The stream of life on our globe ... as revealed by modern discoveries in geology and palæontology

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Page 273 - The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either...
Page xv - Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words with little or no meaning have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance and hindrance of true knowledge.
Page 280 - ... beast, the triumphant conqueror in the primeval struggle for life. Language is something more palpable than a fold of the brain or an angle of the skull. It admits of no cavilling, and no process of natural selection will ever distil significant words out of the notes of birds or the cries of beasts.
Page 266 - Man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already man.
Page 92 - To work in close design, by fraud or guile, What force effected not; that he no less At length from us may find, Who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe. Space may produce new worlds...
Page 92 - There wanted yet the master-work, the end Of all yet done; a creature, who, not prone • And brute as other creatures, but endued With sanctity of reason, might erect His stature, and upright with front serene Govern the rest, self-knowing; and from thence Magnanimous to correspond with Heaven...
Page 526 - Vidi tantum. I saw him but three times. Once walking in the garden of his house in the Frauenplan; once going to step into his chariot on a sunshiny day, wearing a cap and a cloak with a red collar. He was caressing at the time a beautiful little golden-haired granddaughter, over whose sweet fair face the earth has long since closed too.
Page 39 - To adamant, by their petrific touch; Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives, Their masonry imperishable. All Life's needful functions, food, exertion, rest, By nice economy of Providence Were overruled to carry on the process, Which out of water brought forth solid rock.
Page 40 - Dust in the balance, atoms in the gale, Compared with these achievements in the deep, Were all the monuments of olden time, In days when there were giants on the earth : — Babel's stupendous folly, though it...
Page 497 - What I now offer to your Lordship is the wretched remainder of a sickly age, worn out with study and oppressed by fortune: without other support than the constancy and patience of a Christian.

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