text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/96

 to prevent misunderstanding, it may be added that his diet was mainly vegetarian, and that he rarely drank wine. New friends gathered round him who took a keen interest in his researches. Once only do we find him taking an interest in the affairs of his neighbours,—to ask pardon from the government for a homicide. He continued the profession of his religion. Sometimes from curiosity he went to the ministrations of anabaptists, to hear the preaching of peasants and artisans. He carried few books to Holland with him, but a Bible and the Summa of Thomas Aquinas were amongst them. One of the recommendations of Egmond the Abbey was the free exercise there allowed to the Catholic religion. At Franeker his house was a small château, “separated by a moat from the rest of the town, where the mass could be said in safety.” And one motive in favour of accepting an invitation to England lay in the alleged leanings of Charles I. to the older church.

The best account of Descartes’s mental history during his life in Holland is contained in his letters, which extend over the whole period, and are particularly frequent in the latter half. The majority of them are addressed to Mersenne, and deal with problems of physics, musical theory (in which he took a special interest), and mathematics. Several letters between 1643 and 1649 are addressed to the princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the ejected elector palatine, who lived at The Hague, where her mother maintained the semblance of a royal court. The princess was obliged to quit Holland, but kept up a philosophical correspondence with Descartes. It is to her that the Principles of Philosophy were dedicated; and in her alone, according to Descartes, were united those generally separated talents for metaphysics and for mathematics which are so characteristically co-operative in the Cartesian system. Two Dutch friends, Constantijn Huygens (von Zuylichem), father of the more celebrated Huygens, and Hoogheland, figure amongst the correspondents, not to mention various savants, professors and churchmen (particularly Jesuits).

His residence in the Netherlands fell in the most prosperous and brilliant days of the Dutch state, under the stadtholdership of Frederick Henry (1625–1647). Abroad its navigators monopolized the commerce of the world, and explored unknown seas; at home the Dutch school of painting reached its acme in Rembrandt (1607–1669); and the philological reputation of the country was sustained by Grotius, Vossius and the elder Heinsius. And yet, though Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch” is dated the very year after the publication of the Meditations, not a word in Descartes breathes of any work of art or historical learning. The contempt of aesthetics and erudition is characteristic of the most typical members of what is known as the Cartesian school, especially Malebranche. Descartes was not in any strict sense a reader. His wisdom grew mainly out of his own reflections and experiments. The story of his disgust when he found that Queen Christina devoted some time every day to the study of Greek under the tuition of Vossius is at least true in substance. It gives no evidence of science, he remarks, to possess a tolerable knowledge of the Roman tongue, such as once was possessed by the populace of Rome. In all his travels he studied only the phenomena of nature and human life. He was a spectator rather than an actor on the stage of the world. He entered the army, merely because the position gave a vantage-ground from which to make his observations. In the political interests which these contests involved he took no part; his favourite disciple, the princess Elizabeth, was the daughter of the banished king, against whom he had served in Bohemia; and Queen Christina, his second royal follower, was the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus.

Thus Descartes is a type of that spirit of science to which erudition and all the heritage of the past seem but elegant trifling. The science of Descartes was physics in all its branches, but especially as applied to physiology. Science, he says, may be compared to a tree; metaphysics is the root, physics is the trunk, and the three chief branches are mechanics, medicine and morals,—the three applications of our knowledge to the outward world, to the human body, and to the conduct of life.

Such then was the work that Descartes had in view in Holland. His residence was generally divided into two parts—one his workshop for science, the other his reception-room for society. “Here are my books,” he is reported to have told a visitor, as he pointed to the animals he had dissected. He worked hard at his book on refraction, and dissected the heads of animals in order to explain imagination and memory, which he considered physical processes. But he was not a laborious student. “I can say with truth,” he writes to the princess Elizabeth, “that the principle which I have always observed in my studies, and which I believe has helped me most to gain what knowledge I have, has been never to spend beyond a very few hours daily in thoughts which occupy the imagination, and a very few hours yearly in those which occupy the understanding, and to give all the rest of my time to the relaxation of the senses and the repose of the mind.” But his expectations from the study of anatomy and physiology went a long way. “The conservation of health,” he writes in 1646, “has always been the principal end of my studies.” In 1629 he asks Mersenne to take care of himself “till I find out if there is any means of getting a medical theory based on infallible demonstrations, which is what I am now inquiring.” Astronomical inquiries in connexion with optics, meteorological phenomena, and, in a word, the whole field of natural laws, excited his desire to explain them. His own observation, and the reports of Mersenne, furnished his data. Of Bacon’s demand for observation and collection of facts he is an imitator; and he wishes (in a letter of 1632) that “some one would undertake to give a history of celestial phenomena after the method of Bacon, and describe the sky exactly as it appears at present, without introducing a single hypothesis.”

He had several writings in hand during the early years of his residence in Holland, but the main work of this period was a physical doctrine of the universe which he termed The World. Shortly after his arrival he writes to Mersenne that it will probably be finished in 1633, but meanwhile asks him not to disclose the secret to his Parisian friends. Already anxieties appear as to the theological verdict upon two of his fundamental views—the infinitude of the universe, and the earth’s rotation round the sun. But towards the end of year 1633 we find him writing as follows:—“I had intended sending you my World as a New Year’s gift, and a fortnight ago I was still minded to send you a fragment of the work, if the whole of it could not be transcribed in time. But I have just been at Leyden and Amsterdam to ask after Galileo’s cosmical system as I imagined I had heard of its being printed last year in Italy. I was told that it had been printed, but that every copy had been at the same time burnt at Rome, and that Galileo had been himself condemned to some penalty.” He has also seen a copy of Galileo’s condemnation at Liége (September 20, 1633), with the words “although he professes that the [Copernican] theory was only adopted by him as a hypothesis.” His friend Beeckman lent him a copy of Galileo’s work, which he glanced through in his usual manner with other men’s books; he found it good, and “failing more in the points where it follows received opinions than where it diverges from them.” The consequence of these reports of the hostility of the church led him to abandon all thoughts of publishing. The World was consigned to his desk; and although doctrines in all essential respects the same constitute the physical portion of his Principia, it was not till after the death of Descartes that fragments of the work, including Le Monde, or a treatise on light, and the physiological tracts L’Homme and La Formation du fœtus, were given to the world by his admirer Claude Clerselier (1614–1684) in 1664. Descartes was not disposed to be a martyr; he had a sincere respect for the church, and had no wish to begin an open conflict with established doctrines.

In 1636 Descartes had resolved to publish some specimens of the fruits of his method, and some general observations on its

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/96


text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/97

 nature which, under an appearance of simplicity, might sow the good seed of more adequate ideas on the world and man. “I should be glad,” he says, when talking of a publisher, “if the whole book were printed in good type, on good paper, and I should like to have at least 200 copies for distribution. The book will contain four essays, all in French, with the general title of ‘Project of a Universal science, capable of raising our nature to its highest perfection; also Dioptrics, Meteors and Geometry, wherein the most curious matters which the author could select as a proof of the universal science which he proposes are explained in such a way that even the unlearned may understand them.’” The work appeared anonymously at Leiden (published by Jean Maire) in 1637, under the modest title of Essais philosophiques; and the project of a universal science becomes the Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la vérité dans les sciences. In 1644 it appeared in a Latin version, revised by Descartes, as Specimina philosophica. A work so widely circulated by the author naturally attracted attention, but in France it was principally the mathematicians who took it up, and their criticisms were more pungent than complimentary. Fermat, Roberval and Desargues took exception in their various ways to the methods employed in the geometry, and to the demonstrations of the laws of refraction given in the Dioptrics and Meteors. The dispute on the latter point between Fermat and Descartes was continued, even after the philosopher’s death, as late as 1662. In the youthful Dutch universities the effect of the essays was greater.

The first public teacher of Cartesian views was Henri Renery, a Belgian, who at Deventer and afterwards at Utrecht had introduced the new philosophy which he had learned from personal intercourse with Descartes. Renery only survived five years at Utrecht, and it was reserved for Heinrich Regius (van Roy)—who in 1638 had been appointed to the new chair of botany and theoretical medicine at Utrecht, and who visited Descartes at Egmond in order more thoroughly to learn his views—to throw down the gauntlet to the adherents of the old methods. With more eloquence than judgment, he propounded theses bringing into relief the points in which the new doctrines clashed with the old. The attack was opened by Gisbert Voët, foremost among the orthodox theological professors and clergy of Utrecht. In 1639 he published a series of arguments against atheism, in which the Cartesian views were not obscurely indicated as perilous for the faith, though no name was mentioned. Next year he persuaded the magistracy to issue an order forbidding Regius to travel beyond the received doctrine. The magisterial views seem to have prevailed in the professoriate, which formally in March 1642 expressed its disapprobation of the new philosophy as well as of its expositors. As yet Descartes was not directly attacked. Voët now issued, under the name of Martin Schoock, one of his pupils, a pamphlet with the title of Methodus novae philosophiae Renati Descartes, in which atheism and infidelity were openly declared to be the effect of the new teaching. Descartes replied to Voët directly in a letter, published at Amsterdam in 1643. He was summoned before the magistrates of Utrecht to defend himself against charges of irreligion and slander. What might have happened we cannot tell; but Descartes threw himself on the protection of the French ambassador and the prince of Orange, and the city magistrates, from whom he vainly demanded satisfaction in a dignified letter, were snubbed by their superiors. About the same time (April 1645) Schoock was summoned before the university of Groningen, of which he was a member, and forthwith disavowed the more abusive passages in his book. So did the effects of the odium theologicum, for the meanwhile at least, die away.

In the Discourse of Method Descartes had sketched the main points in his new views, with a mental autobiography which might explain their origin, and with some suggestions as to their applications. His second great work,. Meditations on the First Philosophy, which had been begun soon after his settlement in the Netherlands, expounded in more detail the foundations of his system, laying especial emphasis on the priority of mind to body, and on the absolute and ultimate dependence of mind as well as body on the existence of God. In 1640 a copy of the work in manuscript was despatched to Paris, and Mersenne was requested to lay it before as many thinkers and scholars as he deemed desirable, with a view to getting their views upon its argument and doctrine. Descartes soon had a formidable list of objections to reply to. Accordingly, when the work was published at Paris in August 1641, under the title of Meditationes de prima philosophia ubi de Dei existentia et animae immortalitate (though it was in fact not the immortality but the immateriality of the mind, or, as the second edition described it, animae humanae a corpore distinctio, which was maintained), the title went on to describe the larger part of the book as containing various objections of learned men, with the replies of the author. These objections in the first edition are arranged under six heads: the first came from Caterus, a theologian of Louvain; the second and sixth are anonymous criticisms from various hands; whilst the third, fourth and fifth belong respectively to Hobbes, Arnauld and Gassendi. In the second edition appeared the seventh—objections from Père Bourdin, a Jesuit teacher of mathematics in Paris; and subsequently another set of objections, known as those of Hyperaspistes, was included in the collection of Descartes’s letters. The anonymous objections are very much the statement of common-sense against philosophy; those of Caterus criticize the Cartesian argument from the traditional theology of the church; those of Arnauld are an appreciative inquiry into the bearings and consequences of the meditations for religion and morality; while those of (q.v.) and Gassendi—both somewhat senior to Descartes and with a dogmatic system of their own already formed—are a keen assault upon the spiritualism of the Cartesian position from a generally “sensational” standpoint. The criticisms of the last two are the criticisms of a hostile school of thought; those of Arnauld are the difficulties of a possible disciple.

In 1644 the third great work of Descartes, the Principia philosophiae, appeared at Amsterdam. Passing briefly over the conclusions arrived at in the Meditations, it deals in its second, third and fourth parts with the general principles of physical science, especially the laws of motion, with the theory of vortices, and with the phenomena of heat, light, gravity, magnetism, electricity, &c., upon the earth. This work exhibits some curious marks of caution. Undoubtedly, says Descartes, the world was in the beginning created in all its perfection. “But yet as it is best, if we wish to understand the nature of plants or of men, to consider how they may by degrees proceed from seeds, rather than how they were created by God in the beginning of the world, so, if we can excogitate some extremely simple and comprehensible principles, out of which, as if they were seeds, we can prove that stars, and earth and all this visible scene could have originated, although we know full well that they never did originate in such a way, we shall in that way expound their nature far better than if we merely described them as they exist at present.” The Copernican theory is rejected in name, but retained in substance. The earth, or other planet, does not actually move round the sun; yet it is carried round the sun in the subtle matter of the great vortex, where it lies in equilibrium,—carried like the passenger in a boat, who may cross the sea and yet not rise from his berth.

In 1647 the difficulties that had arisen at Utrecht were repeated on a smaller scale at Leiden. There the Cartesian innovations had found a patron in Adrian Heerebord, and were openly discussed in theses and lectures. The theological professors took the alarm at passages in the Meditations; an attempt to prove the existence of God savoured, as they thought, of atheism and heresy. When Descartes complained to the authorities of this unfair treatment, the only reply was an order by which all mention of the name of Cartesianism, whether favourable or adverse, was forbidden in the university. This was scarcely what Descartes wanted, and again he had to apply to the prince of Orange, whereupon the theologians were asked to behave with

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/97


text:
Category:Reviews in The American Journal of Sociology

Reviews that appeared in The American Journal of Sociology.


text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/98

 civility, and the name of Descartes was no longer proscribed. But other annoyances were not wanting from unfaithful disciples and unsympathetic critics. The Instantiae of Gassendi appeared at Amsterdam in 1644 as a reply to the reply which Descartes had published of his previous objections; and the publication by Heinrich Regius of his work on physical philosophy (Fundamenta physices, 1646) gave the world to understand that he had ceased to be a thorough adherent of the philosophy which he had so enthusiastically adopted.

It was about 1648 that Descartes lost his friends Mersenne and Mydorge by death. The place of Mersenne as his Parisian representative was in the main taken by Claude Clerselier (the French translator of the Objections and Responses), whom he had become acquainted with in Paris. Through Clerselier he came to know Pierre Chanut, who in 1645 was sent as French ambassador to the court of Sweden. Queen Christina was not yet twenty, and took a lively if a somewhat whimsical interest in literary and philosophical culture. Through Chanut, with whom she was on terms of familiarity, she came to hear of Descartes, and a correspondence which the latter nominally carried on with the ambassador was in reality intended for the eyes of the queen. The correspondence took an ethical tone. It began with a long letter on love in all its aspects (February 1647), a topic suggested by Chanut, who had been discussing it with the queen; and this was soon followed by another to Christina herself on the chief good. An essay on the passions of the mind (Passions de l’âme), which had been written originally for the princess Elizabeth, in development of some ethical views suggested by the De vita beata of Seneca, was enclosed at the same time for Chanut. It was a draft of the work published in 1650 under the same title. Philosophy, particularly that of Descartes, was becoming a fashionable divertissement for the queen and her courtiers, and it was felt that the presence of the sage himself was necessary to complete the good work of education. An invitation to the Swedish court was urged upon Descartes, and after much hesitation accepted; a vessel of the royal navy was ordered to wait upon him, and in September 1649 he left Egmond for the north.

The position on which he entered at Stockholm was unsuited for a man who wished to be his own master. The young queen wanted Descartes to draw up a code for a proposed academy of the sciences, and to give her an hour of philosophic instruction every morning at five. She had already determined to create him a noble, and begun to look out an estate in the lately annexed possessions of Sweden on the Pomeranian coast. But these things were not to be. His friend Chanut fell dangerously ill; and Descartes, who devoted himself to attend in the sick-room, was obliged to issue from it every morning in the chill northern air of January, and spend an hour in the palace library. The ambassador recovered, but Descartes fell a victim to the same disease, inflammation of the lungs. The last time he saw the queen was on the 1st of February 1650, when he handed to her the statutes he had drawn up for the proposed academy. On the 11th of February he died. The queen wished to bury him at the feet of the Swedish kings, and to raise a costly mausoleum in his honour; but these plans were overruled, and a plain monument in the Catholic cemetery was all that marked the place of his rest. Sixteen years after his death the French treasurer d’Alibert made arrangements for the conveyance of the ashes to his native land; and in 1667 they were interred in the church of Ste Geneviève du Mont, the modern Pantheon. In 1819, after being temporarily deposited in a stone sarcophagus in the court of the Louvre during the Revolutionary epoch, they were transferred to St Germain-des-Près, where they now repose between Montfaucon and Mabillon. A monument was raised to his memory at Stockholm by Gustavus III.; and a modern statue has been erected to him at Tours, with an inscription on the pedestal: “Je pense, donc je suis.”

Descartes never married, and had little of the amorous in his temperament. He has alluded to a childish fancy for a young girl with a slight obliquity of vision; but he only mentions it à propos of the consequent weakness which led him to associate such a defect with beauty. In person he was small, with large head, projecting brow, prominent nose, and eyes wide apart, with black hair coming down almost to his eyebrows. His voice was feeble. He usually dressed in black, with unobtrusive propriety.

Philosophy.—The end of all study, says Descartes, in one of his earliest writings, ought to be to guide the mind to form true and sound judgments on every thing that may be presented to it. The sciences in their totality are but the intelligence of man; and all the details of knowledge have no value save as they strengthen the understanding. The mind is not for the sake of knowledge, but knowledge for the sake of the mind. This is the reassertion of a principle which the middle ages had lost sight of—that knowledge, if it is to have any value, must be intelligence, and not erudition.

But how is intelligence, as opposed to erudition, possible? The answer to that question is the method of Descartes. That idea of a method grew up with his study of geometry and arithmetic,—the only branches of knowledge which he would allow to be “made sciences.” But they did not satisfy his demand for intelligence. “I found in them,” he says, “different propositions on numbers of which, after a calculation, I perceived the truth; as for the figures, I had, so to speak, many truths put before my eyes, and many others concluded from them by analogy; but it did not seem to me that they told my mind with sufficient clearness why the things were as I was shown, and by what means their discovery was attained.” The mathematics of which he thus speaks included the geometry of the ancients, as it had been handed down to the modern world, and arithmetic with the developments it had received in the direction of algebra. The ancient geometry, as we know it, is a wonderful monument of ingenuity—a series of tours de force, in which each problem to all appearance stands alone, and, if solved, is solved by methods and principles peculiar to itself. Here and there particular curves, for example, had been obliged to yield the secret of their tangent; but the ancient geometers apparently had no consciousness of the general bearings of the methods which they so successfully applied. Each problem was something unique; the elements of transition from one to another were wanting; and the next step which mathematics had to make was to find some method of reducing, for instance, all curves to a common notation. When that was found, the solution of one problem would immediately entail the solution of all others which belonged to the same series as itself.

The arithmetical half of mathematics, which had been gradually growing into algebra, and had decidedly established itself as such in the Ad logisticen speciosam notae priores of François Vieta (1540–1603), supplied to some extent the means of generalizing geometry. And the algebraists or arithmeticians of the 16th century, such as Luca Pacioli (Lucas de Borgo), Geronimo or Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576), and Niccola Tartaglia (1506–1559), had used geometrical constructions to throw light on the solution of particular equations. But progress was made difficult, in consequence of the clumsy and irregular nomenclature employed. With Descartes the use of exponents as now employed for denoting the powers of a quantity becomes systematic; and without some such step by which the homogeneity of successive powers is at once recognized, the binomial theorem could scarcely have been detected. The restriction of the early letters of the alphabet to known, and of the late letters to unknown, quantities is also his work. In this and other details he crowns and completes, in a form henceforth to be dominant for the language of algebra, the work of numerous obscure predecessors, such as Étienne de la Roche, Michael Stifel or Stiefel (1487–1567), and others.

Having thus perfected the instrument, his next step was to apply it in such a way as to bring uniformity of method into the isolated and independent operations of geometry. “I had no intention,” he says in the Method, “of attempting to master all

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/98


text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/99

 the particular sciences commonly called mathematics; but as I observed that, with all differences in their objects, they agreed in considering merely the various relations or proportions subsisting among these objects, I thought it best for my purpose to consider these relations in the most general form possible, without referring them to any objects in particular except such as would most facilitate the knowledge of them. Perceiving further, that in order to understand these relations I should sometimes have to consider them one by one, and sometimes only to bear them in mind or embrace them in the aggregate, I thought that, in order the better to consider them individually, I should view them as subsisting between straight lines, than which I could find no objects more simple, or capable of being more distinctly represented to my imagination and senses; and on the other hand that, in order to retain them in the memory or embrace an aggregate of many, I should express them by certain characters, the briefest possible.” Such is the basis of the algebraical or modern analytical geometry. The problem of the curves is solved by their reduction to a problem of straight lines; and the locus of any point is determined by its distance from two given straight lines—the axes of co-ordinates. Thus Descartes gave to modern geometry that abstract and general character in which consists its superiority to the geometry of the ancients. In another question connected with this, the problem of drawing tangents to any curve, Descartes was drawn into a controversy with Pierre (de) Fermat (1601–1663), Gilles Persone de Roberval (1602–1675), and Girard Desargues (1593–1661). Fermat and Descartes agreed in regarding the tangent to a curve as a secant of that curve with the two points of intersection coinciding, while Roberval regarded it as the direction of the composite movement by which the curve can be described. Both these methods, differing from that now employed, are interesting as preliminary steps towards the method of fluxions and the differential calculus. In pure algebra Descartes expounded and illustrated the general methods of solving equations up to those of the fourth degree (and believed that his method could go beyond), stated the law which connects the positive and negative roots of an equation with the changes of sign in the consecutive terms, and introduced the method of indeterminate coefficients for the solution of equations. These innovations have been attributed on inadequate evidence to other algebraists, e.g. William Oughtred (1575–1660) and Thomas Harriot (1560–1621).

The Geometry of Descartes, unlike the other parts of his essays, is not easy reading. It dashes at once into the middle of the subjects with the examination of a problem which had baffled the ancients, and seems as if it were tossed at the heads of the French geometers as a challenge. An edition of it appeared subsequently, with notes by his friend Florimond de Beaune (1601–1652), calculated to smooth the difficulties of the work. All along mathematics was regarded by Descartes rather as the envelope than the foundation of his method; and the “universal mathematical science” which he sought after was only the prelude of a universal science of all-embracing character.

The method of Descartes rests upon the proposition that all the objects of our knowledge fall into series, of which the members are more or less known by means of one another. In every such series or group there is a dominant element, simple and irresoluble, the standard on which the rest of the series depends, and hence, so far as that group or series is concerned, absolute. The other members of the group are relative and dependent, and only to be understood as in various degrees subordinate to the primitive conception. The characteristic by which we recognize the fundamental element in a series is its intuitive or self-evident character; it is given by “the evident conception of a healthy and attentive mind so clear and distinct that no doubt is left.” Having discovered this prime or absolute member of the group, we proceed to consider the degrees in which the other members enter into relation with it. Here deduction comes into play to show the dependence of one term upon the others; and, in the case of a long chain of intervening links, the problem for intelligence is so to enunciate every element, and so to repeat the connexion that we may finally grasp all the links of the chain in one. In this way we, as it were, bring the causal or primal term and its remotest dependent immediately together, and raise a derivative knowledge into one which is primary and intuitive. Such are the four points of Cartesian method:—(1) Truth requires a clear and distinct conception of its object, excluding all doubt; (2) the objects of knowledge naturally fall into series or groups; (3) in these groups investigation must begin with a simple and indecomposable element, and pass from it to the more complex and relative elements; (4) an exhaustive and immediate grasp of the relations and interconnexion of these elements is necessary for knowledge in the fullest sense of that word.

“There is no question,” he says in anticipation of Locke and Kant, “more important to solve than that of knowing what human knowledge is and how far it extends.” “This is a question which ought to be asked at least once in their lives by all who seriously wish to gain wisdom. The inquirer will find that the first thing to know is intellect, because on it depends the knowledge of all other things. Examining next what immediately follows the knowledge of pure intellect, he will pass in review all the other means of knowledge, and will find that they are two (or three), the imagination and the senses (and the memory). He will therefore devote all his care to examine and distinguish these three means of knowledge; and seeing that truth and error can, properly speaking, be only in the intellect, and that the two other modes of knowledge are only occasions, he will carefully avoid whatever can lead him astray.” This separation of intellect from sense, imagination and memory is the cardinal precept of the Cartesian logic; it marks off clear and distinct (i.e. adequate and vivid) from obscure, fragmentary and incoherent conceptions.

The Discourse of Method and the Meditations apply what the Rules for the Direction of the Mind had regarded in particular instances to our conceptions of the world as a whole. They propose, that is, to find a simple and indecomposable point, or absolute element, which gives to the world and thought their order and systematization. The grandeur of this attempt is perhaps unequalled in the annals of philosophy. The three main steps in the argument are the veracity of our thought when that thought is true to itself, the inevitable uprising of thought from its fragmentary aspects in our habitual consciousness to the infinite and perfect existence which God is, and the ultimate reduction of the material universe to extension and local movement. There are the central dogmas of logic, metaphysics and physics, from which start the subsequent inquiries of Locke, Leibnitz and Newton. They are also the direct antitheses to the scepticism of Montaigne and Pascal, to the materialism of Gassendi and Hobbes, and to the superstitious anthropomorphism which defaced the reawakening sciences of nature. Descartes laid down the lines on which modern philosophy and science were to build. But himself no trained metaphysician, and unsusceptible to the lessons of history, he gives but fragments of a system which are held together, not by their intrinsic consistency, but by the vigour of his personal conviction transcending the weaknesses and collisions of his several arguments. “All my opinions,” he says, “are so conjoined, and depend so closely upon one another, that it would be impossible to appropriate one without knowing them all.” Yet every disciple of Cartesianism seems to disprove the dictum by his example.

The very moment when we begin to think, says Descartes, when we cease to be merely receptive, when we draw back and fix our attention on any point whatever of our belief,—that moment doubt begins. If we even stop for an instant to ask ourselves how a word ought to be spelled, the deeper we ponder that one word by itself the more hopeless grows the hesitation. The doubts thus awakened must not be stifled, but pressed systematically on to the point, if such a point there be, where doubt confutes itself. The doubt as to the details is natural; it

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/99


text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/100

 is no less natural to have recourse to authority to silence the doubt. The remedy proposed by Descartes is (while not neglecting our duties to others, ourselves and God) to let doubt range unchecked through the whole fabric of our customary convictions. One by one they refuse to render any reasonable account of themselves; each seems a mere chance, and the whole tends to elude us like a mirage which some malignant power creates for our illusion. Attacked in detail, they vanish one after another into as many teasing spectra of uncertainty. We are seeking from them what they cannot give. But when we have done our worst in unsettling them, we come to an ultimate point in the fact that it is we who are doubting, we who are thinking. We may doubt that we have hands or feet, that we sleep or wake, and that there is a world of material things around us; but we cannot doubt that we are doubting. We are certain that we are thinking, and in so far as we are thinking we are. Je pense, donc je suis. In other words, the criterion of truth is a clear and distinct conception, excluding all possibility of doubt.

The fundamental point thus established is the veracity of consciousness when it does not go beyond itself, or does not postulate something which is external to itself. At this point Gassendi arrested Descartes and addressed his objections to him as pure intelligence,—O mens! But even this mens, or mind, is but a point—we have found no guarantee as yet for its continuous existence. The analysis must be carried deeper, if we are to gain any further conclusions.

Amongst the elements of our thought there are some which we can make and unmake at our pleasure; there are others which come and go without our wish; there is also a third class which is of the very essence of our thinking, and which dominates our conceptions. We find that all our ideas of limits, sorrows and weaknesses presuppose an infinite, perfect and ever-blessed something beyond them and including them,—that all our ideas, in all their series, converge to one central idea, in which they find their explanation. The formal fact of thinking is what constitutes our being; but this thought leads us back, when we consider its concrete contents, to the necessary pre-supposition on which our ideas depend, the permanent cause on which they and we as conscious beings depend. We have therefore the idea of an infinite, perfect and all-powerful being—an idea which cannot be the creation of ourselves, and must be given by some being who really possesses all that we in idea attribute to him. Such a being he identifies with God. But the ordinary idea of God can scarcely be identified with such a conception. “The majority of men,” he says himself, “do not think of God as an infinite and incomprehensible being, and as the sole author from whom all things depend; they go no further than the letters of his name.” “The vulgar almost imagine him as a finite thing.” The God of Descartes is not merely the creator of the material universe; he is also the father of all truth in the intellectual world. “The metaphysical truths,” he says, “styled eternal have been established by God, and, like the rest of his creatures, depend entirely upon him. To say that these truths are independent of him is to speak of God as a Jupiter or a Saturn,—to subject him to Styx and the Fates.” The laws of thought, the truths of number, are the decrees of God. The expression is anthropomorphic, no less than the dogma of material creation; but it is an attempt to affirm the unity of the intellectual and the material world. Descartes establishes a philosophic monotheism,—by which the medieval polytheism of substantial forms, essences and eternal truths fades away before God, who is the ruler of the intellectual world no less than of the kingdom of nature and of grace.

To attach a clear and definite meaning to the Cartesian doctrine of God, to show how much of it comes from the Christian theology and how much from the logic of idealism, how far the conception of a personal being as creator and preserver mingles with the pantheistic conception of an infinite and perfect something which is all in all, would be to go beyond Descartes and to ask for a solution of difficulties of which he was scarcely aware. It seems impossible to deny that the tendency of his principles and his arguments is mainly in the line of a metaphysical absolute, as the necessary completion and foundation of all being and knowledge. Through the truthfulness of that God as the author of all truth he derives a guarantee for our perceptions in so far as these are clear and distinct. And it is in guaranteeing the veracity of our clear and distinct conceptions that the value of his deduction of God seems in his own estimate to rest. All conceptions which do not possess these two attributes—of being vivid in themselves and discriminated from all others—cannot be true. But the larger part of our conceptions are in such a predicament. We think of things not in the abstract elements of the things themselves, but in connexion with, and in language which presupposes, other things. Our idea of body, e.g., involves colour and weight, and yet when we try to think carefully, and without assuming anything, we find that we cannot attach any distinct idea to these terms when applied to body. In truth therefore these attributes do not belong to body at all; and if we go on in the same way testing the received qualities of matter, we shall find that in the last resort we understand nothing by it but extension, with the secondary and derivative characters of divisibility and mobility.

But it would again be useless to ask how extension as the characteristic attribute of matter is related to mind which thinks, and how God is to be regarded in reference to extension. The force of the universe is swept up and gathered in God, who communicates motion to the parts of extension, and sustains that motion from moment to moment; and in the same way the force of mind has really been concentrated in God. Every moment one expects to find Descartes saying with Hobbes that man’s thought has created God, or with Spinoza and Malebranche that it is God who really thinks in the apparent thought of man. After all, the metaphysical theology of Descartes, however essential in his own eyes, serves chiefly as the ground for constructing his theory of man and of the universe. His fundamental hypothesis relegates to God all forces in their ultimate origin. Hence the world is left open for the free play of mechanics and geometry. The disturbing conditions of will, life and organic forces are eliminated from the problem; he starts with the clear and distinct idea of extension, figured and moved, and thence by mathematical laws he gives a hypothetical explanation of all things. Such explanation of physical phenomena is the main problem of Descartes, and it goes on encroaching upon territories once supposed proper to the mind. Descartes began with the certainty that we are thinking beings; that region remains untouched; but up to its very borders the mechanical explanation of nature reigns unchecked.

The physical theory, in its earlier form in The World, and later in the Principles of Philosophy (which the present account follows), rests upon the metaphysical conclusions of the Meditations. It proposes to set forth the genesis of the existing universe from principles which can be plainly understood, and according to the acknowledged laws of the transmission of movement. The idea of force is one of those obscure conceptions which originate in an obscure region, in the sense of muscular power. The true physical conception is motion, the ultimate ground of which is to be sought in God’s infinite power. Accordingly the quantity of movement in the universe, like its mover, can neither increase nor diminish. The only circumstance which physics has to consider is the transference of movement from one particle to another, and the change of its direction. Man himself cannot increase the sum of motion; he can only alter its direction. The whole conception of force may disappear from a theory of the universe; and we can adopt a geometrical definition of motion as the shifting of one body from the neighbourhood of those bodies which immediately touch it, and which are assumed to be at rest, to the neighbourhood of other bodies. Motion, in short, is strictly locomotion, and nothing else.

Descartes has laid down three laws of nature, and seven secondary laws regarding impact. The latter are to a large extent incorrect. The first law affirms that every body, so far as it is altogether unaffected by extraneous causes, always

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/100


text:
Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v8.djvu/79

Rh

Executive Mansion, Washington, November 21, 1864.

Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Massachusetts.

Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully, Abraham Lincoln.

Washington, D. C, May 18, 1861.

Hon. F. P. Blair:

My dear Sir: We have a good deal of anxiety here about St. Louis. I understand an order has gone from the War Department to you, to be delivered or withheld in your discretion, relieving General Harney from his command. I was not quite satisfied with the order when it was made, though on the whole I thought it best to make it; but since then I have become


text:
The New International Encyclopædia/Knoblauch, Hermann

KNOBLAUCH, knṓb'lou K, (1820-95). A German physicist, born in Berlin. Having finished his studies, he became lecturer at the University of Berlin, then professor at Marburg, and in 1854 was appointed professor at the University of Halle. In 1878 he was appointed president of the Leopoldinisch-Karolinische Akademie at Halle. His publications, which are to be found mostly in the Monatsschriften of the Berlin Academy, and in the Abhandlungen der naturforschenden Gesellschaft zu Halle, treat especially of radiation of heat. He was one of the first who demonstrated that the warmth we experience when we stand before a fire reaches us in the same way as the rays of the sun, that is, by radiation, without affecting the temperature of the vacuum or the intervening material medium through which the heat is transmitted.


text:
User talk:Maire

— billinghurst  sDrewth  22:35, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Maire


text:
User talk:78.192.12.79

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to Wikisource! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

 * Help pages
 * Style Guide
 * Inclusion policy

You are welcome to continue editing articles without logging in, but you may wish to  [ create an account] . Doing so is free, requires no personal information, and provides several benefits. For one thing, if you continue to edit without a username, your IP address is used to publicly identify you.

In any case, I hope you enjoy donating your time to grow the Wikisource library that is free for everyone to use! In discussions, please sign your comments using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your IP address (or username if you're logged in) and the date. If you need help, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question here (click  [ edit] ) and place  before your question. Again, welcome! — billinghurst  sDrewth  22:36, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:78.192.12.79


text:
Page:Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots.djvu/115

Rh me; didn't I show how averse i was to all quarrels by refusing altogether his challenge?—but such is the world: and thus the people at Stiffelkind’s used to tease me until they drove me almost mad.

At last he came home one day more merry and abusive than ever. "Gaptain," says he, "I have goot news for you—a goot place. Your lortship vill not be able to geep your garriage, but you vil be gomfortable and serve His Majesty.

"Serve His Majesty," says I: "dearest Mr. Stiffelkind, have you got me a place under Government?"

"Yes, and somting better still—not only a place, but a uniform—yes, Gabdain Stobbs, a red goat."

"A red coat! I hope you don’t think I would demean myself by entering the ranks of the army. I am a gentleman, Mr. Stiffelkind—I can never—no, I never."

"No, I know you will never—you are too great a goward, ha! ha!—though dis is a red goat, and a place where you must give some hard knocks too, ha! ha!—do you gomprehend?—and you shall be a general, instead of a gabdain—ha! ha!"


text:
Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v8.djvu/197

Rh CONKLING, F. A., AND OTHERS. Executive Mansion, Washington, June 3, 1864. Hon. F. A. Conkling and Others. Gentlemen: Your letter inviting me to be present at a mass-meeting of loyal citizens to be held at New York on the fourth instant, for the purpose of expressing gratitude to Lieutenant-General Grant for his signal services, was received yesterday. It is impossible for me to attend. I approve, nevertheless, whatever may tend to strengthen and sustain General Grant and the noble armies now under his direction. My previous high estimate of General Grant has been maintained and heightened by what has occurred in the remarkable campaign he is now conducting, while the magnitude and difficulty of the task before him do not prove less than I expected. Fie and his brave soldiers are now in the midst of their great trial, and I trust that at your meeting you will so shape your good words that they may turn to men and guns, moving to his and their support. Yours truly, A. Lincoln. Conkling, James C. [Private.] War Department, Washington City, D. C, August 17, 1863. My Dear Conkling: I cannot leave here now. Herewith is a letter instead. You are one of the best public readers. I have but one sug


text:
Author:John Woolman

Journal

 * The Journal of John Woolman (1871)
 * The Journal and Essays of John Woolman (1922)

Essays

 * Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes

Works about Woolman

 * "Franklin and Woolman" in The Harvard Classics, Vol. 51 (1914) by Chester Noyes Greenough
 * "Franklin and Woolman" in The Harvard Classics, Vol. 51 (1914) by Chester Noyes Greenough

title: Author:John Woolman


text:
Page:Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots.djvu/114

98 "Look, my dear," says he, "here is an old friend of yours, His Excellency Lort Cornvallis!—Who would have thought such a nobleman vood turn shoeblack? Gaptain Stobbs, here is your former flame, my dear niece, Miss Grotty—how could you, Magdalen, ever leaf soch a lof of a man? Shake hands vid her, Gaptain;—dere, never mind de blacking;" but Miss drew back.

"I never shake hands with a shoeblack," says she, mighty contemptuous.

"Bah! my lof, his fingers vont soil you, don't you know he has just been vitevashed?"

"I wish, uncle," says she, "you would not leave me with such low people."

"Low, because he cleans boots? de Gaptain prefers pumps to boots I tink, ha! ha!"

"Captain, indeed! a nice Captain," says Miss Crutty, snapping her fingers in my face, and walking away; "a Captain, who has had his nose pulled! ha! ha!"—And how could I help it? it wasn't by my own choice that that ruffian Waters took such liberties with


text: A Book of Dartmoor/Chapter 8

title: A Book of Dartmoor/Chapter 8


text:
Author:Robert Kingman Wright

Works

 * CMH 60-9: Military Police (1992)

title: Author:Robert Kingman Wright


text: Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v9.djvu/4


text: Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v9.djvu/3


text: Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v9.djvu/2


text: Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v9.djvu/1


text: Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v9.djvu/10


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Banck, John van der


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Banck, Peter van der


text: Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v3.djvu/10


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bancks, John


text:
Page:Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots.djvu/116

100 "A general in a red goat! Mr. Stiffelkind?"

"Yes, a GENERAL BOSTMAN! ha! ha! I have been vid your old friend, Bunting, and he has an uncle in the Post Office, and he has got you de place—eighteen shillings a veek, you rogue, and your goat. You must not oben any of de letters, you know."

And so it—I, Robert Stubbs, Esquire, became the vile thing he named—a general postman!

I was so disgusted with Stiffelkind’s brutal jokes, which were now more brutal than ever; that when I got my place in the Post Office, I never went near the fellow again—for though he had done me a favor in keeping me from starvation, he certainly had done it in a very rude, disagreeable manner, and showed a low and mean spirit in shoving me into such a degraded placed as that of postman. But what had I to do? I submitted to fate, and for three years or more, Robert Stubbs, of the North Bungay Fencibles, was

I wonder nobody recognized me. I lived in daily fear the first year; but, afterwards, grew accustomed


text:
Template:American Journal of Sociology link/doc

Purpose
This template enables linking from Wikisource articles (usually author pages) to articles in the the Wikisource project of one of the series of The American Journal of Sociology.

Example

 * displays as:

Further information
The order of the parameters by default is though if you use all parameter names, order can be varied.
 * 1) title of article page =
 * 2) volume number =
 * 3) year of publication =
 * 4) year of publication =
 * 5) start page  end page

All parameters are required for a functional template link to be generated.


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bancroft, Edward (1744-1821)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bancroft, George


text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/299

VII.] interjectionally which were once full parts of speech; even a whole phrase being, as it were, reduced to a single pregnantly uttered exclamation: examples are alas! that is, O me lasso, 'oh weary me!' zounds! 'I swear by God's wounds,' dear me! that is, dio mio, 'my God!' and many others.

Such are, compendiously and briefly stated, the steps by which Indo-European language was developed out of monosyllabic weakness into the wealth and fertility of inflective speech. At what rate they went on, how rapid was the growth after its first inception, we know not, and we can hardly hope ever to know. The conditions of that primitive period, and the degree in which they might have been able to quicken the now sluggish processes of word-combination and formation, are so much beyond our ken that even our conjectures respecting them have—at least as yet—too little value to be worth recording. What may have been the numbers of the community which laid the foundation of all the Indo-European tongues, and what its relation to other then existing communities, are also points hitherto involved in the deepest obscurity. But we know that, before the separation, whether simultaneous or successive, of this community into the parts which afterward became founders of the different tongues of Europe and south-western Asia, the principal part of the linguistic development had already taken place—enough for its traces to remain ineffaceable, even to the present day, in the speech of all the modern representatives of the family; the inflective character of Indo-European language, the main distinctions of its parts of speech, its methods of word-formation and inflection, were elaborated and definitely established.

But, though we cannot pretend to fix the length of time required for this process of growth, in terms of centuries or of thousands of years, we can at least see clearly that it must have gone on in a slow and gradual manner, and occupied no brief period. Such is the nature of the forces by which all change in language has been shown to be effected, that anything like a linguistic revolution, a rapid and sweeping modification of linguistic structure, is wholly impossible—and most especially, a revolution of a


text:
Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/6

 Rh

It also shewes the cruell wreake of women in their wrath And that no hainous mischiefe long delay of vengeance hath. And lastly that distresse doth drive a man to looke about And seeke all corners of his wits, what way to wind him out. The good successe of Jason in the land of Colchos, and The dooings of Medea since, doo give to understand That nothing is so hard but peyne and travell doo it win, For fortune ever favoreth such as boldly doo begin: That women both in helping and in hurting have no match When they to eyther bend their wits: and how that for to catch An honest meener under fayre pretence of frendship, is An easie matter. Also there is warning given of this, That men should never hastely give eare to fugitives, Nor into handes of sorcerers commit their state or lyves. It shewes in fine of stepmoothers the deadly hate in part, And vengeaunce most unnaturall that was in moothers hart. The deedes of Theseus are a spurre to prowesse, and a glasse How princes sonnes and noblemen their youthfull yeeres should passe. King Minos shewes that kings in hand no wrongfull wars should take, And what provision for the same they should before hand make. King Aeacus gives also there example how that kings Should keepe their promise and their leages above all other things. His grave description of the plage and end thereof, expresse The wrath of God on man for sin: and how that nerethelesse He dooth us spare and multiply ageine for goodmens sakes. The whole discourse of Cephalus and Procris mention makes That maried folke should warely shunne the vyce of jealozie And of suspicion should avoyd all causes utterly, Reproving by the way all such as causelesse doo misdeeme The chaste and giltlesse for the deedes of those that faultie seeme. The storie of the daughter of king Nisus setteth out What wicked lust drives folk unto to bring their wills about. And of a rightuous judge is given example in the same, Who for no meede nor frendship will consent to any blame. Wee may perceyve in Dedalus how every man by kynd Desyres to bee at libertie, and with an earnest mynd Dooth seeke to see his native soyle, and how that streight distresse Dooth make men wyse, and sharpes their wits to fynd their own redresse. Wee also lerne by Icarus how good it is to bee In meane estate and not to clymb too hygh, but to agree Too wholsome counsell: for the hyre of disobedience is Repentance when it is too late forthinking things amisse. And Partrich telles that excellence in any thing procures Men envie, even among those frendes whom nature most assures. Philemon and his feere are rules of godly pacient lyfe, Of sparing thrift, and mutuall love betweene the man and wyfe, Of due obedience, of the feare of God, and of reward For good or evill usage shewd to wandring straungers ward. In Erisicthon dooth appeere a lyvely image both

Of

title: Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/6


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bancroft, John (1574-1640)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bancroft, John (d.1696)


text:
Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/7

 Rh

Of wickednesse and crueltie which any wyght may lothe, And of the hyre that longs thereto. He sheweth also playne That whereas prodigalitie and gluttony dooth reigne, A world of riches and of goods are ever with the least Too satisfye the appetite and eye of such a beast. In Hercules and Acheloyes encounters is set out The nature and behaviour of two wooers that be stout. Wherein the Poet covertly taunts such as beeing bace Doo seeke by forged pedegrees to seeme of noble race. Who when they doo perceyve no truth uppon their syde to stand, In stead of reason and of ryght use force and myght of hand. This fable also signifies that valiantnesse of hart Consisteth not in woords, but deedes: and that all slyght and Art Give place to prowesse. Furthermore in Nessus wee may see What breach of promise commeth to, and how that such as bee Unable for to wreake theyr harmes by force, doo oft devyse Too wreake themselves by policie in farre more cruell wise. And Deyanira dooth declare the force of jealozie Deceyved through too lyght beleef and fond simplicitie. The processe following peinteth out true manlynesse of hart Which yeeldeth neyther unto death, to sorrow, greef, nor smart. And finally it shewes that such as live in true renowne Of vertue heere, have after death an everlasting crowne Of glorie. Cawne and Byblis are examples contrarie: The Mayd of most outrageous lust, the man of chastitie. The tenth booke cheefly dooth containe one kynd of argument Reproving most prodigious lusts of such as have bene bent To incest most unnaturall. And in the latter end It showeth in Hippomenes how greatly folk offend That are ingrate for benefits which God or man bestow Uppon them in the time of neede. Moreover it dooth show That beawty (will they nill they) aye dooth men in daunger throw: And that it is a foolyshnesse to stryve ageinst the thing Which God before determineth to passe in tyme to bring. And last of all Adonis death dooth shew that manhod strives Against forewarning though men see the perill of theyr lyves. The death of Orphey sheweth Gods just vengeance on the vyle And wicked sort which horribly with incest them defyle. In Midas of a covetous wretch the image wee may see Whose riches justly to himself a hellish torment bee, And of a foole whom neyther proof nor warning can amend, Untill he feele the shame and smart that folly doth him send. His Barbour represents all blabs which seeme with chyld to bee Untill that they have blaazd abrode the things they heare or see. In Ceyx and Alcyone appeeres most constant love, Such as betweene the man and wyfe to bee it dooth behove. This Ceyx also is a lyght of princely courtesie And bountie toward such whom neede compelleth for too flie. His viage also dooth declare how vainly men are led

Too

title: Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/7


text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/300

278 character, building up a fabric of words and forms. Every item of the difference by which a given dialect is distinguished from its ancestor, or from another dialect having the same ancestry, is the work of a gradual change of usage made by the members of a community in the speech which they were every day employing as their means of mutual communication, and which, if too rapidly altered, would not answer the purposes of communication. It takes time for even that easiest of changes, a phonetic corruption or abbreviation, to win the assent of a community, and become established as the law of their speech: it takes decades, and even generations, or centuries, for an independent word to run through the series of modifications in form and meaning which are necessary to its conversion into a formative element. That the case was otherwise at the very beginning, we have not the least reason for believing, The opinion of those who hold that the whole structure of a language was produced "at a single stroke" is absolutely opposed to all the known facts of linguistic history; it has no inductive basis whatever; it rests upon arbitrary assumption, and is supported by à priori reasoning. There must have been a period of some duration—and, for aught we know, it may have been of very long duration—when the first speakers of our language talked together in their scanty dialect of formless monosyllables. The first forms, developed words containing a formal as well as a radical element, cannot have come into existence otherwise than by slow degrees, worked out by the unconscious exercise of that ingenuity in the adaptation of means to ends, of that sense for symmetry, for finished, even artistic, production, which have ever been qualities especially characterizing our division of the human race. Every form thus elaborated led the way to others: it helped to determine a tendency, to establish an analogy, which facilitated their further production. A protracted career of formal development was run during that primitive period of Indo-European history which preceded the dispersion of the branches: words and forms were multiplied until even a maximum of synthetic complexity, of fullness of inflective wealth, had been reached, from which there has


text:
Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/8

 Rh

To utter perill through fond toyes and fansies in their head. For Idols, doubtfull oracles and soothsayres prophecies Doo nothing else but make fooles fayne and blynd their bleared eyes. Dedalions daughter warnes to use the toong with modestee And not to vaunt with such as are their betters in degree. The seege of Troy, the death of men, the razing of the citie, And slaughter of king Priams stock without remors of pitie, Which in the xii. and xiii. bookes bee written, doo declare How heynous wilfull perjurie and filthie whoredome are In syght of God. The frentick fray betweene the Lapithes and The Centaures is a note wherby is given to understand The beastly rage of drunkennesse. Ulysses dooth expresse The image of discretion, wit, and great advisednesse. And Ajax on the other syde doth represent a man Stout, headie, irefull, hault of mynd, and such a one as can Abyde to suffer no repulse. And both of them declare How covetous of glorie and reward mens natures are. And finally it sheweth playne that wisdome dooth prevayle In all attempts and purposes when strength of hand dooth fayle. The death of fayre Polyxena dooth shew a princely mynd And firme regard of honor rare engraft in woman kynd. And Polymnestor, king of Thrace, dooth shew himself to bee A glasse for wretched covetous folke wherein themselves to see. This storie further witnesseth that murther crieth ay For vengeance, and itself one tyme or other dooth bewray. The tale of Gyant Polypheme doth evidently prove That nothing is so feerce and wyld, which yeeldeth not to love. And in the person of the selfsame Gyant is set out The rude and homely wooing of a country cloyne and lout. The tale of Apes reproves the vyce of wilfull perjurie, And willeth people to beware they use not for to lye. Aeneas going downe to hell dooth shew that vertue may In saufty travell where it will, and nothing can it stay. The length of lyfe in Sybill dooth declare it is but vayne Too wish long lyfe, syth length of lyfe is also length of payne. The Grecian Achemenides dooth lerne us how we ought Bee thankfull for the benefits that any man hath wrought. And in this Achemenides the Poet dooth expresse The image of exceeding feare in daunger and distresse. What else are Circes witchcrafts and enchauntments than the vyle And filthy pleasures of the flesh which doo our soules defyle? And what is else herbe Moly than the gift of stayednesse And temperance which dooth all fowle concupiscence represse? The tale of Anaxaretee willes dames of hygh degree To use their lovers courteously how meane so ere they bee. And Iphis lernes inferior folkes too fondly not to set Their love on such as are too hygh for their estate to get. Alemons sonne declares that men should willingly obay What God commaundes, and not uppon exceptions seeme to stay.

For

title: Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/8


text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/301

VII.] been in later times, upon the whole, a gradual descent and impoverishment.

Here we must pause a little, to consider an objection urged by some linguistic scholars of rank and reputation against the truth of the views we have been defending, as to the primitive monosyllabism of Indo-European language, and its gradual emergence out of that condition—an objection which has more apparent legitimacy and force than any of those hitherto noticed. It is this. In ascending the current of historical development of the languages of our family, say the objectors, instead of approaching a monosyllabic condition, we seem to recede farther and farther from it. The older dialects are more polysyllabic than the later: where our ancestors used long and complicated forms, we are content with brief ones, or we have replaced them with phrases composed of independent words. Thus, to recur once more to a former example, for an earlier lagamasi we say we lie; thus, again, for the Latin fuisset, the French says simply fût, while we express its meaning by four distinct words, he might have been. Modern languages are full of verbal forms of this latter class, which substitute syntactical for substantial combinations. The relations of case, too, formerly signified only by means of declensional endings, have lost by degrees this mode of expression, and have come to be indicated by prepositions, independent words. This is what is well known as the "analytical" tendency in linguistic growth. Our own English tongue exhibits its effects in the highest known degree, having reduced near half the vocabulary it possesses to a monosyllabic form, and got rid of almost all its inflections, so that it expresses grammatical relations chiefly by relational words, auxiliaries and connectives: but it is only an extreme example of the results of a movement generally perceptible in modern speech. If, then, during the period when we can watch their growth step by step, languages have become less synthetic, words less polysyllabic, must we not suppose that it was always so; that human speech began with highly complicated forms, which from the very first have been undergoing reduction to simpler and briefer shape?


text: Page:Base Facilities Report.djvu/5

title: Page:Base Facilities Report.djvu/5


text:
Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/9

 Rh

For he will find the meanes to bring the purpose well about, And in their most necessitie dispatch them saufly out Of daunger. The oration of Pithagoras implyes A sum of all the former woorke. What person can devyse A notabler example of true love and godlynesse To ones owne natyve countryward than Cippus dooth expresse? The turning to a blazing starre of Julius Cesar showes, That fame and immortalitie of vertuous dooing growes. And lastly by examples of Augustus and a few Of other noble princes sonnes the author there dooth shew That noblemen and gentlemen shoulde stryve to passe the fame And vertues of their aunceters, or else to match the same. Theis fables out of every booke I have interpreted, To shew how they and all the rest may stand a man in sted. Not adding over curiously the meaning of them all, For that were labor infinite, and tediousnesse not small Bothe unto your good Lordship and the rest that should them reede Who well myght think I did the boundes of modestie exceede, If I this one epistle should with matters overcharge Which scarce a booke of many quyres can well conteyne at large. And whereas in interpreting theis few I attribute The things to one, which heathen men to many Gods impute, Concerning mercy, wrath for sin, and other gifts of grace: Described for examples sake in proper tyme and place, Let no man marvell at the same. For though that they as blynd Through unbeleefe, and led astray through error even of kynd, Knew not the true eternall God., or if they did him know, Yit did they not acknowledge him, but vaynly did bestow The honor of the maker on the creature: yit it dooth Behove all us (who ryghtly are instructed in the sooth) To thinke and say that God alone is he that rules all things And worketh all in all, as lord of lords and king of kings, With whom there are none other Gods that any sway may beare, No fatall law to bynd him by, no fortune for to feare. For Gods, and fate, and fortune are the termes of heathennesse, If men usurp them in the sense that Paynims doo expresse. But if wee will reduce their sense to ryght of Christian law, To signifie three other things theis termes wee well may draw. By Gods wee understand all such as God hath plaast in cheef Estate to punish sin, and for the godly folkes releef: By fate the order which is set and stablished in things By Gods eternall will and word, which in due season brings All matters to their falling out. Which falling out or end (Bicause our curious reason is too weake to comprehend The cause and order of the same, and dooth behold it fall Unwares to us) by name of chaunce or fortune wee it call. If any man will say theis things may better lerned bee Out of divine philosophie or scripture, I agree That nothing may in worthinesse with holy writ compare.

Rh

title: Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/9


text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/302

280 This is, as we have confessed, a plausible argument, but it is at the same time a thoroughly unsound and superficial one. It skims the surface of linguistic phenomona, without penetrating to the causes which produce them. It might pass muster, and be allowed to determine our opinions, if the analytical tendency alone had been active since our knowledge of language began; if we had seen old forms worn out, but no new forms made; if we had seen words put side by side to furnish analytic combinations, but no elements fused together into synthetic union. But we know by actual experience how both synthetic and analytic forms are produced, and what are the influences and circumstances which favour the production of the one rather than of the other. The constructive as well as the destructive forces in language admit of illustration, and have been by us illustrated, with modern as well as with ancient examples. Both have been active together, during all the ages through which we can follow linguistic growth. There have never been forms which were not undergoing continual modification and mutilation, under the influence of the already recognized tendencies to forget the genesis of a word in its later application, and then to reduce it to a shape adapted to more convenient utterance; there was also never a time when reparation was not making for this waste in part by the fresh development of true forms out of old materials. Nor has the tendency been everywhere and in all respects downward, toward poverty of synthetic forms, throughout the historic period. If the Greek and Latin system of declension is scantier than that of the original language of the family, their system of conjugation, especially the Greek, is decidedly richer, filled up with synthetic forms of secondary growth; the modern Romanic tongues have lost something of this wealth, but they have also added something to it, and their verb, leaving out of view its compound tenses, will bear favourable comparison with that which was the common inheritance of the branches. Some of the modern dialects of India, on the other hand, having once lost, in the ordinary course of phonetic corruption, the ancient case-terminations of the Sanskrit, have replaced them by a new scheme, not


text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/303

VII.] less full and complete than its predecessor. The Russian of the present day possesses in some respects a capacity of synthetic development hardly, if at all, excelled by that of any ancient tongue. For example, it takes the two independent words bez Boga, 'without God,' and fuses them into a theme from which it draws a whole list of derivatives. Thus, first, by adding an adjective suffix, it gets the adjective bezbozhnüǐ, 'godless;' a new suffix appended to this makes a noun, bezbozhnik, 'a godless person, an atheist;' the noun gives birth to a denominative verb, bezbozhnikhat, 'to be an atheist;' from this verb, again, come a number of derivatives, giving to the verbal idea the form of adjective, agent, act, and so on: the abstract is bezbozhnichestvo, 'the condition of being an atheist;' while, once more, a new verb is made from this abstract, namely bezbozhnichestvovat, literally 'to be in the condition of being a godless person.' A more intricate synthetic form than this could not easily be found in Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit; but it is no rare or exceptional case in the language from which we have extracted it; it rather represents, by a striking instance, the general character of Russian word-formation and derivation.

It is obviously futile, then, to talk of an uninterrupted and universal reduction of the resources of synthetic expression among the languages of the Indo-European family, or to allow ourselves to be forced by an alleged pervading tendency toward analytic forms into accepting synthesis, inflective richness, as the ultimate condition of the primitive tongue from which they are descended. If certain among them have replaced one or another part of their synthetic structure by analytic forms, if some—as the Germanic family in general, and, above all, the English—have taken on a prevailingly analytic character, these are facts which we are to seek to explain by a careful study of the circumstances and tendencies which have governed their respective development. If, moreover, as has been conceded, the general bent has for a long time been toward a diminution of synthesis and a predominance of analytic expressions, another question, of wider scope, is presented us for solution; but the form in which it offers itself is this: why should the forces which


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/46

 xxxviii family the Covent Garden pantomime at Christmas 1870-71. The party exceeded ninety in number, and he engaged for his guests, after much negotiation, the whole of the first row of the dress circle. Millais's children filled the central places.

In 1870 Smith's energy revived in its pristine abundance, and, finding inadequate scope in his publishing business, it sought additional outlets elsewhere. Early in the year he resolved to make a supreme effort to produce a morning paper. A morning edition of the 'Pall Mall Gazette' was devised anew on a grand scale. In form it followed the lines of 'The Times.' Smith threw himself into the project with exceptional ardour. He spent every night at the office supervising every detail of the paper's production. But the endeavour failed, and, after four months of heavy toil and large expenditure, the enterprise was abandoned. Meanwhile the independent evening issue of the 'Pall Mall' continued to make satisfactory progress. But the discouraging experience of the morning paper did not daunt his determination to obtain occupation and investments for capital supplemental to that with which his publishing business provided him. Later in 1870 he went into partnership with Mr. Arthur Bilbrough, as a shipowner and underwriter, at 36 Fenchurch Street. The firm was known as Smith, Bilbrough, & Co. Smith joined Lloyd's in 1871, but underwriting did not appeal much to him, and he soon gave it up. On the other hand, the width of his interest and intelligence rendered the position of a shipowner wholly congenial. His operations in that capacity were vigorously pursued, and were attended by success. The firm acquired commanding interests in thirteen or fourteen sailing vessels of large tonnage, and they built in 1874 on new principles, which were afterwards imitated, a cargo boat of great dimensions, which Smith christened Old Kensington, after Miss Thackeray's well-known novel. The book had just passed serially through the 'Cornhill.' Sailors who were not aware of the source of the name raised a superstitious objection to the epithet 'Old,' but Smith, although sympathetic, would not give way, and cherished a personal pride in the vessel. When in 1879 he resigned his partnership in Smith, Bilbrough, & Co., he still retained his share in the Old Kensington.

Until 1879, when he withdrew from the shipping business, he spent the early part of each morning at its office in Fenchurch Street and the rest of the working day at Waterloo Place, where, despite his numerous other interests, he spared no pains to develop his publishing connection. His settlement in Waterloo Place almost synchronised with the opening of his cordial relations with Robert Browning. Smith had met Browning casually in early life, and Browning's friend Chorley had asked Smith to take over the poet's publications from his original publisher, Moxon; but, at the moment, the financial position of Smith, Elder, & Co. did not justify him in accepting the proposal. In 1868 Browning himself asked him to undertake a collective issue of his 'Poetical Works,' and he produced an edition in six volumes. Later in the same year Browning placed in Smith's hands the manuscript of 'The Ring and the Book.' He paid the poet 1,250l. for the right of publication during five years. The great work appeared in four monthly volumes, which were issued


text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/304

282 produce synthetic combinations have reached their height of activity during the ante-historic period of growth, and have been gradually gained upon later, at varying rates in different communities, by those of another order? We do not in the least feel impelled to doubt the historic reality of the earliest combinations, their parallelism, in character and origin, with those which we see springing up in modern times. That we now say analytically I did love, or deal, or lead is no ground for questioning that our ancestors said compositely I love-did, deal-did, lead-did, and then worked them down into the true synthetic forms I loved, dealt, led. The cause which produced the different nature of the two equivalent expressions I loved and I did love, composed, as they are, of identical elements, was a difference in habit of the language at the periods when they were respectively generated. Any language can do what it is in the habit of doing. We can turn almost any substantive in our vocabulary into a quasi adjective—saying a gold watch, a grass slope, a church mouse, and so on—because, through the intermediate step of loose compounds like goldsmith, grasshopper, churchman, we have acquired the habit of looking upon our substantives as convertible to adjective uses without alteration and without ceremony. Neither the Frenchman nor the German can do the same thing, simply because his speech presents no analogies for such a procedure. We, on the other hand, like the French, have lost the power to form compounds with anything like the facility possessed by the ancient tongue from which ours is descended and by some of its modern representatives, as the German; not because they would not be intelligible if we formed them, but because, under the operation of traceable circumstances in our linguistic history, we have grown out of the habit of so combining our words, and into the habit of merely collocating them, with or without connectives. Now we have only to apply this principle upon a wider scale, and under other conditions of language, in order to find, as I think, a sufficient answer to the question which is engaging our attention. When once, after we know not how long a period of expectation and tentative effort, the formation of words by


text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/305

VII.] synthesis had begun in the primitive Indo-European language, and had been found so fruitful of the means of varied and distinct expression, it became the habit of the language. The more numerous the new forms thus produced, the greater was the facility of producing more, because the material of speech was present to the minds of its speakers as endowed with that capacity of combination and fusion of which the results in every part of its structure were so apparent. But the edifice after a time became, as it were, complete; a sufficient working-apparatus of declensional, conjugational, and derivative endings was elaborated to answer the purposes of an inflective tongue; fewer and rarer additions were called for, as occasional supplements of the scheme, or substitutes for lost forms. Thus began a period in which the formative processes were more and more exclusively an inheritance from the past, less and less of recent acquisition; and as the origin of forms was lost sight of, obscured by the altering processes of phonetic corruption, it became more and more difficult to originate new ones, because fewer analogies of such forms were present to the apprehension of the language-makers, as incentives and guides to their action. On the other hand, the expansion of the whole vocabulary to wealth of resources, to the possession of varied and precise phraseology, furnished a notably increased facility of indicating ideas and relations by descriptive phrases, by groups of independent words. This mode of expression, then, always more or less used along with the other, began to gain ground upon it, and, of course, helped to deaden the vitality of the latter, and to render it yet more incapable of extended action. That tendency to the conscious and reflective use of speech which comes in with the growth of culture especially, and which has already been repeatedly pointed out as one of the main checks upon all the processes of linguistic change, cast its influence in the same direction; since the ability to change the meaning and application of words, even to the degree of reducing them to the expression of formal relations, is a much more fundamental and indefeasible property of speech than the ability to combine and fuse them bodily together. Then, when


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/47

 Rh respectively in November and December 1868, and January and February 1869. Of the first two volumes, the edition consisted of three thousand copies each; but the sale was not rapid, and of the last two volumes only two thousand were printed. Browning presented Mrs. Smith with the manuscript. Thenceforth Smith was, for the rest of Browning's life, his only publisher, and he also took over the works of Mrs. Browning from Chapman & Hall. The two men were soon on very intimate terms. In 1871 he accepted Browning's poem of 'Hervé Riel' for the 'Cornhill Magazine.' Browning had asked him to buy it so that he might forward a subscription to the fund for the relief of the people of Paris after the siege. Smith sent the poet 100l. by return of post. Fifteen separate volumes of new verse by Browning appeared with Smith, Elder, & Co.'s imprint between 1871 and the date of the poet's death late in 1889. In 1888, too. Smith began a new collected edition which extended to seventeen volumes, and yielded handsome gains (in 1896 he brought out a cheaper complete collection in two volumes). He thus had the satisfaction of presiding over the fortunes of Browning's works when, for the first time in his long life, they brought their author substantial profit. Though Browning, like many other eminent English poets, was a man of affairs, he left his publishing concerns entirely in Smith's hands. No cloud ever darkened their private or professional intercourse. The poet's last letter to his publisher, dated from Asolo, 27 Sept. 1889, contained the words 'and now to our immediate business [the proofs of the volume 'Asolando' were going through the press at the moment], which is only to keep thanking you for your constant goodness, present and future.' Almost Browning's last words on his deathbed were to bid his son seek George Smith's advice whenever he had need of good counsel. Smith superintended the arrangements for Browning's funeral in Westminster Abbey on 31 Dec. 1889, and was justly accorded a place among the pall-bearers.

While the association with Browning was growing close Smith reluctantly parted company with another great author whose works he had published continuously from the start of each in life. A rift in the intimacy between Ruskin and Smith had begun when the issue of 'Unto this Last' in the 'Cornhill' was broken off in 1861, and the death of Ruskin's father in 1864 severed a strong link in the chain that originally united them. But more than ten years passed before the alienation became complete. For no author did the firm publish a greater number of separate volumes. During the forties they published three volumes by Ruskin; during the fifties no less than twenty-six; during the sixties as many as eight, including 'The Crown of Wild Olive,' 'Sesame and Lilies,' and 'Queen of the Air.' In the early seventies Ruskin's pen was especially active. In 1871 he entrusted Smith with the first number of 'Fors Clavigera.' In 1872 the firm brought out four new works: 'The Eagle's Nest,' 'Munera Pulveris,' 'Aratra Pentelici,' and 'Michael Angelo and Tintoret.' But by that date Ruskin had matured views about the distribution of books which were out of harmony with existing practice. He wished his volumes to be sold to booksellers at the advertised price without discount and


text:
Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/24

10 forth every effort to throw off control. When, however, panting and exhausted, he finally submits, he has learned the necessary lesson; and whether it be after a long fight with a brutal rough-rider, or a physically painless struggle with an adroit Rarey, he has learned it for life. Henceforth he accepts the supremacy of the human race, and, unless under the goad of maddening pain or terror, will never, save in rare instances, really rebel; obeying not men only, but women, children, and even the very tools and implements of man, so that a dog may lead him by the bridle. Like a spoiled child, however, a horse will sometimes presume upon indulgence, and, to use a mother's phrase, will try to see how far he can go.

At such times he is best opposed not by violence, but by firmness, reinforced, perhaps, now and then by a sharp cut with the whip, which, given unexpectedly at the precise moment of disobedience, will have the settling effect ascribed to the time-honored nursery "spank," and will bring him to his senses. Generally, however, what seems insubordination is in reality nervousness, which requires soothing, not punishment, and which you will be careful not to increase by fidgeting or by brusque movements of the reins. Even when severity is needed, a reproof in a cold, stern tone is often more effective than the lash.

Thousands of young girls, who for various reasons cannot ride in winter, have every summer within reach

title: Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/24


text:
Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/25

Rh horses quite as good as the average of those at city riding-schools, but which they are never allowed to mount.

They look wistfully at the honest animals, longing for the exercise which would be so beneficial to their health and to their physical development, while so delightfully exhilarating to their spirits; but one horse is pronounced "skittish," another "hard-mouthed," and so on to the end. Nevertheless, some enterprising damsel manages to overcome all opposition, and, skirted, hatted, gloved, sets off in fine spirits. The horse, accustomed to the resistance of a heavy vehicle, moves forward with slow and heavy strides. Urged to greater speed, he rolls his shoulders so that it is almost impossible to rise to his trot. When put to the canter he pounds along the road, his hind-feet kept far in the rear and his head swaying up and down, while, missing the customary support of the bearing-rein, he all the time leans his heavy head on his rider's delicate arm, till it seems as if she would be pulled out of the saddle. However, the fresh open air is there, and the scenery; exercise, too, in plenty, and the pleasure of independent movement, so that our heroine is half inclined to persevere. But, alas! an equestrian party on well-bitted, light-stepping horses sweeps by, casting a pitying glance at her rustic mount and helpless plight. Mortified and discouraged, she goes home and dismounts, determined not to try again. Nevertheless, her horse is very likely quite as good as theirs, and all he wants is a little "handling," as the horsemen

title: Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/25


text:
Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/26

12 say. For twenty-five dollars a riding-master will turn him over to her as docile and supple as any of them, and, with a little time and trouble, she can do it herself for nothing.

As for the proficiency in riding requisite, it is only necessary that you should not depend upon the reins for your balance—a common habit, but one destructive of all delicacy of the horse's mouth. As the first half-dozen lessons of this course are to be given on foot, a riding-habit would only be in the way; so go to your first tête-à-tête with your new scholar in a stout walking-dress, easy in the waist, short of skirt, and of stuff that will bear scouring, for frothy lips will certainly be wiped on it. Let the hat be trim, the gloves strong and old, and the boots heavy with low heels.

The saddle should, if possible, be of the safe and easy modern pattern, with hunting-horn and low pommel on the right side—but of course any one which does not gall the horse can be made to do. It should have at least two strong girths, and must be so padded with wool as not to touch the backbone. Make sure, before putting it on, that there are no tacks loose or likely to become so in the lining.

The bridle should be a double one, with one "snaffle" or jointed bit, and one curb-bit, each having, of course, separate reins and headstalls. By-and-by you can use a single bridle, if you prefer, with whichever bit you think best suited to your hand and your horse's mouth.

title: Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/26


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bankes, Henry


text:
Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/27

Rh The whip should be elastic and capable of giving a sharp cut (though you may never need to administer one with it), and it is convenient to have a loop of cord or ribbon by which it may be hung to the wrist. A good birch switch is better for your present purpose than the usual flimsy "lady's whip;" and if you are in

A GOOD SADDLE.

the country, it makes a good whip to begin with, as you will probably soon wish to substitute a crop.

The place of instruction should be as retired as possible, so that there may be nothing to distract the horse's attention.

title: Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/27


text:
Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/28

14 For the first few lessons it will be well, if you are not thoroughly at home with horses, to have a man—some friend or attendant—near at hand to give you confidence by his presence, and to come to your aid in case of necessity.

title: Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/28


text:
Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/29

Rh LESSON I.

COMING TO THE WHIP.

the horse brought saddled and bridled. Walk quietly up in front of him, with your riding-whip under your arm, and look him kindly in the face. See that the bridle fits properly, as a careless groom may have neglected to adjust it to the length of the head.

The throat-latch should be loose enough to permit the chin to come easily to the breast; the bits should lie in their proper place on the bars, and the curb-chain should lie flat in the chin groove, just tight enough to allow your fore-finger to pass under it. The bars are that part of the gum between the grinders, or back teeth, and the nippers, or front teeth, which in the mare is destitute of teeth, and in the horse has a tusk called the bridle-tooth.

It is upon these bars, of course, that the bits should lie, and the curb-bit, according to military rule, at an inch above the tusk. By general usage they are placed too high, the proper place of the curb-bit being not up in the corner of the lips, but opposite or nearly opposite the chin groove, which is just above the swell of the lower lip. If the curb-chain is too loose the bit will

title: Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/29


text:
Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/30

16 "fall through," or turn around in the mouth. If it is too tight, or is ill adjusted, or if, from the bits being too high, it slips up where the skin is thinner and the bones sharper, it will give such pain that, to avoid it, the nose will be thrust out instead of being brought in. The chain should press below the snaffle, or the latter will

unhook it. Adjust and settle the various straps with your hand, speaking kindly to your horse at the same time; but when you have begun to teach him, reserve all praises and caresses to reward him when he has done well. It is a good plan to give him a lump of sugar before you begin and after you finish each lesson.

title: Page:Horsemanship for Women.djvu/30


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bankes, John


text: Page:Base Facilities Report.djvu/6

title: Page:Base Facilities Report.djvu/6


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bankes, Mary


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bankes, William John