447 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Mimicry 

 Mind 



Taking our facts from Nature, we transfer 

 them to the domain of thought: look at 

 them, compare them, observe their mutual 

 relations and connections, and bringing them 

 ever clearer before the mental eye, finally 

 alight upon the cause which unites them. 

 This is the last act of the mind, in this cen- 

 tripetal direction in its progress from the 

 multiplicity of facts to the central cause on 

 which they depend. But, having guessed the 

 cause, we are not yet contented. We set out 

 from the center and travel in the other di- 

 rection. If the guess be true, certain conse- 

 quences must follow from it, and we appeal 

 to the law and testimony of experiment 

 whether the thing is so. Thus is the circuit 

 of thought completed from without inward, 

 from multiplicity to unity, and from within 

 outward, from unity to multiplicity. TYN- 

 DALL Fragments of Science, ch. 11, p. 282. 

 (A., 1897.) 



2189. MIND, AN OBJECT OF SCIEN- 

 TIFIC STUDY Improved Treatment of Insan- 

 ity Intelligent Investigation of Nervous 

 Disease. The habit of viewing mind as an 

 intangible entity or incorporeal essence, 

 which science inherited from theology, pre- 

 vented men from subjecting its phenomena 

 to the same method of investigation as other 

 natural phenomena; its disorders were 

 thought to be an incomprehensible affliction 

 and, in accordance with the theological no- 

 tion, due to the presence of an evil spirit 

 in the sufferer, or to the enslavement of 

 the soul by sin, or to anything but their 

 true cause bodily disease. Consequently, 

 the treatment of the insane was not in the 

 hands of intelligent physicians, who aimed 

 to apply the resources of medicine to the al- 

 leviation or cure of bodily illness, but was 

 given up to coarse and ignorant jailers, 

 wkose savage cruelties will for all time to 

 come be a great and ugly blot upon the 

 enlightenment of the age which tolerated 

 them. Matters are happily changed now. 

 On all hands it is admitted that the mani- 

 festations of mind take place through the 

 nervous system, and that its derangements 

 are the result of nervous disease, amenable 

 to the same method of investigation as other 

 nervous diseases. Insanity has accordingly 

 become a strictly medical study, and its 

 treatment a branch of medical practise. 

 Still, it is all too true that, notwithstanding 

 we know much and are day by day learn- 

 ing more of the physiology of the nervous 

 system, we are only on the threshold of the 

 study of it as an instrument subserving 

 rental function. MAUDSLEY Body and 

 Mind, lect. 1, p. 12. (A., 1898.) 



2190. MIND A PART OF NATURE 



Mental Laws Are also Natural Laws. If 

 the mind is so spoken of and represented 

 PS to suggest the idea of something apart 

 from the genera 1 system of Nature, and if 

 its laws of thought are looked upon as 

 " forms " or molds into which, by some ar- 

 tificial arrangement or by some mechanical 



necessity, everything from outside must be 

 squeezed and made to fit, then it will nat- 

 urally occur to us to doubt whether con- 

 ceptions cut out and manufactured under 

 such conditions can be any trustworthy rep- 

 resentation of the truth. Such, unfortu- 

 nately, has been the mode of representation 

 adopted by many philosophers, and such, ac- 

 cordingly, has been the result of their teach- 

 ing. This is the great source of error in 

 every form of the idealistic philosophy, but 

 it is a source of error which can be per- 

 fectly eliminated, leaving untouched and 

 undoubted the large body of truths which 

 has made that philosophy attractive to so 

 many powerful minds. ARGYLL Unity of 

 Nature, ch. 4, p. 89. (Burt.) 



2191. MIND CONSCIOUS OF ITS OWN 

 LIMITATIONS Limits of Opportunity Rather 

 than of Power Appetite Can Be Satisfied, 

 but Mind or Spirit Cannot. Nothing, cer- 

 tainly, in the human mind is more wonder- 

 ful than this that it is conscious of its 

 own limitations. For it is to be observed 

 that such consciousness would be impossible 

 if these limitations were in their nature ab- 

 solute. The bars which we feel so much, 

 and against which we so often beat in vain, 

 are bars which could not be felt at all Un- 

 less there were something in us which seeks 

 a wider scope. It is as if these bars were a 

 limit of opportunity rather than a boundary 

 of power. No absolute limitation of mental 

 faculty ever is, or ever could be, felt by the 

 creatures whom it affects. Of this we have 

 abundant evidence in the lower animals, and 

 in those lower faculties of our own nature 

 which are of like kind to theirs. Our bodily 

 appetites can seek nothing beyond or beside 

 the objects of their desire. To the attain- 

 ment of these objects that desire is limited, 

 and with this attainment it is satisfied. 

 Moreover, when a bodily appetite is satis- 

 fied, it for the time ceases to exist, and may 

 even be converted into nausea and disgust 

 towards that which had been the object of 

 pursuit. This is the necessary effect of a lim- 

 itation which is absolute. But the case is 

 very different with the appetites of the 

 mind, and still more with the cravings of 

 the spirit. Even in the purest physical in- 

 vestigations we are perpetually encounter- 

 ing some mental barrier through which we 

 cannot break and over which we cannot see. 

 And yet we know it and feel it to be a bar- 

 rier and nothing more. We stop in front of 

 it not because we are satisfied, but because 

 it bars our way. ARGYLL Unity of Nature,, 

 ch. 4, p. 76. (Burt.) 



2192. MIND CONTROLLING BODY 



Confident Belief an Aid fo Recovery. 

 Perhaps we do not, as physicians, consider 

 sufficiently the influence of mental states in 

 the production of disease, and their impor- 

 tance as symptoms, or take all the advan- 

 tage which we might take of them in our 

 efforts to cure it. Quackery seems to have 

 here got hold of a truth which legitimate 



