Proceedings, American Philosophical Society (vol. 145, no. 4, 2001)

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American Philosophical Society

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Page 430 - Of all vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences.
Page 431 - Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make large fortunes.
Page 432 - I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress.
Page 399 - Did Quattrocento finger fashion it Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
Page 394 - Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love ; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan 's poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight...
Page 434 - Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection...
Page 400 - Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
Page 398 - Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event That changed some childish day to tragedy — Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent Into a sphere from youthful sympathy...
Page 434 - Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence, consequent on his rapid multiplication ; and, if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle...
Page 399 - Plato thought nature but a spume that plays Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; Solider Aristotle played the taws Upon the bottom of a king of kings; World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings What a star sang and careless Muses heard: Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

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