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Bible Encyclopedias
Mind
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
or the exercise or expression of the spiritual part of man's nature. It is obviously divisible into the three elementary functions, thought, emotion, and volition; but scientific writers greatly differ as to the subordinate or detailed faculties, as they are called. Reilt thus classifies the mental powers: Perception, memory, conception, abstraction, judgment, reasoning. Stewart thus: Perception, attention, conception, abstraction, association, imagination, reason. Others propose a, deeper analysis of the intellectual faculties, and find three properties which appear fundamental and distinct, to one in any degree implying the other, while the whole taken together are sufficient to explain all intellectual operations: namely, discrimination, retentiveness, and association of ideas. Sir W. Hamilton, departing from common classifications, sums the intellections into six:
(1.) The presentative faculty, or the power of recognising the various aspects of the world and of the mind.
(2.) The conservative faculty or memory, meaning the power of storing up.
(3.) The reproductive faculty, or the means of recalling sleeping impressions or concepts.
(4.) The representative faculty, or imagination.
(5.) The elaborative faculty, or the power of comparison, by which classification, generalization, and reasoning are performed.
(6.) The regulative faculty, or the cognition of the a priori or instinctive notions of the intellect, as space, time, causation, necessary truths, etc.
Noah Porter divides his "Human Intellect" into four parts:
(a.) He treats of natural consciousness, philosophical consciousness; sense perception, its conditions and process; of the growth and products of sense perception.
(b.) He treats of representation and representative knowledge; by which he means memory, imagining power, etc.
(c.) He treats of thinking and thought knowledge; by which he means the formation and nature of the concept, judgment, reasoning, etc.
(d.) He treats of intuition and intuitive knowledge, in which he discourses on mathematical relations, causation, design, substance, attribute; the finite and conditioned; the infinite and absolute.
Berkeley and his school teach a pure idealism, which asserts that everything we can take cognizance of is mind or self; that we cannot transcend our mental sphere; whatever we know is our own mind. Others, again, as Locke, resolve all into empiricism, and look on mind as simply the result of material organization. These two views contain the extreme angles to which speculation has run. The former is idealism or spiritualism, the latter materialism or empiricism.
The pre-Socratic school of philosophers was materialistic, of which Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, were patrons. Between these and Plato, Socrates was a transitional link. The post-Platonic philosophers were spiritualistic in the main, notwithstanding French materialism and German rationalism. (See MATERIALISM). Dr. McCosh, in his Intuitions of the Mind, makes a triplet of parts. In part first (which is on the "Nature of the Intuitive Convictions of the Mind") he shows that there are no innate mental images; no innate or general notions; no a priori forms imposed by the mind on objects; no intuitions immediately before consciousness as law principles. But there are intuitive principles operating in the mind; these are native convictions of the mind, which are of the nature of perceptions or intuitions. Intuitive convictions rise up when contemplations of objects are presented to the mind. The intuitions of the mind are primarily directed to individual objects. The individual intuitive convictions can be generalized into maxims, and these are entitled to be represented as philosophic principles. In part second he shows that the mind begins its intelligent acts with knowledge; that the simple cognitive powers are sense, perception, and self-consciousness. It is through the bodily organism that the intelligence of man attains its knowledge of all material objects beyond. ‘ The qualities of matter — extension, divisibility, size density or rarity, figure, incompressibility, mobility, and substance — are known by intuition; and it is by cognition we know self as having being, and as not depending for existence on our observation; as being in itself an abiding existence; as exercising potency in spirit and material being "Cogito, ergo sum." The primitive cognitions recognise being, substance, mode. quality, personality, number, motion, power.
The primitive beliefs recognise space, time, and the infinite. The mind intuitively observes the relations of identity, of whole to part, of space, time, quantity, property, cause, and effect. The motive and moral convictions as appetencies, will, conscience are involved in the exercise of conscience. In part third he shows that the sources of knowledge are sense, perception, self-consciousness, and faith exercise. But there are limits to our knowledge, ideas, and beliefs. We cannot know any substance other than those revealed by sense, consciousness, or faith. We can never know any qualities or relations among objects except in so far as we have special faculties of knowledge. The material for ideas must be brought from the knowledge sources. These sources are limited, and our belief is limited. Professor Bain, in his book, shows that human knowledge falls under two departments — the object department, marked by extension; the subject department, marked by the absence of extension. Subject experience has three functions — feeling, will, thought. The brain is the organ of the mind. The nervous systems are only extensions or ramifications of the brain, and through these the mind transmits its influence. In this nervous system, which acts as a channel for the transmission of messages from the mind, are two sets of nerves — the in-carrying, the out-carrying. The intellectual functions are commonly expressed by memory, reason, imagination. The primary attributes of intellect are difference, agreement. retentiveness, or continuity. J.S. Mill propounds a psychological theory of the belief in a material world- postulates, expectation, association, laws, substance, matter. The external world is a permanent possibility of sensation. Then follows the distinction of primary and secondary qualities; application to the permanence of mind, etc.
The true theory is both scriptural and scientific, methodic and encyclopedic; and though it may not explain all ideation amply, yet it shows that the nature and functions of mind can only be seen in connection with all the other parts of the human system, just as the nature and functions of a fountain are only seen when considered in connection with the other parts of the cosmos. We can only understand the nature and office of ducts, glands, veins, or arteries when we view them in their mutual relations, and in their relations with all the other parts of the physical system. We can only understand civil polity, social statics, natural phenomena, when taken in their reciprocal relations; and so we can only understand mind when viewed in connection with everything else it touches. Views taken from any other premise must be partial and imperfect. We hold that mind has seven great forces or modes. The so- called scientific writers acknowledge this, at least substantially. These are consciousness, conception, abstraction, association, memory, imagination, reason. Now if science shows us that there are seven great corresponding qualities or forces in the body, and if Scripture (which reveals what science cannot) shows us that there are seven great corresponding powers in the soul which lie back of and control all powers of body and of mind, why not conclude that this trial septenary of forces interlace and overlap each other, so as to constitute a human personality? We do not claim for this theory a scientific status, but is it not worthy of a speculative niche? Our observation shows us that this universe progresses by a duplex method, unfolding and infolding, or evolving and involving. Scripture shows that this unfolding comes from a sevenfold force; science shows that it comes through a sevenfold faculty. The following curious coincidences may not be out of place here, as illustrating a somewhat abstruse problem of this subject. The Revelation by John reveals ἑπτὰ πνεύματα , or "the seven spirits," as the constituent powers of Deity.
The question arises, What are these seven spirits? (Isaiah 11:2; Psalms 111:10; Proverbs 1:7; Job 28:28). It is held by many influential writers that the spirits mentioned in these references are to be taken in connection with Zechariah's sevenfold lamp (Zechariah 4:1). Delitzsch, in his work on Psychology, endeavors to find these elements in the Hebraistic distinctions of "the spirit of fear," i.e., of divine veneration (יַרְאָה ), "the spirit of knowledge" (דִּעִת ), "the spirit of power" (גְּבוּרָה ), etc.; but these are highly mystical and even fanciful. Whatever, however, may be thought of such abstractions, as to what Scripture says, or is imagined to say, about the sevenfold doxa or soul life, science does seem to discover, or at least point out, a sevenfold means of mind representation in the body. She recognizes seven forms of life: the embryonic, the breathing, the blood, the heart, the sensation, containing the five senses, the externalization of the voig by the tongue, and the outpressure of the entire mental phases and spirit feelings through the entire bodily habifus. In the trichotomy of nature the soul is first, the mind- second, the body third. The mind is therefore moulded by the soul, and the body by the mind. As the soul lies at the base of the being, all its ramifications are tinged with the hues of the soul. The mind, nevertheless, is moulded by whatever it plays upon. Thus mind is a middleman standing between the world of morals and of matter (yet interlacing both), communicating the will of the spirit to the external sphere. It is not a monarch, but a marshal; yet it is august in its capacity; in its elasticity, eternal. (See PSYCHOLOGY).
For further discussion of the mind, see the works mentioned above; also the early Greek writers, as Diogenes, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Democrituis and the Socratic school, as Plato, Aristotle, etc. The modern schoolmen who treat of the subject are chiefly the following: Gassendi (1592-1655), Des Cartes (1596-1650), Geulinx (1625-1699), Spinoza (1632-1677), Malebranche (1688-1715), Hume (1711-1776), Reid (1710- 1796), Brown (1778-1820), Condillac (1715-1780), Collard (1763-1845), Leibnitz (1646-1716), Kant (1724-1804), Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Many of these were rather metaphysicians than mental philosophers; yet their theories and discussions involve the nature and functions of the human mind, especially in its intellectual aspects; and they therefore may be said to have laid the foundations for mental science in its present development. The principal works more expressly relating to the intellectual faculties are Stewart, Treatise and Essay on the Mind; Brown, Philosophy of the Human Mind; Abercrombie, Intellectual Powers; Watts, On the Mind; Cudworth, Intellectual System; Reid, Essays on the active Powers of the Human Mind: Mill (James), Analysis of the Phenomena of the Humans Mind; McCosh, Intuitions of the Mind; Wilson (W.D.), Lectures on the Psychology of Thought and Action; Bain, Mind and Body: the Theories of their Relation; Carpenter, Principles of Mental Physiology; Maudsley, Body and Mind: their Connection and mutual Influence. The works on Mental Science treat likewise of the emotional elements of the mind. (See PHILOSOPHY). Most of the works named include the third or causative faculty of the mind, i.e. the will; but the importance of this, in its theological bearings, requires a separate treatment. (See WILL). See also Christian Monthly Spectator, 8:141, 184; Lit. and Theol. Rev. 1:74,169, 614; 2:261, 576; North Amer. Rev. 19:1; 24:56; Monthly Rev. 68:441; Brit. Qu. Rev. December 1871, page 308; Contemporary Rev. April and Oct. 1872; Meth. Qu. Rev. 4:243; April 1870, page 221; Popular Science Monthly, July 1873, art. 10; December art. 4 and 6; The Academy, November 1, 1873, page 445. (See MONOMANIA).
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McClintock, John. Strong, James. Entry for 'Mind'. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/tce/m/mind.html. Harper & Brothers. New York. 1870.
