Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge].
- Ridge, Benjamin
- Date:
- 1875
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![various ways, different to wliat it did once. Now, hoAv can it alter, for it is an aura from first to last, has never been anything else, and can be nothing else? This proves, I think, that there is no such thing. If physiology cannot explain certain matters, and if chemists cannot account for the behaviour of their compounds, and end as they have ever done by saying, that it is no doubt due to some vital agency ; evidently meaning this very independent principle in all bodies, which has beset all ages,—then I say it is better once and for all future time to give it up. I don’t believe in it, nor can I think anyone else can who retisons upon it. IVe must, therefore, search after that which is more directly profitable, and within the compass of our reason, rather than call upon our imagination to explain the occult by an equally occult piece of metaphysics; for it cannot be called philosophy. All enquiry into brain substance seems to end in the belief, that it is nothing more nor less than nerve matter, and as it is different to anything else in the body, I think the conclusion is fair. Anatomy, physiology, and pathology, are in unison on some of the most important points respecting it. The nerves having been very beautifully delineated, and their dis- tinguishing characters ])ointed out; some as emanants, and others recurrents; some sentient, and others motor; all having origins and tracings through bodily structure, with their several duties of conveying or transmitting intelligence, or holding the ]>owers in obedience, or prompting them to action. They transmit positive and return negative currents. They are made from material substances, as all other matter is made. Their useful- ness no one doubts; they exist in all animal structure according to its requirements, from a simple filament](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2807256x_0162.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
