Miss Martineau & Her Master (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1851. Excerpt: ... purpose of the human mind, and so that it really is in one sense the instrument of its effect. The steam-engine is the application of certain properties of bodies and laws of nature to the accomplishment of man's wants. Man having observed, remembered, and compared numerous properties of bodies and laws of nature, is able, --not always, however, without repeated failures, in which failures he differs in like acts from other animals, --to subject these properties and laws to his will, when the desire to produce a certain effect has arisen in his mind. In like manner, in passive states of mind, trains of mental phenomena arise in obedience to certain laws, and, by attention to these laws, the self which is then passive or suffers, knows, when a desire arises, how to employ these laws of the mental phenomena to accomplish the desire which has arisen. Reflex muscular acts arise in consequence of external impressions, and take place through the nervous centre without any consciousness or act of volition; but some acts which are of this kind at first can afterwards be exercised in obedience to the will. Thus the self can employ many of the laws regulating reflex acts to command these acts. But who can say that the act of volition which thus commences the train of action is an effect of nervous organization? And the same view is applicable to the control of the self over trains of thought; volition is always felt to be an independent act of self--an act not overruled by any before observed laws. It is a fact, resting on the highest kind of evidence known in human pursuits, that the will of man, within certain limits, controls his thoughts in efforts after invention, and, when the invention is completed, directs it at option to the purposes to which it is applicabl...