La fin du viiie siècle de notre ère a vu se réaliser dans l'Europe Occidentale un état de choses sans précédent. Pour la première fois depuis l'aurore des temps historiques, le foyer, non seulement du mouvement politique, mais du mouvement général de la civilisation, s'y est transporté du bassin de la Méditerranée dans celui de la mer du Nord. Le pivot de l'Empire romain était en Italie ; celui de l'Empire carolingien est situé dans la région comprise entre le Rhin et la Seine...
De tout ce qu'il était alors naturel et rationnel de prévoir, rien ne s'est réalisé. Brusquement, un événement imprévu s'est jeté au travers du courant de l'histoire, a interrompu la série de ses causes et de ses conséquences, l'a fait en quelque sorte refluer sur soi-même, et, par ses répercussions inattendues, a coupé court à la tradition.
L'invasion musulmane à laquelle, du vivant même de Mahomet (571-632), personne n'avait pu ni songer ni se préparer, s'est abattue sur l'Univers avec la force élémentaire d'un cataclysme cosmique. Il ne lui a pas fallu beaucoup plus de cinquante ans pour s'étendre de la mer de Chine à l'océan Atlantique. Rien ne résiste devant elle. Du premier choc, elle renverse l'Empire perse (637-644) ; elle enlève successivement à l'Empire byzantin la Syrie (634-636), l'Égypte (640-642), l'Afrique (698), l'Espagne (711), la Corse, la Sardaigne, les îles Baléares, l'Apulie et la Calabre. Sa marche envahissante ne cessera qu'au commencement du viiie siècle...
Few natural groups present so many remarkable illustrations of several of the most important general laws which appear to have determined the structure of animal bodies as that of the whales. The term "whale" is commonly but vaguely applied to all the larger and middle-sized Cetacea, and, though such smaller species as the dolphins and porpoises are not usually spoken of as whales, they may to all intents and purposes of zological science be included in the term. Taken all together the Cetacea constitute a distinct and natural order of mammals, characterized by their aquatic mode of life and external fish-like form. The body is fusiform, passing anteriorly into the head without any distinct constriction or neck, and posteriorly tapering off gradually toward the extremity of the tail, which is provided with a pair of lateral pointed expansions of skin supported by dense fibrous tissue, called "flukes," forming together a horizontally placed, triangular propelling organ.
This book deals with a natural history of Whales and Dolphins, aquatic mammals within the order of Cetacea.
The Whales form one of the most extraordinary groups of the Mammalia, for they are warm-blooded, air-breathers, and sucklers of their young, and are most strangely adapted for life in a watery element. Oddly enough the term "Fish" is still applied to them by the whalers, though they have nothing in common with these creatures save a certain similitude in shape. The vulgar notion of a Whale is an enormous creature with an extremely capacious mouth, but the fact is that many of the Cetacea are of relatively moderate dimensions, though doubtless, on the other hand, the magnitude of some is perfectly amazing. Thus, in size they are variable as a group, a range of from five or six feet (equal to the stature of man) to seventy or eighty feet giving sufficiently wide limits. With certain exceptions, notwithstanding length, an average-sized Whale by no means conveys to the eye the same idea of vastness, say for instance, as does an Elephant. The reason is that most Cetaceans are of a club shape, the compact cylindrical body and long narrow tapering tail reducing the idea of size...
Seated on the dry hill-side here, by the belted blue Mediterranean, I have picked up from the ground a bit of blanched and moldering bone, well cleaned to my hand by the unconscious friendliness of the busy ants; and looking closely at it I recognize it at once, with a sympathetic sigh, for the solid welded tail-piece of some departed British tourist swallow. He came here like ourselves, no doubt, to escape the terrors of an English winter: but among these pine-clad Provençal summits some nameless calamity overtook him, from greedy kestrel or from native sportsman, and left him here, a sheer hulk, for the future contemplation of a wandering and lazy field-naturalist. Fit text, truly, for a sermon on the ancestry of birds; for this solid tail-bone of his tells more strangely than any other part of his whole anatomy the curious story of his evolution from some primitive lizard-like progenitor. Close by here, among the dry rosemary and large-leaved cistus by my side, a few weathered tips of naked basking limestone are peeping thirstily through the arid soil; and on one of these gray lichen-covered masses a motionless gray lizard sits sunning his limbs, in hue and spots just like the lichen itself, so that none but a sharp eye could detect his presence, or distinguish his little curling body from the jutting angles of the rock, to which it adapts itself with such marvelous accuracy.
The singular gas termed ozone has attracted a large amount of attention from chemists and meteorologists. The vague ideas which were formed as to its nature when as yet it had been but newly discovered, have given place gradually to more definite views; and though we cannot be said to have thoroughly mastered all the difficulties which this strange element presents, yet we know already much that is interesting and instructive. Let us briefly consider the history of ozone.
This book will also deal with the Relation of Atmospheric Electricity and Ozone to Health and Disease.
I understand the task of sociology to be description and determination of the historico-psychological origin of those forms in which interactions take place between human beings. The totality of these interactions, springing from the most diverse impulses, directed toward the most diverse objects, and aiming at the most diverse ends, constitutes "society." Those different contents in connection with which the forms of interaction manifest themselves are the subject-matter of special sciences. These contents attain the character of social facts by virtue of occurring in this particular form in the interactions of men. We must accordingly distinguish two senses of the term "society:" first, the broader sense, in which the term includes the sum of all the individuals concerned in reciprocal relations, together with all the interests which unite these interacting persons; second, a narrower sense, in which the term designates the society or the associating as such, that is the interaction itself which constitutes the bond of association, in abstraction from its material content, the subject-matter of sociology as the doctrine of society sensu strict...
The Fiji is an island country in the South Pacific Ocean that gained its independence in 1970. This former British colony consisting of an archipelago, the most important in Polynesia, lies between 15° and 20° South.
The first western contact with Fiji was made in 1643 when Captain Abel Tasman entered Fijian waters and sighted several islands and reefs without realizing the nature of his discovery. Over a hundred years later, Captain Cook made a second contact by stopping at one of the southern Lau Islands. Real knowledge of the area began in 1792 when Captain Bligh sailed through the archipelago from the southeast to the northwest, following the famous mutiny of the Bounty. Bligh made an attempt to land, was attacked by natives, and continued through the islands with no more landings. He did, however, make a record of most of the islands he passed.
In the nineteenth century, commercial contacts began in the form of sandalwood trade. This profitable commodity brought Europeans and Americans first to the Sandalwood Coast on the west side of Vanua Levu. During this period the first systematic survey of Fijian waters was made by the U.S. Exploring Expedition in 1840. After little more than a decade the sandalwood supply was depleted to the point where trade virtually ceased.
As a result of this initial commercial contact, which was mainly around western Vanua Levu and eastern Viti Levu, some marked changes were effected in Fijian culture. After the sandalwood traders abandoned Fiji for more profitable fields, a number of deserters and ship-wrecked men remained. These beachcombers, along with firearms that had been introduced by trade or salvaged from wrecks, brought about the first striking alterations. Rival chiefs competed for the acquisition of muskets, gunpowder, and beachcombers. The latter in some instances became attached to royal households as dubious advisors and instructors in the use of guns, powder, and shot. Some of these coaches enjoyed a status resembling that of household pets.
The introduction of firearms changed the native political scene and increased the scope and destructiveness of warfare. For a time the rulers of Mbau in eastern Viti nearly monopolized the supply of muskets and white men. This established their political supremacy over rival leaders. Larger and stronger political and military alliances, some resembling small kingdoms, developed for purposes of defense or aggression. As warfare grew more frequent, new diseases entered the islands and trade in liquor advanced.
After the third decade of the nineteenth century better elements began to enter Fiji and ensuing culture contact was not so consistently deplorable. Bêche-de-mer traders and whalers began to visit the islands for trade goods and supplies. Some began to settle at the east end of Viti Levu. Missionaries came in the 1830's and the Christianization of Fiji began.
Verbal salutations have generally been employed to explain those expressed by gesture and posture. The study of ancient literature and of modern travel has furnished many friendly phrases of anthropologic and ethnic interest. But friendly greetings were common before articulate speech prevailed. Sign-language was then the mode of communication, and gestures connected with the concepts and emotions of men preceded and influenced all historic ceremonials of greeting. So it is judicious to resort to gesture-speech, as still found surviving among some peoples and deaf-mutes, for the explanation of the existing and still more of the oldest known forms of salutation, whether verbal or silent. Undoubtedly some of the verbal forms are of recent origin and are independent of any gesture, and such cases require separate discussion; but there are many known instances where greeting is and long has been expressed by gesture without words, and others in which the words used, conjointly or independently, are but derivations from the older, perhaps disused, gestures.
In this application of sign-language the characteristics of that mode of expression appear with distinctness, noticeable among which are the variety of shades of meaning conveyed by substantially the same gesture and the different modes of exhibiting the same substantive concept. Sign-language is more elastic as well as more comprehensive than oral language. Its abbreviation and symbolism are also so clear that linguistic lore and etymologic guess are not needed for their explanation.
The main divisions of the subject to be now considered are I. Salutations with contact; and, II. Salutations without contact. Under the first division it is convenient to notice successively those directly connected with the sense of: touch; smell; taste - although that is not the probable order of their evolution.
In every century are born men whose lives bring messages of help and hope to those who come after. Such an one was Abraham Lincoln...
Like Moses, Luther, and Washington, Lincoln became a great leader of men only when he surrendered himself to God. His mother, Nancy Hanks, was a Christian woman. Of her he said: "I remember her prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life."
As a boy he read his Bible and attended church when he could. In those days he learned the hymns which were his favorites throughout life, "Am I a Soldier of the Cross?" and "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood." During his early manhood he drifted into a temporary indifference toward religious matters. Yet even through this time he read and reread his Bible, and his later life showed what it did for him.
In the strict sense of the word "Nature," it denotes the sum of the phenomenal world, of that which has been, and is, and will be; and society, like art, is therefore a part of Nature. But it is convenient to distinguish those parts of Nature in which man plays the part of immediate cause, as something apart; and, therefore, society, like art, is usefully to be considered as distinct from Nature. It is the more desirable, and even necessary, to make this distinction, since society differs from Nature in having a definite moral object; whence it comes about that the course shaped by the ethical man-the member of society or citizen-necessarily runs counter to that which the non-ethical man-the primitive savage, or man as a mere member of the animal kingdom-tends to adopt. The latter fights out the struggle for existence to the bitter end, like any other animal; the former devotes his best energies to the object of setting limits to the struggle.
In the cycle of phenomena presented by the life of man, the animal, no more moral end is discernible than in that presented by the lives of the wolf and of the deer. However imperfect the relics of prehistoric men may be, the evidence which they afford clearly tends to the conclusion that, for thousands and thousands of years, before the orgin of the oldest known civilizations, men were savages of a very low type. They strove with their enemies and their competitors; they preyed upon things weaker or less cunning than themselves; they were born, multiplied without stint, and died, for thousands of generations, alongside the mammoth, the urus, the lion, and the hyena, whose lives were spent in the same way; and they were no more to be praised or blamed, on moral grounds, than their less erect and more hairy compatriots...
When we compare the mental faculties and social instincts of animals, even of monkeys, with those of the superior races of civilized men, the distance seems immeasurable, and to fill the gap impossible. But, if we take the lower races of mankind, the differences appear less marked, and even analogies arise. Many of the moral and mental faculties, in fact, which we observe among the quadrumana appear common to them with savage peoples on the one side, and with some of the higher mammalia on the other side, which have well-developed social instincts-with, for instance, dogs, horses, and elephants. The animals which man has domesticated are, as a rule, those which belong to social species, and live in the natural state in more or less numerous groups. And, among the monkeys, it is not the large ones, those which most resemble men in stature, that are most social and most susceptible of domestication, but the smaller ones, the tree-climbers...
The Republic of Liberia has been the scene of a series of experiments absolutely unique in history; experiments from which we are to derive the knowledge upon which we must rely in the solution of the weighty problems connected with the development of a dark continent, and with the civilization of hundreds of millions of the human race.
The history of Liberia may be regarded as a demonstration of the capacity of the race for self-government. Upon the capability of individuals is reflected the highest credit. The opportunities for a rounded-out and fully developed culture afforded by the peculiar conditions of life in the Republic produced a number of men who deserve unqualified admiration. From the earliest days of the colony, when Elijah Johnson upheld the courage of the little band in the midst of hostile swarms of savages, to the steadfast statesmanship of Russwurm and the stately diplomacy of Roberts, there have stood forth individuals of a quality and calibre that fill with surprise those who hold the ordinary opinion of the possibilities of the Negro. The trials of the Republic have afforded a crucial test in which many a character has shown true metal. It is not too much to assert that the very highest type of the race has been the product of Liberia.
Wells defines two divergent types of mind by the relative importance they attach to things past or things to come. The former type he calls the legal or submissive mind, "because the business, the practice and the training of a lawyer dispose him toward it; he of all men must most constantly refer to the law made, the right established, the precedent set, and most consistently ignore or condemn the thing that is only seeking to establish itself." In opposition to this is "the legislative, creative, organizing, masterful type", which is perpetually attacking and altering the established order of things; it is constructive and "interprets the present and gives value to this or that entirely in relation to things designed or foreseen." The use of the term "legislative" for this latter type is confusing, at least to an American, because unfortunately most of our legislators are lawyers and have minds of the legal or conventional type. "Scientific" would be a better term than "legislative", because most of our real revolutions in thought and industry originate in the laboratory.
In his "Modern Utopia" Wells introduces a more complete classification of mankind into (1) the Poietic, that is, the creative and original genius, often erratic or abnormal; (2) the Kinetic, that is, the efficient, energetic, "business man" type; (3) the Dull, "the people who never seem to learn thoroughly or hear distinctly or think clearly", and (4) the Base, those deficient in moral sense. The first two categories of Wells, the Poietic and Kinetic, correspond roughly to Ostwald's Romanticist and Classicist types of scientific men. I have laid stress upon Wells's point of view and classification of temperaments because it seems to me that it gives the clue to his literary work.
In all ages volcanoes have played a prominent role in human thought The Vulcan of classic mythology was but the head of a family of earth-gods born of the polytechnic Mediterranean mind fertilized by the "burning mountains" of continents conjoined in the Levant; and in the still lower stages of human development represented by scores of surviving tribes, Fire-Earth deities head the primitive pantheons-indeed, the Vulcanean notion seems to run back to a pristine stage in which the forerunners of living races first stole Vulcan's torch, tamed capricious and ferocious fire even as other [to them] beasts were tamed, and thus took the initial step in that nature-conquest by which man rose above lower life. Certain it is that Vulcanean myths are most dominant in lower savagery, feebler albeit sharper-cut about the birth-time of writing, and decadent during the period of written history.
The questions still are asked: What is gravity? What are chemical, electrical, and vital forces? What is the essential nature of matter, energy, and life? There is no oracle to answer.
The study of vital phenomena is difficult because of their complex character, and, in the absence of exact analysis, speculative philosophy has for many ages ventured different theories in explanation of their nature. In seeking to give the present status of physiological science on this important question, it is of interest to take a general historical retrospect, in order that the steps of progress may be observed.
The science of apiculture is the slow growth of centuries of human observation and investigation...
Among the recent industries of rapid growth in United States and Canada, bee-culture stands prominent. Of course, as a homely art, bee-keeping is no modern industry, being as old as history; but in its scientific developments it is of recent growth. In these times, when science is properly taking its place at the helm in all departments of human industry and activity, it is not strange that it is promptly assuming the guidance of bee-culture.
The science of meteorology has revealed to us the true nature of atmospheric disturbances throughout time and space. We know their producing causes, and can foretell, with a considerable degree of accuracy, their force, duration, and direction.
After dealing with the origin and movement of continental cyclones, we will naturally deal with tornadoes and storms.
This book deals with the influence of the moon upon the earth and the weather.
At any given point of the earth's surface the state of the weather always depends on the prevailing air-currents. The annual and the secular periodic changes of the oceanic and the atmospheric currents are repeated in the weather-changes. And on the phenomena which, however imperfectly, establish this periodicity, is based the universal belief that the moon has an influence on the weather...
So long as man does not bother about what he is or whence he came or whither he is going, the whole thing seems as simple as the verb "to be"; and you may say that the moment he does begin thinking about what he is and whence he came and whither he is going, he gets on to a lot of roads that lead nowhere, and that spread like the fingers of a hand or the sticks of a fan; so that if he pursues two or more of them he soon gets beyond his straddle, and if he pursues only one he gets farther and farther from the rest of all knowledge as he proceeds. You may say that and it will be true. But there is one kind of knowledge a man does get when he thinks about what he is, whence he came and whither he is going, which is this: that it is the only important question he can ask himself...
Of the great many things which man does which he should not do or need not do, if he were wholly explained by the verb "to be," you may count walking. Of course if you build up a long series of guesses as to the steps by which he learnt to walk, and call that an explanation, there is no more to be said...
Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season. All great men of letters have, therefore, been enthusiastic walkers (exceptions, of course, excepted). Shakespeare, besides being a sportsman, a lawyer, a divine, and so forth, conscientiously observed his own maxim, "Jog on, jog on, the footpath way"; though a full proof of this could only be given in an octavo volume. Anyhow, he divined the connection between walking and a "merry heart"; that is, of course, a cheerful acceptance of our position in the universe founded upon the deepest moral and philosophical principles...
While religious phenomena are in some respects singularly constant, they are, nevertheless, as noted for their diversity. While certain essential elements are common to almost all faiths, on the other hand, every individual faith has something peculiar to itself. It not only differs in some respects from other religions, but, as we trace down its history, we find it varying from itself.
The Hindoos, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs, are shown by philological research to have come originally from a single stock-the primitive Aryan. Their ancestors originally dwelt together in a common home in the neighborhood of the Caspian Sea; and in this ancient time their religion was, probably, one and the same faith, i. e., in substance. Yet how widely diverse have the faiths of these nations come to be, in the four to five thousand years since that ancient home was little by little deserted! How has this diversity come about? What are the forces or influences that differentiate religions?
This book deals with a history of Brazil. The largest republic of South America, and the third largest of the western hemisphere, Brazil, which from a variety of circumstances, has ever been regarded an interesting country, is now become doubly so, from being the present residence of the court of Portugal; and as such, we are induced to give a description of it, which, from the nature and size of this work, must necessarily be a short one. Cabral, in the year 1500, first landed on the coast of Brazil, and immediately gave notice to the court of Lisbon of the discovery he had made. The Portugueze, however, were for a length of time very indifferent to the acquisition of so fine a country. This negligence may in a great degree be attributed to the want of civilized inhabitants, and opulent towns, which the Portugueze had been accustomed to meet with in Africa and Asia; whilst the natives of Brazil consisted of different colonies of savages, dwelling in miserable huts, situated either in forests, on the banks of rivers, or on the sea-coast; and subsisting entirely on the produce of the chace, or on fish caught by themselves. The heat of the climate made cloathing not only unnecessary, but absolutely superfluous. The men and women equally painted their bodies, ornamented their necks and arms with necklaces and bracelets of white bones, and adorned their heads with feathers. The Brazilians are nearly of the same stature as the Europeans, but in general not so robust. Their principal arms consisted of clubs and arrows; their wars were not frequent, but cruel; and dreadful was the fate of those prisoners who fell into their hands without being wounded, since they constantly served as a repast to their merciless conquerors...
Real fear is a sort of reminiscence of fantastic terror of the past. A man who believes in ghosts and imagines he sees a specter in the darkness must feel fear in all its horror.
"The only valuable result of the amusing ghost story was that it brought about a reconciliation between father and son, and the former, as a matter of fact, felt such deep respect for priests and their ghosts in consequence of the apparition that a short time after his wife had left purgatory for the last time in order to talk with him-he turned Protestant."
Has Boxing a Real Value?
"Both among the Greeks and Romans," says an eminent authority, "the practice of pugilism was considered essential to the education of their youth, from its manifest utility in strengthening the body, dissipating all fear, and infusing a manly courage into the system."
The Greeks and Romans kept boxing in its proper relation to everyday life; not as a brutal exhibition of skill or strength, but as a healthy exercise to invigorate the body, expand the chest, strengthen and quicken the muscles, and render mind and body free, supple, strong, and confident...
How many will say that this is sound doctrine for a man or a community? It is of little importance, perhaps, whether or not a grown man can play cricket or row a boat; but it is of very great importance, no matter how cheap pistols or post-chaises may be, that, in case he were called on, for personal or patriotic duty, to swim or climb for a life, to fight for a child or a woman, to defend his country in the field, he should be ready with a strong body, a stout heart, and a trained hand and mind to raise him over difficulty and danger.
The site of the present city of Washington was chosen with three special views; firstly, that being on the Potomac it might have the full advantage of water-carriage and a sea-port; secondly, that it might be so far removed from the seaboard as to be safe from invasion; and, thirdly, that it might be central alike to all the States. It was presumed when Washington was founded that these three advantages would be secured by the selected position. As regards the first, the Potomac affords to the city but few of the advantages of a sea-port. Ships can come up, but not ships of large burthen. The river seems to have dwindled since the site was chosen; and at present it is, I think, evident that Washington can never be great in its shipping. Statio benefida carinis can never be its motto. As regards the second point, singularly enough Washington is the only city of the Union that has been in an enemy's possession since the United States became a nation. In the war of 1812 it fell into our hands, and we burnt it. As regards the third point, Washington, from the lie of the land, can hardly have been said to be centrical at any time. Owing to the irregularities of the coast it is not easy of access by railways from different sides. Baltimore would have been far better. But as far as we can now see, and as well as we can now judge, Washington will soon be on the borders of the nation to which it belongs, instead of at its centre. I fear, therefore, that we must acknowledge that the site chosen for his country's capital by George Washington has not been fortunate. I have a strong idea, which I expressed before in speaking of the capital of the Canadas, that no man can ordain that on such a spot shall be built a great and thriving city. No man can so ordain even though he leave behind him, as was the case with Washington, a prestige sufficient to bind his successors to his wishes. The political leaders of the country have done what they could for Washington. The pride of the nation has endeavoured to sustain the character of its chosen metropolis. There has been no rival, soliciting favour on the strength of other charms. The country has all been agreed on the point since the father of the country first commenced the work.
