"First cause" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a commonwealth is a constitution of the entire people. But the people is not every association of men, however congregated, but the association of the entire number, bound together by the compact of justice, and the communication of utility. The first cause of this association is not so much the weakness of man as a certain spirit of congregation which naturally belongs to him. For the human race is not a race of isolated individuals, wandering and solitary; but it is so constituted that even in the affluence of all ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... wolf of hunger at bay, cannot be blamed for wrong thinking as the cause of its trouble. Neither can the deaf mute or the child born blind or deformed. We must go farther back, to former lives, to find the first cause of such misfortunes. ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... be explained by the struggle for existence. But in trying to make an occasional and partial cause universal and ultimate, it has undertaken the impossible task of bringing the greater out of the less; which really means bringing their difference out of nothing—and this is creation with the First Cause left out; that is, spontaneous creation. It is from first to last an "aggregation" theory, and has to face the insupportable burdens which such a theory brings with it. Haunted by a false analogy drawn from the political organism whose members are ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... seen how the life and light giving attributes of the sun were in early times used as the symbol to bring before the minds of the people all that they were capable of conceiving of the great First Cause. But other symbols of far deeper and more real significance were known and guarded within the ranks of the priesthood. One of these was the conception of a Trinity in Unity. The Trinities of most ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... Missouri to Chili, but their central seats and empires were from Mexico to Quito. Their great temple at Otolum near Palenque was equal to Solomon's temple. Their mythology was quite peculiar and Asiatic, their maindeity[TN-20] was Hun-aku (first cause) comparable to Anuki the Syrian Cybele, their Astronomy was antediluvian, the year of 360 days or ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque
... that of conscious union with the source of life. Realise this, and you need not trouble yourself about any action of the negative whatever. Seek conscious union with the ultimate, the first cause, that which is the starting point of all things, whether in the universe or in yourself as the individual. That starting point is always present; it is the same yesterday, to-day and forever, and you are the world and the universe in miniature, and it is always ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... some ultimate end, to the realisation of which the whole process of the world as known to us is somehow a means, we may easily see that metaphysical inquiry, though distinct from ethical, is its necessary pre-supposition. The Being or Purpose of God, the great first cause, the world as fashioned, ordered and interpenetrated by Him, and man as conditioned by and dependent upon the Deity—are postulates of the moral life and must be accepted as a basis of all ethical study. The distinction between Ethics ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Thou Great First Cause, least understood, Who all my sense confined To know but this, that Thou art good, And that myself ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... also one theory which is called causal, and another which is called modal, evolution. According to the former, evolution is the first cause of all life, which, of course, excludes God as the First Cause; and according to the latter, evolution is the mode, or method, used by ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... animated organism, a sociable animal, among other bodies, other compositions, other social animals, all analogous to him; and by virtue of these classifications, he is, like them, subject to laws.—For, if the first cause is unknown to us, and we dispute among ourselves to know what it is, whether innate or external, we affirm with certainty the mode of its action, and that it operates only according to fixed and general laws. Every circumstance, whatever it may be, is conditioned, and, its conditions ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... appeared small and almost personal ends, having sometimes, superficially, little in common. Now it was a Giordano Bruno, burnt in Rome in defence of abstract theory with regard to the nature of the First Cause; then an Albigense hurled from his rocks because he refused to part with the leaves of his old Bible; now a Dutch peasant woman, walking serenely to the stake because she refused to bow her head before two crossed rods; then ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... even, so far, Hume's mouth-piece, is increased when we reflect that we are dealing with an acute reasoner; and that there is no difficulty in drawing the deduction from Hume's own definition of a cause, that the very phrase, a "first cause," involves a contradiction in terms. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... notion, (and not ill founded) namely, that the first cause of his disgrace, and on which ensued his rebellion, was occasioned upon God's proclaiming his SON Generalissimo, and with himself supreme ruler in heaven; giving the dominion of all his works of creation, as well already finish'd, as not then begun, to him; which ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Henry Dunbar is very painful to me, my dear Joseph; yet I cannot but feel that your hatred against my employer's son is only natural. I know that he was the first cause of your ruin; and that, but for him, your lot in life might have been very different. Try to forgive him; try to forget him, even if you cannot forgive. Do not talk of revenge. The revelation of that secret which ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... agnosticism is respectful. The materialism against which we have to struggle is not that of the school, but of the shop, of society, of life. There are comparatively few now who avow a system of philosophy making mindless atoms their first cause. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... Dunmore's War was the inevitable outcome of two alien races determined on the same prize, with each primed for a death-struggle by the memories of fearful wrongs. It is useless to argue which race gave the first cause for retaliation; it had been give and take between them for many years. Nor should our children's children, because of any tendency toward ancestor-worship, be allowed to believe that the whites were invincible and slaughtered more natives than they ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... hand of Providence directing her course from the first; but those who opposed her said it was the devil; and others again, in idleness or charity, or the calm neutrality of indifference, set it all down to the Inevitable, a fashionable first cause at this time, which is both comprehensive, convenient, and inoffensive, since it may mean anything, and so suits itself ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... first philosopher she knew, but her opinions of after years were mainly in the direction he marked out for her. In his Philosophy of Necessity, published in 1841, he maintained that the only reality is the Great Unknown which we name God, that all natural laws are actions of the first cause. He taught that the world is created in our own minds, the result of some unknown cause without us, which we call matter; but it is thus God mirrors himself to us. "All we see is but the vesture of God, and what we call laws of nature are but ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... God's permitting and doing in relation to the sins of men, is declared by Calvin to be utterly without foundation in truth, and purely chimerical. So, in various other places, he treats this distinction as "too weak to be supported." "The will of God," says he, "is the supreme and first cause of things;" and he quotes Augustine with approbation to the effect, that "He does not remain an idle spectator, determining to permit anything; there is an intervention of an actual volition, if I may be allowed the expression, which ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... confusion of a million theories, it occurs to him to investigate his instruments, and he makes the discovery that his tools are inadequate, and all their products worthless. His mind is finite, while the thing he seeks is infinite; his knowledge is relative, while the First Cause is absolute. ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Vienna and Versailles, this Britannic-Prussian Treaty was a great surprise. And indeed it proved the signal of a general System of New Treaties all round. The first signal, in fact,—though by no means the first cause,—of a total circumgyration, summerset, or tumble heels-over-head in the Political relations of Europe altogether, which ensued thereupon; miraculous, almost as the Earthquake at Lisbon, to the Gazetteer, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... and quaint imaginings had haunted Sue in the days when her intellect scintillated like a star, that the world resembled a stanza or melody composed in a dream; it was wonderfully excellent to the half-aroused intelligence, but hopelessly absurd at the full waking; that the first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage; that at the framing of the terrestrial conditions there seemed never to have been contemplated such a development of emotional perceptiveness among the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... the first cause of the kind attempted in Ravenna for these two hundred years; for, though they often separate, they assign a different motive. You know that the continental incontinent are more delicate than the English, and don't like proclaiming ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Baalim, offshoots of the supreme Baal, who were returning to their first cause to humble themselves before his might and annihilate themselves ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... she added, with the quiet effort again, 'what I have come to trouble you with, sir. My sister's having found a friend, a lady she has told me of and made me rather anxious about, was the first cause of my coming away from home. And being away, and coming (on purpose) round by where you lived and seeing a light ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... in that number we can only comprehend two descriptions of persons: either those who have been so happy as to preserve their innocence pure and undefiled, or those who, after having lost, have regained it by penitence. This is the first cause. There are only these two ways of salvation: heaven is only open to the innocent or to the penitent. Now, of which party are you? Are ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... passes through three distinct mental stages in his development: First, man attributes all phenomena to a "Personal God," and to this God he servilely prays. Second, he believes in a "Supreme Essence," a "Universal Principle" or a "First Cause," and seeks to discover its hiding-place. Third, he ceases to hunt out the unknowable, and is content to live and work for a positive present good, fully believing that what is best today can not fail to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... conceptions, to empty it of all implications of personality, and to reduce it to signifying something very large and very vague, such as the Infinite or the Absolute (whatever these hard words may signify) the great First Cause, the Universal Substance, the stream of tendency by which all things seek to fulfil the law of their being, and so forth. Now, without expressing opinion as to the truth or falsehood of the views implied by such applications of the name of God, I cannot ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... expressed to the Crown Prince of Prussia his deep sense of the courtesy shown him. He was desirous of passing as unnoticed as possible through French territory, where, indeed, exasperation against him, as the first cause of the misfortunes of France, was so great that his life would have been in peril. The next day he proceeded to the beautiful palace at Cassel called Wilhelmshoehe, or William's Rest. It had been built at ruinous expense by Jerome Bonaparte while king of Westphalia, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... into the distinction than logicians. Substances, most of them say, are either bodies or minds; and, of these, a body is the external cause to which we ascribe sensations. Berkeley and the Idealists, however, deny that there exists any cause of sensations (except, indeed, a First Cause). They argue that the whole of our notion of a body consists of a number of our own or others' sensations occurring together habitually (so that, the thought of one being associated with the thought of the others, we get what Hartley and Locke call a complex idea). They deny that a residuum ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... invocation,[73] the writer begins with a list of the Seven Sciences, giving quaint definitions of each, but in a different order from that recited in the Regius Poem; and he exalts Geometry above all the rest as "the first cause and foundation of all crafts and sciences." Then follows a brief sketch of the sons of Lamech, much as we find it in the book of Genesis which, like the old MS we are here studying, was compiled from two older records: the one tracing the descent from Cain, and ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... application of means; which, if they are employed by inferior agents, it is not upon account of any real efficacy that is in them, or necessary aptitude to produce any effect, but merely in compliance with the laws of nature, or those conditions prescribed to them by the First Cause, who is Himself above all limitation or ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... affair," he observed further, continuing his series of careful modulations. "There is an error made, a false step taken; the family flee their past to begin life anew in another land; yet at the very threshold of their new life they meet the first cause of all their misfortune and ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... compelled to regard phenomena as effects of some cause. We must believe in a cause of that cause, till we reach a first cause. The First Cause must be infinite and absolute. He then follows Mansel in showing the contradiction between the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... life's first cause; who, when he saw The ills that unborn innocents must bear, When doomed to come to earth— Bethought—and gave thee birth To charm the poison from affliction there; And from his source ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... first cause of the union of the kingdoms. The second was the invasion of the Danes. These fierce marauders forced the people south of the Thames to join in common defense, under the leadership of Alfred, King of the West Saxons. By the Treaty of Wedmore, 878, the Danes were ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... that was in His heart. Who put it there—whether the God that gave Shakespeare his brain and Wagner his harmonies, gave Christ His heart—or whether it was the God that paints the lily and moves the mountains in their labours—it matters not. It is one God, the Author and First Cause of all things. It is His heart that moves our own hearts to all their aspirations, to all the benevolence that the wicked world knows; it is His mind that is made manifest in our marvels of civilisation; ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... Dolabella; and Pollio, in his twenty-second year, against Cato.[43] In this precocity Cicero did not imitate Crassus, or show an example to the Romans who followed him. He was twenty-six when he pleaded his first cause. Sulla had then succeeded in crushing the Marian faction, and the Sullan proscriptions had taken place, and were nominally over. Sulla had been declared Dictator, and had proclaimed that there should be no more selections for death. The Republic was supposed to be restored. "Recuperata ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... their return; most of them being, as it happened, men of very high position in Corcyra. In this way Corcyra maintained her political existence in the war with Corinth, and the Athenian vessels left the island. This was the first cause of the war that Corinth had against the Athenians, viz., that they had fought against them with the Corcyraeans in time ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... says the other; "and I call God to witness, Frank Esmond, that I would have asked your pardon, had you but given me a chance. In—in the first cause of our falling out, I swear that no one was to blame but me, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... from the inhabitants of Zante, through the hands of Mr. Speridion Forresti, the very elegant and flattering presents of a sword and cane; accompanied by a most kind and respectful letter, in which they express their grateful acknowledgments to his lordship, for having been the first cause of their liberation from French tyranny. This, though true, his lordship observed, in a very affectionate answer, was such an example of gratitude as must for ever do them the highest honour; and begs that ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... its way, I think I cannot do better than to give, in its proper place, the opening speech on the day it occurred, as delivered in the Court by the plaintiff's counsel, who was a black gentleman. It was the first cause of the kind that ever was tried in this colony, where morality does not appear to be so highly appreciated as ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... in this time of conflict, can look beyond the passing events of time to the Great First Cause, and behold, as with the eye of faith, the providence of his God watching over all things, waiting to bring good out of evil, and causing all things to work to the one great point, when he will cause the wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder of wrath will he restrain. "Come, my ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... Fitzjames thinks that there are grounds independent of revelation for believing in the goodness and unity of an intelligent First Cause. He reads an essay to prove that we can form a notion of inspiration which does not involve dictation. He thinks it 'more agreeable to right reason' to explain the Biblical account of the creation by literal interpretation than 'on scientific ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... One and the same God is the primal source of both rational and revealed truth. Philosophy is the basis of theology, theology the criterion and complement of philosophy. The one starts with effects evident to the senses and leads to the suprasensible, to the First Cause; the other follows the reverse course. To philosophy belongs all that Adam knew or could know before the fall; had there been no sin, there would have been no other than philosophical knowledge. But after the fall, the reason, which informs us, it is true, of the moral law, but not of the divine ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... absorbed all the offices of the state; and in His case also, as has been said of the Roman Caesar, the whole was immeasurably greater than the mere sum of the parts. Scientifically and philosophically He became the first cause of the world; He became the father of the human soul, and its judge; and what is more, its rest and its delight, and its desire. Under the light of this conception, man appeared an ampler being. His thoughts were for ever being gazed on by the great controller of all things; he ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... him, or whatever they began to talk about. He had all his life been a man of no particular creed, and he retained his curious indifference to the end, though Erica found that he had a sort of vague belief in a First Cause, and a shadowy expectation of a personal existence after death. She found this out through Brian, who had a way of getting at ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... all successive phenomena;" and "it matters little whether he rejects the name of God or not," or "whether he has, or has not, an explicit knowledge of Him;" he cannot but acknowledge an eternal First Cause.[7] And so a whole host of Pantheistic Spiritualists will indignantly disclaim the imputation of Atheism, and even attempt to vindicate Spinoza himself from the odious charge.[8] Nay, some of the grossest Materialists, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... that he had left his son in a burning fever, not expected to live. And declared, with genuine emotion, that nothing but a high sense of public duty had brought him hither from his dying son's bedside. He also told the court that Arthur's inability to clear his friend had really been the first cause of his illness, from which he was not expected ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... same time both the Unmanifested (the cause of manifestation) and the destructible or manifested, he crosses over death through knowledge of the destructible and attains immortality through knowledge of the First Cause (Unmanifested). ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... external means. That vital instinct in NORMAL man consists in exactly the same as does the vital instinct of the lowest animal, namely, in the desire of nourishment and of propagation. For this "will of life," this metaphysical first cause of all existence, desires nothing but to live—that is, to nourish and eternally reproduce itself—and this tendency can be seen identically in the coarse stone, in the tenderer plant, and so forth up to the human animal. Only the organs are different, of which the will must avail ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... ornamented with flowers, fruit-trees, &c. (and I would recommend this plan to be invariably adopted,) it not only affords the teacher an opportunity of communicating much knowledge to the children, and of tracing every thing up to the Great First Cause, but it becomes the means of establishing principles of honesty. They should not on any account be allowed to pluck the fruit or flowers; every thing should be considered as sacred; and being thus early ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... Provincial Conseil d'Hygiene, wrote some years ago to Professor Davidson, in answer to inquiries: "I do not believe it would be correct to ascribe the phenomenon to any single cause, and I am convinced it is the result of several factors. For one, the first cause of the heavy infant mortality among the French Canadians is their very heavy natality, each family being composed of an average of twelve children, and instances of families of fifteen, eighteen, and even twenty-four ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... seeks images of Divine power impressed alike on solid rocks and gliding streams. Science, however rigid, would not have restrained the ardor of homage to the Author of creative energy and grandeur, bursting forth irrepressibly in scenes where angels would have adored the Great First Cause, and where man can do ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... the untoward effect of Teddy's disappearance in the peculiar humiliation of its first cause. Raffles took out his watch, and held up the dial for me to see. It was after the half-hour now; but at this moment a servant entered with a missive, and the master recovered ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... we find that the migration was due to a complex of economic and social causes in the form of low wages, poor conditions of labor, lynching, minor injustices in the courts and dissatisfaction with educational facilities. In regard to the first cause, it is known that at the time of the migration wages in this State were extremely low. In 1916 some counties paid only $10 and $12 a month for farm labor; others paid $13 and $15 a month for the same kind of labor. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... was not so easy to imprint right notions in his mind about the devil as it was about the being of a God. Nature assisted all my arguments to evidence to him even the necessity of a great First Cause, an overruling, governing Power, a secret directing Providence, and of the equity and justice of paying homage to Him that made us, and the like; but there appeared nothing of this kind in the notion of an evil spirit, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... be the conclusion of evolutionists, it was quite certain that no theory of evolution that at all coincided with the known facts, offered any ground for argument against the existence of an Intelligent Lawgiver and First Cause of all; nor did it tend in the slightest to show that no such thing as creative design and providence existed in ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... wider, and the inferiority in kind, and not only in degree, was unequivocally expressed. If we take into account the habit, universal with the Hebrew doctors, of referring all excellent or extraordinary things to the great First Cause, without mention of the proximate and instrumental causes—a striking illustration of which may be obtained by comparing the narratives of the same event in the Psalms and in the historical books; and if we further reflect that the distinction ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... great church of the Divine Wisdom at Constantinople, would sooner or later bring trouble to Theodoric's Arian fellow-worshippers. In point of fact, however, an interval of nearly six years elapsed before any actual persecution of the Arians of the Empire was attempted. The first cause of alienation between the Ostrogothic king and his Catholic subjects seems to have arisen in connection with the Jews. Theodoric, on account of some fear of invasion by the barbarians beyond the Alps, was dwelling at Verona. That city, the scene of his most ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... action he was at once put on the defensive. No champion of the imitative faculty could be found. This lack of understanding of the basis of the empirical method, on the part of its most intelligent and successful exponents, was the first cause of the weakness of this method ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... departure of the Count de Moustier, I now enclose you other copies. The English declaration states a notification of this court, in September, by Barthelemy, their Minister at London, "that they would send succours into Holland," as the first cause of England's arming; desires an explanation of the intentions of this court, as to the affairs of Holland, and proposes to disarm; on condition, however, that the King of France shall not retain any hostile views in ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... Granada] and of Nueva Espaa have lost a part of what they had. The cost of mining is greater, the mines are poorer, and, consequently, the gains less, and less the amount obtained. Therefore, since this was the first cause of the greatness of the Indias, it is not remarkable that with its deficiency their commerce ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... of Reason for what they Believe, are, it is likely, more in earnest in this wild Opinion: And in all appearance very many there are among us of such as a Learned Man calls Enthusiastick Atheists, viz. who deny the Existence of an Invisible, Omniscient, Omnipotent, first Cause of all things, only through a certain Sottish disbelief of whatsoever they cannot either see or feel; never consulting their Reason in the Case. That there are some who do thus, their Discourses assure us: The Actions of many others, are unaccountable without supposing ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... teachings as old Mrs. Piozzi[12] was of geology. We had had revolutionary orators, reformers, martyrs; it was but a few years since Abner Kneeland had been sent to jail for expressing an opinion about the great First Cause; but we had had nothing like this man, with his seraphic voice and countenance, his choice vocabulary, his refined utterance, his gentle courage, which, with a different manner, might have been called audacity, his temperate statement of opinions ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... manifestations of religious fervour. We had not gathered together at that performance to abase ourselves with furious hosannas before any dark Creator of an untamed Universe, no Deity of freaks and miracles and sinister hocus-pocus; but to pay our duty to a highly respected Anglican First Cause—undemonstrative, gentlemanly and conscientious—whom, without loss of self-respect, we could sincerely and ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... hallucination are: (1) Local disease of the organ of sense; (2) a state of deep exhaustion either of mind or of body; (3) morbid emotional states, such as fear; (4) outward calm and stillness between sleeping and waking; and (5) the action of certain poisons, as haschisch, opium, belladonna. The first cause points pretty distinctly to a peripheral origin, whereas the others appear to refer mainly, if not exclusively, to central derangements. Excessive fatigue appears to predispose the central structures to an abnormal ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Holland, as far as yet can be ascertained, have no religious belief or ceremonies. A Deity, or great First Cause, can hardly be said to be acknowledged, and certainly is not worshipped by this people, who ascribe the creation to very inefficient causes. They state that some things called themselves into existence, and had the property of creating others. But upon all subjects of this ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... the school of Kapila, according to whose doctrine the purification of the soul must be effected through knowledge, the only source of which lies in sensual perception. In this system, nature, eternal and universal, is considered as the first cause, which produces intelligence and all the other principles of knowledge and existence. This philosophy of nature leads some of its followers to seek their purification in the sensual pleasures of this life, and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... God, creative force, the Self, the I, the beginning or first cause. "Among letters I am the vowel A," says Krishna in the Bagavad. It is ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... the case of Simeon Lathers. Why wuz it that Sister Irene Filkins wuz turned out of the meetin' house and the man who wuz the first cause of her goin' astray kep in—the handsome, smooth-faced hypocrite?—it wuz because he wuz rich as a Jew, and jest plastered over the consciences of them that tried him with his ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... punishment, than that God himself should have done so. For, supposing even that He became incarnate, He would not be like one of us.—It is altogether impossible and self-contradictory that God should assume a body; for God is the first cause, infinite, and omnipotent. He cannot, therefore, assume flesh, and subsist as a finite being, and take upon himself man's punishment, of which nothing whatsoever is written in Scripture.—If the prophecy referred to the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... which is known to God.[209] This explanation can be but a metaphysical doctrine, crowning the work of science; for the distinguishing feature of science is that it only studies efficient causes. The historian is not called upon to investigate the first cause or final causes any more than the chemist or the naturalist. And, in fact, few writers on history nowadays stop to discuss the theory of Providence ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the circumstance that 8000 is the ancient number of the Spartan citizens (Herod.), and would be what Plato might have called 'a number which nearly concerns the population of a city'; the mysterious disappearance of the Spartan population may possibly have suggested to him the first cause of his decline of States. The lesser or square 'harmony,' of 400, might be a symbol of the guardians,—the larger or oblong 'harmony,' of the people, and the numbers 3, 4, 5 might refer respectively to the three orders in the State ...
— The Republic • Plato
... to be a principle established by experience, that mankind in general have at no time been able, by the operation of their own mutual powers, to ascend in their inquiries to the great comprehensive foundation of true religion,—the knowledge of a first cause. This idea is too grand, too distinct, or too refined for the generality of the human race. They are surrounded by sensible objects, and strongly attached to them; they are in a great measure unaccustomed to the most simple and obvious ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... bit, to make pottery, to form, and Tzakol, substantive form of tzak, to build, the Creator, the Constructor. The Arowacks of Guyana applied the term Aluberi to their highest conception of a first cause, from the verbal form alin, he who makes (Martius, Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika's, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... attending the instructions of Molo; who came to Rome, while Sylla was Dictator, to sollicit the payment of what was due to his countrymen, for their services in the Mithridatic war. My defence of Sext. Roscius, which was the first cause I pleaded, met with such a favourable reception, that, from that moment, I was looked upon as an advocate of the first class, and equal to the greatest and most important causes: and after this I pleaded ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... The alienist especially has demonstrated the significant influence of childhood upon adult motives and conduct. Recent studies of human conduct have greatly magnified the importance of early experience and have disclosed how often it is the first cause of morbid thinking and anti-social actions. The conclusion is not to be doubted—a still greater effort must be made to conserve human character by a wiser control of the influences of childhood. One may discover for himself how interested conscientious parents are in ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... his eyes and made him see through and through the big words that swell men's bosoms, she unlocked for him the souls of men and his own soul, made him a seer, and showed him the heart of the world and every first cause hidden behind words and deeds. But what he saw was this: comedy and misery—comedy ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... this coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was showing the necessity of a first cause, that the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the room, to tell me that my solitaire was pinned too strait about my neck. "It should be plus badinant," said the count, looking down upon his own; "but a word, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... The first cause was the rising power of the Jesuits. For the last fifty years these zealous men had been quietly extending their influence in the country. They had built a magnificent college in Prague. They had established a number of schools for the common people. They had obtained ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... a grasp of the meaning of the controversy, it should be borne in mind that in all theories concerning the operation of Grace three points must be safeguarded by all Catholic theologians, namely, man's dependence upon God as the First Cause of all his actions natural as well as supernatural, human liberty, and God's omniscience or foreknowledge of man's conduct. Following in the footsteps of St. Thomas, the Dominicans maintained that when God wishes man to perform a good act He not only ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... that Christianity is by far the noblest religion in existence. The chief point of its superiority is the prominence it gives to the humane and philanthropic element; and in giving this prominence lies its originality. He believes in a Great First Cause, but does not arrive at his belief by any process of reasoning satisfactory to himself. Paley's argument, from the evidence of design, he regards as futile: if the beauty of this world indicates a creating cause, the beauty of that great cause would suggest another, and so on. He believes in a future ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... themselves in one day of his domains; and Eude soon discovered what sort of workmen he had called, to do that of which he himself was so incapable. Charles, with equal courage and prudence, beheld this heavy tempest bursting over his whole country; and to remove the first cause of this national evil, he reconciled the discontented Eude, and detached the duke from his fatal alliance. But the Saracens were fast advancing through Touraine, and had reached Tours by the river Loire: Abderam, the chief of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... written, the Lady was already Philosophy, but philosophy applied to a lower range of thought, not yet ascended from flesh to spirit. The Lady who seduced him was the science which looks for truth in second causes, or even in effects, instead of seeking it, where alone it can be found, in the First Cause; she was the Philosophy which looks for happiness in the visible world (of shadows), and not in the spiritual (and therefore substantial) world. The guerdon of his search was doubt. But Dante, as we have seen, made his very doubts help ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... whole group. Also it is not always the acts which I admire that are imitated. If I am frequently with a lame person, I am in danger of acquiring a limp; one who stutters is clearly injurious to my freedom of speech; round-shouldered friends may at first cause me to straighten up, but soon I am in danger of ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... ascended to the contemplation of those unnumbered worlds, that lie scattered in the depths of aether, thousands of them hid from human eyes, and almost beyond the flight of human fancy. As her imagination soared through the regions of space, and aspired to that Great First Cause, which pervades and governs all being, the idea of her father scarcely ever left her; but it was a pleasing idea, since she resigned him to God in the full confidence of a pure and holy faith. She pursued her way ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... 3: Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... first cause, and four second causes of all things; some are without efficient, as God; others without matter, as angels; some without form, as the first matter: but every essence, created or uncreated, hath its final cause, and some positive end both of its essence and operation; this ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... to this first cause of an exaggerated expenditure there is another not less imperative—the necessity of voting all grants for local purposes. A Deputy is unable to oppose grants of this kind because they represent once more the exigencies of the electors, and because each individual Deputy can only obtain ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... of the two. He knew now that Bozzle had been untrue to him, but his disgust did not spring from that so much as from the feeling that he had defiled himself by dealing with the man. Though he was quite assured that he had been right in his first cause of offence, he knew that he had fallen from bad to worse in every step that he had taken since. Colonel Osborne had marred his happiness by vanity, by wicked intrigue, by a devilish delight in doing mischief; but he, he himself, had consummated the evil ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... fisherman, as he was the first cause of the deliverance of the young prince, the sultan gave him a plentiful fortune, which made him and his family happy the rest of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... of the senses. By it we perceive the form, color, volume, and position of objects that surround us. The eye is the organ of sight, or vision, and its mechanism is so wonderful, that it not only proves the existence of a great First Cause, but perhaps, more than other organs, the design of the Creator to ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... satisfied that if our King Log does no good, he is too sincerely desirous of fulfilling his duty to do any harm. But I really feel sorry for this mere young Daniel come to judgment when I think of the gauntlet which the wicked wits will make him run when he tries his first cause. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... not give yourself up, I pray you, to an illusion of your mind. You have some fancy, it may be, that deceives you. The Virgin could command me as well as yourself. You say there is a brier growing in the grotto: if your vision wants me to build a church on the cliff, tell her she must first cause that brier to bring forth roses in this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... The first cause of modern tolerance is the growing rationalism of which the seeds were sown by the Renaissance. The generation before Luther saw an almost unparalleled liberty in the expression of learned opinion. Valla could attack pope, Bible and Christian ethics; Pomponazzi could doubt the immortality of the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... despised her to the extent even of abandoning her to the shame of an expulsion which was equivalent to having an ignominious sentence passed upon her; and yet, it was he, the king himself, who was the first cause of this ignominy. A bitter smile, the only symptom of anger which during this long conflict had passed across the victim's angelic face, appeared upon her lips. What, in fact, now remained on earth for her, after the king was lost to her? Nothing. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... lively to-do here; Don Pulpete and Don Balbeja when they saw Dona Gorja appear, first cause of the disturbance and future prize for the victor, increased their feints, flourishes, curvets, onsets, crouching, and bounds—all, however, without touching a hair. Our Helen witnessed in silence for a long time this scene ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... could be given sufficiently compelling to sway the will of the Omnipotent. But such an answer was unsatisfactory to the Greek. In his philosophy all this is changed. No god steps out of the machine to initiate cosmic history. The First Cause is a physical substance, some material thing, which operates by the laws of its own nature. Its every movement is theoretically open to the scrutiny of reason. And hence, a scientific rather than a religious answer can ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... been, and which will be forever. Thus the word Creation may have a real sense if we consider it as the first, if we can conceive a first, in the present order of natural phenomena; but in the vulgar sense a creation of all things at a certain time, followed by a quiescence of the first cause, and an abandonment of all sequences of Phenomena to the laws of Nature, or to the other words that people may ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... quiet sympathy that always rested people. "This is the mistake that folk make: they do not distinguish between an unhealthy mind and a diseased soul: the one is due to physical disorganization, the other to moral causes. In your case, dear Mrs. Cheyne, one may safely lay the blame on the first cause." ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... than at least as self-consistent as its manifestations in nature are invariable. Now, from the latter deduction there arises a point of first-rate importance in the present connexion. For if the so-called First Cause be intelligent, and therefore all secondary causes but the expression of a supreme Will, in as far as such a Will is self-consistent, the operation of all natural causes must be uniform,—with the result that, as seen by ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... well as reason and logic, tell us that there is, and can be, only one supreme God, or First Cause of the universe, and that from this one first and fundamental Cause or Power every secondary power and everything that exists has come into existence, or been evolved within it and through its eternal activity. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... was assured. It was part of his philosophy to prevent detection by murder, and the flames from the burning walls added a pleasure to his lustful eye. His march across Scotland was marked by slaughtered families and ruined houses. Plunder was the first cause of his exploits, but there is no doubt that death and arson were a solace to his fierce spirit; and for a while this giant of cruelty knew neither check nor hindrance. Presently it became a superstition ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... may lead to rupture of the heart of the ox. The first cause does not operate so often in cattle as in horses. Tuberculosis or ulceration from other causes, such as a foreign body, is the most common source of this accident. Rupture is shown by sudden fainting, followed very ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... experience demonstrates how learned men have been arch-heretics, how learned times have been inclined to atheism, and how the contemplation of second causes doth derogate from our dependence upon God, who is the first cause. ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... automatically as scientists would have us believe,—an assertion which has been proven in The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception and other places in our literature. Herbert Spencer also rejected the nebular theory because it required a First Cause, which he denied, though unable to form a better hypothesis of the formation of solar systems,—but it is accomplished through the activity of a Great Spirit, which we may call God or by any other name we choose. As above, so below, says the Hermetic axiom. Man, who is a lesser spirit, ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... boast that they have no patience with morbidity. Love—which put them into being and keeps the earth in existence—seems to all such a silly malady peculiar to the sentimental in early youth. So they put the First Cause—in one of its many manifestations—in the waste-paper basket, asking each other what will become of Charles if he cannot find a rich wife, and poor Alice, if she cannot entrap a suitable husband. But there are others ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... yourselves, therefore, to fulfil the will of the Lord. To render yourselves worthy of it, take great care to preserve peace and concord among yourselves, as the ever-subsisting ties of charity. Avoid envy which was the first cause of the loss of mankind. Be patient in tribulations, and humble in success; which is the means of coming off victorious in all encounters. Imitate our Lord Jesus Christ in his poverty, chastity, and obedience; He was born poor, He lived poor, and it was in the bosom of poverty ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... remember that the first cause of uneasiness was given to the prisoner by the rage of Jacob when Gryphus crushed the first bulb. In that moment Boxtel's exasperation was the more fierce, as, though suspecting that Cornelius possessed a second bulb, he by no ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... rights, and as it is never by the result of free choice that she solicits us, she also does not withdraw any of her exigencies as long as she has not been satisfied. Since, from the first cause which gave the impulsion to the threshold of the will where its jurisdiction ends, all in her is rigorously necessary, consequently she can neither give way nor go back, but must always go forward and press more and more the will on which depends the satisfaction of her wants. Sometimes, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... these systems of influence or non-influence may be listed under the general problem of the world's CAUSAL UNITY. If the minor causal influences among things should converge towards one common causal origin of them in the past, one great first cause for all that is, one might then speak of the absolute causal unity of the world. God's fiat on creation's day has figured in traditional philosophy as such an absolute cause and origin. Transcendental Idealism, translating ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... causation of ainhum are quite numerous. The first cause is the admirable location for a furrow in the digito-plantar fold, and the excellent situation of the furrow for the entrance of sand or other particles to make the irritation constant, thus causing chronic inflammatory ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... did not mean strength. The proof of it was the mismanagement of the rebel interests. No doubt the first cause of this trouble lay in the Richmond Government itself. No one understood why Jefferson Davis chose Mr. Mason as his agent for London at the same time that he made so good a choice as Mr. Slidell for Paris. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Yet there had dawned upon me, even before I had met with the CRITIQUE OF THE PURE REASON, a certain guiding light. If the mere intellect could make no certain discovery of a holy and intelligent first cause, it might yet supply a demonstration, that no legitimate argument could be drawn from the intellect against its truth. And what is this more than St. Paul's assertion, that by wisdom,—(more properly ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fame, we have considered only his appeal to the individual intellect and taste, the admiration which represented an interest spontaneous and sincere. There was another phase of his fame which expressed an interest less inspired, though its first cause was none the less in the enthusiasm of the elect. It was the phase foreseen by Horace himself, and its first manifestations had probably appeared in his own life-time. It was the immortality of the ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... length I rejoice, my dear Admiral. You have been the guardian angel of my country; by your wise, temperate, and loyal conduct you have been the first cause of the plans which have been formed against the demon of the Continent. He was on the point of succeeding; folly and the want of confidence in some have made them doubt the success of the good cause. You have shared my anxiety, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... appear (Q. 30, A. 3). An order of nature between things may be taken in two ways: first, as regards rank of dignity, as we say the angels are midway between man and God; secondly, as regards the idea of causality, as we say a cause is midway between the first cause and the last effect. And this second order follows the first to some extent; for as Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. xiii), God acts upon the more remote substances through the less remote. Hence if we consider the rank of dignity, the soul is found to be midway between God and flesh; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... assurance, that whenever I should begin to make money by my profession, he would accept of remuneration. He jestingly said, that he would make the same bargain with me that was made by the famous sophist Protagoras of old with his pupil, that he should have the profits of the first cause I should win—certain that I would not, like his treacherous pupil Evathlus, employ the rhetorician's arms against himself, to cheat him out of his promised reward. My special pleader was not a mere man of forms and law rigmaroles; he knew the reason for ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... dejectedly into the fire. After a moment he said, sadly, "I envy you, Miss Walton. I wish I could believe in a personal God who thought about us and cared for us —that is, each one of us. Of course I believe in a Supreme Being—a great First Cause; but He hides Himself behind the stars; He is lost to me in His vast universe. I think my prayers once had an effect on my own mind, and so did me some good. But that's past, and now I might as well pray to ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... or coal, or cotton cloth, or of railway transportation, or of insurance, or of discounts, the inquirer will find the price to be, in essence, a monopoly or fixed price; and if he will follow his investigation to the end, he will also find that the first cause in the complex chain of cause and effect which created the monopoly in that mysterious energy which ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... to become damp, (1) by wet rising up the wall from the earth; (2) by water soaking down from the top of the [Sidenote: Prevention of damp.] wall; (3) by rain being driven on to the face by wind. Dampness from the first cause may be prevented by the introduction of damp-proof courses or the construction of dry areas; from the second by means of a coping of stone, cement or other non-porous material; and from the third by covering the exterior with impervious materials or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... serious, having been trained to a view of the Great First Cause as figuratively embodied in the image of a gigantic, irascible, omnipotent old gentleman, especially wrought to fury by feminine follies connected with ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... stockings, and small clothes, nay, everything he had, along with her! Thus situated, he was under the necessity of doing something to cover his nakedness; and this, he himself acknowledged, was the first cause of his seriously applying himself to the profession which has since made ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Besides, consider, that curbing our desires is the greatest glory we can arrive at in this world, and will be most rewarded in the next." She answered, like a prudent matron, "Sir, if you please to remember the office of matrimony, the first cause of its institution is that of having posterity: therefore, as to the curbing desires, I am willing to undergo any abstinence from food as you please to enjoin me; but I cannot, with any quiet of mind, live in the neglect of a necessary ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... to the terms without learning to be pedantic in the abuse of them; and his quickness in reasoning was increased by exercise in detecting puerile sophisms; such as that of the Cretans—Gorgias and his bargain about the winning of his first cause. In the following sorites[90] of Themistocles—"My son commands his mother; his mother commands me; I command the Athenians; the Athenians command Greece; Greece commands Europe; Europe commands the whole ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... that ill-fated monarch know that he was forming the first cause of those disastrous events that were to end in the subversion of his throne, in the slaughter of his family, and the deluging of his country with the blood of his people. You cannot but remember that a time ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... Remington. "But then you know metaphysics does not hesitate at anything. I say, it is impossible for the mind to go back to a first cause, and if the mind of a man cannot conceive an idea, why of course that idea can never be true to him. I can think of no cause that may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... neighborhood. First, he was rich; secondly, he was of a taciturn disposition, and of a neutral tint in politics. He had done well under the old regime and, he was doing well under the new—thank God, or the Supreme Being, or the First Cause, or the goddess Reason herself, for all;—he would have invoked Dagon, Moloch, or Kali, quite as readily as the Saints and the Madonna, who has gone so utterly out of fashion of late. Nobody was afraid to speak out before Prosper Alix; he was not a spy; and though a cold-hearted ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... first place, I consider the example set by the government as most injurious: as I shall hereafter prove, it is insatiable in its ambition, regardless of its faith, and corrupt to the highest degree. This example I consider as the first cause of the demoralisation of the Americans. The errors incident to the voluntary system of religion are the second: the power of the clergy is destroyed, and the tyranny of the laity has produced the effect of the outward form having been substituted for the real feeling, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of these two one was Vic Gregg, no despicable fighter himself, and the other was no less than the invincible little sheriff himself. To imagine the sheriff beaten in the speed of his draw or the accuracy of his shot was to imagine the First Cause, Infinity, or whatever else is inconceivable; nevertheless, there were such possibilities as bullets fired at night through the window, and attacks from the rear. So Rickett waited, and held its breath and kept his eyes rather ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... in a last word of warning: "Because a phenomenon has not been explained, and no one knows how to explain it, is no reason for supposing there is anything extraphysical about it. No one has explained the first cause of the development of an embryo. No one knows what goes on in an active nerve, or why atoms are selective in their associates. Ignorance is not a proper basis for speculation, and if one must have a theory, let it be one having ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... look to the principal feature in his picture; and then, finally, because he could not get the windmill dissected, and show us the real heart and centre of the whole, behold, he has put a pair of old millstones, lying outside, at the bottom of it. These—the first cause and motive of all the fabric—laid at its foundation; and beside them the cart which is to fulfil the end of the fabric's being, and take home the sacks ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... and Soldiers of this present Army. The Just and Equal Appeal, and the state of the Innocent Cause of us, who have been turned out of your Army for the exercise of our pure Consciences, who are now persecuted amongst our Brethren under the name of Quakers." Wherein they declare that "The first cause and ground of our engagement in the late wars against the Bishops and Prelates, and against Kings and Lords, and the whole body of oppressors: our first engagement, we say, against these was justly and truly upon that account of purchasing and obtaining Liberties in ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... about the Queen by the Duchess herself. In a letter, supposed to have been addressed to Bishop Burnet, the Duchess gives a brief account of this person, who was her kinswoman, in explanation to his inquiry as to the first cause of her disagreement with ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... abound in others, more then the ordinary course of nature would permit. And such like in all other particular sicknesses; But one thing I will pray thee to obserue in all these places, where I reason upon the deuils power, which is the different ends & scopes, that God as the first cause, and the Devill as his instrument and second cause shootes at in all these actiones of the Deuil, (as Gods hang-man:) For where the deuilles intention in them is euer to perish, either the soule or the body, or both of them, that he is so permitted to deale with: God by the contrarie, ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... succeeded; and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever. For the first time since his birth, Mr. Idle found himself confined to his bed for many weeks together, wasted and worn by a long illness, of which his own disastrous muscular exertion had been the sole first cause. ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... for the purpose of decorating the graves of their friends. It had always been a pleasure to Mary to give her flowers for this purpose, and she now determined to decorate her father's tomb in the same manner. Taking from a cupboard the beautiful basket which had been the first cause of all her unhappiness, she filled it with choice flowers of all colours, artistically interspersed with fresh green leaves, and carried it to Erlenbrunn before the hour of divine service, and laid it on her father's tomb, watering it at the same time with ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... is produced in the following-mentioned way:—the prepuce, naturally very extensible, becomes, while covering the glans, inflamed, thickened, and its orifice contracted. It is during this state withdrawn forcibly backwards over the glans, and in this situation, while being itself the first cause of constriction, it induces another—namely, an arrest to the venous circulation, which is followed by a turgescence of the glans. In the treatment of such a case, the indication is, first, to reduce by gradual pressure the size of the glans, so that the ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... mind assign, for the first comfort, the desire and longing to be comforted by God. And not without some reason call I this the first cause of comfort. For, as the cure of that person is in a manner desperate, who hath no will to be cured, so is the comfort of that person desperate, who desireth not his ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More |
