Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Erasmus Darwin
page 23 of 633 (03%)
page 23 of 633 (03%)
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relieve the fatigued muscles.
Mr. Locke has defined an idea to be "whatever is present to the mind;" but this would include the exertions of volition, and the sensations of pleasure and pain, as well as those operations of our system, which acquaint us with external objects; and is therefore too unlimited for our purpose. Mr. Lock seems to have fallen into a further error, by conceiving, that the mind could form a general or abstract idea by its own operation, which was the copy of no particular perception; as of a triangle in general, that was neither acute, obtuse, nor right angled. The ingenious Dr. Berkley and Mr. Hume have demonstrated, that such general ideas have no existence in nature, not even in the mind of their celebrated inventor. We shall therefore take for granted at present, that our recollection or imagination of external objects consists of a partial repetition of the perceptions, which were excited by those external objects, at the time we became acquainted with them; and that our reflex ideas of the operations of our minds are partial repetitions of those operations. II. The following article evinces that the organ of vision consists of a fibrous part as well as of the nervous medulla, like other white muscles; and hence, as it resembles the muscular parts of the body in its structure, we may conclude, that it must resemble them in possessing a power of being excited into animal motion.--The subsequent experiments on the optic nerve, and on the colours remaining in the eye, are copied from a paper on ocular spectra published in the seventy-sixth volume of the Philos. Trans. by Dr. R. Darwin of Shrewsbury; which, as I shall have frequent occasion to refer to, is reprinted in this work, Sect. XL. The retina of an ox's eye was suspended in a glass of warm water, and forcibly torn in a few places; the edges of these parts appeared jagged and hairy, and did not contract and become smooth like simple mucus, when it is distended till it breaks; which |
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