Racial Contrasts: Distinguishing Traits of the Graeco-Latins and Teutons

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G. P. Putnam's sons, 1908 - 237 pages
 

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Page 34 - For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed.
Page 27 - Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.
Page 7 - Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whitlier it is to lead. The significance, the value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra that surrounds and escorts it...
Page 39 - It is the addition of strangeness to beauty, that constitutes the romantic character in art; and the desire of beauty being a fixed element in every artistic organization, it is the addition of curiosity to this desire of beauty, that constitutes the romantic temper.
Page 232 - Thus, for instance, to take the case of the highest animal, man, his development begins from a speck of living matter similar to that from which the development of a plant begins. And, when his animality becomes established, he exhibits the fundamental anatomical qualities which characterise such lowly animals as the jelly-fish. Next he is marked off as a vertebrate, but it cannot be said whether he is to be a fish, a snake, a bird or a beast. Later on it is evident that he is to be a mammal ; but...
Page 6 - ... sphere within which knowledge must be acquired, not for its own sake, but in order to act, — science itself being valuable only to the office which verifies it and for the purpose which it serves. That being granted, it appears to me that the ordinary furnishing of an English head becomes discernible. As well as I can judge, an educated Englishman possesses a stock of facts three or four times in excess of that possessed by a Frenchman of corresponding position, — at least in all that relates...
Page 30 - The remember'd print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men, families, goods, The disembarkation, the founding of a new city, The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it, the outset anywhere, The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette, The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags; The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons, The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men with their clear untrimm'd faces, The beauty of independence, departure, actions...
Page 7 - Different instruments give the "same note," but each in a different voice, because each gives more than that note, namely, various upper harmonics of it which differ from one instrument to another. They are not separately heard by the ear; they blend with the fundamental note, and suffuse it, and alter it; and even so do the waxing and waning brain-processes at every moment blend with and suffuse and alter the psychic effect of the processes which are at their culminating point. Let us use the words...
Page 97 - Gallic nature necessitates the rule that when the president of the Chamber of Deputies puts on his hat all argument must cease. The inertia of the Teutons is accountable for the calm deliberation prevailing in Germanic legislative bodies; and it had much to do with the disruption of the old German Empire and its long inability to revive, as expressed in Freiligrath's Hamlet, where the German people, with their fluctuations and hesitations, are compared to the Danish prince. The persistency of the...
Page 96 - The celerity of action in the south throws light on the frequency of assassination in Latin countries; it enables us to understand the enthusiastic support received by victorious generals and the speedy disgrace awaiting defeated ones ; it explains many episodes in the revolution of 1789, and furnishes the reason for the general instability of governments among the Romance races. Likewise the cause of many enactments which are not necessary among calmer peoples.

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