Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 edition. Excerpt: ... tic or the olfactory. The effluvia of bodies make an impression upon the olfactory nerves; but make none upon the optic or auditory. No man has been able to give a shadow of reason for this. While this is the case, is it not better to confess our ignorance of the nature of those impressions made upon the nerves and brain in perception, than to Hatter our pride with the conceit of knowledge which we have not, and to adulterate philosophy with the spurious brood of hypotheses ? * CHAPTER III. FALSE CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM THE CONNECTION BETWEEN PERCEPTION AND IMPRESSIONS MADE ON THE ORGANS OF SENSE. I. (1.) That the Mind'is Material, and Perception the Result of Mechanism.} Some philosophers among the ancients, as well as among the moderns, imagined that man is nothing but a piece of matter so curiously organized, that the impressions of external objects produce in it sensation, perception, remembrance, and all the other operations we are conscious of. This foolish opinion could only take its rise from observing the constant connection which the Author of nature has established between certain impressions made upon our senses, and our perception of the objects by which the impression is made; from which they weakly inferred, that * Rcid appears to have been unacquainted with the works and theory of Bonnet. Witli our author's strictures on the physiological hypotheses, the reader may compare those of Tetens, in his Versuche, and of Stewart, in his Philosophical Essays. -- H. Haller took pains to refute the theory of vibrations in his Elementa Physiologme, Vol. IV. Sect. VIII., Art. Conjectural. For some account of the writers who have advocated it, sec Blakcy's History of the Philosophy of Mind, Vol. III. Chap. XVII. Dr. Priestley published...