On man's power over himself to prevent or control insanity.

  • Barlow, John.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On man's power over himself to prevent or control insanity. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    have placed side by side the two great forces which manifest themselves in the phaenomena of man's nature. The vital force by virtue of which he is an animal — and the intellec- tual force by virtue of which he is something more. Throughout nature we find the advance to a higher grade of being, made by addition rather than by change. The power of assimi- lation is added to chemical affinity, and we have organized life, as in vegetables; but set in motion by external causes: nervous matter is added in the animal; and vegetative life pro- ceeds still unconsciously, but by means of a main-spring within the body ; and this lowest kind of life is found, as I formerly observed, in the rooted zoophyte no less than in man. It forms the first subdivision of the Table. Nerves of sensation and of movement are added, and the animal becomes locomotive, and is impelled by a feeling of pain or of pleasure to the acts needful for the maintenance of vegetative life: and this state of being is marked in the second division. Then the hemispheres of the brain are developed in addition, as in the class mam- malia, and the animal seeks its object by con- trivance, and by suiting the means to the end. Finally, as in the great step from inorganized