Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/867

Rh the association of anything material with so pure and spiritual a study as that of mind. Said an eminent spiritual-minded teacher to the writer, "I hate that word 'organization' worse than any other in the language." It is needless to say that this attitude of mind is as far as possible from scientific, and has not truth for its object. Yet the prejudice is powerful, both in paralyzing the minds of individuals and in hindering educational improvement. All the colleges and high schools in the country make loud professions of the thoroughness of their work, and they are every one occupied in dealing with the human brain; but, if there has ever been a book on the brain introduced into one of them for systematic study, we have never heard of it, and we have not been unheedful of the subject. Years are given to the most unspeakable rubbish—to subjects of study so vacant of all use that their continuance is becoming an open scandal; while a knowledge of the laws of the great organ of thought, that "institution of God" which gives law to the mental world, is passed by as unworthy of any serious attention. If the graduates from our colleges, normal schools, academies, and high schools, as they come forth, diploma in hand, were questioned as to the structure, powers, and organic relations of the brain they profess to have been cultivating, would it not be found that their ignorance is quite as great as that of those who have never had the advantage of a higher education? The subject has been too long and too grossly neglected, and we are glad of the appearance of Dr. Bastian's book, as it will take away all excuse for further neglect on the score that there is no suitable manual of the subject adapted to general use.

We can give no detailed account of this work within the limits of a notice, and only desire to convey a general idea of its method of treating the subject. There are three modes of arriving at a knowledge of the laws of mind: In the first place, each man has a source of this knowledge within himself. He carries on the mental operations in his own consciousness, and can observe and analyze them there according to his practice and skill in introspection. This source of acquaintance with mental operations is immediate and direct, and of the highest authority for the individual; but it is incomplete and liable greatly to mislead from this cause. This is known as the subjective field of inquiry. But it is possible to know something about the minds of other people in a different way. We know by experience that mind has its outward expressions, and these expressions in others, which are of the most varied kind, become indications to us of their mental states. In the same manner we acquire a knowledge of the mental activities and capacities of the lower animals, which manifest in various degrees the endowment of intelligence. What we observe without, in this way, constitutes the sphere of objective psychology. But there is another capital source of a knowledge of mind, which comes from investigating the organic structures and functions by which it is manifested in all its grades and forms. We here study the brain and nervous system, tracing its evolution from the lowest germ to the highest development, and tracing the growth of the brain of man from its embryonic rudiments to the mature and perfected structure. This branch of the study of the mind is marked off from the others by applying to it the term neurology. The following diagram, from Dr. Bastian's chapter entitled "The Scope of Mind," is designed to show how all these departments of study require to be combined in order to produce a true science of mind: