The Physical Basis of Mind Being the Second Series of Problems of Life and Mind. — Reading Companion

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Authors: Lewes, George Henry, 1817-1878 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2019 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Psychophysiology; Mind and body Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 173,590

Reading time 755 min

Text sections 41

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #60212

An editorial note examining how George Henry Lewes structures his argument for a biological psychology, using recurring images of tension, discharge, and nerve transmission to bridge physiology and mind.

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PAGE THE PROBLEM STATED 3 (_The Position of Biology_) 4 (_Organisms_) 8 (_Vital Force_) 14 (_Vital Force controlling Physical and Chemical Forces_) 16

DEFINITIONS OF LIFE 24

ORGANISM, ORGANIZATION, AND ORGANIC SUBSTANCE 37 (_Organism and Medium_) 45 (_The Hypothesis of Germinal Matter_) 57 (_Organisms and Machines_) 67

THE PROPERTIES AND FUNCTIONS 70 (_Does the Function determine the Organ?_) 78

EVOLUTION 89 (_Natural Selection and Organic Affinity_) 115 (_Recapitulation_) 152

PROBLEM II. THE NERVOUS MECHANISM.

SURVEY OF THE SYSTEM, 157 (_The Early Forms of Nerve-Centres_), 168 (_The Peripheral System_), 171 (_Ganglia and Centres_), 172

THE FUNCTIONAL RELATIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM, 176

NEURILITY, 189 (_Origins of Nerve-Force_), 201 (_The Hypothesis of Specific Energies_), 207

ACTION WITHOUT NERVE-CENTRES, 227

WHAT IS TAUGHT BY EMBRYOLOGY?, 237

THE ELEMENTARY STRUCTURE OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM, 251 (_Difficulties of the Investigation_), 252 (_The Nerve-Cell_), 258 (_The Nerves_), 270 (_The Neuroglia_), 273 (_The Relations of the Organites_), 278 (_Recapitulation_), 299

THE LAWS OF NERVOUS ACTIVITY 310 (_The Energy of Neurility_) 311 (_The Propagation of Excitation_) 314 (_Stimuli_) 321 (_Stimulation_) 324 (_The Law of Discharge_) 326 (_The Law of Arrest_) 333 (_The Hypothesis of Inhibitory Centres_) 336 (_Anatomical Interpretations of the Laws_) 339

PROBLEM III. ANIMAL AUTOMATISM.

THE COURSE OF MODERN THOUGHT 345

THE VITAL MECHANISM 363

THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 376

CONSCIOUSNESS AND UNCONSCIOUSNESS 399

VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY ACTIONS 415

THE PROBLEM STATED 431

IS FEELING AN AGENT? 440

PROBLEM IV. THE REFLEX THEORY.

THE PROBLEM STATED 467

DEDUCTIONS FROM GENERAL LAWS 490

INDUCTIONS FROM PARTICULAR OBSERVATIONS 509 (_Cerebral Reflexes_) 511 (_Discrimination_) 520 (_Memory_) 522 (_Instinct_) 522 (_The Acquisition of Instinct_) 536 (_Acquisition_) 546

NEGATIVE INDUCTIONS 550

“La Physiologie a pour but d’exposer les phénomènes de la vie humaine et les conditions d’où ils dépendant. Pour y arriver d’une manière sûre, il faut nécessairement avant tout déterminer quels sont les phénomènes qu’on désigne sous le nom de vie en général. C’est pourquoi la première chose à faire est d’étudier les propriétés générales du corps qu’on appelle organiques ou vivans.”--TIEDEMANN, _Traité de Physiologie de l’Homme_, I. 2.

“Some weak and inexperienced persons vainly seek by dialectics and far-fetched arguments either to upset or establish things that are only to be founded on anatomical demonstration and believed on the evidence of the senses. He who truly desires to be informed of the question in hand must be held bound either to look for himself, or to take on trust the conclusions to which they who have looked have come.”--HARVEY, _Second Dissertation to Riolan_.

1. Although for convenience we use the terms Life and Mind as representing distinct orders of phenomena, the one objective and the other subjective, and although for centuries they have designated distinct entities, or forces having different substrata, we may now consider it sufficiently acknowledged among scientific thinkers that every problem of Mind is necessarily a problem of Life, referring to one special group of vital activities. It is enough that Mind is never manifested except in a living organism to make us seek in an analysis of organic phenomena for the material conditions of every mental fact. Mental phenomena when observed in others, although interpretable by our consciousness of what is passing in ourselves, can only be objective phenomena of the vital organism.

2. On this ground, if on this alone, an acquaintance with the general principles of structure and function is indispensable to the psychologist; although only of late years has this been fully recognized, so that men profoundly ignorant of the organism have had no hesitation in theorizing on its highest functions. In saying that such knowledge is indispensable, I do not mean that in the absence of such knowledge a man is debarred from understanding much of the results reached by investigators, nor that he may not himself make useful observations and classifications of psychological facts. It is possible to read books on Natural History with intelligence and profit, and even to make good observations, without a scientific groundwork of biological instruction; and it is possible to arrive at empirical facts of hygiene and medical treatment without any physiological instruction. But in all three cases the absence of a scientific basis will render the knowledge fragmentary and incomplete; and this ought to deter every one from offering an opinion on debatable questions which pass beyond the limit of subjective observations. The psychologist who has not prepared himself by a study of the organism has no more right to be heard on the genesis of the psychical states, or of the relations between body and mind, than one of the laity has a right to be heard on a question of medical treatment.

THE POSITION OF BIOLOGY.

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George Henry Lewes opens The Physical Basis of Mind with a bold structural claim: the human mind has a twofold root, being both an animal organism and a unit in the social organism. This volume, the second series of Problems of Life and Mind, restricts itself to the material conditions—the organism in relation to the physical world—while acknowledging that analysis is artificial and preparatory. Throughout the excerpts, Lewes repeatedly returns to the image of tension and discharge in nervous tissue, using strychnine poisoning and grafted tails as concrete cases to illustrate how excitation propagates along lines of least resistance. His method is to substitute the biological point of view for metaphysical or mechanical ones, a move that shapes both the book's argument and its recurring metaphors.

Tension and Discharge as Structural Motifs

Lewes builds his physiological argument around the concepts of tension and discharge, treating neurine as a tissue of high instability. He describes how strychnine poisoning produces convulsions after a touch or puff of cold air, then notes that after discharge the centres return to a normal state before slowly accumulating excess tension again. This alternation of exhaustion and recrudescence is not merely a clinical observation; it becomes a structural pattern in his reasoning. The same rhythm appears in his discussion of spinal disease, citing Schröder van der Kolk on periodicity. By foregrounding these cycles, Lewes gives the reader a tangible model for how nervous action unfolds over time, one that he will apply to more complex psychological phenomena.

The Direction of Nerve Transmission

A central puzzle in the excerpts is whether nerves conduct in only one direction. Lewes challenges the orthodox view that sensory nerves carry impulses centripetally and motor nerves centrifugally. He marshals evidence from Dubois Reymond (electric conduction in both directions), Paul Bert's rat tail grafts (where a reversed sensory nerve still transmits sensation), and Vulpian and Philippeaux's nerve-crossing experiments (where a hybrid nerve produces both pain and movement). His rhetorical strategy is to compare the nerve to a train of gunpowder that can be fired at either end, insisting that fundamental similarity in composition implies similarity in properties. This argumentative move—using analogy and experimental counterexample—is typical of his method throughout the work.

From Physiology to Psychology: The Biological Point of View

Lewes explicitly aims to replace metaphysical and mechanical theories with a biological perspective. In the preface, he states that analysis is artificial and that no result is final; the synthetic reality of vital facts must be kept in view. This shapes how he presents evidence: he does not simply list facts but constantly interprets them through the lens of organic function. For instance, when discussing nerve transmission, he notes that the 'nerve-current' is a metaphor, not a physical fact, and warns against reifying it. His prose moves between detailed experimental reports and broader methodological reflections, creating a layered argument that insists on the inseparability of structure and function. Readers should watch for how he uses each physiological detail to undermine dualist or materialist extremes.

Recurring Images: Gunpowder, Grafts, and Lines of Resistance

Lewes's choice of images reveals his conceptual priorities. The gunpowder train analogy for nerve conduction emphasizes directionality and excitation; the grafted rat tail illustrates plasticity and reversal of function; the 'line of least resistance' recurs as a principle for propagation. These are not decorative but argumentative: they make abstract physiological processes vivid and contestable. The strychnine example, with its precise alternation of normal and convulsive states, serves as a miniature of the book's larger concern with the conditions under which mental events arise from material ones. By attending to these recurring figures, the reader can track how Lewes builds a case for a psychology grounded in biology without reducing mind to matter.

Lewes's Physical Basis of Mind rewards a reader who follows its structural cues: the alternation of tension and discharge, the insistence on bidirectional transmission, and the constant return to the biological point of view. The excerpts suggest a work that is as much about method as about facts, where each experiment is chosen to illustrate a principle of organic function. Readers approaching the full text should pay attention to how Lewes moves between microscopic detail and broad theoretical claim, and how his recurring images—gunpowder, grafts, lines of resistance—serve to unify a sprawling argument.

That afternoon, the rain drummed a steady rhythm against the window while I traced Lewes’s idea of nervous tension seeking its discharge—a restless, humming pressure that finally breaks. Closing the book, my gaze drifted to a spine I’d forgotten, and somehow the same feeling surfaced there, in a different key. I found myself inside The Wheel of Fortune — Inside the Classic, where chance, too, unfolds like a nerve impulse—waiting, then firing, then settling into quiet aftermath.