44 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE RELATION" OF MIND AND BODY. AN ENERGEIC CONCEPTION. 



§1. An Historical View. — From the earliest times men have 

 debated over the connection between the physical and the mental 

 in the human organism. This has been the problem of chief- 

 est concern, at various stages in the development of thought, 

 alike for mythology, for religion, for philosophy, ' and in our 

 own era for experimental science. The conception of mind 

 most characteristic of primitive reflection in the individual as 

 in the race regards it as a tenant of the body ruling over and 

 directing its activities, and being influenced itself in some meas- 

 ure, great or small, by bodily conditions, and what may be 

 called physical or outward demeanor. This notion does not 

 postulate any organic relationship between, much less identity 

 of, mind and body. There is but a sort of tangential relation, 

 so to speak ; and the spirit can if it will free itself wholly from 

 the control of the material structure in which it is momentarily 

 entombed. It is onlv when the volitional element in one's be- 



*J 



ing is lethargic that he yields to the promptings or suggestions 

 of his physical self, which, most unhappily, are natively of an 

 evil mien. Holding this view men believed during long epochs 

 in human history that they ought to scourge and maltreat the 

 body that they might thus purify and strengthen the spirit ; for 

 if the animal be not held under subjection by such discipline 

 it will endanger the supremacy of the man: a doctrine quite 

 contrasted to the theories of these latter days, when it is pro- 

 claimed on every hand that the more respect we pay the body, 

 and the kindlier and more faithfully we attend its needs the 

 greater will be the reward in spiritual exaltation and freedom. 

 Correspondent with the development of physical science in 

 its earlier years, however, there gradually arose another and a 

 vitally different theory, — that in an ultimate analysis mind 



