Collected Essays and Reviews

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Longmans, Green and Company, 1920 - Parapsychology - 516 pages
 

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Page 240 - Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run ; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence...
Page 85 - If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Page 413 - ... the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish.
Page 245 - If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no "mind-stuff...
Page 239 - My theory, on the contrary, is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion.
Page 253 - Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, contract the dorsal rather than the ventral aspect of the frame, and speak in a major key, pass the genial compliment, and your heart must be frigid indeed if it do not gradually thaw!
Page 253 - Refuse to express a passion, and it dies. Count ten before venting your anger, and its occasion seems ridiculous. Whistling to keep up courage is no mere figure of speech. On the other hand, sit all day in a moping posture, sigh, and reply to everything in a dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers.
Page 139 - An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another ; but what little there is, is very important" This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.
Page 52 - IF the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
Page 133 - In such a moment of utter sincerity, when a man has bared his own soul before the immensities and the eternities, a presence, in which his own poor personality is shrivelled into nothingness, arises within him, and says, as plainly as words can say, " I am with thee, and I am greater than thou.

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