'Considering the emphasis on cellular nature within 'physiological psychology' at this time points to the intimate relation between conceptions of life and mind at the end of the nineteenth century (Young 1990; Smith 1973; Daston 1978; Jacyna 1981).'

'Creative Evolution identified British physiological psychology as it’s principle object of philosophic concern. In this work Bergson identified such writers as Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain with what he characterised as a particularly problematic intellectual trend. Spencer and his contemporaries had articulated what they understood as a simultaneously mechanical and philosophic psychology, in which nerves were characterised as the material corollaries of mental states (Young, [1970] 1990, esp. 172-180. See also Daston 1978; Smith 2013, 45-49).'