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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    know, the source of all those properties which are peculiar to them as living beings. In short, the properties of all of them are discoverable only by observation and experiment ; and we must, in the present state of our knowledge, regard these pro- perties as ultimate facts. Our analysis has not led us to any more simple elements ; and we give no aid to philosophy by referring them to an un- known, undescribable source. We cannot say that the principle of life consists in the combina- tion of them all; for some beings, who are uni- versally admitted to have life, as is the case with every vegetable, exist without possessing them all. We cannot say that this essential principle consists in certain of them only; for the others cannot be traced from any which can be selected | for this purpose. Yet those others are equally properties of life; or if not, what are they ? Irri- tability and mobility are common to every living being. But if these are selected as constituting the principle of vitality, how shall we trace, from them, sensibility, and the various other proper- ties which are found in quadrupeds. From the whole we are authorised to infer, that, although there may be some single principle from which all the phenomena of life arise, and even though the existence of this principle is so probable, and so generally believed, as to make it convenient to refer to it, in the same manner as if it had been actually demonstrated; yet, in the present state of our knowledge, we cannot deduce
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