Elements of life, or, The laws of vital matter / by John Rush, M.D.

  • Rush, John, 1777-1837.
Date:
1804
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of life, or, The laws of vital matter / by John Rush, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    afterwards acquired by imitation and instruction, and the motive is either confirmed, altered, or reversed, by a promiscuous inter- course with men, in the vicissitudes of life, and in the exactions of social and civil society. Actions, thus constituted, become good or evil in proportion with their fitness or unfitness to the general or individual interest. Actions, thus constituted by phy- sical motive, make us act necessarily when we seem to act freely. The involuntary motions of the heart and arteries, associated with the voluntary motions of the nerves and brain, the mind, indifferently obtain the ascendant, according to the nature and force of impressions ; when the latter are superior, we choose good and avoid evil, but the action is nevertheless a necessary one, because the motive to it was the consequence of impressions received in the brain, by means of the example of moral teachers, and the words that they sounded in our ears instituting a habit of action, sufficiently powerful to controul the grosser impulses (heart and arteries), which, if indulged too far, might be productive of evil. Hence, we necessarily choose good. But when salutary precepts have not been inculcated, or if the constitution is of a highly sanguine temperament, the heart and arteries, the sources of the passions, prevail over the emotions of the mind (the nerves) and establish a volition, which, though acting freely, is absolutely uncontroulable, except through fear of punishment, or of shame, which often, though not always, proves superior to the impulse of the passions: hence also we choose evil, when opposite and stronger motives do not prevail.