"First cause" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the smooth and vapid compromises of the old Gnostics. "Gnosticism," says Uhlhorn, "combined Greek philosophies, Jewish theology, and ancient Oriental theosophy, thus forming great systems of speculative thought, all with the object of displaying the world's development. From a pantheistic First Cause, Gnosticism traced the emanation of a series of aeons—beings of Light. The source of evil was supposed to be matter, which in this material world holds light in captivity. To liberate the light and thus redeem the world, Christ came, ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... philosophy;" that experience demonstrates how learned men have been arch-heretics, how learned times have been inclined to atheism, and how the contemplation of second causes doth derogate from our dependence upon God, who is the first cause. ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... particular place had given way beneath the foundations of the wall, which had sunk down, deepening the chasm by their weight, into the yielding ground beneath them. A small spring of water (probably the first cause of the sinking in the earth) had bubbled up into the space in the brick-work, which bit by bit, and year by year, it had gradually undermined. Nor did it remain stagnant at this place. It trickled merrily and quietly ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... of philosophy and religion are departures from Christian Science. Mistaking divine Principle for corporeal personality, ingrafting upon one First Cause such opposite effects as good and evil, health and sickness, life and death; making mortality the status and rule of divinity,—such methods can never reach the perfection and demonstration of metaphysical, or ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... from the first; but those who opposed her said it was the devil; and others again, in idleness or charity, or the calm neutrality of indifference, set it all down to the Inevitable, a fashionable first cause at this time, which is both comprehensive, convenient, and inoffensive, since it may mean anything, and so ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... a grasp of the meaning of the controversy, it should be borne in mind that in all theories concerning the operation of Grace three points must be safeguarded by all Catholic theologians, namely, man's dependence upon God as the First Cause of all his actions natural as well as supernatural, human liberty, and God's omniscience or foreknowledge of man's conduct. Following in the footsteps of St. Thomas, the Dominicans maintained that when God wishes man to perform ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... we walked through it. Here were about eight or ten stalls on either side, in each of which a man was employed at a machine, worked like a turner's or knife-grinder's wheel, by the foot, which, as fast as he fed it with cotton, parted the snowy flakes from the little black first cause, and gave them forth soft, silky, clean, and fit to be woven into the finest lace or muslin. This same process of ginning is performed in many places, and upon our own cotton-estate, by machinery; the objection to which however, is, that the staple of the cotton—in the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... minister in the Colony. John Norton, who had taken Nathaniel Ward's place at Ipswich, was called after twenty years of service, to the Boston church, and his melancholy temperament and argumentative, not to say pragmatical turn of mind, made him ready to seize upon the first cause of offence. ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... are not unworthy of his attention; they often produce the greatest events, and the neglecting what at first view might appear trivial, has often overturned the best-calculated schemes. The most trifling of our actions becomes often a first cause which produces an endless chain of effects—linked to each other—of the greatest importance. The boat sunk by the ice, at Cap Rouge, was a first cause. The cannonier, by this accident, was upon ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... which it depends; because the higher a cause is, the greater the scope of its power. Now just as the causality of the efficient cause consists in its flowing into something, so the causality of the end consists in its drawing the appetite. Therefore, just as the First Cause is that which flows into all things, so the last end is that which attracts the desire of all. But being itself is that which is most desired by all. Therefore man's happiness consists most of all in things pertaining to his being, such as the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Ormond hurt his interest, or cross his schemes? or how had Sir Ulick discovered this so suddenly? Miss Annaly's turning pale was the first cause of Sir Ulick's change of sentiments towards his young favourite. Afterwards, during the whole that passed, Sir Ulick had watched the impression made upon her—he had observed that it was not for Marcus O'Shane's safety that she was anxious; and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... first cause of armed conflict between the British and the Boers, its then position in regard to the authorities at the Cape may as well be reviewed. Though the new Republic maintained its perfectly independent existence, its inhabitants were still mentioned by the Governor ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... help many to free their minds from all doubt as to the Universe and its First Cause, but my doubts remain undispelled. It is true that the Vedanta is simpler than most other theories. The problem of Creation and its Creator is more complex than appears at first sight; but the Vedanta has certainly simplified ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... have set up their rest, resolved to be The first their different quarrels to conclude: And tangled so is one with other plea, That ill Apollo's self could judge the feud. To unravel that first cause of enmity The king began — the strife which had ensued, Because of beauteous Doralice, between The king of ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... my friends are glad that Bearpaw recognises the hand of the Great Spirit in all that has occurred, for we rejoice to believe that He is the great First Cause of all things, and that men are only second causes, gifted, however, with the mysterious power ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... will give you my idea. The Primitive Element must be common to oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. Force must be the common principle of positive and negative electricity. Demonstrate these two hypotheses, and you will hold in your hands the First Cause, the solution of the great riddle ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... the best authority it is a simple substance and therefore incorruptible. It would be immortal, I understand, but for the possibility of its annihilation by its First Cause Who, from all I can hear, is quite capable of adding that to the number of His other practical jokes, corruptio per se and corruptio per accidens both ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... social evil has usually been blamed upon the perversity of women and their pecuniary need, but investigation makes it plain that the causes go deeper than that. The first cause is the ignorance of girls who are permitted to grow up and go out into the world innocently, unaware of the snares in which they are liable to become enmeshed. Added to this ignorance is the lack of moral and religious training, so that there is often no ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... of man's intellect, The vast "Principia," pointing to the skies, Wherein our intellectual king proclaimed The task of science,—through this wilderness Of Time and Space and false appearances, To make the path straight from effect to cause, Until we come to that First Cause of all, The Power, above, beyond the blind machine, The Primal Power, the originating Power, Which cannot be mechanical. He affirmed it With absolute certainty. Whence arises all This order, this unbroken chain of law, This human will, this death-defying ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... The first cause suggested to our minds is, that in view of the fact that the sun is an electro-magnet, and therefore possesses a magnetic field with its aetherial line of force, all the planets may become magnets by the process of magnetic ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... the summer of 1867, at the time that the excitement over the discovery of gold on his ranch had just commenced, and adventurers were beginning to congregate in the hills and gulches from everywhere. The discovery of the precious metal on his estate was the first cause of his financial embarrassment. It was the ruin also of many other prominent men in New Mexico, who expended their entire fortune in the construction of an immense ditch, forty miles in length—from the Little Canadian or Red River—to supply ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... meat, or coal, or cotton cloth, or of railway transportation, or of insurance, or of discounts, the inquirer will find the price to be, in essence, a monopoly or fixed price; and if he will follow his investigation to the end, he will also find that the first cause in the complex chain of cause and effect which created the monopoly in that mysterious energy which ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... fruitful soil and a heavenly climate, colonists are always dissatisfied with their position; because, in a pecuniary point of view, they are always poor. And why are they so? The answer is a startling one. The excess of their abundance is the first cause of their poverty; the instability of their government, the second. They possess more than they can dispose of, and are borne down by the weight of their possessions. Place the markets of England and the labour of Ireland within their reach, and they would become millionaires were they to cease to ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... of infinite loathing in her eyes. Garson rose from his chair as if to go to her, and his face passed swiftly from compassion to ferocity as his gaze went from the woman he had saved from the river to the girl who had been the first cause of her seeking a grave in the waters. Yet, though he longed with every fiber of him to comfort the stricken woman, he did not dare intrude upon her in this time of her anguish, but quietly dropped back into his seat and sat watching with ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... demonstrated the significant influence of childhood upon adult motives and conduct. Recent studies of human conduct have greatly magnified the importance of early experience and have disclosed how often it is the first cause of morbid thinking and anti-social actions. The conclusion is not to be doubted—a still greater effort must be made to conserve human character by a wiser control of the influences of childhood. One may ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... want of true patriotism and proper attention in the people themselves. Jealous of liberties, and disobedient to their king, the Poles were slaves to the feudal proprietors of the soil. Though the first cause was different, yet their divisions and quarrels were the same in effect, as if they had proceeded from real causes of discontent, and a deranged state of society, such as we have seen, when the love of the country ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... The first cause of importance he undertook was his defence of Sextus Roscius; in which he distinguished himself by his spirited opposition to Sylla, whose favourite Chrysogonus was prosecutor in the action. This obliging him, according to Plutarch, to ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... a construction in images belonging to the merely sketched or outlined type.[30] It results from a double activity, negative and positive, or dissociation and association, the first cause and origin of which is found in a will that it shall be so; it is the motor tendency of images in the nascent state engendering the ideal. The inventor cuts out, suppresses, sifts, according to his temperament, character, taste, prejudices, sympathies and antipathies—in short, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... Western Virginia, excepting the Moravians, and a few others who had been induced by the zeal and exertions of Roman catholic missionaries to wear the cross, the Indians north west of the Ohio river, were truly heathens. They believed indeed in a First Cause, and worshiped the Good Spirit; but they were ignorant of the great truths of Christianity, and their devotions were but superstitious acts of blind reverence. In this situation they remain generally at the present day, notwithstanding the many laudable endeavors which have been made ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... never to have taken the Command. He said that the Regiment was not smart enough. This to the White Hussars, who knew they could walk round any Horse and through any Guns, and over any Foot on the face of the earth! That insult was the first cause of offence. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... imbues the elaborate production; the thinking reader, led by its sublimity to a train of deep reflection, sees at once the uncertainty of earthly projects, and sighing owns the wholesome, though still painful truth, that the brightest sun is ever the first cause of the darkest shadow; and from childhood upwards, the blissful visions of our gayest fancy—forced by the cry of stern reality—call back the mental wanderer from imaginary bliss, to be again the worldly drudge; and, thus awakened ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... much afraid of his new teachings as old Mrs. Piozzi[12] was of geology. We had had revolutionary orators, reformers, martyrs; it was but a few years since Abner Kneeland had been sent to jail for expressing an opinion about the great First Cause; but we had had nothing like this man, with his seraphic voice and countenance, his choice vocabulary, his refined utterance, his gentle courage, which, with a different manner, might have been called audacity, his temperate ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... his own day, Thomas would have been scandalized beyond the resources of his Latin had Saint Bonaventure met him at Saint Louis's dinner-table and complimented him, in the King's hearing, on having proved, beyond all Franciscan cavils, that the Church Intellectual had necessarily but one first cause ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... especially perhaps of late years, to apply the name of God to very different conceptions, to empty it of all implication of personality, and to reduce it to signifying something very large and very vague, such as the Infinite or the Absolute (whatever these hard words may signify), the great First Cause, the Universal Substance, "the stream of tendency by which all things seek to fulfil the law of their being,"[1] and so forth. Now without expressing any opinion as to the truth or falsehood of the views implied by such applications of the name of God, I cannot but regard them all ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... The first cause is usually chiefly located in the urethra, and especially at the mouths of the ejaculatory ducts. Distention of the seminal vesicles with a superabundance of seminal fluid also acts as a source of irritation. Constipation, worms, and ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... than an injury to the lateral ligament of the coronary joint wherein there had occurred only a slight sprain, and though crepitation is not recognized, the diagnostician is not justified in excluding the possibility of fracture, if the lameness seems disproportionate to the apparent first cause. ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... pedantic in the abuse of them; and his quickness in reasoning was increased by exercise in detecting puerile sophisms; such as that of the Cretans—Gorgias and his bargain about the winning of his first cause. In the following sorites[90] of Themistocles—"My son commands his mother; his mother commands me; I command the Athenians; the Athenians command Greece; Greece commands Europe; Europe commands the whole earth; therefore my son commands the whole earth"—the ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... is free, our will is also the original element, and conversely. Pre-Kantian dogmatism tried to separate these two predicaments. It was thereby compelled to assume two kinds of freedom, one cosmological, of the first cause, and the other moral and theological, of human will. These are represented in Kant by the third as well as the fourth ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... In addition to this first cause of an exaggerated expenditure there is another not less imperative—the necessity of voting all grants for local purposes. A Deputy is unable to oppose grants of this kind because they represent once more the exigencies of the electors, and because each individual ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... The first cause of mental disease and suffering is not unfrequently in the want of a proper supply of duly oxygenized blood. It has been shown that the blood, in passing through the lungs, is purified by the oxygen of the air combining with the superabundant hydrogen and carbon of the venous blood, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum, or first cause of his musings, entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case, the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made; and those few pertinaciously ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... before him, as the Roman Caesar absorbed all the offices of the state; and in His case also, as has been said of the Roman Caesar, the whole was immeasurably greater than the mere sum of the parts. Scientifically and philosophically He became the first cause of the world; He became the father of the human soul, and its judge; and what is more, its rest and its delight, and its desire. Under the light of this conception, man appeared an ampler being. His thoughts were for ever being gazed on by the great controller ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... they might bring over their country to Corinth on their return; most of them being, as it happened, men of very high position in Corcyra. In this way Corcyra maintained her political existence in the war with Corinth, and the Athenian vessels left the island. This was the first cause of the war that Corinth had against the Athenians, viz., that they had fought against them with the Corcyraeans in time ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... The first cause of Mr. Burleson's being fooled about himself is that he is spotty-minded about people, the fact that he has been running the Post Office with reference to one special slow canal-minded kind of America. His mind is jet ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Henry Dunbar is very painful to me, my dear Joseph; yet I cannot but feel that your hatred against my employer's son is only natural. I know that he was the first cause of your ruin; and that, but for him, your lot in life might have been very different. Try to forgive him; try to forget him, even if you cannot forgive. Do not talk of revenge. The revelation of that secret which you hold respecting the forged bills would bring ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... could not hear at any other season outside a city bird store. How far the different species understood one another I should like to know, and whether the hum of voices meant sociability to them, as it certainly meant to me. Doubtless the first cause of their flocking here was the sheltered warmth and the great numbers of berry-laden bushes, for there was no lack either of abundance or variety on the ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... for itself some resting-place more satisfactory than either of the two extremes. And, at the time of the Reformation, millions found such a resting-place. Whole nations then renounced Popery without ceasing to believe in a first cause, in a future life, or in the divine mission of Jesus. In the last century, on the other hand, when a Catholic renounced his belief in the real presence, it was a thousand to one that he renounced ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Daughter of life's first cause; who, when he saw The ills that unborn innocents must bear, When doomed to come to earth— Bethought—and gave thee birth To charm the poison from affliction there; And from his ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... which communicated with the infinite abyss of thought,"—rather an optimistic view for Hawthorne. Alcott's philosophy had the decided merit, which Herbert Spencer's has not, of a strong affirmation of a Great First Cause, and our direct responsibility thereto: but it was chiefly the philosophy of Plotinus; and his constant reiteration of a "lapse" in human nature from divine perfection (which was simply the Donatello phase expressed in logic), ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... impeachment and trial of President Johnson it is not my province to write. My special knowledge relates only to its first cause, above referred to, and its termination, both intimately connected with the history of the War Department, the necessities of which department, real or supposed, constituted the only vital issue involved in ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... eccentricity did not mean strength. The proof of it was the mismanagement of the rebel interests. No doubt the first cause of this trouble lay in the Richmond Government itself. No one understood why Jefferson Davis chose Mr. Mason as his agent for London at the same time that he made so good a choice as Mr. Slidell for Paris. The Confederacy had plenty of excellent men to send ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the first Cause acts directly,—the fervent Love imprinting the clear Light of the primal Power,—there can be no imperfection in the created thing; it ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... perceiving the leadership of Jesus Christ through the leading of the Holy Ghost. As to doctrine, there is left in man the power to make the beginning of a faith. On this beginning devotion builds a belief in the greater mysteries. Thus reason deduces a First Cause, then the unity of the First Cause. This is as far as reason can go. Huxley, looking out on the universe with this power, said: "There is an impassable gulf between anthropomorphism, however refined and the passionless impersonality underlying ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... the cases just enumerated we know that the first cause of the peculiarity, when not inherited, lies in the conditions to which the animal is exposed during mature life, thus to a certain extent general size and fatness, lameness in horses and in a lesser degree blindness, ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... Adam; then you must ask, How did he come into being? The doctrine of the eternity of man cannot be supported. Fossil remains extend back but 6,000 years. Man is an effect; he has not always existed. Geology proves this. That the first Cause must have been an intelligent Being is proven by the fact that we are intelligent ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... dinner time, and allso at supper. The Prince as ofte as hee satt in the Hall was attended on by a Commoner and Scholler of the Colledge in tafaty sarcenett. After supper there was a private Showe performed in the manner of an Interlude, contayninge the order of the Saturnalls, and shewinge the first cause of Christmas-candles, and in the ende there was an application made to the Day and Nativitie of Christ, all which was performed ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... The first cause of his reverses was a physical one; he could not endure the hard life in the college of Montaigu. The addled eggs and squalid bedrooms stuck in his memory all his life; there he thinks he contracted the beginnings ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... "that there had been a strong and extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remembrance that was the first cause of the malady. Some intense associations of a most distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think. It is probable that there had long been a dread lurking in his mind, that those associations would be recalled—say, under certain circumstances—say, on a particular occasion. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... of the reasoning by which this doctrine is sought to be sustained is found in the assumption "that to all our race the existence of a First Cause is a question of philosophy," and that the idea of God lies at the end of "a gradual process of inquiry" and induction, for which a high degree of "scientific culture" is needed. Whereas the idea of a First Cause lies at the beginning, not at the end of philosophy; and philosophy is ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... inclination to molest the council with his propugnacity, to joke him about his bonny sweetheart, "the Tappit-hen," and he instantly sang dumb, and quietly slipped away; by which it may be seen how curiously events come to pass, since, out of the very first cause of his thwarting me in the lamps, I found, in process of time, a way of silencing him far better than any sort of truth ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... obstructiveness. Vague and quaint imaginings had haunted Sue in the days when her intellect scintillated like a star, that the world resembled a stanza or melody composed in a dream; it was wonderfully excellent to the half-aroused intelligence, but hopelessly absurd at the full waking; that the first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage; that at the framing of the terrestrial conditions there seemed never to have been contemplated such a development of emotional perceptiveness among the creatures subject to those conditions ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... philosophy applied to a lower range of thought, not yet ascended from flesh to spirit. The Lady who seduced him was the science which looks for truth in second causes, or even in effects, instead of seeking it, where alone it can be found, in the First Cause; she was the Philosophy which looks for happiness in the visible world (of shadows), and not in the spiritual (and therefore substantial) world. The guerdon of his search was doubt. But Dante, as we have seen, made ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... unnumbered worlds, that lie scattered in the depths of aether, thousands of them hid from human eyes, and almost beyond the flight of human fancy. As her imagination soared through the regions of space, and aspired to that Great First Cause, which pervades and governs all being, the idea of her father scarcely ever left her; but it was a pleasing idea, since she resigned him to God in the full confidence of a pure and holy faith. She pursued her way through the groves to the terrace, often pausing ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... 2 Thou great First Cause, least understood: Who all my sense confined To know but this, that Thou art good, And that myself ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... she knew, but her opinions of after years were mainly in the direction he marked out for her. In his Philosophy of Necessity, published in 1841, he maintained that the only reality is the Great Unknown which we name God, that all natural laws are actions of the first cause. He taught that the world is created in our own minds, the result of some unknown cause without us, which we call matter; but it is thus God mirrors himself to us. "All we see is but the vesture of God, and what we call laws of nature are ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Argument, or argument from design or final causes, is as follows: Design, or the adaptation of means to effect an end, implies the exercise of intelligence and free choice. The universe is full of traces of design. Therefore the "First Cause" must ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... convinced that in The Absolute, or First Cause, there could be no sin and consequently no sorrow, and he persistently sought to inaugurate such systems of conduct and such a standard of morals as would lead the disciple back to godhood, or liberation from ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... father," said Ginty, rising up, and pacing to and fro the room in a state of great agitation. "You, the first cause, the original author of my shame; you, to whose iniquitous avarice and vulgar ambition I fell a sacrifice, as much as I did to the profligacy and villany of Thomas Gourlay. But I care not—I have my ambition; it is a mother's, and more natural on that account. ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... had tempted him all his life His father had been twenty years dead, but she had kept his spirit alive—his aims, his ambitions, his fears, and the lessons of his life. There lay the beginnings of his ruin, his degradation, and the first cause of his deep duplicity. He had recovered everything that had been lost; he had gained all that his little world could give; and what was the worth of it? What was the price he had paid for it? "What shall it profit a man if he gain ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... thus I shall send preachers over the whole earth. Prepare yourselves, therefore, to fulfil the will of the Lord. To render yourselves worthy of it, take great care to preserve peace and concord among yourselves, as the ever-subsisting ties of charity. Avoid envy which was the first cause of the loss of mankind. Be patient in tribulations, and humble in success; which is the means of coming off victorious in all encounters. Imitate our Lord Jesus Christ in his poverty, chastity, and obedience; He was born poor, He lived poor, and it was in the bosom of poverty that ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... these systems of influence or non-influence may be listed under the general problem of the world's CAUSAL UNITY. If the minor causal influences among things should converge towards one common causal origin of them in the past, one great first cause for all that is, one might then speak of the absolute causal unity of the world. God's fiat on creation's day has figured in traditional philosophy as such an absolute cause and origin. Transcendental Idealism, translating 'creation' into 'thinking' (or 'willing to' think') calls ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... logic, not wholly peculiar to himself, by which he was enabled to discover that there must be some first cause for his being in a place from which he could not escape. That cause was no other than Congo. Had the Kaffir not fallen into a pit, Swartboy was quite certain that he would have escaped ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... repeat any idea frequently, the mind, by a sort of mechanism, repeats it long after the first cause has ceased to operate.[18] After whirling about, when we sit down, the objects about us still seem to whirl. After a long succession of noises, as the fall of waters, or the beating of forge-hammers, the hammers beat ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... blind operation. He is everywhere present in the material world, not superseding secondary causes, but so upholding and guiding their operations, that the intelligence evinced is the omnipresent intelligence of God, and the power exercised is the potestas ordinata of the Great First Cause. He is no less supreme in his control of intelligent agents. They indeed are free, but not independent. They are governed in a manner consistent with their nature; yet God turns them as the rivers of waters are turned. All events depending on human agency are ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... such like in all other particular sicknesses; But one thing I will pray thee to obserue in all these places, where I reason upon the deuils power, which is the different ends & scopes, that God as the first cause, and the Devill as his instrument and second cause shootes at in all these actiones of the Deuil, (as Gods hang-man:) For where the deuilles intention in them is euer to perish, either the soule or the body, or both of them, that he is so permitted ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... The first cause Lamarck calls the vital power (pouvoir de la vie); the other may be called the influence of circumstance (Anim. s. Vert., p. 134). To the latter cause are due the lacunae, the blind alleys, and the complications which the otherwise ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... to say so—an act of baseness, a crime of some sort, may be the beginning, the first cause, of a man's salvation. It pulls him up, wakes his conscience. Aghast at what he has done, he reflects, repents, reforms. That is a comforting circumstance, a ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... The first cause of the existence of this book may be found in a letter, written by my sister, and received by me, Harry Burton, salesman of white goods, bachelor, aged twenty-eight, just as I was trying to decide where I should spend a fortnight's vacation. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... King Stephen, Henry Plantagenet became King of England; and thus there was a recurrence, in an aggravated form, of the position which had been filled by William the Conqueror, and which was the first cause of rivalry between France and England and of the consequent struggles of considerably more than ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... whole heart remained with Paul and John. Yet there had dawned upon me, even before I had met with the CRITIQUE OF THE PURE REASON, a certain guiding light. If the mere intellect could make no certain discovery of a holy and intelligent first cause, it might yet supply a demonstration, that no legitimate argument could be drawn from the intellect against its truth. And what is this more than St. Paul's assertion, that by wisdom,—(more properly ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... satisfied that if our King Log does no good, he is too sincerely desirous of fulfilling his duty to do any harm. But I really feel sorry for this mere young Daniel come to judgment when I think of the gauntlet which the wicked wits will make him run when he tries his first cause. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... to the library, where Lady Myrtle had told them she would be. They found her improving her acquaintance with Eugene, who was chattering away in a most confiding and friendly fashion, even retailing to her his self-congratulation at having been the first cause of their making friends. ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... amaz'd. To Virgil one, The other to a spirit turn'd, who near Was seated, crying: "Conrad! up with speed: Come, see what of his grace high God hath will'd." Then turning round to me: "By that rare mark Of honour which thou ow'st to him, who hides So deeply his first cause, it hath no ford, When thou shalt he beyond the vast of waves. Tell my Giovanna, that for me she call There, where reply to innocence is made. Her mother, I believe, loves me no more; Since she has chang'd the white and wimpled folds, Which she is doom'd once more with grief to ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... said General Belch; "but there may be some breakers ahead. If we lose the Grant it won't be the first cause or man that has been betrayed by the bottle. Condor, let me fill your glass. It is clear that if our dear friend Newt has a weakness it is the bottle; and if our enemies at Washington, who want to head off this Grant, have a strength, it is finding ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... universal law, that neither architecture nor any other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let us be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of perfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration for greatness, or ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... at the time: he never answered her back. She was too frail to be angry with, and then she was right about his being the cause of her suffering—the first cause of it, at least. He had not yet arrived at the point where he censured himself for all that had happened. In fact since Harry's sudden exit, made without a word to anybody at Moorlands except his mother and Alec, who went to town on a hurry message,—a slight ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... disdain of love-stories and boast that they have no patience with morbidity. Love—which put them into being and keeps the earth in existence—seems to all such a silly malady peculiar to the sentimental in early youth. So they put the First Cause—in one of its many manifestations—in the waste-paper basket, asking each other what will become of Charles if he cannot find a rich wife, and poor Alice, if she cannot entrap a suitable husband. But there are others who look on life ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... work—ever active—has been entertained by numerous philosophers and thinkers, under different names and styles. Some, like Schopenhauer have thought of this Will as the final thing—that which took the place of God—the First Cause. But others have seen in this Will an active living principle emanating from the Absolute or God, and working in accordance with the laws impressed by Him upon it. In various forms, this latter idea ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... temperance preaching that counts for anything in a school course, is taught in the girls' classes. A minister of justice declared in the Belgian Chamber that the nation was reverting to a new form of barbarism, which he described by the term "alcoholic barbarism," and pointed out as its first cause the "insufficiency of the food procurable by the working classes." He referred to the quality, not the quantity. The United States experts, who lately made a study of the living habits of the poor in New York, spoke of it as a common observation that "a not ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... Comte Octave de Bauvan; for Madame de Serizy told them the danger in which I stood in consequence of their allowing the source of their information to be guessed at. The Marquis d'Espard was so clumsy as to call upon me, regarding me as the first cause of his winning the day in that ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... often for what appeared small and almost personal ends, having sometimes, superficially, little in common. Now it was a Giordano Bruno, burnt in Rome in defence of abstract theory with regard to the nature of the First Cause; then an Albigense hurled from his rocks because he refused to part with the leaves of his old Bible; now a Dutch peasant woman, walking serenely to the stake because she refused to bow her head before two crossed rods; then a Servetus burnt by Protestant Calvin at Geneva; or a ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... mighty company of superior beings who exercise great control over the lives of men. Above all is Eugpamolak Manobo, also called Manama, who was the first cause and creator of all. Serving him is a vast number of spirits not malevolently inclined but capable of exacting punishment unless proper offerings and other tokens of respect are accorded them. Below them is a horde of low, mean spirits who delight to annoy mankind with mischievous ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... order of nature both man and cattle have existed since the beginning of time, for whether we believe that there was a First Cause of the generation of animals, as Thales of Miletus and Zeno of Citium maintained, or that there was none as was the opinion of Pythagoras of Samos and Aristotle of Stagira, it is, as Dicaearchus points out, a necessity of human life to have descended gradually from the earliest time to the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... a fair mediator between government and the people, endeavoring to form a plan which should have both an early and a temperate operation. I mean, that it should be substantial, that it should be systematic, that it should rather strike at the first cause of prodigality and corrupt influence than attempt to follow them in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... principle recognised in theory, though little carried out in practice, above ground—viz., that the object of all systems of philosophical thought tends to the attainment of unity, or the ascent through all intervening labyrinths to the simplicity of a single first cause or principle. Thus in politics, even republican writers have agreed that a benevolent autocracy would insure the best administration, if there were any guarantees for its continuance, or against its gradual abuse of the powers accorded to it. This singular ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... or power, he quotes abundantly and approvingly from Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, to prove that it is unknowable, inconceivable, unthinkable. He, however, differs from those distinguished writers in two points. While admitting that we know no more of the first cause than we do of a geometrical figure which is at once a circle and a square, yet we do know that it is actual. For this conviction we are not dependent on faith. In the second place, Hamilton and Mansel taught that we ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... had taken him to the Cathedral once, twenty years ago, it was the first time that Queed had ever been inside a church. He had read Renan at fourteen, finally discarding all religious beliefs in the same year. Approximately Spencer's First Cause satisfied his reason, though he meant to buttress Spencer's contention in its weakest place and carry it deeper than Spencer did. But in fact, the exact limits he should assign to religious beliefs as an evolutionary function ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... being!" said Miss Tompkins to herself, glancing at the stately Pike as he bent over his paddle to conceal his emotion. "Reared in this wild seclusion, yet he has become penetrated with visible consciousness of a Great First Cause." Then, collecting herself, she said aloud: "Methinks 't were pleasant to glide ever thus down the stream of life, hand in hand with the one being whom the soul claims as its affinity. But what am I saying?"—and the delicate- minded ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... life as a flux of moods, I must now add that there is that in us which changes not and which ranks all sensations and states of mind. The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite degrees. The sentiment from which it sprung determines the dignity of any deed, and the question ever is, not what you have done or forborne, but at whose command you ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the English press; and a concise account of the life of each authour, by Dr. Johnson, will be a very valuable addition, and stamp the reputation of this edition superiour to any thing that is gone before. The first cause that gave rise to this undertaking, I believe, was owing to the little trifling edition of The Poets, printing by the Martins, at Edinburgh, and to be sold by Bell, in London. Upon examining the volumes which were printed, the type was found so extremely ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... horizon. It is accompanied by the morning-breath (Dam-i-Subh), the current of air, almost imperceptible except by the increase of cold, which Moslem physiologists suppose to be the early prayer offered by Nature to the First Cause. The Ghoul-i-Biybn (Desert-Demon) is evidently the personification of mans fears and of the dangers that surround travelling in the wilds. The wold-where-none-save-He (Allah)-can-dwell is a great and ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... have forgotten the untoward effect of Teddy's disappearance in the peculiar humiliation of its first cause. Raffles took out his watch, and held up the dial for me to see. It was after the half-hour now; but at this moment a servant entered with a missive, and the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... graves of their friends. It had always been a pleasure to Mary to give her flowers for this purpose, and she now determined to decorate her father's tomb in the same manner. Taking from a cupboard the beautiful basket which had been the first cause of all her unhappiness, she filled it with choice flowers of all colours, artistically interspersed with fresh green leaves, and carried it to Erlenbrunn before the hour of divine service, and laid it on her father's tomb, watering it at the same ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... people at large, is a curious theory that human life reaches the earth from some extraordinarily dazzling centre away in the depths of space, "beyond the range of conceptions." This centre appears to be the home of eternal principles, the abode of a First Cause, where perfectly spotless and pure beings "drink of the spiritual and feed on force," and where likeness exists without form. To get back to that state should be the object of all men, and this is only to be attained by a process of mental and physical purification prolonged ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... place," he exclaimed, "till she is pronounced to be in safety. I neither can nor ought to do so; for whatever may have been the immediate occasion of her illness, I gave the first cause for it by my ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... invisible, unintelligible!! Surtur, according to Fin Magnusen, the invisible, unintelligible being whom the ancient Scandinavians regarded as "the great First Cause ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... Bergson has answered this point himself. What he rejects, and what he is right in rejecting, are the doctrines which confine themselves to personifying the unity of nature or the unity of knowledge in God as motionless first cause. God would really be nothing, since he would do nothing. But he adds: "The considerations put forward in my "Essay on the Immediate Data" result in an illustration of the fact of liberty; those of "Matter and Memory" lead us, I hope, to put our finger on mental ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... Carbo; that Caesar did so in his twenty-first against Dolabella; and Pollio, in his twenty-second year, against Cato.[43] In this precocity Cicero did not imitate Crassus, or show an example to the Romans who followed him. He was twenty-six when he pleaded his first cause. Sulla had then succeeded in crushing the Marian faction, and the Sullan proscriptions had taken place, and were nominally over. Sulla had been declared Dictator, and had proclaimed that there should be no more selections for death. The Republic was supposed to be restored. ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... according to the one. So far, therefore, as it is the one alone, it will be unindigent; but so far as unindigent, it will be the first principle, and stable root of all principles. So far, however, as it is the principle and the first cause of all things, and is pre-established as the object of desire to all things, so far it appears to be in a certain respect indigent of the things to which it is related. It has therefore, if it be lawful so to speak, an ultimate vestige of ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... us, he stayed the flight of the Roman army in answer to the prayer of Romulus, but because all things continue in their stay through his goodness. If you were to call this same personage Fate, you would not lie; for since fate is nothing more than a connected chain of causes, he is the first cause of all upon which all the rest depend. You will also be right in applying to him any names that you please which express supernatural strength and power: he may have as many titles as he ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... all intermediate steps are omitted, and the result is linked immediately to the first Cause. God Himself is the theme, and ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... which the Creator comes into contact, as it were, with His creature—a point at which His Will first clothes itself in the form of a physical fact—the point to which all second causes lead up, and at which they lose themselves in the one first cause, the Will of God. Now this is what all systems of philosophy require as their starting-point, but it is entirely out of their unaided reach. But these ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... becomes the cause (or, at least, the conditional condition) of mind of a lower order. This view, however, need not detain us, inasmuch as it can only be held by those who, on grounds independent of philosophical thinking, already believe in mind as the First Cause or Eternal Being: this belief granted, there is, of course, an end of any question as between Spiritualism and Materialism. I have, therefore, only mentioned this possible phase of spiritualistic theory, in order ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... nation that has suffered in this way. Many of the ancient peoples have entirely passed away; and the destruction of their forests, as we have seen in the previous chapter, was the first cause leading to ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... to acquire the friendship of Harrihiagua, giving strict charges that no damage should be done in his country, being extremely unwilling to give the first cause of offence, but nothing could prevail on that cacique to enter into any friendly connection. As some of the men were sent out daily, under a strong escort, to bring in forage for the horses, they were one day suddenly assailed by a multitude of Indians, making such ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... timber; some are burned; some run against icebergs, or fields of ice; and some are ill put together, or rotten, and spring leaks, and so go down: but to my mind the greater number are lost from the first cause I have spoken of. You'll find out in time, Jack, all the perils to which a seaman is exposed, as well as the hardships I once before spoke to you about." I did not think at the time how true ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... exclaustration of the Priests, to elevate them more, nominating at once for the two bishoprics, vacant in the colonies, two Priests of those same religious orders that oppressed the country and were the first cause of the insurrection, the disorder and the general dissatisfaction in the islands; thus ridiculing the virtue, knowledge and worth of the numerous secular Spanish clergy, and especially of that of ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... fictitious narrative into a dissertation on political economy. Of course the principle cause of emigration is the poverty and depressed state of the country; and it follows naturally, that whatever occasions our poverty will necessarily occasion emigration. The first cause of our poverty then, is Absenteeism, which, by drawing six or seven millions out of the country, deprives our people of employment and means of life to that amount. The next is the general inattention of Irish landlords to the state and condition of ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... hope, who gave him wings To fly from mortal things, Which to eternal bliss the path impede; With his own sense, that, seeing how in her Virtues and charms so great and rare combined, A holy pride might stir And to the Great First Cause exalt his mind, (In his own verse confess'd this truth we see,) While that dear lady whom I sent to be The grace, the guard, and guide Of his vain life"—But here a heart-deep groan I sudden gave, and cried, "Yes! sent and snatch'd her from me." He replied, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... people do think of something beyond the house. But here, where there are no romantic crimes, to get a genteel house, to keep (or “run”) a genteel house, or to pretend to keep (or “run”) a genteel house, is the great first cause of almost every British delinquency, from envy and malignant slander up to forgery, robbery, and murder. And yet it is a fact, as Borrow discovered (when a mere lad in a solicitor’s office), that to men ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Duchess herself. In a letter, supposed to have been addressed to Bishop Burnet, the Duchess gives a brief account of this person, who was her kinswoman, in explanation to his inquiry as to the first cause of her disagreement ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... premises. However closely his mind might follow the visible order of experience, he never lost what was for him the consciousness of a Supreme Eternal Will as having existed before it; he never lost the vision of an intelligent First Cause, as underlying all minor systems of causation. But such weaknesses as were involved in his logical position are inherent to all the higher forms of natural theology when once it has been erected into a dogma. As maintained by Mr. Browning, this ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... as they passed through the Porte de Rive. "Elizabeth of England will restrain that one for us. Two neighboring queens will soon be at war with each other. One is handsome, the other ugly,—a first cause for irritation; besides, there's ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... highest to lowest, as the soul through the body; and as the virtue of the sun, diffusing its light, unites with the light, and with it descends into the air, so the virtue of the will unites with the form which it imparts to all things, and descends with it. On this ground it is said that the first cause is in all things, and that there is nothing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... harm, if I may speak, Of fancying one's self by an angel saved, Rather than by a man? Methinks it brings us Just so much the nearer the incomprehensive First cause of preservation. ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... said Remington. "But then you know metaphysics does not hesitate at anything. I say, it is impossible for the mind to go back to a first cause, and if the mind of a man cannot conceive an idea, why of course that idea can never be true to him. I can think of no cause that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Necessity of the ancient Greeks, the trinitarian God of the mediaeval school-man, the great First Cause of the eighteenth-century deist, the primordial Life-Force of the modern man of science, are all on common ground here in regard to the unfathomableness of ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... growth out of self, back to him—the First Cause: Therein lies the purpose, the law of all laws. Tears, grief, disappointment, well, what are all these To the Builder of stars ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... interest and object in itself. In this quarrel with her—a quarrel, intimate, pre-natal, anterior to consciousness and to volition—he found the justification of his every lapse, his every crookedness of conduct and of thought. Since he could not reach Almighty God, and strike at the eternal First Cause which he held responsible for the inalienable wrong done to him, he would strike, with cold-blooded persistence, at the woman whom Almighty God had permitted to be His instrument in the infliction of that wrong. And to where had that sustained purpose of striking led him? ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... dates from the time of the Han dynasty, or, in round numbers, about two thousand years ago. Originally it was a ceremonial worship in the temple of the First Cause, and lasted from the 13th to the 16th of the first moon, bringing to a close on the latter date all the rejoicings, feastings, and visitings consequent upon the New Year. In those early days it had no claim ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... nature as eternal, and consequently as having existed from all time, is baseless and unreasonable. He prefers to think that nature is only a result, "whence, I suppose, and am glad to admit, a first cause, in a word, a supreme power which has given existence to nature, which has made it as ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... burning in one corner. The Parsee recognizes an overruling god, Ahura-Mazda, the creator of the universe; he believes that Nature with its remarkable laws could not have come into being without a great first cause. But he believes that the universe created by Ahura-Mazda was invaded by a spirit of evil, Angra-Mainyush, which invites men to wicked deeds, falsehood and ignorance. Over against this evil spirit is the good spirit, Spenta-Mainyush, which represents God and ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... defensive. No champion of the imitative faculty could be found. This lack of understanding of the basis of the empirical method, on the part of its most intelligent and successful exponents, was the first cause of the weakness of ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... this coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was showing the necessity of a first cause, that the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the room, to tell me that my solitaire was pinned too strait about my neck. "It should be plus badinant," said the count, looking down upon his own; "but a word, M. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... content with this first effort, it still endeavored to develop the mechanism, and discover the origin and the instinctive principle. Hence, engaged in the abstract and metaphysical nature of motion and its first cause, of the inherent or incidental properties of matter, its successive forms and its extension, that is to say, of time and space unbounded, the physical theologians lost themselves in a chaos of subtile ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... principal feature in his picture; and then, finally, because he could not get the windmill dissected, and show us the real heart and centre of the whole, behold, he has put a pair of old millstones, lying outside, at the bottom of it. These—the first cause and motive of all the fabric—laid at its foundation; and beside them the cart which is to fulfil the end of the fabric's being, and take ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... of these provinces, it is manifest, begins to awaken a spirit of envy and ambition. The acknowledged importance of this colony to the parent state will secure the continuance of her powerful protection. Her fostering care has been the first cause, under Providence, of the uninterrupted happiness you have so long enjoyed. Your industry has been liberally rewarded, and you have in ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... waters. The waters are so called (nara) because they were the production of Nara, or the spirit of God; and, since they were his first ayana or place of motion, he thence is named Narayana, or moving on the waters. From that which is the first cause, not the object of sense existing everywhere in substance, not existing to our perception, without beginning or end, was produced the divine male. He framed the heaven above, the earth beneath, and in the midst placed the subtle ether, the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... are aware of the identity of laws ruling the universe with laws ruling and prevailing in the historical development of man. Rarely has an American patience enough to ascend the long chain from effect to cause, until he reaches the first cause, the womb wherein was first generated the subsequent distant effect. So, likewise, they cannot realize that at the start the imperceptible deviation from the aim by and by widens to a bottomless gap until the aim is missed. Then the greatest and the most devoted sacrifices ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... avoided whilst they closely approach the admission of belief in a deity. I am not prepared to deny that the faith in a supreme being may not have characterised Buddhism in its origin, as the belief in a Great First Cause in the person of Brahma is still acknowledged by the Hindus, although honoured by no share of their adoration. But it admits of little doubt that neither in the discourses of its priesthood at the present ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... brought about a political union of the New England colonies, although the first cause of the New England confederation was the Indian tribes who lay between the Dutch and the English. In August, 1637, during the war with the Pequots, some of the Connecticut magistrates and ministers suggested ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... utter indifference to his system. Religion and philosophy may perhaps go on side by side; but their provinces are wholly distinct, and therefore there is no need to attempt a reconciliation between them. God, as a first cause, lives like an Epicurean deity in undisturbed ease, apart from the world of phenomena, of which alone philosophy can take cognisance: philosophy, as the science of phenomena, contents itself with observing the ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... mind or of body; (3) morbid emotional states, such as fear; (4) outward calm and stillness between sleeping and waking; and (5) the action of certain poisons, as haschisch, opium, belladonna. The first cause points pretty distinctly to a peripheral origin, whereas the others appear to refer mainly, if not exclusively, to central derangements. Excessive fatigue appears to predispose the central structures to an abnormal kind of activity, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Dr. E.P. La Chapelle, the President of the Provincial Conseil d'Hygiene, wrote some years ago to Professor Davidson, in answer to inquiries: "I do not believe it would be correct to ascribe the phenomenon to any single cause, and I am convinced it is the result of several factors. For one, the first cause of the heavy infant mortality among the French Canadians is their very heavy natality, each family being composed of an average of twelve children, and instances of families of fifteen, eighteen, and even twenty-four children ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... says the other; "and I call God to witness, Frank Esmond, that I would have asked your pardon, had you but given me a chance. In—in the first cause of our falling out, I swear that no one was to blame but me, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... though it be, I mention this circumstance attending my introduction to college, because it formed the first cause which tended to diminish my faith in the institution to which I was attached. I soon grew to regard my university training as a sort of necessary evil, to be patiently submitted to. I read for no honours, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... he did not hate the latter the more strongly of the two. He knew now that Bozzle had been untrue to him, but his disgust did not spring from that so much as from the feeling that he had defiled himself by dealing with the man. Though he was quite assured that he had been right in his first cause of offence, he knew that he had fallen from bad to worse in every step that he had taken since. Colonel Osborne had marred his happiness by vanity, by wicked intrigue, by a devilish delight in doing mischief; but he, he himself, had consummated the evil by his own folly. Why had he not taken ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... private; only the two sovereigns were present. The French emperor afterwards expressed to the Crown Prince of Prussia his deep sense of the courtesy shown him. He was desirous of passing as unnoticed as possible through French territory, where, indeed, exasperation against him, as the first cause of the misfortunes of France, was so great that his life would have been in peril. The next day he proceeded to the beautiful palace at Cassel called Wilhelmshoehe, or William's Rest. It had been built at ruinous expense by Jerome Bonaparte while king of Westphalia, and ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Marsillac (son of M. de La Rochefoucault) is not a man of so much honour as Lindamore." I fancy I was overheard by one in a neighbouring window, who might have told M. de La Rochefoucault, for otherwise I cannot guess at the first cause of the hatred ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz |
