BODY.—(1) Material existence, whether organised or unorganised; (2) organised material being, in contrast with unorganised matter. Body is commonly the animated structure constituted by the correlation of muscular and nerve systems, in its higher forms, built upon the substratum of skeleton.
| 1. Spinoza uses the word in the most extended signification. «By Body we understand a certain measure or quantity, having length, breadth, and thickness, and bounded by a definite outline» (Ethics, p. I. prop, XV., Scholium). With this must be taken the fact that, according to Spinoza, God is res extensa.Locke says:—»The primary ideas we have peculiar to body, as contradistinguished to spirit, are the cohesion of solid and consequently separable parts, and a power of communicating motion by impulse (Essay, bk. II. ch. XXIII.). |
«A Body, according to the received doctrine of modern metaphysicians, may be defined the external cause to which we ascribe our sensations… The sensations are all of which I am directly conscious; but I consider them as produced by something, not only existing independently of my will, but external to my bodily organs and to my mind. This external something I call a Body» (J. S. Mill, Logic, bk. I. ch. III. sec. 7).
2. The more restricted meaning is that involved in the whole range of discussion concerned with the relations of «Mind and Body» (Carpenter, Mental Physiology; Bain, Mind and Body; Maudsley, Body and Mind and Physiology of Mind; Calderwood, Relations of Mind and Brain).
