Essays: scientific, political, & speculative. Libr. ed, Volume 1

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Page 270 - For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE, in Latin CIVITAS, which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty...
Page 418 - I find in the domestic duck that the bones of the wing weigh less and the bones of the leg more, in proportion to the whole skeleton, than do the same bones in the...
Page 420 - I think there can be no doubt that use in our domestic animals has strengthened and enlarged certain parts, and disuse diminished them ; and that such modifications are inherited.
Page 386 - Buechner and his school, with a contempt certainly not less than that felt by Mr. Martineau. To show how anti-materialistic my own view is, I may, perhaps, without impropriety, quote some out of many passages which I have written on the question elsewhere : "Hence though of the two it seems easier to translate - so-called Matter into so-caUed Spirit, than to translate so-called Spirit into so-called Matter (which latter is, indeed, wholly impossible) ; yet no translation can carry us beyond our symbols.
Page 429 - I mean by Nature, only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us.
Page 465 - I will add only that, considering the width and depth of the effects which acceptance of one or other of these hypotheses must have on our views of Life, Mind, Morals, and Politics, the question — Which of them is true ? demands, beyond all other questions whatever, the attention of scientific men.
Page 316 - long legs,' etc., and for ' round,' they said ' like a ball,' ' like the moon,' and so on, usually suiting the action to the word, and confirming, by some sign, the meaning to be understood.
Page 420 - I may take this opportunity of remarking that my critics frequently assume that I attribute all changes of corporeal structure and mental power exclusively to the natural selection of such variations as are often called spontaneous; whereas, even in the first edition of the "Origin of Species...
Page 373 - The semitransparent, colourless, extremely active substance called phosphorus may be so changed as to become opaque, dark red, and inert. Like changes are known to occur in some gaseous, non-metallic elements, as oxygen; and also in metallic elements, as antimony. These total changes of properties, brought about without any changes to be called chemical, are interpretable only as due to molecular rearrangements ; and, by showing that difference of property is producible by difference of arrangement,...
Page 333 - I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct ; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.

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