Religio medici / With the Observations of Sir Kenelm Digby.

  • Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religio medici / With the Observations of Sir Kenelm Digby. 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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    speculation; but to profound farther, and to contemplate a reason why his providence hath so disposed and ordered their motions in that vast circle, as to conjoin and obscure each other, is a sweeter piece of reason, and a diviner point of philosophy; therefore some- times, and in some things, there appears to me as much divinity in Galen's books De Usu Partium, as in Suarez's Metaphysics: had Aristotle been as curious in the inquiry of this cause as he was of the other, he had not left behind him an imperfect piece of philo- sophy, but an absolute tract of divinity. Natura nihil aget frustra, is the only indisputed axiom in philosophy; there are no grotesques in nature; not anything framed to fill up empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces: in the most imperfect crea- tures, and such as were not preserved in the ark, but having their seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are everywhere, where the power of the sun is, in these is the wisdom of his hand discovered. Out of this rank Solomon chose the objects of admiration ; in- deed what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders ? what wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us ? ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, whales, elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these I confess are the colossus and majestic pieces of her hand: but in these narrow engines there is more B—32