"First principle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beloved object is the first and inviolate sentiment that pervades my soul; and whatever pleasures I might wish for, or whatever might be the raptures they would give me, yet, if they interfere with that first principle, it is having these pleasures at a dishonest price; and justice forbids and generosity disdains ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... said the captain, drowning in the deepest notes of his voice the feeble treble in which Noel Vanstone paid his compliments to Magdalen. "We will start, if you please, with a first principle. All bodies whatever that float on the surface of the water displace as much fluid as is equal in weight to the weight of the bodies. Good. We have got our first principle. What do we deduce from it? Manifestly this: That, in order to keep a vessel ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the Countess, with haughty dignity, "you mean to be on the side of the Government. Learn that the first principle of government is this—never to have been in the wrong, and that the instinct of power and the sense of dignity is even stronger in women than ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... that she was as low down, in the school, as low could be; that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of Political Economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prattler three feet high, for returning to the question, 'What is the first principle of this science?' the absurd answer, 'To do unto others as I would that they ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... of Love, v.231, etc. Origin of Superstition and Tyranny, from the same principle, of Fear, v.237, etc. The Influence of Self-love operating to the social and public Good, v.266. Restoration of true Religion and Government on their first principle, v.285. Mixed Government, v.288. Various forms of each, and the true end of ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... turned back to her booklet. Maybe James was right. If she could assemble this doodad without knowing the first principle of its operation, without even knowing from the name what the thing did, then she might be willing to admit that—messy as it looked—the machine ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... that, in the lifetime of the individual, increased use of structures leads to an increase of their functional efficiency; while, on the other hand, disuse leads to atrophy. The arms of a blacksmith, and the legs of a mountaineer, are familiar illustrations of the first principle: our hospital wards are full of illustrations of the second. Again, we know that the characters of parents are transmitted to their progeny by means of heredity. Now the hypothesis in question consists in ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... the sale of salt, flour, bread; and imposed a heavy tax on oil. Sixtus V. by exactions of a like description and by the sale of numberless offices, accumulated a vast sum of money, much of which bore heavy interest. He was so ignorant of the first principle of political economy as to lock up the accruing treasure in the Castle of S. Angelo. The rising of Masaniello in Naples was simply due to the exasperation of the common folk at having even fruit and vegetables ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... performed her share of the work in making a fair copy for the printer. Borrow's subsequent remark that the manuscript "was written by a country amanuensis and probably contains many ridiculous errata," was scarcely gracious to the wife, who seems to have comprehended so well the first principle of wifely duty to an illustrious and, it must be admitted, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... is the first principle of society, but it cannot supply all the wants of society, and may easily cause more evils than it cures. Plato is aware of the imperfection of law in failing to meet the varieties of circumstances: he is also aware that human life would be intolerable ...
— Statesman • Plato
... metaphysical definitions of the rights of man, without reaching the comprehension, or exciting the interest, of the country people; but that if they would not understand the propagation of the rights of man, they would very easily comprehend an abolition of the rights of their landlords. Accordingly, the first principle of liberty they were taught from the new code was, that they had a right to assemble in arms, to force the surrender of title-deeds; and their first revolutionary notions of equality and property seem to have been ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... pulsation, remained by him as hypothesis only—the hypothesis he actually preferred, as in itself most credible, however scantily realisable even by the imagination—yet still as but one unverified hypothesis, among many others, concerning the first principle of things. He might reserve it as a fine, high, visionary consideration, very remote upon the intellectual ladder, just at the point, indeed, where that ladder seemed to pass into the clouds, but for which there was certainly no time left ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... obstacles as were in the way of holding the Apostolic and Catholic character of the Anglican teaching; to assert the right of all who chose to say in the face of day, "Our Church teaches the Primitive Ancient faith." I did not conceal this: in Tract 90, it is put forward as the first principle of all, "It is a duty which we owe both to the Catholic Church, and to our own, to take our reformed confessions in the most Catholic sense they will admit: we have no duties towards their framers." And still more pointedly in my letter, explanatory ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... respected themselves and practiced their profession like merchants of other kinds were right, were doing what she ought to do. Anyhow, it was absurd to practice a profession half-heartedly. To play your game, whatever it might be, for all there was in it—that was the obvious first principle of success. Yet—she remained laggard ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... it doesn't; not at all. That's the first principle of the science. You only need to resign yourself and let the ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... humanity. A good deal of confusion exists concerning the interrelation of these three. It is supposed that humanity and divinity are mutually exclusive, and that divinity and Deity must necessarily mean exactly the same thing. But this is not so. It follows from the first principle of the New Theology that all the three are fundamentally and essentially one, but in scope and extent they are different. By the Deity we mean—and I suppose everyone means—the all-controlling consciousness of the universe ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... Now whether this "first principle," called "Love," "the cause of motion and of union" in the universe, was regarded as a personal Being, and whether, as the ancient scholiast taught, Hesiod's love was "the heavenly Love, which is also God, that other ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the question of the development of man by known natural laws, we must ever bear in mind the first principle of "natural selection," no less than of the general theory of evolution, that all changes of form or structure, all increase in the size of an organ or in its complexity, all greater specialization or physiological division of labour, can only be brought about, in ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... cult about that says you ought to know these things; moreover, children keep on asking one. We always answer at random and say it's a wagtail or a flowering shrike or a female magnolia. We were brought up in the country and learned that first principle of good manners, which is to let birds and flowers and animals go on about their own affairs without pestering them by asking them their names and addresses. Surely that's what Shakespeare meant by saying a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. We can enjoy a rose just ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... culture of friendship finds its best and briefest summary in the Golden Rule. To do to, and for, your friend what you would have him do to, and for, you, is a simple compendium of the whole duty of friendship. The very first principle of friendship is that it is a mutual thing, as among spiritual equals, and therefore it claims reciprocity, mutual confidence and faithfulness. There must be sympathy to keep in touch with each other, but sympathy needs to be constantly exercised. It is a channel of communication, which has to ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... different races manifestly determined by the climate in which they live? The action of the sky on the earth is undeniable, and, the sidereal influences once admitted, all previsions based on them are legitimate. As soon as the first principle is admitted, all corollaries are ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... Procession of Creatures from God, and of the First Cause of All Things 45. The Mode of Emanation of Things from the First Principle 46. Of the Beginning of the Duration of Creatures 47. Of the Distinction of Things in General 48. The Distinction of Things in Particular 49. The Cause ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... and will continue to appeal, to the heart of every Englishman, so long as the care of public liberty and love of the soil maintain their hold in this country. In this poem, as indeed in all that Gray ever wrote, we find it his first principle to prefer his subject to himself; he never forgot that while he was a man he was also an artist, and he knew that the function of art was not merely to indulge nature, but ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... Governments, to be resolutely withstood—the policy of trying "to conciliate our enemies by giving away our friends." We shall hear of it again in dealing both with Ireland and with certain colonies when Germany claims their return. On the other hand, the first maxim in all negotiation, the first principle of sound diplomacy, is always to give to the other side, and give without grudging, all he wants, provided it does not interfere with what it is important for your side to secure. Never be afraid of giving the opposing party ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... not,' he might have thought within himself, 'why all this is futile? By what authority does he declare all this meritless? What holy text can be quoted to justify his assertion? What is his view in reference to the different doctrines taught by Shakya Muni? What does he hold as the first principle of Buddhism?' Thus thinking, he inquired: "What is the holy truth, or the first principle?" The answer was no less astonishing: "That principle transcends all. There is ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... The first principle of play must be to obey our higher impulses. To play means the ability to change our occupation. It means the ability to obey other impulses than ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... of mob-massacre began with the sudden ascendency of Marat—a hideous assassin, who regarded the knife as the only instrument of governing, and proclaimed as his first principle of political regeneration, that "half a million ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... which all things "live and move and have their being." Therefore it matters little to us, except as a matter of antiquarian interest, to know what the Vedic singers may have dreamed; or what Thales or Xenophanes or Parmenides may have thought about the first principle of things, or about the many and the one. For our spiritual genealogy is not from them, but from a nearer and double line of begetters, including seers—in the true sense of the word—and saints, for both are represented by Kepler and Hooker, Newton and Jeremy Taylor, Descartes and Spinoza, Leibnitz ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... chief rule of conduct for all officers and their colleagues in the court. The first principle governing subjects must be politeness. When superiors are not polite then inferiors will not keep in the right; when inferiors are not polite their conduct degenerates into crime. When both prince and subjects are polite, then social order is never disturbed ...
— Japan • David Murray
... policy, we must take advantage of the present opportunity to alter China's Republican form of Government into a Constitutional Monarchy which shall necessarily be identical, in all its details, to the Constitutional Monarchy of Japan, and to no other. This is really the key and first principle to be firmly held for the actual reconstruction of the form of Government in China. If China changes her Republican form of Government to that of a Constitutional Monarchy, shall we, in the selection of a new ruler, restore the Emperor Hsuan T'ung to his throne or choose the most ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... be a first principle, in beginning life to do with earnestness what we have got to do. If it is worth doing at all, it is worth doing earnestly. If it is to be done well at all it must be done with purpose ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Again, there are many things in nature, the difference between which is so slight as to be hardly perceptible to the understanding; so that it may readily happen that such things are confounded together, if they be conceived abstractedly. (4) But since the first principle of nature cannot (as we shall see hereafter) be conceived abstractedly or universally, and cannot extend further in the understanding than it does in reality, and has no likeness to mutable things, no confusion need be feared in respect to the idea of it, provided (as before shown) that ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... know the ultimate nature of being, then philosophy is impossible, for philosophy differs from other kind of knowing by seeking a first principle." "The objects of philosophy then include those of ontology. They are first the nature of the ultimate being of the universe, the first ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... consider that education commences before a child can walk: the first principle of education, the most important, and without which all subsequent are but as leather and prunella, is the lesson of obedience—of submitting to parental control—"Honour thy father ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... mysterious essence? It is—I do not know what! A powerful something; source of our joy and grief, felt and experienced by every one, and yet unknown to all! Nor shall we ever comprehend what it is till we are united to our first principle, and there read its wondrous nature in the clear ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... dear Sir,' said the little man, 'pray, allow me—my dear Sir, the very first principle to be observed in these cases, is this: if you place the matter in the hands of a professional man, you must in no way interfere in the progress of the business; you must repose implicit confidence in him. Really, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... declares the illusoriness of pain only as part of the illusoriness of all evil, moral as well as physical. Christian Science explicitly denies the reality of sin: and that denial follows with inexorable logic from its first principle—that {135} God is All, and All is Good. And here rather than in the material domain lies the danger we have to face; this is the side of Mrs. Eddy's doctrine which, the moment it is attractively presented to, and grasped by, half-educated and unstable minds, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... "first principle" of which some gardeners are very fond, but in which I do not believe, that if you begin to water you must go on, and that too few waterings do harm. What I don't believe is that they do harm, nor ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... election a minority may often elect a President, and when this happens it may reasonably be expected that efforts will be made on the part of the majority to rectify this injurious operation of their institutions. But although no evil of this character should result from such a perversion of the first principle of our system—that the majority is to govern—it must be very certain that a President elected by a minority can not enjoy the confidence necessary to the successful discharge of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... and left to make its appeal to men's minds. It may be stated theologically by saying, as the Christian theology says, that all men are equal before God. Or it may be stated in the form which Jefferson uses—that all men are equal in their "inalienable rights." But it must be accepted as a first principle or not at all. The nearest approach to a method of proving it is to take the alternative proposition and deduce its logical conclusion. Would those who would maintain that the "wisest and best" have rights superior to those of their neighbours, welcome a law which would enable any ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... natural taste in dress, nor did she know the first principle of the law of colour; but when she had finished her toilette she stood for many moments before the mirror, regarding herself with disapproval. The radiant whiteness of the frock and of the ribbon about her neck made her look as dark as an Indian. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... opium in China. But he would be doing very bad service if he were to go among the doctors and nurses on the field and tell them not to give drugs, as they give morphia in a hospital. But it is the whole hypothesis of war, it is its very nature and first principle, that the man in the trench is almost as much a suffering and abnormal person as the man in the hospital. Hit or unhit, conqueror or conquered, he is, by nature of the case, having less pleasure than is proper and natural to ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... them the credit for having the courage of their convictions. But I maintain that they were all wrong, now, in turning these people loose upon the country the way they did, without knowledge of what the first principle of liberty was. The natural result is that these people are irresponsible. They are unacquainted with the ways of our higher civilisation, and it 'll take them a long time to learn. You know Rome was n't built in a day. I know Berry, and I 've known ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... above the common course of justice." "Some may imagine," continued he, "that these calamities are not displeasing to me, because they may in some measure turn to my advantage. I renounce all such unworthy thoughts. The love of my country is the first principle of my worldly wishes, and my heart bleeds to see so brave and honest a people distressed and misled by a few wicked men, and plunged into miseries almost irretrievable." "Thereupon," says the writer of the letter, "he rose briskly from ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... character to be impartially developed. I would be born to no hereditary prejudices, no hereditary passions. My course in life should not be carved out by the example of a grandfather, nor my ideas modelled to a preconceived system of family perfection. Do you like my first principle, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... which the entire universe holds to the Creator. Nothing in man, in nature, in the universe, is explicable without the creative act of God, for nothing exists without that act. That God "in the beginning created heaven and earth," is the first principle of all science as of all existences, in politics no less than in theology. God and creation comprise all that is or exists, and creation, though distinguishable from God as the act from the actor, is inseparable from him, "for in Him ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... employing hypotheses, not as principles, but as veritable hypotheses, that is to say, as steps and starting-points, in order that it may ascend as far as the unconditioned ([Greek: mechri tou anypothetou]), to the first principle of the universe, and having grasped this, may then lay hold of the principles next adjacent to it, and so go down to the end, using no sensible aids whatever, but employing abstract forms throughout, ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... Among all our cultivated love of the uncommon, the remote, the subtle, the involved, the metaphysical and the terrible—the representation of which things has its due place, even its necessity—it is well to think of that quiet truth, and to keep it as a first principle in the judgment of the arts. Indeed, the recovery of the natural, simple and universal ways of acting and feeling in men and women who love as the finest subjects of the arts has always regenerated them whenever, in pursuit of the unnatural, the complicated, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... only, an anomaly, upon that one, white, unruffled consciousness! His first principle once recognised, all the rest, the whole array of propositions down to the [110] heartless practical conclusion, must follow of themselves. Detachment: to hasten hence: to fold up one's whole self, as a vesture put aside: to anticipate, by such individual force as he could find in him, the slow ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... that Helen Keller absorbed words, just as the child in the cradle absorbs words by hearing thousands of them before he uses one and by associating the words with the occasion of their utterance. Thus he learns that words name things and actions and feelings. Now, that is the first principle in Miss Sullivan's method, one that had practical results, and one which, so far as I can discover, had never been put in practice in the education of a deaf child, not to say a deaf-blind child, until Miss Sullivan ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... in the same relation to the doctrine of faith, as self-evident principles to a teaching based on natural reason. Among these principles there is a certain order, so that some are contained implicitly in others; thus all principles are reduced, as to their first principle, to this one: "The same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time," as the Philosopher states (Metaph. iv, text. 9). In like manner all the articles are contained implicitly in certain primary matters of faith, such as God's ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the spiritual principles in us follows the order which we impose upon them by our thought; therefore the order of realisation will reproduce the order of desire; and if we neglect this first principle of right order and guidance, we shall find ourselves beginning to put forth other great powers, which are at present latent within us, without knowing how to find suitable employment for them—which would be a very perilous condition, for without having before us ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... principle; and you will be safe in this world and the next, in your steward's office. But by no means so, if you ever admit the usurers Gospel of Arithmetic, that two and two make Five. You see by the rich hem of his robe that the asserter of this economical first principle is a man well to do in ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... opposed to popular government. "The greatest good to the greatest number" is the ideal that directs the life of a self-governing community. "The safety and happiness of the ruling class" is the first principle of imperial organization. ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... the blindest of our political economists would venture to assert this in so many words. But where do they assert the contrary? During the entire period of the reign of the late Emperor it was assumed in France, as the first principle of fiscal government, that a large portion of the funds received as rent from the provincial labourer should be expended in the manufacture of ladies' dresses in Paris. Where is the political economist in France, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... or unit, was not only the point whence all extension proceeds, but it further symbolised the First Principle, the origin of all. The duad represented the line, as being bounded by two points or monads. The triad stood for surface as length and width. The tetrad for the perfect figure, the cube, length, depth, and width. The decad, or denarius, indicated comprehensively all being, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... good sense, is the first principle and fountain of writing well. The Socratic papers will direct you in the choice of your subjects; and words will spontaneously accompany the subject, when it is well conceived. He who has learned what he owes to ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Miletus, made air the first principle of things; d. 500 B.C.; A., of Lampsacus, preceptor and biographer of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... his life ... Now, stifle your romantic frenzy, Mr. Grant, and listen to me. If you were minded to instruct me in the art of writing good English, I would sit at your feet an attentive disciple. When I, Furneaux, of the 'Yard,' lay down a first principle in the investigation of crime, I expect deference on your part. I tell you unhesitatingly that if Doris Martin didn't exist, Adelaide Melhuish would be alive now. That, as a thesis, is nearly as certain a thing as that the sun will rise to-morrow. I go ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... uneasily to yourself at the same time; for which reason I here quit it entirely, and for ever, and 'tis heartily at any one's service—it has spoiled me the digestion of a good supper, and brought on a bilious diarrhoea, which has brought me back again to my first principle on which I set out—and with which I shall now scamper it away to the banks ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... appreciation at the loss of rest in behalf of her early departure, and conspicuously forbore to glance in the direction of the barnacles, that being a first principle as between ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... religious history which can only be explained on the first principle of this hypothesis; there are special facts which can only be explained on the latter principle. The universal prevalence of the idea of God, and the feeling of obligation to obey and worship God, belong ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... is, that it is in the same case with all the bodies in nature. In them the simplest movements, the most ordinary phenomena, the commonest actions, are inexplicable mysteries, whose first principles are for ever sealed to us. How shall we flatter ourselves that we know the first principle of gravity, by virtue of which a stone falls? What do we know of the mechanism that produces the attraction of some substances, and the repulsion of others? But surely the incomprehensibility of natural effects is no reason for assigning to them a cause that is still more incomprehensible than ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... First principle: Homo Sapiens clearly can posses extreme health while eating very different dietary regimens. There is no one ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... use strong drink with the expectation of becoming eventually a drunkard. No man ever became a drunkard without having at first assured himself that he could keep a safe rein upon every disposition that might endanger his strict sobriety. "I am in no danger while I only take a little," is the first principle in the doctrine of intemperance. It is high time it were discarded. It has deluged the land with vice, and sunk the population into debasement. The same results will ensue again, just in proportion as the moderate use of ardent spirits continues to be encouraged. Let the multitude continue ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... He extends his power as far as he can with each of us; he is the most subtle of diplomatists. Unconsciously he passes under the influence of each person about him, and reflects it while transforming it after his own nature. He is a magnifying mirror. This is why the first principle of education is: train yourself; and the first rule to follow if you wish to possess yourself of a child's will is: ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tried to explain the physical world about them by trying to discover what they called the "first principle," from which all else had been derived. Thales (c. 624-548 B.C.), the father of Greek science, had concluded that water was the original source of all matter; Anaximenes (c. 588-524 B.C.), that air was the first principle; Heraclites (c. 525-475 B.C.), fire; and ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... to restrain that force is Law. The rules of life, embodied in law are the painful results of experience in killing and the dire effects which follow, both to the individual and the race. Law is a force only so long as reverence for law is made the first principle of man's social training. The moment he lifts his individual will against the embodied experience of humanity, he is once more the elemental beast of ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage,—the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think. No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... science of morals. Yet they seldom attempt to make out a list of the a priori principles which are to serve as the premises of the science; still more rarely do they make any effort to reduce those various principles to one first principle, or common ground of obligation. They either assume the ordinary precepts of morals as of a priori authority, or they lay down as the common groundwork of those maxims, some generality much less obviously authoritative ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... moments, and the actors resort to the elocutionary devices which belong to the spoken drama, and, foregoing pitch and rhythm, shout or whisper or hiss out the words which tell of the feelings by which they are swayed. Thus the first principle of music, which is melody, in Wagner as much as it was in Cimarosa or Mozart, is sacrificed. Quite as significant as the degradation of music thus illustrated is the degradation of the drama which has brought it about. There has always been a restrictive and purifying potency in melody. It has that ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... instructive to study this by a comparison of the zodiacal sign, Capricorn, as set forth in the "Light of Egypt," Vol. 1, wherein we read: "This sign signifies the knees, and represents the first principle in the trinity of locomotion, viz., the joints, bending, pliable, movable." The analogy is perfect. The soul, which has been pliant, bending to material forces, now reverses this action, and bows the knee in awe and reverence to the higher powers of its being. When refracted ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... was glad; he had put the Royalist precisian in a dilemma, between the dogma of passive obedience on the one hand (for the upholders of the Monarchy maintained that obedience was the first principle of military law), and the equally important dogma which turns respect for the person of a King into a matter of religion. In the priest's indecision he was eager to see a favorable solution of the doubts which seemed to torment him. To prevent too prolonged ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... the good is identical with his ultimate happiness. The wise man is the happy man. Hence to know oneself is the secret of well-being. Let each be master of himself, knowing what he seeks, and seeking what he knows—that, for Socrates, is the first principle of Ethics, the condition of all moral life. This view is obviously one-sided and essentially individualistic, excluding all those forms of morality which are pursued unconsciously, and are due more to the influence of intuitive perception and social habit ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Genevan theology. The clergy were little better than the English Deists. D'Alembert says, "All the religion that many of the ministers of Geneva have is a complete Socinianism, rejecting everything called mystery, and supposing that the first principle of a true religion is to propose nothing to be received as a matter of faith which strikes against reason." Rousseau declares that those who filled the pulpits of that venerable city had no answer to ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... wafer to his parrot. Nothing could be more stupid than these acts of irreverence, by which Catholics were offended and honest patriots disgusted. Nothing could be more opposed to the sentiments of Orange, whose first principle was abstinence by all denominations of Christians from mutual insults. At the same time, it is somewhat revolting to observe the indignation with which such offences were regarded by men of the most abandoned character. Thus, Armenteros, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... they betray their ignorance of the very nature of Truth, which is that it can never be destroyed: the very fact that Truth is Truth makes this impossible. And again they exhibit their ignorance of the first principle of Life—namely, the Law of Growth, which throughout the universe perpetually pushes forward into more and more vivid forms of expression, having ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... the beginning and I will lay down this first principle, that religion and the full meaning of things has nowhere more disappeared from the modern world than in the ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... O.C. of the relieved battalion where the lurking-places of German maxims were suspected. Afterwards he made a long and exhaustive tour of the muddy trenches, concealing his anxiety from the junior officers, and speaking lightly and cheerfully to them—following therein truly and instinctively the first principle of all good commanders to show the greater confidence as they feel it the less. He returned to the Battalion Headquarters, situated in a very grimy cellar of a shell-wrecked house behind the support trenches, and ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... Territorial Council a Territorial Force similar to that of England but not removable from Ireland. Military conscription could never be permitted except by Act of the Irish Parliament. It would be a denial of the first principle of nationality if the power of conscripting the citizens of the country lay not in the hands of the National Parliament but ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... man is grace denied. Every man has the will to grasp what is good. But though to all He gives a will, all have not the same degree of intelligence; He does not endow them equally in this respect. How then could He make intelligence the first principle of salvation and of faith? God searches the heart, not the mind. A modicum of wit is guaranteed to all to know that they can safely believe. Be one ever so unlettered and ignorant, and dull, faith and heaven are to him as accessible ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... a hundred and fifty men on board. She had been brought in by a French privateer and Delano was moved to remark, with an indignation which was much in advance of his times: "Privateering is entirely at variance with the first principle of honorable warfare.... This system of licensed robbery enables a wicked and mercenary man to insult and injure even neutral friends on the ocean; and when he meets an honest sailor who may have all his earnings on board his ship but who carries an enemy's flag, he plunders ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... not difficult to see why this should be. The first principle, on which the theory of a science of history can be plausibly argued, is that all actions whatsoever arise from self-interest. It may be enlightened self-interest, it may be unenlightened; but it is assumed as an axiom, that every man, in whatever he does, is aiming at something which he considers ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... that every child in his dominions should be taught to read the Bible. The king's gracious wish unconsciously indicated a difficulty. Was it safe to teach the Bible without the safeguard of authorised interpretation? Orthodox opponents feared the alliance with a man whose first principle was toleration, and first among them was the excellent Mrs. Trimmer, who had been already engaged in the Sunday-school movement. She pointed out in a pamphlet that the schismatic Lancaster was weakening ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... tradesman as setting up with the ordinary stock, that is to say, a negative character, namely, that he has done nothing to hurt his character, nothing to prejudice his behaviour, and to give people a suspicion of him: what, then, is the first principle on which to build a tradesman's reputation? and what is it he ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... metempsychosis was connected with a theory, yet more fantastic, of the visible heaven above us. For Pythagoras, the Pythagoreans, had had their views also, as became the possessors of "a first principle"—of a philosophy therefore which need leave no problem untouched—on purely material things, above all on the structure of the planets, the mechanical contrivances by which their motion was effected (it came to just that!) ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... He is pointed out[22] as the source of all light. The attempt to demonstrate God as anything else is demonstrated, by descending, that is, from higher principles until the object in view is arrived at—this attempt implies a contradiction. God is in fact the first principle, the foundation of all principles, the principle beyond which there is nothing. We may describe the process by which the human mind rises to this supreme idea; but to wish to demonstrate God by mounting higher than Himself in order to look for a point of ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... first principle of the democracy of which we boast, if it be not that excellence, that power, that Genius, is not the attribute of the rich or the noble, but that it may make its appearance anywhere among men? And you who ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... out his own means of shelter,—to contrive his own weapons of defence. Slowly, and by painful degrees, from Savagery he has emerged to Civilization;—wherefore it is evident that his Maker meant Thought to be his first principle, and Action his second. He who does not work, shall not eat;—he who does not use all his faculties for improvement, shall by and by have none to use. Injustice and corruption are amongst us, merely because we ourselves have failed to resist their first inroads. Who is ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... only discredited at an epoch nearly simultaneous with that of the discovery of the New World by Columbus. The true arrangement of the solar system was then expounded by Copernicus in the great work to which he devoted his life. The first principle established by these labours showed the diurnal movement of the heavens to be due to the rotation of the earth on its axis. Copernicus pointed out the fundamental difference between real motions and apparent motions; he proved that the appearances presented ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... develop that the insurrection is largely, if not exclusively, a war upon the first principle of popular government—the rights of the people. Conclusive evidence of this is found in the most grave and maturely considered public documents, as well as in the general tone of the insurgents. In those documents we find the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... first principle. A man is born of the same family, and is not made such by an appointment, or ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... the "beginning," should be, directly or indirectly, a cause of which it is the effect. Only under these conditions will the plot be, as Aristotle said it should be, an organic whole. Only in this way can it conform to the principle of unity, which is the first principle of all ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... First principle: The League of Nations is composed of all civilised States which recognise one another's external and internal independence and absolute equality ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... author of such distinguished reputation as the Abbe Raynal, it might very well become me to apologize for the present undertaking; but as to be right is the first wish of philosophy, and the first principle of history, he will, I presume, accept from me a declaration of my motives, which are those of doing justice, in preference to any complimental apology, I might otherwise make. The Abbe, in the course of his work, has, in some instances ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... the Atlantic. This spelled the end of the Internationale as a world organization, but enormously increased the stakes of the factional fights within the handful of American Internationalists. The organization of the workers into trade unions, the Internationale's first principle, was forgotten in the heat of intemperate struggles for empty honors and powerless offices. On top of that, with the panic of 1873 and the ensuing prolonged depression, the political drift asserted ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... vivum ex ovo," but that of "primordial germs"—living indestructible "principles of life"—existing in the earth itself. For it is evident that he uses the word "egg," in its more general sense, as designating any material substance capable of receiving his "primordium" (first principle of life) and developing itself into a ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... side with "Beauty," as the watchword being in greatest point. The filling of spaces in agreeable and harmonious arrangement does not demand strict acknowledgment to natural aspect. Indeed this is denied in most cases where the limitations of decoration are enjoined. With the first principle, truth, upon which all education rests, as the basis of such study, the nature part of this system will fall into its logical channels. If nature's largeness and simplicity contributes to its value, then nature should be consulted when she is large ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... dumbness, etc., is liable to remain. Indeed, when the disease once becomes established in an animal, drugs seem to lose their physiological action. Therefore, with all the previously mentioned facts before us, it is evident that the first principle in the treatment of this disease is prevention, which consists in the exercise of proper care in feeding only clean, well-cured forage and grain and pure water. These measures when faithfully carried out check ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... habit of feeling. A good example maybe found in the work of Mr Swinburne: the latter is the better poetry, the earlier remains the more popular — because of its eloquence of margin. Mr Tupper might long ago have sat with laureate brow but for his neglect of this first principle. The song of Sigurd, our one epic of the century, is pitiably unmargined, and so has never won the full meed of glory it deserves; while the ingenious gentleman who wrote "Beowulf,'' our other English epic, grasped the great fact from the first, ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... decreed that I be raised on a grain and stock ranch where the only trees we could see were in the distant mountains, or, if we rode in the canyons, cottonwoods and choke-cherries. My experience and training was with animals, and animals, especially horses, seem quite susceptible to accident. The first principle of treating almost any wound is to give it drainage, otherwise, both literally and figuratively, the "sap" soured. Thus it dawned on me that a tree-wound, even if only skin deep should have the same treatment ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... illumination of his mind. The most powerful telescope known to man is mind's eye." "He who has cultivated and learned to open his heart to the touch of outward Nature illuminates his inner being by the elevation and refinement of his emotional and imaginative nature. This is the first principle in the objective world of the higher education of mind and soul. The first lesson of Mother Earth is to instruct her children to be softened and sympathetic toward the moods of outward Nature. Thus mankind softens, broadens, and grows, ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... The first principle of Sophron is, to run no hazards. Though he loves money, he is of opinion that frugality is a more certain source of riches than industry. It is to no purpose that any prospect of large profit is set before him; he believes little about ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... assume as a postulate pro tempore. This having been granted, though but in expectation of the argument, I can safely deduce from it the equal truth of my former assertion, that philosophy cannot be intelligible to all, even of the most learned and cultivated classes. A system, the first principle of which it is to render the mind intuitive of the spiritual in man (i.e. of that which lies on the other side of our natural consciousness) must needs have a great obscurity for those, who have never disciplined and strengthened this ulterior consciousness. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... one should be himself, and work out his salvation in his own way, seems to be the first principle of the working plan drawn from the law of loving your neighbor as yourself. If we drop all selfish resistance to the ways of others, however wrong or ignorant they may be, we are more free to help them to better ways when they turn to us for help. It is in pushing and ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... the President being incapacitated, Huxley delivered as Deputy-President the Presidential Address. This address is famous in the history of geology, because for the first time it stated clearly and in permanent form a doctrine now taken as a first principle in all geological text-books. A large part of geology is the attempt to read the past history of the earth from the evidence given by the successive strata of rocks ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... was desirous of getting a sketch of a real lion's head to compare with them, and my friend Mr. Millais kindly offered to draw both the one and the other for me. You have not, however, at present, a lion in your zoological collection; and it being, as you are probably aware, the first principle of Pre-Raphaelitism, as well as essential to my object in the present instance, that no drawing should be made except from Nature itself, I was obliged to be content with a tiger's head, which, however, will answer ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin |
