settled. Yet it is easy to see that if the mind must use the brain as a machine and
work through it, then the mind must be subject to the limitations of its machine,
or, in other words, the mind cannot be better than the brain through which it
operates. A brain and nervous system that are poorly developed or insufficiently
nourished mean low grade of efficiency in our mental processes, just as a poorly
constructed or wrongly adjusted motor means loss of power in applying the
electric current to its work. We will, then, look upon the mind and the brain as
counterparts of each other, each performing activities which correspond to
activities in the other, both inextricably bound together at least so far as this life
is concerned, and each getting its significance by its union with the other. This
view will lend interest to a brief study of the brain and nervous system.
2. THE MIND'S DEPENDENCE ON THE EXTERNAL WORLD
But can we first see how in a general way the brain and nervous system are
primarily related to our thinking? Let us go back to the beginning and consider
the babe when it first opens its eyes on the scenes of its new existence. What is
in its mind? What does it think about? Nothing. Imagine, if you can, a person
born blind and deaf, and without the sense of touch, taste, or smell. Let such a
person live on for a year, for five years, for a lifetime. What would he know?
What ray of intelligence would enter his mind? What would he think about? All
would be dark to his eyes, all silent to his ears, all tasteless to his mouth, all
odorless to his nostrils, all touchless to his skin. His mind would be a blank. He
would have no mind. He could not get started to think. He could not get started
to act. He would belong to a lower scale of life than the tiny animal that floats
with the waves and the tide in the ocean without power to direct its own course.
He would be but an inert mass of flesh without sense or intelligence.
The Mind at Birth.—Yet this is the condition of the babe at birth. It is born
practically blind and deaf, without definite sense of taste or smell. Born without
anything to think about, and no way to get anything to think about until the
senses wake up and furnish some material from the outside world. Born with all
the mechanism of muscle and nerve ready to perform the countless complex
movements of arms and legs and body which characterize every child, he could
not successfully start these activities without a message from the senses to set
them going. At birth the child probably has only the senses of contact and
temperature present with any degree of clearness; taste soon follows; vision of
an imperfect sort in a few days; hearing about the same time, and smell a little
later. The senses are waking up and beginning their acquaintance with the