Mind-body problem

“ Except that equilibrium does not itself judge of its relationship to brain, whereas mind is the sole judge of its relationship and dependence on brain. Since everything in the world is a mental event, mentality cannot be dependent upon anything, and everything depends upon mind for its existence, or at least its recognition. But we get nowhere by such "logic" gone mad. Apply the same kind of reasoning to brain-mind, body-mind relationship which anatomists and physiologists apply to other functions, and one can no longer separate body and mind. ”

“ In the cultivation and expansion of the faculties of the mind, we act altogether upon organized matter—and this, too, of the most delicate kind—which, while it serves as the mediator between body and spirit, partakes so largely of the nature, character, and essential attributes of the former, that, without its proper physical growth and development, all the manifestations of the latter sink into comparative insignificance; so that, without a perfect organization of the brain, the mental powers must be proportionally paralyzed ”

“ This is not saying that there is no existence of spirit apart from body, but that at present such existence is beyond the realm of science.
The dependence of mind upon body in a general way is evident to every one, upon the most general observation and thought. We know the effect on the mind of disease, of good health, of hunger, of fatigue, of overwork, of severe bodily injury, of blindness or deafness. We have, perhaps, seen some one struck upon the head by a club, or run over by an automobile, and have noted the tremendous consequences to the person’s mind. ”

“ And it is from a neglect of this principle, that some of the most exemplary and conscientious persons in the world suffer a thousand mental agonies from a diseased state of body, while others ruin the health of the body by neglecting the proper care of the mind.
When the mind is excited by earnest intellectual effort, or by strong passions, the blood rushes to the head and the brain is excited. ”

“ The general consensus of mankind is a sharp protest against this conclusion—but the experimental proofs have, to many, seemed in favor of this scientific denial;—the healthy brain in general exhibits a healthy mental activity, the diseased or imperfect brain shows impaired mental action, and the disorganized brain simply exhibits no mental activity nor any evidence whatever of the existence of mind. ”

“ The dependence of the mind (like any other mode of energy) upon physical conditions, is further proved by the fact that the mental and moral states of a man are largely governed by sensation; if the latter is unhealthy it makes the mind so, and it makes some difference what the part of the body is in which the sensation exists ”

“ Mind and matter were one thing, that was the theme of the physiologist. Matter could erupt, as it were, into ideas. You could carve passions in the brain with a knife. You could get rid of imagination with drugs and cure an outworn convention like a disease. "The knowledge of good and evil is an observed phenomenon, attendant upon a certain condition of the brain-cells, which is removable." ”

“ When all the bodily functions are perfectly performed, the mind must be in a better state than when these functions are imperfectly performed. And now I ask, is not that system of education fundamentally defective, which makes no provision for putting the body in its best condition, and for keeping it in that condition? A system which expends its energies upon the mind alone, and surrenders the body either to the irregular promptings of perverted instinct, or to the hap-hazard impulses of chance or necessity? ”

“ You admit that mind influences the body somewhat, but conclude that matter, blood, nerves, brain, etc., hold the balance of power. In accordance with this belief, you continue the old routine, and lean on the inert and unintelligent; and this deprives you of the available superiority of mind over matter. We cannot control our body with a negative position. Spirit destroys the belief of matter, and the “flesh warreth against the Spirit,” and they can no more unite in action than good and evil. ”

“ The sharp distinction between the mind and the body is, as we shall find, a very ancient and spontaneous uncritical savage prepossession. What we think of as "mind" is so intimately associated with what we call "body" that we are coming to realize that the one cannot be understood without the other. Every thought reverberates through the body, and, on the other hand, alterations in our physical condition affect our whole attitude of mind. ”

“ If this principle be once thoroughly grasped, it will be seen how shallow and misleading is the view that the world is just reflected in consciousness unchanged as in a mirror, or faithfully photographed as on a sensitive plate. This is to reduce the human mind, which is surely no whit less complex than the human body, to the condition of a mere passive recipient instead of a vital and active agent in the construction of man's world. ”

“ Fact, observation, experience and scientific investigation all emphatically say yes; and we know that if the brain be disordered the mind, will be disordered, likewise; and a disordered mind is an insane mind. Clearly, then, in the degree that a man impairs or hurts his brain—temporarily or continuously—in that degree his mind is unbalanced; in that degree he is not a truly rational and sane man. ”

“ But in life, as we are cognizant of it, mental development can go but a little way. The mind hardly begins to awake ere the bodily powers decline—it but becomes dimly conscious of the vast fields before it, but begins to learn and use its strength, to recognize relations and extend its sympathies, when, with the death of the body, it passes away. Unless there is something more, there seems here a break, a failure. ”

“ What happens to all those marginal desires which have chiefly occupied themselves with the affairs of the body 100 or lower mind—those innumerable little spirits and imps which (as we discover in dreams, or by closely watching our waking thoughts) are continually planning and scheming their own little successes and gratifications? What happens to the thousand and one intelligences which carry on the functions and processes of the organism? ”

“ The problem is, with a material body and a mental organization inseparably connected with it, to bridge the grave. Emotion, volition, thought itself, are functions of the brain. When the brain is impaired, they are impaired. When the brain is not, they are not. Everything ceases with the dissolution of the material fabric; muscular activity and mental activity perish alike. With the pronounced positive statements on this point from many departments of modern Science we are all familiar. ”

“ Well, just such pressure and such inhibition are what consciousness seems to be exerting all the while. And the interests in whose favor it seems to exert them are its interests and its alone, interests which it creates, and which, but for it, would have no status in the realm of being whatever. We talk, it is true, when we are darwinizing, as if the mere body that owns the brain had interests; we speak about the utilities of its various organs and how they help or hinder the body's survival ”

“ It must not be forgotten in this connection that the subjective mind is the soul, or spirit, and is itself an organized entity, possessing independent powers and functions; while the objective mind is merely the function of the physical brain, and possesses no powers whatever independently of the physical organization. The one possesses dynamic force independently of the body ”

“ I am often asked how I can expect by such a system to rest the organs of mind. No act of will can force them to be at rest. To this I should answer that it is not the mere half-automatic intellectuation which is harmful in men or women subject to states of feebleness or neurasthenia, and that the systematic vigorous use of mind on distinct problems is within some form of control. ”

“ If the processes of the men are also limited and conditioned by the nature of human nerves and muscles so that they must run on certain lines, it would follow that the human mind also, in face of a certain problem, will fall into conditioned modes of activity, and we should approach the doctrine that men must think the same thoughts by way of mental reaction on the same experiences and observations. ”

“ For instance, we can prescribe a conflict between the subconsciousness and the personal consciousness, between a subconscious wish and a conscious wish, or volition, and observe the resultant mental and physical behavior, which may be inhibition of thought, hallucinations, amnesia, motor phenomena, etc. The possibilities and limitations of subconscious influences can in this way be experimentally studied. Subconscious personalities, therefore, afford a valuable means for studying the mechanism of the mind. ”

“ Will it be a brain unspoiled by lust or dissipation, a mind trained to think and act, a nervous system true as a dial in its response to the truth about you? Will you, boy of the Twentieth Century, let him come as a man among men in his time, or will you throw away his inheritance before he has had the chance to touch it? Will you turn over to him a brain distorted, a mind diseased, a will untrained to action, a spinal cord grown through and through with the devil grass of that vile harvest we call wild oats? ”

“ In another place he goes still further and puts the psycho-analytical postulate of the unconscious in the centre of the whole problem. “If one only admits that mental processes can react upon the body even when they do not lie in the conscious field of vision, then most of the supposed difficulties disappear”. ”

“ But, as a matter of fact, like other fundamental questions, this is exactly as it has ever been, and so far as Science is concerned, we are just as much in the dark respecting it as men ever were. Though the philosophers of former days were unaware of all the departmental details of brain activity, they understood as well as we do the essential point, that in our composite nature soul and body form one being, whose every operation is of mixed character like itself. ”

“ But your second difficulty daily increases itself, and its advocates, for by the increasing proofs and apparatus of chemistry and physiology, the future world is daily more effectually annihilated and dispersed, as it cannot be brought within play of a sun-microscope or of a chemical furnace. In fact, not only the reality, but also the theory of the body, not only the practised measurement of its longings, but also the pure moral philosophy of its spirit-world, must darken and make difficult the prospect on the inner world from the outer one. ”

“ A physical vice becomes a moral vice, and all vice leaves its record on the nervous system. To cultivate vice is to render the actual machinery of our mind incapable of normal action.
It is the brain's business to perceive, to think, to will, to act. All these functions taken together we call the mind. The brain is hidden in darkness, sheltered within a box of bone. All that it knows comes to it from the nerves of sense. All that it can do in this world is to act on the muscles it controls through its nerves of motion. The final purpose of knowledge is action. ”

“ It is certainly clear, without a knowledge of anatomy or physiology, that for pure, unadulterated thinking, only the brain is needed; and if vital force is given to other parts of the body to hold them in unnatural contraction; we not only expend it extravagantly, but we rob the brain of its own. When, for purely mental work, all the activity is given to the brain, and the body left free and passive, the concentration is better, conclusions are reached with more satisfaction, and the reaction, after the work is over, is healthy and refreshing. ”

“ Early ideas concerning thought and feeling ignored everything like cause, save in recognising those effects of habit which were forced on men's attention and expressed in proverbs; but there are growing up interpretations of thought and feeling as correlates of the actions and reactions of a nervous structure, that is influenced by outer changes and works in the body adapted changes, the implication being that psychology becomes a science, as fast as these relations of phenomena are explained as consequences of ultimate principles. ”

“ Why should not feelings and thoughts be manufactured in the brain just as any effect is produced when its necessary conditions are fulfilled? May it not be the function of this wonderfully complex organ to produce mind just as other less complex organs produce the secretions that are necessary to the life of the whole? Is it only the subtlety and ethereal nature of the product that make it seem inconceivable that mind can arise from a material process? ”

“ If the brain is kept active, fresh and young, and the brain cells are not ruined by a vicious life, worry, fear, selfishness, or by disease induced by wrong living or thinking, the mind will constantly increase in vigor and power. Men and women whose faculties are sharp and whose minds are keen and vigorous at ninety, and even at a hundred, prove this. I know a number of men in their seventies and eighties who are as sturdy and vigorous physically and mentally to-day as they were twenty years ago. ”

“ In other words, every appetite, every excess, has a physical basis, and if we only knew enough of the human system—of the tides and currents of thought and will and wish—enough of the storms of passion—if we only knew how the brain acts and operates—if we only knew the relation between blood and thought, between thought and act—if we only knew the conditions of conduct, then we could, through science, control the passions of the human race. ”