Tablets

7

"Man feeds upon air, the plant collecting the materials from the atmosphere and compounding them for his food. Even life itself, as we know it, is but a process of combustion, of which decomposition is the final conclusion. Through this combustion all the constituents return back into air, a few ashes remaining to the earth from whence they came. But from these embers, slowly invisible flames arise into regions where our science has no longer any value." – Schleiden.

8

9

"One would think nothing were easier for us than to know our own mind, discern what was our main scope and drift, and what we proposed to ourselves as our end in the several occurrences of our lives. But our thoughts have such an obscure, implicit language, that it is the hardest thing in the world to make them speak out distinctly; and for this reason the right method is to give them voice and accent. And this, in our default, is what the philosophers endeavor to do to our hand, when, holding out a kind of vocal looking-glass, they draw sound out of our breast, and instruct us to personate ourselves in the plainest manner." – Lord Shaftesbury.

10

"The first principle of all things is Living Goodness, armed with Wisdom and all-powerful Love. But if a man's soul be once sunk by evil fate or desert, from the sense of this high and heavenly truth into the cold conceit that the original of all lies either in shuffling chance or in the stark root of unknowing nature and brute necessity, all the subtle cords of reason, without the timely recovery of that divine torch within the hidden spirit of his heart, will never be able to draw him out of that abhorred pit of atheism and infidelity. So much better is innocency and piety than subtle argument, and sincere devotion than curious dispute. But contemplations concerning the dry essence of the Godhead have for the most part been most confusing and unsatisfactory. Far better is it to drink of the blood of the grape than to bite the root of the grape, to smell the rose than to chew the stalk. And blessed be God, the meanest of men are capable of the former, very few successful in the latter; and the less, because the reports of those that have busied themselves that way have not only seemed strange to most men, but even repugnant to one another. But we should in charity refer this to the nature of the pigeon's neck than to mistake and contradiction. One and the same object in nature affords many different aspects. And God is infinitely various and simple; like a circle, indifferent whether you suppose it of one uniform line, or an infinite number of angles. Wherefore it is more safe to admit all possible perfections of God than rashly to deny what appears not to us from our particular posture." – Henry More.

11

"Spix, in his 'Cephalogenesis,' aids Oken's theory of the spinal cranium in endowing the artist's symbol of the cherub with all that it seemed to want before that discovery; namely: with a thorax, abdomen and pelvis, arms, legs, hands and feet." – Owen.

12

"Thou hast possessed my reins, thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in a secret place, and there curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth: there thine eyes did see my substance yet being imperfect: and in thy Book were all my members written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them." – Psalm cxxxix: 13, 15, 16.

13

Boehme thus classifies and describes the temperaments:

"Lapsing out of her innocency, man's soul enters into a strange inn or lodging, wherein he is held sometime captive as in a dungeon, wherein are four chambers or stories, in one of which she is fated to remain, though not without instincts of the upper wards (if her place be the lowest) and hope of finding the keys by which she may ascend into these also. These chambers are the elements of his constitution, and characterized as the four temperaments or complexions, namely:

I. The melancholic or earthy.

II. The phlegmatic or aqueous.

III. The choleric or fiery.

IV. The sanguine or ethereal.

I. The splenetic or melancholic partakes of the properties of the earth, being cold, dark, and hungry for the light. It is timid, incredulous, empty, consuming itself in corrosive cares, anxieties and sorrows, being sad when the sun shines, and needs perpetual encouragement. Its color is dark.

II. The phlegmatic being nourished from the earth's moisture, is inclined to heaviness; is gross, effeminate, dull of apprehension, careless, indifferent. It has but faint glimpses of the light, and needs much inculcation from without. Its color is brown.

III. The choleric is of the fiery temper, inclined to violence, wrath, obstinacy, irreverence, ambition. It is impulsive, contentious, aspires for power, and authority. It is greedy of the sun, and glories in its blazing beams. Its color is florid.

IV. The sanguine, being tempered of ether, and the least imprisoned, is cheerful, gentle, genial, versatile, naturally chaste, insinuating, searching into the secret of things natural and spiritual, and capable of divining the deepest mysteries. It loves the light, and aspires toward the sun. Its complexion is fair."

14

"'Tis well known that according to the sense of antiquity, these two considerations were always included in that one opinion of the soul's immortality – namely; its pre-existence as well as its post existence. Neither were there ever any of the ancients before christianity, that held the soul's future permanency after death, who did not likewise assert its pre-existence, – they clearly perceiving that if it was once granted that the soul was generated, it could never be proved but that it might be also corrupted. And therefore the asserters of its immortality commonly began here – first, to prove its pre-existence, proceeding thence afterwards to establish its permanency after death." – Cudworth.

15

Let us remember that immortality signifies a negative, or not having of mortality, and that a positive term is required by which to express a change, since nature teaches that whatever is, will abide with the being it is, unless forced out of it by something positive. And as it appears that man's soul has these grounds in her which make all visible things to be perishable, it is obvious that his soul is immortal and the cause of mortality itself. – Sir Kenelm Digby.