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John Bascom - Creator of Science of Mind - progenitor of New Thought

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John Bascom's

Science of Mind

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Introduction - Intellect - Mental Science's Divisions - Intellect's Divisions and Perceptions - The Understanding - The Reason - The Dynamics of the Intellect - Physical Feelings - Intellectual Feelings - Spiritual Feelings - Dynamics of Feelings - The Will - The Nervous System - Nervous System of Man - Executive Volition - Primary Volition, or Choice - Dynamics of the Will and the Mind - The Relations of the Systems Here Offered to Prevalent Forms of Philosophy - Index - Contents -


logic, and such powers would quickly command expression. This utterance of judgments we should the more anticipate, as the most sagacious brutes are in constant company with man, and might learn from him, in some instances, vocal language, in others, sign-language.

The fundamental difference in mental action between the brute and man, incident to the absence of intuitive ideas, is the fact, that man alone deals with abstractions, generalizations, conceptions. The animal has to do directly with things and their images. All analysis proceeds under an intuitive idea, and no sooner reaches an abstraction than it calls for a sign, a word to express and hold fast the product. The animal can not be taught language, because it has no occasion for language, lacking abstractions either of qualities or of relations; and the animal never is taught language, no matter how many words it is made to repeat, or how many sounds it associates directly with concrete feelings and actions. Without the demand occasioned for language by an incipient act of abstraction of some sort, language is impossible, and with this demand it is unavoidable. Contemplate things solely as present and in the concrete, and the senses quite suffice.*

The only way in which a brute does show intelligence is in action, and this may as well spring from association as from reflection. The utmost efforts of instruction expended by man on animals, even when it has reached to the mechanical repetition of words, has only secured results in conduct readily referable to slow, established, and patiently confirmed associations, the varying perceptions of the animal putting it, in connection with accompanying pains and pleasures, on the clue of the behavior designed for it.

* For a fuller discussion see Comparative Psychology, or Growth and Grades of Intelligence, Chap. VII.

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