Author: A. D. Bache

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-07-04

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 9781330717943

Excerpt from Lecture on Switzerland Travelers relate that in certain conditions of the atmosphere a spectator standing upon the shore at Reggio, and looking upon the smooth waters of the Straits of Messina, sees suddenly, rise before him, as if by magic, the walls, towers, palaces, domes, and streets of a city, in which mimic life goes on, men and animals moving noiselessly to and fro. The illusion is as complete as if the waters of the bay were a foundation upon which the genii of the lamp or of the ring had suddenly erected their magic structures. This is an extreme case of the ordinary illusion presented to those who, in a calm clear day, look at distant objects across a wide expanse of bay or river. Familiar forms are strangely distorted; level shores appear precipitous; the puny sloop swells into the size of a frigate; the fisherman's boat becomes a dismasted sloop, and its occupant a giant. Just so it is when in mental vision we attempt to look through an atmosphere disturbed by the habits and prejudices to which we are accustomed. Unreal towers and walls appear, and objects so lose their shapes that the most familiar forms escape recognition. Every country has its prejudices resulting from education, from all the influences, political, moral, social, and physical which surround and act upon its citizens. By these, in general, the observer of men and things is biased, and be who through the mists of his national or personal prejudices seeks to realize their just forms and proportions, may mistake the pigmy for a giant, the shallop for a frigate. In estimating the institutions of the Old World we are prone to forget that the materials for our judgment are generally furnished by the opinions of those who are brought up under a totally different state of things from that which exists around us. The conclusions which we thus form may be the very opposite of those to which we would have come ourselves, had our own prepossessions furnished the inferences from the facts. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.