"Retrogression" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vigorous denunciation. But like vigour, and like characterization of American "barbarism" did not appear in the British press until after the news arrived of the release of Mason and Slidell. Then the storm broke, well summed up in the Punch cartoon entitled "Retrogression. (A Very Sad Picture.) War Dance of the I.O.U. Indian," and showing Uncle Sam in war-feathers and with war-club, in his hand a flag made of the New York Herald, dancing in glee on the shores of a deserted harbour across which stretched a row ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... have a new amendment to the theory of evolution: We are told that the huge Saurians (reptiles) overworked the development idea, and became too large and cumbersome, and hence are now extinct. Prof. Cope says:—"Retrogression in nature is as well established as evolution." It seems that man also has, contrary to all former conceptions, reached the limit of his development, if he has not already ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • 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 Classes, who were already more ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... shines out 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
... pursued one strand of his plot to a certain point in time, he is obliged to turn backward several days or weeks, or possibly a longer period, to pick up another strand and carry it forward to the same point in time at which he left the first. Retrogression in time, therefore, is frequently not only permissible but necessary. But it is only common-sensible to state that chronological sequence should be sacrificed merely for the sake of making clear the logical relation of events; and whenever ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... Land 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 ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... 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 ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... right. If so disposed, the Architect of the Universe, we must assume, might have made the world and man perfect, free from evil and from pain, as angels in heaven are thought to be; but although this was not done, man has been given the power of advancement rather than of retrogression. The Old and New Testaments remain, like other sacred writings of other lands, of value as records of the past and for such good lessons as they inculcate. Like the ancient writers of the Bible our thoughts should rest upon this life and our duties here. "To perform the duties of this ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... effective. These conditions and methods which make you feel like a "back number" may not be the best; if they are not, try to make them the best, if you will, but do not attempt to perfect them backward by returning to yesterday. The world is very impatient of apparent retrogression; ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... neumes was 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, as well as giving ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... 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
... from sentiment inspired the genial mood to tease. Women, having to encounter a male adept at the weapon for the purpose, must be either voluble or supportingly proud to keep the skin from shrinking: which is a commencement of the retrogression; and that has frequently been the beginning of a rout. Now the Countess Livia was a lady of queenly pose and the servitorial conventional speech likely at a push to prove beggarly. When once on a common platform with a man ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... sincerely and without misgiving, that we are the more lifted up in spirit for having, even in the privacy of our own household, eaten our daily meal by the help of hand-wrought silver utensils, from hand-painted china (often of dubious artistic value) laid on high-priced table linen. Any retrogression from the standard of living which we are accustomed to regard as worthy in this respect is felt to be a grievous violation of our human dignity. So, also, for the last dozen years candles have been a more pleasing source ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... is more reliable than physiological theories and opinions.... The history of the advance of the cure of disease is in the history of empiricism, in the best sense of that much-abused word. The history of retrogression in the art of curing disease is that of the so-called Physiological Schools of Medicine... Physiological theory, based on experiments on dogs, wishes us to believe that mercury does not excite a flow of bile; but here the common sense of ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... means retrogression with us. He wished, perhaps ignorantly, to arrest the progress of civilization and substitute a slovenly ideal of his own. His purpose was to cancel the civilization which the race had gained during thousands of years of effort, and bring it back to a semi-savagery. But the world was too big for ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... be remembered that the word evolution may be used equivocally. It is not evident that all evolution is in the direction of a life, brute or human, that we commonly recognize as higher. There is retrogression, as well as progress, where such retrogression is favored by environment. We may call this, if we please, devolution. Were the conditions of his life very unfavorable, man could not live as he now lives; ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... 89-91) I argued, not as a matter of speculation, but, from paleontological facts, the bearing of which I believe, up to that time, had not been shown, that any adequate hypothesis of the causes of evolution must be consistent with progression, stationariness and retrogression, of the same type at different epochs; of different types in the same epoch; and that Darwin's hypothesis fulfilled ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... from 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 estate, 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 ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley
... day saw a 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 not only to Kanab but for miles up the gorge, sweeping away at one ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... 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 of these three elements, Sense, Intellect, and Spirit, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... merely brings about the adaptation of a species or a group to a given environment. The tapeworm is the stock example. In human evolution, the nature of this environment will determine whether adaptation to it means progress or retrogression, whether it leaves a race happier and more productive, or the reverse. All racial progress, or eugenics, therefore, depends on the creation of a good environment, and the fitting of the race to that environment. Every ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... not to be doubted that as many causes for interference occur in that body as in our own, but education, discipline, and a well-regulated system for their poor enable them to grapple with every question of good or evil, whether of retrogression or advancement as ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... in front of the Royal Palace at Berlin, 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
... followed the 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
... labor is 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. The harder they work, they believe, the more wealth ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... 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
... himself, his private opinions about life; and when I reflect now upon my lack of real knowledge at five and twenty, I am amazed at the futility of an expensive education which had failed to impress upon me the simple, basic fact that life was struggle; that either development or retrogression is the fate of all men, that characters are never completely made, but always in the making. I had merely a disconcerting glimpse of this truth, with no powers of formulation, as I sat beside my mother in the bedroom, where every article evoked some childhood scene. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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
... retrogression himself it is difficult to say. Sometimes one felt that such might be the case, whilst at others it seemed as if he viewed his own fate only as something absolutely wonderful and bound to develop in the future even more prosperously than it had done in the past. There was always ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... man's destiny as an infinite retrogression, Eden receding behind Eden, lost Paradise behind lost Paradise, in the dateless past, encounters us, now as a myth, now as a religious or philosophic tenet, throughout the earlier history of humanity from the Baltic to the Indian Sea, from the furthest Orient to the Western Isles. ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... point of light depressed 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 ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... is only rendered the more contemptible by it. I have some of the play-bills of John Kemble's last performances before me, and there is none of this fustian: the fact, the performance, and the name are simply announced. If our taste improves in some respects, it does not in this; it is a retrogression—a royal theatre sinking back into the booth of a fair. Shakspeare's and Byron's texts have been converted into the showman's explanations of panoramas: to what vile uses they may be next applied, there is no guessing. Poor Shakspeare! how ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... medicines, and examining each of the phials there. But when I turned away without finding one which at all answered to my dream, I felt mean and miserable; deeply disappointed at not having found the phial, I was ashamed at my retrogression to ages which dealt with incantations, and luck, and other impostures. I was shamed to the conclusion that the phial with its blue liquid was something I had read of in the curious old books which my father had hidden away from me, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... prophet in the 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 ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... 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 legislatures have ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... then are really 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 Infinite ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... pole without a murmur, and the Mohawk applied it with a power and skill that made the retrogression much faster than was the progress in the other direction. When the deepest portion of the channel was reached, Lena-Wingo used the implement with a great deal more cleverness than Ned Clinton had displayed, and it was crossed ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... 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 push. When travelling ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... taken in a celestial revolution, of the two first of these epochs in the history of a settlement, depend very much on its advancement in wealth and in numbers. In some places, the pastoral age, or that of good fellowship, continues for a whole life, to the obvious retrogression of the people, in most of the higher qualities, but to their manifest advantage, however, in the pleasures of the time being; while, in others, it passes away rapidly, like the buoyant animal joys, that live their ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... life; but they persist in 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, vines and branches must be shaken by the winds, that the energies ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... 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 ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... 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, to ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... stability of Darwinism, I have seen so many immortal truths die young. I verily believe that the cocksureness of our century is destined to be the amusement of the next, which may not impossibly believe that the ape is descended from man by retrogression. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... 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 preserved in ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... 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; ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... with the earlier naturalistic mood. But this is explained by the fact that before the later experience became prominent, the early fervour of poetic creation had already passed. Not the less for this, however, was the poet's later conviction a riper, more advanced wisdom—not a retrogression. ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... only of her boundless love for this one glorious man, and to whom the memories of a less harmless past seemed like wicked dreams sent by the Tempter to molest her chastity. This self-deception, or rather retrogression of her instincts, led her into touches of mysticism. The story of little Sonia who had fallen in love with the ten-year-old Wilhelm at first sight, to die shortly afterward with his name upon her lips, made a deep impression on her, and set her dreaming. "When sweet little Sonia died I ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... always been the 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, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Anglo-Saxons, begun in 449, seemed at first to promise only retrogression and the ruin of an existing civilization. These fierce barbarians found among the Celts of Britain a Roman culture, and the Christian religion exerting its influence for order and humanity. Their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... The abolition of slavery made small difference, for the taint had sunk in too deeply to be eradicated. A curse rested upon all labor; and even now, after four thousand years of vacillating progress and retrogression, it lingers still. ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... side he sees the model Republic of Hayti—a coloured community, which has enjoyed nearly half a century of entire independence and self-rule. And with what issues? As respects moral and intellectual culture, stagnation: in all that concerns material development, a fatal retrogression. He beholds there, at this day, a miserable parody of European and American institutions, without the spirit that animates either: the tinsel of French sentiment on the ground of negro ignorance: even the 'sacred right of 'insurrection' burlesqued: a people which ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... 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. We can ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... life. Every morning, duly as an attempt was made to put them in motion, they began to back, and no arts, gentle or harsh, would for a moment avail to coax or to corce them into the counter direction. Could retrogression by any metaphysics have been translated into progress, we excelled in that; it was our forte; we could have backed to the North Pole. That might be the way to glory, or at least to distinction—sic itur ad astra; unfortunately, it was not ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to the policy and party of ascendency lay darkly lowering in the immediate future, this diminutive and tainted Irish Parliament, with a chivalry rare even in the noblest histories, made what can hardly be called less than a bold attempt to arrest the policy of retrogression adopted by the Government in London. Lord Fitzwilliam was the declared friend of Roman Catholic Emancipation, which was certain to be followed by reform; and he had struck a death-blow at bigotry and monopoly in the person of their heads, Mr. Beresford ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... begins to 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 ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... this question, of comradeship between black and white laborers, there is a call to the leaders of labor organizations to lead right. These chiefs of labor hold a place of the highest possibilities and obligations. In their hands largely lies the advance or retrogression of the industrial community—and that means our entire community. It is one of the most hopeful signs of the times that stress of necessity is bringing to labor's front rank men of a higher type, men often ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... end of the literary evolution of the Bible. Everything that has since been done has only been in the direction of retrogression, of injury to the text. We have now a great many later versions, much more scholarly, so far as correct scholarship is concerned, than the King James version, but none having any claim to literary importance. Unfortunately, ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... preceding pages, shown the retrogression of some parts of the West Indies, since the passing of the Emancipation and Sugar-Duty Acts. Let me now take a cursory view of the progression of Cuba during the same ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... progression, march, advancement, promotion, preferment, elevation, appreciation, enhancement; overture, tender, proposal, proffer, offer. Antonyms: retreat, retrogression, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... these years into the future. There is no reason why in many lines of production we should not surpass all other nations, as we have already done in some. There are no near frontiers to our possible development. Retrogression would be ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... who voice such objections. If this 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 ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... development of civilization. The character of the religious belief of man is, to a certain extent, the true test of his progressive {13} nature. His faith may prove a source of inspiration to reason and progressive life; it may prove the opposite, and lead to stagnation and retrogression. Upon the whole, it must be insisted that religious belief has subserved a large purpose in the economy of human progress. It has been universal to all tribes, for even the lowest have some form of religious belief—at ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... 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
... eagerness, it at once seizes as an omnivorous appetite with little selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into its ear by all sorts of commanders—parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices, or public opinion. The extraordinary limitation of human development, the hesitation, protractedness, frequent retrogression, and turning thereof, is attributable to the fact that the herd-instinct of obedience is transmitted best, and at the cost of the art of command. If one imagine this instinct increasing to its greatest extent, commanders and independent individuals will finally be ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... shallow-pate, With smallest brain possession, He uttered no filosofy On Nature's retrogression. To ancient types, by Darwin's rule, He simply ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... theological spirit, then personated by the Roman Church, its most bitter and most powerful enemy. The church, which had hitherto been a teacher and guide, became the champion of barbarism and the genius of retrogression. Instead of adapting herself to the growing wants of mankind, instead of preserving her influence and power by inward progress proportionate to that which she saw advancing without, she sought, stationary herself, to keep the world stationary, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... that such decisions would be calculated to stamp Norway as a dependency, according to international and common law principles, and declared that from a national point of view, it indicates a very great retrogression on the present arrangement of the Consular Service[34:1]. In this, he forgets that Mr BOSTROeM'S conditions refer to exceptional decisions and do not touch the Norwegian Consul's normal position as being a Norwegian civil Official, and he omits ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... What is known as religion —that is to say, a system by which this world is wasted in preparation for another—a system in which the duties of men are greater to God than to his fellow-men—a system that denies the liberty of thought and expression—tends only to discord and retrogression. Of course, I know that religious people cling to the Bible on account of the good that is in it, and in spite of the bad, and I know that Freethinkers throw away the Bible on account of the bad that is in it, in spite ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... being the true line of evolution—in a word they would realize that the principle of Creative Progression, when it reaches the level of fully developed mental man, necessarily implies the Resurrection of the Body, and that anything short of this would be retrogression and ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... Change in 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 ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... earth beneath. Does He not show us new materials for His building? Does He not give new forms to His design? Does He not surprise us with novelties, extraordinaries, and mysteries? In a word, the world is in progress, not in retrogression. ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... the inertia of mind and body, it is truly marvelous that there has been any progress in machine design. In fact, if the machine-building trade were in retrogression, with only a few new men being taken in there would be little or no excuse for making machine tools of new design. The older workers would get along about as ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... they need definite teaching on the true nature, the sanctity, and the beauty of marriage. It appears that the line of progress is always a spiral, and it would seem as if we were in the backward sweep of the spiral which looks like retrogression, but will doubtless bring us out further up in the end. The masculine view that marriage is the one aim and end of a woman's existence, adopted also by some careful mothers, is now exploded. Young men ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... material principle, that denoted the retrogression of a large portion of the race towards brutality and matter. These phenomena are ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... The cause for this retrogression was the love of migratory life which is characteristic of the American race. The Pawnee villages, as I have stated, lay a long ways to the north-west, but among the party that had been on the long tramp, was a strong minority in favor of moving their town to the ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... stage by stage, towards a higher order. Each advance purchased at such a price, becomes a free gift, by inheritance, to the next generation, and from this inheritance still further progress may be made. It is quite possible that in a dissolute age retrogression may set in and the ground be lost, in which case its recovery becomes the arduous task of a ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... we will here only add, that whoever is inclined, in observing the ambition, the selfishness, the party spirit, the unworthy intrigues, and the irregularities of moral conduct, which modern rulers and statesmen sometimes exhibit to mankind in their personal and political career, to believe in a retrogression and degeneracy of national character as the world advances in age, will be very effectually undeceived by reading attentively a full history of this celebrated dynasty, and reflecting, as he reads, that the narrative presents, on the whole, a fair and honest exhibition of the general character of ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... 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. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... mechanical deduction of a lesson, or a 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 ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... 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 at his orders. Yet nothing, it seemed, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... 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 in which the civilization ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... consider that we thus in any way bind ourselves to adopt Roman, or Greek, or Egyptian, or Scandinavian costumes or customs; nor in our use of the Arts of Antiquity do we perceive any demonstration of retrogression in ourselves. ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... gigantic trees, overrun with plants and creepers, and closely backed by the gloomy forest, he is struck by the solemnity and picturesque beauty of the scene, and is led to ponder on the strange law of progress, which looks so like retrogression, and which in so many distant parts of the world has exterminated or driven out a highly artistic and constructive race, to make room for one which, as far as we can judge, is very far ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... 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 ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... frequent experience of organized labor that, even after a strike has been won, men drop out of the Union and leave the burden of Union obligation to the loyal minority, who, weakened in numbers, face not only a loss of what the strike has gained, but a retrogression of those Union standards that have been the result of past struggles ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... frontier was perpetually exposed, the Roman government became a despotism which gradually took on many of the vices of the Oriental type. The political weakness which resulted from this allowed Europe to be overrun by peoples organized in clans and tribes, and for some time there was a partial retrogression toward the disorder characteristic of primitive ages. The retrogression was but partial and temporary, however; the exposed frontier has been steadily pushed eastward into the heart of Asia; the industrial type of society is no longer menaced by the predatory type; the primeval clan-system ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... did not encourage the Radicals. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana voiced the sentiments of the opposition, defeating Galusha A. Grow, speaker of the House, and seriously threatening the Radical majority in Congress. This retrogression, accounted for by the absence of soldiers who could not vote,[857] suggested trouble in New York, and to offset the influence of the Seymour rally in Brooklyn a great audience at Cooper Institute listened to a brief letter from the Secretary of State, and to a speech ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the house afforded—Tolstoi—Ibsen, Hardy, Howells,—but she was shut away from the meaning of what she read and even from the comments of the man under her care, by the consideration of her own problems. For to Laura Van Dorn it was a time of anxious doubt, of sad retrogression, of inner anguish. In some of the books were passages she had marked and read to her husband; and such pages calling up his dull comprehension of their beauty, or bringing back his scoffing words, or touching to the quick ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... 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 only ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the western area the conflict has nothing whatever to do with the principles embodied in the home policy of the belligerents, in the east, on the other hand, these principles will in truth be affected by the results of war, since a Russian victory, followed by a Russian conquest, would mean the retrogression of western institutions and the corresponding expansion of eastern ones over a large area and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the old religious sects, and in place of the gravity and permanence of those societies of opinion, they run into freak and extravagance.... In creeds never was such levity: witness the heathenisms in Christianity,—the periodic revivals, the millennium mathematics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression to popery, the maundering of Mormons, the squalor of mesmerism, the deliration of rappings, the rat-and-mouse revelation, thumps in table-drawers, and black art ... By the irresistible maturing of the general mind the Christian traditions have ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... that as long ago as 1872, before there was any perceptible fall in the birth-rate to consider, an article by Mr Montagu Crackenthorpe, Q.C., appeared in The Fortnightly Review, contending that small families were a sign of progress rather than of retrogression. This article was recently republished in a book entitled Population and Progress. There are many other books on the subject, and to them I must refer those of my readers who desire further knowledge of this very important ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... his Nevsky bridge—statues representing restive horses restrained by strong men; and the Berlin populace, with an unerring instinct, had given to one of these the name "Progress checked,'' and to the other the name "Retrogression encouraged.'' To this day one sees every- where in the palaces of Continental rulers, whether great or petty, his columns of Siberian porphyry, jasper bowls, or malachite vases—signs of his ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... came on with a rush in the 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. Rome succeeded to the world-leadership; and Rome, ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... 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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... had, as she thought, been yet spoken. Augustus had already obtained for himself among his friends the character of an eloquent young lawyer. Let him come and try his eloquence on his cousin,—only let it first be ascertained, as an assured fact, and beyond the possibility of all retrogression, that ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... retrogression, during which we find but little apparent appreciation of the unity between parents and offspring; no reference to memory in connection with heredity, whether of instinct or structure; an exaggerated view of the consequences which may be deduced from the fact that the fittest ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... 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 Ferdinand ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... self-indulgent class above the protests of its business agents and solicitors and its own habits and vanity? Is chivalry in a class possible?—was it ever, indeed, or will it ever indeed be possible? Is the progress that seems attainable in certain directions worth the retrogression that may ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... exact description of the state of Richard's Government itself. All depended on what should blow from the Parliament that had been called. In the writs for the elections to the Commons there had been a very remarkable retrogression from the practice of Oliver for his two Parliaments. For those two Parliaments there had been adopted the reformed electoral system agreed upon by the Long Parliament, reducing the total number of members for England and Wales to about 400, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... to say nothing of retrogression, was an unthinkable crime to him. Like freedom, progress was a Good Thing, anywhere, at all times, and ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... the learning curve closely, you will note that after the initial spurt, there is a slowing up. The curve at this point resembles a plateau and indicates cessation of progress if not retrogression. This period of no progress is regarded as a characteristic of the learning curve and is a time of great discouragement to the conscientious student, so distressing that we may designate it "the plateau of despond." Most people describe it as a time when ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... undoubtedly to a fault. But it is, perhaps, a fault on the right side. That we have been far too slow to improve our laws must be admitted. But, though in other countries there may have occasionally been more rapid progress, it would not be easy to name any other country in which there has been so little retrogression. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... thoughts of Berowne upon things in general are those of Hamlet, or Hamlet's those of Prospero. But before it is possible to point out the nature of this difference, and to show that the change is a natural growth of thought, not a mere retrogression, a few explanatory ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... recall Goethe's reply to the botanist, Wolff, who had ascribed the metamorphosis of plant-organs from root to blossom to a gradual stunting or atrophy of their vegetative force, whereas it was clear to Goethe that simultaneously with a physical retrogression, there is a spiritual progress in the development of the plant. The fact that all Wolff's efforts to see clearly did not save him from 'seeing past the thing' seemed to Goethe an inevitable result of Wolff's failure to associate ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... 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, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of most interest and importance in sociology are those of social evolution. Under this head we have the problem of the origin of society in general and also of various forms of association. More important still are the problems of social progress and social retrogression; that is, the causes of the advancement of society to higher and more complex types of social organization and the causes of social decline. The former problem, social progress, is in a peculiar sense the central problem of sociology. The effort of theoretical sociology is ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... drone along uneventfully for years with scarce a perceptible progress, retrogression, or change; and then suddenly, with a few leaps, will cover more of alteration and event in a week than it has passed through in a decade. So will the critical occurrences of a day fill chapters, after those of a year have failed to yield more material than ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... 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 ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... 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 as a trust for the good of ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... and even lose ground, although moving their legs forward with all the nimbleness of which they are capable. The more they struggle upwards, the faster they come down. This drifting, which neutralizes the distance covered and even converts it into a retrogression, is ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... 10 A.M. I have just paid one of my pair of permitted 2 minutes visits per day to the sick room. And found what I have learned to expect—retrogression, and that pathetic something in the eye which betrays the secret of a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... old building. "I know the racket was in that wing, and see how the round tower begins here and shoots up past all that outside plumbing? I know Lenox was one time a show building here, but freshies have got to have some place to sleep, hence the retrogression." ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... end of, say 'every ten thousand years,' all the same events which have been happening throughout the period may begin to happen over again in the same order as before. Such a succession, however, would involve quite as much of retrogression as of progression, and the continual advance so boastfully spoken of would be nothing else than a tendency of society to return to the condition from which it had originally emerged. But, even on this uncomfortable hypothesis, there could be no regularity of occurrences within the same cycle; no ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... 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 made progress, ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... convention, Germany and the States hauled down their flags. It was so done again before the second; and Germany, by a still more emphatic step of retrogression, returned the exile Laupepa to his native shores. For two years the unfortunate man had trembled and suffered in the Cameroons, in Germany, in the rainy Marshalls. When he left (September 1887) Tamasese was king, served by five iron war-ships; his right to rule (like a dogma ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... combative or destructive kind provide an innocent outlet for a certain amount of this unused ferocity; and indeed the chief function of games in the modern state is to help us avoid occasions of sin. The sinfulness of any deed depends, therefore, on this theory, on the extent in which it involves retrogression from the point we have achieved: failure to correspond with the light we possess. The inequality of the moral standard all over the world is a simple demonstration of this fact: for many a deed which is innocent in New Guinea, would in London provoke the immediate ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... phenomena included in the past eighty years has demonstrated a continuing retrogression in ink manufacture and a consequent deterioration of necessary ink qualities. When the attention of some ink makers are addressed to these sad facts, they attribute them, either to the demand of the public for an agreeable color and a free ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... superstition, prevalent in the backwoods, and begotten by the influence of the vast wilderness upon illiterate men of a rude native force. It interests scholars to trace the evolutions of religious faiths, but it might be not less suggestive to study the retrogression of religion into superstition. Thomas was as restless in matters of creed as of residence, and made various changes in both during his life. These were, however, changes without improvement, and, so far as he was concerned, his son Abraham ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... 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 different rates ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... that they make things easier technically. They facilitate purity of intonation. Yet I am willing to forgo these advantages when I consider the wonderful pliability of the gut strings for which Stradivarius built his violins. I can see the artistic retrogression of those who are using the wire E, for when materially things are made easier, spiritually ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... 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 is sometimes one way, and sometimes another, yet the rolling ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... 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 ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... order to subvert that of cannibalism: why should the relapse into the ethics of cannibalism proceed so much more rapidly? But the instinctive presentiment that growing civilisation will be connected, not with social stagnation and moral retrogression, but with both social and moral progress—this yearning for liberty, equality, and fraternity ineradicably implanted in the Western mind, despite all the follies and the horrors to which it for a time gave rise—it was just this 'drop of foreign blood in the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... solution of it.... Admitted facts seem to show ... a general, but not a detailed progression.... It is, however, by no means difficult to show that a real progression in the scale of organisation is perfectly consistent with all the appearances, and even with apparent retrogression should ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... affords a better 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 average ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... perished. Will they be continuously reproduced, and thus, like the human race itself, run ever on? Quien sabey? Eras of barbarism have overtaken civilizations as pretentious as our own— intellectual nights in which the patiently acquired learning of ages was lost. Petrifaction as in China, retrogression begotten of luxury as in Athens, submersion beneath an avalanche of human debris as in Rome, ignorance-breeding despoliation as in Ireland—these be the lions in the path of civilization. No race or nation of which we have any record has avoided a recrudescence of barbarism for an hundred ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann |
