Religio medici with Observations thereon / by Sir Kenelm Digby. To which is added, Hydriotaphia, or Urn-burial, a discourse on sepulchral urns; and also Christian morals ; by Sir Thomas Browne.

  • Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religio medici with Observations thereon / by Sir Kenelm Digby. To which is added, Hydriotaphia, or Urn-burial, a discourse on sepulchral urns; and also Christian morals ; by Sir Thomas Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    the world,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “ I count it not an inn, but a hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.” This, though somewhat forced and extravagant is intelligible. He undoubtedly here means, by “ the world,” that material domicile ap- pointed to be our prison,—albeit not an uncheerful one,—during the state of probation in which we ex- ist here below. He then continues:—“the world I regard is myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on : for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation.” Here the perspicuity of the sentence is no doubt disturbed, in some degree, by quaintness and affectation ; but we can still see our way, and arrive, I think, at a pure meaning, as de- void of overweening vanity as anything in the whole work. He is clearly not contrasting himself, Thomas Browne, with other men, and the general frame-work of society, often, in conventional phraseology, termed “ the world”—the parallel lies between man, as an intellectual being, and that stupendous elemental structure which he inhabits; and he prefers, he observes, contemplating himself, (as that representative of human nature which he could most conveniently command) to the investi- gation cf those laws which regulate the movements and preserve the existence of the universe. So far there is no remarkable display of personal vanity. Socrates, the wisest at once and humblest of men, pursued the same course, and probably was the model which Browne, when he wrote the above, had in his mind.