Finding your able man, and getting him invested with the symbols of ability, is the business, well or ill accomplished, of all social procedure whatsoever in this world.
Every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.
The counsels of impatience and hatred can always be supported by the crudest and cheapest symbols; for the counsels of moderation, the reasons are often intricate, rather than emotional, and difficult to explain. And so the chauvinists of all times and places go their appointed way: plucking the easy fruits, reaping the little triumphs of the day at the expense of someone else tomorrow, deluging in noise and filth anyone who gets in their way, dancing their reckless dance on the prospects for human progress, drawing the shadow of a great doubt over the validity of democratic institutions. And until people learn to spot the fanning of mass emotions and the sowing of bitterness, suspicion, and intolerance as crimes in themselves — as perhaps the greatest disservice that can be done to the cause of popular government — this sort of thing will continue to occur.
In my books I have lifted bits from various religions in trying to come to a better understanding; I've made use of religious themes and symbols. Now, as the world becomes more pagan, one has to lead people in the same direction in a different way...
He who works with symbols merely is a pedant, a hypocrite, and a bungler.
Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for symbols of human destiny have been broken; those I still have with me show defects in this broad light. Yet enough is left, even by experience, to point distinctly to the glories of that destiny; faint, but not to be mistaken streaks of the future day. I can say with the bard, "Though many have suffered shipwreck, still beat noble hearts." Always the soul says to us all, Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action. Such shall be the effectual fervent means to their fulfilment.
The man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these formulæ and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician, who should mistake the x's and y's with which he works his problems for real entities--and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of a life.
The external world of physics has … become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. … The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose — and, alas, suffering and evil. The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.
But the spirit of the science of painting deals with all works, human as well as divine, which are terminated by their surfaces, that is, the lines of the limits of bodies by means of which the sculptor is required to achieve perfection in his art. She with her fundamental rules, i.e. drawing, teaches the architect how to work so that his building may be pleasant to the eye; she teaches the makers of diverse vases, the goldsmiths, weavers, embroiderers; she has found the characters with which diverse languages find expression; she has given symbols to the mathematicians; she has taught geometry its figures, and instructed the astrologers, the makers of machines and engineers.
Since once again, O Lord, in the steppes of Asia, I have no bread, no wine, no altar, I will raise myself above those symbols to the pure majesty of reality, and I will offer to you, I, your priest, upon the altar of the entire earth, the labor and the suffering of the world.
The finding of your able man, and getting him invested with the symbols of ability, is the business, well or ill accomplished, of all social procedure whatsoever in the world.
Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries.
Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.
The beginning of wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes= (_i.e._ symbols), =till they become transparent.
Belief has its structures, and its symbols change. Its tradition changes. All the relationships within these forms are inter-dependent. We look at the symbols, we hope to read them, we hope for sharing and communication.
HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 2 proof by cumbersome notation: Best done with access to at least four alphabets and special symbols. proof by exhaustion: An issue or two of a journal devoted to your proof is useful. proof by omission: 'The reader may easily supply the details' 'The other 253 cases are analogous' '...'
It is through symbols that man consciously or unconsciously lives, works and has his being. -- Thomas Carlyle
Suffering alone exists, none who suffer; The deed there is, but no doer thereof; Nirvana is, but no one is seeking it; The Path there is, but none who travel it. -- "Buddhist Symbolism", Symbols and Values
Police: Good evening, are you the host? Host: No. Police: We've been getting complaints about this party. Host: About the drugs? Police: No. Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns? Police: No, the noise. Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise? The neighbors? Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could ask the host to quiet things down? Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind down.
Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about. -- Philippe Schnoebelen
"Jacques," returned Defarge, drawing himself up, "if madame my wife undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it--not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register of Madame Defarge."
The two most memorable barricades which the observer of social maladies can name do not belong to the period in which the action of this work is laid. These two barricades, both of them symbols, under two different aspects, of a redoubtable situation, sprang from the earth at the time of the fatal insurrection of June, 1848, the greatest war of the streets that history has ever beheld.
The old symbols of Genesis are eternal; in human society, such as it now exists, and until a broader day shall effect a change in it, there will always be two men, the one superior, the other subterranean; the one which is according to good is Abel; the other which is according to evil is Cain. What was this tender Cain? What was this ruffian religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin, watching over her, rearing her, guarding her, dignifying her, and enveloping her, impure as he was himself, with purity?
The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable. In an extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures, that I have heard hunters who have declared them akin to Free-Mason signs and symbols; that the whale, indeed, by these methods intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are there wanting other motions of the whale in his general body, full of strangeness, and unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face.
Morrel obeyed; the count arose, and unlocking a closet with a key suspended from his gold chain, took from it a little silver casket, beautifully carved and chased, the corners of which represented four bending figures, similar to the Caryatides, the forms of women, symbols of the angels aspiring to heaven. He placed the casket on the table; then opening it took out a little golden box, the top of which flew open when touched by a secret spring. This box contained an unctuous substance partly solid, of which it was impossible to discover the color, owing to the reflection of the polished gold, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, which ornamented the box. It was a mixed mass of blue, red, and gold. The count took out a small quantity of this with a gilt spoon, and offered it to Morrel, fixing a long steadfast glance upon him. It was then observable that the substance was greenish.
To redeem man from this state of guilt, and to recover him from corruption, the Son of God became incarnate, assuming man's nature into union with His own, so that in Him were two natures in one person. Thus incarnate He took on Him the offices of prophet, priest and king, and by His humiliation, obedience and suffering unto death, followed by His resurrection and ascension to heaven, He has perfected His work and fulfilled all that was required in a redeemer of men, so that it is truly affirmed that He has merited for man the grace of salvation (bk. ii. ch. 13-17). But until a man is in some way really united to Christ so as to partake of Him, the benefits of Christ's work cannot be attained by him. Now it is by the secret and special operation of the Holy Spirit that men are united to Christ and made members of His body. Through faith, which is a firm and certain cognition of the divine benevolence towards us founded on the truth of the gracious promise in Christ, men are by the operation of the Spirit united to Christ and are made partakers of His death and resurrection, so that the old man is crucified with Him and they are raised to a new life, a life of righteousness and holiness. Thus joined to Christ the believer has life in Him and knows that he is saved, having the witness of the Spirit that he is a child of God, and having the promises, the certitude of which the Spirit had before impressed on the mind, sealed by the same Spirit on the heart (bk. iii. ch. 33-36). From faith proceeds repentance, which is the turning of our life to God, proceeding from a sincere and earnest fear of God, and consisting in the mortification of the flesh and the old man within us and a vivification of the Spirit. Through faith also the believer receives justification, his sins are forgiven, he is accepted of God, and is held by Him as righteous, the righteousness of Christ being imputed to him, and faith being the instrument by which the man lays hold on Christ, so that with His righteousness the man appears in God's sight as righteous. This imputed righteousness, however, is not disjoined from real personal righteousness, for regeneration and sanctification come to the believer from Christ no less than justification; the two blessings are not to be confounded, but neither are they to be disjoined. The assurance which the believer has of salvation he receives from the operation and witness of the Holy Spirit; but this again rests on the divine choice of the man to salvation; and this falls back on God's eternal sovereign purpose, whereby He has predestined some to eternal life while the rest of mankind are predestined to condemnation and eternal death. Those whom God has chosen to life He effectually calls to salvation, and they are kept by Him in progressive faith and holiness unto the end (bk. iii. _passim_). The external means or aids by which God unites men into the fellowship of Christ, and sustains and advances those who believe, are the church and its ordinances, especially the sacraments. The church universal is the multitude gathered from diverse nations, which though divided by distance of time and place, agree in one common faith, and it is bound by the tie of the same religion; and wherever the word of God is sincerely preached, and the sacraments are duly administered, according to Christ's institute, there beyond doubt is a church of the living God (bk. iv. ch. 1, sect. 7-11). The permanent officers in the church are pastors and teachers, to the former of whom it belongs to preside over the discipline of the church, to administer the sacraments, and to admonish and exhort the members; while the latter occupy themselves with the exposition of Scripture, so that pure and wholesome doctrine may be retained. With them are to be joined for the government of the church certain pious, grave and holy men as a senate in each church; and to others, as deacons, is to be entrusted the care of the poor. The election of the officers in a church is to be with the people, and those duly chosen and called are to be ordained by the laying on of the hands of the pastors (ch. 3, sect. 4-16). The sacraments are two--Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Baptism is the sign of initiation whereby men are admitted into the society of the church and, being grafted into Christ, are reckoned among the sons of God; it serves both for the confirmation of faith and as a confession before men. The Lord's Supper is a spiritual feast where Christ attests that He is the life-giving bread, by which our souls are fed unto true and blessed immortality. That sacred communication of His flesh and blood whereby Christ transfuses into us His life, even as if it penetrated into our bones and marrow, He in the Supper attests and seals; and that not by a vain or empty sign set before us but there He puts forth the efficacy of His Spirit whereby He fulfils what He promises. In the mystery of the Supper Christ is truly exhibited to us by the symbols of bread and wine; and so His body and blood, in which He fulfilled all obedience for the obtaining of righteousness for us, are presented. There is no such presence of Christ in the Supper as that He is affixed to the bread or included in it or in any way circumscribed; but whatever can express the true and substantial communication of the body and blood of the Lord, which is exhibited to believers under the said symbols of the Supper, is to be received, and that not as perceived by the imagination only or mental intelligence, but as enjoyed for the aliment of the eternal life (bk. iv. ch. 15, 17). Entry: CALVIN
At Syracuse also there are very extensive catacombs known as "the Grottos of St John." They are also figured by Agincourt, and described by Denon (_Voyage en Sicile et Malte_) and Führer. There is an entire underground city with several storeys of larger and smaller streets, squares and cross ways, cut out of the rock; at the intersection of the cross ways are immense circular halls of a bottle shape, like a glass-house furnace, lighted by air shafts. The galleries are generally very narrow, furnished on each side with arched tombs, and communicating with family sepulchral-chambers closed originally by locked doors, the marks of the hinges and staples being still visible. The walls are in many places coated with stucco adorned with frescoes, including palms, doves, labara and other Christian symbols. The ground-plans (figs. 19, 20), from Agincourt, of the catacomb and of one of the circular halls, show how widely this cemetery differs in arrangement from the Roman catacombs. The frequency of blind passages and of circular chambers will be noticed, as well as the very large number of bodies in the cruciform recesses, apparently amounting in one instance to nineteen. Agincourt remarks that this cemetery "gives an idea of a work executed with design and leisure, and with means very different from those at command in producing the catacombs of Rome." Entry: 1
The difficulties that confront an Occidental who attempts to learn Japanese are enormous. There are three languages to be acquired: first, the ordinary colloquial; second, the polite colloquial; and, third, the written. The ordinary colloquial differs materially from its polite form, and both are as unlike the written form as modern Italian is unlike ancient Latin. "Add to this," writes Professor B. H. Chamberlain, "the necessity of committing to memory two syllabaries, one of which has many variant forms, and at least two or three thousand Chinese ideographs, in forms standard and cursive--ideographs, too, most of which are susceptible of three or four different readings according to circumstance,--add, further, that all these kinds of written symbols are apt to be encountered pell mell on the same page, and the task of mastering Japanese becomes almost Herculean." In view of all this there is a strong movement in favour of romanizing the Japanese script: that is to say, abolishing the ideograph and adopting in its place the Roman alphabet. But while every one appreciates the magnitude of the relief that would thus be afforded, there has as yet been little substantial progress. A language which has been adapted from its infancy to ideographic transmission cannot easily be fitted to phonetic uses. Entry: JAPANESE
_Anthracene and Phenanthrene._--These isomeric hydrocarbons, of the formula C14H10, are to be regarded as formed by the fusion of three benzenoid rings as represented by the symbols:-- Entry: 1
As a convenient method of expressing the arrangement of the parts of the flower, _floral formulae_ have been devised. Several modes of expression are employed. The following is a very simple mode which has been proposed:--The several whorls are represented by the letters S (sepals), P (petals), St (stamens), C (carpels), and a figure marked after each indicates the number of parts in that whorl. Thus the formula S5P5St5C5 means that the flower is perfect, and has pentamerous symmetry, the whorls being isomerous. Such a flower as that of Sedum (fig. 33) would be represented by the formula S5P5St_(5+5)C5, where St_(5+5) indicates that the staminal whorl consists of two rows of five parts each. A flower such as the male flower of the nettle (fig. 41) would be expressed S4P0St4C0. When no other mark is appended the whorls are supposed to be alternate; but if it is desired to mark the position of the whorls special symbols are employed. Thus, to express the superposition of one whorl upon another, a line is drawn between them, e.g. the symbol S5P5 | St5C5 is the formula of the flower of Primulaceae. Entry: FIG
When true heraldry begins in Western Europe nothing is more remarkable than the suddenness of its development, once the idea of hereditary armorial symbols was taken by the nobles and knights. Its earliest examples are probably still to be discovered by research, but certain notes may be made which narrow the dates between which we must seek its origin. The older writers on heraldry, lacking exact archaeology, were wont to carry back the beginnings to the dark ages, even if they lacked the assurance of those who distributed blazons among the angelic host before the Creation. Even in our own times old misconceptions give ground slowly. Georg Ruexner's _Thurnier Buch_ of 1522 is still cited for its evidence of the tournament laws of Henry the Fowler, by which those who would contend in tournaments were forced to show four generations of arms-bearing ancestors. Yet modern criticism has shattered the elaborated fiction of Ruexner. In England many legends survive of arms borne by the Conqueror and his companions. But nothing is more certain than that neither armorial banners nor shields of arms were borne on either side at Hastings. The famous record of the Bayeux tapestry shows shields which in some cases suggest rudely devised armorial bearings, but in no case can a shield be identified as one which is recognized in the generations after the Conquest. So far is the idea of personal arms from the artist, that the same warrior, seen in different parts of the tapestry's history, has his shield with differing devices. A generation later, Anna Comnena, the daughter of the Byzantine emperor, describing the shields of the French knights who came to Constantinople, tells us that their polished faces were plain. Entry: HERALDRY
where the periods 2[pi]/n1, 2[pi]/n2, ... of the various simple-harmonic constituents are already known with sufficient accuracy, although they may have no very simple relations to one another. The problem of determining the most probable values of the constants A0, A1, B1, A2, B2, ... by means of a series of recorded values of the function [f](t) is then in principle a fairly simple one, although the actual numerical work may be laborious (see TIDE). A much more difficult and delicate question arises when, as in various questions of meteorology and terrestrial magnetism, the periods 2[pi]/n1, 2[pi]/n2, ... are themselves unknown to begin with, or are at most conjectural. Thus, it may be desired to ascertain whether the magnetic declination contains a periodic element synchronous with the sun's rotation on its axis, whether any periodicities can be detected in the records of the prevalence of sun-spots, and so on. From a strictly mathematical standpoint the problem is, indeed, indeterminate, for when all the symbols are at our disposal, the representation of the observed values of a function, over a finite range of time, by means of a series of the type (2), can be effected in an infinite variety of ways. Plausible inferences can, however, be drawn, provided the proper precautions are observed. This question has been treated most systematically by Professor A. Schuster, who has devised a remarkable mathematical method, in which the action of a diffraction-grating in sorting out the various periodic constituents of a heterogeneous beam of light is closely imitated. He has further applied the method to the study of the variations of the magnetic declination, and of sun-spot records. Entry: A
Decline indeed came rapidly, and to the latter part of the Ming epoch we must assign those countless bronzes where dragons and flowers and the stock symbols of happiness, good luck and longevity sprawl together in interminable convolutions. When once we reach this stage of contortion, of elaborate pierced and relief work, we come to the place in history of Chinese bronzes where serious study may cease, except in so far as the study of the symbols themselves throws light upon the history of Chinese procelain (see CERAMICS). One class of bronze alone needs a word of notice, namely, the profusely decorated pieces which have a Tibetan origin, and are obviously no older than the end of the Ming period. Of these fig. 17 will serve as a specimen, and a comparison with fig. 9 will show how the softer rounded forms and jewelled festoons of Hindu-Greek taste enervated the grand primitive force of the earlier age, and that neither the added delicacy of texture and substance nor the vastly increased dexterity of workmanship can compensate for the vanished majesty. (C. J. H.) Entry: 4