The claims of psychology to a place in the circle of the sciences / sessional address of the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Edward William Cox
Date:
[1878]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The claims of psychology to a place in the circle of the sciences / sessional address of the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    annihilation. It is only dissolution—change—separation of particles and reconstruction. No one particle perishes. The material mechanism is resolved into its elements and re- appears. If there be a Soul in Man, that also cannot die. It must remain somewhere, under some condition of existence. The Psychologist sees with awe and veneration in all this ceaseless round of dissolution and reformation, the presence of an animating, directing and intelligent power, very like that he is conscious of in himself. Recog- nising Soul as the intelligent force that is within him, he recognises the presence and the action of the like force without. Seeing Soul in Nature, as in Man, he feels what the poet has expressed for him, in thoughts that breathe and words that burn : For I have learned To look on Nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Not harsh nor grating, but of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thopgjits; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns. And the round ocean, and the living air. And the blue sky, and in the heart of man: A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought. And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods And mountains, and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half create And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In Nature and the language of the sense The anchor of my purest thought, the nurse. The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.—Wordsworth. [262]