CHAPTER I FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND THE FORCES AGAINST IT (INTRODUCTORY) IT is a common saying that thought is free. A man can never be hindered from thinking whatever he chooses so long as he conceals what he thinks. The working of his mind is limited only by the bounds of his experience and the power of his imagination. But this natural liberty of private thinking is of little value. It is unsatisfactory and even painful to the thinker himself,... more...

INTRODUCTION We can distinguish three kinds of astronomy, each with a different origin and history, but all mutually dependent, and composing, in their fundamental unity, one science. First in order of time came the art of observing the returns, and measuring the places, of the heavenly bodies. This was the sole astronomy of the Chinese and Chaldeans; but to it the vigorous Greek mind added a highly complex geometrical plan of their movements,... more...

ADVERTISEMENT. What I have here to say is rather in the nature of an apology than of a preface or advertisement. The very title of a Treatise upon the art of dancing by a dancing-master, implicitly threatens so much either of the exageration of the profession, or of the recommendation of himself, and most probably of both, that it cannot be improper for me to bespeak the reader’s favorable precaution against so natural a prejudice. My... more...

INTRODUCTION No one who is interested in the growth of human ideas or the origins of human society can afford to neglect Maine's Ancient Law. Published some fifty-six years ago it immediately took rank as a classic, and its epoch-making influence may not unfitly be compared to that exercised by Darwin's Origin of Species. The revolution effected by the latter in the study of biology was hardly more remarkable than that effected by Maine's... more...

CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN. INTRODUCTION. Scene—A Library. ALDA. You will not listen to me? MEDON. I do, with all the deference which befits a gentleman when a lady holds forth on the virtues of her own sex. He is a parricide of his mother's name,And with an impious hand murders her fame,That wrongs the praise of women; that dares writeLibels on saints, or with foul ink requiteThe milk they lent us.Yours was the nobler birth,For you... more...

ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE “A very slight acquaintance with the history of our own language will teach us that the speech of Chaucer’s age is not the speech of Skelton’s, that there is a great difference between the language under Elizabeth and that under Charles the First, between that under Charles the First and Charles the Second, between that under Charles the Second and Queen Anne; that considerable changes had taken... more...

PREFACE. There were no prefatory remarks to the first and second editions of the following work. It was thought, when the printer made his final call for copy, that a preface might be written with more propriety if the public should indicate sufficient interest in the book to make its improvement and enlargement necessary. That interest, owing to the theme rather than the treatment, has not been withheld. The investigation of the subject was... more...

PREFACE The following pages give in general outline the century story of McGill University. They have no pretension to the title of detailed History, for it has been possible to chronicle only the circumstances which shaped the University in its infancy and the important events of its succeeding years. The story is one of struggle and disappointment, of discouragement and controversy, and of ultimate success and triumph. The men who made McGill... more...

BRUMAIRE. THE OVERTHROW OF THE FRENCH DIRECTORY. The eighteenth century went out with the French Directory, and the nineteenth came in with the Consulate. The coincidence of dates is not exact by a year and a month and twenty-one days. But history does not pay much attention to almanacs. In general our century arose with the French Consulate. The Consulate was the most conspicuous political fact of Europe in the year 1801; and the Consulate... more...

INTRODUCTORY. For the investigation of art in its early stages and in its widest sense—there is probably no fairer field than that afforded by aboriginal America, ancient and modern. At the period of discovery, art at a number of places on the American continent seems to have been developing surely and steadily, through the force of the innate genius of the race, and the more advanced nations were already approaching the threshold of... more...