while others think with all the body and all the soul, with the blood, with the marrow of the bones, with the heart, with the lungs, with the belly, with the life. And the people who think only with the brain develop into definition-mongers; they become the professionals of thought. ”

“ In other words the problem is not how the attributes of the soul arose from the chemistry of the brain and the nerves; but how the brain and the nerves together with the whole stream of material phenomena from the star-dust upwards, ever got themselves unified and focussed into any sort of intelligibility or system. ”

“ The function of the brain—which must be regarded as the bulbous root of a nervous plant whose branches grow downwards—is twofold; to affect, and to be affected. In its active or positive condition it affects the whole of the vital and muscular processes in the man, finding expression in vital action. ”

“ The brain, then, and the various nerves of sense in continuity with it, may, when taken together, be considered as forming one great organ, which I would term briefly the sensorial organ, essential to life, and to the immediate production of those mental phenomena which constitute our sensations, and, perhaps, too, modifying in some measure, directly or indirectly, all the other phenomena of the mind. ”

“ The brain and muscles must develop simultaneously. Iron nerves with an intelligent brain—and the whole world is at your feet. ”

“ Now, when the psychologist asks how a given mind comes to have a knowledge of any external thing, he finds his answer in the messages which have been brought to the mind by means of the bodily senses. He describes the sense-organs and the nervous connections between these and the brain, and tells us that when certain nervous impulses have traveled, let us say, from the eye or the ear to the brain, one has sensations of sight or sound. ”

“ The Brain.—You cannot see and examine your own brain because it is shut up in the skull; but perhaps you can find the brain of a sheep or a calf at the meat market. The brain of one of these animals looks very nearly like your own. ”

“ Your chapter on “Brain and Soul,” with its twenty-eight pages of medical and physiological erudition, offers no proof of your assumption beyond the three sophisms I have refuted. All the rest consists of facts which have not the least bearing on the question. “The whole science of man,” as you say, “is a continuous proof in favor of the connection of brain and mind.” This is what your facts demonstrate; but your object was to show that “the soul is a product of the development of the brain” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Contemplate, then, if you can, a duplex intelligent brain, in a state of activity, but cut off from all communication with the external world through the media of the senses and from all control over the body;—in fact, an isolated, self-acting, self-contained mechanism, the organ of intelligence and emotion. ”