Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T19:48:44.022Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Description of the Human Body

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2009

Stephen Gaukroger
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Get access

Summary

There is no more fruitful occupation than to try to know oneself. And the benefit that one expects from this knowledge does not just extend to morals, as many may initially suppose, but also to medicine in particular. I believe one can find very many reliable precepts in medicine, as much for curing illness as for preventing it, and even also to slow the course of ageing, so long as one has studied sufficiently to know the nature of our body, not attributing to the soul functions which depend only on the body and on the disposition of its organs.

But because it is the experience of everyone from childhood that many of our movements obey the will, which is one of the powers of the soul, this has disposed us to believe that the soul is the principle behind all of them. And the ignorance of anatomy and mechanics has contributed to this, for in considering only the exterior of the human body, we never imagined that it had enough organs or springs in it to move itself in all the different ways in which we see it move. And we have been confirmed in this error in judging that dead bodies have the same organs as living ones, for they lack nothing but the soul and yet there is no movement in them.

When we make the attempt to understand our nature more distinctly, however, we can see that our soul, in so far as it is a substance distinct from body, is known to us solely from the fact that it thinks, that is to say, understands, wills, imagines, remembers, and senses, because all these functions are are kinds of thoughts.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×