Allotment

“ I don't know whether I could get a couple of men who could or, if they could, would thresh a load of wheat in my neighborhood. The third great cause which has improved their condition is the very general, not to say universal, institution of allotment grounds. ”

“ Fencing.—To be done by allottees. If any person has an undue proportion Commissioners have power to equalise.
Exceptions.— (1) Fences of cow common allotment for those who have Cottage Common only (see above) , which are to be made [382] and kept in repair by the other proprietors; but if these allottees choose to have separate allotments they must fence them themselves.
(2) Allotment for the Poor (30 acres) .—To be fenced by other proprietors.
(3) Allotments to charities, ditto. ”

“ The next object in which the higher classes can help the lower is in establishing and maintaining garden allotments under a provident system of management, by which a labourer, having allotted to him a rood of land, may pay, during his active life, a rent more than sufficient to satisfy the landowner, but which it is quite worth his while to pay, to secure the profit which the gardening of a rood of land will give. ”

“ For division (which is all that a mill, or pestle, or any other body, does upon another, in reducing it to insensible parts) can never take away either solidity, extension, figure, or mobility from any body, but only makes two or more distinct separate masses of matter, of that which was but one before ; all which distinct masses, reckoned as so many distinct bodies, after division, make a certain number. These I call original or primary qualities of body, which I think we may observe to produce simple ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number. ”

“ Two years ago your uncle advanced a theory that materialization phenomena were produced by a substance which he termed 'psychoplasm.' After listening to his argument, I was convinced that he was right. Since then, we have attended numerous materialization seances, with the object of securing a sample of this elusive material for examination. It always disappears instantly when bright light is flashed upon it, or when the medium is startled or alarmed, and our efforts in this direction have always been fruitless. ”

“ No doubt, the order of the succession of various forms of life is correlated to the successive stages of material adaptation, but the bond is not of cause and effect. The successive acts of the farmer in ploughing, sowing, and reaping, are correlated to the order in which the seasons return, but the order of seasons is not the physical cause of the acts of the larmer. The two orders of succession, though correlated, are totally different. In the one case, a material law is the bond of union between the successive steps ”

“ In all this we have a true division of labor—a division of labor, however, by no means absolute; for the processes which are essential to the life of the cell must still continue common to all the cells of the organism. ”

“ A further purpose has been to prepare the way for a question hereafter to be discussed—whether, in the various types of either kingdom, the elongation is effected in the same ways or in different ways. We shall have to ask whether the vertically-growing part is always, like that of Lessonia, a simple individual, or whether, as possibly in Phænogams, it is a united series of individuals; and similarly whether the elongated body is always single, like that of a mollusc, or whether, as possibly in annulose animals, it is a series of united individuals. ”

“ This is an excellent example of the so-called 'fallacy of division,' or predicating what is true only of a collection, of each member of the collection distributively. It no more follows that if a thousand things together cause sensation, one thing alone must cause it, than it follows that if one pound weight moves a balance, then one ounce weight must move it too, in less degree. ”

“ As it is the activity of assimilation directed to a special end during this latter period which we suppose to be increased in accelerated development, the acceleration is evidently not brought about by increased facilities for obtaining the means of life which the same individual possesses as an adult. That it is not in consequence of such increased facilities possessed by its parents over those of the type preceding it, seems equally improbable when we consider that the characters in which the parent’s advance has appeared are rarely of a nature to increase those facilities. ”

“ Suppose we use integers instead of quintillions or centillions, and say that an individual represents by inheritance a total of 10-5 of impulses favourable to social life, 5 of the reverse. (Such a balance would really occur in many cases.) The child inherits, under favourable conditions, the father’s balance plus the maternal balance of 9,—four of the number being favourable. ”

“ I am ready to narrow my own resources and the prospects of my family by binding myself to allow you five hundred pounds yearly during my life, and to leave you a proportional capital at my death—nay, to do still more, if more should be definitely necessary to any laudable project on your part. ”

“ Brook Farm, April 14, 1843.—Here I am alone in my room once more. I feel settled, and begin to live again, separated from everything but my studies and thoughts, and the feeling of gratitude toward you all for treating me so much better than I am aware of ever having treated you. May I ever keep this sense of obligation and indebtedness. My prayer is, that the life I have been led to live these few months back may prove to the advantage of us all in the end. I sometimes feel guilty because I did not attempt again to try and labor with you. ”

“ Yet the capacity is often, even to the last minute, as perfect as in the vigour of health. Were all within, as well as all without, material, would not the blight to one involve, uniformly, the blight to the other? ”

“ Those who, like Malthus, sounded a note of warning, showing that population increases, unlike the supply of food, by geometrical progression, were answered that compound interest follows the same admirable law. ”

“ Phil.—Your history of the laws of the inevitable destruction of material forms recalls to my memory our discussion at Adelsberg. The changes of the material universe are in harmony with those which belong to the human body, and which you suppose to be the frame or machinery of the sentient principle. ”

“ Growth may cease at this limit, and a balance be struck; or the form of the unit may be altered and surface gained by flattening out, or very frequently by ramifying processes; or—and this the most frequent solution—the cell may divide, halving its volume, gaining new surface, and restoring the balance. ”

“ Malthus answered the problem in the simplest and most consistent way in his first edition. What are the checks? The ultimate check would clearly be starvation. A population might multiply till it had not food. But before this limit is actually reached, it will suffer in various ways from scarcity. Briefly, the checks may be distinguished into the positive, that is, actual distress, and the preventive, or 'foresight.' We shall actually suffer unless we are restrained by the anticipation of suffering. ”

“ The mass of associated systems forms the 'reductives' of each individual system. In dissociated systems the controlling influence of the 'reductive mass' is lost and the result is an over-activity, unchecked by any counteracting tendencies. ”

“ The population would have become so thin and dispirited through hunger, that with a little energy it would be possible to decide within the narrow circle of a family who should be ruler, and to give effect to the decision. ”

“ In the development of altruism from the low point, where there was scarcely enough to hold the clan together, up to the point reached at the present day, there has been a notable progress, but there is still room for an enormous amount of improvement. ”

“ The consolidation or cure is here always more speedy than in the preceding cases, where nature, with the same amount of means and resources, has twice the quantum of labour to perform, and where she supplies her deficiency of power, by the greater length of the time which she employs. ”

“ Thus, the separation of parts usually united has been shown to depend on an excess of [Pg 485] development, the persistent union of parts, usually separate in the adult state, has been traced to an arrest of the process of development, by no means necessarily coexistent with diminished growth. The diminished or increased number of parts is, in like manner, attributable to analogous causes, as also are the variations in arrangement and form, spoken of under the heads of Displacement, Peloria, Substitution, &c. ”

“ The treatment of the mass must be reduced to a system, the ruling idea of which will be, to enable one man to force into the same channel of labour the muscles of a large number of men of various and often conflicting wills. ”

“ To differentiate the interesting and the essential from the mass of routine material is, perhaps, not very difficult, but to present this segregated matter in a form that will not be monotonous is much more of a problem. ”

“ From the small subdivisions in many parts of the country, each family is enabled to till its own little portion with the spade; and where the divisions are larger, and ploughs used, they will invariably be found rude, clumsy, enormous masses of wood and iron, weak from the unskilfulness of the workmanship, continuing from father to son without improvement, because improvement would not only injure their purses, but give a deadly wound to that respect and veneration which they have for the good old ways of their ancestors. ”

“ This theory boldly affirms a limit to the divisibility of matter, and thus seems to defy the logic of the metaphysician, who, passing the limit set by the necessary imperfections of manipulation, carries the process of subdivision mentally downward through the scale of littleness, until, finding no place where his conception of subdivision must halt, declares that no limit exists. ”

“ Morgan, the Actuary of the Equitable, materials with which to construct, by the aid of various calculations, a very tolerable Table of the actual mortality in that Society. Upon this basis I calculated the Tables of our new Institution. After three months' labour, when the whole of the arrangements had been completed, and the day for our opening had been fixed, circumstances occurred which induced us to give up the plan. After the experience I had now had of the amount of time occupied by such an office, I was unwilling to renew the engagement with other parties. ”

“ The action in renewal, like that of original growth, may be compared—very crudely—with the action of a separator which simultaneously distributes a variety of heterogeneous materials in an orderly fashion; but in the living body the thing distributed must rather be the appetency for special materials, not the materials themselves. ”

“ Who does not know how terrible are those preparations for house-moving;—how infinite in number are the articles which must be packed, how inexpressibly uncomfortable is the period of packing, and how poor and tawdry is the aspect of one's belongings while they are thus in a state of dislocation? ”

“ I do not see much, if any, improvement in this settlement during the past three years. True, you lost time and labour in moving south; but if you labour all your lives, and God does not bless your labours, they are in vain. He can give you possessions and great wealth, as he gave Job. In a short time he added to Job much more than he had even previously possessed. If your hearts are pure and holy, the Lord can in a short time restore to your settlement fourfold. ”

“ Our immunity from danger thus far, leads me to hope for the best, as, from the knowledge that I gained before starting, the settlement, which is our destination, cannot be more than twenty miles distant, near enough for us to reach it to-morrow, if nothing unexpected occurs. ”

“ The several ages, or stages of man’s existence, have been differently determined, according to the particular views which have suggested the division, especially as they relate to legal or physiological objects; on the present occasion it is to the latter of these that we have more particularly to direct our attention. Aristotle marked three grand and obvious divisions in our existence, that of Growth—that during which we remain apparently Stationary—and that of Decline ”

“ The foundation-stone of a new building is, in a sense, the threshold of that structure. Hence to lay the foundations in blood is to proffer blood at the threshold. Traces of this custom are to be found in the practices or the legends of peoples wellnigh all the world over. ”

“ Forms showing us clearly the transition to well-developed individuals of the third order, are not to be found. Nevertheless, in the great sub-kingdom Annulosa, there are traits of structure, development, and mode of multiplication, which go far to show that its members are such individuals of the third order; and in the relations to external conditions involved by the mode of union, we find an adequate cause for that obscuration of the secondary individualities which we must suppose has taken place. ”

“ The bones connected by joints are at once a unitary whole and not a unitary whole. To be in agreement is to differ; the concordant is the discordant. From out of all the many particulars comes oneness, and out of oneness comes all the many particulars. ”

“ It is manifest, too, that whereas the differentiation of functions proceeds, not necessarily by division into two, but often by division into several, and usually in such ways as not to leave any two functions that are just complementary to one another, the restorations of equilibrium cannot be so simple as above supposed. ”