Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 24, 1870 (IA b22307643).pdf/17

 heritance when he says: Man is not only the most wonderful creature God hath created, in the perfection of his organization, but most in this that He hath en- dowed him with an intellect to understand himself. "When this height is reached," this same writer adds, "then, and not till then, will man be a perfect monu- ment of the wisdom and power of his Maker, a created being knowing his own existence, and capable of explaining it."* A hypothesis, like that of a separate vital principle, which demands so much, which stops inquiry at once, making progress impossible, by removing the steps by which it could ascend, should at least have the highest sanctions of our intellect. This, however, seems not to be so; for, says one of the acutest thinkers, † to a reflecting mind the very fact that the powers peculiar to life include cohesion, elasticity, &c., that living Draper's "Human Physiology," 1856, p. 25. + Coleridge, " Hints towards the Formation of a more Comprehensive Theory of Life," 18-18.