Autobiography and Selected EssaysHoughton Mifflin, 1909 - 138 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
æsthetic ancient animal atolls believe Bernard de Jussieu better body bottom called carbonate of lime carbonic acid chalk coast coccoliths coral polypes coral reefs covered Crania cretaceous crocodiles depth encircling reefs England English epoch essay existence fact faculty feet Flamborough Head fringing reef Globigerina hard and green human hundred Huxley Huxley's hypothesis improvement of natural kind lagoon less literature living matter London Lord Brouncker man's mankind mass ment mind Monte Nuovo natural knowledge naturalist nettle nitrogenous ocean particle Peyssonel phenomena philosopher physical basis Piece of Chalk plague plant present protoplasm Radiolaria reason Réaumur red coral rock Royal Society scientific sea-bottom sea-urchin seaward selenography sentences musical skeletons species structure style subject-matter substance suppose surface things THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY thought thousand tion truth universe whole words writes wrote
Popular passages
Page 26 - As when in heaven the stars about the moon Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, And every height comes out, and jutting peak And valley, and the immeasurable heavens Break open to their highest, and all the stars Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart...
Page 39 - Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would one day or other depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check?
Page 17 - Our business was (precluding matters of Theology and state affairs) to discourse and consider of Philosophical Enquiries, and such as related thereunto : as physick, anatomy, geometry, astronomy, navigation, staticks, magneticks, chymicks, mechanicks, and natural experiments ; with the state of these studies, as then cultivated at home and abroad.
Page 13 - I have subordinated any reasonable, or unreasonable, ambition for scientific fame, which I may have permitted myself to entertain, to other ends ; to the popularisation of science ; to the development and organisation of scientific education ; to the endless series of battles and skirmishes over evolution ; and to untiring opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit, that clericalism, which in England, as everywhere else, and to whatever denomination it may belong, is the deadly enemy of science.
Page 111 - These new compounds, like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless. But when they are brought together, under certain conditions they give rise to the still more complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life. I see no break in this series of steps in molecular complication, \ and I am unable to understand why the language which is applicable / to any one term of the series may not be used to any of the others.
Page 43 - That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of...
Page 43 - ... whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.
Page x - I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness, or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs a true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is what are you going to do with all these things...
Page 60 - ... coverings and appendages by putrefaction ; and that, after this had happened, another animal might attach itself to the dead and naked skeleton, might grow to maturity, and might itself die before the calcareous mud had buried the whole. Cases of this kind are admirably described by Sir Charles Lyell. He speaks of the frequency with which geologists find in the chalk a fossilized sea-urchin, to which is attached the lower valve of a Crania. This is a kind of shell-fish, with a shell composed...