An history of the earth, and animated nature / [Oliver Goldsmith].

  • Goldsmith, Oliver, 1730?-1774
Date:
1790
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An history of the earth, and animated nature / [Oliver Goldsmith]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    196/424 (page 186)
    •the fhape of the objects, by which they are fur* rounded, as they want this organ, which ferves to examine andmeafure their forms, their rifings and depredions. A quadrupede, probably con- ceives as erroneous an idea of any thing near him, as a child would of a rock, or a mountain, that it beheld at a didance. It may be for this reafon, that we often fee them frighted at things. with which they ought to be better acquainted. Fifties, whofe bodies are covered with feales, and who have no organs for feeling, mult be the mod Itupid of all animals. Serpents, that are like wife deditute, are yet, by winding round feveral bodies, better capable of judging of their form. Ail thefe, however, can have but very imperfect ideas from feeling; and we.have already feen, when deprived of this fenfe, how little the red of the fenfes are to be relied on. The feeling, therefore, is the guardian, the judge, and the examiner of all the red of the fenfes. It edablidies their information, and detects their errors. All the other fenfes are altered by time, and contradud heir former evidence; but the touch dill continues the fame; and though extremely condned in its operations, yet it is never found to deceive. The univerfe, to a men who had only ufed the red of his fenfes, would be but a feene of if*.