In States of Mind, Lapham’s Quarterly explores the brain, the soul, and consciousness itself—how they connect and where they diverge. The issue tracks Plato’s sense of divine inspiration to Alan Turing’s test of a robot mind, from the mystical meditation of Christian monks to David Hume’s enlightened sense of self. The five senses of medieval Islamic scholar al-Ghazali face off with the six unruly passions in a Buddhist sutta. Herman Melville interprets a whale brain in graphic detail, while Simone Weil examines her own locked-in language. Charles Baudelaire explores hidden realms by sampling hashish for the first and last time. Original essays include Anthony Gottlieb on Descartes’ correspondence with Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia, and Ferris Jabr on the history of research into the minds of apes.