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Studies of man. By a Japanese [or rather by W. Ellis].
Studies of man By a Japanese - or rather by W. Ellis Author:William Ellis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. It is generally admitted by those who have given much attention to the subject, that men collectively have a much greater command over the elements and f... more »orces amid which they dwell than they ever had formerly. As well as we can judge by the records which have been preserved to us, this command has been acquired by slow degrees. At times, even, it has seemed as if men had been on the point of losing much of the power which they had acquired. Happily, after a while, this apparent suspense or loss of power previously acquired has been overcome, and men have started forward more rapidly than ever. This advance in capacity of men collectively is none the less manifest because the inhabitants of some parts of the earth have retrograded, and others, apparently, have never shared in the attainments acquired elsewhere. One consequence of the greater capacity of men collectively is that their numbers have increased greatly. They have been able to extract larger crops from the ground, to rearmore numerous flocks and herds, to turn to useful account minerals and material long regarded as so much encumbrance and rubbish, and hence to become possessed of larger quantities of food, clothing, fuel, dwellings, and of means of intercourse and transport, and, in general, of all the things which conduce to health and comfort. We are not losing sight of the fact that there are some parts of the earth formerly occupied by numerous and thriving inhabitants which are now comparatively desert. Making every allowance for the diminution in the number of inhabitants which has taken place in some parts of the earth, the increase in the other parts has been so great as to leave no doubt about the fact that the total number of men now living upon the earth is much larger than it has ever been. There ...« less