Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1, July 1850

Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1, July 1850

It may be universally affirmed that every thing having shape either grows or is put together, is a living organism or a contrived machine; and the radical distinction between minds in all the modes of their operation, and between things in all the forms of their manifestation, is expressed in the antithesis of vitality and mechanism. To suggest, in a manner necessarily imperfect and rambling, some of the important consequences involved in this distinction, is the object of the present essay. And first, in regard to minds, it may be asked, to what faculties and operations of the intelligence do you apply the term vital, as distinguished from other faculties and operations indicated as mechanical? The answer to this question may be spiritually true without being metaphysically exact, and we shall hazard a brief one. The soul of man in its essential nature is a vital unit and person, capable of growth through an assimilation of external objects; and its faculties and acquirements are all related to its primitive personality, as the leaves, branches, and trunk of a tree to its root. In the tree there are sometimes dead branches and withered leaves, which constitute a part of the trees external form without participating in the trees internal life. The same thing occurs in the human mind. Faculties, originally springing from the souls vital principle, become disconnected from it, lose all the sap and juice of life, and dwindle from vital into mechanical powers. The customary vocabulary of metaphysics evinces the extent of this decay in its division of the mind into parts, each part with a separate name and performing a different office. It is plain that no organism, vegetable, animal, or human, admits of such a classification of parts, for the fundamental principle of organisms is unity in variety, each part implying the whole, growing out of a common centre and source, and dying the moment it is separated. When, therefore, we say that the mind has faculties which are not vitally related to each other, that the whole mind is not present in every act, that there are processes of thought in which a particular faculty operates on its own account, we assert the existence of death in the mind; what is worse, the assertion is true; and, what is still worse, this mental death often passes for wisdom and common sense, and mental life is stigmatized as fanaticism. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 53980
Author: Various
Release Date: Jan 17, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Graham, George R., 1813-1894