The Interpretation of HistoryMoffat, Yard, 1910 - 419 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
acquired action adaptation æsthetic animal anthropomorphic appear Aristotle artificial attention Auguste Comte average become Bossuet brain cause Cicero civilization concrete connection consciousness course created crowd death desire directed earth effort eternal exploitation favourable feeling force French Revolution Georg Simmel Giambattista Vico habits Hegel historian human species Ice Age ideas illusion imagination impulse individual influence instinct institutions intellectual invention Jean Bodin judgment knowledge labour less living thing Ludwig Gumplowicz maintained man's mankind matter of fact means ment moral nations nature necessity needs never object observation organic origin pain parasitism Paris past perceptions personality phenomena philosophy of history pleasure possess present primitive progress proved psychology purpose question race reality regarded religion rise Robert Flint rouse ruler satisfaction satisfied scientific sense social society sociology stage superior thought tion to-day tory truth universe Voltaire whole word youth
Popular passages
Page 83 - The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.
Page 58 - Gospel, count up as an hour each, the first age from Adam to Noah; the second, from Noah to Abraham; the third, from Abraham to David; the fourth, from David to the...
Page 86 - Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.
Page 299 - To return, then, to the inquiry, what is it that determines the will in regard to our actions? And that, upon second thoughts, I am apt to imagine is not, as is generally supposed, the greater good in view; but some (and for the most part the most pressing) UNEASINESS a man is at present under. This is that which successively determines the will, and sets us upon those actions we perform. This uneasiness we may call, as it is, DESIRE; which is an uneasiness of the mind for want of some absent good.
Page 259 - I conceive that there are two kinds of inequality among the human species ; one, which I call natural or physical, because it is established by nature, and consists in a difference of age, health, bodily strength, and the qualities of the mind or of the soul : and another, which may be called moral or political inequality, because it depends on a kind of convention, and is established, or at least authorised by the consent of men.
Page 46 - ... it provides us with no knowledge", that it "corresponds to no natural requirement of the human mind," that "the pictures which it throws upon the black background of the past are not aspects of reality, but projections of subjective ideas", and that " its practical purpose, in a word, is to oppress and deceive the present with the assistance of the past.
Page 351 - Great Men are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine BOOK OF REVELATIONS, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch...
Page 4 - If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed...
Page 261 - ... is driving at. In his chapter on the Psychological Premises of History, he describes the mind of the average cultivated man as follows: " A stream of words and combinations pour in upon him from language, intercourse, school, newspapers, and books, and some of them remain in his memory as formulae. If he is provided with a good supply of such formulae, and can produce one on any occasion that requires it, he passes in his own estimation, and that of his fellows, as a cultivated man. But his repetition...
Page 62 - ... empires. In it, as in the entire work, the central thought is that a Divine hand trains and guides collective humanity for the religion of Christ, which is incorporated in the Church ; and that all historical changes may be co-ordinated with reference to a single end, the good of the Church. " God has made use of the Assyrians and Babylonians to chastise His people ; of the Persians to restore it ; of Alexander and his immediate successors to protect it ; of Antiochus the Great and his successors...