It is a collection of fictitious dialogues between kings, queens, philosophers, etc, who were separated by centuries. Several consist of one person being brow-beaten by a supposedly wiser figure, so there are usually clear winners in the debates.
A time-traveler, Julian West, a young Bostonian who is put into a hypnotic sleep in the late 19th century, and awakens in the year 2000 in a socialist utopia. In conversations with the doctor who awakened him, he discovers a brilliantly realized vision of an ideal future, one that seemed unthinkable in his own century. Crime, war, personal animosity, and want are nonexistent. Equality of the sexes is a fact of life. In short, a messianic state of brotherly love is in effect.
The simple truth, and everybody knows it really, is that collars squeak for some people and not for others. A squeaky collar round the neck of a man is a comment, not upon the collar, but upon the man. That man is unlucky. Things are against him. Nature may have done all for him that she could, have given him a handsome outside and a noble inside, but the world of inanimate objects is against him.
The dominion which astronomy has always held over the minds of men is akin to that of poetry; when the former becomes merely instructive and the latter purely didactic, both lose their power over the imagination. Astronomy is known as the oldest of the sciences, and it will be the longest-lived because it will always have arcana that have not been penetrated....
In this collection of essays, the author takes a look at the state of the study of early religion, ritual, magic, and myth. He begins by looking at science and superstition, and the dangers of allowing belief unsupported by fact to seep into science. He then discusses the origin or religion, and "loan gods," or borrowed religion, a theory advanced by E.B. Tylor. Then moves on to look at William Frazer's theory of the origin of the divine character of Christ, and more.
The Romance of Modern Invention Contains Interesting Descriptions in Non-Technical Language of Wireless Telegraphy, Liquid Air, Modern Artillery, Submarines, Dirigible Torpedoes, Solar Motors, Airships, &c. &c.
An explorer faces a future burdened with our greatest hopes...and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine's lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth. There he discovers two bizarre races-the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks-who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the men of tomorrow as well.
Four lives lay helpless before the murder machine, the uncanny device by which hypnotic thought-waves are filtered through men's minds to mold them into murdering tools!
The World's Great Age begins anew, The Golden Years return, The Earth doth like a Snake renew Her Winter Skin outworn: Heaven smiles, and Faiths and Empires gleam Like Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream.