ABSTRACT
Davy was always to emphasize the interrelation of the different parts of the human mind, and the ties of connexion between the sciences. During his apprenticeship to Borlase poetry and metaphysical speculation mingled with his professional studies. In later years, the Davy was to write, ‘The doctrine of the materialists was always, even in his youth, a cold, heavy, dull, and insupportable doctrine to him, and necessarily tending to atheism.’ But he retained an eighteenth-century cast of mind; he was very much of the eighteenth century. Intellectually through the study of medicine, and practically through engineering, there was link between Cornwall, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. An apothecary and surgeon in Penzance aspiring to become a physician would turn his thoughts towards Edinburgh. Some mild fun has been made of Davy because he asked for a ‘genteel maintenance’; but the word ‘genteel’ had not become, at that time, through comic abuse, vulgarism, though an advanced person like Beddoes might regard it quizzically.
