(Public Domain Reader)

Short Description:
"A strange creation. Part study, part Platonic dialogue, part novel, it all adds up to a fascinating, but uneven, literary artifact.The Bureaucrats is Balzac's study of the French bureaucracy under the reign of Charles X in the 1920s. It begins with about 100 pages of essentially prefatory material that serially introduces the dozens of characters that populate this novel, explaining where they came from, what role they play in the bureaucracy, and what their plans for the future contain. There are little bits of storytelling in the first part, but mostly Balzac is setting up the story--which takes up the next 150 pages of the book." - Jason, goodreads.com

Long Description:
“A strange creation. Part study, part Platonic dialogue, part novel, it all adds up to a fascinating, but uneven, literary artifact.

The Bureaucrats is Balzac’s study of the French bureaucracy under the reign of Charles X in the 1920s. It begins with about 100 pages of essentially prefatory material that serially introduces the dozens of characters that populate this novel, explaining where they came from, what role they play in the bureaucracy, and what their plans for the future contain. There are little bits of storytelling in the first part, but mostly Balzac is setting up the story–which takes up the next 150 pages of the book.” – Jason, goodreads.com

Word Count: 75661

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically as part of a bulk import process by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided. As a result, there may be errors in formatting.)

A factor of evolution

Short Description:
Struggle for existence. Mutual Aid: a law of Nature and chief factor of progressive evolution. Invertebrates. Ants and Bees. Birds, hunting and fishing associations. Sociability. Mutual protection among small birds. Cranes, parrots.

Long Description:
Two aspects of animal life impressed me most during the journeys which I made in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria. One of them was the extreme severity of the struggle for existence which most species of animals have to carry on against an inclement Nature; the enormous destruction of life which periodically results from natural agencies; and the consequent paucity of life over the vast territory which fell under my observation. And the other was, that even in those few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed to find—although I was eagerly looking for it—that bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution.

Word Count: 94488

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically as part of a bulk import process by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided. As a result, there may be errors in formatting.)