Evening thoughts / by a physician.

  • Bullar Joseph, 1808-1869.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evening thoughts / by a physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    given up by the deepest natural philoso- phers. Still, if matter had existed, there must have been something else to move that matter; for, however fine the suj)posed matter must have been, it could not have moved itself; and the cause of its motion would have been the time object of experi- mental investigation. If then it is not and cannot be matter, what is it? It is that which moves matter. It is active ])ower. It is galvanic force, magnetic force. It is therefore more akin to the will and to the Deity (whose essential characteristics are “invisible power”} than to matter. Thus we are led to the conviction, that cei-tain physical movements are the effect of invisible power; that the moving agent we can command, is the cause of certain move- ments; and that these motions of matter ai-c merely the outward and visible signs of an inward and invisible force. The experiments of Faraday have conclu- sively proved to him the identity of the elec- trical and the galvanic forces; and that the latter is merely a form of chemical force. The mind, therefore, that has been looking at the lightning as illuminated lines of elec-