Physiology and animal mechanism : first-book of natural history, prepared for the use of schools and colleges / by W.S.W. Ruschenberger ; from the text of Milne Edwards & Achille Comté.

  • Milne-Edwards, H. (Henri), 1800-1885.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiology and animal mechanism : first-book of natural history, prepared for the use of schools and colleges / by W.S.W. Ruschenberger ; from the text of Milne Edwards & Achille Comté. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    and one may, therefore, confine himself to the description of observable facts, and he will find nothing in them, the knowledge of which can be, in the slightest degree, at variance with morality or religion. These elementary notions, early imparted to children, will contribute to the progress of their minds and reason, render the other studies to which they may dedicate themselves, more easy and more brilliant, and will serve as a basis to the more profound knowledge they may acquire in riper years. The spectacle of Nature is the striking assemblage of all that is most wise, most beautiful, most simple, and most wonderful; all this, however, would be ephemeral, if God had not the secret of uniting together all these productions, of perpetuating them in an immutable order, and of placing man in the midst of this ever moving scene, that he might be as the mirror wherein are reflected the various images of the universe. Man was a necessity to the creation; and it is with him alone that the intelligence of created things began. Bacon has given an admirable definition of science : Science, says he, is man added to nature. In vaia would the earth open its bosom to show in broad day the combinations of its metals, the agglutination of its stones or the chrystallization of its salts ; in vain would the emerald or topaz exist in transparent columns, and the waters gush through the rent rocks in limpid and living streams; all these sublime phenomena would be with- out value, without object; in a word, Nature would not be understood, if man had not been created to know and describe her. Indeed, if we carry our thoughts back to the primitive ages of the world, to those epochs that preceded the appearance of man upon the earth, we dis- cover that all the imagination finds to dwell upon is gigantic, without form and monstrous; the mind passes in fear from the account of a revolution to the history of the deluge, where there is nought but destruction and submer- sion, painful labor and abortion. Pyrites enkindle the volcanoes; burning sul- phur perpetuates these vast conflagrations; boiling waters are decomposed in their fires ; from these craters rush forth flames and burning lava ; their accu- mulations are projected into the midst of rivers, and turn them violently from their course ; electric detonations shake the earth far and wide, and open it in frightful rents ; the ocean beholds its bed torn up by volcanic eruptions; new isles raise their smoking heads above the waves; and, too ponderous for the pedicles that support them, like some magic promontories, they soon disappear, and the heaps of their ruins form the base of steep rocks which may at some future time become vast continents. In these incoherent preludes we perceive chaos; and it is only at remote periods we are permitted to detect some unfinished phenomena of an uncertain and incomplete life, a life which struggles against nihility, and overcomes it only with difficulty, a life that would take possession of the globe, and which contends against the laws of inert matter, the dominion of which is universal.