The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society: A Poem, with Philosophical NotesDarwin, Erasmus
Philosophy
The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society: A Poem, with Philosophical Notes
Darwin, Erasmus
Cosmology -- Poetry; Life -- Origin -- Poetry
[Footnote: _Are mighty monuments_, l. 450. The reader is
referred to a few pages on this subject in Phytologia, Sect.
XIX. 7. 1, where the felicity of organic life is considered
more at large; but it is probable that the most certain way
to estimate the happiness and misery of organic beings; as it
depends on the actions of the organs of sense, which
constitute ideas; or of the muscular fibres which perform
locomotion; would be to consider those actions, as they are
produced or excited by the four sensorial powers of
irritation, sensation, volition, and association. A small
volume on this subject by some ingenious writer, might not
only amuse, as an object of curiosity; but by showing the
world the immediate sources of their pains and pleasures
might teach the means to avoid the one, and to procure the
other, and thus contribute both ways to increase the sum
total of organic happiness.]
[Footnote: _How Life increasing_, l. 453. Not only the vast
calcareous provinces, which form so great a part of the
terraqueous globe, and also whatever rests upon them, as
clay, marl, sand, and coal, were formed from the fluid
elements of heat, oxygen, azote, and hydrogen along with
carbon, phosphorus, and perhaps a few other substances, which
the science of chemistry has not yet decomposed; and gave the
pleasure of life to the animals and vegetables, which formed
them; and thus constitute monuments of the past happiness of
those organized beings. But as those remains of former life
are not again totally decomposed, or converted into their
original elements, they supply more copious food to the
succession of new animal or vegetable beings on their
surface; which consists of materials convertible into
nutriment with less labour or activity of the digestive
powers; and hence the quantity or number of organized bodies,
and their improvement in size, as well as their happiness,
has been continually increasing, along with the solid parts
of the globe; and will probably continue to increase, till
the whole terraqueous sphere, and all that inhabit it shall
dissolve by a general conflagration, and be again reduced to
their elements.
Thus all the suns, and the planets, which circle round them,
may again sink into one central chaos; and may again by
explosions produce a new world; which in process of time may
resemble the present one, and at length again undergo the
same catastrophe! these great events may be the result of the
immutable laws impressed on matter by the Great Cause of
Causes, Parent of Parents, Ens Entium!]
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