James Williams

James Williams in his book The Principles of Psychology (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, 1890) does not define the word “mind”.

Psychology, the science of finite individual minds, assumes as its data (1)thoughts and feelings, and (2) a physical world in time and space with which they coexist and which (3) they know. (preface  )

We quote their arguments only to show how they appeal to the principle that /

no actions but such as are done for an end, and show a choice of means, can be called indubitable expressions of Mind.(p.11)

Phrenology hardly does more than restate the problem. To answer the question, Why do I like children? By saying, " Because you have a large organ of philoprogenitiveness, but renames the phenomenon to be explained. What is my philoprogenitiveness ? Of what mental elements does it consist ? And how can a part of the brain be its organ? A science of the mind must reduce such complex manifestations as philoprogenitiveness to their elements. A science of the brain must point out the functions of its elements. A science cf the relations of mind and brain must show how the elementary ingredients of the former correspond to the elementary functions of the latter. (p.28)

the elementary powers which the mind possesses, memory, imagination, association, judgment, and volition.(p.29)

Modern Science conceives of the matter in a very different way. Brain and mind alike consist of simple elements, sensory and motor. “All nervous centres”; says Dr. Hughlings

Jackson, " from the lowest to the very highest (the substrata of consciousness), are made up of nothing else than nervous arrangements, representing impressions and movements. ... I do not see of what other materials the brain can be (p.29-30)

The muscles and the sensitive points are represented each by a cortical point, and the brain is nothing but the sum of all these cortical points, to which, on the mental side, as many ideas correspond. Ideas of sensation, ideas of motion are, on the other hand, the elementary factors out of which the mind is built up by the associationists in psychology.(p.30)

No psychosis without neurosis (p.129)

In a general theory of evolution the inorganic comes first, then the lowest forms of animal and vegetable life, then forms of life that possess mentality, and finally those like ourselves that possess it in a high degree. As long as we keep to the consideration of purely outward facts, even the most complicated facts of biology, our task as evolutionists is comparatively easy. We are dealing all the time with matter and its aggregations and separations ; and although our treatment must perforce be hypothetical, this does not prevent it from being continuous.(p.146)

We cannot even (as we shall later see) have two feelings in our mind at once.(p.157)

The associationists say the mind is constituted by a multiplicity of distinct ideas associated into a unity.