The evidence afforded by the order and adaptations in nature to the existence of a God : a lecture, delivered in connection with the Christian Evidence Society, June 21, 1872 / by Charles Brooke.

  • Brooke, Charles, 1804-1879.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The evidence afforded by the order and adaptations in nature to the existence of a God : a lecture, delivered in connection with the Christian Evidence Society, June 21, 1872 / by Charles Brooke. 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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    necessity in the animal economy than the faculty of discriminating tone and quality of sound ; accordingly, the perfect development of the semicircular canals is met with as low in the scale of organisation as the cartilaginous fishes, while in the cochlea and the ossicles we meet with various stages of progressive development, each obviously adapted to the exigences of the individual organism ; and especially in the fish and reptile tribes that do not emit vocal sounds, the construction of the auditory apparatus, apart from the semicircular canals, is exceedingly simple. Can any one really believe that all these admirable adaptations resulted from blind chance, or from the necessity of the case, unintentioned and undesigned ? But the evidence of design in the ear does not end here ; and in order to render the sequel intelligible to those who are unacquainted with physiological details, it becomes necessary to briefly indicate the general relations of the nervous system. This consists of two distinct parts ; one, the cerebro-spinal system, com- prising all nerves that terminate in the brain and spinal cord, which fulfils all the functions of percep- tion and volition ; this system exists in all vertebrate animals, in an ascending scale of development up to man. The other, the ganglionic system, consisting of fibres terminating in nerve centres, or ganglia, dis- tributed over various parts of the frame, but chiefly in two parallel rows arranged on either side of the central axis, or the vertebral column ; the office of this system 3i