3. "Nature exists in totality in leasts," as Maiphighi well observes in his treatise on the Silkworm. 1 Whatever is presented to the eyes and to the organs of the senses, consists of series of things beginning with leasts and multiplied through many degrees or stages, and which at length, after they attain to a certain considerable magnitude, appear to us as the least of things; in consequence of which it is usual at first to regard them as boundaries and causes, though far from being this, they but mask the real causes; hence nothing further is to be hoped for from them than that they will supply the mind with ultimate effects, from which it may pass to principles by an analysis of its own; besides which they are the only means that the mind can judge from per nexum [or by relation]. The path, however, is difficult and steep. If we confine ourselves to a few facts and phenomena, we form an idea of causes in conformity with these alone; though nothing is confirmed, unless all things which relate to the subject both nearly and remotely also give their consent to the same effect. And when the truth is found, consent is never absent, for all calculations support it. All things in the world are connected because all things spring from a single most universal principle. Hence the truth on no subject which is examined can be said to be declared, unless all things hasten to give their consent. And thus whatever results we are now to arrive at in treating of the brain 2 must be confirmed by all that depends upon that brain, that is to say, by the whole body, including all the viscera, organs, parts, solids and fluids; also by the records of disease, whether of the body or the animus; and furthermore by the details of experimental chemistry and physics, and all the other parts, inasmuch as animal nature in her domain passes in the most perfect manner through all the arts to obtain the effects that she desires. Such is the connection of all the sciences requisite to explore the powers of the animal machine alone, that the absence of but one of them is sufficient to deprive the chain of the link which suspends it, or to leave it too feeble to bear any weight.
Bilješke:
1. "Cum enim tota in minimis existat natura, si alicubi, magis equidem in insectorum moleculis id deprehendi par fuerit." De Bombyce, p. 1, fol, Londin., 1687. - Tr.
2. Acton entered the following footnote at this point in the text in Psychological Transactions, page 9:
From this it would appear that this little treatise on the Way to a Knowledge of the Soul, was intended as a prefatory statement to a work or "transaction" on the brain, cf. I Brain, 24.
