Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

CXXIX It remains for me to say a few words touching the excellency of the end in view.

XIV How poor we are in history anyone may see from the foregoing tables, where I not only insert sometimes mere traditions and reports (though never without a note of doubtful credit and authority) in place of history proved and instances certain, but am also frequently forced to use the words "Let trial be made," or "Let it be further inquired."

Now from this our First Vintage it follows that the form or true definition of heat (heat, that is, in relation to the universe, not simply in relation to man) is, in few words, as follows: Heat is a motion, expansive, restrained, and acting in its strife upon the smaller particles of bodies.

Constitutive instances are: order or distribution, which clearly aids the memory; also topics or "places" in artificial memory; which may either be places in the proper sense of the word, as a door, angle, window, and the like; or familiar and known persons; or any other things at pleasure (provided they be placed in a certain order), as animals, vegetables; words, too, letters, characters, historical persons, and the like; although some of these are more suitable and convenient than others.

In the first it must be something which suits the order; in the second it must be an image which bears some relation or conformity to the places fixed; in the third, it must be words that fall into the verse; and thus infinity is cut off. Other instances, again, will give us this second species: that whatever brings the intellectual conception into contact with the sense (which is indeed the method most used in mnemonics) assists the memory.

Such, for example, as these following: that a little drop of ink spreads to so many letters or lines; that silver gilt stretches to such a length of gilt wire; that a tiny worm, such as we find in the skin, possesses in itself both spirit and a varied organization; that a little saffron tinges a whole hogshead of water; that a little civet or musk scents a much larger volume of air; that a little incense raises such a cloud of smoke; that such exquisite differences of sounds, as articulate words, are carried in every direction through the air, and pierce even, though considerably weakened, through the holes and pores of wood and water, and are moreover echoed back, and that too with such distinctness and velocity; that light and color pass through the solid substances of glass and water so speedily, and in so wide an extent, and with such copious and exquisite variety of images, and are also refracted and reflected; that the magnet acts through bodies of all sorts, even the most compact; and yet (which is more strange) that in all these, passing as they do through an indifferent medium (such as the air is), the action of one does not much interfere with the action of another.

But the inner consents and aversions, or friendships and enmities, of bodies (for I am almost weary of the words sympathy and antipathy on account of the superstitions and vanities associated with them) are either falsely ascribed, or mixed with fables, or from want of observation very rarely met with.

I must now say a few words on the circumstances, favourable, or the reverse, to man's power of selection.

Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult—at least I have found it so—than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.

And this leads me to say a few words on what I call Sexual Selection.