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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 -


By the word choice, we intend to cut off all efficient forces, that is all physical forces, external or internal, mechanical or vital, from any control over, or direct effect upon the action which is so designated. The commencement of the line of effort which springs from a primary volition a volition, as we shall concisely term it is absolute and complete.

We do not affirm hereby anything concerning the exact manner in which the train of physical forces is set in motion by volition, but only that it does, of its own power, initiate the physical movements which follow. These energies may lie in store for it, ready to be used, but the will liberates and controls them. The will, then, in the first place, stands above and beyond the range of causation, even in its most subtile forms as presented by nervous energies and influences. It descends upon and uses these, is not evolved by them.

By the limitations now given, all reflex action, all automatic action, under the play of the senses and appetites, are as physical states excluded from the realm of liberty, are but the higher forms of physical action. Equally are those executive volitions which have received their impulse from above, those acts which follow directly 'an intellectual weighing of means, a balancing of probabilities, a deliberative movement which is simply the gathering and eddying of executive force looking for a new avenue, the best avenue for advance, cut off from the freedom which attaches to choice. Having reached a point wholly unaffected by physical force, we are to inquire what are the conditions of liberty. The inducements to action in the will lie before it, not behind it; they are motives, not causes. There is no opportunity for choice, unless there are two or more of these, and as by successive rejection they at length assume the typical form unless there are two motives or lines of action. Neither

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