THE UNSEEN WORLD AND OTHER ESSAYS
By John Fiske
Transcriber's Note: This reviews Draper's Science and Religion
and contrasts two Dante translations.
TO JAMES SIME. MY DEAR SIME: Life has now and then some supreme moments of pure happiness, which in reminiscence give to single days the value of months or years. Two or three such moments it has been my good fortune to enjoy with you, in talking over the mysteries which forever fascinate while they forever baffle us. It was our midnight talks in Great Russell Street and the Addison Road, and our bright May holiday on the Thames, that led me to write this scanty essay on the "Unseen World," and to whom could I so heartily dedicate it as to you? I only wish it were more worthy of its origin. As for the dozen papers which I have appended to it, by way of clearing out my workshop, I hope you will read them indulgently, and believe me Ever faithfully yours, JOHN FISKE. HARVARD UNIVERSITY, February 3, 1876.
ESSAYS.
I. THE UNSEEN WORLD.
PART FIRST.
"What are you, where did you come from, and whither are you bound?"—the question which from Homer's days has been put to the wayfarer in strange lands—is likewise the all-absorbing question which man is ever asking of the universe of which he is himself so tiny yet so wondrous a part. From the earliest t
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