Thoughts on animalcules ; or, a glimpse of the invisible world revealed by the microscope / By Gideon Algernon Mantell.

  • Gideon Mantell
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thoughts on animalcules ; or, a glimpse of the invisible world revealed by the microscope / By Gideon Algernon Mantell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ful mythology of Fairy-land, and the dreamy creations of the ancient philosophers, who, like the Chaldeans, ——_——_ - —_-—___——_———. watch’d the stars, Till they had peopled them with beings bright As their own beams. Curiitpz Haroxrp. A. sublimer creed succeeded, and is shadowed forth in the following noble lines of our divine poet :— Nor think, though Man were none, That heav’n would want spectators, Gop want praise. Millions of spiritual beings walk the earth, Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep ! ParapisE Lost, Boox IV. This faith in the existence of supernatural beings, whose presence is but rarely made manifest to mortals, appears to be innate in the human mind. Its creations have varied with the progress of civilisation and refine- ment, and the inhabitants of the unseen world been invested with higher attributes and subtler natures; but the beautiful superstition, though modified, still retains its influence, and even yet throws its spell over the imaginings of the poet, and the speculations of the philosopher and the sage. Who, in the bloom and freshness of youth, ere the