On the Physical Basis of LifeCollege Courant, 1869 - 24 pages |
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ammonia animal animalcule aquosity Archbishop believe calc-spar carbonate of lime carbonic acid Catholicism CHARLES ELLIOTT PERKINS COLLEGE colorless corpuscles complex Comte conception condition contractility contrary David Hume dead protoplasm difference discourse doctrines DUE OCT electric shocks Ethalium existence fact faculties forms of protoplasm formula and symbols Fungi fungus give rise granules highest human HUXLEY hypothetical cause influence of pre-existing innumerable knowledge less limits of philosophical living body living matter living protoplasm lowest plant Man's Land manifestations mass of protoplasm materialistic matter and law microscopic million-fold molecular molecules nature necessity nettle hair nitrogen nucleated nucleus older philosophies ordinary matter organism oxygen and hydrogen Peau de Chagrin philosophical inquiry physical basis Physiology plasm Positive Philosophy possess powers pre-existing living prelate proto protoplasm into living prove quicklime resolved into carbonic smelling-salts spirit and spontaneity substance term terminology thought tion transitory changes unity unknown and hypothetical vegetable world vital phenomena
Popular passages
Page 21 - The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of these days. They watch what they conceive to be the progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun.
Page 22 - If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Page 6 - In physiological language this means, that all the multifarious and complicated activities of man are comprehensible under three categories. Either they are immediately directed towards the maintenance and development of the body, or they effect transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body, or they tend towards the continuance of the species.
Page 9 - I shall advert more at length presently), in the fact that plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready made, and hence, in the long run, depend upon plants. Upon what condition this difference in the powers of the two great divisions of the world of life depends, nothing is at present known. With such qualification as arises out of the lastmentioned fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally...
Page 21 - For, after all, what do we know of this terrible "matter," except as a name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness? And what do we know of that "spirit...
Page 6 - ... diversities of vital existence; but I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity — namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition — does pervade the whole living world. No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the first place, to prove that the powers or faculties of all kinds of living matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are substantially similar in kind. Goethe has condensed a...
Page 16 - These new compounds, like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless. But when they are brought together, under certain conditions they give rise to the still more complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life. I see no break in this series of steps in molecular complication, \ and I am unable to understand why the language which is applicable / to any one term of the series may not be used to any of the others.
Page 16 - When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and an electric spark is passed through them, they disappear, and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of their weights, appears in their place.
Page 5 - ... that there is some one kind of matter which is common to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity.
Page 11 - Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter : which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod.