Mysteries of life, death, and futurity : illustrated from the best and latest authorities / by Horace Welby [pseud., i.e. John Timbs].
- John Timbs
- Date:
- 1861
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Mysteries of life, death, and futurity : illustrated from the best and latest authorities / by Horace Welby [pseud., i.e. John Timbs]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![usual operation of its laws, so the vital principle, which was supposed to be diffused through the body in the living state ; and to pervade every texture and every part, was imagined to protect the whole from the chemical agencies of the surrounding elements.—Review of the Doctrine of a Vital Principle, sect. ii. This passage gives a fair exposition of the doctrine inculcated by Mr. Abernethy, on the subject of Life as taught by Hunter; and Abernethy imagined that if philosophers once saw reason to believe that Life was something of an invisible and active nature superadded to organisation,— They would see equal reason to believe that Mind might be super- added to Life, as life is to structure. They would then, indeed, still further, perceive how Mind and Matter might reciprocally operate on each other, by means of an inhering substance (viz. the matter of life).—Phys. Led. and Disc. p. 95. (Again: The consideration of the phenomena of Mind, as well as that of the phenomena of Life, equally enforces the opinion of their distinct and independent nature. .... Uneducated reason, and the most scientific research, equal] y in- duce us to believe that we are composed of an assemblage of organs formed of common inert matter, a principle of life and action, and a sentient and rational faculty; all intimately connected, yet each distinct from the other.—Phys. Led. and Disc, p. 401.) Yet, adds Dr. Cromwell, the notion of any distinct agent or principle, to account for Life at least, has already become obso- lete, and is now commonly abandoned. {The Soul and the Future Life, p. 40.) THE IMPRISONED SOUL. Cowley, in his Davideis, book iv., says of Saul, His soul was ne'er unbent from weighty care ; But active as some mind that turns a sphere. Upon which he notes— According to the old senseless opinion, that the heavens were divided into several orbs or spheres, and that a particular Intelligence or Angel was assigned to each of them, to turn it round (like a mill-horse, as Scaliger says,) to all eternity. In his Pindaric Ode—Life, Cowley thus describes the im- prisoned soul. Upon the text from Euripides, Who knows whether to live be not to die ; and to die to live? he says : We grow at last by custom to believe That really we live : Whilst all these shadows that for things we take, Are but the empty dreams which in death's sleep we make. But these fantastic errors of our dream Lead us to solid wrong ; We pray God our friends' torments to prolong, And wish uncharitably for them To be as long a dying as Methusalem.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21782945_0058.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
