Mind and body : a discourse on the physiology of the phrenical action of the cerebrum / by Robert Jamieson.

  • Jamieson, Robert
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mind and body : a discourse on the physiology of the phrenical action of the cerebrum / by Robert Jamieson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/24 (page 9)
    The Ideas which furnish the mind, and are in its keep¬ ing, have been classified as Ideas of Sensation and Ideas of Reflection. The former proceed from the action of the material external world on the personality, and the latter from the action of the personality on the Ideas of Sensation. Ideas of Sensation spring from two sources,—the Human Body and the extraneous body of the Universe. They rush inwards towards the conscious Brain, through u the five gates of knowledge —the Eye, the Ear, and other organs of sense; and rise up also, to the sensorium, from * the penetralia of the body itself. Perhaps ideas, that scarcely can be called sensational, may be born with the Brain itself, or descend to it from the universal Pneuma by which it is overarched but to speculate so were less meta¬ physical than mystic, and more imaginative than either. Without adopting such fancies, probably we should take too narrow a guage of our Ideas, in limiting their origin to the impressions on the nerves of the senses, for there is the certainty of many of our feelings being either morbid or healthy, in harmony with states of welfare, or the reverse, in the hidden chambers of the animal economy, where there is neither eye, nor ear, nor any accredited ambassador from the distant seat of government, and where even a muffled sensibility is very doubtfully recognized. Save as general feelings of comfort, cheerfulness, and self-assured¬ ness, it would be difficult to condescend on any detail of such ideas, under ordinary corporeal conditions; but, while the psychologist might scruple to declare them, the observer of the mental phenomena of disease has no hesitation in * Gardiner Wilkinson.