Natural theology : the Gifford lectures, delivered before the University of Edinburgh in 1891 / by G.G. Stokes.

  • Stokes, George Gabriel, 1819-1903.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural theology : the Gifford lectures, delivered before the University of Edinburgh in 1891 / by G.G. Stokes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a desiiltoriiiess and want of system of wliicli I am keenly sensible. Should it fall to me to address you for a second year, it is my intention to deal more directly with those subjects to which I have given more special attention; I mean, to make my lectures more directly scientific than those of the present year. If we believe that what are called the natural sciences spring from the same supreme source as those which are con- cerned with morals and ISTatural Theology in general, we may expect to find broad lines of analogy between the two ; and thus it may conceivably happen that the investigations which belong to natural science may here and there afford us hints with respect even to the moral sciences, with which at first sight they might appear to have no connection. And if such are to be found, perhaps they are more likely to be indicated by one whose studies have lain mainly in the direction of those natural sciences than by one whose primary attention has been devoted to moral subjects; or, as perhaps it might be more true to say, that a different sort of analogies might be suggested by one who had attended mainly to natural science, and but slightly to the moral sciences, from those which would naturally occur to one who, on the con- trary, had attended mainly to the moral sciences and but slightly to the natural. But T contemplate also leaving myself greater freedom as regards the state-