"Premise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about 3/4 of an inch. To show how the various Engineers differ, as to their estimates of the sizes of the several parts of bridges, I subjoin two Tables—one by Prof. G.L. Vose, a well known Engineer, and one by Jno. C. Trautwine, an Engineer of note also—and I would premise that a bridge built according to either would ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... I shall only premise, that as you know I never cared one Farthing either for Whig or Tory, So I shall consider our Writers purely as they are such, without any respect to which Party ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... given case is not easy for a foreigner. It is not easy even for ourselves. We have few abstract principles, and reliable induction from our past is not easy. We are often guided by what Mr. Justice Wendell Holmes has called "the intuition more subtle than any particular major premise." Nor is help to be derived from any study of our general outlook on life, for that outlook is hard to ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... government run the great industries, producing food and clothing for the people as it was now producing them for the troops. But when he tried to give this programme the name of Socialism, then the trouble began. Weren't Socialists the lunatics who wanted to have America "lay down" like Russia? The premise from which all discussion started with these men was that America was going to win the war; if you tried to hint that this matter could so much as be hesitated over, you met, first sharp mockery, and then angry looks, and ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... must premise Our ministers are good and wise; So, though malicious tongues apply, Pray what care they, or what care I? If I am free with courts; be't known, I ne'er presume to mean our own. If general morals seem to joke On ministers, and such like folk, A captious fool may take offence; What then? he ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... at her. He could reason so far as that he and Mr. Keller must have taken the same poison, because he and Mr. Keller had been cured out of the same bottle. But to premise that he had been made ill by an overdose of medicine, and that Mr. Keller had been made ill in some other way, and then to ask, how two different illnesses could both have been cured by the same remedy—was an effort utterly beyond ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... best unravell'd, When I premise that Tim has travell'd. In Lucas's by chance there lay The Fables writ by Mr. Gay. Tim set the volume on a table, Read over here and there a fable: And found, as he the pages twirl'd, The monkey who ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... With this premise firmly under our feet let us go on to the question of the intelligence of the physical tissues of the human body, and our relation to disease, ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... premise that I entirely agree with him in his opening paragraph as to selecting, when practicable, a bird as little damaged as possible; but I need not remind professionals, or amateurs of some practice, how seldom these conditions exist, especially in the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... a rude genius. Judge Horatio Lancaster Page, for instance, insisted that the Governor had a charm of his own, that, "he wasn't half bad to look at if you caught him smiling," that he could even reason "like one of us," if you granted him his premise. After the open debate between Vetch and Benham—the great John Benham, hero of war and peace, and tireless labourer in the vineyard of public service—after this memorable discussion, Judge Horatio Lancaster Page had remarked, in his mild, unpolemical tone, that "though John had undoubtedly carried ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... cannot be sold at all; then there would be no sweater, and the woman would get no work. Is no work better than some work?" The trouble with a great deal of this is, that it is incorrect both in its premise and in its reasoning. It is indeed true that there is great competition in the clothing business, but it is not true that the result of this competition leads every employer to pay the highest wages that can be recovered from the sale of the pants. It is also a remarkable ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... of these impractical theorists to call aloud on the chance of attracting their friends' attention. Instead, with all the assurance that deductive reasoning from a wrong premise induces in one, Mr. Samuel T. Philander grasped Professor Archimedes Q. Porter firmly by the arm and hurried the weakly protesting old gentleman off in the direction of Cape Town, fifteen ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... years very much on than quite off—have given me a good title—to myself, I ask no one else for leave—to make the following remarks: A conclusion has premises, facts or doctrines from proof or authority, and mode of inference. There may be invention or {34} falsehood of premise, with good logic; and there may be tenable premise, followed by bad logic; and there may be both false premise and bad logic. The Roman system has such a powerful manufactory of premises, that bad logic is little wanted; there is comparatively little of it. The doctrine-forge ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... one of the psychiatrists said with more than a trace of admiration in his voice. "Complete and thoroughly consistent. She's just traded identities—and everything else she does—everything else—stems logically out of her delusional premise. Beautiful." ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I would premise, however, that these intellectual views may also be regarded as inducements to munificence, and thus to the adoption of an individual system, fitted to each one's peculiar relations; for they will thus operate from the ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... people who live in the country, are like heaven— objects of universal desire and very general neglect. Indeed, in a land so peculiarly adapted to their cultivation, it is difficult to account for this neglect if you admit the premise that Americans are civilized and intellectual. It is the trait of a savage and inferior race to devour .with immense gusto a delicious morsel, and then trust to luck for another. People who would turn away from a dish of "Monarch" ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... sudden flash. One word seemed to stand out from all the rest on the written page he held in his hand—"Forrester." He laughed a little in a low, grim way. His intuition had been right again then, and that meant—what? If she, the Tocsin, knew, then—his mind was working subconsciously, leaping from premise to a dimly seen, half formed conclusion, while his eyes travelled rapidly ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... and now the Owners of the English Privateer and Capt. Norton and his Crew demand one half for Salvage according to the Stat. In that Case (as they say) provided, and if they are Entitled to the Same is the Sole Question. In determining of which I shall Premise ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... the circumference to the diameter is the same in all circles. Now, take a diameter of 1 and draw round it a circumference of 3 1/5. In that circle the ratio is 3 1/5; therefore, by the major premise, that is the ratio ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... mean something else; policies based upon world value, (Weltgeltung.) The policy based on world domination differs from that based on world value, in that the former denies the equal rights of other States, while the latter makes that its premise. The State that asserts its rights to world values demands for itself what it concedes to the others: its right to expand and develop its political and economic influence, and to have a voice in the discussion whenever the political or economical relations of the various States at any ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to premise this Observation to the Readers, as it will shew that the Critic on Shakespeare is of a quite different Kind. His genuine Text is religiously adher'd to, and the numerous Faults and Blemishes, purely his own, are left as they were found. Nothing is alter'd, ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... premise a word about myself? I neither did the deed nor saw it done, Nor were it just that I ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... Talmage was prompted by an article in which Talmage had assumed the premise that if workingmen attended the churches it would drive the better class of worshipers away. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... knowledge; in other words, is not adopted as the result of a process of reasoning. What I believe with reference to my past history, so far as I can myself recall it, I believe instantaneously and immediately, without the intervention of any premise or reason. Similarly, our notions of ourselves are, for the most part, obtained apart from any process of inference. The view which a man takes of his own character or claims on society he is popularly supposed to receive intuitively by a ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... with faithful helps and guards, and got together with most careful selection a regular army of divine works, it may seem that we have no more to do but to proceed to philosophy itself. And yet in a matter so difficult and doubtful there are still some things which it seems necessary to premise, partly for convenience of explanation, partly for ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... that happened once, in connection with cattle, of rather an unusual sort. So much so, in fact, that most people to whom we have at times spoken of it have doubted our veracity. I suppose it will add but little weight to the story if I premise it with the assertion that it is simple truth. Nevertheless, it is actual fact, believe ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... you understand how it act, and can follow the mind of the great Charcot, alas that he is no more, into the very soul of the patient that he influence. No? Then, friend John, am I to take it that you simply accept fact, and are satisfied to let from premise to conclusion be a blank? No? Then tell me, for I am a student of the brain, how you accept hypnotism and reject the thought reading. Let me tell you, my friend, that there are things done today in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... therefore, Thaddeus was grumpy. One premise only was necessary for the conclusion—in fact, it was the only premise upon which a conclusion involving Thaddeus's grumpiness could find a foothold. If Thaddeus felt rested, everything in the world ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... nearly every doctor had a slightly different dogma, usually based upon an incorrect deduction from a false premise. One doctor would place all his confidence in the spirit of the Banana—the most popular spirit; and another in the spirit of the river, because out of a dozen times that he had implored aid, five "miracles" at least had been vouchsafed, therefore, argued he, ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... answers to your interrogatories, it may be well to premise, that at the time of commencing the experiment, he was forty-five years of age; and being an extensive cotton planter, his business was such as to make it necessary for him to undergo a great deal of exercise, particularly on foot, having, as he himself declares, to walk seldom less than ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... epitome of it will not be out of place here. It not only throws light upon the historical events of the period, but also gives us a glimpse of the proceedings connected with the schism in the Catholic Church. It is only necessary to premise that in the separation between the Roman and Greek Catholics which took place in the latter half of the ninth century, the Danubian provinces followed the eastern section, that the union was complete under Basilius, but that, when the brothers Asan shook off the Byzantine yoke, there was a national ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... * which was decided in 1793, the Court ruled, in the face of an assurance in the "Federalist" to the contrary, that an individual might sue a State; and though this decision was speedily disallowed by resentful debtor States by the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment, its underlying premise that, "as to the purposes of the Union, the States are not sovereign" remained untouched; and three years later the Court affirmed the supremacy of national treaties over conflicting state laws and so established a ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... woodpeckers and wagtails. Thus the English starling will occasionally impose upon and dispossess the green woodpecker. In the process of nature in such cases the stronger of the two birds would retain the nest, and thus assume the duties of foster-parent. Starting from this reasonable premise concerning the prehistoric cuckoo, it is not difficult to see how natural selection, working through ages of evolution by heredity, might have developed the habitual resignation of the evicted bird, perhaps ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... explorers have been rare; and the natives, anxious only to secure the showy and saleable shells of the sea, have neglected the less attractive ones of the land and the lakes. Hence Mr. Hanley finds it necessary to premise that the list appended, although the result of infinite labour and research, is less satisfactory than could have been wished. "It is offered," he says, "with diffidence, not pretending to the merit of completeness as a shell-fauna of the island, but rather as a form, which the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Theatre. Since we can't produce it, let us deduce it. Major premise: the seats are cheap. Minor premiss: the plays are good. Conclusion: A People's Theatre. How much will you give me for my syllogism? Not a slap in ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... premise a caution, that I would by no means confine God to one way of acting. I would by no means say that all persons, before they come to have a settled peace in their hearts, are obliged to undergo the same degrees of conviction. No; God has various ways of bringing His children ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... manly and independent address made to the shah during his European tour was, we think, the speech of welcome delivered by the president of the Swiss Confederation. We may premise that the shah is the first sovereign who, as such, has become the guest of Switzerland since the meeting of the Council of Constance in the fifteenth century. Still, the Swiss people did not show themselves overcome, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... conclude by another process of reasoning—that there is but one such substance. I think that this may profitably be done at once; and, in order to proceed regularly with the demonstration, we must premise:— ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... order in which these different rocks had been formed in the beginning, great layers of these different rocks having originally been spread completely around the globe one outside another like the coats of an onion. With this as a major premise, it is not surprising that he and his enthusiastic disciples "were as certain of the origin and sequence of the rocks as if they had been present at the ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... that the ludicrous is a simple feeling, and therefore indefinable, a statement in which the premise seems more correct than the conclusion. The opinion that it is simple and primary, although not admitting of proof, has some probability in its favour. It arose from a conviction that we had no means of reaching it, of taking it to pieces, and was derived from ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... proclamation authorizing Governor Claiborne to take possession of West Florida and to govern it as part of the Orleans Territory. He justified his action, which had no precedent in American diplomacy, by reasoning which was valid only if his fundamental premise was accepted. West Florida, he repeated, as a part of the Louisiana purchase belonged to the United States; but without abandoning its claim, the United States had hitherto suffered Spain to continue in possession, looking forward to a satisfactory adjustment by friendly negotiation. A crisis ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... I only premise that I have left the facts of the history unaltered, even in the names; and that I believe them to ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... Europa says, "In Europe at this time dwelt Aryans, but the Syrians and Sudanese cannot be Aryans," the inference being, of course, that the European dolmens were built by a different race from that which built those of Syria and the Sudan. Unfortunately, however, the major premise is not completely true, for though it is true that Aryans did live in Europe at this time, there were also people in Europe who were not Aryans, and it is precisely among them ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... honest as he was fearless and fussy. But he had no patience; he wanted things done and done at once, and his way was THE way to do them. People who did not think as he thought didn't THINK at all. On this drastic premise he went to work. There was of course continuous friction between him and the House of Burgesses. Dinwiddie had all a Scot's native talent for sarcasm. His letters, his addresses, perhaps in particular his addresses to the House, bristled with satirical ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... economic inferiority to man is not due to "any inherent disability of sex." Wherever Mrs. Gilman may be right, here the biologist knows that she is wrong. The argument has been fully stated in earlier pages, and need not here be restated. But we shall not be surprised if a premise which denies any natural economic disadvantage of women leads to more than ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... Irish, and could trace his ancestry back to the fairies—to hear him tell it. But one can never be quite certain how much Spanish there is in an Irishman from the west, so I have always started with the premise that the result of that marriage—my father—was three-fifths Latin. Father married a Galvez, who was half Scotch; so ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the corpus vile before us we will henceforward confine ourselves to him, though we premise that in spite of his very sufficient originality he is characteristic of what is most worth attention in modern American poetry. Proceeding then, we find another point of contact between him and Mr Kipling, more important ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... that well-known one of the predominant objectivity of the Pagan mind; while among us the subjective has risen into superiority, and brought with it in each individual a multitude of peculiar associations and relations. These, as not explicable from any one external principle assumed as a premise by the ancient philosopher, were rejected from the sphere of his aesthetic creation: but to us they all have a value and meaning; being connected by the bond of our own personality and all alike existing in that ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... touching the theory of the religion in which he believed, Moses had from early childhood been nurtured in these Mesopotamian beliefs and traditions, and to them—or, at least, toward them—he always tended to revert in moments of stress. Without bearing this fundamental premise in mind, Moses in active life can hardly be understood, for it was on this foundation that his theories of cause ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... these points a little, and I will premise by saying that I have spoken to no one on the subject, and have not even seen Mr. Ewing, Mr. Stanbery, or General Grant, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... political economy have private property as their major premise. This fundamental assumption is regarded by it as an unassailable fact, which needs no demonstration, and about which it only chances to speak casually, as M. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... notions, I have read over Sylvia's billet; and notwithstanding the reserve I have had upon this matter, am resolved to go a much greater length, than I yet ever did, in making my self known to the world, and, in particular, to my charming correspondent. In order to it I must premise, that the person produced as mine in the play-house last winter, did in nowise appertain to me. It was such a one however as agreed well with the impression my writings had made, and served the purpose I intended it for; which ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... make a strong case for the truth of Mr. Jones' representation of our 'standard English', and his book is the most trustworthy evidence at my disposal: but before exhibiting it I would premise that our present fashionable dialect is not to be considered as the wanton local creator of all the faults that Mr. Jones can parade before the eye. Its qualities have come together in various ways, nor ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... effective part in the literature of sensibility; they constituted thirty years ago the title of Mr. Howells's delightful volume of impressions; but in using them to-day one owes some frank amends to one's own lucidity. Let me carefully premise therefore that so often as they shall again drop from my pen, so often shall I beg to be regarded as ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... United States declares that no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts. This proposition being the major premise, Chief Justice Marshall added the minor premise that every charter of a private corporation is a contract, and completed the syllogism by the conclusion that no State can pass any law impairing the obligation of such charters. The counsel who opposed this doctrine ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... sketch, "The Maker of Lenses," makes this single love-episode in the life of Spinoza the controlling impulse of his life, probably reasoning on the premise that men who mark epochs are ever and always, without exception, those with the love nature strongly implanted in their hearts. So thoroughly does Zangwill believe in the one passion of Spinoza's life, that a score of years after the chief incident of it had transpired, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... on the selection of a generator which follow, as well as any references in other chapters to the same matter, have been made without regard to particular apparatus of which a description may (or may not) appear in the Appendix. With this premise, it may be stated that the intending purchaser should regard the mechanism of a generator as shown in a sectional view or on inspection of the apparatus itself. If the generator is simple in construction, he should be able to understand its method ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... nurse arrived she turned me out of the room, on which I went downstairs. I should premise that at breakfast the news that our brilliant friend was doing well excited universal complacency, and the Princess graciously remarked that he was only to be commiserated for missing the society of Miss Collop. Mrs. Wimbush, whose social gift never ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... Aristotle and Padre Amat, read carefully his "Ramos," and sometimes glanced at "Ganot." With all that, he would often shake his head with an air of doubt, as he smiled and murmured: "transeat." In regard to chemistry, no common knowledge was attributed to him after he had taken as a premise the statement of St. Thomas that water is a mixture and proved plainly that the Angelic Doctor had long forestalled Berzelius, Gay-Lussac, Bunsen, and other more or less presumptuous materialists. Moreover, in spite of having ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... between partisan assertions and actual conditions. It is necessary to recognize worth as well as to condemn graft. No system of government can stand that lacks public confidence and no progress can be made on the assumption of a false premise. Public administration is honest and sound and public business is transacted on a higher ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... of Aristotle's critical divisions into Fable, Character, Sentiment, and Diction, and took for granted the doctrine of the distinction of genres, he otherwise rejected traditional formulae and critical tenets, and began with the premise that man is most delighted by the imaginative perception of the states of life for which he would willingly exchange his own. These are "the busy, great, or pompous" (depicted in tragedy and the epic) and "the retir'd, soft, or easy" ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... that this memorable day was a Saturday, one on which civic sportsmen exhibit. We may also premise, that the particular hunt we are about to describe, took place when there were very many packs of hounds within reach of the metropolis, all of which boasted their respective admiring subscribers. As our party proceeded they overtook a gentleman perusing a long bill of ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... likewise say a few words respecting my nature and my temperament, I premise that the most indulgent of my readers is not likely to be the most dishonest or the least ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... been thought necessary to premise, with regard to the hydrographical and geographical part of the ensuing work; which, it is hoped, the reader will find, on perusal, much ampler and more important than this slight sketch can well explain. But, as there ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... matter," for it was a serious business. "Come with me into the dining-room and you'll see for yourself." There we went round the table, and "The table's full," he repeated from Macbeth. There was something truly original in the implied premise that his friend was entitled of right to have a place at his table, and that the sole dispensing cause to be allowed was absence of space or a physical impossibility. It seems to me that this was a very genuine, if rare, ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... For the rest, he was a large, mild, good-humored, pulpy individual, with a fixed delusion that the human organism can absorb a quart of alcoholic miscellany per day and be none the worse for it. The major premise of his proposition was perfectly correct. He proved it daily. The minor premise was an error. Bets were even in the Toledo clubs as to whether delirium tremens or paresis would win the event around young Mr. Hoff's kite-shaped race-track ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of War was more detailed and more explicit. "It cannot," he said, "be necessary for me to premise to you or to others who know my sentiments; that to quit the tranquility of retirement, and enter the boundless field of responsibility, would be productive of sensations which a better pen than I possess would find it difficult to describe. Nevertheless, the principle by ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... facts as they may find, but a well-defined issue of law, to be determined by the court, whether certain acts set forth upon the record are a ground of liability. It is possible that the judges may have dealt pretty strictly with defendants, and it is quite easy to pass from the premise that defendants have been held trespassers for a variety of acts, without mention of neglect, to the conclusion that any act by which another was damaged will make the actor chargeable. But a more exact scrutiny of the early books will show ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... a different premise and saw a deeper thing. The world might exist for her enjoyment, but it eluded her understanding. And that was beginning to ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... later; a belief in the ultimate good even to Mrs. Bishop of throwing that lady more on her own resources; and so forth and so on down a list of arguments obvious enough or trivial enough, but all inspired by the soul of fervour, all ennobled by the spirit of truth that lies back of the major premise that a woman should cleave to a man, forsaking all others. Orde sat back in his chair, his eyes vacant, his pen all but falling from his hand. He did not finish the letter to his mother. After a while he went upstairs ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... to be proved identical with thought. Certainly, if Descartes had intended to prove his own existence by reasoning, he would have been guilty of the petitio principii Gassendi attributes to him, viz., that the major premise, "that which thinks exists," is assumed, not proved. But he did not intend this. What was his object? He has told us that it was to find a starting-point from which to reason—to find an irreversible certainty. And where did he find this? ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... (which our Language would not bear) at least so as to comprehend every one of his Sentiments, without adding any thing of my own. I have already apologized for this Authors Want of Delicacy, and must further premise, That the following Satyr affects only some of the lower part of the Sex, and not those who have been refined by a Polite Education, which was not so common in the Age ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Penalties," exist? It can only be for the public benefit, and our enquiry is thus a study of the grounds of political obedience. Locke thus traverses the ground Hobbes had covered in his Leviathan though he rejects every premise of the earlier thinker. To Hobbes the state of nature which precedes political organization had been a state of war. Neither peace nor reason could prevail where every man was his neighbor's enemy; and the establishment of absolute power, with the consequent ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... premise that the cures that took place while I was at Lourdes that August cannot yet be regarded as finally established, since not sufficient time has elapsed for their test and verification.[3] Occasionally there is a relapse soon after the apparent cure, in the case of certain diseases ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... on the man in question. He was wearing evening kit, and at first sight the brown-skinned face above the white of his collar, taken in conjunction with dark hair and very strongly-marked brows, seemed to premise the correctness of Tony's surmise. Suddenly the man lifted his bent head, and over the top of the newspaper Arm found herself looking into a pair of unmistakably grey eyes—grey as steel. They were very direct eyes, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... closing words are a compendium of his life and beliefs: "Countrymen: I have given proofs, as well as the best of you, of desiring liberty for our country, and I continue to desire it. But I place as a premise the education of the people, so that by means of instruction and work they may have a personality of their own and that they may make themselves worthy of that same liberty. In my writings I have recommended the study of the civic virtues, without which there can be no redemption. I have also ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... premise the school of tulip-fanciers, the most exclusive of all schools, worked out the following syllogism ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... hand, reasonable people will look with distrust upon too much reason. The foundations of action lie deeper than reason can reach. They rest on faith—for there is no absolutely certain incontrovertible premise which can be laid by man, any more than there is any investment for money or security in the daily affairs of life which is absolutely unimpeachable. The Funds are not absolutely safe; a volcano might break out under the Bank of England. A railway journey is not absolutely safe; one person at least ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... sacred, were to him light subjects upon which, she was well aware, only her presence prevented his jesting. The most obvious laws of rectitude were but thistle-down before the whirlwind of his subversive theories; and Edith found argument impossible with one who denied her every premise. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... me to adopt them as such is that my situation and connexions in the island led me to a more intimate and minute acquaintance with their laws and manners than with those of any other class. I must premise however that the Malay customs having made their way in a greater or less degree to every part of Sumatra, it will be totally impossible to discriminate with entire accuracy those which are original from those which ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... thinks it must help him examine it and understand it; so its drifting mind settles upon it with that intent, but always with one and the same result: there is a change of temperature and the mountain is hid in a fog. Every time it sets up a premise and starts to reason from it, there is a surprise in store for the reader. It is strangely nearsighted, cross-eyed, and purblind. Sometimes when a mastodon walks across the field of its vision it takes it for a rat; at other times it does not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is, I doubt not, that which this MS. points to, and which the G. Text gives us in the second passage quoted above, viz. Arbre SOL, occurring in Ramusio as Albero del SOLE. To make this easier of acceptation I must premise two remarks: first, that Sol is "the Sun" in both Venetian and Provencal; and, secondly, that in the French of that age the prepositional sign is not necessary to the genitive. Thus, in Pauthier's own text we find in one of the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and quackery have reached a height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even English Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their door-lintels No cheating here,—we thought it good to premise. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... surprise us in an exact scientist—is the influence upon human conduct which M. Garofalo attributes to the religious sentiment. "Moral instruction has no meaning, or at least no efficacy, without a religious basis" (p. 267). And from this erroneous psychological premise, he draws the conclusion that it is necessary to return to religious instruction in the schools, "selecting the masters from among men of mature age, fathers of families or ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... than military and sportsman virtues. The code of masters exalts liberty—for the ruling class—and resents any restraint by inferiors or civilians, or by public opinion of any group but its own. It has a justice which takes for its premise a graded social order, and seeks to put and keep every man in his place. But its supreme value is power, likewise for the few, or for the state as consisting of society organized and directed by the ruling class. Such a group, according to Treitschke, will also need ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... himself as little open to the charge of credulity as any writer who ever lived, cannot get beyond this. He has no demonstrable first premise. He requires postulates and axioms which transcend demonstration, and without which he can do nothing. His superstructure indeed is demonstration, but his ground is faith. Nor again can he get further than telling a man he is a fool ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... borne in mind, will serve to throw into stronger relief the things that an automobile can do, and to supply a substantial basis for the premise that, at least in some respects, the automobile is the most marvelous machine the world has yet seen. It can go anywhere at any time, floundering through two feet of snow, ford any stream that isn't deep enough to drown out the magneto, triumph ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... questions which cannot be determined by a direct appeal to experience. And undeniably Theism is one of those questions, unless we admit with the transcendentalist what is contrary to evident fact, that men have an intuitive perception of God. In the next place, the minor premise of this argument is assumed. There is no general consent of mankind in favor of Theism, but only a very extensive consent. Mr. Gladstone, not long since, in the Nineteenth Century, went so far as to claim the general consent ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... student—the student of the thirteenth century—struggling painfully against difficulties, eager and hot after knowledge, wasting eyesight and stinting sleep, subtle, inquisitive, active-minded and sanguine, but omnivorous, overflowing with dialectical forms, loose in premise and ostentatiously rigid in syllogism, fettered by the refinements of half-awakened taste and the mannerisms ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Cochran & Mrs. Livingston to dine with me to-morrow; but am I not in honor bound to apprize them of their fate? As I hate deception, even where the imagination only is concerned; I will. It is needless to premise, that my table is large enough to hold the ladies. Of this they had ocular proof yesterday. To say how it is usually covered, is rather more essential; and this shall be the ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... to employ you on it." Fleetwood almost groaned. He could not again venture to interrupt the governor, though he was bursting with impatience to have his fears relieved or confirmed. "Well, I see ye wish to be informed on the subject, which is very natural, Captain Fleetwood; and, therefore, I must premise that I have this day received notice of the arrival of a brig, a merchantman from Smyrna, and that she is now performing quarantine in Port Marsa Musceit. Her master has written a statement which has been forwarded to me; and which, if correct, and I see ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... image of the invisible God, Col. i. 15, and, p. 43, of the dominion of Christ, as he is the eternal Son of God. This being premised," &c. Mr Coleman, without taking the least notice of that which I did purposely and plainly premise, begins to speak of God essentially; and that if something may be given to Christ as God, then something may be given to God, and then God is not absolutely perfect, &c., Male Dicis, p. 13, 14. Thus ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... to include suits brought against a State by its own citizens,[11] by a foreign state,[12] by a federally chartered corporation,[13] or by a State as an agent of its citizens to collect debts owed them by another State.[14] These rulings are based on the premise expressed in Hans v. Louisiana[15] that the amendment "actually reversed the decision" in Chisholm v. Georgia and, as Chief Justice Hughes indicated in Monaco v. Mississippi,[16] had the effect of prohibiting ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... intellection has been for something—a fact, a basis, a generalization, law, formula, a major premise that is positive: that the best that has ever been done has been to say that some things are self-evident—whereas, by evidence we mean ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... confessions, or introductory narrative of the youthful adventures which laid the foundation of the writer's habit of opium-eating in after-life, it has been judged proper to premise, for three ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... "It is necessary to premise, friends, that my marriage with this lady was a hasty, ill-advised, and inconsiderate one; unacceptable to my family, unfortunate for myself, humiliating in its results. For some weeks past my suspicions were aroused to the fact that all was not right between the viscountess and another ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... A fundamental premise in the fully developed exorcism was that, according to sacred Scripture, a main characteristic of Satan is pride. Pride led him to rebel; for pride he was cast down; therefore the first thing to do, in driving him out of a lunatic, was ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... propose to state briefly what I understand by 'Poetry for poetry's sake,' and then, after guarding against one or two misapprehensions of the formula, to consider more fully a single problem connected with it. And I must premise, without attempting to justify them, certain explanations. We are to consider poetry in its essence, and apart from the flaws which in most poems accompany their poetry. We are to include in the idea of poetry the metrical ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... permitted to premise at this division of my work, what most historians [Footnote: Thucydides seems to be specially referred to.] have professed at the beginning of their whole undertaking; that I am about to relate the most memorable of all wars ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... is a fairly sound premise in a case like this, but when we have found the woman we shall have to find the man who is at the bottom of the plot. I mean the man who is not only thwarting the woman, but giving you a pretty severe lesson as to the advisability of minding your ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White |
