If Thought is capable of being classed with Electricity, or Will with chemical affinity, as a mode of motion, it seems necessary t...o fall at once under the second law of thermodynamics as one of the energies which most easily degrades itself, and, if not carefully guarded, returns bodily to the cheaper form called Heat. Of all possible theories, this is likely to prove the most fatal to Professors of History.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ireland, as distinct from her people, is nothing to me; and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for "Ireland," a...nd can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, the shame and the degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland--yea, wrought by Irishmen upon Irish men and women, without burning to end it, is, in my opinion, a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements he is pleased to call Ireland.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We do not want actions, but men; not a chemical drop of water, but rain; the spirit that sheds and showers actions, countless, end...less actions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge; as the chemical... energy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I cannot go to the houses of my nearest relatives, because I do not wish to be alone. Society exists by chemical affinity, and not... otherwise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The main objection to religious myths is that, once made, they are so difficult to destroy. Chemistry is not haunted by the phlogi...ston theory as Christianity is haunted by the theory of a God with a craving for bloody sacrifices. But it is also a fact that while serious attempts are constantly being made to verify scientific myths, religious myths, at least under Christianity and Islam, have become matters of faith which it is more or less impious to doubt, and which we must not attempt to verify by empirical means. Chemists believe that when a chemical reaction occurs, the weights of the reactants are unchanged. If this is not very nearly true, most of chemical theory is nonsense. But experiments are constantly being made to disprove it.... Chemists welcome such experiments and do not regard them as impious or even futile.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The vitamin has been reified. A chemical intangible originally defined as a unit of nutritive value, it was long ago reified into ...a pill. Now it is a pill; no one except a few precise scientists define it as anything else. Once the vitamin became a pill, it became "real" according to the precepts of American Cartesianism: "I swallow it, therefore it is."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the ...mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »