The Mental Highway
	Mind And Body <  Previous Contents Next  >

We draw all of our knowledge of mental and physical states from two distinct sources, mind and body, which seem to overlap each other. Some things are purely material in character, as for instance, the patella reflex, which makes the toe kick upward when the tendon is struck just below the knee. No mental action seems to cause this movement whatever, as no physical action may be involved in the mental process of recalling a past sensation.

Yet we cannot always trust physical action and sensation to report facts as they are, any more than the mind can depend upon its report of facts. For instance, gallstones can cause referred pain below the shoulder blade. Seeing an optical illusion is merely projecting a purely mental state into visual form. We need to closely scrutinize the facts of the mind and the body before we accept and interpret them as realities.

Usually we see the distinction between material and mental things in that all material things appear in space. They have the dimensions of length, breadth and thickness, and we may trace them to a movement in space.

Mental states have no such relationship. We cannot think of a state of consciousness having connection with space, save perhaps in a symbolical way.

Inertia is a basic law of matter in motion, without which natural science would be impossible. We must explain every material movement by another material movement. For instance, a point in space cannot get up and move about of its own accord. Some material movement is in the background to explain every other physical movement.

A second law of matter in motion, called the conservation of energy, says that matter is not destroyed. The form changes but the sum of the material is not lost. The next step is that the energy bound up in or represented by matter is similarly conserved. The fine form of the energy in a steel spring represents the lower form of energy in pig iron, together with heat and hammering.

Every movement upward calls for the outlay of energy, compensated for by the higher form attained. This principle applies in all the physical processes. In the higher and more complex forms of material activity, as when the mental life and its instrument, the nervous system, influences the material energies, we find a gradual emergence into a field where we must keep relative values clearly in mind.

A nervous system in embryonic form exists in plant life, is definite in animal life, and fully developed in human beings. This system is the instrument by which we pass from purely material energy to mental energy.

The lowest form of nervous activity is the reflex, as when an afferent nerve carries a pin prick to a nerve bunch, called a ganglia, from which returns an impulse by a motor nerve, causing the contraction of a muscle and movement of the part. The mind has no part in this action. For that reason, those animals with the least cerebral power are most richly endowed with reflexes.

The smaller the cerebral or thinking power, the greater the reflex activity. The converse is true — the greater the brain power, the less the reflex activity, which marks the measure of a cuttlefish and a human. Likewise the organs of the body, such as the heart and stomach, profusely supplied from the sympathetic nervous system and the least under the control of the conscious mind, are equipped with reflexes, while the organs innervated from the cerebrospinal system have few or none of the reflexes.

The cerebrum elaborates, assorts and determines the values of these reflexes. In other words, the reason, seated in the brain, monitors incoming body sensations, determines their values, controls their reflexes, and decides the values of the impressions and illusions of the mind arising from them.

One can easily inhibit the reflexes of sneezing, blushing, fainting, weeping or laughing, by simply diverting the attention to another idea or sensation. The cure of a facial tic is a process of suppressing the reflex actions of muscles that should move only under motived impulse. The cure of most mental obsessions consists in replacing them with deliberate ideas.

Every reflex must rest periodically. A constantly stimulated reflex will wear out, and not respond. A monotonous physical action or mental process will eventually result in the loss of power to continue that action. Consciousness becomes less active as we hold the mind to one monotonous idea or problem. Just as monotonous sensation or sound tends to put the body to sleep, so monotony of idea tends to put the mind to sleep. All sorts of cranks and partisans are born of such a mental process, to say nothing of the more pronounced abnormal types of mental life.

Variety in food, etc., is essential to the highest physical activity and health. The change of ideas, the recognition of change, and the ability to see the difference between one experience and another, is essential to mental health. Also, we must be able to recall and reproduce yesterday’s experiences so that we may compare them with today’s. Finally we must be able to recognize the unity of our mental life — to know, to know that we know, to know what we know, to know ourselves as knowing beings. A unity in consciousness exists, which must include all life’s experiences if we would remain in both mental and physical health.

We may clearly distinguish between the body and the mind, yet they are so intimately united that we may hypothesize that they are the dual expression of a being in the background. This being partakes of what we call the spiritual nature, which whether it first expresses itself in one, invariably finds expression in other, body or mind. Our mental activities take on corresponding physical form, while the mind reflects our physical conditions.

We may spend our lives curing the mind so that we may in turn cure the body, or doctoring the body to heal the mind. The logical thing is to heal and set in harmony the real spiritual being back of them so that it will express health through them.