Fragments of Science: A Series of Detached Essays, Addresses and Reviews

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D. Appleton and Company, 1884 - 589 pages
 

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Page 338 - ... the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem ; but the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process...
Page 418 - Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem. ' How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness ? ' The chasm, between...
Page 384 - By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
Page 451 - For what are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked, and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind itself — emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena — were once latent in a fiery cloud.
Page 522 - By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter — which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium — the promise and potency of all terrestrial life.
Page 522 - We come at length to those organisms which I have compared to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of alcohol and water. We reach the protogenes of Haeckel, in which we have "a type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its finely granular character.
Page 488 - Is there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that "Nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself, without the meddling of the gods?" or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter is not "that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb?
Page 346 - Consider how the lilies of the field grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.
Page 535 - I have noticed during years of self-observation that it is not in hours of clearness and vigour that this doctrine commends itself to my mind ; that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears, as offering no solution of the mystery in which we dwell, and of which we form a part.
Page 531 - Hamlet's, however, teaches us all how the troubles of common life may be ended; and it is perfectly possible for you and me to purchase intellectual peace at the price of intellectual death. The world is not without refuges of this description; nor is it wanting in persons who seek their shelter and try to persuade others to do the same.

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