"Hypothesis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possibility of these great boulders heaped on the Himalayan-ward face of the Khasia range, having been transported hither by ice at some former period; especially as the Mont Blanc granite, in crossing the lake of Geneva to the Jura, must have performed a hardly less wonderful ice journey: but this hypothesis is clearly untenable; and unparalleled in our experience as the results appear, if attributed to denudation and weathering alone, we are yet compelled to refer them to these causes. The further we travel, and the longer we study, the more positive ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... that the reflected rays pass through the focus. Most chains of physical deduction are of this more complicated type; and even in mathematics such are abundant, as in all propositions where the hypothesis includes numerous conditions: "If a circle be taken, and if within that circle a point be taken, not the centre, and if straight lines be drawn from that point to ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... absurdum is a variety of analysis. Starting from a hypothesis, namely the contradictory of what we desire to prove, we use the same process of analysis, carrying it back until we arrive at something admittedly false or absurd. Aristotle describes this method in various ways as ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... observers, or to the imperfection of instruments. But, if the observation can be made at the Pole, the difference between the first degree of the meridian nearest the equatorial line, and, for example, the sixty-sixth degree, which crosses the polar circle, will be great enough, even by Huyghens' hypothesis, to show itself irresistibly, and beyond the possibility of miscalculation, because the difference would be repeated just as many times ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... consult for himself in any good public library, it is my belief that in Swedenborg we have a preeminent illustration both of dissociation and of subliminal action, and that it is therefore equally unnecessary to stigmatize him as insane or to adopt the spiritistic hypothesis in explanation of his utterances. The records show that from his father he inherited a tendency to hallucinations, checked for a time by the nature of his studies, but fostered as these expanded into pursuit of the absolute and the infinite. They further ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... country, - very early, it must be admitted, since it goes back to the deluge. The first part of this treatise is chiefly occupied with an argument to show the identity of Peru with the golden Ophir of Solomon's time! This hypothesis, by no means original with the author, may give no unfair notion of the character of his mind. In the progress of his work he follows down the line of Inca princes, whose exploits, and names even, by no means coincide with ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... resemble the acquiescence of reason, that I find it difficult to distinguish between the two. I am enabled, too, plainly to trace this effect to the mesmeric influence. I cannot better explain my meaning than by the hypothesis that the mesmeric exaltation enables me to perceive a train of ratiocination which, in my abnormal existence, convinces, but which, in full accordance with the mesmeric phenomena, does not extend, except through its effect, into my normal condition. In sleep-waking, the reasoning ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Luther, and who, seating himself on his cloak with his companions, was conveyed away and borne by the Devil through the air to distant kingdoms."[109] Glanvin inclines rather to the spiritual than the material hypothesis, and suggests "that the Witch's anointing herself before she takes her flight may perhaps serve to keep the body tenantable and in fit disposition to receive the spirit at its return." Aubrey, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... struggles doubtless very common amongst early Christians. Indeed, the devils who were cast out must sometimes have been baffled hypnotists confronted by One who was stronger than they; the departing into the swine is much more intelligible on this hypothesis than on Dean Farrar's, of the swine's terror, ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... forbids us to take these words, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee,' as anything less than the voice of divine love wiping out the man's transgressions; and if Jesus Christ pretended or presumed to do that, there is no hypothesis that I know of which can save His character for the reverence of man, but that which sees in Him God revealed in manhood; the world's Judge, from whom the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a historical basis in the fact that Seth was regarded by his mother as a (the) son of from God, (5) in the circumstance that already the Sethites had begun to call themselves by the name of Jehovah (Gen. 4:26); (6), finally, it is sufficient as a hypothesis, and is therefore entitled ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... Herbert answered dubitatively. 'But as he's probably neither the one nor the other, the hypothesis isn't worth seriously discussing. I must go off now; I've got a lecture at twelve. Good-bye. Don't forget ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... executing consequently 660 simple oscillations; it ought at each time to impress a lateral deviation of the body of the insect, and destroy the velocity that the preceding oscillation has given it in a contrary direction. So that by this hypothesis the insect in its flight only utilizes fifty to one hundred parts (or one-half) of the resistance ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... here prepares His hearers for what is coming by putting it in the gentle form of an hypothesis. The frequency with which 'If' occurs in this section is very remarkable. He will not startle them by the bare, naked statement which they, in that hour of depression and agitation, were so little able to endure, but He puts it in the shape of a 'suppose that,' not because there ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... to me last night,' he said, 'when I went up there after dinner, the hypothesis which he puts forward in regard to the crime. A very remarkable young man, Trent. His meaning is occasionally obscure, but in my opinion he is gifted with a clearheaded knowledge of the world quite unusual ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... hectic, consumptive. hielo ice, frost. hierba grass. hierro iron. higo fig. higuera fig tree. hijo, -a son, daughter; pl. children. hilar to spin. hilo thread. himno hymn. hipocrita m. f. hypocrite. hipotesis f. hypothesis. hisopo holy water sprinkler. historia history, story; historieta (dim.) tale. hogar m. hearth, home. hoguera bonfire. hoja leaf. hola holla! hollar to trample, tread on. hombre man. hombro shoulder. hondo ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... Guinea?" said the man in gray; "where is he? Let us at once find him, and refute beyond cavil this injurious hypothesis." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... recover its long-lost order and repose. Had the subjects of Austria been as disaffected as they are loyal, the world might have witnessed such a terrible event, and been enabled to judge whether the hypothesis was the production of an ingenious schemer or of a profound statesman. Our armies under Bonaparte have never before penetrated into the heart of a country where subversion was not prepared, and where subversion did ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... rest ourselves at the theatre. Pompeii had two such places of amusement, one tragic and the other comic, or, rather, one large and one smaller, for that is the only positive difference existing between them; all else on that point is pure hypothesis. Let us, then, say the large and small theatre, and we shall be sure to ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... and I may preface my remarks by adding that the invention sprang solely from my experience gained by constantly using and experimenting with the many electrical machines which I possessed. It was from these I formed a working hypothesis which led me to make my first small machine. It excited itself when new with the first revolution. It so fully satisfied me with its performance that I had four others made, the first of which I presented to this Institution. Its construction is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... this end (assuming the hypothesis that spirits of the departed were in a condition to communicate with mortals), I interrogated, through the instrumentality of a clairvoyant gifted with the remarkable power of passing at will into an unconscious or trance ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... that, in the extract you quote, Monsieur Politis, after placing his own interpretation upon the article, remarks that it is quite foreign to the hypothesis of the occupation of territory and ought to be removed from the Regulations and turned into a Convention by itself. If this interpretation were correct, this remark of Monsieur Politis is certainly true: but the fact that the provision appears where it does should ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... wants me he has generally been on the spree, and got into trouble.' While the husband is engaged in his official duties, the wife is abroad promoting a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a necessary institution in southern countries, where, on the purely gratuitous hypothesis that the so-called lower animals have no soul, the utmost brutality is shown in the treatment of them. 'You see,' remarks our host, 'that my wife and I are like an elder and younger living en garcon. We divide the work. I take all the hard and ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... the ground that it subverts morality and makes of religion a mocking. Such pious objections, of course, are foreign to logic, but nevertheless it may be well to give a glance to this one. It is based upon the fallacious hypothesis that the determinist escapes, or hopes to escape, the consequences of his acts. Nothing could be more untrue. Consequences follow acts just as relentlessly if the latter be involuntary as if they be voluntary. If I rob a bank of my free choice or in response to some unfathomable ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... standing in the days of Josephus, and he had seen it. That it was standing then is also attested by Clement of Rome, contemporary with Josephus; as also that it was so in the next century, is attested by Irenaeus, with the addition of an hypothesis, how it came to last so long, with all its members entire.—Whether the account that some modern travelers give be true, that it is still standing, I do not know. Its remote situation, at the most southern point of the Sea of Sodom, in the wild and dangerous deserts of Arabia, makes it ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... character of governments, as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard, by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that, for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a Government of as much vigor as ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... place here to dwell upon this publication, suffice it to say, that all the information I have since collected, tends to confirm the hypothesis advanced. One extract from this brochure will show the connexion that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... Macallan, laying aside hypothesis, what have you ascertained, from actual observation, besides ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... his professional dogmas, he made no personal examination. Besides, Professor Pludder was beginning to be shaken in his first belief that all trouble from the nebula was at an end. Once having been forced to accept the hypothesis that a watery nebula had met the earth, he began to reflect that they might not ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... of fact, however, whether the hypothesis of single or of multiple specific centres be adopted, similarity of organic contents cannot possibly afford any proof of the synchrony of the deposits which contain them; on the contrary, it is demonstrably compatible with the lapse of the most prodigious ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... those of Mr. Eyre. The intercourse between natives of opposite sides of the continent (though it is certainly possible) has never been established, and while it remains hypothetical, cannot be adduced to overthrow another hypothesis. The existence of hot winds also blowing from the interior is not conclusive, as we had, when in the Gulf of Carpentaria, very cold winds coming from the same direction. We know, however, that the temperature of winds depends much ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... business of forming literary taste faith enters. You probably will not specially care for a particular classic at first. If you did care for it at first, your taste, so far as that classic is concerned, would be formed, and our hypothesis is that your taste is not formed. How are you to arrive at the stage of caring for it? Chiefly, of course, by examining it and honestly trying to understand it. But this process is materially helped by an act of faith, by the frame of mind which says: ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... be best to announce here a more or less dogmatic hypothesis to which the writer will steadfastly adhere: that human behavior results from the rather simple, arithmetical combination of the inherited nature of man and the environment in which his maturing years are passed! Man will behave according ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... in his mind once more. He doubted if ud Klavan could accept the hypothesis that Marlowe did not know he was a spy. But the Dovenilid must be a sorely confused being at ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... evident, is, upon any hypothesis, no less than the attempt to bring that vast, complex, unique Being, its subject, into clear, true relations with the individual intelligence. Now, since individual intelligences are individual, and each is a little differently placed in regard to the subject under consideration, since ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... a perfectly reasonable hypothesis," the Commandant assented. "Two patrol boats were sent out early this morning, in search of her. An old man whom I saw at Waburne declares that she passed like a long, black cloud, just over his head, and that he was almost deafened ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... its highest striking energy. Finally, assuming the geographical conditions give reasonable promise of contact, a quick decision, which modern war demands with ever greater insistence, is more probable. In such a disposition of course contact can rarely be made certain. The enemy, whom the hypothesis of blockade assumes to be anxious to avoid action, will always have a chance of evasion, but this will always be so, even with the closest blockade now possible. We may even go further and claim for open blockade that in favourable conditions it ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... processes, its tribes and races, whether of vegetable or animal life; and affirms that the world, as now constituted, never had a beginning, and that it will never have an end. This has been called the Aristotelian Hypothesis, because Aristotle, while he spoke of a Supreme Mind or Reason, maintained not only the eternity of matter, but also the eternity of ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... hypothesis of British defeat rather than that of British victory? Because it is the invariable practice of the masters of war to consider first the disagreeable possibilities and to make provision for them. But also because, according to every one of ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... discussed, we find conflict of opinions. There is no certain scientific decision, but there is the possibility of working in the scientific spirit, with breadth of comparison; consistency of logic; economy of conjecture; abstinence from the piling of hypothesis ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... have been acquainted with the southern extremity of South America, or must have built this information on hypothesis, as there is no known inhabited land of this description ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... according to the explanation given by Nilakantha. The Sankhya doctrine proceeds upon the hypothesis that all states of life imply sorrow. To find a remedy for this, i.e., to permanently escape all sorrow, is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... being no scientific evidences that give countenance to the assumption, even the spiritualists themselves hesitate to assert the existence of a ghost or soul. Again he[FN185] says: "With this illegitimate hypothesis of annihilation the materialist transgresses the bounds of experience quite as widely as the poet who sings of the New Jerusalem with its river of life and its street of gold. Scientifically speaking, there is not a particle ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... the days when young men about town were even more reckless and more likely to become the prey of feminine deception than they are now. The fact that Matthew Haygarth revealed no such marriage is no conclusive evidence against my hypothesis. He died very suddenly—intestate, as it seems the habit of these Haygarths to die; and he had never made any adjustment of his affairs. According to the oldest inhabitant in Ullerton almshouses, this Matthew was a very handsome fellow, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... not pay much attention, I think, to this hypothesis of mine. But while I was speaking about the sense of smell he nestled about in his seat, and presently succeeded in getting out a large red bandanna handkerchief. Then he lurched a little to the other side, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... This hypothesis, too, accounted for that most perplexing circumstance of all, the murder of Baron von Harden. For Lanyard was fully persuaded that had been nothing less than premeditated murder, in no way an accident of faulty aim. Even the most ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Cairnsley, who taught philosophy, it was more difficult to form a working hypothesis. He had grown old in the service of the college, and after thirty years' experience of girl-nature he was still as unsuspiciously trustful as he had been in the beginning. Taking it for granted that his pupils were as interested in the contemplation of philosophic truths as ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... Dodge made an experiment to test the hypothesis of anaesthesia. He proceeded as follows (ibid., p. 458): "A disc of black cardboard thirteen inches in diameter, in which a circle of one-eighth inch round holes, one half inch apart, had been punched close to the periphery all around, was made to revolve at such a velocity that, while the light ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... hypothesis was exploded, and Miss Wall's speculations set at rest, with a quite comforting solatium of romantic and unhappy interest, "a nice tit-bit for the old cat," as Mr. Naylor unkindly put it. Cynthia had told her story; she wanted a richer sympathy than Doctor Mary's common-sense afforded; out of ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... give, it might be remarked, an original hypothesis of their own, regarding the death of the man; viz: that in passing along over this spot he was either drowned or swallowed up in the mire ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... here. One," she said coolly, her eyes steady upon his, "has beckoned, as you put it; the other has driven. One is the desire to get my feet into the golden trough, the other to get my body out of the way of the law. Your hypothesis seems, in my case as in the others, to be ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... Level only when Entrepreneurs' Gains are Nil.—Any net profit on an entrepreneur's part means that his product is selling for more than the elements of it have cost him. But this is a condition which, if labor and capital are as mobile as the static hypothesis requires that they should be, will cause this entrepreneur and others to move labor and capital into his industry, thus increasing its output and lowering the selling price of its product. If there is no such action going on, it shows that the entrepreneurs ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... in the position. It depended on the current-whether it would carry the iceberg into an eddy which might drive it on the coast, or continue to drift it towards the north. Which was the more admissible hypothesis? ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... induced currents in alternating machines have, like those of the Ruhmkorff coil, a definite direction, which would be that of currents having the greatest tension, that is to say, that of direct currents. This hypothesis seems to us the more plausible in that Mr. J. Van Malderem has demonstrated that the attraction of solenoids with the currents, not straight, of magneto-electric machines is almost as great as that of the same solenoids with straight currents; and it is very likely that the difference ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... proportions of Dichtung and Wahreit in certain episodes of his biography. The strange story, for example, told by Peacock about a supposed warning he had received in the spring of this year from Mr. Williams of Tremadoc, may possibly be explained on the hypothesis that his brooding thoughts had taken form before him, both ear and eye having been unconsciously pressed into the service of a subjective energy. (Fraser's Magazine, January, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... matters which followed his death to secure its own aggrandisement at Israel's expense; in correspondence with this attack from the northern side another by Judah in concert with Hamath may well have been made from the south. In this way, though not without the aid of pure hypothesis, it might be possible to fit into the general historical connection the fragmentary Assyrian notices about Azariah of Judah and his relations to Hamath; the explanations suggested by the Assyriologists have hitherto been total failures. But ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Cocagne. From its own point of view there seems to be no fault to find with it, except, perhaps, with the first part of the Twelfth Commandment; for the remembrance of former favours heightens the enjoyment of later ones, and the danger of nessun maggior dolore is excluded by the hypothesis of indifference after breach. But a sort of umpire, or at any rate thirdsman, the shepherd Silvandre,[145] when asked his opinion, makes an ingenious objection. To carry out Article Three, he says, there ought to be ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... evolution from the anthropoid apes ... becomes a reasonable hypothesis, especially when we think of the semi-naked savages who inhabited these islands when Julius Caesar landed on our shores, and our present Prime ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... this sweeping generalization must be made in favor of several medieval scientists and philosophers, including—Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar of the thirteenth century.] This so-called deductive method of Aristotle assumed as a starting-point some general of principle as a premise or hypothesis and thence proceeded, by logical reasoning, to deduce concrete applications or consequences. It had been extremely valuable in stimulating the logical faculties and in showing men how to draw accurate conclusions, but it had shown a woeful inability to devise new general ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... She had often lamented his insensibility to the attractions of such women as she fancied would add to his happiness, and grace the high place to which his wife would be exalted. She never liked to hear him called invulnerable; repelled the hypothesis of his incurable bachelorhood as derogatory to his heart and head. This unlooked-for intelligence, had it reached her in a different way, would have delighted as much as it astonished her. The fear lest her consent to wed Frederic and leave Ridgeley might be the occasion ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... two fragments, put together by a later compiler; and some of them have even gone so far as to maintain that "the feeling which saw God revealed in the law did not arise till the time of Josiah."[C] But such a hypothesis is not required to explain either the sudden transition or the difference in style and rhythm between the two parts of the psalm, which unquestionably exists. The turn from the outer world to the better light of God's word, is most natural; the abruptness of it is artistic and impressive; the difference ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... themselves against such a measure, to point out the danger, and to prove it. The onus lies upon them. And what evidence do they give us? Where is it to be found? In what circumstance shall we discover it? From what principles and probabilities shall we infer it? We must not have mere hypothesis—mere allegations—mere fancied horrors, dressed up in frightful language. We must have proof to substantiate, in some good measure, their theory of rebellion, warfare, and blood. If any such thing exists, let them ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... assuredly is the male of Ibla quadrivalvis. But feeling strongly how improbable it is, that an additional or complemental male should be associated with an hermaphrodite, I will make a few remarks on the only possible hypothesis, if my view be rejected,—namely, that the two parasites considered by me to be exclusively males, are not so, but are independent hermaphrodite Cirripedes, the female organs and ova (which, if present, ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... much as opinions and beliefs may differ, among music critics, as to the necessity of Form in music, and the conditions of its existence, no reasonable objection can be taken to the hypothesis that Clearness and Attractiveness are the two vital requisites upon which the enjoyment of any art depends. The artist's utterances or creations must be intelligible, and they must be interesting. The lack, partial ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... historically through both kinds of experience, 14; inward experience or inspiration, 14 sq.; deification of living men, 16 sq.; outward experience as a source of the idea of God, 17; the tendency to seek for causes, 17 sq.; the meaning of cause, 18 sq.; the savage explains natural processes by the hypothesis of spirits or gods, 19 sq.; natural processes afterwards explained by hypothetical forces and atoms instead of by hypothetical spirits and gods, 20 sq.; nature in general still commonly explained ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... The barranca was here deeper than at any point above; so deep that I could but indistinctly see the rocky boulders at its bottom. Perhaps with the daylight I might be able to find a crossing-place; but from that doubtful hypothesis ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... kindly prelate touched, was part of the well-maintained etiquette of the little ecclesiastical court. But, as you meet in the street faces that are like a sacrament, so there are faces, looks, tones of voice, among dignified priests as among other people, to hear or look upon which is to feel the hypothesis of an unseen world impossible. As he smiled amiably out of the midst of his pontifical array on Gaston's scrupulous devotion, it was as if the old Roman augur smiled not only to his fellow augur but to the entire assistant world. In after years Gaston seemed to understand, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... strength and position of the different English establishments; ... his views, and hopes that he might have of finding support, in case of war, so as to be able to maintain himself in the Peninsula.... Finally, as one must reason on the hypothesis that we should not be masters of the sea and could ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... part that is based upon logic and depends for its effectiveness upon pure reasoning is called conviction; the part that consists of an emotional appeal to the people addressed is called persuasion. If the only purpose of argumentation were to demonstrate the truth or falsity of a hypothesis, conviction alone would be sufficient. But its purpose is greater than this: it aims both (1) to convince men that certain ideas are true, and also (2) to persuade them to act in accordance with the truth presented. Neither conviction nor persuasion can with safety be omitted. An appeal ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... experience among miners, the probabilities of extension are somewhat in proportion to the length and width of each ore-body. For instance, in the A mine, with an ore-shoot 1000 feet long and 10 feet wide, on its bottom level, the minimum extension under this hypothesis would be a wedge-shaped ore-body with its deepest point 500 feet below the lowest level, or a minimum of say 200,000 tons. Similarly, the B mine with five ore-bodies, each 300 hundred feet long and 10 feet wide, exposed on ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... of that phrase before the Great War was not commonly grasped. People thought it purely religious and reserved for saints and church services. As a working hypothesis it was not generally known. The every-day ideals of our generation, the friendships and brotherhoods of nations as we know them ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... cast a light upon these subjects, yet when thoroughly investigated, they tended rather to bewilder than lead to any certain conclusion. The origin of the natives has ever since been a matter of curious speculation with the learned; conjecture has succeeded conjecture, hypothesis has yielded to hypothesis, as wave recedes before wave, still it remains involved in a labyrinth of inexplicable difficulties, from which the most ingenious mind will perhaps never be able ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... of Johanna, on which Skene mainly founds his assertion that Johanna of Strathnaver was Earl John's daughter, is just as easily explicable, and with equal verisimilitude, if she was not. Snaekoll went to Norway in 1232, leaving behind him, on our hypothesis, one child, an infant daughter of tender years, or possibly as yet unborn. The child of a younger child of Ragnhild would probably be still younger. Heiress to very large landed estates and justly entitled to claim a ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... must not act upon the hypothesis that all men are hypocrites, whose conduct does not square with their sentiments. No vice is more rare, for no task is more difficult, than systematic hypocrisy. When the Demagogue becomes a Usurper it does not follow ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... doubt of their own senses; that some, for venting unintelligible nonsense, pretended to think themselves superior to kings; that they gave themselves airs of accounting for all that we do and do not see-and yet, that no two of them agreed in a single hypothesis; that one thought fire, another water, the origin of all things; and that some were even so absurd and impious, as to displace God, and enthrone matter in his place. I do not mean to disparage such wise men, for we are really obliged to them: they anticipated ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... which the wife is to bend herself in loving submission before her husband is very beautiful; and would be good altogether if it could only be arranged that the husband should be the stronger and the greater of the two. The theory is based upon that hypothesis and the hypothesis sometimes fails of confirmation. In ordinary marriages the vessel rights itself, and the stronger and the greater takes the lead, whether clothed in petticoats, or in coat, waistcoat, and trousers; but there sometimes comes a terrible shipwreck, when the woman before ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... their fabrication. Their origin, like that of many other writings of the same description, cannot be satisfactorily explored; and we must in vain attempt a solution of all the objections which may be urged against almost any hypothesis framed to elucidate their history. It is, however, pretty clear that, in their original form, they first saw the light in the early part of the third century. About that time there was evidently something like a mania for the composition of such works,—as ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... The dogmatism of this hypothesis cannot be maintained by any careful and conscientious inquirer, who knows how to conduct an investigation. When the psychic faculties are well developed, as they certainly are in Mr. Bishop, the inquirer cannot fail to realize that ideas are developed by transference in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... the pretty animal, as reason long since is fled to animals, you know, or indeed for the more modelising, or enamelling, or rather diamondising of your subject, you shall perceive the hypothesis, or galaxia, (whereof the meteors long since had their initial inceptions and notions,) to be merely Pythagorical, mathematical, and aristocratical — For, look you, sir, there is ever a kind of concinnity and species — Let us ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... this question will deny in theory that there is any free-will at all, though in practice they take care to act as if there was. For if we admit that like causes are followed by like effects (and everything that we do is based upon this hypothesis), it follows that every combination of causes must have some one consequent which can alone follow it and which ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... couple strolled Detective Ransom, of the Central office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who could walk abroad with safety in the Stovepipe district. He was fair dealing and unafraid and went there with the hypothesis that the inhabitants were human. Many liked him, and now and then one would tip off to him something ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... and substitute any other danger than that of the pound of flesh (the circumstance in which the improbability lies), yet all the situations and the emotions appertaining to them remain equally excellent and appropriate. Whereas take away from the Mad Lover of Beaumont and Fletcher the fantastic hypothesis of his engagement to cut out his own heart, and have it presented to his mistress, and all the main scenes must ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... with success. The probability is that when the expedition failed, Cimon was ostracized, and that then Ephialtes defeated the Areopagus, and also made a change in foreign policy by making alliances with Sparta's enemies, Argos and Thessaly. This hypothesis alone explains the absence of any account of a third struggle between Cimon and Ephialtes over the Areopagus. The chronology would thus be: ostracism of Cimon, spring, 461; fall of the Areopagus and reversal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... broad; internal parts of the sun are not in a state of combustion; volcanos visible in the sun; all the planets together are less than one six hundred and fiftieth part of the sun; planets were ejected from the sun by volcanos; many reasons shewing the probability of this hypothesis; Mr. Buffon's hypothesis that planets were struck off from the sun by comets; why no new planets are ejected from the sun; some comets and the georgium sidus may be of later date; Sun's matter decreased; Mr. Ludlam's opinion, that ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... to see us were natives who had risen to be the chief doctor, lawyer, priest and merchant. One of the Italianists, Antonio Spadoni, told us that the people were afraid of expressing their real wishes for union with Italy. This hypothesis might seem to demand some elucidation, but Signor Spadoni insisted on passing on to the "Workers' Society," which the young Commandant had founded for the purpose, according to Spadoni, of helping the people ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... were my own," replied la Peyrade, "which, by the bye, is not altogether an hypothesis. I have already received suggestions about my own candidacy, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... who, by the exercise of his inner life, has acquired the gift of some power, allows us to suppose that there is as great a difference between men of genius and other beings as there is between the blind and those who see. This hypothesis, since it extends creation beyond all limits, gives us, as it were, the clue to heaven. The beings who, here on earth, are apparently mingled without distinction, are there distributed, according to their inner perfection, in distinct spheres whose speech and ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... one reading of the facts is possible; not cloistered mystics, or anchorites withdrawn from the world, but heroes engaged in fighting its ills, have steadfastly proclaimed that God is good; is it an altogether unreasonable hypothesis that their faith, if it outsoars ours, may be the result of a ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... in noiselessly, and had moved in a purblind fashion to the centre of the apartment. The vagueness of the expression on his face and of his movements hinted at a vacant mind or too much drink,—but Thorpe gave no thought to either hypothesis. The face itself—no—yes—it was ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... the hypothesis was none the less quite plausible; a thing had happened, within P. Sybarite's ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... generalizations which naturalists, physiologists, and comparative anatomists have established. The third and final part of the first volume of the "Principles of Biology" deals with the speculation commonly known as "the development hypothesis," and considers its a priori and a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... parchment roll, "You little scamp, who begin to trim the trees from the top!" All of the gentlemen who formed her escort now drew nigh in turn, each having something to remark or jest over, either a freshly worked-up miniature system, or a miserable little hypothesis, or some similar abortion of their own insignificant brains. Through the open door of the hall many strange gentlemen now entered, who announced themselves as the remaining magnates of the illustrious Order—mostly angular suspicious-looking fellows, who with extreme complacency ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... which had been created out of the western part of Washington County, Utah, by the Utah Legislature. The first session of the court was at St. Joseph, with Joseph W. Young as magistrate. This county organization is not understood, even under the hypothesis that Utah claimed a sixty-mile strip of Nevada, for St. Joseph, on the Muddy, lies a considerable distance south of the extension of the southern ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... discussion. Herodotus, speaking of some settlements held to be Pelaigic, and existing in his time, terms their language "barbarous;" but Mueller, nor with argument insufficient, considers that the expression of the historian would apply only to a peculiar dialect; and the hypothesis is sustained by another passage in Herodotus, in which he applies to certain Ionian dialects the same term as that with which he stigmatizes the language of the Pelasgic settlements. In corroboration of Mueller's opinion we may also observe, that the "barbarous-tongued" ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the generative source of that creative power of thought in him, from his own mysterious intellectual being to its first cause, he still reflected, as one can but do, the enlarged pattern of himself into the vague region of hypothesis. In this way, some, at all events, would have explained his mental process. To him that process was nothing less than the apprehension, the revelation, of the greatest and most real of ideas—the true substance of all things. He, too, with his vividly-coloured existence, with this picturesque ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... vegetable life." [448] Some of these writers may appear to be travelling rather too fast or too far, and their assumptions may wear more of the aspect of plausibility than of probability. But on their atmospheric and aqueous hypothesis, vegetation in abundance is confessedly a legitimate consequence. If a recent writer has liberty to condense into a sentence the conclusion from the negative premiss in the argument by saying, "As there ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... suspect that a small proportion of these agencies, say five thousand, may be severally competent to the production of all the phenomena, or may be quite up to the task among them. The physical explanations which I have seen are easy, but miserably insufficient: the spiritual hypothesis is sufficient but ponderously difficult." This statement is natural enough from the scientific side of the question. Perhaps the theological inquirer, taking the fact into consideration that Scripture certainly concedes the spiritual ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Lieut. Maury has invented a very ingenious hypothesis, which is published in his "Physical Geography of the Sea." He supposes that the air, which passes from the equator toward the poles in the upper regions of the atmosphere, is brought down to the surface of the earth beyond the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... to observe that the opposition of the heart to the intelligence is Comte's key to the whole history of the past, especially in relation to religion. Theology is to him a system growing out of a natural, though partially erroneous, hypothesis, a hypothesis which in its first appearance was well suited to excite the nascent intelligence and satisfy the primary affections of man, but which, in its further development, tended to secure moral and social ends at the expense of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... "The hypothesis is not absurd! But there! What is the real truth of the whole affair? That is what I am wondering all the time. That murder is never out of my head; it interests me more and more every day. Oh, yes, I've got lots of ideas, but they are all utterly vague and improbable: sometimes ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... therefore, in America—that is, all white men—are "free and equal;" and every thing that has been done in her political world for the last half century has gone to illustrate and carry out this somewhat intractable hypothesis. Upon this principle, the vote of John Jacob Astor, with his twenty-five millions of dollars, is neutralized by that of the Irish pauper just cast upon its shores. The millionaire counts one, and so does the dingy unit of Erin, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Dudley Stackpole, who perhaps never in his life had had for a target a living thing, should have sped a bullet so squarely into the heart of his victim at twenty yards or more. The first phenomenon might perhaps be explained, they agreed, on the hypothesis that the mishap to his brother, coming at the very moment of the fight's beginning, unnerved Jess and threw him out of stride, so to speak. But the second was not in anywise to be explained excepting on the theory of sheer chance. The fact remained that it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... opinion, even a belief, if not a credo. It is the crux by which society is tested. But as I shall proceed scientifically, my conclusion will, I trust, effect rational proof of what was an a priori hypothesis. ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... are driven to the hypothesis that people choose in comparatively cold blood, how is it they choose so well? One is almost tempted to hint that it does not much matter whom you marry; that, in fact, marriage is a subjective affection, and if you have made up your mind to it, and once talked yourself fairly ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... domain of physiology and psychology, and to note the modifications which can be brought about by altering the conditions of the experiments. The authors possess the great scientific virtue of never dogmatising. In the entire book not a single law is laid down, not a single hypothesis is advanced, which is not reached by the most approved inductive processes. A great service of the book lies in its enunciation of new and trustworthy methods for studying the physiology of the brain in health ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... change in social and industrial conditions. Linked with this change we see a deterioration of the physique of the race as a distinct factor in the problem of city poverty. This is no vague speculation, but a strongly-supported hypothesis, which deserves most serious attention. Dr. Ogle, who has done much work in elucidation of this point, sums up ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... invest him, will be found to tally much better with my hypothesis of romantic busy-bodyism, than with the reasoner's suggestion of guilt. Once adopting the more charitable interpretation, we shall find no difficulty in comprehending the rose in the key-hole; the 'Marie' upon the slate; the 'elbowing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... intend to use her against the Burgundians? We have already noted reasons for believing that towards the end of March, he had asked the Sire de la Tremouille to send her from Sully with a goodly company to wage war in l'Ile-de-France. And our hypothesis is confirmed when, after they had been unhappily deprived of Jeanne's services, we find the bishop and the Chamberlain driven to replace her by someone likewise favoured with visions and claiming to be sent of God. Unable to discover a maid ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... of indecision; has entirely failed in obtaining solidity? For thousands of years the most idle dreamers have been relieving each other, meditating on systems, diving into concealed ways, inventing hypothesis suitable to develope this important enigma. Their slender success has not at all discouraged theological vanity; the priests have always spoken of it as of a thing with which they were most intimately acquainted; they have disputed ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... world, to whom at death we return, and our relations to whom, together with his own nature, are an assurance that according as we promote or fail to promote his design by self improvement and the improvement of our kind, it will be well or ill for us in the sum of things. This is a hypothesis evidently separable from belief in a revelation, and from any special theory respecting the next world, as well as from all dogma and ritual. It may be true or false in itself, capable of demonstration or incapable. We are ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... opening might well have been that of discharge of a stream, now choked, for the Baumes Chauds and its adjoining fissures, one is led at first to suppose that water had brought down these logs that had fallen into some pot-hole. But this hypothesis is untenable, for it can be seen that these poles have been artificially pointed at each end, and that they have been made firm by cross pieces of metal, either bronze or iron. This may be the remains of a roof or a floor ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... length some one suggested that it looked as though the leaves of the trees had been burned. But what burned them? There was only one answer. The fiery blast from a big gun hidden amid those trees, of course! Acting on that hypothesis, a score of aviators were sent out with orders to pour upon the wood a torrent of high explosive. The next few hours must have been very uncomfortable for the German gun-crew. In any event, the big piece was hauled out of danger under cover of darkness and the bombardments ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... gone, the mark of a dirty hand on the window-sill, and that of a hob-nailed boot outside, and comes to the conclusion that someone has broken open the window, and stolen the plate, arrives at that hypothesis—for it is nothing more—by a long and complex train of inductions and deductions of just the same kind as those which, according to the Baconian philosophy, are to be used for investigating the ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... no countenance from the experienced lawyer for the hypothesis she had formed, rose, in something like displeasure, to order her whiskey to be prepared. But hostess as she was herself, when in her own dominions, she reckoned without her host in the present instance; for ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... other possible method in inductive science," he added, "than to embrace some hypothesis, the most attractive that one can ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... human conduct, is mainly a matter of imitation, punishment fairly may be expected to help to keep it out of fashion. The study of criminals has been thought by some well known men of science to sustain the former hypothesis. The statistics of the relative increase of crime in crowded places like large cities, where example has the greatest chance to work, and in less populated parts, where the contagion spreads more slowly, have been used ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... ideas of the difference between my will and my muscular force were more accurately defined. Then came the illusion, that I could, of course, "lick," "serve out," or "polish off," various small boys who had been or might be obnoxious to me. The event of the different "set-tos" to which, this hypothesis led not uniformly confirming it, another limitation of my possibilities was the consequence. In this way I groped along into a knowledge of my physical relations to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... king, still more to the queen, and that orders were, in consequence, issued to the court members of the House of Commons to devise some means to get rid of it. Indeed, the general circumstances of the times are decisive against the hypothesis of the two reverend historians; nor is it, as far as I know, adopted by any other historians. The probability seems to be, that the motion in the committee had been originally suggested by some Whig ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... them brought on the stage. They have generally been considered greatly inferior to his other prose and poetical works; their modern editor is even of opinion that they were meant as parodies and satires on the vitiated taste of the time: but to find this hypothesis ridiculous, we have only to read them without any such prepossession. Had Cervantes entertained such a design, he would certainly have accomplished it in a very different way in one piece, and also in a manner both highly amusing and not liable to misconception. No, they were ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... lived by theft; others that they were coiners; and there were many who imagined, from the diabolical countenance of the older brother, that he had sold himself to the devil, who, they affirmed, set his mark upon him, and was his paymaster. Upon this hypothesis several were ready to prove that he had neither breath nor shadow; they had seen him, they said, standing under a hedge-row of elder—that unholy tree which furnished wood for the cross, and on which Judas hanged himself—yet, although it was noon-day ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... generous contempt of money, which you show me in the whole transaction, is really noble;—and what renders it more so, is the principle of it;—the workings of a parent's love upon the truth and conviction of this very hypothesis, namely, that were your son called Judas,—the sordid and treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have accompanied him through life like his shadow, and in the end made a miser and a rascal of him, in spite, Sir, of your example." ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... ingenious reasons to prove, that those gospels are Compilations from pre-existing documents, written by nobody knows who. So that the pieces from which the three first gospels were composed were, according to this Hypothesis, anonymous, and the gospels themselves written by we do not know what authors; and yet, you know sir, that these patch-work narratives of miracles have passed not only ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... care, there is no doubt. In the "Principia" is a chapter on mosses wherein it is explained how the first vestige of lichen catches the dust particles of disintegrating rock, and we get the first tokens of a coming forest. Darwin never made a point better; and the nebular hypothesis and the origin of species are worked out with conjectures, fanciful flights, queer conceits, poetic comparisons, far-reaching analogies, and most astounding ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... must be earned, or rather prepared for, by a strenuous course of moral discipline. The religious life begins with Faith, which has been defined ... as the resolution to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis. This venture of the will and conscience progressively verifies itself as we progress on the upward path. That which began as an experiment ends as an experience. We become accustomed to breathe the ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... represented by these gentlemen), are sufficient to excite this disturbance, very perverse must be the disposition of that people amongst whom such a disturbance can be excited by such means. It is besides no small aggravation of the public misfortune that the disease, on this hypothesis, appears to be without remedy. If the wealth of the nation be the cause of its turbulence, I imagine it is not proposed to introduce poverty as a constable to keep the peace. If our dominions abroad ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... contrary, I feel I have been very ungrateful in not writing earlier to acknowledge the receipt. I dare say, however, you hate writing letters as much as I can do myself (for if you like my article, I may presume other points of sympathy between us); and on this hypothesis you will be ready to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... principles formed his private opinions. Thus LEIBNITZ, we are told, laughed at the fanciful system revealed in his Theodicee, and acknowledged that he never wrote it in earnest; that a philosopher is not always obliged to write seriously, and that to invent an hypothesis is only a proof of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... also stated the doctrine that so-called "exaltation of faculties" in many morbid states is owing to "insubordination from loss of control," and that the same was said in effect by Symonds, of Bristol. Adopting the hypothesis of evolution as enunciated by Herbert Spencer, Dr. Hughlings Jackson thinks that cases of insanity, and indeed all other nervous diseases, may be considered as examples of Dissolution, this being, I need not say, the term Spencer uses for the process which is the reverse of Evolution. ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke |
