The Press. — London, England, 1856-09-20 00:00:00

90t systems are so purely artificial, and so depen dent upon arbitrary definitions of language, that there is sure to be great diversity in them Each writer adopts a system of his own, and thus the teaching of philosophy is Continually fluctuating. There is no general agreement even on first principles; and until such agreement is come to, mental philosophy cannot become what we observe both Mr. Bain and Mr. Hill agree in terming it, the " Science of Mind." Every science must have exact foundations, and be built up by facts But philosophy, as it has usually been taught, rests mainly on theory, supported by spe culation. _ _ At the commencement of Mr. Bain's volume we notice the uncertainty of the very elementary principles of " mental science." The mind, he says, possesses three attributes or capacities :- 1. it has feeling, in which term I include what is com monly called sensation and emotion. 2. It can act according to feeling. 8. It can think. The author endeavours to show that in the various classifications of the mental pheno mena that have hitherto passed current, we shall find that the three attributes above specified have been more or less distinctly re cognised. The " more or less " comprises so many modifications as to show that at the very commencement of the inquiry we are entering a region of uncertainty. The three divisions of Mr. Bain will not, we thirk, bear close scrutiny. It must be almitted that the mind has the capacity of feeling or sensation. But do not the second and third parts of the classification mean, in substance, the same thing ? There can be no action of the mind without an exercise of its powers, and such exercise is really a form of thought. It is true that the exercise may vary, from emotions of the mind which are almost or altogether instinctive to those which are highly conscious and reasoning ; but the latter class of emotions are hut a more culti vated form of the former class. In children and savages the mind acts with little or no reflection, but as its powers are educated its action becomes more deliberative, and its in stinctive action is partly merged in ratiocina tive process. To support his theory of three divisions of mind, Mr. Bain falls into what we cannot help thinking a serious error. He supposes that thought may exist independent of sensation and independent of mental action or will:— sannot help looking upon the intellect u a distinct endowment following laws of its own, being sometimes well developed and sometimes feeble, without re aru to the force or degree of the two other attributes (feeling and volition). It is surprising that so acute a man as Mr. Bain should tall into so strange an error es to suppose that the intellect can be separated from the acuteness of its sensations and the strength of its powers. For these two classes of capacity must in fact constitute the intel lect. To what extent they are inseparably blended, how far the active power of the mind is connected with its sensibility, is a very nice question Some conaection of the kind cer tainly exists, though liable to very wide modi fication. In the chapters on the " Nervous System." which immediately follow Mr. Bain's defini tion of mind, it is shown that there are two distinct currents of nervous action One of these currents serves to receive mental iii pression, the other to transmit mental action; and in this instance, at least, physiology teaches philosophy the two leading elemen tary principles of mental science. The white and grey matter of the spinal cord and brain are mingled together inextric ably, yet in such manner as most clearly to evidence design, and to allow us to understand the separate use of each system. Mr. Bain, after an elaborate description of the appear ances presented to the physiologist, writes:— The arrangement may thus be seen to resemble the comae of a railway train. The various central masses are like so many stations where the train drop* a certain number of passengers, and takes up others in their stead, whilst some are carried through to the final terminus. A system of telegraph wires might be formed to represent exactly what takes place in the brain. If from a general terminus in London a mass of wires were carried out to proeeed towards Liverpool, and if one wire of the mass woe to end at oath station, while from the same station THE PRESS. new wires arose, one for every station further on, a corn plete and perfectly Ldependetit connectimi could be kept up between any two stations along the line. Of the two distinct sets of nerves Mr. Bain gives au intelligible description : We have remarked of the nerves that they convey influence for the two distinct ends of causing action and causing feeling. For action, the influence must proceed outwards from the centres to the active organs ; a stimulus from the brain or spinal cord has to be transmitted to the limbs, trunk, head, eyes, mouth, voice, or other parts that are to be set in motion. For feeling, the influence must pass inwards. In a sensation of hearing, for example, an impression male on the sensitive surface of the ear is conveyed by the nerve of hearing towards the cerebral centres. Now, it is found that different sets of nerves are employed for those two purposes; one class being exelu• sively devoted to the outward transmission of stimulants to action or movement, while the other class is equally confined to the office of conveying influence centrewar ls, for the ends of sensation or feeling. The first of these two classes is that named efferent (out-carrying) nerves, the second comprises the qfferent (in-carrying) nerves. In every individual fibre it would appear that the influence always follows one direction. No single nerve can combine both functions. It is further known, since the discovery of Sir Charles Bell, that one of the two roots of the spinal nerves is entirely composed of nerves conveying the outward stimulus; these are, therefore, purely nerves of motion, " motor nerves." The other root c'insists of fibres trans mitting influence from the various parts of the body in• wards to the centres; these are called the sentient nerves. (They are not all sentient in the full sense of the word, as will be afterwards explained.) The anterior roots are the motor nerves ; the posterior roots are the in•carrying or afferent nerves. This division of sentient and of motor power, so deafly established in the nervous system, should, in our opinion, form the basis of mental philosophy. From the intimate con nection of these systems of nerves, it would seem highly probable that the sentient class cannot be acted on without communicating some impulse to the motor class. This seems to be the view of Mr. Bain : Oar present insight enables us to say with great proba bility, no currents, no mind. The transmission of influence along the nerve fibres rim place to place, seems the very essence of cerebral action. 'l'h's transmission, moceover, must not be confined within the limits of the brain ; not only could no action he kept up and no sensation received by the brain alone, but it is &HMO if even thou.tht, re• miniacence, or the emotions of the past and absent, could he sustained without the more distant communications between the brain and the rest of the body—the organs of sense and of movement. It is trite that between the separate oon volutions of the brain, between one hemisphere and another, between the convoluted hemispheres and the corpora striate, thalami optici, corpora gnadrigemina, cerebellum, medulla oblongata, and spinal cord, influence might be imagined to pass and repass without flowing into the active extremities or to the five senses, and might thus constitute an isolated cerebral life : but it is in the highest degree improbable that such isolation does or can exist. Nervous influence, rising in great part in sensation, comes at last to action ; short of this nothing is done, no end served. However feeble the currents may be, their natural course is towards the organs accustomed to their sway. The reader will notice the opposition between the conclusion here arrived at, and the posi tion assumed by Mr. Bain at the commence ment of his book, that intellect may exist in dependently of either sensation (the result of sentient nerves) or volition (the result of motor nerves.) Following the chapter on the nervous sys tem (one of the most valuable in the book, perhaps because not the most original) are chapters on sensation, which appear to us much less satisfactory. Mr. Bain commences this part of his subject by recognising a class of sensations proceeding from the action of the muscles. He says:— They have been regarded by some metaphysicians as proceeding from a sense apart. a sixth, or mu-cular sense, and have accordingly been enrolled under the general head of sensations. That they are to be dealt with as a class by themselves, as mach so as sounds or sights, the feelings of affection, or the emotion of the ludicrous, is now pretty well admitted on all bands. The author, however, thinks that this class of sensations, as he terms them, are different from the iinpressionii of the other senses, in asmuch as they precede them : In my judgment they ought not to be classed with the sensations of the five senses, and I believe further that the consideration of them should precede the exposition of the senses. The grounds of this belief are such as the following—namely, that movement precedes sensation, and is at the outset independent of any stimulus from without; and that action is a more intimate and in separable properly of our constitution than any of our sensations, and in fact enters as a component part into every one of the senses, giving them the character of compounds while itself is a simple and elementary petailroperty. These assertions require to be proved in d. SATURDAY, This is sad nonsense. It shows the pen of Mr. Bain to be often more tl,►eut than discri minative ; and this whole notion of a sixth sense shows also that mental philosophy is Waite in modern times to aberrations which must not only retard its progress, but must positively throw it back. Sir Charles Bell, departing from anatomy, the observation of facts (which was his pro vince). to philosophy, the reasoning from facts (which was beyond the scope of his fine but limited powers), supposed that there might not only be a sixth sense (the muscu lar sense), but other senses also, of so fine a quality as almost to escape our cognisance. He thus helped, in degree, to countenance all those fortes of mysticism and delusion which are disgraceful to the intelligence of our day. He instanced, if we recollect rightly, the case of a person who in the dark might be conscious of the presence of another person in the same room through the impressions of some sense not yet recognised He did not perceive that under such conditions as he supposes the senses of hearing and even of smelling are almost preternaturally sharpened, and that these organs of intelligence may receive im pressions so delicate and evanescent as to convey an idea to the ►mind, without being the objects of distinct and recognisable per ception. Many presentiments (as they aro called) consist of impressions left on the mind when the exciting cause of those he. pressions are forgotten, or when they were so slight and transient as never to have been objects of distinct cognisance. Mr. Bain conceives that the muscles are so constituted as to be a source of activity in themselves. His arguments are ingenious, but they are not convincing. In insisting on the spontaneous activity of the muscles, he appears to us to get out of his depth. The curse of metaphysicians (Locke himself was not free from it) is a fluent style. Mr. Bain , in adopting the theory of spontaneous mus cular activity, confounds, we think, sponta neity with extreme susceptibility of organi sation. The often repeated question, " What " is life ?" Mr. Bain answers by " spontaneous " muscular activity." The fault of this, as of previous definitions, is that it may be altogether disputed. The question is one for physiolo gists rather than for mental philosophers. There is no fact adduced by Mr. Bain to establish spontaneity which may not be fully accounted for on the supposition of the muscles being so exquisitely organised, so finely strung. as to be acted on by almost impercep tible influences. Some of his conclusions are certainty erroneous. He supposes, for example, that sleep is broken by spontaneous inuseular action : In wakening from sleep movement precedes sensation. If light were essential to the movements concerned in vision, it would be impossible to open the eyes. The act of wakening from sleep can hardly be considered in an other view Man as the reviving of the activity by a rush ofnervous power to the muscles, followed by the exposure of the senses to the influences of the outer world. I know of no circumstance that would go to show that sensation ii the antecedent fact, in the case when the indi vidual awakes of his own accord. The first symptom of awakening that presents itself is a general commotion of the frame, a number of spontaneous movements—the stretching of the limbs, the opening of the eyes, the ex pansion of the features—to all which succeeds the revival of the sensibility to outward things. Mysterious as the nature of sleep is in the present state of our knowledge, we are not preclodel from remarking so notable a circum• stance, as the prior.ty of action to sensibility, at the moment of wakening. We conceive that Mr. Bain is here totally wrong in facts and reasoning. We believe, in direct opposition to his theory, that sensibility precedes action on awakening from sleep. This is notoriously the case when persons are roused from sound slumber, for then the mind commonly weaves an instantaneous vision connected with the disturbing cause. But even though it should be admitted that the muscles are endowed with inherent ac tivity, this would not establish a " muscular sense." The muscles are acted on by influ ences external to themselves. The sensations of pain and pleasu►e which belong to them can clearly be traced to physical effects, inde pendent of their organisation alone ; and hence their sensations may properly be re ferred to the sense of touch. Without being in soma way or other acted on, they are in a