Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon].

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    how a large portion of our species are endowed with vigorous powers which take a pleasure in meeting and overcoming difficulty and danger. Even that principle on which our faculties are con- stituted—a wide range of freedom in which to act for all various occasions—necessitates a resentful faculty, by which individuals may protect them- selves from the undue and capricious exercise of each other’s faculties, and thus preserve their individual rights. So also there is cautiousness, to give us a tendency to provide against the evils by which we may be assailed; and secretiveness, to enable us to conceal whatever, being divulged, would be offensive to others or injurious to our- selves,—a function which obviously has a certain legitimate range of action, however liable to be abused. ‘The constitution of the mind generally points to a state of intimate relation of individuals towards society, towards the external world, and towards things above this world. No individual being is integral or independent; he is only part of an extensive piece of social mechanism. The inferior mind, full of rude energy and unregulated impulse, does not more require a superior nature to act as its master and its mentor, than does the superior nature require to be surrounded by such
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