Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:24:18

Excerpt #1, from The Book of the Dead, by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge

…which Ra receives from the dwellers in Amentt (i.e., the Hidden Place, like the Greek “Hades”) is emphasized thus:– “All the beautified dead (Aakhu) in the Tuat receive him in the horizon of Amentt. They shout praises of him in his form of Tem (i.e., the setting sun). Thou didst rise and put on strength, and thou settest, a living being, and thy glories are in Amentt. The gods of Amentt rejoice in thy beauties (or beneficence). The hidden ones worship thee, the aged ones bring thee offerings and protect thee. The Souls of Amentt cry out, and when they meet thy Majesty (Life, Strength, Health be to thee!) they shout ‘Hail! Hail!’ The lords of the mansions of the Tuat stretch out their hands to thee from their abodes, and they cry to thee, and they follow in thy bright train, and the hearts of the lords of the Tuat rejoice when thou sendest thy light into Amentt. Their eyes follow thee, they press forward to see thee, and their hearts rejoice at the sight of thy face. Thou hearkenest to the petitions of those who are in their tombs, thou dispellest their helplessness and drivest away evil from them. Thou givest breath to their nostrils. Thou art greatly feared, thy form is majestic, and very greatly art thou beloved by those who dwell in the Other World.” The Introductory HYMN TO RA is followed by a HYMN TO OSIRIS, in which the deceased says:–…

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Excerpt #2, from Radioisotopes and Life Processes (Revised), by Baserga and Kisieleski

…turn, offers possibilities for investigations meant to control these processes. It is difficult to chart the future course of modern molecular biology, but it is not difficult to predict that the next few years will bring to biology the same kind of sweeping advances that revolutionized physics a few decades ago. The DNA molecule has been called the atom of life. When we have harnessed it, the harnessing of the uranium atom will seem, in comparison, a result of scientific adolescence. When man has mastered the genetic code, he’ll hold a vast power in his hands—power over the nature of coming generations. SUGGESTED REFERENCES Books The Cell, Carl P. Swanson, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1964, 114 pp., $1.75. Inside the Living Cell, J. A. V. Butler, Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1959, 174 pp., $3.95. Life and Energy, Isaac Asimov, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1962, 380 pp., $4.95. Applied Nuclear Physics, Ernest C. Pollard and William L. Davidson, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1956, 352 pp., $6.00. Adventures in Radioisotope Research, the collected works, with recent…

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Excerpt #3, from Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling

…straining at the deer-sinews with his mouth full of loose ends. The Stranger-man–a genuine Tewara he was–sat down on the grass, and Taffy showed him what her Daddy was doing. The Stranger-man thought, this is a very wonderful child. She stamps her foot at me and she makes faces. She must be the daughter of that noble Chief who is so great that he won’t take any notice of me.’ So he smiled more politely than ever. ‘Now,’ said Taffy, ‘I want you to go to my Mummy, because your legs are longer than mine, and you won’t fall into the beaver-swamp, and ask for Daddy’s other spear–the one with the black handle that hangs over our fireplace.’ The Stranger-man (and he was a Tewara) thought, ‘This is a very, very wonderful child. She waves her arms and she shouts at me, but I don’t understand a word of what she says. But if I don’t do what she wants, I greatly fear that that haughty Chief, Man-who-turns-his-back-on-callers, will be angry.’ He got up and twisted a big flat piece of bark off a birch-tree and gave it to Taffy. He did this, Best Beloved, to show that his heart was as white as the birch-bark and that he meant no harm; but Taffy didn’t quite understand. ‘Oh!’ said she. ‘Now I see! You want my Mummy’s living-address? Of course I can’t write, but I can draw pictures if I’ve anything sharp to scratch with. Please lend me the shark’s tooth off your necklace.’…

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Excerpt #4, from The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant

…per se, no cognition; it merely contributes the manifold in à priori intuition to a possible cognition. But, in order to cognize something in space (for example, a line), I must draw it, and thus produce synthetically a determined conjunction of the given manifold, so that the unity of this act is at the same time the unity of consciousness (in the conception of a line), and by this means alone is an object (a determinate space) cognized. The synthetical unity of consciousness is, therefore, an objective condition of all cognition, which I do not merely require in order to cognize an object, but to which every intuition must necessarily be subject, in order to become an object for me; because in any other way, and without this synthesis, the manifold in intuition could not be united in one consciousness. This proposition is, as already said, itself analytical, although it constitutes the synthetical unity, the condition of all thought; for it states nothing more than that all my representations in any given intuition must be subject to the condition which alone enables me to connect them, as my representation with the identical self, and so to unite them synthetically in one apperception, by means of the general expression, “I think.” But this principle is not to be regarded as a principle for every possible understanding, but only for the understanding by means of…

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Excerpt #5, from The Influence of the Stars: A book of old world lore, by Rosa Baughan

…Mercury are deemed of common influence–that is, either of good or evil, according to the planets with which they are connected. The planets have particular familiarity with certain places in the zodiac by means of parts designated as their houses, and also by their triplicities, exaltations and terms. The nature of their familiarity by houses is as follows:– Cancer and Leo are the most northerly of all the twelve signs; they approach nearer than the other signs to the zenith of this part of the earth, and thereby cause warmth and heat; they are consequently appropriated as houses for the two principal and greater luminaries; Leo for the Sun, as being masculine; and Cancer for the Moon, as being feminine. Saturn, since he is cold and inimical to heat, moving also in a superior orbit most remote from the luminaries, occupies the signs opposite to Cancer and Leo; these are Aquarius and Capricorn, and they are assigned to him in consideration of their cold and wintry nature. Jupiter has a favourable temperament, and is situated beneath the sphere of Saturn; he, therefore, occupies the next two signs, Sagittarius and Pisces. Mars is dry in nature and beneath the sphere of Jupiter; he takes the next two signs, of a nature similar to his own, viz., Aries and…

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Excerpt #6, from Why Men Fight: A method of abolishing the international duel, by Bertrand Russell

…his desires are specific, and directed towards objects which only he can create. And conversely, the worshiper of money can never achieve greatness as an artist or a lover. Love of money has been denounced by moralists since the world began. I do not wish to add another to the moral denunciations, of which the efficacy in the past has not been encouraging. I wish to show how the worship of money is both an effect and a cause of diminishing vitality, and how our institutions might be changed so as to make the worship of money grow less and the general vitality grow more. It is not the desire for money as a means to definite ends that is in question. A struggling artist may desire money in order to have leisure for his art, but this desire is finite, and can be satisfied fully by a very modest sum. It is the worship of money that I wish to consider: the belief that all values may be measured in terms of money, and that money is the ultimate test of success in life. This belief is held in fact, if not in words, by multitudes of men and women, and yet it is not in harmony with human nature, since it ignores vital needs and the instinctive tendency towards some specific kind of growth. It makes men treat as unimportant those of their desires which run counter to the acquisition of money, and yet such desires are, as a rule, more important to well-being than any increase of income. It leads men to…

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Excerpt #7, from Symbolic Logic, by Lewis Carroll

…14. No xy’ exist, &c. 15. Some xy exist, &c. 16. All y are x. 17. All x’ are y, and all y’ are x. 18. All x are y’, and all y are x’. 19. All x are y, and all y’ are x’. 20. All y are x’. Answers to § 4. AN4 1. No x’ are y’. 2. Some x’ are y’. 3. Some x are y’. 4. [No Concl. Fallacy of Like Eliminands not asserted to exist.] 5. Some x’ are y’. 6. [No Concl. Fallacy of Like Eliminands not asserted to exist.] 7. Some x are y’. 8. Some x’ are y’. 9. [No Concl. Fallacy of Unlike Eliminands with an Entity-Premiss.] 10. All x are y, and all y’ are x’. 11. [No Concl. Fallacy of Like Eliminands not asserted to exist.] 12. All y are x’. 13. No x’ are y….

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Excerpt #8, from An Account of Egypt, by Herodotus

…fifty years: since then this time was now expiring, and the vision of the dream also disturbed him, Sabacos departed out of Egypt of his own free will. Then when the Ethiopian had gone away out of Egypt, the blind man came back from the fen-country and began to rule again, having lived there during fifty years upon an island which he had made by heaping up ashes and earth: for whenever any of the Egyptians visited him bringing food, according as it had been appointed to them severally to do without the knowledge of the Ethiopian, he bade them bring also some ashes for their gift. This island none was able to find before Amyrtaios; that is, for more than seven hundred years the kings who arose before Amyrtaios were not able to find it. Now the name of this island is Elbo, and its size is ten furlongs each way. After him there came to the throne the priest of Hephaistos, whose name was Sethos. This man, they said, neglected and held in no regard the warrior class of the Egyptians, considering that he would have no need of them; and besides other slights which he put upon them, he also took from them the yokes of corn-land which had been given to them as a special gift in the reigns of the former kings, twelve yokes to each man. After this, Sanacharib king of the Arabians and of the Assyrians marched a great host against Egypt. Then the warriors of the Egyptians…

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Excerpt #9, from The Principles of the Art of Conversation, by J. P. Mahaffy

…through the rooms and talking in succession to all sorts and conditions of men. If on the one hand the people addressed are sure to be flattered by such attention, and therefore responsive and anxious to be pleased, on the other there is no social duty which gives more scope for all the mental and moral perfections already enumerated, and therefore there is no more certain test of conversational ability. For here the talk is not really with many at a time, nor again is it the conversation with one person, in which the main element is the sustaining of interest for a considerable time; it is a series of brief successive dialogues, in which the two great difficulties of conversation, the starting of it and the breaking off, are perpetually recurring. The speaker is even debarred from the use of any fixed formula or method of overcoming these difficulties, for the people addressed will be sure to compare notes, and will reject as insincere any politenesses which are administered according to a formula, however graceful it may appear. Here then, if anywhere, the art must consist in concealing the art. But let none imagine that art has no place here. A sympathetic nature, which readily apprehends the interests of other minds, is not more useful to the great man or woman than a careful previous study of the company, who they are, what they have done, what the distinction or the hobby of each of them may be. Nothing is easier than to acquire such information from…

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Excerpt #10, from Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

…words. His very clothes seemed to partake of the hospitable nature of the wearer. They looked as if they were at ease, and liked to make him comfortable. His capacious waistcoat was suggestive of a large heart underneath. His rusty coat had a social air, and the baggy pockets plainly proved that little hands often went in empty and came out full. His very boots were benevolent, and his collars never stiff and raspy like other people’s. “That’s it!” said Jo to herself, when she at length discovered that genuine good will toward one’s fellow men could beautify and dignify even a stout German teacher, who shoveled in his dinner, darned his own socks, and was burdened with the name of Bhaer. Jo valued goodness highly, but she also possessed a most feminine respect for intellect, and a little discovery which she made about the Professor added much to her regard for him. He never spoke of himself, and no one ever knew that in his native city he had been a man much honored and esteemed for learning and integrity, till a countryman came to see him. He never spoke of himself, and in a conversation with Miss Norton divulged the pleasing fact. From her Jo learned it, and liked it all the better because Mr. Bhaer had never told it. She felt proud to know that he was an honored Professor in Berlin, though only a poor…

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Excerpt #11, from The Naval War of 1812, by Theodore Roosevelt

…Americans. Cooper, as usual, praises all concerned; but in this instance not with very good judgment. He says the line-of-battle was highly judicious, but this may be doubted. The weather was peculiarly suitable for the gun-boats, with their long, heavy guns; and yet the line-of-battle was so arranged as to keep them in the rear and let the brunt of the assault fall on the Lawrence, with her short carronades. Cooper again praises Perry for steering for the head of the enemy’s line, but he could hardly have done any thing else. In this battle the firing seems to have been equally skilful on both sides, the Detroit’s long guns being peculiarly well served; but the British captains manoeuvred better than their foes at first, and supported one another better, so that the disparity in damage done on each side was not equal to the disparity in force. The chief merit of the American commander and his followers was indomitable courage, and determination not to be beaten. This is no slight merit; but it may well be doubted if it would have ensured victory had Barclay’s force been as strong as Perry’s. Perry made a headlong attack; his superior force, whether through his fault or his misfortune can hardly be said, being brought into action in such a manner that the head of the line was crushed by the inferior force opposed. Being literally hammered out of his own ship, Perry brought…

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Excerpt #12, from The Boy’s Book of the Sea, by Eric Wood

…the pirates roamed the seas at their own sweet will and took toll of shipping, these tales of treasure have been told. Dotted about here and there are small islands where tradition has it that the pirates hid their hoards of gold, silver, and precious jewels, intending to come back for them at some future date; but, being caught and hauled to justice, they died with their secret unrevealed, and the treasure remained. Then someone was told–or perhaps imagined–that such-and-such an island held it, and expeditions would be fitted out to seek for the treasure, which, as time rolled on, grew in size and value till it assumed fabulous proportions. Of course, there are hidden treasures secreted by the old pirates, and there are, too, other hoards which it would be well worth while to salvage, if the exact places were known. One can go back as far as the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula and find mention of richly laden ships which foundered with all their treasure; two galleys, for instance, containing plate, gold, art treasures, and many jewels were lost in the Lake Nemi, and nothing has ever been recovered, although the lake at this spot is only little more than a hundred feet deep. Coming to a much later date, the seventeenth century, there is an authentic record of the recovery of a vast quantity of lost treasure which was lost off Hispaniola, when a great Spanish galleon went…

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