Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/49

Rh light, that whensoever the images of natural thnigs are introduced into the human mind, it is by virtue of a faculty—not inherent in those things themselves, nor yet in the organ by and through which they gain admission—but implanted in every man by the ; being the constant and wonderful result of the life which every human being- receives continually from ? Had your favourite author, Mr. Locke, then, suffered his intellectual sight to be opened by this edifying truth, that all life is from , and particularly the life of man, and that hence man derives the astonishing faculty, not only of seeing the various subjects of outward nature, but also of transplanting them for use into the interior of his own intellectual mind, he would never have cherished the groundless idea, that matter, by its own activity, ascends into and forms that mind; but would rather have adopted the sublime wisdom which teaches, that mind, in connection with the life which it receives momentarily from the of life, takes to itself, for its own use, the material images presented to it by the various material substances with which it is surrounded. Let me then earnestly caution you how you give too much credit to great names, in their speculations on mind and matter; whether they assign to the latter a power which belongs only to the former, or to the former an