The Soul: A Study and an ArgumentMacmillan and Company, limited, 1903 - 234 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
according activity adapt afferent nerve aggregation animals APPENDIX assume believe birds blood body brain cause cerebral hemispheres cerebrum changes chemical chief centre colour conceive connection consciousness cuckoo Darwin decapitated Descartes described designing mind eggs end organs evidence experience fact feeling force functions G. H. Lewes ganglia ganglion hatching Herbert Spencer idea impulse individual intelligence intestinal canal living manifested material maternal instinct mechanism memory mental action mind and matter molecular monad motion movements muscular natural selection necessary nerve cells nerve centres nervous system nest object operation organic modifications organic structure organised organs of sense Origin of Species periphery phenomena physical laws physicist physiological physiologists present preserved produce profitable variations protoplasm psychical psychical action Psychology purpose recognise reflex action result says scious sensation soul spinal stimulus sub-centres substance supposed term theory thought tion tissue uncon unextended volition whole
Popular passages
Page 155 - If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.
Page 119 - It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.
Page 85 - ... still a change in the region of the extended. The only adequate expression is a CHANGE OF STATE : a change from the state of the extended cognition to a state of unextended cognition. By various theologians, heaven has been spoken of as not a place, but a state ; and this is the only phrase that I can find suitable to describe the vast, though familiar and easy, transition from the material or extended, to the 'immaterial or unextended side of our being.
Page 213 - I cannot compare the soul more properly to any thing than to a republic or commonwealth in which the several members are united by the reciprocal ties of government and subordination, and give rise to other persons, who propagate the same republic in the incessant changes of its parts.
Page 118 - Several writers have misapprehended or objected to the term Natural Selection. Some have even imagined that natural selection induces variability, whereas it implies only the preservation of such variations as arise and are beneficial to the being under its conditions of life.
Page 3 - is a definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences.
Page 196 - The length of time that was occupied by this deluge of ideas, or rather the shortness of time into which they were condensed, I cannot now state with precision, yet certainly two minutes could not have elapsed from the moment of suffocation to that of my being hauled up.
Page 70 - The more we examine the mechanism of thought, the more we shall see that the automatic, unconscious action of the mind enters largely into all its processes. Our definite ideas are steppingstones: how we get from one to the other, we do not know: something carries us; we do not take the step. A creating and informing spirit which is with us, and not of us, is recognized everywhere in real and in storied life.
Page 61 - Abercrombie mentions another case, of a boy, who, at the age of four, received a fracture of the skull, for which he underwent the operation of the trepan. He was at the time in a state of perfect stupor ; and, after his recovery, retained no recollection either of the accident or of the operation.
Page 71 - It has often happened to me to have been occupied by a particular subject of inquiry ; to have accumulated a store of facts connected with it ; but to have been able to proceed no further. Then, after an interval of time, without any addition to my stock of knowledge, I have found the obscurity and confusion, in which the subject was originally enveloped, to have cleared away ; the facts have seemed all to have settled themselves in their right places, and their mutual relations to have become apparent,...