The System of Animate Nature: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in the Years 1915 and 1916, Volume 1H. Holt, 1920 - 687 pages |
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activity adapted æsthetic emotion Amoeba animal behaviour Animate Nature aspect of reality beauty biological biologist birds body brain Brown Rat called capacity cell cerebral cortex characteristic chemical and physical chemico-physical chemistry colours complex concatenated concepts consciousness conservation of energy continuance correlation Darwin difficulties effective endeavour energy Entelechy environment epiphenomenalism evolution experience expression external fact feeling Foraminifera formulation give haviour idea identity hypothesis individual inorganic domain instinctive behaviour intelligent behaviour Jennings kind larvæ less limitations living creatures Lloyd Morgan material matter ment mental metabolism mind molecules monism movements nerve-cells nervous system not-living object organisation perhaps phenomena philosophical physiological plants problem processes Prof Professor psychical psycho-physical purpose reactions realm of organisms recognise reflex actions regard relation result scientific seems species starfish stimulus struggle for existence theory things tion tropisms ture vital vitalistic W. K. Clifford whole Yucca moth
Popular passages
Page 63 - Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred, and may yet occur, in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built — the foundation-stones of .the material universe — remain unbroken and unworn.
Page 83 - All flesh is not the same flesh ; but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.
Page 323 - The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by a man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.
Page 268 - What to others a trifle appears Fills me full of smiles or tears; For double the vision my Eyes do see, And a double vision is always with me. With my inward Eye 'tis an old Man grey; With my outward, a Thistle across my way. "If thou goest back...
Page 30 - Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge ; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.
Page iv - And all depends on keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature and so receiving their images simply as they are. For God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world...
Page 177 - In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.
Page iv - This I dare affirm in knowledge of Nature, that a little natural philosophy, and the first entrance into it, doth dispose the opinion to atheism ; but, on the other side, much natural philosophy, and wading deep into it, will bring about men's minds to religion.
Page 272 - That rivulet of smooth silver — how does it flow, think you ? It literally rows on the earth, with every scale for an oar; it bites the dust with the ridges of its body. Watch it, when it moves slowly : — A wave, but without wind...
Page 97 - it is the peculiarity of living things not merely that they change under the influence of surrounding circumstances, but that any change which takes place in them is not lost but retained, and as it were built into the organism to serve as the foundation for future actions.