"Hypothesis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after much inquiry, "that in no other quarter of the peninsula, and certainly not around any of the higher peaks, is there a spot corresponding in any degree, so fully as this, to the historical account, and to the circumstances of the case." Starting upon the hypothesis that there is no other plain than the one he describes, he has been obliged to give the name of Sinai to one of the peaks which overlook this plain, in order that the Israelites might witness the awful ceremonies attending the promulgation ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the express purpose of hiding his authorship of the protocols—which, if we credit the story that they were presented to a secret conference of the leaders of the alleged conspiracy, is an impossible hypothesis—we are warranted in saying that, whoever wrote them, it was not Theodor Herzl. It would be as reasonable to ascribe a Walt Whitman chant to Emerson, or a Bernard Shaw satire to Jonathan Edwards, as to ascribe these crude, meandering pages ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... or constables. Nearly every house still has its pinjan or bow, but only a desultory use is made of this during the winter months. As it is principally used by a Muhammadan caste it seems a possible hypothesis that the cotton-bow was introduced into India by invaders of that religion. The name of the bow, pinjan, is, however, a Sanskrit derivative, and this is against the above theory. It has already been seen that the fact of animal sinew being used for the string ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... society to repose on conventions which the human will had made, lay in the corollary that the human will is competent at any time to unmake them, and also therefore to devise all possible changes that fell short of unmaking them. This was the root of the fatal hypothesis of the dictator, or divinely commissioned lawgiver. External circumstance and human nature alike were passive and infinitely pliable; they were the material out of which the legislator was to devise conventions at pleasure, without apprehension as to their suitableness either to ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... action, which I admire, with that generous contempt of money, which you shew me in the whole transaction, is really noble;—and what renders it more so, is the principle of it;—the workings of a parent's love upon the truth and conviction of this very hypothesis, namely, That was your son called Judas,—the forbid and treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have accompanied him through life like his shadow, and, in the end, made a miser and a rascal of him, in spite, Sir, of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... outr as a dying reference to a rat, and the incident of the vanishing cloth. No, sir, I shall approach this case from the point of view that what this young man says is true, and we shall see whither that hypothesis will lead us. And now here is my pocket Petrarch, and not another word shall I say of this case until we are on the scene of action. We lunch at Swindon, and I see that we shall be ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... seeing we are driven to the hypothesis that people choose in comparatively cold blood, how is it they choose so well? One is almost tempted to hint that it does not much matter whom you marry; that, in fact, marriage is a subjective affection, and if you have made up ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bodies move round the fiery centre." But this was no heliocentric system, since the sun moved like the earth, in a circle around the central fire. This was merely the work of the imagination, utterly unscientific, though bold and original. Nor did this hypothesis gain credit, since it was the fixed opinion of philosophers, that the earth was the centre of the universe, around which the sun and moon and planets revolved. But the Pythagoreans were the first to teach that the motions of the sun, moon, and planets, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... upon an admission of the hypothesis, that the ice in those seas comes from the rivers, there are others which give great room to suspect the truth of the hypothesis itself. Captain Cook, whose opinion respecting the formation of ice had formerly coincided with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... though he had been the king of France.[44] If he did not come to imagine himself something of the sort, he certainly forgot the existence of any one with a better claim to the title. He conducted himself on the hypothesis that Charles VII. was another Charles VI. He signed with enthusiasm that treaty of Arras, which left France almost at the discretion of Burgundy. On December 18 he was still no further than Bruges, where he entered into a private ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... globe of the earth was, at some period of time, submerged in water, and covered with the vast ocean, until in the lapse of time one little island appeared in this immense sea, which island must have been of course the highest mountain upon the surface of the earth. In support of his hypothesis, he adduces a number of facts, many of which have fallen within his own observation, of the progressive retreat of the sea, the diminution of springs and rivers, and the necessary increment of land. Among the most remarkable of these are the observations ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Common Council, would prove at all beneficial to the City, or likely to enhance their own personal reputation. And if, as they themselves allege, they have hitherto been deterred from undertaking civic duties by the pressure of private affairs, there is no ground for the hypothesis that they will henceforth have more leisure to devote themselves to promoting the welfare of their neighbours. In truth, the office of alderman is no sinecure. He is not merely a very stout gentleman, wearing a blue gown, and guzzling enormous ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... this publication, and imitated him to expose him. Many wretched burlesque prints came out to ridicule his system. There was a better answer to it in one of the two prints that he gave to illustrate his hypothesis. In "The Ball," had he confined himself to such outlines as compose awkwardness and deformity, he would have proved half his assertion; but he has added two samples of grace in a young lord and lady that are strikingly stiff and affected. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... the cigar at another angle, with lines of grim amusement about the corner of his mouth. "I should have thought," he said with dry deliberation, "that possibly this fact might have raised in your mind the conceivable hypothesis that the plants might not be intended for ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... From this hypothesis he reasons that atmospheric and oceanic masses are moved along with the decumbent nucleus with a velocity decreasing from the equator to the poles; and if the least retardation operates on the atmospheric and oceanic waters, a counter-current will be formed, flowing with the greatest rapidity ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... this connection that Mr. E. W. Nelson has found that places somewhat similar to these in the ruins about Springerville, New Mexico, always well repaid the labor of excavation, and he adopted as a working hypothesis the assumption that these were the burial places of the village. Whether a similar condition would be found in this region can only be determined by ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... temporary camps, as such a migration would imply, but places of permanent abode. The houses are too numerous and well constructed to be accounted for on any other hypothesis. A people fleeing periodically to the cliffs to escape from an enemy could not have built such houses. Indeed, they are simply marvelous when considered as to location and construction. The time that must necessarily have been consumed in doing the work and the amount of danger and labor ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... entire girdle of stone, of pyramidal size and strength, shows much symmetrical arrangement and dexterity. The blocks have been selected according to size and shape, and in many places mortised together. We find no trace of cement, a fact disproving the hypothesis that the wall may have been of Roman origin. We must doubtless go much farther back, and associate these primitive builders with such relics of prehistoric times as the stones of Carnac and Lokmariaker. And not to seek so wide for analogies, do we ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... not only as a celebrity of the first grade in his quality of editor of 'Every Other Week', but as a sage of wisdom and goodness, with whom he must not lose the chance of counsel upon almost every hypothesis and exigency of life. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Africa, where water is comparatively scarce, the animal is equipped with these implements in order to assist it in digging wells in the sand and in raising the juicy roots of the mimosas and succulent plants for the sake of their moisture. In support of this hypothesis, it has been observed, that whilst the tusks of the Ceylon species, which are never required for such uses, are slender, graceful and curved, seldom exceeding fifty or sixty pounds' weight, those of the African elephant are straight and thick, weighing occasionally ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Rappahannock, send the other by a long circuit to fall on the Federal rear near Manassas. This plan of action was opposed to the first rule of the military art, that a general should never divide his force in the face of an enemy. That Lee ventured to do so on this occasion can only be explained on one hypothesis, that he did not highly esteem the military ability of his opponent. These flank attacks undoubtedly, however, possessed a great attraction for him, as they did for Jackson, and, in preferring such movement, Lee was probably ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... these years, poured on Agassiz the floods of its opprobrium, and even the little dogs of physical science bark at his name; but his greater contemporaries knew and esteemed him better. The revival of the evolutionary hypothesis by Darwin, and the controversies growing out of it, then filled the air, and Agassiz paid the penalty of his eminence and constancy to the system in which he had been grounded by his master, Cuvier. He was attacked ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the forests of Northern Europe, no one can confidently say. Collecting the various indications from the superstitions, language, and habits of this barbarian people, and comparing them with like peculiarities of the most ancient races now existing in Europe, we can frame a very plausible hypothesis that these early savages belonged to that great family of which the Finns and Laps, and possibly the Basques, are scattered members. Their skulls, also, are analogous in form to those of the Finnish race. This age the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... has seen that the hypothesis of 'an intelligent cause of things' involves difficulties, greater, infinitely greater than the one difficulty involved in the hypothesis that things always existed. He has seen the folly of explaining natural, by the invention of supernatural mystery, because it manifestly violates ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... breath, and his hand tightened on the arm of his chair. He was, as we know, blind to many of the world's aspects, even to those in which he himself figured; and Dr Drummond's plain hypothesis of his relations with Advena came before him in forced illumination, flash by tragic flash. This kind of revelation is more discomforting than darkness, since it carries the surprise of assault, and Finlay groped in it, helpless ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... As a working hypothesis, correspondence is adequate to all life, through the whole range of phenomena. The flash of thought and its swiftness explain the lightning flash and the sweep of a comet through the heavens. My mental sky opens to me the vast celestial spaces, and I proceed to fill them ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... meant by this strange romance can only, I think be explained by this hypothesis. She was "dazed and bewildered," say some of the historians, evidently not knowing how to interpret so strange an interruption to her narrative; but there is no other sign of bewilderment; her mind was ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... of such persons as figure principally in the story, will help to show to those who wish to read it intelligently, how much of it is genuine history. They will see that the tale is mainly constructed on a succession of hypotheses, but that every hypothesis rests on a substratum of fact, however slender, and in many cases on careful weighing and comparison of a number of facts together. Some of these conjectures are perhaps the only ones which will fully and satisfactorily account for the sequence of events. For convenience ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... unmixed with true dancers is established, and further, until the inheritance of this peculiar deviation from the normal is proved, Saint Loup's account of the origin of the dancing mouse race must be regarded as an hypothesis. ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... consequence of innumerable improvements of the monkey; the negro as he now exists being the result of the Fifteenth Amendment. These philosophers erect a sort of pyramid of progress, placing an Ape at the base and a Caucasian at the Apex. This wild hypothesis of a monkey apotheosis can of coarse only be regarded Jockolarly, in other words, with a grin. Nevertheless the Marmozet is sufficiently like a little Frenchwoman to be called a Ma'amoiselle, and there are (in New-Zealand for instance) ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... wanted?' At the name a stir of emotion was manifest, even there: the dry bones stirred and moved: the passions outside had long ago passed to the interior of this gloomy prison: and not a man but had his hypothesis on the case; not a man but had almost fought with some comrade (many had literally fought) about the merits of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... depends for its effectiveness upon pure reasoning is called conviction; the part that consists of an emotional appeal to the people addressed is called persuasion. If the only purpose of argumentation were to demonstrate the truth or falsity of a hypothesis, conviction alone would be sufficient. But its purpose is greater than this: it aims both (1) to convince men that certain ideas are true, and also (2) to persuade them to act in accordance with the truth presented. Neither conviction nor persuasion can with safety be omitted. An appeal to ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... asserted it to be physically impossible that there could have been a recent delivery; and, moreover, in his "Remarks," he proved mathematically that the mark was four times the size it ought to have been on that hypothesis. Miss Burns had not been attended professionally by any one as she was averse to doctors. Mr. Angus in his defence ascribed the whole of the legal proceedings against him to the malevolence of two interested parties, and had ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... Space Hypothesis complicating thought, it simplifies by synthesis and co-ordination in a manner analogous to that by which plane geometry is simplified when solid geometry becomes a subject of study. By immersing the mind in the idea of ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... certitude, I have fully convinced myself that, in this sphere of thought, opinion is perfectly inadmissible, and that everything which bears the least semblance of an hypothesis must be excluded, as of no value in such discussions. For it is a necessary condition of every cognition that is to be established upon a priori grounds that it shall be held to be absolutely necessary; much more is this the case with an attempt to determine all pure a priori ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... custom introduced by popular uprisings against heresy and by certain royal decrees, or whether it owes its origin to the law of Frederic II which Gregory IX tried to enforce in France, as he had done in Germany and Italy. This second hypothesis is hardly probable. The tribunals of the Inquisition did not have to import into France the penalty of the stake; they found it already established in both central ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... from the top!" All of the gentlemen who formed her escort now drew nigh in turn, each having something to remark or jest over, either a freshly worked-up miniature system, or a miserable little hypothesis, or some similar abortion of their own insignificant brains. Through the open door of the hall many strange gentlemen now entered, who announced themselves as the remaining magnates of the illustrious Order—mostly angular suspicious-looking fellows, who with extreme complacency ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... imitation is opposed to historic imitation. It would only be a historic imitation if it proposed a historic end, if its principal object were to teach us that a thing has taken place, and how it took place. On this hypothesis it ought to keep rigorously to historic accuracy, for it would only attain its end by representing faithfully that which really took place. But tragedy has a poetic end, that is to say, it represents an action to move us, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... because, there being no scientific evidences that give countenance to the assumption, even the spiritualists themselves hesitate to assert the existence of a ghost or soul. Again he[FN185] says: "With this illegitimate hypothesis of annihilation the materialist transgresses the bounds of experience quite as widely as the poet who sings of the New Jerusalem with its river of life and its street of gold. Scientifically speaking, there is not a particle of ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... circumstance in which the improbability lies), yet all the situations and the emotions appertaining to them remain equally excellent and appropriate. Whereas take away from the Mad Lover of Beaumont and Fletcher the fantastic hypothesis of his engagement to cut out his own heart, and have it presented to his mistress, and all the main scenes ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... sample of the whole body of 467, and, for reasons already given, they are too rich in noteworthiness for the one and too poor for the other. They will, therefore, be referred to the number that is the mean of these two limits—namely, to 337. I am aware of no obvious guidance to any better hypothesis. ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... in all savage races imputing human motives and sex to the heavenly bodies, for, in fact, to this day there are savages, as in the South Pacific, who suppose even stones to be male and female, and to propagate their species. On this method of interpretation the hypothesis is not that the Australians, Indians, etc., received their myths from, say, the Greeks, either by community of stock or by contact and borrowing, but because the ancestors of the Greeks passed through the same ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... the queen, and that orders were, in consequence, issued to the court members of the House of Commons to devise some means to get rid of it. Indeed, the general circumstances of the times are decisive against the hypothesis of the two reverend historians; nor is it, as far as I know, adopted by any other historians. The probability seems to be, that the motion in the committee had been originally suggested by some Whig member, who could not, with prudence, speak his real ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... this machine in its movements. I wish I could form any that were reasonable and well-founded; but notwithstanding the minute attention with which I have repeatedly observed it, I have not been able in the least degree to form any hypothesis which could satisfy myself. The English ambassador, Prince Guistiniani, and several English Lords, for whom the inventor had the complaisance to make the figure play, stood round the table while I played the game. They all had their eyes on M. de ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... God. Of course, God is only a hypothesis, but ... I admit that He is needed ... for the order of the universe and all that ... and that if there were no God He would have to be invented," added Kolya, beginning to blush. He suddenly fancied that Alyosha might think he was trying to show off his knowledge and to prove that he ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... other hand, there has been no report of Indians having been seen in proximity to the place. If there had, the mestizo's conduct might be accounted for, upon an hypothesis that would certainly cause apprehension to ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... amongst all the burghers of Laon by their opposition to the power of the lords; perhaps they had sullied by deeds of violence this patriotic opposition; perhaps they had been taken at haphazard to suffer alone for the crimes of their fellow-citizens." The second hypothesis appears the most probable; for that deeds of violence and cruelty had been committed alternately by the burghers and their foes is an ascertained fact, and that the charter of 1128 was really a work of liberal pacification is proved by its contents and wording. After such struggles ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to Madame Surville as if it were her own, and asked what her course would be if she were rich, and Sophie an heiress with many suitors. Sophie, according to her uncle's hypothesis, was in love with a young sculptor; and her parents had permitted an engagement between the two. The sculptor, however, came to live in the same house with his fiancee, and his family wrote him letters which he showed to Madame Surville, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... that, my ideas of the difference between my will and my muscular force were more accurately defined. Then came the illusion, that I could, of course, "lick," "serve out," or "polish off," various small boys who had been or might be obnoxious to me. The event of the different "set-tos" to which, this hypothesis led not uniformly confirming it, another limitation of my possibilities was the consequence. In this way I groped along into a knowledge of my physical relations to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... even where justice is uprightly and skilfully administered, it is not rare to encounter between equally credible witnesses such flagrant and irreconcilable contradictions as to leave no room for any hypothesis other than perjury on one side or both. Perjury in transactions with the national revenue and with municipal assessors is by no means unprecedented among persons of high general reputation. False oaths of this description are, indeed, not infrequently preceded by some fictitious formalism, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... they were overawed by superstition as to the invaders. They stated that a few centuries before, they had been a wild tribe on the high country of the Rio Grande and Colorado, in New Mexico. The access from the Pacific up the Colorado would agree well with the hypothesis that the chief sources of the aboriginal inhabitants of America were Mongolian, and that from parties of Mongols landing from the Pacific Isles on the American coast, the population was derived. At any rate ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... the association of wings and a wreath is found elsewhere in Donatello's work.[51] Moreover, the rich Renaissance decoration is quite sufficient to demonstrate that the work must be much later than 1406, though whether immediately before or after the second Roman visit must be founded on hypothesis. The precise date of the particular decoration is too nebular to permit any exact statement on the subject. There was never any line of demarcation between one school and another. One can find Gothic ideas long after the Renaissance had established its principles,[52] ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... of my steps are unsound, correct me. You are silent? Then do not, I beseech you, be so vulgarly illogical as to revolt from my conclusion. We have now arrived,' he resumed, 'at some idea of the composition of the gang—for I incline to the hypothesis of more than one—and we now leave this room, which can disclose no more, and turn our attention to the court and garden. (Jean-Marie, I trust you are observantly following my various steps; this ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the application of this hypothesis to some parts of the Bible, there are others to which it is plainly inapplicable, and of these the narrative of the Creation is evidently one. No theory of limited inspiration can be admitted to explain any supposed inaccuracies in that narrative. It cannot be liable to those imperfections which ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... chiefly to the existence of surcharged steam within them, which is steam to which an additional quantity of heat has been communicated subsequently to its generation, so that its temperature is greater than is due to its elastic force; and on this hypothesis the observed facts relative to corrosion become to some extent explicable. Felt, applied to the outside of a boiler, may accelerate its internal corrosion by keeping the steam in a surcharged state, when by the dispersion of a part of the heat it would cease to be in that state; boilers in ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... All Saints' Church at Wittenberg. The older folk as a rule refused to accept or to consider the new doctrine. I recollect a botanical Fellow of the Royal Society who, in 1875, told me that he had no opinions on Darwin's hypothesis. The young men of the time I am describing grew up with the new ideas and accepted them as a matter of course. Herbert Spencer, then deemed the greatest of English thinkers, was pointing out in portentous phraseology the enormous significance of Evolution. ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... of Madame Recamier's contemporaries that she was the own daughter of Monsieur Recamier, whom the unsettled state of the times had induced him to marry; but there is not a shadow of evidence in support of this hypothesis,—though, to make it more probable, Madame Moehl adds, that "Madame Lenormant rather confirms than contradicts this rumor." In this she is strangely mistaken. Madame Lenormant does not allude to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... least, know also the great general conceptions brought in by modern physical science; for science, as Professor Huxley says, forces them upon us all. But the student of the natural sciences only, will, by our very hypothesis, know nothing of humane letters; not to mention that in setting himself to be perpetually accumulating natural knowledge, he sets himself to do what only specialists have in general the gift for doing genially. And so he will probably be unsatisfied, or at any rate incomplete, and even more incomplete ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture, where the most logical mind may be at fault. Each may form his own hypothesis upon the present evidence, and yours is as likely to be ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... company. Here, I felt, was perhaps the answer to my question, the secret of the enigma that puzzled me; and as I went over my memories of that time, and revived its sombre and almost sinister fascination, I seemed to see an answer looming before my imagination. But it was an answer, an hypothesis or supposition, so fantastic, that my common sense could ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... think, in answering that question. Observing the prominence that is given to the parents, and how the story enlarges upon what they thought and felt, we shall not have much doubt in accepting the hypothesis that it was none other than Mary from whom Luke received such intimate details. Notice, for instance, 'Joseph and His mother knew not of it.' 'They supposed Him to have been in the company.' 'And when they,' i.e. Joseph and Mary, 'saw Him, they ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the basis, more modestly expressed, of Blackstone's conception of the British Constitution and of liberty under law. It was the kernel of Burke's theory of statecraft. It is the inspiration of the sublimer science, which accepts the hypothesis of evolution as taught by Darwin and Spencer, yet bows in reverence before the unnamed and incommensurable force lodged as a mystical purpose within the unfolding universe. It was the wisdom of that child of Stratford who, building better than he knew, gave to ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... account for the strange fact that all schools of medicine which have risen, flourished, and disappeared, have left some trace in historical records, with the exception of that of India, is most difficult, unless under the hypothesis that the language in which the science and philosophy of India was recorded has been almost a sealed book to the world, and is even now quite unintelligible to the people of India itself, generally speaking, and that thus the only way in which the results of the long ages of philosophic ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... doubt. In the "Principia" is a chapter on mosses wherein it is explained how the first vestige of lichen catches the dust particles of disintegrating rock, and we get the first tokens of a coming forest. Darwin never made a point better; and the nebular hypothesis and the origin of species are worked out with conjectures, fanciful flights, queer conceits, poetic comparisons, far-reaching analogies, and most astounding ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... amused me greatly, for of course neither the newness nor the orthodoxy of a hypothesis will make it true if it is not true, nor untrue if it is true. Nor could the luck or will-power, with which I had resisted their hypnotists and psychoanalysts, make what might or might not be a universal fact one whit ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... Its first real effect was observable in the counting-house of the Hamburg owners. There it was believed that Captain Schmidt had either become a lunatic himself or was in touch with a rich one. Schmidt was so well known to them that they acted on the latter hypothesis. They cabled him their hearty commendation, "drew" on the Paris bank by the next post, and awaited developments. To their profound amazement, the money was paid. As they had obtained 8,750 pounds for a vessel ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... vindication of human feeling began from an hypothesis,—that the outward state of the mass of the Spanish people would be improved by the French usurpation. To this I now give an unqualified denial. Let me also observe to those men, for whose infirmity this hypothesis was tolerated,—that the true point of comparison does not lie between what the Spaniards have been under a government of their own, and what they may become under French domination; but between what the Spaniards may do (and, in all likelihood, will do) for themselves, and what ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to be untenable, there being 'clear and unmistakable evidence that the traps were in great part of sub-aerial formation', The intercalation of sedimentary beds with fresh-water fossils is conclusive proof that the lava-flows associated with such beds cannot be submarine. The hypothesis that the lower beds of traps were poured out in a vast, but shallow, freshwater lake extending throughout the area over which the inter- trappean limestone formation extends appears to be extremely improbable. The lava seems to have been poured, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... so-called proofs, would be waste of time. They prove nothing except Pope's extreme anxiety to justify his wild hypothesis of a dark conspiracy. Pope was jealous, spiteful, and credulous. He was driven to fury by Tickell's publication, which had the appearance of a competition. But angry as he was, he could find no real cause of complaint, except by imagining ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... order to explain certain features in the hereditary transmission of coat colour in mice, postulated the hypothesis that the grey colour of the wild mouse (which is known to be a compound of black, chocolate and yellow pigments) may be due either to the interaction of a single ferment and three chromogens, or vice versa, to one chromogenic substance ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... beast as man. So holy it is, so touching, so wise and so great a credit it does to man. As for me, I've long resolved not to think whether man created God or God man. And I won't go through all the axioms laid down by Russian boys on that subject, all derived from European hypotheses; for what's a hypothesis there, is an axiom with the Russian boy, and not only with the boys but with their teachers too, for our Russian professors are often just the same boys themselves. And so I omit all the hypotheses. For what are ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... This hypothesis, however, appears to have been advanced upon imperfect data; for although some fish, like the salmon, scrape grooves in the sand and place their spawn in inequalities and fissures; yet as a general rule spawn is deposited not ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... toils somehow or other. It was in the days of Fleet marriages—in the days when young men about town were even more reckless and more likely to become the prey of feminine deception than they are now. The fact that Matthew Haygarth revealed no such marriage is no conclusive evidence against my hypothesis. He died very suddenly—intestate, as it seems the habit of these Haygarths to die; and he had never made any adjustment of his affairs. According to the oldest inhabitant in Ullerton almshouses, this Matthew was a very handsome fellow, generous-hearted, open-handed—a devil-may-care kind of a chap, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... observe that the opposition of the heart to the intelligence is Comte's key to the whole history of the past, especially in relation to religion. Theology is to him a system growing out of a natural, though partially erroneous, hypothesis, a hypothesis which in its first appearance was well suited to excite the nascent intelligence and satisfy the primary affections of man, but which, in its further development, tended to secure moral and social ends at the expense of truth, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... half-formed, it is true, but still a theory," said Taxiing. "In fact, it's hardly so much a theory as an hypothesis." ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... creation owes its existence very largely to the supposed necessity of making science accord with the Hebrew cosmogony"; and that the hypothesis of special creation is, in my judgment, a "mere specious mask for our ignorance." Not content with ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... could be no objection to the publication of the work. In the first place, the title of the book was to be so carefully worded as to show plainly that the Copernican doctrine was merely to be regarded as an hypothesis, and not as a scientific fact. Galileo was also instructed to conclude the book with special arguments which had been supplied by the Pope himself, and which appeared to his Holiness to be quite conclusive against ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... large and handsome; but not so magnificent as that at Bayeux. The organ is comparatively small. Perhaps the thirteenth century is a period sufficiently remote to assign for the completion of the interior of this church, for I cannot subscribe to the hypothesis of the Abbe de la Rue, that this edifice was probably erected by Tancred King of Sicily at the end of the eleventh, or at the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... on him lacks credibility. One is inclined to believe that there is a misunderstanding, and that what money Cameron took was for the Prince's service. Yet we find no proof of this, and Torcastle's letter is difficult to explain on the hypothesis of Cameron's innocence. Glengarry tried to secure himself by a mysterious interview with the King. On May 23, at Rome, he wrote to Edgar. 'As His Majesty comes into town next week, and that I can't, in your absence, have an audience with such safety, not choising to confide myself ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... a question whether, in view of the enemy's activity both west of the Oise and south of the Somme, and also further to the north, a retreat would not have to be made. General Joffre resolutely put this hypothesis aside and ordered the offensive to be resumed with the reinforcements that had arrived. It was, however, clear that, despite the efforts of all, our front, extended to the sea as it was by a mere ribbon of troops, did not possess the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... proposed, in your SPECTATOR of last Tuesday, Mr. Hobbs's Hypothesis for solving that very odd Phaenomenon of Laughter. You have made the Hypothesis valuable by espousing it your self; for had it continued Mr. Hobbs's, no Body would have minded it. Now here this perplexed Case arises. A certain Company laughed very heartily upon the Reading of that ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Debray; "besides, he could not well appear in public, since he has been the dupe of the Cavalcanti, who, it appears, presented themselves to him with false letters of credit, and cheated him out of 100,000. francs upon the hypothesis of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... if there is any evidence of a Divine Mind discernible in the structure of a professing revelation, such evidence, in whatever degree present, would be of the best possible kind for substantiating the hypothesis of Theism. ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... said, amid strident cheers from Opposition, welcoming their old captain back to the fighting line, "asked to force through under the Parliament Act a Bill which by hypothesis requires amendment. What is worse than that is that we are to be compelled to read it a third time and to part with it while we know that it is to be amended, but while we have not the smallest conception in what respects or in what way." Insisted that before Home Rule Bill is added to Statute Book ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... colours of organised beings would be an exception to most other natural phenomena. They would not be the product of general laws, or determined by ever-changing external conditions; and we must give up all enquiry into their origin and causes, since (by the hypothesis) they are dependent on a Will whose motives must ever be unknown to us. But, strange to say, no sooner do we begin to examine and classify the colours of natural objects, than we find that they are ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... taken aback, and he hesitated, consulting his notes. Then he said: "Good—good. That confirms my hypothesis." ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... mined and wrought by the Igorot when the Spaniards came to the Philippines, and they wrote regarding it that it was then an old and established industry and art. It may possibly be that bronze was made in the Philippines before the arrival of the Spaniard, but there is no proof of such an hypothesis. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... picked up the first Mentz Bible, called the Mazarine, for a few francs at Nancy. M. Traiteur is yet enthusiastic in his love of books, and shewed me the relics of what might have been a curious library. He has a strange hypothesis, that the art of printing was invented at Spire; on account of a medal having been struck there in 1471, commemorative of that event; which medal was found during the capture of that place about two centuries ago. He fixed a very ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... in view Dodge made an experiment to test the hypothesis of anaesthesia. He proceeded as follows (ibid., p. 458): "A disc of black cardboard thirteen inches in diameter, in which a circle of one-eighth inch round holes, one half inch apart, had been punched close to the periphery all around, was made ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... Senator Reed turned to the President again and in the most emphatic way, said, "Mr. President, Senator Stone told me before I came to see you that you were not a cold man and that you were a good fellow. It was upon that hypothesis that I took the liberty of appealing to you personally in behalf of my friend." Senator Reed then continued, and in the most eloquent short speech I have ever heard, said, "They tell me that before you became ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... On this hypothesis, which is so wild that one begins to suspect that it may be true, was it impossible that I and that murdered man of the far past were in fact identical? If the woman were the same, preserved across the gulf in some unknown fashion, why should not her lover be the same? ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... I told myself, he must infallibly be reckoned. What mere professional man or merchant would have the heart to render his person thus conspicuous? And the hypothesis that might have disposed of him as a model was excluded by the freshness of his clothes. A poet, painter, sculptor, possibly an actor or musician—anyhow, something to which the generic name of artist, soiled with all ignoble ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... we to make a laborious calculation, any more than in trying them by other standards of morals. For long ago they have been classified sufficiently for all practical purposes by the thinker, by the legislator, by the opinion of the world. Whatever may be the hypothesis on which they are explained, or which in doubtful cases may be applied to the regulation of them, we are very rarely, if ever, called upon at the moment of performing them to determine their effect upon the happiness ...
— Philebus • Plato
... however, not be deceived by him; for there is higher evidence than his opinion. Look at Boyd's other writings: he never did write like Junius; and never could write like Junius. Internal evidence destroys the hypothesis of Almon." Sir Richard then said, that many persons had ascribed these letters to His Lordship; and that the world at large conceived that, at least, he was not unacquainted with the author. The Marquis smiled, and said, "No, no: I am not equal to Junius: I could not ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... Dods, receiving no countenance from the experienced lawyer for the hypothesis she had formed, rose, in something like displeasure, to order her whiskey to be prepared. But hostess as she was herself, when in her own dominions, she reckoned without her host in the present instance; for the humpbacked postilion, as absolute in his department as Mrs. Dods herself, declared ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... was thought there was no gunpowder for, although there had been a large quantity of coarse blasting-powder aboard, it was part of the original freight, and had all been delivered to King Dingo Bingo in exchange for the slaves. So at least was it supposed at the time, and this hypothesis served a useful purpose—since it enabled the crew to act with more coolness than they would otherwise have done. There is no situation more calculated to destroy presence of mind than to be aboard a ship on fire, and to know that somewhere among the ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... condition, its return to that condition being declared by the current observed at breaking the circuit. He called this hypothetical state of the wire the electro-tonic state: he afterwards abandoned this hypothesis, but seemed to return to it in after life. The term electro-tonic is also preserved by Professor Du Bois Reymond to express a certain electric condition of the nerves, and Professor Clerk Maxwell has ably defined and illustrated the hypothesis in the Tenth Volume of the "Transactions ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... This hypothesis appears at first sight very bold, but when it was brought before the Entomological Society (33. 'Proceedings, Entomological Society,' Dec. 3, 1866, p. xlv. and March 4, 1867, p. lxxx.) it was supported by various statements; and Mr. J. Jenner Weir, who keeps a large number ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... This hypothesis had some plausibility. No other creature would be so likely to trouble a person who had an antipathy to it. Dogs are very apt to make the acquaintance of strangers, in a free and easy way. They are met with everywhere,—in one's daily walk, at the thresholds ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... every human activity, unless we defined beforehand the end to be served and selected carefully only the appropriate factors. Carefully defined, missionary survey is not the unwieldy, amorphous thing which people often imagine. There is indeed a dangerous type of survey which starting with a hypothesis proceeds to prove it by collecting any facts which seem to support it to the neglect of all other facts which might disprove it. The procedure advocated here is the adoption of a definite and acknowledged purpose for which ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... point of disputing the hypothesis, but prudently checked myself. Suddenly he removed my hat and put his broad, hard palm upon my organs with an impudent dexterity which made me doubt whether he had not been a pickpocket or a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... This pleasant hypothesis has unquestionably prevented many a stomach from revolting, and increased the reputation of French cooks. It is related of the astronomer LALANDE that he often ate caterpillars and spiders, affirming that the former tasted like almonds and the latter like walnuts; ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... not as finally disproved,—because denial, like affirmation, must, in order to be final, be logically supported; and spirit is, if not illogical, at any rate outside the domain of logic,—but as being a hopelessly vague and untrustworthy hypothesis. The Bible is a human book; Christ was a gentleman, related to the Buddha and Plato families; Joseph was an ill- used man; death, so far as we have any reason to believe, is annihilation of personal existence; life is—the predicament of the ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... No hypothesis has yet been formulated which will account for the structure of the corona, or for its variation in shape. The great difficulty with regard to theorising upon this subject, is the fact that we see so much of the corona under conditions ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... has taken place, especially between physicists and chemists, over the nature of the substances with which all space must, according to scientific hypothesis, be filled. One side contends that it is infinitely thinner than the thinnest gas, absolutely frictionless and without weight; the other asserts that it is denser than the densest solid. In this substance the ultimate atoms of matter are thought to float, like motes in ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... ancient source". The prehistoric burial customs of these separate peoples are also remarkably similar and they resemble closely in turn those of the Neolithic Europeans. The cumulative effect of such evidence forces us to regard as not wholly satisfactory and conclusive the hypothesis of cultural influence. A remote racial connection is possible, and is certainly worthy of consideration when so high an authority as Professor Frazer, author of The Golden Bough, is found prepared to admit that the widespread "homogeneity of beliefs" may have been due to "homogeneity of race". ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the note, 'not including ontological inquiries under the head of metaphysics.' He denies, however, the proposition that 'all general truths are founded on experience.' He thinks that a meaning can be attached to the term 'freewill'; but considers it impossible 'to frame a satisfactory hypothesis as to the origin of evil.' Even the intellect of the apostles had its limits. His ethical doctrines seem to have inclined to utilitarianism. The whole society (four members present) agrees that the system of expediency, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... as Phoebe, is revolving in a direction the exact contrary of that which all known astronomical laws would have led us to expect. English astronomers admit that this may necessitate a fundamental revision of the nebular hypothesis.—Weekly Paper. ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... of this century, the properties of bodies were investigated by several distinguished French mathematicians on the hypothesis that they are systems of molecules in equilibrium. The somewhat unsatisfactory nature of the results of these investigations produced, especially in this country, a reaction in favour of the opposite method of treating bodies as if they were, so far at least ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... I lit a cigarette and strolled forward. Either the fellow had fancied that he knew her or he had behaved in a confoundedly impertinent way. The latter hypothesis seemed, on the whole, the more likely, and I felt a lively desire to drop him over ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... position on the bureau, returned in a very perplexed frame of mind to his own premises in Staple Inn. This affair had given him a shock. He was at a loss to account for Mr. Bessel's conduct on any sane hypothesis. He tried to read, but he could not do so; he went for a short walk, and was so preoccupied that he narrowly escaped a cab at the top of Chancery Lane; and at last—a full hour before his usual time—he went to bed. For a considerable time he could ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... pair on the end of the piazza, a smile of triumph on his face, as he came to this conclusion. Mary was kneeling beside her father, her back towards himself, fondling the old man's poor withered face, and paying so little attention to the man so soon to be her husband, that the jealousy hypothesis might have seemed well supported. What was it that the little girl had said to Josephine Harris, not half an hour before?—that "she could never meet Egbert Crawford after such a revelation?" Something of the kind, certainly. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... said the man in gray; "where is he? Let us at once find him, and refute beyond cavil this injurious hypothesis." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the Grass. It was an impossible happening. Every inhabitant had had personal experience of the Grass and was fearfully alert against its appearance. The patrols covered the sea between it and the mainland constantly; the distance was too far for windborne seeds. The tenuous hypothesis that gulls had acted as carriers was accepted simply for want of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... note: Alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do not (except occasionally in spaceborne computers). Intel could not explain random bit drops in their early chips, and one hypothesis was cosmic rays. So they created the World's Largest Lead Safe, using 25 tons of the stuff, and used two identical boards for testing. One was placed in the safe, one outside. The hypothesis was that if cosmic rays were causing the bit drops, they should see a ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... friend of Galileo and Tycho Brahe, and his life may be said to have been spent in finding the abstract intelligible reason for the actual disposition of the solar system, in which physical cause should take the place of arbitrary hypothesis. He did this.] medicine was, during those ages, a magical art, and the idea of cure by medicine, that drugs actually cure, is existent to this day as a remnant of the Middle Ages. A man's death-offense might be that he knew more than he could make others understand about the then secrets ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... degrees 29 minutes south, and in the longitude of 199 degrees 32 minutes, the variation of the needle being 8 degrees. Here we are to observe that the eastern variation decreases, which is likewise very agreeable to Doctor Halley's hypothesis; which, in few words, is this: that a certain large solid body contained within, and every way separated from the earth (as having its own proper motion), and being included like a kernel in its shell, revolves circularly from east to west, as the ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... anatomists equipped with more delicate instruments than I the task of elucidating this obscure question. The second conjecture appears to me the more probable, because of the palpi, whose nerves, it seems to me, must have the same origin as those of the fangs. Basing our argument on this latter hypothesis, we see that the Calicurgus has only one means of suppressing the movement of the poisoned pincers without affecting the mobility of the palpi, above all without injuring the cephalic centres and thus producing death, namely, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... that of the varieties of a polymorphous species, some of them slight, others extreme. And in large genera the unequal resemblance shows itself in the clustering of the species around several types or central species, like satellites around their respective planets. Obviously suggestive this of the hypothesis that they were satellites, not thrown off by revolution, like the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and our own solitary moon, but gradually and peacefully detached by divergent variation. That such closely-related species may be only varieties ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... that her husband's humiliating idiosyncrasy seemed to her only an added richness—a proof of life and talent), there was still the possibility that she had not found him out, that she took his false pieces at his own valuation. A little reflection rendered this hypothesis untenable; it was too evident that the account he gave of things must repeatedly have contradicted her own knowledge. Within an hour or two of his meeting them Lyon had seen her confronted with that perfectly gratuitous invention about the profit they had made off his early picture. ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... other historians have supposed, on the contrary, that Agrippina had fallen out with some one of the more powerful freedmen of Claudius, and seeing Claudius waver, had despatched him in order that she herself should not end like Messalina. But this hypothesis also is absurd. An empress was virtually invulnerable. Messalina had proved this, for she had committed every excess and abuse with impunity. Agrippina, protected as she was by the respect of all, invested with honors that gave her person a virtually sacred character, had ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... maintained, as a metaphysical hypothesis, that there exists in the mind of man an inherent principle, in virtue of which he believes and expects that what has been, will be; and that the course of nature will be a continuous and uninterrupted one. So far, however, from any such belief existing ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... ulterior aims she would suspect me less if I should be businesslike, and yet I consented not to be so. It was possible she intended her omission as an impertinence, a visible irony, to show how she could overreach people who attempted to overreach her. On that hypothesis it was well to let her see that one did not notice her little tricks. The real reading of the matter, I afterward perceived, was simply the poor old woman's desire to emphasize the fact that I was in the enjoyment of a favor as rigidly ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... Marques del Vasto. More recently, with some greater show of probability, it has been called Guidobaldo II., Duke of Urbino. In the Jahrbuch der koeniglich-preussischen Kunstsammlungen,[43] Herr Carl Justi, ever bold and ingenious in hypothesis, strives, with the support of a mass of corroborative evidence that cannot be here quoted, to prove that the splendid personage presented is a Neapolitan nobleman of the highest rank, Giovan Francesco Acquaviva, Duke of Atri. There is the more reason ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... He usually starts with the nebular hypothesis. And where does that begin? "In the beginning"? No. It begins by assuming that two things existed, which the theory does not try to explain. It assumes that matter and force existed, but it does not tell us how matter and force ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... eccentricity—I use the word in its literal sense—of most things, and the humour followed in accordance with the above definition. The method was simple. Chesterton invented some grotesque situation, some hypothesis which was glaringly absurd. He then placed it in an abrupt juxtaposition with the normal, instead of working from the normal to the actual, in the usual manner. Just as the reader was beginning to protest against the reversal of his accustomed values, G.K.C. would ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... this, and although we do not think it is possible completely to disprove the truth of the hypothesis that some or all of these animal cults are vestiges of a once fully developed totemic system, we are inclined to reject it. We are led to do so by four considerations. In the first place, if by totemism we mean a social ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... century they invariably appear to me on a background coloured like the principal figure in the dates of that century; thus events of the eighteenth century invariably appear to me on a greenish ground, from the colour of the figure 7. This habit clings to me most tenaciously, and the only hypothesis I can form about its origin is the following:—My tutor, when I was ten to twelve years old, taught me chronology by means of a diagram on which the centuries were represented by squares, subdivided in 100 smaller squares; the squares representing ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... does his soul break the dendritic contacts between cell and cell; and when he awakes, does it make contacts and switch the impulses evoked by sense stimuli on to one or other tract of the axons, or axis cylinder processes, which form the association pathways? Such a hypothesis is no explanation; it simply puts back the whole question a step further, and leaves it wrapped in mystery. It cannot be fatigue that produces the hypothetical interruptions of the dendritic synapses and then induces sleep, for sleep can follow after fatigue of a very ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... trees, because it was almost certain she had taken the narrow path leading to the bridge that joins Krestowsky to Kameny-Ostrow. Some indications discovered by the police who swarmed to right and left of the path confirmed this hypothesis. And no carriage in sight! They all ran on, Koupriane among the first. Rouletabille kept at his heels, but he did not pass him. Suddenly there were cries and calls among the police. One pointed out something below gliding upon the sloping descent. It was little Kathanna. ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... present address, I notice that Joule's and my own old experiments[1] on the thermal effect of gases expanding from a high-pressure vessel through a porous plug, proves the less dense gas to have greater intrinsic potential energy than the denser gas, if we assume the ordinary hypothesis regarding the temperature of a gas, according to which two gases are of equal temperatures [2] when the kinetic energies of their constituent molecules are of equal average amounts ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... answer to the derision which has been flung upon what was supposed to be the author's hypothesis as to the invention of steam locomotion before the time of the Marquis of Worcester, Salomon de Caus ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... of Brougham, then the most conspicuous advocate of Whiggism. He published in 1843 a Political Philosophy, which, according to Lord Campbell, killed the 'Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.' No such hypothesis is necessary to account for the death of a society encumbered by a 'Dictionary of Universal Biography.' But the book was bad enough to kill, if a collection of outworn ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... that distinguished writer, he is obliged to take refuge behind the deficiency of the geological record, and to suppose facts and proofs may hereafter be discovered, when few are now known to favor the new hypothesis. We can see no more reason why a giraffe should have had a long neck, because he wished to crop the leaves of tall trees, than that mankind should have become winged, because in all times both ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the voice slides down and then up; and the other, the falling circumflex, in which the voice slides upward and then downward on the same vowel. They may both be denoted by the same mark, thus, (^). The circumflex is used chiefly to indicate the emphasis of irony, of contrast, or of hypothesis. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... have intended to affirm that if the free States should refuse to repeal their obnoxious statutes after a final decision against their constitutionality, then the slave States would be justified in revolutionary resistance. But he had no right to make such an argument or suggest such an hypothesis, for never in the history of the Federal Government had the decision of the Supreme judicial tribunal been disobeyed or disregarded by any State or by any individual. The right of "revolutionary resistance" ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... circulation.—Attempts at experimentation.—The oddities of inventors brought under two heads: the explicable and inexplicable. They are helpers of inspiration.—Is there any analogy between physical and psychic creation? A philosophical hypothesis on the subject.—Limitation of the question. Impossibility ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... paper was read, I have changed some of the terms which were first proposed, that I might employ only such as were at the same time simple in their nature, clear in their reference, and free from hypothesis. ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... her poor little head was busy on this perturbing question, till she inquired of herself whether after all it might not be possible for photographs to represent people as they had never been. Before rejecting the hypothesis she determined to have the word of a professor on the point, which would be better than all her surmises. Returning to Markton early, she told the coachman whom Paula had sent, to drive her to the shop of Mr. Ray, an obscure photographic ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... of thirteen Deronda had associated the deepest experience of his affections with what was a pure supposition, namely, that Sir Hugo was his father: that was a hypothesis which had been the source of passionate struggle within him; by its light he had been accustomed to subdue feelings and to cherish them. He had been well used to find a motive in a conception which might be disproved; and he had been also used to think of some revelation ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Any Other Book. Two Modes of Investigation. Did the Council of Nice Make the Bible? The Mythical Theory. The Evidence of Celsus. The Fragment Hypothesis. The Bank Signature Book. Could ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... their view they were compounds of maltose and dextrin, they had the properties of mixtures of these two substances. On the assumption of the existence of these compounds, Brown and his colleagues formulated what is known as the maltodextrin or amyloin hypothesis of starch degradation. C.J. Lintner, in 1891, claimed to have separated a sugar, isomeric with maltose, which is termed isomaltose, from the products of starch hydrolysis. A.R. Ling and J.L. Baker, as well as Brown and Morris, in 1895, proved ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... 'Bellforded' so often," I said, "that it has lost its edge. Still, in the end, it may grow wearisome. Would you be willing at all to entertain the hypothesis that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, and that I never saw you before ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... had not been able to digest, his disquisition was so indistinct, and his expression so obscure and unentertaining, that our hero seized the opportunity of displaying his own erudition, by venturing to contradict some circumstances of the doctor's hypothesis, and substituting a theory of his own, which, as he had invented it for the purpose, was ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... be reconciled by strict reasoning with the logical contents of old dicta, gave him wonderful advantage. His adversary, as he strode confidently along the smooth grass, suddenly found himself treading on a serpent; he had overlooked a condition, a proviso, a word of hypothesis or contingency, that sprang from its ambush and brought his triumph to naught on the spot. If Mr. Gladstone had only taken as much trouble that his hearers should understand exactly what it was that he meant, as he took trouble afterwards to show that his meaning had been grossly misunderstood, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... to seven thousand miles, and, even supposing that the wind had varied half a quarter, it must have brought us either to the archipelago of Mendava, either on the Pomotous, or even, if it had a greater strength than I suppose, to the land of New Zealand. If the last hypothesis is correct, it will be easy enough to get home again. English or Maoris, we shall always find some one to whom we can speak. If, on the contrary, this is the coast of a desert island in some tiny archipelago, perhaps we shall be able ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... These two lines are about the nearest approach to definite Theism to be found in any writing of Shelley. The conception, which may amount to Theism, is equally consistent with Pantheism. Even in his most anti-theistic poem, Queen Mab, Shelley said in a note—'The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit, co-eternal ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... Howells' implicit Altruria, and Bellamy's future Boston, Comte's great Western Republic, Hertzka's Freeland, Cabet's Icaria, and Campanella's City of the Sun, are built, just as we shall build, upon that, upon the hypothesis of the complete emancipation of a community of men from tradition, from habits, from legal bonds, and that subtler servitude possessions entail. And much of the essential value of all such speculations lies in ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... hypothesis," said Dr. White, "and have conducted several experiments which seem to bear it out. I am staking my reputation upon the supposition that it is correct. Not only that, but I am also staking the lives of ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak |
