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The Doctrine of Changes as Applicable Both to the Institutions of Social Life and to the Progressive Order of Nature
The Doctrine of Changes as Applicable Both to the Institutions of Social Life and to the Progressive Order of Nature Author:Thomas Wright General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1844 Original Publisher: Thomas Clark Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can se... more »lect from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: PAST TIMES. " The bright and glorious past." Anonymous. " Great Britain, in the course she seems at present disposed to pursue, requires a mind less imbued than mine, with ancient recollections." Talleyrand. There is at all times great folly -- to say no worse -- in the disposition which some men manifest to speak of all the past, in terms of unmeasured ridicule and contempt -- to believe that in the days which are gone, there could be nothing truly " bright and glorious" -- that darkness and folly are the only attributes that can be considered as justly applicable to all that has occurred -- and that the future or the present only are the periods of which " brightness and glory" can, with any propriety, be predicated. There is, I say, at all times great folly -- at the least -- in this habit of speaking and thinking; -- for the state of society, at almost any period, is suited to the time in which it has occurred -- and nothingis more certain than that the ages of "great lights," -- and of great talents or great virtues, are not always the same -- men of the most gigantic stature in mind and in heart, as well as in physical structure, having often adorned the ages of comparative ignorance -- and actions having been performed in such periods, which, so long as history is cultivated, will be recorded among the most brilliant exploits of human energy and human skill. Such ages, too, are often as distinguished for the happiness which prevailed in them, as for the energies they called forth, or the great men which they formed. And, as in private life, it is true that ...« less