Introductory lecture to the course of chemistry / delivered by Professor Draper.

  • John William Draper
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory lecture to the course of chemistry / delivered by Professor Draper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    12/16
    of the human understanding, I am lost in amazement. What is it that gives to the mechanism of the brain these marvellous qualities] I perceive, that on its tablets are registered all the events that have happened in my life ; there, too, are the impressions of all that I have heard, and all that I have read. There, too, are engraven the shadowy forms of the innumerable words and names of things, in the different languages I know. There, too, are pictured the facts and events which compose the domain of history and the sciences. In those silent galleries are hung the portraits of the friends that are around me, and of the friends that are dead. I call up lineaments whose realities are gone to de- cay, and revisit again the scenes of boyhood. The intricate music of Italian singers still lingers there, which I listened to years ago; or the more simple melodies of a country life. The echo of those prayers is still heard, which an unskilful tongue first learnt at its mother's knee. And now the power of re- membering things that are past, is only one of the many functions of the brain ; is it not also the seat of all that passion dictates, the source of all that action performs] In it are the first seeds of all that we resolve ; and by it are received all those impressions which afford us pleasure or give us pain. The higher powers are also there, and above all, it is the house of Reason. Shall I then fail to assert the presence of a controlling principle of intellectuality, the ope- rations of which 1 feel, the existence of which! know] Science in its progress scatters light upon every object: and surely it should afford us no common pleasure, apart from the positive benefit we may reap, to understand the various modes of operation which nature employs in determin- ing the structure, the nourishment, the accidents, the death, of a whole creation around us. There is no plant and no insect which does not call for our atten- tion, and from which we may not gain an instructive lesson. Is it of no interest to know by wh it structural arrangement, and by what great laws of nature, one animal is fitted for one mode of life, and another for another ]—by what appa- ratus the inhabitant of the sea can live where we must die, and perishes where we can live ] How is it, that from the deep sleep of winter, trees and plants awake at the coming of spring, and put forth their leaves and flowers, and then sink again into their annual slumber ] Deprived by nature of moving powers, and of the means of sensation, they teach us how organic life is cherished under a variety of forms. If, beginning at the remotest ranks of creation, we pass step by step from the dead, the inanimate, to the living, the complicated, and see in each successive class, organ added to organ, and mechanism to mechan- ism, and carefully mark the changes produced by each addition, of all lessons we shall find it the most instructive, for it teaches us that knowledge that men have been in pursuit of from the beginning, to know the world and to know ourselves. Have not the stars, which our fathers thought to be instinct with spirit, and perhaps to be living things, yielded their secrets to us ] Do we not assign their places, their condition, and the laws that guide them in their paths ] The comet, — that hermit of the universe, — that goes into the abyss, a pilgrimage of ages, when mortal eye cannot follow him, does not the hand of our intellect stretch itself forth, and, pointing his place in the immensity, do we not say, There he is ] Our native earth, too, is gradually revealing her ancient history to us, not written in books which may be lost, nor conveyed in traditions which might be perverted ; but, inscribed on the rocks and stamped