A Century of Science, and Other Essays

"The time allowed was ample; but here he fell into a fatal error, entering on this long pilgrimage with all the vehemence of one starting on a mile heat. His reliance, however,...

Well, in the spring of 1871, when Darwin's "Descent of Man" came out, just about the same time I happened to be reading Wallace's account of his experiences in the Malay Archipe...

When such a man goes about for seventeen years, teaching scientific truths for which the world is ripe, we may be sure that his work is great, albeit we have no standard whereby...

As already observed, my rule was never to put into the class of eccentric literature any books save such as seemed to have emanated from diseased brains. To hold and absurd beli...

We have met together this evening on one of those occasions, which keep recurring, for communities as well as for individuals, when it is desirable to take a retrospect of the p...

Nevertheless, in the regions where Irish myths have been preserved, they have been remarkably well preserved, and bear unmistakable marks of their vast antiquity. One very notic...

Sometimes, however, our crank has a practical end in view, as in the numerous attempts to discover "perpetual motion," or, in other words, to invent a machine out of which you c...

Edward Livingston Youmans was born in the town of Coeymans, Albany County, N.Y., on the 3d of June, 1821. From his father and mother, both of whom survived him, he inherited str...

A word must be said of the historical sciences, which have witnessed as great changes as any others, mainly through the introduction of the comparative method of inquiry. The fi...

Before leaving this part of the subject, however, there are still one or two points of interest to be mentioned. Shakespeare shows a fondness for the use of phrases and illustra...

That method, it must be acknowledged with due regard to the _bon mot_ of the old Greek statesman, is a method well adapted to conciliate the favour of an immense audience,--even...

This question is answered by Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, a writer who speculates with equal infelicity on all subjects, but never suffers for lack of boldness. He published in 1887 a...

"To be made with impunity, the attempt must be made with the most watchful caution. He caused a wooden frame to be constructed of the size and shape of a sheet of letter paper....

In New England history, the usual remedy for such a state of things has been what might be called "spontaneous fission." The overgrown town would divide into three, and the segm...

But as we learn to broaden our horizon, the perspective becomes somewhat shifted. It begins to dawn upon us that in New World events, also, there is a rare and potent fascinatio...

The separation of church from state, which was effected with such remarkable success in the founding of Rhode Island, did not become general in the United States until after the...

This capacity for unconscious learning is not at all uncommon. It is possessed to some extent by everybody; but a very high degree of it is one of the marks of genius. I remembe...

The next time that I happened to be in New York, chatting with Youmans at the Century Club, I alluded to Mr. Flighty, who believed he had made a convert of him.

It may be urged that arbitration cannot often succeed in dealing with difficulties so formidable as those connected with the Alabama Claims. The questions hitherto settled by ar...

When, after these publications on architecture, Freeman began publishing books and articles on ancient Greece and on the Saracens, I presume there were many of his readers who t...

Between the beginning and the end of this well-rounded tale a mighty drama is wrought out in all its scenes. The struggle between France and England for the soil of North Americ...

This extension of the doctrine of evolution to psychical phenomena was what made it a universal doctrine, an account of the way in which the world, as we know it, has been evolv...

DEAR TOM,--It has long been my wish to make you the patron saint or tutelar divinity of some book of mine, and it has lately occurred to me that it ought to be a book of the des...

When once the truth of Lyell's conclusions began to be distinctly realized, their influence upon men's habits of thought and upon the drift of philosophic speculation was profou...

The impulse thus given to free thinking must have been extremely powerful. It is customary to attribute the brilliant efflorescence of the human mind in the sixteenth century to...

They were already falling out among themselves; how seriously, Dunbar and Worcester were by and by to show. "Their own generation," says Mr. Hosmer, "believed that the Independe...

Parkman, Francis, as an historian, 194-222; his birth, 223; his boyhood, 226-230; his first journey to Europe, 233-235; his life among Indians, 235-246; his ill-health, 238, 239...