Mental Diseases and Their Modern Treatment | Page 6

the occupant of this brain, is the marvel and the mystery of creation. It is swayed by every flitting passion or impression, and yet it is held in steady poise by the calm monitions of reason, of cultivated judgment, and of developed will. In these respects it resembles those wondrous rocking-stones reared by the ancient Druids. You remember that they were so finely balanced that the finger of a child could vibrate them to their centers, and yet they were so firmly poised that the might of an army could not move them from their base. So it is with the human mind which has been thoroughly trained, carefully cultured, and kept by its owner as a pearl without price. The smile of a child can sway it to and fro, while the faggot of martyrdom could not change one jot or tittle of its firm determination.
Let us see how the brain works during the evolution of thought. It is claimed that there are two classes of intellectual faculties,--the knowing, and the reflecting. The knowing faculties are individuality, form, size, weight, coloring, locality etc. The reflecting faculties are comparison, and causality. Each faculty has, it is said, a separate portion of the brain for its home. The memory belongs to each faculty. Hence there are as many kinds of memory as there are homes for the knowing and reflecting faculties. Sometimes by reason of localized brain disease a person may lose the power of recalling a name, or place, or event, and yet may be able to exercise his memory with regard to all the faculties except the one which has been disturbed by disease.
Memory is simply a retentive attribute or power of the mind. The best view to take of memory is to regard it as the holding of a feeling, a thought, or a purpose in the continuous life of the mind. Every thinking act continues, every choice and purpose likewise remain part of the mind's activity. The law of retentiveness in the mind imposes three conditions for a good memory. They are found:
1. In the subject matter of remembrance, 2. In the relationship of each thing remembered to other things in the mind, and, 3. In the care of the mind itself.
The first condition is that the mind accepts readily only what it most needs or wishes to use; therefore, you should get good things to remember. The second is to associate them carefully with things already remembered in such a manner that they may be easily recalled. The third condition, without day-dreaming or mind-wandering, is fixing attention to the subject that you may wish to memorize.
Professor Bain classifies mental activities as follows:
1. The senses--that is, the five senses, 2. The intellect, or the mental processes which are developed between impressions on the one hand and determination on the other, 3. The will, with which the judgment is closely associated, 4. The emotions.
The products of the senses are called sensations. The products of the intellect are ideas, beliefs, imaginings, derived from processes of reasoning and understanding and arriving at the conclusion of judgment. The products of the will are volitions; and the products of the emotions are feelings and passions.
The first step in mental activity is self-consciousness. The mind takes cognizance of an impression produced upon the brain by any of the five senses. When the brain receives an impression from any source, and the mind becomes conscious of it, then there is formed within the mind what are called perceptions. The power of perceiving and comparing is called the intelligence. The intelligence is the mind's faculty of knowing. After receiving various and repeated impressions, and after forming numerous comparison of objects which we often see, we find at last that there has been developed an automatic function, so to speak, and this is known as intuition. Intuition is the faculty of internal perception and internal comprehension. Intuition is a limited sphere of mental phenomena. It is an incomplete knowledge, and thus the faculty of thought is stirred into activity. Thought is the elaborative faculty, the comparative faculty, the faculty of relationships. Well, we put several thoughts together, and let them have a warlike struggle, and this process of fighting, of thoughts rubbing against each other, and concluding either victory or defeat, we call reasoning. After this fight of thoughts has been carried on until final facts or conclusions are distinguished from primal inference, after the monkey and the parrot have both got through, there is brought in a verdict of the whole matter, and this is called judgment. Judgment is that faculty which enables the mind to ascertain truth by comparing facts and ideas. Judgment is the faculty of opinion put by the individual upon facts with which he has become acquainted, and upon ideas which