Handbook for the Ruins and Museums of Rome (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 edition. Excerpt: ...philosophical expression could be found for the objectivity of the poet, than the destruction of those organs which are the source of all the illusions of the senses;--there is no form of existence more fitted to represent the visual power of the philosophic spirit, than that abstraction which is fully characterized by sleep alone. The peculiar drowsiness in which the ancients imagined the Cretan seer to have existed during a period of forty years, is represented in this bust with masterly skill and truth. It seems as if we might accost him and receive answers without recalling him from the vegetative state of existence in which he has found this blessed, and, by no means, unproductive rest. As a representation, like this, must necessarily rest upon the views first propounded by Mesmer; it may serve to prove that the ancients were not only familiar with this natural phenomenon, but had it before their eyes in a purity and perfection, of which, from the turbid character of the sources whence our knowledge of it is derived, we possess scarcely an idea. Whilst we come into contact with the sleep-waking state only in cases of diseased over-excitement; it appears to have been observed, in ancient times, in individuals whose mental and physical powers were in the most perfect harmony, and in whom it denoted a return to the purest innocence and nature. 14. EPICURUS. Nr. 498. Heads of Epicurus are more frequently met with than those of any other philosopher of antiquity. For those desirous of obtaining a correct notion of the intellectual aim and character of this original philoso246 METRODORUS.-ZENO.-ANTISTHENES. pher, they are not unimportant, as they afford us an opportunity of observing, physiognomically, the state of mental ease conferred by the...