Edward Bruce Hamley

“ Nature has been exposed to many scourges, many vicissitudes. The fairest, the most fertile territories of western Europe, all the low lands watered by rivers, have been covered with the ocean during a prodigious multitude of ages.
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"What notion had the earliest peoples of the 'soul'? That which our rustics have before they have learned their Catechism, or even afterwards. They get only a confused idea, upon which they never reflect. Nature has been too compassionate to make metaphysicians of them; this Nature is always and everywhere the same. ”

“ Yet the spirituality of Plato is still strongly contested; and the greater part of the fathers of the Church, Platonists as they are, consider the soul as corporeal.
"When, after a great number of ages, some societies were established, it is probable that there was some sort of religion, of rude worship. Men, then solely occupied with the care of sustaining life, could not rise to the Author of life; they could not discern that concert of all parts of the universe, those means, and those innumerable ends which speak to wise men of an Eternal Architect. ”

“ It is rendered less flowing and imposing, but more lucid, by being divided into short chapters, each forming an essential but distinct portion of the argument and narrative. Many problems which are discussed and disputed by the philosophers of our day, are here briefly, clearly, and confidently stated. He is, as we have seen, no believer in savage virtue, or in the nobility sometimes deemed to be the accompaniment of a state of pure nature, and strongly insists that every nation has had its beginning in a condition approaching, and in many respects inferior, to that of brutes. ”

“ It is, then, something which was in the departed, and which walks abroad; it is his soul, his shade, an airy figure of himself. Such is the natural reasoning of ignorance which begins to reason. This opinion is that of all the earliest times that we know of, and must therefore have been the opinion of those that we know not of.
"The idea of a purely immaterial being could not present itself to minds which knew only of matter. Smiths, carpenters, masons, and labourers, were necessary before a man could exist who would have leisure to meditate. ”

“ She also makes them perceive that there is in man something which acts and thinks. They do not distinguish this faculty from that of life; and the word soul always signifies life with the ancients, whether Syrians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, or those who came at last to establish themselves in a part of Phoenicia.
"By what degrees could the step be gained of imagining, in our physical being, another being which is metaphysical? Certainly, men solely occupied with their wants could not know enough to fancy themselves philosophers. ”

“ To what a degree of perfection might agriculture have attained, and how widely might manufactures have spread comfort and ease throughout communities, if such astonishing numbers of useless men and women had not been buried in cloisters! A new humanity has tempered the scourge of war, softening its horrors, and still continuing to save nations from that destruction which appeared so imminently to menace them. ”

“ Nature being everywhere the same, men have of necessity adopted the same truths and errors in those matters which are the objects of the senses, and which most strike the imagination. All have attributed the noise and effects of thunder to the power of a superior being inhabiting the air. ”

“ It is indeed very deplorable to see such a multitude of soldiers maintained by all princes; but this evil produces good. The people do not now mix in the wars which their masters wage; the citizens of besieged towns often pass from one domination to another without loss of life to a single inhabitant; they are only the prize of him who has most soldiers, cannon, and money."
In all this the reader may perhaps discern a spirit which, at least in humanity and liberality, was in advance of his own time, and possibly of ours. ”

“ In course of time societies were formed, a little civilised, in which a small number might have sufficient leisure to reflect. It might happen that a man who deeply felt the death of his father, brother, or wife, would see in a dream the person whom he lamented. ”

“ The reason is, that it is not in the nature of man to desire that which he does not know. Not only a prodigious extent of time, but fortunate conditions also, are necessary in order that man may raise himself above the life of animals. ”

“ To know how all these worships, or superstitions, were established, it seems to me that we must follow the march of the human intellect when left to itself. A village inhabited by those who are almost savages, sees the fruits that fed it perish ”

“ The vast reading necessary for the work is disguised by the ease and simplicity of the style; and, in order to realise the extraordinary labour which it implies, it is necessary for the modern reader to bear in mind that Voltaire led the way in paths that, now well trodden and familiar, were then enveloped in darkness. ”

“ Genesis says expressly that a serpent spoke to Eve and beguiled her. It is careful to remark that the serpent is the most subtle of animals; and we have already observed that all nations had this opinion of the serpent. Genesis notes especially that the hatred of men towards serpents springs from the ill office which that animal did the human race ”

“ Still greater changes have taken place in climates less favourable. Physical have joined with moral causes; for if the ocean has not entirely changed its bed, it has, at least, alternately covered and abandoned vast regions. ”

“ The most populous countries were doubtless the warm climates, where man found easy and abundant nourishment in the cocoas, dates, pine-apples, and rice which grew of themselves. It is very likely that India, China, and the borders of the Euphrates and Tigris, were thickly populated when the rest of the globe was almost a desert. In our northern climates, on the contrary, it was much easier to encounter a herd of wolves than a society of men. ”

“ In the spirit, though not with the full knowledge, of a modern geologist and ethnologist, he speaks of the great changes of the earth's surface, and their influence on the races of men. The gradual formation of societies and of languages is briefly but pithily noted. ”