Most of us are idolators, and ascribe divine powers to the abstractions "Force," "Gravity," "Vitality," which our own brains have created. I do not know anything about "inert" things in nature. If we reduce the world to matter and motion, the matter is not "inert," inasmuch as the same amount of motion affects different kinds of matter in different ways. To go back to my own illustration. The fabric of the watch is not inert, every particle of it is in violent and rapid motion, and the winding-up simply perturbs the whole infinitely complicated system in a particular fashion. Equilibrium means death, because life is a succession of changes, while a changing equilibrium is a contradiction m terms. I am not at all clear that a living being is comparable to a machine running down. On this side of the question the whirlpool affords a better parallel than the watch. If you dam the stream above or below; the whirlpool dies; just as the living being does if you cut off its food, or choke it with its own waste products. And if you alter the sides or bottom of the stream you may kill the whirlpool, just as you kill the animal by interfering with its structure. Heat and oxidation as a source of heat appear to supply energy to the living machine, the molecular structure of the germ furnishing the "sides and bottom of the stream," that is, determining the results which the energy supplied shall produce.
Nil agit exemplum litem quod lite resolvit=--An illustration which solves one difficulty by involving us in another settles nothing.
The great danger to self-government in the United States lies in municipal corruption, and municipal corruption is in large measure traceable to the manner in which cities have used their credit. For American readers, this reference to local government is a pertinent illustration of a most dangerous political tendency of deficit financiering. [ Public Debts, An Essay in the Science of Finance . New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898, p. 25.]
~Education.~--Education gives fecundity of thought, copiousness of illustration, quickness, vigor, fancy, words, images, and illustrations; it decorates every common thing, and gives the power of trifling without being undignified and absurd.--_Sydney Smith._
Prayer is the forerunner of mercy. Turn to sacred history and you will find that scarcely ever did a great mercy come to this world unheralded by supplication. Prayer is always the preface to blessing. It goes before the blessing _as the blessing's shadow_. When the sunlight of God's mercies rises upon our necessities it casts the shadow of prayer far down upon the plain. Or, to use another illustration, when God piles up a hill of mercies He Himself shines behind them, and He casts on our spirits the shadow of prayer so that we may rest certain, if we are much in prayer, our pleadings are the shadows of mercy. Prayer is thus connected with the blessing to show us the value of it.--_Spurgeon._
Therefore, the great business of the scientific teacher is, to imprint the fundamental, irrefragable facts of his science, not only by words upon the mind, but by sensible impressions upon tne eye, and ear, and touch of the student, in so complete a manner, that every term used, or law enunciated, should afterwards call up vivid images of the particular structural, or other, facts which furnished the demonstration of the law, or the illustration of the term.
Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it.--_Coleridge._
Education gives fecundity of thought, copiousness of illustration, quickness, vigour, fancy, words, images, and illustrations; it decorates every common thing, and gives the power of trifling without being undignified and absurd.
The history of the "Aryan question" affords a striking illustration of these general remarks.
The floating vapour is just as true an illustration of the law of gravity as the falling avalanche.
The good oxymoron, to define it by a self-illustration, must be a planned inadvertency. -Wilson Follett
"The occupation resumed under the influence of this passing affliction so happily recovered from," said Mr. Lorry, clearing his throat, "we will call--Blacksmith's work, Blacksmith's work. We will say, to put a case and for the sake of illustration, that he had been used, in his bad time, to work at a little forge. We will say that he was unexpectedly found at his forge again. Is it not a pity that he should keep it by him?"
"Merely to the illustration of _your_ character," said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. "I am trying to make it out."
They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street outside Newgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since attached to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practised, and where dire diseases were bred, that came into court with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. It had more than once happened, that the Judge in the black cap pronounced his own doom as certainly as the prisoner's, and even died before him. For the rest, the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard, from which pale travellers set out continually, in carts and coaches, on a violent passage into the other world: traversing some two miles and a half of public street and road, and shaming few good citizens, if any. So powerful is use, and so desirable to be good use in the beginning. It was famous, too, for the pillory, a wise old institution, that inflicted a punishment of which no one could foresee the extent; also, for the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action; also, for extensive transactions in blood-money, another fragment of ancestral wisdom, systematically leading to the most frightful mercenary crimes that could be committed under Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that "Whatever is is right;" an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.
But by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was the almost complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842, on the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken credulous slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and bestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of it being taken across the sea to Owen, the English Anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile was a whale, though of a departed species. A significant illustration of the fact, again and again repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owen rechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his paper read before the London Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, one of the most extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have blotted out of existence.
Allowing for my learned friend's appearance being careless and slovenly if not debauched, they were sufficiently like each other to surprise, not only the witness, but everybody present, when they were thus brought into comparison. My Lord being prayed to bid my learned friend lay aside his wig, and giving no very gracious consent, the likeness became much more remarkable. My Lord inquired of Mr. Stryver (the prisoner's counsel), whether they were next to try Mr. Carton (name of my learned friend) for treason? But, Mr. Stryver replied to my Lord, no; but he would ask the witness to tell him whether what happened once, might happen twice; whether he would have been so confident if he had seen this illustration of his rashness sooner, whether he would be so confident, having seen it; and more. The upshot of which, was, to smash this witness like a crockery vessel, and shiver his part of the case to useless lumber.
He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship theirs must have been: a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage that "extremes meet."
I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known to me, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In more than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing boats back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks. The English ship Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head; and, as for his strength, let me say, that there have been examples where the lines attached to a running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred to the ship, and secured there; the whale towing her great hull through the water, as a horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often observed that, if the sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts, not so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate designs of destruction to his pursuers; nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his character, that upon being attacked he will frequently open his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for several consecutive minutes. But I must be content with only one more and a concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant one, by which you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous event in this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but that these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so that for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon--Verily there is nothing new under the sun.
He looked like his illustration, as he raised his eyes to Mr. Lorry's face.
Do not forget that you must put forward propositions adducing the above-mentioned facts as illustrations, not as propositions,--that would be too simple.
38. _Modern Developments._--Since 1870, then, with the single exception of Great Britain, all the major European powers have adopted the principle of compulsory short service with reserves. Along with this has come the fullest development of the territorial system (see below). The natural consequence therefore of the heavy work falling upon the shoulders of the Prussian officer, who had to instruct his men, was, in the first place, a general staff of the highest class, and in the second, a system of distributing the troops over the whole country in such a way that the regiments were permanently stationed in the district in which they recruited and from which they drew their reserves. Prussia realized that if the reservists were to be obtained when required the unit must be strictly localized; France, on the contrary, lost much time and spent much trouble, in the mobilization of 1870, in forwarding the reservists to a regiment distant, perhaps, 300 m. The Prussian system did not work satisfactorily at first, for until all the district staff-officers were trained in the same way there was great inequality in the efficiency of the various army corps, and central control, before the modern development of railways, was relatively slight. Further, the mobilization must be completed, or nearly so, before concentration begins, and thus an active professional army, always at war strength, might annihilate the frontier corps before those in the interior were ready to move. But the advantages far outweighed the defects of the system, and, such professional armies having after 1870 disappeared, there was little to fear. Everywhere, therefore, save in Great Britain (for at that time the United States was hardly counted as a great military power, in spite of its two million war-trained veterans in civil life), the German model was followed, and is now followed, with but slight divergence. The period of reforms after the Prussian model (about 1873-1890) practically established the military systems which are treated below as those of the present day. The last quarter of the century witnessed a very great development of military forces, without important organic changes. The chief interest to the student of this period lies in the severe competition between the great military powers for predominance in numbers, expressed usually in the reduction of the period of service with the colours to a minimum. The final results of this cannot well be predicted: it is enough to say that it is the _Leitmotiv_ in the present stage in the development of armies. Below will be found short historical sketches of various armies of the present day which are of interest in respect of their historical development. Details of existing forces are given in articles dealing with the several states to which they belong. Historical accounts of the armies of Japan and of Egypt will be found in the articles on those states. The Japanese wars of 1894-95 and 1904-5 contributed little to the history of military organization as a pure science. The true lessons of this war were the demonstration of the wide applicability of the German methods, upon which exclusively the Japanese army had formed itself, and still more the first illustration of the new moral force of nationalities as the decisive factor. The form of armies remained unaltered. Neither the events of the Boer War of 1899-1902 nor the Manchurian operations were held by European soldiers to warrant any serious modifications in organization. It is to the moral force alluded to above, rather than to mere technical improvements, that the best soldiers of Europe, and notably those of the French general staff (see the works of General H. Bonnal), have of late years devoted their most earnest attention. Entry: 38
6. The necessity of employing more stringent standards of criticisms and more exact methods is now recognized, and it is characteristic that the foremost contemporary representative of comparative jurisprudence, Joseph Kohler of Berlin, principal editor of the _Zeitschrift für vgl. Rechtswissenschaft_, often gives expression to this view. Beginning with studies of procedure and private law in the provinces of Germany where the French law of the Code Napoléon was still applied, he has thrown his whole energy into monographic surveys and investigations in all the departments of historical and ethnological jurisprudence. The code of Khammurabi and the Babylonian contracts, the ancient Hindu codes and juridical commentaries on them, the legal customs of the different tribes and provinces of India, the collection and sifting of the legal customs of aborigines in the German colonies in Africa, the materials supplied by investigators of Australian and American tribes, the history of legal customs of the Mahommedans, and numberless other points of ethnological research, have been treated by him in articles in his _Zeitschrift_ and in other publications. Comprehensive attempts have also been made by him at a synthetic treatment of certain sides of the law--like the law of debt in his _Shakespeare vor dem Forum der Jurisprudenz_ (1883) or his _Primitive History of Marriage_. Undoubtedly we have not to deal in this case with mere accumulation of material or with remarks on casual analogies. And yet the importance of these works consists mainly in their extensive range of observation. The critical side is still on the second plane, although not conspicuously absent as in the case of Post and some of his followers. We may sympathize cordially with Kohler's exhortation to work for a universal history of law without yet perceiving clearly what the stages of this universal history are going to be. We may acknowledge the enormous importance of Morgan's and Bachofen's discoveries without feeling bound to recognize that all tribes and nations of the earth have gone substantially through the same forms of development in respect of marriage custom, and without admitting that the evidence for a universal spread of group-marriage has been produced. Altogether the reproach seems not entirely unfounded that investigations of this kind are carried on too much under the sway of a preconceived notion that some highly peculiar arrangement entirely different from what we are practising nowadays--say sexual promiscuity or communism in the treatment of property--must be made out as a universal clue to earlier stages of development. Kohler's occasional remarks on matters of method (e.g. _Zeitschift für vgl. Rechtswissenschaft_, xii. 193 seq.) seem hardly adequate to dispel this impression. But in his own work and in that of some of his compeers and followers, J. E. Hitzig, Hellwig, Max Huber, R. Dareste, more exact forms and means of inquiry are gradually put into practice, and the results testify to a distinct heightening of the scientific standard in this group of studies on comparative jurisprudence. Especially conspicuous in this respect are three tendencies: (a) the growing disinclination to accept superficial analysis between phenomena belonging to widely different spheres of culture as necessarily produced by identical causes (e.g. Darinsky's review of Kovalevsky's assumptions as to group marriage among the Caucasian tribes, _Z. für vgl. Rw._, xiv. 151 seq.); (b) the selection of definite historical or ethnological territories for monographic inquiries, in the course of which arrangements observed elsewhere are treated as suggestive material for supplying gaps and starting possible explanations: Kohler's own contributions have been mainly of this kind; (c) the treatment of selected subjects by an intensive legal analysis, bringing out the principles underlying one or the other rule, its possible differentiation, the means of its application in practice, &c.: Hellwig's monograph on the right of sanctuary in savage communities (_Das Asylrecht der Naturvölker_) may be named in illustration of this analytical tendency. Altogether, there can be no doubt that the stage has been reached by comparative jurisprudence when, after a hasty, one might almost say a voracious consumption of materials, investigators begin to strive towards careful sifting of evidence and a conscious examination of methods and critical rules which have to be followed in order to make the investigations undertaken in this line worthy of their scientific aims. Until the latter has been done many students, whose trend of thought would seem to lead them naturally into this domain, may be repelled by the uncritical indistinctness with which mere analogies are treated as elusive proofs by some of the representatives of the comparative school. F. W. Maitland, for instance, was always kept back by such considerations. Entry: 6
In 1759 Ferguson was appointed professor of natural philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, and in 1764 was transferred to the chair of "pneumatics" (mental philosophy) "and moral philosophy." In 1767, against Hume's advice, he published his _Essay on the History of Civil Society_, which was well received and translated into several European languages. In 1776 appeared his (anonymous) pamphlet on the American revolution in opposition to Dr Price's _Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty_, in which he sympathized with the views of the British legislature. In 1778 Ferguson was appointed secretary to the commission which endeavoured, but without success, to negotiate an arrangement with the revolted colonies. In 1783 appeared his _History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic_; it was very popular, and went through several editions. Ferguson was led to undertake this work from a conviction that the history of the Romans during the period of their greatness was a practical illustration of those ethical and political doctrines which were the object of his special study. The history is written in an agreeable style and a spirit of impartiality, and gives evidence of a conscientious use of authorities. The influence of the author's military experience shows itself in certain portions of the narrative. Finding himself unequal to the labour of teaching, he resigned his professorship in 1785, and devoted himself to the revision of his lectures, which he published (1792) under the title of _Principles of Moral and Political Science_. Entry: FERGUSON
Simone di Mariano, a brother of Botticelli long resident at Naples, returned to Florence in 1493 and shared Sandro's home in the Via Nuova. He soon became a devoted follower of Savonarola, and has left a manuscript chronicle which is one of the best sources for the history of the friar and of his movement. Sandro himself seems to have remained aloof from the movement almost until the date of the execution of Savonarola and his two followers in 1498. At least there is clear evidence of his being in the confidence and employ of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco so late as 1496 and 1497, which he could not possibly have been had he then been an avowed member of the party of the Piagnoni. It was probably the enforced departure of Lorenzo from Florence in 1497 that brought to a premature end the master's great undertaking on the illustration of Dante. After Lorenzo's return, following on the overthrow and death of Savonarola in 1498, we find no trace of any further relations between him and Botticelli, who by that time would seem to have become a declared devotee of the friar's memory and an adherent, like his brother, of the defeated side. During these years of swift political and spiritual revolution in Florence, documents give some glimpses of him: in 1497 as painting in the monastery of Monticelli a fresco of St Francis which has perished; in the winter of the same year as bound over to keep the peace with, a neighbour living next to the small suburban villa which Sandro held jointly with his brother Simone in the parish of San Sepolcro; in 1499 as paying belated matriculation fees to the gild of doctors and druggists (of which the painters were a branch); and again in 1499 as carrying out some decorative paintings for a member of the Vespucci family. It has been suggested, probably with reason, that portions of these decorations are to be recognized in two panels of dramatic scenes from Roman history, one illustrating the story of Virginia, which has passed with the collection of Senatore Morelli into the gallery at Bergamo, the other a history of Lucretia formerly belonging to Lord Ashburnham, which passed into Mrs Gardner's collection at Boston. These and the few works still remaining to be mentioned are all strongly marked by the strained vehemence of design and feeling characteristic of the master's later years, when he dramatizes his own high-strung emotions in figures flung forward and swaying out of all balance in the vehemence of action, with looks cast agonizingly earthward or heavenward, and gestures of wild yearning or appeal. These characters prevail still more in a small Pietà at the Poldi-Pezzoli gallery, probably a contemporary copy of one which the master is recorded to have painted for the Panciatichi chapel in the church of Sta Maria Maggiore; they are present to a degree even of caricature in the larger and coarser painting of the same subject which bears the master's name in the Munich gallery, but is probably only a work of his school. The mystic vein of religious and political speculation into which Botticelli had by this time fallen has its finest illustration in the beautiful symbolic "Nativity" which passed in succession from the Aldobrandini, the Ottley, and the Fuller Maitland collections into the National Gallery in 1882, with the apocalyptic inscription in Greek which the master has added to make his meaning clear (No. 1034). In a kindred vein is a much-injured symbolic "Magdalene at the foot of the Cross" in private possession at Lyons. Among extant pictures those which from internal evidence we must put latest in the master's career are three panels illustrating the story of St Zenobius, of which one is at Dresden and the other two in the collection of Dr Mond in London. The documentary notices of him after 1500 are few. In 1502 he is mentioned in the correspondence of Isabella d'Este, marchioness of Gonzaga, and in a poem by Ugolino Verino. In 1503-1504 he served on the committee of artists appointed to decide where the colossal David of Michelangelo should be placed. In these and the following years we find him paying fees to the company of St Luke, and the next thing recorded of him is his death, followed by his burial in the Ortaccio or garden burial-ground of the Ognissanti, in May 1510. Entry: A