Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 edition. Excerpt: ...between the soul and instinct, since there is nothing in Nature that denotes superflnity. Hence, also, it is that instinct is in full operation at the birth of animals, when there is no display of it in the human race, and while the soul is only slowly developed in its operations. And thus do the physiological and final causes concur together. And now comes up the remarkable anatomical fact, which goes, also, to the same conclusion, (although it might be perverted if left without its physiological solution, ) that instinctive acts are irrespective of the progressive stages of cerebral development, while those of the human mind wait for that development. This corresponds, in respect to animals, exactly with what we know of the perfection of the functions of all other parts at all stages of life, and with what we have seen of the objects of reason and ofinstinct, since instinct must be in early operation for the exigencies of organic life, while reason, in the complexities of its functions, is only ready, in a general sense, to act when the brain shall have acquired sufiicient maturity for those endless physical impressions which come through the medium of the senses, and from which the soul gathers its earliest treasures of knowledge. This, then, is the relative aspect in which must be regarded the correspondence between the progres sive development or hardening of the brain and the operations of the mind in early life; the development or maturity of the brain having as well a reference to the multifarious physical contributions from the senses, as to its co-operation with the soul in acts of intellection. The soul, therefore, may be, abstractedly considered, in as perfect a state in infancy as at any stage of life; and thus does the..