Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt:... from the periodical eruptions of the elemental scoria of mankind. But only so long as the elemental characteristics of mankind form in themselves the basis of analogical reasoning can analogy be considered reliable or a source of truth when dealing with man, his institutions or customs. Each succeeding age regards itself as infinitely wiser than the age that has preceded, though in fact it may be a dark and villainous affair, as were the Middle Ages, and even recent times, in comparison to the antique Greek and Roman, Indian and Chinese civilizations. Each succeeding religion, likewise, regards the efforts of its predecessor as futile, and that it alone hath the ear of God. Each age regards its customs alone sensible, and those that have gone before ridiculous; its morality more pure, its equity more perfect, and so on, ad infinitum, through the whole list of transient vanities that are as mutable as though written on fluxing sands that the veriest froth waves, rolling in from the illimitable oceans of time, toss into confusion and nothingness. Only in the ever-recurring tracing on the sands and obliteration thereof do we discern human characteristics that are immutable; characteristics that bring about the formation of the human race into political entities, and in due time their inevitable dissolution. These characteristics are of themselves the elemental instincts of the human race, instincts that as a whole are but momentarily affected by the transient caprices of theories or morals, styles or religions. It is in these ever-recurring forces innate in mankind that we alone reason analogically concerning the present and the future; not so much from the sand-dunes of the past as from the inevitable tides that form and shatter them. So...