Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 24, 1870 (IA b22307643).pdf/37

 may be secured and advanced; for of nothing can we be more certain than that the laws of life, in their unimpeded operation, culmi- nate in the advancing perfection of man, corporeally, intellectually, and morally. But the operation of these laws depends upon common things. Whilst the ignorant have recourse to the supernatural, science asserts that everything, if not traced, is yet trace- able to its antecedents; and thus, as the handmaid of religion, proves that what a man soweth that shall he also reap.

But to return. Whilst lower natures in the organic scale are the immediate subjects of ex- ternal influences, which act upon and mould them with but little resistance, the reflex ner- vous actions institute a new order of pheno- inena, culminating in the intellect and the use of means. As feeling dawns into sensation, the sentient being directs its movements so as to avoid what is injurious, and to attain what is useful, and in that degree resists those disturbances which would modify the equilibrium of non-sentient natures. As