Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Fundamental   /fˌəndəmˈɛntəl/  /fˌəndəmˈɛnəl/   Listen
Fundamental

adjective
1.
Serving as an essential component.  Synonyms: cardinal, central, key, primal.  "The central cause of the problem" , "An example that was fundamental to the argument" , "Computers are fundamental to modern industrial structure"
2.
Being or involving basic facts or principles.  Synonyms: rudimentary, underlying.  "A fundamental incomatibility between them" , "These rudimentary truths" , "Underlying principles"
3.
Far-reaching and thoroughgoing in effect especially on the nature of something.  Synonym: profound.  "The book underwent fundamental changes" , "Committed the fundamental error of confusing spending with extravagance" , "Profound social changes"



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Fundamental" Quotes from Famous Books



... of arts, by which we might be enabled to enjoy without any trouble the fruits of the earth, and all its comforts, but also and especially for the preservation of health, which is without doubt, of all the blessings of this life, the first and fundamental one; for the mind is so intimately dependent upon the condition and relation of the organs of the body, that if any means can ever be found to render men wiser and more ingenious than hitherto, I believe that it is in medicine they must be sought for. It is true that the science of medicine, ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes

... to his orders. And you shall declare and advise, each one of you, what you deem suitable and necessary for the good of this expedition, whether he asks it or not, although you think he may be vexed or angry at hearing what you wish to tell him; only you shall state the fundamental reason why your assertion is good, in everything making it a point of your desire to come directly to the question, and not to give your advice with passion, or servilely, but with all freedom." If he send them on missions they must report to him alone. "And none ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair

... two incongruous currents was beyond his power; the immature and impetuous want of exactitude of modern times was repugnant to his nature; and when his great sense of justice forced him to recognize certain fundamental truths, it was still always a source of annoyance to him to be obliged to do so. It appears to me that he sought a counteracting influence to all this, in his boundless admiration for ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... Human Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policy, being a Discovery of the Faculties, Acts, and Passions of the Soul of Man, from their original Causes, according to such philosophical Principles as are ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... volume of Reports which issued from the Court following Marshall's death—11 Peters (1837)—signalizes such a revolution, that is to say, a recasting of fundamental concepts; so does 100 years later, Volume 301 of the United States Reports, in which the National Labor Relations Act [The "Wagner Act"] and the Social Security Act of 1935 were sustained. Another considerable revolution was marked by ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... Senator had risen and had addressed the Hearing. "I was one of the fathers of the Reclamation Act. One of the fundamental ideas of the Act was that it was not governmental charity but that every farmer whose arid acres were watered would be willing to pay for it. I see but one thing in all these protests against the Service and that is the attempt to ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... virtues, follies, and the like almost as well as the characters in Bunyan; and therefore I think the wise thing to do is simply to skip the bosh and twaddle and vulgarity and untruth, and get the benefit out of the rest. Of course one fundamental difference between Thackeray and Dickens is that Thackeray was a gentleman and Dickens was not. But a man might do some mighty good work and not be a ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt

... great distributing centres of the English race on this continent, Massachusetts and Virginia. Each has impressed the character of its early legislators on the swarms it has sent forth. Their ideas are in some fundamental respects the opposites of each other, and we can only account for it by an antagonism of thought beginning with the early framers of their respective institutions. New England abolished caste; in Virginia they still talk of "quality ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... fatalist, Unorna," observed her companion, still stroking and twisting his beard. "It is strange that we should differ upon so many fundamental questions, you and I, and yet be such good friends. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... of the synod of North Holland. North Holland was not at this time a province, but merely a part of the province of Holland, the chief of the seven United Provinces. The national Acta would probably be those of the six fundamental synodical conventions of 1568-1586 and the ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor

... of The Observer: "There may be fundamental differences between observed phenomena without affecting the validity of a strict analogy; and after all an analogy is based upon presented similarities. It is sufficient if the sameness should apply to particular attributes or occurrences found by induction to have similar relationships ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various

... that the question to be decided is not whether this or that type of school should be supported, but whether the present system of education should be entirely discarded in favour of an altogether new plan? that behind all these petty controversies lie great issues, affecting the fundamental principles of education, which must be pushed to the front unless the degeneration of the race—an inevitable result of the present educational method—is to ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... the essence of their teaching from the shape in which they put it, the reason that they all teach the same is that they are all giving you fragments of knowledge of the other worlds, and these worlds are all more real than the world in which you are; and they all teach the same fundamental truths, the same fundamental moral principles, the same religious doctrines, and use the same methods in order that men may come into touch with the other worlds. The sacraments do not belong to Christianity alone, as sometimes Christians ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... position between the Old and New Testaments, though now it is usually separated. In theology, which is concerned with questions of authority, the distinction between the Bible and the Apocrypha is fundamental: the one is accepted as authoritative in matters of faith, whereas the Apocryphal books are merely recommended for devout reading. But in literary study the distinction disappears; and two books of the Apocrypha are of the highest ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... fundamental importance of Mr. Fiske's presentation of "the doctrine of the meaning of infancy," his views are here reprinted in detail. The material consists of an essay and an address. The first of these, "The Meaning ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske

... before the teacher engages in actual work in the schoolroom. When the solutions of these problems have become a part of his own mind, they will come to his rescue as occasion demands; and, although much must be learned by experience, a sound knowledge of the fundamental principles of education and teaching will always throw much light upon practical procedure. It is true that theory without practice is often visionary, but it is equally true that practice without any previous knowledge, or ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... in the season may see that, in a vast quantity of cases, the heroines of the night are just as sorrily off in bodily stamina as they are for intellectual ideas and interests. Here we again encounter the fundamental blunder, that it is only the outside about which we need concern ourselves. Let a woman be well dressed (or judiciously undressed), have bright eyes, a whitish skin, rounded outlines, and that suffices. All this a wise English mother will certainly ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... before us is whether Father, Son, and Holy Spirit may be predicated of the Divinity substantially or otherwise. And I think that the method of our inquiry must be borrowed from what is admittedly the surest source of all truth, namely, the fundamental doctrines of the catholic faith. If, then, I ask whether He who is called Father is a substance, the answer will be yes. If I ask whether the Son is a substance, the reply will be the same. So, ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... their superiors of details in outlining correspondence. It is not enough that bookkeepers know one or several systems of keeping business records, or that cashiers manipulate figures rapidly and well. More important than these fundamental requirements is the determination to grasp the details of the business as conducted in the office in which they find themselves and to adapt their work to the needs of the person whose work they do. General knowledge ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... there may be ideas and human history, two material things must first be present: human beings, and food and shelter for them. And the fundamental fact that is so seldom realized is, that where, by what means, and how much, food and shelter can be obtained, determines if, where, and how, man shall live, and the forms his social institutions ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... in fashioning a work, its technique, may be as incomprehensible and perplexed and difficult as its executants choose to make them. Technique is not the same as art. The only mystery of art is the mystery of all life itself. Accept life with its fundamental mysteries, with its wonders and glories, and we have the clue to art. But we miss the central fact of the whole matter if we do not perceive that art is only a means. It is by expression that we grow and so fulfill ourselves. The work itself which ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... people. Then followed Hesiod, Theognis, the Greek poets, and the fables of Aesop. [16] Reading, declamation, and music were closely interrelated. To appeal to the emotions and to stir the will along moral and civic lines was a fundamental purpose of the instruction (R. 5). A modern writer well characterizes the ancient instruction in literature in the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... topics, or do so only in a shamefaced manner. If any are bold enough to discuss the subject, they are at once set down as eccentric individuals of coarse and brutal propensities. This is an extraordinary instance in which, through sheer lack of reasoning, men unhappily lose sight of fundamental principles. When the Duke of Chou was minister under Ch'eng Wang, he regulated ceremonies and made music, and venerated the arts of scholarship and learning; yet when the barbarians of the River Huai revolted, [60] he sallied forth and chastised them. When Confucius held office under the Duke ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... Belgian and Dutch delegates. It provided for equal toleration for all creeds and a two Chamber Parliament where an equal number of deputies from both countries would sit. (This in spite of the fact that Belgium had 50 per cent. more inhabitants than Holland.) This Constitution or "fundamental law," as it was called, was adopted by the Dutch, but rejected by the Belgian States General. Instead of amending the law, the king considered abstentions as favourable votes and ignored all opposition, so that the new Constitution was passed, in spite of a strong adverse ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... church as represented in the State of Maryland, but you are here also as part of the assize of humanity, to remind yourselves of the things that are permanent and eternal, which if we do not translate into action we have failed in the fundamental things of our lives. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Mechanical Philosophy, explicating, by very Considerable Observations and Experiments, what may be, according to such Principles, conceived of the Nature and Origine of Qualities and Forms; the knowledge whereof, either makes or supposes the Fundamental and Useful part of Natural Philosophy. In doing of which, the Author, to have his way the clearer, writes rather for the Corpuscularian Philosophers (as he is pleased to call them) in General, than any {192} Party ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... super-natural. Some one says I know a hundred or a thousand soldiers who did not see it. A man may witness a murder. His evidence is accepted in the law courts. They do not call the hundred thousand people who did not see it in proof that no murder was perpetrated. Few people know the fundamental principles of ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... adopted. Now this is to a certain extent an error. There were certain institutions which from the very nature of their origin and of the principles on which they were based, must have been, at once in their idea and in their structure, opposed to the fundamental principle of feudalism. The Roman Church, for example, conformed itself to the forms and customs of this system, but never lost its structural unity and centralization, ideas founded on principles which stood in direct opposition to those of feudalism. So it was, though perhaps in a less ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams

... Sabbath-keeping. But then she had naturally such an instinct of arrangement that a scrap of ribbon, or the lace scarf my grandmother had given her, made so great a difference that she seemed to have an entire wardrobe at her command. No doubt a woman would have picked out the fundamental sameness at a glance. But it did very well for men, who only ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... Superficially, of course, as I have said, every child of talent becomes world-weary and sophisticated; the bright surface of the mind is dulled with things half-perceived. But this, the result of moving in an atmosphere of hectic brilliance, devoid of spiritual nourishment, is not fundamental: it is but a phase. Old-fashioned as the idea may be, it is still true that artificial excitement is useful, indeed necessary, to the artist; and conditions of life that would spoil or utterly destroy the common person are, to him, entirely innocuous, since he lives on and by ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... me," offered Patches abstractedly, "that education, as we call it, is a benefit only when it adds to one's life. If schooling or culture, or whatever you choose to term it, is permitted to rob one of the fundamental and essential elements of life, it is ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... Tropes against causality belong chronologically before the five Tropes of Agrippa, in the history of the development of sceptical thought. They have a much closer connection with the spirit of Scepticism than the Tropes of Agrippa, including, as they do, the fundamental thought of Pyrrhonism, i.e., that the phenomena ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick

... descries to be true: it is a "truism", and is necessarily the Fundamental Principle of Society throughout the universe. So that, summing up, we may define: "Rent" is "right", based on truth when paid to those by whose movements ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... to us rather "the groaning of this angel," this "watchman of the LORD" at the national subjection, the fiery martyrdoms, "the sobs and tears of the poor oppressed;" than the expression of any fundamental principle on which GOD has constituted human society. Intellectually, there is partiality, forgetfulness and disproportion in the argument. It applies as much to a Man as to a Woman, and more to a wicked than a good Woman. He started on the assumption that ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox

... little differences—as have most couples. Mostly, it is about wings. There seems to be a something fundamental about both Charles-Norton and Dolly which irresistibly makes them diverge on the question of the proper length of wings (male wings at least). For a time, in fact, during the first months of their intoxicating public success and before ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... propose to call it "The Limit," and so I drop it as a subject for further artistic, reference. It is invaluable, however, as an object lesson in showing the fatal results of the utter disregard of all those fundamental laws of balance, harmony, and unity so uniformly and persistently applied through the seriously designed main body of the Exposition. There is no harmony whatever in the Zone anywhere, either in the form, style, ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... not agreed as to how many elements or fundamental materials compose all substances. In fact this is one of the most difficult problems; some indeed hold that there remains no further hope of searching out the elements of substances. Poor comfort for those who feel their greatest pleasure in the ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele

... uneasily in his chair, to find a comfortable place to sit upon; "but as we have been for two days riding the hardest-backed horses over roads that were simply awful, and as previous to that time we had not taken any equestrian exercise for several years, there are some fundamental reasons—that is, reasons lying at the very base of things, (he shifted again)—why we should not be called upon to do another mile of horseback riding until Time has had an opportunity to exercise his soothing and healing influence, so to speak. Abe, ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... returned displeased. It is remarkable with what accuracy he pointed out the ultimate tendency of much that he saw. A close observer of current phases of society, and on the alert to explain them in the light of broad and fundamental principles of human progress, he had every opportunity for studying social life at the French capital. Unlike the younger men of his times, he was doubtful, and held his judgment in suspense. The ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke

... Funeral.—In Fig. 34 we have an exceedingly striking example of the advantage of knowledge, of the fundamental change produced in the man's attitude of mind by a clear understanding of the great laws of nature under which we live. Utterly different as they are in every respect of colour and form and meaning, these two thought-forms were seen simultaneously, ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... educated, and made grand by the influences of a divine Christianity. Those men were not mere colonists, nor were they limited in their patriotism. "No pent-up Utica" could confine their patriotism, for those men grasped the fundamental principle of human rights. Nay, they declared the ultimate truth of humanity, leaving nothing to added since, though a century has passed. Great modifications have come to the governments of Europe. Some changes ...
— 'America for Americans!' - The Typical American, Thanksgiving Sermon • John Philip Newman

... interest than what searching thought and lucid views, aptly expressed, ought of themselves to create. His subject, indeed—the laws by which human belief and the inquisition of truth are to be governed and directed—is both of that extensive and fundamental character, that it would be treated with success only by one who knew how to resist the temptations to digress, as well as how to apply himself with vigour to the solution of the various questions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... may lay down as our fundamental proposition that a hieroglyphic form of writing is better fitted to, and must properly, in the period of its natural development, accompany the imaginative processes of mind. Or, since imagination to our literal thought implies in some degree the fanciful (though wrongly so in essence), ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates

... now consider the formation and use of artillery on the field of battle. It may be laid down as a fundamental principle, that the fire of artillery should be directed on that part of the enemy's line which we design to pierce; for this fire will not only weaken this point, but will also aid the attack of the cavalry and ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... extent of sewers and paved streets. The aggregate of town debts in New England is vastly less than the aggregate for a similar population in the Middle States. The state constitutions of New England commonly relate to fundamental principles, since each district may protect itself by the town meeting; but outside New England, to assert the rights of localities, state constitutions usually perforce embody particulars. In their fire and police departments, and public school and water supply systems, New England towns lead ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan

... by me. It was copied into the Athenaeum of March 19. It must be said that if the manner in which algebra was presented to the learner had been true algebra, he would have been right: and if he had confined himself to protesting against the imposition of attraction as a fundamental part of the existence of matter, he would have been in unity with a great many, including Newton himself. I wish he had preferred amendment to rejection when he was a college tutor: he wrote and spoke English with a clearness ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... trouble," the doctor completed. "Our fundamental trouble. All our confidences and our accustomed adaptations are destroyed. We fit together no longer. We are—loose. We don't know where we are nor what to do. The psychology of the former time fails to give safe ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... not define its fundamental note—ever there, ever the same; big with a warning of quick-coming woe to many households; whose unheeded waves, slow but sure, and ominous as those that rolled on great occasions from le Bourdon de Notre Dame (the Big Ben of Paris), drove all over the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... the room with a jug of spring water. Bernard smiled, and Washington quickly caught his look and answered it: "This may seem a contradiction, but I think you must perceive that it is neither a crime nor an absurdity. When we profess, as our fundamental principle, that liberty is the inalienable right of every man, we do not include madmen or idiots; liberty in their hands would become a scourge. Till the mind of the slave has been educated to perceive ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... patient, deeply-feeling men, there were untold reserves of power and passion in the nature of Wardour Wentworth which might, for aught I knew to the contrary, tend naturally to and culminate in revenge. The wish to retaliate was, I knew, a fundamental fault in my own character, one I had often occasion to struggle with even in childhood, when Evelyn, my despot, was also my dependant, and generosity had been called to the aid of forbearance. Vengeance was a fierce thirst in my Judaic heart which only Christian streams ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... sympathizers here at the North—who constantly assert that secession is simply a geographical necessity, and slavery only a secondary cause—that the South will, in fact, eventually emancipate, and that race and latitude are the great fundamental causes of national difference, constituting us in fact 'two peoples.' How completely false and puerile are all these assertions, appears from an examination of the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... bound the States together, II. faults of, II. advantages of, II. propositions to reform the, II. no fundamental law, II. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... often large and beautiful. It is always packed with a thousand or its multiple of other crystals into veins of a few inches thick; and crystals are obtained by carefully breaking with edge of the cold chisel these masses down to the fundamental form shown. As the masses are never secured by the miners, they can always be picked from the piles of debris around the shafts and the dumps, and afford some little instruction as to the manner in which a mineral is built up ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... matter of form. The main fundamental manful instinct David had—the idea that there should not be any more people dying on crosses than could be helped—that collective society should take hold of Evil and set it down hard in its chair and make it cry seems to many of us absolutely sound. Of course, we feel that it is ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... fellowship and it has become the symbol now for all our intercourse together. If I didn't understand the things he said, I did the mood he was in. He gave me two very broad ideas in that talk and the talks I have mingled with it; he gave them to me very clearly and they have remained fundamental in my mind; one a sense of the extraordinary confusion and waste and planlessness of the human life that went on all about us; and the other of a great ideal of order and economy which he called variously Science and Civilisation, and which, though I do not remember that he ever ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... government was America's "most conspicuous failure." The mayor of Toledo, writing in 1907, says, "There has been a pessimism, almost enthusiastic, about the city." These failures are due not to any lack of desire for good government, not to any fundamental evils of cities, but to the fact that municipal reform, like the crusade against alcohol, has been based upon emotionalism, not upon definite proof. Reformers have been unable to lead in the right direction, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... hardly possible that men of eminent attainments in the profession should so far forget one of the most fundamental and universally recognized laws of organic life as to promulgate the fallacy here stated. The fundamental law to which we refer is, that all vital phenomena are accompanied by, and dependent upon, molecular or atomic changes; ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... of what may be called the map of dramatic literature, we return to the examination of its fundamental ideas. Since, as we have already shown, visible representation is essential to the very form of the drama; a dramatic work may always be regarded from a double point of view,—how far it is poetical, and how far it is theatrical. The two are by no means inseparable. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... had been so full and quiet that Mrs. Austin languished under the separation. In their last years, they would sit all evening in their own drawing-room hand in hand: two old people who, for all their fundamental differences, had yet grown together and become all the world in each other's eyes and hearts; and it was felt to be a kind release, when eight months after, on January 14, 1885, Eliza Barron followed Alfred Austin. ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... himself picturesque, acute, with a keen knowledge of character and a taste for originality, saw material for a useful supporter—fearless, independent, with a gift for saying ironical things, and some primitive and fundamental ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Chao, "tell me, doctor, how many fundamental rules there are for finding the correct amounts ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... of the fundamental principles in British legislature which always supposes a man to be innocent until he has been proved guilty. It practically put the whole of Cape Colony under the thumb of De Beers. The statute was not wisely framed. It could be invoked to remove persons ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill

... Commonwealth, as well as those of the United States, have voluntarily formed such constitutions of government, as they have judged well adapted to secure their own political safety.—These Constitutions are founded upon the same principles; and they avow the great and fundamental political truth that all power is derived from the people. As these and all new forms of Government which recognize principles, never reduced to practice until the period of our illustrious Revolution must be in their nature experiments, the provision of ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... halfpenny, so long as the sporting news was put there. It simply was indifferent. It failed to see the importance to such an immense district of having two flourishing and mutually-opposing daily organs. The fundamental boy ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... know that nine minus eight equals one. And that, you see, is a fact of the highest importance. Life becomes impossible if you are ignorant of that fundamental truth." ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... relations to Europe,—Mr. Sumner proceeds to present the grand duty we owe, not less to ourselves than to Europe, of giving to the struggling nations an example of government true to the memories of our National Anniversary, and to the fundamental ideas of civil freedom "implied in an independent, but rigidly responsible judiciary, and a complete separation of the legislative and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... is the fruit of long experience and reflection. It has two fundamental ideas—the study of nature, and the study of the psychology of man in health ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... you are speaking for the time being without precise knowledge of all the pertinent material, as we say in science. During my study of the cells of plants and animals, I came to see that a so-called fundamental procreation was out of the question. I gave expression to this view in a circle of professional colleagues. They laughed at me. To-day it is no longer possible to oppose the theory I then advanced. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... leave the real issue untouched. The real ground for the poet's faith in his moral intuitions lies in his subscription to the old Platonic doctrine of the trinity,—the fundamental identity of the good, the true ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... which extends from the northern boundary of Assynt to near Applecross. But though I formed at this time my first acquaintance with the group, it was not until many years after that I had an opportunity of determining the relations of their component beds to each other, and to the fundamental ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... this class to legislate for their own interests were severely investigated, it might appear upon just and rational principles that the landlord is nothing more nor less than a pensioner upon popular credulity, and lives upon a fundamental error in society created by the class to which he belongs. Think of this, gentlemen, and pay ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... chancel with a longitudinal axis, or of a nave and chancel whose longitudinal axis is intersected by a transverse axis across transepts. Variations, no doubt, occur; but these will never carry us far from one or other of these fundamental plans. The aisled basilica of the continent found no scope for itself in Saxon England; and it was through an interval of aisleless building that the aisled plan eventually became acclimatised, and then in a form which bears only ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson

... states on the fly anymore) are only part of the story. Another part of it is that radio-frequency leakage from the lamp wiring was beginning to be a problem as far back as transistor machines. But the most fundamental fact is that there are very few signals slow enough to blink an LED these days! With slow CPUs, you could watch the bus register or instruction counter tick, but at 33/66/150MHz ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... the deceptions which Elizabeth Hunter was called upon to practise, however, she followed the natural trend of her character in ways which proved how fundamental truth and outrightness were in her make-up. Having discussed Hugh with Luther, she told Hugh that she had done so. This gave Hugh a wrong impression of affairs between the two which she was obliged ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... answer it would require at least 200 folio pages! If you could see how often I have rewritten some pages you would know how anxious I am to arrive as near as I can to the truth. I lay great stress on what I know takes place under domestication; I think we start with different fundamental notions on inheritance. I find it is most difficult, but not, I think, impossible to see how, for instance, a few red feathers appearing on the head of a male bird, and which are at first transmitted ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... says Lincoln, "for the Constitution to contain any provision expressly forbidding the disintegration of the state; perpetuity and the right to maintain self-existence will be considered as a fundamental law of all national government. If the theory be accepted that the United States was an association or federation of communities, the creation or continued existence of such federation must rest upon contract; and before such contract can ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam

... of the convention as its initial proceeding to declare on behalf of the people of the State their submission to the Constitution of the United States, and to incorporate in their own organic law three fundamental provisions: First, No one who has held any office under the Confederate Government except civil offices merely ministerial, or military office below the rank of colonel, shall vote for or be a member of the Legislature, or shall vote for or be elected ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... balustraded balcony and its bases of massive carving. Nine years later a new Archbishop added to the north side a square XVII century chapel, richly ornamental in itself, but entirely out of harmony with the fundamental style of the church. Other chapels, less distinguished, which have been added from time to time, line the nave both north and south, and all are excrescent to the original plan. Of the exterior, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... of one supreme law, which governed the whole race and dated from the lost Golden Age, came to the knowledge of the lawyers of Rome. They proceeded to identify the two really different concepts, and evolved for themselves the final notion of a fundamental rule, essential to all moral action. In time, therefore, this supposed Natural Law, from its venerable antiquity and universal acceptance, acquired an added sanction and actually began to be held ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... measures against slavery where it exists, but that he would oppose its establishment where it exists not,—that moment they broke loose from what was, at least, a very solemn contract, and formed themselves into a Confederation professing as its fundamental principle not merely the perpetuation, but the indefinite extension of slavery. And the doctrine is loudly preached through the new Republic, that slavery, whether black or white, is a good in itself, and the proper condition of the working ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill

... held the theory of a contract between King and People. They voted that King James, "having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of this kingdom by breaking the original contract between King and People, and by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the Government, and that the throne is thereby vacant." But in the Lords where the Tories were still in the ascendant the resolution was ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green

... Of what does this impetus consist? Where are we to seek it? It is here that Saint Simon comes back to the point of view of all the Utopians, to the point of view of human nature. Thus, according to him, the essential fundamental cause of the French Revolution was a change in the temporal and spiritual forces, and, in order to direct it wisely and conclude it rightly, it "was necessary to put into direct political activity the forces which had become preponderant." ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... and adventurous life had affected him as this had done? What were the ethics of a love that rose purely above physical attraction—environment—temperament; a love that grew and strengthened and absorbed until it ceased to be a part of life and became life itself—the main issue, the fundamental essence? ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... stress the worthy man had laid on the verb "float!" And it was true! All, yes! all these savants had forgotten this fundamental law, namely, that on account of its specific lightness, the projectile, after having been drawn by its fall to the greatest depths of the ocean, must naturally return to the surface. And now it was floating quietly at the mercy of ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... upon which all should agree, and these should be pressed to the forefront, so as to attract and hold the attention of the people, in place of the divergent details upon which they disagree. If these fundamental laws and principles are thoroughly studied and well defined, it may be found that they would explain the discrepancies between the different theories, and that under certain conditions, one plan is best, and that under different conditions another ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... agree with you, Lord Maltenby," the Bishop said firmly. "The very danger of the man's doctrines lies in their clarity of thought, their extraordinary proximity to the fundamental ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... precious metals to attain to great prosperity than for a rich man to secure eternal felicity. Witness, for instance, the sluggish growth and degenerate civilization of the South American states. But timber is a fundamental element of colonial growth. The mines of Potosi cannot compare with it in value. An abundance of timber and a superabundance of it are two very different things. Some of the Middle, and what were once Western States, were originally covered with forests. So of the greater part of New ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... added lustre. Our Ptolemaic theory of society is necessitated by our tenacity to the personal standpoint. This fixed idea of ours causes all else seemingly to rotate about it. Such an egoistic conception is quite foreign to our longitudinal antipodes. However much appearances may agree, the fundamental principles upon which family consideration is based are widely different in the two hemispheres. For the far-eastern social universe turns ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... observed many strong indications that it is wholly likely to disappear. For example, to come at once to the foundations, I read in the papers the other day, and I am credibly informed it is true, that the head of Yale College voted to install a minister whose opinions upon the vital, pivotal, fundamental doctrine of eternal damnation are unsound. [Laughter.] Then, again, I look at the annual reports of the Bureau of Education on this department at Washington, and I read there for some years that Harvard College was unsectarian; and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... emphasis which our civilization has given to human rights and individual freedom and the equality of men. India has thus far denied to the individual those rights and liberties which are deemed elementary and fundamental in the West. Its emphasis has always been upon the rights and privileges of Society as a corporate body. It has ignored entirely the claims of the individual and has prevented him from enjoying his inalienable rights in any division of society. This may be seen in the two great departments of ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... hand, James should attempt to promote the interest of his Church by violating the fundamental laws of his kingdom and the solemn promises which he had repeatedly made in the face of the whole world, it could hardly be doubted that the charges which it had been the fashion to bring against the Roman ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... there is in life is one's fundamental choice between the spiritual and the material. After that choice is made, the die of life is cast. Events play upon that choice their curious pattern, bringing such griefs and joys, such calamities ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... the exact grammatical relation of these clauses to one another, with which I need not trouble you, because it does not affect their substantial meaning. However we solve the mere grammatical questions, the fundamental significance of the whole remains unaffected, and it is this: that Christ's sufferings and death were, in one aspect, for the purpose that the world might know His love to the Father, and, in another aspect, were obedience to the Father's commandment. And ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... getting to its foundations. But I feel on perfectly solid ground in Medo- Persian or Scythian. Difficulties in them are like difficulties in Greek or Sanscrit: that is all. In the Assyrian, I do not yet know whether to believe at least half of the characters, and many fundamental alleged principles; and I get no ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... diseases, which naturally follows from the fundamental principles of the doctrine, and which is guided by the state and degree of excitement, is widely different from that of former nosologists, who have arranged or classed them according to symptoms, which have already been shown to be fallacious; and which method ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... this leading idea." "Rationalism tends to destroy revealed religion altogether, by obliterating the whole distinction between the human and the divine. If it retain any portion of revealed truth, as such, it does so, not in consequence, but in defiance, of its fundamental principle." ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... can't afford to have you gambling and cheating Normals," he went on. "One of the Lodge's fundamental rules is that no psi may use his powers to the detriment of Normals. Lefty's big scene at Nick's fixed it so you won't be welcome in a big-time poker game anywhere in town. We did that deliberately. And we're telling you to quit gambling, ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett

... Psychology, Oct., 1906), "jealousy seems such a necessary psychological accompaniment to biological behavior, amidst competitive struggle, that one is tempted to consider it genetically among the oldest of the emotions, synonymous almost with the will to live, and to make it scarcely less fundamental than fear or anger. In fact, jealousy readily passes into anger, and is itself a brand of fear.... In sociability and mutual aid we see the other side of the shield; but jealousy, however anti-social it may be, retains a function in zooelogical economy: viz., to conserve the individual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... rubs a stick of sealing-wax on the sleeve of his jacket, then holds it over dusty shreds or bits of straw to see them fly up and cling to the wax, repeats without knowing it the fundamental experiment of electricity. In rubbing the wax on his coat he has electrified it, and the dry dust or bits of wool are attracted to it by reason of a mysterious process which is ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... connected by the same ties which link together all the phenomena of nature. The classification of the species, which must be considered as the fundamental part of botany, and the study of which is rendered attractive and easy by the introduction of natural methods, is to the geography of plants what descriptive mineralogy is to the indication of the rocks constituting the exterior crust ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... endeavoured to occupy the place left vacant by the gradual decay of the national religion. The individual, seeking for support and spiritual guidance, found it, or at least imagined he had found it, in philosophy. The conduct of life became the fundamental problem, and philosophy assumed a practical aspect. It aimed at finding a complete art of living. It had a thoroughly ethical stamp, and became more and more a rival of and opposed to religion. Such were ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... the municipal government being, in its personnel, at the moment, incompetent to preserve the fundamental principles on which it was established, permitted a strike of railroad employees to grow without restriction as to the observance of law and order until it became an insurrection. Four million ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church

... urged to do so by friends, with whose views and wishes, ordinarily, it were a pleasure to comply. In my letters and speeches, I have generally aimed to discuss the question of Slavery in the light of fundamental principles, and upon facts, notorious and open to all; making, I trust, no more of the fact of my own former enslavement, than circumstances seemed absolutely to require. I have never placed my opposition to slavery on a basis so narrow as my own enslavement, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... woman run after styles and periods of which we know nothing? Why should we not be content with the fundamental things? The formal French room is very delightful in the proper place but when it is unsuited to the people who must live in it it is as bad as a sham room. The woman who wears paste jewels is not so conspicuously wrong as the woman who plasters herself with ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... so much for the soul as captain's work. Consequently you will have to give him at least as much as the captain unless you definitely wish him to be a lower creature, in which case the sooner you are hanged as an abortionist the better. That is the fundamental argument. ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... still in a certain sense at least, he regards individual facts and the details of experience as of little value, unconnected with the principles which he had laid down as the basis of all medical reasoning. In this fundamental point, therefore, the method pursued by Galen appears to have been directly the reverse of that which we now consider as the correct method of scientific investigation; and yet, such is the force of natural genius, that in most instances he attained the ultimate object in view, although by ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... the story, of which it is the real hero or heroine. This society was doubtless selected for characteristic illustration as being the most advanced in the progress of "modern ideas." Thus, for a complete perception of its writer's fundamental purpose, "The Parisians" should be read in connection with "Chillingly," and these two books in connection with "The Coming Race." It will then be perceived that through the medium of alternate fancy, sentiment, and observation, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... February, 1796. No person shall be admitted into the Freshman class unless he be versed in Virgil, Cicero's Select Orations, the Greek Testament, be able accurately to translate English into Latin, and also understands the fundamental rules of Arithmetic."[32] ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... form, may mark the inspiration of thought or incident common to them all, and may find an interest in refreshing what may be an old acquaintance with that Book of Books which gives with classic truth the fundamental subject matter for all deep thought ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... this is true, we can hardly help inclining more or less to one or other of the theories named, in reference to the future. But in this, as I have just said, we ought to be very charitable with each other, as to our special conviction. If it were a fundamental question, likely the Word of God would have made it plain. But it is not a fundamental question. We may take whichever view seems the most agreeable with Scripture or with reason; and for so doing we ought not to ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... education, they must be reckoned with in making the next steps. In the chapter on education we shall discuss certain academic peculiarities of women's minds, but here we are interested in seeing what fundamental differences characterize ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... American thought is yet prepared for, but that is a difference not of quality but of degree. And even the appendix, which at a hasty glance may seem to be no more than the discussion of British parochial boundaries, does indeed develop principles of primary importance in the fundamental schism of American politics between the local State government and the central power. So much of apology and explanation I owe to the reader, to the ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... is a necessary part of those laws, just as the action of all surrounding organisms is one of the agencies in organic development. But even if my particular view should not be the true one, the difficulties I have put forward remain, and I think prove, that some more general and more fundamental law underlies that of "natural selection." The law of "unconscious intelligence" pervading all organic nature, put forth by Dr. Laycock and adopted by Mr. Murphy, is such a law; but to my mind it has the double ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... weir is a matter of considerable concern, since its ability to carry off the high water is fundamental. The capacity of such waste weirs depends on the volume of flood-water, and this, in turn, depends on the area of the watershed. This volume cannot be predicted with any absolute certainty, but, ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden



Words linked to "Fundamental" :   harmonic, significant, factor, of import, basic, important



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org