The hand : its mechanism and vital endowments, as evincing design / by Sir Charles Bell.

  • Charles Bell
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hand : its mechanism and vital endowments, as evincing design / by Sir Charles Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    through this space, shall enter the eye, and strike upon the delicate nerve with no other effect than to produce vision. Instead of saying that light is created for the eye, and to give us the sense of vision, is it not more conformable to a just manner of considering these things that our wonder and our admiration should fix on the fact, that this small organ, the eye, is formed with relation to a creation of such vast extent and grandeur:—^and more especially, that the ideas arising in the mind through the in- fluence of that matter and this organ, are constituted a part of this vast whole! By such considerations we are led to contemplate the human body in its different relations. The magnitude of the earth deter- mines the strength of our bones, and the power of our muscles; so must the depth of the atmosphere determine the condition of our fluids, and the resistance of our blood vessels; the common act of breathing, the transpiration from the surfaces, must bear relation to the weight, moisture, and temperature of the medium which surrounds us. A moment’s reflection on these facts proves to us that our body is formed with a just correspondence to all these external influences. These views leads us to another consideration, that the com- plexity of our structure belongs to exernal nature, and not of neces- sity to the mind. Whilst man is an agent in a material world, and sensible to the influence of things external, complexity of struc- ture is a necessary part of his constitution. But we do not per- ceive a relation between this complexity and the mind. From aught that we learn by this mode of study, the mind may be as dis- tinct from the bodily organs as are the exterior influences which give them exercise. Something, then, we observe to be common to our planet and to others, to our system, and to other systems; matter, attraction, light; which nearly implies that the mechanical and chemical laws must be the same throughout. It is perhaps too much to affirm, with an anonvmous author, that an inhabitant of our world would find himself at home in any other, that he would be like a traveller only, for a moment perplexed by diversity of climate and strange- ness of manners, and confess, at last, that nature was everywhere and essentially the same. However this may be, all I contend for is, the necessity of certain relations being established between the planet and the frames of all which inhabit it; between the great mass and the physical properties of every part; that in the mecha- nical construction of animals, as in their endowments of life, they are created in relation to the whole, planned together and fashioned by one Mind. The passiveness which is natural in infancy, and the want of reflection as to the sources of enjoyment which is excusable in
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