"State of nature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... itself—Nukuheva. Its inhabitants have become somewhat corrupted, owing to their recent commerce with Europeans, but so far as regards their peculiar customs and general mode of life, they retain their original primitive character, remaining very nearly in the same state of nature in which they were first beheld by white men. The hostile clans, residing in the more remote sections of the island, and very seldom holding any communication with foreigners, are in every respect unchanged from ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... nothing but the mutton, until the humane, but late Mr. Godolphin bequeathed a sum of money, to be appropriated in supplying them with potatoes, which henceforth accompanied the mutton, though in a state of nature; and as this was not contrary to the statute, and as in all charities as little is done for the money as is possible, the poor boys and their potatoes were without remedy, until one of the College Fellows ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... conquerors—has become his own master, and his own landlord; and an impulse has been given to industry, which is shown by trim cottages, gay gardens, and fresh olive orchards, pushed up into glens which in a state of nature ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... elephant exists only in a state of nature. None of the nations upon this little-known continent tame or train him to any purpose. He is only prized among them for his precious tusks, and his flesh as well. Some have asserted that this species is more fierce than its Indian congener, and could not be domesticated. This is altogether a ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... soil through which they flow is highly polluted. All water of doubtful purity should be boiled, and there are but few natural waters of undoubted purity. There is no such thing as absolutely pure water in a state of nature. The mountain streams perhaps approach nearest to it where there are no humans to pollute the banks; but then there are always the beasts and birds, and they, too, are subject to disease. There are very few waters that at some time of the year and under ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... enough with other varieties or are left to themselves and to the crossing with individuals of the original form of their species; and hence we can not see how individual characteristics, even if favorable to the individual, will not be lost again by the crossing which is inevitable in a state of nature, with such individuals as do not possess those characteristics. Besides, it is an established fact, confirmed by all our observations stretching over thousands of years, that the characteristics of species are preserved ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... forests like timid hares pursued by hounds. The Spaniards followed them, but only succeeded in capturing one woman, whom they took on board their ships, where they gave her plenty of food and wine and clothes (for both sexes lived absolutely naked and in a state of nature); afterwards this woman, who knew where the fugitives were concealed, returned to her people, to whom she showed her ornaments, praising the liberality of the Spaniards; upon which they all returned to the coast, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... existing savagery for the earliest period of human savagery. Darwin is not satisfied with the evidence as to promiscuity, strong as it appeared to him to be, and he pronounced it to be "extremely improbable" in a state of nature, and falls back upon the evidence of the rudimentary stages of human existence, there being, as among the gorillas, but one adult male in the band, and "when the young male grows up, a contest takes place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing and ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... in a state of anarchy, and there is no government, no protection to life, property, or business; no law and no self-respect or morality among the people. We are living in a perfect state of nature, without the restraining influence of civil or military law, ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry
... fiction of the GOLDEN AGE, is in some respects, of a piece with the PHILOSOPHICAL fiction of the STATE OF NATURE; only that the former is represented as the most charming and most peaceable condition, which can possibly be imagined; whereas the latter is painted out as a state of mutual war and violence, attended with ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... Europeans to fix a settlement upon it. However, this Eastern side is not that barren and miserable country that Dampier and others have described the Western side to be. We are to consider that we see this country in the pure state of nature; the Industry of Man has had nothing to do with any part of it, and yet we find all such things as nature hath bestow'd upon it in a flourishing state. In this Extensive Country it can never be doubted but what most sorts of Grain, Fruit, roots, etc., of every kind ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... that in the lower animals misery can result from two causes only—restraint and disease; consequently, that animals in a state of nature are not miserable. They are not hindered nor held back. Whether the animal is migrating, or burying himself in his hibernating nest or den; or flying from some rapacious enemy, which he may, or may not, be able to escape; ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... another law, by which that of similarity is greatly modified, to wit, the law of variation or divergence. All organic beings, whether plants or animals, possess a certain flexibility or pliancy of organization, rendering them capable of change to a greater or less extent. When in a state of nature variations are comparatively slow and infrequent, but when in a state of domestication they occur much oftener and to a much greater extent. The greater variability in the latter case is doubtless owing, in some measure, ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... insists, "have stood the test of ages; and the plant every where retained its name and credit: and one of our good herbarists, who had seen a wonderful case of a swoln spleen, so big, and hard as to be felt with terror, brought back to a state of nature by it" (p. 37).[15] The greatest portion of Hill's concluding section combines advertisement for the powder medicine he was himself manufacturing at a handsome profit together with a protest against competing apothecaries: ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... planting, fencing, and the accommodation of roads, it is quite evident that his extra thousand pounds of capital will be more profitably expended on such purposes than on lending it to Richard Roe, who has double the quantity of land in a state of nature. For Richard, though with the best intentions, may not find his agricultural returns quite so speedy as he expected, may shake his head negatively at the hint of repayment of the principal, and even be rather tardy with tender of interest at the term. John, moreover, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society, under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger: and as in the latter state even the stronger individuals are prompted by the uncertainty of their condition to submit ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... not these changes take place suddenly in a state of nature? As Mr. Murphy says,[95] "It may be true that we have no evidence of the origin of wild species in this way. But this is not a case in which negative evidence proves anything. We have never witnessed ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... difficult afterwards to rear it by hand.[3] Caterpillars which have been fed on the leaves of one kind of tree, have been known to perish from hunger rather than to eat the leaves of another tree, although this afforded them their proper food, under a state of nature;[4] and so it is in many ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... not yet driven the primitive tenants of the forest from their favorite retreats. Most of the country was still in a state of nature—unsettled and unappropriated. Few fences or inclosures impeded the free range of the hunter, and very few buts and bounds warned him of his being about to trespass upon the private property of some neighbor. Herds of buffaloes and ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... kinds of ground. The conception is thus presented by Fred. Arndt: "At the outset, the word of God finds all in the first unreceptive condition; we go away without experiencing its power, and remain in a state of nature, unconverted. Next, the word begins to take effect upon us, and we are awakened. Oh now the word of the Lord burns with a holy glow in our hearts! We give ourselves over with our whole souls in those first days of love. We have found heaven; we have seen it opened, and the angels of ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... sentimentalism of which Rousseau was to be the great exponent. Goldsmith is beginning to denounce luxury—a characteristic mark of the sentimentalist—and his regret for the period when 'every rood of earth maintained its man' is one side of the aspiration for a return to the state of nature and simplicity of manners. The inimitable Vicar recalls Sir Roger de Coverley and the gentle and delicate touch of Addison. But the Vicar is beginning to take an interest in philanthropy. He is impressed ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... leaving our railroad, and to depend for twenty days on the contents of our wagons; and as the country was very obscure, mostly in a state of nature, densely wooded, and with few roads, our movements were necessarily slow. We crossed the Etowah by several bridges and fords, and took as many roads as possible, keeping up communication by cross-roads, or by couriers through the woods. I personally joined General Thomas, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... adds: 'I still think with shame and self-contempt of my boyish weakness, which, however, did not continue in later years. The process taught me for life the lesson that to be weak is to be wretched, that the state of nature is a state of war, and Vae Victis the great law of Nature. Many years afterwards I met R. Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke) at dinner. He was speaking of Winchester, and said with much animation that he had ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... often been said that no animal uses any tool, but this can be so easily refuted on reflection, that it is hardly worth while considering; for illustration, though, the chimpanzee in a state of nature cracks nuts with a stone; Darwin saw a young orang put a stick in a crevice, slip his hand to the other end, and use it in a proper manner as a lever. The baboons in Abyssinia descend in troops from the mountains to plunder fields, ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... precedes society; but that his very first state and situation may justly be esteemed social. This, however, hinders not, but that philosophers may, if they please, extend their reasoning to the supposed state of nature; provided they allow it to be a mere philosophical fiction, which never had, and never coued have any reality. Human nature being composed of two principal parts, which are requisite in all its actions, the affections and understanding; ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... gospel is that it is better to be dead than not to be Real, society should try to approach nature by the way of the materialistically ignoble, and even go such a pace of Realism as literature finds it difficult to keep up with; but it is doubtful if the young woman will get around to any desirable state of nature by this route. We may not be able to explain why servile imitation of nature degrades art and degrades woman, but both deteriorate without an ideal so high that there is no earthly model for it. Would you like to marry, perhaps, a Greek statue? says ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... found the Milnea roxburghiana to be their proper food plant. I do not know the proper food-plant of the Mylitta (Tusser), but I have succeeded very well with it, as it is a more hardy species than the Atlas. Though a Bombyx be polyphagous in a state of nature, yet I think most species have a tree proper to themselves, on which they are more at home than on any other plant. I should like, if you could find out from some your correspondents in India, on what species ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... town to town, and reconstruct a fortress from the imposing ruins in the bed of the River Waag. Nay, he even ventured upon the audacious experiment of cutting through the mountain chain separating the River Hernad from the River Poprad, and uniting these two rivers (in a state of nature they flow in diametrically opposite directions) into one broad continuous water-course, thus bringing together all the various branches of that scattered family of kindred nations which dwells between the White ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... to provide for themselves by being kept in a state of confinement, and therefore even liberty would be a barbarous gift to them now. Punctuality in supplying them with everything necessary was the only kindness that can be shown to them, since they have forgotten the habits of their state of Nature. She has been very exact since this conversation in feeding and cleaning them, and does everything in her power to make amends for their loss ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... 11 And now, my son, all men that are in a state of nature, or I would say, in a carnal state, are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity; they are without God in the world, and they have gone contrary to the nature of God; therefore, they are in a state contrary ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... said, "how beautiful nature is and how simple things are in a state of nature. It's only when man interjects himself onto a scene that things get complicated. Take Flora for instance. Before Grandfather came here, it must have been a pleasant place with the simple natives happy in their paradise. But that's ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... lawn-tennis, in connection with bright eyes and pretty faces, would compensate for the labours of the day and let off the steam. They were deep in their game when a rap at the door brought their faces suddenly to a state of nature. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... always employed on works of taste or classic elegance, they serve at least to unlock the treasures of native genius; they present us with frequent sallies of bold imagination, and constantly afford matter for philosophical reflection by showing the workings of the human mind in its almost original state of nature." ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... different species sprout up in place of the old ones; and here the same remark, in a great measure, holds good,—acacias very commonly making their appearance on land that has been once under cultivation, and afterwards permitted to relapse into a state of nature. From this circumstance it should seem, that trees, like other vegetables, extract a particular substance from the ground, which substance it is necessary should be restored before the same species of tree can be readily grown a second time,—a restoration to be effected, perhaps, by such chemical ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... simplicity of manners, and who are perpetually committing the blunder of supposing that every advance towards perfection only withdraws man further from his primitive and proper condition, Popanilla triumphantly demonstrated that no such order as that which they associated with the phrase 'state of nature' ever existed. 'Man,' said he, 'is called the masterpiece of nature; and man is also, as we all know, the most curious of machines; now, a machine is a work of art, consequently, the masterpiece of nature is the masterpiece ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... remains in a state of nature uncultivated and uninclosed, is known among the inhabitants of the Australian colonies by the expressive name of the Bush.[3] It includes land and scenery of every description, and, likewise, no small variety of climate, as may be supposed from the great extent ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... not of themselves develop into brocade. A certain personal idiosyncrasy must be assumed at bottom, else cotton damask would be as good as silk and all men having like opportunities would be equally great. This idiosyncrasy is brought out by social pressure, while in a state of nature it might have betrayed itself only in trivial and futile ways, as it ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... so, but a gracious soul that is reconciled With God in Christ, and hath the spirit of grace dwelling in it, may suppose itself a stranger yet unto this reconciliation, and void of the grace of God, and so be still in the state of nature. ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... Penalties," exist? It can only be for the public benefit, and our enquiry is thus a study of the grounds of political obedience. Locke thus traverses the ground Hobbes had covered in his Leviathan though he rejects every premise of the earlier thinker. To Hobbes the state of nature which precedes political organization had been a state of war. Neither peace nor reason could prevail where every man was his neighbor's enemy; and the establishment of absolute power, with the consequent surrender by men ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... gemmules (to use my own term) were often deficient in buds, I cannot but think that bud-variations would be commoner than they are in a state of nature; nor does it seem that bud-variations often exhibit deficiencies which might be accounted for by the absence of the proper gemmules. I take a very different view of the meaning or cause of sexuality. (271/4. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the globes belonging to our solar system—all the planets and comets—consist, at the beginning of all things was decomposed into its primary elements, and filled the whole space of the universe in which the bodies formed out of it now revolve. This state of nature, when viewed in and by itself without any reference to a system, seems to be the very simplest that can follow upon nothing. At that time nothing has yet been formed. The construction of heavenly bodies at a distance from one another, their distances regulated ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... to maturity. Other moths bred by collectors behaved in the same way, but the grubs were reared to maturity, and three successive generations of "fatherless" moths were obtained. In these cases the hatching of unfertilised eggs is not known to occur in a state of nature, although it probably occurs occasionally. It has also been observed—an important fact when considered with the history of the frog's egg and the needle—that "brushing" the unfertilised eggs of the silkworm and other moths, that is to say, gently ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... them easy upon the subject, and their familiarity was renewed; but great caution was used, to be fully prepared for a similar attack, by keeping the men well-armed on all occasions. Of the animals left at this island in the former voyages, many were thriving; and the gardens, though left in a state of nature, were found to contain cabbages, onions, leeks, radishes, mustard, and a few potatoes. The captain was enabled to add to both. At the solicitation of Omai, he received two New Zealand lads on board the Resolution, and by the 27th was clear of ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... avoided.—The benefits and evils of the two processes depend on the degree of differentiation in the sexual elements.—The evil effects not due to the combination of morbid tendencies in the parents.—Nature of the conditions to which plants are subjected when growing near together in a state of nature or under culture, and the effects of such conditions.—Theoretical considerations with respect to the interaction of differentiated sexual elements.—Practical lessons.—Genesis of the two sexes.—Close correspondence between the effects of cross-fertilisation and self-fertilisation, ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... condition as we conceive of savage uncivilised life; they put themselves beyond the law as well of God as of man, and are, with respect to principle and reciprocal conduct, like so many individuals in a state of nature. The inhabitants of every country, under the civilisation of laws, easily civilise together, but governments being yet in an uncivilised state, and almost continually at war, they pervert the abundance which civilised life produces to carry ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... larger sense than our word Duty) of man is (they said) to keep himself in the state of nature; the second or derivative officium is to keep to such things as are according to nature, and to avert those that are contrary to nature; our gradually increasing experience enabled us to discriminate the two. The youth learns, as he grows up, to value bodily accomplishments, mental cognitions ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... rights of man and citizen, the sole metaphysical act of the Revolution to this time, had given it a social and universal signification. This declaration had been much jeered; it certainly contained some errors, and confused in terms the state of nature and the state of society; but it was, notwithstanding, the very ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... and blew it up, lying on the soft short grass in a state of nature after a swim, there being none to see us but the glorious sun. The skinned perch were sweeter than any ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... yet almost every acre was capable of yielding all the various rich productions of a tropical land. Considering the enormous area of Brazil, the proportion of cultivated ground can scarcely be considered as anything compared to that which is left in the state of nature: at some future age, how vast a population it will support! During the second day's journey we found the road so shut up that it was necessary that a man should go ahead with a sword to cut away the creepers. The forest abounded with beautiful objects; among which the tree ferns, though ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... feel that my decision is for his benefit. We must not here put the value upon a finished education which we used to do. Let us give him every advantage which the peculiarity of his position will allow us to do; but we are now in the woods, to a certain degree returned to a state of nature, and the first and most important knowledge is to ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... to my heels and ran as far as M. le cure's. He lent me a skirt belonging to his servant, for I was almost in a state of nature, and he went to fetch Maitre Chicot, the country watchman who went to Criquetot to fetch the police who came to my ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... savages rejoicing in the tattoo, natural for barbarians rejoicing in violence, but not natural for man in a true civilization, which I insist is the natural state to which he tends by a sure progression. The true state of Nature is not war, but peace. Not only every war, but every recognition of war as the mode of determining international differences, is evidence that we are yet barbarians,—and so also is every ambition for empire founded on force, and not on the ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... exactly, little girl. People living in what we call a state of nature, like African savages, or as our American Indians once did, seem to follow Heart of Nature's law; 'Kill only what ye need for food.' But many people that are called civilized never think of natural law at all, and having a coarse streak in their natures ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... Louis Lake. The distance was about nine miles and through an intervale from half a mile to two miles in width. This valley was studded with huge trees at such a distance from each other that it might well be called a park, and when in a state of nature it must have been not only beautiful, but magnificent. The curse of civilization was upon it, however. For lumbering purposes a dam had then been built across the outlet of Indian Lake, and the intervale had been overflowed until all the trees were dead. The grass was rich and we were told that ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... the water, or near a mere sandbank, or on an inhabited shore. At first we could only see, as before, the white foam dancing up, then dark rocks and yellow sand, and beyond it brown hills and a few trees. As the light still further increased we discovered that the country was in a state of nature; in vain we looked for traces ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... hides, others cloth and clothes of the wool of the country. Some were hinds on neighbouring farms, but most were shepherds, for there was now very little tillage. Almost all the land formerly cultivated had been given up to grass and sheep, and not a little of it was steadily returning to that state of nature from which it had been reclaimed, producing heather, ling, blueberries, cnowperts, and cranberries. The hamlet was too far from the sea for much fishing, but some of its inhabitants would join relatives on the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... the shores of all the Great Lakes was little more than a wilderness. There were exceptions at particular points, but these were few and far asunder. The whole coast of Ohio—for Ohio has its coast as well as Bohemia [Footnote: See Shakespeare—Winter's Tale.]—was mostly in a state of nature, as was much of those of Pennsylvania and New York, on the side of the fresh water. The port which the bee-hunter had in view was Presque Isle, now known as Erie, a harbor in Pennsylvania, that has since become somewhat celebrated ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... masters. This, however, still remains a question, and there is reason to believe that the wild dog is just as much a native of the wilderness as the lion or tiger. If there be these doubts about an animal left for centuries in a state of nature, how can we expect to unravel the difficulties accumulated by ages of domestication? Who knows for a certainty the true prototype of the goat, the sheep, or the ox? To the unscientific reader such questions might appear idle, as having been settled from time immemorial; yet they have ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... perhaps, to enquire into the truth of her story, and I will help her as far as I can,—though not in the useless way she proposes. Her letter is evidently unstudied, and so natural, that the orthography is also in a state of nature. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part of ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... reliance can be placed upon human integrity, the principle that it is more essential to arouse fear than to invite confidence would not, perhaps, be a false one, if we were living in a state of nature, where every man would have to protect himself and directly maintain his own rights. But in civilized life, where the State undertakes the protection of our person and property, the principle is no longer applicable: it stands, like the ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... there is a growing belief that some radical reform is needed; and this dissatisfaction is in itself wholesome. Boys come into college with no reading and with minds unused to the very practice of study; and they leave college, too often, in the same state of nature. There are even those, inside and outside of academic halls, who protest that our higher institutions of learning simply fail to educate at all. That is slander; but in sober earnest, you will find few experienced college professors, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... fair in the afternoon of the 22d, accompanied by the botanists, I visited our gardens on Motuara, which we found almost in a state of nature, having been wholly neglected by the inhabitants. Nevertheless, many articles were in a flourishing condition, and shewed how well they liked the soil in which they were planted. None of the natives having yet made their appearance, we made a fire on the point of ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... varieties, and their mongrel offspring, are very generally, but not quite universally, fertile. Nor is this nearly general and perfect fertility surprising, when we remember how liable we are to argue in a circle with respect to varieties in a state of Nature; and when we remember that the greater number of varieties have been produced under domestication by the selection of mere external differences, and not of differences in the reproductive system. In all other respects, excluding fertility, there is a close general resemblance ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... hard, and misanthropic in the state of nature, softened wonderfully as he sat in the gloom of the tablecover, in silent possession of ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... Mexican mules and all the articles we required, though we had to pay somewhat highly for them. Well satisfied, we set off to return to Mr Praeger's. The houses and the stores were few and far between, the intermediate country being still in a state of nature. As our laden mules could not travel fast, we had to camp on the way. We chose a grassy spot near a wood, offering sufficient attractions to our animals to prevent them from straying, though of course we hobbled them ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... of work which, by itself, enables one to form a sound judgment on the questions involved in the action of the law of natural selection. These rest mainly on the external and vital relations of species to species in a state of nature—on what has been well termed by Semper the "physiology of organisms," rather than on the anatomy or physiology ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... evil good; our light is your darkness, and our darkness your light. Yet surely you cannot be altogether insane. Come, come, let us look further. How is it! Try now to recall your reason. A long life—a life, and a long one! Surely there can be no human being in a healthy state of nature who wishes to prolong his life; and as to riches, it is possible that anyone exists who really and honestly desires riches? Impossible! And requited love! Oh, Atam-or, you are mad to-day! You are always strange, but now you have quite taken leave ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... of nature the weaklings perish. If man interferes with this state of nature in the lower animals, he may make a selection and cultivate some particular attribute. This is artificial selection, and is best exemplified in the experiments with pigeons. Pasteur saved the silk industry of France, and perhaps ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... rather inactive; the proper time having at length arrived, exuviation is effected in the course of a few hours, body and limbs being alike relieved from their hard covering. Until the new shell acquires firmness and strength, the creature is very shy, and in the state of nature, retires into cavities below rocks or heaps of protecting sea-weed. Sir John had kept for some time one of our smaller species of shore-crabs (Carcinus monas), of medium size, of a brown colour, with one white limb. One summer evening it was put outside ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... and the foxes afterward chose them for their habitations. Every unit in the whole animate world, not only chooses the place of its abode, but also the modes and means of its subsistence. Even plants in a state of nature conform to this general law. Shall man, born to glorify God and enjoy him forever, be cut short in the free exercise of his will? I cannot believe it. But I do believe that the brightest saint in heaven is where he is because it was first his will ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... meaning. But good government in the Middle Ages was only another name for a public-spirited and powerful monarchy. Such monarchies existed in the western states; they rested upon the shoulders of a middle class of small landowners and wealthy merchants, too weak to defend themselves in a state of nature, a war of all against all, but collectively strong enough to overawe ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... for ever adored an Infinite Intelligence, the friend of human kind. A sentiment of confidence in his supreme power filled their minds with consolation under the past, with fortitude for the present, and with hope for the future. Thus, compelled by misfortune to return to a state of nature, those women had unfolded in their own bosoms, and in those of their children, the feelings which are most natural to the human mind, and which are our ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... environment survive; those without, perish. In consequence when any individual in a species happens to be born with a variation specially adapted to its environment, in the sharp "struggle for existence" that characterizes animal life in a state of nature, it alone will be able to survive and reproduce its kind. All the variations of species current are, therefore, examples of this continuous process of descent with adaptive modifications. The origin of the human species came ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... not cultivated wheat (Triticum sativum) only a plant brought by man into the condition in which we actually see it? Who can tell me in what country such a plant lives in a state of nature—that is to say, without being there the result of its culture in some ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... individuals. They appear to consider yellow ochre and peacocks' feathers the climax of barbarism—marabouts and kalydor the acme of refinement. A ring through the nose calls forth their deepest pity—a diamond drop to the ear commands their highest respect. To them, nothing can show a more degraded state of nature than a New Zealand chief, with his distinctive coat of arms emblazoned on the skin of his face; nor anything of greater social elevation than an English peer, with the glittering label of his "nobility" tacked to his breast. To a rational mind, the one is not a whit more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... gone by himself, but unacquainted with that part of the forest, he would scarcely alone have found his way in the dark. A couple of hours' hard riding, sometimes across cultivated ground, and at others over what remained in a state of nature, brought him to the neighbourhood of the Grange. Leaving the horses with Burdale, who promised to remain concealed with them under a thick clump of trees, he went towards the house on foot. Jack found the Squire waiting for him in a sheltered ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of care which man has had to devote to the horse is found in the matter of shoeing. In the state of nature the admirably constructed hoof sufficiently provided the animal against the excessive wearing of its horny extremity. Nature, however, rarely provides for more strength and endurance than the creature in its wild state demands; and so it comes about that when ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... life is the primary cause of warfare in the minds of the people of Bontoc, and it is to-day a persistent cause. Moreover, since interpueblo warfare exists and head taking is its form, head-hunting is a necessity with an individual group of people in a state of nature. Without it a people could have no peace, and would be annihilated by some group which believed it a ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... occasion a violent shock in your habits, your fortunes, and your prejudices. Vicious contracts and abusive claims must be dissolved, unjust distinctions and ill founded property renounced; you must indeed recur for a moment to a state of nature. Consider whether you can consent ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... remark,' continued Goethe, 'how large a portion of the life of a rich Englishman of rank is passed in duels and elopements. Lord Byron himself says, that his father carried off three ladies. And let any man be a steady son after that. Properly speaking, he lived perpetually in a state of nature, and with his mode of existence the necessity for self-defence floated daily before his eyes. Hence his constant pistol-shooting. Every moment he expected to be called out. He could not live alone. Hence, with all his oddities, he was very indulgent to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... circumference, through its numerous curvatures, 812 miles. Except the island of St. Joseph, and one or two trading establishments belonging to the north-west company, the shores of this lake were in a state of nature, or inhabited only by Indians. When the Americans were allowed to obtain the dominion of Lake Erie, which they did in 1813, it was determined at the close of the following year to create a naval ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... or politician, so powerful in his own element, on board ship during a storm becomes at once of less general value or consideration than the meanest sailor who can reef a sail or guide a wheel; and, were we to be reduced again suddenly to a state of nature, a company of highly civilised men and women would at once, as we have before remarked, find their social value completely inverted; landed on a desert shore, unarmed and naked, to encounter wild beasts and savages, and to combat nature for food, the primitive scale ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... nothing like this for man in the state of nature. As he depends only upon himself, it is necessary that he be sufficient for everything. All creation is his property; but he finds in it as many hindrances as helps. He must surmount these obstacles with the single strength that God has given him; he cannot reckon on any other aid ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... expressly to establish natural selection as the main means of organic modification? "The new factor which Mr. Romanes suggests," continues the Times, "is that at a certain stage of development of varieties in a state of nature a change takes place in their reproductive systems, rendering those which differ in some particulars mutually infertile, and thus the formation of new permanent species takes place without the swamping effect of free intercrossing. . . . How his theory can be properly termed one ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... now however, "Dus aliter visum"—for just as she came to the very moving apostrophe alluded to, and called out, "why comes he not?"—a gruff voice from behind answered in a strong Cork brogue—"ah! would ye have him come in a state of nature?" at the instant a loud whistle rang through the house, and the pavillion scene slowly drew up, discovering me, Harry Lorrequer, seated on a small stool before a cracked looking-glass, my only habiliments, as I am an honest man, being a pair of long white silk stockings, and a very richly ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... example has, in this matter, been so followed, that I have heard travellers say, who have been in foreign countries, that the shire of Ayr, for its bonny round green plantings on the tops of the hills, is above comparison either with Italy or Switzerland, where the hills are, as it were, in a state of nature. ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... and peaceful government, resting on influences that seem, in a great measure, to be founded in nature—the most inflexible of all rulers. Tastes, conditions, connections, habits, and even prejudices, unite to form a dynasty that never has yet been dethroned. New York is nearer to a state of nature, probably, as regards all its customs and associations, than any other well-established place that could be named. With six hundred thousand souls, collected from all parts of Christendom—with no upper class recognized by, or ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... and blame I have spoken in III. xxix. note: the time has now come to treat of the remaining terms. But I must first say a few words concerning man in the state of nature ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... avenged himself by making fierce war on society. The savage state is the best—society being revolting in its falseness and shallow varnish: all men are naturally equal and free; society is nothing but an artificial contract, an arrangement by which, in the end, the strong domineer over the weak; the state of nature is divine: there is a Garden of Eden for those who will cast society behind them. Sciences and arts, civilization and literature, Encyclopaedists included, are hateful as corrupters of mankind; all progress has been backward, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... favourite topics of the sentimentalists of the day was the denunciation of "luxury," and of civilized life in general. There was a disposition to find in the South Sea savages or American Indians an embodiment of the fancied state of nature. Johnson heartily despised the affectation. He was told of an American woman who had to be bound in order to keep her from savage life. "She must have been an animal, a beast," said Boswell. "Sir," ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... free scope given to trade, afterwards no pirates durst venture to sea in that quarter. This check, together with that they received among the islands, served to extirpate these pestilent robbers, who had declared war against all mankind; and, by reducing themselves to the savage state of nature, had led such lives as rendered them the common enemy of every civilised nation. But these two expeditions from Carolina, though crowned with success, cost the poor province upwards of ten thousand pounds, an additional ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... cold and the excessive climate are perhaps the most formidable. Plants that grow in localities marked by sudden extremes of heat and cold, are always very variable in stature, habit, and foliage. In a state of nature we say the plants "accommodate themselves" to these changes, and so they do within certain limits; but for one that survives of all the seeds that germinate in these inhospitable localities, thousands die. In our gardens we can neither imitate the conditions of an alpine climate, nor ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... that war is a conflict between two or more isolated moral systems, each of which only regards violence as a crime to be suppressed within the limits of its own validity. International warfare in its crudest form is only a manifestation of the original wolfish state of man, the "state of nature" which exists between two moral agents who have no moral obligation to each other (but only to themselves). The fact that the primitive savage was an individual moral agent having no moral obligation to anyone but himself, while the modern fighting nation is a moral agent of who knows how many millions, ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... proclamations of poets, the development of literature offers a singular paradox. The further it goes back, the more sophisticated it becomes; and it grows more and more natural as it grows distant from the State of Nature. However this may be, it is at least certain that the Romantic revival peculiarly deserves to be called Naturalistic, because it succeeded in bringing into vogue the operations of the external world—'the Vegetable Universe,' as Blake called it—as subject-matter ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... bushes, even of weeds, only such of the latter having been cut as were pests of the sort which scatter their seeds to the winds. Trim and workmanlike as was the clearing up of the ground just beyond the lane, on either side the lane itself was very nearly in a state of nature. It was, therefore, a picturesque roadway enough, and Sally walking along it bareheaded, clad still in the pink gingham of the morning, found it so to an unusual degree. Yet it must be admitted that it would have been an ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... was in the Bush, as the Virginians call it"]. "Woodland, country more or less covered with natural wood applied to the uncleared or untitled districts in the British Colonies which are still in a state of nature, or largely so, even though not wooded; and by extension to the country as opposed to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... I will trust no man's honour in affairs of barter. I will tell you why: a state of bargain is Hobbes's 'state of nature—a state of war.' It is so with all men. If I come to a friend, and say, 'Friend, lend me five hundred pounds,'—he either does it, or says that he can't or won't; but if I come to Ditto, and say, 'Ditto, I have an excellent house, or horse, or carriage, or ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other, arising from their necessary and unavoidable relations; which rights and duties there is no common human authority to protect and enforce. Still, they are rights and duties, binding ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... seen in the "open daylight" of truth. He is selfish, sensual, cruel, indolent, and impassive. The highest graces of character, the sweetest emotions, the finest sensibilities,—which make up the novelist's stock in trade,—are not and cannot be the growth of a so-called state of Nature, which is an essentially unnatural state. We no more believe that Logan ever made the speech reported by Jefferson, in so many words, than we believe that Chatham ever made the speech in reply to Walpole which begins with, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... belonging to these country houses; and it is certainly no longer a matter of surprise to us, that rich proprietors take little interest in embellishing them. A house which will in all probability be converted once a year into a barrack, is decidedly better in a state of nature, than encumbered with elegant furniture. This house has been entirely destroyed in that way more than once, and the last time that it was occupied by troops, was left like an Augean stable. We have here the luxury of books. My room opens ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... unstable, and often have a tendency, if left to themselves, to return to the normal form of the parent species; and this instability is considered to be a distinctive peculiarity of all varieties, even of those occurring among wild animals in a state of nature, and to constitute a provision for preserving unchanged the originally ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... means of infibulation. In an old Amsterdam edition of Locke's "Essay on the Extent of the Human Understanding," there is a quotation from the voyages of Baumgarten, wherein he states having seen in Egypt a devout dervish seated in a perfect state of nature among the sand-hillocks, who was regarded as a most holy and chaste man for the reason that he did not associate with his own kind, but only with the animals. As this was by no means an uncommon ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Albine and Serge, as it had so long welcomed the sun, as pleasant companions, with whom one puts on no ceremony. The animals, the trees, the streams, the rocks, all continued in an unrestrained state of nature, speaking aloud, living openly, without a secret, displaying the innocent shamelessness, the hearty tenderness of the world's first days. Serge and Albine, however, suffered from these voluptuous surroundings, and at times felt ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... likeness of the beast, and is more and more the slave of his own lusts, and passions, and fancies, as the dumb animals are. And, as St. Paul says, the animal man, the carnal man, understands not the things of God. And we need no one to tell us that this is the state of nature which we bring into the world with us. We feel it; from our very childhood, from the earliest time we can recollect, have we not had the longing to do what we liked? to please ourselves, to pride ourselves on ourselves, to set up our own wills against ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... August. In Nootka lie the Spanish frigates from California, bristling with cannon, the red and yellow flag blowing to the wind above the palisaded fort. In solemn parade, with Maquinna, the Nootka chief, clad in a state of nature, as guest of the festive board, Don Quadra, the Spanish officer, dines and wines Vancouver; but when it comes to business, that is another matter! Vancouver understands that Spain is to surrender all sovereignty ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the Turkish ladies at the baths at Sophia: "The first sofas were covered with cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies, and on the second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank in their dress, all being in a state of Nature; that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture among them. They walked and moved with the same majestic grace which Milton describes of our general mother. I am here convinced of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... zoos produce any new knowledge about animal behavior. Such knowledge must be got, not from animals penned up and tortured, but from animals in a state of nature. A college professor studying the habits of the giraffe, for example, and confining his observations to specimens in zoos, would inevitably come to the conclusion that the giraffe is a sedentary and melancholy beast, standing immovable for hours at a time and ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... to the vermin with which their nests often swarm, and which kill the young before they are fledged. In a state of nature this probably never happens; at least I have never seen or heard of it happening to nests placed in trees or under rocks. It is the curse of civilization falling upon the birds which come too near man. The vermin, or the germ ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... spoken, our ready hands soon managed to get rid of all obstacles, and to expose in a state of nature all the beauties which are generally veiled by troublesome wearing apparel. Two whole hours were devoted to the most delightful, loving ecstasies. At last we exclaimed together in mutual ecstasy, "O ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was reduced to a mere state of nature, found this to my daily discouragement; and was made more sensible of it every hour, even after I had got the first handful of seed-corn, which, as I have said, came up unexpectedly, and indeed ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... that all was much alike, and if you condemned that you would condemn all my life's work, and that I confess made me a little low; but I could have borne it, for I have the conviction that I have honestly done my best. The discussion comes in at the end of the long chapter on variation in a state of nature, so that I have discussed, as far as I am able, what to call varieties. I will try to leave out all allusion to genera coming in and out in this part, till when I discuss the "Principle of Divergence," which, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... give you the secret of my supernatural power. On returning from your ride, you shall dine with my niece, and we will go together to a very curious spectacle now exhibiting at the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre. A most extraordinary lion-tamer there shows you a number of wild beasts, in a state of nature, in the midst of a forest (here only commences the illusion), and has fierce combats with them all—tigers, lions, and panthers. All Paris is crowding to these representations, and all Paris will see you there, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... ignorant; but we can see that in man as in the lower animals, they stand in some relation to the conditions to which each species has been exposed, during several generations. Domesticated animals vary more than those in a state of nature; and this is apparently due to the diversified and changing nature of the conditions to which they have been subjected. In this respect the different races of man resemble domesticated animals, and so do the individuals of the same race, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... and various countries, such as no garden could possibly supply, are brought together at once under our eyes, at any season of the year. If these be assisted with drawings and descriptions, nothing less than an actual survey of the whole vegetable world in a state of nature, could excel such a store ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... that the Mantis attacks such adversaries in a state of nature when I see it, under my wire-gauze covers, boldly give battle to whatever is placed before it. Lying in wait among the bushes it must profit by the prizes bestowed upon it by hazard, as in its cage ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... winded the horse-path to Shaws-Castle, at a point about a pistol-shot distant from the Buck-stane. As the principal access to Mr. Mowbray's mansion was by a carriage-way, which passed in a different direction, the present path was left almost in a state of nature, full of large stones, and broken by gullies, delightful, from the varied character of its banks, to the picturesque traveller, and most inconvenient, nay dangerous, to him who ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... and abstracted, including whole series of journals and transactions, I am surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... publication, they found an analogy in the gathering of acorns, or in seizing on a vacant piece of ground; and thus degrading that most refined piece of art formed in the highest state of society, a literary production, they brought us back to a state of nature; and seem to have concluded that literary property was purely ideal; a phantom which, as its author could neither grasp nor confine to himself, he must entirely depend on the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... unmarried girls among the Britons in the first century of the Christian era were in the habit of staining themselves all over with the juice of the woad; and he adds that, thus rivalling the swarthy hue of the AEthiopians, they go on these occasions in a state of nature. We are sometimes taught that when the English invaded Britain, the natives whom they found here were all driven out or massacred. There are, however, many reasons for doubting that this wholesale destruction was as complete as has been imagined. The name of Coventry betrays in its termination a ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... the Nile. Boys were largely in the ascendant—boys from ten to fifteen years of age swam like young Leanders, and sunned themselves on the bank, in the absence of towels, as the preparative to dressing, or smoked their pipes in a state of nature. It is only just to say that while I remained, I heard little if any language that could be called "foul." Very free and easy, of course, were the remarks, and largely illustrative of the vulgar tongue; not without a share of light chaff directed against myself, whose presence by the lake-side puzzled ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... proper sphere, and to check every advance of invasion, on the rights of others. Unrestrained liberty speedily degenerates into licentiousness. Without the necessary curbs and restraints of law, men would relapse into a state of nature; [88] and although the obligations of justice (the basis of society) be natural obligations; yet such are the depravity and corruption of human nature, that without some superintending and coercive power, they would be wholly ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... an ace of coming to blows with the islanders of the Louisiades, and on one occasion a portly member of the gun-room, being cut off by these black gentry, only saved his life by parting with all his clothes as presents to them, and keeping them amused by an impromptu dance in a state of nature under the broiling sun, until a party came to his relief. At Cape York also, a white woman was rescued who had been made prisoner by the blacks from a wreck, and had lived among them for several years. Here, too, Huxley and Macgillivray made a trip inland, and were welcomed by a ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the people here very nearly in a state of nature, and going almost naked. The men wear their frizzly hair gathered into a flat circular knot over the left temple, which has a very knowing look, and in their ears cylinders of wood as thick as one's finger, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... experiences little difficulty in observing birds in the sparsely-wooded flat country, but in the tree-covered mountains the feathered folk often require to be stalked. If you would see the Pekin-robin in a state of nature, go to some clearing in the Himalayan forest, where the cool breezes blow upon you direct from the snows, whence you can see the most beautiful sight in the world, that of snow-capped mountains standing forth against an azure sky. ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... a late navigator, Captain Krusenstern, will be admitted as decisive of the question of fact, without further enquiry. They may have another effect too, viz. to destroy that delusion which many persons labour under as to the innocence and amiableness of mankind in a state of nature. "Notwithstanding," says he, "the favourable account in Captain Cook's voyages of the Friendly, the Society, and the Sandwich islands, and the enthusiasm with which Forster undertakes their defence against all those who should make use of any harsh expression with regard to them, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... can make, this is going on, as I have said, in the proportion of about two families and a fraction in four. In one more family and a fraction out of the same number, efforts are being made to reduce the children to a state of nature; and to inculcate, at a tender age, the love of raw flesh, train oil, new rum, and the acquisition of scalps. Wild and outlandish dances are also in vogue (you will have observed the prevailing rage for the Polka); and savage cries ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... nest, he says, is formed of moss at some height from the ground, supported on clusters of orchideous plants. Dr. Cantor, in his 'Catalogue of the Mammalia of the Malayan Peninsula,' writes as follows: "In a state of nature it lives singly or in pairs, fiercely attacking intruders of its own species. When several are confined together they fight each other, or jointly attack and destroy the weakest. The natural food is mixed insectivorous ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... a favorite one also with the buttercup and many of its kin, the geraniums, mallows, and various others. Most of our fruit trees and bushes are near relatives of the rose. Five petals and five sepals, then, we always find on roses in a state of nature; and although the progressive gardener of to-day has nowhere shown his skill more than in the development of a multitude of petals from stamens in the magnificent roses of fashionable society, the most highly cultivated darling of the ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... a false hypothesis, his arguments in favour of a state of nature are plausible, but unsound. I say unsound; for to assert that a state of nature is preferable to civilization in all its possible perfection, is, in other words, to arraign supreme wisdom; and the paradoxical exclamation, that God has made all things right, and that evil has been introduced ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... shall hardly know a good field from a poor, a meadow from a pasture, a park from a forest. Lines and boundaries are disregarded; gates and bar-ways are unclosed; man lets go his hold upon the earth; title-deeds are deep buried beneath the snow; the best-kept grounds relapse to a state of nature; under the pressure of the cold, all the wild creatures become outlaws, and roam abroad beyond their usual haunts. The partridge comes to the orchard for buds; the rabbit comes to the garden and lawn; the crows ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... serve to collect the nitrogen from the lower soil-layers and concentrate it in the surface portion. In a state of nature, where the soil is constantly covered with vegetation, the process going on, therefore, will be one of steady accumulation of nitrogen in the surface-soil. To what extent this accumulation goes on, and how far it is ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... suspected, and it requires to be answered in a very different way. Socialism may be worthless as a scheme, but it is not meaningless as a symptom. Rousseau's theory of the origin of society, of the social contract, and of a cure for all social evils by a return to a state of nature, had, as we all know now, no more relation to fact than the dreams of an illiterate drunkard; but they were not without value as a vague and symbolical expression of certain evils from which the France of his day was suffering. As a child, I was told ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... people should be divided into Naturvoelker, Halbkulturvoelker, and Kulturvoelker—people in the state of nature, half-cultivated people, and cultivated people. This is not all. There are people who are simply cultivated—Naturvoelker—and people who are wholly cultivated—Vollkulturvoelker. Now the degree of right depends on the degree of culture. As compared with the Kulturvoelker ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... only ones available during the "state of nature" and the savage state. Before all else, man created weapons: the most circumscribed primitive races have invented engines for attack and defense—of wood, bone, stone, as they were able. Then the weapon became a tool by special adaptation:—the battle-club serves as a lever, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... it is a little above the average amount of time, it is nevertheless too little. A week consists of 168 hours. After deducting 12 hours a day for sleep, meals, etc., there remain 84 hours per week to be used. In a state of nature this was largely used for physical play. Under the artificial conditions of modern city life, the nature of children is not changed. They still need huge amounts of active physical play for wholesome ...
— What the Schools Teach and Might Teach • John Franklin Bobbitt
... to note that in "Sir Launcelot Greaves," we find a character, Ferret, who frankly poses as a strugforlifeur. M. Daudet's strugforlifeur had heard of Darwin. Mr. Ferret had read Hobbes, learned that man was in a state of nature, and inferred that we ought to prey upon each other, as a pike eats trout. Miss Burney, too, at Bath, about 1780, met a perfectly emancipated young "New Woman." She had read Bolingbroke and Hume, believed in nothing, and was ready to be a "Woman who Did." ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... mere child's play, and whose skin had converted itself into a sort of leather, impervious to every thing except lead and steel. In a moral point of view, these men may be considered a psychological curiosity: in the wild state of nature in which they live, their mental faculties frequently develop themselves in a most extraordinary manner; and in the conversation of some of them may be found proofs of a sagacity and largeness of views, of which the greatest philosophers of ancient or modern ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Mr. Appleditch, "that's all very well in a state of nature; but when a man is once born into a state of grace, Mr. Sutherland ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... day or of whom we have any record represent a relatively highly developed traditional culture, with elaborate languages, myths, and well-established artificial customs, which it probably took hundreds of thousands of years to accumulate. Man in "a state of nature" is only a presupposition, but a presupposition which is forced upon us by compelling evidence, conjectural ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... of this district is one of the best in Ceylon for deer-shooting, which is a proof of its want of inhabitants. This has always been the case, even in the prosperous days of the pearl fishery. So utterly worthless is the soil, that it remains in a state of nature, and its distance from Colombo (one hundred and fifty miles) keeps it in ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... perhaps it is not so much a tradition as an idea which the human mind naturally inclines to form respecting the fathers of the race; but nothing that we see of mankind absolutely forbids our entertaining this idea, while there are some considerations rather favourable to it. A few families, in a state of nature, living near each other, in a country supplying the means of livelihood abundantly, are generally simple and innocent; their instinctive and perceptive faculties are also apt to be very active, although the higher intellect may be dormant. If we therefore presume India to ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... Godwin, and the whole class, he was continually dreaming about the perfectibility of human nature, and believed that innocence was alone to be found in that portion of humanity, which approached the nearest to the state of nature. With these notions, which he succeeded, in some measure, in imparting to his young and interesting partner, he declined establishing himself in any of our Atlantic cities, then the only places in the Union offering attractions ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... depended on the point of view: whether you thought of a goddess as fully clothed from chin to toes, and proceeded with a pair of shears to cut away so much of her costume, or whether you imagined the goddess in a state of nature, and proceeded to put veils of gauze about her, and a ribbon over each shoulder to hold the ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... me; "UZELLE, PEK UZELLE," which is nothing but, Charming, very Charming.—The first sofas were covered with cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies; and on the second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them. They walked and moved with the same majestic ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... a state of nature, you find any two groups of living beings, which are separated one from the other by some constantly-recurring characteristic, I don't care how slight and trivial, so long as it is defined and constant, and does not depend on sexual peculiarities, then ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilized society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.' The General said, that in a state of nature a man and woman uniting together, would form a strong and constant affection, by the mutual pleasure each would receive; and that the same causes of dissention would not arise between them, as occur between husband and wife in a civilized state. JOHNSON. 'Sir, they would have dissentions enough, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... have abused the phrase borrowed from the theologians, and made it cover a political doctrine which they would have been the last to accept. These theorists or political speculators have imagined a state of nature antecedently to civil society, in which men lived without government, law, or manners, out of which they finally came by entering into a voluntary agreement with some one of their number to be king and to govern them, or with one another to ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson |
