"Antecedent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so on ad infinitum, thus giving rise to the whole train of secondary causes. So long as we judge only from the information conveyed to us by the outward senses, we are working on the plane of secondary causation and see nothing but a succession of conditions, forming part of an endless train of antecedent conditions coming out of the past and stretching away into the future, and from this point of view we are under the rule of an iron destiny from which there seems no possibility of escape. This is because the outward senses are only capable of dealing with the relations ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... The name is still retained, however, and applied to the introductory, or, to use Mr. Boucicault's word, "proloquial" acts of certain long and complicated plays, which seem to require for their due comprehension the exhibition to the audience of events antecedent to the real subject of the drama. But these "proloquial acts" are things quite apart from ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... that we must return, not only in religion and its practice, but in philosophy, if we are to establish a firm foundation for that newer society and civilization that are to help us to achieve the "Great Peace." Antecedent systems failed, and subsequent systems have failed; in this alone, the philosophy of Christianity, is there safety, for it alone is consonant with the revealed ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... action was interpreted in the most definite sense possible, as origin out of an INTENTION; people were agreed in the belief that the value of an action lay in the value of its intention. The intention as the sole origin and antecedent history of an action: under the influence of this prejudice moral praise and blame have been bestowed, and men have judged and even philosophized almost up to the present day.—Is it not possible, however, that the necessity may now have arisen of again making up our minds ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... his theodicy represents God as limited by an antecedent reason in things which makes certain combinations logically incompatible, certain goods impossible. He surveys in advance all the universes he might create, and by an act of what Leibnitz calls his antecedent will he chooses our actual world as the one in which the evil, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... of the Senate of December 30, I now lay before them the correspondence of the naval commanders Barron and Rodgers and of Mr. Eaton, late consul at Tunis, respecting the progress of the war with Tripoli, antecedent to the treaty with the Bey and Regency of Tripoli, and respecting the negotiations for the same, and the commission and instructions of Mr. Eaton, with such other correspondence in possession of the offices as I suppose may be useful to the Senate in their ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... end. The direct and immediate occasion of the discourse lies in Peter's question at the 27th verse of the nineteenth chapter, "We have forsaken all and followed thee: what shall we have therefore?" But as the parable sprang from Peter's question, so Peter's question sprang from an antecedent fact. To that fact, accordingly, we must look as the true ultimate root on which the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... antecedent and prehistoric matters of faith about Him, we find here that before He became man He subsisted in possession, lawful and natural, of the manifested reality [Greek: morphe] of Godhead, equal to God [ii. 6.]. His appearance as man was the ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... questions,—of antiquity, philology, local custom and allusion; in what place and at what time it was done; whence, how, and why it came to be as it is; where the author got any hints or materials for it, and what of antecedent or contemporary history may be gathered from it. All this is legitimate and right in its place, but has nothing to do with the character and meaning of the thing as a work of art, in which respect it must know its cue without a prompter, and be able to tell its own tale. That which holds ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... write, their names can perish only with the knowledge of the history of our times. A National Anti-Slavery Society was formed, which astonished the country by its novelty, and awed it by its boldness. In five months its first annual meeting was held in the identical city in which, only seven antecedent months, Abolitionists were in peril of their lives. In ability, interest, and solemnity it took precedence of all the great religious celebrations which took place at the same time. During the same month, a New England anti-slavery convention was held ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... too, may be considered nowadays to hold but a mean idea of the spiritual authority of the Church. He had never been known to dispute on its exact bearing with the State,—whether it was incorporated with the State or above the State, whether it was antecedent to the Papacy or formed from the Papacy, etc. According to his favourite maxim, "Quieta non movere,"—["Not to disturb things that are quiet."]—I have no doubt that he would have thought that the less discussion is ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... disposition to be influenced by the Vicious than the Virtuous motive. My difficulty upon this is, that a stronger natural disposition to be influenced by the Vicious than the Virtuous Motive (which every one has antecedent to his first vice), seems, to all purposes of the present question, to put the Man in the same condition as though he was indifferent to the Virtuous Motive; and since an indifferency to the Virtuous Motive would have ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler
... consequences attached to a certain group of facts, and, by implication, that the facts are true of him. The important thing to grasp is, that each of these legal compounds, possession, property, and contract, is to be analyzed into fact and right, antecedent and consequent, in like manner as every other. It is wholly immaterial that one element is accented by one word, and the other by the other two. We are not studying etymology, but law. There are always two things to be asked: ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... gospel before them, is it not strange that there are so many virulent enemies to infant baptism? Their rejection of it seems to rest mainly upon the untenable position that baptism has meaning and force only when it is the fruit of an antecedent, self-conscious faith on the part of the subject, and that it is but the outward demonstration of a separate and prior participation of some inward grace. As infants have not a self-conscious faith, it is believed, therefore, that they ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... affinities are rather with flowers and birds and all enchanting innocencies than with dark human passions, who can think no ill of man or God, and in whom religious gladness, being in possession from the outset, needs no deliverance from any antecedent burden. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... another aspect, as separated into two great kingdoms, that of necessity (mineral, vegetable, animal), and that of grace (humanity). He displayed it willed by God, projected by God, created by God; governed by God according to antecedent and consequent wills, that is, by general wills (God desires man to be saved) and by particular wills (God wishes the sinner to be punished), and the union of the general wills is the creation, and the result of all the particular wills is Providence. ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... administration of the "law common to all nations"; and all we know of primitive thought would lead us to conclude that this ideal similarity would do much to encourage the belief in an identity of the two conceptions. But then, while the Jus Gentium had little or no antecedent credit at Rome, the theory of a Law of Nature came in surrounded with all the prestige of philosophical authority, and invested with the charms of association with an elder and more blissful condition of the race. It is easy to understand how the difference ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... production de M. Crapelet rappelee, dans le titre precedent, sera consideree comme un phenomene dans son genre. Elle est, certes, sans antecedent et, pour l'honneur de la France, je desire qu'elle n'ait pas d'imitateurs. Quiconque prendra la peine de lire la trentieme lettre de mon voyage, soit dans l'original, soit dans la version de M. Crapelet, en laissant de cote les notes qui appartiennent an traducteur, conviendra facilement que cette ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... aside as limiting the perfections of God. Indeed, it has been objected against the scheme of Leibnitz, "that it seems to make something which I do not know how to express otherwise than by the ancient stoical fate, antecedent and superior even to God himself. I would therefore think it best to say, with the current of orthodox divines, that God was perfectly free in his purpose and providence, and that there is no reason to be sought for the one or the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... lead to the conclusion that if ideas of reason are not chronologically antecedent to sensation, they are, at least, the logical antecedents of all cognition. The mere feeling of resistance can not give the notion of without the a priori idea of space. The feeling of movement of change, can not give ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... this is not a period in world history when the informing energy of life expresses itself through such qualities, whereas the twelfth century was of precisely this nature. The antecedent hundred years had seen the recovery from the barbarism that engulfed Western Europe after the fall of Rome, and the generation of those vital forces that for two centuries were to infuse society with a vigour almost unexampled ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... know what we can do,' said the miserable father, sitting huddled up in his arm-chair one evening towards the end of August. It was very hot, but the windows were closed because he could not bear a draught, and he was somewhat impatiently waiting for the hour of prayers which were antecedent to bed, where he could be silent even if he ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... What offence had he committed that deserved such implacable vengeance? Nothing I had heard from Sarsefield was in contradiction to his own story. His deed, imperfectly observed, would appear to be atrocious and detestable; but the view of all its antecedent and accompanying events and motives would surely place it in the list, not ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... upon the mind of the investigator that "there is nothing new under the sun". No matter how far back he may push his inquiry in attempting to unveil the true source of any important idea, he will always find at some antecedent date the germ, either of the same inventive conception, or of something which is hardly distinguishable from it. The habit of research into the origin of improved industrial method must therefore help to strengthen the impression of the importance of gradual growth, and of general tendencies, as ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... They are, indeed, of an order of events which are going on under the agency of intelligible causes, down to the present day. We may therefore consider these generally as recent transactions. But advancing to the far distant antecedent era of its existence, we may consider it to have been a globe of its present size enveloped in the crystalline rock already described, with the waters of the present seas and the present atmosphere around ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... with an effort I did so; and found, after paying my hotel bills, a balance in my favour of exactly twenty-five dollars! Twenty-five dollars to live upon until I could write home, and receive an answer—a period of three months at the least—for I am talking of a time antecedent to ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... across the room and thrashing the furniture about. "Poor old gentleman!" thought he. "I hope I shall succeed in convincing him how little I value money in comparison with righting this wrong, as far as possible. Alas! it would never have taken place had there not been a great antecedent wrong; and that again grew out of the ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... made only high enough to incite them to effort, but not so high as to cause discouragement. I recalled the sentence in Harvey's Grammar: "Milo began to lift the ox when he was a calf." After we had succeeded in locating the antecedent of "he" we learned from this sentence a lesson of value, and I recalled this lesson in my efforts to inculcate progressive mastery in the boys and girls of my school. I sometimes deferred a difficult problem ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... appropriate influence, which is indestructible; and they all combine to make up the great whole of human action, the results of which at any specific period are only the necessary and inevitable consequences of all antecedent facts. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... there reason to think that the climate was ever different? Geologists assure us that "great oscillations of climate have occurred in times immediately antecedent to the peopling of the earth by man."[136] But in Central and Northern Asia there is evidence of such fluctuations of temperature in a much more recent period. In 1803, on the banks of the Lena, in latitude 70 deg., the entire body of a mammoth fell ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... unbelieving age, then, when even the book of Deuteronomy is 'critically examined,' let us see how much can really be said for and against our old friend, the toad-in-a-hole; and first let us begin with the antecedent probability, or otherwise, of any animal being able to live in a more or less torpid condition, without air or food, for any considerable ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... then, how Ludwig Halberger came to be domiciled there, so far from civilisation, and so high up the Pilcomayo—river of mysterious note—it is necessary to give some details of his life antecedent to the time of his having established this solitary estancia. To do so a name of evil augury and ill repute must needs be introduced—that of Dr Francia, Dictator of Paraguay, who for more than a quarter of a century ruled ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... our solution of all questions become. A hundred years hence, should science increase in the mean time, the solutions which are satisfactory to us will be looked down upon by our posterity, as the speculations of our fathers antecedent to Adam Smith's time are ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... his reputation; and in any view of the case, it had been taken away from him by a decree of the Convention. His seat in that body did not affect his American status, because a convention to make a constitution is not a government, but extrinsic and antecedent to a government. The government once established, he would never have accepted a situation under it. Monroe assured him that he considered him an American citizen, and that "to the welfare of Thomas Paine Americans are not nor can they be indifferent,"—with which fine phrase Paine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Are the antecedent conditions such as would make the allegation probable? (Character and opportunities of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... of the Pro-Slavery agents in Kansas, from their initiation, with a varnish of smooth and plausible pretexts. Adroitly taking up the question at the point which it had reached when his own administration began, he leaves out of view all the antecedent crimes, treacheries, and tricks by which the people of the Territory had been led into civil war, and thus assumes that the late Lecompton Convention was a legitimate Convention, and that the Constitution framed by it (or said to have been framed by it,—for there is no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... existence, without any precedent condition from which it could have naturally proceeded. The assumption that successive states of Nature have arisen, each without any relation of natural causation to an antecedent state, is a mere modification of ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... from these remarks is, that all causation is an exertion of mind, and is only figuratively applied to matter. It necessarily implies power, will, and action. An efficient cause—we are not speaking now of a mere antecedent—is that which is necessarily followed by the effect, so that, if it were known, the effect might be predicted antecedently to all experience. Cicero describes it with philosophical accuracy. "Causa ea est, quae id efficit, cujus est causa. Non sic causa intelligi debet, ut quod cuique ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... or leaps in the life of a people. Development may hasten or may slacken, and may seem to cease for a time, but it is always continuous; it always proceeds out of antecedent conditions, and if it be arrested for a time it begins again at the point where ...
— A Guide to Methods and Observation in History - Studies in High School Observation • Calvin Olin Davis
... the pronoun he, she, or it is used it is necessary to think of the sex of its antecedent, though in its use there is no reason why sex should be expressed, say, one time in ten thousand. If one pronoun non-expressive of gender were used instead of the three, with three gender adjectives, then in nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell
... Hippocrates regarded all phenomena as at once divine and scientifically determinable. In this respect it is interesting to compare him with one of his most illustrious contemporaries, namely, with Socrates, who distributed phenomena into two classes: one wherein the connection of antecedent and consequent was invariable and ascertainable by human study, and wherein therefore future results were accessible to a well-instructed foresight; the other, which the gods had reserved for themselves and their unconditional agency, wherein there was no invariable or ascertainable ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... I am now advocating, explains this by the supposition, that there is a feeling—a sense of right and wrong—in our nature, antecedent to and independent of experiences of utility. Where free play is allowed to the relations between man and man, this feeling attaches itself to those acts of universal utility or self-sacrifice, which are the products of our affections and sympathies, and ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... after Magalhaens had shewed them the way, made several voyages from America to the westward, previous to that of Alvaro Mendana De Neyra, in 1595, which is the first that can be traced step by step. For the antecedent expeditions are not handed down to us with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... master's desk to a use for which the architect had clearly not designed it, to justify himself, with great simplicity averred, that he did not know that the thing had been forewarned. This exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral or declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... appreciation of the actor's art was so systematic that it had an antiquarian side, and at the risk of representing him as attached to an absurd futility it must be said that he had as yet hardly known a keener regret for anything than for the loss of that antecedent world, and in particular for his having belatedly missed the great comedienne, the light of the French stage in the early years of the century, of whose example and instruction Madame Carre had had the inestimable ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... from surplus to capital, and no longer is available for actual distribution. * * * not only does a stock dividend really take nothing from * * * the corporation and add nothing to that of the shareholder, but * * * the antecedent accumulation of profits evidenced thereby, while indicating that the shareholder is richer because of an increase of his capital, at the same time shows [that] he has not realized or received any income in" what is no more than a "bookkeeping transaction." But conceding ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the writers of the period antecedent to the revolution of 1789 were quite as much thrown up by the condition of public sentiment as they were the exciters of it. Nothing comprehensive, in matters of social arrangement, can be effected under a state of things like that of England; so ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... a man to believe in something better and higher than himself, when Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Homer, and Virgil could so believe. Brian Walford's idea of cleverness was to consider himself the ultimate product of incalculable antecedent time, the full-stop ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... great care for the purpose of concealment. Some parts had been hollowed out by art, though I concluded from the appearance of the roof and sides that there had been originally a cavern there formed by nature. Whether it had been constructed by our brethren the Molokani, or at a period antecedent to the persecutions they had suffered, I could not tell to a certainty, but I thought it very likely that it was of a much more ancient date. As may be supposed, I was not in a condition to consider the subject. The unusual exertion and excitement I had just gone through made rest very requisite, ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... that I am a matron and Francesca is shortly to be married, it is odd, to say the least, to see us cosily ensconced in a private sitting-room of a Dublin hotel, the table laid for three, and not a vestige of a man anywhere to be seen. Where, one might ask, if he knew the antecedent circumstances, are Miss Hamilton's American spouse ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... shall not argue that such action involves an "interference" with natural law; and if we have to admit our ignorance as to {210} how such a force would operate and bring results to pass, let us remind ourselves that the ultimate "how?"—the bridge between antecedent and consequent, and why the former should be followed by the latter—always and inevitably escapes us. Why in the thousand and more observed forms of snow-crystals the filaments of ice should always be arranged at angles ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Lord Clarendon, that Lord Aberdeen should ask Lord John what he advised him to do under the circumstances, was strongly condemned by me, as depriving Lord Aberdeen of all the advantage of the initiative with Lord Palmerston. Lord Aberdeen states his great difficulty to be not only the long antecedent and mutual opposition between him and Lord Palmerston, but also the fact that Lord Palmerston loved war for war's sake, and he peace for peace' sake.... He consoled himself, however, at last by the reflection that Lord Palmerston was not ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... be drawn between revision and review. Revision implies review as an antecedent step, but review is by no means necessarily followed by revision. The English book was reviewed and revised in 1662; it was reviewed but not revised in 1689. Review is tentative and advisory; revision is authoritative and final. In the present instance not an atom of power to effect ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... shall deal later with a method by which a responsive current of action is obtained without any antecedent current of injury. 'Negative variation' has then no meaning. Or, again, a current of injury may sometimes undergo a change of direction (see note, p. 12). In view of these considerations it is necessary to have at our disposal other forms of expression by which ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... for the proper appreciation of what Captain Douglas justly called "a momentous event." It was a strife of pigmies for the prize of a continent, and the leaders are entitled to full credit both for their antecedent energy and for their dispositions in the contest; not least the unhappy man who, having done so much to save his country, afterwards blasted his name by a treason unsurpassed in modern war. Energy ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... incompatible with routine. They are as little constructive as the age itself, as anything that we mean when we use the epithet Louis Quinze. Of everything thus indicated one predicates at once unconsciousness, the momentum of antecedent thought modified by the ease born of habit; the carelessness due to having one's thinking done for one and the license of proceeding fancifully, whimsically, even freakishly, once the lines and limits ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... meeting between them. It did not occur to his mind that Eustacia's love-signal to Wildeve was the tender effect upon the deserted beauty of the intelligence which her grandfather had brought home. His instinct was to regard her as a conspirator against rather than as an antecedent ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... corked the bottles before she boiled them, and of course they exploded. For greater preservation, the bottles were always buried in the ground; a number were once found in our garden with the fruit in high preservation which had been buried no one knew when. Thus experience is sometimes the antecedent of science, for it was little suspected at that time that by shutting out the air the invisible organic world was excluded—the cause ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... upon elementary law, of a time antecedent to all law, when men theoretically are said to have met together and surrendered a part of their rights for a more secure enjoyment of the remainder. Hence, we are told, human governments date their origin. This dream of the enthusiast as applied to ages past, in Connecticut for the first time and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... official concerned in the business at home would be more or less shown up, that this was particularly unfortunate just at this time in view of Lord Kitchener's lamented death, that the papers must be limited to those bearing upon the period antecedent to the actual landing of the army in the Gallipoli Peninsula, that if this last proviso was accepted I would go fully into the question and report in detail, and that if the proviso was not accepted I declined to act ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... assumed that, given any event, there is some one phenomenon which is THE cause of the event in question. This seems to be a mere mistake. Cause, in the only sense in which it can be practically applied, means "nearly invariable antecedent." We cannot in practice obtain an antecedent which is QUITE invariable, for this would require us to take account of the whole universe, since something not taken account of may prevent the expected effect. We cannot distinguish, among nearly invariable antecedents, one as THE ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... powers; that he may know the true good, meditate of it, desire, and do it. St. John xv. 5. That to this grace of God is owing the beginning, the progression, and accomplishment of all good; in such manner that even the Regenerate, without this antecedent, of preventing, exciting, concomitant, and co-operating grace, cannot think that which is good, desire, or practise it, nor resist any temptation to evil; so that all the good works or actions he can conceive, spring ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... that he aimed to disprove a Christian revelation which he judged fraudulent and conspiratorial. In place of ecclesiastical authority he offered the rule of conscience. For orthodoxy he substituted "a Religion antecedent to Revelation, which is necessary to be known in order to ascertain Revelation; and by that Religion [he meant] Natural Religion, which is presupposed to Revelation, and is a Test by which Reveal'd Religion is to be tried, is a Bottom on which ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... into custody, and in the final sentence the measure of his fine proclaimed him eminently guilty. The total estimate, which he delivered on oath to the House of Commons, amounted to 106,543 pounds 5 shillings 6 pence, exclusive of antecedent settlements. Two different allowances of 15,000 pounds and of 10,000 pounds were moved for Mr. Gibbon; but, on the question being put, it was carried without a division for the smaller sum. On these ruins, with the skill and credit of which Parliament had not ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... personality, yet retains so much of the old identity of which it was once indisputably part, that it remembers what it did when it was part of that identity as soon as it finds itself in circumstances which are calculated to refresh its memory owing to their similarity to certain antecedent ones, then ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... hold its tragic reminiscence. No narrow or sectional reminiscence. It belongs to these States in their entirety—not the North only, but the South—perhaps belongs most tenderly and devoutly to the South, of all; for there really this man's birthstock; there and then his antecedent stamp. Why should I not say that thence his manliest traits, his universality, his canny, easy ways and words upon the surface—his inflexible determination at heart? Have you ever realized it, my friends, that Lincoln, though grafted ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... upon the Massachusetts troops in Baltimore, as they were passing through on their way to Washington, on the 19th of April, with the antecedent and attendant circumstances, roused to the highest degree the passions of all who sympathized with the secession movement, and the mob became for the time being the controlling force of that city. So largely in ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... depression, suffered by emigration almost as heavily as the rest of Ireland, and built up its industries with proportionate difficulty. Over the rest of Ireland the main features of the story are continuous from a period long antecedent to the Union. A student of the condition of the Irish peasantry in the eighteenth and in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth centuries can ignore changes in the form or personnel of government. He would scarcely be aware, unless he travelled outside his subject, that Grattan's Parliament ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... project it by some mode of action not of a material nature. Now the only mode of action not of a material nature is Thought, and therefore to Thought we must look for the origin of Substance. This places us at a point antecedent to the existence even of primary substance, and consequently the initial action must be that of the Originating Mind upon ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... Antecedent to June 1811, the date of the order by which officers in command of ships were required to send quarterly returns of punishments to the Admiralty, there was little or no restraint upon the despotic ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... a doctrine of 'individualism' is implied throughout. The individual rights are the antecedent and the rights of the state a consequent or corollary. Every man has certain sacred rights accruing to him in virtue of 'prescription' or tradition, through his inherited position in the social organism. The 'rule of law' secures that he ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Hamilton, the novelist's attention may have been attracted to "Creichton's Memoirs," which treat of the adjacent districts, and that the mention of Stobo's name therein may have suggested to his mind its connection with Lismahago. Certainly there was no antecedent work to "Humphrey Clinker," in which, as we may believe, either of these names finds a place, save this of Creichton; and as, throughout the whole series of letters, Smollett does not profess to avoid the introduction of actual persons and events, often even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... say that we know "why" a thing is so and so, we mean that we know its immediate antecedents and connections, and find them familiar to us. I say that the immediate antecedent of, and the phenomenon most closely connected with, heredity is memory. I do not profess to show why anything can remember at all, I only maintain that whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities, ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... conscious enjoyment. We had been content. That expresses our condition perfectly; and now that I can analyze my own feeling, and understand what the word implies, I am satisfied of its accuracy. "Content" has both a positive and negative meaning or antecedent condition. It implies an absence of disturbing conditions as well as of wants; also it implies something positive which has been won or achieved, or which has accrued. In our state of mind—for though it may be presumption on my part, I am satisfied that our ideas ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... namesake of his who was the author of a well-known Homily on Palm Sunday,) remarks that "yesterday" had been read the history of the rising of Lazarus.(364) Now S. John xi. 1-45 is the lection for the antecedent Sabbath, ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... had the remotest idea of visiting Pietermaritzburg. It is necessary, of course, for the reader to know where they did intend going to, and how the intention arose; but before doing this we must deal with some antecedent circumstances. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... of Helvetius's transgressions in the region of speculative ethics, from any dogmatic point of view. Their nature is tolerably clear. Helvetius looked at man individually, as if each of us came into the world naked of all antecedent predispositions, and independent of the medium around us. Next, he did not see that virtue, justice, and the other great words of moral science denote qualities that are directly related to the fundamental constitution of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Cloud was one of the best hotels of Paris at this time, a time long antecedent to the opening of such vast caravansaries as the Louvre, the Continental, the Athenee, or the Grand. It occupied four sides of a courtyard, to which access was had by the usual gateway. The porter's lodge was in the latter, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the whole period antecedent to the time when Ap. Claudius carried the Roman arms beyond Italy against the Carthaginians; (2) extended, from that time till the fall of Carthage; (3) sinking, the times of the Gracchi; (4) gave way more and more, those of Sulla; (5) precipitate, those of Caesar; (6) the present ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... all over. She was married, and gone away. Doubtless the captain had taken his precautions to prevent any possible hinderance. That it was a safe marriage legally, even though so little was known of the bridegroom's antecedent life, seemed more than probable—certain, seeing that the chief object he would have in this marriage was its legality, to assure himself thereby of the property which should fall to Helen in the event of the earl's decease. That he loved Helen for herself, or was capable ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... idiotic?" cried Vendramin. "No; you are mad; for madness, the crisis we despise, is the memory of an antecedent condition acting on our present state of being. The genius of my dreams has taught me that, and much else! You want to make one of the Duchess and la Tinti; nay, dear Emilio, take them separately; it will be far ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... us with astonishment in their record, whether they are real or imaginary, acquire much of their importance from our knowledge of the antecedent circumstances and present condition of the actors. We connect the present with the past, and our sympathies becoming enlisted with the joys or sorrows of others, all that relates to them acquires the exaggerated importance to us which it has ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... more than three installments; and even the second was a disappointment. As soon as the tale became in any way perspicuous, it lost all merit in my eyes; only a single scene, or, as is the way with these feuilletons, half a scene, without antecedent or consequence, like a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing my interest. The less I saw of the novel, the better I liked it: a pregnant reflection. But for the most part, as I said, we neither of us read anything ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appointments and belongings of the folk indicates that tribes which had for a long time inhabited a district were driven out and replaced by a new race. Thus, then, from waifs and strays we can piece together a fairly connected account of the events of a period long antecedent to any written history. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... some few of the adminicles that are proven only by one witness; but as to this you may consider, 1st, That a witness deponing de facto proprio, is in law more credited than any other single witness. And this is the present case as to some of the adminicles. 2dly, The antecedent concomitant, and subsequent circumstances of fact, do sustain the testimony and make the semi-plenary probation to become full. But 3dly, The other adminicles, undoubtedly proven by concurring witnesses, are per se sufficient; and therefore you ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... foregoing scene to have been only described antecedent to the woman in the outbreak of her gratitude revealing the priest's charity, from which he recoiled,—suppose the mirthfulness of the incidents arising from reading the subscription-list—a mirthfulness ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... altogether wrong-headed—we hope to show them still farther, though we think we have already shown them satisfactorily, that we are by no means without reason in entering on this enterprise. I submit, however, we may very well dismiss the antecedent history of the question for the present: it grew from an unnoticed feeble plant, to be a stately and flourishing tree; and, for my part, any one that pleases may say he made the tree grow, if I can only have hereafter my fair share of the shelter and the shade. But in the present stage of ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... obligation to death. And this debt, you see, is wholly discharged to them that are in Christ, by another sentence repealing the former curse,—ver. 1 "There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ." But there is another debt, which I may call a debt of duty and obedience, which, as it was antecedent to sin, even binding innocent Adam, so the obligation of the debt of sin hath been so far from taking it away that it is rather increased exceedingly, and this debt is unpardonable and indispensable. The more ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... cause should also have been forever; to wit, the world universal. But what a strange mockery is this in so great a master, to confess a sufficient and effectual cause of the world, (to wit, an almighty God) in his antecedent; and the same God to be a God restrained in his conclusion; to make God free in power, and bound in will; able to effect, unable to determine; able to make all things, and yet unable to make choice of the time when? For this were impiously ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... that funeral which had so lately formed part in the most memorable event of my life. But these elements of awe, that might at any rate have struck forcibly upon the mind of a child, were for me, in my condition of morbid nervousness, raised into abiding grandeur by the antecedent experiences of that particular summer night. The listening for hours to the sounds from horses' hoofs upon distant roads, rising and falling, caught and lost, upon the gentle undulation of such fitful airs as might be stirring—the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Period, and the earliest known Signs of Man's Appearance in Europe. Series of Tertiary Deposits in Norfolk and Suffolk immediately antecedent to the Glacial Period. Gradual Refrigeration of Climate proved by the Marine Shells of successive Groups. Marine Newer Pliocene Shells of Northern Character near Woodbridge. Section of the Norfolk Cliffs. ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... our attention in the first instance to a proof of evolution considered as a fact, without any reference at all to its method, let us begin by considering the antecedent standing of ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... Ten Lectures on the Tuscan Art directly Antecedent to Florentine year of Victories. 13 plates. 12mo, ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... by no means implies that the two variables above-named— matter and consciousness—stand in the relation of cause and effect, antecedent and consequence, to one another. For on ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... Mr. Locke calls it, which was necessary to combine with it all its causes and consequences, and render it practically useful to the purposes of life. I was several times struck with the superior advantages which he derived from these details of relative and antecedent with which he had recorded in his memory historical facts. His fellow-students were acquainted with all the prominent incidents of history; but not having examined them in all their bearings, as they had read, and impressed them, with all their ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... be easy to find many superior. But, in the first place, I hardly know of anybody who has so completely taken up the principles, and is so thoroughly of the same way of thinking with yourself. In the next place, there are very few who have so much of the necessary previous discipline, my antecedent years having been wholly occupied in acquiring it. And, in the last place, I am pretty sure you cannot think of any other person whose whole life will be devoted to the propagation of the system." "There was during the last few years of Bentham's life," said James Mill's son, "less frequency ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... virtues must, therefore, be allowed to have a natural beauty and amiableness, which, at first, antecedent to all precept or education, recommends them to the esteem of uninstructed mankind, and engages their affections. And as the public utility of these virtues is the chief circumstance, whence they derive their merit, it follows, that the end, which they have ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... quotation carefully again): may not every act, incident, circumstance in a human life be the "uncoiling" of a karmic aggregate? This coil of life may be thought of most conveniently in this connection as the character of the person, a character built up, or "successively introduced" in antecedent lives. The sequence of events resultant on its "unwinding" would be the destiny of the person—a destiny determined, necessarily, by past action. This concept gives a new and more eloquent meaning to the phrase "Character is destiny." If we ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Descartes' Discourse of Method lies not in the antecedent methodical doubt; not in his beginning by resolving to doubt everything, a merely intellectual device; but in his resolution to begin by emptying himself of himself, of Descartes, of the real man, the man of flesh and bone, the man who does not want to die, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... detected, and, at the same time, a lack of confidence in his ability to express himself in unmistakable language. He avoids periodic sentences, uses only the simpler subjunctive constructions, repeats the antecedent in relative clauses, and, not infrequently, adopts a formal language closely akin to that of specifications and contracts, the style with which he was, naturally, most familiar. He ends each book with a brief summary, almost a formula, somewhat like a sigh of relief, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... particularly what; so that Protestants show on this ground some respect even for an artist when he has once achieved success. A certain experience of ill fortune is only a stimulus to this fidelity. So great is the antecedent trust in the world that the world, as it appears at first blush, may be ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... on which Lady Augustus and her daughter left Bragton old Mrs. Morton returned to that place. She had gone away in very bitterness of spirit against her grandson in the early days of his illness. For some period antecedent to that there had been causes for quarrelling. John Morton had told her that he had been to Reginald's house, and she, in her wrath, replied that he had disgraced himself by doing so. When those harsh words had been forgotten, or at any rate forgiven, other causes ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... it worth (their) while: and that he would use against their inventor those arts by which up to that time both our leaders and our armies had been overcome. Notice that the long relative clause quibus artibus ... forent is in Latin placed before the antecedent iis. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... man-wolf or wolf-man, which term the Anglo-Saxons translated literally in Canute's Laws verevulf, and the early English werewolf. In old French he was loupgarou, which means the same thing; except that garou means man-wolf in itself without the antecedent loup, so that, as Madden observes, the whole word is one of those reduplications of which we have an example in lukewarm. In Brittany he was bleizgarou and denvleiz, formed respectively from bleiz, wolf, and den, man; garou is merely a distorted form of wer ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... governed by the will of another. We are all born in subjection, all born equally, high and low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great, immutable, preexistent law, prior to all our devices, and prior to all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas, and all our sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by which we are knit and connected in the eternal frame of the universe, out of which ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... continues Professor Mivart, "it is freely conceded that the destructive agencies in nature do succeed in preventing the perpetuation of monstrous, abortive, and feeble attempts at the performance of the evolutionary process, that they rapidly remove antecedent forms when new ones are evolved more in harmony with surrounding conditions, and that their action results in the formation of new characters when these have once attained sufficient completeness to be of real ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... expectation thus answer much less to an objective conjunction of past experiences than to a capricious subjective conjunction of mental images. Here, then, the fusion of nervous processes must have another cause. And it is not difficult to assign such a cause. The antecedent activity of imagination doubtless involves as its organic result a powerful temporary disposition in the nervous structures concerned to go on acting. In other words, they remain in a state of sub-excitation, which can be raised to full excitation ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... wisdom, believing that he will take charge of them and direct them according to the promptings of boundless love and absolute omniscience? Is prayer really a power with God, or is it merely an expedient by which our own piety may be cultivated? Is it not merely a power (that is, a stated antecedent accompanied by the idea of causation), but is it a transcendent power, accomplishing what no other power can, over-ruling all other agencies, and rendering them subservient to its own wonderful ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... men have once swallowed this principle, that Mankind is free from all obligations antecedent to the laws of the Commonwealth, and that the Will of the Sovereign Power is the only measure of Good and Evil, they proceed suitably to its consequences to believe that no Religion can obtain the ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... Badgered ministers, bankrupt merchants, diplomatists with a headache,—any of our modern grandees under difficulties,—might have envied that peace over which Mr. Goren presided: and he was an enviable man. He loved his craft, he believed he had not succeeded the millions of antecedent tailors ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... which is a penitent condition antecedent to all help. Moreover he wanders alone, he has gone apart from his companions; behold, the Goddess steps out of the air and speaks. She reproaches him with folly, and turns him to the deity who can assist him. Who ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... by choice which brings as a necessary consequence something else. For there are many things which would involve contradiction and so be impossible, did not certain consequences follow them. This premised, it is clear that the antithesis of Mr. Mill's "Law" is Free Will. Law and antecedent necessity to Mr. Mill are one and the same. But Law in Catholic terminology means the Will of God decreeing freely or not freely, according to the subject-matter; and is not opposed to Free-Will. It guides, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Warren was in lusty health, and as the time approached all was fair and promising. By one of those turns, however, which it pleases Providence for his own wise purposes frequently to ordain, to mock our best hopes and baffle our most sanguine expectations, this admirable woman was, contrary to every antecedent prognostic, visited in her travail with epileptic fits, in which she expired, "leaving," (as the sublime Burke no less truly than pathetically said on the death of doctor Johnson,) "not only nothing to fill her place, but nothing that has a ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... to contend with; above all, an antecedent prejudice against the Cookes, in reality a prejudice against the world, the flesh, and the devil, natural to any quiet community, and of which Mohair and its appurtenances were taken as the outward and visible signs. Older people came to Asquith for simplicity and rest, and the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... have come from the Being...That which is the subtlest that is the self, that is all this, the truth, that self thou art O S'vetaketu [Footnote ref 3]." "Brahman," as Deussen points out, "was regarded as the cause antecedent in time, and the universe as the effect proceeding from it; the inner dependence of the universe on Brahman and its essential identity with him was represented as a creation of the universe by and out of Brahman." Thus it is ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... [Justin's] doctrine of the Logos is precisely that of Philo, and of writings long antecedent to the fourth Gospel, and there can be no doubt, we think, that it was derived from them." ("Supernatural Religion," ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... though it probably, by putting the Boer Government into a strong position, had a great effect in accelerating matters. What had been done secretly and slowly could be done more swiftly and openly when so plausible an excuse could be given for it. As a matter of fact, the preparations were long antecedent to the raid. The building of the forts at Pretoria and Johannesburg was begun nearly two years before that wretched incursion, and the importation of arms was going on apace. In that very year, 1895, a considerable sum was ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... respect to the future. The parties remain bound for all antecedent engagements. The partnership may be said to continue as to everything that is past, and until all pre-existing matters are wound up and settled. With regard to things past, the partnership ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... little bearing on descriptive Botany, so that anything like a familiarity with Physiology might be evaded. But he that took up Zoology, would to a certainty take up Physiology; and very probably also the antecedent members of the fundamental group. As to Geology, it is usually coupled with Mineralogy, although involving also a slight knowledge of Botany and Zoology. A competent mineralogist would be pretty sure to add Geology to his ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... which beholds objects that truly are—the objects in the world of intelligence— stirs within, and awakens to its power, who can be astonished that the mind which contains in itself the principles of all events, should, in this its state of liberation, discern the future in those antecedent principles which will constitute that future? The nobler part of the mind is thus united by abstraction to higher natures, and becomes a participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the gods . . . . The night-time of ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... diary and recollections have been here quoted, not as differing from, but only as being antecedent to, the following account, which has been ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... she added, as she came through the kitchen. "He (without any antecedent) has promised he'll do all he can to fetch her forth; and if he doesn't, and metely soon too, he'll wish ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... began to fall into abeyance after the Restoration, if we are to believe Antony Wood. His statements are always to be received with caution; but they are on this point confirmed by other testimonies, and by the antecedent probability of a strong reaction against the Puritan regime. Eighteen months after the King's Restoration, he writes of the decay of learning and discipline in the University. "Before the warr wee had scholars that made a thorough search in scholasticall ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... the cards only, and who, as was not uncommon with the vendor of that time, in this way robbed the artist of what honour might belong to his work. Both of these packs are rare; that of the "Fables" is believed to be unique. Of a date some quarter of a century antecedent to those just described we have an amusing pack, in which each card has a collection of moral sentences, aphorisms, or a worldly-wise story, or—we regret in the interests of good behaviour to have to add—something very much the reverse of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... our duty does not make us Christians, does not save the soul; so, why be particular in doing more than others, or being better than others? Orthodox congregations believe in the new life, but not in obedience as its necessary antecedent. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... itself not only with conspicuous events, but with the names of great men, to whom, either by originality of genius or by favoring opportunity, it has fallen to illustrate in action the changes which have a more silent antecedent history in the experience ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... travel, biography and philosophy do not usually try, because they think it unnecessary. This is simply a survival. It used to be true that readers of these subjects read them because of their great antecedent interest in them—an interest so great that interesting methods of presentation became unnecessary. No one cared about the masses, still less about what they might or might not read. Things are changed now; we are trying to advertise stored ideas to persons unfamiliar with them and we ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... girl, like Suzanne, for instance, might seem in a capital, it alarms provincial parents, and destroys the hopes of marriage of a poor young man when possibly the fortune of a rich one might cause such an unfortunate antecedent to be overlooked. Between the depravity of certain liaisons and a sincere love, a man of honor and no fortune will not hesitate: he prefers the misfortunes of virtue to the evils of vice. But in the provinces women with whom a young man call ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... thus the animal includes the vegetable, for it possesses the "vegetative" as well as the "animal" organs. So it is, too, by a rational necessity that the development of a perfect animal repeats the series of antecedent formations. ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... hypothesis was that the present condition of things had had only a limited duration, and that, at some period of the past, what we now know came into existence without any relation of natural causation to an antecedent state. The third hypothesis also assumed that the present condition of things had had a limited duration, but it supposed that that condition had been derived by natural processes from an antecedent condition, the hypothesis attempting ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell |
