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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 -


believe that the races of men could have sprung from one pair, may be referred to Darwin; those who cannot explain the sagacity of the dog, his apparent sense of shame and approval, without endowing him with the entire circle of human powers, moral and intellectual, may well find profit and conviction in the works of the sensualistic school.

The truth is, memory and perception can present, with close agreement through quite a wide range of conduct, an image of rational and moral behavior. Memory can unite impressions and their appropriate accompanying actions in permanent associations, exhibiting results as safe and sagacious as if the union had taken place by judgment. We constantly interpret the conduct of animals under the analogies of our own experience; an act more unphilosophical even than for the accomplished and sensitive man to infer the exact counterpart of his own feelings in the clown from an agreement of external actions. The aspen trembles without fear: the dog skulks and crouches in apparent shame without a sense of guilt. The severe tones of voice, the sharp eye, punishment associated in experience with like action, are a sufficient explanation of conduct which we often hastily regard as showing the germs of a moral nature.

Indeed, this inferring the same sweep of thought and feeling from coincident actions in man and in animals leads constantly to the most insecure and unfortunate conclusions; unfortunate when they are made the grounds of cruel exactions, and the tyrannous handling of domestic animals. Says Professor Whitney, in his treatise on Language and the Study of Language: "A dog, for instance, as surely apprehends the general idea of a tree, a man, a piece of meat, cold and heat, light and darkness, pleasure and pain, kindness, threatening, barking, running, and so on, through the whole range, limited as compared with ours, of matter within his ken, as if he had a word for each. He can as

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