Proteus ; or,the law of nature / by Charles Bland Radcliffe.

  • Radcliffe, Charles Bland, 1822-1889.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Proteus ; or,the law of nature / by Charles Bland Radcliffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    soul of man unto God, who gave it.” The one is a subject; the other is a potentate to whom was once entrusted—and who still continues to exercise in some degree—the administration of law. The one is ephemeral and transient: the other exists for ever. It is difiScult to deny to the higher brutes the phe- nomena of reason and understanding, nor in one sense is there any necessity to do so. There is no difficulty, indeed, in supposing the omnipresent spirit of Deity to be revealed in this manner, independently of any act of volition in the creature itself. There is no more difficult]'^, indeed, in supposing a revelation of the Deity in phenomena of reason or understanding, than in power and life,—for all are reflections of attributes which are inseparable: but it is an error to suppose that the brute has true volition; for all those signs of progress which are characteristic of the will are absent, and, moreover, the quasi-mental acts are unobscured by error, and directed to good and not to evil. The brute, indeed, is that irresponsible machine into which the fatalists degrade themselves. The other instinctive impulses of the lower animals are to be accounted for in the same way, for they are constant and ever tending to the good of the creature. In the brute, indeed, there is no fallen and changeful principle, as in man, to thwart the beneficent purposes of the lawgiver and to mask the law. The vitality of the lower ranks of created forms