The human body and its connexion with man : illustrated by the principal organs / by James John Garth Wilkinson.

  • James John Garth Wilkinson
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The human body and its connexion with man : illustrated by the principal organs / by James John Garth Wilkinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    413/420 page 383
    numbers. At the point where they unite, they must of course fit; to fit, they must be of cup and ball construction; in other words, there must be a likeness or likiugness between them, and this likeness, when studied, becomes a scieuce of analogies. When the marriages of a dozen sciences have been observed, they all begin to group upon each other, and the thought strikes us that all the sciences fit to each, or that analogy is universal. Everything likes everything. This sends our curiosity abroad, and we come upon the thought of universal organization, and then we find that certain parts of nature, as vegetables, beasts, and men, are shining lights of organization ; that flesh, for instance, loves its part so well, and that they embrace so closely, that nothing can come be- tween them without pain, or destruction. Thus we only get to individuality as the result of a compact of sentient beings whom God has so closely linked in liking, that they cannot be sundered without mischief. The scientific individuality thus obtained, illustrates our common individuality, and we are constrained to think is a true statement of one part of its ground. Trom this point our thoughts become organic, and we are sure to make organization or association into a rule of judg- ment, and a method of discovery; insisting, by faith and science, that the whole world is covertly what the highest things in it are manifestly. We have found that the best and most speaking bodies are disposed in mutual order and help- fulness ; we dictate downwards, from the heights of nature, that this is the case with the other parts; and that their im- perfection consists in nothing else, than the fact that they do not so openly express the everlasting order. The plants are poor timid things which cannot tell us what they have in. them; the beasts have better voices; and mankind are dif- ferent over again, precisely according as they can display that association and organization which is the lesson of the whole. The best men indeed are still markedly individual; but why ? Only because they are the general officers of regiments or armies, and not because they have no world under them. They are dependent on much larger and broader bases than other people. The apex of the pyramid has a free point, but of all the parts, it rests at last the most heavily upon the ground.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3