Historical Reprints
History
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A collection of articles published in the 1880s debating women's rights and suffrage.
THERE is in Northern Italy a mountain district known as La Romagna Toscana, the inhabitants of which speak a rude form of the Bolognese dialect. These Romagnoli are manifestly a very ancient race, and appear to have preserved traditions and observances little changed from an incredibly early time.
Bordering upon the United States on the extreme southwest, for a distance of more than two thousand miles, is a republic which represents a civilization possibly as old as that of Egypt; a land, notwithstanding its proximity to us, of which the average American knows less than he does of France or Italy, but which rivals them in natural picturesqueness, and nearly equals them in historic interest.
WE may never know precisely when or where or how the legend of the unicorn began. It pervades recorded time and may be dimly visible even in the clouds that hover just above history's sunrise.
From the way in which the partisans of Nature have fallen on me I might well be the uninformed and visionary Luis of the fable, for has it not been taken for granted that I began my experiments ignorant alike of mechanics and ballooning? And before my experiments succeeded, were they not all called impossible?
The large Zeppelin Airship supplies the demand for a much faster, more luxurious, more comfortable and more safe long distance transportation. It is not restricted by the geographical limitations of the railway and the steamship. A Zeppelin can go anywhere, in fact the cruising radius of a Zeppelin is only limited by the size of the ship and the amount of fuel it can carry.
The following remains of Chaldean theology are not only venerable for their antiquity, but inestimably valuable for the unequalled sublimity of the doctrines they contain.
It is now twenty years since I ventured on the attempt to lay before the friends and admirers of Egyptian antiquity, in the French language, a History of Egypt under the Pharaohs according to the evidence of the Monuments, in so far as they have been preserved from the earliest times down to our own age.
Of that golden chain of philosophers, who, having themselves happily penetrated, luminously unfolded to others the profundities of the philosophy of Plato, Proclus is indisputably the largest and most refulgent link.
In Africa the natives still dig round about the modern gum-trees to find the buried treasure that oozed from other trees which stood on the same spot in the forests of the far-off past. The Natural Genesis contains the second half of A Book of the Beginnings, and completes the author's contribution to the new order of thought that has been inaugurated in our own era.
The 'end of the world' is the end of an aeon, age or cycle of Time, and we have seen the prophecy fulfilled in the rare lunar and planetary conjunction which occurred on the 3rd of March. It now remains for scientific astronomy to determine the length of this particular cycle of Time and define its relationship to the period of precession.
I have written other books, but this I look upon as the exceptional labour which has made my life worth living. Comparatively speaking, 'A Book of the Beginnings' (London, 1881) was written in the dark, 'The Natural Genesis' (London, 1883) was written in the twilight, whereas 'Ancient Egypt' has been written in the light of day. The earlier books were met in England with the truly orthodox
A totem is a class of material objects which a savage regards with superstitious respect, believing that there exists between him and every member of the class an intimate and altogether special relation. The name is derived from an Ojibway Chippeway word totem, the correct spelling of which is somewhat uncertain.
Plato, unfolding the knowledge of eternal being, calls it at first intelligence, but he also conjoins with intelligence reason. For, when reason understands perpetual being, as reason it energizes transitively, but as perceiving intellectually it energizes with simplicity, understands each particular so far as simple at once, but not all things at once, but passing from one to another, at the same time intellectually perceiving every thing which it transitively sees, as one and simple.
Of the simple, stiffly given account of weird and extraordinary matters, I will say little. It lies before you. The inner story must be uncovered, personally, by each reader, according to ability and desire. And even should any fail to see, as now I see, the shadowed picture and conception of that to which one may well give the accepted titles of Heaven and Hell; yet can I promise certain thrills, merely taking the story as a story.