The Brain as an Organ of Mind

Front Cover
Appleton, 1880 - 708 pages

From inside the book

Contents


Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 235 - Under changed conditions of life, it is at least possible that slight modifications of instinct might be profitable to a species; and if it can be shown that instincts do vary ever so little, then I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving and continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that may be profitable. It is thus, as I believe, that all the most complex and wonderful instincts have originated.
Page 548 - The motion of our body follows upon the command of our will. Of this we are every moment conscious. But the means, by which this is effected ; the energy, by which the will performs so extraordinary an operation ; of this we are so far from being immediately conscious, that it must for ever escape our most diligent enquiry.
Page 154 - It would be incompatible with everything we know of the cerebral action, to suppose that the physical chain ends abruptly in a physical void, occupied by an immaterial substance; which immaterial substance, after working alone, imparts its results to the other edge of the physical break, and determines the active response — two shores of the material with an intervening ocean of the immaterial.
Page 175 - ... one, is the result. Ideas, also, which have been so often conjoined, that whenever one exists in the mind, the others immediately exist along with it, seem to run into one another, to coalesce, as it were, and out of many to form one idea; which idea, however in reality complex, appears to be no less simple than any one of those of which it is compounded.
Page 159 - Centipede be cut off, whilst it is in motion, the body will continue to move onwards by the action of the legs; and the same will take place in the separate parts, if the body be divided into several distinct...
Page 250 - Zoology (the stoparola of Ray) builds every year in the vines that grow on the walls of my house. A pair of these little birds had one year inadvertently placed their nest on a naked bough, perhaps in a shady time, not being aware of the inconvenience that followed. But...
Page 169 - ... in these modifications, a quality, a phenomenon of mind, absolutely new, has been superadded, which was never involved in, and could therefore never have been evolved out of, the mere faculty of knowledge. The faculty of knowledge is certainly the first in order, inasmuch as it is the conditio sine qua non of the others...
Page 289 - ... of Simian brains, this hiatus does not lie between Man and the man-like apes, but between the lower and the lowest Simians; or, in other words, between the old and new world apes and monkeys, and the Lemurs. Every Lemur which has yet been examined, in fact, has its cerebellum partially visible from above, and its posterior lobe, with the contained posterior cornu and hippocampus minor, more or less rudimentary. Every Marmoset, American monkey, old world monkey, Baboon, or Man-like ape, on the...
Page 6 - ... system. The red crystals turn yellow when heated, and resume their red tint on cooling. The yellow crystals obtained by sublimation retain their colour when cooled ; but, on the slightest rubbing or stirring with a pointed instrument, the part which is touched turns scarlet, and this change of colour extends with a slight motion, as if the mass were alive, throughout the whole group of crystals as far as they adhere together.
Page 327 - When asked how he could possibly learn so soon whether a particular monkey would turn out a good actor, he answered that it all depended on their power of attention. If, when he was talking and explaining anything to a monkey, its attention was easily distracted, as by a fly on the wall or other trifling object, the case was hopeless.

Bibliographic information