On instinct / [Philip Bury Duncan].

  • Philip Bury Duncan
Date:
1820?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On instinct / [Philip Bury Duncan]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    34/34 page 32
    stincts connected with the passions, bnt must think that Reid has made a strange confusion of terms by attributing many mechanical motions of the body to this faculty. As organization is traced by anatomists, extend¬ ing through the nervous system from molecules among the acrita or infusory animals, i. e. polypi, &c., among the radiata, i. e. worms, leeches, &c., to fibres and ganglia among the mollusca, i. e. slugs, to imper¬ fect spinal or knotted medulla among the Crustacea, i. e. lobsters and insects, and to spinal marrow con¬ nected with a brain in animals of superior faculties and general organization; so the intellectual power seems to exist in combination with a mere power of sensation, gradually expanding from a speck of instinct in the lowest order of living beings, to a gradually increasing degree, till it becomes min¬ gled with minor degrees of reason, and then with greater degrees of the divine infusion, till the dia¬ pason closes full in man.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3