"And the only Conception we can form of voluntary Motion is, that the Mind, like a skillful Musician, strikes upon the Nerve which conveys Animal Spirits to the Muscle to be contracted, and adds a greater Force than the natural to the nervous Juice"

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)


Place of Publication
London
Date
1715
Metaphor
"And the only Conception we can form of voluntary Motion is, that the Mind, like a skillful Musician, strikes upon the Nerve which conveys Animal Spirits to the Muscle to be contracted, and adds a greater Force than the natural to the nervous Juice"
Metaphor in Context
And the only Conception we can form of voluntary Motion is, that the Mind, like a skillful Musician, strikes upon the Nerve which conveys Animal Spirits to the Muscle to be contracted, and adds a greater Force than the natural to the nervous Juice; whereof it opens its Passage into the Vesicles of which the Muscular Fibres consist, which it could not have done by its natural Power
(pp. 137-8)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Yolton's Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. p. 164.
Date of Entry
05/03/2006

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.