Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

On the 14th of March, 1792, the Commissioners of the City of Washington offered a premium, by advertisement in the public papers, for a plan for the President’s house, and another for a design for the Capitol, to be presented on the 15th July. The plan for the President’s house, presented by Capt. James Hoban, […]

(From Moore’s Evenings in Greece.) Ah ! where are they who heard, in former hours, file voice of song in these neglected bowers ? They are gone—they are all gone ! The youth, who told his pain in such sweet tone, That all who heard him wished his pain their own, He is gone—he is […]

Do not press your children too much during their early years on the subject of religion. Show them, by your example, that it is the object of your own reverence ; but suffer their religious principles to form gradually, as their understandings open. Do not make religion appear to them a burden; do not lay […]

Daily habit has the effect of so soon familiarising objects to us, that we seldom pause to think how they have had a commencement. Gas light is now as familiar to us as the light of the sun or moon. It even illumines cellars and recesses, where the rays of either of these luminaries never […]

Icebergs are large bodies of ice filling the valleys between the high mountains in northern latitudes. Among the most remarkable are those of the East Coast of Spitsbergen. The frost sports wonderfully with these bodies, and gives them the most fantastic, and sometimes the most majestic forms. Masses have been seen assuming the shape of […]

While some are lost in dissipation and thoughtlessness, there are others whose minds are absorbed in diligent and laborious study. And, indeed, he who has no taste for intellectual pleasures, seems to be but a small remove from the animal tribes. Ile who cannot bear thinking, or at least has no disposition for investigation, but […]

Ginger is a native of the southeast of Asia ana the adjacent isles. It was naturalized in America very soon after the discovery of that country by the Spaniards; indeed, at so early a period that it is scarcely believed to be an exotic, and is supposed to have been found indigenous in the Western […]

The narrations of a frontier circle, as they draw round their evening fire, often turn upon the exploits of the old race of men, the heroes of the past days, who wore hunting-shirts, and settled the country. In a boundless forest full of panthers and bears, and more dreadful Indians, with not a white within […]

Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come, From God, who is our home. Heaven lies about us in our infancy WORDSWORTH I may begin with the question of Henry IV of France, when found by an ambassador at romps with his children,—” Are you a […]

The earth which we inhabit is not precisely a spherical body, but a spheroid flattened at its poles, similar in shape to an orange. Its shortest diameter is about 7940 miles, its longest about 7966 miles ; their difference being about 26 miles. This body passes through its orbit, which is nearly a circle of […]