The troubled conscience and the insane mind / by Charles Blondel ; with an introduction by F. G. Crookshank.

  • Blondel, Charles (Charles AimĂ© Alfred), 1876-1939.
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The troubled conscience and the insane mind / by Charles Blondel ; with an introduction by F. G. Crookshank. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    47/98 (page 43)
    One and the same individual conscious¬ ness is therefore susceptible, according to the language it uses, of developing towards itself and towards others, accor¬ ding to a plan which is not identical with itself in all times and in all places. Moreover, this effect upon us of the place where we live is not confined to the imposition of our language upon us. It regulates our miming and our actions. We do not only learn to speak, we learn to feel, and to do, in accordance with certain models of emotion and action. To depart from these models is to commit blunders, faults, even crimes. It is at any rate running the risk of misleading others as to what our feelings and inten¬ tions really are. Language, in fact, has supplied to us, written down in its own terms, a system of ready-made concepts and their relations of reciprocal sub¬ ordination. Here, the collective group furnishes us with a system of mimetic expressions and ready-made actions generally applicable to cases of the same order ; we may even say, if a certain stretch of terminology be permitted,