Can

“ I will proceed by asking a question: Would you not say that a horse has some end?
I should.
And the end or use of a horse or of anything would be that which could not be accomplished, or not so well accomplished, by any other thing?
I do not understand, he said.
Let me explain: Can you see, except with the eye?
Certainly not.
Or hear, except with the ear?
No.
These then may be truly said to be the ends of these organs? ”

“ What is more surprising still, what moreover we cannot comprehend at all, is the delicate sensitiveness of tact—I would almost say of instinct—with which each one of the million millions of tiny atoms of which our body is composed, draws out of the blood—the common food of all—exactly that aliment which is necessary to it, leaving the rest to his neighbor, and this without ever making a mistake. ”

“ But he thinks that along with the power, or as part of the conception of Power, the material organ is also signified. It seems to me that the organ does not enter in either of these modes, into the signification of the word. We can imagine ourselves ignorant that we possess physical organs; or aware that we possess them, but not aware that our sensations of smell are connected with them. ”

“ A heart, the doors and walls of which are in perfect order, through which flows freely the full stream of a healthy man's red blood; lungs deep, clear, easily filled, easily emptied; a body that can bend and twist and be straightened again in ceaseless rhythmical movement; limbs tireless; the very spirit of primeval man conquering primeval nature—all these go into the cutting of the hemp. ”

“ Now if we have succeeded in drawing the distinction between a merely material organism and the mind, or soul, in which is all faculty, and which uses the external organ as its instrument of action, we can proceed still further. ”

“ The reason of this rule will be understood on reflecting, that if the cane is carried in the useful hand, it must necessarily be conveyed to the other every [118] time a man bows; it is a poor action, and presents an awkward appearance, especially if the cane drops. ”

“ To understand what I mean, consider any animal—a dog, for instance—how much every animal has in it what men have,—a body, and brain, and heart; it hungers and thirsts as we do, it can feel pleasure and pain, anger and loneliness, and fear and madness ”

“ Being transparent, so anyone can see through me, I'd look nice, wouldn't I, with a common mouse inside me? But the fact is that I haven't any stomach or other machinery that would permit me to eat things. ”

“ When you can tell me why a wheat grain cannot produce an oak, or an acorn a wheat plant; when you can tell me why our bodies are, each of them, the very same bodies which they were ten years ago, though every atom of flesh, and blood, and bone in them has been changed; when, in short, you, or any other living man, can tell me the meaning of those three words, body, life, and growth, then it will be time to ask that question. ”

“ The physiological reason of the fact I’m very ignorant of, but for the truth and frequency I can well vouch, that there are certain people, certain faces, certain voices, certain whiskers, legs, waistcoats, and guard-chains, that inevitably produce the most striking effects upon the brain of a gentleman already excited by wine, and not exactly cognizant of his own peculiar fallacies. ”

“ The above analogy might be illustrated, if necessary, by a thousand instances; but perhaps one will be sufficient to prove that the mind, as well as the body, hath its powers of digestion, of absorption, and of secretion, and that, if those powers are not exercised, it is impossible that any mental food can be fully received and admitted by it. ”

“ A word or an expression, having been long in use exclusively among the working classes, or in the easy talk of certain trades, gradually penetrates into the colloquial speech of the cultivated—sometimes with a slight change of the sense—and suddenly appears one day in refined literary language. In actual English, there are many such expressions, originating partly from cant, partly from slang [2] . ”

“ He upon whose finger it is worn, can understand the language of animals, the properties of plants, and it shall also have power to stanch the blood from any wound, howsoever dangerous, which its wearer shall receive. ”

“ As there will be found an obstacle at the entrance of the paunch, the cane must be pushed with additional force; and, as soon as a smell is observed to proceed from that place, and the animal's body sinks, the cure is performed, and Nature will complete the rest. ”

“ The humane plan, however, requires at first both trouble and patience; and trouble some schoolmasters do not like, and patience they do not possess; the use of the cane is quick, sharp, decisive, and at the time effective. ”

“ Cant is by some people derived from one Andrew Cant, who, they say, was a Presbyterian minister in some illiterate part of Scotland, who by exercise and use had obtained the faculty, alias gift, of talking in the pulpit in such a dialect that ’tis said he was understood by none but his own congregation,—and not by all of them. ”

“ Indeed, a very fair account of mankind might be made by writing the story, of its canes. And nothing that would readily occur to mind would more eloquently express a civilisation than its evident attitude toward canes. Perhaps nothing can more subtly convey the psychology of a man than his feeling about a cane. ”

“ This change of the subjective to the objective may be illustrated by the simplest sensations. What we call sweet or sour, red or yellow, no one will deny to be purely subjective. We can only say, I have such or such a sensation. But others claim also to have the sensation of sweet or sour, and the rest. ”

“ From whom else, I ask again, can they come? Can they come from our bodies? Our bodies? What are they?—Flesh and bones, made up of air and water and earth,—out of the dead bodies of the animals, the dead roots and fruits of plants which we eat. ”

“ My Dear Sir, My Dear Sir,It cannot have escaped your observation, that the five bodily senses, called seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, are the only doors of your communication with the outward visible world of nature, insomuch that if these doors are removed, or even closed, you would be as insensible as a stone to all the variety of earthly objects by which you are encompassed ”

“ In certain nervous conditions, natural or provoked, this Force can possess the human organism and bring about, temporarily, either a change in one’s personality or an alteration in one’s sensations and in the intellectual and moral faculties. ”

“ It is a good rule in physiology, when we are studying the meaning of an organ, to ask after its most peculiar and characteristic sort of performance, and to seek its office in that one of its functions which no other organ can possibly exert. Surely the same maxim holds good in our present quest. The essence of religious experiences, the thing by which we finally must judge them, must be that element or quality in them which we can meet nowhere else. ”

“ These senses, like the sense of seeing, have their several organs, as the ear, the tongue and palate, the nostrils, and the skin, all which organs, when explored by anatomical skill, bespeak a wisdom Divine and incomprehensible; compared with which the utmost ingenuity of man is but like the light of a candle compared with the splendour of the sun. ”

“ I said to you before, and I felt at the time that it was rather beyond you, that "each one of our organs is a distinct being, which has its particular nature and special office, its separate life consequently; and our individual life is the sum total of all these lesser lives, independent one of the other, but which nevertheless blend together, by a mysterious combination, into one common life, which is diffused everywhere, but can be apprehended nowhere in particular." ”

“ They carry, however, in lieu of arms, canes dried in the sun, on the ends of which they fix heads of dried wood, sharpened to a point, and even these they dare not use habitually ... and have fled in such haste at the approach of our men, that the fathers forsook their children and the children their fathers.... ”

“ "A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes," answered the Roman Candle in a low whisper; ”

“ To say that mind is a product or function of protoplasm, or of its molecular changes, is to use words to which we can attach no clear conception. ”

“ The conception of a dog indicates a rule, according to which my imagination can delineate the figure of a four-footed animal in general, without being limited to any particular individual form which experience presents to me, or indeed to any possible image that I can represent to myself in concreto. This schematism of our understanding in regard to phenomena and their mere form, is an art, hidden in the depths of the human soul, whose true modes of action we shall only with difficulty discover and unveil. ”

“ You should instruct the sick that Soul is Substance, and body its idea; that disease is not in the idea of Soul or immortality, nor can it exist in shadow, the body of Soul, therefore it has no existence. ”

“ When we talk of cannibals, we proudly smile and proclaim our superiority over these savages. ”

“ Those who wish honestly to learn the laws of Madam How, which we call Nature, by looking honestly at what she does, which we call Fact, have only to begin by looking at the very smallest thing, pin’s head or pebble, at their feet, and it may lead them—whither, they cannot tell. ”

“ Canning possesses! The amplest stores of his mind are unfolded to their inmost source—the classic lore, the historic page, the philosophic doubt, the sage reply, the sprightly allusion, the delicate irony, the happy turning of a period or insinuation of a paragraph with senatorial dignity and Ovidian grace—are all here concocted, studied, revised, varnished over, till the sense aches at their glossy beauty and sickens at hopeless perfection. Our modern orator’s thoughts have been declared by some to have all the elegance of the antique ”

“ The spirit, like the body, can be strengthened and developed by frequent exercise. Just as the body, if neglected, grows weaker and finally impotent, so the spirit perishes if untended. ”

“ How wonderful is it, that these same spiritual principles can, at one time, influence the organs of speech, so as to produce articulate sounds, and thus convey ideas; whilst, at another time, they can act upon the arms and hands, and by putting them in motion give birth to actions! For on what ground, except that of the appointment of the DIVINE WILL and WISDOM, can we account for this otherwise inexplicable commerce between mental volition and bodily action,—in consequence of which commerce, the organs of the body are perpetually at the nod of the decisions of the mind? ”

“ May thy doctrine abound, in deeds more than words! In saying few words, till Thou our land with labour, that by much tillage the scanty seed may become rich, the increase of the old seed, may come among us thirtyfold, and thy new seed sixtyfold. ”

“ Who knows the countless associations that mingle with his each and every thought? Who can pick apart all the nameless feelings that stream in at every moment from his various internal organs, muscles, heart, glands, lungs, etc., and compose in their totality his sense of bodily life? Who is aware of the part played by feelings of innervation and suggestions of possible muscular exertion in all his judgments of distance, shape, and size? Consider, too, the difference between a sensation which we simply have and one which we attend to. Attention gives results that seem like fresh creations ”

“ Is it the flesh that saith, “Praise thou the Lord, O my soul”? And can the flesh suggest good counsel to the soul? However much the flesh be conquered, and subjected as a servant to us through strength which the Lord imparteth, that it serve us entirely as a bond slave, enough for us that it hinder us not....For the body, inasmuch as it is the body, is even beneath the soul; and every soul, however vile, is found more excellent than the most excellent body. And let not this seem to you to be wonderful, that even any vile and sinful soul is better than any great and most surpassing body. ”

“ So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet, in his kind, Is bit by him that comes behind: Who, though too little to be seen, Can teaze, and gall, and give the spleen; ”

“ Without writing to prejudice the question, I believe, in my turn, that I can solemnly affirm that this force has intimate connection with the soul, the mind or the ministerial part of our being, as it is called; that it acts on our ideas as well as on our physiological functions, and it is to my mind the destiny of humanity to investigate its essence and study its phenomena, its manifestations and all its sensible effects by all our senses and means of investigation. ”

“ His book on crime was entertainin’ enough as far as it went, but the fellow’s got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God’s a secretion of the liver—all right once in a way, but there’s no need to keep on about it. There’s nothing you can’t prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited. ”

“ Passepartout was astounded, and, though ready to attempt anything to get over Medicine Creek, thought the experiment proposed a little too American. ”

“ For is it an indisputable fact, that a chemical process is every instant carrying on in the deep centre of our corporeal frame, over which process we have no control, and which can only be accounted for by referring it to the agency of some power above ourselves? ”

“ All that mere examination can effect, is to investigate whether an individual has duly prepared himself for the discharge of certain functions; but it never can presume to ascertain whether the person is one fitted by nature, by habit, by taste, or inclination, for the duties before him. Why, the student who may answer the most abstruse questions in anatomy, may himself have nerves so weak as to faint at the sight of blood. ”

“ At one time I thought the Editor of the Lancet would kindly publish a letter from me on the subject, but further reflection led me to doubt whether an insignificant individual would be noticed without some special introduction. ”