Life : its nature, varieties, & phenomena / by Leo H. Grindon.

  • Leopold Hartley Grindon
Date:
[1863]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life : its nature, varieties, & phenomena / by Leo H. Grindon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/426 (page 11)
    cular provinces, but no doctrine is so generally efficacious as this grand and comprehensive one of the omnipresence and the unity of life. Life it is which gives to the universe all its reality as well as splendour, so that the larger oim conception of life, the more nearly do we approach both to a just appreciation of the magnificence of nature, and to the solution of her stupendous problems. Not the least of the advantages accessory to the doctrine here set forth, is, that the physiologist who adopts it, instead of entering on his inquiries with the sense of a great, unnatural, gap between physiology and physics, finds the latter not only adjoined, but an instructive introduction. He ascends, as all rational philosophy advises, from the simple to the complex. Coleridge clearly exhibits this in his ‘ Theory of Life,’ above cited; Dr. Radcliffe well exemplifies it in his ‘ Proteus, or the Law of Natiu’c.’ ‘As an earnest,’ he observes, ‘ of the rich haiwest which is to come when the cm-rent separation of physiology from physics shall be forgotten, several phenomena which wore once deemed peculiar to living bodies are now ex])lained by ordinary physical influences.’ Looked at through a single science. Life is unintelligible; for the sciences, separately taken, are but like the constituent portions of a telescope,—we can only see properly by coimectmg them. Physiology, for the same reason, becomes a pathway and preface to psychology, which, inquh-ed into without reference to physiology, as its material representative, is but an intellectual ignis fatuus. Every true law in metaphysics has a law corresponding to it in physical natiu-e, and the latter is often the surest clue whereby to find it.