The first-sight phenomena of historic time, and the ocular mechanism of historic memory : developing organic principles for the most rapid possible acquisition and affixment of historical knowledge, and forming an elucidatory and illustrative companion to the fifth edition, coloured, of Major Bell's twenty-five royal folio synchrono-historic and biographic tables / by Major James Bell.

  • Bell, James, Major.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The first-sight phenomena of historic time, and the ocular mechanism of historic memory : developing organic principles for the most rapid possible acquisition and affixment of historical knowledge, and forming an elucidatory and illustrative companion to the fifth edition, coloured, of Major Bell's twenty-five royal folio synchrono-historic and biographic tables / by Major James Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    BARBARISM. mental tyranny earlier than to bodily domination. For, while in a savage state, man will surrender his mind to enslavement long before he will habituate himself to acknowledge any bodily coercion, but when he becomes a civilized being his case is exactly reversed: his body is then the first to surrender; his body may be readily coerced, while his mind will spurn, with indignation, at any offered restraint. Nor can we reprove man for thus almost constantly offering checks to power either with body or with mind, for were he patiently to submit with both, there are no depths too humiliating, there is no slavery too cruel into which superstition, and des- potism have not shown themselves ready to trample him. Extremely interesting, as connected with the earliest emanations of literature, are the various forms, characters, and materials that have first been employed in writing. Some, for example, having used stones, others the skins or the bones of ani- mals, the bark of trees, leaves, wax tables, &c. Some have written vertically, i. e. single word be- neath word downwards, to an indefinite length, while others have carried their writing horizontally on- ward upon a single line, also to an indefinite length. Two extreme systems which mankind in general have blended into a medium method of writing both horizontally and vertically. The Western nations, however, differing from the Eastern in this respect, that while we write from the left to the right, the Easterns commonly write from the right hand to-