The hand: its mechanism and vital endowments as evincing design / By Charles Bell.

  • Charles Bell
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hand: its mechanism and vital endowments as evincing design / By Charles Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    34/400 page 6
    powerful Being should manifest his will in this manner; that mechanical contrivance implies difficulties overcome : and how strange it is, they add, that the perceptions of the mind, which might have been produced by some direct means, or have arisen spontaneously, should be received through an instrument so fine and complex as the eye;—and which requires the creation of the ele- ment of light, to enter the organ and to cause vision. For my own part, I think it most natural to contemplate the subject quite differently. We perhaps presume too much when we say that light has been created for the purpose of vision. We are hardly entitled to pass over its properties as a chemical agent, its influence on the gases, and, in all probability, on the atmosphere, its importance to vegetation, to the formation of the aromatic and volatile principles and to fructifi- cation, its influence on the animal surface by in- vigorating the circulation, and imparting health. In relation to our present subject, it seems more rational to consider light second only to attrac- tion in respect to its importance in nature, and as a link connecting systems of infinite remoteness. To have a conception of this we must tutor our minds, and acquire some measure of the velocity of light, and of the space which it fills. It is not sufficient to say that it moves 200,000 miles in a second; for we can compre-
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