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Diffusion   /dɪfjˈuʒən/   Listen
Diffusion

noun
1.
(physics) the process in which there is movement of a substance from an area of high concentration of that substance to an area of lower concentration.
2.
The spread of social institutions (and myths and skills) from one society to another.
3.
The property of being diffused or dispersed.  Synonym: dissemination.
4.
The act of dispersing or diffusing something.  Synonyms: dispersal, dispersion, dissemination.  "The diffusion of knowledge"



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"Diffusion" Quotes from Famous Books



... Prince of Orange, who in 1575 founded the university of Leyden as a reward to that city for its valiant defense against the Spaniards. Similar institutions were soon established at Groningen, Utrecht, and elsewhere; these various seats of learning produced a rivalry highly advantageous to the diffusion of knowledge, and great men arose in all branches of science and literature. Among the distinguished names of the sixteenth century those of the Latin writers ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... the gemmules do not spread from bud to bud, but only through the tissues developed from each separate bud. We are led to this conclusion from the stock being rarely affected by the insertion of a bud or graft from a distinct variety. This non-diffusion of the gemmules is still more plainly shown in the case of ferns; for Mr. Bridgman[908] has proved that, when spores (which it should be remembered are of the nature of buds) are taken from a monstrous part of a frond, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... worst, and only those made with the strongest mixture of cement, 1 to 1, withstood the severe frost experienced. The best results were obtained when the mortar was made compact, as such a mixture only allowed diffusion to take place so slowly that its effect was negligible; but when, on the other hand, the mortar was loose, the salts rapidly penetrated to the interior of the mass, where chemical changes took place, and caused it to disintegrate. The concrete blocks made with 1 to 3 mortar disintegrated in nearly ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... part in the history of the organic world, almost inevitably follows from the principle of natural selection; for old forms are supplanted by new and improved forms. Neither single species nor groups of species reappear when the chain of ordinary generation is once broken. The gradual diffusion of dominant forms, with the slow modification of their descendants, causes the forms of life, after long intervals of time, to appear as if they had changed simultaneously throughout the world. The fact of the fossil remains ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... two of hours they are among the tobacco-fields and the slave-pens of Virginia. The war passion burned like scattered coals of fire in the households of Revolutionary times; now it rushes all through the land like a flame over the prairie. And this instant diffusion of every fact and feeling produces another singular effect in the equalizing and steadying of public opinion. We may not be able to see a month ahead of us; but as to what has passed a week afterwards it is as thoroughly talked out and judged as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Latinity. Its chief characteristic is ill-digested erudition. Various circumstances combined to make a certain amount of knowledge general, and the growing cosmopolitan sentiment excited a strong interest in every kind of exotic learning. With increased diffusion depth was necessarily sacrificed. The emperor set the example of travel, which was eagerly followed by his subjects. Hence a large mass of information was acquired, which injuriously affected those who possessed it. They appear, as ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... and all that could be seen of her face was her nose, which seemed to be refusing to be overawed by the reputation of the author whose work she studied. In the swinging glass door beside her there was a diffusion of reflected hues that made Marion able to imagine what she herself looked like, in her gown of copper-coloured velvet, sitting in the high-backed chair by the fire. She was glad that sometimes, by night, her beauty crawled out of the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... it had to do with the introduction of rational ideas. The rapid increase of the world's population and the very general occupancy of arable lands throughout the world, presupposes that the maximum of food production will soon be reached. A liberal and general diffusion of scientific information among agriculturists alone can augment the productive power of the soil and at the same time conserve its fertility for the support of future generations. This subject demands a real awakening of public sentiment ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst

... superiority of one method over another, much depends upon their adaptability to the time and convenience of the user; light bread can be produced by either method. Less yeast but more time will be required when the bread is started with a sponge. The end to be attained by all is a complete and equal diffusion of gas bubbles generated during fermentation throughout the whole ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... many reasons which render a very general diffusion of literature impossible in America. I can scarcely class the universal reading of newspapers as an exception to this remark; if I could, my statement would be exactly the reverse, and I should ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... interrupted by the dawn, would do wisely to withdraw herself from the gaze of her fondest and most partial admirers. Such was the pale, inauspicious, and ungrateful light which began to beam upon those who kept watch all night in the hall at Sayes Court, and which mingled its cold, pale, blue diffusion with the red, yellow, and smoky beams of expiring lamps and torches. The young gallant, whom we noticed in our last chapter, had left the room for a few minutes, to learn the cause of a knocking at the outward gate, and on ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... to light even in insulated England? A living nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanizers are a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not Utilitarianism flourished in high places of Thought, here among ourselves, and in every European country, at some time or other, within the last fifty years? ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... time awaited by Johannes is at hand," Gevingey proclaimed. "Here are some of the manifest proofs. Raymond Lully asserted that the end of the old world would be announced by the diffusion of the doctrines of Antichrist. He defined these doctrines. They are materialism and the monstrous revival of magic. This prediction applies to our age, I think. On the other hand, the good tidings was to be realized, according to Our Lord, as reported by Saint Matthew, 'When ye ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... direct a glance of sympathy towards that pleasing building, which contains so much youth and so many hopes. Then a sudden dull sound is heard, a clapping to of books and portfolios, a shuffling of feet, a buzz which spreads from room to room, and from the lower to the higher, as at the sudden diffusion of a bit of good news: it is the beadle, who is making his rounds, announcing the dismissal of school. And at that sound a throng of women, men, girls, and youths press closer from this side and that of the door, waiting for their sons, brothers, or grandchildren; ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... disorder and of martial tastes had given men the opportunity to lead other than military lives, so the decline of the theological spirit enabled them to attain that diffusion of knowledge without which there could be no civilization. The Roman clergy, during many centuries, partly from conscientious motives, and partly to maintain their own power, had suppressed intellectual and material ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... intellectual and spiritual change which came over western Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century was the result of a number of converging causes, of which the most important were the diffusion of classical literature consequent upon the break-up of the Byzantine Empire at the hands of the Turks, the brilliant civilization of the Italian city-states, and the establishment, in France, Spain and England, of powerful ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... The wide diffusion of intelligence among you is in fact proved by the immense circulation of your journals. It is not solely the cheap price which renders your press a common benefit, and not a mere privilege to the richer; but it is the universality of public ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... American republics have the American Constitution, more or less, but are not shining examples of republican success. No one can question that monarchies like the United Kingdom and Germany enjoy a larger diffusion ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... be done. He did with a rush the hard labor of a missionary and of a pastor, and he went beyond it into untrodden pathways. He hated routine. He minded not what others had been doing, seeking only what he himself might do. His efforts for the diffusion of Catholic literature, THE CATHOLIC WORLD, his several books, the Catholic tracts, tell his zeal and energy. A Catholic daily paper was a favorite design to which he gave no small measure of time and labor. He anticipated ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... interesting, as well as the most important, feature of the age is the diffusion of Hellenic culture—the "Hellenizing" of the Orient. It was, indeed, a changed world in which men were now living. Greek cities, founded by Alexander and his successors, stretched from the Nile to the Indus, dotted the shores of the Black Sea and ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... and young, and that nearly all the young have been enabled to breed. Their geometrical ratio of increase, the result of which never fails to be surprising, simply explains their extraordinarily rapid increase and wide diffusion in their ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... for one or the other explanation has lain at the bottom of much ethnological discussion in the past; and at present influential schools both in England and in continental Europe clamorously insist that all cultural parallels are due to diffusion from a single center. It is inevitable to envisage this moot-problem at the start, since uncompromising championship of either alternative has far-reaching practical consequences. For if every parallel is due to borrowing, then sociological laws, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... a maimed soldier; writing his Don Quixote in prison. And Lope's fate withal was sad, his popularity perhaps a curse to him; for in this man there was something ethereal too, a divine particle traceable in few other popular men; and such far shining diffusion of himself, tho all the world swore by it, would do nothing for the true life of him even while he lived; he had to creep into a convent, into a monk's cowl, and learn, with infinite sorrow, that his blessedness had lain elsewhere; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... taught mysterious BACON to explore Metallic veins, and part the dross from ore; With sylvan coal in whirling mills combine 240 The crystal'd nitre, and the sulphurous mine; Through wiry nets the black diffusion strain, And close an airy ocean in a grain.— Pent in dark chambers of cylindric brass Slumbers in grim repose the sooty mass; 245 Lit by the brilliant spark, from grain to grain Runs the quick fire along the kindling train; On the pain'd ear-drum bursts the sudden crash, Starts ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... antiquity,—Egyptians, Persians, Assyrians, Chinese,—according to Deneus (215. 2), the patria potestas probably prevented any considerable diffusion of the family estates. By the time of Moses, the Hebrews had come to favour the first-born, and to him was given a double share of the inheritance. With the ancient Hindus but a slight favouring—of the eldest ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... well to curb. It is enough to say that some of the peers supported the House of Commons, and the majority were too timid to make any stand against the numbers and violence of the other House. Nowadays, thanks to the wide diffusion of peerages and the fact that they are conferred far more freely on persons of advanced political views, this lack of independence has largely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various

... speech there is a kind of symphony that cannot be described;{1} which comes from the pouring forth and diffusion of the thoughts and affections from which speech flows, in accordance with the form of heaven, and all affiliation and all communication in heaven is in accordance with that form. That angels are affiliated in accordance with the form of heaven, and that their thoughts and affections flow in accordance ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... twelve miles broad, is a very remarkable diffusion of water without islands. It fills a large hollow between two ridges of high rocks, being supplied partly by the torrents which fall into it on either side, and partly, as is supposed, by springs at the bottom. Its water is remarkably clear and pleasant, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... the English language, like the Latin, has greater literary power, and conveys to the Indians the latest ideas and scientific discoveries of the foremost nations of the world. There is also a certain diffusion of European manners and even dress, resembling in some degree what took place even in such a remote province of the Roman empire as Britain, where, as we know from Tacitus, it was made a reproach against the Romanising Britons that they were abandoning their own costume for the Roman ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... give as complete an extraction as hot water. However, speed of extraction is materially increased with rise in temperature, due to the fact that the rate and degree of solubility of the substances in water, and the diffusion of the water through the cell walls of the coffee, are accelerated. Also, the resistance which the fat content of the bean offers to the wetting of the coffee, and the persistency of the "enfleurage" action of the fat in retaining the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... and taciturn each year, mellowed into some resemblance to his former benevolent, though stately, self. He had not yet heard of Ned's treason. His lady, still graceful and slender, resumed her youth. Fanny, who had ever forced herself to the diffusion of merriment when there was cheerlessness to be dispelled, reflected with happy eyes the old-time jocundity now reawakened. My mother, always a cheerful, self-reliant, outspoken soul, imparted the cordiality of her presence to the household, and both Tom and I rejoiced to find ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... exterior." It is certainly a matter entitled to reflection that, at almost all the periods of history when art flourished and taste held sway, humanity is found in a state of decline; nor can a single instance be cited of the union of a large diffusion of aesthetic culture with political liberty and social virtue, of fine manners associated with good morals, and of politeness fraternising with truth and loyalty ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... and others of their school, it is the species-subserving qualities that Nature selects; and these, in the higher grades of life, are equivalent to the altruistic, social, and ethical qualities. It is in virtue of the parental and maternal instincts of self-sacrifice, self-diffusion, self-forgetfulness in the interests of the offspring, that species are preserved and prevail. Selfish egoism leads eventually (as we see in some modern countries where laizzez-faire liberalism prevails) to social disruption, decadence, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... had once been attached by this religious thread to the Argian; the similar periodical ceremonies, frequented by all who bore the Achaean or AEtolian name; and the splendid and exhilarating festivals, so favorable to the diffusion of the early Grecian poetry, which brought all Ionians at stated intervals to the sacred island of Delos. This later class of festivals agreed with the Amphictyony in being of a special and exclusive character, not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... draw the fur-trade to Montreal,—in spite of the Jesuits, who felt that their influence over the remoter tribes would be compromised by the presence among them of officers, soldiers, and traders; and in spite of the King himself, who feared that the diffusion of the colony would ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... possessing a single slave." The latter part of my note was intended to suggest this consideration. Yet so completely was slavery rooted in the social system, both in the east and the west, that in the great diffusion of wealth at this time, every one, I doubt not, who could afford a domestic slave, kept one; and generally, the number of slaves was in proportion to the wealth. I do not believe that the cultivation of the soil by slaves was confined to Italy; the holders of large estates in the provinces would ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... excursions for the performance of any of my operas took place, for the simple reason that no such performances were given. As I saw it was quite clear that the diffusion of my works through the theatrical world would be a very slow business, I concluded that this was probably due to the fact that no adaptations of them for the piano existed. I therefore thought that I should do well to press forward such an issue at all ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... among its component stars. The laws by which those stellar aggregations are produced and governed are wrapped in obscurity, and the nature of the motions of their stars, whether towards concentration or diffusion, cannot at present be ascertained. If those globular clusters could be observed sufficiently near, they would most probably expand into vast systems of suns ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... continued existence of the use of salt currency in regions of the same frontier, I have been favoured with the following note by M. Francis Garnier, the distinguished leader of the expedition of the great Kamboja River in its latter part: "Salt currency has a very wide diffusion from Muang Yong [in the Burman-Shan country, about lat. 21 deg. 43'] to Sheu-pin [in Yun-nan, about lat. 23 deg. 43']. In the Shan markets, especially within the limits named, all purchases are made with salt. At Sse-mao and Pou-erl [Esmok and Puer of some ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... preparation of plans for their conservative use with the Bureau of Forestry, which is also charged with the general advancement of practical forestry in the United States. These various functions should be united in the Bureau of Forestry, to which they properly belong. The present diffusion of responsibility is bad from every standpoint. It prevents that effective co-operation between the Government and the men who utilize the resources of the reserves, without which the interests of both ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt

... out-of-door affair,' said Dick indolently, 'made for the diffusion of worked petticoats and ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... use of Greek on his coins and his traditional connection with the beginnings of the Mahayana are arguments against a very late date. If the date 78 A.D. is accepted, the conversion of the Yueeh-chih to Buddhism and its diffusion in Central Asia cannot have been the work of Kanishka, for Buddhism began to reach China by land about the time of the Christian era.[167] There is however no reason to assume that they were his work. Kanishka, like Constantine, probably favoured a winning ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... introduced by the negroes into the southern states, we do not know whether a single word or expression supposed to be peculiar to the United States, may be found, which cannot be traced to Great Britain or Ireland. In the volume on Insect Architecture, issued by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, we notice the word sparse, which, till then, we had supposed to be of American formation; and a late writer in Blackwood's Magazine says, that the New-England word tarnation, is current in the county of Suffolk in old England. The probability of its being introduced ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... benefit resulting from Agricultural Fairs, is a more rapid and general diffusion of knowledge among the farmers in regard to the advantages and practical utility of new inventions, for the saving of time and labor in agricultural operations. This is illustrated very clearly by the exhibition of Mr. Parish's "Stump and Grub Extractor," ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo

... hardly likely that Obeism should now be "rapidly gaining ground again" there, from the greater spread of Christianity and diffusion of enlightenment and information in general since the slave-emancipation; as also from the absence of its feeding that formerly accompanied every fresh importation from the coast: as, like mists before the mounting sun, all such ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... have been learning this year in the great Indian and Colonial Exhibition, which is to stand always as evidence of the numerous resources of the Empire, as aid to the full knowledge of them, and through that to their wide diffusion. We are a long way now from the wrecked ship of Captain Francis Pelsart, with which the ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... border, soon urged many to face even this barrier, and the number paying head-tax rose to sixteen hundred (1910) and later to seven thousand (1913). These rising numbers led British Columbia to demand total exclusion; but, thanks to the diffusion of the Chinese throughout the Dominion, their lack of assertiveness and their employment for the most part in industries which did not compete with union men or the smaller merchants, the agitation did not ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... ineradicable spirit of hatred against every thing British, vented itself harmlessly in the bravadoes of the tyrant; but was more dangerously inflamed among many of the native powers of India, by the secret diffusion of a project for a general and simultaneous insurrection. A double mystery of villany saved us, probably, at that time from the shocks and horrors of war in which we have been recently involved. The deposed Kurruck Singh ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... in a civilized community, should have by this time a fine accumulation of simplified knowledge for diffusion in public schools; a store of practical experience in how to promote social advancement most rapidly, a progressive economy and ease of administration, a simplicity in theory and visible benefit in practice, such as should make every child an eager ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... more for the amusement than for the glory or for the financial remuneration there was in it, he printed a modest weekly paper which he named "The Tidings"—"an Instrument for the Spreading of Proper New Arts and Philosophies, and for the Indication and Diffusion of What Haps and Hearsays Soever Are Meet for Chronicling Withal." This journal was of unpretentious appearance, and its editorial tone was modest to a degree. The size of the paper was eight by twelve inches, four pages, with two columns to the page. The ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... theories by making themselves the exemplars of a religious life, and by bearing witness to them, when necessary, by their own martyrdom; they had thus to become the effectual instruments to the gradual diffusion throughout the world of those elements of truth, of virtue and happiness, calculated to bring forth the ultimate ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio

... allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the utterances of a word that had no distinct purport to their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to argue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her no deeper pang had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story among themselves—had the summer breeze murmured about it—had the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... profound knowledge of the Bible which is so evident in his writings? A good many copies of the Scriptures must have been by this time, in one translation or another, scattered over the country. [Footnote: And it seems to us probable that this diffusion of the Bible, did more to rouse the slumbering literary power of England, than any influences of foreign literature whatever.] No doubt the word was precious in those days, and hard to buy; but there might have been a copy, notwithstanding, in the house of John Shakspere, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the United States by aiding technical schools, institutions of higher learning, libraries, scientific research, hero funds, useful publications and by such other agencies and means as shall from time to time be ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... Mithrasliturgie. Difference between the two initiations. Link between Phrygian, Mithraic, and Christian, Mysteries to be found in their higher, esoteric, teaching. Women not admitted to Mithraic initiation. Possible survival in Grail text. Joint diffusion through the Roman Empire. Cumont's evidence. Traces of cult in British Isles. Possible explanation of unorthodox character of Grail legend. Evidence of survival of cult in fifth century. The Elucidation ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... regret that I belong to that feeble and limited variety of creation, but with the next self-diffusion of the concentrated Infinite I may be ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan

... especially the education of women. In those days the few were educated; and to be educated was regarded as the distinctive mark of a leisured and cultivated class: now, education is general, but, like many other things, it has suffered in the process of diffusion, whether or not it may in the long run suffer ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... she cried, "why you don't jump about like Paus dance? Ebbery t'ing want a hand, and some want a foot. Plate to wash, crockery to open, water to b'ile, dem knife to clean, and not'ing missed. Lord, here's a madam, and 'e whole kitchen in a diffusion." ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... the diffusion in England, after the Conquest, of a new literature full of southern inventions and gaieties, and loves, and follies, was the silencing of the native singers. This silence lasted for a hundred years; the ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... forms of violence. Ideas do not make victorious headway by force of arms. Ideas must be combatted by ideas, and it is only by the propaganda of the idea that we can prepare humanity for its future. Violence is always a means of preventing the sincere and fruitful diffusion of an idea. We do not say this merely for the abnormals of the lower classes. We refer with scientific serenity also to the upper classes, who would suppress by violence every manifestation of revolt against the social iniquities, every affirmation ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... fetal organs. In poisoning by lead and copper the accumulation of the poison in the fetal tissues is greater than in the maternal, perhaps from differences in assimilation and disassimilation or from greater diffusion. Whilst it is not an impermeable barrier to the passage of poisons, the placenta offers a varying degree of obstruction: it allows copper and lead to pass easily, arsenic with greater difficulty. The accumulation of toxic substances in the fetus does not follow the same law as in the adult. They ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... their country, and with more tenacity as their dangers and calamities increased. To find, therefore, that expectations so gratifying were to be worse than disappointed; that they were to end in the diffusion of a mild unambitious religion, which, instead of victories and triumphs, instead of exalting their nation and institution above the rest of the world, was to advance those whom they despised to an equality with ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... intellectually, for it was to be given to Miss Winthrop, of Boston, and was to include Miss Winthrop's niece, Miss Grace Winthrop, also of Boston. These ladies, as she knew, belonged to clubs which, while modestly named after the days of the week, were devoted wholly to the diffusion of the most exalted mental culture. Moreover, they both were on terms of intimacy with Mr. Henry James. On the other hand, it was her desire that the dinner should be perfect materially, because among her guests was to be Miss Grace Winthrop's uncle, Mr. Hutchinson Port. ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... toleration has its origin in the weakening of faith; and, drawing the consequence of their affirmation, they recommend the diffusion of the spirit of doubt as the best means of promoting liberty of conscience. We have here the old argument which would suppress the use to get rid of the abuse. Persecutions are made in the name of religion; let us get rid of faith, and we shall have peace. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... the means of transmission. It would carry me far beyond my bounds to produce instances of this community of fable, among nations who never borrowed from each other anything intrinsically worth learning. Indeed, the wide diffusion of popular fictions may be compared to the facility with which straws and feathers are dispersed abroad by the wind, while valuable metals cannot be transported without trouble ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various

... a minority is making or taking part in the intellectual process itself, there is an atmosphere, a diffusion, produced around them, which affects many thousands who have but little share—but little conscious share, at any ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... The diffusion of knowledge is greater than in any other part of the globe of equal dimensions. Such are the excellent provisions of our laws, and the virtuous habits of our citizens, that schools of instruction in all useful knowledge are to be found in every place where they are needed. ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast

... a corporation of divine origin, devised to strengthen men in their struggle for goodness and holiness by the association and mutual help of fellow-believers. To the evangelical it was hardly more than a collection of congregations commended in the Bible for the diffusion of the knowledge and right interpretation of the Scriptures, the commemoration of gospel events, and the linking of gospel truths to a well-ordered life. To the high anglican as to the Roman catholic, the church was something ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... Witchcraft" were his contribution to a series of books, published by John Murray, which appeared between the years 1829 and 1847, and formed a collection of eighty volumes known as "Murray's Family Library." The series was planned to secure a wide diffusion of good literature in cheap five-shilling volumes, and Scott's "Letters," written and published in 1830, formed one of the earlier books in ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... a new party cause so much uneasiness? Can democracy make no use of that increased diffusion of political intelligence from which springs these new political movements? Mr. Asquith takes no such pessimistic view. He, least, realises that our present system is not necessarily the final stage in the development of ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... left him a painter, would have been equally great as a philosopher, a man of science, a poet, or a statesman. It may be so; but the life of Lionardo tends also to illustrate the disadvantage of too wide a grasp and diffusion of genius. Beginning much and finishing little, not because he was idle or fickle, but because his schemes were so colossal and his aims so high, he spent his time in preparation for the attainment of perfect excellence, which eluded him. Lionardo was the pioneer, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... Augsburg, Paris, Nuremberg, Cologne, Antwerp, and Venice. An earlier and even more extraordinary distribution of a letter of news is that of the letter purporting to be addressed by Prester John to the Emperor Manuel, which circulated through Europe about 1165. "How great was the popularity and diffusion of this letter," writes Sir Henry Yule, "may be judged in some degree from the fad that Zarncke in his treatise on Prester John gives a list of close on 100 mss. of it Of these there are eight in the British Museum, ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... orchard attended with wife, family, and friends; and the Doctor gave permission to the whole school to be present, being moved also, as he told the lads in a brief address, to go himself with the masters and support a very worthy enterprise for the diffusion of natural history throughout the country. The visits were paid to the great yellow-walled prison, and Ramball, in his best blue coat, the one with the basket-work treble-gilt buttons, attended on the Doctor himself to explain the peculiarities of the beasts and give ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... is on the vegetable principle, or as the skilful gardener lops the branch that it may throw out more vigorous shoots. It is true, we do not expect to see the tail itself sprouting out anew; but then we look to the increase of its reason, and to its more general diffusion in society. The extremities of our cauda, as fast as they are lopped, are sent to a great intellectual mill, where the mind is extracted from the matter, and the former is sold, on public account, to the editors of the daily journals. This is the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... not the idem velle atque idem nolle[535]— the same likings and the same aversions. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, you must shun the subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live very well with Burke: I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party.' GOLDSMITH. 'But, Sir, when people live together who have something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... to imply that what she has done claims merit on this account alone or chiefly. It does claim merit in this way, and of a very high order, because it avoids a prominent fault that vitiates most works intended to promote the general diffusion of knowledge. The fault referred to is the same which De Quincey, in a note to his "Political Economy," has called the greatest vice of teaching,—namely, that the teacher does not readily enter into, as an inheritance, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... set the little focalizer wheel for maximum diffusion. He felt sure that it would not be fatal, considering the distance and the physical vigor of the men he meant to hold. He ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl

... instructions whatever were given in his will or found in his papers beyond the comprehensive one "to found an institution at Washington to be called the Smithsonian Institution for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." No plan of the institution, no scrap of paper which might assist in the interpretation of the mandate, was ever discovered. Not a word respecting his intention was ever known to have been uttered. Only a single remark was ever recorded which ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... months ago, had never heard the names of these scandalous productions; the impunity with which the most horrible blasphemies are uttered in public, and the worse utterance of expressions and sentiments that breathe a hellish wickedness; the exposition, the public sale and the diffusion of statuettes, pictures and engravings, which brutally outrage piety, purity, the commonest decency; the representation in our theatres of pieces and scenes in which are turned into ridicule the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... with very cheap labor. With steamers controlling the rivers, a check could here be given to the slave-trade, and to the conflicts between the Moors and Negroes, and Christianity have a fair prospect of diffusion. Such a colony is strongly recommended by Lieutenant Allen, who accompanied the expeditions of 1833 and 1842; and there can be no doubt that it would attract the caravans from the remote interior, and put an end to the perilous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... should set aside a certain portion of its revenues to be spent annually upon education. But long delays had been caused by an interminable and fierce controversy over the rival merits of the vernaculars and of English as the more suitable vehicle for the diffusion of education. The champions of English were much encouraged by the immediate success which attended the opening of an English school in Calcutta in 1830 by Dr. Alexander Duff, a great missionary who was convinced that English education could alone win over ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... Indian Philosophical Congress at Calcutta University. At the end of the visit to Mysore, I enjoyed a talk with Sir C. V. Raman, president of the Indian Academy of Sciences. This brilliant Hindu physicist was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930 for his important discovery in the diffusion of light-the "Raman Effect" now ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... Keller's many friends who have lent him her letters to them and given him valuable information; especially Mrs. Laurence Hutton, who supplied him with her large collection of notes and anecdotes; Mr. John Hitz, Superintendent of the Volta Bureau for the Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge relating to the Deaf; and Mrs. Sophia C. Hopkins, to whom Miss Sullivan wrote those illuminating letters, the extracts from which give a better idea of her methods with her pupil than ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... preached, ad populum; and his works have given to his people, especially in Great Britain, an elevated tone of intelligence as well as of piety. He may, indeed, be considered the leader in those exertions which are now being made for the popular diffusion of knowledge. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... of all European peoples, is true also of some ballads. Their present form, of course, is relatively recent: in centuries of oral recitation the language altered automatically, but the stock situations and ideas of many romantic ballads are of dateless age and world-wide diffusion. The main incidents and plots of the fairy tales of Celts and Germans and Slavonic and Indian peoples, their unknown antiquity and mysterious origin, are universally recognized. No one any longer attributes them to this or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... them Sutras and Books of Discipline. Now the image was set up rather more than 300 years after the nirvana(7) of Buddha, which may be referred to the reign of king P'ing of the Chow dynasty.(8) According to this account we may say that the diffusion of our great doctrines (in the east) began from (the setting up of) this image. If it had not been through that Maitreya,(9) the great spiritual master(10) (who is to be) the successor of the Sakya, who could have caused the 'Three ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... the Neolithic as the age of horse power changed into that of steam and electricity, allowance being always made for the slower transmission of a new intelligence in the days when men lived alone and when a hundred years in the diffusion of knowledge was as a ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... made the final and ineffaceable distinction between the freeman and the slave. The perturbed restlessness and constant migration of tribes in Greece, recorded both by tradition and by history, would consequently tend at a very remote period to the institution and diffusion of slavery and the Pelasgi of one tribe would become the masters of the Pelasgi of another. There is, therefore, no necessity to look out of Greece for the establishment of servitude in that country by conquest and war. But the peaceful colonization of foreign settlers would ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... book of Propertius is not only an example of Addison's felicity in choice of motto for a paper, but was so bold and well-timed that it must have given a wholesome shock to the minds of many of the Spectators readers. Addison was not before Steele in appreciation of Milton and diffusion of a true sense of his genius. Milton was the subject of the first piece of poetical criticism in the Tatler; where, in his sixth number, Steele, having said that all Milton's thoughts are wonderfully just and natural, dwelt on the passage in which Adam ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... meal of dried fish a dish of smoking potatoes fresh out of the moist earth. After enjoying sufficiently my wonder at their appearance, and delight at their agreeable taste, she informed me of their first introduction into Europe, and their gradual diffusion over the more civilised ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... on a vessel three hundred miles from the land, I was much surprised to find particles of stone above the thousandth of an inch square, mixed with finer matter. After this fact one need not be surprised at the diffusion of the far lighter and smaller sporules ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... Young took all his countrymen into counsel while he was learning his art, as a farmer who brought to his calling a vigorous spirit of inquiry with an activity in the diffusion of his thoughts that is a part of God's gift to the men who have thoughts to diffuse; the instinct for utterance being almost invariably joined to the power of suggesting ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young

... every mission in the North-West native Christians contribute regularly to the support and diffusion of the Gospel, and, considering their means, their contributions are liberal. I remember hearing years ago of a native church in Calcutta agreeing, without a dissentient voice, to give a month's salary for the erection of their new church building—an act of liberality which has been seldom equalled ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... have a mottled, reddish-brown color because of decomposition, exposure to severe heat, or diffusion with blood present a problem of lack of contrast between ridges and depressions for photographic purposes. This lack of contrast can be overcome to a large extent by the use of a yellow or light red filter. Sometimes, in those cases where ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation

... scarcely necessary to remark that every country which has been long subjected to the sway of popery is in a state of great and deplorable ignorance. Spain, as might have been expected, has not escaped this common fate, and the greatest obstacle to the diffusion of the Gospel light amongst the Spaniards would proceed from the great want of education amongst them. Perhaps there are no people in the world to whom nature has been, as far as regards mental endowments, ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... which followed on this rapid diffusion of Tyndale's works forced Wolsey to more vigorous action; many of the Oxford Brethren were thrown into prison and their books seized. But in spite of the panic of the Protestants, some of whom fled over ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... the diffusion of political knowledge among a people exercising the right of self-government, is universally admitted. The form of government established by the people of the United States, though well adapted to promote the general welfare, is highly complicated; and the knowledge requisite ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... momentary pause by walking up the broken cement path, which was hard beset by plantain-weed and the long grass of the ill-kept lawn. Ascending the steps, he was assailed by an odour as of vehement bananas, a diffusion from some painful little chairs standing in the long, high, dim, rather sorrowful hall disclosed beyond the open double doors. They were stiff little chairs of an inconsequent, mongrel pattern; armless, with perforated wooden seats; legs tortured by the lathe ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... progressive development, and acts most powerfully, or at first, in the direction in which the dimensions of the attenuated mass decrease, and then in the direction of the angles or corners which from any cause may exist on the surface. This force not only causes spontaneous diffusion of gases and other substances over the surface, but is considered as very elementary in its nature, and competent to account for all the phenomena of capillarity, chemical affinity, attraction of aggregation, rarefaction, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... should call it the Age of Machinery. We trust our age is unfolding something better than material triumphs. The results of past thought and past endeavor are pouring through it in expanding currents of knowledge, liberty, and brotherhood. But the great agents in this diffusion of ideas and principles are those vehicles of iron, and those messengers of lightning, which compress the huge globe into a neighborhood, and bring all its interests within the system of a daily newspaper. Like the generations which ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... than a wave of intellectual activity set in, which has gone on increasing up to the present time. If it be true that never before in our history has so much attention been given to education as now; that never before did so many men devote themselves to the diffusion of knowledge, it is no less true that never was astronomical work so energetically pursued among us as at the ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... is so named from resemblance to the moline, or crossed iron, in the center of the upper millstone. Its ends are divided and curved backward. As they are turned in all directions, they are said to express the universal diffusion of the blessings of the Cross; or, as they decline both to the right and the left, they express willingness to do exact justice and give to all ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... water-cleaned birds. [Footnote: The American publication, "Science," points out that the addition of salt to the water cleanses blood from feathers, by preventing the solution of the blood-globules, and diffusion to the colouring matter, or red haemoglobin. I have found this "wrinkle" of great benefit in cleansing white-plumaged birds.] Sometimes, in very old skins, successive applications of water, turpentine, benzoline, and plaster, carefully managed, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... has been forgotten than the use that has been made in recent years of the term "national education." The leaders of both parties have discussed the subject as though any system of schools maintained at the public expense formed a system of national education. But the diffusion of instruction is not education, and the fact that it is carried on at the public expense does not make it national. Education is training the child for his life to come, and his life's value consists in the work which he will do. National education means bringing up every boy and girl to do his ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson

... the exhibition a voluptuous display—provided it be merely a matter of abject adulation or fashionable sensation, the most fastidious censor can find no fault with it. What, then, does the education of the masses amount to? We read of lectures for the diffusion of knowledge among the people; of colleges for young men; of various institutions of learning; of a liberal system of common schools for the poor. All this is very well in its way. A little light is better than none when the road is crooked, and the country abounds in ruts and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... any operation of the demon; that the venomous drug which Hocque placed in the stables, and by means of which he caused the death of the cattle stalled therein, was nothing but a poisonous compound, which, by its smell and the diffusion of its particles, poisoned the animals and caused their death; it required only for these drugs to be taken away for the cattle to be safe, or else to keep the cattle from the stable in which the poison was placed. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... of many years' reading and thought—is that it is a result of the marriage of the older East and the newer (non-classical) West through the agency of the spread of Christianity and the growth and diffusion of the "Saint's Life." The beginnings of Hagiology itself are very uncertain: but what is certain is that they are very early: and that as the amalgamation or leavening of the Roman world with barbarian material proceeded, the spread ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... history of the origin, collection, preservation, transmission, diffusion, and present influence of the Bible involves so much that is surprising and unique, as to amount to at least a strong presumption of a divine care. Among all the remarkable things about the Book, nothing is more remarkable than that there it is, after all that has happened. When we think of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... its chief home is British India. It principally affects the alluvial soil near the mouths of the great rivers, and more particularly the delta of the Ganges. Lower Bengal is pre-eminently the standing focus and centre of diffusion. In some years it is quiescent, though never absent; in others it becomes diffused, for reasons of which nothing is known, and its diffusive activity varies greatly from equally inscrutable causes. At irregular intervals this property becomes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... just heard of the breaking out of the war of the Second Coalition against France; and revolts in Egypt also demanded his presence.[116] But these last events furnished a damning commentary on his whole Syrian enterprise, which had led to a dangerous diffusion of the French forces. And for what? For the conquest of Constantinople or of India? That dream seems to have haunted Bonaparte's brain even down to the close of the siege of Acre. During the siege, and later, he was heard ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... other exertions of genius, the greater part of the praise is unknown and unenjoyed; the writer, indeed, spreads his reputation to a wider extent, but receives little pleasure or advantage from the diffusion of his name, and only obtains a kind of nominal sovereignty over regions which pay no tribute. The colloquial wit has always his own radiance reflected on himself, and enjoys all the pleasure which he bestows; he finds his power confessed by every one that approaches him, sees friendship ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... shadows, has, or imagines that he has, a vague fear of adverse contact with the invisible, and feels at every moment the obscure pressure of a hostile encounter which immediately dissolves. There is something of the effect of a forest in the nocturnal diffusion ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... flowers burst forth as the spring brings them on the walls of a ruin; even in the caverns there droop from the vaulted roof faintly colored tufts of green vegetation. The sun of education permeates all. Since this vast development of thought, this even and fruitful diffusion of light, we have scarcely any men of superiority, because every single man represents the whole education of his age. We are surrounded by living encyclopaedias who walk about, think, act and wish to be immortalized. Hence the frightful catastrophes of climbing ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... performed the ever-thankless task of translation; and, in preparing Madame Lenormant's work for the American public, has somewhat restrained the author's tendency to confusion and diffusion. Here and there, as editor, she has added slight but useful notes, and has accompanied the Memoirs with a very pleasantly written introduction, giving a skilful and independent analysis ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... whole; but I assert, that the result of which I have spoken is terribly common in our large cities, and that it is much more likely to be common in America than in any other country, from the effect of our climate, our free institutions, and the almost universal diffusion of printed matter. ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... vestiges of its Teutonic colonists. The richly ornamented door-ways of its village churches have, in particular, long been the theme of admiration among antiquaries. Bred up in the midst of these, and warmly partaking in the admiration of them, Mr. Cotman devoted his pencil and his graver to the diffusion of their fame. Common report, aided by the suffrages of the learned, and in some degree by locality, designated them as Saxon: at the same time, when they were compared with what is left in Britain, of workmanship avowedly Norman, the ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is, to use it as sparingly as ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... recollections of geometry. He put pencil to paper, drew a circle, and constructed what seemed likely to answer, and, indeed, was—as he said—certain, if only this bit were equal to that; which of course it was not. He forwarded his diagram to the Secretary of the Diffusion Society, to be handed to the author of the article, in case the difficulty should happen ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... volume much valuable assistance has been afforded by Mr. Greeley, of the New York Tribune, who has been earnest in his desire and efforts for the diffusion of what Margaret ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... trouble is the lot of all mankind, and that mankind would be the happier, in its other memories, without it. Go! Be its benefactor! Freed from such remembrance, from this hour, carry involuntarily the blessing of such freedom with you. Its diffusion is inseparable and inalienable from you. Go! Be happy in the good you have won, and in ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens

... Alcohol over and under Proof — Other Alcohol Tables. Continuous Aseptic and Antiseptic Fermentation and Sterilisation in Industrial Alcohol Manufacture. The Manufacture of Industrial Alcohol from Beets. — Beet Slicing Machines — Extraction of Beet Juice by Maceration, by Diffusion — Fermentation in Beet Distilleries — Plans of Modern Beet Distillery, The Manufacture of Industrial Alcohol from Grain. — Plan of Modern Grain Distillery. The Manufacture of Industrial Alcohol from Potatoes. The Manufacture of Industrial Alcohol from Surplus Stocks of Wine, Spoilt ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech

... Mother-Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite. What Signor Margiotta terms Universal Freemasonry is not the Palladium at all, but simply the Scotch Rite; one of his own diplomas, reproduced at page 120 of "Adriano Lemmi," is proof positive of this; and in view of the universal diffusion of this rite, no one would deny it the name. In the third place, the documents of Signor Margiotta as regards the Palladium are not to be trusted, because in one instance a gross imposition has been practised provably ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... equally distributed, there being few paupers and still fewer very rich individuals. The twenty years following 1840 have been called the "golden age" of American history, and as far as concerns the diffusion of material comforts ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre

... the European populations in bulk, without regard to the production of genius (for men of genius are always a very minute fraction of a nation), the European populations which they are accustomed to regard as standing at the head in the general diffusion of character, intelligence, education, and well-being, are all included in the first twelve or thirteen nations, which are the same in both lists though they do not follow the same order. These peoples, as peoples—that is, without regard to their size, ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... all igneous and most sedimentary rocks. It occurs in sea-water, and quite frequently in beach-sands. Traces of it are also usually to be found in alluvial deposits and in the soils of most mountain-folds. In spite of its wide diffusion, however, all the gold that has been mined could be stored readily in the vaults of any ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... Young. Like Thurtell, Fountleroy defended himself, and battled with the prejudicial reports circulated against him—among the rest his addiction to gambling. 'I am accused,' he said, 'of being an habitual gambler, an accusation which, if true, might easily account for the diffusion of the property. I am, indeed, a member of two clubs, the Albion and the Stratford, but never in my life did I play in either at cards, or dice, or any game of chance; this is well known to the gentlemen of these clubs; and my private friends, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... have discussed elsewhere [Footnote: Chapter V, Behind the Mirrors] the parentage of this infant born of Rousseau and Thrse, his moron mistress. The public mind is a child mind because in the first place the mob mind of men is primitive, youthful and undeveloped, and again because by the wide diffusion of primary instruction, we have steadily increased the number of persons with less than adult mentality who contribute to the forming of public opinion. In the nature of the case, fifty per cent. of the public must be sub-normal, that is, youthful mentality. We have reached down to the level of ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... unmortified passions of mankind. The world on the contrary would be something like a paradise regained; and universal benevolence and philanthropy, reside as they ought in the human heart. But though from long experience we may and must despair of the general diffusion of Christian sentiments and practice, we have this comfortable trust, in our own particular persons, that we have a peace which the world can neither give nor take away; and though the kingdoms of this world tumble into confusion, and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... three children is all the man of moderate income can allow himself. Four is an outside number, but it is worth making some sacrifices to attain it. Professor E. A. Ross has recently stated in The American Journal of Sociology that although restriction 'results in diffusion of economic well-being; lessens infant mortality; ceases population pressure, which is the principal cause of war, mass poverty, wolfish competition and class conflict,' yet there are 'disquieting effects, and in one-child or two-child families both parents and children miss many of the ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... the present legislators in power; and the nation, and especially the superior classes in Paris, were indignant at conduct which they considered as alike selfish and arbitrary. The royalist party gladly lent themselves to the diffusion of any discontents; and a formidable opposition to the measures of the existing ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... preserving, because they have secured the greatest good to the greatest proportion of the population of any form of government yet devised. All other forms of government approach it just in proportion to the general diffusion of education and independence of thought and action. As the primary step, therefore, to our advancement in all that has marked our progress in the past century, I suggest for your earnest consideration, and most earnestly recommend it, that ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant

... great weight and quantity of which was worth but very little; so that to lay up a hundred or two dollars there was required a pretty large closet, and, to remove it, nothing less than a yoke of oxen. With the diffusion of this money, at once a number of vices were banished from Lacedaemon; for who would rob another of such a coin? Who would unjustly detain or take by force, or accept as a bribe, a thing which it was not easy to hide, nor a credit to have, nor indeed of any use to cut in pieces? For when it ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... maintain her position, although she could scarcely breathe in the keen frigidity. Snow had fallen, deeper than she had ever seen. With it had come that strange quality of visibility that seems to appertain to a sheeted world like an inherent luminosity; or was it perchance some vague diffusion of light from the clouded moon, skulking affrighted somewhere in the grim and sullen purlieus of the sky? She listened, thinking to hear the stir of horses in their stalls, some sound from barn or byre, the wakening of ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... be shed abroad. And indeed it is diffused but not effused. For that diffusion of it is a [-rJo-tc] or an extension. For therefore are the beams of it called [i-m'] from the word [KTEIVEO-Oa,,] to be stretched out and extended. Now what a sunbeam is, thou mayest know if thou observe the light of the sun, when through some narrow hole it pierceth ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... selected some of the wisest men as well as greatest fools of the day to carry his plans into effect. His satanic majesty seems also to have considerably improved in his taste; owing, no doubt, to the present improving state of society, and the universal diffusion of useful knowledge. Indeed, we no longer hear of cloven-footed devils, only in a metaphorical sense—fire and brimstone are extinct or nearly so; the embers of hell and eternal damnation are chiefly kept alive and blown up by ultras among the sectaries ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... commences in human affairs. This era is distinguished by free representative governments, by entire religious liberty, by improved systems of national intercourse, by a newly awakened and an unconquerable spirit of free enquiry, and by a diffusion of knowledge through the community such as has been before altogether unknown ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... an invisible leader; a sanguine hope of speedy triumph, cooling into more remote expectation, and in the finer spirits transforming into a present spiritual communion; a growing elaboration of organization, priesthood, ritual, mythology; a diffusion through vast masses of people of the new religion, and a corresponding depreciation of its quality,—this was the early stage of Christianity. It vanquished and destroyed the Greek-Roman mythology, already half dead. Philosophy strove ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... and many were sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. When prosecutions were instituted, large numbers emigrated to Roumania and there took the name of "Lipovans." Women, especially one of the name of Anna Romanovna, have had a great share in the invention and diffusion of the doctrine. Not infrequently it is the women who, with their own hands, transform ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... is not split up in the world, but remains united in compact blocks, and thus forms, even in foreign countries, political centres of gravity in our favour, markets for our exports, and centres for the diffusion of German culture. ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... systems and means of Education, and the truth has at length been generally recognized that the stability and glory of nations must depend upon the intelligence and virtue of their inhabitants. In our own country, which is most of all interested in the diffusion of knowledge, unexampled efforts are being made not only for the general improvement of the culture offered in the seminaries, but for that elevation of the laboring classes which, whatever may be said by ambitious feeble-minds, seeking for reputation as ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... monastic revival, the Cistercian, arising in the last years of the 11th century, had a wider diffusion, and a longer and more honourable existence. Owing its real origin, as a distinct foundation of reformed Benedictines, in the year 1098, to Stephen Harding (a native of Dorsetshire, educated in the monastery ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... had cherished and worked for was the spreading of the knowledge of God and the diffusion of the true religion over the whole world.[346] The end of Jewish national life was approaching, but rabbis in Palestine and philosophers at Alexandria, unconscious of the imminent doom, thought that the promise ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... DIFFUSION switch would not be safe to tamper with. It would be near the SOLUTION switch, and almost as dangerous. For if you were to make diffusion cease in the world, the dissolved food and oxygen in your blood ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... Europe are composed almost entirely of starch, along with a few fibres of the ligneous matter. It may be purified by diffusion in warm water, passing the milky mixture through a linen cloth, evaporating the straining liquid over the fire, with constant agitation. The starch, dissolved by the heat, thickens as the water evaporates, but on being stirred it becomes granulated, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... they were diffused into the ten thousand parishes of England; for, (with a very few exceptions in favor of poor benefices, Welch or Cumbrian,) every parish priest must unavoidably have spent his three years at one or other of the English universities. And by this mode of diffusion it is, that we can explain the strength with which Shakspeare's thoughts and diction impressed themselves from a very early period upon the national literature, and even more generally upon the national ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... below reaches the rustic and uncultured classes. Every one is without exception under its influence. The superfluity of the subtle spirit expands far and wide, and finding nowhere to betake itself to, becomes, in due course, transformed into dew, or gentle breeze; and, by a process of diffusion, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... subject may be divided into three heads: Quality, or approximation to natural light. Quantity, as demanded by reflection or absorption. Installation, diffusion or ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford

... be irresistible natural tendencies to the growth of a persistent black race in the Gulf and river States, we must not make bad worse by futile attempts to resist it. If, on the other hand, the natural tendencies are to the diffusion and final disappearance of the black (and colored) race, then our policy should be ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... of the aborigines of this continent; the first effort at writing and printing in characters of their own; the first newspaper, and the first book printed among themselves; the first editor; and the first well organized system for securing a general diffusion of knowledge among the people. Among the Cherokees, also, we see established the first regularly elective government, with the legislative, judicial, and executive branches distinct; with the safeguards of a written constitution and trial by jury. Here, ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... rightly and without hesitation continue to employ these terms, provided that we remember always that the justification of any dominion imposed by a more advanced upon a backward or disorganised people is to be found, not in the extension of mere brute power, but in the enlargement and diffusion, under the shelter of power, of those vital elements in the life of Western civilisation which have been the secrets of its strength, and the greatest of its gifts to the world: the sovereignty of a just and rational system of law, liberty of person, of thought, and of speech, ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... in Europe: and though we devoutly wish it may not prove the occasion of bloody contests, we shall rejoice to trace its fruits in the gradual destruction of old despotic systems, and in the general diffusion of knowledge among the people, and the enjoyment of those equal and just rights, which mild ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... fact, the spread of the new ideas has been easy, because a large class derives power from their diffusion, while to oppose them is the business of no one in particular. Moreover, the disinterested love of truth for its own sake is rare; the patience to unearth it is rarer still, especially in the East. Patriotism, too, is a mighty engine working in the interests ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain

... accomplishment of what is to be done. If the suffrage is exposed to defect in wisdom by reason of its dulness and ignorance, which I by no means admit, the remedy lies not in a guardianship of the people by the educated class, but in popular education itself, in lower forms, and the diffusion of that general information which, in conjunction with sound morals, is all that is required for the comprehension of the great questions decided by suffrage, and the choice of fit leaders who shall carry the decisions into effect. The vast increase ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... means to all kinds of ends, high as well as low, spiritual as well as material." According to this definition, money may as readily become a source of mischief as an instrument for good; its wider diffusion among the community has, therefore, a mixed effect, and it works for evil or for good, according to the character of the individual. It is only when the character is disciplined by the habitual exercise of self-restraint, ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... to Christian worship, yet it is a superstition, founded on ancient tradition. This tribe once lived near the head waters of the Mississippi; and, as the early Jesuit missionaries were energetic zealots, in the diffusion of their religious sentiments, probably to make their faith more acceptable to the Indians, the Roman Catholic rites were blended with the homage shown to the pipe, which custom of offering, in the form of a cross, is still retained by them; but as every custom is handed ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... literary devices, and it is an essentially poetic one, is the diffusion through the story of some particular background, a background which gathers to itself a sort of brooding personality as the tale proceeds, and often becomes before the book is finished far more arresting and important than any of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... slopes bright spots or glows of fire marked the occupied claim-sites. From the camp itself there came a murmur that sometimes swelled louder under the dull flare that hung over the lower end of the valley; reflection and diffusion from the gasoline lights and acetylene flares used by the owners of the eating-houses, the bars and gambling shacks, all open for business during miners' hours, which meant two shifts, of ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... undermining the whole structure. The growing use of firearms in war; the rapid multiplication of printed books; the spread of the new learning after the taking of Constantinople in 1453, and the subsequent diffusion of Greek teachers throughout Europe; the surely and steadily increasing communication with the new world, and the consequent increase of the precious metals; and, last but not least, Vasco da Gama's discovery of the new trade route from ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... comfort is the wide diffusion of that peculiar language, "trade English"; it is not only used as a means of intercommunication between whites and blacks, but between natives using two distinct languages. On the south-west Coast you find ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... If I did not think you a good-tempered and truth-loving man, I should not tell you that (spite of the great knowledge, store of facts, capital views of the correlation of the various parts of organic nature, admirable hints about the diffusion, through wide regions of many related organic beings, etc., etc.) I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly, parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow, because I think ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... work-houses, industrial, and reformatory schools, all concerned with primary and secondary education in its administrative aspect, while the Board of Works is occupied with the erection of school buildings. The extravagance and inefficiency which results from this diffusion and consequent overlapping of power and duties on the part of officials scattered about in Tyrone House, in Hume Street, in Merrion Place, and three or four other parts of Dublin, is well illustrated by the fact that out of every 20s. given as ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... with those mentioned before, seem to me to indicate that errors of localization are largely responsible for judgments which seem to be due to fusion or diffusion of sensations. But they are responsible only in this way, they prevent the correction of the first impression. I do not mean that a person never changes his judgment after having once made it, but a change of judgment is not necessarily a correction. Often it is just the contrary. But ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... great poet of a literary period is still a popular poet in no narrower sense than the popular poet of an illiterate age. The difference between them is not in the way they originate, but it is their diffusion and propagation, in short, tradition. This tradition is exposed to eternal danger without the help of handwriting, and runs the risk of including in the poems the remains of those individualities through whose oral tradition ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche



Words linked to "Diffusion" :   spreading, crop-dusting, suffusion, osmosis, permeation, pervasion, spraying, activity, spread, natural process, distribution, transport, diffuse, natural philosophy, mythology, action, natural action, physics



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