The Constitution of Man Considered in Relation to the Natural Laws |
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Page 36
Now all this kind of gratification is of a pure and disinterested nature , and has no reference to any of the common purposes of life ; yet it is a pleasure , an enjoyment . You are nothing the richer for it ; you do not gratify your ...
Now all this kind of gratification is of a pure and disinterested nature , and has no reference to any of the common purposes of life ; yet it is a pleasure , an enjoyment . You are nothing the richer for it ; you do not gratify your ...
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The Constitution of Man, Considered in Relation to the Natural Laws George Combe No preview available - 2019 |
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according acquiring action activity adapted advantages afford animal appears applied arise arranged attended become benevolent body brain cause CHAPTER condition conduct consequences constitution CONTINUED course creation Creator death desire direct discover duty earth effect enable energy enjoy enjoyment evils example exercise exertion existence external faculties fall feel follow give given gratification happiness heat higher human ignorant important improvement increase individual inflicted influence infringement instance instituted interest knowledge labor laws of nature less light live lower man's means ment mental mind moral and intellectual moral law moral sentiments muscular natural laws necessary neglect nervous never obedience obey object observe operation organic laws pain perceive persons physical laws pleasure possess powers practical present principle produce propensities punishment qualities race reason regard relations render result suffer tion vigor whole
Popular passages
Page 35 - There is something," says an eloquent writer, " positively agreeable to all men, to all at least whose nature is not most grovelling and base, in gaining knowledge for its own sake. When you see any thing for the first time, you at once derive some gratification from the sight being new ; your attention is awakened, and you desire to know more about it. If it is a piece of workmanship, as an instrument, a machine of any...
Page 31 - It has been computed by some political arithmetician that if every man and woman would work for four hours each day on something useful, that labor would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life, want and misery would be banished out of the world, and the rest of the twenty-four hours might be leisure and pleasure.
Page 35 - You feel this desire, too, without at all considering that the machine or the animal may ever be of the least use to yourself practically; for, in all probability, you may never see them again. But you have a curiosity to learn all about them, because they are new and unknown. You accordingly make inquiries ; you feel a gratification in getting answers to your questions, that is, in receiving information, and in knowing more — in being better informed than you were before.
Page 64 - Cook had not known that no application had been made to it, he declared that he should certainly have inquired, with a very interested curiosity, after the vulnerary herbs and surgical art of the country. An additional evidence of human nature's being untainted with disease in New Zealand, is the great number of old men with whom it abounds. Many of them, by the loss of their hair and teeth, appeared to be very ancient, and yet none of them were decrepid. Although they were not equal to the young...
Page 36 - If you see another instrument or animal, in some respects like, but differing in other particulars, you find it pleasing to compare them together, and to note in what they agree and in what they differ. Now, all this kind of gratification is of a pure and disinterested nature, and has no reference to any of the common purposes of life ; yet it is a pleasure — an enjoyment. You are nothing the richer for it; you do not gratify your palate or any other bodily appetite ; and yet it is so pleasing,...
Page 123 - Now, in the present state, all which we enjoy, and a great part of what we suffer, is put in our own power. For pleasure and pain are the consequences of our actions ; and we are endued by the Author of our Nature with capacities of foreseeing these consequences.
Page iii - If there be a superintending Providence, and if his will be manifested by general laws operating both on the physical and moral world, then must a violation of these laws be a violation vii of his will, and be pregnant with inevitable misery.
Page 123 - I know not that we have any one kind or degree of enjoyment but by the means of our own actions. And by prudence and care we may, for the most part, pass our days in tolerable ease and quiet : or, on the contrary, we may, by rashness, ungoverned passion, wilfulness, or even by negligence, make ourselves as miserable as ever we please.
Page 123 - And many do please to make themselves extremely miserable; ie they do what they know beforehand will render them so. They follow those ways, the fruit of which they know, by instruction, example, experience, will be disgrace, and poverty, and sickness, and untimely death.
Page 64 - In the man who had been shot with the musket ball through the fleshy part of his arm, the wound seemed to be so well digested, and in so fair a way of being perfectly healed, that if Mr.
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Constitution of Man Considered in Relation to the Natural Laws |
| Author | George Combe |
| Publisher | Fowlers and Wells, 1851 |
| Original from | Harvard University |
| Digitized | 18 Mar 2008 |
| Length | 129 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |