eBooks „civilisation“
55 eBooks were found for the search term „civilisation“.
Ellen G. White
European Union in Prophecy
- Political Science
- English
- 229941 Words
- Ages 10 and up
- 36
The European Union in Prophecy provides insightful perspectives on the E.U. both as a political project in integration and a transformation of an ancient order. One would discern that the aligned and centralised powers, which firmly resolved on unification, conceived and instituted united kingdoms, united states and united nations, still persevere in their efforts for a more robust and resilient E.U. However, unknown to most, the territorial aggrandisement, economic and military supremacy and global dominance of the E.U. have all been foretold in prophecy, millennia before the reign of the first European monarch. Spiritual forces that engineered the rise of the European thrones, also calculated the suppression of dissidence and incited merciless carnage. Although now paraded as an industrialised paragon of progress and self-made sophistication, this book elucidates on the enigmatic and clandestine alliances, decrees and dogmas that consolidated Eurocentricity that moulded modern civilisation. Indeed, despite rooted religiopolitical tensions and divergences, a peculiar one-minded homogenisation facilitates the unification process. [more]
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John Morley
Rousseau (Fiscle Part-3)
- Short Story
- English
- 189302 Words
- Ages 18 and up
- 2
Christianity Is The Name For A Great Variety Of Changes Which Took Place
During The First Centuries Of Our Era, In Men's Ways Of Thinking And
Feeling About Their Spiritual Relations To Unseen Powers, About Their
Moral Relations To One Another, About The Basis And Type Of Social
Union. So The Revolution Is Now The Accepted Name For A Set Of Changes
Which Began Faintly To Take A Definite Practical Shape First In America,
And Then In France, Towards The End Of The Eighteenth Century; They Had
Been Directly Prepared By A Small Number Of Energetic Thinkers, Whose
Speculations Represented, As Always, The Prolongation Of Some Old Lines
Of Thought In Obedience To The Impulse Of New Social And Intellectual
Conditions. While One Movement Supplied The Energy And The Principles
Which Extricated Civilisation From The Ruins Of The Roman Empire, The
Other Supplies The Energy And The Principles Which Already Once, Between
The Seven Years' War And The Assembly Of The States General, Saved
Human Progress In Face Of The Political Fatuity Of England And The
Political Nullity Of France; And They Are Now, Amid The Distraction Of
The Various Representatives Of An Obsolete Ordering, The Only Forces To
Be Trusted At Once For Multiplying The Achievements Of Human
Intelligence Stimulated By Human Sympathy, And For Diffusing Their
Beneficent Results With An Ampler Hand And More Far-Scattering Arm.
Faith In A Divine Power, Devout Obedience To Its Supposed Will, Hope Of
Ecstatic, Unspeakable Reward, These Were The Springs Of The Old
Movement. Undivided Love Of Our Fellows, Steadfast Faith In Human
Nature, Steadfast Search After Justice, Firm Aspiration Towards
Improvement, And Generous Contentment In The Hope That Others May Reap
Whatever Reward May Be, These Are The Springs Of The New. [more]
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H. B. Montgomery
The Empire Of The East
- History
- English
- 95377 Words
- Ages 18 and up
- 2
On My Return From Another Visit To Japan A Few Months Ago I Found
Those Persons In This Country With Whom I Was Brought Into Close
Association Extremely Curious And Strangely Ignorant Regarding That
Ancient Empire. Despite The Multitude Of Books Which Have Of Late
Years Been Published About Japan And Things Japanese A Correct
Knowledge Of The Country And The People Is, So Far As I Can Judge,
Altogether Lacking In England. Indeed The Multiplicity Of Books May
Have Something To Do With That Fact, As Many Of Them Have Been Written
By Persons Whose Knowledge, Acquired In The Course Of A Flying Visit,
Was, To Say The Least, Perfunctory, And Who Had No Opportunities For
Viewing The Life Of The People From Within And Forming A Sound
Judgment On Many Matters Upon Which The Writers Have Dogmatically
Pronounced. I, Accordingly, Came To The Conclusion Not Only That There
Was Room For One More Book On Japan, But That Another Book Was Greatly
Needed--A Book Not Technical, Historical, Abstruse Or Recondite, But A
Book Describing In Simple Language Japan As It Was, Is, And Will Be.
This Is The Task I Set Before Myself When I Commenced To Write This
Volume, And The Reader Must Be The Judge To What Extent I Have Been
Successful In The Accomplishment Thereof. I Have Touched But Lightly
On The Material Development Of The Country Of Recent Years. I Know
From Experience That Though Statistics Are The Fad Of A Few They Are
Caviare To The Great Mass Of The Public. Nor Have I Dealt At All With
Politics Or Political Parties In New Japan. It Is, I Think,
Unfortunate That The Japanese People, In Adopting Or Adapting English
Institutions, Should Have Introduced The Political Party System So
Much In Evidence In Great Britain And Other European Countries.
Whether That System Works Well In The West, Where It Has Been In
Existence For Centuries And Is Not Always Taken Over-Seriously By
Party Politicians Themselves, Is A Question Upon Which I Shall Express
No Opinion. But I Think It Is Problematical Whether Such A System Is
Well Adapted For An Oriental People, Possessed Of And Permeated By An
Ancient Civilisation--A People Whose Feelings, Sentiments, Modes Of
Thought, Prejudices And Passions Are So Essentially Different From
Those Of Western Nations. Be That As It May, Japanese Politics Find No
Place In This Work. [more]
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Richard Jefferies
AFTER LONDON
- Essay
- English
- 84047 Words
- Ages 18 and up
- 2
After London (1885), can be seen as an early example of "post-apocalyptic fiction": after some sudden and unspecified catastrophe has depopulated England, the countryside reverts to nature, and the few survivors to a quasi-medieval way of life.
The book has two parts. The first, "The Relapse into Barbarism", is the account by some later historian of the fall of civilisation and its consequences, with a loving description of nature reclaiming England: fields becoming overrun by forest, domesticated animals running wild, roads and towns becoming overgrown, the hated London reverting to lake and poisonous swampland. The second part, "Wild England", is largely a straightforward adventure set many years later in the wild landscape and society (here too Jefferies was setting an example for the genre); but the opening section, despite some improbabilities, has been much admired for its rigour and compelling narrative.
Critics dissatisfied with the second part often make an exception of chapters 22-4, which go beyond recreation of a medieval world to give a disturbing and surreal description of the site of the fallen city.[32]
Jefferies' interest in catastrophes predates After London: two short unpublished pieces from the 1870s describe social collapse after London is paralysed by freak winter conditions. In the better achieved of these, the narrator is a future historian piecing the story together from surviving accounts.[33] The fantasy of the second part also has a predecessor in a short work, The Rise of Maximin, Emperor of the Occident, serialised in The New Monthly Magazine in 1876, in this case an adventure set in a remote and imaginary past.[34]
Although the society that Jefferies depicts after the fall of London is an unpleasant one, with oppressive petty tyrants at war with each other, and insecurity and injustice for the poor, it still served as an inspiration for William Morris's utopian News from Nowhere (1890). In a letter of 1885, he writes of his reaction to After London: "absurd hopes curled around my heart as I read it."[35] After London also influenced M.P. Shiel's disaster novel, The Purple Cloud. [more]
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G. K. Chesterton
Varied Types
- Biography & Autobiography
- English
- 42963 Words
- Ages 18 and up
- 2
Objection is often raised against realistic biography because it reveals
so much that is important and even sacred about a man's life. The real
objection to it will rather be found in the fact that it reveals about a
man the precise points which are unimportant. It reveals and asserts and
insists on exactly those things in a man's life of which the man himself
is wholly unconscious; his exact class in society, the circumstances of
his ancestry, the place of his present location. These are things which
do not, properly speaking, ever arise before the human vision. They do
not occur to a man's mind; it may be said, with almost equal truth, that
they do not occur in a man's life. A man no more thinks about himself as
the inhabitant of the third house in a row of Brixton villas than he
thinks about himself as a strange animal with two legs. What a man's
name was, what his income was, whom he married, where he lived, these
are not sanctities; they are irrelevancies.
A very strong case of this is the case of the Brontes. The Bronte is in
the position of the mad lady in a country village; her eccentricities
form an endless source of innocent conversation to that exceedingly mild
and bucolic circle, the literary world. The truly glorious gossips of
literature, like Mr. Augustine Birrell and Mr. Andrew Lang, never tire
of collecting all the glimpses and anecdotes and sermons and side-lights
and sticks and straws which will go to make a Bronte museum. They are
the most personally discussed of all Victorian authors, and the
limelight of biography has left few darkened corners in the dark old
Yorkshire house. And yet the whole of this biographical investigation,
though natural and picturesque, is not wholly suitable to the Brontes.
For the Bronte genius was above all things deputed to assert the supreme
unimportance of externals. Up to that point truth had always been
conceived as existing more or less in the novel of manners. Charlotte
Bronte electrified the world by showing that an infinitely older and
more elemental truth could be conveyed by a novel in which no person,
good or bad, had any manners at all. Her work represents the first great
assertion that the humdrum life of modern civilisation is a disguise as
tawdry and deceptive as the costume of a _bal masque_. She showed that
abysses may exist inside a governess and eternities inside a
manufacturer; her heroine is the commonplace spinster, with the dress of
merino and the soul of flame. It is significant to notice that Charlotte
Bronte, following consciously or unconsciously the great trend of her
genius, was the first to take away from the heroine not only the
artificial gold and diamonds of wealth and fashion, but even the natural
gold and diamonds of physical beauty and grace. Instinctively she felt
that the whole of the exterior must be made ugly that the whole of the
interior might be made sublime. She chose the ugliest of women in the
ugliest of centuries, and revealed within them all the hel [more]
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