"Premiss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... future," as Mr Arnold styles himself, begins, with orthodoxy if not with philosophy, by warning the Tories off entirely. "They cannot really profit the nation, or give it what it needs." Perhaps; but suppose we ask for a little reason, just a ghost of a premiss or two for this extensive conclusion? There is no voice, neither any that answers. And then, the Tories dismissed with a wave to all but temporary oblivion (they are to be allowed, it seems, to appear from time to time to chasten Liberalism), our prophet turns ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... argued that Papias was an Ebionite, because he quoted the Gospel according to the Hebrews. In the first place, however, the premiss is highly questionable. Eusebius does not say, as in other cases, that Papias 'uses' this Gospel, or that he 'sets down facts from' it [152:2], but he writes that Papias relates 'a story about a woman accused of many sins before the Lord' (doubtless the same which is found in our copies ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... of the very same atoms). If you mean to assert that the difference between a live animal and a dead animal, i.e., between animate and sensitive matter, and the same matter when it becomes inanimate and insensitive, is a mere rearrangement of the same atoms, your premiss is intelligible. (It is a bolder one than any biologists have yet advanced. The most sceptical of them admits, I believe, that "vitality" is a thing per se. However, that is beside my present scope.) But this premiss is advanced to prove that it is of no "consequence" to kill an ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... discussing the possibility of reconciling an isolated expression in S. Mark's Gospel with another in S. Matthew's: just as if on that depended the genuineness or spuriousness of the entire context: as if, in short, the major premiss in the discussion were some such postulate as the following:—"Whatever in one Gospel cannot be proved to be entirely consistent with something in another Gospel, is not to be regarded as genuine." Did then the learned Archbishop of Caesarea really suppose that a comma judiciously thrown ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... also practical universal principles, such as "One should do evil to no man," as shown above (Q. 47, A. 6). The other understanding, as stated in Ethic. vi, 11, is cognizant of an extreme, i.e. of some primary singular and contingent practical matter, viz. the minor premiss, which must needs be singular in the syllogism of prudence, as stated above (Q. 47, AA. 3, 6). Now this primary singular is some singular end, as stated in the same place. Wherefore the understanding which is a part of prudence is a right ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... a philosopher whose energy has been paralysed by too great a range of thought. For the sovereignty of human reason this is a most dangerous premiss. Do we not owe to the full and free use of that reason everything great which mankind has created? History speaks of a thousand heroes (only think of Alexander, of Julius Caesar, of Frederick the Great!) whose doings convince us that a strong power of thought and action can ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... mental view, which might—who can tell?—be correspondent to, be defined by and define, varieties of facts, of truths, just "behind the veil," regarding the world all alike had actually before them as their original premiss or starting-point; a world, wider, perhaps, in its possibilities than all possible fancies ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... sins; and, then, when society had come to be settled on an agricultural basis and dependent on the harvest, prayer was offered for daily bread. In the Lord's Prayer, the order of these petitions is exactly reversed. A fresh basis, or premiss, for them, is supplied. They are still petitions proper to put forward, if put forward in the consciousness of a fact, hitherto not revealed—that man may do not his own will but the will of Our Father, ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... lesser law, no narrower claim. A freeman's Reason well might think it scorn To toil for those who may be never born, But for some Cause not wholly out of ken, Some all-directing Will that works with men, Some Universal under which may fall The minor premiss of our effort small; In Whose unending purpose, though we cease, We find our impulse ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... considered in its practical use, and consequently as proceeding from a priori principles, and not from empirical principles of determination, hence the division of the analytic of pure practical reason must resemble that of a syllogism; namely, proceeding from the universal in the major premiss (the moral principle), through a minor premiss containing a subsumption of possible actions (as good or evil) under the former, to the conclusion, namely, the subjective determination of the will (an interest in the possible practical good, and in ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... vouchsafed to them. A solution is impossible. The affinities, repulsions, reasons in a nature like that of Miss Leroy's are so secret and so subtle, working towards such incalculable and not-to-be-predicted results, that to attempt to make a major and minor premiss and an inevitable conclusion out of them would be useless. One thing was clear, that by marrying George she gained great freedom. If she had married anybody closer to her, she might have jarred with him; there might have been collision and wreck as complete as if they had been entirely opposed; ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... Articles were actually drawn up against "Popery," and therefore it was transcendently absurd and dishonest to suppose that Popery, in any shape,—patristic belief, Tridentine dogma, or popular corruption authoritatively sanctioned,—would be able to take refuge under their text. This premiss I denied. Not any religious doctrine at all, but a political principle, was the primary English idea of "Popery" at the date of the Reformation. And what was that political principle, and how could it best be suppressed ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... fire consumed him, his falsity would be manifest; and that he might have no excuse for evading the test, the Franciscan declared himself willing to be a victim to this high logic, and to be burned for the sake of securing the necessary minor premiss. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Now the major premiss of this syllogism is inadmissible for two reasons: in the first place, it is assumed that known mind can only be caused by unknown mind; and, in the second place, even if this assumption were granted, it would not explain the existence of Mind as Mind. To take the last of these objections first, ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes |
