ABSTRACT
Mind and Morals v. Brain.—It may be said, and no doubt will be said, by many who read this book, that however strongly it may be proved, even up to the hilt, that the brain is the organ of mind, yet that mind, looked at as mind, morals as morals, apart from brain or body, form the most important view of man's life and Mental Hygiene. They will say that a motive is the chief mental and moral force and can only appeal to mind, and that man's whole life is regulated by motives, good and bad. They will say that consciousness and the ego are so instinctively regarded as the ultimate thing in man, that it is vain to go to a secondary cause, such as brain mechanism and brain working, to explain mental action and moral conduct. They will say that no matter what are the facts as to the slow evolution of mind, what we have to do with is man as he exists with his enormous and varied power of thinking, feeling, and volition. They will ask if it is not a primary instinct in all men to attach responsibility to a man's mental action as it takes practical form in conduct? They will say that it is entirely against common sense to blame a man's brain for doing wrong and not doing right. They will say that the great moralists, the great religionists, and 76the wise men of past ages among all highly developed peoples could not have been entirely wrong when they regarded mind alone and took no practical notice of the mind machinery in the brain. They will ask if Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mahomet, Zeno, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius did not know their work as great human moral teachers and reformers when they took so little notice of the connection of mind and conduct with the working of the human brain; most of them not only taking no notice of the place of the body in relation to mind, but taking pains to say it must be "kept under," and even holding it in contempt. The supernatural aspect of all religions will be adduced as showing that the Deity acts directly on the human mind without the intervention of any physical intermediary. How else, will it be asked, could any revelation from the Almighty or any possession by the Holy Ghost or by the evil one be imagined? They look on the views of the modern physiological psychologist and physician as being "wrong" in a moral and religious sense and call it " materialism" and " fatalism." The " spiritualist" and the " telepathist," the " theosophist," and the " Christian Science" devotees will adduce proofs abundantly satisfactory to themselves that mind can be manifested and influenced apart from brain and the senses. Above all, the moralist will ask if those doctrines do not imply such a conditioning of man's " Free Will" as to impair his responsibility to God and the law, and to degrade him from the proud position of lord of himself and of creation? There is, no doubt, much force in those considerations, and they cannot be lightly put aside. The real reply to all those objections is that everything in man and in the world is governed by fixed laws, and the supreme duty of science is to find out what those laws are, and when ascertained to hold to them irrespective of any objections whatever. If it is the case that all modern investi77gations done on scientific lines and tested by scientific proofs point to the conclusion that in this world mind is only manifested through brain as its vehicle, and is absolutely conditioned in its every form and manifestation by brain action, we must accept the fact and its consequences. It does not in the least follow from this conclusion that the mental energy so conditioned by organisation does not work by laws and on lines applicable to itself. It does not follow that the mental force does not condition the working of the brain as well as being conditioned by that working. It does not imply that mind evolved from one brain cannot act on mind evolved in another brain, though this must always be done through the senses. It in no way implies that one mind cannot be developed and educated through the efforts of another mind. Even the metaphysician does not claim that the will is free in an absolute sense. When the man with the freest and the strongest will is in an apoplexy or a fever, or is under the influence of a brain poison like alcohol, it is an evident and incontestable scientific fact that his will is no longer free. Why, therefore, may not imperfections in brain organisation and working interfere with freedom of volition and conduct? To the scientist, thinking on scientific and biological lines, it does not seem an inscrutable mystery that a man and a woman between them can create ten new minds. To the man who reasons on metaphysical lines, without reference to organisation, thinking only of the ego, this new creation of ten minds is simply a miracle which no one can either explain or even imagine. Mind and organisation must meantime be regarded as a dualism, organisation being the factor which can be most easily got at and influenced by hygienic means. It is capable of absolute proof that improved mind results from bettered brain. We are slowly groping by study and experiment after the processes through which this can be 78done. We recognise also that bad brain can be bettered and developed by purely mental processes, and we are groping and experimenting in regard to that mighty problem too. The scientist is perfectly willing to accept man's responsibility in so far as it can be proved to be a fact, but he maintains that responsibility is conditioned by all sorts of agencies affecting the brain. Many of the great philosophers of old and many of its religionists fully admitted the limited responsibility of man. St. Paul, though evidently most unwilling to admit this, yet was obliged to say, "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." On any theory, however, that of the metaphysician or of the modern scientist, the brain must be held to be the organ of supreme importance in regard to mind, and there will be little practical difference of opinion as to the importance of hygienic measures in mental improvement, especially in the earlier and formative stages of life.
