This book presents a general study of British Genius.

"Until now it has not been possible to obtain any comprehensive view of the men and women who have chiefly built up English civilization. It has not, therefore, been possible to study their personal characteristics as a group. The sixty-three volumes of the 'Dictionary of National Biography' of which the last has been lately issued, have for the first time enabled us to construct an authoritative and well balanced scheme of the persons of illustrious genius, in every department, who have appeared in the British Isles from the beginning of history down to the end of the nineteenth century; and, with a certain amount of labor, it enables us to sum up their main traits... "

A Study of British Genius

This book deals with the stuff that dreams are made of and the symbolism of dreams."Our dreams begin to seem to us an allied subject of study, inasmuch as they reveal within ourselves a means of entering sympathetically into ideas and emotional attitudes belonging to narrow or ill-adjusted states of consciousness which otherwise we are now unable to experience. And they have this further value, that they show us how many abnormal phenomena-possession, double consciousness, unconscious memory, and so forth-which have often led the ignorant and unwary to many strange conclusions, really have a simple explanation in the healthy normal experience of all of us during sleep. Here, also, it is true that we ourselves and our beliefs are to some extent "such stuff as dreams are made of."

Dreams and their Symbolism

Among all colors, the most poignantly emotional tone undoubtedly belongs to red... In all parts of the world red is symbolical of joyous emotion. Often, either alone or in association with yellow, occasionally with green, it is the fortunate or sacred color. In lauds so far apart as France and Madagascar scarlet garments were at one time the exclusive privilege of the royal family. A great many different colors are symbolical of mourning in various parts of the world; white, gray, yellow, brown, blue, violet, black can be so used, but, so far as I am aware, red never. Everywhere we find, again, that red pigments and dyes, and especially red ochre, are apparently the first to be used at the beginning of civilization, and that they usually continue to be preferred even after other colors are introduced. There is indeed one quarter of the globe where the allied color of yellow, which often elsewhere is the favorite after red, may be said to come first. In a region of which the Malay peninsula is the center and which includes a large part of China. Burmah and the lower coast of India, yellow is the sacred and preferred color, but this is the only large district which presents us with any exception to the general rule, among either higher or lower races, and since yellow falls into the same group as red, and belongs to a neighboring part of the spectrum, even this phenomenon can scarcely be said to clash seriously with the general uniformity...

The Psychology of Red and Yellow

On ne doit pas avaler plus de croyances qu'on ne peut en digérer.

La Terre promise est toujours de l'autre côté du désert.

La vie peut être considérée comme un art.

Ce que nous appelons progrès est le remplacement d'un inconvénient par un autre.

La danse est le plus sublime, le plus émouvant, le plus beau de tous les arts, parce qu'elle n'est pas une simple traduction ou abstraction de la vie ; c'est la vie elle-même.

L'art de vivre consiste en un subtil mélange entre lâcher prise et tenir bon.

On ne doit pas avaler plus de croyance qu'on en peut en digérer.

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