Insect life / by David Badham.

  • Charles David Badham
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insect life / by David Badham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    vation which the subject requires me to make ; viz. that insects do not feel. Of course this is still only an assertion, though I hope not so startling as it might have been, but for the considerations by which it has been preceded. A popular treatise is bound to meet popular objections as early as possible, in order that whatever the author has to advance on his own account may be received without prejudice; and for this reason it is better, at once, to notice the first objection which will probably be made to this hypo- thesis. How, it will be asked, can that which is endowed with voluntary motion be destitute of sen- sation? For it is only the undoubting persuasion that sensibility and motion are two phases of one and the selfsame life that causes our compassion to be, as it were, instinctively engaged on behalf of the writhing worm, and that we maintain not only that he feels, but that he moves because he feels. The discovery of a distinguished philosopher of our days, which bears immediately upon the point, is suffi- cient, as it appears to me, to correct this error—for undoubtedly it is an error to consider motion and feeling as inseparable. Sir Charles Bell, moved no doubt by that “ Prudens questio” which has been so justly declared to be the half of philosophy, ap- plied himself to the examination of the nerves which had hitherto been supposed to be the vehicles of
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