Natural causes and supernatural seemings / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Maudsley, Henry, 1835-1918.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural causes and supernatural seemings / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    the recompense would be just, whether in truth it would not be « ~pense sc.,ht is out^all^o portion to the suffering undergone or the merit shown smce ?t is a claim to eternity in compensation ^ —^^2 the second place, the compensation ought rightly to include other living creatures besides man, since .^^ -^l^J^^^J^;^^^^^^^^ that they, unlike him, should be nowise indenimfied for he r great and grievous sufferings in this world, the ^^^^f j^^^' . ;erhaps, are inflicted upon them by hmi advisedly for his uses o wan only for his pleasures. Is it just that he the grea oppressor, shall be recompensed, and that they the heli^le victims who have never sinned by eating forbidden food, shall have no compensation?* . . That man takes no serious thought of this injustice, or thinks the injustice fully justified by his pre-eminence because dominion has been divinely given to him over every living thino- proves how much he is thmking of himself only m the matter; how entirely his notions of his own special destiny are inspired by an exacting and exclusive egoism. That being so, it is quite possible that his protest against the order ot nature in his case is the wail of egoism using all it can for its profit, and rebelling against the subordination of itself_ to the whole which in the end uses it for its profit; exacting an order of things in conformity with its pretensions as the aim and end of things created; postulating an immortal satisfaction of its delirious desires; and that supernatural aspirations will die out when, by attaining to a true know- ledge of his own nature and its relations, man ceases to distinguish himself absolutely from the rest of nature and gains a true sense of proportion. As a just sense of pro- portion is a saving grace to the individual, so it may be also to the race. It weakens not, strengthens rather, this theory that those who are loudest in their wailing outcries against the order of natural things, and in passionate demands for a compensating supernatural order, are just those who by * No doubt the animal feels sure that the world was made for it, and, being happily unburdened with reason, does not divine that it has been made to be butchered for man's benefit—to yield him sport, food, and clothing.