Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure: And Other EssaysG. Allen & Unwin, 1891 - 299 pages |
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Expressions et termes fréquents
absolute actions actual amoeba animals appears Astronomy atom Atomic theory attributes become bodily body Boyle's law cause central central power centre Civilisation civilisation-period common conception consciousness course cracy creation creature criminal customs desire direction disease divine earth ellipse epicycle evolution Exfoliation exist external fact Fahrenheit feeling force foxhound generalisations giraffe gravitation growth habits human ideal individual inner instinct intellectual J. S. Mill Kaffirs kind Lamarck less Lewis Morgan limit living locus standi look Man-the marriage mass and motion matter meaning mind modern mollusc moral nature objects obviously organic organisation passions perfect perhaps phenomena physical Plato Polyandry question race realised regard region relation Science scientific sensation sense sepals social society spirit stage stamens supposed theory thing thought to-day true truth ultimately unity universal whole word
Fréquemment cités
Page 70 - That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.
Page 1 - The friendly and flowing savage, who is he? Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering It?
Page 3 - I am not alluding to the number and importance of the lunatic asylums which cover our land, nor to the fact that maladies of the brain and nervous system are now so common ; but to the strange sense of mental unrest which marks our populations, and which amply justifies Buskin's cutting epigram : that our two objects in life are, " Whatever we have — to get more ; and wherever we are — to go somewhere else.
Page 70 - Newton's law of universal gravitation states that every particle in the Universe attracts every other particle with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
Page 7 - In all the visits made to their towns, where old and young, men and women, crowded about our voyagers, they never observed a single person who appeared to have any bodily complaint; nor among the numbers that were seen naked, was once perceived the slightest eruption upon the skin, or the least mark which indicated that such an eruption had formerly existed.
Page 9 - Each man scrupulously respects the rights of his fellow, and any infraction of those rights rarely or never takes place. In such a community, all are nearly equal. There are none of those wide distinctions, of education and ignorance, wealth and poverty, master and servant, which are the product of our civilization...
Page 31 - The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim ; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction.
Page 81 - But he has got nothing on at all," and amid some confusion it will be seen that the child is right. NOTE. "I fear I have very imperfectly succeeded in expressing my strong conviction that, before a rigorous logical scrutiny, the Reign of Law will prove to be an unverified hypothesis, the Uniformity of Nature an ambiguous expression, the certainty of our scientific inferences to a, great extent a delusion.
Page 140 - On the theory of Exfoliation, which was practically Lamarck's theory, there is a force at work throughout creation, ever urging each type onward into new and newer forms. This force appears first in consciousness in the form of desire. Within each shape of life sleep wants without number, from the lowest and simplest to the most complex and ideal. As each new desire or ideal is evolved, it brings the creature into conflict with its surroundings, then gaining its satisfaction externalises itself in...
Page 60 - Yet the reason is obvious. Astronomy is the most perfect science because we know least about it — because our ignorance of the actual phenomena is most profound. Situated in fact as we are, on a speck in space, with our observations limited to periods of time which, compared with the stupendous flights of the stars, are merely momentary and evanescent, we are in somewhat the position of a mole surveying a railway track and the flight of locomotives.