Fragments of Science: A Series of Detached Essays, Addresses, and Reviews

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Longmans, Green, 1876 - Science - 625 pages
 

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Page 334 - ... the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem ; but the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process...
Page 380 - By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
Page 414 - ... molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, "How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness?" The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable.
Page 516 - Nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods?' or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter is not ' that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb?
Page 542 - Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. "Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver and the gold broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors ; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
Page 527 - I have noticed during years of self-observation that it is not in hours of clearness and vigour that this doctrine commends itself to my mind ; that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears, as offering no solution of the mystery in which we dwell, and of which we form a part.
Page 569 - Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! I never thought to ask, I never knew: But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same power that brought me there brought you.
Page 521 - ... nature of man. To yield this sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the problem of problems at the present hour. And grotesque in relation to scientific culture as many of the religions of the world have been, and are — dangerous, nay, destructive, to the dearest privileges of freemen as some of them undoubtedly have been, and would, if they could, be again — it will be wise to...
Page 502 - Natural selection acts only by the preservation and accumulation of small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being...
Page 501 - Altogether at least a score of pigeons might be chosen, which, if shown to an ornithologist, and he were told that they were wild birds, would certainly be ranked by him as well-defined species.

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