Electrical-psychology, or, The electrical philosophy of mental impressions, including a new philosophy of sleep and of consciousness / from the works of J.B. Dods and J.S. Grimes ; revised and edited by H.G. Darling.

  • Grimes J. Stanley (James Stanley), 1807-1903.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Electrical-psychology, or, The electrical philosophy of mental impressions, including a new philosophy of sleep and of consciousness / from the works of J.B. Dods and J.S. Grimes ; revised and edited by H.G. Darling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    examine the raw material out of which worlds were manufactured. It is the most commonly received opinion in the Christian world, that God made all things out of no- thing. It is true the inspired book does not say, or even hint tnis. It simply says— In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;'' but it does not add the words—out of nothing. It is absolutely and philosophically impossible, in the very nature and constitution of things, that something can be made out of nothing. It implies, at the same time, a contradic- tion in terms. We cannot form even a notion in our imaginations how much of nothing it would take to make the least imaginable something. We are speak- ing of nothing in the strictest sense of the word. But using the word nothing in its common acceptation, we can easily perceive how all things could have been made out of nothing. When all visible objects are removed from a room, we say there is nothing in it— it is empty. Yet we know that it is filled with air, because we continue to bieathe. But if the air, by a force-pump, were removed from an air-tight room, we might, with much more propriety, say there is nothing in it; yet electricity would be there. If solid sub- stances were therefore made out of air, in an empty room, we could say that they were made out of nothing, for the room, according to the usual mode of expression, had nothing in it. But admitting the air to have been extracted from the room, and nothing but electricity left, and if solid substances were produced from this ethereal and invisible fluid, we could with much mere