Instinct and reason, philosophically investigated : with a view to ascertain the principles of the science of education / by Thomas Jarrold, M.D.

  • Thomas Jarrold
Date:
1736 [i.e. 1836]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Instinct and reason, philosophically investigated : with a view to ascertain the principles of the science of education / by Thomas Jarrold, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    30 growth cannot be the atniospliere, nor will it be fully known whence' it arises, until it be ascertained by what means the soil is produced, and from whence it originated. As it is not an original formation, and cannot by any process to which earth can be su])jected be obtained, it must be concluded to be an artificial production. Chemistry has ascertained it to be from vegetable and animal remains, but the difficulty at- tending it is not yet removed. At the commencement of time there were but few of the human race, and but few animals, and proba- bly but a scanty distribution of vegetable life, how can they have increased so as to form the existing multitude of every species, and to give a thick covering to the earth ? We have said that earth, as originally con- stituted, forms scarcely any part of an organised body, it consequently is not the source whence soil was formed—every tree and every animal is a concentrated congeries of organic matter, but from whence was it obtained ? if it be answered from the soil, the ques- tion again recurs, how was it accumulated ? Foiled in our researches, we turn to the brilliant discoveries of science in the present day ; by them it is ascertained that water, and almost every other fluid, abounds with monads, or living organic atoms, equal in amount to one-half the fluid in which they exist, and are divided into genera and species, and have all the characters of animated beings, darting repeat- edly from place to place. Professor Ehrenberg states their size to be about the 28,000 part of an inch, and their number in a drop of water to be innumerable. Monads, in common with other organic bodies, have