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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 -


may be sustained after the loss of the hemispheres, but in that case a stimulus from without is necessary in order to commence the action. As a matter of course, the automatic actions, those that we have seen to go on in the decapitated or anencephalous animal, may still proceed.

"Fifth: The sensibility of the skin, and taste, and smell would appear to remain in a greatly impaired form. Such sensibility, however, cannot be of the nature of true sensation, for to have a sensation is to feel. It may consist in some mode of reflex stimulation, operated through the other centres. By operating energetically on any nerve of sense, we may excite reflex movements extending over almost all the muscles of the body.

"Hence it appears that the hemispheres of the brain are indispensable to the exercise of our two highest senses, and to feeling, volition, and thought." The Senses, and the Intellect, page 57.

That the higher senses, however, aside from the connection of their ganglia with the cerebral hemispheres, act purely automatically, is shown by facts of vivisection given by Taine in his work on Intelligence, p. 155. "Here is a pigeon, whose cerebral lobes are entirely removed, but whose corpora bigemina remain. When I suddenly put my hand near it, it makes a slight movement of the head to avoid the threatened danger." This fact, then, presents automatic movement through the highest special sense, entirely aside from conscious control, or conscious activity. The ordinary action of the eye in perception is therefore a state superinduced on a purely organic power, and gives a striking illustration of the descent of the conscious into the unconscious life, and its control over it.

The offices of the several parts of the nervous system in man may be briefly summarized as follows; all portions save the highest are mediums of general communication;

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