Proteus or unity in nature.

  • Radcliffe, Charles Bland, 1822-1889.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Proteus or unity in nature. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    the phenomena of the will no less than in those of the imagination and the memory, for this commingling of being may be looked upon as itself unintelligible unless it be assumed that different people are — by being subject to the law of unity in diversity and diversity in unity—substantially one. So likewise with the intellect. The mighty power which speculates, not only upon the world of appear- ances, but upon such abstract mysteries as infinity, eternity, absolute goodness, absolute truth, absolute justice, unity, cosmical law, Deity—which is ever asking xvhy, and never doubting that it is entitled to a satis- factory answer in every case,—which is as free of time and space as are the powers of memory and imagination, —is surely something more than cerebration or anything of the kind. And, as surely, this impression is only deepened by looking into the facts a little more par- ticularly. As it seems to me, the notion that the intelligence is something which is hemmed in within the bounds of the body or subjected to any kind of limitation, is flatly contradicted by the simple presence in the mind of any abstract idea. It is to me inconceivable that the idea of eternity, for example, can have a lodgement in a brain- cell. I might, perhaps, allow that impressions of a certain sort upon this cell may by myriad blows give rise to the notion of time ; but that any multiplica- tion of these impressions should cause the idea of time to change into that of eternity is altogether beyond my powers of comprehension. These two ideas have nothing in common ; and to think that the idea of eternity should arise in this way, would seem to be almost as absurd as to suppose that a clock, by dint of O