On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell.

  • Dora Greenwell
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/54 (page 5)
    Connexion between the Soul and the Body. hard to classify, or to bring under a general law, and some of these we must be content to accept and to acquiesce in, to receive them as self-asserting facts, and to let them lie quietly alongside of others that seem to oppose and contra¬ dict them. We believe that physiology, approached in this spirit, is the true antidote to materialism, and that the more we learn of the soul’s dependence upon the body, the more we recognise its actual, if not entire subjugation to the organism it has to work through, the more thoroughly we shall believe in the soul’s distinct existence, and separate power and freedom. When we have learnt all that is at present known about brain and cell, and nerve and tissue, we shall find that we have extended, and not in any degree exhausted, the study of the rational, affectionate man. Nay, we shall find him rather grown than lessened in our eyes by researches that some may deem too curious. To say that such an instinct or emotion belongs to the animal part of our nature is thought to convey a certain sense of dis¬ paragement ; but what if we can prove that the range of feelings we are so accustomed to classify are connected as intimately with the highest as they are with the lowest region of our nature,—what if we can establish by the very light which the late researches on imbecility cast, that the slightest warp in our physical organization is fatal to gene¬ ral human development, and that the perfect animal is needed to make the perfect man ? If the foot or the hand be faulty the soul suffers, if a muscle withers the whole life endures a blight. From all that we at present know of man, it appears that the soul can as little assert itself with¬ out the body, as the body can exist without the soul. Nor