170 A. T. SCHOFIELD, ESQ., M.D., ETC., ON 



connections of mind and body offer a very wide field for investiga- 

 tion. "We feel at once on entering^ this territory the disadvantage 

 of our position in having no experience of mind acting apart from 

 matter, and one is familiar with the futile efforts of many physi- 

 ologists to get rid of everything which brings them into contact 

 with consciousness, by either confounding the mental operations 

 with their physical concomitants, or by avoiding allusion to 

 psychical considerations. To this school Dr. Schofield dees not 

 belong. But when he defines mind as " an external force that 

 everywhere acts on matter " I confess that I must demur to any 

 definition of mind as a force and nothing more. That mind 

 which " acts on matter, organic and inorganic " is the One Eternal 

 Spirit, as indeed I understand Dr. Schofield to mean. T cannot 

 see the advantage of altering the meaning of the words Mind 

 and Intelligence so as to make them applicable to any operations 

 apart from consciousness somewhere. I am painfully aware that 

 to introspection our mental processes present mere results which 

 we cannot- trace back, but I am not prepared to allow moi-e than 

 the defectiveness of self-consciousness. The smallest amount of 

 attention given to a voluntary action becomes, after all, self- 

 consciousness; and however feeble the light may be which this 

 consideration throws on the seemingly unconscious steps by 

 means of which we carry out the dictates of volition in habitual 

 actions such as the details of speaking and walking, it probably 

 throws more than is shed by the supposed revelation contained in 

 the favourite word of the present day, " automatic." 



As to the current doctrine accepted and stated clearly by Dr. 

 Schofield that " we really know that the only seat of consciousness, 

 is in the brain," I still hold, as I did when I wrote in the Journal 

 of Anatomy and Physiology in 1870, that the facts of physiology 

 are against it, and that they favour my view, that the sensorium 

 extends at any given moment to any part which is in uninter- 

 rupted continuity of nervous activity with the brain or major 

 mass of the great nervous centre. Very likely this will not be 

 admitted for many years to come ; but the truth will be acknow- 

 ledged in the long run. 



The Rev. H. J. Clakke writes : — 



The importance of the matters treated of in Dr. Schofield's paper 

 can hardly be over-i'ated, and the thoughtful contribution he has 

 made to the elucidation of the subject must, I feel sure, be found 

 of great practical value. 



