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The Perceptive Centres and their Localisation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Rev. W. G. Davies
Rev. W. G. Davies*
Affiliation:
Chaplain to the Joint Counties' Asylum, Abergavenny
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The cerebral anatomist, if destitute of any leading idea as to what he should be searching for, must be labouring under considerable disadvantage when he examines the intimate structure of the brain; and since the study of his choice must, from its peculiar intricacy, demand his best attention, he cannot be expected to be as profound in his pyschology as he is in his anatomy. “It is interesting to remark,” says Wagner, “that wherever an insight into the nature of the functions performed by an organ has been wanting, there has the structure also remained more or less obscure; we feel the want of everything like a guiding principle in the anatomical inquiry; of this truth we have satisfactory assurance in the cases of the thyroid, thymus, and supra-renal bodies and spleen.”* Then, as regards the pyschologist proper, if he devotes his days and nights to the analysis of the mind's conscious and expressed operations, it is not in human nature that he should be a professed and original anatomist as well. Indeed, division of labour is more necessary, perhaps, in this obscure field of research than in any other. Now, it is as a pyschologist who, in the interest of truth, has deemed it his duty to explain mental phenomena in such a way as to be in harmony with the ascertained structure of the brain, that the writer offers the following remarks, hoping that they may not be unserviceable to the cerebral anatomist.

Information

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 15 , Issue 70 , July 1869, pp. 240 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1869 

References

∗ Elements of Physiology, Willis's Translation, Part III., p. 606.Google Scholar

† Journal of Mental Science, October, 1868.Google Scholar

∗ Researches on the Intimate Structure of the Brain. By Lockhart Clarke, J. Second Series—Of The Auditory Nuclei and Nerves.Google Scholar

† The Physiology and Pathology of the Mind. By Maudsley, Dr. Chapter IV. Sensory Ganglia.Google Scholar

∗ Physiology of the Nervous System. Lecture VIII.Google Scholar

† Bastian, Dr. has, of his own accord, explained that the views advanced by him in the January number of this Journal were in print before he had any knowledge of our article in the previous number.Google Scholar

∗ Hamilton's Reid, p. 911.Google Scholar

∗ It does not follow from this that action does not persist in the same seat for a long time together, giving rise to identical thoughts, as illustrated in the text.Google Scholar

∗ “Notions formed from several objects are called conceptions, as being produced by the power which the mind possesses of taking several things together (concipere, i. e., capere hoc cum illo).” Outline of the Laws of Thought, by the Archbishop of York, § 48.Google Scholar

By conception is meant the act of conceiving; by concept that which is conceived. This latter term is now commonly adopted in this sense. There is a similar distinction between the act of perceiving and the object perceived, and it would be well to use the word percept to signify the latter.Google Scholar

We cannot discover any cognitive act so simple as that answering to a term. Perception, the most elementary act of thought, is a judgment, and has no other explicit form of expression, as a whole, than the proposition. As a term, therefore, is only part of a proposition, so it only represents a portion of an act of thought. We gather from this that common terms are properly called concepts because they imply a conceptive judgment. In like manner the word percept must imply a perceptive judgment, which is presupposed by every judgment of the former character.Google Scholar

∗ Essays—Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion.Google Scholar

∗ The Alphabet of Thought, &c, 1861. The Law of Certainty. Medical Critic and Psychological Journal, 1863. Mr. J. S. Mill and the Inductive Origin of First Principles. Journal of Sacred Literature, 1866.Google Scholar

† Hamilton's Reid, p. 754.Google Scholar

∗ We do not at all insist upon calling the former of these connexions necessary, but we do strongly upon the necessity of clearly marking the distinction between the two by some definite terminology.Google Scholar

∗ The Lancet, November 28—December 5.Google Scholar

∗ The British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, April 1869. p. 474.Google Scholar

∗ Among the sense-centres the same law is clearly observable in so far as Sight Hearing, Taste, and Smell presuppose Touch and Actuation, which are the origin quoad nos of the extended and solid, that to which we impute colour, sound, savour, odour, &c.Google Scholar

† Physiology and Pathology of the Mind. By Dr. Maudsley, p. 191.Google Scholar

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