"Natural law" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those exercising it. One can feel justified to lose a part of her own life if she is conferring life upon others, but to indulge in such a waste of vital force merely for pleasure is certainly never excusable, and least excusable of all is the arousing of pleasurable emotions by a direct violation of natural law. ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... the event suggests the direct action of mind, of some free intelligence, is it possible for the religious sentiment to throw around it the aureole of sanctity. Obviously when natural law was little known, this included vastly more occurrences than civilized men now think of holding to be of religious import. Hence the objective and material form of religion is always fostered by ignorance, and this is the form which ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... inspiration from science and life. Without ever frightening people with horrid pictures of the future, he has a sense of the perils which beset human life here, upon this bank and shoal of time. How needless to draw upon the imagination, in depicting the consequences of violating natural law! Suppose a preacher should give a plain, cold, scientific exhibition of the penalty which Nature exacts for the crime, so common among church-going ladies and others, of murdering their unborn offspring! ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... fulfilling this very purpose of regeneration, although she had not sent him upon it for his own sake, but her own—Echo knew that, after all, she was a woman. She loved Jack Payson with the unreasoning and unrestrained passion that sways even the highest of her sex. By the balance of natural law she was lowering herself to meet him as he was coming up in the moral scale, and thus preparing for herself and her husband a happy union of a mutual understanding of weaknesses held in common. Were Echo to remain always on the heights and ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... better arrangements. In steam-voyaging, we may expect that means will be adopted to avert, or at least assuage, the terrible calamities of conflagration and shipwreck—better acquaintance with the principles of spontaneous combustion, and with the natural law of storms, being of itself a great step ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... is a wise provision of Nature that we find our mates in our opposites. It is some natural law working for the good of the race, something to maintain the balance and uniformity of mankind. Certainly in many ways two people could not have been more unlike than Father and Mother. She said he was as weak as water, ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... by "these things" the natural law that white shall mate with white, and brown with brown; and so Shere Ali understood her. He ceased to plead. There came a ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... exterminates or expels them. Yet because racial and social geography changes slowly, quietly and imperceptibly, like all those fundamental processes which we call growth, it is not so easy and obvious a task to formulate a natural law for the territorial relations of the various hunter, pastoral nomadic, agricultural, and industrial types of society as for those ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... was the central idea of cohesion, which was early aided by religious superstition and belief. Following this idea, all of the ancient monarchies and empires were based on the ethnic group or race. All of this indicates that society was based on natural law, and from that were gradually evolved the general and political elements which foreshadowed the enlarged functions of the more ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... always accompanied with its tale of hangings. There is sometimes a touch of the grotesque. "At Kilkenny," writes Sir W. Drury, "the jail being full, we caused sessions immediately to begin. Thirty-six persons were executed, among which some good ones; two for treason, a blackamoor, and two witches by natural law, for that we found no law to try them by in this realm." It is like the account of some unusual kind of game in a successful bag. "If taking of cows, and killing of kerne and churles had been worth advertizing," writes Lord Grey to the Queen, "I would have had every ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... conditions of monopoly. But business exploits such as these are, in a measure, things of the past, and cannot be repeated. Great industries can no longer hem in their rivals, or stifle and cripple them to the extent that fields, which by natural law are free to all, become the field of one. The people have at last risen against this, and consolidations will only be tolerated when confidence is established that the masses will be benefited. When the scheme of the Consolidated Companies ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... the possibilities of computer-searching have emerged, scholars in the field of late ancient and early medieval studies (philosophers, theologians, classicists, and those studying the history of natural law and the history of the legal development of Western civilization) have been longing for a fully searchable version of Western literature, for example, all the texts of Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux and Boethius, not to mention all the ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... nothing clearer in natural law than that sons inherit from their mothers. I know of only two cases in all history where an able man had a father superior in brain and energy to the mother—Martin Luther and the present King of Prussia. Perhaps it was all for ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... worshipping, more or less ambitious, not always just, patriotically devoted fatalist and enthusiast, a mysterious and commanding genius of an iron sort. When he was angered it was as though the offender had managed to antagonize some natural law, or force or mass. Such an one had to face, not an irritated human organism, but a Gibraltar armed for the encounter. The men who found themselves confronted by this anger could and did brace themselves against it, but it was with some hopelessness ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... made his way back to the camp he did a vast deal of cogitation. When in extreme pain of body, produced by a mishap intentionally conceived by another, it is but following the natural law of cause and effect to feel a certain degree of exasperation toward the evil-doer; and, as the Irishman at every step experienced a sharp twinge that ofttimes made him cry out, his ejaculations were neither conceived in charity nor uttered in good-will toward all men. Still, he pondered ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... standing there Until the January thaw Should take the polish off the crust. He bowed with grace to natural law, ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... about ready to start. The merry top-riders had been assigned to their seats by the gentlemanly conductor. The sidewalk was blockaded with sightseers who had gathered to stare at sightseers, justifying the natural law that every creature on earth is preyed upon by some ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... How this one in particular, as ordinary a quadruped as ever breathed, had contrived to impose thus upon his infatuated proprietors, I never could understand, but so it was; he even engrossed the chief part of the conversation, which after any lull seemed to veer round to him by a sort of natural law. ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... that the soil was the source and origin of all wealth, whilst human labour, however highly developed it might be, could add nothing to what was drawn from the soil, because labour itself consumed what it produced. This may look like the first application of the subsequently discovered natural law of the conservation of force; and—notwithstanding its obvious absurdity—it was seriously believed in because it professed to explain what seemed otherwise inexplicable. Between the labourer's means of subsistence, the amount of labour employed, and the product, there is by no means that quantitative ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... thinking and give tone to our writing. The world is not the same to the Christian theist and to the agnostic. Human life has a deeper significance to the man who believes in the loving providence of God than to the man who believes only in the existence of matter and natural law. The man who believes in the presence and sovereignty of God in all things looks hopefully to the future. He is optimistic rather than pessimistic. The presence of an exuberant vitality reveals itself in a cheerful, buoyant tone. Scott's exuberant spirit forms ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... out the declaration that the gospel was for the poor. The very miracles that Christ performed were not philosophical enigmas, as we look at them. They were all of them miracles of mercy. They were miracles to those who were suffering helplessly where natural law and artificial means could not reach them. In every case the miracles of Christ were mercies, though we look at them in a spirit totally different from that in which he ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... close, arm in arm, between two guardian angels. Sometimes I faint almost with the thought of all that I ought to do, and of my own weakness and wants.—Tell me, are there not natures born so out of parallel with the lines of natural law that nothing short of a miracle ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... posture and use grandiose words! Why did she shrink from the complete submission that her presence here implied? No amount of self-assertion would do away with the natural law of which he had contemptuously reminded her, the law which distinguishes man and woman, and denies to one what is permitted ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... plea of the demands of civilization, or of the interests of a superior race, can be held to justify such a policy as that long pursued by the people of this country. The natural law of the "survival of the fittest" may doubtless be pleaded in explanation of all that has happened; but that is not a law of Christianity, nor of civilization, nor of wisdom. It is the law of greed and cruelty, which generally works in the ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... highest degree—is God. This combination of intelligence with existence we may suppose to have existed from eternity. At the creation we may suppose that a portion of the Eon was separated from the intelligence, and it was ordained—it became a natural law—that it should have the properties of gravitation, etc.—that is, that it should give to man the ideas of those properties. The Eon in this state is matter in the abstract. Matter, then, is Eon in the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... "Creation" and accept evolution; if you discard "revelation" and accept evolution; if you discard miracles and accept natural law, there is nothing left of the Christian Religion but the life ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... difficulties. It was during this period that he published in the Danish language, his "Introduction to the Law of Nature and of Nations." In this treatise, Holberg aimed rather to apply the principles of Natural Law to the Laws and Constitutions of Norway and Denmark, than elaborately to discuss the principles themselves. The work was coldly received at its first appearance, but, after ten or twelve years began to excite public attention, and passed through ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... a strange but natural law of the mind that works in this way: If you make a mistake and worry and brood over it and live in the fear that you will make a similar mistake again, you are liable to make the same mistake—over and over, as often as you fear making it. Someway ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... because we are still so undeveloped that it would be, for many reasons, unsafe to let us know how great a future is before us. Strongest in hope is the argument of Charles Fourier, based on what he declared to be a natural law. ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... feared arrest, was confident that never would hand of human justice be laid on me, but I dimly felt that there was a divine justice which would exact retribution. I felt that if there was mind behind this frame of matter we see, then He who made the natural law and decreed a penalty for every infraction must have made an infallible decree for every violation against the moral law. If so, where could we poor insects go or hide, or how scheme or dodge ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... highly elaborate conditions of our modern civilised life require from the practical politician such circumspect and impartial consideration, such thorough historical training and powers of critical comparison, that he will not venture to make such an application of a "natural law" to the practice of civilised life, but with the greatest caution and reserve. How, then, is it possible that Virchow, the experienced and skilled politician, who, above all things, preaches caution and reserve in theory, suddenly makes just such an application of transformation ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... their garments not in every case formally wedded to the button-holes. Some day or other, after a long time spent in measuring space, or in accumulating Xs under Aa-Gg, they succeed in analyzing some natural law, and resolve it into its elemental principles, and all on a sudden the crowd gapes at a new machine; or it is a handcart perhaps that overwhelms us with astonishment by the apt simplicity of its construction. The modest ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... species are not limited to motherhood alone. Every organ and faculty is fully employed and perfected. Through the development of the individual mother, better and higher types of animals are produced and carried forward. In a word, natural law makes the female the expression and the ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... Andrews' letter, extremely valuable in its collation of the records of simultaneous volcanic phenomena; praying the reader also to observe the instantaneous acknowledgment, by the true 'Naturalist,' of horror in the violation of beneficent natural law. ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... and its one preposterous feather waving as she aimlessly went, her stout legs stepping high with an unnatural motion, her head lifted nearly off her neck, and in her brilliant yellow eye an expression of more than outrage at this overturning of a natural law. Behind her, entirely ignored and neglected, trailed the little progeny. She never looked at it. We went about our various affairs, and all through the clear, sunny day that unending metallic scream pervaded the premises. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... in their path. But, when the Southern people adopted this false idea, that slavery could be perpetuated and made the foundation of stable institutions, they not only placed themselves in conflict with the decrees of natural law, which was the most important and fatal error, but they also indicated hostility to those vital provisions of the Constitution to which reference has already been made. No thoughtful observer of events in this country will require evidence to sustain this assertion. The constant evasion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I ask you? What considerations keep us fast? I am told that we cannot have everything at once, and that every idea is realised in time. But who says so? Where is the proof that it is so? You refer me to the natural order of things, to the law of cause and effect, but is there order or natural law in that I, a living, thinking creature, should stand by a ditch until it fills up, or is narrowed, when I could jump it or throw a bridge over it? Tell me, I say, why should we wait? Wait, when we have ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... subjects spoken of. It certainly does not mean that any man shall be invested with the rights of omnipotence and omniscience, but simply that in the family state he is the head and protector, even as in the Church is the Saviour. It is merely the announcement of a great natural law of society which obtains through all the tribes and races of men,—a great and obvious fact ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... increase, and with that the defense and security of the islands. For there is no more powerful argument than that which establishes the conservation of a province in the strength, that is, the wealth of its inhabitants, and depends on the abundance of that for its conservation. Commerce is a natural law of nations, by which they make common to all provinces what each one produces, grows, or manufactures—now by selling, now by exchanging. Although commerce ought to be free, and was in the beginning, when kingdoms and seigniories were less powerful (for as they had narrower territories, so they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... his blessing no poisonous animal should continue or revive, nor the wonted troop of demons therein abide, the saint completed without earthly food a fast of forty days. For he desired to imitate in his mystical fast Moses, who was then bound by the natural law, or rather Elias the prophet, appointed under the law; but most principally desiring to please the great Founder of nature, the Giver of the law and of grace, Jesus Christ, who in Himself had consecrated such a fast. Therefore ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... have existed to give them Hebrew names. Then, breaking away from the theological bonds, there sprang into active thought men of far-reaching minds, who began a thorough reconstruction of the whole theory of creation. The handwriting on the wall was NATURAL LAW. All creation, man included, was but the result of one undeviating, unceasing, eternal, all-pervading law, and the state of the universe at any given moment was the state of evolution which that universe exhibited. Behind this law was the great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... as man has not the use of reason, he differs not from an irrational animal; so that even as an ox or a horse belongs to someone who, according to the civil law, can use them when he likes, as his own instrument, so, according to the natural law, a son, before coming to the use of reason, is under his father's care. Hence it would be contrary to natural justice, if a child, before coming to the use of reason, were to be taken away from ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... being thoroughly "broken-in" is in itself extremely satisfactory. A few more crimes of desperation perhaps might occur, to balance against an almost universal effort to achieve contentment and reconciliation. We should hear more of the "natural law" permitting murder by the jealous husband or by the jealous wife, and the traffic in poisons would need a sedulous attention—but even there the impossibility of re-marriage would operate to restrain the impatient. On the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... last necessity is eating. The animated world is unceasingly eating and digesting itself. None could see this truth clearly but an enthusiast in diet like Epicurus, who, discovering the unexceptionableness of the natural law, proceeded to the work of adaptation. Ocean, lake, streamlet, was separately interrogated, 'How much delicious food do you contain? What are your preparations? When should man partake?' In like manner did the enthusiast ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... senseful wit Outflashed the rosy wines that warmed its flow, I've held my vigils till the brow of Night Grew pale and starless, and her solemn pomp, Out-glared by day, faded in hueless space. I do repent me of my worship. Night Was given for rest: who breaks this natural law Wrongs body and soul alike. One vigorous hour Of sober day-light thought is worth a night's Slow oscitations of a drowsy mind. 'Neath Eve's pale star the desolate heart reverts To those far moments, when the sky was blue, And ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... indeed true that the change of generation forms a circle in which the form of the last generation always returns to that of the first, and therefore leaves the species, as species, wholly unchanged. But it is nevertheless a process which shows that the natural law of an identity between generator and product, observed in other relations, is not without exception; and if we once have reason to suppose that the generation of new species took place in past periods of the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... are inadequate. The belief itself is therefore an illusion. The essence of a critical philosophy, on the other hand, consists in this, that it makes a distinction between the functions of knowing and believing. It distinguishes between the perception of that which is in accordance with natural law and the understanding of the moral meaning of things.[3] Kant thus uses his word critique in accordance with the strict etymological meaning of the root. He seeks to make a clear separation between the provinces of belief and knowledge, and thus to find an adjustment ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... interfere, no matter how pressing the business may be. Do not assume, however, that it is necessary to eat at meal times, no matter whether appetite for food be present or not. To eat without appetite is an infringement of natural law, and it is far better to go without the meal if nature does not demand it than to yield to custom, or to imagine it necessary to eat because the dinner bell has rung. If not hungry do not eat at all, wait till the next meal time; do not take a "snack" in an hour ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... economics and finance, money, banking, credits, corporations, and business in their broad relations to the people, the American Government, and natural law, and the relation each holds to the other, or is your knowledge confined to the skimming and smattering such as any alert and bright stock speculator would naturally pick up in years of experience as a broker ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... reflection, instruction, and a little music? The cheap excursions, the school feasts, the concerts given for the people, the increased brightness of religious services, the Bank holidays, the Saturday half-holiday, all point to the gradual recognition of the great natural law that men and women, as well as boys and girls, must have play. At the present moment we have just arrived at the stage of acknowledging this law; the next step will be that of respecting it, and preparing to obey it, just now we are willing and anxious ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... pilots pray for the government, you can't expect heathen individuals like me to do business on a Christian basis,—if there is such a thing. You can make rules for croquet, but not for a game that is based on the natural law of the survival of the fittest. The darned fools in the legislatures try it occasionally, but we all know it's a sop to the 'common people.' Ask Hughie here if there ever was a law put on the statute ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... From this natural law follows another of Wordsworth's favourite precepts. The mountains are not with him a symbol of anti-social feelings. On the contrary, they are in their proper place as the background of the simple domestic affections. He loves his native hills, not in the Byronic fashion, as a savage wilderness, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... fact, nothing but a force as strong and compelling as a natural law—could have brought into existence such a vast solidarity as now exists in the world of labor. Like food and drink, the organization of labor satisfies an inherent necessity. The workers crave its protection, seek its guidance, and possess ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... corner of the room stood a case containing books enough to supply us with reading matter for a year, those printed in Swedish being, of course, of no use to me, but a variety of subjects were here presented in English, ranging from Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual World" to nursery rhymes for the children. Volumes on medicine, law, science, travels, stories, ethics and religion—all were here for the instruction and edification of inmates of the Mission. In another corner there was a large case of medicines, and here ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... important, and until lately, most neglected, of the general principles which, in this division of the social science, may be considered as established; namely, the necessary correlation between the form of government existing in any society and the contemporaneous state of civilization: a natural law which stamps the endless discussions and innumerable theories respecting forms of government in the abstract, as fruitless and worthless, for any other purpose than as a preparatory treatment of materials to be afterward used for the construction ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... girl is married and by due operation of natural law becomes a widow, she doubtless has come to a better understanding of the pedestal idea. Hence she does not attempt the impossible, and satisfies herself with working those miracles which ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... From this false law he argued that, as population increases too rapidly, the newcomers cannot hope to find a sufficiency of good things; that the poverty of the masses is not due to conditions created by man, but to a natural law; and that consequently this law cannot be altered by any change in political institutions. This new doctrine was eagerly adopted by the rich, who were thus enabled to argue that Nature intended that the masses should find no room at her feast; and that therefore ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... believe in it in its philosophical sense, and not simply in the juridical sense attached to it by Ulpian. "Let us not," observes Portalis, "confound the physical order of nature, common to all animated beings, with the natural law which is peculiar to man. We call natural law, the principles which govern man considered as a moral being, that is, as an intelligent and free being, intended to live in the society of other beings, intelligent ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... between the meanings of law in the phrases "moral law," "natural law," and "law ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... from legal slavery. Manumission is the giving of freedom; for while a man is in slavery he is subject to the power once known as 'manus'; and from that power he is set free by manumission. All this originated in the law of nations; for by natural law all men were born free—slavery, and by consequence manumission, being unknown. But afterwards slavery came in by the law of nations; and was followed by the boon of manumission; so that though we are ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... marks a progress in the history of law and of civilization (215. 49), while testamentary freedom is unjust and inexpedient. The author discusses the subject from the points of view of history, statute and natural law, social economy, etc., devoting special attention to pointing out the defects of the system of the school of Le Play,—primogeniture, which still obtains in England, in several parts of Germany, in certain localities of the Pyrenees, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to create children in accord with natural law, how to mold their bodies and their characters into harmony and beauty before the new life sees the light of day, when they learn to rear their offspring in health of body and purity of mind in harmony with ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... own special property). It was all going to end in his—the Boy's—being hooked in for service. As long as the Esquimaux were there he couldn't, of course, tear himself away. And here was the chance they'd all been waiting for. Here was a native chock-full of knowledge of the natural law and the immemorial gospel of the North, who would be gone soon—oh, very soon, if Mac and the Colonel went on like this—and they were going to choke off Nicholas's ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... has always respected the racial feelings and the language of nations, for they are based on natural law, and natural law is nothing else but the expression of the fundamental relations constituted by God. Yet history can tell what the Church had to suffer from racial and language differences. We all agree on principles, but often differ on policies. The angle of vision varies; facts ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... before that warm and potent wind, so steadfast that there must be controlling it some natural law. Ocean-Sea spread around, with that weed like a marsh at springtide. Then, suddenly, just as the murmuring faction was murmuring again, we cleared all that. Open sea, blue running ocean, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... needs of humanity, or, at least, to the "effective demand," which the classicist mistook for the same thing. Just as much wheat or bricks or diamonds would be produced as the world called for; to produce too much of any one thing was to violate a natural law; the falling price and the resulting temporary loss ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... of injustice or wrong. But money may be lent at interest without one of these bad passions being brought in to play, and in these cases I confess my inability to see where, either in terms or in spirit, such use of money is condemned either by the Christian code of charity, or by that natural law of conscience which we are told (I) is written ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the child's godfather, and, as such, might reasonably expect to be allowed a free pass to his nursery; but Mamie, like Keggs, had fallen so under the domination of Lora Delane Porter that she had grown to consider it almost a natural law that no one came to see Bill unless approved of and personally ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... then, that all the substantial and permanent literature of the profession should be represented upon our shelves. Much of it is there already, and as one private library after another falls into this by the natural law of gravitation, it will gradually acquire all that is most valuable almost without effort. A scholar should not be in a hurry to part with his books. They are probably more valuable to him than they can be to any other individual. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... systematized under the forms of the great doctrines of Morphology, of Development, of Distribution, and the like. He sees an enormous mass of facts and laws relating to organic beings, which stand on the same good sound foundation as every other natural law; and therefore, with this mass of facts and laws before us, therefore, seeing that, as far as organic matters have hitherto been accessible and studied, they have shown themselves capable of yielding to scientific investigation, we may accept this as proof ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... summer, however, he seemed to lose confidence in the Virgin's tampering with natural law for his sake. One day we saw that the talons were sacrificed, and were told that the Mother of God had announced to our Brazilian in a dream that she would accept a vow never to cut his hair in place of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... was constantly subject, added to my secret inclination to France, had inspired me with an aversion to the King of Prussia, who by his maxims and conduct, seemed to tread under foot all respect for natural law and every duty of humanity. Amongst the framed engravings, with which I had decorated my alcove at Montmorency, was a portrait of this prince, and under it a distich, the last line of which was ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... that they resort to this nutriment only in the winter, when the grasses and shrubs are leafless or covered with snow, whereas the goat feeds upon buds and young shoots principally in the season of growth. However this may be, the natural law of consumption and supply keeps the forest growth, and the wild animals which live on its products, in such a state of equilibrium as to insure the indefinite continuance of both, and the perpetuity of neither is endangered until man interferes and ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... unwillingly. They brought it on themselves; theirs was the fault. As well blame a railway engine for running over the well-meaning individual who lies down on the track to rest and meditate on higher things, as blame the natural law with which men tamper. The All-Wise shows His goodness to His creatures in that He has laid down law of any sort, not left the universe to chance and wilful freakishness. As for gospel, the essential thing to preach was the duty of living according to the law. After all, it was ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... powers are. Man can only act as man; he must obey his nature, as the stock or stone or plant obeys its nature. But to act as man is to act freely, and man's nature is not that of a stock or stone. He is rational, and cannot but be rational. Hence he can neither be ruled, as dead matter is ruled, by natural law; nor live, like a bird, the life of innocent impulse or instinct. He is placed, from the very first, on "the table land whence life upsprings aspiring to be immortality." He is a spirit,—responsible because he is free, and free because ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... individual providence, the reality of miracles, as against the "philosophers," i. e., the Aristotelians, who held to the eternity of motion, denied God's knowledge of particulars, and insisted on the unchanging character of natural law. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... observed by these natives in their paganism, are observed by them since they have become Christians, in so far as they are not contrary to natural law, especially as to their slavery, successions, inheritances, adoptions, wills, and lawful trading. In their suits, they always allege and prove the custom, and are judged by it, according to royal decrees to that effect. In other causes which do not involve their customs, and in criminal ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... eras, grew up. He can show us what can be disregarded, as being only the conventional belief of the time; he can indicate, for instance, how a false conception of supernatural interference with natural law grew up in an age when, for want of trained knowledge, facts seemed fortuitous occurrences which were really conditioned by natural laws. The poet and the idealist make and cast abroad the great vital ideas, which the specialist picks up and analyses. But we must not stop at analysis; we want positive ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is one. It is the manifestation of disobeyed natural law, and whether the mistakes are made knowingly or ignorantly matters but little so far as the results are concerned. It is generally considered a disgrace to be imprisoned for transgressing man-made law, which is faulty and complex. How about being in ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... search for knowledge of his time. He explored all domains of thought, and he enriched his verse with the fruit of his studies. All the great elemental forces are found in his poems: he is the laureate of love and sorrow, of grief and aspiration. Throughout his verse runs the great natural law that the man who is not pure in heart can never see the ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... are constantly coming to realize how little we really know, and are also continually finding manifestations of forces that at first seem like exceptions to established laws. This is, of course, brought about by the modifying influence of some other natural law, though many of these ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... By a natural law, the waves of despotism gather strength and volume as they spread from the central power. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the Autocrat of Russia is the least despotic of all the despots in authority. The landed proprietors ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... of a saint. It seems that the failure of an inheritance, which he had every reason to expect, was the cause of his first disadvantage in the world; and since then, in consonance with that curious natural law which seems so contrary to justice, yet constantly consonant with fact, this evil has been cumulative, and he has had nothing but disappointments ever since. He has a very small living now, and is never likely to get a better, for he ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... this alliance. I allude to Puffendorf. "It seems useless," says he, "to frame any pacts or leagues, barely for the defence and support of universal peace; for by such a league nothing is superadded to the obligation of natural law, and no agreement is made for the performance of any thing which the parties were not previously bound to perform; nor is the original obligation rendered firmer or stronger by such an addition. Men of any tolerable ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... disturbing original. He was, it is said, meditating an ambitious work, the history of the Roman Polity from Numa to Justinian, an epic in five and twenty books, wherein Selvaggia would have played a fine part, that of the Genius of Natural Law. The scheme might have ripened but for one small circumstance; this ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... be startled when I further recommend to you Blackstone's "Commentaries" and Burlamaqui's "Treatise on Natural Law." These are books which, besides affording admirable opportunities for the exercise of both concentrated and comprehensive thought, will fill your mind with valuable ideas, and furnish it with very important ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... the gospel comes, and are capable of understanding the contents of it. "The truth," says Dr. Doddridge, "seems to be this—that none of the heathen will be condemned for not believing the gospel, but they are liable to condemnation for the breach of God's natural law: nevertheless, if there be any of them in whom there is a prevailing love to the Divine Being, there seems reason to believe that, for the sake of Christ, though to them unknown, they may be accepted by God; and so much the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... the universe had been created a few thousand years ago by a remote and external Deity? As for him, he professed, and professed candidly enough, that he could see nothing in nature but the operation of impersonal forces; there was natural law, and there was the process of evolution, but beyond these——? Now the only really telling reply that can be made to those who argue in this fashion is that which reasons from the Divine immanence as its terminus a quo—the doctrine which beholds God first of all present ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... coffin of Mohammed to the roof of the temple at Mecca, should be placed in the room above us. The needle, instead of falling to the floor, would be drawn in the nearest direction to that magnet. The will or tendency of the needle, as generally understood, would be overcome, the natural law of gravitation would lose its influence, by the counteracting power of ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... Nationalism to end forever. In all these cases, and in every case, the advocates and apologists of Anarchy, or of Laissez-faire must not mistake their position, they are inevitably the allies of the oppressor. The integration of special classes, sects, and interests, is the natural law making "toleration" more and more impossible. The integral integration, then, of all for the equal support, and for the equal protection of all, in mutual harmony and progress, is the only condition of our liberty, peace, and safety. No rule in ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... other people afraid of you must have an end, the policy of making others respect and like you can have no end. There is no question which is the natural law of national development. Neither for the individual nor for a nation is it wholesome to increase antagonisms and to lessen the conciliatory points of contact ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... to know without being taught and without expressing it in words, that there is a natural law of environment which makes us grow like the company we keep. During the first six months of my stay in De Chaumont's house Doctor Chantry was my sole companion. I looked anxiously into the glass ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... adjustment or apportionment of these effects. Though the law is a natural law and mechanical in its operation, there are nevertheless certain great Angels who are concerned with its administration. They cannot change by one feather-weight the amount of the result which follows upon any given thought or act, but they can within ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... The fact that the natural law which he was trying to demonstrate had been pronounced an impossibility by professors of science, should weigh as nothing in the mind of any man who remembered how every great invention of the age had in turn been stamped "impossible" by those dogmatizers ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... duality of natural law and revealed law. All divine law is natural, and, as such, is a revelation. Physical and moral laws are but different forms of one and the same order. The same Power is working in the world around man and in the world within man. The lower forms of Its action are to be interpreted ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... wool-sack and hang his effigy on a sour-apple tree. Law isn't worth the paper it is written on unless it embodies the will and natural tendencies of the governed. Where poaching is popular, no law can stop it. Marriage is easy, and divorce difficult, because this is Nature's plan. The natural law of attraction brings men and women together, and it is difficult to separate them. Natural things are easy, and artificial ones difficult. Most couples who desire freedom only think they do: what they really want is a vacation; but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... is to you and to me. I, Rupert, have obeyed Peter's word, and have received the promise. You may do the same, and the same blessings will follow. The gospel is a law, a natural law, and oh, such ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... fear. They are the inversion of the principle which builds up, and they are therefore the principle which pulls down; but the Law itself never changes, and it is on the unchangeableness of the law that all Mental Science is founded. We are accustomed to realize the unchangeableness of natural law in our every day life, and it should therefore not be difficult to realize that the same unchangeableness of law which obtains on the visible side of nature obtains on the invisible side as well. The variable factor is, not the law, but our own ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... one in the company had had an exciting and fatiguing day, the young people began immediately after supper, as if according to a natural law, to ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... life joy and harmony in it as there would be in a jungle picnic of monkeys and parrots. There is just one place where large families can dwell together peaceably—the grave-yard. It is contrary to natural law that families of grown ups, should live together. When a cub bear is old enough, big enough to hunt for food, and comes back after he once goes out, his mother gives him a mauling that makes him feel he would rather starve than come back again. Does she love him? ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... the argument of Carneades: that men had established laws among themselves from considerations of advantage, varying them according to their different customs, and altering them often so as to adapt them to the times; but that there was no such thing as natural law; that all men and all other animals are led to their own advantage by the guidance of nature; that there is no such thing as justice, or, if there be, that it is extreme folly, since a man would injure ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Marlay, I didn't look for cant from you. I don't believe that God cares. Everything goes on by the almanac and natural law. The sun sets when the time comes, no matter who is belated. Girls that are sweet and loving and trusting, like Katy, have always been and will always be victims of rakish fools like Smith Westcott. I wish I were an Indian, and then I could ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... to be unlucky; it really appeared as though everything must go wrong by a natural law. In the first place, while making a hobble peg, while Carmichael and Robinson were away after the horses, the little piece of wood slipped out of my hand, and the sharp blade of the knife went through the top and nail of my third finger ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... cheerfully submitted to it in questions left open, but numerical majorities are not necessarily physical majorities. The South, though numerically inferior, contend they can whip the Northern superiority of numbers, and therefore by natural law they contend that they are not bound to submit. This issue is the only real one, and in my judgment all else should be deferred to it. War alone can decide it, and it is the only question now left for us as a people to decide. Can we whip the South? If we can, our numerical ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... only in the form of duties on the part of the state, not in the form of definite legal claims of the individual. The Declaration of the Rights of Man for the first time originated in all its vigor in positive law the conception, which until then had been known only to natural law, of the personal rights of the members of the state over against the state as a whole. This was next seen in the first French constitution of September 3, 1791, which set forth, upon the basis of a preceding declaration of rights, ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... stagnant—waters. But the advance of scientific discoveries and the scientific spirit sapped the defences of faith in more methodical fashion, and Tennyson's mind was only too open to all the evidence of natural law and the stern lessons of the struggle for life. To understand the influence of Tennyson on his age it is necessary to inquire how he reconciled religion with science; but this is too large a subject for a biographical sketch, and valuable studies have been written which deal with ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... the first instance the relative claims of Bruce and Balliol, and also to decide by what law these should be determined. On October 14, they declared their first judgment. They rejected Bruce's plea that the decision should follow the "natural law by which kings rule," and accepted Balliol's contention that they should follow the laws of England and Scotland. They further laid down that the law of succession to the throne was that of other earldoms and dignities. They pronounced in favour of primogeniture as against ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... little girl. People living in what we call a state of nature, like African savages, or as our American Indians once did, seem to follow Heart of Nature's law; 'Kill only what ye need for food.' But many people that are called civilized never think of natural law at all, and having a coarse streak in their natures desire to kill wild things merely for the sake of killing. It is against such people that laws must be made by those who have ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... suppliant pleading for mercy, but a prophetess declaring to him a divine law which he dare not resist. "It has been said by them of old time," our blessed Lord tells us, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy." This is the first natural law which a savage lays down for himself. There is a rude sense of justice in it, mixed up with the same brute instinct of revenge which makes the wild beast turn in rage upon the hunter who wounds him. But our Lord Jesus Christ ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... a boy of whom Knight had briefly inquired the way to Endelstow; and by that natural law of physics which causes lesser bodies to gravitate towards the greater, this boy had kept near to Knight, and trotted like a little dog close at his heels, whistling as he went, with his eyes fixed upon Knight's boots as ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... then we have solemn admonitions of the Sisyphian tendency of the attempt so oft defeated, so persistently renewed to banish a Personal and Ruling God, and substitute the scientific fetich, 'Force and Matter,' 'Natural Law,' 'Evolution,' or 'Development.' While I desire that the basis of Regina's education shall be sufficiently broad, liberal, and comprehensive, I intend to be careful what doctrines are propounded; for unfortunately all who sympathize with ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... "None. This is the only one that works. We've eliminated the other ones, remember? I can't blame you for finding it hard to believe, since it is in direct opposition to everything you've understood to be true in the past. It's like altering a natural law. As if I gave you proof that gravity didn't really exist, that it was a force altogether different from the immutable one we know, one you could get around when you understood how. You'd want more proof than words. Probably want to see someone ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... through the law of nature. "Every man," says Cicero, "is born in society, and remains there." They held the same, and maintained that every one born into society contracts by that fact certain obligations to society, and society certain obligations to him; for under the natural law, every one has certain rights, as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and owes certain duties to society for the protection and assistance it ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... the width of the river, so that a river 1000 feet wide would oscillate once in 6000 feet. This is an important consideration, and much labour has been lost in trying to prevent rivers from following their natural law of oscillation. But rivers are very true to their own laws, and a change at any part is continued both upwards and downwards, so that a new oscillation in any place cuts its way through the whole plain of the river both above ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... Couriers. Covetousness. Crafts. Crete. Crime and punishment. Crown apostrophized. Cruelty. Cunliffe, H. — J. Cures, accidental and scientific. Curse. Cursus. Curtius Marcus. Curtius Quintus. Customary and natural law. ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... secondary importance quite. But if you had been as much amongst them as I, perhaps you would be of my opinion, that the poor are not, cannot possibly feel so wretched as they seem to us. They live in a climate, as it were, which is their own, by natural law comply with it, and find it not altogether unfriendly. The Laplander will prefer his wastes to the rich fields of England, not merely from ignorance, but for the sake of certain blessings amongst which he has been born ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... looked after, from having everything done for you, not from a man's mere politeness, but from his right (he, the one man) to serve the one woman. In all he did he was so intensely efficient and reliable; the most casual trivial detail, if entrusted to him, took place as by some immutable natural law. He would return in the shortest possible time, yet without hurry, with the tea-basket, while half that crowd of jostling, distracted passengers outside would have to go without. And it was not otherwise in things ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... shaken, no species of property is secure, when it once becomes an object large enough to tempt the cupidity of indigent power. I see a practice perfectly correspondent to their contempt of this great fundamental part of natural law. I see the confiscators begin with bishops, and chapters, and monasteries; but I do not see them end there. I see the princes of the blood, who, by the oldest usages of that kingdom, held large landed estates, (hardly with the compliment of a debate,) ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... be described as resembling a large cat; a wolf, a fox, or even a lion, as resembling certain kinds of dogs; a howdah as a smaller sofa, and a palanquin, as a light crib. In all these cases, it is worthy of notice, that a mere difference of size never creates confusion;—simply because, by a natural law in optics, such differences are of constant occurrence in the experience both of children and adults. A water neut will convey a sufficiently correct idea of a crocodile; and the picture of an elephant, only one inch square, will create no difficulty, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... sense of dignity, but more particularly to the fact that when a business firm was about to fail, it did not fail. It borrowed enough to "tide over" from the agent of the William J. Mosely Estate. This interfered with that natural law in the business world as everywhere else, the survival of the fittest. Everybody survived, the fit and the unfit, which is death to competition and that arterial excitation without ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... nature or of the creative energy in the world of life and matter about us; with our own origin in the low fishlike or apelike creature in the maternal womb; with the development of every plant, tree, and animal from a microscopic germ; with the unbroken sequence of natural law; with the waste, the delays, the pains, the failures on every hand; with the impersonal and the impartial character of all the physical forces; with the transformations and metamorphoses that marked ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... you generalise the facts, and you expect to find sourness in apples where you get hardness and greenness. You found upon that a general law that all hard and green apples are sour; and that, so far as it goes, is a perfect induction. Well, having got your natural law in this way, when you are offered another apple which you find is hard and green, you say, "All hard and green apples are sour; this apple is hard and green, therefore this apple is sour." That train of reasoning ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... entailed upon the race through the fall, and evidently, though mysteriously, affects mankind through the natural law of generation. The image of God is provided for the race through redemption in Christ, and is imparted to each individual through the divine law of regeneration and its accompanying grace. It is compatible with the word of God, with reason, and with observation, that every child born into this world ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... come to the Ningpo River, with Chinhai, a small city, at its mouth, and Ningpo, [Page 19] a great emporium, some twelve miles inland. This curious arrangement, so different from what one would expect, confronts one in China with the regularity of a natural law: Canton, Shanghai, Foochow, and Tientsin, all conform to it. The small city stands at the anchorage for heavy shipping; but the great city, renouncing this advantage, is located some distance inland, to be safe ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... Christ's coming, of His giving of a law of belief and of His founding of a Church. It is beyond human comprehension that He should have come for naught, labored for naught and died for naught. And such must be the case, if the observance of the natural law is a sufficient worship of the Creator. What reasons Christ may have had for imposing this or that truth upon our belief, is beside the question; it is enough that He did reveal truths, the acceptance of which glorifies ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... research into most of them, we need these laws. We know approximately that this and that have come to light so and so often, but we have not reduced to order and studied systematically the cases before us, and we dare not call this knowledge natural law because we have subjected it to no inductive procedure. "The reference of any fact discovered by experience to general laws or rules we call induction. It embraces both observation and deduction.'' Again, it may be defined as "the generalization or universalization of our ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... conditions tend to equalize themselves throughout the world and in time the contest between humanitarian instincts and economic pressure will reach a world-wide equilibrium through the operation of natural law. What will happen then I do not know. Neither can ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... accordance with God's will, which we perceive by our inborn reason. We strive to follow the guidance of noble religion, exact science and philosophy, and to discover their truth. We believe it to be a natural law of the human mind to investigate freely all phenomena of the universe. We aim to maintain the peace of the world, and to promote the happiness of mankind. We endeavor to assert our rights, and to fulfil our duties as Japanese ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... casualty. And as for this, it proceeds from my neighbour, my kinsman, my fellow: through his ignorance indeed, because he knows not what is truly natural unto him: but I know it, and therefore carry myself towards him according to the natural law of fellowship; that is kindly, and justly. As for those things that of themselves are altogether indifferent, as in my best judgment I conceive everything to deserve more or less, so I ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... cultivating them in the manner which they wished and which would be most productive; maintenance and clothing during one year; respect for their usages and customs so far as they did not oppose the natural law; to leave to their own wishes whether or not they should become Christians; to buy or facilitate the sale of their crops; exemption from contributions and tributes for ten years and lastly, government by local officials elected by themselves under ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... nothing more than the true, fitting, and natural law of man. Man considered solely as a spiritual machine? No. Considered as an animal that eats and drinks? Not that either. Man considered as a complete ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... Everyone could understand that a generation which travels sixty miles an hour must be five times as civilised as one which only travelled twelve. Thus the beneficent 'law of progress' was exemplified in that nation which had best deserved to be its exponent. The myth in question is that there is a natural law of improvement, manifested by greater complexity of structure, by increase of wants and the means to satisfy them. A nation advances in civilisation by increasing in wealth and population, and by multiplying the accessories and paraphernalia ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... philosophers will at once say that such atmospheric conditions are contrary to reason and natural law, but they must be informed that on Mars there are chemical elements and affinities not known in our world. It requires but little change in the elementary construction of the atmosphere to render it ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... of Galatians you will find a commentary upon this natural law. Shall we read it? 'Now the works of the flesh'—the fruit of the flesh, if you like to put it that way—'are manifest, which are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... he can never have again. The attempt to represent it in art would have so little verisimilitude that it would be flat and uninteresting. The chief factor in the thoughts of the modern mind concerning itself is the intricacy, the universality of natural law, even in the moral order. For us, necessity is not, as of old, a sort of mythological personage without us, with whom we can do warfare: it is a magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of which modern ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... States and of six in Ireland, only two deaf and dumb children were produced. Mr. Sedgwick,[59] in commenting on this remarkable and fortunate failure in the power of transmission in the direct line, remarks that it may possibly be owing to "excess having reversed the action of some natural law in development." But it is safer in the present state of our knowledge to look at the whole ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... way we will be acting in harmony with the natural drift or natural law, if you prefer, and this is one of the purposes ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... possible that human life is reaping the agonies of a terrible retribution for a crime an important public in every civilized country believed, and still continues to believe, to have been committed. It is a natural law of life that no mysterious physical force ever dies, but only changes its form and direction. Individuals and vast communities may dare to mock at the great mystery that we do not understand. But it is a perilous experiment ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... senses and logic, creates gods for himself, or when he gets to the point of seeing that he has made them, he disclaims them. The Mystic knows that he creates gods, he knows why he creates them, he sees, so to say, behind the natural law which makes man create them. It is as though a plant suddenly became conscious, and learned the laws of its growth and development. As it is, it develops in lovely unconsciousness. If it knew about the laws of its own being, its relation to itself would be completely changed. What ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... convinced one day, I think. Here are wide-awake men (some of them most anti-spiritual to this hour, as to theory) who agree in giving testimony to facts of one order. You shall hear their testimony when you come. As to the 'supernatural,' if you mean by that the miraculous, the suspension of natural law, I certainly believe in it no more than you do. What happens, happens according to a natural law, the development of which only becomes fuller and more observable. The movement, such as it is, is accelerated, and the whole structure of society ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... burning over there in the fireplace," said I, anxious to get him before the open chimney-place; for, by a natural law, that was directly in the line ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... The natural law of exhaustion, which sooner or later affects all races of any distinction, may also not improbably have come into play, rendering the Parthians of the age of Verus very degenerate descendants of those who displayed such brilliant ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... is some distance off yet. But now that I have given you this little excitement, which you will not regret after it is all over, I will stop the current which produces this great force and bring in an artificial law, as it were, to override the natural law now in operation. Just look at this lever and see how ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... Hence on the words in Gal. 3:19, "Being ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator," a gloss says: "With great wisdom was it so ordered that the Son of Man should not be sent immediately after man's fall. For first of all God left man under the natural law, with the freedom of his will, in order that he might know his natural strength; and when he failed in it, he received the law; whereupon, by the fault, not of the law, but of his nature, the disease gained strength; so that having recognized his infirmity he might cry out for a physician, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... theosophy and theology. Theosophy declares the immortality of man but not as a religious belief. It appeals to the scientific facts in relation to the nature of consciousness. It knows no such word as "faith," as it is ordinarily used. Its faith arises from the constancy of natural law, the balance and sanity of nature, and the harmonious adjustment of the universe. Theosophy is very ancient in that it is the great fund of ancient wisdom about man and his earth, that has come down through ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... that two ideas, or principles, struggle in my mind for mastery. One is the idea of the super-mechanical and the super-chemical character of living things; the other is the idea of the supremacy and universality of what we call natural law. The first probably springs from my inborn idealism and literary habit of mind; the second from my love of nature and my scientific bent. It is hard for me to reduce the life impulse to a level with common ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... which dooms the waster to ultimate want; but for the excise officer, or bank accountant, or railway clerk, who pursues a similar course, there exists a court of official responsibility, which anticipates the slow operation of the natural law, by at once divesting the offender of his office. And the State-paid schoolmaster must have also his official responsibility. But it would serve neither the ends of justice nor the interests of a sound policy to erect ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... amazed at the temerity of a girl who dared to refuse the husband her father had chosen for her. It would be an outrage on all authority, a scandal never to be forgotten, an unheard-of rebellion against the natural law by which unmarried children were held in bondage as slaves to their parents. But Marietta was not frightened by the tremendous consequences her fancy deduced from her refusal to marry. She was happy. Some ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford |
