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Antecedent   Listen
adjective
Antecedent  adj.  
1.
Going before in time; prior; anterior; preceding; as, an event antecedent to the Deluge; an antecedent cause.
2.
Presumptive; as, an antecedent improbability.
Synonyms: Prior; previous; foregoing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Antecedent" Quotes from Famous Books



... her favour or endure her frown, in that it ministers counsel to the one sort and consolation to the other. Wherefore, albeit great matters have preceded it, I mean to tell you a story, not less true than touching, of adventures whereof the issue was indeed felicitous, but the antecedent bitterness so long drawn out that scarce can I believe that it was ever sweetened ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... have the pas; set the fashion &c. (influence) 175; open the ball; take precedence, have precedence; have the start &c. (get before) 280. place before; prefix; premise, prelude, preface. Adj. preceding &c. v.; precedent, antecedent; anterior; prior &c. 116; before; former; foregoing; beforementioned[obs3], abovementioned[obs3], aforementioned; aforesaid, said; precursory, precursive[obs3]; prevenient[obs3], preliminary, prefatory, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... and the system of private education having so decidedly failed, it was resolved that he should spend the years antecedent to his going to Oxford at home. Nothing could be a greater failure than the first weeks of his "course of study." He was perpetually violating the sanctity of the drawing-room by the presence of Scapulas and Hederics, and outraging the propriety of morning visitors by bursting into his mother's ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... assumed that, given any event, there is some one phenomenon which is THE cause of the event in question. This seems to be a mere mistake. Cause, in the only sense in which it can be practically applied, means "nearly invariable antecedent." We cannot in practice obtain an antecedent which is QUITE invariable, for this would require us to take account of the whole universe, since something not taken account of may prevent the expected effect. We ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... request of the Senate of December 30, I now lay before them the correspondence of the naval commanders Barron and Rodgers and of Mr. Eaton, late consul at Tunis, respecting the progress of the war with Tripoli, antecedent to the treaty with the Bey and Regency of Tripoli, and respecting the negotiations for the same, and the commission and instructions of Mr. Eaton, with such other correspondence in possession of the offices as I suppose may be useful to the Senate in their deliberations ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... added, as she came through the kitchen. "He (without any antecedent) has promised he'll do all he can to fetch her forth; and if he doesn't, and metely soon too, he'll wish he ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... the English constitutional system to-day, namely, the cabinet. The creation of the cabinet was a gradual process, and both the process and the product are utterly unknown to the letter of English law. It is customary to regard as the immediate antecedent of the cabinet the so-called "cabal" of Charles II., i.e., the irregular group of persons whom that sovereign selected from the Privy Council and took advice from informally in lieu of the Council itself. In point of fact, by reason principally ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... present nomenclature.—We shall deal later with a method by which a responsive current of action is obtained without any antecedent current of injury. 'Negative variation' has then no meaning. Or, again, a current of injury may sometimes undergo a change of direction (see note, p. 12). In view of these considerations it is necessary to have ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... demands, and I find it complicated not only with the private and public interests of the people and State of Louisiana, but also with the direct interests of the government of the United States, or with the obligations imposed upon the government by the condition of the country or by the antecedent exercise of lawful military authority. To the extent that these considerations obtain they are controlling considerations, and I cannot find that I have any authority to delegate the duties devolved upon me by my official position, or to evade the responsibilities which it imposes. ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... Peace pertains to man's last end, not as though it were the very essence of happiness; but because it is antecedent and consequent thereto: antecedent, in so far as all those things are removed which disturb and hinder man in attaining the last end: consequent inasmuch as when man has attained his last end, he remains at peace, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... says, "had collected itself; the feuds of the families had been chastened, if they had not been subdued; while the increase of wealth and material prosperity had brought out into obvious prominence those advantages of peace which a hot-spirited people, antecedent to experience, had not anticipated, and had not been able to appreciate. They were better fed, better cared for, more justly governed, than they had ever been before; and though, abundance of unruly tempers remained, yet the wiser portion of the nation, looking back from their new vantage-ground, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of that war (each is its place) have had their immediate results well defined. To see, as clearly their exact place in relation to the entire struggle, and that they were the legitimate sequence of antecedent preparation, requires that the preparation ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various

... for which it stands, and it enables us to explain these facts in terms of the classes of causes from which they follow, and the classes of effects which they produce. No explanation, of course, can actually acquaint us directly with the real antecedent or consequent facts themselves: it can only tell us to what classes these facts must belong. The terms of the plan by which we explain the facts, the classes, for instance, daylight and darkness, and their relation of alternation, or the words ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen

... These peculiar associations are no doubt what is chiefly enjoyed in music, antecedent to a properly musical culture. Persons of slight acquaintance with music invariably prefer the voice ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... should have been obtained at that remote period when the earliest Hebrews were among the Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew poetic accounts of creation were drawn either from the sacred traditions of these earlier peoples or from antecedent sources common to ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... The wider our horizon grows, the deeper should our solution of all questions become. A hundred years hence, should science increase in the mean time, the solutions which are satisfactory to us will be looked down upon by our posterity, as the speculations of our fathers antecedent to Adam Smith's time are ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... is dull, or there is something a little confused in the apostrophe to Mr. Pitt. Verse 55th is the antecedent to verses 57th and 58th, but in verse 58th the connexion ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... under a certain scrutiny one can detect here what we do not detect in our other two elements, and that is that, going on side by side with the processes of dissolution and frequently masked by these, there are other processes by which men, often of the most diverse parentage and antecedent traditions, are being segregated into a multitude of specific new groups which may presently develop very distinctive ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... literature enthroned among the stars with that of the deified mortal canonized as the Spirit of Tzu T'ung was essentially a Taoist trick. "The thaumaturgic reputation assigned to the Spirit of Chang Ya Tzu was confined for centuries to the valleys of Ssuch'uan, until at some period antecedent to the reign Yen Yu, in A.D. 1314, a combination was arranged between the functions of the local god and those of the stellar patron of literature. Imperial sanction was obtained for this stroke of priestly cunning; and notwithstanding protests continually ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... economists any true measure of value has been doubted or denied as a possibility: but no man can doubt the existence of a ground of value; 2. that a measure is posterior to the value; for, before a value can be measured or estimated, it must exist: but a ground of value must be antecedent to the value, like any other cause to ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... the more phlegmatic opponents, who failed to sweep them away. The result was to save Ladysmith, or rather—what was most really important—to save the organized force that was there shut in. The brilliant antecedent campaign, the offensive right and left strokes, the prompt and timely resolve of Yule to retreat just as he did, and the consequent concentration, utterly frustrated the Boers' combinations, and shattered antecedently ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... spiritual elements of a large soul: 'There may be a God. The evidence is insufficient for proof. It only amounts to one of the lower degrees of probability. He may have given a revelation of His will. There are grounds sufficient to remove all antecedent improbability. The question is wholly one of evidence; but the evidence required has not been, and cannot be, forthcoming. There is room to hope for a future life, but there is no assurance whatever. Therefore cultivate in the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the class of what has been termed nervous asthma and is observed with special frequency in children who, when younger, had been liable to catarrhal croup; spasm of the air-tubes having taken the place of the previous spasm of the windpipe. Independently of that antecedent it comes on sometimes about the time of the second teething in nervous and impressionable children, in whom an attack may be produced by indigestion, constipation, or over-fatigue. It is also by no means rare in children in whom that skin affection, eczema, of which I have already spoken, ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... the point. Draw a form of settlement that passes all my property to Miss Fleur's children in equal shares, with antecedent life-interests first to myself and then to her without power of anticipation, and add a clause that in the event of anything happening to divert her life-interest, that interest passes to the trustees, to apply for her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the rapid progress of the scepticism in England. Everywhere, a disbelief in witchcraft was becoming fashionable in the upper classes; but it was a disbelief that arose entirely from a strong sense of its antecedent improbability. All who were opposed to the orthodox faith united in discrediting witchcraft. They laughed at it, as palpably absurd, as involving the most grotesque and ludicrous conceptions, as so essentially incredible that ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... accelerating matters. What had been done secretly and slowly could be done more swiftly and openly when so plausible an excuse could be given for it. As a matter of fact, the preparations were long antecedent to the raid. The building of the forts at Pretoria and Johannesburg was begun nearly two years before that wretched incursion, and the importation of arms was going on apace. In that very year, 1895, a considerable sum ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... case," I rejoined. "You have the native American passion,—the passion for the picturesque. With us, I think it is primordial,—antecedent to experience. Experience comes and only shows us ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James

... arrived were:—1st. That the extraordinary form of the skull was due to a natural conformation hitherto not known to exist, even in the most barbarous races. 2nd. That these remarkable human remains belonged to a period antecedent to the time of the Celts and Germans, and were in all probability derived from one of the wild races of North-western Europe, spoken of by Latin writers; and which were encountered as autochthones by the German immigrants. And ...
— On Some Fossil Remains of Man • Thomas H. Huxley

... life is Light. This the primitive savage felt, and, personifying it, he made Light his chief god. The beginning of the day served, by analogy, for the beginning of the world. Light comes before the sun, brings it forth, creates it, as it were. Hence the Light-God is not the Sun-God, but his Antecedent and Creator. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... has now laid aside a little money, repenting of her frivolous and mercenary deeds (they sometimes do), and becoming puritanically zealous of good works in her old age—all this, however, as might have been expected from her antecedent career, without much discrimination. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... obvious to reason; for the case is similar with a man as with a tree, which grows and increases every instant of time, even the most minute, from the casting of the seed into the earth. These momentaneous progressions are also changes of state; for the subsequent adds something to the antecedent, which perfects the state. The changes which take place in a man's internals, are more perfectly continuous than those which take place in his externals; because a man's internals, by which we mean the things appertaining to his mind or spirit, are elevated into a superior degree above his externals; ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... Polynesia to Greece, tend; if indeed the theology of the period of the nineteenth dynasty was not, as some Egyptologists think, a modification of an earlier, more distinctly monotheistic doctrine of a long antecedent age. It took only half a dozen centuries for the theology of Paul to become the theology of Gregory the Great; and it is possible that twenty centuries lay between the theology of the first worshippers in the sanctuary of the Sphinx and that of the ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... of life, by devotion to high ideals, and they regard Truth as a prize to be striven for, not as a dogma to be imposed by authority. They consider that belief should be the result of individual study or intuition, and not its antecedent, and should rest on knowledge, not on assertion. They extend tolerance to all, even to the intolerant, not as a privilege they bestow, but as a duty they perform, and they seek to remove ignorance, not to punish it. They see every religion as an expression of the DIVINE WISDOM, ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... been caught putting the inside of the master's desk to a use for which the architect had clearly not designed it, to justify himself, with great simplicity averred, that he did not know that the thing had been forewarned. This exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral or declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the pedagogue himself not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... Vendramin. "No; you are mad; for madness, the crisis we despise, is the memory of an antecedent condition acting on our present state of being. The genius of my dreams has taught me that, and much else! You want to make one of the Duchess and la Tinti; nay, dear Emilio, take them separately; it will ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac

... Irish emigrant after landing on this enfranchised land. Wonder not, then, you natives of this God-provided country, that the foreigner is likely to become more republican than yourselves, and that his is a keener sense of enjoyment than yours, from the evils of his antecedent life. Do not, therefore, become jealous of his purer and more ardent love for this republic, the inheritance of the oppressed; but, instead of envying his growing influence in this country of his choice and adoption, receive him with ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... whatever we may think of the antecedent probabilities, the fact itself can hardly be disputed. In the year A.D. 177, under Marcus Aurelius, a severe persecution broke out on the banks of the Rhone in the cities of Vienne and Lyons—a persecution which by ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... there is no antecedent objection to this form of the Trinity as a threefold manifestation of the divine Being, we have only to ask, Is it true as a matter of fact? Has such a threefold manifestation of God actually taken place? ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... Grabo points out in "The Art of the Short Story," is suggested rather than recorded. The running away of the Judge's son and of his little admirer, the butcher boy, really lies outside the story proper. "With these youthful adventures the story has not directly to do, but the hints of the antecedent action envelop the story with a romantic atmosphere. The reader speculates upon the story suggested, and thereby is the written story enriched and made a part of a ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... to be said. The second [Greek: OI] was safe to be dropped in a collocation of letters like that. It might also have been anticipated, that there would be found copyists to be confused by the antecedent [Greek: KAI]. Accordingly the Peshitto, Lewis, and Curetonian render the place 'et dicentes;' shewing that they mistook [Greek: KAI OI LEGONTES] for a ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... and aristocratic a mantle to fling around an obscure actress, of whose pedigree and antecedent life you know nothing, save that widowhood and penury goaded her to histrionic exhibitions of a beauty, that sometimes threatened to subject her to impertinence and insult? Put aside the infatuation which not unfrequently ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... revelation. "It is now pretty generally admitted," says the author of Contemporary Evolution, "with regard to Christianity and theism that the arguments really telling against the first, are in their logical consequences fatal also to the second, and that a Deus Unus, Remunerator once admitted, an antecedent probability for a revelation ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... such a state, we may as well suppose the armies of Salmanasser or Xerxes were never children, because we hear little of them, till they were men, and imbodied in armies. Government is every where antecedent to records, and letters seldom come in amongst a people till a long continuation of civil society has, by other more necessary arts, provided for their safety, ease, and plenty: and then they begin to look after the history of their founders, and search into their original, ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke

... two, to delete the words "and emit bills."[304] Nevertheless, in 1870, the Court relied in part upon this clause in holding that Congress had authority to issue treasury notes and to make them legal tender in satisfaction of antecedent debts.[305] When it borrows money "on the credit of the United States" Congress creates a binding obligation to pay the debt as stipulated and cannot thereafter vary the terms of its agreement. A law purporting to abrogate a clause in government ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... to the same family, and springing from the same family tree. But then the grape we see would not be what the grape of last year, or the grape immediately preceding it on the same branch, had made it, though there can be no doubt that the antecedent possibilities of the new grape were the same as those of the last. If one grape is blue, the next will be blue too, but no one would say that it was blue because the last grape was blue. The real cause would be that the molecules of the protoplasm have been so affected ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... or Cuseans; Amon for the Amonians; and Asur, or the Assyrian, for the people of Assyria. Hence, when it was said, that the Ninevite performed any great action, it has been ascribed to a person Ninus, the supposed founder of Nineve. And as none of the Assyrian conquests were antecedent to Pul, and Assur Adon, writers have been guilty of an unpardonable anticipation, in ascribing those conquests to the first king of the country. A like anticipation, amounting to a great many centuries, is to be found in the annals of the Babylonians. Every thing that was done ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... of the two Cases, or Conditions, of the Elect and Non-elect, may serve to set this Matter in a clear Light, God being in himself antecedent to the Existence of all other Beings, infinitely glorious and happy, could have no Occasion for Creatures to add to his Blessedness; all that we call evil, such as Cruelty and Injustice in Man, ever arises from such a ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch

... habits. However natural the liaison of a young man, like Athanase, with a handsome girl, like Suzanne, for instance, might seem in a capital, it alarms provincial parents, and destroys the hopes of marriage of a poor young man when possibly the fortune of a rich one might cause such an unfortunate antecedent to be overlooked. Between the depravity of certain liaisons and a sincere love, a man of honor and no fortune will not hesitate: he prefers the misfortunes of virtue to the evils of vice. But in the provinces women with whom a young man call fall in love are rare. A rich young girl he cannot ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... is expounded two ways. Some, referring the relative his to the first antecedent, take the meaning to be that no Jew or Christian shall die before he believes in Jesus: for they say, that when one of either of those religions is ready to breathe his last, and sees the angel of death before him, he shall then believe in that prophet as he ought, though ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... for the shelter of Her Majesty's troops while on their march and for the safe lodgment of the stores, is no new act on the part of Her Majesty's authorities. The buildings in question have been in the course of construction from a period antecedent to the provisional agreements of last year, and they are now maintained and occupied along the line of march with a view to the same objects above specified, for which the small detachments of troops also referred to are in like ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... It traces the downward curve of decay, but gives no account of the slow ascent to maturity. The present splendour of Vega, for instance, was prepared, according to all creative analogy, by almost endless processes of gradual change. What was its antecedent condition? The question has been variously answered. Dr. Johnstone Stoney advocated, in 1867, the comparative youth of red stars;[1379] A. Ritter, of Aix-la-Chapelle, divided them, in 1883,[1380] into two squadrons, posted, the one on the ascending, the other on the descending branch of the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... of a single syllable is sufficient to make good English, good sense, and good metre of a passage which is otherwise defective in these three particulars. It retains the s in "labours," keeps the comma in its place, and provides that antecedent for "it," which was justly considered necessary ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various

... including magazine pieces, mimeographed plays, motion pictures, verses, pamphlets, fiction. In a blend of casualness and scholarship, it gives the substance and character of each item. Indeed, this bibliography reads like a continued story, with constant references to both antecedent and subsequent action. Pat Garrett, John Chisum, and other related characters weave all through it. A first-class bibliography that is also readable is almost a ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... pronoun referring to something which precedes (or follows) is called a "relative pronoun". The person or thing to which it refers is called its "antecedent." The relative pronoun, identical in form with the interrogative pronoun (106), as in English, is ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman

... of Ennius is another of the eclipses antecedent to the Christian Era which has been the subject of full modern investigation, and the circumstances of which are such that, in the language of Professor Hansen, "it may be reckoned as one of the most certain and well-established eclipses of antiquity." The record of it has only been brought to light ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... introduce, usher in; have the pas; set the fashion &c (influence) 175; open the ball; take precedence, have precedence; have the start &c (get before) 280. place before; prefix; premise, prelude, preface. Adj. preceding &c v.; precedent, antecedent; anterior; prior &c 116; before; former; foregoing; beforementioned^, abovementioned^, aforementioned; aforesaid, said; precursory, precursive^; prevenient^, preliminary, prefatory, introductory; prelusive, prelusory; proemial^, preparatory. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... &c. I have followed the general consensus of recent editors; but I do not feel at all sure that the antecedent of [Greek: us] is not [Greek: polemos]. In that case we should translate, 'which led to Philip's coming to Elateia and being chosen commander of the Amphictyons, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes

... virtues must, therefore, be allowed to have a natural beauty and amiableness, which, at first, antecedent to all precept or education, recommends them to the esteem of uninstructed mankind, and engages their affections. And as the public utility of these virtues is the chief circumstance, whence they derive ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... perhaps it may be permitted me to say at the outset that I have no prejudice on this subject. I am not a Roman Catholic, and therefore cannot be accused of approaching the controversy with what Paley was wont to call an "antecedent bias." ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... the few who were taken into custody; and, in the final sentence, the measure of his fine proclaims him eminently guilty. The total estimate which he delivered on oath to the House of Commons amounted to 106,543 pounds 5 shillings and 6 pence, exclusive of antecedent settlements. Two different allowances of 15,000 pounds and of 10,000 pounds were moved for Mr. Gibbon; but, on the question being put, it was carried without a division for the smaller sum. On these ruins, with the skill and credit, of which ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... according to the laws of nature; and here we must distinguish between it and the empirical, which uses, or attempts to use, those forces, without a knowledge of the laws. The true practical, therefore, is the result, or actual, of an antecedent ideal. The ideal, full and complete, must exist in the mind before the actual can be brought forth according to the laws of science. Who, then, are the truly practical men of our age? Are they not those who are engaged ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... Ireland was joyless he was right in saying that it was the duty of every Irishman to spend his money in making Ireland a joyful country. He was speaking now in the interests of religion. A country is antecedent to religion. To have religion you must first have a country, and if Ireland was not made joyful Ireland would become a Protestant country in about twenty-five years. In support of this contention he produced figures showing the rate at which the Catholics were emigrating. But not only were the ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... his daughters object to it. He has only to say, 'Release me.' From that moment he is free." There was no contending against such a system of defence as this. We knew as well as she did that our fascinated parent would not say the word. Our one chance was to spend money in investigating the antecedent indiscretions of the lady's life, and to produce against her proof so indisputable that not even an old man's infatuation could ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... linger over degrees and phases. Every morning, Gibbie got into the kitchen in good time; and not only did more and more of the work, but did it more and more to the satisfaction of Jean, until, short of the actual making of the porridge, he did everything antecedent to the men's breakfast. When Jean came in, she had but to take the lid from the pot, put in the salt, assume the spurtle, and, grasping the first handful of the meal, which stood ready waiting in the bossie ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... with causes which have been associated in experience with such results. Let the inference span with its mighty arch a myriad of years, or link together the events of a few minutes, in each case the arch rises from the ground of familiar facts, and reaches an antecedent which is known to be a cause capable ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... Allington, whose daughter married Sir Robert Crane, father of Sir Edward Walpole's .'Wife. I want but Lady Burwell's name to Make my genealogic tree Shoot out stems every way. I have recovered a barony in fee, which has no defect but in being antecedent to any summons to Parliament, that of the Fitz Osberts: and On MY Mother's side it has mounted the Lord knows whither by the Philipps,s to Henry VIII. and has sucked in Dryden for a great-uncle: and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... Professor Mivart, "it is freely conceded that the destructive agencies in nature do succeed in preventing the perpetuation of monstrous, abortive, and feeble attempts at the performance of the evolutionary process, that they rapidly remove antecedent forms when new ones are evolved more in harmony with surrounding conditions, and that their action results in the formation of new characters when these have once attained sufficient completeness to be of real utility ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... always, to the identities from which they sprung or shall spring. Did you guess any of them lived only its moment? The world does not so exist— no parts, palpable or impalpable, so exist—no result exists now without being from its long antecedent result, and that from its antecedent, and so backward without the farthest mentionable spot coining a bit nearer the beginning than any other spot.... Whatever satisfies the soul is truth. The prudence of the greatest poet answers at last the craving and ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... his theodicy represents God as limited by an antecedent reason in things which makes certain combinations logically incompatible, certain goods impossible. He surveys in advance all the universes he might create, and by an act of what Leibnitz calls his antecedent will he chooses our actual world as the one in which the evil, unhappily ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... treating the uninflected English language as if it were an inflected language, in which variations and distinctions of case and gender and number help to connect adjective with substantive, and relative with antecedent. Sometimes, though less often, he distorts the natural order of the English in order to secure the Latin desideratum of finishing with the most emphatic and important words of the clause. His subject leads and almost forces him to an occasional pedantry of vocabulary, and in the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... however, of these uninfluenced elections generally was to promote a man antagonistic to his predecessor. The clash of parties and the numerical majority of independent Cardinals excluded the creatures of the last reign, and selected for advancement one who owed his position to the favor of an antecedent Pontiff. This result was further secured by the natural desire of all concerned in the election to nominate an old man, since it was for the general advantage that a pontificate should, if possible, not ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... for "persuasion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect." This band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once poetry and music and dancing and astronomy and mathematics. I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... supposed historic credibility under which so many powerful minds—minds many of them of the first order—have felt themselves compelled to receive these histories as true, in spite of such obstacles. Surely, you do not think that a miracle is in our age, or has been for many ages, an antecedent ground of credibility; or that if a history does not contain enough of them, as this assuredly does, it is certain to be believed. No; do not you with Strauss contend that a miracle is not to be believed at all, because it contradicts uniform experience? And yet ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... white haired priest, with a remarkably clever, humorous, kindly face; and he wore a remarkably shabby cassock. The Duchessa's chaplain, Peter supposed. How should it occur to him that this was Cardinal Udeschini? Do Cardinals (in one's antecedent notion of them) wear shabby cassocks, and look humorous and unassuming? Do they go tramping about the country in the rain, attended by no retinue save a woman and a fourteen-year-old girl? And are they little men—in one's antecedent notion? True, his shabby cassock had red buttons, and there was ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... already mentioned, the Colonial Government succeeded the Dutch East India Company in the administration of Java towards the end of the last century. During the period antecedent to the British occupation, the revenue of the Government was derived from two monopolies: (1) that of producing the more valuable crops, and (2) that of trading in all products whatever. Meanwhile the mass of the natives were left entirely to the mercy of the native ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... celery, cabbage and turnip leaves. Parts of the same leaves which had not been moistened by the worms, were pounded with a few drops of distilled water, and the juice thus extracted was not alkaline. Some leaves, however, which had been drawn into burrows out of doors, at an unknown antecedent period, were tried, and though still moist, they rarely exhibited even a trace of ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent to the human. An outlandish delegate sustained against both these views, with such heat as almost carried conviction, the theory of copulation between women and the males of brutes, his authority being his own avouchment in support ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... of the State of New York: IN DISQUISITIONS of every kind, there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend. These contain an internal evidence which, antecedent to all reflection or combination, commands the assent of the mind. Where it produces not this effect, it must proceed either from some defect or disorder in the organs of perception, or from the influence ...
— The Federalist Papers

... that of a longer sentence interrupted exactly in the middle,—not unlike a bridge of two spans, resting on a central pier. But, precisely as the central pier is only an intermediate point of support, and not terra firma, so the ending of the Antecedent phrase is never anything more weighty than a semicadence, while the definite, conclusive, perfect cadence appears at the end of the Consequent phrase,—or of ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius

... subject of "Spiritual Evolution," which will form the subject of our next lesson, we would again call your attention to the vital difference between the Western and the Eastern Teachings. The Western holds to a mechanical theory of life, which works without the necessity of antecedent Mind, the latter appearing as a "product" at a certain stage. The Eastern holds that Mind is back of, under, and antecedent to all the work of Evolution—the cause, not the effect or product. The Western claims that Mind was produced by the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... mysterious being. Plato says that everything in this world is merely the material form of some model previously existing in a higher world of ethereal spiritual forms; and Swedenborg's beautiful doctrine of Correspondences is a reappearance of the same idea. If their theory be true, may not the antecedent type of that strange force which in the material world we call electricity be a spiritual magnetism. As yet, we know extremely little of the laws of electricity, and we know nothing of those laws of spiritual attraction and repulsion which are perhaps the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... not the inspiration or aspiration to be a first or second Virgin-Mother—her duplicate, antecedent, or subsequent. What I am remains to be proved by the good I do. We need much humility, wisdom, and love to perform the functions of foreshadowing and foretasting heaven within us. This glory is molten in the furnace ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... garrison for their future protection. Granting that this Gadara really is the city of the Gadarenes, the reference, without citation, to the passage, in support of Mr. Gladstone's contention seems rather remarkable. Taken in conjunction with the shortly antecedent ravaging of the Gadarene territory by the Jews, in fact, better proof could hardly be expected of the real state of the case; namely, that the population of Gadara (and notably the wealthy and respectable part of it) was thoroughly ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... could not have refrained from doing of any person, of any kind, whose presence had served to help away the tedious hours of a long day, and who had, moreover, shown that sort of consideration for him which the accompanying basket implied—antecedent consideration, so telling upon all invalids—and which he so seldom experienced except from the hands ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... Testament England and the Suppression of Heresy The Calvinists and the Suppression of Heresy Cruelty of the Criminal Code in the Middle Ages The Spirit of the Age Explains the Cruelty of the Inquisition Defects in the Procedure Abuses of Antecedent Imprisonment and Torture Heretics who were also Criminals Heresy Punished as Such Should the Death Penalty Be Inflicted upon Heretics? The Responsibility of the Church Abuses of the Penalties of Confiscation and Exile The Penitential Character of Imprisonment The Syllabus ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... several additions to it, with which improvements it was printed at Amsterdam, under the direction of Monsieur Forbier, who published a French translation of it. Dr. John Bramhall, bishop of Derry in Ireland, in the Preface to his Book entitled a Defence of true Liberty, from an antecedent and extrinsical Necessity, tells us, 'that ten years before he had given Mr. Hobbs about sixty exceptions, one half political, and the other half theological to that book, and every exception justified by a number of reasons, to which he never yet vouchsafed ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... he leaves England in search of relic or evidence of his spiritual "double." Finally, in a picture-gallery abroad, he comes face to face with a portrait which' he instantly recognises as the portrait of himself, both as he is now and as he was in the time of his antecedent existence. Upon inquiry, the portrait proves to be that of a distinguished painter centuries dead, whose work had long been the young Englishman's guiding beacon in methods of art. Startled beyond measure at the singular discovery of a coincidence which, superstition ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training. From the age of 17 I had never even witnessed the excitement attending a Presidential campaign but twice antecedent to my own candidacy, and at but one of them was I ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... catastrophe. Avoiding every digression, the action should go forward rapidly, in order not to weary the patience and dissipate the interest of the spectator. The denouement should not be dependent upon some foreign element introduced at the last moment, but should spring naturally from the antecedent action. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... allowed, that this "ruling passion," antecedent to reason and observation, must have an object independent on human contrivance; for there can be no natural desire of artificial good. No man, therefore, can be born, in the strict acceptation, a lover of money; for he may be born where money does not exist: nor can he be born, in a moral sense, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... sacramentalism then that we must return, not only in religion and its practice, but in philosophy, if we are to establish a firm foundation for that newer society and civilization that are to help us to achieve the "Great Peace." Antecedent systems failed, and subsequent systems have failed; in this alone, the philosophy of Christianity, is there safety, for it alone is consonant with the revealed will ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... a part of the scheme of things, the necessary antecedent of something or other in your life and mine. I shall go to Naples to-morrow; I shall spend one day there; on the day after I shall be with you again. My hand upon it, Mallard. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... it, though it may not always be appropriate, can never be premature, and for these reasons. The fact of a new idea having come to one man is a sign that it is in the air. The innovator is as much the son of his generation as the conservative. Heretics have as direct a relation to antecedent conditions as the orthodox. Truth, said Bacon, has been rightly named the daughter of Time. The new idea does not spring up uncaused and by miracle. If it has come to me, there must be others to whom it has only just missed coming. If I have found my way to the light, there must be others groping ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... philosophy and its historic relations, it becomes necessary to ascend to a more remote period, in order to find the origin of the language in which Chaucer wrote, and the effect produced upon him by any antecedent literary works, in the root-languages from which the English ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... (Federalist, No. 83), "Every man of discernment must at once perceive the wide difference between silence and abolition." The mode and manner in which the people shall take part in the government of their creation may be prescribed by the constitution, but the right itself is antecedent to all constitutions. It is inalienable, and can neither be bought, nor sold, nor given away. But even if it should be held that this view is untenable, and that women are disfranchised by the several ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... something in the natural make-up of man which would move the Almighty to give him grace, the bestowal of grace would no longer be a free act of God. But to assert the consequent would be Semipelagian, hence the antecedent ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... how Ludwig Halberger came to be domiciled there, so far from civilisation, and so high up the Pilcomayo—river of mysterious note—it is necessary to give some details of his life antecedent to the time of his having established this solitary estancia. To do so a name of evil augury and ill repute must needs be introduced—that of Dr Francia, Dictator of Paraguay, who for more than a quarter of a century ruled that fair land verily with a rod of iron. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... manner of attacks coming from without as well as from within the Lutheran Church. The Formula merely presents, repeats, reaffirms explains, defends, clearly defines, and consistently applies the truths directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly confessed and taught in the antecedent Lutheran confessions. The Augsburg Confession concludes its last paragraph: "If there is anything that any one might desire in this Confession, we are ready God willing, to present ampler information (latiorem informationem) according to the Scriptures." (94, 7.) Close scrutiny will ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... too, may be considered, now-a-days, to hold but a mean idea of the spiritual authority of the Church. He had never been known to dispute on its exact bearing with the State—whether it was incorporated with the State, or above the State—whether it was antecedent to the Papacy, or formed from the Papacy, &c., &c. According to his favorite maxim, Quieta non movere (not to disturb things that are quiet), I have no doubt that he would have thought that the less discussion is provoked upon such matters, the better for ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... antecedents as place the details of his life in their proper setting. And so, having the honour to be the juvenile biographer of Mr. Clive Newcome, I deem it wise to preface the story of his life with a brief account of events and persons antecedent to his birth. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... one of those things that stand alone, and neither divorce law nor the general principles of divorce are to be discussed without a reference to antecedent arrangements. Divorce is a sequel to marriage, and a change in the divorce law is essentially a change in the marriage law. There was a time in this country when our marriage was a practically divorceless bond, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... standing of this theory, and I allude to its past history only in order to examine the statement which is frequently made, to the effect that its general prevalence in all ages and among all peoples of the world lends to it a certain degree of 'antecedent credibility.' With reference to this point, I should say, that, whether or not the order of Nature is due to a disposing Mind, the hypothesis of mental agency in Nature—or, as the Duke of Argyll terms it, the hypothesis of 'anthropopsychism'—must necessarily have been the earliest ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes

... heroes of ancient history, who lived in times antecedent to the period when the regular records of authentic history commence, no reliance can be placed upon the actual verity of the accounts which have come down to us of their lives and actions. In those ancient days there was, in fact, no ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... our powers of understanding into activity, to compare to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... the lower; thus the animal includes the vegetable, for it possesses the "vegetative" as well as the "animal" organs. So it is, too, by a rational necessity that the development of a perfect animal repeats the series of antecedent formations. ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... soldier on either side ... "[11] This great picture was painted before 1504, when the artist was only twenty-seven years of age,[12] a fact which clearly proves that his genius must have developed early. For not even a Giorgione can produce such a masterpiece without a long antecedent course of training and accomplishment. This is not the place to inquire into the nature and character of the works which lead up to this altar-piece, for a chronological survey ought to follow, not precede, an examination of all available material; it is important, nevertheless, to bear ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... comprehending not simply those minor modifications which offspring inherit from recent ancestry, but comprehending also those larger modifications distinctive of species, genus, order, class, which they inherit from antecedent races of organisms. And thus it may be that the law of adaptation is the sole law; presiding not only over the differentiation of any race of organisms into several races, but also over the differentiation of the race ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... medical details may interest your professional friends. Mr. Motley's case was a striking illustration that the renal disease of so-called Bright's disease may supervene as part and parcel of a larger and antecedent change in the blood-vessels in other parts than the kidney. . . . I ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Oxford before other universities, because he was brought up there, and the best scholar there is one of his own college, and the best scholar there is one of his friends. He is a great favourer of great persons, and his argument is still that which should be antecedent; as,—he is in high place, therefore virtuous;—he is preferred, therefore worthy. Never ask his opinion, for you shall hear but his faction, and he is indifferent in nothing but conscience. Men esteem him for this a zealous affectionate, but they mistake him many times, for he ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... perhaps the most difficult command of any of the generals on duty in the South, as the State of South Carolina had from the beginning of the Rebellion presented certain phases of disobedience to Federal authority peculiar to her population and naturally arising from her antecedent history. General Sickles had some trouble with Attorney-General Stanbery, and asked for a court of inquiry, that he might vindicate himself from the accusations ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... dread, and the false always in fear of betrayal," said Mr. Dinneford. "I can make no terms with you for any antecedent reward. The child must be in my possession and his parentage clearly proved before I give you a dollar. As to what may follow to yourself, your safety will lie in your own silence. You hold, and will still hold, a family secret that ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... Luke we are indebted for details of those antecedent circumstances that ushered John the Baptist into the world. He tells us that he had "traced the course of all things accurately from the first." And in those final words, "from the first," he suggests that he had deliberately ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... steers, l. 91. Association is an exertion or change of some extreme part of the sensorium residing in the muscles and organs of sense in consequence of some antecedent or attendant fibrous contractions. Associate ideas, therefore, are those which are preceded by other ideas or muscular motions, without the intervention of irritation, sensation, or volition between them; these are ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... come ready formed with us into this world. Whatever principles or materials of this kind we may possibly bring with us, a legitimate and just taste can neither be begotten, made, conceived, or produced without the antecedent labor and ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... the people of the Territories be free to legislate against slavery? It was a knotty question, testing the best legal minds in the Senate; and it was dispatched only by an amendment which stated that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise should not revive any antecedent ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... succeeded by the Netherland school, extending from about 1425 to 1625. The removal of the star of progress from one location to another, as here indicated in the succession of these great national schools, was probably influenced by corresponding or slightly antecedent changes in the commercial or political relations of the countries, rendering the old locality less favorable to art than the new one. For questions of this sort, however, there is not now time or space. To return to the old French school—the recognition ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... Biogenesis; but it is remarkable that he held the doctrine in a sense which, if he lead lived in these times, would have infallibly caused him to be classed among the defenders of "spontaneous generation." "Omne vivum ex vivo," "no life without antecedent life," aphoristically sums up Redi's doctrine; but he went no further. It is most remarkable evidence of the philosophic caution and impartiality of his mind, that although he had speculatively anticipated the manner in ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... which of us shall trace the contemporary tendencies, the one towards honour, the other towards dishonour? Or who shall discover why derivation becomes degeneration, and where and when and how the bastardy befalls? The decivilized have every grace as the antecedent of their vulgarities, every distinction as the precedent of their mediocrities. No ballad-concert song, feign it sigh, frolic, or laugh, but has the excuse that the feint was suggested, was made easy, by some living ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... Corinthians the pronoun "we" is applied to the inward man, and the "earthly house of this tabernacle" is spoken in reference to the outward man. In the quotation from second Peter the pronoun "I" has for its antecedent the "inward man," and tabernacle refers again to the ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... runs through the ink line in unbroken, even continuity." These points established, Mr. Maskelyne's conclusion, that in the examples which he tested "the pencil underlies the ink, that is to say, was antecedent to it in its date," is unavoidable. But does it follow upon this conclusion that the manuscript changes in the readings of this folio are of spurious and modern date,—made, for instance, within the last fifty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... either by direct statement or implication, which the enemy can profit by. If we meant to play into the hands of the Rebels, we could hardly do it more successfully than our papers are doing it daily; for it must be remembered that they only need hints and scraps of information, which, added to the antecedent probabilities that our army is about to proceed to a certain point, will enable them to forecast with almost absolute certainty the movements of their enemies. Sure am I, that if a Southern paper would publish such information of their movements, ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... which is subject to later correction. That being so, it is evident that instinctive action, under the guidance of traditional folkways, is an operation of the first importance in all societal matters. Since the custom never can be antecedent to all action, what we should desire most is to see it arise out of the first actions, but, inasmuch as that is impossible, the course of the action after it is started is our field of study. The origin of primitive customs is always lost ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... whom it relates. When we can foresee outward events, we can often foretell, with little danger of mistake, the courses of conduct to which they will give rise. In view of the extent and accuracy of human foresight, we cannot pronounce it impossible, that He who possesses antecedent knowledge of the native constitution of every human being, and of the shaping circumstances and influences to which each being is subjected, may foreknow men's acts, even though their wills be ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... borrowed from the drama "King Leir." So it is also with Othello, taken from an Italian romance, the same also with the famous Hamlet. The same with Antony, Brutus, Cleopatra, Shylock, Richard, and all Shakespeare's characters, all taken from some antecedent work. Shakespeare, while profiting by characters already given in preceding dramas, or romances, chronicles, or, Plutarch's "Lives," not only fails to render them more truthful and vivid, as his eulogists affirm, but, on the contrary, always ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... am a matron and Francesca is shortly to be married, it is odd, to say the least, to see us cosily ensconced in a private sitting-room of a Dublin hotel, the table laid for three, and not a vestige of a man anywhere to be seen. Where, one might ask, if he knew the antecedent circumstances, are Miss Hamilton's American spouse ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... perceived, and alt find that they have been working unconsciously to one end. These thoughts in Nature, which we are too prone to call simply facts, when in reality they are the ideal conception antecedent to the very existence of all created beings, are expressed in the objects of our study. It is not the zooelogist who invents the structural relations establishing a gradation between all Polyps,—it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... reached the bank that morning he was still in a state of doubt and perplexity. He had parted with his grateful visitor, whose safety in a few hours seemed assured, but without the least further revelation or actual allusion to anything antecedent to his selecting Tappington's room as refuge. More than that, Herbert was convinced from his manner that he had no intention of making a confidant of Mrs. Brooks, and this convinced him that Dornton's previous relations with ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... work is now before us. But the capacity for hard work depends in a great measure on the antecedent winding up of the will; I would call upon you, therefore, to gird up your loins for ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... to say upon the END of the wood. The other difference, of which Bewick is said to have been the inventor, is less easy to describe. It consisted in the employment of what is technically known as "white line." In all antecedent wood-cutting the cutter had simply cleared away those portions of the block left bare by the design, so that the design remained in relief to be printed from like type. Using the smooth box block as a uniform surface from which, if covered with ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... "Coriolanus" is one of those masterpieces sui generis, on a solid foundation, without antecedent or sequel in analogous works. Does it remind you of Shakespeare's exposition of the tragedy of the same name (Act i., Scene I)? It is the only pendant to it that I know in the productions of human genius. Read it again, and compare it as you are thinking ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... (Symmochus), who comes fifty-first in the Apostolic succession, as "Pope." Thus, if we were to write the history of Christianity, and indulge in remarks upon its chronology, we might say that since there were no antecedent Popes, and since the Apostolic line began with Symmochus (498 A.D.), all Christian records beginning with the Nativity and up to the sixth century are therefore "fabulous traditions," and all Christian chronology is ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... Antecedent to the events mentioned in the last chapter, one of considerable importance to Terence Adair occurred. He had to undergo a court-martial for the loss of the Flash. She had been run on shore, of that there was no doubt; but when there he had fought her with the greatest ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... that is important in pastoral, apart from the more notable works which they inspired. And even Menaphon, in so far as the general conception is concerned, can hardly be said necessarily to involve the existence of any antecedent pastoral tradition. Greene's novel is, indeed, far from being purely pastoral; no more than in Sidney's, to use Professor Herford's happy phrase, are we allowed to forget that Arcadia bordered on Sparta. In this it undoubtedly ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... misapprehension and confusion of ideas which had perverted their effect. For example, during the later returns of my dejection, the doctrine of what is called Philosophical Necessity weighed on my existence like an incubus. I felt as if I was scientifically proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circumstances; as if my character and that of all others had been formed for us by agencies beyond our control, and was wholly out of our own power. I often said to myself, what a relief it would be if I could disbelieve the doctrine of the formation ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... extended present has some of the character of the sense-awareness of the imaginary being whose mind was free from passage and who contemplated all nature as an immediate fact. Our own present has its antecedents and its consequents, and for the imaginary being all nature has its antecedent and its consequent durations. Thus the only difference in this respect between us and the imaginary being is that for him all nature shares in the ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... protest against malicious and exaggerated invective. As if it were a question of what might beforehand be reasonably expected, instead of an account of what actually exists, it may be alleged that surely it is a representation too much against antecedent probability to be true, that a civilized, Christian, magnanimous, and wealthy state like that of England, can have been so careless and wicked as to tolerate, during the lapse of centuries, a hideously gross and degraded ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... he generally knows it, and takes great satisfaction in it; but a child does not. He loses half his happiness because he does not know that he is happy. If he ever has any consciousness, it is an isolated, momentary thing, with no relation to anything antecedent or subsequent. It lays hold on nothing. Not only have they no perception of themselves, but they have no perception of anything. They never recognize an exigency. They do not salute greatness. Has not the Autocrat told us of some lady who remembered a certain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the social prejudice which discourages woman would only reward proportionately those who surmount the discouragement. The more obstacles the more glory, if society would only pay in proportion to the labor; but it does not. Women, being denied not merely the antecedent training which prepares for great deeds, but the subsequent praise and compensation which follow them, have been weakened in both directions. The career of eminent men ordinarily begins with colleges and the memories of Miltiades, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... cut off, and hung up in some part of the house or byre, where it remains suspended, notwithstanding the seeming danger of infection. There is hardly a house in Mull where these may not be seen. This practice seems to have taken its rise antecedent to Christianity, as it reminds us of the pagan custom of hanging up offerings in their temples. In Breadalbane, when a cow is observed to have symptoms of madness, there is recourse had to a peculiar process. They tie the legs of the mad creature, and throw ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... is carried out from a speculative point of view in the Philebus. There neither pleasure nor wisdom are allowed to be the chief good, but pleasure and good are not so completely opposed as in the Gorgias. For innocent pleasures, and such as have no antecedent pains, are allowed to rank in the class of goods. The allusion to Gorgias' definition of rhetoric (Philebus; compare Gorg.), as the art of persuasion, of all arts the best, for to it all things submit, not by compulsion, but of their own free will—marks ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... It is now offered in a more popular form, that the general public may share with the student the light shed by these untutored melodies upon the history of music; for these songs take us back to a stage of development antecedent to that in which culture music appeared among the ancients, and reveal to us something of the foundations upon which rests the art of music as ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher

... reading is confirmed by succeeding letters. The syllable bits might very naturally, in the mind of honest Aby, be changed into bites. Dates have for certain reasons been omitted; but, from this and other passages, we may perceive that the date of this correspondence is antecedent to the bill for protecting ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... when several Relatives, each at the head of a separate Sentence, are governed by one Antecedent, or several Verbs by one Nominative Case, to the close ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson

... efforts—like most pioneer efforts—failed. He became overpowered in the struggle. But his young son, who witnessed the struggle, derived a great lesson which enabled him "to look on success or failure as one"—or rather "failure as the antecedent power which lies dormant for the long subsequent dynamic expression in what we call success." "And if my life" says Sir Jagadis "in any way came to be fruitful, then that came through the realisation of this lesson."[2] So great was the influence exerted on him by his father that ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... when dealing with their witch prisoners. An expressed malediction, or frequently an almost inaudible mutter, followed by the coincident fulfilment of the imprecation, was accepted eagerly by the judges as sufficient proof (an antecedent one, contrary to the boasted principle of English law at least, which assumes the innocence until the guilt has been proved, of the accused) of the crime of the person arraigned. And they complacently attributed to conscious ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... means of investigation was working at its highest pressure, had ransacked her husband's papers for any trace of antecedent complications, of entanglements or obligations unknown to her, that might throw a faint ray into the darkness. But if any such had existed in the background of Boyne's life, they had disappeared as completely as the slip of paper ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... meditate of it, desire, and do it. St. John xv. 5. That to this grace of God is owing the beginning, the progression, and accomplishment of all good; in such manner that even the Regenerate, without this antecedent, of preventing, exciting, concomitant, and co-operating grace, cannot think that which is good, desire, or practise it, nor resist any temptation to evil; so that all the good works or actions he can conceive, spring from the grace of God: that as to what regards the manner ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... the love of the land as is shown by myths and folklore. There is in it the idea of ownership but also the idea of belonging to the land. So there is both the filial and the parental attitude in patriotism. As fatherland or motherland country is superior to and antecedent to us; as possession it is something to hold and to transmit, to improve and to leave the impress of our work upon. As historic land there is the idea of sacred soil, of land which persists through all time. ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... them. As it is, I have chosen, for interest sake, to shuffle my cards a little; and two knaves happen to have turned up together just at this time and place. The time is just three weeks ago—a week before the baronet came of age, and a fortnight antecedent to the finding of the crock; which, as we know, after blessing Roger for a se'nnight, has at last left him in jail. The place is the cozy house-keepers room at Hurstley: and the brace of thorough knaves, to enact then and there as dramatis personae, includes Mistress Bridget Quarles, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... (or the namesake of his who was the author of a well-known Homily on Palm Sunday,) remarks that "yesterday" had been read the history of the rising of Lazarus.(364) Now S. John xi. 1-45 is the lection for the antecedent ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... education. A medical school is strictly a technical school—a school in which a practical profession is taught—while a university ought to be a place in which knowledge is obtained without direct reference to professional purposes. It is clear, therefore, that a university and its antecedent, the school, may best co-operate with the medical school by making due provision for the study of those branches of knowledge which lie at the foundation ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... discharged into the Gulf of Mexico becomes known. It is sufficient to cover one square mile to the depth of 269 feet; in twenty years it is one cubic mile, or five cubic miles in a century. Turning now to the other aspect of this process, and the antecedent causes which produce these effects, it appears that the area of the Mississippi River basin is 1,147,000 square miles—about one third of the total area of the United States. Knowing this, and the annual waste from its surface, it is easy to demonstrate that it will take 6000 years to plane ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton



Words linked to "Antecedent" :   forbear, prevenient, antecede, forefather, foremother, forerunner, subsequent, ancestor, descendant, pre-existent, forebear, anterior, relation, ascendent, plasma thromboplastin antecedent, ancestress, root, prior, father, preceding, anticipatory, preexistent, pre-existing, sire, preexisting, ascendant, antecedence, referent, temporal relation, antecedency, primogenitor, progenitor, cause



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