"Ratiocination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that is, stories of great fear induced in a character by a mass of rather vague and unusual incidents, such as The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) and The Pit and the Pendulum (1843); and stories of "ratiocination," that is, of the ingenious thinking out of a problem, as The Mystery of Marie Roget (1843). In the latter type he is the ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... psycho-analytic theory, up to a certain point, has been based on the actual recovery of patients, if you do not like the use of the word cure, from particular symptoms. Then this has been generalized. Now that has opened an enormous field for ratiocination. Therefore, I am not at all sure that these conceptions will really apply to essential epilepsies or to the real epilepsies. I do not know how far our conceptions which originate in the therapeutic situation will apply to the situation which appears ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the appearance of more circumspection; it wants neither harmony of numbers, accuracy of thought, nor elegance of diction. It has either been written with great care, or, what cannot be imagined of so long a work, with such felicity as made care less necessary. Its two constituent parts are ratiocination and description. To reason in verse is allowed to be difficult; but Blackmore not only reasons in verse, but very often reasons poetically; and finds the art of uniting ornament with strength and ease with closeness. This is a skill which ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... man calleth Wisdome, what another calleth Feare; and one Cruelty, what another Justice; one Prodigality, what another Magnanimity; one Gravity, what another Stupidity, &c. And therefore such names can never be true grounds of any ratiocination. No more can Metaphors, and Tropes of speech: but these are less dangerous, because they profess their inconstancy; which the other ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... the old squire, hastily, whose capacities of ratiocination had been cultivated by the exercise of the judicial functions of his ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... within tenn myles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and frendshipp with the most polite and accurate men of that University; who founde such an immensenesse of witt, and such a soliddity of judgement in him, so infinite a fancy bounde in by a most logicall ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant in any thinge, yet such an excessive humillity as if he had knowne nothinge, that they frequently resorted and dwelt with him, as in a Colledge scituated in a purer ayre, so that ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... example of 'emotional ratiocination'. There is a flash of ecstasy through the strangely cautious description of Karshish; every syllable is weighed and thoughtful, everywhere the lines swell ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... pain. Fourthly, when she doth dissemble, and covertly and falsely either doth or saith anything. Fifthly, when she doth either affect or endeavour anything to no certain end, but rashly and without due ratiocination and consideration, how consequent or inconsequent it is to the common end. For even the least things ought not to be done, without relation unto the end; and the end of the reasonable creatures is, to follow and obey him, who is the reason as it were, and the law of this great city, and ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... him much. To a man not accustomed to thinking there is nothing in the world so difficult as to think. After some loose fashion we turn over things in our mind and ultimately reach some decision, guided probably by our feelings at the last moment rather than by any process of ratiocination;—and then we think that we have thought. But to follow out one argument to an end, and then to found on the base so reached the commencement of another, is not common to us. Such a process was hardly within the compass of Roger's mind,—who when he was made wretched ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Cornish thinks he can queer it, and at the same time reap some advantages from the old man, if he can have a few minutes' talk with Pen before you do. And he's going to do it, if he can. Now, I figure, with my usual correctness of ratiocination, that your scheme is going to be better for the town, and therefore for the Herald, than his, and hence this disclosure, which I freely admit has some of the ear-marks of bad form. Not that I blame Cornish, or am saying anything against him, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... kindly, and with a friendly scrutiny, you will find many a natural sentiment vividly reflected. But traces of the higher operations of the intellect, of deep or subtle thought, of analytic power, of ratiocination of any kind, there is absolutely none. If, therefore, his injudicious admirers should insist, without any reference to his origin or culture, on extolling his writings as works submitted, without apology or excuse, to the mature judgment and formed taste—they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... it would be wholly useless, as they were creatures who never bred out if their own country." But any reply serves any common Italian, who is little disposed to investigate matters; and if you tease him with too much ratiocination, is apt to cry out, "Cosa serve sosistieare cosi? ci fara andare tutti matti[V]." They have indeed so many external amusements in the mere face of the country, that one is better inclined to pardon them, than one would be to forgive inhabitants of less happy ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... study, designs some valuable blessing for his lower and more animal brethren, only pursues the craving of his nature; and that his happiness is no higher than their's in their several occupations and delights. Sight and sense are fully as powerful for happiness as thought and ratiocination. Nature grows flowers wherever she can; she causes sweet waters to ripple over stony beds, and living wells to spring up in deserts, so that grass and herbs may grow and afford nourishment to some of God's creatures. Even the granite and the lava ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... hard life still more irksome. Of all this, and much more, in the general way of consolers who set out on the principle that grief is a matter of logic, did Gentleman Waife deliver himself with a vigour of ratiocination which admitted of no reply, and conveyed not a particle of comfort. And feeling this, that great actor—not that he was acting then-suddenly stopped, clasped the child in his arms, and murmured in broken accents,—"But if I see you thus cast down, I shall have no strength left to hobble ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the innate faculties of the citizen, so far as it is consistent with the general good. And the business of the moral and political philosopher appears to me to be the ascertainment, by the same method of observation, experiment, and ratiocination, as is practised in other kinds of scientific work, of the course of conduct which will best conduce to ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the task of combating shinty and tobacco. It is impossible to withhold some measure of admiration from Christians so staunch, logical, and uncompromising. Logical? Well, here at least is a gem of ratiocination. What, for example, was the cause that forced so many Skyemen to emigrate to the Canadian plains and the Australian bush? The fathers of Skye believed that the crofters, having insufficiently appreciated the unique opportunities of divine worship at home, were driven by ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the baffling criminal by means of analyzing cigar butts, magnifying thumb marks or specializing in the various perfumes in favor among the fair sex, or by any of those complicated, brain fatiguing processes of ratiocination indulged in by our old friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. There are still, however, genuine detectives, and some of them are to be found upon the New York police force. The magnifying glass is not one of the ordinary tools of the professional sleuth, and if he carries a pistol at all it is because ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... rippling downhill. As O. Henry puts it in one of his most delightful stories: "He was outwardly decent and managed to preserve his aquarium, but inside he was impromptu and full of unexpectedness." To say that he was thinking of Miss Chapman would imply too much power of ratiocination and abstract scrutiny on his part. He was not thinking: he was being thought. Down the accustomed channels of his intellect he felt his mind ebbing with the irresistible movement of tides drawn by the blandishing moon. And across these shimmering estuaries of impulse ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... by which in Perception we see the unapparent details—-i.e, by which sensations formerly co-existing with the one now affecting us are reinstated under the form of ideas which REPRESENT the objects—is a process implied in all Ratiocination, which also presents an IDEAL SERIES, such as would be a series of sensations, if the objects themselves were before us. A chain of reasoning is a chain of inferences: IDEAL presentations of objects and relations not apparent to Sense, or not presentable to ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... left behind it no great laconic English classic who stands in the first rank. Our own Emerson is concise enough, but he is disconnected and prophetic. Dante is not only concise, but logical, deductive, prone to ratiocination. He set down nothing that he had not thought of a thousand times, and conned over, arranged, and digested. We have in English no prototype for such condensation. There is no native work in the language written in anything which approaches the style ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... in the first Good. This faith is excellently described in Proclus, where it is set above all ratiocination, nay, Intellect it self. Pros de au to agathon ou gnoseos eti kai sunergeias dei tois sunaphthenai speudousin, all' hidruseos kai monimou katastaseos kai eremias. But to them that endeavour to be joyned with the first Good, there is no need of ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... more than ten miles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men of that university; who found such an immenseness of wit and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant in anything, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted, and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university in less volume; whither they ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... Smithsonian Institution, which probably had never before seen so motley a gathering. Each nation had sent three representatives, two professional scientists, and a lay delegate, the latter some writer or thinker renowned in his own country for his wide knowledge and powers of ratiocination. They had come together upon the appointed day, although the delegates from the remoter countries had not yet arrived, and the Committee on Credentials had already reported. Germany had sent Gasgabelaus, ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... is an affair of eyes, memory, and calculative ratiocination. As to eyes, I have a private theory that mine are bewitched. It is not mere short sight. At school and college I have seen Greek words on the printed page, and translated them correctly, and come to grief, because these ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... proposition, since it implied no capacity in himself to discover every riddle of this kind that should be invented. He however succeeded with several difficult cryptographs that were sent to him, and the direction of his mind to the subject led to the composition of some of the tales of ratiocination which so largely increased his reputation. The infirmities which induced his separation from Mr. White and Mr. Burton at length compelled Mr. Graham to seek for another editor; but Poe still remained in Philadelphia, engaged from time ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... wench," said the surly money-lender. "I have saved this prelatist and malignant from his adversaries, and now"——He considered a while, muttering his thoughts and arguments to himself with a most confused and volatile impetuosity of ratiocination. In a short time he seemed to arrive at some satisfactory conclusion through all this obscurity, and drew out a handful of coin, of some low denomination, apparently by the sound, and placed it in the hands of his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... practical seaman being, in a great degree, unknown to him, rendering it necessary for him to think in moments of emergency; periods when the really prime mariner seems more to act by a sort of instinct than by any very intelligible process of ratiocination. With his fleet drawn out before him, however, and with no unusual demands on his resources, this gallant officer was an exceedingly formidable foe to contend ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... I should rather say instinctive—for his keen intuitive thoughts appeared more like instincts, than the results of a process of ratiocination. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... piece. That it was not so deliberately, only added to its effect. The slow and musing air which underlies all the assumption of ardent passion, made a way for the doctrine into sensitive natures, that would have been untouched by the pretended ratiocination of the Discourses, and the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... contemptuous exclamation analogous to our idiom, "stuff and nonsense;" Pah-bodh (literally stuff and nonsense-knowledge) is their term for futile and false philosophy, and applied to a species of metaphysical or speculative ratiocination formerly in vogue, which consisted in making inquiries that could not be answered, and were not worth making; such, for instance, as "Why does an An have five toes to his feet instead of four or six? Did the first An, created by the All-Good, have the same number of toes ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... together; that is to say, the whole man and not merely his intellect, directed to those problems upon which, in sympathy and moral reaction, the whole man must be directed and upon which the pure reason, the mere faculty of ratiocination, does not adequately operate. In the practical reason the will is the central thing. The will is that faculty of man to which moral magnitudes appeal. It is with moral magnitudes that the will is ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... are, indeed, few negligencies in the subordinate parts. The original impropriety, and the subsequent unpopularity of the subject, added to the ridiculousness of its first elements, has sunk it into neglect; but it may be usefully studied, as an example of poetical ratiocination, in which the argument suffers ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... marvellous phenomenon. The literary faculty is born of the marriage of chronic desperation with chronic trust. This may account in part for that peculiar condition of mind which is both engendered and required by abundant writing. A bold abandon, a desperate guidance, a thoughtless ratiocination, a mechanical swaying of rhetoric, are the grounds of dissertation. A pause for a few days, a visit to the country, anything that would seem designed to restore the mind to its normal state, destroys the faculty. The weary penman, who wishes his chaotic head could be relieved by being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... reader be not somewhat perplexed by the ratiocination of the foregoing passage, he will perceive at a glance that the great Peter, in concluding a treaty with his eastern neighbors, was guilty of lamentable error in policy. In fact, to this unlucky agreement ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... was a priest severe In conduct and in conversation, It did a sinner good to hear Him deal in ratiocination. ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... vagrant street boy, or a daring cat, or an inquisitive cur; that this game was stopped at about ten o'clock by the advent of Mr Denham, who generally gave them, the rats, a smile of recognition as he passed to his office, concluding, no doubt, by a natural process of ratiocination, that they were kindred spirits, because they delighted in bad smells and filthy garbage, just as he (Denham) rejoiced in Thames air ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... Thomas Bartholinus the Dane, whom he strongly resembled in the character of his mind, in the complexion and variety of his studies, in grave simplicity, in exactness of observation, in general philosophical incredulity with some startling reserves, in elaborate and massive ratiocination, and in the enthusiasm, subdued but not extinguished, which gives zest to his speculations and poignancy and colouring to his style. He who seeks to measure great men in their strength and in their weakness, and what operation ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Phaenomena relating to the present Question, which have been afforded by experiments, especially since it might seem injurious to our senses, by whose mediation we acquire so much of the knowledge we have of things corporal, to have recourse to far-fetched and abstracted Ratiocination [Errata: Ratiocinations], to know what are the sensible ingredients of those sensible things that we daily see and handle, and are supposed to have the liberty to untwist (if I may so speak) into the primitive bodies they consist of. He annexed that he wished therefore ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... Ivanhoe, for example, cannot be estimated by the same standards as the truthfulness of Stubbs's Constitutional History.) In reading a book, a sincere questioning of oneself, "Is it true?" and a loyal abiding by the answer, will help more surely than any other process of ratiocination to form the taste. I will not assert that this question and answer are all-sufficient. A true book is not always great. But a ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... composition there should not be one word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design." Fourthly, that it must assume the aspect of verisimilitude; "truth is often, and in very great degree, the aim of the tale—some of the finest tales are tales of ratiocination." Fifthly, that it must give the impression of finality; the story, and the interest in the characters which it introduces, must begin with the opening sentence and end with ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... books, it is difficult to doubt that, like the other phrase above cited, it came to Shakspere through Florio's Montaigne. The word discours is a hundred times used singly by Montaigne, as by Shakspere in the phrase "of such large discourse," for the process of ratiocination. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... perhaps from time immemorial; and however unaccountable it may seem, yet, to a certain degree, at least, we are obliged to admit the fact; but whether, after all, this is any thing more than the effect of that kind of foresight or ratiocination, which all men (idiots excepted) have to a greater or less degree, but some much greater than others, is still a question. But should I be obliged to admit the truth of prophecy, in the sense in which it is generally ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... typical form out of which the greater number of the others have arisen. The creative power is there shown entirely unconfined, freed from all hindrance, careless of the possible and the impossible; in a pure state, unadulterated by the opposing influence of imitation, of ratiocination, of the knowledge of natural laws ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... to Smoak are to-day even stronger than when I wrote. (1) It is a fallacie of the vulgar that because the braines of men are colde & wet, therefore Tobacco Smoak, being hote and dry, is good for them; a conclusion which no more followeth on the Premiss than the Ratiocination of one who should apply a cake of cold lead to his stomacke, because the Liver, being the fountaine of blood, is always hote. Moreover, the Smoak hath also a venomous qualitee. (2) It is a vulgar fallacie ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... and supply him with store of spirits, sufficient to replenish and fill up the ventricles, seats, tunnels, mansions, receptacles and cellules of common sense—of the imagination apprehension, and fancy—of the ratiocination, arguing, and resolution—as likewise, of the memory, recordation, and remembrance; and with great alacrity, nimbleness, and agility, to run, pass and course from one to the other, through those pipes, windings, and conduits, which to skilful anatomists are perceivable at the end of the wonderful ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... is not in point of narrative that the present author will obtain any advantage over his predecessors. It is in disquisition that he rejoices, and succeeds; it is the argumentative matter which excites and sustains him. His style seems to languish when the effort of ratiocination gives place to the task of the narrator. We fancy we see him resume the pen with listlessness, when nothing remains for the historian but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... philosophy of Aristotle, considered as a whole, appears on one side to have passed the line of the great Hellenic period. If it did not inaugurate, it at least prepared the way for the decline. It perfected logic, as the instrument of ratiocination, and gave it exactness and precision, Yet taken all in all, it was greatly inferior to its predecessor. From the moral point of view it is a decided retrogression. The god of Aristotle is indifferent ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... confute; He'd undertake to prove by force Of argument, a man's no horse; He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a Lord may be an owl; A calf an Alderman, a goose a Justice, And rooks Committee-Men or Trustees. He'd run in debt by disputation, And pay with ratiocination. All this by syllogism true, In mood ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... went over this whole matter once for all and definitively. Ratiocination is a relatively superficial and unreal path to the deity: "I will lay mine hand upon my mouth; I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee." An intellect perplexed and baffled, yet a trustful sense ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... was "thoroughly logical and argumentative; not a rhetorician, as fools aver." Whether this estimate was right or wrong in the main may be a matter of question: we think it wrong. His genius, in our view, lay rather in pictorial passion than in ratiocination. At all events, as a teacher of philosophy, it appears to us that his conception of the duties of his office, and his style of teaching, were far inferior to those of his competitor and subsequent associate, Sir William Hamilton. The one taught like a trumpet-tongued poet, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... a kind of cerebral sensation of foolishness in my ideas of ratiocination; but I pulled out the little brick and unwrapped my handkerchief ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... Although Sankara's commentary is a piece of severe ratiocination, especially in its controversial parts, yet he holds that the knowledge of Brahman depends not on reasoning but on scripture and intuition. "The presentation before the mind of the Highest Self is effected by meditation and devotion." Brah. Sut. III. 2. 24. See too his comments ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... confute; He'd undertake to prove by force Of argument, a man's no horse; He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a lord may be an owl; A calf an alderman, a goose a justice, And rooks committee-men and trustees, He'd run in debt by disputation, And pay with ratiocination: All this by syllogism, true In mood and figure, he would do. For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope; And when he happened to break off I' th' middle of his speech, or cough, H' had hard words, ready to show why, And tell what rules ...
— English Satires • Various
... letting go of the dog were, in the strictest sense, intellectual and rational operations. Do they cease to be so when the man ceases to be conscious of them? That depends upon what is the essence and what the accident of those operations, which, taken together, constitute ratiocination. ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 'Ratiocination,' says one of the most eloquent and yet exact of modern writers,[*] 'is the great principle of order in thinking: it reduces a chaos into harmony, it catalogues the accumulations of knowledge; it maps out for us the relations of its ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Romish priests. Captain Abrane sniffed, loud as a horse, condemnatory as a cat, in speaking of him. He said: 'By George, it comes to this; we shall have to turn Catholics for a loan!' Watchdogs of the three repeated the gigantic gambler's melancholy roar. And, see what gap, cried the ratiocination of alarm, see the landslip it is in our body, national and religious, when exalted personages go that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was extorted under fear of punishment. And she well knew that her interference in his favor, while it could not estrange him from his father more than he was already estranged, would give her greater influence over him for good. Such were the conclusions of her mind—not arrived at by cold ratiocination, but by woman's shorter way of perception. And she knew that she ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... his own invention of—the modern short story; that is his general and supreme achievement. He also stands superlative for the quality of three varieties of short stories, those of terror, beauty and ratiocination. In the first class belong A Descent into the Maelstrom (1841), The Pit and the Pendulum (1842), The Black Cat (1843), and The Cask of Amontillado (1846). In the realm of beauty his notable productions ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... therefore, is to be carried on either by induction, or by ratiocination. Induction is a manner of speaking which, by means of facts which are not doubtful, forces the assent of the person to whom it is addressed. By which assent it causes him even to approve of some points which are doubtful, on account of their resemblance ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... more was what Epicurus had to teach on the subject of logic. He had no theory of definition, or division, or ratiocination, or refutation, or explication; on all these matters Epicurus was, as Cicero said, 'naked and unarmed.' Like most self-taught or ill-taught teachers, Epicurus trusted to his dogmas; he knew nothing and ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... Alice, the family had developed traits and even eccentricities enough to make it a sort of microcosm of life. There, for instance, was Patience, the maiden aunt, his father's sister, the news-monger of the fireside, whose powers of ratiocination first gave Philip the Greek idea and method of reasoning to a point and arriving at truth by the process of exclusion. It did not excite his wonder at the time, but afterwards it appeared to him as one of the New England eccentricities ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... hemisphere emblazoned with stars of astonishing brilliancy; the near-by ones unparalleled in splendor by any celestial object known to us, while the more distant ones would resemble ordinary stars. An inhabitant of the cluster would not know, except by a process of ratiocination, that he was dwelling in a globular assemblage of suns; only from a point far outside would their spherical arrangement become evident to the eye. Imagine fourteen-thousand fire-balloons with an approach ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Bennett didn't get either killed or wounded," said his mother with that defective ratiocination which it is a pretty woman's privilege to indulge in ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... servants have been lost to England because, however accomplished, they lacked the mathematical twist required to pass the standard in this one subject? As a training in intelligence it is harmful: it teaches a person to underestimate the value of evidence based on their other modes of ratiocination. It is the poorest form of mental exercise—sheer verification; conjecture and observation are ruled out. A study of Chinese grammar would be far more valuable from the point of view of general education. All ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... more charitable toward Vane than was Fox, who never deals gently with persons who approach his point of view and yet miss it. The former, declaring that Vane's writings lack "his usual clearness and ratiocination," and that "in a crowd of very easy words the sense was too hard to find out," yet concludes to give the furnace-tried statesman the benefit of the doubt: "I was of opinion that the subject was of so delicate a nature that it required another kind ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... hollow which volcanic fires had wrought on the surface of uplands undulating like diluvian billows fixed into stone in the midst of their stormy swell. I wandered on and away from the beaten track, absorbed in thought. Could I acknowledge in Julius Faber's conjectures any basis for logical ratiocination; or were they not the ingenious fancies of that empirical Philosophy of Sentiment by which the aged, in the decline of severer faculties, sometimes assimilate their theories to the hazy romance of youth? I can well conceive that the story I tell will be ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... means of syllogistic locomotion. For the further we ascend from the solid ground of verification, the less confidence should we place in our wings of speculation, while the more do we find the practical wisdom of such intellectual caution, or distrust of ratiocination, as can be given only by experience. Therefore, most of all is this the case in those departments of thought which are furthest from the region of our sensuous life—viz. metaphysics and religion. And, as a matter of fact, it is just in these departments of ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... ever be possible to the masses. Take the very highest society in England and America—to what extent are its members controlled by reason, and to what extent by feeling and by the fixed sentiments growing out of feeling? Ratiocination does not influence one of their actions in a million. There is not within my knowledge a single instance where a purely rational conception has been the basis of practice, in opposition ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... my companion was a reflecting being, his ratiocination being connected by regular links, and that he did not boost his philosophy on the leaping-staff of impulse, like most of those who were sputtering, and arguing, and wrangling, with untiring lungs, in all corners of the guinguette. I frankly ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... commonly accepted. But every reader who has ever taken the slightest interest in architecture must know that there is a great popular impression on this matter, which maintains itself stiffly in its old form, in spite of all ratiocination and definition; namely, that a flat lintel from pillar to pillar is Grecian, a round arch Norman or Romanesque, and a pointed ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... wrote "Shades" was one of the most brilliant of American writers, and his stomach was empty most of the time. And when this master of ratiocination had on rare occasions a full stomach it was invariably ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... young man was from New York, but the rest of us wondered how Bud guessed it. So, when the steaks were done, we besought him to lay bare his system of ratiocination. And as Bud was something of a Territorial talking machine he made ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... that 'it hath not pleased the Lord to give his people salvation in dialectic,' has a profound meaning far beyond its application to theology. It is deeply true that our ruling convictions are less the product of ratiocination than of sympathy, imagination, usage, tradition. But from this it does not follow that the reasoning faculties are to be further discouraged. On the contrary, just because the other elements are so strong that they can be trusted to take care of themselves, it is expedient to give special countenance ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... his difficult stanza and even more because of the "languor of a continued allegory."[169] In comparing his judgments on Spenser and Dryden we may conclude that the critic found more in the later poet of that solid intellectual basis which he emphasizes in characterizing him. "This power of ratiocination," says Scott, "of investigating, discovering, and appreciating that which is really excellent, if accompanied with the necessary command of fanciful illustration and elegant expression, is the most interesting quality which can be possessed by a poet."[170] Again ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... arrogance and ignorance must inevitably have their issue in folly and disaster. Nothing could be more antipathetic to him than a mind so strangely lacking in patience, in reflection, in principle, and in the habits of ratiocination. For to him it was intolerable to think in a hurry, to jump to slapdash decisions, to act on instincts that could not be explained. Everything must be done in due order, with careful premeditation; the premises of the position must first be firmly established; and he must ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... men ought to do this or that! This body might not be dead—or dead, some one might like to have it! He rushed into the water, and caught it—ere the next wave broke, though hours of cogitation, ratiocination, recollection, seemed to have intervened. The breaking wave drenched him from head to foot: he clung to his prize and dragged it out. A moment's bewilderment, and he came to himself lying on the sand, his arms round a great lump of net, lost ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... the discovery of their mutual relations and connection. The various branches of physical science differ in the extent to which at any given moment of their history, observation on the one hand, or ratiocination on the other, is their more obvious feature, but in no other way, and nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... wheel. That noble fellow, true as steel, had perceived the accident as soon as any of us, and he sprang to the very part of the vessel where he was most needed. He had a seaman's faculties in perfection, though ratiocination was certainly not his forte. A motion of my hand ordered him to put the helm hard up, and the answering sign let me know that I was obeyed. We could do no more just then, but the result was awaited ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... sober rationality in thinking, heedless eclecticism, and the demand for religious tolerance. Philosophy must be generally intelligible, and practically useful, knowledge of the world (not of God); its form, free and tasteful ratiocination; its object, man and morals; its first duty, culture, not learning; its highest aim, happiness; its organ and the criterion of every truth, common sense. He alone gains true knowledge who frees his understanding ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... a fact!" said the rest in high admiration of the Judge's ratiocination. Steve was specially pleased, and drawing a neck-yoke from a barrel standing near, pounded the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... the landscape has ceased to vibrate. In the douce benignance of equinoctial sunshine we gaze about us with eyes of inventory. Where my observation errs by too much sentiment the Urchin checks me by his cooler power of ratiocination. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... where we, poor slaves of traditional ratiocination, seek to turn these explosions of eternal lava into eternal systems. The lava of life pours forth forever, but the systems break and crumble; each one overwhelmed in its allotted time by a ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... because it is devoid of sound and other qualities. It cannot therefore be asserted that there is no scriptural authority for the pradhana. And this pradhana vouched for by Scripture we declare to be the cause of the world, on the ground of Scripture, Sm/ri/ti, and ratiocination. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... Shropshire border, and some of them, like mushrooms, as suddenly suffered decay. A facetious Salopian prophet ventured publicly to predict that "we shall hear next of a railway to Llansilin (a remote village among the border hills) or the moon." His ratiocination was hardly exaggerated. A "preliminary prospectus" was actually published for carrying a railway, at a cost of under 10,000 pounds per mile, from Shrewsbury, through Kinnerley and Porthywaen, thence "near ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... and handsome as Adonis, with whom she is to fall in love. He is generally described with considerable minuteness, and the time and place of meeting foretold. This may be fictitious, and it is fortunate for her if it is so. Rut the seeress too frequently needs no powers of clairvoyance or ratiocination to make these disclosures, for some roue; who has exhausted the ordinary rounds of dissipation, or some fast young fellow seeking a change, has made a bargain with the prophetess for a new and innocent ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... with the equations of Mathematics; but from Hamilton's innovations no such thing results. This cannot be said, however, of the equations of Symbolic Logic; which are the starting-point of very remarkable processes of ratiocination. As the subject of Symbolic Logic, as a whole, lies beyond the compass of this work, it will be enough to give Dr. Venn's equations corresponding with the four propositional ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... as a singular instance of perverse ratiocination, that, unwarned by experience, the French should still persist in perpetuating this political vice; that all their policy should still be the policy of Centralization,—a principle which secures the momentary strength, but ever ends in the abrupt ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... have been exterminated. The success of serpents of all species in meeting new conditions and maintaining their existence in the face of enormous difficulties compels us, as reasoning beings, to accord to them keen intelligence and ratiocination. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... little absurd to suspect Mannering," he remarked meditatively. "Yet there are times when a woman's intuition is a better guide than a man's ratiocination." ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... hundreds of instances that have come under my own observation of arguments stated and deductions made by Natives who were innocent of all European education that would show a capacity for mental analysis and clear ratiocination equal to that of the educated European, but I have to consider the reader's patience and will therefore confine myself to a few illustrations taken at random from a number that were written down by me at the time of observation. I may say here that my translation into English has ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... pleading is exactly what we might be led to expect from the peculiar state of manners, and the particular character of that singular people. It is infinitely further removed from dry legal ratiocination, and much more allied to real eloquence, than any thing we met with in England. Any one who is acquainted with the natural inborn fluency in conversation of every individual whom he meets in France, may ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... fanciful when we find a resemblance between Jefferson's mode of argumentation and that of Machiavelli. There is the same manner of approaching a subject, the same neglect of opposing arguments, and the same disposition to rely on the force of general maxims. Machiavelli exceeded him in power of ratiocination from a given proposition, but does not seem to have been able to determine whether a given proposition was right ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... my little poem, so I am now set out in the cold by every big magazine and publisher, and may as well understand and admit it—which is just as well, for I find I am palpably losing my sight and ratiocination. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman |
