A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century Quotes
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“Take away thought, and monotony becomes the order.”
“As every person is his own best biographer, so... every age is... its own best historian.”
“I... decided to complete the first part of the history which deals with scientific thought in two volumes...”
“But where the facts recorded and the mind which records them both belong to the same age, we have a double testimony regarding that age.”
“A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century Vol.4 (1914)*rchive.org”
“This large body of forgotten thought has nevertheless been... the great propelling force which, stored up, awaits the time and aid of individual talent or genius to set it free.”
“Such a survey seemed to me indispensable. ...Like every survey it can claim to be merely an approximation. It gives outlines which closer scrutiny will have to correct and fill up.”
“The process of substitution led to the conception of "Types," which remained the same whilst the individual compounds varied according to the different elements which were introduced.”
“The object of the book is philosophical, in the sense now accepted by many and by divergent schools—i.e., it desires to contribute something towards a unification of thought.”
“The number of elements or simple bodies, which in Lavoisier's time hardly exceeded thirty, increased before the year 1830 to more than double: the number of new compounds, unknown before, has probably never been counted.”
“In the course of time the conception of types was much changed, and became more and more complicated; it had, however, the effect of finally destroying the binary view of chemical composition, and restoring in its place the older unitary conception.”
“Behind the panorama of external events and changes which history unfolds before our view there lies the hidden world of desires and motives, of passions and energies, which produced or accompanied them; behind the busy scenes of Life lie the inner regions of Thought.”
“Historians like Thucydides, Tacitus, and Machiavelli are looked upon as perfect models in the art of writing history, and the memoirs of many modern statesmen are more lastingly valuable than the more elaborate and connected narratives of remote and secluded scholars.”
“Of European thought itself I am forced to select... only the central portion the thought embodied in French, German, and English Literature. ...languages unknown and interests foreign to me have made it impossible to identify myself ever so superficially with the new life that is contained in them.”
“The pendulum which swings backwards and forwards in endless monotony, the planet which moves round the sun in unceasing repetition, the atom of matter which vibrates in the same path, have for us no interest beyond the mathematical formulae which govern their motions, and which permit us mentally to reproduce, i.e., to think them.”
“A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century Vol.1 (1904), Vol.2 (1903), Vol.3 (1912)*oogleBooks”
“Motion and change would be as monotonous as absolute rest, were they merely to repeat themselves endlessly, did the whole movement not produce something more, and were this something more not greater or better than the beginning. But greater and better are terms which imply comparison by a thinking beholder...”
“We who live in the expectation of the light which is to come, surrounded by the shadows, difficulties, and obstacles; we who belong to the army, and are not leaders, who live in, not after, the fight,—we claim to be better able to tell the tale of endless hopes and endeavours, of efforts common to many, of the hidden intellectual and moral work of our age.”
“Although no mathematical relation equal in value and definiteness to the gravitation formula marks the introduction of the Atomic theory in Chemistry, it nevertheless owes its success to similar qualities—viz., to the fact that it led natural philosophers to make definite measurements, and put exact research in the place of vague reasoning.”
“We must note the reserve with which some of the greatest representatives of chemical science expressed themselves up to the middle of the century regarding the actual physical existence of those elementary particles [atoms] with which they operated so freely in their formulæ, and which they even represented by balls and coloured discs in their demonstrations.”