Remarks on the Brunonian system ... / [James Jackson].

  • James Jackson
Date:
1809
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the Brunonian system ... / [James Jackson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that is the only advantage, for we gain nothing by knowing that there is such a principle, unless we know the laws of its operation in producing those peculiar properties which we discover in living bodies. If we do not know those laws, we are then left to investigate the properties of living be- ings by experiment. When we have thus gained knowledge respecting those properties, it is con- venient to refer them to some general principle as their source. But we derive no other advan- tage, since we cannot go to this unknown princi- ple as the source of any other knowledge, and its name is only one word to express a combination of several ideas. ‘To say, for instance, that sensi- bility is to be attributed to the vital principle, is no more than to say, that sensibility is one of the properties of some living beings. Brown represents this excitability as a prin- ciple common to all living beings, vegetable as well as animal. This only increases the difficulty. Indeed it is impossible that there should be one simple, unmodified principle, which is essential to to vitality, and from which all the phenomena of life flow, common to all living beings. For assur- edly there is a great difference in the vital proper- ties, not only of animals and vegetables, but of different animals from each other; and likewise of different vegetables from each other. I am not contending that there is not some principle, or property, common to them all; but that this common principle is not, so far as we
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