Essays--scientific, Political and SpeculativeLongman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858 - 435 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract action advance alike animals arise arrangement become beginning believe body called carried cause certain changes common companies complex consequence consider continue contrast differentiation direct divisions effect emotions equal established evidence existing experience expression extension fact feeling follows force forms function further give given greater hand Hence heterogeneous higher homogeneous human idea illustrated implies increasing individual inference influence interest involved kind knowledge language less lines look lower marked matter means measure meeting ment mental mind mode modifications names nature needs objects observed once organic original pass persons phenomena position possible practice present principle produced progress question races railway reason relations remains respect seems seen separate social successive things thought tion trace true truth various
Popular passages
Page 150 - But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
Page 3 - It is settled beyond dispute that organic progress consists in a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. Now, we propose in the first place to show, that this law of organic progress is the law of all progress. Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple into the complex, through successive differentiations,...
Page 237 - The border slogan rent the sky ! A Home ! a Gordon ! was the cry : Loud were the clanging blows ; Advanced, — forced back, — now low, now high, The pennon sunk and rose ; As bends the bark's mast in the gale, When rent are rigging, shrouds, and sail, It wavered 'mid the foes.
Page 241 - As when a prowling wolf, Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey, Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve, In hurdled cotes amid the field secure, Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold ; Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash Of some rich burgher...
Page 230 - Let us then inquire whether economy of the recipient's attention is not the secret of effect, alike in the right choice and collocation of words, in the best arrangement of clauses in a sentence, in the proper order of its principal and subordinate propositions, in the judicious use of simile, metaphor, and other figures of speech, and even in the rhythmical sequence of syllables.
Page 248 - Here we drift, like white sail across the wild ocean, now bright on the wave, now darkling in the trough of the sea ; but from what port did we sail ? Who knows ? Or to what port are we bound ? Who knows ? There is no one to tell us but such poor weather-tossed mariners as ourselves, whom we speak as we pass, or who have hoisted some signal, or floated to us some letter in a bottle from far.
Page 247 - But after what has been said, the great economy it achieves will seem the more probable cause. Lear's exclamation—
Page 237 - The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.
Page 230 - Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced. In either case, whatever force is absorbed by the machine is deducted from the result.
Page 390 - Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most likely that by continual modifications, due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being produced still?