On the identity of the vital and cosmical principle / by Robert Lewins.

  • Lewins, Robert, 1817-1895.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the identity of the vital and cosmical principle / by Robert Lewins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    COSIIOAL PRINCIPLE. The object of the following remarks, which are merely the corollaries from certain scientific facts expressed in intelligible formulas, is to state A Rational Theory of Human Exist- ence, in which everything supernatural, or which contradicts the universal common sense of mankind, is relegated into the province of disordered ideation. I may premise this formulation and exposition of fact by stating, that in all civilized ages and countries of which we have any record, the higher orders of intellect, or, to express it less pretentiously, the truly thinking part of the com- munity, which always constitutes a very small minority (thought, in accordance with nature and fact, being a much more difficult process than belief or fancy) have always been dissenters from the authorised creed of the majority,—their dissent differing in degree from simple scepticism or doubt up to the most emphatic protest and denial, entailing upon the dissidents persecution in every shape up to death itself. I may further premise, that all the chief theosophies of the world—Judaism, Christianity, Mahomedanism, &c., have had their origin in the East; the three dominant ones I have named in one part of the East, viz.,—Syria, in which the human mind is peculiarly prone to mysticism, by which term I mean such a preponderance of the idealising or imaginative over the really judicial faculties of the mind, that sober reason, the seeing everything as it really is in the open day- light of fact and nature, is quite overlaid by the illusions of fancy and ideality. From a competentpersonal acquaintance with the East, which appears to have remained stationary from the dawn of human history till the present hour, I feel justified in stating, in full confidence that my statement, though it may be contradicted,