"Axiomatical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Darius. The doctor was more communicative, and they were both cheerfully matter-of-fact concerning it. There it was, to be made the best of! And that Darius could never handle business again, and that in about two years his doom would be accomplished—these were basic facts, axiomatic. The doctor had seen his patient in the garden, and he suggested that if Darius could be persuaded to interest himself in gardening... They discussed his medicine, his meals, his digestion, and the great, impossible dream of 'taking him away,' 'out of it all.' And every now and then ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of this war, it is necessary to refer to two incidents of Japan's foreign relations, both of which preceded her struggle with Russia. The first was the restoration of her judicial autonomy. It has always been regarded as axiomatic that the subjects or citizens of Western countries, when they travel or reside in Oriental territories, should be exempted from the penalties and processes of the latter's criminal laws. In other words, there is reserved to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... surprised. She had thought it axiomatic that people kept their appointments promptly. "Oh, I'm always on time," ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... regard as axiomatic. It is this. You will nowhere find an adult offspring which reproduces in any marked degree the physical features of one parent displaying in any marked degree the mental features of the other. That man whose external ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... generations ago was probably not aware that he was an extreme individualist. The average citizen of to-day is not conscious of the fact that he has ceased to be one. The man of three generations ago had certain ideas which he held to be axiomatic, such as that his house was his castle, and that property was property and that what was his was his. But these were to him things so obvious that he could not conceive any reasonable person doubting them. So, too, with the man of to-day. He has come to believe in such things as old age pensions ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... honor of women and the jealousy of men. Chastity for the unmarried meant—no one; for the married—none but the husband. The mores extended to take in this doctrine, and it has passed into the heart of the mores of all civilized peoples, to whom it seems axiomatic or "natural." It has often been declared absurd that sex honor, especially for women, should be made to depend on a negative. It seems to make an ascetic and arbitrary standard for everyday life. In fact, however, the negation is imposed by the nature of the sex passion and by the conditions ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... essays which follow "The Over-Soul," "Circles," "Intellect," "Art," would furnish us a harvest of good sayings, some of which we should recognize as parts of our own (borrowed) axiomatic wisdom. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a painful heart process was going on. Sunk in a deep, capacious chair, with head resting upon his hand, he set in order before himself the axiomatic truths he ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... the governor-general's task was a campaign of education in the ABC of responsible government. Those elementary ideas of party government now regarded as axiomatic had to be taught painfully to our rude forefathers in legislation. That the government should have a definite head or leader in the Assembly, who should speak for the government, introduce and defend ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... and because it is aesthetic it is the most human, the most permanently pregnant of all philosophies. Much labour has been spent on the examination of the identity which Plato established between the good and the beautiful. It is labour lost, for that identity is axiomatic, absolute, irreducible. The Greeks knew by instinct that it is so, and in their common speech the word for a gentleman was ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... axiomatic. Brazil grows coffee and makes no machinery. We make machinery and grow no coffee. She needs the fabrics of our forges and factories, and we need the fruit of her tropical soil. We agree to concessions for her coffee and she agrees ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... recently published, suggested that the belief that God is Love is not axiomatic. Many of us take it for granted, as the point at which religion naturally begins; but, as he emphasized, it is not an obvious truth; it is something of which we have to be convinced, something that has to be made good to men. Unless we bear this in mind, we shall ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... them were heirs to property, others had definite expectations; yet others either possessed names that were known in the world, or a most robust belief in their destiny and a fixed resolution to circumvent the law. Lucien, too, believed in his future on the strength of various profound axiomatic sayings of Blondet's: "Everything comes out all right at last—If a man has nothing, his affairs cannot be embarrassed—We have nothing to lose but the fortune that we seek—Swim with the stream; it will take you somewhere—A clever man ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... said. He smiled archly. "Trying out your Opinioner's methods, aren't you? Well, even a child knows that our civilization is based upon trust, not collateral. It is axiomatic that even a stranger is to be trusted until he has ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... is brought out in the second quotation—that profits directly produced by the war are not limited to the period of the war. This again is really axiomatic, being only another form of the platitude that it takes longer to construct than to destroy: but it means that even a short war of sufficient intensity will ensure a long period of profits, and therefore ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... truisms and verbal propositions, his dogmatic assertions and unreal demonstrations, savour more of theology than of political science, while his quasi-mathematical method of reasoning from abstract formulae, assumed to be axiomatic, gives a deceptive air of exactness and cogency which is apt to be mistaken for sound logic. He supports glaring paradoxes with an array of ingenious arguments, and with fatal facility and apparent precision he deduces from his unfounded premises ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... state of affairs, and in this case the reality proves the possibility. "This primal phenomenon," he says, "overflows all explanation. It has, as the fundamental condition of all spiritual life, a universal axiomatic character." Again he says, "The wonder of wonders is the human made divine, through God's superior power." "The problem surpasses the capacity of the human reason." For taking up this position, Eucken is sharply ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... in England before 1648—the date of the translation of Weigel's Life of Christ—which more closely approached the Quaker position. That religion must have an inward seat and origin; that divine things must be learned of God, are taken as axiomatic truths throughout this book. If a man is to see, he must have eyes of his own; if he is to teach, he must have the Word of God within him. People say that "there can be no true Faith without outward preaching ministry." That ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... subject of pedagogy as on other subjects, are constantly expressed and re-expressed, shows among other things that reasonable, or practically untried education has certain principles which are as axiomatic as those of mathematics. Every reasonable thinking man must as certainly discover anew these pedagogical principles, as he must discover anew the relation between the angles of a triangle. Spencer's book it is true has not laid again the foundation of education. It can rather be called the crown ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... to be by nature unadapted for jollity, if not positively averse to it. This supposition is not without some reasonable foundation, and the stranger may be readily excused for adopting it as an axiomatic truth. Busy calculation and restless labor appear at first to be the grand elements of American life; mirth is apparently excluded, as the superfluous members of his equations are eliminated by the algebraist. Fun is not practical enough for the American, and subserves none of his profitable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... even those who in theory suspect its validity. For we are a moving people. We have known little stasis in the centuries of our presence on this continent, and each generation of us is imbued anew in childhood with certain axiomatic ideas; movement is forward, growth is up, construction is better than vacancy, not to make economic use of something is to waste it. These ideas linger in our reactions: "You can't," the saying goes, "stand ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... Christ's nature and office determine our relation to Him and our whole cast of life. True, we may say that He is Lord, and not be His disciples, but we are not His disciples as He would have us unless His Messiahship stands out clear and axiomatic in our thoughts of Him. The conviction must pass into feeling, and thence into life, but it must underlie all real discipleship. Doctrine is not Christianity, but it is the foundation of Christianity. The Apostolic confession here ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... holds as good in a general application as in her own particular. Which rightly infers that she sees things in their principles; that is, her thoughts touch the pith of whatever matter she takes in hand; while at the same time broad axiomatic notes of discourse drop from her with an ease which shows that her mind is thoroughly at home in them. For this cause, her feelings, strong as they are, never so get the upper hand as to beguile her into any self-delusion; ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and consistent ideas; they perceive the logical connection of these ideas, and advocate them in a very cogent and powerful manner; and they propose to push them with determination and zeal. Concede their premises, and it is impossible to deny their conclusions; and since these premises are axiomatic truths with the great majority of Protestant Christians, the effect of the vigorous campaign on which they are entering cannot be small or despicable. The very respect with which we were compelled to regard them only increases our ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... cannot help believing them, and that they are indispensable to science and to consistent thought. Logic, then, may be briefly defined as the science of proof with respect to qualitative laws and propositions, except those that are axiomatic. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... which underlay all other questions, down to the Civil War, was the determination of the seat of sovereignty. Hamilton and the Federalists held it to be axiomatic that, if the federal government were to be more than a shadow, it must interpret the meaning of the instrument which created it, and, if so, that it must signify its decisions through the courts. Only in this ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... sidelight on this question came in rather a surprising manner. It was taken for granted, almost as axiomatic, that if the conditions of savage life were such as to discourage, if not prevent, tuberculosis, certainly, then, the race which had been exposed to these conditions for countless generations would have a high degree of resisting power to the disease. But what an awakening ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... master. It is therefore a mark of inferiority, and therefore comes to be accounted unworthy of man in his best estate. By virtue of this tradition labour is felt to be debasing, and this tradition has never died out. On the contrary, with the advance of social differentiation it has acquired the axiomatic force due to ancient ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... place, that primordial attribute of the complex vision which we commonly name conscience. We are not concerned here with the world-old discussion as to the "origin" of conscience. Conscience, from the point of view we are now considering, is just as fundamental and axiomatic as ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... It was axiomatic that there had to be some sort of vertical structure to society, naturally. A child can't do the work of an adult, and a beginner can't be as good as an old hand. Aside from the fact that it was actually impossible to force everyone into a common ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... motto upon a little pencil-case contained in the small work-case Emily has given me. She had it engraved on the seal, and though it is not altogether so congenial a motto to me as Arnold and Robertson's Christian device "Forward!" (and is moreover axiomatic rather than hortatory), I use it partly for her sake, and partly because it ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the thought forces itself home to us that the idea of natural death, as we now conceive it, came to primitive man as a relatively late scientific induction. This thought seems almost startling, so axiomatic has the conception "man is mortal" come to appear. Yet a study of the ideas of existing savages, combined with our knowledge of the point of view from which historical peoples regard disease, make it more probable that the primitive conception of human life did not include ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... this question I think it proper to submit a few axiomatic or common-sense truths which are universally admitted by ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... exacerbated opposition, is a strong argument in its favour. It is exactly analogous to the way in which the truths of astronomy and of geology have triumphed over universal opposition. They were once anathematised as "infidel"; they are now accepted as axiomatic. I cannot name a single student or professor of any eminence in Great Britain who does not accept, with more or less modification, the main conclusions of ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... judgment, it has been rendered impregnable. In the early part of the last century, the ecclesiastical mind in this country was much exercised by the question, not exactly of miracles, the occurrence of which in biblical times was axiomatic, but by the problem: When did miracles cease? Anglican divines were quite sure that no miracles had happened in their day, nor for some time past; they were equally sure that they happened sixteen ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of the aim is a matter that gives rise to a good bit of disagreement. There are those who maintain that if the aim announces the subject as a sort of heading that is sufficient. Others contend that the aim should crystallize into axiomatic form the thought of the lesson. Of course, the real force of the aim lies in its serving as the focus of thought. The wording of it is of secondary importance. And yet it is very excellent practice to reduce to formal statement the truth to be presented. ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... themselves, and as their own rewards:[17] the one hunting for a principle or a "divine method;" the other sapping or shelling from a distance, and for his pleasure, a position, or gaining a point, or settling a rule, or verifying a problem, or getting axiomatic and proverbial. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... with the complex and highly sensitive nerve centers of the genital organs. Mutilation of the genital nerve centers, therefore, invariably affects the brain, and thus the intellectual and emotional life of a woman. It is almost axiomatic that a woman whose uterus or ovaries have been removed or mutilated is afterward mentally and emotionally more or less abnormal. Nervousness, irritability and only too often nervous prostration and insanity are ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... axiomatic to say that a system of wealth production which cultivated creative effort would yield more in general terms of life as well as in terms of goods, than a system like our own which exploits creative power. It is obvious that the disintegrating tendency ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... 'gentlemen' it is often said that their education becomes their curse. Here is another little subterfuge. This is one of those taking expressions which are repeated from parrot to magpie till they seem to acquire axiomatic force. It is such men's ignorance—their technical ignorance—that is their curse. Education of any kind never was, and never can be, a curse to its possessor; it is a curse only to the person whose interest lies in exploiting its possessor. Erudition, even in the humblest sphere of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... charges the price system with being a fundamental cause of war, and says that it must now come up for radical examination and perhaps modification. The theory of the rights of property and contract which have been taken as axiomatic premises by economic science may itself fail, or at least be thrown open to question. Either the price system will go, or there will be wars between nations in the future as there have been in the past, because ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... in England, argued that the Stamp Act was clearly within the power of Parliament, while Lord Camden, whose opinion was by no means to be despised, staked his reputation that the law was unconstitutional. Mr. Grenville, in his precise way, laid it down as axiomatic that since "Great Britain protects America, America is therefore bound to yield obedience"; if not; he desired to know when Americans were emancipated. Whereupon Mr. Pitt, springing up, desired to know when they were made slaves. The Great Commoner rejoiced that America had resisted, ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... influence of alcohol by means of the alcoholic death-rate or by the rate of convictions for drunkenness will not readily accept the doctrine that alcohol is a greater enemy of women than of men. Yet assuredly this is true. It is an axiomatic and first principle that whatever injures one sex injures the other, and whilst drinking on the part of women at present injures men as a whole in comparatively small degree, the consumption of alcohol by men works enormous injury upon women indirectly, in addition to ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... property, is reactionary and false to the principle which it has always implicitly or explicitly maintained, of the right of each and every individual to a full and free development. In so far as Liberalism does this, in so far as it assumes as axiomatic a state of society based on unrestricted freedom of private property, and proceeds to adjust social arrangements solely or primarily in the interests of the owners of private property, in so far ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... the society by Huxley was to show that many of the axioms of current speculation are far from being axiomatic, and that dogmatic assertion on some of the cardinal points of metaphysic is unwarranted by the evidence of fact. To find these seeming axioms set aside as unproven, was, it appears from his "Life," disconcerting ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... practice that is considered absolutely necessary by Hindus of one corner of India is unknown or ignored by some other corner. It is true that the various schools of Hindu philosophy agree in regarding a few fundamental ideas as axiomatic, but philosophy is not religion. The Mohammedans are one because they have a common religion and a common law. The Christians are one, because at least one point of faith is common. But the Hindus have neither faith, nor practice, nor law to distinguish them from others. I should therefore ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... that this great and important work should depend upon the various casualties and vicissitudes incident to the natural or official life of a single officer of the Army. This would be to make the work subordinate to the man, and not the man to the work, and to reverse our great axiomatic rule of "principles, not men." I desire to express no opinion upon the subject. Should the question ever arise, it shall have ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... allied fleets had started their bombardment of the Turkish forts at the Dardanelles they were breaking certain well-defined rules which had been axiomatic with naval authorities. The greatest of modern battleships were designed to fight with craft of their like, but not to take issue with land fortifications. For weeks, while the fleets succeeded in silencing for a time some of the Turkish forts, it was thought that this rule no longer held good. But ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the human mind is that the wish is parent to the thought. No matter what they want to do, the sanction always comes. They are superficial casuists. They are Jesuitical. They even see their way to doing wrong that right may come of it. One of the pleasant and axiomatic fictions they have created is that they are superior to the rest of mankind in wisdom and efficiency. Therefrom comes their sanction to manage the bread and butter of the rest of mankind. They have even resurrected the theory of the divine right of kings—commercial ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... While the deductive, axiomatic or intuitive, scholastic or introspective methods of inquiry prevailed in the intellectual world, systems of philosophy, psychology and theology were built up according to the peculiar subjective nature of their author, and ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... this day whom ye will serve." Cleanse your mind of the cobwebs which spurious "compounds" engender. Before considering a subject that is unworthy [15] of thought, take in this axiomatic truism: "Trust her not, she's fooling thee;" and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... has prima facie claims upon us, so imposing, that it can only be rejected on the ground of those claims being nothing more than imposing, that is, being false. As to our own countries, it occupies our language, it meets us at every turn in our literature, it is the secret assumption, too axiomatic to be distinctly professed, of all our writers; nor can we help assuming it ourselves, except by the most unnatural vigilance. Whoever philosophizes, starts with it, and introduces it, when he will, without ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... addresses give us only an imperfect reflection of the style of Mr. Lincoln's oratory during this period, they nevertheless show its essential characteristics, a pervading clearness of analysis, and that strong tendency to axiomatic definition which gives so many of his sentences their convincing force and durable value. They also show us the combination, not often found in such happy balance, of the politician's discernment of fact with the statesman's wisdom of theory—how present forces of national life ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... race, and to the disclosure of these secrets we may look with confidence for the inspiration of a new literature. But in politics Ireland has no secrets. All her cards are on the table, decipherable at the first glance. Her political demand combines the lucidity of an invoice with the axiomatic rectitude of the Ten Commandments. There is no doubt about what she wants, and none about why she ought to have it. In that sense the case for Home Rule is made, and this book, having justified its title, ought to come to an end. But convention prescribes ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... knowledge. There are some things which we know to be true, and there are others of which we say we believe them to be true. There are certain truths which are termed axiomatic. When the terms in which they are expressed are understood, the truth they convey is at once admitted. We know that two and two make four, we know that two straight lines cannot enclose a space; but we do not ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... to conceive," says Mr. Mill, very properly, "is in no case to be received as a criterion of axiomatic truth." What modern in his senses would ever think of disputing this truism? The only wonder with us must be, how it happened that Mr. Mill conceived it necessary even to hint at any thing so obvious. So far good—but let us turn over another paper. What have we here?—"Contradictories ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... moral and religious convictions and education. If these are false, the political society will be violent, disorderly, and abnormal; if true, the State is calm, prosperous, strong and happy. If these propositions be true, and I claim they are as axiomatic and undeniable as any proposition in Euclid—yea more so, for they are the maxims of inspired wisdom—how immeasurably important ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... the association, gave a brief resume of the work during its one year of existence. Colonel Henry Logan of Boulder (formerly of Illinois), made a manly and telling speech in favor of a measure which he called one of axiomatic justice. Mrs. Wright of New York, after a piquant address, announced the meeting of the convention for the next day. On the following morning a business session was held, and officers elected for the year.[489] In the afternoon speeches were made by Dr. Crary, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... product, so far as he really knew it, of his own lonely thinking power—of himself, there, thinking: as being zero without him: and as possessing a perfectly homogeneous unity in that fact. "Things that have nothing in common with each other," said the axiomatic reason, "cannot be understood or explained by means of each other." But to pure reason things discovered themselves as being, in their essence, thoughts:—all things, even the most opposite things, mere transmutations ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... limited class, and the complicated rights sanctioned by law in one plot of land, are considered of no validity as against the natural right of the new-born baby. I do not see this theory to be self- evident: on the other hand the supporters of it always give it as fundamental, axiomatic; they no doubt presume rightly that the land is limited, and that if one man holds more than his arithmetical share, he must push out somebody else from his arithmetical share: while a man who keeps a hundred pocket-knives does not perceptibly hinder other people having ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... replaced Cuvier's doctrine of the forms of life upon earth coming about through a series of successive catastrophes. Lyell, in the face of the whole scientific world of his day, insisted on the gradual and uniform development of the earth's surface. Half the scientific doctrines now accepted as axiomatic were bitterly denounced when they were first suggested ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... been to most of these men axiomatic that doctrine has only relative truth. Doctrine is but a composite of the content of the religious consciousness with materials which the intellect of a given man or age or nation in the total view of life affords. As such, doctrine is necessary and inevitable for all those who in any measure ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... human [74] conduct. Ethics would thus become applied Natural History. In fact, a confused employment of the maxim, in this sense, has done immeasurable mischief in later times. It has furnished an axiomatic foundation for the philosophy of philosophasters and for the moralizing of sentimentalists. But the Stoics were, at bottom, not merely noble, but sane, men; and if we look closely into what they really meant by this ill-used phrase, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... veneered by education and environment. Like the hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who in his father's day had worked on the railroad tracks, dug in the mines, picked and shoveled in the ditches, and carried up bricks and mortar on the endless structures of a new land, he was strong, hairy, axiomatic, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... that I seemed to find myself struggling in deep water, with no footing under me. Value of life? How could I answer the question on the spur of the moment? The sacredness of life I had accepted as axiomatic. That it was intrinsically valuable was a truism I had never questioned. But when he challenged ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... somebody has poetically imagined that it is possible, and has very likely been altogether incapable of its achievement, is no help. Moreover, the commonplaces which even the most freethinking of Unitarians seem to consider as axiomatic, are to me far from certain, and even unthinkable. For example, they are always talking about the omnipotence of God. But power even of the supremest kind necessarily implies an object—that is to say, resistance. ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... basic and axiomatic proposition of Hegel's Philosophy, that the first discrimination of Thought and Being in any sphere is into two factors, a Something and a Nothing;—that which constitutes the main or predominant element of the Conception or Creation, and that which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... essays in which Goethe in later years gave out some of the results of his scientific observation in axiomatic form, is one called 'Intuitive Judgment' ('Anschauende Urteilskraft'), in which he maintains that he has achieved in practice what Kant had declared to be for ever beyond the scope of the human mind. Goethe ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... supreme height of Religion. What these men—the prophet and philosopher of the New Idealism—thought and did has borne fruit in the foundation in America, Great Britain and Ireland, in France, Germany, Austria and Italy, of Centres or Societies of Ethical Culture which assume as axiomatic that there is, there can be, no Religion but that which makes us one with the Moral Progress of Humanity, by incessant co-operation with "the Power that makes for Righteousness". If Religion be, what its name ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... experience as that which came to Boehme, if we may take his case as typical, are (1) The birth of an inner conviction of God's immediate and environing Presence amounting to axiomatic certainty—faith through experience has become "the substance," and "is now one spirit with God"; (2) The radiation of the whole being with "a joy like that which parents have at the birth of their first-born child"—the joy now of the {206} soul crying, "Abba"; (3) A vastly heightened ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... sympathetic students to be vast upward essays of mankind toward truth and goodness. That no religion is handed down complete from heaven, and that all religions are expressions of human aspiration and effort, is coming to be accepted as axiomatic. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... ingenuity of not a few and have not infrequently been abandoned as insoluble. It has so long been said, "This missionary work always has to be carried on by a few," that the expression has come to have something of the force of axiomatic truth which, of course, no one dares assail. And so the missionary society lives on, decade after decade, with less than a quarter of the women of the church on its list, and of that quarter not more than one-fourth active members. How to change these ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 8, August, 1889 • Various
... words and glory o' sweet phrase, and yet, and here's the enduring wonder—I am still but man, though man blessed with so much profundity, fecundity, and redundity of thought and expression, and therefore a facile scribe or speaker, able to create, relate, formulate or postulate any truth, axiomatic, sophistry subtle, or, in other ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... in this world a man comes forward with a thought, a deed, a vision, we ask not, how does he look,—but what is his message? It is of but passing interest whether or not the messenger is beautiful or ugly,—the message is the thing. This, which is axiomatic among men, has been in past ages but partially true if the messenger was a woman. The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, "What else are women for?" Beauty "is its own excuse for ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of an early time, when problems like those which tortured the writers of the seventy-third Psalm, or of Job and Ecclesiastes, had not yet disturbed the childlike trust of the friend of God, because no facts in his experience had forced them on him. But the belief which was axiomatic to him, and true for his supernaturally shaped life with its special miracles and visible divine guard, is not the ultimate and irrefragable principle which he thought it. In widespread calamities the righteous are blended with the wicked in one bloody ruin; and it is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... to reflect about it, just as they may want concrete signs to show that five times six do really make thirty. As we ascend in numbers and in morals, the intuitive perceptions become less and less; and though the truths are there, and ought to be admitted as axiomatic, they are not at once seen and ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... that such ways of looking at phenomena must originate in the mind, and be prior to the experience which confirms them. Without digging further into the character of this mental contribution to knowledge, James contented himself with the suggestion that the use of these axiomatic principles might be construed in Darwinian style as a 'variation' surviving by its fitness, thus introducing into his account of mental process the important idea that thinking might be ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... this question Marx goes to the orthodox economists of his time—the recognised exponents of the system against which his own arguments were directed—and notably, among these, to Ricardo; and, adopting Ricardo's conclusions, as though they were axiomatic, he asserts that the measure of exchange between one class of commodities and another—such, for example, as cigars, printed books, and chronometers—is the amount of manual labour, estimated in terms of time, which is on an ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... consider these points in greater detail: and first that of the religious group-consciousness which a church should give its members. This is of a special kind. It is axiomatic that group-organization of some sort is a necessity of human life. History showed us the tendency of all spiritual movements to embody themselves, if not in churches at least in some group-form; the paradox of each successive revolt ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... Canada might have been described as a nation of athletes. This does not mean that Canada neglected work for play. It means that she worked so robustly because she had developed strength on the field of play. Three truths are almost axiomatic about nations and sport. It is said that a nation is as it spends its leisure; that nations only win battles as their boys have played in their youth; that man's work is only boy's sport full grown. The religious little ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... of what he would have thought of it, affected my attitude materially. He had accepted it as axiomatic, I thought, that his son must be a gentleman. My present lot as an 'inmate' of St. Peter's hardly seemed to fit the axiom, somehow; and Ted, whatever I might think or say about 'beggin'' or the like, was all the friend I had or ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... functions of our bodies. After this all-important step, there are a few practical suggestions which it is well to follow. Most of them are nothing more than the common-sense habits of personal hygiene which are so obvious as to be almost axiomatic, but which ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... conclusions are valid, and to every thoughtful person they must seem well-nigh axiomatic, then the school has a wide field of usefulness in the way of inculcating a loftier and broader conception of patriotism. The teacher who worthily fills her place in the vitalized school will give the boys and girls in her care such a ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... difficulties with regard to contact of the war chemical and the envelope of the container. If a projectile is in question the ballistics become of importance. More important than any of these, except production, is the question of protection. It is axiomatic that an army proposing to use a new offensive chemical must be protected against it. It may, therefore, be necessary to modify the existing mask or protective appliance, or to create an entirely new one. ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... Deity. It is true that Phil. exonerates his philosophic scholar, when throwing himself in Protestant freedom upon pure intellectual aids, from the vain labor of such an effort. He consigns him, however philosophic, to the evidence of 'inevitable assumptions, upon axiomatic postulates, which the reflecting mind is compelled to accept, and which no more admit of doubt and cavil than of establishment by formal proof.' I am not sure whether I understand Phil. in this section. Apparently he is glancing at Kant. Kant was the first person, and perhaps the last, that ever ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... be Tried by Fire (MACMILLAN) might be called axiomatic for the precise type of fiction represented by the story. Because, if gold hadn't to be tried by fire, you might obviously marry the hero and heroine on the first page and save everybody much trouble and expense. Mr. RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER, however, knows his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... is the critical time of life in respect to a man's diet in other words, I would say in axiomatic form that as a man feeds at or about middle age, so will he be for the ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... of these natural laws, nor even their regular operation in the common course of Providence, that is hostile to our religious beliefs,—it is only the supposition that they are unoriginated, independent, and invariable; and to assume this without proof, as if it were a self-evident or axiomatic truth, or to apply it in a process of historical deduction respecting either the past development or the future prospects of the race, is such a shameless begging of the whole question,—that we know of no parallel to it except ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... be taken as axiomatic that in those early days the value of a piece of timber depended upon its accessibility to flowing water down which logs might be driven. A medium piece of timber on the banks of a stream which came to plentiful flood in the spring was worth ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... examined. If she had cherished any illusion as to the existence of a document in her favour, Madame Bernard's last speech had effectually destroyed it, which was the best thing that could have happened. At least, she was sure of Giovanni, and a year must pass in a year's time! That was axiomatic, and when the twelve months were over she would be married quietly. She would not bring him a handsome dowry as she had fully expected to do, and though his father was well-off, there were other children, so that she could ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... that he had gone too far, he tempered his ill-humor and the brutality of his diagnosis with a bolus of trite, axiomatic observations.—He must be careful. Medicine was not magic. The power of the Jenkins Pearls was limited by human strength, the necessities of advancing age, the resources of nature, which, unhappily, are not inexhaustible. The ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... creatures of this earth, got in, in order to get out, for involution lies behind evolution. But then, we theologians "have no right to be heard?" "are not entitled to be heard?" and, besides this, Mr. Haeckel has set aside intuitive, or first truths, and, as all axiomatic truths are of this class, perhaps it is wrong for us to bother you with our logic? Nevertheless we can't refrain from speaking our piece; we are advocates of free thought and ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... command, she derived from this evening garb a social superiority which friends and neighbours, whether they would or no were constrained to recognise. She was deemed a well-to-do woman, and as such—Paradise Street held it axiomatic—might reasonably adorn herself for the respect of those to whom she sold miscellaneous pennyworths. She did not depend upon the business. Her husband, as we already know, was a foreman at Egremont & Pollard's oilcloth manufactory; they ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... understand the history of the Liberal party have more and more come to see, that Liberal principles recommended it, since they involve faith in the people, and faith in the curative tendency of local self-government. But this was by no means axiomatic. Taking the whole complicated facts of the case, and taking Liberalism as it had been practically understood in England, a man might in July, 1886, deem himself a good Liberal and yet think that the true interests of both peoples would ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... axiomatic truth that "out of nothing, nothing comes," and it has often been asserted by scoffers that the Bible teaches generation "from nothing." We readily agree that translations into the modern languages promulgate ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... justification a great number of things that do exist and have existed as property. Usually the basis of the labor theory of property is declared to be each individual's natural right to the results of his own labor, which claim is assumed to be an ultimate, undebatable, axiomatic fact. However, that type of natural-right doctrine, which makes no appeal to experience and results, is now quite discredited ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... more accessible, or, where available, more carefully read, and his views more fairly represented; had he been favored in his lifetime by a single supporter, rather than been unjustly criticised by Cuvier, science would have made more rapid progress, for it is an axiomatic truth that the general acceptance of a working evolutionary theory has given a ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... vast that it would be quite impossible for me within the limits of this discourse to describe it. I will, however, occupy the rest of my time in dealing with some points and conclusions, and some mental changes which will flow perfectly naturally from this axiomatic change taking place at ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... of serious attention. One principal cause of these discrepant and often contradictory results is our ignorance concerning the exact modes of developmental change. What one writer postulates as almost axiomatic, another will reject as impossible and absurd. Few will be found to agree as to how far a given resemblance is offset by a given unlikeness, and so long as the question is one of weighing evidence and balancing probabilities, complete harmony is not to be looked for. These formidable difficulties ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... on level terms with her stronger neighbour on the East, unless she adds to her forces and is helped by her allies. Thus the hostility to Germany, from this aspect also, is based on England's most important interests, and we must treat it as axiomatic and self-evident. ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... yielded to this corpulent adventurer's insistence? Both from experience and observation he knew this for a world plentifully peopled by soldiers of fortune, contrivers of snares and pitfalls for the feet of the unwary. On the other hand, it is axiomatic that a penniless man is perfectly safe anywhere. Besides, there was the girl to ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance |
