"Dialectics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all our knowledge was derived from sensation, and that all parts of the earth were endowed with feeling. Campanella also wrote Prodromus philosophiae instaurandae (1617); Philosophia rationalis, embracing grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, poetry, and history; Universalis Philosophatus, a treatise on metaphysics; Civitas solis, a description of a kind of Utopia, after the fashion of Plato's Republic. But the fatal book which ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... omnipotent." Inquisitors were set free from all rules which had been found necessary to save judges from judicial error,[590] and the formularies to guide inquisitors inculcated chicane, terrorism, deception, and brow-beating, and an art of entangling the accused in casuistry and dialectics. A new crime was invented for the cases in which confession could not be obtained: suspicion of heresy, which had three degrees, "light," "vehement," and "violent." Even papal decretals which restrained the effort to destroy the accused could be set aside.[591] Thus the Inquisition ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... appeared in his imagination a vast creative effort of the spiritual powers, of humanity struggling perilously to see justice done upon earth, to let reason and the will of God prevail. It lost its hold upon him the instant it became a thing of technicalities, of mere learning, of statutory dialectics. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Reasoning, — N. {ant. 477} reasoning ratiocination rationalism; dialectics, induction, generalization. discussion, comment; ventilation; inquiry &c. 461. argumentation, controversy, debate; polemics, wrangling; contention &c. 720 logomachy[obs3]; disputation, disceptation[obs3]; paper war. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Amoraim, again, were merely receptive, the medium through which tradition was handed on; others were creative as well. To put the same fact in Rabbinical metaphor, some were Sinais of learning, others tore up mountains, and ground them together in keen and critical dialectics. ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... extend far beyond the present number. In France, it is divided into a Faculte des Lettres and a Faculte des Sciences. The present comprehensive use of the term is but an extension of the Middle-Age division of the liberal arts into the Trivium,—Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectics,—and the Quadrivium,—Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy,—as expressed in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... comparative estimate which he placed upon his own parliamentary efforts. He told me more than once that he thought his second speech on Foot's resolution was that in which he had best succeeded as a senatorial effort, and as a specimen of parliamentary dialectics; but he added, with an emotion which even he was unable to suppress, "The speech of the 7th of March, 1850, much as I have been reviled for it, when I am dead, will be allowed to be of the greatest ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... never said anything; sat silent, sometimes smiling; but he took good note of what others said, and would bring it up, on occasion, twenty years after. As for me Jocelin, I was of opinion that 'some skill in Dialectics, to distinguish true from false,' would be good in an Abbot. I spake, as a rash Novice in those days, some conscientious words of a certain benefactor of mine; 'and behold, one of those sons of Belial' ran and reported them to him, so that ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Street, and Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt, never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth—with the weapons of his dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved; jeered and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... debate whether the American people will abandon it now? Those who have a fancy for that species of dialectics may weigh the chances, and evolve from circumstances of their own imagination, and canons of national and international obligation of their own manufacture, conclusions to their own liking. I need not ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... temper begins to get a little ruffled at the process to which he has been subjected, is aware that he will soon be compelled by the dialectics of Socrates to admit that the temperate is the just. He therefore defends himself with his favourite weapon; that is to say, he makes a long speech not much to the point, which elicits the applause ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... experiment. He is treated by Socrates in a half-playful manner suited to his character; at the same time he appears not quite to understand the process to which he is being subjected. For he is exhibited as ignorant of the very elements of dialectics, in which the Sophists have failed to instruct their disciple. His definition of virtue as 'the power and desire of attaining things honourable,' like the first definition of justice in the Republic, is taken from a poet. His answers have a sophistical ring, ...
— Meno • Plato
... knowledge, was purely philosophical. While the older scholasticism, based on Platonic traditions, endeavoured to bring these into harmony with Christianity, that is to say, prove the revelations by dialectics, Albertus Magnus and, authoritatively, his pupil, Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274), strictly distinguished, by the use of Aristotelian weapons, the rational or perceptive truths from the supernatural verities or the subjects of faith. This distinction, made in order ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... but a change of scene, of climate, of the animal qualities of the frame, and evil has become a good, and good has become evil .... Now, our displeasure with Mr. Macaulay is, not that he has advanced a novel and mischievous theory: it was elaborated long ago in the finely-tempered dialectics of the Schools of Rhetoric, at Athens; and so long as such a phenomenon as a cultivated rogue remains possible among mankind, it will reappear in all languages and under any number of philosophical disguises .... Seldom or never, however, has it appeared with so little attempt ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... oaks in their hands. Their adversaries defend themselves warily from an invisible world, and reduce the substances of their opponents to the minutest fractions, until they are lost in generation and flux. The latter sort are civil people enough; but the materialists are rude and ignorant of dialectics; they must be taught how to argue before they can answer. Yet, for the sake of the argument, we may assume them to be better than they are, and able to give an account of themselves. They admit the existence of a mortal living creature, which is a body containing a soul, and ...
— Sophist • Plato
... order to convince his listeners, he was obliged to use a new method of argument. So he carried on his argumentation by question and answer, and was therefore the first who used dialogue, which he called dialectics, as a medium ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... optics, the canon law, and the divinity of the schoolmen for ink-horn terms and similes. He was in verse what Browne was in prose. He loved to play with distinctions, hyperboles, paradoxes, the very casuistry and dialectics of love ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... explain—until the simple splendour of Christ's mysterious act is altogether overlaid and hidden. Be more simple! It is better to 'love God than to discourse learnedly about the Blessed Trinity.' It has not pleased God to save His people through dialectics. Believe more, ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... conscientious minister come upon a time when the social prestige of the clergy is waning, and whose independence will test the voluntary system of ministerial support; Simeon Brown, the man of theological dialectics, in whom the utmost perfection of creed is shown to be not inconsistent with the most contradictory imperfection of life,—all these are characters new to literature. And the scene is laid just far enough away in point of time to give ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... length to Paris, where above all in those days the art of dialectics was most flourishing, and there did I meet William of Champeaux, my teacher, a man most distinguished in his science both by his renown and by his true merit. With him I remained for some time, at first indeed well liked of him; but later I brought him great grief, because I undertook to refute ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... mighty questions, which in those days hid that deep unbelief in any truth whatsoever which was spreading fast over the minds of men. Such word-splitters were Stilpo and Diodorus, the slayer and the slain. They were of the Megaran school, and were named Dialectics; and also, with more truth, Eristics, or quarrellers. Their clique had professed to follow Zeno and Socrates in declaring the instability of sensible presumptions and conclusions, in preaching an absolute and eternal Being. But there was this deep gulf between ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... go even further with my bragging: I can exegete the psalms and the prophets, and they cannot. I can translate, and they cannot. I can read Holy Scriptures, and they cannot. I can pray, they cannot. Coming down to their level, I can do their dialectics and philosophy better than all of them put together. Plus I know that not one of them understands Aristotle. If, in fact, any one of them can correctly understand one part or chapter of Aristotle, I will eat my hat! No, I am not overdoing it for I have been educated in and have practiced ...
— An Open Letter on Translating • Gary Mann
... which agitated the world in the tenth century, relating to dialectics, was concerning universals (as for example, man, horse, dog, &c.) signifying not this or that in particular, but all in general. They distinguished universals, or what we call abstract terms, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... about to assail you with sequiturs and non sequiturs dialectics and all the mysteries of Denk-Lehre, but simply to remind you there is such a thing as the bottom of a subject. When I tell you we are flying towards the bottom of our institutions, it is in the intellectual sense, and not, as you have erroneously imagined, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... states certain facts which the Government do not like to be known, not that they injure the military situation in the least, but that they show that the Government, in the opinion of the writer, made certain very bad blunders." The Home Secretary's answer was {viii} typical of departmental dialectics: "It is inconceivable to me," he declared, "that the Government would venture to say to the Press, or indicate to it in any way, 'This is our view. Publish it. If you do not, you will suffer.'" What the Government did, in effect, say to the Editor of the ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... over I may as well forget it. Pah! I am boring you, and over-talking myself. Have a cigar, and let us say no more about it. There is more here, old fellow, than you will cure by doses of Socratic Dialectics." ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... authorship. To a friendly critic they appear to present not only rare and highly trained qualities of statement and persuasion, but a unity and sincerity of thought which give them a place above mere party dialectics. Mr. Churchill's distinguished service to Liberalism has not been long in point of years, but it opened with the first speeches he ever delivered in the House of Commons. No competent observers of political ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Coleridge's philosophy was essentially the philosophy of a poet. He had, indeed, great dialectical ingenuity—a faculty which may certainly be allied with the highest imagination, though it may involve certain temptations. A poet who has also a mastery of dialectics becomes a mystic in philosophy. Coleridge had, it seems, been attracted by Plotinus in his schooldays. At a later period he had been attracted by Hartley, Berkeley, and Priestley. To a brilliant youth, anxious to be in the van of intellectual progress, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... never studied, nor well understood. Thus in our day, that little which Aristotle can bring, is peculiar for its inventive reasoning, its suggestiveness, its metaphysics, and is useful for other pedants, who work with the same "Sursum corda," who institute new dialectics and modes of forming the reason (judgment?) which are as much viler than those of Aristotle, as may be the philosophy of Aristotle is incomparably viler than that of the ancients. And it has been caused by this, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... time the latter doctrine, that of Nominalism, as it was called, prevailed. At length, these new or 'modern' philosophers abandoned the question of Realism, and the relation of thought to Reality, in favour of a system of pure logic or dialectics, dealing with the mere forms and expressions of thought, the formal analysis of ideas and words, the mutual relation of propositions and conclusions—in short, all that constitutes what we call formal logic, in ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... these processes and methods of reasoning fits in the metaphysical framework of thought. To dialectics, however, which takes in the objects and their conceivable images above all in their connections, their sequence, their motion, their rise and decline, processes like the above are so many attestations of its own method of procedure. Nature furnishes ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... earnest, and reverential regard. Others, more particularly the earlier ones, including "Opera and Drama," excite and agitate one; their rhythm is so uneven that, as prose they are bewildering. Their dialectics is constantly interrupted, and their course is more retarded than accelerated by outbursts of feeling; a certain reluctance on the part of the writer seems to hang over them like a pall, just as though the artist were somewhat ashamed of speculative discussions. What the reader ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... dialectics, it must be admitted that this sort of reasoning is not very formidable to those who are not to be frightened by consequences. It is an 'argumentum ad ignorantiam'—take this explanation ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... precincts of universities. Moreover, the Lord Jesus, consummate mystic, incomparable artist, was such partly because He was a great theologian as well. His dealings with scribe and Pharisee furnish some of the world's best examples of acute and courageous dialectics. His theological method differed markedly from the academicians of His day. Nevertheless it was noted that He spoke with an extraordinary authority. "He gave," as Dr. Peabody also points out, "new scope and significance ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... wrought in fire rather than in frost. It lights the enthusiasm which cannot despair, the diligence that will not weary, the fervour that often goes farther to sway other minds than the sharpest dialectics of a passionless understanding. There are causes in which an unimpassioned advocacy is worse than silence; and this is one of them. The word of the living God which has saved our souls and brought to us all that makes our natures rich and strong, and all ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... their own glorification; some, like birds, in their levity and ambition soaring to the height and brightness of physical things; others like young puppies, as Plato[265] says, rejoicing in tearing and biting, betake themselves to strifes and questions and sophisms; but most plunging themselves into dialectics immediately store themselves for sophistry; and some collect sentences[266] and histories and go about (as Anacharsis said he saw the Greeks used money for no other purpose but to count it up), merely piling up and comparing them, but making ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Thirty-nine Articles. Many of them are less capable teachers and even less intelligent men than many Board School teachers. There is, however, urgent need of an absolutely new type of school—a school that shall be, at least, so skilfully conducted as to supply the necessary training in mathematics, dialectics, languages, and drawing, and the necessary knowledge of science, without either consuming all the leisure of the boy or destroying his individuality, as it is destroyed by the ignorant and pretentious blunderers of to-day; and there is an equally manifest need of a new type ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... worst aspect of the German policy is that it associates the subtlest dialectics with the most insane brutality. When the time comes, they act with the blind fury of the bull, but they have already thought it all over with the wisdom of the serpent. That is why the popular appellation of "Huns" is so misleading. ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... host of pupils, and won therein his own great renown whilst laying the foundation for that of the abbey of Bee, which was destined to be carried still higher by one of his disciples, St. Anselm. Lanfranc was eloquent, great in dialectics, of a sprightly wit, and lively in repartee. Relying upon the pope's decision, he spoke ill of William's marriage with Matilda. William was informed of this, and in a fit of despotic anger, ordered Lanfranc to be driven from the monastery and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... subjective form of myth and science, for which Descartes had prepared the way; the theory of Spinoza and of the German school in general fundamentally consists in the substitution of entified forms and dialectics of the mind for the earlier objective forms of ideas. A great error was rectified, and the former phase of the intellectual evolution of myth disappeared, in favour of another which, although still erroneous, was ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... well-known figure in London literary society, and was busy making for himself a huge private reputation. The Christmas Day of 1758 witnessed a singular scene at the dinner table of David Garrick. Dr. Johnson, then in full vigour of his mind, and with the all-dreaded weapons of his dialectics kept burnished by daily use, was flatly contradicted by a fellow-guest some twenty years his junior, and, what is more, submitted to it without a murmur. One of the diners, Arthur Murphy, was so ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... species of human knowledge may be reduced to one or other of these divisions. Even law belongs partly to the history of man, partly as a science to dialectics. The twelve languages are Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... at the Old Bailey for a tumultuous assembly, written by themselves, may be read in the State Trials, vol. vi. The trial was the occasion of Penn's famous remark to the Recorder of London, who, driven wellnigh distracted by Penn's dialectics, exclaimed, "If I should suffer you to ask questions till to-morrow morning you would never be the wiser." "That," replied Penn, "would be ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... as well, so far as the run of the students is concerned, be in Arabic. Nine-tenths of the young men leave the Collegio Romano as learned as they entered it. The higher priesthood are educated at the Sapienza, where, I believe, a thorough training in theological dialectics ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... himself tea. KEN squints at posters, LAURA munches sandwich and giggles.] Comrade Martin—bring on your material dialectics. ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... should be past for the mental attitude: "Revolution is atrocious. Sir, there is no revolution." Likewise should the time be past for that other familiar attitude: "Socialism is slavery. Sir, it will never be." It is no longer a question of dialectics, theories, and dreams. There is no question about it. The revolution is a fact. It is here now. Seven million revolutionists, organized, working day and night, are preaching the revolution—that passionate gospel, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... his, so-called, dialectic method, which reflects the objective life-process of the Absolute, and is, in fact, identical with it; for God, says he, "is only the Absolute Intelligence in so far as he knows himself to be the Absolute Intelligence, and this he knows only in science [dialectics], and this knowledge alone constitutes his true existence."[48] This life-process of the Absolute has three "moments." It may be considered as the idea in itself—bare, naked, undetermined, unconscious idea; as ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... times, when this so perplexing doctrine proceeded from that most learned man aforesaid. His was a mind of no common cultivation; first in the preliminaries of literature in Greek education, then as a master of dialectics and argumentation. Moreover, he was most grave in his whole life, and reckoned among the very first of those who ever deserved the love of the orthodox, and so continued till his maintenance of this doctrine. Nay, he had undergone banishment for not submitting ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... only compare the most simple and ordinary difficulties which good sense opposes to religion, with the pretended solutions that have been given. You will perceive that the difficulties, evident even to the capacities of a child, have never been removed by divines the most practised in dialectics. You will find in their replies only subtle distinctions, metaphysical subterfuges, unintelligible verbiage, which can never be the language of truth, and which demonstrates the embarrassment, the impotence, and the bad faith of those who are interested by their position ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... the exclusion of all other parts, but all parts should be used daily. To this end the practical things of life should daily engage our attention, no less than the contemplation of beauty as manifest in music, poetry, art or dialectics. The thought that every day we should look upon a beautiful picture, read a beautiful poem, or listen for a little while to beautiful music, is highly scientific, for this contemplation and appreciation of harmony is a ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... indeed, has considerably exaggerated the share of the Metaphysical spirit in this mental revolution, since by a lax use of terms he credits the Metaphysical mode of thought with all that is due to dialectics and negative criticism—to the exposure of inconsistencies and absurdities in the received religions. But this operation is quite independent of the Metaphysical mode of thought, and was no otherwise connected with it than in being very generally ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... had acquired sufficient knowledge of Aristotle and the Schoolmen, among whom he paid particular attention to S. Thomas and to Raymond Lully. Plato, as expounded by Plotinus, had taken firm hold on his imagination. He was versed in the dialectics of the previous age, had mastered mediaeval cosmography and mathematics, and was probably already acquainted with Copernicus. The fragments of the Greek philosophers, especially of Pythagoras and Parmenides, whose metaphysics ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the Constitution guarantied the existence of Slavery, presto, Slavery must be regarded as existing under it in the Territories! This, we say, was more respectable ground than Squatter Sovereignty, because it met the question more fairly in the face; yet, considered either as dialectics or history, it was not one whit less absurd. We do not wonder that Webster, and all the other sound lawyers of the nation, heard such an announcement of Constitutional hermeneutics with utter surprise and astonishment. It was enough to astound ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... and from within, had become most pitiable. The Kabbala lured into her charmed circle the strongest Jewish minds. Scientific aspirations seemed completely extinguished. Even the study of the Talmud was abandoning simple, undistorted methods of interpretation, and espousing the hairsplitting dialectics of the northern French school. Synagogue poetry was languishing, and general culture found no votaries among Jews. Occasionally only the religious disputations between Jews and Christians induced some ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... 1508 he was invited by Frederic, Elector of Saxony, to become a professor in the new university which he had established at Wittemberg. He was now twenty-five years of age, and the fact, that he should have been selected, at that early age, to teach dialectics, is a strong argument in favor of his attainments ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... searching process of question and answer, that Socrates endeavored to lead his pupils to a consciousness of their own ignorance, and thus to awaken in their minds an anxiety to obtain more exact views. This method of questioning he reduced to a scientific process, and "dialectics" became a name for the art of reasoning and the science of logic. The subject-matter of this method was moral science considered with special reference to politics. To him may be justly attributed induction and general definitions, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... until he had complied with all the English demands. In this extremity, Denonville sent Father Vaillant to Albany, in the hope of bringing his intractable rival to conditions less humiliating. The Jesuit played his part with ability, and proved more than a match for his adversary in dialectics; but Dongan held fast to all his demands. Vaillant tried to temporize, and asked for a truce, with a view to a final settlement by reference to the two kings. [Footnote: The papers of this discussion will be ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... school of six years came the so-called philosophical course of three years (sometimes two). The study of the Latin classics and rhetoric was continued, and dialectics (logic) and some metaphysics were added. The nine years together covered about the same scope as Sturm's school (R. 137) at Strassburg (p. 273), but was more formal in character and partook more of the nature of the later formalized humanistic schools. Slight variations ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... manor-house and copy the figures on the tapestries, standing in midwinter, half-frozen, the paper in one hand, the pencil in the other; and how, when these artistic enthusiasms were sternly if admiringly checked by a father intent on siring a Rabbi, he relieved the dreary dialectics of the Talmud—so tedious to a child uninterested in divorce laws or the number of white hairs permissible in a red cow—by surreptitious nocturnal perusal of a precious store of Hebrew scientific and historical works discovered in an old cupboard ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Mielot told how the virgin of Alexandria controverted the subtle arguments of Homer, the syllogisms of Aristotle, the very learned reasonings of the famous physicians AEsculapius and Galen, practised the seven liberal arts, and disputed according to the rules of dialectics.[275] Jacques d'Arc's daughter had heard nothing of all that; she knew Saint Catherine from stories out of some history written in the vulgar tongue, in verse or in prose, so many of which were ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... me your dialectics!—because any skill you have in them, I taught you! You cannot excuse your own sins by running over the list of mine; that is the only answer I have to make to you! I don't stand before you as the embodiment of truth; I am no braggart. No; but ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... consciences dictated, free from the restrictions on the liberty of conscience imposed by the Pilgrim Fathers. There, at last, complete freedom of dissent was found, and one of the consequences was that the colony became a sort of field for Christian dialectics, where the most extreme doctrines on all points of Christian belief were discussed without other or more serious results of the odium theologicum than the building of many meeting-houses and the multiplication of sects. Among these sects was one which played an important part in the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... realm of natural right. The decision of such important questions can only be accomplished by careful historical analysis, which will show different results for different epochs,—that, for example, the legal nature of liberty is entirely different in the ancient state and in the modern. Legal dialectics can easily deduce the given condition with equally logical acuteness from principles directly opposed to one another. The true principle is taught not by jurisprudence but ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... consultation, and it demands, therefore, for its successful accomplishment, the highest and rarest faculties and acquisitions. Dr. Ducachet possesses in a very eminent degree, not only the requisite knowledge and judgment, but he has a certain temperament and felicity, with a love of and skill in dialectics, which promise even to the articles for a dictionary, from his hand, the utmost raciness and attractive interest. We understand this work will ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens out the widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread,' as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage; and repugnant as its manners, its doubting and challenging, its quibbling and dialectics, often are to common people, no one of us can get along without the far-flashing beams of light it sends over the world's perspectives. These illuminations at least, and the contrast-effects of darkness and mystery that accompany them, give to what it says an interest that is much ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... other events of their lives; they have represented evangelists; apostles; the twenty-four old men of the Apocalypse; saints, prophets, kings, queens, and princes, by the score; the signs of the zodiac, and even the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music; everything is there ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... the "God-taught" Ammonius, tells us that the secret gnosis or the knowledge of Theosophy, has three degrees-opinion, science, and illumination. "The means or instrument of the first is sense, or perception; of the second, dialectics; of the third, intuition. To the last, reason is subordinate; it is absolute knowledge, founded on the identification of the mind with the object known." Theosophy is the exact science of psychology, so to say; it stands in relation to natural, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... himself with great zeal to letters, and had become famous for his visits to the schools of France and Italy, in order to gather there the secrets of learning. As a consequence he was well informed not only in grammar and dialectics, but also in astronomy and in music. He also possessed such an extensive knowledge of the natural sciences that in the town of Salerno, where, since ancient times, the best schools of medicine had existed, there was no one ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... law, as Kant proclaimed it in the year after the publication of his essay (1785).[206] Kant really came to his ethics by the way of evolution, though he afterwards disavowed it. Similarly the same line of thought may be traced in Hegel though it has been disguised in the form of speculative dialectics.[207] And in Schopenhauer's theory of the blind will to live and its abrogation by the ethical feeling, which is founded on universal sympathy, we have a more individualistic form of ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... and "understanding." And another Greek philosopher [*Andronicus; Cf. Q. 80, Obj. 4] says that ten things are connected with prudence, namely, "good counsel," "shrewdness," "foresight," "regnative [*Regnativa]," "military," "political" and "domestic prudence," "dialectics," "rhetoric" and "physics." Therefore it seems that one or the other enumeration is either excessive ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... with us. All the qualities of manly thought, though with ruder implements and cruder materials, have been as conspicuously exhibited down through the ages past as in our day. The power of governing, ability in war, diplomacy in peace, subtle dialectics, clear insight, the art of conversation, persuasive and impressive speech, high art in every form, whatever constitutes the test of good manhood, has been here in full force. It would puzzle us yet to lay the stones of Baalbec, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... coercion days, letters constantly appeared in the newspapers, signed "George Wyndham." A certain flippancy and cynicism of tone, joined to a skilful though school-boyish delight in dialectics, suggested that though the name was George Wyndham, the writer was an eminent chief. When at last Mr. George Wyndham made his appearance in the House and delivered himself of his maiden speech, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman—one of the wittiest men in the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... turn every object or incident into acrostics and anagrams. Everything is spun out into allegory; and a digression is always preferred to the main story. Sentiment is built up upon plays of words; the hero or heroine feels, not from the impulse of passion, but from the force of dialectics. There is besides, a strange attempt to substitute the language of painting for that of poetry, to make us SEE their feelings in the faces of the persons; and again, consistently with this, in the description ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... of humanity in long-clothes. Man, ignorant of the forces of the Cosmos, blinded by theological dialectics and metaphysical subtleties, incapable of understanding the real essence of our moral and intellectual nature, philosophically untrained to observe that evil is but a sequence of the disturbed balance between our double nature—spirit ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... marvellously anticipated one of the most surprising discoveries of the Christian revelation. The respectable name of Plato was used by the orthodox, and abused by the heretics, as the common support of truth and error: the authority of his skilful commentators, and the science of dialectics, were employed to justify the remote consequences of his opinions and to supply the discreet silence of the inspired writers. The same subtle and profound questions concerning the nature, the generation, the distinction, and the equality of the three divine persons of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... native of Mantua, and was educated there in grammer and dialectics. Having entered himself among the clergy, he spent some time in the study of theology and the canon law, and laid that foundation of learning, which, joined with his natural genius and eminent virtue, qualified him to rise to the highest ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... consequences. But what struck me at that time most of all, was the Classification of Offences, which is much more clear, compact, and imposing in Dumont's redaction than in the original work of Bentham from which it was taken. Logic and the dialectics of Plato, which had formed so large a part of my previous training, had given me a strong relish for accurate classification. This taste had been strengthened and enlightened by the study of botany, on the principles of what is called the Natural Method, ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... table-talk of Edinburgh was, and probably still is, in a very great measure made up of brilliant disquisition—such as might be transferred without alteration to a professor's note-book, or the pages of a critical Review—and of sharp word-catchings, ingenious thrusting and parrying of dialectics, and all the quips and quibblets of bar pleading. It was the talk of a society to which lawyers and lecturers had, for at least a hundred years, given the tone. From the date of the Union, Edinburgh ceased to be the headquarters of the Scotch nobility—and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... mine is different and more elaborate. Yet, first of all, let me frankly confess to the reader, that some people allege a point-blank assertion by Scripture itself of its own verbal inspiration; which assertion, if it really had any existence, would summarily put down all cavils of human dialectics. That makes it necessary to review this assertion. This famous passage of Scripture, this locus classicus, or prerogative text, pleaded for the verbatim et literatim inspiration of the Bible, is the following; and I will so exhibit its very words as that the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... assumed improbability of disorder owing to the homogeneity of the population is a reason, not for giving Home Rule, but for withholding it? These contradictions and confusions are painfully familiar in anti-Home Rule dialectics all over the world. A quiet Ireland does not want Home Rule; a turbulent Ireland is not fit for it. If the Unionist element in Ireland is strong, that is clearly an argument for withholding Home Rule in deference to the wishes of a strong minority. If the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... science of correct thinking or of the laws which regulate thought, called also dialectics; or in the Hegelian system "the scientific exposition and development of those notions or categories which underlie all things ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 'you must be, with the aptness of my scholar. Julia has not studied dialectics in vain. Before I can feel myself able to contend with her, I must study the books she has commended so—from which, I must acknowledge, I have been repelled by a prejudice, I believe, rather than any ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... worked out by the dumb agents who were quite unable to recognise their nature. If, in short, we wish to discover the secret of the great ecclesiastical and political struggles of the day, we should turn, not to the men in whose minds beliefs lie inert and instinctive, nor to the ostensible dialectics of the ostensible apologists and assailants, but to the great poet who shows how they were associated with the strongest passions and ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... voice was raised against the doctrine in its strict physical form. The great body of the Scholastics stood stanchly by it. In defence and support of the Church thesis they brought all the quirks and quiddities of their subtle dialectics. As we take down their ponderous tomes from their neglected shelves, and turn over the dusty, faded old leaves, we find chapter after chapter in many a formidable folio occupied with grave discussions, carried on in acute logical terminology, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of metaphysics. You are making a very hotbed of your intellect, while you heart is daily becoming a dreary desert. Take care, lest the starvation be so complete that eventually you will be unable to reclaim it. Dialectics answer very well in collegiate halls, but will not content you. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... don't trouble my head with such matters—I say Stukely was a right good-hearted fellow at bottom; and if you plague my head with any of your dialectics, and propositions, and college quips and quiddities, you sha'n't have any more sack, sir. But here come the knaves, and I hear ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... way as best it could to its own district. Buchanan would seem to have had enough of fighting; and perhaps he had succeeded in proving to his relatives that neither arms nor agriculture were his vocation; for we next find him on his way to St. Andrews, "to hear John Major who was then teaching dialectics or rather sophistry." Here he would seem to have studied for two years; taking his degree in 1525 at the age of nineteen. After this he followed Major to France, whether for love of his master, or with the idea that Major's interest as a doctor ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... present day, they indicate definite physical conceptions, susceptible of mathematical treatment, and giving rise to innumerable deductions, the value of which can be experimentally tested. The old notions produced little more than floods of dialectics; the new are powerful aids towards the ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... "Theologico-Political Tractate" (1640-1677). This advanced state of culture in Holland did not fail to react upon the neighboring countries. Under the impulse of enthusiasm for the Bible Puritan England under Cromwell opened its portals to the Jews. In Italy, in the dank atmosphere of rabbinical dialectics and morbid mysticism, great figures loom up—Leon de Modena, the antagonist of Rabbinism and of the Kabbala, and Joseph del Medigo, mathematician, philosopher, and mystic, ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... in voting as Member of Parliament against measures which conflicted with his social inclinations. There was probably not an ounce of the theological spirit in his whole composition; for his refutation of atheism was a youthful essay in dialectics, a bone thrown to the traditions of the ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... from her. This is as it should be, and let no one fear to prosecute his researches, for out of this merciless dissection comes life. But we need not be surprised at the feverish heat which, after these orgies of dialectics, can only be calmed by the kisses of the artless creature in whom nature lives and smiles. Woman restores us to communication with the eternal spring in which God reflects Himself. The candour of a child, unconscious of its own beauty and seeing God clear as the daylight, is the great revelation ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Volozhin, Mir, [2] and other towns sent forth thousands of rabbis and Talmudists. Mentality, erudition, dialectic subtlety were valued here above all else. Yet, as soon as the mind, whetted by talmudic dialectics, would point its edge against the existing order of things, or turn in the direction of living knowledge, of "extraneous sciences," [3] it was checked by threats of excommunication and persecution. Many were the victims ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... his objects were new, his method was no less so. He was the parent of dialectics and logic. Aristotle says, "To Socrates we may unquestionably assign two novelties—inductive discourses, and the definitions of general terms." Without any predecessor to copy, Socrates fell as it were instinctively into that which Aristotle describes as the double tract ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... you are lost!" she exulted. "For you can only modify in the direction of my position, which is neither so Jesuitical nor so harsh as you have defined it. But don't let us get lost in dialectics. I want to see what I can see, so tell ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... him in a discussion on the freedom of the will, and Macalister, with his well-stored memory, brought out argument after argument. He had a mind that delighted in dialectics, and he forced Philip to contradict himself; he pushed him into corners from which he could only escape by damaging concessions; he tripped him up with logic and battered him ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... among them doubtless saw whither such innovations tended. Meanwhile they were content to linger in that wide field of speculation which the development of the physical sciences had recently opened to philosophic thought. As, at the Revival of Learning, the thinker imprisoned in mediaeval dialectics suddenly felt under his feet the firm ground of classic argument, so, in the eighteenth century, philosophy, long suspended in the void of metaphysic, touched earth again and, Antaeus-like, drew fresh life from ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the founder of the philosophy that is still recognized in the civilized world. He left no writings behind him; but by means of lectures, that included question and answer, his system, known as the dialectics, ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... fraternise with the adversary of the eve and the morrow in friendly curiosity and liberal recognition. It fell to the present writer at one time to have one or two bouts of public controversy with Mr. Greg. In these dialectics Mr. Greg was never vehement and never pressed, but he was inclined to be—or, at least, was felt by an opponent to be—dry, mordant, and almost harsh. These disagreeable prepossessions were instantly ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... dialectics," said he with a smack of the lips upon the word. It was a good cunning scholarly word, and the man who could produce it so aptly ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... from these fineries or pedantries? What help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. Our young people have thought and written much on labor and reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have got on a step. Intellectual ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... into our dialectics again," said his lordship, laughing, with no particular surrender in his merriment. "You gentlemen make no allowance for the likelihood that James Grahame, too, may be swearing himself Heaven's chosen weapon. 'Who gave Jacob ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... that asses in Brabant have wings, would he not himself make the laughing-matter? He cries out that the whole of Luther is in my books, that on all sides they swarm with heretical errors. But when those who read my writings find nothing of the kind, even if ignorant of dialectics, they readily infer the true conclusion. He has authority from the Emperor. Let him therefore conduct himself in the spirit of the Emperor, who would rather that wrong-doers should be cured than punished, and certainly does not desire that the harmless ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... you can readily see how they would reason the matter out from their own premises: If they were to go no farther, as had been decided by themselves, why should their riders belabor them in that merciless way? For downright dialectics commend me ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... invented. By the agency of evil demons they have stolen into human life with the other pests. For did not the simple-minded people of the Golden Age live happily, unprovided with any science, only led by nature and instinct? What did they want grammar for, when all spoke the same language? Why have dialectics, when there were no quarrels and no differences of opinion? Why jurisprudence, when there were no bad morals from which good laws sprang? They were too religious to investigate with impious curiosity the secrets of nature, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... climate, of the animal qualities of the frame, and evil has become good, and good has become evil. Now, our displeasure with Lord Macaulay is, not that he has advanced a novel and mischievous theory: it was elaborated long ago in the finely tempered dialectics of the Schools of Rhetoric at Athens; and so long as such a phenomenon as a cultivated rogue remains possible among mankind, it will reappear in all languages and under any number of philosophical disguises. Seldom or never, however, has it appeared with so little attempt at disguise. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... resolution, but by reason of an original receptivity and the circumstances of his training. If he had been merely a student the case would have been different but he was not a student. He was a journeyman printer; and hard work has a tendency to demolish the distinctions of dialectics. He had also been to school outside his shop, and had learned many lessons, often confusing and apparently contradictory. Blanketeer marches; his first wife; the workhouse imprisonment; his second wife; the little Pauline had each come to him with its own special ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... plane we come to psychological plausibility, the plausibility of events dependent mainly or entirely on character. For example—to cite a much disputed instance—is it plausible that Nora, in A Doll's House, should suddenly develop the mastery of dialectics with which she crushes Helmer in the final scene, and should desert her husband and children, slamming ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... have succeeded (with the aid of the scriptures and of inference) in dispelling all doubts. Madhava never resides in the hearts of those that are under the sway of doubts and that would dispute away everything with the aid of false dialectics. They that are conversant with the Pancharatra scriptures, that are duly observant of the duties laid down therein, and that are devoted to Narayana with their whole souls, succeed in entering into Narayana. The Sankhya and the Yoga systems are eternal. All the Vedas, again, O monarch, are eternal. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... he shows for all men of learning, and which he sought to inculcate upon his Order, was for Gioacchino one of the characteristics of the new era. "The truth which remains hidden to the wise," he says, "is revealed to babes; dialectics closes that which is open, obscures that which is clear; it is the mother of useless talk, of rivalries and blasphemy. Learning does not edify, and it may destroy, as is proved by the scribes of the Church, swollen with pride and arrogance, who ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... discovered. Hence only one virtue is directed to being of good counsel, wheres there are two virtues for good judgment: because difference is based not on common but on proper principles. Consequently, even in speculative matters, there is one science of dialectics, which inquires about all matters; whereas demonstrative sciences, which pronounce judgment, differ according to their different objects. Synesis and gnome differ in respect of the different rules on which judgment is based: for synesis judges of actions according to the common ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas |
