This book has grown out of an attempt to harmonize two different tendencies, one in psychology, the other in physics, with both of which I find myself in sympathy, although at first sight they might seem inconsistent, Bertrand Russell wrote at the beginning of The Analysis of Mind, a collection of lectures delivered in London and Peking. He then unfolds for his readers his ideas on consciousness, instinct and habit, desire and feeling, introspection, perception, sensations and images, memory, words and meaning, belief, and characteristics of mental phenomenon. Throughout, Russell explores the mystery of the mind, and proposes that there exists a fundamental material of which both mind and matter exist. The stuff of which the world of our experience is composed is, in my belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than either, he wrote. Both mind and matter seem to be composite, and the stuff of which they are compounded lies in a sense between the two, in a sense above them both, like a common ancestor.
Brilliant… one of the most interesting and important books that Mr. Russell has yet given us. –Nation Here are the old clarity and the old charm; the restrained, illuminating with .a most brilliant essay in psychology. –New Statesman Most interesting.a most valuable contribution to its subject. –Manchester Guardian This interesting and fascinating book.is a perfect model of what such books should be.the style is so clear and technicalities so carefully explained that the reading of the book is an intellectual pleasure rather than a mental effort. –Church Times