Winds of Doctrine: Being an Examination of the Modern Theories of Automatism and Evolution |
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absolutely accept action affinities aggregate ammonia Amphibia animals apes appear argument Ascidians assertion automaton Belfast Belfast Address believe bodies brute carbonic acid certainly chemical chemistry combination compounds conclusion consciousness correlation Crown 8vo Darwin demonstration Demy 8vo doctrine of Evolution doctrines true electricity ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING embryology endowment essay evidence existence facts faculty favour fessor formation germ Haeckel Herbert Spencer higher Human Automatism Huxley's hydrogen hypothesis idea illustration inorganic matter inquire intellect intelligence larvæ Lay Sermons light living protoplasm logical Man's Place manifestations mechanical molecular mollusc Monera motion natural selection observation ontology ordinary matter organic force organisation Origin of Species oxygen phenomena philosophy Phylogenesis Place in Nature possible present principle produce Professor Huxley Professor Tyndall properties protoplasm proved question R. A. PROCTOR reason recognised resembling scientific structure suppose theory thought tion truth Tyndall's Vertebrata vital volition whilst
Popular passages
Page 53 - Put out the light, and then put out the light. If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me; but once put out thy light, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume.
Page 65 - But I bid you beware that, in accepting these conclusions, you are placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which, in most people's estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes of heaven.
Page 32 - But expectation is permissible where belief is not; and if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions, which it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter.
Page 150 - At the same time, no one is more strongly convinced than I am of the vastness of the gulf between civilized man and the brutes ; or is more certain that, whether from them or not, he is assuredly not of them.
Page 41 - Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen unite in certain proportions and under certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid ; hydrogen and oxygen produce water ; nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to ammonia. These new compounds, like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeJess.
Page 30 - ... production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between man and the rest of the living world, and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed — from the inorganic to the organic — from blind force to conscious intellect and will.
Page 127 - Madeira beetles is mainly due to the action of natural selection, combined probably with disuse. For during many successive generations each individual beetle which flew least, either from its wings having been ever so little less perfectly developed or from indolent habit, will have had the best chance of surviving from not being blown out to sea; and, on the other hand, those beetles which most readily took to flight would oftenest have been blown to sea and thus have been destroyed.
Page 25 - We are conscious automata, endowed with free will in the only intelligible sense of that much-abused term — inasmuch as in many respects we are able to do as we like — but none the less parts of the great series of causes and effects which, in unbroken continuity, composes that which is, and has been, and shall be — the sum of existence.
Page 15 - You cannot satisfy the human understanding in its demand for logical continuity between molecular processes and the phenomena of consciousness. This is a rock on which materialism must inevitably split whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of life.
Page 51 - We reach the protogenes of Haeckel, in which we have "a type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its finely granular character.