"Adaptation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... priggish. The talker was not more than 22 or 23 years old, but the immense experience he had passed through was more than wonderful, and the old chestnuts he got off as having happened to himself were beyond Eli Perkins' power of adaptation. ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... its numberless variations present the most remarkable example of adaptation in the genus. The variations are mostly those associated with changes of environment—dimensions of cone and leaf and the number of leaves in the fascicle. These are so accurately correlated with altitude and exposure, and are so imperceptibly graded, that no specific ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... shows Spenser's wonderful technique. His exquisite effects are produced, it will be noticed, partly by the choice of musical words and partly by the rhythmical cadence of the verse phrases. It is an example of perfect "keeping," or adaptation of sound to sense. Cf. Chaucer's description of the waterfalls in the Cave of Sleep in his Boke of the ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... process. He afterwards associated himself with Andrew Wilson, a London printer, and in 1802 the plaster process, as it was called, was perfected. This remained in use until 1846, when a system of forming moulds in papier mache was introduced, and this was succeeded by the adaptation of the ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... folkways, therefore, are not creations of human purpose and wit. They are like products of natural forces which men unconsciously set in operation, or they are like the instinctive ways of animals, which are developed out of experience, which reach a final form of maximum adaptation to an interest, which are handed down by tradition and admit of no exception or variation, yet change to meet new conditions, still within the same limited methods, and without rational reflection or purpose. From this it results that all the life of human beings, in all ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... reconcile these discrepancies, is often a very difficult matter, and when combined with the other principles on which the Harmonies were constructed must have caused a great deal of trouble, and required much skilful adaptation. This part of the work can be tested by examining some one chapter of the Authorized Version, and we can then discover how the subjects are treated. The eighth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel will be a ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland
... humble the reader, make him feel what is in him, and what he can and may, as well as what he cannot, and need never hope to know. In this respect, Hamilton is as grand as Pascal, and more simple; he exemplifies everywhere his own sublime adaptation of Scripture—unless a man become a little child, he cannot enter into the kingdom; he enters the temple stooping, but he presses on, intrepid and alone, to the inmost adytum, worshipping the more the nearer he gets to the inaccessible shrine, whose ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... perfect. As consciousness develops further, in each succeeding type, actions originally reflex tend to take on a more consciously purposeful character. But all we are concerned with now is the problem of tone-production. Our purpose is best served by accepting the faculty of muscular adaptation as an ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... of the flatness of the picture because the two eyes receive identical impressions. And we may add an argument nearly related to it, namely, that the screen as such is an object of our perception and demands an adaptation of the eye and an independent localization. We are drawn into this conflict of perception even when we look into a mirror. If we stand three feet from a large mirror on the wall, we see our reflection three feet from our eyes in the plate glass and we see ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... system of the Church until the end of the Arian controversy, whereby the full and eternal deity of the Son was established as the Catholic faith; thirdly, the development of the constitution, the fixation of the leading ecclesiastical conceptions, and the adaptation of the system of the Church to the practical needs of the times. The entire period may be divided into two main parts by the reign of Julian the Apostate (361-363); and the reign of Constantine as Emperor of the West (312-324) ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... machinery as a brute, is merely a passing phase of human stupidity. This tram road beside us will be a triumph of design. The idea will be so unfamiliar to us that for a time it will not occur to us that it is a system of beautiful objects at all. We shall admire its ingenious adaptation to the need of a district that is buried half the year in snow, the hard bed below, curved and guttered to do its own clearing, the great arched sleeper masses, raising the rails a good two yards above the ground, the easy, simple ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... The perfect adaptation of the bread-fruit and cocoa-nut trees to the varied wants of the South-sea islanders tells, more eloquently than could be told in words, of the wisdom and benevolence with which the Almighty cares for His creatures, ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... years, have come again into full and unconcealed prominence. Such are the questions about the natural order of appearance of the faculties in childhood, as to what are the elementary faculties of the mind, as to the adaptation of the kinds and order of studies to these, etc. And thus, all at once, is disclosed that Education itself, which many had thought quite a 'finished' thing, well and happily disposed of, or at least so far perfected ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... couldn't. It's my grand adaptation of the phonograph to the marine service. You store up profanity in it for use at sea. You know that sailors don't fly around worth a cent unless you swear at them—so the mate that can do the best job of swearing is the most valuable man. In great emergencies his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to Erling's partiality for the axe as an offensive weapon. This preference was in truth—strange though the assertion may appear—owing to the peculiar adaptation of that instrument to the preservation of life as well as ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... algebraic problems Jose saw the working of a rule infinite in its adaptation. She knew not what the answers should be, yet she took up each problem with supreme confidence, knowing that she possessed and rightly understood the rule for correctly solving it. She knew that speculation regarding the probable results was an idle waste of time. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... facts of order, and design, and special adaptation which crowd the universe, and the a priori ideas of an unconditioned Cause and an infinite Intelligence which arise in the mind in presence of these facts, are inadequate to produce the logical conviction that it is the work ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... one being productive of no more resistance, and consequently superfluous. A single unbroken turn of the screw, however, when the diameter is of any magnitude, would require a considerable length of axis, which in its adaptation to the Balloon, would be practically objectionable; accordingly two half turns, nearly equivalent in power to one whole turn, has been preferred; as in most instances it has been by Mr. Smith, himself, in his application of it to the navigation ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... state their position. They have no intention whatever of writing a new book. Their aim is to adapt old books to new needs. {48} Adaptation, not invention, is their aim. Four times in their short Preface they refer us to "the ancient Fathers" as ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... one side or the other of the Grecian parties, and thus becoming artificially strengthened against both. But the Xenophontic Anabasis[124] betrays her real weakness against any vigorous attack; while it at the same time exemplifies the discipline, the endurance, the power of self-action and adaptation, the susceptibility of influence from speech and discussion, the combination of the reflecting obedience of citizens with the mechanical regularity of soldiers—which confer such immortal distinction on the Hellenic character. The importance of this expedition ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... welcomer guests in feast and camp, and were better preserved. We shall have more to say on this in speaking of our proposed song collection. Printing so multiplies copies of ballads, and intercourse is so general, that there is less need of this adaptation to music now. Moreover, it may be disputed whether the dramatic effect in the more solemn ballads is not injured by lyrical forms. In such streaming exhortations and laments as we find in the Greek choruses and in the adjurations and ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Customs Mrs. Ewing showed her ready ability to take up any subject of interest that came under her notice—botany, horticulture, archaeology, folk-lore, or whatever it might be. The same readiness was shown in her adaptation of the various versions of the Mumming Play, or ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... believe, it seems, that the original use of the pahu was in connection with the services of the temple, and that its adaptation to the halau was simply a transference from ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... were many and varied. He had a great deal of adaptation, and made himself agreeable to every one. He had traveled extensively, was a close observer, and had a retentive memory. Mr. Trevlyn was charmed with him. So was Alexandrine Lee, a friend of Margie's, a rival belle, ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... the most considerable part of it. But with the adoption of steam for ocean carriage began the decline of American shipping, a decline hastened by the use of iron, and then steel, for hulls. Though we credit ourselves—not without some protest from England—with the invention of the steamboat, the adaptation of the screw to the propulsion of vessels, and the invention of triple-expansion engines, yet it was England that seized upon these inventions and with them won, and long held, the commercial mastery of the seas. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the seventh line the word filled is weak and prosaick, having no particular adaptation to any of the words ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... giving by the valued friend who acted as spokesman for his fellow-members, and who was himself the only non-American member of the said Cabinet. There is a horseman by Macmonnies, and a big bronze vase by Kemys, an adaptation or development of the pottery vases of the Southwestern Indians. Mixed with all of these are gifts from varied sources, ranging from a brazen Buddha sent me by the Dalai Lama and a wonderful psalter from the Emperor ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... four principal streets, is lighted by its roof of glass, and a hundred brilliant shops and cafes spread their business and leisure over its marble floor. Nothing could be architecturally more cheerful, and, if it were not too hot in summer, there could be no doubt of its adaptation to our year, for it could be easily closed against the winter by great portals, and at other seasons would give that out-door expansion which in Latin countries hospitably offers the spectacle of pleasant eating and drinking to people who have ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... man or woman. What, then, is the defect? If the machine is right, then the material with which it is fed must be defective. If the material is right, then the machine has every virtue except that of adaptation to the use ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... the working of constitutional government could be seriously considered. But no system of defence, however constitutional, can avail unless it be shaped with a view to war. It is to the conciliation of these two necessities, that of compatibility with the constitution and that of adaptation to the purpose of war, that our attention ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... know her. Possibly you may not yourself feel that you altogether understand your mother? She has had many demands upon her powers of adaptation. I should imagine her not one who would adapt herself easily, yet, once she had recognized a necessity of that sort, I believe she would fit herself to its conditions with an exacting thoroughness which in time would become almost, one ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... So only petroleum remained, and the inconvenience attaching to its use was so great that victory and fortune would certainly rest with the manufacturer who should be able to replace it by some other hitherto unknown agent. In the discovery and adaptation of the latter lay ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... T**LE.—It is not true that Die Walkuere, about to be produced at the Grand Opera, in Paris, is either an adaptation, or a translation, of Walker—London. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various
... of intellectual view, and the more minute the perception of its parts, the greater will be the simplicity of conception, the aptitude for exposition, and the directness of access to the open and expectant mind. This adaptation to the humblest wants is the peculiar triumph of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... and tender adaptation to our need in that feature of our Lord's character, which consists in his desiring and appreciating our love. He is not a distant, cold, omnipotence. He lavishes love on the world, but he is disappointed when the world does not throw back a reflection of his own love, as ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... at last from Biarritz, where it appeared the young lady was spending the winter with her father. After an exchange of letters Wark joined them there. In the twelve years since her return to the family, she had by degrees adapted herself to the task of looking after her young lady. The adaptation was not all on one side. Many of Vida's friends wondered that she could put up with a lady's maid who could do so few of the things commonly ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... as our nationwide development of permanent highways proceeds, roadside trees planting on a large scale is sure to follow. When undertaken it should be on a solid foundation of experience especially with regard to the climatic adaptation, soil and drainage requirements, varietal characteristics, such as habit, vigor, pest resistance, and productiveness, all of which are fundamentally important where the use of the land for a century or more is involved. What has been said with regard to highway planting ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... sensitive to environment; they are loyal when others are loyal, but if there be a change in spirit round them they immediately correspond, and they do so not from any selfish calculation, but merely through a quick adaptation to environment. People of this kind find themselves by an instinct on the winning side, but they would be mightily offended if they were charged with being opportunists. They are at each moment thoroughly convinced of their integrity, and are ever on the side which commends ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... advice. "Take the funeral oration of Pericles for a model," was the reply. "Use his words where they will fit, and dress up the rest to suit our day." The orator was surprised to find how much of the oration could be used bodily, and how much, with adaptation, was germane to his subject. But slight alterations are necessary to make the opening sentence this: "Most of those who have spoken here have commended the law-giver who added this oration to our other customs; it seemed to them a worthy thing that such an honor should be given ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... In the Epilogue to the comedy of "An Evening's Love; or, The Mock Astrologer," borrowed from "Le Feint Astrologue" of the younger Corneille, Dryden, the adapter of the play, makes jesting defence of the system of adaptation. The critics are described as conferring together in the pit on the subject of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... in the remains of classic poetry. Though the commentators are accused of often, seeing an imitation where there is none, no commentary can point out the ever-present infusion of classical flavour, which bespeaks intimate converse far more than direct adaptation. Milton's classical allusions, says Hartley Coleridge, are amalgamated and consubstantiated with ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... begot Plenty. An adaptation of the wellknown saying which Puttenham in his Arte of English Poesie (ed. Arber, p. 217) attributes to Jean de Meung. Puttenham gives ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... skin, the arm and leg being at the same time greatly shortened. The limbs are thus converted into efficient "flippers," adapting the animal for an active existence in the sea. The different joints of the backbone (vertebrae) also show the same adaptation to an aquatic mode of life, being hollowed out at both ends, like the biconcave vertebrae of Fishes. The spinal column in this way was endowed with the flexibility necessary for an animal intended to pass the greater part of its time in water. Though the Ichthyosaurs ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... climb to 1110 Dupont Street; and although the street had been graded, the houses retained their airy elevation, and were accessible only by successive flights of wooden steps to the front door, which still gave perilously upon the street, sixty feet below. I now painfully appreciated Enriquez's adaptation of the time-honored joke about the second floor. An invincible smell of garlic almost took my remaining breath away as the door was opened to me by a swarthy Mexican woman, whose loose camisa seemed to be slipping from her unstable bust, and was held on only by the mantua-like shawl ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... beauty of the latter being rather marred, according to my taste, by a curious glitter, which, but for the calmness of their owner's demeanour, I should have regarded as slightly suggestive of incipient insanity. Her figure, clothed in a picturesque, if somewhat theatrical, adaptation of the costume of her comrades, was somewhat slight, but eminently graceful, while her hands and feet would have delighted a sculptor with their symmetry. Her voice was especially beautiful, being a full, rich, and ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... always subjected to the laws of a delicate, but most severe taste. His poems are probably planned with views to their artistic effects, and are then constructed from his exhaustless wealth of poetical material, by a nice adaptation of each part to the perfect whole of his design. If he has less imagination than Mr. Taylor, he has a richer and more glowing fancy; if his figures are less apt and striking, they are more elegant and symmetrical; if the harmonious dignity of his versification is less, its melodious sweetness is ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... execute, yielding obedience to no dogma, legal or political, he followed the convictions of his mind, without regard to precedent or example. His knowledge of human nature seemed intuitive, and his capacity of adaptation was without limit. At the period when he commenced the practice of law, the successful abilities in the profession were forensic. Every case was tried by a jury, and the law made juries judges of law ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... find her first place. During this period of looking for work the immigrant girl is subjected to great dangers. It is at such times that immigrants often exhibit symptoms of that type of disordered mind which alienists pronounce "due to conflict through poor adaptation." I have known several immigrant young men as well as girls who became deranged during the first year of life in America. A young Russian who came to Chicago in the hope of obtaining the freedom and self-development denied ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... no criticism of his manner toward her," Stephen replied. "I'll say for him that he's a pastmaster at adaptation. I'll wager he's enjoying himself, too. It's a new ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... spirit in regard to the reality of things and the laws which govern them." This philosophical statement is readily adapted to the True in the arts, which is acquired by the observation of nature and adaptation of the lawful ideal. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... time, and had for several years the superintendence of the works of the Palace; but it appears, from the documents collected by the Abbe Cadorin, that the first designer of the Palace, the man to whom we owe the adaptation of the Frari traceries to civil architecture, was Pietro Baseggio, who is spoken of expressly as "formerly the Chief Master of our New Palace,"[58] in the decree of 1361, quoted by Cadorin, and who, at his death, left Calendario his executor. Other documents collected by ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... from his hideout, Tyler," Bentley explained, "and won't hesitate to send them into danger since it can't touch him. And he watches every move they make, too. He's made some television adaptation of his own. I'll wager, if he so desires, he can see us sitting here right now, even perhaps hear what we say. I can fancy ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... pursuits,— identifying herself with the politician as warmly and readily as with the author, and keeping Love still attendant on Genius through all his transformations. As the wife of the dramatist and manager, we find her calculating the receipts of the house, assisting in the adaptation of her husband's opera, and reading over the plays sent in by dramatic candidates. As the wife of the senator and orator we see her, with no less zeal, making extracts from state-papers, and copying out ponderous ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Company, publishers of Lockwood and Emerson's Composition and Rhetoric, and to the Goodyear-Marshall Publishing Company, publishers of Marshall's Business English, the author is indebted for their kind permission to make a rather free adaptation of certain parts ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... conditions, which whole eras of heroism and affection—whole eras of misery and misconduct,—confirm into glory, or confuse into shame. Collecting the causes of changed form, in lower creatures, by distress, or by adaptation,—by the disturbance or intensifying of the parental strength, and the native fortune—the wonder is, not that species should sometimes be confused, but that the greater number of them remain so splendidly, so manifestly, so eternally distinct; and that the vile industries and vicious ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... the rocks, which met over it in a kind of gothic arch. A stream of water just sufficient for the requisite purposes, fell in through a fissure from above, forming such a little subterraneous cascade in the cavern as human design itself could scarcely have surpassed in felicity of adaptation to the objects of ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... charming paragraph on the "divergence of characters" (Darwinism, p. 107), in forming new habits, moving to new abodes, and taking to new sorts of food. In all such cases there will be no extermination, even no competition—the new adaptation being a relief from competition, if it ever existed; and yet there will be, after a time, an absence of intermediate links, in consequence of a mere survival of those which are best fitted for the new conditions—as surely as under the hypothesis of extermination of ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... various argument in defence of the use of rhyme on the stage, Dryden, we have seen, always speaks of its peculiar adaptation to "Serious Plays," or "Heroic Plays." In an essay thereon, prefixed to the "Conquest of Grenada," in the pride of success he says, "whether heroic verse ought to be admitted into Serious Plays, is not now to be disputed." And he again takes up the obstinate objection to rhyme, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... specified, does not discern truth intuitively, or as a whole. We know, not by a direct and simple vision, not at a glance, but, as it were, by piecemeal and accumulation, by a mental process, by going round an object, by the comparison, the combination, the mutual correction, the continual adaptation, of many partial notions, by the employment, concentration, and joint action of many faculties and exercises of mind. Such a union and concert of the intellectual powers, such an enlargement and development, such a comprehensiveness, is necessarily a matter of training. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the enactments of law have secured for the body), might well be tempted to view the prospect to which I have now introduced you with some feelings of misgiving, were he not reassured by his firm reliance on the harmonising influence of British connexion, and the power of self- adaptation inherent in our institutions. On the one side he sees the model Republic of Hayti—a coloured community, which has enjoyed nearly half a century of entire independence and self-rule. And with what issues? As respects moral and intellectual culture, stagnation: in all ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Creator who gave to the bee the mathematical instinct could endow man with the instinct of speech. Even to animal instinct we find a certain variation and permitted latitude in what is called adaptive instinct. So in man we find this same instinct of adaptation in a higher sense. The instinct comes into play when we suppose a number of persons separated from others, each living in different quarters of the globe. In such a condition, though of the same language when ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... the contradiction of the Restoration and the Revolution, to have that disquieting side of the revolutionary which becomes reassuring in governing power, therein lay the fortune of Louis Philippe in 1830; never was there a more complete adaptation of a man to an event; the one entered into the other, and the incarnation took place. Louis Philippe is 1830 made man. Moreover, he had in his favor that great recommendation to the throne, exile. He had been proscribed, a wanderer, poor. He had lived ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in its pagan form even unto this day. Christian Science is neither one nor the other, and the obvious pleasantry that it is neither Christian nor scientific is a jest in earnest. Christian Science is a modern adaptation of all that is best in the simplicity and asceticism of Jesus, the commonsense philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, the mysticism of Swedenborg, and the bold pronunciamento of Robert Ingersoll. It is a religion of ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... pick of Rajputana's patriots—the men who loved the old ways, yet admitted there was virtue in an adaptation of the new. And Yasmini, with a gift for reading men's hearts that has been her secret and her source of power first and last, was reviving an ancient royal custom for them, to the end that she might lead them in altogether new ways ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Charles Reade worshiped Laura Seymour, and she understood him and sympathized with his work and his whims. She died before he did, and he never got over it. The great success of one of his last plays, "Drink," an adaptation from the French, in which Charles Warner is still thrilling audiences to this day, meant nothing to him because she was not alive to share it. The "In Memoriam" which he had inscribed over her grave is characteristic of the man, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Egeria, carved by Thorwaldsen, throws up between her hands a shaft of cold crystal water, pure as truth, which spreads into a silvery veil all around her, and plashes down in a snowy basin: no place could be more inviting for a bath. But in the winter Egeria shows her power of adaptation by furnishing instead a Geyser of hot water. Then I turn my scientific friends in here, when they call upon me, to make them ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... are necessary. Since history repeats itself, the possibility and even the probability must be entertained that every now and then a ballad which had been in circulation for some time was adapted to the circumstances of a recent occurrence, and has come down to us only in such an adaptation. It is also far from improbable that many ballads which appear to have no definite localization or historical antecedents may be founded on fact, since one of the marked tendencies of popular narrative poetry is to alter or eliminate specific names of persons and places ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... of this legislation is heightened by the probability of its continuance; for it is not easy to uproot a body of laws once accepted by a people, however mischievous in their character. Custom, and the faculty of adaptation, have a very reconciling influence upon communities as well as individuals. Moreover, men absorbed in a feverish and hazardous industry, and stimulated by the hope of sudden wealth, are not disposed to consider ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... agreed that private swindling is private swindling, there is the Devil's own difficulty in punishing the swindling of the public. The art of swindling now is a different thing to the art of swindling a hundred years ago; but the laws remain the same. Adaptation in private cases is innovation in public; so, without repealing old laws, they make new. Sometimes these are effectual, but more often not. Now, my beloved pupils, a law is a gun which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... adverse exigencies which came into collision with his design, but this only strengthens the moral of the building against revivals. Two humble achievements, if we had chosen were certainly within our reach,—perfect adaptation to our object and inoffensive dignity. Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches. For my part I look up with admiration, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... either backward or forward on the path which the conditions of survival mark out for them. They are free to progress or to perish. But social evolution in any case, in the sense of social change either toward higher or toward lower social adaptation, is a necessity that cannot be escaped. Sociology and all social science is, therefore, a study not of what human groups would like to do, but of what they must do in order to survive, that is, how they can control their environment by utilizing the ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... with the law of adaptation through natural selection, phylogeny, and association, one would expect no pain in abscess of the brain, in abscess of the liver, in pylephlebitis, in infection of the hepatic vessels, in endocarditis. This law explains why there are no nociceptors for cancer, while there are active nociceptors ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... reference to this heterosexual instance need not necessarily be heterosexual in a psychological sense. It is important to recognize that though the object of the male in a particular case be a woman, yet psychologically this need not be a heterosexual adaptation. In the case I have cited the relation of the patient to his wife is psychologically a homosexual one. We have seen in this case the presence of a profound neurosis and coexistent with it an apparently normal sexual life. This we know from the Freudian standpoint ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... was usually in the form of a parallelogram, with a seat for the judges at one end, and in their adaptation of this form of building, the early Christians devoted this place to the purposes of an altar. This, by an easy and natural transition, is thought to have given rise to the formation of the semi-circular recess at one end of the building, known as the apse (from the Latin apsis, a bow or ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... come, and it would sound loaded." Again he looked at the bill, again read it, and then proceeded to describe with great accuracy, on a fly-leaf, the dimensions of the paper to be used, the size of the different types, and the adaptation of various colours. "That will do," said he; "I think that ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... The peculiar adaptation of his character to this mission of humanity was not only felt by his fellow laborers in the New-York Association, but was acknowledged wherever he was known. Dr. Walter Channing, brother of the late Dr. William Ellery Charming wrote to ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... daily life of the men. They learned to fight and live in the open. The power of human adaptation to abnormal conditions was never better exemplified than in those weary, dreary years ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... wise to stuff his plea for Liberty of Conscience so full as he did with the details of a farce. His doing so should, at all events, acquit him of the charge of being a sour Puritan. In the Rehearsal Bayes (Dryden), who is turned by Sheridan in his adaptation of the piece into Mr. Puff, is made to produce out of his pocket his book of Drama Commonplaces, and the play proceeds (Johnson and Smith being ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... architecture the navies of the world had then known. While the turrets on the modern battleship are very different in design, in armor and in arrangement from those on the old monitors, they are nothing more than an adaptation of the ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... books recommended to students. Thanks are due to Professor Edgar James Swift and Charles Scribner's Sons for permission to use a figure from "Mind in the Making"; and to J.B. Lippincott Company for adaptation of cuts from Villiger's ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... wore bandannas of silk or cotton looped gracefully about their necks. A few of the younger ones wore a sort of rude outside trouser of leather called "chaps," and each of them carried a revolver slung at the hip. They were superb examples of adaptation to environment, alert, bold, and graceful ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... their attendant planets throughout space. Our first glance therefore shows us that the All-originating Power must be in essence Unity and in manifestation Multiplicity, and that it manifests as Life and Beauty through the unerring adaptation of means to ends—that is so far as its cosmic manifestation of ends goes: what we want to do is to carry this manifestation still further by operation from an individual standpoint. To do this is precisely our place in the Order of Creation, but we must defer the ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... all ages, and in all there will be, sharp and slender heads made purposely and peculiarly for creeping into the crevices of our nature. While we contemplate the magnificence of the universe, and mensurate the fitness and adaptation of one part to another, the small philosopher hangs upon a hair or creeps within a wrinkle, and cries out shrilly from his elevation that we are blind and superficial. He discovers a wart, he pries into ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the little Chevalier strutting about in an adaptation of the smallest midshipman's uniform, and the centre of an admiring party, who were equally diverted by his consequential airs and by his accounts of his sports among the Moors. Happy fellow, he could adapt himself to any society, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not merely a sensorium. His intelligence is not merely an instrument for adaptation. There is a germ within, a nucleus of force and organisation, which can be unfolded, under favourable circumstances, into a perfection inwardly determined. Man's constitution is a fountain from which to draw an infinity of gushing music, not representing anything external, yet not ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... build. Robert Adam had been much struck in his foreign travels with the palace of Diocletian on the Bay of Spalatro. The terrace facing the sea had impressed his imagination, and the Adelphi Terrace is the result of his adaptation of the idea. It was necessary to gain a solid foundation on the slippery river-bank, therefore the brothers designed the wonderful system of arches on which all the Adelphi precinct rests. On building their terrace they ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... suggest, though the first may disguise it, gives us the story of the first of Tennyson's original Idylls. The Chevalier au Lyon is a delightful romance of the Gawain group, better represented by its English adaptation, Ywain, than any other French example. Percevale and the Charette touch closest on the central Arthurian story, and the latter has been the chief battlefield as to Chrestien's connection therewith, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... energies are scattered he will accomplish nothing. Emerson says: "A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors." There is no adaptation or universal applicability in ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... churches and those who attend them. Later on, my attention was called to the curious fact that his discourse was merely a translation into modern American of portions of the twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew; a free adaptation of those ancient words to present day practices and conditions. But I had no idea of this while I listened; I was shocked by what seemed to me a furious tirade, and the guests of the hotel were even more shocked—I think they would have ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... bed, or the accidental presence of a hard body concealed in the straw, or to a heavy fall when the movements of the patient have not been sufficiently controlled by an effective apparatus and its skillful adaptation, but it is quite as liable to be caused by the violent resistance and the consequent powerful muscular contraction by the frightened patient. The simple fact of the overarching of the vertebral column, with excessive pressure against it from the intestinal mass, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Kashtanov," came Istafiev's voice. "The refractive index, lowered to that of air to produce invisibility, iss being raised again—all through a simple adaptation of Roentgen's theories! The substance above, mark, in the dome, which this morning you saw affect Zenalishin's blood and the pigment of his hair so that the vibrations would render his colorless tissues transparent, ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... was nothing coarse, nothing virulent, nothing contumelious, nothing ungenerous in his triumph. Whether he addressed the Liverpool electors, or the House of Commons, it was with the same ease, the same adaptation to his auditory, the same unrivalled dexterity, the same command of his subject and his hearers, and the same success. His only faults as a speaker were committed when, under the inebriating influence of popular applause, he was led away by the heat and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... pueblo architecture to the country in which it is found has been commented on. Ordinarily such adaptation would imply two things—origin within the country, and a long period of time for development—but there are several factors that must be taken into consideration. If the architecture did not originate in the country ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... which it has in common with the animals, and out of these alone forms the infinite variety of products which we derive from it for food and various economical and aesthetical purposes. Among the many processes of Nature whose contemplation fills us with ever new delight, this power of the adaptation of a few means to an infinite number of ends is one of the most enchanting. We endeavor to explain by chemical laws the reduction of the materials which earth and air furnish, to a form in which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... but little of the true poetic spirit, and their poetical literature owed its origin, for the most part, first to translation, then to free imitation, and finally to appropriation and new modelling, of the Greek. With them, therefore, a particular sort of adaptation passed for originality. Thus we find, from Terence's apologetic prologues, that they had so lowered the notion of plagiarism, that he was accused of it, because he had made use of matter which had been already adapted from the Greek. As we cannot, therefore, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... bearing without evidential or polemic ones. No other portion or form of proof, however it may approve itself to the ideas of particular periods or minds, can really make up for this. The alleged sinlessness of the Teacher, the internal evidence from adaptation to human nature, the historical argument of the development of Christendom, are, as Mr. Mozley points out, by themselves inadequate, without that further guarantee which is contained in miracles, to prove the Divine origin of a religion. The tendency has been of late ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Pentateuch, five books of tales connected by a Frame. This collection is of special interest to us in the present connection, as it has come to Europe in various forms and shapes. I have edited Sir Thomas North's English version of an Italian adaptation of a Spanish translation of a Latin version of a Hebrew translation of an Arabic adaptation of the Pehlevi version of the Indian original (Fables of Bidpai, London, D. Nutt, "Bibliothque de Carabas," 1888). In this I give a genealogical ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... intellect and self-consciousness had been evolved, civilisation became possible. Nature has no history in the sense of the origin of values; in the case of still uncivilised tribes every new generation is a faithful reproduction of the preceding one. Certainly there is modification caused by adaptation to the environment, but there are no moral values, and consequently there is ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... this life-story we are writing. The materials to be built into one structure of service were from a thousand sources and moulded into form by many hands, but there was a mutual fitness and a common adaptation to the end in view which prove that He whose mind and plan span the ages had a supreme purpose to which all human agents were unconsciously tributary. The awe of this vision of God's workmanship will grow upon us as we look beneath and behind the mere human ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... as well as virtually, as much an enemy of Ireland as England is. The Firm, comprising Great Britain and all its colonies and dependencies throughout the world, is known as John Bull & Co., and the distinctive sign of the house, in all its ramifications, is the Union Jack or some adaptation of the red cross of St. George to local predilections. As in ordinary mercantile transactions, a debt incurred by any branch of the establishment involves the responsibility of the whole, and can be levied for in London ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... from each other in superficial detail, are yet of one metal, one size, and one value; old in the sense in which she is old, being merely the reincarnation under the pressure of new conditions of the ancient forms of his race; new in the sense in which she is new, in that he is an adaptation to material and social conditions which have no exact counterpart in the past; more diverse from his immediate progenitors than even the woman is from hers, side by side with her today in every society and in every class in which she ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... the blood of pigs and fowls on men and on the altar-posts and images may, we think, be an extension or adaptation of the blood-brotherhood ceremony. We have seen that with the Kayans and Kenyahs the essential feature of this ceremony is the drawing of a little blood from the arm of the two men, each of whom then drinks or consumes in a cigarette ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... stagnant life of the house behind the cedars. There had come to him from some source, down the stream of time, a rill of the Greek sense of proportion, of fitness, of beauty, which is indeed but proportion embodied, the perfect adaptation of means to ends. He had perceived, more clearly than she could have appreciated it at that time, the undeveloped elements of discord between Rena and her former life. He had imagined her lending grace and charm to his own household. Still another motive, a purely psychological one, had ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... incessant Variability in organisms as an actual circumstance, which we may see exemplified in its extreme form in the monstrous deviations of structure that occur from time to time before our own eyes; second, of Adaptation to environment as the determining condition of Survival among the forms that present themselves. Even as a bald and unsustained guess, this was an effective side-blow at the doctrine of final causes—a doctrine, as has been often remarked, which does not survive, in any given set of phenomena, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... existence of those metals, and had to content themselves with sharpened flints and other hard stones for cutting purposes. Many of these weapons were fashioned with considerable skill, and give evidence that even in the dark days of the Stone Age men had a good idea of form and the adaptation of the roughest materials to suit the particular ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... the heart, doing its duty incessantly for the seventy years or so allotted to man, is amazed at the precariousness of our existence. It seems indeed uncanny that so delicate a mechanism should function so regularly for so many years. The mysticism connected with this and other phenomena of adaptation would disappear if we would be certain that all cells are really immortal and that the fact which demands an explanation is not the continued activity but the cessation of activity in death. Thus we see that the idea of the immortality of the body cell if it can be generalized ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... vocal bands can be set into suitable vibrations the expiratory breath-stream must be directed against them in a special manner, and they themselves must be adapted to the blast. It is a case of complex and beautiful adaptation. The clarinet or flute player must learn to "blow," and equally must the singer learn to use his breath. The processes each employs, though not identical, are closely related; both use the breath to cause vibrations, ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... instead of 'Open, sesame!' and the barriers remained unaffected by his magic. The secret may really be simple enough. The complete success of such a book as 'Robinson' implies, it may be, the precise adaptation of the key to every ward of the lock. The felicitous choice of situation to which Lamb refers gave just the required fitness; and it is of little use to plead that 'Roxana,' 'Colonel Jack,' and others might have done the same trick if only they had received a ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... moment. At the same time, lest vanity should be thought to have mastered his better judgment, he assures his patrons that he does not claim the undivided merit of his good fortune; since, beyond his own taste of adaptation and selection, he "misses nothing he can fairly lay his hands on;" so that, the multiplicity of his resources being considered, his success is, perhaps, more complimentary to the discernment of the public, than it is laudatory of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... at street corners, and become more arabized than ever. So it comes about that, if the eyes of the former generation were entirely averse from French rule, the present one is Janus-faced—looking both ways. Some day, presumably, there will be a further adaptation, and their eyes, like those of certain flat-fish, will wander round and settle down definitely ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine, tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for years in some neglected vault, with no ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... extending our foreign commerce. The enlargement and improvement of our merchant marine, the development of a sufficient body of trained American seamen, the promotion of rapid and regular mail communication between the ports of other countries and our own, and the adaptation of large and swift American merchant steamships to naval uses in time of war are public purposes of the highest concern. The enlarged participation of our people in the carrying trade, the new and increased ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... addresses of the book, to whom each was delivered, its purpose, etc.(15) The chief elements of power of these early disciples. (16) The growth of Christianity and the hindrances it had to overcome. (17) The great outstanding teachings of these early Christians. (18) The tact and adaptation of the apostles (give examples). (19) The different plans to kill Paul and the way by which he escaped each. (20) The missionary journeys of Paul and his journey to Rome ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... steam vessels, to which part alone the motion is communicated by the engine, requires to adapt itself to the altering forms of the vessel, as the engine and intermediate shaft are rigidly connected, although the paddle shaft requires to be capable of such an adaptation. Even if this objection existed, however, it could easily be met by making the crank pin of the ball and socket fashion, which would permit the position of the intermediate shaft, relatively with that of the cylinder, to be slightly changed, without throwing an undue ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... possessing different characteristics of form, color and use; and bred, as our common stock has usually been, indiscriminately together, with no special point in view, no attempt to obtain any particular type or form, or to secure adaptation for any particular purpose, we have very frequent opportunities of witnessing the results of the operation of this law of hereditary transmission. So common indeed is its occurrence, that the remark is often made, that however good ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... give us sufficient ground for identifying the period with which a novel deals. Of course the question as to whether a particular person or event is truly historical, is not always an easy one to answer. By the adaptation in it of some purely mythical character or event, a novel is no more constituted "historical" than is a Fairy-tale by the adaptation of folklore. King Arthur and Robin Hood are unhistorical, and, if I have ventured to insert in my ...
— A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales • Jonathan Nield
... both weight and the movement resulting from weight: so that weight, from being the principle of movement to the place, which is connatural to that body by reason of its weight, can, in a way, be called "natural love." In the same way the appetible object gives the appetite, first, a certain adaptation to itself, which consists in complacency in that object; and from this follows movement towards the appetible object. For "the appetitive movement is circular," as stated in De Anima iii, 10; because the appetible object moves the appetite, introducing itself, as it were, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... I have not been guarded enough, but might not the term inferiority include less perfect adaptation to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... the organism, the less would seem to be the capacity for physical adaptation to changed conditions of life; the jelly-fish dies in the aquarium, the dog has wandered throughout the world with his master. The same principle apparently holds true in the evolution of the intellect; for while the oyster lacks consciousness, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... to attempt to enumerate all these rivals here. Among them are the semi-rigid Parseval and Gross types which found great favour among the military authorities during the war. The latter is merely an adaptation of the highly successful French ship the Lebaudy, but the Parseval is the result of a slow evolution from an ordinary balloon. It is wholly German, in conception and development, and it is reported ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... much astuteness. I don't suppose there's a married woman in the world in full command of her wits. You've noticed how foolish most of them are. That's why. It isn't that they were born foolish. They've simply been addled by enforced adaptation to mates of lower intelligence. Oh, I'm not scolding. I'm merely stating a natural, observed, psychological fact. The woman who marries says good-bye to the orderly working of her faculties. For that she may get compensations, with which ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... life. Every plant selects its food from the elements of earth by a chemistry of its own. The atmosphere around us is no less to the vegetable kingdom than a great pasture field. Every leaf is feasting, and every fiber is touched by the light. What wonderful correlations meet us at every turn! What adaptation of means to ends! Above all the beauty and grandeur of the vegetable kingdom we find the glorious animal, with man at the head, as lord over all below him. With man the moral government of God begins; physical ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... least important of these creations is the infinitesimal word "as"—or rather, it is a case of adaptation. Yesterday "as des carreaux" (to give the full form) stood simply for ace of diamonds. To-day all France, with that swift assimilation which has ever been one of its many mysteries, knows its new meaning and applies it. And what is this ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... say a word here as to another phase of this perpetual newness of the old Christ—viz., in His adaptation to deal with all the complications and perplexities and problems of each successive age. It has taken the Church a long, long time to find out and to formulate, rightly or wrongly, what it has discovered in Jesus. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... reversion of resigning that place in the next generation to some younger candidate having equal or greater skill in appropriating the vague sentiments and old traditionary language of passion spread through books, but having also the advantage of novelty, and of a closer adaptation to the prevailing taste of the day. Even at that early age, I was keenly alive, if not so keenly as at this moment, to the fact, that by far the larger proportion of what is received in every age for poetry, and for a season usurps that consecrated ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... here we need only notice that it inspired him to translate Plato's 'Symposium', a dialogue occupied almost entirely with theories about love. He was not, however, well equipped for this task. His version, or rather adaptation (for much is omitted and much is paraphrased), is fluent, but he had not enough Greek to reproduce the finer shades of the original, or, indeed, to ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... adapted himself to the strangeness of a life empty of her physical presence. The human being, in a world of pain, like the insect in a world of danger, lives mainly by that same ceaseless, unconscious miracle of adaptation. Dearly though he craved a sight of his father and Christine, he had not asked for leave home. There were bad moments when he wondered if he could ever bring himself to face the ordeal. He sincerely hoped they understood. Their letters ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... things of the sort that we literally handle, are what our intellects cope with most successfully. Does not this confirm us in the view that the original and still surviving function of our intellectual life is to guide us in the practical adaptation ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... in the way of adaptation. He could write a hoax worthy of Poe, and one of his humors of imagination was sufficiently subtle and successful to excite comment in Europe and America, and to call for an explanation and denial from a distinguished Englishman. He lived in ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... with the doctrine of the fixity of species and of their miraculous creation was growing. The great contribution of Darwin was this: First, by his theory of natural selection, he brought together the known facts of variation, of struggle for existence, and of adaptation to varying conditions, in such a way that they provided men with a rational and known cause, a cause the operation of which could be seen, for the origin of species by means of preservation of favoured races. Next, as to the origin of species, he brought together not only proofs of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... that these fur-coated chicks were a proof of nature's adaptation of all animals to their environment, the seventeen eggs having been of ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... Pyramus and Thisbe and Amos and Laura have slight literary value, The Scourge, while failing to score very high as a minor epic, yet has a certain crude, narrative vitality. And Dom Diego, Mirrha, Hiren, and Philos and Licia, by virtue of their charm, inventiveness, or skillful adaptation of minor epic conventions to their expressive needs, form a hierarchy of increasing literary value that raises them as a group well above the level of ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... apt to rob the will of its initiative and reduce all moral achievements to merely natural factors in an unfolding drama of life. The soul itself, with all its manifestations and experiences, is treated simply as the resultant and harmonious effect of adaptation to environment. Man is regarded as the highest animal, the most richly specialised organism—the last of a long series in the development of life, the outstanding feature of which is the acquired power of complete adjustment to the world, of which ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander |
