Viewing page 157 of 182

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

THOUGHT---ITS ANALYSIS.

Closing Lecture of the Session of 1874

BY PROF. JOHN WISE
[Reported for the Evening Bulletin.]

Locke wrote a profound and elaborate treatise on the understanding, exhausting the whole mental phenomenon as it were; but it is purely metaphysical and abstract. I propose to take it up this evening from a material standpoint, and show that it is in itself the sum and product of material action. Science fears not to take up the objects in that way, believing as it does, and porving, as it can, that all things cognizable to the human mind are entities. If words alone could elucidate and analyze things, without the intervention of material facts, Locke's treatise would leave nothing to be added to a full and complete comprehension of the workings of the mind. In Locke's time mind and body were held to be dual–two things–one the soul, the other metaphysical. Nevertheless, Locke was accused of materialistic tendencies. 

Now let us see what the lexicographers say if this thing-Thought. Webster says it is "a product of the imagination; a conceit; a fancy." In a note appended he says: "Thought, in philosophical usage, now somewhat current, denotes the capacity, or the exercise of the very highest intellectual functions, especially those usually comprehended under judgment."And then, quoting Sir Win. Hamilton, who says: "This faculty, to which I give the name of the elaborative faculty-the faculty of relations or comparisons-constitutes what is properly denominated thought." Thought is not a product of the imagination any more than the imagination is the product of thought.

Now, as a matter of philological curiosity, let us see what the dictionary-maker gets out of the terms imagination-a conceit-a fancy. He says: "The image-making power; the power to recall a mental or spiritual state that has before been experienced. 2d. The representative power; the phantasy or fancy; the power to reconstruct or recombine the materials furnished by experience or direct apprehension; the complex faculty usually termed the plastic or creative power." Now, Shakespeare is called in to explain, and hear what he says of it: "The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the form of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.:"

And so we might go on and quote authority upon authority for a simple explanation of thought, but never find it clear and definite. We may hunt the dictionary through, and examine all the various terms in which Thought is clothed-in idea, mind,intellect, understanding, conceit,fancy cogitation,reason, mentality, &c.[[etc.]], and we can find nothing clearer than that thought is the product-the resultant of material action upon the organs of the senses-in short, material action upon the nervous system. Thought is to the corporeal body what music is to the instrument that gives it utterance-may it come harsh and discordant, or may it come gentle and harmonious. A scolding tongue is simply a human musical instrument out of temper and out of tune-a cracked bell, a harp with over-strained strings, an accordeon with its bellows fissured.
Thought being the resultant of material action upon the nervous system it becomes a question of serious importance how that nervous system is nurtured and cared for. Recreation, rest, light, sleep,diet, must all play their normal parts o insure a good thinking apparatus for the production of correct thought. Health must be at the foundation of clear and active perception. Without clear perception-without examining the object in all its bearings-we cannot receive correct and clear impressions upon the brain; and without clear impressions it is in vain that we look for logical and elaborated thought upon the matter. You cannot draw clear water from a muddied pool.
The force that actuates our organs of vitality is very strict in its demands for healthful instrumentalities, in order to play the music of Divinity that notes our eventful history in the struggle for existence.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

What a calamity false first impressions upon the plastic brain of the young have produced in the human family! Legends and lies, ghosts and goblins, necromancy and witchcraft-a catalogue[[catalog]] of mental diseases more numerous than these that afflict the body otherwise, are the false doctrines brooding in the brains of humanity, planted there in the nursery garden, to grow and flourish as the tares in the wheat. How ineffaceably these first impressions haunt us upon the record book of thought. How they make us "whistle through the woods" even in our maturer days. What a delectable commentary upon our boasted learning is the nursery tale of the "Ogres."
Shakespeare's hell-broth, stewed up by witches, may do for old people to laugh at, but the tender, impressible brain of the child should be sacredly guarded against these pernicious impressions of the nursery.
The record on the brain strands there indelibly impressed, and is the text-book of our daily reference. When we open its pages, as we do when we think, when we reason, when we cogitate, we but make the comparison of that immediately under our notice with that which stands on record of like tenor. When our brain-record is clear of false impressions, and is, withal, made up of truthful knowledge, these references are accordingly digested, and result in good logical deductions. Early false impressions may be ignored-never effaced-by a more mature record of scientific training, always followed more or less by the power of reason to mark the false ones obsolete, and in that way we compile an erratum in the portfolio of our autobiographies. Our thoughts compose our true histories, our lives, our professions, but they make a sacred volume, only open to our own inspection. It would be an awful volume accessible in a common library.
A celebrated diplomat said, concerning words, that they were useful to conceal our thoughts. That is not only true as regards diplomacy, but it is just as true in every day transactions. In this regard man is more treacherous than the wild beast. The tiger always sounds the true note of his intentions; man not always-but often sounds the notes of amity and loving kindness while he holds concealed the dagger of vengeance and inhuman violence, ready to use it as occasion may be afforded. Some day-not so remote-we may be able to read the sacred record of the dead man's brain with the optical power of the microscope, and then, alas, to those fulsome eulogies that are wont to be passed upon departed profligacy.
Philosophers were wont to wrangle about he seat of sensation. Some antiquated ones do yet. We have already located that, and in the very best place that nature could provide for it, in a strong enamelled casket-its material of the very finest albumenoid that nature could compound, both for impressionable and sensitive purposes. Like a central station of the telegraph company, it runs its lines from the centre to every part of its dominion, in what we call the nervous system, an extension of the brain fibre so universally ramified through the body that no a hair's-breadth of its composition is without it.
That is the materialistic mechanicism that clicks the action of our "environments" upon the albumenoid folds of the brain, and produces thought. Strictly speaking, we have but one sense. The five are differentiations of the one of feeling-touch, or sensibility, if you like that term better.
The brain is the general depot of sensation. It is the receiving-vessel of all the impressions that environ us from without and that excite us from within. What other purpose can it or does it subserve? When the brain goes into repose it shrinks into a smaller compass, and then the body is merely an automaton. The body can, and sometimes does act without the action of the brain. I am well acquainted with a person who walks about with eyes wide open, goes out of doors, handles objects, answers "yes" and "no," manipulates objects given him, and does it all automatically, and knows nothing whatever of what he has done, when aroused from his brain sleep. He is simply functional by instinct.
What is instinct? The old philosophy makes it a distinct thing from reason, but it is a distinction without an essential difference. Instinct is the call to the brain by the organs of vitality within the body. Hunger, thirst, warmth, light, air, come within the demands of instinct. They produce thought in the same mode, and through the nerves,as do the outside objects that move us to reason-to think. There is a sufficient force for every thought that is engendered and recorded on the folds of the brain. Indeed, nothing is done, or can be done, without an impelling and compelling force without or within our corporeal bodies. Dreams are no exception to this law of nature. Some writers assume that dreaming is a purely spiritual manifestation. That dreams prove a two-fold personality. That the mind may wander into ethereal lands while the body sleeps in a comatose state. Swedenborg was a dreamer, and it is a physiological fact that a condition of the body may be induced in which the muscular functions are suspended, while the brain at the same time remains intelligent. And, [[Italics]]vice versa:[[Italics]] The brain may be in a state of repose, while the muscular functions are in action, as in sleep-walking. These things only prove that we are organic and functional attributes that pertain to all living objects. Some animals sleep all winter. Trees do the same thing. When they throw off their velvet green garments in the autumn, and put on their yellow sleeping gowns, they are simply preparing for a long winter nap, to wake no more till spring time.
Conscience is thought. Thought springing anew from the place of its record in he brain-the seat of sensation. It is cogitation, nothing else, and it affects us pleasureably[[pleasurably]] or painfully, as the case may be. It pays us back in our own coin. It is the regulation of our moral movements. It is the touchstone of our works, and it never fails to tarnish the baser metals of vices, while it serves to bring out the pure gold of charity and good will to men in resplendent lustre. Conscience only makes cowards of us when we, in our sober thoughts , find that we have been guilty of cowardly acts-acts of unkindness, lives of wickedness, of knavery, of profligacy, &c[[etc.]]. We may be able to cheat anybody and everything, but one, and that is conscience. That's the "rub" that makes us pause. It is in this life that conscience does its work. Thoughts come from realities always, and hence the great care, the great necessity, of building up as best we can a healthful constitution in our bodies, so that our organism may be able to engender virtuous thoughts by virtuous actions.
We can no more cheat conscience than we can cheat the Devil, in landing an irregular and debauched life, and then lie down in the consolation and hope of future bliss, by simply praying in death-bed repentance for forgiveness. Too late-too late in the day of our existence then, to make proper amends. The arrows of remorse-he cankers of conscience, are not so easily arrested-it is only when the mind pales into obscurity from the shattering pangs of dissolution, that the mistaken idea comes up to the watchers hat peace was purchased by dying repentance.
No, no; it is that noble, that glorious [[Italics]]thought[[Italics]] that comes up from the bottom of all our works, when we are about to end our lease of life, that permits us to lie down in the arms of Death with its sweet embrace, and in its utterance of "Well done thou good and faithful servant."