"Postulate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... preserved. The aristocracy and the clergy possess an influence almost unknown in Germany, but solely over the people, not over the government. As corporative bodies they still are, as in the days of Charles VI., convoked for the purpose of holding postulate diets, whose power, with the exception of that of the Hungarian diet, is merely nominal. The nobility, even in Hungary, as everywhere else throughout the Austrian states (more particularly since the Spanish system adopted by Ferdinand II.), is split into two inimical classes, those of the ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... of course," Neel told him. "Chances are that that will be enough to straighten things out. Since the completion last year of the refining equations of Debir's Postulate, all sigma-110 and alpha-142 ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... unchanged front, changed very frequently her point of view. She had been drilled—in her tradition, in her upbringing—to keep her mouth shut. But there were times, she said, when she was so near yielding to the temptation of speaking that afterwards she shuddered to think of those times. You must postulate that what she desired above all things was to keep a shut mouth to the world; to Edward and to the women that he loved. If she spoke she would ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... human individuality can exist in a discarnate state, and that it reincarnates into the body of an infant, shortly after birth. But the Statisticalists cannot accept the idea of discarnate consciousness, since they conceive of consciousness purely as a function of the physical brain. So they postulate an unconscious discarnate personality, or, as you put it, one in a somnambulistic state. They have to concede memory to this discarnate personality, since it was by recovery of memories of previous reincarnations that discarnate existence and reincarnation ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... individual, as an alien being distinguished from the real individual, which is the chimera, the dream, and the postulate of Christianity, is under democracy sensual reality, the present, and ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... the rate of change in the forms of life to have been the same formerly, Lyell concludes that geological phenomena postulate 200,000,000 years at least," [88] "to account for the undoubted facts of geology since life began." [89] On the other hand, mathematical astronomy, [90] on theories which Mr. Laing complains of as wanting the solidity of ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... objections are that abstract thought does not postulate being; and that possibly all intelligence is not one in kind. To the former objection the most satisfactory, reply has been offered by Professor J. F. Ferrier. He has shown that the conception of object, even ideal object, implies the conception ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... A word here regarding the priority of monotheism or of polytheism. The tradition is in favor of the latter, while on a priori grounds whoever thinks that the more primitive the race the more apt it is for monotheism will postulate, with some of the older scholars, an assumed monotheism as the pre-historic religion of the Hindus; while whosoever opines that man has gradually risen from a less intellectual stage will see in the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... human beings is—Can I kill thee, or canst thou kill me? I do not agree that any organised society has ever subsisted upon either of those principles, or that brutality is always present as a fundamental postulate in the relations ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... necessarily conceives his own existence as being so; so far then this is a subjective principle of human actions. But every other rational being regards its existence similarly, just on the same rational principle that holds for me: [Footnote: This proposition is here stated as a postulate. The grounds of it will be found in the concluding section.] so that it is at the same time an objective principle, from which as a supreme practical law all laws of the will must be capable of being deduced. Accordingly the practical imperative will be as follows: So act as to treat humanity, whether ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... and impure. As fares the good, so fares the sinner," ix. 2. This is a direct and deliberate challenge of the law of retribution in which the writer had been brought up. It may be urged, of course, that his belief in a divine judgment is a postulate of his faith which he retains, though he does not find it verified by experience. But such words—and there are many such—seem to carry us much farther. Here, then, is the essential problem of the book. Can it be regarded ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... as possible, endeavours to conceive those things which increase or help the body's power of activity (III. xii.); in other words (III. xii. note), those things which it loves. But conception is helped by those things which postulate the existence of a thing, and contrariwise is hindered by those which exclude the existence of a thing (II. xvii.); therefore the images of things, which postulate the existence of an object of love, help the mind's endeavour to conceive the object of love, in other words (III. xi. ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... One of which I read to you. This is Reality with the big R, reality that makes the timeless claim, reality to which defeat can't happen. This is what the men of principles, and in general all the men whom I called tender-minded in my first lecture, think themselves obliged to postulate. ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... 24. This postulate being granted, as we are sure it will by most (and we beg to assure those who are refractory or argumentative, that, were this a treatise on the sublime and beautiful, we could convince and quell their incredulity to their entire satisfaction by innumerable instances), we proceed to ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... I broke my vows (which is a serious matter), and if I neglected to contemplate the heavens (for which neglect I will confess to no one, not even to a postulate sub-deacon; it is no sin; it is a healthy omission), if (I say) I did this, I did what peasants do. And what is more, by drinking wine and eating pig we proved ourselves no Mohammedans; and on such as he is sure of, St Peter ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... church-yards of London, and even more violently to the river Thames. As a tidal river, even: beyond the metropolitan bridges, the Thames undoubtedly does much towards cleansing the atmosphere, whatever may be the condition of its waters. And one most erroneous postulate there is from which the Times starts in all its arguments, namely, this, that supposing the Thames to be even a vast sewer, in short, the cloaca maxima of London, there is in that arrangement of things any special reproach applying to our mighty English capital. On the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... you perceive and understand this predicate and postulate of Mind-healing; but the Science of Mind-healing is best understood in practical demonstration. The proof of what you apprehend, in the simplest definite and absolute form of healing, can alone answer this question of how much you understand of Christian Science Mind-healing. Not ...
— Rudimental Divine Science • Mary Baker Eddy
... compared to a shaking anemometer that will not let the troubled indicator take station. Reposing on his perceptions and his instincts, he fixed his attention on the chief persons, only glancing at the others to establish a postulate, that where there are parties in a house the most bewitching person present is the origin of them. It is ever Helen's achievement. Miss Middleton appeared to him bewitching beyond mortal; sunny in her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wonder o' words and glory o' sweet phrase, and yet, and here's the enduring wonder—I am still but man, though man blessed with so much profundity, fecundity, and redundity of thought and expression, and therefore a facile scribe or speaker, able to create, relate, formulate or postulate any truth, axiomatic, sophistry subtle, or, in other words, I ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... of communion with God, like that which in the seventy-third Psalm marks the very high-water mark of Old Testament faith in regard to a future life, where the Psalmist finds himself so completely blessed and well in present fellowship with God, that he must needs postulate its eternal continuance, and just because he has made God the portion of his heart, and is holding fellowship with Him, is sure that nothing can intervene to break that sweet communion. They did not get it from any clear definite revelation, such as we have in the resurrection ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... witches, demons, and monsters, or in an impersonal form as a sort of pervading taint or corruption of the air. This is the view of Dr. Edward Westermarck[799] and apparently of Professor Eugen Mogk.[800] It may be called the purificatory theory. Obviously the two theories postulate two very different conceptions of the fire which plays the principal part in the rites. On the one view, the fire, like sunshine in our latitude, is a genial creative power which fosters the growth of plants and the development of all that makes for health and ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... toute sainte cose; and also for the presence in the tale of distinctly popular, and Folk-lore, elements. Such an interpretation would also explain features irreconcilable with orthodox Christianity, which had caused some scholars to postulate a heterodox origin for the legend, and thus explain its curiously complete disappearance as a literary theme. In the first volume of my Perceval studies, published in 1906, I hinted at this possible solution of the problem, a solution ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... "Postulate that the Masters, in many thousands of cycles of study, made advances in science that were not reduced to practice; that the Omans either possessed this knowledge or had access to it; and that Omans and humans cooperated ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... the minister will appeal frankly to manly and heroic qualities. He will advance no dark premise of their natural estrangement from God, but will postulate for all a sonship which is at once a divine challenge to the best that is in them and the guaranty that the best is the normal and the God-intended life. They must qualify for a great campaign under the greatest soul that ever lived. They engage to stand with ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... countless ways according to the varying development of exterior influences upon them, but of the most typical portion of the central body, the section containing the scientific engineering or scientific medical sort of people, we can postulate certain tendencies with some confidence. Certain ways of thought they must develop, certain habits of mind and eye they will radiate out into the adjacent portions of the social mass. We can even, I think, deduce ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... once I deemed it The most degrading stain our nature bore: Wearing a shade of every hateful vice, Ingratitude, injustice, selfishness. But I was wrong, for I have traced the stream Back to its fountain in the inmost cave, And found in postulate of purest grain, It's first beginning.—It is not the man, The friend who has obliged us, we would shun, But the conviction which his presence brings, That we have done him wrong:—a sense of grief And shame at our own rash improvidence: The heart ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... of matter through the interpenetration of spirit, what is a possible method of action? To explain what I mean I must use a diagrammatic figure, but I admit this must be not only inadequate but misleading, for instead of the two dimensions of a diagram, we must postulate three, with time added as a vital element, and, I dare say, a "fourth dimension" as well. Confessing inadequacy in the symbol, let us conceive of a space divided into four strata. The lowest of these is the primary unknowable, the region of pure spirit, pure spirit itself, the creative energy of ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... Simply from the event. It was notoriously the triumphant cause. It was victorious, (victrix causa Deis placuit; sed victa Catoni.) It was the 'victrix causa;' and, as such, simply because it was 'victrix,' it had a right in his eyes to postulate the divine favor as mere matter of necessary interference: whilst, on the other hand, the victa causa, though it seemed to Lucan sanctioned by human virtue in the person of Cato, stood unappealably condemned. This mode of reasoning may strike ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... formerly laid down as a postulate of the Christian's belief that Hinduism is of the devil; and that, coming from below, it must be shunned as a study and denounced root and branch as a thing purely satanic. This theory has entirely given ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... with unwavering pluck; I've struggled if ever a man did; Infringed every postulate, stuck At nothing,—nay, once, to be candid, I shifted the cadence—designed A fresh but unauthorised fare-well; 'Twas plausible, too, but I find ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... without some key. But having once proved the existence of such examples as the clan Coneely and the Ossory wolves, this difficulty, though still great, is very much lessened. Our method would be as follows. We first of all postulate that totem peoples did actually exist in ancient Britain, or whence such extraordinary survivals? We next examine and classify the beliefs and customs which are incidental to totemism in savage society, and having set these forth by the aid of ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... the descendant. But this scientific assurance of self in the past is uttered in no materialistic sense. Science is the destroyer of materialism: it has proven matter incomprehensible; and it confesses the mystery of mind insoluble, even while obliged to postulate an ultimate unit of sensation. Out of the units of simple sensation, older than we by millions of years, have undoubtedly been built up all the emotions and faculties of man. Here Science, in accord with Buddhism, avows the Ego composite, and, like Buddhism, explains the psychical riddles ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... whilst on the other hand those Irish Nationalists who followed Mr Dillon's lead attacked the new movement with a ferocity that was as stupid as it was criminal. For at least it did not require any unusual degree of political intelligence to postulate that if The Times, Sir Edward Carson, The Northern Whig and other Unionist and Orange bravoes and journals were denouncing the Devolution proposals as "worse than Home Rule," Irish Nationalists should have long hesitated before they joined them ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... Wisconsin has made good use of the direct primary it does not follow that it will benefit the Filipino. It always seems curious to watch the satisfaction of some reform magazines when China or Turkey or Persia imitates the constitutional forms of Western democracies. Such enthusiasts postulate a uniformity of human ability which every ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... amounts of heat by the same amount of work, it would follow that the oxidation of the same amount of material would sometimes yield a less, sometimes a greater, quantity of heat. 'Hence,' says Mayer, 'that a fixed relation subsists between heat and work, is a postulate of the physiological ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... conflict through to the end as a civilized people, and we answer for this upon our good name and upon our honor!" Why this humble and pitiful repudiation? Perhaps because their theory of war rested upon the postulate of their invincibility, and that, in the first shiver of their defeat upon the Marne, it collapsed, and now their repudiation quickly follows—in dread of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... be said with truth that the Bible is a book which reads History, and the perplexities of Man, in the light of one great postulate, viz. that there is a God. The natural sequences, which are now partially explained by scientific discoveries, are in the Bible attributed to God's guidance: and of course there is no contradiction ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... 67 is a new English face designed by Mr. C. R. Ashbee for a prayerbook for the King. Interesting as it is, it seems in many ways too extreme and eccentric to be wholly satisfactory: the very metal of type would seem to postulate a less "tricky" treatment. ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... seances contains much mathematics (in its physical assemblage), but in order to make it "tap" there must be somebody to move it: in fact, a "medium." In my view, as soon as the animal subject has been able to understand "numbers"—and this postulate of the new zoopsychology, I repeat, I believe to be indispensable to the whole edifice—the animal finds itself sufficiently in harmony with the master to become capable (in principle) of all ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... struggle for technical existence, unless it is to a certain degree adapted to the human nerve and muscle system and to man's possibilities of perception, of attention, of memory, of feeling, and of will. Industrial technique with its restless improvements has always been subordinated to this postulate. Every change which made it possible for the workingman to secure equal effects with smaller effort or to secure greater or better effects with equal effort counted as an economic gain, which was welcome to the market. For ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... had hated sums. All arithmetical difficulties had confused and sickened him. But now he worked with indefatigable industry on an imaginary slate; put his postulate, counted probabilities, allowed for chances, added, deducted, multiplied, and unknowingly performed algebraic feats, till his brows were stiff with frowning, and his brain ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and brooches (of great beauty, but possible Byzantine workmanship) in the Irish Academy, are the chief grounds on which rest the claims of Ireland to ancient civilization. Yet not merely civilization, but the extreme grandeur and magnificence of Ireland in "former times," is the first postulate of all Irish discontent. It is because England has dimmed her glory and overthrown her royal state that Irishmen burn with patriot indignation, and not by any means because she has merely left barbarism and disunion still barbarous and disunited after seven centuries, and has checked, instead ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... is therefore likely to be a permanent article in the wardrobe, so that its continued existence must be taken as a datum or postulate in any discussion upon vestimentary reform. This, it must be allowed, makes any reform to a very picturesque costume out of the question; for not only is the loose trouser itself hostile to the fit display of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the whole has come into being without direct intelligence and apart from spiritual guidance, that it is managed so well (or so ill) that it is really not managed at all, that no Deity exists, and that it is absurd to postulate the existence of a comprehensive ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... formerly prevailed, these have now become discredited with every one. We do not censure this way of proceeding, but we prefer the manner of Sir W. Hamilton. He always keeps before us divergence and discrepancy of view as the normal condition of reasoned truth or philosophy; the characteristic postulate of which is, that every affirmative and every negative shall have its appropriate reasons clearly ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... form, or, if you will, the symbolical representation, of a profound idea necessary as the 'prae-suppositum' of the Christian scheme, or a postulate of reason, indispensable, if we would render the existence of a world of finites compatible with the assumption of a super-mundane God, not one with the world. In short, this idea is the condition under ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... arena; a future life might afford "time" and opportunity to right the wrongs of the present, and all end well in the best of future worlds. This explanation would have set doubts at rest and settled the question for at least two thousand years; and it seemed such a necessary postulate to the fathers of the Church, who viewed the matter in the light of Christian revelation, that they actually put into Job's mouth the words which he would have uttered had he lived in their own days and been a member of the true fold. And they effected this with a pious recklessness of artistic ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... this assertion is wholly negative. The geologist reasons thus: The more perfect organisms have not been discovered in the earlier strata; therefore, they do not exist in them. When, in a different connection, it suits our author's purpose to throw doubt on the very postulate which is here admitted, he holds ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... unconsciously saturated with the notion that British trade is rapidly declining and German trade as rapidly increasing. It is upon this implied proposition that all their arguments are based; this is the primary postulate upon which rests their ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... of the world is an almost undiscussed postulate of most metaphysics. "Reality is not merely one and self-consistent, but is a system of reciprocally determinate parts"[19]—such a statement would pass almost unnoticed as a mere truism. Yet I believe that it embodies ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... atoms and that only the atoms as such, not the bodies composed of the atoms, were eternal. He conceived the gods, too, as made of atoms, nevertheless he held that they were eternal. Any rational explanation of this postulate is not possible on Epicurus's hypotheses, and the criticism of his theology was therefore especially ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... the postulate be thus admitted, that one mind influencing two bodies, would only involve a diversity of operations, but in reality be one in essence; or otherwise, (as an hypothetical argument, illustrative of truth) if one preeminent mind, or spiritual ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... auto-intoxicated by some organ or other, no matter which—and the rest. But now, I ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance? According to the general postulate of psychology just referred to, there is not a single one of our states of mind, high or low, healthy or morbid, that has not some organic process as its condition. Scientific theories are organically ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... that those rights inhere in the individual, are part of his existence, and not the gift of any man or aggregation of men. If they were, equality under a despotism might find its justification in the postulate just as well as equality under a republic. Caesarean Democracy could claim like paternity with American Democracy. The assumption, then, that freedom in any of its forms is a privilege conceded by society ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... conquest's sake and mere race glorification. To go far and to endure, it must have behind it an ethical impulse, a sincerely conceived righteousness. But it must be taken into consideration that the above postulate is itself a product of Western race-egotism, urged by our belief in our own righteousness and fostered by a faith in ourselves which may be as erroneous as are most fond race fancies. So be it. The world is whirling faster to-day than ever before. It has gained impetus. Affairs rush ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... utmost fire-face by bringing both broadsides into play. Secondly, by breaking up the enemy's line into fragments it deprived their admiral of any shadow of control over the part attacked. Thirdly, by seizing the leeward position (the essential postulate of the French method of fighting) it prevented individual captains making good their escape independently to leeward and ensured a decisive melee, such as Nelson aimed at. And, fourthly, it permitted a concentration on any part of the enemy's line, since it actually severed ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... was in all probability founded, by Saint Serf, and he was certainly its patron saint. If we are not compelled to postulate two saints of this name from the number of years covered by traditions which cannot all relate to the same person, we would incline to quit hold of the earlier and less definite tradition, and to consider ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... with Goethe poetry and philosophy were one, his pantheism is full of life and poetic vision, whilst that of the wise man of Amsterdam is severely mathematical and abstract. And the postulate of this pantheism was sympathy, harmony between Nature and the inner life. He felt himself a part of the power which upholds and encompasses the world. Nature became his God, love of her his religion. In his youth, in the period of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... first erroneous postulate of belief is, that substance, life, and intelligence are something apart from God. 91:27 The second erroneous postulate is, that man is both ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Psychologists, I repeat, habitually ignore this fact, and constantly speak of feeling and intelligence as true causes of adjustive action; but by so doing they merely beg from this contradictory theory of Spiritualism a flat denial of the fundamental postulate on which they elsewhere proceed—the postulate, namely, that mental changes are determined by cerebral changes. Consider, for example, the following passage from Mr. Spencer's Principles of Psychology (Sec. 125), which serves to show in ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... so, if we may venture on a practical suggestion, Assuming that your postulate's indubitably true, And all should be examined—there must yet remain the question, Custodes quis custodiet?—For who'll ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various
... prove effective in a case of double pneumonia, or compound fracture, or malignant tumour, without the assistance of the physician—above all, without "drugs," which are pronounced taboo by Mrs. Eddy; "and that," to quote Mr. Podmore again, "is a postulate which can never be contradicted by experience, for failure can always be {128} ascribed—as it is, in fact, ascribed by the Christian Scientist to-day—to want of faith or 'Science' on the part of the sufferer." Nothing could be more ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... question of ideas, and postulate again that these too must conform both to the subject and to men's character. Ideas agree with the subject if they are true, if they are appropriate, and if they so to speak get into the insides of the thing. They are in accord with men's character ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... any application in this homily," said the Easy Chair, "or only an application disastrous to your imaginable postulate that Christmas is a beneficent and consolatory ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... which his school imagines, and I once imagined, to be the roots out of which they are fed. That they depend directly on the heart's belief in the sympathy of God with individual man,[7] I am well assured: but that doctrine does not rest upon the Bible or upon Christianity; for it is a postulate, from which every Christian advocate is forced to start. If it be denied, he cannot take a step forward in his argument. He talks to men about Sin and Judgment to come, and the need of Salvation, and so proceeds to the Saviour. But his very first step,—the idea ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... and morals, which are both at root only motor habits. Indeed consciousness itself is largely and perhaps wholly corrective in its very essence and origin. Thus life is adjusted to new environments; and if the Platonic postulate be correct, that untaught virtues that come by nature and instinct are no virtues, but must be made products of reflection and reason, the sphere and need of this principle is great indeed. But this implies a distrust of physical human nature as deep-seated ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... analysis the cause of most of the human misery in the world. And it should undoubtedly appeal more to our sense of justice to attribute these things to our own lack of consideration for others than to shift the responsibility on to a Power whom we first postulate ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... attended by all the Irish members, irrespective of party. The outcome was a resolution in the House of Commons, proposed by Mr. John Redmond, and seconded by Mr. Lecky. The rejoinder of the Government to the demands made was to the effect that the postulate of the Commissioners that Ireland and Great Britain must, for the purposes of the inquiry, be considered as ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... with a typewriting machine and some beehives, to a little farm I have acquired in a sleepy locality on the south coast. There I hope to be spared for some few years to develop the economic products of the honey-bee, to meditate on the Universal Postulate, and to watch, from afar, my children cultivating the difficult fields of Experience. May their task be ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... the East there was no incentive for the Christians to try to prove the existence of God, for the philosophy of that portion of the world was essentially religious in its character, and based its speculation on the existence of God as a fundamental postulate of revelation and of reason as well. In the combination of Judaism and Hellenic philosophy made by the "Hellenizing Jews" and by the "Judaizing Hellenes," the existence of God was admitted quite ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... systematic exposition of our economic arrangements) have furthermore accustomed us to think of everything like work as done under compulsion, fear of worse, or a kind of bribery. It is really taken as a postulate, and almost as an axiom, that no one would make or do anything useful save under the goad of want; of want not in the sense of wanting to do or make that thing, but of wanting to have or be able to do something else. Hence everything which is manifestly done from ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... supplied by the spontaneous activity of mind as the correlative prefix to the phenomena observed."[251] Unless, then, we are prepared to deny the validity of all our rational intuitions, we can not avoid accepting "this subjective postulate as a valid law for objective nature." If the intuitions of our reason are pronounced deceptive and mendacious, so also must the intuitions of the senses be pronounced illusory and false. Our whole intellectual constitution is built up on false and erroneous principles, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... well with our haphazard previsionings, are sometimes so disastrously facile that they exercise an insurrectionary influence. They occasionally suggest that wisdom of Gotham which is ever ready to postulate the certainty of a fulfilment because of the existence of a desire. It is this that vitiates so much of his poetic reasoning. Truth may ring regnant in the lines of ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... it is compelled to admit really exists—must be a One possessed of a nature so far transcending human experience that the human mind finds itself without the proper concepts, symbols, and words with which to think of It. But none the less, the Intellect finds itself bound by its own laws to postulate the existence of such ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... intelligence abiding in itself becomes evident from the fact that intelligence is the essential quality of spirit; and if we were to conceive of the primordial substance as something apart from spirit, then we should have to postulate some other power which is neither spirit nor matter, and originates both; but this is only putting the idea of a self-evolving power a step further back and asserting the production of a lower grade of undifferentiated spirit by a higher, which is ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... dominated by the notion of a truth that should prove incontrovertible, binding on every one, and certain, which should be the truth, one, indivisible, eternal, objective, and necessary, to which all our particular thinking must lead as to its consummation. This is the dogmatic ideal, the postulate, uncriticised, undoubted, and unchallenged, of all rationalizers in philosophy. 'I have never doubted,' a recent Oxford writer says, that truth is universal and single and timeless, a single content or significance, one and whole and complete.[6] Advance in ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Mathematics and Metaphysics excluded. The Postulate of Science: the Uniformity of Nature. Hume's account of it. Kant's account of it. Insufficiency of both accounts. Science traced back to observation of the Human Will. The development of Science from this origin. The increasing generality of the Postulate: ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... starting point, I began to consider the mobility of the Earth; and although the idea seemed absurd, yet because I knew that the liberty had been granted to others before me to postulate all sorts of little circles for explaining the phenomena of the stars, I thought I also might easily be permitted to try whether by postulating some motion of the Earth, more reliable conclusions could be reached regarding the revolution of the heavenly bodies, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... said I, "the postulate, George Douglas, the most active of the gang. Let him arise at your call—the claimant of wealth which he does not possess, the partaker of the illustrious blood of Douglas, but which in his veins is sullied with illegitimacy. Paint him the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... if society at large was reconstructed on the new basis. The object of Jesus was to reconstruct the kingdom of heaven in Israel, and he was crucified. All Israel had the same object in view, and stood at the brink of dissolution. If the basis and principles of the kingdom of heaven became the postulate of society at large, Jesus is resurrected in the world, and Israel is saved, was Paul's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... ethical naturalism to establish a principle of virtue, inasmuch as we have to look upon virtue as the principle of individual perfection, and inasmuch as even naturalism, by means of the indestructible impulse of man to attain moral ideas, can postulate an ideal of human action. But on closer examination even the naturalistic idea of virtue vanishes under our hands. Virtue, as individual morality, is constituted of the factors of duty and of the highest good, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... Mannheim German Society, in June, 1784, on the question: 'What can a good permanent theater really effect?' It is an excellent, thoughtful essay, instinct with lofty idealism and at the same time full of sound observation. Setting out from the postulate that the highest aim of all institutions whatsoever is the furtherance of the general happiness, the paper discusses the theater as a public institution of the state. Its claims are examined, and the sphere and manner of its influence discussed, along with those of religion and the laws. Probably ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... logomachy[obs3]; disputation, disceptation[obs3]; paper war. art of reasoning, logic. process of reasoning, train of reasoning, chain of reasoning; deduction, induction, abduction; synthesis, analysis. argument; case, plaidoyer[obs3], opening; lemma, proposition, terms, premises, postulate, data, starting point, principle; inference &c. (judgment) 480. prosyllogism[obs3], syllogism; enthymeme[obs3], sorites[obs3], dilemma, perilepsis[obs3], a priori reasoning, reductio ad absurdum, horns of a dilemma, argumentum ad hominem [Lat.], comprehensive argument; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... lost in mystery. No objection can lie against this postulate about the way in which folkways began, on account of the element of inference in it. All origins are lost in mystery, and it seems vain to hope that from any origin the veil of mystery will ever be raised. We ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... present. This may indeed be produced by other causes, but I am satisfied with having here shown one cause through which I could explain it, just as if I had explained it through the true cause. I do not think, however, that I am far from the truth, since no postulate which I have assumed contains anything which is not confirmed by an experience that we cannot mistrust, after we have proved the existence of the human body as ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... protection. ("Enslavement" they called it.) Why should she, when in the evolution of society there was not now, or presently would not be, anything from which to protect her? ("Competing slaveowners" was what they said.) When you wish to behold protectors you must postulate dangers. The first are valueless save as a preventive of the second. Both evils will be conveniently dispensed with. All this was new to me, most of my thinking life having been passed in distant ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... opposed it. Of the multitudes who confess Christianity at this hour how many have clear in their minds the cardinal distinction established by its Founder between "born of the flesh" and "born of the Spirit?" By how many teachers of Christianity even is not this fundamental postulate persistently ignored? A thousand modern pulpits every seventh day are preaching the doctrine of Spontaneous Generation. The finest and best of recent poetry is colored with this same error. Spontaneous Generation is the leading theology of the modern religious ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... mental plane is again totally different, for in this case we can no longer speak of separate senses such as sight and hearing, but rather have to postulate one general sense which responds so fully to the vibrations reaching it that when any object comes within its cognition it at once comprehends it fully, and as it were sees it, hears it, feels it, and knows ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... one other argument to make, and this we present with a conviction of its truth, while conceding that it must remain a theory, until proven, each individual, man or woman, for himself and herself. The postulate is this: immortality (i.e. godhood) is bi-sexual. No male person can by any possibility become an immortal god, in, of and by himself; no female person can be complete without the "other ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... presents a dilemma. To resolve it, it is necessary to postulate a Supreme Mind, and to say that all things are just thoughts in God's Mind. That makes us both the same then and there is no argument about who ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips
... one hundred years ago, fails to profit by the teachings of history—overlooks the fact that Germany in 1840 was only where she had been in 1618. That we should take Germany for our standard of comparison, rather than England or France, is a postulate which has one circumstance unmistakably in its favor. Although we are connected with England by common descent, institutions and language, although the politics and philosophy of France have exerted considerable influence over our own, we do not observe ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... nor less than that of re-establishing tradition. The practice of the church was the standard applied; many an unhistorical assertion was made to justify it and many a practice of comparatively recent growth was sanctioned by the postulate that "it had descended from apostolic use." "By show of antiquity they introduce ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... really contribute largely to that great reaction which checked and narrowed the first successes of Protestantism. But beginning in the attempt, not to establish, but to evade—not to discover a principle, but to escape a postulate—not to settle the nature of right and wrong, but to determine what was not wrong of a particular nature,—Casuistry went on with its dexterous refinements till it ended in so attenuating the moral features of actions, and so belying the ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... to point his sentence and prove his first postulate, Mr. King is obliged not only to dispose of Washington, but to introduce Columbus, who never was imagined in the wildest fantasy to be an American, and to omit Franklin. The omission of itself is fatal to Mr. King's case. Franklin has ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... What nature can afford, I shall produce, upon my word; 760 And if she ever gave that boon To man, I'll prove that I have one I mean by postulate illation, When you shall offer just occasion: But since y' have yet deny'd to give 765 My heart, your pris'ner, a reprieve, But made it sink down to my heel, Let that at least your pity feel; And, for ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... we know to have been seriously perplexed by this assertion of Mr Cobden's; and others, we have heard, not generally disposed to view that gentleman's doctrines with favour, who insist upon it, that, in mere candour, we must grant this particular postulate. "Really," say they, "that cannot be refused him; the law was for the purpose he assigns; its final cause was, as he tells us, to keep up artificially the price of our domestic corn-markets. So far he is right. But his error commences in treating ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... we must postulate a congenital abnormality in order to account satisfactorily for at least a large proportion of sexual inverts, wherein does that abnormality consist? Ulrichs explained the matter by saying that in sexual inverts a male body coexists ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... important postulate underlying this theory. It is, that upon each planet the possibilities of development just attain to the margin of the next higher step in mental evolution. That is, that on Mercury the period of brawn develops to the possibility ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... perception of Good might perhaps be an instinct, you objected that instincts conflict one with another, and that we therefore require another faculty to choose between them. Now it seems to me that your own argument is open to the same objection. You postulate some faculty—which perhaps you might as well call an instinct—and this faculty, as I understand you, in the effort to realize itself, proceeds to discriminate various objects as good. But, now, does this same faculty also know that the Goods are good, and which is better than which, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... whom we were referred. Look a man calmly through the very centre of his pupils and ask him for anything with a tone implying entire conviction that he will grant it, and he will very commonly consent to the thing asked, were it to commit hari-kari. The Captain acceded to my postulate, and accepted my friend as a corollary. As one string of my own ancestors was of Batavian origin, I may be permitted to say that my new friend was of the Dutch type, like the Amsterdam galiots, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that the Revolution was inevitable and indispensable, how was the nation to make the best of it? And how were surrounding nations to make the best of it? This was the true point of view. But Burke never placed himself at such a point. He never conceded the postulate, because, though he knew France better than anybody in England except Arthur Young, he did not know her condition well enough. "Alas!" he said, "they little know how many a weary step is to be taken before they can form themselves ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... and the moral law within us, that we conclude that somebody must be doing it all, or that somebody is doing the good and somebody else doing the evil, or that armies of invisible persons, benefit-cut and malevolent, are doing it; hence you postulate gods and devils, angels and demons. You propitiate these powers with presents, called sacrifices, and flatteries, called praises. Then the Kantian moral law within you makes you conceive your god as a judge; and straightway you try to corrupt him, also with presents ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... thank us for a new sensation. The French continue to find Shakspeare exaggerated, because he treated English just as our folk do when they speak of "a steep price," or say that they "freeze to" a thing. The first postulate of an original literature is, that a people use their language as if they owned it. Even Burns contrived to write very poor English. Vulgarisms are often only poetry in the egg. The late Horace Mann, in one of his Addresses, commented at some length on the beauty of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... was familiar with this postulate, and was curious to hear the Magian's reply; but he could not follow his argument till he ended by saying, rather more emphatically: "You, even, do not deny the physical connection of things; but I know the power that causes it. It is the magical sympathy which displays itself more powerfully ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the season of nuts, there will be the commencement of a great moral eclipse, in that portion of the monikin region which lies immediately about the pole. The property in eclipse will be the great moral postulate usually designated by the term Principle; and the intervening body will be the great immoral postulate, usually known as Interest. The frequent occurrence of the conjunction of these two important postulates has caused ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... poison used. Now all this supposed exactness and infallibility is imaginary; and to treat a doctor as if his mistakes were necessarily malicious or corrupt malpractices (an inevitable deduction from the postulate that the doctor, being omniscient, cannot make mistakes) is as unjust as to blame the nearest apothecary for not being prepared to supply you with sixpenny-worth of the elixir of life, or the nearest motor garage for not having perpetual motion on sale in gallon tins. But if apothecaries and motor ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... introduced a contemporary critic of Utopian conditions in the shape of the talkative person, "a conscious Ishmaelite in the world of wit, and in some subtly inexplicable way a most consummate ass." But once we begin to postulate our Utopian villains, the reader's thought is distracted from the contemplation of the heroic which is the cement that binds every stone in the visionary city. In order to change conditions it is necessary to change much ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... who is necessitated. We can perceive, and do perceive, that we ought to do a thing. It follows that we can do it. However, the hindrances to the realisation of the moral ideal are such that it cannot be realised in a finite time. Hence the postulate of eternal life for the individual. Finally, reason demands realisation of a supreme good, both a perfect virtue and a corresponding happiness. Man is a final end only as a moral subject. There must be One who is not only a law-giver, but in himself also the realisation ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... constitutional defects of vision. When he deals with woman he is no longer scrupulously conscientious. We begin to have our suspicions of his uprightness when we find him in his Subjection of Women laying it down as a fundamental postulate that the subjection of woman to man is always morally indefensible. For no upright mind can fail to see that the woman who lives in a condition of financial dependence upon man has no moral claim to unrestricted liberty. The suspicion of Mill's honesty ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... hardly in accordance with the concomitant faith of those who adopt it, in the miraculous insight and superhuman sagacity of their Master; nor do I see any way of getting it to harmonise with the orthodox postulate; namely, that Matthew was the author of the first gospel and John of the fourth. If that is so, then, most assuredly, Matthew was no dullard; and as for the fourth gospel—a theosophic romance of the first order—it ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... doctrine of human equality has failed or is failing us; the facts to which the Declaration of Independence appealed have altered. Are we, then, to give up the belief in human equality—that priceless postulate of the moral law, the basis alike of democracy and of private morality? At times it seems to us that the world is almost ready to do so. Nietzsche in Germany puts it forth as a philosophic principle that humanity exists not for the democratic purpose of securing the highest ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... would predict for it. "That is what confounds my opponents," said Professor Lockyer, in talking to me about the new star. "Most of those who oppose my theory have not taken the trouble to make observations for themselves, but have contented themselves with falling back apparently on the postulate that because a theory is new it must be wrong. Then, outside the scientific world, comparatively few people appreciate the extreme parsimony of nature. They expect, therefore, that when such a phenomenon as the appearance of a new star occurs, the new-comer will ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... (the Stoic) lays claim; therefore I take it subjectively as an attribute alleged to belong to man. (Perhaps the expression virtue, with which also the made great show, would better mark the characteristic of his school.) The expression of a postulate of pure practical reason might give most occasion to misapprehension in case the reader confounded it with the signification of the postulates in pure mathematics, which carry apodeictic certainty with them. ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... his head he would lie down on his bed and stare out of the window until he went to sleep. He drank alone and in solitude not for pleasure or good cheer, but to forget the awful loneliness and level of the Divide. Milton made a sad blunder when he put mountains in hell. Mountains postulate faith and aspiration. All mountain peoples are religious. It was the cities of the plains that, because of their utter lack of spirituality and the mad caprice of their ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... of them insists upon a certain subordination of individual actions to social requirements.... From the oldest and rudest idea of allegiance, down to the most advanced political theory of our own day, there is on this point complete unanimity." He speaks of this subordination as a postulate "which is, indeed, of self-evident validity," as ranking "next in certainty to the postulates of exact science." As the result of his search for "a generalization which may habitually guide us when seeking for the soul of truth in things erroneous," he concludes: "This ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... Possession is to be protected because a man by taking possession of an object has brought it within the sphere of his will. He has extended his personality into or over that object. As Hegel would have said, possession is the objective realization of free will. And by Kant's postulate, the will of any individual thus manifested is entitled to absolute respect from every other individual, and can only be overcome or set aside by the universal will, that is, by the state, acting ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... original postulate of my plan. Other travellers have gone, relying on the abundant Caribou, yet saw none, so starved. I relied on no Caribou, I took plenty of groceries, and because I was independent, the Caribou walked into camp nearly every day, and we lived largely on their meat, saving our groceries ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... changed nor taken away without loss or harm, all other things continuing the same. Should you suppose various things in the system changed at once, you can neither judge of the possibility nor the consequences of the changes, having no degree of experience to direct you." Now assuredly this postulate makes the whole question as easy a one as ever metaphysician or naturalist had to solve. For it is no longer—Why did a powerful and benevolent Being create a world in which there is evil—but only—The world being given, how far are its different arrangements consistent with ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, where there shall be no more curse, no night, no candle, no light of the sun. It might have been thought that it was impossible to establish a connection between Patmos and Skinner Street, but the first postulate of Euclid's elements holds good universally, 'that a straight line may be drawn from any one point to ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... irony, not the finest air of the season, and he adopted the weapon to which a person whose use of tobacco is only occasional resorts when every one else produces a cigar—he puffed the spasmodic, defensive cigarette. He accepted as to what he had done the postulate of the obscurely tortuous, abounding so in that sense that his critics were themselves bewildered. Some of them felt that they got, as the phrase is, little out of him—he rose in his good humour so much ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Some postulate a sinless Eden past, before this killing habit began; and foresee a sinless Millennium to come, when we shall have outgrown it. These do not use their imaginations enough. Even if Edenic or Millennial tigers could digest ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... knowledge or conclusion, that these bodies were in one place, while the sensations suggesting them were felt to be associated with something in another place; colour would not be seen—as it is—incarnated with body: or, (thirdly), we should be compelled to postulate for the eye, as many philosophers have done, in our opinion, most unwarrantably, "a faculty of projection"[37] by which it might dissolve the association between itself and its sensations, throwing off the latter in the form of colours over the surface of things, and reversing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... admit that we have to postulate, on behalf of the female vanity whose cause we are espousing, that it should not derive its inspiration solely from self-love. However anxious a woman may be to please, if her anxiety is on her own account, and simply to secure admiration, she must be a very Helen ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... practical reason must also postulate the existence of God as the necessary condition of the attainment of the summum bonum. As the perfect good can only be promoted by accordance of the will with the moral law, so also this summum bonum is possible ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... intellectual method might be pronounced a thing of trifling import, or wholly indifferent. But such suppositions are the seemings only of postulates floating through the brains of Ignorance or Un-heed, who really postulate nothing at all. If, on the contrary, we admit this inflexible relation of cause and result in the mental, as well as in the material world, and if we admit also that our school-methods are yet fragmentary, varying and tentative, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the sentiments of the French people, or to offend any principle of public law. It is difficult to question these two postulates, at least in the abstract. Only when we come to the application is there opportunity for difference. The third postulate, demanded alike by justice and humanity, is the establishment of some rule or precedent by which the recurrence of such a barbarous duel shall be prevented. It will not be enough to obtain a guaranty for Germany; there must be a guaranty ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... efficaciously, he must say what is already in his hearer's mind. That, alone, the hearer will believe; that, alone, he will be able to apply intelligently to the facts of life. Any conviction, even if it be a whole system or a whole religion, must pass into the condition of commonplace, or postulate, before it becomes fully operative. Strange excursions and high-flying theories may interest, but they cannot rule behaviour. Our faith is not the highest truth that we perceive, but the highest that we have been able to assimilate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grounds enough for reflection and for reverence towards Kant in these two great results: 1st, That an order of ideas has been established, which all deep philosophy has demanded, even when it could not make good its claim. This postulate is fulfilled. 2ndly, The postulate is fulfilled without mysticism or Platonic reveries. Ideas, however indispensable to human needs, and even to the connection of our thoughts, which came to us from nobody knew whence, must for ever have been suspicious; ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... powers to the President; thirdly, the delegation in many instances of like powers to so-called independent agencies or commissions, in which are merged in greater or less measure the three powers of government of Montesquieu's postulate. Under Roosevelt the first two of these developments were brought to a pitch not formerly approximated, except temporarily during World ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... pronounce in the affirmative and write it in their constitutions—the masculine qualifies, the feminine disqualifies—and this has just now been echoed by the Supreme Court of the United States! My mind and reason forbid my acceptance of such postulate. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was not—could not have been—self-supporting. There is no source of organic material on the planet great enough to support such a city; therefore, foodstuffs must have been imported. On the other hand, it is necessary to postulate some reason for establishing a city on an otherwise barren planet and populating it with an estimated six ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... supposition is entirely valid. All we know of mankind justifies the statement that, as regards all the qualities and motives with which the primal sympathies deal, men are remarkably alike. Their loves, hates, fears, and sorrows are alike in their essentials; so that the postulate of sympathy that the other man is essentially like one's self is no idle fancy but an established truth. It not only embodies the judgment of all men in thought and action but has its warrant from all the science we can apply ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... cannot be proved but yet have to be accepted; these are called postulates, because they make a demand on the faith of the learner. Euclid's Postulates are of this kind, especially that known as the parallel-postulate. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... "The postulate with which metaphysical reasoning sets out is that we are primarily conscious only of our sensations—that we certainly know we have these, and that if there be anything beyond these serving as cause for them, it can be known ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... present order of things was brought about suddenly and irrespective of any pre-existent order; and it is important to hold clear ideas as to which of these beliefs is the true one. In the first place, we may postulate that the world had a beginning, and, equally, that the existing terrestrial order had a beginning. However far back we may go, geology does not, and cannot, reach the actual beginning of the world; and we are, therefore, left simply to our ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... therefore are necessitated." This is clear and explicit. There is no controversy, he truly says, that voluntary actions, that is, external actions proceeding from the will, are necessitated by the will. And as according to his postulate, the will or volition is also caused by other things of which it has no disposal, so they are also necessitated. In other words, external voluntary actions are necessarily caused by volitions, and volitions are necessarily ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... body.—A full perception of the truth that society is not a mere aggregate, but an organic growth, that it forms a whole, the laws of whose growth can be studied apart from those of the individual atom, supplies the most characteristic postulate of modern speculation.—L. STEPHEN, Science of Ethics, 31. Wie in dem Leben der einzelnen Menschen kein Augenblick eines vollkommenen Stillstandes wahrgenommen wird, sondern stete organische Entwicklung, so verhalt es sich such in dem Leben der Volker, und in jedem einzelnen Element, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... special mirth among the unbelievers. Not only the abnormal length of the nectary had to be considered; there was, besides, the fact that all its honey lay at the base, a foot or more from the orifice. Accepting it as a postulate that every detail of the apparatus must be equally essential for the purpose it had to serve, he made a series of experiments which demonstrated that some insect of Madagascar—doubtless a moth—must be equipped with a proboscis ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... This is straight track. The wedge would go in even. It should have spread the rails equally. That's the probable thing. But instead it did the improbable thing; it spread one. I hold the improbable thing always in question. Human knowledge is built up on that postulate. ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... craniology, whose conclusions would appear at first sight to be capable of more precise demonstration, but which, in spite of this fair appearance, has as yet yielded results which are somewhat disappointing. At the birth of every science it is necessary to postulate something. The postulates that the anthropologist demands rival in simplicity those formulated by Euclid. He merely asks us to accept as facts that the main object of every living creature is to go on living, that he cannot attain this object without being ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... any higher spiritual quality in the female, nor was it a religious movement, as is the beautiful dream of Bachofen. I do not think we can credit "a movement" as having taken place at all, rather the change arose gradually, inevitably, and quite simply. To postulate a conscious movement towards progress organised by women is surely absurd. Human nature does not start on any new line of conduct voluntarily, rather it is forced into it in connection with the conditions ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... were the best and ultimate achievements of the pagan world. Now Christianity, said he, is the synthesis of whatever is separately excellent in either. It will abate as little as the haughtiest Stoicism of the ideal which it contemplates as the first postulate of true morality; the absolute holiness and purity which it demands are as much raised above the poor performances of actual man, as the absolute wisdom and impeccability of the Stoic. Yet, unlike the Stoic scheme, Christianity ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... about discussing the possibility of reconciling an isolated expression in S. Mark's Gospel with another in S. Matthew's: just as if on that depended the genuineness or spuriousness of the entire context: as if, in short, the major premiss in the discussion were some such postulate as the following:—"Whatever in one Gospel cannot be proved to be entirely consistent with something in another Gospel, is not to be regarded as genuine." Did then the learned Archbishop of Caesarea really suppose that a comma judiciously thrown into the empty ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... in using not persuasion only, but force. I do not propose here to enter into the great question which Mr. Mill pressed anew upon the minds of this generation. His arguments are familiar to every reader, and the conclusion at which he arrived is almost taken for a postulate in the present essay.[31] The object of these chapters is to reiterate the importance of self-assertion, tenacity, and positiveness of principle. The partisan of coercion will argue that this thesis ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... third postulate, you have begun the consideration of primary mental operations with a view to evolving methods and devices for the scientific and systematic employment of the mind in the attainment of success. You have concluded your study of the first of the two fundamental ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... such a postulate, his patriotism if not his scientific reputation might lead us to expect; but that Obermueller should be so eager to trace German origin back to the first murderer is rather more suprising. Obermueller's work embraces in its general scope the origin of all European nations, but the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... is another mysterious and sovereign force, whereof use has been made; but it is only the feeblest of writers who have ventured to accept this postulate in its entirety: only those to whom reality and probability were matters of smallest moment. The affirmation that wickedness is necessarily and visibly punished in this life, and virtue as necessarily and visibly rewarded, is too manifestly opposed to the most elementary daily experience, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... different classes of vertebrates. The four higher classes are characterized by a common underlying plan of limb structure, whilst fish have one peculiar to themselves. On the other hand it is an inevitable postulate of the doctrine of Descent that fish are the original progenitors of all other vertebrates. Hence the five-joint limbs of the latter must have developed from the fins of fish. This derivation was actually attempted but without success, as Fleischmann points out at considerable length. By means ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... fallacy. We fancy ourselves the fixed and necessary element in society, to which all others are to accommodate themselves. "Given the rights of the few rich, to find the condition of the many poor." It seems to me that other postulate is quite as fair: "Given the rights of the many poor, to find the ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... between the proposition, "I have found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect," and this other, "I foresee that other objects which are, in appearance, similar, will be attended with similar effects"? This postulate, that the future will be like the past, and that like causes will have like effects, rests on a purely psychological basis. In virtue of the laws of association the sight of an object or event vividly recalls the image of a second, often observed in connection with the former, and leads ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... fly; She looks too happy and content, For whose least pleasure he would die; Oh, cruelty, she cannot care For one to whom she's always kind! He says he's nought, but, oh, despair, If he's not Jove to her fond mind! He's jealous if she pets a dove, She must be his with all her soul; Yet 'tis a postulate in love That part is greater than the whole; And all his apprehension's stress, When he's with her, regards her hair, Her hand, a ribbon of her dress, As if his life were only there; Because she's constant, he will change, And kindest glances ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... thoroughly model not only an elastic solid, and any combination of elastic solids, but so complex and recondite a phenomenon as the passage of polarized light through a magnetic field. But now, with the view of ultimately discarding the postulate of rigidity from all our materials, let us suppose some to be absolutely destitute of rigidity, and to possess merely inertia and incompressibility, and mutual impenetrability with reference to the still remaining rigid matter. With these postulates ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... re-interpretation too forced, if it can help him to find external support somewhere for his spontaneous conviction. To denounce one authority he needs to invoke another, and if no other be found, he will invent or, as they say, he will postulate one. His courage in facing the actual world is thus supported by his ability to expand the world in imagination. In separating himself from his fellow-men he has made a new companion out of his ideal. An impetuous spirit when betrayed by the world will cry, "I know that my redeemer ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... that Darwin "is simply a naturalist," and that "his work on the origin of species does not purport to be philosophical." In physical and physiological treatises, the most religious men rarely think it necessary to postulate the First Cause, nor are they misjudged by the omission. But surely Mr. Darwin does show the disposition which our author denies him, not only by implication in many instances, but most explicitly where one would naturally look for it, namely—at ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... small postulate, the astronomers proceed to deduce the most astounding conclusions. They tell us, that the distance of the nearest fixed star from the earth is at least 7,600,000,000,000 miles, and of another they name, not less than 38 millions of millions of miles. A cannon-ball therefore, proceeding at ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... eloquence of his inculcations, the beauty of the apologues in which he conveys them, that I so much admire; sometimes, indeed, needing indulgence to eastern hyperbolism. My eulogies, too, may be founded on a postulate which all may not be ready to grant. Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... first postulates is that man inhabits a moral universe, and from this postulate he has no difficulty in moving forward not only to contemplate the hypothesis of immortality, but to confront the difficulty of punishment for sin. In a little book of his called Belief and Life he has ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... World would not understand. They were observing rites which it was not seemly that the World should watch. Hitherto they had toiled in a harbour at which the World did not touch. Knowing naught else, they had come to take their privacy for granted. Now suddenly this precious postulate had been withdrawn. Since wellnigh the whole of the estate was edged by road, the erection of the fence at once cost them seclusion and showed them ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... have we become to rapid change in the conditions of life that the first thing we postulate is further change. The rustic accustomed to the same food every day of his life does not criticise his fare; it is the epicure, accustomed to variety, who is critical of the menu. The active mind which witnesses perpetual variety must be perpetually critical. To ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... the honorers nor the honored ones, and had resolutely refused the chance offered him by Mrs. Beverley to amend his ignorance. For Patricia's "No" was not yet twenty-four hours old, and since it had changed the stars in their courses for Patricia's lover, the cataclysm was much too recent to postulate anything like a return of the heavenly bodies ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... would have taken place, but for a notion of his which he arbitrarily enforced as a rule of law. It was a part of the theory relating to witchcraft, that the Devil made use of the spectres, or apparitions, of some persons to afflict others. From this conceded postulate, a division of opinion arose. Some maintained that the Devil could employ only the spectres of persons in league with him; others affirmed, that he could send upon his evil errands the spectres of innocent persons, without their consent or knowledge. The chief-justice held the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... and perhaps nervous theorizers—who has wavered about the military policy of the country; but there have naturally been some who have found it less easy than they could have foreseen to live up to the sacrifices it has necessitated. Of course there have been such people: one would have had to postulate them if they had not come within one's experience. There have been some to whom it was harder than they imagined to give up a certain way of living, or a certain kind of breakfast-roll; though ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton |
