Mental Diseases and Their Modern Treatment | Page 7

have been generated within his own brain. A judgment having been formed, the will rises and executes the mandates of the judgment. The will is the power of determining upon final action, and upon the will human achievement largely depends.
Now remember that intellectual action of the mind works as follows: First, you have impression through one of the senses; then perception of that impression, that is consciousness; then intuition, then thought, then reasoning, then understanding, then judgment, then will.
Beyond the intellectual workings of the human mind, we have, as a compass to guide the will, what men call conscience. Theodore Parker, when a little boy, was tempted one day to kill a spotted tortoise, but a voice spoke to him and said "It is wrong." He looked around, and seeing no one, fled in great fear to his mother, and told her what he had heard and asked her what it was that spoke to him in that way. The mother took the child in her arms, and said: "Some men call it conscience, but I prefer to call it the voice of God speaking in the soul of man. If you heed that little voice it will always guide you aright."
The will is swayed and impelled, or hindered, by what are called the emotions. The emotions have been subdivided into feelings, and passions. The extremes of feeling are termed pleasure, and pain. These vary through all grades of intensity, from the faintest flush of satisfaction, to the brightness of ecstatic joy; from the slightest cloud of discontent, to the stormiest violence of grief and agony. They intermingle with all the experiences and energies of the mind, intruding upon every affection investigating every movement of the intelligence, and animating or disheartening every activity of the free will. Passions are represented on the one extreme by love, and on the other by hate. When these are but partially developed, we may feel pity, or disgust, or contempt for objects about us.
Emotions are sometimes awakened by the idea that things are true, or beautiful, or good. Such emotions are called the intellectual sense, the aesthetic sense, and the moral sense. Again, the emotions may be excited by the originality or newness of the idea. If new and incongruous, it is known as the emotion of the ludicrous. An emotion when vividly presented in bright language is termed repartee.
Again, the mind is the parent of desires. Some may be normal and healthful, while others are irregular and morbid. Desires belonging to the physical constitution are commonly known as appetites. Healthful appetites, when naturally satisfied, cease their craving, and disappear until the health and well-being of the body reawaken them. Unnatural appetites continue their demands for that which is unhealthy and injurious. The will is not always energetic enough to subdue such appetites. Concerning unnatural appetites, Charles Dickens has declared that "vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess."
And now, as we rehearse these various and numerous faculties of the mind, we come to the conclusion that the mind is single, yet with a plurality of functions. It is the same mind that feels, that thinks, and that wills; and in putting forth either of these functions it never entirely ceases from the others. Consequently, every mental state has something of feeling, something of intelligence, and something of volition, or endeavor. It is so with the body. The body puts forth simultaneously various functions of animal life. It breathes, it circulates its blood, it digests, it secretes, and it receives, and transmits sensations. Not one of these bodily functions need be suspended while the others are in exercise. The human mind works as a unit. One function may appear temporarily to overshadow by its prominence all others, and yet the other functions are by no means suspended. The various functions of the mind shade into each other with an infinitely varying degree of prominence, and thus give a kaleidoscopic character to the mental states.
It needs but little reflection to conclude that the uses to which our brains must be subjected are both intricate and multitudinous. They have a priestly charge and oversight over those living temples so "fearfully and wonderfully made" by the hand of Infinite Wisdom; and they are likewise the temporary lodging places of the immortal soul. The brain is the great storehouse of fact and the factory of thought. It takes up by its inherent action the scenes and sounds by which it is surrounded; it gorges itself upon the experiences of the past; it protrudes itself, through hope and imagination, upon the great undiscovered future. Within the serried ranks of cell and fiber, of matter gray and white, there is involved in meshes, too intricate to unravel, a mysterious union of the material and the immaterial. The theories of the