Page:The Harveian oration ; delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 26th, 1879 (IA b24976465).pdf/46

 scientific instinct, aro influenced by mere literary cavillers in our newspapers and magazines. We believe these writers are altogethor mistaken in their view of the lofty objects which are ever placed before us. They belong to a class who, no doubt, foel a great repugnance to all physical inquiry, they regard it as mean and low compared with their own soarings in the region of the imagi- nation. I can quite understand how they shudder at the thought of penetrating beneath the surface of things. Just as I have myself felt on leaving the green fresh fields and descending into a dark mine in the bowels of the carth, so thoy in- stinctively feel a horror on raising the veil and beholding an object like the dissected dead body deprived of its outward form and beauty. These external attributes, they say, are enough for them, and to pry into the mechanism (in the words of a distinguished writer) is no business of ours; form and colour, besides a hundred other qualities, are the phenomena which are allied to the spiritual and excite the imagination; but the substance which underlies them is unpleasant to think upon, it is gross, it is material. All explanations of the working of the human body aro styled mate-