"First cause" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heat as the first cause. But Captain Giles disclosed himself possessed of a deeper philosophy. Things out East were made easy for white men. That was all right. The difficulty was to go on keeping white, and some of these nice boys did not know how. He gave ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... that sound the depths of our hearts. No man that ever lived, if told that he could be young again or go to any heaven, would choose the latter. Men die for many things, but all fear the beyond. Thus no religion gives us an intelligible First Cause, a code or a heaven that we want. The most religious man is the peasant listening to the angelus, putting out a little ghi for his God; the woman crying in the pagoda. Thus we can only turn to the hearts of men for ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Primitive Element must be common to oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. Force must be the common principle of positive and negative electricity. Demonstrate these two hypotheses, and you will hold in your hands the First Cause, the solution of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... which, however understood by statesmen, would enrage the peoples he had to conciliate. After the ordeal was over, and Russia was at war with France, a leading Swedish statesman wrote to him: "You have been the guardian angel of my country; by your wise, temperate, and loyal conduct, you have been the first cause of the plans which have been formed against the demon of the continent.... Once more I must tell you, that you were the first cause that Russia had dared to make war against France; had you fired one shot ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... French emperor afterwards expressed to the Crown Prince of Prussia his deep sense of the courtesy shown him. He was desirous of passing as unnoticed as possible through French territory, where, indeed, exasperation against him, as the first cause of the misfortunes of France, was so great that his life would have been in peril. The next day he proceeded to the beautiful palace at Cassel called Wilhelmshoehe, or William's Rest. It had been built at ruinous expense by ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... for nearly twenty years, I never thought of going through the experiment, which I have since regretted; for, many a time and oft have I stood, in wonder, gazing at this strange anomaly of character, and searching in vain for a first cause. The barber's shop at the St. Nicholas is the most luxurious in New York, and I believe every room has its own brush, glass, &c., similarly numbered in ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... help many to free their minds from all doubt as to the Universe and its First Cause, but my doubts remain undispelled. It is true that the Vedanta is simpler than most other theories. The problem of Creation and its Creator is more complex than appears at first sight; but the Vedanta has certainly simplified it half way, by cutting the ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... knew, but her opinions of after years were mainly in the direction he marked out for her. In his Philosophy of Necessity, published in 1841, he maintained that the only reality is the Great Unknown which we name God, that all natural laws are actions of the first cause. He taught that the world is created in our own minds, the result of some unknown cause without us, which we call matter; but it is thus God mirrors himself to us. "All we see is but the vesture of God, and what we call laws ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... are quite insignificant. The two latter never indeed lost their popularity during the Elizabethan age, but they had ceased to be considered respectable—a very different thing—before that age began. The first cause of their fall in the social scale was the disapprobation of the humanists. Ascham, echoing Plato's condemnation of Homer, attacks the romance of chivalry from the moral point of view, at the same time cunningly associating it with "Papistrie." But he holds the novella ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... also one theory which is called causal, and another which is called modal, evolution. According to the former, evolution is the first cause of all life, which, of course, excludes God as the First Cause; and according to the latter, evolution is the mode, or method, used ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... Bauvan; for Madame de Serizy told them the danger in which I stood in consequence of their allowing the source of their information to be guessed at. The Marquis d'Espard was so clumsy as to call upon me, regarding me as the first cause of his winning the day in that ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... The first cause Lamarck calls the vital power (pouvoir de la vie); the other may be called the influence of circumstance (Anim. s. Vert., p. 134). To the latter cause are due the lacunae, the blind alleys, and the complications which the otherwise ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... as well as reason and logic, tell us that there is, and can be, only one supreme God, or First Cause of the universe, and that from this one first and fundamental Cause or Power every secondary power and everything that exists has come into existence, or been evolved within it and through its eternal activity. The whole ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... some wise man or prophet, had taken upon him the punishment, than that God himself should have done so. For, supposing even that He became incarnate, He would not be like one of us.—It is altogether impossible and self-contradictory that God should assume a body; for God is the first cause, infinite, and omnipotent. He cannot, therefore, assume flesh, and subsist as a finite being, and take upon himself man's punishment, of which nothing whatsoever is written in Scripture.—If the prophecy referred to the Messiah, it must refer either ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... difficult to withstand a suspicion that the three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time may be four independent variables of a system that is neither space nor time, but something else wholly unconceived by us. Our present enigma as to how a First Cause could itself have been brought into existence—how the tortoise of the fable, that bears the elephant that bears the world, is itself supported,—may be wholly due to our necessary mistranslation of the four or more variables of the universe, limited by inherent ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... proving by practice, of perceiving the leadership of Jesus Christ through the leading of the Holy Ghost. As to doctrine, there is left in man the power to make the beginning of a faith. On this beginning devotion builds a belief in the greater mysteries. Thus reason deduces a First Cause, then the unity of the First Cause. This is as far as reason can go. Huxley, looking out on the universe with this power, said: "There is an impassable gulf between anthropomorphism, however refined and the passionless impersonality underlying the thin veil of phenomena. ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... knows at the same time both the Unmanifested (the cause of manifestation) and the destructible or manifested, he crosses over death through knowledge of the destructible and attains immortality through knowledge of the First Cause (Unmanifested). ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... Commander of their army in the field, tried, instead of carrying out the expulsion or exclaustration of the Priests, to elevate them more, nominating at once for the two bishoprics, vacant in the colonies, two Priests of those same religious orders that oppressed the country and were the first cause of the insurrection, the disorder and the general dissatisfaction in the islands; thus ridiculing the virtue, knowledge and worth of the numerous secular Spanish clergy, and especially ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... only a Father of all good things, as being their First Cause and Creator, but He is also their Mother, since He remains with the creatures which have from Him their being and existence, and maintains them continually in their being. If God did not abide with and in the ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... a fair mediator between government and the people, endeavoring to form a plan which should have both an early and a temperate operation. I mean, that it should be substantial, that it should be systematic, that it should rather strike at the first cause of prodigality and corrupt influence than attempt to follow them in all ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... obliged here to mention these circumstances, and to describe them so particularly, because in them I see the first cause of my early habit of introspection, my tendency to self-examination, and my early separation from companionship with other men. Soon after the birth of her own son, when I had scarcely entered my boyhood, my step-mother ceased to use the sympathetic, heart-uniting "thou" ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... Zante, through the hands of Mr. Speridion Forresti, the very elegant and flattering presents of a sword and cane; accompanied by a most kind and respectful letter, in which they express their grateful acknowledgments to his lordship, for having been the first cause of their liberation from French tyranny. This, though true, his lordship observed, in a very affectionate answer, was such an example of gratitude as must for ever do them the highest honour; and begs that Mr. Speridion Forresti, by whom he transmits it to them, will have the goodness ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... This was the first cause of the union of the kingdoms. The second was the invasion of the Danes. These fierce marauders forced the people south of the Thames to join in common defense, under the leadership of Alfred, King of the West Saxons. By the Treaty of Wedmore, 878, the Danes were compelled ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... described life as a flux of moods, I must now add that there is that in us which changes not and which ranks all sensations and states of mind. The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite degrees. The sentiment from which it sprung determines the dignity of any deed, and the question ever is, not what you have done or forborne, but at whose command you have done ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the Innocent Cause of us, who have been turned out of your Army for the exercise of our pure Consciences, who are now persecuted amongst our Brethren under the name of Quakers." Wherein they declare that "The first cause and ground of our engagement in the late wars against the Bishops and Prelates, and against Kings and Lords, and the whole body of oppressors: our first engagement, we say, against these was justly and truly upon that account of purchasing and obtaining Liberties ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... "The first cause of the enmity between myself and the King of England is in ancient prophecy or prediction, believed by the English nation, and written in their books and chronicles, that all England will be conquered by an Earl of Desmond, which enterprise ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... coal has become within the last few years to a certain extent a necessity due to market conditions, danger of labor difficulties at the mines and in the railroads, and the crowding of transportation facilities. The first cause is probably the most important, and this is particularly true of anthracite coals where a sliding scale of prices is used according to the season of the year. While market conditions serve as one of the principal reasons for coal storage, most ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... of the affairs of the world by the principles of human morals.' All these became to her as mere visions; beliefs necessary in their day, but not philosophically nor permanently true. Miss Martineau was not an Atheist in the philosophic sense; she never denied a First Cause, but only that this Cause is within the sphere of human attributes, or can ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... minister in the Colony. John Norton, who had taken Nathaniel Ward's place at Ipswich, was called after twenty years of service, to the Boston church, and his melancholy temperament and argumentative, not to say pragmatical turn of mind, made him ready to seize upon the first cause of offence. ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... free-will, but supernaturally and mysteriously, according to his sovereign will, which is above law, since God is the author of law. He simply erred in enforcing a certain class of truths which must follow from the majesty of the one great First Cause, lofty as these truths are, to the exclusion of another class of truths of great importance; which gives to his system incompleteness and one-sidedness. Thus he was led to undervalue the power of truth itself in its contest ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... echoed the captain of the Bluebird, close by, which was his way of saying that I was off. There was nothing to pay for above five cents' worth of paint, maybe, but such a din was raised between the old "hooker" and the Bluebird, which now took up my case, that the first cause of it was forgotten altogether. Anyhow, no bill ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... yet I contrived to introduce considerable reinforcements into an orchestra which was really only calculated for a string quartette, two first and two second violins, two violas, and one 'cello. These successful exertions of mine were the first cause of the dislike Holtei evinced towards me later on. After this we were able to get good concerted music for the opera. I found the thorough study of Mehul's opera, Joseph in Aegypten, very stimulating. Its noble and simple style, added to ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... nation that has suffered in this way. Many of the ancient peoples have entirely passed away; and the destruction of their forests, as we have seen in the previous chapter, was the first cause leading to their extinction. ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... the ancient Greeks, the trinitarian God of the mediaeval school-man, the great First Cause of the eighteenth-century deist, the primordial Life-Force of the modern man of science, are all on common ground here in regard to the unfathomableness of the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... favour proceeds from false ideas of its origin. Though every sinner be ungrateful, yet every sinner is not a monster of ingratitude. The first cause of our felicity is sometimes mingled with the second, which is serviceable in procuring it. Our industry frequently seems to share with Providence the glory of our condition, and the nature of a blessing sometimes leads us to forget the acknowledgments ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... that science which deals with life on strictly physical lines, and drawing from it an immense consolation because it reaffirmed that the soul has not only its old excuse for being in the unthinkability of an automatic universe and the necessity of an intentional first cause, but with Evolution, in the regard of some scientists, tottering on its throne, and Natural Selection entering the twilight into which the elder pagan deities have vanished, is newly warranted in claiming existence as ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... to differ with you? Besides, apart from this great first cause, I do not understand how, after a week of it, she ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... obstinately maintains her rights, and as it is never by the result of free choice that she solicits us, she also does not withdraw any of her exigencies as long as she has not been satisfied. Since, from the first cause which gave the impulsion to the threshold of the will where its jurisdiction ends, all in her is rigorously necessary, consequently she can neither give way nor go back, but must always go forward and press more and more the will on which depends the satisfaction of her wants. Sometimes, it is ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... boast that they have no patience with morbidity. Love—which put them into being and keeps the earth in existence—seems to all such a silly malady peculiar to the sentimental in early youth. So they put the First Cause—in one of its many manifestations—in the waste-paper basket, asking each other what will become of Charles if he cannot find a rich wife, and poor Alice, if she cannot entrap a suitable husband. But there are others who look on life with some hope of understanding ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... quaint imaginings had haunted Sue in the days when her intellect scintillated like a star, that the world resembled a stanza or melody composed in a dream; it was wonderfully excellent to the half-aroused intelligence, but hopelessly absurd at the full waking; that the first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage; that at the framing of the terrestrial conditions there seemed never to have been contemplated such a development of emotional perceptiveness among the creatures subject to those conditions as ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... generative source of that creative power of thought in him, from his own mysterious intellectual being to its first cause, he still reflected, as one can but do, the enlarged pattern of himself into the vague region of hypothesis. In this way, some, at all events, would have explained his mental process. To him that process was nothing less than the apprehension, the revelation, of the greatest ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... officials of the public services—all those who live on the State or hope to live on it, without mentioning the idlers and enjoyers of life whom a Court always carries in its train. However, this influx of newcomers was a first cause of intoxication, for every one imagined that the increase would continue, and, in fact, become more and more rapid. And so the city of the day before no longer seemed large enough; it was necessary to make immediate preparations for the morrow's need by enlarging ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... all, and therefore piously to be observed of all things that are, and that which now is, to whatsoever first was, and gave it its being, hath relation of blood and kindred. She is also called truth and is the first cause of all truths. He therefore that willingly and wittingly doth lie, is impious in that he doth receive, and so commit injustice: but he that against his will, in that he disagreeth from the nature of the universe, and in that striving with the nature of the world ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... as if man, to live happily here below, needed not his own exertions. Yet, without his own labour, man could subsist hardly a day. To live, he is obliged to sweat, toil, hunt, fish, and labour without intermission. Without these second causes, the first cause, at least in most countries, would provide for none of our wants. In all parts of the globe, we see savage and civilized man in a perpetual struggle with Providence. He is necessitated to ward off ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... "It is the first cause of the kind attempted in Ravenna for these two hundred years; for, though they often separate, they assign a different motive. You know that the continental incontinent are more delicate than the English, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... himself in another. Thus Prideaux's failure as a candidate for the post of parish-clerk of Ugboro, in Devon, led to his applying himself to learning, and to his eventual elevation to the bishopric of Worcester. When Boileau, educated for the bar, pleaded his first cause, he broke down amidst shouts of laughter. He next tried the pulpit, and failed there too. And then he tried poetry, and succeeded. Fontenelle and Voltaire both failed at the bar. So Cowper, through his ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... a commonwealth is a constitution of the entire people. But the people is not every association of men, however congregated, but the association of the entire number, bound together by the compact of justice, and the communication of utility. The first cause of this association is not so much the weakness of man as a certain spirit of congregation which naturally belongs to him. For the human race is not a race of isolated individuals, wandering and solitary; but it ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... though it be, I mention this circumstance attending my introduction to college, because it formed the first cause which tended to diminish my faith in the institution to which I was attached. I soon grew to regard my university training as a sort of necessary evil, to be patiently submitted to. I read for no honours, and joined no particular set of men. ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... be original. If our will is free, our will is also the original element, and conversely. Pre-Kantian dogmatism tried to separate these two predicaments. It was thereby compelled to assume two kinds of freedom, one cosmological, of the first cause, and the other moral and theological, of human will. These are represented in Kant by the third as well as ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of Providence, were stopped with objections grounded on the impossibility of physical miracles, he would justly protest against the interruption; and were the philosopher, who was determining the motion of the heavenly bodies, to be questioned about their Final or their First Cause, he too would suffer an illogical interruption. The latter asks the cause of volcanoes, and is impatient at being told it is "the divine vengeance;" the former asks the cause of the overthrow of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... defects, and my capacity for loving, and then placed Myra Gaunt in my way. Is there mercy to me in this? As part of a great evolutionary principle, which develops the race life at the expense of the individual, it might be consistent with the idea of a God—a first cause. But does the individual who perishes, because unfitted to survive, owe any love, or gratitude to this God? He does not! On the supposition that He exists, I deny it! And on the complete lack of evidence that He does ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... them fell upon Tilottama's body. And when Tilottama set out (for the city of the Asuras) with the wealth of her beauty, all regarded the task as already accomplished. After Tilottama had gone away, the great god who was the First Cause of the Universe, dismissed all the celestials and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... detained in the Imbozhwa country much longer than I relished. The inroad of the Mazitu, of which Casembe had just heard when we reached the Mofwe, was the first cause of delay: he had at once sent off men to verify the report, and requested me to remain till his messengers should return. This foray produced a state of lawlessness in the country, which was the main reason of our ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... by which this doctrine is sought to be sustained is found in the assumption "that to all our race the existence of a First Cause is a question of philosophy," and that the idea of God lies at the end of "a gradual process of inquiry" and induction, for which a high degree of "scientific culture" is needed. Whereas the idea of a First Cause lies at the beginning, not ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... affirmative position is that of conscious union with the source of life. Realise this, and you need not trouble yourself about any action of the negative whatever. Seek conscious union with the ultimate, the first cause, that which is the starting point of all things, whether in the universe or in yourself as the individual. That starting point is always present; it is the same yesterday, to-day and forever, and you are the world ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... feet bound to earth, but eyes among the stars. Hell or heaven I never heard formulated, nor their equivalents; unless that existence in the Shining One's domain could serve for either. Over all this was Thanaroa, remote; unheeding, but still maker and ruler of all—an absentee First Cause personified! Thanaroa seemed to be the one article of belief in the creed of the soldiers—Rador, with his reverence for the Ancient Ones, was an exception. Whatever there was, indeed, of high, truly religious impulse among the Murians, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... virtue of being a physical body, a chemical composition, an animated organism, a sociable animal, among other bodies, other compositions, other social animals, all analogous to him; and by virtue of these classifications, he is, like them, subject to laws.—For, if the first cause is unknown to us, and we dispute among ourselves to know what it is, whether innate or external, we affirm with certainty the mode of its action, and that it operates only according to fixed and general laws. Every circumstance, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is by far the noblest religion in existence. The chief point of its superiority is the prominence it gives to the humane and philanthropic element; and in giving this prominence lies its originality. He believes in a Great First Cause, but does not arrive at his belief by any process of reasoning satisfactory to himself. Paley's argument, from the evidence of design, he regards as futile: if the beauty of this world indicates a creating cause, the beauty of that great cause ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... The first cause of modern tolerance is the growing rationalism of which the seeds were sown by the Renaissance. The generation before Luther saw an almost unparalleled liberty in the expression of learned opinion. Valla could attack pope, Bible and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... after I ceased in this respect to be one to her. I had no family; she had one; and this family was composed of individuals whose dispositions were so different from mine, that I could never make it my own. This was the first cause of my unhappiness. What would I not have given to be the child of her mother? I did everything in my power to become so, but could never succeed. I in vain attempted to unite all our interests: this was impossible. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... death of King Stephen, Henry Plantagenet became King of England; and thus there was a recurrence, in an aggravated form, of the position which had been filled by William the Conqueror, and which was the first cause of rivalry between France and England and of the consequent struggles of considerably more than ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Great First Cause, least understood: Who all my sense confined To know but this, that Thou art good, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... have shrunk in dismay,—has it never occurred to you as a wonderful fact, that the easiest thing in the world to teach a child is that which seems to metaphysical schoolmen the abstrusest of all problems? Read all those philosophers wrangling about a First Cause, deciding on what are miracles, and then again deciding that such miracles cannot be; and when one has answered another, and left in the crucible of wisdom a caput mortuum of ignorance, then turn your eyes, and look at the infant praying ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the case of Simeon Lathers. Why wuz it that Sister Irene Filkins wuz turned out of the meetin' house and the man who wuz the first cause of her goin' astray kep in—the handsome, smooth-faced hypocrite?—it wuz because he wuz rich as a Jew, and jest plastered over the consciences of them that tried him with his fine ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... all intermediate steps are omitted, and the result is linked immediately to the first Cause. God Himself is the theme, and trust in ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... forgotten the untoward effect of Teddy's disappearance in the peculiar humiliation of its first cause. Raffles took out his watch, and held up the dial for me to see. It was after the half-hour now; but at this moment a servant entered with a missive, and the master ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... was in this coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was showing the necessity of a first cause, that the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the room, to tell me that my solitaire was pinned too strait about my neck. "It should be plus badinant," said the count, looking down upon his own; "but a word, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Beings. The theory on which these Mysteries were based may be very briefly thus stated: There is ONE, prior to all beings, immovable, abiding in the solitude of His own unity. From THAT arises the Supreme God, the Self-begotten, the Good, the Source of all things, the Root, the God of Gods, the First Cause, unfolding Himself into Light.[12] From Him springs the Intelligible World, or ideal universe, the Universal Mind, the Nous and the incorporeal or intelligible Gods belong to this. From this the World-Soul, to which belong the "divine intellectual ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... rational souls; or altogether separate, like the celestial spirits; which the philosophers call Intelligences, we Angels. On these, according to the philosophers, it devolves to move the heavenly bodies; and for this reason the administration of the universe is ascribed to them, as receiving from the First Cause—that is, God—that inflow of virtue which they pour forth again in relation to the work of government, which has reference to the natural consistence of things. But according to the theologians the direction of the universe is ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of these provinces, it is manifest, begins to awaken a spirit of envy and ambition. The acknowledged importance of this colony to the parent state will secure the continuance of her powerful protection. Her fostering care has been the first cause, under Providence, of the uninterrupted happiness you have so long enjoyed. Your industry has been liberally rewarded, and you have in ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... very order of nature both man and cattle have existed since the beginning of time, for whether we believe that there was a First Cause of the generation of animals, as Thales of Miletus and Zeno of Citium maintained, or that there was none as was the opinion of Pythagoras of Samos and Aristotle of Stagira, it is, as Dicaearchus ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... hunger at bay, cannot be blamed for wrong thinking as the cause of its trouble. Neither can the deaf mute or the child born blind or deformed. We must go farther back, to former lives, to find the first cause of such misfortunes. ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the serpent that deuoureth her moother so they destroy their first cause as inopia luxuria etc. The fashon of D. Hert. to the dames of Lond. Your way is to be sicker Usque adeo latet vtilitas Aliquisque malo fuit ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... fourth of England, Ruy de Sousa, a principall person, and a man of great wisedome and estimation, and in whom the king reposed great trust, with doctor Iohn d'Eluas, and Ferdinand de Pina, as secretarie. And they made their voyage by sea very honourably, being very well accompanied. [Sidenote: The first cause of this ambassage.] These men were sent on the behalfe of their king, to confirme the ancient leagues England, wherein it was conditioned that the new king of the one and of the other kingdome, should be bound to send to confirme the olde leagues. [Sidenote: The second cause.] And ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... to be fixed forever beneath the delightful shades of Valfeuillu. But alas! one evening on returning from the hunt, Sauvresy became so ill that he was forced to take to his bed. A doctor was called; inflammation of the chest had set in. Sauvresy was young, vigorous as an oak; his state did not at first cause anxiety. A fortnight afterward, in fact, he was up and about. But he was imprudent and had a relapse. He again nearly recovered; a week afterward there was another relapse, and this time so serious, that a fatal end of his illness was foreseen. During this long sickness, the ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... from design or final causes, is as follows: Design, or the adaptation of means to effect an end, implies the exercise of intelligence and free choice. The universe is full of traces of design. Therefore the "First Cause" must have been a ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came, and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty from the immense amount of suffering through the world. I am, also, induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... said he. "Who can believe that the Great Infinite First Cause can be influenced, and his plans changed by the teasing of every one of ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... want to know the first cause, Pliny, it is because I pledged you to my Redeemer, as a thank-offering for a gracious answer to my prayers, which he sent me, even when I was unbelieving; and the second is, because, dear friend, I love you, and can ...
— Three People • Pansy
... to acquire the friendship of Harrihiagua, giving strict charges that no damage should be done in his country, being extremely unwilling to give the first cause of offence, but nothing could prevail on that cacique to enter into any friendly connection. As some of the men were sent out daily, under a strong escort, to bring in forage for the horses, they were one day suddenly assailed by a multitude of Indians, making such hideous yells as scared ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... for him to embark on such a crusade. In his early manhood, except for his volunteering in the war scare of 1859, he had taken no part in public life. The first cause which led to his appearing at meetings was wrath at the ill-considered restoration of old buildings. In 1877, when a society was formed for their protection, Morris was one of the leaders, and took his stand by Ruskin, who had already stated the principles to be observed. They believed that the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... enough in all conscience; but in France, in Spain, in Italy, even in Germany, people do think of something beyond the house. But here, where there are no romantic crimes, to get a genteel house, to keep (or “run”) a genteel house, or to pretend to keep (or “run”) a genteel house, is the great first cause of almost every British delinquency, from envy and malignant slander up to forgery, robbery, and murder. And yet it is a fact, as Borrow discovered (when a mere lad in a solicitor’s office), that to men in health the house need not, and should not, be the ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Uhlhorn, "combined Greek philosophies, Jewish theology, and ancient Oriental theosophy, thus forming great systems of speculative thought, all with the object of displaying the world's development. From a pantheistic First Cause, Gnosticism traced the emanation of a series of aeons—beings of Light. The source of evil was supposed to be matter, which in this material world holds light in captivity. To liberate the light and thus redeem ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... life's first cause; who, when he saw The ills that unborn innocents must bear, When doomed to come to earth— Bethought—and gave thee birth To charm the poison from affliction there; And from his source eternal, bade ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... was nature, man, fact and principle suggestive to Mr. Lincoln, not only had he accurate and exact perceptions, but he was causative, i. e., his mind ran back behind all facts, things and principles to their origin, history and first cause, to that point where forces act at once as effect and cause. He would stop and stand in the street and analyze a machine. He would whittle things to a point, and then count the numberless inclined planes, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... the remedy must be particularly observed, if its full specific action is to be obtained. Therefore we must first cause the mortification of the tuberculous tissue, and then effect its removal as soon as possible, for instance, by means of a surgical operation; but where this is impossible and the excretion by the organisms themselves is necessarily slow, ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... means difficult; polity being only the conduct of immoral men in publick affairs. The evils of each particular kind of government are very clearly and elegantly displayed, and, from their secondary causes, very rationally deduced; but the first cause lies still in its ancient obscurity. There is, in this letter, nothing new, nor any thing eminently instructive; one of his practical deductions, that "from government, evils cannot be eradicated, and their excess only can be prevented," has been always allowed; the question, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... her for the purpose of decorating the graves of their friends. It had always been a pleasure to Mary to give her flowers for this purpose, and she now determined to decorate her father's tomb in the same manner. Taking from a cupboard the beautiful basket which had been the first cause of all her unhappiness, she filled it with choice flowers of all colours, artistically interspersed with fresh green leaves, and carried it to Erlenbrunn before the hour of divine service, and laid it on her father's tomb, watering it at the same time with ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... can reach that conviction by the most refined dissection of the bodily tissues. How, then, does the spiritists' Positive Revelation help the matter? Their answer is that the physical universe is a permanent and orderly phenomenon which (setting aside the problem of its First Cause) fully accounts for itself; whereas the phenomena of Spiritism, such as rapping, table- tipping, materializing, and so forth, are, if not supernatural, at any rate extra-natural. They occur in consequence of a conscious effort to bring ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... had reached all the great thoughts which underlie our modern creeds. They had attained to the conception of one universal, omnipotent, great First Cause. We find the worship of this One God in Peru and in early Egypt. They looked upon the sun as the mighty emblem, type, and instrumentality of this One God. Such a conception could only have come with civilization. It is not until ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... he observed further, continuing his series of careful modulations. "There is an error made, a false step taken; the family flee their past to begin life anew in another land; yet at the very threshold of their new life they meet the first cause of all their misfortune and ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... of the Theology of the Sephiroth. "The King" is AINSOPH, Being Supreme and Absolute. From this centre, which is everywhere, all things ray forth; but we especially conceive of it in three manners and in three different spheres. In the Divine world (AZILUTH), which is that of the First Cause, and wherein the whole Eternity of Things in the beginning existed as Unity, to be afterward, during Eternity uttered forth, clothed with form, and the attributes that constitute them matter, the First Principle is Single and First, and yet not the VERY Illimitable Deity, incomprehensible, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... that ill-fated monarch know that he was forming the first cause of those disastrous events that were to end in the subversion of his throne, in the slaughter of his family, and the deluging of his country with the blood of his people. You cannot but remember that a time when we had scarcely a regular ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... personal supreme-being as it did an ill-defined sense of supernatural, mysterious power. This point not being clearly understood, it was quite natural that the early writers understood by these various expressions their name of the First Cause. ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... life and light giving attributes of the sun were in early times used as the symbol to bring before the minds of the people all that they were capable of conceiving of the great First Cause. But other symbols of far deeper and more real significance were known and guarded within the ranks of the priesthood. One of these was the conception of a Trinity in Unity. The Trinities of most sacred significance were never divulged ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... not," said General Belch; "but there may be some breakers ahead. If we lose the Grant it won't be the first cause or man that has been betrayed by the bottle. Condor, let me fill your glass. It is clear that if our dear friend Newt has a weakness it is the bottle; and if our enemies at Washington, who want to head off this Grant, have a strength, it is finding out an adversary's soft spot. We may find ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... we are compelled to regard phenomena as effects of some cause. We must believe in a cause of that cause, till we reach a first cause. The First Cause must be infinite and absolute. He then follows Mansel in showing the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... understand either the suspension or subversion of the laws of nature, or the intervention of the first cause in certain particular cases, I could not concede it. In this negation physical and logical reasons are secondary; the true reason—let no one be surprised—is entirely religious; the miracle is ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... some ultimate end, to the realisation of which the whole process of the world as known to us is somehow a means, we may easily see that metaphysical inquiry, though distinct from ethical, is its necessary pre-supposition. The Being or Purpose of God, the great first cause, the world as fashioned, ordered and interpenetrated by Him, and man as conditioned by and dependent upon the Deity—are postulates of the moral life and must be accepted as a basis of all ethical study. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... So that the first cause of Shakespeare's fame was that the Germans wished to oppose to the cold French drama, of which they had grown weary, and which, no doubt, was tedious enough, a livelier and freer one. The second cause was that the young German writers required a model for writing ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... the other; "and I call God to witness, Frank Esmond, that I would have asked your pardon, had you but given me a chance. In—in the first cause of our falling out, I swear that no one was to blame but ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... had taken him to the Cathedral once, twenty years ago, it was the first time that Queed had ever been inside a church. He had read Renan at fourteen, finally discarding all religious beliefs in the same year. Approximately Spencer's First Cause satisfied his reason, though he meant to buttress Spencer's contention in its weakest place and carry it deeper than Spencer did. But in fact, the exact limits he should assign to religious beliefs as an evolutionary function were still indeterminate in his system. He, like all cosmic ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... time that the excitement over the discovery of gold on his ranch had just commenced, and adventurers were beginning to congregate in the hills and gulches from everywhere. The discovery of the precious metal on his estate was the first cause of his financial embarrassment. It was the ruin also of many other prominent men in New Mexico, who expended their entire fortune in the construction of an immense ditch, forty miles in length—from the Little Canadian or Red River—to ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Corinth on their return; most of them being, as it happened, men of very high position in Corcyra. In this way Corcyra maintained her political existence in the war with Corinth, and the Athenian vessels left the island. This was the first cause of the war that Corinth had against the Athenians, viz., that they had fought against them with the Corcyraeans ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... grief, pours balm into the wounded souls of the desolate and bereaved, and gives health and refreshment to the suffering. When nature pines in winter cold or in summer drought and lacks power to revive, when the sun is darkened, when lies and evil instincts alienate the soul from its pure first cause, then Isis uplifts her complaint, calling on her husband, Osiris, to return, to take her once more in his arms and fill her with new powers, to show the benevolence of God once more to the earth and to us men. You have learnt that lament; and when you sing it at her festival, picture yourself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... instantly. Prejudiced against Midwinter by his conduct when his friend had introduced him at the cottage, she now fairly detested him as the unlucky first cause of her misunderstanding with Allan at the picnic. Her face flushed and she drew back from the summerhouse with an expression of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... meet with like contradictions concerning the origin of evil. To explain this problem,—one of the profoundest in philosophy,—M. Lamennais at one time denies evil, at another makes God the author of evil, and at still another seeks outside of God a first cause which is not God,—an amalgam of entites more or less incoherent, borrowed from Plato, Proclus, Spinoza, I might say even ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... a construction in images belonging to the merely sketched or outlined type.[30] It results from a double activity, negative and positive, or dissociation and association, the first cause and origin of which is found in a will that it shall be so; it is the motor tendency of images in the nascent state engendering the ideal. The inventor cuts out, suppresses, sifts, according to his temperament, character, taste, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... eyes and made him see through and through the big words that swell men's bosoms, she unlocked for him the souls of men and his own soul, made him a seer, and showed him the heart of the world and every first cause hidden behind words and deeds. But what he saw was this: comedy and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Louis the Sixteenth was not the first cause of the evil by which he suffered. He came to it, as to a sort of inheritance, by the false politics of his immediate predecessor. This system of dark and perplexed intrigue had come to its perfection before he came to the ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... all his life His father had been twenty years dead, but she had kept his spirit alive—his aims, his ambitions, his fears, and the lessons of his life. There lay the beginnings of his ruin, his degradation, and the first cause of his deep duplicity. He had recovered everything that had been lost; he had gained all that his little world could give; and what was the worth of it? What was the price he had paid for it? "What shall it profit a man if he gain ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... or time; it cannot be other than at least as self-consistent as its manifestations in nature are invariable. Now, from the latter deduction there arises a point of first-rate importance in the present connexion. For if the so-called First Cause be intelligent, and therefore all secondary causes but the expression of a supreme Will, in as far as such a Will is self-consistent, the operation of all natural causes must be uniform,—with the result that, as seen by us, this operation must needs ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... blows, or disease may lead to rupture of the heart of the ox. The first cause does not operate so often in cattle as in horses. Tuberculosis or ulceration from other causes, such as a foreign body, is the most common source of this accident. Rupture is shown by sudden fainting, followed ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... influence or non-influence may be listed under the general problem of the world's CAUSAL UNITY. If the minor causal influences among things should converge towards one common causal origin of them in the past, one great first cause for all that is, one might then speak of the absolute causal unity of the world. God's fiat on creation's day has figured in traditional philosophy as such an absolute cause and origin. Transcendental Idealism, translating 'creation' into 'thinking' (or 'willing ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... metaphysical subtleties which characterize alike the Platonic Dialogues and the Aristotelian treatises, at any rate he was ready to discuss with them such questions as the origin of the world, its destructibility or indestructibility, and the derivation of all things from one First Cause or from more. Later in his reign, another Greek, a sophist named Uranius, acquired his especial favor, became his instructor in the learning of his country, and was presented by him with a large sum ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... the fourth with Titian. Mengs does not succeed in rising above this empiricism of the studio, save to declaim about the beauty of nature, virtue, forms, and proportions, and indeed everything, including the First Cause, which is the ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... especially has demonstrated the significant influence of childhood upon adult motives and conduct. Recent studies of human conduct have greatly magnified the importance of early experience and have disclosed how often it is the first cause of morbid thinking and anti-social actions. The conclusion is not to be doubted—a still greater effort must be made to conserve human character by a wiser control of the influences of childhood. One may discover ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... heavenly climate, colonists are always dissatisfied with their position; because, in a pecuniary point of view, they are always poor. And why are they so? The answer is a startling one. The excess of their abundance is the first cause of their poverty; the instability of their government, the second. They possess more than they can dispose of, and are borne down by the weight of their possessions. Place the markets of England and the labour of Ireland within their reach, and they would become millionaires were they to cease ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... with Spinoza, though my whole heart remained with Paul and John. Yet there had dawned upon me, even before I had met with the CRITIQUE OF THE PURE REASON, a certain guiding light. If the mere intellect could make no certain discovery of a holy and intelligent first cause, it might yet supply a demonstration, that no legitimate argument could be drawn from the intellect against its truth. And what is this more than St. Paul's assertion, that by wisdom,—(more properly translated by the powers of reasoning)—no ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... somewhat of a digression, we cannot help saying something of the barbarous customs of those heathen Calamianes. They recognized a first cause, which governed what was visible. They attributed good or evil events to fortune and to the star of each one. They adored a deity who resembled Ceres, to whom they commended their fields and offered their fruits. They worshiped another petty deity who ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... Roman ambition in check and for generations deferred the final struggle. But when at last Rome had acquired the strength she needed in order to assert her rivalry, it was only a question of actual preparation, and the first cause of quarrel was sure to be seized upon by either party, especially by the growing and haughty ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... suddenly amaz'd. To Virgil one, The other to a spirit turn'd, who near Was seated, crying: "Conrad! up with speed: Come, see what of his grace high God hath will'd." Then turning round to me: "By that rare mark Of honour which thou ow'st to him, who hides So deeply his first cause, it hath no ford, When thou shalt he beyond the vast of waves. Tell my Giovanna, that for me she call There, where reply to innocence is made. Her mother, I believe, loves me no more; Since she has chang'd the white and wimpled folds, Which she is doom'd once more with grief ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... The first cause of his reverses was a physical one; he could not endure the hard life in the college of Montaigu. The addled eggs and squalid bedrooms stuck in his memory all his life; there he thinks he contracted the beginnings of his later infirmity. In the Colloquia he has ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Bozzle had been untrue to him, but his disgust did not spring from that so much as from the feeling that he had defiled himself by dealing with the man. Though he was quite assured that he had been right in his first cause of offence, he knew that he had fallen from bad to worse in every step that he had taken since. Colonel Osborne had marred his happiness by vanity, by wicked intrigue, by a devilish delight in doing mischief; but he, he himself, had consummated the evil by his own folly. Why had he not taken ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... wrong to use another life, another soul, for either his pride or his revenge. But God knows best how it will be with him, and if he was the first cause of making my life what it has been, I send after him (I almost tremble to say it) if ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the zeal of one who seeks images of Divine power impressed alike on solid rocks and gliding streams. Science, however rigid, would not have restrained the ardor of homage to the Author of creative energy and grandeur, bursting forth irrepressibly in scenes where angels would have adored the Great First Cause, and where ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... they Believe, are, it is likely, more in earnest in this wild Opinion: And in all appearance very many there are among us of such as a Learned Man calls Enthusiastick Atheists, viz. who deny the Existence of an Invisible, Omniscient, Omnipotent, first Cause of all things, only through a certain Sottish disbelief of whatsoever they cannot either see or feel; never consulting their Reason in the Case. That there are some who do thus, their Discourses assure us: The Actions of many others, are unaccountable ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... In addition to this first cause of an exaggerated expenditure there is another not less imperative—the necessity of voting all grants for local purposes. A Deputy is unable to oppose grants of this kind because they represent once more the exigencies of the electors, and because each individual Deputy can only obtain what he ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... so easy to imprint right notions in his mind about the devil as it was about the being of a God. Nature assisted all my arguments to evidence to him even the necessity of a great First Cause, an overruling, governing Power, a secret directing Providence, and of the equity and justice of paying homage to Him that made us, and the like; but there appeared nothing of this kind in the notion of an evil spirit, of his origin, his being, his nature, and above all, of his inclination ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... The first cause is usually chiefly located in the urethra, and especially at the mouths of the ejaculatory ducts. Distention of the seminal vesicles with a superabundance of seminal fluid also acts as a source of irritation. Constipation, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... without gleaning some sensual enjoyment from it, that a less egotistical person might never have discovered. An epicure in all things, he had attained to a sort of self-worship, which would have been sublime if applied to the First Cause of all that is beautiful. His splendid person was held in reverence, not because it was made in the image of his God, but for the powers of enjoyment it possessed—for the symmetry it displayed, and the defiance which ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... materialistic efforts to postpone or to dodge the real vital lessons to be read from natural phenomena,—efforts to push the real Cause back one step farther into the shadow,—a last desperate effort, in the face of the constantly accumulating evidence of modern knowledge that the great First Cause is far more intimately connected with life and motion than many are willing to believe. We have already mentioned gravity and the other attractive forces, such as cohesion and adhesion; but seemingly very few people have ever paused to consider how utterly inexplicable they still ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... cannot be understood, as I intend more fully to show unto you in a peculiar treatise which on that purpose I am about to publish. Therefore, if you will that I take any meddling in this process, first cause all these papers to be burnt; secondly, make the two gentlemen come personally before me, and afterwards, when I shall have heard them, I will tell you my opinion freely without any ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... appeared small and almost personal ends, having sometimes, superficially, little in common. Now it was a Giordano Bruno, burnt in Rome in defence of abstract theory with regard to the nature of the First Cause; then an Albigense hurled from his rocks because he refused to part with the leaves of his old Bible; now a Dutch peasant woman, walking serenely to the stake because she refused to bow her head before two crossed rods; ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... hesitation as to just how much it would be wise to say of the genteel gentleman who resided in Sinna Ferry, and was in her eyes a model of culture and disdainful superiority. Indeed, that disdain of his had been a first cause in her desire to reach the state of polish he himself enjoyed—to rise above the vulgar level of manners that had of old seemed good enough to her. "Yes, there is some high-toned folks there; the doctor's wife and family, for one; and then there is a very genteel man there—Captain Leek. ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... executed, without the application of means; which, if they are employed by inferior agents, it is not upon account of any real efficacy that is in them, or necessary aptitude to produce any effect, but merely in compliance with the laws of nature, or those conditions prescribed to them by the First Cause, who is Himself above ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... themselves the reasons of all successive phenomena;" and "it matters little whether he rejects the name of God or not," or "whether he has, or has not, an explicit knowledge of Him;" he cannot but acknowledge an eternal First Cause.[7] And so a whole host of Pantheistic Spiritualists will indignantly disclaim the imputation of Atheism, and even attempt to vindicate Spinoza himself from the odious charge.[8] Nay, some of the grossest Materialists, such as Atkinson and ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... Iuges syttynge in a chayer wyth a book open to fore their eyen/ And that is be cause that some causes ben crymynell/ And some ben cyuyle as aboute possessyons and other temporell thynges and trespaces/ And therfore ought to be two Iuges in the royame/ one in the black for the first cause/ And that other in whyte as for the seconde/ Theyr office is for to counceyll the kynge/ And to make by his comandements good lawes And to enforme alle the royame in good and vertuous maners/ And to Iuge and gyue sentence well and truly after the caas ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... image is partly due to the obliquity of the pencils which form parts of the image, and partly to what is termed spherical aberration. The first cause cannot be modified by the optician's skill, and is not important when the field of view is small. Spherical aberration causes those parts of a pencil which fall near the boundary of a convex lens to ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... of Lucifer, I found it not so easy to imprint the right notions of him in his mind, as it was about the divine essence of God; for there nature assisted me in all my arguments, to show him plainly the necessity of a great first cause, and over-ruling, governing power, of a secret directing Providence, and of the equity and reasonableness of paying adoration to our Creator: whereas there appeared nothing of all this in the notion of an evil spirit, of his first ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... following-mentioned way:—the prepuce, naturally very extensible, becomes, while covering the glans, inflamed, thickened, and its orifice contracted. It is during this state withdrawn forcibly backwards over the glans, and in this situation, while being itself the first cause of constriction, it induces another—namely, an arrest to the venous circulation, which is followed by a turgescence of the glans. In the treatment of such a case, the indication is, first, to reduce by gradual pressure the size ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... As Natal became the first cause of armed conflict between the British and the Boers, its then position in regard to the authorities at the Cape may as well be reviewed. Though the new Republic maintained its perfectly independent existence, its inhabitants were still mentioned by the Governor of Cape ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... from being supreme, that he is abject. Or, again, a great phenomenon or force in Nature-worship, say Sun, or Heaven, is raised to supremacy. Or speculative philosophy ascends from the Many to the One by trying to discern through and beyond the universe a First Cause. Animistic conceptions thus reach their utmost limit in the notion of the Anima Mundi. He may accumulate all powers of all polytheistic gods, or he may 'loom vast, shadowy, and calm ... too benevolent to need human worship ... too merely existent to concern himself with the petty ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Shakespeare his brain and Wagner his harmonies, gave Christ His heart—or whether it was the God that paints the lily and moves the mountains in their labours—it matters not. It is one God, the Author and First Cause of all things. It is His heart that moves our own hearts to all their aspirations, to all the benevolence that the wicked world knows; it is His mind that is made manifest in our marvels of civilisation; it is His ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... immortality but it is remarkably like it in other ways. Like materialism it is fatalistic because it makes man the helpless subject of resistless power. It merely puts an intelligent force as first cause where the materialist ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... despised her whom every one overwhelmed; he despised her to the extent even of abandoning her to the shame of an expulsion which was equivalent to having an ignominious sentence passed upon her; and yet, it was he, the king himself, who was the first cause of this ignominy. A bitter smile, the only symptom of anger which during this long conflict had passed across the victim's angelic face, appeared upon her lips. What, in fact, now remained on earth for her, after the king was lost to her? Nothing. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... pp. 203, 204. He shows that with the Stoics, who were Pantheists, the Logos was regarded as a first cause; while with the Neoplatonists, who were Theists and Transcendentalists, it was a secondary cause. In Plotinus, the Intelligence ([Greek: Nous]) is "King" (Enn. v. 3. 3), and "the law of Being" (Enn. v. 9. 5). But the Johannine Logos is both immanent ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the first cause no examples can be more striking than we find in the false conception of the Caspian as a gulf of the Ocean, entertained by Strabo, and the opposite error in regard to the Indian Sea held by Ptolemy, who regards it ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa |
