Natural causes

“ Thus the natural history of doubt, viewed as a chapter of human history, like the chapter of physiology which studies a disease, will point indirectly to the cure, or at least to the mode of avoiding the causes which induce the disease ”

“ We must, therefore, seek for origins of the phenomena in causes lying outside the body, and affecting it in such manner as to either render the natural actions and processes irregular, or to excite actions and processes that are altogether new. ”

“ Thus we have in the Ens Astrale a field in which exist the causes of numerous kinds of diseases; the thorough understanding of which requires a still deeper penetration into the secrets of nature and a higher conception of its constitution than is at present presented by the natural sciences of this day. ”

“ But, to complete this explanation, it is necessary to add that, in the production of their natural effects, creatures are more than instrumental. The primary cause, God, and the secondary causes, creatures, are both principal causes of natural effects ”

“ For as we divided natural philosophy in general into the inquiry of causes and productions of effects, so that part which concerneth the inquiry of causes we do subdivide according to the received and sound division of causes. The one part, which is physic, inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes; and the other, which is metaphysic, handleth the formal and final causes. ”

“ Darwin's views aside, the whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the 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. ”

“ and as the eye naturally seeks the light and vision, and our body naturally desires food and drink, so our mind is possessed with a becoming and natural desire to become acquainted with the truth of God and the causes of things. ”

“ Again; if an animal in a permanent condition, neither waxing nor wasting, may be taken as the normal state in which the functions of life measure time, in order that we may consider growth as an effect, to be referred to food as cause; we may, for other purposes, consider, as the normal condition, an animal waxing and then wasting, according to the usual law of animal life: and we must take this, the healthy progress of an animal, as our normal condition, if we have to consider causes which produce disease. ”

“ and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character. ”

“ If such cases could be observed, and their phenomena connected with physiological disturbances, we might see our way clear to speak with great confidence of a natural view of the world, determined by organic conditions and expressing the natural adjustment of the organism to its conditions of life. ”

“ It is clear that when the disturbing action, the cause of disease, works upon the fundamental element, the same causes will produce fundamentally similar effects; when, on the contrary, this action is exercised upon the acquired and special element of each race, the same causes will produce different effects. ”

“ It must be remembered that when these notions originated, comparatively nothing was known of the nature of the human body, its organic needs and the desirability of rational control of the natural functions of the organism. ”

“ But we have learned from our daily experience that in the physical world He is pleased to employ the agency of secondary causes; and when we know that for many ages a certain effect has been uniformly produced by a certain cause, and not otherwise, then if we again see the effect, we infer the cause. ”

“ There are four natures out of which the body is compacted, earth and fire and water and air, and the unnatural excess or defect of these, or the change of any of them from its own natural place into another, or-since there are more kinds than one of fire and of the other elements-the assumption by any of these of a wrong kind, or any similar irregularity, produces disorders and diseases ”

“ But what is this natural definition of health? I can only conceive that health should be defined in natural terms as the normal state of an organism; for undoubtedly disease is also a natural product. To say that health is what is preserved by evolution, and what itself tends to preserve, in the struggle for existence, the organism which possesses it, comes to the same thing: for the point of evolution is that it pretends to give a causal explanation of why some forms of life are normal and others are abnormal; it explains the origin of species. ”

“ Now, if we examine the real nature of those two important properties of life, we find that we can trace them, like all physiological functions, to physical and chemical causes, to the properties and the phenomena of motion of those substances of which the bodies of animals and plants consist. ”

“ I mean the application of the laws of life to explain the nature and causes of diseases, and the methods of curing them, which must always be imperfect, and conjectural, unless the nature of the diseases themselves be well understood. ”

“ And here I confess that to my mind the argument does acquire a weight which, if long and attentively considered, deserves to be regarded as enormous. For, although this and that particular adjustment in Nature may be seen to be proximately due to physical causes, and although we are prepared on the grounds of the largest possible analogy to infer that all other such particular cases are likewise due to physical causes, the more ultimate question arises, How is it that all physical causes conspire, by their united action, to the production of a general order of Nature? ”

“ More to the point, at this stage of our inquiry, than a formally precise definition of Nature, is a consideration of the motives which lead us to acknowledge as real the facts that we all call physical, — viz. to acknowledge the existence of matter, the laws of natural processes, and the dependence of our own mental life upon these processes. To this aspect of the problem of Nature we accordingly at once proceed. ”

“ One of the important characteristics of the biological process is the final cause, the purpose formed by natural selection out of chance variations, and leading to the preservation of that process, to the preservation of the individual. ”

“ The reason is, That as all the Parts of Nature are Self-knowing, so they are Self-loving: Also, Regular Societies beget an united Love, by Regular Agreements, which cause a Rational Fear of a disuniting, or dissolving; and that is the reason, that upon the perception of such a Disease, the Rational, through some disorder, figures that Disease; and the Sensitive Corporeal Motions, take a pattern from the Rational, and so the Disease is produced. ”

“ The vis vitæ or vital principle—for we are compelled by the imperfection of our knowledge to associate under this one term the ultimate causes of many of the phenomena of life—is a [Pg 392] power which, although constantly employed, has the capability of continually renewing itself by some inexplicable connection existing between it and many external influences. We know that certain conditions are necessary to the health of animals. Diseased digestion, or any interruption in the circulation of the blood, destroys the vital force, and death ensues. ”

“ I affirm it; and say moreover, that as she is the onely Physicianess, so she is also the onely Destroyeress and Murtheress of all particular Creatures, and their particular lives; for she dissolves and transforms as well as she frames and creates; and acts according to her pleasure, either for the increase or decrease, augmentation or destruction, sickness or health, life or death of Particular Creatures. But concerning Diseases, your Authors opinion is, That a Disease is as Natural as Health. ”

“ Since feeling and voluntary motion are peculiar to animals, whilst growth and nutrition are common to plants as well, we may look on the former as effects of the soul and the latter as effects of nature. ”

“ In this work new theories, some revolutionary in the extreme, are advanced as to the nature of disease, the action of drugs and stimulants, the germ theory, the quantity of food necessary to sustain life, of cancer, insanity, pain, fatigue, sleep, death, the causation and maintenance of bodily heat and of human vitality. ”

“ How has this 'combination of the elements and other physical causes, so contrary to the enlargement of animal nature in this new world, these obstacles to the developement and formation of great germs*,' been arrested and suspended, so as to permit the human body to acquire its just dimensions, and by what inconceivable process has their action been directed on his mind alone? ”

“ In order to take this calm attitude toward disease as a natural phenomenon and attempt to explain it, it may be necessary to move backward toward simpler problems from man to the higher animals, from these to lower types, from the complex processes of the human machine to the physical and chemical phenomena of the inorganic world. ”

“ From this criterion it may always be determined, whether more diseases than one are comprehended under one name; a circumstance which has much impeded the investigation of the causes, and cures of diseases. ”

“ The innumerable external influences which disturb the natural condition of our organs, or the balance of the functions which they perform, as, for example, excess or privation of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat ”

“ In the progress of connected natural phenomena, from East 18to West, that great law of nature is plainly revealed which has so often and evidently manifested itself in the earth’s organism, as well as in the state of nations dependent upon it. ”

“ In nature causation assumes three different forms; that of cause in the narrow sense, of stimulus, and of motive, on which differences depend the true distinctions between inorganic bodies, plants, and animals. ”

“ While we rest satisfied with unanalyzed causes, we may be sure both that we do not rightly comprehend the production of the particular effects ascribed to them, and that we overlook other effects which would be revealed to us by contemplation of the causes as analyzed. ”

“ It is necessary to reduce the physiological and developmental, and all the other processes of life, to terms of physical and chemical processes, and thus to reduce the living to the not living, and to derive the organic from the forces and substances of inanimate nature. ”

“ Again, in his work on "Man's Place in Nature," he expresses himself much to the same effect: "A true physical cause is admitted to be such only on one condition, that it shall account for all the phenomena which come within the range of its operation. ”

“ Nor ought it to be forgotten, that cultivation and artificial habits may have blunted the natural susceptibility of our organs, and in some instances changed and depraved their functions: certain qualities for instance are so strongly connected with each other by the chain of association, that by presenting only one to the mind, the other links follow in succession. ”

“ This force is influenced and modified in its action, when exercised in the regulation of nutrition, growth, and reproduction of tissues, by the passions and emotions of the mind. All the secretions and functions of the body are more or less susceptible of being accelerated, retarded or modified by the psychical relations of mind and matter. ”

“ We live simply and in accordance with Nature's laws, and disease, such as prevails in your land and others, is unknown in this, and has been for ages. Science and scientific discovery, as we utilize and employ them, have freed us from disease and made death but the exchange of lives. ”

“ The answer is that the vibratory conditions of the organism must be in harmony with Nature's established harmonic relations in the physical, mental, moral, spiritual and psychical realms of human life and action. ”

“ The causes of definitely directed evolution are contained, according to my view, in the effects produced by outward circumstances and influences such as climate and nutrition upon the constitution of a given organism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For ever since the attention of investigators was directed to the problems of growth, of nutrition, of development and so on, and particularly as knowledge has passed from primitive and unmethodical forms to real science, it has been taken as a matter of course that chemical and physical processes play a large part in life, and indeed that everything demonstrable, visible, or analysable, does come about “naturally,” as it is said. ”

“ THE HUMAN BODY
The world is compounded of the five elements,—earth, water, air, fire, and ether. So too is our body. It is a sort of miniature world. Hence the body stands in need of all the elements in due proportion,—pure earth, pure water, pure fire or sunlight, pure air, and open space. When any one of these falls short of its due proportion, illness is caused in the body. ”