text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/17

Rh I have had constantly upon my table, and have freely consulted, deriving from them great instruction and enlightenment, even when I have been obliged to differ most strongly from some of their theoretical views. Upon them I have been dependent, above all, in preparing my eighth and ninth lectures; my independent acquaintance with the languages of various type throughout the world being far from sufficient to enable me to describe them at first hand. I have also borrowed here and there an illustration from the "Lectures on the Science of Language" of Professor Max Müller, which are especially rich in such material.

To my friend Professor Fitz-Edward Hall, Librarian of the East India Office in London, I have to return my thanks for his kindness in undertaking the burdensome task of reading the revise of the sheets, as they went through the press.

It can hardly admit of question that at least so much knowledge of the nature, history, and classifications of language as is here presented ought to be included in every scheme of higher education, even for those who do not intend to become special students in comparative philology. Much more necessary, of course, is it to those who cherish such an intention. It is, I am convinced, a mistake to commence at once upon a course of detailed comparative philology with pupils who have only enjoyed the ordinary training in the classical or the modern languages,


text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/18

viii or in both. They are liable either to fail of apprehending the value and interest of the infinity of particulars into which they are plunged, or else to become wholly absorbed in them, losing sight of the grand truths and principles which underlie and give significance to their work, and the recognition of which ought to govern its course throughout: perhaps even coming to combine with acuteness and erudition in etymological investigation views respecting the nature of language and the relations of languages of a wholly crude or fantastic character. I am not without hope that this book may be found a convenient and serviceable manual for use in our higher institutions of learning. I have made its substance the basis of my own instruction in the science of language, in Yale College, for some years past; and, as it appears to me, with gratifying success. In order to adapt it to such a purpose, I have endeavoured to combine a strictly logical and scientific plan with a popular mode of handling, and with such illustration of the topics treated as should be easily and universally apprehensible. If, however, the lecture style should be found too discursive and argumentative for a text-book of instruction, I may perhaps be led hereafter to prepare another work for that special use.

 * New Haven, Conn.,
 * August, 1867.
 * August, 1867.

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


text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/19

(ix)


text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/20

x


text:
Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/21

Rh


text: Language and the Study of Language

title: Language and the Study of Language


text: Language and the Study of Language/Preface


text: Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/22


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/61

Rh

 (See also )


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/62

24


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/63

Rh


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/64

26


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/65

Rh


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/66

28


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/67

Rh


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/68

30


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/70

32


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/71

Rh


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/73

Rh


text:
Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/46

40 And to go free great efforts make; But the two urchins here and there, Meet and head them everywhere, Till every single one they take. The mother trails her wings in vain; Now timid flies, and now makes bold; But uselessly she'd longer feign; The boys get all their pockets hold. Each boy has six; one yet remains; And for this odd one both contend; Each of his rights and wrongs complains, Till of dispute there seems no end. "Let us draw lots!" "No!" "Yes!" "Yes!" "No!" So to and fro, The bandied words between them go. "I'll knock you down!" "I'll break your crown!" Hot and hotter the contest grew, When th' older one the odd bird threw At his brother's head. The younger brother in reply, Then let another birdling fly. The elder back another sped. Neither will yield, Until the ground is strewn around Like any battle field, With quiv'ring, gasping, dying birds. The father, hap'ning round that way, Stopp'd to observe the cruel play, And to his boys address'd these words:—

title: Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/46


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/69

APPAREL


text:
Page:The New Far East (1906).djvu/90

Rh I therefore reproduce them here, complete. On February 11, 1904, Count Lamsdorf, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave out the following circular note:

"Since the rupture of the negotiations between Russia and Japan, the attitude of the Tokyo cabinet has constituted an open violation of all customary laws governing the mutual relations of civilised nations. Without specifying each particular violation of these laws on the part of Japan, the Imperial Government considers it necessary to draw the most serious attention of the Powers to the acts of violence committed by the Japanese Government with respect to Korea. The independence and integrity of Korea as a fully independent Empire have been fully recognized by all the Powers, and the inviolability of this fundamental principle was confirmed by Article 1 of the Shimonoseki treaty, and by the agreement especially concluded for this purpose between Japan and Great Britain on January ao, 1902 (Anglo-Japanese alliance), as well as by the Franco-Russian declaration of March 16, 1902. The Emperor of Korea, forseeing the danger of a possible conflict between Russia and Japan, addressed, early in January, 1901, a note to all the Powers, declaring his determination to preserve the strictest neutrality. This declaration was received with satisfaction by the Powers, and was ratified by Russia. According to the Russian Minister to Korea, the British Government, which had signed the above-mentioned treaty with Japan on January 30, 1902, charged the British diplomatic representative at Seoul to present an official note to the Emperor of Korea, thanking him for his declaration of neutrality. In disregard of all these facts, in spite of all treaties, in spite of all its obligations, and in violation of the fundamental rules of international law, it has been proved by exact and fully confirmed facts that the Japanese Government,

"1. Before the opening of hostilities against Russia, landed its troops in the independent Empire of Korea, which had declared its neutrality.

"2. With a division of its fleet made a sudden attack on February 8th—that is, three days prior to the declaration of war— on two Russian warships in the neutral port of Chemul-po. The commanders of these ships had not been notified of the severance of diplomatic relations, as the Japanese maliciously stopped the delivery of Russian telegrams by the Danish cable and destroyed the telegraph communication of the Korean Govenmient. The details

title: Page:The New Far East (1906).djvu/90


text:
Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/49

Rh Their love of wrong, contempt of right, The selfish use they make of war, Et cetera, et cetera. And now the world crowd up to hear A preacher of so little fear. Deer, gazelles, kids, show their deep sense Of his all-powerful eloquence. His gen'rous truths they recognize; He's listened to with weeping eyes; His fame is spread the country round; The tidings far and near resound— Are borne upon the pop'lar voice, Until at court they make a noise. The lion who at that time reign'd (Good and pious as things then went), To hear the famous preacher deign'd, And to invite his presence sent. Charm'd with the royal courtesy, The preacher went without delay. His sermon now himself surpass'd. It was a perfect thunder-blast Against th' infernal thirst for blood Indulged by tyrants of the wood. He spoke of helpless innocence, Oppress'd by lawless insolence; Dwelt on the vices of the great; Their love of power insatiate; He call'd for justice long delay'd, 'Gainst those who on the feeble prey'd, Till beasts of prey all quak'd with fear

title: Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/49


text:
Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/52

46 Why man the lord of all our race Always provides for you a place? He gives you shelter, food, and care; And e'en his bread with you will share. By him you are esteem'd so high, He seeks your race to multiply. You have good qualities, 'tis true; Are gentle, sober, never slack; You bear his burdens on your back, His wife and children too: All this I own; But are these merits yours alone? To us then, is there nothing due? In fact, I think, with due respect, We well might man's regards expect As well as you. We furnish him with horn and shield To aid him on the battle-field. Yet he pursues us with his hate; Hunts us with rage insatiate; Despises us, or in his wrath, Impels us to avoid his path."

The dromedary made reply:— "Why envy us our lot, my friend? To serve is nothing; you must try To make man's pleasure your sole end. Be not surpris'd that he should show      Such favor to our progeny: The secret of it, you must know,       Is this:—we've learn'd to bend the knee."

title: Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/52


text: Ambulance 464/Glossary

title: Ambulance 464/Glossary


text:
Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/59

Rh Of these exploits grown proud at length, He said one day:—"Why use this pole? It weighs me down, impairs my strength, Embarrasses my free control— More grace I'd have and freer play If I should throw the thing away." No sooner said than done. But once his pole was thrown aside, And his new dancing had begun, With arms outstretch'd and awkward stride, He waver'd, lost his balance, fell, Broke his nose, and all the crowd At his tumble laughed aloud.

My dear young friends! you know full well That he who has no check at all, Must soon or later have a fall. Though reason, virtue, rule, and law Against young inclinations draw Like a check-rein, Your fiery passions to restrain; They are the needed balance-pole, To keep your fame and fortune whole.

title: Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/59


text:
Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/47

Rh  "What! are you kings, that you should be With lives of innocents so free? What right have you, I'd like to know, To deal around you death and woe, Like emperors, whose sport it is, To slay mankind like partridges?"  FABLE XVII.

THE FOX AS A PREACHER.

An old fox, gouty, apoplectic, All broken down, but learn'd and wise, Eloquent and skill'd in logic, His art at moral teaching tries, And to the desert rais'd his cries. His style was fine, his moral good; Under three heads his sermons stood; He plainly proved simplicity, Good manners and integrity, Must end in that felicity To which a lying world allures, But never to our hopes secures, Although we pay for't a large fee. At first he met with no success; None ever came to hear him preach, Save a few squirrels, more or less, Who chanc'd to fall within his reach; Or timid does, of little name, Who could not spread the preacher's fame. At length he wholly chang'd his course, And aimed at tyrants his discourse.

title: Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/47


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/651

 POLITICS POPPY

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Who is the dark horse he has in his stable? Thackeray—Adventures of Philip | seealso = (See also {{sc|Disraeli) As long as I count the votes what are you going to do about it? Say. Wm. M. Tweed—The Ballot in 1871. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 613 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Defence, not defiance. Motto adopted by the "Volunteers," when there was fear of an invasion of England by Napoleon. (1859) | topic = | page = 613 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = The king [Frederick] has sent me some of his dirty linen to wash; I will wash yours another time. Voltaire—Reply to General Manstein. CXI. | seealso = (See also {{sc|Napoleon}}) | topic = | page = 613 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = The gratitude of place expectants is a lively sense of future favours. Ascribed to Walpole by Hazlitt—Wit and Humour. Same in La Rqchfoucauld— Maxims. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 613 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = I am not a politician, and my other habits air good. Artemus Ward—Fourth of July Oration. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 613 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself. Woodrow Wilson. To the Pan-American Scientific Congress. Washington, Jan. 6, 1916. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 613 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Tippecanoe and Tyler too. Political slogan, attributed to Orson E. Woodbury. (1840)

POLLUTION (See Corruption)

POPPY

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = I sing the Poppy! The frail snowy weed! The flower of Mercy! that within its heart Doth keep "a drop serene" for human need, A drowsy balm for every bitter smart. For happy hours the Rose will idly blow— The Poppy hath a charm for pain and woe. Mary A. Barr—White Poppies. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 613 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Central depth of purple, Leaves more bright than rose, Who shall tell what brightest thought Out of darkness grows? Who, through what funereal pain, Souls to love and peace attain? Leigh Hunt—Songs and Chorus of the Flowers. Poppies. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 613 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = We are slumberous poppies, Lords of Lethe downs, Some awake and some asleep, Sleeping in our crowns. What perchance our dreams may know, Let our serious beauty show. Leigh Hunt—Songs and Chorus of the Flowers. Poppies. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = | page = 613 }}


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/652

614

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Bring poppies for a weary mind That saddens in a senseless din. Wm. Winter—The White Flag.

POPLAR Popidus Fastigiata

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = Trees that, like the poplar, lift upward all their boughs, give no shade and no shelter, whatever their height, trees the most lovingly shelter and shade us, when, like the willow, the higher soar their summits, the lowlier droop their boughs. Bulwer-Lytton—What Will He Do With It? Bk. XI. Ch. X. Introductory lines.

POPULARITY

Their poet, a sad trimmer, but no less In company a very pleasant fellow, Had been the favorite of full many a mess Of men, and made them speeches when half mellow; And though his meaning they could rarely guess, Yet still they deign'd to hiccup or to bellow The glorious meed of popular applause, Of which the first ne'er knows the second cause. Byeon—Don Joan. Canto III. St. 82. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = Pop | page = 614 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = 15 | text = Some shout him, and some hang upon his car, To gaze in bis eyes, and bless him. Maidens wave Their 'kerchiefs, and old women weep for joy; While others, not so satisfied, unhorse The gilded equipage, and turning loose His steeds, usurp a place they well deserve. Cowpee—The Task. Bk. VI. L. 708. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = Pop | page = 614 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = And to some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it. Geo. Henry Lewes—The Spanish Drama. ch. m. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = Pop | page = 614 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = There was ease in Casey's manner as he stept into his place, There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile on Casey's face, And when responding to the cheers he lightly doft his hat, No stranger in the crowd could doubt, 't was Casey at the bat. Ebnest L. Thayer—Casey at the Bat. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = Pop | page = 614 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights Are spectacled to see him. Coriokmits. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 221. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = Pop | page = 614 }}

{{Hoyt quote | num = | text = I have seen the dumb men throng to see him, and The blind to hear him speak: matrons flung gloves, Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers Upon him as he passed; the nobles bended, As to Jove's statue, and the commons made A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts. Coriolanus. Art II. Sc. 1. L. 278. The ladies call him sweet; The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet. Love's Labour's Lost. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 329. | author = | work = | place = | note = | topic = Pop | page = 614 }}


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/901

Rh

WATER-LILY Nymphasa

WEAKNESS


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/438

400


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Hutten, Ulrich von

HUTTEN, Ulrich von, ool'rĭ H fōn, German knight, distinguished for his poems and satires, and for the influence which his writings exercised upon the Reformation: b. Steckelberg on the Main, 31 April 1488; d. Ufnau, an island in the lake of Zürich, 22 Aug. 1523. His father placed him at Fulda in order to educate him for a monk. The monastic school there was one of the most famous in all Germany, and he received an excellent education. Here he lost his faith and, the declared enemy of Christianity, fled to Erfurt in 1504, where he became intimately acquainted with several scholars and poets. In 1511 he went to Wittenberg, where he published a work on versification. Ulrich, Duke of Würtemberg, murdered a cousin of Hutten and Hutten gave free course to his indignation in poems, letters and addresses, which made him known throughout Germany. He distinguished himself no less in the Reuchlinian controversy with the Dominican Hogstraaten in Cologne. Hutten severely criticized the monastic life, and was so much the enemy of the clergy, that by his edition of Laurentius Valla, ‘De falso credita et ementita Donatione Constantini,’ he declared war upon the Church and prepared the way for Luther. In 1518 he entered the service of Albert, archbishop of Mayence; and made several official journeys to Paris. He also accompanied the archbishop to the Diet at Aufsburg, where Luther held his well-known discussion with Cajetan; and Hutten, in a Demosthenic oration, urged the German princes to a war against the Turks. He took the field with the Swabian League in 1519 against his hereditary enemy, Ulrich of Würtemberg, and then retired to the solitude of his paternal castle of Steckelberg, to engage anew in the controversy with the monks. Here he published work after work, violently assailing the Church, the clergy and the state. Leaving Steckelberg in 1522 he went first to Basel and thence to Zürich, where he died. He was a savage and violent controversialist, and was unsparing in the vehemence of his invective. Consult ‘Life’ by Jordan (1910); and Sturges' translation of Strauss' ‘Life’ in German.


text:
Template:National/doc

This template provides the basic header and features required for a national portal in the "Texts by Country" class (Class I).

Usage
The most basic usage of this template is: This will automatically display all of the required basic information for a portal.

However, in cases where some adjustment is required, some or all of the following parameters may be used:

If this is still insufficient then the portal's contents will need to be entered manually. See portal header instead.

Parameters

 * Use as per portal header
 * Use as per portal header
 * An alternative image for the portal (use the entire file name, including the initial "File:")
 * An alternative category for the portal
 * To link to a parent portal, making this portal a grandschild portal of Class I.
 * Alternative text for "nation" in the default notes text
 * Sister link to Wikipedia
 * Sister link to a gallery on Wikimedia Commons
 * Sister link to a category on Wikimedia Commons
 * Sister link to Wikiquote
 * Sister link to Wikinews
 * Sister link to Wiktionary
 * Sister link to Wikibooks
 * Sister link to Wikiversity
 * Sister link to Wikispecies
 * Sister link to Meta
 * Additional text in the "notes" field of the header, following the standard text.

Automatic functions
This template will automatically do the following:
 * Classify the portal as part of Class I (Texts by Country). This cannot be overridden.
 * Categorise the portal in Category:NATIONAL, where NATIONAL is the name of the portal. This can be overridden by the  parameter.
 * Link to the sister projects Wikipedia (Portal:NATIONAL), Wikimedia Commons (Category:NATIONAL) and Wikinews (Portal:NATIONAL). Again, where NATIONAL is the name of the portal. These can be overridden by the parameters,  and.
 * Display the image of the national flag, which is assumed to be "File:Flag of NATIONAL.svg". If this is incorrect, it can be overridden with the  paramater.

Non-nation states
This template can be used in portals that do not represent nation states (or that are no longer independent nation states), including federal states, counties and other districts. In these cases:
 * 1) Use the  parameter to link to the actual nation state.
 * 2) Use the  parameter to define the exact nature of the area (ie. state, county etc).
 * 3) Set the  parameter to the correct non-national subclassification.

If this is insufficient, use the full portal header instead.

title: Template:National/doc


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Ramberg, Arthur, Baron

RAMBERG, räm'bĕrg, Arthur, , German painter: b. Vienna, 4 Sept. 1819; d. Munich, 5 Feb. 1875. He studied art at Hanover and early made a tour in Italy, Hungary and Styria. In 1840 he attended the university at Prague, while at the same time uniting the pursuit of art with his other studies. In 1842 he became a pupil at the Art Academy of Dresden under J. Hübner, and among other early

pictures produced his ‘Wedding of Dwarfs’ after Goethe; and ‘The Emperor Henry I on His Hungarian Campaign.’ In 1850 he went to Munich and executed a series of genres illustrating the works of Schiller. In 1860 he was appointed professor to the Art School in Weimar, and six years later took a similar position in the Academy of Munich. His subsequent productions include ‘The Court of Frederick II in Palermo’; and, among his genres, most notable are his ‘Hermann and Dorothea’ after Goethe; and ‘Luise,’ after the poem of J. H. Voss, which latter was much admired for its brilliancy in design and execution. He also frescoed the walls of Luther's chamber at Wartburg; and for the Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar illustrated the tale of the ‘King of the Frogs.’


text: Template:Deprecated

title: Template:Deprecated


text: Template:W

title: Template:W


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Ramberg, Johann Heinrich

RAMBERG, räm'bĕrg, Johann Heinrich, German artist: b. Hanover, 1763; d. there, 6 July 1840. He first showed his talent by drawings of scenes in the Harz Mountains. These became known to George III, king of England, his sovereign, as Elector of Hanover, who induced him to go to London, where he provided for him. He remained there nine years, and perfected himself under Reynolds. In 1788 the king sent him to Italy, whence he returned to Hanover where he was appointed painter to the court. He distinguished himself particularly in humorous drawings; as in his illustrations to ‘Reineke Fuchs’ and ‘Eulenspiegel.’ The drawings in the magnificent edition of Wieland's works are all by him; some he etched himself.


text:
Template:*/doc

Usage
This page provides an escape for a line beginning with an asterisk, which is otherwise rendered as a bullet point. * an asterisk produced with *
 * A mediwiki bullet point is default

title: Template:*/doc


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Rambler, The

RAMBLER, The. Though no longer read with the enthusiastic admiration formerly accorded it, Johnson's ‘Rambler’ has at least retained the respect of the thoughtful student of the history of English literature. The essays were distinctly of their day and, like all Johnson's writings, distinctly of their author. They followed the fashion of the periodical literature established by Addison and Steele in ranging over as wide a field of social and moral conduct as the fancy or ingenuity of the author led him. Temperamentally Johnson was not so well fitted to write the familiar essay as he was for more serious discourse. ‘The Rambler’ consequently suffers in comparison with the essays of Addison and Steele. A certain dramatic element in characterization appears in ‘The Spectator’ which is very little present in ‘The Rambler.’ Johnson created no such personages as Sir Roger de Coverley or Beau Tibbs. The essays are lacking also in variety. One ‘Rambler’ seems very much like another, and though it is scarcely a fair test of them to sit down and read them as a volume, since they appeared periodically and were intended to be read one at a time at intervals, this disadvantage is one that must be faced by all literature of a journalistic character. One may at least expect that certain portions of such writing shall stand out with sufficient significance to carry the rest along with it. Then again Johnson's didacticism is presented with a simple directness that seems to have been enjoyed in an age when men suffered moral instruction more patiently than they do to-day. Johnson never sought for ingenious cases of conscience to form the foundation upon which his reflections were based. His didacticism reminds one of the obvious teaching of the sermon, a characteristic which led some one to propose, facetiously, the influence of Dr. Johnson's ‘Rambler’ upon the high school graduation essay, as a subject for scholarly research. With all these qualifications, however, there still remains enough in ‘The Rambler’ to justify the student in giving to it respectful and serious consideration. If the essays never rise to great heights of imagination, they are never cheap or trivial. Throughout they are characterized by good sense, often by genuinely elevated thought and feeling. Their evenness of tone, from one point of view tending to monotony, is also not without its virtue. The essays appeared twice a week over a period of two years, and in the end they present if not a systematic code of conduct, something which is perhaps a good deal better, the detailed picture of a mind conscious of itself and of its riches, and sure of the position it wants to take in any situation in which it may be placed. One may be inclined to criticise some of Dr. Johnson's literary ideals, but the mastery of technique with which they were put into effect calls for no apologies. Granted the aim and the method. Dr. Johnson's prose is among the best in the English language, and ‘The Rambler’ will repay the careful study of any one who wishes to see how a serious mind realizes itself in appropriate and effective expression.


text:
Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/61

Rh But finding all his efforts vain, Threw it away with spite. "My mother must have lied," he said, "To say she had on such things fed—      That they were good and sweet,              And fit to eat. What fools are young folks to believe Old women's tales—they but deceive!       The devil take such fruit,       And granny too, to boot!" A monkey seizing on the prize, Thus to the foolish ape replies:— "See here! my friend, I'll show to you, That your good mother told you true." Then with a stone the nut he breaks, And therefrom all the kernel takes. And as he eats Its luscious sweets— "You see," says he, "for food 'tis fit, If you'll take pains to open it. No good in this life one e'er gains, Without some labor, care, and pains."

title: Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/61


text:
User:Inductiveload/wikisource pages

This data was generated by the script that can be found User:Inductiveload/scripts/template_usage. It relies on Phe's query_ext.py to query the database for the relavant data, and pywikipedia to do the uploading to my user page.

If you want to regenerate this data, please feel free to use this script, but don't overwrite this page, as I may be using it for something. You can change the parameter "self.upload_destination" below to allow you to place the page where you like, or just use the data out of the text file.

Alternatively, if you don't know how to run this program, drop a note on my talk page asking me to re-run the script.

title: User:Inductiveload/wikisource pages


text: Author:George Philip Krapp

title: Author:George Philip Krapp


text: The Fables of Florian (tr. Phelps)/The Two Cats


text: Index:Montesquieu.djvu

title: Index:Montesquieu.djvu


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Rasse

RASSE, răs, a small arboreal civet (Viverricula malaccensis), which is widely distributed in southeastern Asia and the Malayan islands, and long ago became naturalized in Madagascar. It is slender, agile in tree-climbing, has no erectile mane and lives in holes in rocky and brushy districts. In confinement it is easily tamed and feeds on small animals, which it catches with cat-like dexterity. Hence it is often kept in houses in the East as a ratter, and also for the sake of its civet, which is artificially removed from the glands. It is a handsome little animal of a yellowish or brownish gray color, with longitudinal bands on the back and regular spots on the side; tail 16-17 inches long with eight or nine complete dark rings; length of body and head about 24 inches; known, zoologically, as the lesser-civet. Consult Blanford, Jerdon, Tennent and other authorities on Oriental zoology.

title: The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Rasse


text:
Page:Montesquieu.djvu/3

 MONTESQUIEU

Sainte-Beuve sat down, in the year 1852, to write a causerie about Montesquieu, he gave as a reason for not having dealt with the subject before that Montesquieu belonged to the class of men whom one approaches with apprehension on account of the respect which they inspire, and of the kind of religious halo which has gathered round their names.

This was written more than fifty years ago, and the language reflects the glamour which still attached to Montesquieu's name during the first half of the nineteenth century. That glamour has now passed away. Not that Montesquieu has died, or is likely to die. But he is no longer the oracle of statesmen; his Spirit of Laws is no longer treated by framers of constitutions as a Bible of political philosophy, bearing with it the same kind of authority as that which Aristotle bore among the schoolmen. That authority ended when the greater part of the civilized world had been endowed with parliamentary and representative institutions framed more or less on the model which Montesquieu had described and had held up for imitation. The interest which attaches to him now is of a different order. It is literary and historical. He lives as one of the greatest of French writers, and his Considerations on the Greatness and Decay of the Romans are still read as a school classic by French boys and girls, much as the masterpieces of Burke are, or ought to be,

title: Page:Montesquieu.djvu/3


text:
Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/32

16 the narrative of the Creation as proving the duty of marital faithfulness.

When the famous declaration was added to the record in Genesis cannot be determined, but at least we may be sure that it represents a prophetic handling of the primitive material designed to correct current practice in the direction of monogamy. "The primitive Hebrew tradition," observes Bishop Ryle, "is made, through the Divine Spirit, the first step in the stairway of Divine Revelation."

Historically the order of moral attainment was otherwise. Man did not begin with monogamy, but reached that stage of moral advance by a long and gradual progress; but monogamy did represent the true demands of human nature in this particular of sexual intercourse, and therefore was fitly set in the forefront of the prophetic version of human origins as indicating, in advance of the history, the ideal which would determine its course. Read as record of fact, the narrative may be

title: Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/32


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Rasselas

RASSELAS, the name usually given to a moral story with an Oriental setting written by the famous lexicographer and essayist, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and published in the spring of 1759, in two volumes, under the title of ‘The Prince of Abyssinia: A Tale.’ It reached a second edition the same year, and has since been often reprinted and translated, maintaining its rank as a notable if somewhat old-fashioned English classic. There is uncertainty as to just when and why and in how short a space of time it was written, but it seems clear that Johnson composed it rapidly at the period of his mother's death in January 1759, and that he probably used some of the money it brought him for flial purposes connected with that event

Scholars have exercised themselves over the sources and the materials of the story, and have shown that Johnson did not invent his happy valley, his Abyssinian paradise; but they have taken away none of the credit due him for selecting an impressive theme — the vain search of youth after happiness — and for treating it with adequate weight of thought, soundness of feeling and dignity of style. The book plainly belongs with the grave, solid, somewhat magniloquent essays of his middle period rather than with the less stilted biographies of his old age, and it holds by his early years in owing something to his translation of the French version of Lobo's 'Voyage to Abyssinia.' Everyone of its 49 short chapters, however little calculated to arouse the interest of the experienced reader of modern novels, is thoroughly representative of Johnson himself — of his sturdy morality, his common sense, his wide knowledge of men and books, his sombre but far from cowardly and depressing views of life.

The plot is simple in the extreme. Rasselas, shut up in a beautiful valley, “till the order of succession should call him to the throne,” grows weary of the factitious entertainments of the place, and after much brooding escapes with his sister Nekavah, her attendant Pekuah and his poet-friend Imlac. They are to see the world and search for happiness, but after some sojourn in Egypt, where they frequent various classes of society and undergo a few mild adventures, they perceive

the futility of their search and abruptly return to Abyssinia. That the plot should be so simple, that local color should be almost nonexistent, that episodic elements, e.g., the story of Imlac and that of the mad astronomer, should abound, is not surprising when one considers what didactic purposes the Oriental tale of 18th century western Europe was intended to serve and remembers that Johnson was a moralist and essayist, not a novelist. What does surprise is that with so little of incident, with no love-making, with few endeavors to charm the fancy, with but slight recognition of the claims of sentiment, ‘Rasselas’ is none the less a story that deserves its fame. It does this, not so much because it is, like ‘Candide,’ but in a very different way, an effective protest against shallow optimism, whether of deist or of “hustler,” but because it contains not a little of the courageous philosophy of life which a great, unique personality had formed for himself at the height of a literary career full of moving vicissitudes. Consult the editions of G. Birkbeck Hill and of O. F. Emerson.


text:
User:Inductiveload/Scripts/template usage

There are no parameters to this script. You run like this:

python get_template_stats.py

Any changes to the destination file, etc should be made in the "__init__" function.


text:
Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/34

18 by bringing the Jews into closer relation with the rest of mankind. The Greeks and Romans were monogamists, and the Jews of the dispersion were, in spite of themselves, compelled to mitigate their provincialism in many respects. The sexual license of the Græco-Roman world was, indeed, truly repugnant to the best instincts of a race which treasured the pure teachings of the prophets, but in the particular matter of polygamy the Jews were probably assisted by the influence of their Gentile neighbours to escape in practice from a vicious theory. Dr. Edersheim writes:

"The readers of the New Testament cannot but feel that the relations there indicated proceed upon the assumption that monogamy was the rule, and polygamy the exception. The permission of polygamy, and the comparative facility of obtaining a divorce, may seem to militate against the fundamental idea of the marriage relation. But against these drawbacks we have to put the two indubitable facts, that generally men were only united in wedlock to one wife, and that Jewish females occupied not only a comparatively but an absolutely high position. The law throughout recognised and protected the rights of women, and discouraged the practice of polygamy. An impartial reader cannot rise from the perusal, not of a few isolated passages, but of the sections

title: Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/34


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Rastatt

RASTATT, räs'tät, or RASTADT, a town of Baden, Germany, on the river Murg, about four miles from the Rhine and about 15 miles southwest of Karlsruhe. It was formerly a fortress of the first rank but in 1892 the fortifications were dismantled. The town has manufactures of lace, tobacco and cigars. Pop. about 15,196. Rastatt was the scene of two diplomatic congresses in the 18th century. The first congress of Rastatt met in 1713 to arrange lerms of peace between the emperor and France, then still engaged in the war of the Spanish Succession. Peace was concluded 7 March 1714. In accordance with the terms of the treaty, signed by Marshal Villars and Prince Eugene, France gave up possession of the towns of Kehl, Freiberg and Breisach, and the electors of Cologne and Bavaria were reinstated in power. The terms of the Treaty of Utrecht (q.v.) were ratified. The second congress of Rastatt met in 1797 for the purpose of terminating hostilities between France and the empire. After negotiations had been prolonged for more than a year, war broke out again between France and the allies and the congress suspended its sessions (April 1799). As the French representatives, Roberjot, Bonnier and Debry left the city on the evening of 28 April they were set upon by a company of hussars wearing the Austrian uniform and the first two were murdered and the third sabred and left for dead in a ditch. The papers of the legation were carried off, but no other spoil was taken. This violation of the law of nations aroused the indignation and horror of all Europe. Many attempts have been made to fix the responsibility for the deed. Some have ascribed the crime to the Austrian government which was desirous of obtaining certain papers in the possession of the ambassadors; others maintain that the murderers were French émigrés, while others still assert that the act was instigated by Napoleon and other leaders of the War party in France for the purpose of exasperating the French people against Austria. In 1849 the town again became conspicuous as the stronghold of the Baden revolutionists.


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Rat

RAT, any of several large rodents of the mouse family (see ), especially two species of “house-rats” now habituated to civilization in all parts of the world. The black rat (Mus rattus) is of light and slender build, about seven inches in length, usually of a bluish black color, but sometimes grayish, and has quite large, thin ears. The brown rat (M. decumanus) or Norway rat, as it is often inappropriately styled, is much heavier and larger, with short, rounded ears and a dull brown color. Both species are believed to be natives of China but the black rat was abundant in Europe at least as early as the 13th century. The brown rat migrated from western China, entering Russia in great numbers in 1727, and from there quickly spreading over Europe, which was fully occupied by it by the middle of the 18th century. By its greater fecundity and ferocity it quickly overcame the black rat, which it has now replaced in most parts. It infested ships and by this means has been carried to all parts of the world. Its wonderful capacity for increase (from 20 to 50 annually), its boldness, tough, elastic constitution and adaptable nature, make it everywhere dominant, and its omnivorous habits, voracity and destructiveness frequently lead it to become a source of great annoyance, loss and disease about human habitations. The ferocity of this species when brought to bay is well known; and when driven by hunger it is so ravenous that neglected babies have been known to be killed and eaten by them, and a few cases are recorded where even able-bodied men have suffered a like fate when attacked by hordes of rats. They are also agents in the spread of disease, particularly bubonic plague and trichinoses. Against their many faults may be set the solitary virtue that they serve a useful purpose as scavengers in the city sewers, etc. The albino and black and white pied rats sold for pets by bird dealers are derived from the black rat, which has a far milder disposition. The rats of the United States include the black and brown of Norway, above described; the roof, or white-bellied (M. tectorum) of the southern States, named from its preference for thatched roofs for its abode; the Florida (neotorua Floridana) a habitat of the Gulf States, common to wild places and swamps, and frequently nesting in trees; the Cotton (Sigmodon hispidus), named from its use of cotton in forming its nest; and the Rocky Mountain, which is destructive to the trappings and stores of campers. Rat skins make fine leather for gloves.

title: The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Rat


text:
Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/67

Rh There, while pond'ring o'er his woes, He saw an owl beset by foes— An angry crowd of jays and crows. They peck'd him, curs'd him, call'd him sot, And said he was no patriot. "Let's pluck him," said they, "of his plumes— This rascal who such wit assumes!" "Let's hang him," said the wrathful birds, "And judge the villain afterwards!"

In vain the owl implor'd for peace, And call'd on them their rage to cease. The sage was touch'd to see the owl Assail'd by words and deeds so foul (For wisdom always makes the mind To peace and gentleness inclin'd). He quell'd the rage, and ask'd the bird Why such a mob was 'gainst him stirr'd. "Wherefore," said he, "is all this strife? Why do these foes thus seek your life?" "My only crime," the owl replied, "Is one which they cannot abide; The reason why I've rous'd their spite, Is simply this—I see by night."

title: Page:Florian - The Fables, 1888.djvu/67


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Vanity Fair

VANITY FAIR. Thackeray's ‘Vanity Fair’ is perhaps the most famous novel in the English language; certainly no critic would name the five best novels in English and not

include ‘Vanity Fair.’ It is hard for a novel to keep its place in the public mind; only a remarkable novel can do so. Each new generation comes to novels with a new appetite, with demands for some fresh interpretation of life, some exposition, some consideration, some solution if possible, of the new problems that confront it, and it finds novels of the preceding generation wofully old-fashioned. Nevertheless, ‘Vanity Fair,’ although written in 1846-48, is not old-fashioned. Becky Sharpe is still a familiar and intimate companion; Sir Pitt Crawley, the Marquess of Steyne, Major Dobbin are still among the best known of our acquaintances in the world of fiction.

Of course a novel 70 years old cannot affect us in the same sort of way that it affected its first readers. To them ‘Vanity Fair’ was a new kind of novel. They were acquainted with novels of several well-marked types, such as ‘Tom Jones,’ an out-of-door, free-hand, picture of a rowdy young man, ‘Pamela,’ the elaborate presentation of sentimental situations, ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ the delicate delineation of manners, ‘Ivanhoe,’ the romance of adventure, and they were beginning to know Dickens; but Thackeray's detached, cynical, sentimental survey of life was new and strange. Since then novels have multiplied, they swarm like locusts, and yet ‘Vanity Fair’ has its own peculiar power and interest; its place in literature is better established than ever. It was this novel that made Thackeray famous. And though it was followed by ‘Pendennis,’ ‘Esmond’ and ‘The Newcomes,’ it stands, in the general opinion, as his most brilliant novel.

The defects in the book according to the taste of to-day are obvious enough. Artist as he is in details Thackeray lacks the power or the will to make his novel as a whole a work of art. We do not like to have the author poke his head out from the pages every little while and moralize over his characters; we grow tired of the frequent comparisons of life to a pantomime; we find the characters Pitt Crawley, George, Amelia, Dobbin exaggerated, out of drawing, distorted. Thackeray does not hold a mirror up to life; he holds up a warped and twisted reflector that gives the life it reflects a half comic, half satirical aspect. Thackeray's admirers are many and devoted, but for most readers he is too much occupied with the superficial relations of life, with social distinctions, with the envy and vulgarity of those below and the snobbishness and vulgarity of those above. Greater men, such as Shakespeare or Tolstoi, do not find their attention drawn to such matters, they find their interest in experiences, emotions, passions, of a kind more deeply human, they delineate men and women as more occupied with the larger matters of life, love, work, discipline, excellence and so forth, and less concerned with the meaner failings of ill-adjusted social classes.

And yet despite these defects ‘Vanity Fair’ is a novel that represents some manifestations of human society, with remarkable truth. In Becky Sharpe Thackeray accomplished what is commonly accepted as a very great achievement of art, the portrait of a woman who exhibits a familiar human trait so definitely that without losing her individuality she represents a type. Such a portrait has the freshness of

novelty, and it has also the interest that attaches to the familiar. This effect Thackeray achieves with surprising swiftness and sureness. Becky Sharpe within the first page or two leaves Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies and we see her opening her wings like a young hawk, just fledged, casting its far-seeing, pitiless eyes about for prey. No sooner do we see that hawk glance than we watch, entranced, for the great circles through the air and the cruel pounce. Becky Sharpe belongs to the order of raptores, creatures that arouse in us all a mixture of apprehension and fascination. Every wild bird has a tragic end, and Becky's career squares with our experiences of life.

Thackeray is a master of English; his flexible sentences adapt themselves like running water to every circumstance, they flow limpidly, they babble, they rush along, or move deep and slow. In this respect by general consent be stands at the head of English novelists, and it is perhaps his command of language that enables him to shift so easily from pathos to humor, from tragedy to comedy, from satire to sympathy; and in ‘Vanity Fair’ his style is at its best.


text:
Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/33

Rh actually, from the point of view of the modern student, grotesque; read as symbolising fundamental truth, it is precious and illuminating still.

No help meet for man can be found in all the circuit of created life outside the sphere of humanity itself. Fundamental equality of nature must condition sexual union, and not less must determine the intimacy and permanence of that union. "The man said, This is now bones of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." The prophetic teaching, then, had checked, and to a great extent corrected, the tendency of the law and the history to perpetuate, under sacred sanctions, a properly obsolete type of marriage.

It must be added that the circumstances of the nation in the period preceding the advent of Christ had contributed to the same result

title: Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/33


text:
Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/19

Rh general consideration is particularly relevant to a discussion of the Christian doctrine of marriage. We must start by attempting to recover the view of marriage which obtained in Palestine in the time of Christ.

It goes without saying that the Jews based their practice on the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and therein principally on the legislation of the Pentateuch. The legislation was regarded as the work of the Law-giver, Moses, and its character as a gradual modification of existing practice was not recognised. Thus injustice was done to the legislation itself, and a grave difficulty in the development of morals was created.

Viewed historically, the laws contained in the Pentateuch represent a moral advance, for they correct and mitigate a traditional practice which was in many respects barbarous and immoral. So far we may fairly claim that they form part of the great process of education effected through the Prophets, but the fact that that process was gradual and progressive

title: Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/19


text: Author:Henry Dwight Sedgwick

title: Author:Henry Dwight Sedgwick


text:
Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/20

4 prohibited the competence of those laws for the functions which the Rabbis attributed to them.

There is an old proverb that "the good is enemy of the best," and the history of the Mosaic law provides a striking illustration of its truth. Relatively good the laws were; but they soon fell behind the prophetic conscience, and came to represent an inferior and discarded morality. At the time when Christ fulfilled His ministry there was a wide gulf between the morals of the earlier books of the Old Testament and the accepted moral standard of the Jewish people, but the existence of this gulf was screened by the hedge of superstitious reverence with which the sacred literature was surrounded. The Old Testament was, of course, read in a temper of unquestioning acceptance, and although it was not possible even so to evade the grand and pervading conflict between the primitive ideas illustrated by patriarchal practice, and incorporated in the Mosaic law on the one hand

title: Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/20


text: Christian Marriage (Henson)/Chapter 1

title: Christian Marriage (Henson)/Chapter 1


text:
Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/21

Rh and the prophetic teaching, which from the earliest times attempted the correction of those ideas, on the other, yet the difficulty of reconciling the two was limited to individual thinkers, or gave employment to the speculative casuistry of the Rabbinic schools, rather than disturbed the general mind or affected the general practice.

Probably we may say that the practice was superior to the theory of marriage. Theoretically the Jews, who were the contemporaries of Christ, were polygamists. As disciples of Moses they could be nothing else. The study of their sacred literature confirmed them in a theoretical acceptance of polygamy; and the strong continuous influence of human depravity always secured a certain amount of polygamous practice. Herod the Great had no less than ten wives, and though this was regarded as unusual yet it was admittedly lawful. Indeed, the Rabbis, following their favourite method of giving precise shape to everything, laid it down that eighteen wives

title: Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/21


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Vanity of Human Wishes, The

VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES, The. Ostensibly a formal satire in heroic couplets (368 lines) published by Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1749, more than a decade after the appearance of his other notable satire, ‘London.’ As that had followed in a way the third satire of Juvenal, so this followed the tenth. In the interval between the two Johnson's style had grown more rotund and he himself had ripened into a dignified moral essayist soon to give expression to his views of life in The Rambler. Indeed, it might be held that ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’ is more of a weighty essay in verse than it is of a keen satire. This point need not be pressed, however, nor need we emphasize Macaulay's well-known comparison with the Tenth Juvenal. What mainly matters is that Johnson, although probably more of a rhetorician than of a poet, gave the readers in this essay, or satire, one of the best pieces of sententious poetry in the language. The famous portraits of Wolsey and of Charles XII of Sweden fail to impress but few readers, and there are other passages and single lines equally memorable — e.g., “Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail,” and ‘Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage’ — the first truer of Johnson's own career than the second. Tested by any standards of poetry in which an appeal to the intellect is given due weight, ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’ is worthy of the fame of its author; but it must be admitted that it does not touch the heart so deeply as the simple stanzas Johnson wrote on the death of his friend, the old quack-doctor, Robert Levet.


text:
Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/31

Rh the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee."

The prophet Malachi emphasises the duty of faithfulness to the marriage bond not only by adducing the divine hatred of all treachery, but also by representing that Jehovah Himself is the witness to the marriage covenant. The contempt with which the offerings of the Jews were received had its explanation, according to this prophet, in the moral fault of the worshippers. To their question why their service was unacceptable he answers thus:

Malachi, as afterwards our Lord, refers to

title: Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/31


text:
Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/30

14 his own private disaster an instrument of spiritual witness.

A later prophet, the author of the latter part of Isaiah, adopts the same moving and suggestive thought when he thus consoles the captive nation:

And again in another place the prophet writes:

"Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken: neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzi-bah, and thy land Beulah: for

title: Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/30


text:
Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/29

Rh source in the unhappy domestic experience of the prophet himself. His own wife had proved an adulteress, and his children were born in adultery. The anguish which he had felt opened to him a new and profounder knowledge of the true gravity of the national sin. He discovered the intrinsic force and grandeur of his love for his faithless wife when he learned her falseness, and inevitably he carried into his theology the noblest version he could frame of human character. He could ask with the poet:

and his answer could not be the same. His own love for the shameless Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, was in its generosity and persistence but a faint picture of the long-suffering and munificent love of Jehovah for His unthankful people. So the prophet wakes

title: Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/29


text:
Page:Story of the robins.djvu/20

6 When Harriet first appeared, the winged suppliants approached with eager expectation of the daily handful which their kind benefactress made it a custom to distribute, and were surprised at the delay of her charity. They hopped around the window—they chirped—they twittered, and employed all their little arts to gain attention; and were on the point of departing, when Frederick, breaking a bit from the piece he held in his hand, attempted to scatter it among them, calling out at the same time, "Dicky! Dicky!" On hearing the well-known sound, the little flock immediately drew near. Frederick begged that his sister would let him feed all the birds himself; but finding that he could not fling the crumbs far enough for the redbreasts, who, being strangers, kept at a distance, he resigned the task, and Harriet, with dexterous hand, threw some of them to the very spot where the affectionate pair stood waiting for her notice, who with grateful hearts picked up the portion assigned them; and in the meanwhile the other birds, being satisfied, flew away, and they were left alone. Frederick exclaimed with rapture that the two robin redbreasts were feeding; and Harriet meditated a design of taming them by kindness. "Be sure, my dear brother," said she, "not to forget to ask the cook and John for the crumbs, and

title: Page:Story of the robins.djvu/20


text:
Page:Story of the robins.djvu/21

 Rh do not let the least morsel of anything you have to eat fall to the ground. I will be careful in respect of mine, and we will collect all that papa and mamma crumble; and if we cannot by these means get enough, I will spend some of my money in grain for them." "Oh," said Frederick, "I would give all the money I have in the world to buy food for my dear dear birds." "Hold, my love," said Mrs. Benson "though I commend your humanity, I must remind you again that there are poor people as well as poor birds." "Well, mamma," replied Frederick, "I will only buy a little grain, then." As he spoke these last words, the redbreasts having finished their meal, the mother bird expressed her impatience to return to the nest; and having obtained her mate's consent, she repaired with all possible speed to her humble habitation, whilst he tuned his melodious pipe, and delighted their young benefactors with his music; he then spread his wings, and took his flight to an adjoining garden, where he had a great chance of finding worms for his family.

Frederick expressed great concern that the robins were gone; but was comforted by his sister, who reminded him that in all probability his new favourites, having met with so kind a reception, would return on the morrow. Mrs. Benson then bid them

title: Page:Story of the robins.djvu/21


text:
Page:Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots.djvu/74

62, and helped me as much as ever he could; he swore I was such a brave fellow.

As I had received a number of attentions from Clopper, I determined to invite him to dinner; which I could do without any sacrifice of my principle, upon this point; for the fact is, Dobble lived at an inn—and as he sent all his bills to his father, I made no scruple to use his table. We dined in the coffee-room; Dobble bringing his friend, and so we made a party carry, as the French say. Some naval officers were occupied in a similar way, at a table next to ours.

Well—I didn’t spare the bottle, either for myself or my friends; and we grew very talkative, and very affectionate as the drinking went on. Each man told stories of his gallantry in the field, or amongst the ladies, as officers will, after dinner. Clopper confided to the company his wish that I should marry his sister, and vowed that he thought me the best fellow in Christendom.

Ensign Dobble assented to this—"But let Miss Clopper beware," says he, "for Stubbs is a sad fellow;


text: Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots/Chapter 6


text:
Page:Story of the robins.djvu/22

8 shut the window; and taking Frederick in her lap, and desiring Harriet to sit down by her, thus addressed them:—

"I am delighted, my dear children, with your humane behaviour towards animals, and wish by all means to encourage it; but let me recommend to you not to suffer your tender feelings towards animals to gain upon you to such a degree as to make you unhappy or forgetful of those who have a higher claim to your attention—I mean poor people; always keep in mind the distresses which they endure, and on no account waste any kind of food, nor give to inferior creatures what is designed for mankind."

Harriet promised to follow her mamma's instructions; but Frederick's attention was entirely engaged by watching a butterfly, which had just left the chrysalis, and was fluttering in the window, longing to try its wings in the air and sunshine; this Frederick was very desirous to catch, but his mamma would not permit him to attempt it, because, she told him, he could not well lay hold of its wings without doing it an injury, and it would be much happier at liberty. "Should you like, Frederick," said she, "when you are going out to play, to have anybody lay hold of you violently, scratch you all

title: Page:Story of the robins.djvu/22


text: Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots/Chapter 7


text: Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots/Chapter 11


text:
Page:Story of the robins.djvu/23

Rh over, then offer you something to eat which is very disagreeable, and perhaps poisonous, and shut you up in a little dark room? And yet this is the fate to which many a harmless insect is condemned by thoughtless children." As soon as Frederick understood that he could not catch the butterfly without hurting it, he gave up the point, and assured his mamma he did not want to keep it, but only to carry it out of doors. "Well," replied she, "that end may be answered by opening the window;" which, at her desire, was done by Harriet: the happy insect was glad to fly away, and Frederick had soon the pleasure of seeing it upon a rose.

Breakfast being ended, Mrs. Benson reminded the children that it was almost time for their lessons to begin; but desired their maid to take them into the garden before they applied to business. During his walk, Frederick amused himself with watching the butterfly as it flew from flower to flower, which gave him more pleasure than he could possibly have received from catching and confining the little tender creature.

Let us now see what became of our redbreasts after they left their young benefactors.

The hen bird, as I informed you, repaired immediately to the nest; her heart fluttered with

title: Page:Story of the robins.djvu/23


text:
Page:Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots.djvu/106

90 The letter ran thus: "Messrs. Childs & Co. present their compliments to Captain Stubbs, and regret that they have been obliged to refuse payment of the inclosed, having been served this day with an attachment by Messrs. Solomonson & Co., which compels them to retain Captain Stubbs’s balance of £2,010 11s. 6d. until the decision of the suit of Solomonson v. Stubbs.

"Fleet street."

"You see," says Mr. Nabb, as I read this dreadful letter, "you see, Shtubbsh, dere vas two debts,—a little von, and a big von. So dey arrested you for de little von, and attashed your money for de big von."

Don't laugh at me for telling this story; if you knew what tears are blotting over the paper as I write it; if you knew that for weeks after I was more like a madman than a sane man,—a madman in the Fleet prison, where I went, instead of to the desert island. What had I done to deserve it? Hadn’t I always kept an eye to the main chance? Hadn’t I lived


text:
Page:Story of the robins.djvu/24

10 apprehension as she entered it, and she eagerly called out, "Are you all safe, my little dears?" "All safe, my good mother," replied Pecksy, "but a little hungry, and very cold." "Well," said she, "your last complaint I can soon remove; but in respect to satisfying your hunger, that must be your father's task; however, he will soon be here, I make no doubt." Then spreading her wings over them all, she soon gave warmth to them, and they were again comfortable.

In a very short time her mate returned; for he only stayed at Mr. Benson's to finish his song and sip some clear water, which his new friends always kept where they fed the birds. He brought in his mouth a worm, which was given to Robin; and was going to fetch one for Dicky, but his mate said, "My young ones are now hatched, and you can keep them warm as well as myself; take my place, therefore, and the next excursion shall be mine." "I consent," answered he, "because I think a little flying now and then will do you good; but, to save you trouble, I can direct you to a spot where you may be certain of finding worms for this morning's supply." He then described the place; and on her quitting the nest he entered it, and gathered his young ones under his wings. "Come, my dears," said he, "let us see what

title: Page:Story of the robins.djvu/24


text:
Page:Story of the robins.djvu/25

 Rh kind of a nurse I can make; but an awkward one, I fear; even every mother bird is not a good nurse, but you are very fortunate in yours, for she is a most tender one, and I hope you will be dutiful for her kindness." They all promised him they would. "Well, then," said he, "I will sing you a song." He did so, and it was a very merry one, and delighted the nestlings extremely; so that, though they were not quite comfortable under his wings, they did not regard it, nor think the time of their mother's absence long. She had not succeeded in the place she first went to, as a boy was picking up worms to angle with, of whom she was afraid, and therefore flew further; but as soon as she had obtained what she went for, she returned with all possible speed; and though she had repeated invitations from several gay birds which she met to join their sportive parties, she kept a steady course, preferring the pleasure of feeding little Dicky to all the diversions of the fields and groves. As soon as the hen bird came near the nest her mate started up to make room for her, and take his turn of providing for his family. "Once more adieu!" said he, and was out of sight in an instant.

"My dear nestlings," said the mother, "how do you do?" "Very well, thank you," replied all at

title: Page:Story of the robins.djvu/25


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/74

36

 (See also )


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/77

Rh


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/79

Rh


text:
Page:Story of the robins.djvu/26

12 once; "and we have been exceedingly merry," said Robin, "for my father has sung us a sweet song." "I think," said Dicky, "I should like to learn it." "Well," replied the mother, "he will teach it you, I dare say; here he comes, ask him." "I am ashamed," said Dicky. "Then you are a silly bird. Never be ashamed but when you commit a fault; asking your father to teach you to sing is not one; and good parents delight to teach their young ones everything that is proper and useful. Whatever so good a father sets you an example of you may safely desire to imitate." Then addressing herself to her mate, who for an instant stopped at the entrance of the nest, that he might not interrupt her instructions, "Am I not right," said she, "in what I have just told them?" "Perfectly so," replied he; "I shall have pleasure in teaching them all that is in my power; but we must talk of that another time. Who is to feed poor Pecksy?" "Oh, I, I!" answered the mother, and was gone in an instant.

"And so you want to learn to sing, Dicky?" said the father: "well, then, pray listen very attentively; you may learn the notes, though you will not be able to sing till your voice is stronger."

Robin now remarked that the song was very pretty indeed, and expressed his desire to learn it also. "By

title: Page:Story of the robins.djvu/26


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/75

Rh


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/76

38


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/78

40


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/80

42


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/81

Rh


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/82

44


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/216

 CHAPTER XX. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.

is the relation of man to his own nature,—therein lies its truth and its power of moral amelioration;—but to his nature not recognised as his own, but regarded as another nature, separate, nay, contradistinguished from his own: herein lies its untruth, its limitation, its contradiction to reason and morality; herein lies the noxious source of religious fanaticism, the chief metaphysical principle of human sacrifices, in a word, the prima materia of all the atrocities, all the horrible scenes, in the tragedy of religious history.

The contemplation of the human nature as another, a separately existent nature, is, however, in the original conception of religion an involuntary, childlike, simple act of the mind, that is, one which separates God and man just as immediately as it again identifies them. But when religion advances in years, and, with years, in understanding; when, within the bosom of religion, reflection on religion is awakened, and the consciousness of the identity of the divine being with the human begins to dawn,—in a word, when religion becomes theology, the originally involuntary and harmless separation of God from man, becomes an intentional, excogitated separation, which has no other object than to banish again from the consciousness this identity which has already entered there.

Hence the nearer religion stands to its origin, the truer, the more genuine it is, the less is its true nature disguised; that is to say, in the origin of religion there is no qualitative or essential distinction whatever between God and man. And the religious man is not shocked at this identification; for his understanding is still in harmony with his religion. Thus in ancient Judaism, Jehovah was a being differing from the human individual in nothing but in duration of existence; in his qualities, his inherent nature, he was entirely similar to man,—had the same passions, the same human, nay, even corporeal properties. Only in the later Judaism was Jehovah separated in the strictest manner from man, and recourse


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/83

Rh

 Fraxinus


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/217

 was had to allegory in order to give to the old anthropomorphisms another sense than that which they originally had. So again in Christianity: in its earliest records the divinity of Christ is not so decidedly stamped as it afterwards became. With Paul especially, Christ is still an undefined being, hovering between heaven and earth, between God and man, or, in general, one amongst the existences subordinate to the highest,—the first of the angels, the first created, but still created; begotten indeed for our sake, but then neither are angels and men created, but begotten, for God is their Father also. The Church first identified him with God, made him the exclusive Son of God, defined his distinction from men and angels, and thus gave him the monopoly of an eternal, uncreated existence.

In the genesis of ideas, the first mode in which reflexion on religion, or theology, makes the divine being a distinct being, and places him outside of man, is by making the existence of God the object of a formal proof.

The proofs of the existence of God have been pronounced contradictory to the essential nature of religion. They are so; but only in their form as proofs. Religion immediately represents the inner nature of man as an objective, external being. And the proof aims at nothing more than to prove that religion is right. The most perfect being is that than which no higher can be conceived: God is the highest that man conceives or can conceive. This premiss of the ontological proof—the most interesting proof, because it proceeds from within—expresses the inmost nature of religion. That which is the highest for man, from which he can make no further abstraction, which is the positive limit of his intellect, of his feeling, of his sentiment, that is to him God—id quo nihil majus cogitari potest. But this highest being would not be the highest if he did not exist; we could then conceive a higher being who would be superior to him in the fact of existence; the idea of the highest being directly precludes this fiction. Not to exist is a deficiency; to exist is perfection, happiness, bliss. From a being to whom man gives all, offers up all that is precious to him, he cannot withhold the bliss of existence. The contradiction to the religious spirit in the proof of the existence of God lies only in this, that the existence is thought of separately, and thence arises the appearance that God is a mere conception, a being existing in idea only,—an appearance


text:
Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/84

46


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/218

 however which is immediately dissipated; for the very result of the proof is, that to God belongs an existence distinct from an ideal one, an existence apart from man, apart from thought,—a real self-existence.

The proof therefore is only thus far discordant with the spirit of religion, that it presents as a formal deduction the implicit enthymeme or immediate conclusion of religion, exhibits in logical relation, and therefore distinguishes, what religion immediately unites; for to religion God is not a matter of abstract thought,—he is a present truth and reality. But that every religion in its idea of God makes a latent, unconscious inference, is confessed in its polemic against other religions. “Ye heathens,” says the Jew or the Christian, “were able to conceive nothing higher as your deities because ye were sunk in sinful desires. Your God rests on a conclusion, the premisses of which are your sensual impulses, your passions. You thought thus: the most excellent life is, to live out one’s impulses without restraint; and because this life was the most excellent, the truest, you made it your God. Your God was your carnal nature, your heaven only a free theatre for the passions which, in society and in the conditions of actual life generally, had to suffer restraint.” But, naturally, in relation to itself no religion is conscious of such an inference, for the highest of which it is capable is its limit, has the force of necessity, is not a thought, not a conception, but immediate reality.

The proofs of the existence of God have for their aim to make the internal external, to separate it from man. His existence being proved, God is no longer a merely relative, but a noumenal being (Ding an sich): he is not only a being for us, a being in our faith, our feeling, our nature, he is a being in himself, a being external to us,—in a word, not merely a belief, a feeling, a thought, but also a real existence apart from belief, feeling, and thought. But such an existence is no other than a sensational existence; i.e., an existence conceived according to the forms of our senses.


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/219

 The idea of sensational existence is indeed already involved in the characteristic expression “external to us.” It is true that a sophistical theology refuses to interpret the word “external” in its proper, natural sense, and substitutes the indefinite expression of independent, separate existence. But if the externality is only figurative, the existence also is figurative. And yet we are here only concerned with existence in the proper sense, and external existence is alone the definite, real, unshrinking expression for separate existence.

Real, sensational existence is that which is not dependent on my own mental spontaneity or activity, but by which I am involuntarily affected, which is when I am not, when I do not think of it or feel it. The existence of God must therefore be in space—in general, a qualitative, sensational existence. But God is not seen, not heard, not perceived by the senses. He does not exist for me, if I do not exist for him; if I do not believe in a God, there is no God for me. If I am not devoutly disposed, if I do not raise myself above the life of the senses, he has no place in my consciousness. Thus he exists only in so far as he is felt, thought, believed in;—the addition “for me” is unnecessary. His existence therefore is a real one, yet at the same time not a real one;—a spiritual existence, says the theologian. But spiritual existence is only an existence in thought, in feeling, in belief: so that his existence is a medium between sensational existence and conceptional existence, a medium full of contradiction. Or: he is a sensational existence, to which however all the conditions of sensational existence are wanting:—consequently an existence at once sensational and not sensational, an existence which contradicts the idea of the sensational, or only a vague existence in general, which is fundamentally a sensational one, but which, in order that this may not become evident, is divested of all the predicates of a real, sensational existence. But such an “existence in general” is self-contradictory. To existence belongs full, definite reality.

A necessary consequence of this contradiction is Atheism. The existence of God is essentially an empirical existence, without having its distinctive marks; it is in itself a matter of experience, and yet in reality no object of experience. It calls upon man to seek it in Reality: it impregnates his mind with sensational conceptions and pretensions; hence, when these are not fulfilled—when, on the contrary, he finds experience in


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/220

 with these conceptions, he is perfectly justified in denying that existence.

Kant is well known to have maintained, in his critique of the proofs of the existence of God, that that existence is not susceptible of proof from reason. He did not merit, on this account, the blame which was cast on him by Hegel. The idea of the existence of God in those proofs is a thoroughly empirical one; but I cannot deduce empirical existence from an à priori idea. The only real ground of blame against Kant is, that in laying down this position he supposed it to be something remarkable, whereas it is self-evident. Reason cannot constitute itself an object of sense. I cannot, in thinking, at the same time represent what I think as a sensible object, external to me. The proof of the existence of God transcends the limits of the reason; true; but in the same sense in which sight, hearing, smell transcend the limits of the reason. It is absurd to reproach reason, that it does not satisfy a demand which can only address itself to the senses. Existence, empirical existence, is proved to me by the senses alone; and in the question as to the being of God, the existence implied has not the significance of inward reality, of truth, but the significance of a formal, external existence. Hence there is perfect truth in the allegation, that the belief that God is or is not has no consequence with respect to inward moral dispositions. It is true that the thought—there is a God, is inspiring; but here the is means inward reality; here the existence is a movement of inspiration, an act of aspiration. Just in proportion as this existence becomes a prosaic, an empirical truth, the inspiration is extinguished.

Religion, therefore, in so far as it is founded on the existence of God as an empirical truth, is a matter of indifference to the inward disposition. As, necessarily, in the religious cultus, ceremonies, observances, sacraments, apart from the moral spirit or disposition, become in themselves an important fact: so also, at last, belief in the existence of God becomes, apart from the inherent quality, the spiritual import of the idea of God, a chief point in religion. If thou only believest in God—believest that God is, thou art already saved. Whether under this God thou conceivest a really divine being or a monster, a Nero or a Caligula, an image of thy passions, thy revenge, or ambition, it is all one,—the main point is that thou be not an atheist. The history of religion has amply confirmed this consequence which


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/221

 we here draw from the idea of the divine existence. If the existence of God, taken by itself, had not rooted itself as a religious truth in minds, there would never have been those infamous, senseless, horrible ideas of God which stigmatize the history of religion and theology. The existence of God was a common, external, and yet at the same time a holy thing:—what wonder, then, if on this ground the commonest, rudest, most unholy conceptions and opinions sprang up!

Atheism was supposed, and is even now supposed, to be the negation of all moral principle, of all moral foundations and bonds: if God is not, all distinction between good and bad, virtue and vice, is abolished. Thus the distinction lies only in the existence of God; the reality of virtue lies not in itself, but out of it. And assuredly it is not from an attachment to virtue, from a conviction of its intrinsic worth and importance, that the reality of it is thus bound up with the existence of God. On the contrary, the belief that God is the necessary condition of virtue, is the belief in the nothingness of virtue in itself.

It is indeed worthy of remark, that the idea of the empirical existence of God has been perfectly developed in modern times, in which empiricism and materialism in general have arrived at their full blow. It is true that even in the original, simple religious mind, God is an empirical existence to be found in a place, though above the earth. But here this conception has not so naked, so prosaic a significance; the imagination identifies again the external God with the soul of man. The imagination is, in general, the true place of an existence which is absent, not present to the senses, though nevertheless sensational in its essence. Only the imagination solves the contradiction in an existence which is at once sensational and not sensational; only the imagination is the


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/222

 preservative from atheism. In the imagination, existence has sensational effects, existence affirms itself as a power; with the essence of sensational existence the imagination associates also the phenomena of sensational existence. Where the existence of God is a living truth, an object on which the imagination exercises itself, there also appearances of God are believed in. Where, on the contrary, the fire of the religious imagination is extinct, where the sensational effects or appearances necessarily connected with an essentially sensational existence cease, there the existence becomes a dead, self-contradictory existence, which falls irrecoverably into the negation of atheism.

The belief in the existence of God is the belief in a special existence, separate from the existence of man and Nature. A special existence can only be proved in a special manner. This faith is therefore only then a true and living one when special effects, immediate appearances of God, miracles, are believed in. Where, on the other hand, the belief in God is identified with the belief in the world, where the belief in God is no longer a special faith, where the general being of the world takes possession of the whole man, there also vanishes the belief in special effects and appearances of God. Belief in God is wrecked, is stranded on the belief in the world, in natural effects as the only true ones. As here the belief in miracles is no longer anything more than the belief in historical, past miracles, so the existence of God is also only an historical, in itself atheistic conception.


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/223

 CHAPTER XXI. THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD.

the idea of the existence of God is connected the idea of revelation. God’s attestation of his existence, the authentic testimony that God exists, is revelation. Proofs drawn from reason are merely subjective; the objective, the only true proof of the existence of God, is his revelation. God speaks to man; revelation is the word of God; he sends forth a voice which thrills the soul, and gives it the joyful certainty that God really is. The word is the gospel of life,—the criterion of existence and non-existence. Belief in revelation is the culminating point of religious objectivism. The subjective conviction of the existence of God here becomes an indubitable, external, historical fact. The existence of God, in itself, considered simply as existence, is already an external, empirical existence; still, it is as yet only thought, conceived, and therefore doubtful; hence the assertion that all proofs produce no satisfactory certainty. This conceptional existence converted into a real existence, a fact, is revelation. God has revealed himself, has demonstrated himself: who then can have any further doubt? The certainty of the existence of God is involved for me in the certainty of the revelation. A God who only exists without revealing himself, who exists for me only through my own mental act, such a God is a merely abstract, imaginary, subjective God; a God who gives me a knowledge of himself through his own act is alone a God who truly exists, who proves himself to exist,—an objective God. Faith in revelation is the immediate certainty of the religious mind, that what it believes, wishes, conceives, really is. Religion is a dream, in which our own conceptions and emotions appear to us as separate existences, beings out of ourselves. The religious mind does not distinguish between subjective and objective,—it has no doubts; it has the faculty, not of discerning other things than itself, but of seeing its own conceptions out of itself, as distinct beings. What is in itself a mere theory, is to the religious mind a practical belief, a matter of conscience,—a fact. A fact is that


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/224

 which from being an object of the intellect becomes a matter of conscience; a fact is that which one cannot criticise or attack without being guilty of a crime; a fact is that which one must believe nolens volens; a fact is a physical force, not an argument,—it makes no appeal to the reason. O ye short-sighted religious philosophers of Germany, who fling at our heads the facts of the religious consciousness, to stun our reason and make us the slaves of your childish superstition,—do you not see that facts are just as relative, as various, as subjective, as the ideas of the different religions? Were not the Gods of Olympus also facts, self-attesting existences? Were not the ludicrous miracles of paganism regarded as facts? Were not angels and demons historical persons? Did they not really appear to men? Did not Balaam’s ass really speak? Was not the story of Balaam’s ass just as much believed even by enlightened scholars of the last century, as the Incarnation or any other miracle? A fact, I repeat, is a conception about the truth of which there is no doubt, because it is no object of theory, but of feeling, which desires that what it wishes, what it believes, should be true. A fact is that, the denial of which is forbidden, if not by an external law, yet by an internal one. A fact is every possibility which passes for a reality, every conception which, for the age wherein it is held to be a fact, expresses a want, and is for that reason an impassable limit of the mind. A fact is every wish that projects itself on reality: in short, it is everything that is not doubted simply because it is not—must not be—doubted.


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/225

 The religious mind, according to its nature as hitherto unfolded, has the immediate certainty that all its involuntary, spontaneous affections are impressions from without, manifestations of another being. The religious mind makes itself the passive, God the active being. God is activity; but that which determines him to activity, which causes his activity (originally only omnipotence, potentia) to become real activity, is not himself,—he needs nothing,—but man, the religious subject. At the same time, however, man is reciprocally determined by God; he views himself as passive; he receives from God determinate revelations, determinate proofs of his existence. Thus in revelation man determines himself as that which determines God, i.e., revelation is simply the self-determination of man, only that between himself the determined, and himself the determining, he interposes an object—God, a distinct being. God is the medium by which man brings about the reconciliation of himself with his own nature: God is the bond, the vinculum substantiale, between the essential nature—the species—and the individual.

The belief in revelation exhibits in the clearest manner the characteristic illusion of the religious consciousness. The general premiss of this belief is: man can of himself know nothing of God; all his knowledge is merely vain, earthly, human. But God is a superhuman being; God is known only by himself. Thus we know nothing of God beyond what he reveals to us. The knowledge imparted by God is alone divine, superhuman, supernatural knowledge. By means of revelation, therefore, we know God through himself; for revelation is the word of God—God declaring himself. Hence, in the belief in revelation man makes himself a negation, he goes out of and above himself; he places revelation in opposition to human knowledge and opinion; in it is contained a hidden knowledge, the fulness of all supersensuous mysteries; here reason must hold its peace. But nevertheless the divine revelation is determined by the human nature. God speaks not to brutes or angels, but to men; hence he uses human speech and human conceptions. Man is an object to God, before God perceptibly imparts himself to man; he thinks of man; he determines his action in accordance with the nature of man and his needs. God is indeed free in will; he can reveal himself or not; but he is not free as to the understanding; he cannot reveal to man whatever he will, but only what is adapted to man, what is


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/226

 with his nature such as it actually is; he reveals what he must reveal, if his revelation is to be a revelation for man, and not for some other kind of being. Now what God thinks in relation to man is determined by the idea of man—it has arisen out of reflection on human nature. God puts himself in the place of man, and thinks of himself as this other being can and should think of him; he thinks of himself, not with his own thinking power, but with man’s. In the scheme of his revelation God must have reference not to himself, but to man’s power of comprehension. That which comes from God to man, comes to man only from man in God, that is, only from the ideal nature of man to the phenomenal man, from the species to the individual. Thus, between the divine revelation and the so-called human reason or nature, there is no other than an illusory distinction;—the contents of the divine revelation are of human origin, for they have proceeded not from God as God, but from God as determined by human reason, human wants, that is, directly from human reason and human wants. And so in revelation man goes out of himself, in order, by a circuitous path, to return to himself! Here we have a striking confirmation of the position, that the secret of theology is nothing else than anthropology—the knowledge of God nothing else than a knowledge of man!

Indeed, the religious consciousness itself admits, in relation to past times, the essentially human quality of revelation. The religious consciousness of a later age is no longer satisfied with a Jehovah who is from head to foot a man, and does not shrink from becoming visible as such. It recognises that those were merely images in which God accommodated himself to the comprehension of men in that age, that is, merely human images. But it does not apply this mode of interpretation to ideas accepted as revelation in the present age, because it is yet itself steeped in those ideas. Nevertheless, every revelation is simply a revelation of the nature of man to existing men. In revelation man’s latent nature is disclosed to him, becomes an object to him. He is determined, affected by his own nature as by another being; he receives from the hands of God what his own unrecognised nature entails upon him as a necessity, under certain conditions of time and circumstance. Reason, the mind of the species, operates on the subjective, uncultured man only under the image of a personal being. Moral laws have force for him only as the commandments of a Divine Will, which has


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/227

 at once the power to punish and the glance which nothing escapes. That which his own nature, his reason, his conscience says to him, does not bind him, because the subjective, uncultured man sees in conscience, in reason, so far as he recognises it as his own, no universal, objective power; hence he must separate from himself that which gives him moral laws, and place it in opposition to himself, as a distinct personal being.

Belief in revelation is a child-like belief, and is only respectable so long as it is child-like. But the child is determined from without. And revelation has for its object to effect by God’s help, what man cannot attain by himself. Hence, revelation has been called the education of the human race. This is correct; only, revelation must not be regarded as outside the nature of man. There is within him an inward necessity which impels him to present moral and philosophical doctrines in the form of narratives and fables, and an equal necessity to represent that impulse as a revelation. The mythical poet has an end in view—that of making men good and wise; he designedly adopts the form of fable as the most appropriate and vivid method of representation; but at the same time, he is himself urged to this mode of teaching by his love of fable, by his inward impulse. So it is with a revelation enunciated by an individual. This individual has an aim; but at the same time he himself lives in the conceptions by means of which he realizes this aim. Man, by means of the imagination, involuntarily contemplates his inner nature; he represents it as out of himself. The nature of man, of the species—thus working on him through the irresistible power of the imagination, and contemplated as the law of his thought and action—is God.

Herein lie the beneficial moral effects of the belief in revelation.

But as Nature “unconsciously produces results which look as if they were produced consciously,” so revelation generates moral actions, which do not, however, proceed from morality;—moral actions, but no moral dispositions. Moral rules are indeed observed, but they are severed from the inward disposition, the heart, by being represented as the commandments of an external law-giver, by being placed in the category of arbitrary laws, police regulations. What is done, is done not because it is good and right, but because it is commanded by God. The inherent quality of the deed is indifferent;


text:
Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/228

 God commands is right. If these commands are in accordance with reason, with ethics, it is well; but so far as the idea of revelation is concerned, it is accidental. The ceremonial laws of the Jews were revealed, divine, though in themselves adventitious and arbitrary. The Jews received from Jehovah the command to steal;—in a special case, it is true.

But the belief in revelation not only injures the moral sense and taste,—the æsthetics of virtue; it poisons, nay it destroys, the divinest feeling in man—the sense of truth, the perception and sentiment of truth. The revelation of God is a determinate revelation, given at a particular epoch: God revealed himself once for all in the year so and so, and that, not to the universal man, to the man of all times and places, to the reason, to the species, but to certain limited individuals. A revelation in a given time and place must be fixed in writing, that its blessings may be transmitted uninjured. Hence the belief in revelation is, at least for those of a subsequent age, belief in a written revelation; but the necessary consequence of a faith in which an historical book, necessarily subject to all the conditions of a temporal, finite production, is regarded as an eternal, absolute, universally authoritative word, is—superstition and sophistry.

Faith in a written revelation is a real, unfeigned, and so far respectable faith, only where it is believed that all in the sacred writings is significant, true, holy, divine. Where, on the contrary, the distinction is made between the human and divine, the relatively true and the absolutely true, the historical and the permanent,—where it is not held that all without distinction is unconditionally true; there the verdict of unbelief, that the Bible is no divine book, is already introduced into the interpretation of the Bible,—there, at least indirectly, that is, in a crafty, dishonest way, its title to the character of a divine revelation is denied. Unity, unconditionality, freedom from exceptions, immediate certitude, is alone the character of divinity. A book that imposes on me the necessity of discrimination, the necessity of criticism, in order to separate the