The Breath of Life (Complete Writings of John Burroughs) [Paperback]

John Burroughs (Author)

Book Description

Series: Complete Writings of John Burroughs | Publication Date: March 1, 2001

About the Author

John Burroughs was born April 3, 1837, near the town of Roxbury in the Catskill Mountains. Growing up on his parents' farm, he absorbed much of the nature and country life that he would later write about in his many volumes.

He taught briefly, married, and during the Civil War settled in Washington, D.C. where he obtained a job as a clerk in the Treasury Department. It was during his nine years in Washington that he published his first book, Wake-Robin. In 1873 he returned to New York State and established his home "Riverby" on the west bank of the Hudson River at West Park. He began fruit farming and continued to write, publishing a new books about every two years.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

"As life nears its end with me, I find myself meditating more and more upon the mystery of its nature and origin, yet without the least hope that I can find out the ways of the Eternal in this or in any other world. In these studies I fancy I am about as far from mastering the mystery as the ant which I saw this morning industriously exploring a small section of the garden walk is from getting a clear idea of the geography of the North American Continent. But the ant was occupied and was apparently happy, and she must have learned something about a small fraction of that part of the earth's surface.'' ''My imagination and ingrained humanism are appealed to by the facts and methods of natural history. I find something akin to poetry and religion (using the latter word in its non-mythological sense, as indicating the sum of mystery and reverence we feel in the presence of the great facts of life an death) in the shows of day and night, and in my excursions to fields and woods. The love of nature is a different thing from the love of science, though the two may go together. To the rigid man of science this is frank mysticism; but without a sense of the unknown and unknowable, life is flat and barren. Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, and no literature. How to get from the clod underfoot to the brain and consciousness of man without invoking something outside of, and superior to, natural laws, is the question. For my own part I content myself with the thought of some unknown and doubtless unknowable tendency or power in the elements themselves - a kind of universal mind pervading living matter and the reason of its living, through which the whole drama of evolution is brought about."

John Burroughs

Product Details

• Paperback: 308 pages
• Publisher: International Law & Taxation; 1 edition (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589631455
• ISBN-13: 978-1589631458
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,317,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Burroughs - man of letters and naturalist, February 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Breath of Life (Complete Writings of John Burroughs) (Paperback)

John Burroughs was a respected man of letters and a dedicated naturalist. This is one of Burroughs's last statements of his naturalist philosophy.