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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Charles Peirce At Johns Hopkins, Ellery W. Davis
Charles Peirce At Johns Hopkins, Ellery W. Davis
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
In the company of scholars and investigators which Daniel Coit Gilman gathered at Baltimore in the seventies and eighties was Charles S. S. Peirce, son of the Harvard mathematician, Benjamin Peirce, and considered by Sylvester (surely a capable judge) “a far greater mathematician than his father.” But great though his mathematical powers were, it is not they alone which chiefly distinguished him among the scientists of his generation. Mathematics was simply one of the many fields of thought tilled by his active brain. At Harvard it was in chemistry that he had chiefly distinguished himself, but it might as well …
Justice According To Law, Roscoe Pound
Justice According To Law, Roscoe Pound
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
A generation ago, when the law schools of our state universities were first founded, the dominion of law appeared to be complete. Almost every phase of public and of individual activity was subject to judicial review. It was taken to be an axiom that the people themselves were subject to certain fundamental limitations, running back of all constitutions and inherent in the very nature of free government, and it was assumed without serious question that the scope and the extent of these limitations were questions of law. Administration was subjected to strict judicial control, and almost every measure of police …
Old Solutions Of A New Problem, Edwin Ray Guthrie
Old Solutions Of A New Problem, Edwin Ray Guthrie
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
When King David said in his haste that all men are liars, was he led to acknowledge the hastiness of his remark through reflection on its logical consequences? If he were, he showed commendable delicacy in taking for granted that we should see what the logicians insistently point out, that it must follow that he himself could not be believed. Reflection on this problem of verbal paradox has led some of the logicians, as well as the Psalmist, to wonder whether they have not made haste too rapidly. The paradox of the" Liar" is still with us; but modern writers, …
Legislation By The Courts, W. G. Hastings
Legislation By The Courts, W. G. Hastings
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
It is remarkable that in this second century of the republic our courts should be so vehemently assailed for interference in legislation. One who knew of our duplex governments only by study of their written constitutions would open his eyes when told that there is any such thing under them as legislation by the courts. The citizen of Nebraska lives under a constitution which devotes an entire article to declaring, not only that the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of its state government are and must be kept distinct, but that no person in anyone of them, except as specially …
Professorial Ethics, Edgar L. Hinman
Professorial Ethics, Edgar L. Hinman
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
We are aware that a lawyer, by the very nature of his profession, comes into peculiar relations with his clients, and therefore with other lawyers, with the courts, and with the outside world. By reason of the trust that is reposed in him, there are many things which he might do in an underhand way to gain personal advantage. All this, however, has been in some degree rectified by the development of a code of professional ethics, of such character that the man who offends against it is damaged by a certain loss of caste. The physician, in like manner, …
The Mystery Of Pain, Robert Johnston
The Mystery Of Pain, Robert Johnston
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
One great mystery which confronts all men, as they contemplate this universe, is the mystery of pain. The problem is universal in its extent, for although there are the very few who claim never to have known a moment of sickness, the natural processes of their existence are inevitably accompanied by physical suffering in a greater or less degree, and pain is claiming its own among those with whom they come in daily contact, while the greater number of them have felt its iron hand upon themselves. Naturally an explanation is demanded. The eternal "why" rises from millions of hearts, …
The Revolution In Portugal, Guernsey Jones
The Revolution In Portugal, Guernsey Jones
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
The lower classes in Portugal, particularly in the country, are as hard working, sober, peaceable, and well-mannered a people as one could hope to find. They are, however, incredibly ignorant. To me it was a joy and wonder to find in Lisbon that the servants could not tell time by the clock, and that they thought the French tongue was merely an impediment of speech. I twas a temptation never before dreamed of and triumphantly endured, to discover that the washerwoman would accept with childlike faith whatever was offered her because she could not count money. As for reading and …
The Russian Merchant Marine, Edwin Maxey
The Russian Merchant Marine, Edwin Maxey
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
The rise of the Russian merchant marine is more intimately bound up with national politics than is that of any other of the merchant marines of the world. It will be necessary, therefore, in discussing its development, to call attention to the political conditions which furnished the impetus to the development of the merchant fleets of Russia. The subject, in other words, is not purely a business one, but is in part political.
Poetry And Archaeology, Robert Shafer
Poetry And Archaeology, Robert Shafer
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
Undoubtedly archaeology is a strange word for anyone to be using in connection with the poetry of men like Mr. Masefield or Mr. Gibson; and probably it were well to explain immediately what I mean in using it. Unless I am much mistaken, both archaeology, in the ordinary sense of the word, and naturalism were born of that prolific mother of strange children, the Romantic Movement. And more than this, besides having the same mother the two are so remarkably alike as to make me suspect that they must be twins.
The Modern Ideal Of Culture, Edward A. Thurber
The Modern Ideal Of Culture, Edward A. Thurber
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
A definition of modern culture as something realised and actual ought not to be too elusive, especially as it can be spoken of in concrete terms. It is possible to point to certain men and say, "There are cultivated men; the qualities they possess evidently go to make up culture." By way of approach, suppose we recall Matthew Arnold's sentence: "Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers' voyage, they and their standard of perfection are rightly judged when we figure to ourselves Shakespeare or Virgil - souls in whom sweetness and light, and all that in human nature is …
Jean François Millet, George M. Gould
Jean François Millet, George M. Gould
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
There were three painters named Jean François Millet, but he who was born October 4, 1814, and lived at Barbizon, is the only one we know. It is even more suggestive that of all the world's great painters, our reverential love goes out to "our Millet" with an especial fervour. We feel as if he were one of us, and that from him, personally, we may learn much; more, perhaps, from his living and his painting. His biography and especially his letters may have a distinctive and vital value for us, other artists seeming detached, or impersonal, often characterless, at …
Savage Spiritualism, Hutton Webster
Savage Spiritualism, Hutton Webster
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
Modem spiritualism has been described by Professor E. B. Tylor as in large measure a direct revival of savage superstition and peasant folklore.
The Qualities Of Browning, Harry T. Baker
The Qualities Of Browning, Harry T. Baker
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
The opening lines of Pippa Passes pulse with the tremendous vitality which the reader of Browning has early learned to expect of his poetry:
"Day!
Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world." …
Literature And The New Anti-Intellectualism, Philo M. Buck, Jr.
Literature And The New Anti-Intellectualism, Philo M. Buck, Jr.
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
" Never has he drawn so deeply from the well that is the human heart; never so near those invisible heights which are the soul." The reviewer who wrote this sentence probably meant that the author of the book he so enthusiastically welcomed wrote with a little more than the ordinary insight. Indeed if we are to judge from the encomiums in our less critical reviews the world has never been so blessed with novels and plays which touch the secret springs of the heart. The old fiction had generalised, had conventionalised, much as the old art had done. This, …
Plato's Political Ideas, P. H. Frye
Plato's Political Ideas, P. H. Frye
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
If we seek a rallying point, to begin with, for Plato's political conceptions, we shall find, I think, that they all centre about a single idea - the idea of justice. No other problem has given rise to more discussion, I. suppose, than just this problem of the relation of justice to society and the individuals composing it; and in no age, perhaps, has it given rise to more discussion than it did in the age of Plato. The difficulty has to do partly with the nature of justice itself and partly with the discovery of a practical working definition. …
Theories Of Cosmic Evolution, Ellery W. Davis
Theories Of Cosmic Evolution, Ellery W. Davis
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
The framing of theories is an occupation in which men like to indulge. To imagine how things may have come about is probably the nearest approach to a creative act to which we finite beings will ever attain; and the field of astronomy has been an especially tempting one in which to try our creative powers. We like to do things on a large scale; and it is quite as easy to construct, in imagination, a planet or a solar system as something less pretentious. From the first men have been explaining how the cosmos came to be; naturally these …
Lionel Johnson, T. K. Whipple
Lionel Johnson, T. K. Whipple
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
A score of years have passed since that courageous band of young Englishmen who styled themselves the Rhymers' Club tried to transplant the air of the Latin Quarter into London, by meeting at the Cheshire Cheese to discuss welsh rarebits, ale, and each other's verses. Time has played havoc with their ranks, and to some extent with their works. Some of them have died; several have abandoned song for scholarship; Mr. Le Gallienne has migrated to America; Mr. Yeats devotes himself to managing the Irish renascence. Of the two most characteristic voices of the period, one, that of Ernest Dowson, …
Literature As A Fine Art, S. B. Gass
Literature As A Fine Art, S. B. Gass
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
"The art of reasoning," says one of Wordsworth's eminent eulogists, "even the art of coherent speech, was to the poet a kind of art of lying." "The whole energy of his mind was spent to reunite what men had put asunder, to fuse in holy passion the differences that are invented by the near-sighted activities of the discriminating human intellect." "The unsophisticated perceptions and thoughts of children and of the peasantry, of half-witted human creatures and of the animals that are nearer to earth than we, lent him a more rompanionable guidance [than his own intellect and] to these spiritual …
"Laokoon" And The Prior Question, Hartley Burr Alexander
"Laokoon" And The Prior Question, Hartley Burr Alexander
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
The first gift of criticism is perspective. By perspective I mean a comprehensive view of related matters shown in their just and intelligible proportion. To attain such views in any department which falls within our human ken is no light task. The matters considered must be seen, as Arnold would have us see life, steadily and whole; and steadiness implies balance in the observer, no less than wholeness depends upon the accessibility of the phenomena. It is a happy union, therefore, of the personality and the season which produces the truly great critic.
Greek Nationalism And Home Rule In The Fourth Century, B.C., E. Benjamin Andrews
Greek Nationalism And Home Rule In The Fourth Century, B.C., E. Benjamin Andrews
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
A certain view of fourth century Greek politics is familiar. We mean what may be called the Demosthenic theory in which nearly all English and American readers of history have agreed. It assumes Athens to have been a real democracy, a government of freedom, the great bulwark of liberty for the entire Greek world at the time. It sets down Philip of Macedon as a barbarian. It maintains that his conquest of Greece before it was completed was of right feared as the death of Greek liberty, just as when executed it actually killed Greek liberty and buried it out …
A Study In Contemporary Balladry, H. M. Belden
A Study In Contemporary Balladry, H. M. Belden
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
Some time before daylight, May 11, 1894, at the foot of Jenkins Hill, about two miles from Browning, Linn County, Missouri, a quadruple murder was committed which made a very strong impression upon the people of the countryside. Though the crime was committed nearly twenty years ago, the memory of it is kept fresh in a number of ballads which constitute probably as good an instance of what Professor Gummere calls journalistic balladry as is to be found in modern times.
Puero Reverentia, Philo M. Buck, Jr.
Puero Reverentia, Philo M. Buck, Jr.
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
"The kindergarten is no longer an experiment. Critics may say what they will about its being a waste of time, an opportunity to play under unnatural conditions; they may assert that the work done by the child there is purposeless, that the child is too old when he enters; in short, they may empty every chamber of their wrath; yet the fact still stands that children who have gone through the kindergarten in the normal way are better and stronger physically, mentally, and morally when they enter the grades than those who have had no such training. This has been …
Lincoln And Hamlet, Daniel Kilham Dodge
Lincoln And Hamlet, Daniel Kilham Dodge
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
It is now pretty generally known that Abraham Lincoln, whose schooling, according to his own statement, amounted in all to somewhat less than a year, was not only a steady reader and admirer of Shakespeare but also one of the keenest critics of some of the tragedies. His brief remarks on the opening lines of Richard III, protesting against the rhetorical rendering so dear to most actors, are not surpassed, for insight and sympathy, by the best criticism of Lamb and Coleridge, and his expressed preference for Claudius's soliloquy to the more famous "To be or not to be," …
Bonneval Pasha, A. I. Du P. Coleman
Bonneval Pasha, A. I. Du P. Coleman
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
When, a few months ago, the Turks crumpled up helplessly before the fierce onslaught of their hereditary foes, there must have been some among them well enough acquainted with the history of their country to wish for at least one hour of the brilliant Frenchman who, almost two centuries earlier, came to place his sword at their disposal and ended his life as a Pasha of three tails in Constantinople. His strange career was then the talk of an amazed and fascinated Europe; now, there will probably be few of those who chance upon these pages to whom it will …
German Romanticism, P. H. Frye
German Romanticism, P. H. Frye
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
The German romantic movement was the result of defective culture, of bodily and mental derangement, of spiritual and nervous disorder. It is a work of degeneration, deformation, and disease. And it bears on its front the stigmata of its infirmities - absurdity, folly, inanity, and confusion. There is Hardenberg, the pattern of the school, who falls in love with a chit of thirteen and at her death a year or so later dedicates himself to the grave, an unblemished sacrifice of love, unblighted by sickness, violence, or sorrow, the cheerful victim of his own regret. In the meanwhile he begins …
Formal Logic And Logical Form, Edwin Ray Guthrie
Formal Logic And Logical Form, Edwin Ray Guthrie
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
Last year Dr. F. C. S. Schiller published Formal Logic, a Scientific and Social Problem, - a critical text-book, he calls it in the preface, that will teach logic" in a critical spirit and with a minimum of pedantry and reverence for forms." This object is so thoroughly fulfilled - at the end of the four hundred pages the criticism has been so searching and insistent and the reverence for forms so truly a minimum that formal logic seems to be a complete ruin, and the only scientific problem left at the end is how men ever came to …
Literature And Criticism, P. H. Frye
Literature And Criticism, P. H. Frye
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
In these days of "scientific method," when there is so little literary activity of a genuinely critical sort, it is a good deal easier to say in what such activity does not, than in what it does, consist. That literary criticism is not identical with a study of words or language, or yet of texts or "documents"; that it is not to be confounded with philology or with the exploration of origins or derivations, or the investigation of manuscripts, or a determination of the details of literary history-all this ought. to be reasonably clear on the face of it, and …
The Comedy Of The Arts College, S. B. Gass
The Comedy Of The Arts College, S. B. Gass
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
The Arts College - the Arts College. There is without doubt a savour of feebleness and effeminacy in the phrase. And on the countenance of the college itself there is beginoing to appear the intense and baffled look of the subject of comedy. It is beginning to pay the price of its court of the current romantic eccentricity, of its wanderings from its ancient concern for the larger visions of the human spirit. In its older allegiance it had stood in the midst of the chaos of life, stably anchored in the flux, offering to those who came to it …
Socrates And The Street Car, Horace M. Kallen
Socrates And The Street Car, Horace M. Kallen
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
It was at half past ten in the morning that they took me down to the operating room, weary with pain and numb with morphine. Upon my closed eyes I felt, for an instant, the soft, cool touch of the doctor's hand, succeeded immediately after by the warmth and woolliness of gauze and by the pressure of the rubber hood over my nose and chin. I wriggled a moment, coughed, and the pressure vanished. When it came again it brought with it the pungent sweetness of ether. I breathed deep, gasped and breathed deeper, gasped again and pumped for breath, …
College Study Of English, Alfred D. Sheffield
College Study Of English, Alfred D. Sheffield
Mid-West Quarterly (1913-1918)
College study, as we judge it by the quality of intellectual leaven that our young graduates bring into society, is still a theme of discontent. In particular, we feel that the college study of literature and of the literary medium foments no genuine social demand for books and writing of the highest scholarly and reflective type. The criticisms voicing this discontent, it is true, often imply unreasonable expectations as to what the college can achieve with studies elective and students not particularly elect. "We require it to do all sorts of things for all sorts of people, and then wonder …