The object of this book is to present in compendious form the evidence which myths and dreams supply as to primitive man’s interpretation of his own nature and of the external world, and more especially to indicate how such evidence carries within itself the history of the origin and growth of beliefs in the supernatural.
The examples are selected chiefly from barbaric races, as furnishing the nearest correspondences to the working of the mind in what may be called its “eocene” stage, but examples are also cited from civilised races, as witnessing to that continuity of ideas which is obscured by familiarity or ignored by prejudice.

The Republic is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 380 BC concerning the definition of justice and the order and character of the just city-state and the just man. The dramatic date of the dialogue has been much debated and though it must take place some time during the Peloponnesian War, "there would be jarring anachronisms if any of the candidate specific dates between 432 and 404 were assigned".

A fancy overtakes us at times to question our presumption in writing a book. Wherein are we beter than another, that we should attempt to doctor another? We look over the matter-of-fact world and find it impossible to make a show, unless we have something to exhibit: Yet here are we who can fiddle little, and fife less-who cannot turn somersets, as we could once when we were less fit to write a book -who cannot commit by the page like an actor, nor play cbess witb a third-rate,-in short who cannot prove our ability by any standard feat whatsoever, proposing to indoctrinate many who can do all these things into the deepest mysteries of life!

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, generally referred to by its shortened title The Wealth of Nations, is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith. First published in 1776, the book offers one of the world's first collected descriptions of what builds nations' wealth, and is today a fundamental work in classical economics.

Pedro Calderon de la Barca was born in Madrid, January 17, 1600, of good family. He was educated at the Jesuit College in Madrid and at the University of Salamanca; and a doubtful tradition says that he began to write plays at the age of thirteen. His literary activity was interrupted for ten years, 1625-1635, by military service in Italy and the Low Countries, and again for a year or more in Catalonia. In 1637 he became a Knight of the Order of Santiago, and in 1651 he entered the priesthood, rising to the dignity of Superior of the Brotherhood of San Pedro in Madrid. He held various offices in the court of Philip IV, who rewarded his services with pensions, and had his plays produced with great splendor. He died May 5, 1681.

"An Account of the Lands & Peoples of Ottoman Empire"

MEASURED by population, Turkey is also a very small country. The whole Ottoman Empire " European, Asiatic, African, and Mediterranean, and including states that are only nominally subject to the sultans " barely reaches forty million souls “, or less than the population of the British Isle's; while the immediate Turkish possessions in Europe have a population of but six million people, or about that of the New England states of the American Union. Osmanli Turks number only a tenth of the population of European Turkey, the other nine-tenths being Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Wallachians, Hebrews, Servians, Magyars, Gypsies, Armenians, Circassians, and divers other races.

In 1776, writer Thomas Paine publishes his pamphlet “Common Sense,” setting forth his arguments in favor of American independence. Although little used today, pamphlets were an important medium for the spread of ideas in the 16th through 19th centuries.

This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. It is possible that they may be among those who understand my “Zarathustra”: how could I confound myself with those who are now sprouting ears?—First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.

On the second day of July in the year 1863 the Civil War in America was at its height. Late in the preceding month Lee had turned his face northward, and, with an army of a hundred thou-sand Confederate soldiers at his back, had marched up into Penn-sylvania.

A major actor in the American Revolution, the English intellectual Thomas Paine (1737-1809) is best remembered for his pamphlet Common Sense (1776), which advocated American independence from Britain. Although accorded honorary French citizenship in 1792 for his republican Rights of Man, Paine was later imprisoned and narrowly escaped guillotine.