Microcosmus: An Essay Concerning Man and His Relation to the World, Volume 1T. & T. Clark, 1885 - Anthropology |
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Common terms and phrases
activity actual æther alimentary canal alteration animal aorta appear atoms become bodily carbonic acid causes chemical chemical affinity colour combination conceive conception connection consciousness constituents contrary course of Nature depend direction distinct disturbance effect elective affinities elements energy excitation exert existence experience explain external fact favourable feeling fibres finite force further human ideas impressions impulse individual infinite influence inherent inner internal living body manifestation manifold material matter means mechanical mental merely mind mode motion movements mutual necessary necessity nerves observation operations original ourselves outer world particular peculiar perception phænomena physical science plurality possible present processes produced psychic reciprocal action regard relations result retina seek sensation sense single soul soul's space sphere stimulations substances suppose take place things thought tion train of thought uncon unity universal laws variety vertebræ vertebral column vital volition whole wholly
Popular passages
Page xv - The more I myself have laboured to prepare the way for acceptance of the mechanical view of Nature in the region of organic life — in which region this view seemed to advance more timidly than the nature of the thing required — the more do I now feel impelled to bring into prominence the other aspect which was equally near to my heart during all these endeavours.
Page ix - ... may at times forget the connection of his narrow sphere of work with the great ends of human life ; it may at times seem to him as though the furtherance of knowledge for the sake of knowledge were an intelligible and worthy aim of human effort. But all his endeavors have in the last resort but this one meaning, that they, in connection with those of countless others, should combine to trace an image of the world from which we may learn what we have to reverence as the true significance of existence...
Page 592 - It is, to say the least, an interesting notion of Lotze * that whenever we bring a foreign body in contact with the skin, the consciousness of our personal existence is prolonged into the extremities and surfaces of this foreign body. According to him a tall head-dress is worn preferably because it lengthens our own "personality," producing the pleasing illusion that we ourselves extend up to that point.
Page 250 - The crushed worm writhing in pain undoubtedly distinguishes its own suffering from the rest of the world, though it can understand neither its own ego nor the nature of the external world.
Page 263 - Among all the errors of the human mind it has always seemed to me the strangest that it could come to doubt its own existence, of which alone it has direct experience, or to take it at second hand as the product of an external Nature which we know only indirectly, only by means of the knowledge of the very mind to which we would fain deny existence.
Page 324 - ... being taken up into a world of thought, and estimated at the value belonging to it in the rational connection of things.
Page 154 - We come to understand the connection of our inner life only by referring all its events to our ego, lying unchanged alike beneath its simultaneous variety and its temporal succession.
