Letter on vaccination to a medical practitioner / from H. Strickland Constable.

  • Constable, H. Strickland (Henry Strickland), 1821-1909
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter on vaccination to a medical practitioner / from H. Strickland Constable. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    8 which Utilitariauism denies. After all, why shoiild we make such a fuss about Darwinism ‘? The only question that signifies two straws is what a man is now—is he a good one or a bad one ? Yet he troubles his head little enough about this, but makes himself unhappy because he is told that his ancestor was a polypus in the time of chaos. Now and then we meet with angelic men and women walking on this earth. Surely it is wonderful and admii-able to think that they have risen to such a height above their ancestor. Sometimes we meet with diabolic men. Surely it is wonderful and dreadful to think tliat they have sunk to such a depth below their ancestor. The fourth corner stone is the denial of disinterested unconscious unselfishness in man. This stone is getting into a sad crumbling state, but it never will perhaps he quite destroyed, for it would be necessary to destroy first all who by birth, habits of abstract thinking, or other causes, are incapable of comprehending the meaning of disinterested unselfishness ; people who are to the higher things of human nature what the color-blind man is to color. I am afraid there are a good many such in our part of the world, for Utilitarianism is an English disease. “ The cold in clime are cold in blood” says B^tou. Some Benthamites, seeing the pre- carious condition of their corner .stones, and the dilapidated state of the old structure, are crawling out by the back way— and quite right too—if I were in such a tumble down buildmg, I would get out any way I could. They stick to Utilitariauism in name, ljut shuffle out of its distinctive doctrines one by one. Some try propping. One ^n-op is denial of free will. But it is little suited to the purpose, though wore it othenvise it would he serviceable euougli, tor connected as it is with the ultimate insolulde mysteries, it will never ])c completely des- troyed ; certainly not by reasoning, for tliat only makes matters worse. He who uses nothing but his reason must logically end in the denial ot everything, like Mr. Mill, who denies Ihe existance ot either matter or mind; or like Hegel, who eliminates from the Deity all attributes but knowing and loving, and to the question what knows and loves, answers “the infinite nothing.”