Daniel G. Brinton

“ We may, if we choose, begin our survey of the continent with its extreme northernmost inhabitants, the Eskimo, whose abode is along the inhospitable shores of the Arctic sea. One might think that the eternal snows which surround them, the vast glaciers which chill the air for miles beyond their limits, would also freeze out and kill all fire of poesy. Quite the contrary. I doubt if throughout the American continent I could quote you a more thoroughly poetic people, one taking a greater delight in song, than these same boreal, blubber-eating, ice-bound Eskimo. ”

“ We can always explain our merriment, but often not our melancholy. Glee is concrete and affirmative; dejection is vague and negative; and the negative is unlimited.
The drama of life is a tragedy, for its last scene is always that of the death of the title-role. We take the greatest interest in the spectacle, but rarely care to remember the denouement.
If you love life so much, why complain of ennui? There is nothing like it for lengthening the hours, and thus giving you longer to live.
The more pleasant the moments, the swifter they fly. Perfect happiness would destroy Time. ”

“ A reconstruction supposes a previous existence. This they felt, and had something to say about an earth anterior to this of ours, but one without light or human inhabitants. A lake burst its bounds and submerged it wholly. This is obviously nothing but a mere and meagre fiction, invented to explain the origin of the primeval ocean. But mark it well, for this is the germ of those marvellous myths of the Epochs of Nature, the catastrophes of the universe, the deluges of water and of fire, which have laid such strong hold on the human fancy in every land and in every age. ”

“ The philosopher Hobbes taught that the natural condition of man in society is one of perpetual warfare with his neighbors. This grim theory is sadly attested by a study of savage life. The wretched Fuegians, the miserable Australians, with really nothing worth living for, let alone dying for, fall to cutting each other’s throats the moment that tribe encounters tribe. So it has been in all ages, so it has been in all stages of culture. The warrior, the hero, is the one who wins the hearts of women by his fame, and the devotion of men by his prowess. Civilization helps not at all. ”

“ Nothing, therefore, is more natural than to attribute to the light-god the early progress in the arts of domestic and social life. Thus light came to be personified as the embodiment of culture and knowledge, of wisdom, and of the peace and prosperity which are necessary for the growth of learning.
The fair complexion of these heroes is nothing but a reference to the white light of the dawn. Their ample hair and beard are the rays of the sun that flow from his radiant visage. Their loose and large robes typify the enfolding of the firmament by the light and the winds. ”

“ Only cramped bigots and dull pedants cheapen the value of beauty.
Beauty is real; it is that which alone is permanent and visible; it lurks behind a thousand masks and distorted countenances, ever struggling to body itself forth; it is the manifestation of potent and mysterious natural laws, which but for it would remain forever hidden from us. Its proud power is to awaken Love with all her joyous train; and Love means the unconscious attraction of the Ideal, the noblest incitement to human endeavor. ”

“ The soul is the life, the life is the breath. Invisible, imponderable, quickening with vigorous motion, slackening in rest and sleep, passing quite away in death, it is the most obvious sign of life. All nations grasped the analogy and identified the one with the other. But the breath is nothing but wind. How easy, therefore, to look upon the wind that moves up and down and to and fro upon the earth, that carries the clouds, itself unseen, that calls forth the terrible tempests and the various seasons, as the breath, the spirit of God, as God [50] himself? ”

“ When the sunbeams fall full upon the water, by a familiar optical delusion, it seems to a spectator on the bank that the bottom and sides of the basin are elevated, and over the whole, over the frowning crags, the snow-white shells, the long sedge, and the moving aquatic tribes, the decomposed light flings its rainbow hues, and all things float in a sea of colors, magnificent and impressive beyond description. ”

“ In the language of feeling, love is a passion; but it does not spring from feeling alone. It is far more fervid when it rises through intellect than through sense. “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love,” says the fair Rosalind; and though her saying is not very true as to the love of sense, it is far less true as to the love of intellect. The martyrs to science and religion, to principles and faith, multiply a hundred-fold [59] those to the garden god. The spell of the idea is what
“Turns ruin into laughter and death into dreaming.” ”

“ Pg 20 But we hold it needless and unwise to leave any sunny field uncultured on whose soil may be trained to bloom the fragrant flower of pleasure.
The yearning for joy is a cry of nature which can never be stifled. Give heed to it and obey it. It calls you to wider horizons, to warmer sympathies, to a fuller growth, to a completer development. It holds the secret of Evolution. It is the incessant prompter to a higher form of existence. ”

“ What wonder that the untaught children of nature spread the fame of this marvellous fountain to far distant climes, and under the stereoscopic power of time and distance came to regard it as the life-giving stream, whose magic waters washed away the calamities of age and the pains of disease, round whose fortunate shores youths and maidens ever sported, eternally young and eternally joyous! ”

“ I must seek them in the broader fields of ethnology and philosophy; I must appeal to your interest in man as a race, as a member of a common species, as possessing in all his families and tribes the same mind, the same soul. Language is almost our only clue to discover the kinship of those countless scattered hordes who roamed the forests of this broad continent. ”

“ As at certain times past the equipoise of nature was lost, and the elements breaking the chain of laws that bound them ran riot over the universe, involving all life in one mad havoc and desolation, so in the future we have to expect that day of doom, when the ocean tides shall obey no shore, but overwhelm the continents with their mountainous billows, or the fire, now chafing in volcanic craters and smoking springs, will leap forth on the forests and grassy meadows, wrapping all things in a winding sheet of flame, and melting the very elements with fervid heat. ”

“ The home of Ioskeha is in the far East, at that part of the horizon where the sun rises. There he has his cabin, and there he dwells with his grandmother, the wise Ataensic. She is a woman of marvelous magical power, and is capable of assuming any shape she pleases. In her hands is the fate of all men's lives, and while Ioskeha looks after the things of life, it is she who appoints the time of death, and concerns herself with all that relates to the close of existence. Hence she was feared, not exactly as a maleficent deity, but as one whose business is with what is most dreaded and gloomy. ”

“ Yet nothing is more certain than that the spirit of true religion wages constant war with the predominance or even presence of selfish aims. Self-love is the first and rudest form of the instinct of preservation. It is sublimed and sacrificed on the altar of holy passion. “Self,” exclaims the fervid William Law, “is both atheist and idolater; atheist, because it rejects God; idolater, because it is its own idol.” Even when this lowest expression of the preservative instinct rises but to the height of sex-love, it renounces self, and rejoices in martyrdom. ”

“ Such considerations as these, drawn from the unalterable laws of nature and life, show how short is the sight of those who look upon happiness as the uninterrupted continuance of pleasurable sensations, or would seek it in a ceaseless round of gayety. Far clearer was the vision of Pindar when he exclaimed, with the inspiration of a poet,—“Beneath every true pleasure hides the sense of a past pain.” The dark background of sorrow can alone give full relief to the bright figure of joy. Grief is a part of gladness, and that life is not happy which has no unhappiness. ”