James Wood

“ Fall, The, the first transgression of divine law on the part of man, conceived of as involving the whole human race in the guilt of it, and represented as consisting in the wilful partaking of the fruit of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of both good and evil. ”

“ Renaissance, the name given to the revolution in literature and art in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, caused by the revival of the study of ancient models in the literature and art of Greece and Rome, especially the former, and to the awakening in the cultured classes of the free and broad humanity that inspired them, an epoch which marks the transition from the rigid formality of mediæval to the enlightened freedom of modern times. ”

“ Scottish literature and thought, Scottish industry, James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott (little as he dreamt of debt in that quarter) , and Robert Burns, I find Knox and the Reformation acting on the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that without the Reformation they would not have been; or,” he adds, “the Puritanism of England and of New England either”; and he sums up his message thus: “Let men know that they are men, created by God, responsible to God; who work in any meanest moment of time what will last through eternity. ”

“ The principle of morality was defined to be conformity to reason, and the duty of man to lie in the subdual of all passion and a composed submission to the will of the gods. It came short of Christian morality, as indeed all Greek philosophy did, in not recognising the Divine significance and power of humility, and especially in its failure to see, still more to conform to, the great doctrine of Christ which makes the salvation of a man to depend on the interest he takes in, as well as in the fact of the salvation of, other men. ”

“ Northmen or Norsemen, the name given in the Middle Ages to the sea-roving, adventure-loving inhabitants of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; in their sea-rovings they were little better than pirates, but they had this excuse, their home was narrow and their lands barren, and it was a necessity for them to sally forth and see what they could plunder and carry away in richer lands; they were men of great daring, their early religion definable as the consecration of valour, and they were the terror of the quieter nations whose lands they invaded ”

“ Buddhism, the religion of Buddha, a religion which, eschewing all speculation about God and the universe, set itself solely to the work of salvation, the end of which was the merging of the individual in the unity of being, and the “way” to which was the mortification of all private passion and desire which mortification, when finished, was the Buddhist Nirvâna. This is the primary doctrine of the Buddhist faith, which erelong became a formality, as all faiths of the kind, or of this high order, ever tend to do. ”

“ Claude Lorraine, a great landscape painter, born in Lorraine, of poor parents, and apprenticed to a pastry-cook; went as such to Rome; became servant and colour-grinder to Tassi, who instructed him in his art; by assiduous study of nature in all her aspects attained to fame; was eminent in his treatment of aërial perspective, and an artist whom it was Turner's ambition to rival; he was eminent as an etcher as well as a painter; Turner left one of his finest works to the English nation on condition that it should hang side by side of a masterpiece of Claude, which it now does ”

“ Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator, born in Athens; had many impediments to overcome to succeed in the profession, but by ingenious methods and indomitable perseverance he subdued them all, and became the first orator not of Greece only, but of all antiquity; a stammer in his speech he overcame by practising with pebbles in his mouth, and a natural diffidence by declaiming on the sea-beach amid the noise of the waves; while he acquired a perfect mastery of the Greek language by binding himself down to copy five times over in succession Thucydides' “History of the Peloponnesian War” ”

“ Alfonso X., the Wise, or the Astronomer, king of Castile and Leon, celebrated as an astronomer and a philosopher; after various successes over the Moors, first one son and then another rose against him and drove him from the throne; died of chagrin at Seville two years later. His fame connects itself with the preparation of the Alfonsine Tables, and the remark that “the universe seemed a crank machine, and it was a pity the Creator had not taken advice.” ”

“ Philosophy dwells aloft in the Temple of Science, the divinity of the inmost shrine; her dictates descend among men, but she herself descends not; whoso would behold her must climb with long and laborious effort ”

“ Franc-Tireurs (i. e. free-shooters) , French volunteers, chiefly peasants, who carried on a guerilla warfare against the Germans in the Franco-German War; were at first denied the status of regular soldiers by the Germans and mercilessly shot when captured, but subsequently, having joined in the movements of the regular army, they were when captured treated as prisoners of war.
Frankenstein, a monster of romance created without a soul, yet not without craving for human sympathy, who found existence on these terms a curse, as a man with high cravings might find science to be without God. ”

“ Eclectics, so-called philosophers who attach themselves to no system, but select what, in their judgment, is true out of others. In antiquity the Eclectic philosophy is that which sought to unite into a coherent whole the doctrines of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, such as that of Plotinus and Proclus was. There is an eclecticism in art as well as philosophy, and the term is applied to an Italian school which aimed at uniting the excellencies of individual great masters. ”

“ Rational Horizon, a great circle parallel to the horizon, the centre of which is the centre of the earth.
Rationalism, Modern, a speculative point of view that resolves the supernatural into the natural, inspiration into observation, and revelation into what its adherents called reason, when they mean simply understanding, and which ends in stripping us naked, and leaving us empty of all the spiritual wealth accumulated by the wise in past ages, and bequeathed to us as an inheritance that had cost them their life's blood. ”

“ Thinker, The, defined to be “one who, with fresh and powerful glance, reads a new lesson in the universe, sees deeper into the secret of things, and carries up the interpretation of nature to higher levels; one who, unperturbed by passions and undistracted by petty detail, can see deeper than others behind the veil of circumstance, and catch glimpses into the permanent reality.” ”

“ London is also a grand emporium of commerce, and the banking centre of the world. It has nine principal docks; its shipping trade is unrivalled, 55,000 vessels enter and clear annually; it pays more than half the custom duties of the kingdom, and handles more than a quarter of the total exports; its warehouse trade is second only to that of Manchester; it manufactures everything, chiefly watches, jewellery, leather goods, cycles, pianos, and glass. The control of traffic, the lighting, and water-supply of so large a city are causing yearly more serious problems. ”

“ Their secret is not learned from one, but from all three; and they give grace only with fulness, buoyancy, and radiancy of soul, or life, united all in one. They are in essence the soul in its fulness of life and sympathy, pouring itself rhythmically through every obstruction, before which the most solid becomes fluid, transparent, and radiant of itself. ”

“ Zephaniah, a Hebrew prophet who prophesied in the interval between the decline and fall of Nineveh and the hostile advance of Babylon; forewarned the nation of the judgment of God impending over them for their ungodliness, and exhorted them to repentance as the only way of averting the inevitable doom, while he at the same time encouraged the faithful to persevere in their godly course with the assurance that the day of judgment would be succeeded by a day of glorious deliverance, that they would yet become “a name and a praise among the people of the earth.” ”

“ Oceanus or Okeanos, in the Greek mythology the great world-stream which surrounds the whole earth, and is the parent source of all seas and streams, presided over by a Titan, the husband of Tethys, and the father of all river-gods and water-nymphs. He is the all-father of the world, as his wife is the all-mother, and the pair occupy a palace apart on the extreme verge of the world. ”

“ Joel, a Hebrew prophet, author of a book of the Old Testament that bears his name, and which is of uncertain date, but is written on the great broad lines of all Hebrew prophecy, and reads us the same moral lesson, that from the judgments of God there is no outlet for the sinner except in repentance, and that in repentance lies the pledge of deliverance from all evil and of the enjoyment of all good. ”

“ Michael, an archangel, the leader of the heavenly host, at never-ending war with the devil and his angels in their arrogance of claim; is represented in art as clad in armour, with a sword in one hand and a pair of scales in the other to weigh the souls of men at the judgment. ”

“ It is in delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakespeare is great.... The thing he looks at reveals not this or that face, but its inmost heart, its generic secret; it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it.... It is a perfectly level mirror we have here; no twisted, poor convex-concave mirror reflecting all objects with its own convexities and concavities, that is to say, withal a man justly related to all things and men, a good man.... ”

“ The many roads, railways, canals, and rivers which converge on Paris have made it the most important trading centre in France, and the concourse of wealthy men of all nations has given it a high place in the financial world. It is a manufacturing city, producing jewellery, ornamental furniture, and all sorts of artistic “articles de Paris.” The centre of French, and indeed European, fashion, it is noted for its pleasure and gaiety. The concentration of Government makes it the abode of countless officials. ”

“ Confucius, the Latin form of the name of the great sage of China, Kung Futsze, and the founder of a religion which is based on the worship and practice of morality as exemplified in the lives and teachings of the wise men who have gone before, and who, as he conceived, have made the world what it is, and have left it to posterity to build upon the same basis; while he lived he was held in greater and greater honour by multitudes of disciples, till on his death he became an object of worship, and even his descendants came to be regarded as a kind of sacred caste ”

“ Rights, Declaration of, a declaration of the fundamental principles of the constitution drawn up by the Parliament of England and submitted to William and Mary on their being called to the throne, and afterwards enacted in Parliament when they became king and queen. It secures to the people their rights as free-born citizens and to the Commons as their representatives, while it binds the sovereign to respect these rights as sacred. ”

“ His treatment of Napoleon III. provoked the latter into a declaration of war, and to an advance on the part of the French against Berlin. To the surprise of nearly all Europe, the Germans proved to be a nation of soldiers, marshalled as army never was before, and beat the French ignominiously back from the Rhine. Count Bismarck had the satisfaction of seeing the power of France, that still threatened, as well as that of Austria, helpless at his feet, the German empire restored under a Hohenzollern king, and himself installed as chancellor of the monarch he had served so well. ”

“ The tactless oppression of the Emperor Ferdinand again fanned into flame the fires of rebellion; Swedish armies now came to the assistance of the Protestants, and under Gustavus Adolphus waged successful war against the emperor, but the death of Gustavus at Lützen (1632) turned the tide in favour of the imperial forces; the German Protestant prince made a disadvantageous peace in 1635, but Sweden, now joined by France, continued the struggle against the Austrian empire. ”

“ Demoivre, Abraham, a mathematician, born in Champagne; lived most of his life in England to escape, as a Protestant, from persecution in France; became a friend of Newton, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was of such eminence as a mathematician that he was asked to arbitrate between the claims of Newton and Leibnitz to the invention of fluxions (1667-1754) .
Demon, or Daimon, a name which Socrates gave to an inner divine instinct which corresponds to one's destiny, and guides him in the way he should go to fulfil it, and is more or less potent in a man according to his purity of soul. ”

“ Galileo, an illustrious Italian mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, born at Pisa, demonstrated the isochronism of the pendulum, invented the thermometer and the hydrostatic balance, propounded the law of falling bodies, constructed the first astronomical telescope, and by means of it satisfied himself of, and proved, the truth of the Copernican doctrine, that the sun and not the earth is the centre of the planetary system, and that the earth revolves round it like the other planets which reflect its light ”

“ In religion they are atheists, and admit of no Creator or of any perfection of being at the beginning, only at the end. They distinguish between soul and body, and regard the former as eternal; evil is not in mere existence, but in life, and their Nirvâna is a blessedness without break or end. We know little or nothing of the history of these sects; with them conduct is everything; their origin is of later date than that of the Buddhists. See Barth's “Religions of India,” translated by the Editor. ”

“ Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly celestial loveliness and tenderness, the face and bosom of a goddess, but ending in the claws and the body of a lioness ... is a heavenly bride and conquest to the wise and brave, to them who can discern her behests and do them ”

“ Psyche (i. e. the soul) , in the later Greek mythology the youngest of three daughters of a king, and of such beauty as to eclipse the attractions and awake the jealousy of Venus, the goddess of beauty, who in consequence sent Cupid, her son, to inspire her with love for a hideous monster, and so compass her ruin. Cupid, fascinated with her himself, spirited her away to a palace furnished with every delight, but instead of delivering her over to the monster, visited her himself at night as her husband, and left her before daybreak in the morning, because she must on no account know who he was. ”

“ Cynics, a sect of Greek philosophers, disciples of Antisthenes, who was a disciple of Socrates, but carried away with him only part of Socrates' teaching and enforced that as if it were the whole, dropped all regard for humanity and the universal reason, and taught that “virtue lay wholly in the avoidance of evil, and those desires and greeds that bind us to enjoyments,” so that his disciples were called the “Capuchins of the Old World.” ”

“ Faith, in its proper spiritual sense and meaning is a deep-rooted belief affecting the whole life, that the visible universe in every section of it, particularly here and now, rests on and is the manifestation of an eternal and an unchangeable Unseen Power, whose name is Good, or God. ”

“ Belief, a word of various application, but properly definable as that which lies at the heart of a man or a nation's convictions, or is the heart and soul of all their thoughts and actions, “the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain concerning his vital relations to this mysterious universe, and his duty and destiny there.” ”

“ Realism, as opposed to Nominalism, is the belief that general terms denote real things and are not mere names or answerable to the mere conception of them, and as opposed to idealism, is in philosophy the belief that we have an immediate cognition of things external to us, and that they are as they seem. In art and literature it is the tendency to conceive and represent things as they are, however unsightly and immoral they may be, without any respect to the beautiful, the true, or the good. ”

“ Dragon, a fabulous monster, being a hideous impersonation of some form of deadly evil, which only preternatural heroic strength and courage can subdue, and on the subdual and slaying of which depends the achievement of some conquest of vital moment to the human race or some members of it; is represented in mediæval art as a large, lizard-like animal, with the claws of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the tail of a serpent, with open jaws ready and eager to devour, which some knight high-mounted thrusts at to pierce to death with a spear ”

“ The epoch thus created was the emancipation of the human being from dependent childhood to self-dependent manhood, and it constituted the first epoch in the self-conscious history, which is the history proper, of the human race. The idea the Persians formed of the principle of good came far short of the reality indeed, but they first saw that it was of purely illuminating quality and universal, and that the destiny of man was to relate himself to it, to know, worship, and obey it. ”

“ Real-schule, a German school in which languages, sciences, and arts are taught to qualify for apprenticeship in some special business or craft.
Reason, in philosophy is more than mere understanding or reasoning power; it is the constitutive and regulative soul of the universe assumed to live and breathe in the inner life or soul of man, as that develops itself in the creations of human genius working in accord with and revealing the deep purpose of the Maker. ”