Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Mottoes
- Contents
- Letter. 1 Inquiry for a Basis
- Letter. 2 Proposal of a Basis
- Letter. 3 Preparation of the Ground
- Letter. 4 What is the Brain?
- Letter. 5 Inquiry about its Structure
- Letter. 6 Early days of Phrenology
- Letter. 7 Inquiry for New Discoveries
- Letter. 8 Methods of New Discovery. Organic Arrangement of the Brain
- Letter. 9 Illustrative Cases
- Letter. 10 Organic Arrangement of the Cerebrum
- Letter. 11 Dr. Howe's Report on Idiocy
- Letter. 12 The Senses and Nervous System
- Letter. 13 Illustrative Comment
- Letter. 14 Facts about the Senses under various conditions
- Letter. 15 Raising questions
- Letter. 16 Bacon, on Matter and Causation. Inferences and Dreams. Association of Ideas
- Letter. 17 Nothing
- Letter. 18 Knowledge and Notions. Results of each
- Letter. 19 Release from Notions. Entrance upon Knowledge
- Letter. 20 Natural History of Superstition
- Letter. 21 Theology and Science
- Letter. 22 Central Law and Pervasive Unity. Light. Sense of Identity. Ghost-seeing. Unrevealed Human Relations
- Letter. 23 Position and Privilege of Truth-seekers
- Letter. 24 Position and Privilege of Truth-speakers
- Appendix
Letter. 11 - Dr. Howe's Report on Idiocy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Mottoes
- Contents
- Letter. 1 Inquiry for a Basis
- Letter. 2 Proposal of a Basis
- Letter. 3 Preparation of the Ground
- Letter. 4 What is the Brain?
- Letter. 5 Inquiry about its Structure
- Letter. 6 Early days of Phrenology
- Letter. 7 Inquiry for New Discoveries
- Letter. 8 Methods of New Discovery. Organic Arrangement of the Brain
- Letter. 9 Illustrative Cases
- Letter. 10 Organic Arrangement of the Cerebrum
- Letter. 11 Dr. Howe's Report on Idiocy
- Letter. 12 The Senses and Nervous System
- Letter. 13 Illustrative Comment
- Letter. 14 Facts about the Senses under various conditions
- Letter. 15 Raising questions
- Letter. 16 Bacon, on Matter and Causation. Inferences and Dreams. Association of Ideas
- Letter. 17 Nothing
- Letter. 18 Knowledge and Notions. Results of each
- Letter. 19 Release from Notions. Entrance upon Knowledge
- Letter. 20 Natural History of Superstition
- Letter. 21 Theology and Science
- Letter. 22 Central Law and Pervasive Unity. Light. Sense of Identity. Ghost-seeing. Unrevealed Human Relations
- Letter. 23 Position and Privilege of Truth-seekers
- Letter. 24 Position and Privilege of Truth-speakers
- Appendix
Summary
H. M. to H. G. A.
I was just going to write to you yesterday, when I took up Dr. Howe's Report to the Legislature of Massachusetts on Idiocy: and I found it so interesting, that I could not put pen to paper till I had gone through it. One of the best things in it is the quiet exhibition of the mess made by Law, Medicine, and Philosophy, of the statement of the case of idiots. One would think nothing could be done in the legal direction without some definition or description of Idiocy which might be of pretty general application to the class of the imbecile: but nothing can be more loose, and, at the same time, limited, than the description that English and American law give of an idiot. The philosophers who have attempted to define do no better. Proceeding from the idea that the mind is one thing, and the body another, only arbitrarily connected with it, and entangled by the notion of freewill, they talk in the most confused manner of weakness of the understanding as accounting for failure of the affections;—of weakness in that connection which should bring the other faculties under the control of the will; and so on, till one wonders whether the writers really believed that they had any clear idea in their minds when they wrote what was so vague and utterly unsubstantial.
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- Information
- Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development , pp. 89 - 96Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1851