Essay on instinct, and its physical and moral relations / By Thomas Hancock.

  • Thomas Hancock
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essay on instinct, and its physical and moral relations / By Thomas Hancock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/574 (page 5)
    any where but at home. It is ready to grasp at the notions of others, calling them its own; and to grasp at its own phantoms, calling them realities. How necessary that it should be bridled, and brought within the limits of sober and legitimate investi- gation! We may take it for granted, that knowledge, which is so readily gleaned from others, does not properly constitute mental improvement. The cul- tivation of the mind, in order that it may bring forth good fruit, requires a steady persevering labour. It is true, indeed, that some soils, from a kind of native luxuriance, produce abundantly, with but little out- ward aid; but, in these as much labour is often re- quired to check an extravagant growth, and to root up the weed, as in ground which is less fertile, to manure and water In Its season. Knowledge must be conveyed to the mind, as food » to the body, if it be intended for profit, by healthy digestion and assimilation of the materials to our actual substance. It is by reflection and meditation upon the truths afforded by others, that we make them our own; and this observation applies to our moral and religious, as it does to cur intellectual, advance- ment. Hence it is that the man who can boast little else than a capacious memory, though his mind may be stored with the records of past ages, is often ex- tremely deficient in the faculty of Reason, and in common discretion, when placed in the embarrassing concerns of life: while he who may want this prompt