"Final cause" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which we perceive. The image seems to prepare the adaptation of the individual to his surroundings; it creates the foresight, the preparation of the means, and, in a word, everything which constitutes for us a final cause. Now, it is very necessary that the image appear real to be usefully the substitute of the sensation past or ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... divine development is the unfolding of an intelligent plan, showing the adaptation of means to ends for the accomplishment of a purpose; the atheistic theory of evolution denies plan, purpose, adaptation and final cause. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... its possible action. He could not delude himself into the belief that the oversight of his plantations, and the perfecting his park scenery, could be a worthy end of existence; or that painting and music were meant to be the stamina of life; or even that books were their own final cause. These things had refined and enriched him; they might go on doing so to the end of his days; but ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... this ratiocination Mr. Theobald printed the text, a thread of my own life. I have restored the ancient reading. Prospero, in his reason subjoined why he calls her the third of his life, seems to allude to some logical distinction of causes, making her the final cause. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... been discovered. Subterraneous fire, again, although the most conspicuous in the operations of this world, and often examined by philosophers, is a power which has been still less understood, whether with regard to its efficient or final cause. It has hitherto appeared more like the accident of natural things, than the inherent property of the mineral region. It is in this last light, however, that I wish to exhibit it, as a great power acting a material part in the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... that it admits at least of one interpretation which may, according to fact, be given of it—namely, that of playing a principal part in effecting some of the most distressing of "the thousand natural ills that flesh is heir to." But heedless of such a singular explanation of a final cause, the practical surgeon will readily confess the fitting application of the interpretation, such as it is, and rest contented with the proximate facts and proofs. As physiologists, however, it behooves us to look further into ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... of Wellington was an original member, though (unlike Blucher, who repeatedly lost everything he had at play) the great captain was never known to play deep at any game but war or politics. Card-tables were regularly placed, and Whist was played occasionally; but the aim, end, and final cause of the whole was the Hazard bank, at which the proprietor took his nightly stand, prepared for all comers. Le Wellington des Joueurs lost L23,000 at a sitting, beginning at twelve at night, and ending at seven the following evening. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... military final cause!" said Oliver. "But, Seignior Le Balafre, you will be glad, doubtless, to learn that his Majesty is so far from being displeased with your nephew's conduct, that he hath selected him to execute a piece ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... absurd. It would be easy to account for this failure, by supposing the defect to arise from the author's want of skill, and, probably, many readers may not be inclined to look farther. But as the author himself can scarcely be supposed willing to acquiesce in this final cause, if any other can be alleged, he has been led to suspect, that, contrary to what he originally supposed, his subject was injudiciously chosen, in which, and not in his mode of treating it, lay the source of the want ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... question, why things fall, and HOW, is just where it was before Newton was born, and is likely to remain there. All we can say is, that Nature has her customs, and that other customs ensue, when those customs appear: but that as to what connects cause and effect, as to what is the reason, the final cause, or even the CAUSA CAUSANS, of any phenomenon, we know not more but less than ever; for those laws or customs which seem to us simplest ("endosmose," for instance, or "gravitation"), are just the most inexplicable, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... is always this idea, that it would have been possible for a part only of this coordination to have been realized, that the complete realization is a kind of special favor. This favor the finalists consider as dispensed to them all at once, by the final cause; the mechanists claim to obtain it little by little, by the effect of natural selection; but both see something positive in this coordination, and consequently something fractionable in its cause,—something which admits of every possible degree of achievement. In reality, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... strongly upon Hutton. Like most philosophers of his age, he coquetted with those final causes which have been named barren virgins, but which might be more fitly termed the hetairae of philosophy, so constantly have they led men astray. The final cause of the existence of the world is, for Hutton, the production of life ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... come from his outfitters in London, with his new Rolls-Royce car and his new chauffeur Briggins (parenthetically it may be remarked that a seven-hour excursion in this vehicle, youth in the back seat and Briggins at the helm, all ordained by Peggy, had been the final cause of the evening's explanations), with the starry heavens above, with the well-ordered earth beneath them, and with all human beings on the earth, including Germans, Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks—all save one: and that, as he learned from a letter delivered by the last post, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... would have proceeded thither. Finally, the words in the original as to the King refusing Benedetti "somewhat sternly" were omitted, and very properly omitted, by Bismarck in his abbreviated version. Had he included those words, he might have claimed to be the final cause of the War of 1870. As it is, his claim must be set aside as the offspring of senile vanity. His version of the original Ems despatch did not contain a single offensive word, neither did it alter any statement. Abeken also admitted that his original telegram was ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... origin nor end. Wherefore, a cause which is called final is nothing else but human desire, in so far as it is considered as the origin or cause of anything. For example, when we say that to be inhabited is the final cause of this or that house, we mean nothing more than that a man, conceiving the conveniences of household life, had a desire to build a house. Wherefore, the being inhabited, in so far as it is regarded as a final cause, is nothing else but this particular desire, which is really ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... is the proprietor's hobby. Under a system of equality, all economy which does not aim at subsequent reproduction or enjoyment is impossible—why? Because the thing saved, since it cannot be converted into capital, has no object, and is without a FINAL CAUSE. This will be explained more fully in ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... The final cause of Discipline is the efficient use of arms on the field of battle. Discipline is the result of an irksome educational process by which a man is taught to submit his wishes, his instincts, and, to a great extent, his personal liberty to the control of one who may be his inferior morally, mentally, ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... those propositions in which I have shown, that everything in nature proceeds from a sort of necessity, and with the utmost perfection. However, I will add a few remarks, in order to overthrow this doctrine of a final cause utterly. That which is really a cause it considers as an effect, and vice versa: it makes that which is by nature first to be last, and that which is highest and most perfect to be most imperfect. Passing over the questions of ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... Universe constitutes not merely a physical but a moral order. He would not deny that the Universe means something; that the series of events tends towards an end, an end which is also a good; that it has a purpose and a final cause. And yet this purpose exists in no mind whatever, and is due to no will whatever—except to the very small extent to which the processes of physical nature can be consciously directed to an end by the volitions of men and ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... between the animals. The mode of escaping from the reptile he showed to be not by running away, but by leaping on its back booted and spurred. The two animals had misunderstood each other. The use of the crocodile has now been cleared up—viz., to be ridden; and the final cause of man is that he may improve the health of the crocodile by riding him a-fox-hunting before breakfast. And it is pretty certain that any crocodile who has been regularly hunted through the season, and is master of the weight he carries, will take a six-barred ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... soft evening air over the tree-tops. No available or profitable craft navigate these waters, and animated gentlemen from the city who run up for "a mouthful of fresh air" cannot possibly detect the final cause of such a river. Yet the dreaming idler has a place on maps ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... received with triumphant accord, a fresh dissatisfaction begins to steal over the mind of Socrates: Must not friendship be for the sake of some ulterior end? and what can that final cause or end of friendship be, other than the good? But the good is desired by us only as the cure of evil; and therefore if there were no evil there would be no friendship. Some other explanation then has to be devised. May not desire be the source of friendship? And desire ...
— Lysis • Plato
... life, unless the greatest precautions are taken on your part, and unless the measures I shall use have the effect I wish for in the next twenty-four hours. She is on the verge of a brain fever. Any allusion to the subject which has been the final cause of the state in which she now is must be most cautiously avoided, even to a chance word which may ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Paul, just as much as any Old Testament thinker, believed that there were often mysteries, ay, tragedies, in the lives, not only of individuals, nor of families, but of whole races, to which we shortsighted mortals could assign no rational or moral final cause, but must simply do that which Spinoza forbade us to do, namely—"In every unknown case, flee unto God;" and say—"It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him good;"—certain of this, which the Cross and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ shewed forth ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... of treating it poetically. The ideas of the Divine Mind the origin of every quality pleasing to the imagination. The natural variety of constitution in the minds of men; with its final cause. The idea of a fine imagination, and the state of the mind in the enjoyment of those pleasures which it affords. All the primary pleasures of the imagination result from the perception of greatness, or wonderfulness, or beauty in objects. The pleasure ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... must be a tendency to the ultimate production of the highest and most comprehensive individuality. This must be the one great end of Nature, her ultimate object, or by whatever other word we may designate that something which bears to a final cause the same relation that Nature herself bears to the ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... liked to talk, and drew out much of the hidden treasure of her spirit respecting her husband, who, though ailing for years, had finally passed away with only the immediate warning of a week—the final cause being harass from the difficulties from those above and below him that beset an earnest clergyman ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "The real foundation of the discontent which led to the Revolution was the effort of Great Britain, beginning in 1750, to prevent diversity of occupation, to attack the growth of manufactures and the mechanic arts, and the final cause before the attempt to tax without representation was the effort to enforce the navigation laws." When England argued that the hardship of regulation might be greater than the hardship of taxation, and that those who submitted to the one submitted, in principle, to the other, Franklin replied that ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... therefore prefers the supposition that they are generated by a modification of the living substance of the plants themselves. Indeed, he regards these vegetable growths as organs, by means of which the plant gives rise to an animal, and looks upon this production of specific animals as the final cause of the galls and of, at any rate, some fruits. And he proposes to explain the occurrence of parasites within the animal body in ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect, anatomize, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause, causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... would be quite wrong. On the other hand, imagine another death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, listening to the monotonous "tick! tick!" so exactly like his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy to point to the clear relation of the whole mechanism to the pendulum, to the fact that the one thing the clock did always and without intermission was to tick, and that ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley |
