The Physical Basis of Mental Life; A Popular Essay (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. 1873 Excerpt: ...influence their actions. They come into the world with the analogues of individually acquired memories and habits. Instinctively the new-born babe and young mammalia generally apply their lips to the teats of their mothers; instinctively puppies will display destructive tendencies at the first sight of certain creatures; they will hunt and worry mice, &c., without having been taught by their parents, or man, so to do. It is the same with kittens, who instinctively crouch and spring at their prey.' The young of certain breeds of dogs, show reactions of the brain on outward impressions, in the form of pointing at game, retrieving, &c. These dispositions are 'born in them, ' as I have heard game-keepers say. Similarly in man, various innate emotions and impulses, tastes, likings, and dislikings, &c., follow Abnormal Mental Phenomena 61 spontaneously on impressions on the senses caused by particular outward objects. Very abnormal psychical phenomena of this kind are called idiosyncrasies, and generally die out with the individuals who have displayed them. I allude, by way of example, to the repugnance of James I. of England to the sight of naked steel. Many mental peculiarities however, in whatever circumstances their genesis may be sought, become permanent in families and races. The observation of this fact induced Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to declare that 'God had created men, women and Harveys.' Gipsies, too, who have continued generation after generation to lead a vagabond life in the midst of civilised communities, appear to have inherited this propensity from a migratory tribe of Hindostan, from which ethnologists and philologists now fully believe them to be descended.1 The anatomy of the brain, in so far as its complicated structure has been ...