Various

“ The penalty of being able to read what is written between the lines and the columns of the figures is the conclusion that after we have all done the best work that the present conditions of science will permit, the entire product barely suffices to keep mankind in existence; his fixed capital, so-called, is at the mercy both of time and of the inventor who substitutes better methods which at less cost of effort or labor yield more abundance to the community as a whole. ”

“ As my occupation in life has required me to give attention to the science which deals with the structure and organization of the bodies of man and animals—a science which either includes within its scope or has intimate and widespread relations to comparative anatomy, embryology, morphology, zoölogy, physiology and anthropology—I shall limit myself to the attempt to bring before you some of the more important observations and conclusions which have a bearing on the present position of the subject. ”

“ Had he and his contemporaries known that the light of the sun was more than ten thousand million times that of a bright star, they would have seen that it must be placed at one hundred thousand times its present distance to shine as a bright star. If, then, the stars are as bright as the sun, they must be one hundred thousand times as far away, and their annual parallax would then have been too small for detection with the instruments of the time. ”

“ Should our defense prove too obstinate for direct assault, it may be that the enemy will construct regular intrenchments from which to dig a trench deep enough to protect, and large enough to hold a body of troops, thus enabling them to approach sufficiently near to assail some weak point, without too great risk. The modern repeating rifle, dangerous at a thousand yards, and fatal at a hundred, has given the defense so great preponderance that it requires quick work indeed to capture a stronghold. ”

“ This, an apparently extinct disease, has suddenly reappeared and given evidence of its power to spread death and desolation. Fortunately, however, modern sanitary precautions are quite able to restrict its progress, provided they be applied at the proper time and place. Filth and overcrowding, protracted wars and famine, have been the powerful allies of the plague in the past. Through their aid this disease has made a deep impression upon the pages of history. It may not be out of place, therefore, to turn from the present outbreak of the disease and trace its grewsome past. ”

“ Many of the errors commonly presented under the name of the ‘claims of labor’ have arisen from the limited and partial conception of the function of economic science.
We have become accustomed to deal with the so-called material forces of nature and with the physical work and labor of man under the general term of ‘Energy’. What man does by his own labor or physical energy is to convert the products of land and sea, of mine and forest, into new forms from which he derives shelter, food and clothing. ”

“ It inculcates a belief in the worthlessness of all terrestrial blessings, and considers life a disease, with no cure but death. And not death by suicide, either; the victims of misery must drain life’s cup to the dregs, to cure the very love of existence, and thus prevent the risk of re-birth. ”

“ Witness the relative progress of the last century as compared with all the previous centuries; then attempt to conceive what will be the condition of humanity a century hence, knowing, as we do, that the applications of science through mental energy now proceed in geometric progression, reversing the dogma of Malthus and leading to the concept of production unlimited, consumption limited. ”

“ What greater stimulus can there be than for every man each in his own way rendering service for service, his objective point being only the welfare of himself and his family, when he attains the conviction that by so much as his mental energy adds to the sum of the utilities by which mankind lives, so may that part which he consumes and which represents his cost to the community be fully justified, even though it is earned with more apparent ease and less physical exertion than are called for from his poorer neighbors. ”

“ According to that concept, to man is given “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” By what force does man hold dominion unless it is through his mental energy and his capacity to accumulate experience? ”

“ If the fading out which we see is really due to an eclipse by a dark body, that body must be nearly or quite as large as the star itself, else it could not cut off so much of its light. In this case, it is probably nearly as massive as the star itself, and therefore would affect the motion of the star. Both bodies would, in fact, revolve around their common center of gravity. Therefore, when after the dark body has passed in front of the star, it has made one-fourth of a revolution, which would require about seventeen hours, the star would be moving towards us. ”

“ The enunciation of the fundamental principle that the elementary tissues consisted of cells constituted a step in the progress of biological science which will forever stamp the century now drawing to a close with a character and renown equalling those which it has derived from the most brilliant discoveries in the physical sciences. It provided biologists with the visible anatomical units through which the external forces operating on, and the energy generated in, living matter come into play. ”

“ People who commit suicide go to a place in which it is always dark and where they go about with their tongues lolling. Women who have had premature births go to Sedna’s abode and stay in the lowest world.
The other soul stays with the body. When a child has been named after the deceased, the soul enters its body and remains there for about four months. It is believed that its presence strengthens the child’s soul, which is very light and apt to escape from the body. After leaving the body of the infant, the soul of the departed stays nearby, in order to re-enter its body in case of need. ”

“ As this is the closing year of the century it will not, I think, be out of place to refer to the changes which a hundred years have brought about in our fundamental conceptions of the structure of animals. In science, as in business, it is well from time to time to take stock of what we have been doing, so that we may realize where we stand and ascertain the balance to our credit in the scientific ledger. ”

“ The periodic stars show wide differences, both in the length of the period and in the character of the changes they undergo. In most cases they rapidly increase in brightness during a few days or weeks, and then slowly fade away, to go through the same changes again at the end of the period. In other cases they blaze up or fade out, from time to time, like the revolving light of a lighthouse. Some stars are distinguished more especially by their maximum, or period of greatest brightness, while others are more sharply marked by minima, or periods of least brightness. ”

“ The hunter must therefore avoid contact with people who have touched a body, or with such as are bleeding. If any one who has touched a body or who is bleeding should allow others to come in contact with him he would cause them to become distasteful to the seals and therefore also to Sedna. For this reason the custom demands that every person must at once announce if he has touched a body or if he is bleeding. If he does not do so, he will bring ill luck to all the hunters.
These ideas have given rise to the belief that it is necessary to announce the transgression of any taboo. ”

“ But on the other hand, no matter how hard the struggle for existence may be, we find the promise of future abundance even in the insufficient product which has been derived from the application of science and invention up to date. ”

“ The existence of famine in India, together with the filthy, overcrowded condition of the population, enabled the plague to gain a firm foothold in a relatively short time. Indeed, there can be no doubt but that the disease was well established at the time it was first recognized. It is no wonder, then, that in spite of the most stringent precautions, it spread like wildfire, so that in a short time the weekly deaths from the plague rose to nearly 2,000. In the face of such a relentless enemy, it is but natural that a large proportion of the population578 should seek safety in flight. ”

“ One can scarcely regard the presence of so remarkable an appearance as the achromatic figure without associating with it an important function in the economy of the cell. As from the centrosome at the pole of the spindle both sets of radiations diverge, it is not unlikely that it acts as a center or sphere of energy and attraction. By some observers the radiations are regarded as substantive fibrillar structures, elastic or even contractile in their properties. Others, again, look upon them as morphological expressions of chemical and dynamical energy in the protoplasm of the cell body. ”

“ There is in every transaction of life an unconscious cerebration or estimate of the services rendered to us, saving each of us mental or manual energy, whenever we buy any product or service from another. ”

“ The burden-carriers of Constantinople are still the stoutest men of our latter-day world. We might as well impeach the degeneracy of the Circassian highlanders, who resisted the power of the Russian monarchy for sixty-five years, and in their last stronghold stood at bay with drawn hunting knives—after blunting their sabres and exhausting a stock of ammunition purchased by the sacrifice of their herds and harvests. ”

“ While certain principles of research are common to all the sciences, each great division requires for its investigation specialized arrangements to insure its progress. Nothing contributes so much to the advancement of knowledge as improvements in the means of observation, either by the discovery of new adjuncts to research, or by a fresh adaptation of old methods. ”

“ However bright a star might be on one side, or however dark on the other, any one region of its surface would be visible to us half the time and a change of brightness from different degrees of brilliancy on different sides would be gradual and regular.
It is not impossible that the variability may be in some way connected with the action of a body revolving round the star. This seems to be the case with Eta Aquilæ. The radial motion of this object shows the existence of a dark body revolving round it in the same period as that of the star’s variation. ”

“ The angle between the direction of a star and that of the earth’s axis, the latter direction being represented by the celestial pole, can be measured with our meridian instruments. It is, in fact, the north polar distance of the star, or the complement of its declination. If, therefore, the astronomer could measure the declination of a star with great precision throughout the entire year, he would be able to determine its parallax by a comparison of the measures. But it is found impossible in practice to make measures of so long an arc with the necessary precision. ”

“ I may, therefore, venture to repeat the statement of two principles which are presented in this treatise, which I think have been seldom if ever fully developed in any of the standard works upon political economy. To my own mind these are basic principles which when applied may profoundly modify many of the concepts of students of economic science. I join in the view that the family is the unit of society, the home the center. The end of all production is consumption. ”

“ Without doubt they are fundamental qualities necessary for historical research, but in order to bear fruit they require to be exercised by one whose mental qualities are such as to enable him to analyze the data brought together by his diligence, to discriminate between the false and the true, to possess an insight into the complex motives that determine human action, to be able to recognize those facts and incidents which had exercised either a primary or only a secondary influence on the affairs of nations, or on the thoughts and doings of the person whose character he is depicting. ”

“ Why do we not house, feed and clothe ourselves, and why would not the hundred representatives of different classes wrecked on an island each do his own part of the work for himself only? Simply for the reason that men are either endowed from birth with different aptitudes, or different aptitudes are developed in their environment. ”

“ The simplest conception of an arc of one second is reached by thinking of it as the angle subtended by a short line at a distance of two hundred and six thousand times its length. To say that a star has a parallax of 1′′ would therefore be the same thing as saying that it was at a distance of a little more than two hundred thousand times that of the earth from the sun. ”

“ We deal, as I have said, with sixty elements, so-called, more or less, but the unity of nature is the most important fact ever proved by science; the correlation of all forms of physical energy leading logically from the idea of manifold forces or gods to the unity of creation, necessarily ending in the conception of unity of a creator, or the one God. This modern development of mental science is but the Hebrew concept of the creation in a new form. ”

“ If, then, man by his power of mental energy converts the original and crude forces with which the earth is endowed into new forms, and by giving them new direction increases his power of production of the means of his own subsistence and enjoyment of life, does it not follow that creation is a continuous procession in which man is a factor? ”

“ Also, until my own observation led me to the conclusion that the cost of a man to the community is what he consumes, and not what he secures in the way of income, the correlation of wealth and welfare had not been satisfactorily reconciled. I think that a very large part of what is written under the title of political economy would be greatly modified, and perhaps never have been written, had these concepts been derived by the writers from experience, as they have been in my own observation. ”

“ A few words should be given here to the overland dissemination of the disease. Europe is not merely threatened by infected ships which may come from China, India, Eastern Africa or South America. The overland routes from China and India are fully as grave a source of danger. Indeed, as will be presently shown, these are the routes along which the great epidemics of cholera and plague have always traveled in the past. ”

“ Surrounded by a force sufficiently large to make resistance in the field quite hopeless, we are at least in position to protract the struggle, and one capable of defense, except against an assault in overwhelming numbers, or against heavy artillery. The latter they are not provided with, or the measures we are taking might all go in the end for nothing. Several assaults are attempted during the day, but are easily repulsed with no small loss. The enemy at last withdraws, and we now see that he is busy throwing up intrenchments. ”