MIND AND BRAIN. *

THE intellectual fermentation of the present age is incessant. New systems of philosophy appear in rapid succession. To comprehend existence is the grand aim of the "most thinking " men and women of our time. A singular characteristic of these new men- tal constructions is the impatience of the limits prescribed by the canons of the scientific or positive method. A decided reaction seems to have set in against the rigid procedure of the "experi- ence " school. A priori speculation, more or less modified, has revived. It tries to become scientific ; metaphysics, ignoring the metaphysical method, assumes the legitimacy of the physical method; or physical science borrows the logic of metaphysics and seeks to elevate itself into a. transcendental region. No doubt much of this lofty endeavour will end in frustration and disap- pointment; but we would hope that all the efforts of the more able and aspiring minds, that pursue this double path of inquiry, will not be absolutely resultless. If the "Terra Incognita" which is the object of much anxious speculation, be inaccessible to the human intellect ; if our knowledge must always remain commensurate with observation, mediate or immediate, so that the realm of the " unknowable " will exist to "unaided reason" as the realm of the unknowable only ;. the domain of pure science may yet receive splendid extensions, and the social and individual life of man may be greatly developed and ennobled by these re- peated efforts to make discovery of the happy islands and fortu- nate abodes which glitter in the 'dreams of fancy, or the visions of faith, on the shoreless sea of the "colourless, figureless intangible existence," which Plato tells us is the true and only real existence. These remarks must be understood generally. At any rate, they are not intended to apply, without restriction or qualification, to any one of the series of philosophical constructions with which we are acquainted. If all should prove failures as regards this intended result, it would be pleasant to find that oil were, in some sense and degree, essentially fruitbearing.

Dr. Thomas Laycock, a gentleman of professional eminence, an anther and an investigator to whom, it would appear, "is due the credit of first extending the doctrine of reflex action to the brain," has recently published a systematic work, of the class to which we now refer—a work which only a scientific physiologist could adequately review, but of which we shall attempt to give such an account as may interest the intelligent reader.

Dr. Laycock tells us, that thirty years have elapsed since he "first commenced an inquiry into the relations of body and mind with a view to practical results." To establish an applied science of mind, he found it necessary to effect a union between philo- sophy and biology ; to ascertain the laws of consciousness in relation with the laws of the vital forces ; to bring within the range of metaphysics, then only complete as a unity, the laws of life and organization. Some of the results of Dr. Laycock's physiological inquiries, having reference more es- pecially to various abnormal states of mind, have already been partially communicated to the public. Required, at a subsequent period, to deliver a course of lectures on medical psychology in the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Laycock then first made an attempt to systematize the results of his labours. The attempt has issued in the production of the two thoughtful, suggestive, and valuable volumes, which bear as their first and most available designation' the title of Mind and Brain.

Noticing all the various interrogations of popular and philoso- phical intellect, which arise in the present mentally anarchical period, the researches of the zoologist, the physicist, the econo- mist, the moralist, the sociologist, Dr. Laycock saw and felt the necessity of instituting a regular and systematic knowledge of human nature, of giving science at once a philosophical unity and practical availability. The problems suggested by the phe- nomena of insanity, mesmerism, spiritualism, &c., engage the attention of persons of general cultivation, and demand the con- ception of a system of thought which shall be adequate to supply a solution of their difficulties.

In concordance with these views, Dr. Layeock has published this introductory exposition of the correlations of physiology and philosophy. In the first part of the work, after indicating the necessary connexion between a science of life and a science of mind, he states the objects which a correlative method of inquiry

• Mind and Brain; or the Correlations of Consciousness and Organization: with- their Applications to Philosophy, Zoidogy, Physiology,' Mental Pathology, and the Practice of Medicine. By Dr. Thomas Laycock, Professor of the Practice of Medicine and of Clinical Medicine, and Lecturer on Medical Psychology in the University of Edinburgh. With Illustrations. Two volumes. Published by Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.

should aim at ; shows the obstacles to scientific progress arising out of the separate and independent method of investigation, points out how a teleological unity may be attained, and founds the practical science of mind on the common sense and experience of mankind. In the second part of the work are exhibited the re- sults of that experience and the doctrines which the speculative or independent method has proclaimed. With the third part commences the really scientific portion of the work. " It is occu- pied with the causes of life and consciousness." Transferring the idea of unity which presides over the doctrine of the correlation of physical forces into the higher region of inquiry, Dr. Lay- cock undertakes " to throw a scientific bridge across the impassable gulf which has hitherto appeared to separate the phenomena of life and organization, and of thought." This achievement he flatters himself that he has accomplished by a new and very simple method.

"Looking at the two classes of phenomena, and examining what they have in common, this principle is deduced—viz., that whereas mind designs, life is designed. Design, therefore, is common to both ; but in the one, there is a conscious energy of design, in the other, an unconscious. And this further law of correlation is universally manifest—viz., that the results of the vital forces, operative according to a law of design, coincide with the various states of consciousness known as desires, feelings,and the like. Hence a general law of design correlates both the laws of life and of con- sciousness."

"In the third part, the principles of teleology, or mental dy- namics' are developed from this law of design and ideas are con- sidered as causes, not only of life and thought, but of all the phe- nomena of creation." The principles thus established are then successively applied to the "general laws of life and organization, or biology' to the development of a scientific cerebral psychology ; and to the first principles of a mental physiology and organology. To estimate the value of the biological researches or conclusions of Dr. Laycock, is beyond our power ; nor shall we attempt to give even an outline of the doctrines advanced on the desires and feel- ings, and their correlations with the laws of vital action ; on the correlation of the laws of growth and development, and the laws of thought; on the correlation of the instincts and appetites with vital motion ; and of the sympathies and antipathies with the pri- mordial instincts ; on the dynamic and structural elements, &c., of the nervous system ; on the functions of the sympathetic and inver- tebral systems, or the organology of the brain and cerebellum. Before, however, we pass to a consideration of the more philosophi- cal portion of Dr. Laycock's work, we will here briefly record, to the satisfaction of some of our readers' the author's decided adhe- sion to the general doctrines of the phrenological school. Dissent- ing from the physiognomical method of phrenology, while yet not denying the diagnosis and value of cranioseopal observations, Dr. Layeock maintains that the brain is not only the organ of the mind but that it is a compound organ. Believing, moreover, that any arrangement, founded upon the doctrine of "fundamental intuitions" (the most important of which he has already indicated) must necessarily coincide with the psychological classification of Gall and Spurzheim, he is "inclined to adopt that classification as the best arrangement that could be adopted until our physiological

analysis of mental phenomena has had a more scientific develop- ment."

Proceeding to a closer examination of the more speculative part of Dr. Laycock's volumes, we find the architectural principle of his entire philosophy to be what is known as the teleogieal prin- ciple. As man must inevitably propose an end to himself, nature, it is inferred, must also have her predetermined ends and purposes. If teleology, or the doctrine of ends, presides over the mechanical and fine arts, which aim at the promotion of happiness ; if it pre- sides over life and organization, as it does, for they too have for their ultimate end the promotion of happiness, then teleology must be accepted as "our guide in the first principles of mental science ; or, in other words, the results of the laws of nature, as ends must be the great object of our scientific researches into the correlations of life and thought." Mind determines the order of society. But mind determines also the order of nature. As there are physical forces, as there are vital forces, so also there is a universal force, the final cause of all phenomena, and, therefore of the physical forces themselves. That force is mind. Dr. Laycock's method requires him to "de- velop the general principles of teleology, or the general laws of mind' considered as a force in creation operating to ends ; and to develop them in such a way that the phenomena which the three great divisions of the sciences investigate, namely, the physical, the vital, and the mental, may be brought into teleological unity.' Such laws constitute the principles of the new science of mental dynamics.

The Universe is a structure or system ; the work of the Great Designer, whose ideas are the representatives of human hands, for they are causal agents, or the immediate antecedents to all phenomena. "The form of existence or the archetype, once launched in time and space, continually tends to reproduce itself in successive organisms in a sort of cycle of changes." This archetype remains essentially unchanged, amidst all the variety and multiplicity which variations in external conditions, whether climatic or geological, have superinduced in the form and func- tions of organs in species. In accordance with the hypothesis of Mr. Darwin—whose celebrated work he recognizes as an "in- structive and important addition to the literature of this part of the subject," Dr. Laycock ascribes the development of varieties in plants and animals, and of hereditary characteristics as to structure and functions to the law of permanent action with in- cessant change. One a the consequences of a new direction of

the vital form is the transmission of hereditary disease, issuing in the extinction of a family or race.

"In this way, the law of adaptation to ends, as regards the species, is manifested as the teleiotic idea of perfection ; and the extinction of what may be termed "morbid varieties," is nothing else than the result of the operation of a fundamental law, by which the purity and vigour of the species is maintained, and life continually advanced towards perfection."

Having considered the conditions of existence as organisms, the relations of causal ideas to the order of vital phenomena next claims the attention of our author. The first fundamental law of life is the teleiotio idea of unity, causing the combination of many parts into one structure ; the idea of duality, or "the balance and neutralization of contrary tendencies," exemplified in chemical synthesis, or affinity; and the idea of multiplicity, evolving the many out of the one. These fundamental ideas have their corresponding modes of physiological action, indicated with sufficient exactness for our present .purpose, as the laws of individualization, dualization, and differentiation. Finally, "the end attained in time and space is the complete realization of the teleiotic idea, whatever that may be; that complete realization is what we call perfection"; the grand idea of creation ever growing into higher order, goodness, and beauty. This ideal perfection, because it is absolute and infinite, we cannot realize. Evils and imperfections, cosmic, biological and moral, remain unexplained, an unknown something which we must struggle to know, some- thing for our imagination and our faith to dwell on. Rightly understood, evil would be found to be very good !

Such is a very inadequate presentment of Dr. Laycock's enlarged and ennobled view of the teleological doctrine: a doctrine, which, it appears to us, deserves a far more searching and philosophical discussion than it has yet received. The symmetries in nature suggest intelligence ; the functional availability of an organ, com- posed of inter-related parts, indicates, or seems to indicate, design. Paley, in his clear style and, with his business way of looking at life, has effectively handled the argument, under its mechanical aspect ; and devout and poetical minds denounce his national theology as a desecration of the divine life of the world. Mr. G. H. Lewes, who worships in the "cathedral of immensity," and needs "the conception of a God as the infinite life from whom the Universe proceeds," agrees that the pretended beauty of " de- sign " manifested in astronomy is not a legitimate argument. Humboldt and other attendants at the same convenient me- tropolitan church, maintain a similar view of the world's arrange- ments. Other sages reject the argument because as they allege it is self-destructive ; for if (they argue) the designed pleasure in the world proves a good God Almighty, the designed pain in the world proves a bad God Almighty. Even churchmen take a dif- fering view of the nature of design ; one proclaiming that to be the right view which another proclaims to be the wrong. Thus (we quote from Mr. J. S. Mill's System of Logic) Dr. Chalmers thinks that "though design is present everywhere, the irresistible evidence of it is to be found not in the laws of nature, but the collocations, i.e., in the part of nature in which it is impossible to trace any law ; " while Mr. Baden Powell "vigorously reasserts the doctrine, that the indication of design in the Universe is not spe- cial adaptations, but Uniformity and Law, these being the evi- dences of mind, and not what appears to us to be a provision for our uses." Nor is this all, for Dr. Chalmers is of opinion that "a few. properties of dead matter might conceivably account for the regular and invariable succession of effects and causes. An ac- complished thinker and writer whom we know, regards both these phases of the argument, as fundamentally identical ; considering the special adaptations to be the result of the general law.

We feel the difficulties of the design argument, but we would rather invite competent minds to discuss its merits, and deter- mine its value, than ourselves enumerate its infirmities. If we cannot admit that cork trees were created to supply us with corks, we cannot easily divest ourselves of the impression that the eye was made to see.

It is evident that the strength of Dr. Laycock's philosophical structure is dependent on the validity of the teleological method. But, further : the known correlation of the physical forces does, we believe, justify the magnificent hypothesis of a physical force unity. All of the physical forces may be "forms of one and the same force, varying only in its outward manifestations." But if their identity should never be established, to what extent would Dr. Laycock's "law of unity" be ultimately affected ; indeed, to what extent is it affected now ? Again, fundamental ideas may be regulative ; but where is the proof of their creative efficiency ? If heat produces electricity, it is because heat is itself transformed into electricity ; but how does mind produce matter ; and if mind does not produce matter, how can mind be the absolute First Cause ? 'These interrogations are intended as suggestive, and. not as dogmatically asserted objections. We are not ourselves in a position to make any positive allegation at present as to the strength or the weakness of the scientific reasoning employed by Dr. Laycoek. It is possible that his theory may not be bound up with the hypothesis of an identity of force.

There are many passages in this deeply interesting work which we could wish to quote, and on which we could wish to comment; but we must bring these remarks to a close. There is much in Dr. Laycock's volumes that we admire ; there is much from which we dissent. We profoundly disbelieve in the doctrine of innate ideas, or fundamental intuitions, such as we understand the author to accept when he regards certain conceptions as final and authoritative. We have, moreover, little respect for the etymo- logical learning which is somewhat needlessly displayed. in the

pages of this book. Moreover, we have a strong suspicion that "Dr. Laycoek in Greek is somewhat to seek." We find, in one place, that he begins with Dios ; whereas, when we were at school, we used to begin with Zeus (genitive Dios), Dis being pronounced. obsolete. He goes on to say that "we all are ever in communion with Dios, for we are of the genus of him." Not contented with quoting Aratus, he cites a similar expression, in the hymn of Cleanthes—E'c trot, yap Woos iapev—parallel, as it seems to us, to IE 10(4179 Wvov it'd, and which we should interpret, "we derive our descent from thee." Neither can we admit that the word iffitEP (we have our being) properly means "we have conscious being."

These fancies, however, are very pardonable. The work which Dr. Laycock has written, after all deductions on the score of fan- tastic scholarship, excess of quotation, superfluous exposition, and metaphysical speculation, still remains emphatically a book, worthy to bear outside, as its legitimate title, the words which denote the realities that will be found inside, "Mind and Brain."