On literary and scientific pursuits, as conducive to longevity : with explanatory notes / by Richard Fowler.

  • Fowler, Richard, 1765-1863.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On literary and scientific pursuits, as conducive to longevity : with explanatory notes / by Richard Fowler. 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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    It is contrived by Benevolence, that like adjust- ments induce like conceptions. Many repetitions are required to form accurate conceptions. And we must do to know, for it is not till we have done that we get the conceptions which form the painter, sculptor, orator, singer, &c. Sir J. Reynold says, that it was not till he had been at Rome a year, that he began to appreciate the works of Raphael. We know how vibrations induce definite dia- grams. Thus are also definite adjustments induced, and thus identity is recognised, by the likeness of this object to our previous conceptions of it. Unadjust the coil, and the force disappears. This is the sleep of the coil, not of the force. In man, who is, as we have said, a congeries of coils, they do not all sleep. Feeling in the body, and conception from abiding adjustments of past sensations, are the instructive interpreters of new sensations. Thus the conception of a- ship near to us, interprets the perspective appearance of a distant sail. Every known part is suggestive of its whole. A concep- tion already in the mind retransmits such adjust- ments to the ear, that it interprets the sound of the words sung in music. When I read the words of a chant, I hear them when chanted, not otherwise.* Some persons seem to live in a dreaming state, unadjusted by attention. They do not observe * Qui aturtia vigilana nee somnia cemere ceasas.—Lucr.