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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 -


speaks of the "sense of ability to move" "the sense of freedom for motions" as a constituent in our idea of space. Observe that this ability, this freedom, are not spoken of as something explained under the idea, but as a constituent of the idea.

Bain says yet more explicitly: " Extension or space as a quality has no other origin and no other meaning than the association of these different sensitive and motor effects." Mark the words quality and no other meaning. Again, "The mental conception that we have of empty space is scope for movement, the possibility of potentiality of movement; and this conception we derive from our experience of movements." The Senses and the Intellect, p. 378. How is it as to the interstellar, or the intermolecular spaces? What has experience to say concerning these? Do we in them derive our belief of space from the changed sensations of motion? Bain proceeds still farther. "By such steps as I have endeavored to describe, we derive our notion of extended things, of extension in the concrete. And from this we can obtain an abstract notion of the extended in the same manner as we gain any other abstract notion, as color, heat or justice." This can only be true if our knowledge of space, like our knowledge of heat and color, is a sensation; and this belief, not explicitly stated, underlies logically the sensualistic philosophy. The doctrine that space is a sensation or "quality" of sensations, or a series or concatenation of sensations, or in any way an immediate product of sensation, we are willing to leave without argument to the refutation of simple statement. It would thus sink wholly from the intellectual field, and, if allowed to drag other kindred ideas with it, would leave neither occasion nor opportunity for any other faculty than that of perception. Sensations lie together, and need no conjunction by the judgment; and as for any notions wherewith the mind

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