Upperparts

“ To sum up, the eye, owing to the laws of its mechanism, follows a line much more easily in the central than in the peripheral parts of the field, and in the central parts it follows a vertical line more easily than an oblique, and an horizontal more easily than a vertical. ”

“ We discover distance in a glazed surface; a province is contained in a foot of canvass; a thin evanescent tint gives the form and pressure of rocks and trees; an inert shape has life and motion in it. ”

“ Each section, North, South, East, or West, has its own faults; no section can with wisdom spend its time jeering at the faults of another section; it should be busy trying to amend its own shortcomings. ”

“ In the centre there is less of beauty, because there is no contrast, and it is by comparison that we form our estimates.
In the heart of the upland all is equally barren, and the variations of elevation are small. ”

“ Boundaries.—​The children having got the idea of direction, it will be quite easy to introduce that of boundaries—such and such a turnip field, for instance, is bounded by the highroad on the south, by a wheat crop on the south-east, a hedge on the north-east, and so on; the children getting by degrees the idea that the boundaries of a given space are simply whatever touches it on every side. Thus one crop may touch another without any dividing line, and therefore one crop bounds the other. ”

“ In any circle, the nearer the points of the circumference are to the centre, the closer they will necessarily be to one another. As we draw nearer, each for himself, to our Centre, we shall feel that we have approximated to all those who stand round the same centre, and draw from it the same life. ”

“ But on this assumption it would be hard to explain the fact that the arable land attached to a half-place is, on the average, a little less than half that attached to a whole place, and that attached to a farthing hold only a little more than one quarter. ”

“ As in the ascent of the elevation, step by step, we can judge imperfectly of its height, until from the very summit we look down upon our place of starting, so with the wretched outcasts of society of whom we speak. ”

“ Without counting that if a vertical descent of sixteen leagues costs us a horizontal of eighty-five, we shall have to go about either thousand leagues to the southeast, and we must therefore come out somewhere in the circumferences long before we can hope to reach the center. ”

“ There is usually a shading off of one class into another, like the blending of the tints of - 111 - sunset, and it often baffles all the skill of the profoundest anatomist, by drawing a distinct line, to pronounce where the one division actually ends and the other begins. ”

“ If we turn round and go in the opposite sense, then the area will be to the left if it was first to the right, and vice versa. If we give the boundary a definite sense, and go round in this sense, then the area is said to be either of the one or of the other sense according as the area is to the right or to the left. ”

“ Some of the signs of civilization are wanting: there are no roads and no fences; the fields are divided only by stones. But the divisions are as fixed and as sacred as if the fields were hemmed in by walls ten feet high. ”

“ If we suppose the south pole to be the centre of a chart of which the equinoctial is the circumference, we shall then discern four quarters, of the contents of which, if we could give a full account, this part of the world would be perfectly discovered. ”

“ And there are no upper and lower parts in the earth, nor are there in a terrella; unless perchance some one considers those parts superior which are in the periphery, and those inferior which are situated more towards the centre. ”

“ The people in the North of Caithness in directing us on our way did not tell us to turn to right or left, but towards the points of the compass—say to the east or the west as the case might be, and then turn south for a given number of chains. ”

“ The region designed for the existence of man, and of every other creature endowed with organic life, as well as the sphere open to the preception of man's senses, is confined to a limited space between the upper and lower parts of the earth, exceedingly small in proportion to the diameter, or even semi-diameter of the earth, and forming only the exterior surface, or outer skin, of the great body of the earth. ”

“ As the horizontal contours of any portion of the earth's surface must depend on the vertical, or, in other words, the various features which are marked on the map—the coast line, plains, rivers, vallies, lakes, hills, mountains, &c., being consequent on the different elevations of the various portions of the surface above the level of the sea ”

“ In fine, if, instead of comparing immediately adjacent parts of two beds, one of which lies upon another, we compare distant parts, it is quite possible that the upper may be any number of years older than the under, and the under any number of years younger than the upper. ”

“ However, I will admit that the land that surrounds it has a trick of turning this way or that; and so, if one is standing upon the plain and facing north, he is likely to find himself suddenly facing west—or east—or south. ”

“ Furthermore, across the middle, and obliquely inclined to the south, there is a broad circular belt composed of the twelve signs, whose stars, arranged in twelve equivalent divisions, represent each a shape which nature has depicted. ”

“ Trace through, from east to west, upon the line between the free and slave country, and we shall find a little more than one third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and populated, or soon to be populated, thickly upon both sides; while nearly all its remaining length are merely surveyors' lines, over which people may walk back and forth without any consciousness of their presence. ”

“ I observed the latitude 13 degrees 32 minutes south; longitude made 35 degrees 19 minutes west; course north 89 degrees west, distance 108 miles.
(*Footnote. One person turns his back on the object that is to be divided: another then points separately to the portions, and each of them asking aloud, "Who shall have this?" to which the first answers by naming somebody. This impartial method of division gives every man an equal chance of the best share.) ”

“ The majority begin, as we did, in this lower circle, and remain here until they are fitted to move onward to a higher sphere. Others take a place in that higher sphere immediately, and some few are led into the Holy Presence straightway. ”

“ The bases, of which many are to be seen lying about, and some in situ, display the most delicate tracery and carving imaginable, some being adorned with round bands of relief, and others divided into facets, making the base dodecagonal instead of round, each panel bearing a different and highly ornate design. ”

“ For, if the height of the capitals is greater than their width—when they are called "high-tensioned,"—something should be taken from the arms, so that the more the tension is weakened by height of the capitals, the more the strength of the blow is increased by shortness of the arms. ”

“ Classical man, in his turn, for whom the monolithic column was the mightiest symbol of Euclidean existence—all body, all unity, all steadiness—connected it, in the strictest proportions of vertical and horizontal, of strength and load, with his architrave. ”

“ All the houses, streets and towns on his right hand are to the east of him, those on the left are to the west. The places he must walk straight forward to reach are north of him, and the places behind him are to the south. ”

“ Those who know the East know, where the system of 'squeeze,' which is commission, runs through every transaction of life, from the sale of a groom's place upward, where the woman walks behind the man in the streets, and where the peasant gives you for the distance to the next town as many or as few miles as he thinks you will like, that these things must be so. ”

“ The vast level, stretching thirty miles from east to west, thirty from north to south:—perhaps the reader may think little of its resources for the seeker after natural beauty, or its capacity to develope the imagination. ”

“ And so, under the space which is nearest to the pivot at the bottom, off the southern portions of the line of the axis, are found nations that on account of the slight altitude of the heaven above them, have shrill and very high-pitched voices, like the string nearest to the angle in the musical instrument. ”

“ The boundaries between the great kingdoms of nature, and, still more, between the various provinces, and lesser portions, into which they are subdivided, afford another illustration of the same important truth. ”

“ THE BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth! ”

“ In all practical experience our subdivisions do consume space. They consume it in our geometrical figures. But for simplicity's sake, in geometry we postulate subdivisions which violate experience and consume none of it. ”

“ Those in the middle will march straight against them, and the other two divisions will surround them on the right and on the left. When the middle detachment begins to walk toward them, they will think that we are all there, and so they will leap forward. ”

“ The farther we advance into the higher country, where the points of division are, the higher are the mountains; but this height is always the same on both sides of the vallies, and the hills are raised or lowered alike. I have frequently made the like observations in many other parts of France. It is this equality in the height of the hills which forms the plains in the mountains, and these plains form lands higher than others. ”

“ But since that which sinks to the bottom of all things moves to the centre, necessarily that which rises to the surface moves to the extremity of the region in which the movement of these bodies takes place. For the centre is opposed as contrary to the extremity, as that which sinks is opposed to that which rises to the surface. ”

“ Another constraint was the division of the country into such horizontal axes as east and west, and the vertical axes such as the northern hills and southern plains – a division the truth of which is recognized as both sociological and political. ”

“ In like manner, in preparing the psychological map of the events and sentiments belonging to a certain human civilization, we find at the start five or six well determined provinces—religion, art, philosophy, the state, the family, and industries; next, in each of these provinces, natural departments, and then finally, in each of these departments, still smaller territories [Pg 19] until we arrive at those countless details of life which we observe daily in ourselves and around us. ”

“ Symbolism of Directions.—The north points to spiritual things, the south to earthly things, the east to Christ and His ransom sacrifice. The right is the side of favor, the left of less favor, or of disfavor. Higher elevations represent higher planes of being or of power; lower planes the opposite.
Figure 1. The Division Of The Land The Land and Its Divisions.—As places typify conditions, the land of Canaan, of the children of Israel, types the whole world of mankind. ”

“ It is well to let him give, in a roundabout way, the direction of places as—‘more to the east than the west,’ ‘very near the east but not quite,’ ‘half-way between east and west.’ He will value the exact means of expression all the more for having felt the need of them. ”

“ Let the centre of the smaller be placed upon the centre of the larger, and secured for a moment from slipping; while radii are drawn from the common centre to the circumference of the smaller circle, and thus extended to the circumference of the greater. ”

“ The height of the capital is one half the thickness of a column. The abacus has a width equivalent to the thickness of the bottom of a column. Let the height of the capital be divided into three parts, and give one to the plinth (that is, the abacus) , the second to the echinus, and the third to the necking with its congé.
4. Upon the columns lay the main beams, fastened together, to a height commensurate with the requirements of the size of the building. ”

“ In these secluded parts, scarcely affording a single foot of level ground, and where the whole surface, tossed into confusion, offers nothing but the perpetual labour of climbing and descending, there is a considerable degree of population ”

“ That is to say, in any of the great divisions of Western Europe, though the land may have been settled and conquered over and over again, yet the mass of the people of the land have been drawn to some one national type. ”