"It is quite true that, to the best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally good of men; and, therefore, that all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which takes place automatically in the organism; and that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from EnglandTranslators from EnglandAgnosticsZoologists from EnglandAnthropologists from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Thomas Henry Huxley
1825 – 1895
englischer Biologe
148 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Thomas Henry Huxley →
Related Quotes
"From the point of view of the moralist the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator's show. The creatur…"
"The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind."
"Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once."
"To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with w…"
"It is true that if philosophers have suffered their cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about …"
"A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there was an ancestor whom I should feel s…"
"I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of the ve…"
"The fact is he made a prodigious blunder in commencing the attack, and now his only chance is to be silent and let pe…"
"I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition…"
"I do not mean to suggest that scientific differences should be settled by universal suffrage, but I do conceive that …"