"Retrogression" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apparent motions of these evanescent spectra, either before or after the body is at rest. From all which arguments it is manifest, that these apparent retrograde gyrations of objects are not caused by the rolling of the eyeballs; first, because no apparent retrogression of objects is observed in other rollings of the eyes: secondly, because the apparent retrogression of objects continues many seconds after the rolling of the eyeballs ceases. Thirdly, because the apparent retrogression of objects ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... in brilliant contrast with the ignorance and superstition of his age. The world was not yet ripe for his advanced ideas, hence when the work lost the support of his strong personality, its effects soon became obliterated, and a retrogression of ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... were taken from us. The present business of the country could not be carried on, the present population could not be maintained, property would sink to half its value—(hear, hear)—and instead of prosperity and progress we should have collapse and retrogression on all sides. (Cheers.) What would Newcastle be if it ceased to be a focus of railways? How would London be supplied if it had to fall back upon turnpike roads and horse traffic? In short, England as it is could not exist without railways and locomotives; and it is ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... for the inequality in the political and economic circumstances of the different districts and for the comparatively flourishing condition of several of them, the retrogression is yet on the whole unmistakeable, and it is confirmed by the most indisputable testimonies as to the general condition of Italy. Cato and Polybius agree in stating that Italy was at the end of the sixth century far weaker in population than at the end of the fifth, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... advancement, promotion, preferment, elevation, appreciation, enhancement; overture, tender, proposal, proffer, offer. Antonyms: retreat, retrogression, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... and of propagating ideas being that of speech, fugitive and limited, and that of writing, tedious of execution, expensive and scarce, the consequence was a hindrance of present instruction, loss of experience from one generation to another, instability, retrogression of knowledge, and a perpetuity of confusion ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... (or retrogression) was rapid. His muscles became hard as iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He achieved an internal as well as external economy. He could eat anything, no matter how loathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach extracted the last ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... a gradual progress towards perfection forming any necessary part of the Darwinian creed, it appears to us that it is perfectly consistent with indefinite persistence in one state, or with a gradual retrogression. Suppose, for example, a return of the glacial epoch and a spread of polar climatal conditions over the whole globe. The operation of natural selection under these circumstances would tend, on the whole, to the weeding out of the higher organisms and the cherishing ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... be made in behalf of women, therefore, is liberty, as untrammelled a choice of occupation and mode of life, as free a range of individuality and spiritual fruition, as is granted to men. But would this really be an advance, or a retrogression? Many maintain that it would be subversive of the genuine progress of civilization, to abandon the prejudices and throw down the bars which have hitherto restrained women from a full share in the chosen ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... name of "colony," was wrested from the empire and occupied by the most powerful of its adversaries. Not only Amida and Carrhae, but Antioch itself, trembled at a loss which was felt to lay open the whole eastern frontier to attack, and which seemed ominous of further retrogression. Although the fear generally felt proved to be groundless, and the Roman possessions in the East were not, for 200 years, further curtailed by the Persians, yet Roman influence in Western Asia from this time steadily declined, and Persia came to be regarded as the first ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... of a primitive savage culture are hard to find. Few of these groups or communities that are classed as "savage" show no traces of regression from a more advanced cultural stage. But there are groups—some of them apparently not the result of retrogression—which show the traits of primitive savagery with some fidelity. Their culture differs from that of the barbarian communities in the absence of a leisure class and the absence, in great measure, of the animus or spiritual attitude on which the institution of a leisure class rests. These communities ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... literary result of Mark Twain's Buffalo period does not reach the high standard of The Innocents Abroad. It was a retrogression—in some measure a return to his earlier form. It had been done under pressure, under heavy stress of mind, as he said. Also there was another reason; neither the subject treated nor the environment of labor had afforded that lofty inspiration which glorified every step ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... stamp and contained a cablegram originally despatched from Rome, which had been received at Vancouver and, thence, had pursued her—first along the route originally designed, afterwards, with zigzagging, retrogression and much delay, along the one she had taken. That it had reached her at all, said a good deal for Mrs Gildea's fame as a freely paragraphed ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... we share this pessimism, nor what we may have to say pro or con this question of "progress" or "retrogression" in eating (or in anything else for that matter). In fact we are not concerned with the question here more than to ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... the negro has proved the correctness of this theory. In no instance has he evinced other than a retrogression, when once freed from restraint. Like a horse without harness, he runs wild, but, if harnessed, no animal is more useful. Unfortunately, this is contrary to public opinion in England, where the vox populi assumes the right of dictation upon matters and men in which ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... education, the future literature, the ethics, the laws, should be purely Japanese. They were not even satisfied with the disendowment of Buddhism: there was a vigorous proposal made for its total suppression! And all this would have signified, in more ways than one, a social retrogression towards barbarism. The great scholars had never proposed to cast away Buddhism and all Chinese learning; they had only insisted that the native religion and culture should have precedence. But the new literary party ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... same policy. Old vessels which had outlived their usefulness as cruisers were one by one taken out of commission and were not replaced. Thus the navy moved steadily on a downward plane. Through the seventies and into the eighties this retrogression continued. The lowest ebb was reached in 1882, when the entire naval force numbered only thirty-one vessels in commission, all but four of which were built entirely of wood. They were old-fashioned ships, which had ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the army in the interior of Alaska are the consumption of whisky and wood. There is no opportunity for military training—for more than six months in the year it is impossible to drill outdoors—and the officers complain of the retrogression of their men in all soldierly accomplishments during the two years' detail in Alaska. Whether the prosperity of the liquor dealer be in any real sense the prosperity of the country, and whether the rapid destruction of the forest be compensated for by the wages ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... one of the chief acknowledged factors in the retrogression of British trade. The workers have become class conscious as never before. The wrong of one is the wrong of all. They have come to realize, in a short-sighted way, that their masters' interests are not their interests. ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... what we also maintain: The establishment of the theory of Descent in general, and the continual retrogression of Darwinism in particular. Wigand was entirely right when he said that Darwinism would ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... fallen after the age of the Antonines. Of course a general statement like this must be accepted with qualifications. There is no hard and fast line between one age or period and another, and in no age is either progress or retrogression universal in all things. There were many points in which the Middle Ages, because of the simple fact that they were Christian, surpassed the brilliant pagan civilization of the past; and there are some points ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... her head, bit her lip, and rustled out of the room in a huff. She reported her ill-success with 'Maryllia Van' to her husband, who, in his turn, reported it to Lord Roxmouth, who straightway conveyed these and all other items of the progress or retrogression of his wooing to Mrs. Fred Vancourt. That lady, however, felt so perfectly confident that Roxmouth would,—with the romantic surroundings of the Manor, and the exceptional opportunities afforded by long afternoons and moonlit evenings,— succeed where he had hitherto failed, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... forges for forming new structures of matter or forms of energy, rather than quarries from which they are cut, and we seem to get a glimpse of the origin of life, perhaps itself the cause of "retrogression" in the material, coming through from the Reality, the ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... in some ways a retrogression from the Greek letter system, for the neumes indicated neither definite pitches nor definite tone-lengths. But it had this advantage over the Greek system, that the position of the signs on the page indicated graphically to the eye the general direction of the melody, ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... knit his brows; Shakib shakes his head, biting his nether lip; and here and there in the audience is heard a murmur about retrogression and reaction. Khalid proceeds with his allegory of the Muleteer ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... it always be so? Is our commercial supremacy decaying or not? Have we begun to reach the period of inevitable decline? Or is decline indeed inevitable at all? Might a nation go on being great for ever? If so, are we that nation? If not, have we yet arrived at the moment when retrogression becomes a foregone conclusion? These are momentous questions. Dare I try, under the mimosas on the terrace, ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... is another side, that dark one, which revels in anticipation. It is the cave-man in me, hiding by night, waiting with a bludgeon to slay. I am beginning to be struck by the gradual change in my comrades. I fancied that I alone had suffered a retrogression. I have a deep consciousness of baseness that is going to keep me aloof from them. I seem to be alone with my own soul. Yet I seem to be abnormally keen to impressions. I feel what is going on in the soldiers' minds, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... supposes great progress of the mining countries in civilization in general; and yet, thus far, Mexico's republican independence etc., as compared with the later years of the Spanish colonial system there, is a great retrogression. The conquest of Spanish America by the United States would give a vast impetus to economic improvement; and here, again, the increase of production would be ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... that He has risen and lives for ever, we have a better presence than that. He is gone from our sight that He may be seen by our faith. That 'now we see Him not' is advance on the position of His first disciples, not retrogression. Let us strive to possess the blessing of 'those who have not seen, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... unsatisfactory, valuable materials have been collected for future students. If we were to abandon our position of traditional orthodoxy, and accept that of Schleiermacher in doctrine, or of De Wette in criticism, it would be a retrogression; but for the Germans of their time it was a progress from doubt towards faith. It was not orthodoxy, but it was the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... model for interpreting other communities more complex and highly organized. In it one may see the processes which affect the town and city communities; shifting of population, economic changes, educational improvement or retrogression and the processes of social life which express themselves in moral conditions. The community is the field in which may be observed the prosperity of the people as a whole. It is the local exhibit in which the ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... impression! The modern method is to assume that all that is, or has been, present to consciousness is ipso facto unified aesthetically. The result of such an assumption is an obvious disintegration both of language and artistic effort, a mere retrogression ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... corpora lutea have an important influence on the development of the milk glands. According to Lane-Claypon and Starling, if the ovaries and uteri are removed from a pregnant rabbit before the fourteenth day the development of the mammary gland ceases, retrogression takes place, and no milk appears in the gland. If, on the other hand, the operation be performed after the fourteenth day, milk appears within two days after the operation. It is to be concluded from this that the cause of secretion of milk ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... there cannot be progression without retrogression, or gain with no corresponding loss; and often on my wheel, when flying along the roads at a reckless rate of very nearly nine miles an hour, I have regretted that time of limitations, galling to me then, when I was compelled to go on foot. I am a walker ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... empire has held itself aloof from other countries and is ignorant of the affairs of the world; the only object sought has been to give ourselves the least trouble, and by daily retrogression we are in danger of ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... office-holder, and the Negro politician who aspires to lead the race, for the revenue that is in it. The best men, the wisest, the most unselfish, and above all, the men of the most profound integrity and uprightness, must take the helm or retrogression will be the inevitable result. Politics followed as an end has been the curse of the race. Under it problems have multiplied, and under it the masses have remained longer than they should in the lower stages ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... are better managed than those of the Spaniards and Mestizos; the plazas are kept freer from weeds, and the roads in good order. Probably nowhere but in tropical America can it be said that the introduction of European civilisation has caused a retrogression; and that those communities are the happiest and the best-governed who retain most of their old customs and habits. Yet there it is so. The civilisation that Cortez overthrew was more suitable for the Indians than that which has supplanted ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... War isn't news. War is old—atavistic, a confession of failure, evidence of retrogression. News deals with new things: progress, science, art, invention, the conquest of nature. That's real news. And where is ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... once to carry out their own wishes fully, for fear that they might sting the populares beyond endurance. They stopped the assignments of lands, however, allowing those who had occupied large tracts to keep them, and thus the desolation and retrogression which had so deeply moved Gracchus continued and increased even more rapidly than it had in his time. The state fell into a condition of corruption in every department, and office was looked upon simply as a means of acquiring wealth, not as something to be held ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... inside, in a space where six would have been disagreeably crowded. Mr. Sandford preferred the outside, where he could smoke his cigar without molestation. The road was very hilly, and several times our progress was turned into retrogression, for the horses invariably refused to go up hill, probably, poor things! because they felt their inability to drag the loaded wain up the steep declivities which we continually met with. The passengers ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... subtlety of moralizing, with a definite intention, on the part of the Cherokees, always past-masters in the intricacies of symbolism, it is difficult to determine, but the bears are certainly not alone in this illustration of retrogression, and memory may furnish many an image of a lost ideal to haunt the paths of beings of a ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the proper care for the health, comfort, and convenience of employes in general. It cannot be said that the labor interests have always shown great wisdom in all their advocacy of new legislation, and too many acts, like those in reference to the employment of convict labor, show a lamentable retrogression. On the whole, however, there is every reason to believe that the general course of justice has been aided by the influence of the trade unions—something which can be said of very few special interests for whose benefit our ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... country had not been one of the few privileged places on our planet where the experiment of a sudden change of institutions and ideals has been carried on most successfully, without paralyzation or retrogression, disorganization or destruction, I would say that the apprehension and fears of those who oppose this innovation might ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... architecture was not his trade. Over and over again he repeated this to his Medicean patrons; but they compelled him to build, and he applied himself with the predilections and prepossessions of a plastic artist to the task. The result was a retrogression from the point reached by his immediate predecessors to the vicious system followed by the pseudo-Gothic architects in Italy. That is to say, he treated the structure as an inert mass, to be made as substantial ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... bottom of all progress or retrogression, of all success or failure, of all that is desirable or undesirable in human life. The type of thought we entertain both creates and draws conditions that crystallize about it, conditions exactly the same in nature as is the thought that ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the most powerful and wealthy kingdoms of Europe, Spain has sunk to the position of the humblest and poorest. Other nations have labored and succeeded in the race of progress, while her adherence to ancient institutions and her dignified contempt for "modern innovations" have become a species of retrogression, which has placed her far below all her sister governments. The true Hidalgo spirit, which wraps itself up in an antique garb and shrugs its shoulders at the advance of other nations, still rules over the realm of ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... years that elapsed between the death of Montaigne (1592) and the accession to power of Louis XIV the tendencies in French literature were fluctuating and uncertain. It was a period of change, of hesitation, of retrogression even; and yet, below these doubtful, conflicting movements, a great new development was germinating, slowly, surely, and almost unobserved. From one point of view, indeed, this age may be considered the most important in the whole history of the literature, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... hatching the insect assumes its degraded louse physiognomy. The developmentist would say that this process of degradation points to causes acting upon the insect just before or immediately after birth, inducing the retrogression and retardation of development, and would consider it as an argument for the evolution of specific forms by causes acting on the animal while battling with its fellows in the struggle for existence, and perhaps consider that the metamorphoses of the animal within the egg are due to a ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... add something to God's work. Man retouches creation, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. The Court buffoon was nothing but an attempt to lead back man to the monkey. It was a progress the wrong way. A masterpiece in retrogression. At the same time they tried to make a man of the monkey. Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland and Countess of Southampton, had a marmoset for a page. Frances Sutton, Baroness Dudley, eighth peeress in the bench of barons, had tea served ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... a barbaric and blundering copy of pagan fatalism in taking the words "His blood be upon us and on our children" as a divinely appointed verbal warrant for wreaking cruelty from generation to generation on the people from whose sacred writings Christ drew His teaching. Strange retrogression in the professors of an expanded religion, boasting an illumination beyond the spiritual doctrine of Hebrew prophets! For Hebrew prophets proclaimed a God who demanded mercy rather than sacrifices. The Christians also believed that God delighted not ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... to the oft-asked question: "Do educated Indians go back to the blanket?" it should be said, first, that return to Indian dress in isolated communities where this is still the common dress of the people is not necessarily retrogression. It may be only a wise conformity to custom. Investigation has shown, however, that very few graduates of any school ever do reassume Indian dress or ways. Of those who have attended school but two or three years in all, a larger proportion may do so. A northwestern school ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... knows what happened at the concert, when, for the first time, the notes of that matchless symphony fell upon the ears of the world: when the supreme desolation of the magnificent, crashing retrogression of the finale held a thousand people in breathless, trembling stillness; the tears of Ivan's boundless yearning: the passions of the true Weldschmerz glazing every eye. Accounts of the mad storm of applause which finally rose into a chorus of shouts for Ivan, are still ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... of rapid retrogression under new unfavorable geographic conditions is afforded by the South African Boer. The transfer from the busy commercial cities of the Rhine mouths to the far-away periphery of the world's trade, from the intensive agriculture of small deltaic gardens and the scientific dairy farming ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the most intelligent hearers before retiring, audibly confessed that they came to find fault, but had seen nothing to censure. So some who came to scoff remained to applaud. With such advocates there can be no retrogression of Woman's Rights. Equality is their motto, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Theory.—Progress is self-perpetuating. Instead of insuring a retrogression, it causes further progress. The man who has advanced from the position in which he earned a bare subsistence to one in which he earns comforts is, for that very reason, likely to advance farther and to obtain the modest luxuries which appear on a well-paid ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... From the facts he aims to discover on the above lines what are or were the regular characteristics of the people or peoples he is studying. The ethnic differences so revealed are to him what organic variations are to the biologist and morphologist; they indicate evolution or retrogression, and show an advance toward higher forms and wider powers, or ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... retrogression that appears in Carlyle's Politics is traceable in his Religion; though it is impossible to record the stages of the change with even an equal approach to precision. Religion, in the widest sense—faith in some supreme Power above us yet acting for us—was the great factor ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... The progression and retrogression of numbers in groups expressed by the multiplication table gives rise to what may be termed "numerical conjunctions." These are analogous to astronomical conjunctions: the planets, revolving around the sun at ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... in a mundane year and a periodical repetition of the world's history, would have found a remarkable corroboration of their theory in the retrogression of learning during the middle ages, and its subsequent gradual revival. This re-birth contained all the leading characteristics of the original development of thought, although, amid the darkness, the torch handed down from the past afforded ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... great sub-tropical river basins; and presently, where the brine of the AEgean got into his blood, he achieved such miracles of thought and art that his subsequent history, for well-nigh two thousand years, bore the appearance of retrogression. I have already asked what the Invisible King was about when he suffered the glory that was Athens to sink in the fog-bank that was Alexandria. At all events, that wonderful false-start came to nothing. ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... at the expense of man is one of the most pernicious things in the world. The stunted man is a retrogression in the human race: he throws a shadow over all succeeding generations The tendencies and natural purpose of the individual science become degenerate, and science itself is finally shipwrecked: it has ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... tenner for the ring I bought and paid for like an ass. I'll be shot if I ever touch a diamond again! Not if it was the Koh-I-noor; those few whacking stones are too well known, and to cut them up is to decrease their value by arithmetical retrogression. Besides, that brings you up against the Fence once more, and I'm done with the beggars for good and all. You talk about your editors and publishers, you literary swine. Barabbas was neither a robber nor a publisher, but a six-barred, barbed-wired, ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Next come the retrogression of the nodes and the variation of the inclination, which at the time were being observed at Greenwich by Flamsteed, from whom Newton frequently, but vainly, begged for data that he might complete their theory while he had his mind upon it. Fortunately, Halley ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... a constant struggle between progression and retrogression. Of course, the great lines of the general pedigree are due to progression, many single steps in this direction leading together to the great superiority of the flowering plants over their cryptogamous ancestors. But progression ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... animals to human beings we find at first not only no advance in the sexual relations, but a decided retrogression. Among some species of birds, courtship and marriage are infinitely more refined and noble than among the lowest savages, and it is especially in their treatment of females, both before and after ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... vaults as this would imply. Celt, Goth, Hun, and Slav must undergo progressive development for many generations before the population of northern Europe can catch step with the classical Greek and prepare to march forward. That, perhaps, is one reason why we come to a period of stasis or retrogression when the time of classical activity is over. But, at best, it is only one reason ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... has no noble champion, during which the true spiritual food is wanting, are periods of retrogression in the spiritual world. Ceaselessly souls fall from the higher to the lower segments of the triangle, and the whole seems motionless, or even to move down and backwards. Men attribute to these blind and dumb periods a special value, for they judge them by outward results, thinking only of material ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... down in its foundations to the solid rock of truth. One of the best reasons for our belief lies in the fact that, since 1776, government after government has imitated our example. We have, by our very existence and rise to power, made any decided retrogression from these doctrines impossible. So many people have tried to rule themselves, and are still trying, that one begins to believe that the time is not far distant when the United States, once the most radical, will become ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... representing fiery horses restrained by strong men. Pompous inscriptions proclaim these presents from Nicholas; but the people, knowing the man and his measures, have fastened upon one of these curbed steeds the name of "Progress Checked," and on the other "Retrogression Encouraged." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... the undertaking which year by year had been carried forward with so much energy and success, should after a while come to a standstill; and the commonest observation of life will suffice to remind us that when progress ceases, retrogression is almost certain to set in. The immense zeal and unflagging enthusiasm of Junipero Serra and his immediate followers could not be transmitted by any rite or formula to the men upon whose shoulders their responsibilities came presently ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... Italian and French German opera was also added. The vicissitudes which brought with them this demonstration must be reserved for a subsequent chapter, but before I tell the story of the institution's retrogression I owe to the student of history an outline of the doings of the season 1890-91. The season began on November 26th and lasted till March 21st. There were sixty-seven subscription performances, an extra performance ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in circumstance, it described individual growth, and the change of progress. Where there is no change there can be no history; and as all change is either growth or decay, all history must describe progress or retrogression. The former had now begun for Euphra as well; and it was one proof of it that she told Margaret all I have already recorded for my readers, at least as far as it bore against herself. How much more she told her I am unable to say; but after she ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... this retrogression due? Is it the delectable civilization, the religion of salvation of the friars, called of Jesus Christ by a euphemism, that has produced this miracle, that has atrophied his brain, paralyzed his heart and made of the man this ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... Pestilent priests paraded the country, and did their utmost to excite religious fanaticism against the Government. These agitators spoke so loudly and rashly that the ire of the old religious leaders, the higher Moullas, men of learning and tranquil temper, who had not joined the party of retrogression, was roused. The knowledge of this emboldened the sober-minded to speak out against the arrogance and conceit of the new self-elected leaders. Open expression of opinion led to the criticism, 'These priests will next desire to rule over us.' The Nomads, who have always declined ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... the ministers at Ottawa had not stood firmly to their guns, all our subsequent career, instead of being the golden century of magnificent progress and peace that it has been, would have been linked with all the turbulence and the alternate advance and retrogression of the States. ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... This atavistic movement, this retrogression towards primevalism, must have possessed a certain charm, for it attracted vast multitudes; it was only hemmed, at last, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... a miserably feverish night, and when the doctor exclaimed the next morning at his retrogression, he told him, with some irritation, of the ill-success of his servant; he accused the man of stupidity, and wished fervently that he were ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... reached in the autumn of 1886. But in the early months of 1887 a reaction became visible. By July 1, the membership of the Order had diminished to 510,351. While a share of this retrogression may have been due to the natural reaction of large masses of people who had been suddenly set in motion without experience, a more immediate cause came from the employers. Profiting by past lessons, they organized strong associations. The main object of ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... establish truth and lead men. In a general way, however, it may be said that the course of opinion in these two generations, in reference to such questions as those of the dates and authorship of the New Testament writings, has been one of rather noteworthy retrogression from many of the Tuebingen positions. Harnack's Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 1893, and his Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur, 1897, present a ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... changes of structure which, in their earlier stages, constitutes its growth to maturity; while in the body politic the progress of those changes can not, generally speaking, have any effect but the still further continuance of growth: it is the stoppage of that progress, and the commencement of retrogression, that alone would constitute decay. Bodies politic die, but it is of disease, or violent death; they have no ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the fundamental conditions of her development. It is a bad and a dangerous time for a growing nation, but it is an almost inevitable stage in her life. Thank God, that time is past with us! Let us not think of the possibility of exposing ourselves again to civil war as an alternative against retrogression ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... treaty by which the United States is to be bound to arbitrate its sovereign functions—for policies are matters of sovereignty. . . . The aberrations of the social movement are neither progress nor retrogression. They represent merely a local and temporary sagging of the line of the great orbit. Tennyson knew this when he wrote that fine and noble 'Maud.' I often read it, for to do so does me good." After quoting ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of the most promising social movements are like by-roads which, at first less steep and difficult, end sooner or later against impassable obstacles. And even if there be a main line of march, advance seems to alternate with retreat, progress with retrogression. To illustrate further, the great waves rush onward only to fall back again, and we can hardly tell whether the ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... sympathy with his surroundings, impatient of the necessity that brought him into contact with what he would have chosen to avoid. He looked about with eyes grown hard and contemptuous. The very building seemed to be the embodiment of retrogression and blind superstition. He was filled with antagonism. His face was grim and his figure drawn up stiffly to its full height when the door opened to admit the Mother Superior. For a moment she hesitated, a faint look of surprise coming into her face. And ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... doubt. It may be true; such things have happened ere now. This particular writer's credibility, however, is none of the best; he has been convicted over and over again of forcing the note in his diatribes against what he calls "retrogression into idolatry." There was certainly a good deal of unrest in the country during the period of the ex-monk's ascendency; no less than 13,783 persons had been banished to Siberia, and 3,756 executed ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the most, to the time when the uppermost portion of the Sun's disc was released by the eastward motion of the Moon, and the light from that uppermost portion was again manifest, was about 20 minutes, and this, therefore, was the time during which the phenomenon of retrogression on the "steps" would have been exhibited to the King's eyes. Assuming then that the time when the ascending shadow had travelled upwards to the tenth step coincided, or nearly so, with the time when the Sun had reached its highest altitude for the day, at noon, we ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... to your objection of a multitude of still living simple forms, I have not discussed it anywhere in the "Origin," though I have often thought it over. What you say about progress being only occasional and retrogression not uncommon, I agree to; only that in the animal kingdom I greatly doubt about retrogression being common. I have always put it to myself—What advantage can we see in an infusory animal, or an intestinal worm, or coral polypus, or earthworm being highly developed? ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... make the history of the state the criterion of every aspect of the national fortunes, a corresponding barrenness and lack of interest in other aspects of national life. Yet a remedy for Henry's misrule was only found because the age of political retrogression was in all other fields of action an epoch of unexampled progress. The years during which the strong centralised government of the Angevin kings was breaking down under Henry's weak rule were years which, to the historian of civilisation, are among the most fruitful in our ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... repression incident to usurped and unrighteous domination by the Roman church, civilization was retarded and for centuries was practically halted in its course. The period of retrogression is known in history as the Dark Ages. The fifteenth century witnessed the movement known as the Renaissance or Revival of Learning; there was a general and significantly rapid awakening among men, and a determined effort to shake off the stupor of indolence and ignorance was manifest throughout ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... form. Matter is the potential, form is the actual. Whatever potentialities an object has it owes to its matter. Its actual essence is due to its form. A thing free from matter would be all that it is at once. It would not be liable to change of any kind, whether progress or retrogression. All the objects of our experience in the sublunar world are not of this kind. They realize themselves gradually, and are never at any given moment all that they are capable of becoming. This is due to their matter. On the other hand, pure matter is actually nothing. It is just capacity ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... contemplation; it is a totally distinct social organization. With regard to the position of woman, the facts are even more remarkable, for if the Homeric picture be a true one, historic Hellas, instead of representing an advance upon the prehistoric age, presents a distinct retrogression. In the Homeric poems woman occupies a position, not only important, but even comparable in many respects to that held by her in modern life. She is not secluded from sight and kept in the background, as in later Hellenic society; on the contrary, she mixes ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... sheath of a leaf, with the addition of colouring matter, to be replaced by a perfect leaf, one in which all three constituent parts, sheath, stalk, and blade, are present, it surely can hardly be said that there has been any retrogression or arrest of development in the formation of a complete in place of an incomplete organ. The term retrograde here is used in a purely theoretical sense, and cannot be held to imply any actual degradation. Morphologically, ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... it did not inaugurate, it at least prepared the way for the decline. It perfected logic, as the instrument of ratiocination, and gave it exactness and precision, Yet taken all in all, it was greatly inferior to its predecessor. From the moral point of view it is a decided retrogression. The god of Aristotle is indifferent to virtue. He is pure thought rather than moral perfection. He takes no cognizance of man. Morality has no eternal basis, no divine type, and no future reward. Therefore Aristotle's philosophy had little ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... climax—a mutual reconciliation. The dialogue is pithy, simple, and sententious. Nevertheless the play, as a whole, makes the impression of incompleteness. It is a dramatic sketch rather than a drama. It marks no advance on Bjoernson's previous work in the same line; but perhaps rather a retrogression. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... essential respects save one, the decade was a period of retrogression for New York City. Crime, pauperism, insanity, and suicide increased; repression by brute force personified in an armed police was fostered, while the education of the children of the masses ebbed lower and lower. The standing army of the homeless swelled to twelve thousand nightly ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... a couple or more months of absolute freedom every year, control of much of your own time, ample leisure to enjoy it. You would give only your chances of actual marriage for perhaps five years, for poor Allan cannot live longer than that at his present state of retrogression, and some part of every day to seeing that Allan was not neglected. If you bestow on him half of the interest and effort I have known of your giving any one of a dozen little immigrant boys, his mother has nothing to fear ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... become more beautiful and the exterior life be more perceptibly stamped with the holy image of God. There must be progress, or there will be regress. When a ball that has been thrown upward ceases to ascend, it begins to descend. When the fulness of the type is reached, then begins the retrogression. This is none the less true of spiritual things. The reason why there need be no declension in love is because the highest point of development ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... Outpouring and the Indrawing; the "Outbreathing and Inbreathing of Brahm," as the Brahmans word it. Universes are created; reach their extreme low point of materiality; and then begin in their upward swing. Suns spring into being, and then their height of power being reached, the process of retrogression begins, and after aeons they become dead masses of matter, awaiting another impulse which starts again their inner energies into activity and a new solar life cycle is begun. And thus it is with all the worlds; they are born, grow and die; only to ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... out of 151 votes. No foreign banker would undertake to negotiate the loan, but it was twice covered by Italian buyers, nearly all small capitalists, who put their money into it as a patriotic duty. Amongst the few deputies who opposed the loan was the old apostle of retrogression, Count Solaro della Margherita, who raised his solitary voice against the tide of revolution; and the Savoyard the Marquis Costa de Beauregard whose speech was pathetic from the melancholy foreboding which pervaded it that ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... proclaimed as the central idea of the new ordering, and that an effort, however feeble, was put forth to realize it in the shape of a covenant of social and moral fellowship, marks an advance from which there can be no retrogression. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... sacre rappresentationi themselves. In 1506 the court of Urbino witnessed the eclogue composed and recited by Baldassare Castiglione and Cesare Gonzaga[378]. It also belongs to the octave group, and is diversified with a canzonet. Dramatically the piece is somewhat of a retrogression, but it is interesting from the characters introduced in pastoral guise. Thus in Iola and Dameta we may see Castiglione and his fellow author; Tirsi, who gives his name to the poem, is a stranger shepherd attracted by ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the organized world alone it is hardly easier to prove all harmonious: facts would equally well testify to the contrary. Nature sets living beings at discord with one another. She everywhere presents disorder alongside of order, retrogression alongside of progress. But, though finality cannot be affirmed either of the whole of matter or of the whole of life, might it not yet be true, says the finalist, of each organism taken separately? Is there not a wonderful division of labor, a marvellous solidarity among ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... at last to break silence consists in the continual and ample advantage that all the clerical and reactionary organs have been taking of Virchow's address, during the last three-quarters of a year, in favour of mental retrogression. The shouts of triumph with which they at once hailed Virchow's "grand moral action," that is to say, his perversion from a Free-thinker to the side of mental darkness, was the first signal for that persistent utilisation of his authority of which the pernicious consequences ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... all its prodigious inequalities, is in foundation and substance the perfection of social blessedness, Rousseau was almost in the right. If the only alternative to the present social order remaining in perpetuity were a retrogression to some such condition as that of the islanders of the South Sea, a lover of his fellow-creatures might look upon the result, so far as it affected the happiness of the bulk of them, with tolerably complete ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... opinion, is not provided with a poisonous fluid to instill into wounds which these fangs may inflict, they must consequently be intended for a purpose different to those which exist in poisonous reptiles. Their use seems to be to offer obstacles to the retrogression of animals, such as birds, etc., while they are only partially within the mouth; and from the circumstance of these fangs being directed backward, and not admitting of being raised so as to form an angle with the edge of the jaw, they are well ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Corson's looks like a final plunge; a fatal fall; a hopeless retrogression. But we must not judge prematurely. "Man advances; but in spiral lines," said Goethe. The river goes forward, in spite of its eddies. You can complete a geometric circle from a minute portion of its curve; but not a human cycle. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... infant. The only special treatment after childbirth is to sit with the back close to a fire, so as to heat it as much as can be borne. The delivery is sometimes aided by tightly binding the body above the gravid uterus in order, it would seem, to prevent any retrogression of the process. While the mother goes about her work in camp, the infant is usually suspended in a sling of bark-cloth from a bent sapling or branch, an arrangement which enables the mother to rock and so soothe the child by means of an occasional ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... possibly of twenty miles to the hour, than, if you happen to fix your eye on the faintly illuminated brickwork which you are so rapidly dashing past, the apparent movement of the engine will be in a reverse direction to the real; and the general effect will be that of retrogression at a furious pace, instead of the progression which is taking place in reality. This is altogether different from the trite illustration of the astronomical lecturer, who reminds us of the apparent movement of the shore when observed from the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... strictest sense of the word, a progressive being, and with many periods of inaction and retrogression, has still held, upon the whole, a steady course towards the great end of his existence, the re-union and re-harmonizing of the three elements of his being, dislocated by the Fall, in the service of his God. Each ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... you. The desert would show you its own power if you would give it a chance. No one can describe the call to you. I suppose if I answered it and went back, you would call it retrogression?" ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... crenellations, was a matter of four or five centuries back in a mere turn of the eye; and from these latter to the Hindu temples here and there, which, whether or not of actual age, always carry one straight into antiquity, was a further retrogression to the obscure depths of time. So, too, one's glance would often sweep in a twinkling from a European clothed in garments of the latest mode to a Hindu whose sole covering was his dhotee, or clout about the loins, taking in between these two extremes a number of distinct ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... place where the creek which flowed on a level with the surroundings suddenly plunged into a deep mud canyon. This canyon had been cut back from far below by the undermining action of the falling water, and it was plain to see that it would continue its retrogression till it eventually reached the mouth of the great canyon several miles above, but I did not dream that it could accomplish this work as rapidly as it actually did years after. During a great flood it washed a canyon ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... then conceive a series in which each term is fact in relation to those which follow it, and constructed in relation to those which precede it. The expression "primitive fact" then determines not so much a final object as a direction of thought, a movement of critical retrogression, a journey from the most to the least elaborate, and the "contact with pure immediacy" is only the effort, more and more prolonged, to convert the elements of experience into real and ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... to the right nor to the left as she swung her leaders around the corner, yet no sign of the town's retrogression since her last visit escaped her—any more than did the mean small-town smirk upon the faces of a group of doorway loafers, who commented humorously upon the ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... individuals," and therefore social equality would destroy progress; that inequality influences production by existing as an object of desire and as a means of pressure; that the evils of poverty are caused by want, not by inequality; and that, finally, equality is not the goal of progress, but of retrogression; that inequality is not an accidental evil of civilization, but the cause of its development; the distance of the poor from the rich is not the cause of the former's poverty as distinct from riches, but of their civilized competence as distinct from barbarism; and that ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... way. This Psalmist is no exception to the devout souls of his time. For though, as I have said, externalisms and ritualisms filled a place then, that it is an anachronism and a retrogression that they should be supposed to fill now, still beneath all these there lay this one ancient, permanent relation, the relation of trust. From the day in which the 'father of the faithful' as he is significantly called Abraham, 'believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness,' down ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... race, they are elevated in the scale of existence, improved mentally, morally, and physically, and are thus enabled to do their part in contributing to the well-being of the human race. But so far as our experience goes, this development is not permanent, but is liable to retrogression as soon as the influence of the superior race is removed. Like the electro-magnet, whose power is lost the moment it is insulated from the vivifying power of electricity, so the servile race loses its power when removed from the control ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... their present mode of action, and, when they are not modified by outward changes, reduce life to its simplest phases. Changes of growth are effected by those apparent hardships to which life is subject; and progression in new directions is effected by retrogression in previous modes of growth. The old leaves and branches must fall, the wood must be frost-bitten or dried, the substance of seeds must wither and then decay, the action of leaves must every night be reversed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the extension of civil rights to women. But, amid all the evidences of frivolity and extravagance which pain the judicious, we need never relinquish the hope that, once the pendulum swings backwards into the direction of sanity, its retrogression will probably be beneficial, even though we cannot pronounce ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... has been explained, was that his own retrogression had disconcerted the plans of this special miscreant for whom, however, ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... and hopelessness of your retrogression from all good that you should presume to ask such a question," answered Moretti, growing white under the natural darkness of his skin with an impotency of rage he could scarcely suppress, "Your sermon this morning was an open attack ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... eyes of the multitude of his followers—saint in the eyes even of many who have not accepted him as a prophet—Mr. Gandhi preaches to-day under the uninspiring name of "Non-co-operation," a gospel of revolt none the less formidable because it is so far mainly a gospel of negation and retrogression, of destruction not construction. Mr. Gandhi challenges not only the material but the moral foundations of British rule. He has passed judgment upon both British rule and Western civilisation, and, condemning both as "Satanic," his cry is away with the one and with the other, and "back ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... mite slowly up and down, and said, "Oh, you Beauty!" and then went off into various inarticulate sounds, which I recommend to the particular study of the new philosophers: they cannot have been invented after speech; that would be retrogression; they must be the vocal remains of that hairy, sharp-eared quadruped, our Progenitor, who by accident discovered language, and so turned Biped, and went ahead of all the other hairy quadrupeds, whose ears were too long or not sharp enough ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... tendency is certainly good and satisfying; a sign of a notable social progress altho for the majority it is a cause of alarm and regret because of the seeming increase of such ills. Is there a positive increase of immorality? Is there real cause for alarm because of a moral retrogression of our society? ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... prosperity—will be pronounced by all unprejudiced judges as the true days of merrie England. Let us, then, though not unmindful of the past, pin our faith firmly on the present and the future. Carpe diem should be our motto in these fleeting times, and, above all, progress, not retrogression. Let us, as the old, old sound of the village bells comes to us over the rolling downs this New ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... contradict him,' said Godwin; 'for it may be that advance is destined only to come after long retrogression and anarchy. Perhaps the way does lie through such miseries. But we can't foresee that with certainty, and those of us who hate the present tendency of things must needs assert their hatred as strongly as possible, seeing that we may ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... days or more, since time measurement had lost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched their complete retrogression into a state of unawareness. Even the speech which they had retained seemed now to thin and falter as the simplifying of their idea-content no ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... next the traitor spy, who had taken that one fatal step, from which in this life there is no retrogression—that one plunge in infamy from which there is no receding—that one treachery for which there is no earthly forgiveness; and, think you, he hesitated about a prejury more or less to secure present pay and future ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... others anticipated for their children a distinction they could not hope for themselves. That honourable ambition would not have to be sacrificed. With the universal adoption of Colour, all distinctions would cease; Regularity would be confused with Irregularity; development would give place to retrogression; the Workman would in a few generations be degraded to the level of the Military, or even the Convict Class; political power would be in the hands of the greatest number, that is to say the Criminal ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... ever. There was no question with her but that she must bear her father's anger, should he be angry; put up with his continued opposition, should he resolutely oppose her; bear all that the countesses of the world might say to her;—for it was thus that she thought of Lady Cantrip now. Any retrogression was beyond ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... a well established fact in the very nature of things that it would be impossible to grow if there was no possibility of a decline. If there be no retrogression, there can be no progression. The beloved John from the lonely isle writes unto the church of Ephesus and tells them that God had somewhat against them because they had left their first love. He tells them to remember from whence they are fallen and repent. ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... wholly disappeared. If the Wars of the Roses failed in utterly destroying English freedom, they succeeded in arresting its progress for more than a hundred years. With them we enter on an epoch of constitutional retrogression in which the slow work of the age that went before it was rapidly undone. From the accession of Edward the Fourth Parliamentary life was almost suspended, or was turned into a mere form by the overpowering influence ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... of accepting the position of Secretary of Public Health in your Cabinet, I wish to say that it will be my sole purpose to prove myself possessed of the larger patriotism which would defend our race against retrogression and annihilation, not by such antiquated and inefficient methods as immigration restriction or mechanical warfare, but by the improvement of ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... least. Yet in our present mood we seem not to feel this. We misunderstand the considerations which should rightly lead us in practice to surrender some of what we desire, in order to secure the rest; and rightly make us acquiesce in a second-best course of action, in order to avoid stagnation or retrogression. We misunderstand all this, and go on to suppose that there are the same grounds why we should in our own minds acquiesce in second-best opinions; why we should mix a little alloy of conventional expression with the too fine ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... say that these do not exist; the period that has seen the retrogression has recorded also a reaction, and there are now perhaps more who are fired by the ardent passion for active righteousness, than for several generations, but the average is lower, for where, many times in the past, ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... virtue did the Egyptian religion exercise this irresistible influence over the Roman world? What new elements did those priests, who made proselytes in every province, give the Roman world? Did the success of their preaching mean progress or retrogression from the standard of the ancient Roman faith? These are complex and delicate questions that would require minute analysis and cautious treatment with a constant and exact observation of shades. I am compelled to limit myself ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... fix society in a contradictory position between retrogression and progress, such as is seen in the parliamentary monarchy of England. This is a last phase of the metaphysical polity, and is ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various |
