The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 2, Civilized Nations: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 2Bancroft, Hubert Howe
History
The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 2, Civilized Nations: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 2
Bancroft, Hubert Howe
Indians -- Bibliography; Indians of Central America; Indians of Mexico; Indians of North America -- Pacific Coast of North America
Man, like every other natural substance, is a compound of force and
matter. "Respiration," says Liebig, "is the falling weight, the bent
spring, which keeps the clock in motion; the inspirations and
respirations are the strokes of the pendulum which regulates." Atoms
of matter, through the instrumentality of living force, cohere and
coalesce under endless complex conditions into endless varieties of
form and substance; so also the activities of man, corporeal and
intellectual, result in vast accumulations of experiences, which
accumulations become the property of the whole society. Society, like
matter, is composed of units, each possessing certain forces,
attractive and repulsive; societies act upon each other, like
celestial bodies, in proportion to their volume and proximity, and the
power of the unit increases with the increase of the mass. In
association there is a force as silent and as subtle as that which
governs atoms and holds worlds in equipoise; its grosser forms are
known as government, worship, fashion, and the like; its finer essence
is more delicate than thought. It is this social force, attractive and
repulsive, that binds men together, tears them asunder, kneads, and
knits, and shapes, and evolves; it is the origin of every birth, the
ultimate of every activity. Mechanical forces are manifest in
machines, as the lever, the wheel, the inclined plane; professional
force is manifest in intellectual ingenuity, literature, art, science,
which are the machines of human progress.
[Sidenote: MATERIALITY ACTING ON THE MIND.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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