Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
I am not now alluding to such phaenomena, at once rare and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plants, or the stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely spread, and at the same time, more subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contractility.
But though detached truths relating to the more complex order of phaenomena may be empirically observed, and a few of them even scientifically established, contemporaneously with an early stage of some of the sciences anterior in the scale, such detached truths, as M. Littré justly remarks, do not constitute a science.
Among these phaenomena we may esteem it a very favourable one to our present purposes that though fame in general be agreeable, yet we receive a much greater satisfaction from the approbation of those, whom we ourselves esteem and approve of, than of those, whom we hate and despise.
That science can only be admitted to explain the phaenomena; though at the same time it must be confest, they are so clear of themselves, that there is but little occasion to employ it.
On the other hand, impressions and passions are susceptible of an entire union; and like colours, may be blended so perfectly together, that each of them may lose itself, and contribute only to vary that uniform impression, which arises from the whole. Some of the most curious phaenomena of the human mind are derived from this property of the passions.
It may be that, by and by, philosophers will discover some higher laws of which the facts of life are particular cases very possibly they will find out some bond between physico-chemical phaenomena on the one hand, and vital phaenomena on the other.
We use those phaenomena to correct and to expand our law. And this belief that History is 'God educating man, is no mere hypothesis; it results from the observation of thousands of minds, throughout thousands of years.
Now, all foresight of phaenomena, and power over them, depend on knowledge of their sequences, and not upon any notion we may have formed respecting their origin or inmost nature. We foresee a fact or event by means of facts which are signs of it, because experience has shown them to be its antecedents.
These two phaenomena of the effects of relation and acquaintance will give mutual light to each other, and may be both explained from the same principle.
In the case of phaenomena which science has not yet taught us either to foresee or to control, the theological mode of thought has not ceased to operate: men still pray for rain, or for success in war, or to avert a shipwreck or a pestilence, but not to put back the stars in their courses, to abridge the time necessary for a journey, or to arrest the tides.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking