Mind and soul : a lecture on the intellectual differences between man and the lower animals, especially with reference to instinct and reason : delivered at the Wakefield Mechanics' Institution, November 27, 1848 / by J.G. Atkinson.

  • Atkinson, James George.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mind and soul : a lecture on the intellectual differences between man and the lower animals, especially with reference to instinct and reason : delivered at the Wakefield Mechanics' Institution, November 27, 1848 / by J.G. Atkinson. 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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    ■27 brutes doth, and to perish with it, hut to be a Flatus, a breathing of God, and to continue so long as God is pleased to continue his breathing. Wherefore if this interpretation of scripture be cor- rect, it is most probable that the reasoning faculties and instinctive actions of man, are similarly produced as 3rdly “ God superadded his Afflatus—God breathed into man the breath of life, (called the spirit of man) and then he became Idaa. All which answers the Greek translation, according to the Septuagint version. Kai tTrXaatv b Geo's t'ov dvQgbivov, \h'v diro r^s lvi<pva7](Tev tig rb tzpoatavov aiiTS irvotjv icai ty'ivero b av9ph)TTOQ ih fvxrjv K<2aav. Here is a man supposed before God's breathing—if a man, then not a dead man, which is indeed no man, but one animated with the lower soul, common to him with beasts, and not to be imputed to a Divine breathing. But the breathing gave him, the honour, which (according to the Psalmist) distin- guished him from, and exalted him above the beasts that perish. As by the former he had an animal life, and that only : so by this breathing he became superior to all other visible animals. Mr. Dodwell asserts that in the Greek Text two words are used to denote two kinds of spii’its, one word which is called spuit in our translation is simply termed 4'^xv other termed i/vxv the latter is called the spu’it of man, being the same as the breath of life spoken of in Genesis, 2nd chapter verse 7, hence it is also said in Ecclesiastes, 3rd chapter, verse 21, who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth ? The ^vxv he argues is material, like the streams of odoriferous bodies, being the same as that referred to the beast, in the verse just quoted, the T^vxn X,(S<sa, immortal, ha\dng proceded directly from God, yet both these are to be distinguished from the spirit of God, which he believes from various passages in the New Testament is obtained alone by oui- Saviom-’s incaraation.