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John Bascom - Creator of Science of Mind - progenitor of New Thought

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John Bascom's

Science of Mind

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Introduction - Intellect - Mental Science's Divisions - Intellect's Divisions and Perceptions - The Understanding - The Reason - The Dynamics of the Intellect - Physical Feelings - Intellectual Feelings - Spiritual Feelings - Dynamics of Feelings - The Will - The Nervous System - Nervous System of Man - Executive Volition - Primary Volition, or Choice - Dynamics of the Will and the Mind - The Relations of the Systems Here Offered to Prevalent Forms of Philosophy - Index - Contents -


to grow into knowledge. Till this idea is evoked, every movement will, in its special relations, be utterly unintelligible, provoking indeed no attention; after it is evoked, these movements will but make it the more definite and precise in its application. Take the illustration offered by Spencer. Let a stick rest on imaginery finger-ends, by its two extremities, designated A and Z. Can that fact alone call forth the idea of space? We think it may, provided the mind is ready to know it as a fact, and to recognize two mutually excluding positions in sensation. It would evidently be thus interpreted at once by the adult mind, and a farther movement of the fingers would only be be sought after as giving confirmation to the fact of two mutually exclusive sensations, and as furnishing a distinct estimate of the distance between the two points. The objection expressed by Spencer in the words, " If now it be said that the length of the stick will be perceived, it is implied that the distance between A and Z is already known; or in other words, that there is a pre-existent idea of special extension, which is absurd," has no particular force; for it only holds against the assertion, that the space A Z is not merely recognized as a space, but accurately known in its dimensions. This knowledge, our latest adult experience fails to give us, and certainly a general notion of some space must go before this, its careful estimate. Spencer confounds intuitions with generalizations of the senses. In these the particular does precede the general, the sweetness of honey or of sugar the notion of sweetness. It is not so in intuitive ideas; here the general precedes the particular, the notion of space that of a given distance, the notion of time that of the time of day. Here is a fundamental difference between the two, which Spencer overlooks.

If the points A and Z are recognized as distinct, according to the comparison on distinct finger-ends, or in the

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