Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Thus the condition of the human body is known by the state of the pulse, urine, and the like. In the third and fourth kind, reductions are applicable to a great many things, and in the investigations of nature should be sought for on all sides.

Thus in its effect on the human body a bath is one thing, a slight sprinkling another.

Similarly leaven, yeast, curd, and certain poisons excite and invite a successive and continued motion in dough, beer, cheese, or the human body, not so much by the force of the exciting as by the predisposition and easy yielding of the excited body.

For mere power and mere knowledge exalt human nature, but do not bless it. We must therefore gather from the whole store of things such as make most for the uses of life. But a more proper place for speaking of these will be when I come to treat of applications to practice. Besides, in the work itself of interpretation in each particular subject, I always assign a place to the human chart, or chart of things to be wished for. For to form judicious wishes is as much a part of knowledge as to ask judicious questions.

For carnivorous animals cannot live on herbs, whence the order of Feuillans (though the will in man has more power over the body than in other animals) has after trial (they say) well nigh disappeared, the thing not being endurable by human nature.

For creation was not by the curse made altogether and forever a rebel, but in virtue of that charter "In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread," it is now by various labors (not certainly by disputations or idle magical ceremonies, but by various labors) at length and in some measure subdued to the supplying of man with bread, that is, to the uses of human life.

Nor let it be thought that some great deviation of structure would be necessary to catch the fancier's eye: he perceives extremely small differences, and it is in human nature to value any novelty, however slight, in one's own possession.

Others believe that the shape of the pelvis in the human mother influences by pressure the shape of the head of the child.

We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process.

Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor.