"Hypothesis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appear to the reader that a clearer case of guilt could hardly be established, but the action of juries is always problematical, and this was a case composed entirely of circumstantial evidence. The jury would be obliged to find that no reasonable hypothesis consistent with the innocence of the accused could be formulated upon the evidence. Thus, even in the face of the facts proven against him, some "freak" juryman might still have said, "But, after all, how do you know that Strollo ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... of the habit of barking cannot, then, be regarded as an argument in deciding the question concerning the origin of the dog. This stumbling block consequently disappears, leaving us in the position of agreeing with Darwin, whose final hypothesis was that "it is highly probable that the domestic dogs of the world have descended from two good species of wolf (C. lupus and C. latrans), and from two or three other doubtful species of wolves—namely, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... of the old ones are, if possible, more markedly in favour of my hypothesis; there is the same aggregation of grumous congealed matter about the ends of each cell, the same curious communication between these masses which hide the septa from view, evincing a greater or less tendency to assume the peculiar fuscesent or fusco-brown ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... by theft; others that they were coiners; and there were many who imagined, from the diabolical countenance of the older brother, that he had sold himself to the devil, who, they affirmed, set his mark upon him, and was his paymaster. Upon this hypothesis several were ready to prove that he had neither breath nor shadow; they had seen him, they said, standing under a hedge-row of elder—that unholy tree which furnished wood for the cross, and on which Judas hanged himself—yet, although it was noon-day in the month of July, his person ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... the history and development of Catholicism,[445] were it not for two voluminous writings which still continue to be regarded as monuments of the earliest epoch of syncretistic Jewish Christianity. Not only did Baur suppose that he could prove his hypothesis about the origin of Catholicism by the help of these writings, but the attempt has recently been made on the basis of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, for these are the writings in question, to go still ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... the enemies of the faith. AS THE TWO ACCOUNTS NOW STAND, it is wholly impossible to suggest any satisfactory method of UNITING THEM, every one who has attempted it has in some part or other of his hypothesis violated probability and common sense," but in spite of this, the Dean had no hesitation in accepting both the accounts. With reference to this the author of The Jesus of History (Williams and Norgate, 1866)—a work to which my brother admitted himself ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... Then coming to the pretty animal, as reason long since is fled to animals, you know, or indeed for the more modelising, or enamelling, or rather diamondising of your subject, you shall perceive the hypothesis, or galaxia, (whereof the meteors long since had their initial inceptions and notions,) to be merely Pythagorical, mathematical, and aristocratical — For, look you, sir, there is ever a kind of concinnity and species — ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... interval of darkness. And I now understood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear of the little Upper-world people for the dark. I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that the Morlocks did under the new moon. I felt pretty sure now that my second hypothesis was all wrong. The Upper-world people might once have been the favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks their mechanical servants: but that had long since passed away. The two species that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding down towards, ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... enough to contain the essential parts of a tomb; and then, year by year, would add fresh layers around the first core, until the time when his death for ever arrested the growth of the monument. But the facts do not justify this hypothesis. The smallest of the pyramids of Sakkarah is that of Unas, who reigned thirty years; while the two imposing pyramids of Gizeh were raised by Khufu and Khafra (Chephren), who governed Egypt, the one for twenty-four, and the other for twenty-three ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... to all sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which, though not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying him. To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... but were in some mysterious fashion "intimidated" by a disloyal minority. How, in the absence of any special means of coercion, one man can "intimidate" two was never explained any more than it is explained when the same absurd hypothesis is brought forward in relation to Irish agrarian and English labour troubles. At any rate in this case there is not, and never has been, the slightest justification for doubting that Secessionism was from the first a genuine popular movement, that it was enthusiastically embraced by hundreds of ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... have no satisfactory explanation to offer. He may have set his own judgment above Homer—a most unlikely hypothesis: he may have been consistently following, in the framework of his story, some original now lost to us: there may be more, and longer, lacunae in the text than any editors have ventured to indicate: but, whatever theory we adopt, it must be based ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... the admired couple strolled Detective Ransom, of the Central office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who could walk abroad with safety in the Stovepipe district. He was fair dealing and unafraid and went there with the hypothesis that the inhabitants were human. Many liked him, and now and then one would tip off to him something that he was ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... evidence of adherence to ancient tradition. Frequently in Dr. Steere's own experience the skeleton of the story seemed to be contained in these snatches of song, which were connected together by an account, apparently extemporized, of the intervening history. In these latter portions, if the hypothesis of extemporization were correct, the words of course would be different, but the substance might remain untouched. I suspect, however, that the extemporization was nothing like so complete as the learned writer imagined, but rather that the tale, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... he believes that if any man knew anything of the rules of Philosophy, that man was Sir Isaac Newton. The first chapter therefore deals with the generally recognized rules which govern philosophical reasoning, the same being three in number; the fundamental rule being, that in making any hypothesis, the results of experience as obtained by observation and experiments must not ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... regard your language as cant. As I listen to you I seem to see a hybrid between Prynne and Voltaire. So far from its being true that you have renounced the 'letter' of the Bible and retained its 'spirit,' I think it would be much more correct to say, comparing your infidel hypothesis with your most spiritual dialect, that you have renounced the 'spirit' of the Bible and ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... their own senses; that some, for venting unintelligible nonsense, pretended to think themselves superior to kings; that they gave themselves airs of accounting for all that we do and do not see-and yet, that no two of them agreed in a single hypothesis; that one thought fire, another water, the origin of all things; and that some were even so absurd and impious, as to displace God, and enthrone matter in his place. I do not mean to disparage such wise men, for we are really ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... sensation and motion. David Hartley, from whom this account of aether is chiefly borrowed, makes it the instrument of propagating those vibrations or configurative motions which are ideas. It appears to me, no hypothesis ever involved so many contradictions; for how can the same fluid be both dense and rare in the same body at one time? Yet in the Earth as gravitating to the Moon, it must be very rare; and in the Earth as gravitating to the Sun, it must be very dense. For as Andrew Baxter well observes, it doth ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... quite see the thing in this light, and yet she did not wish to contradict him. At this moment she forgot that in order to put herself on perfectly firm ground, she should have gone back to the first hypothesis, and assured him that she did not feel any such regard for him. Mr. Saul, whose intellect was more acute, took advantage of her here, and chose to believe that that matter of her affection was now conceded ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... new; the Republic and Laws of Plato, and More's Utopia, Howells' implicit Altruria, and Bellamy's future Boston, Comte's great Western Republic, Hertzka's Freeland, Cabet's Icaria, and Campanella's City of the Sun, are built, just as we shall build, upon that, upon the hypothesis of the complete emancipation of a community of men from tradition, from habits, from legal bonds, and that subtler servitude possessions entail. And much of the essential value of all such speculations lies in this assumption ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... of that I can ascertain only by experience. I am perfectly willing to have that power subjected to the severest tests which you can suggest, and I have no doubt at all, from the invariable experience of the last six years, that cures will be effected for which no existing scientific hypothesis can ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... poem is to demonstrate the self-existence of an eternal mind, from the created and dependent existence of the universe, and to confute the hypothesis of the Epicureans and the Fatalists, under whom all the patrons of impiety, ancient and modern, of whatsoever denomination may be ranged. The first of whom affirm, the world was in time caused by chance, and the other, that it existed from eternity without ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Chteau des Fleurs and the Prado to its Bonneveine terminus, alittle beyond the racecourse. Just behind the Bonneveine terminus is the Chteau Borly, containing the Muse d'Archologie, including a collection of Phoenician relics found in the neighbourhood, which support the hypothesis of the Phoenician origin of Marseilles. Open on Sundays and Thursdays. On the ground-floor are Roman mosaics, busts, altars, tombstones, jewellery, mummies; and in the end room is a stone with a Phoenician inscription, regulating the tariff of the prices ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Ireland going to do?' Public opinion was divided about the ultimate purpose of the poster. The majority expected the announcement of a new play or novel; a few held that a pill or a cocoa would be recommended. Next morning the question became more explicit, and the hypothesis of the play and the pill were excluded. 'What,' the new poster ran, 'is Ireland going to do for the Boers?' The public were not intensely anxious to find an answer to the conundrum thrust thus forcibly on their ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... correctness of Darwin's opinions, but, like that distinguished writer, he is obliged to take refuge behind the deficiency of the geological record, and to suppose facts and proofs may hereafter be discovered, when few are now known to favor the new hypothesis. We can see no more reason why a giraffe should have had a long neck, because he wished to crop the leaves of tall trees, than that mankind should have become winged, because in all times both children and men have wished to fly. Nor do we think Mr. Wallace's opinion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... no right to assume an impassable barrier. That is an inadmissible hypothesis. There is no such thing as a line of fortifications impassable ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... imagining any one spot to be the birthplace of the millions of millions of animalcula and confervae: for whence come the germs at such points?—the parent bodies having been distributed by the winds and waves over the immense ocean. But on no other hypothesis can I understand their linear grouping. I may add that Scoresby remarks that green water abounding with pelagic animals is invariably found in a certain ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of the accuracy of some of those who undertake to come forward as guides to the public on an occasion of great urgency and peril. By some of Sir Gilbert's abettors, we are assured that his "facts are perfectly reconcileable with the hypothesis of the cholera being of an infectious nature." A fig for all hypothesis just now! Let us have something like the old English trial by jury. May I be allowed to introduce a fresh evidence to the public notice, in addition to the thousand-and-one whose testimony is ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... the spirit of the age would inevitably drive her—to the great Pythian games of speculation, where the lordly intellects of the nineteenth century gather to test their ratiocinative skill, and bear off the crown of bay on the point of a syllogism or the wings of an audacious hypothesis. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... chance to hold the other four; he would have less territory and fewer subjects, but the like independence and an equal royalty. Now Mataafa, even if all debatable points were decided against him, is still Tuiatua, and as such, on this hypothesis, a sovereign prince. In the second place, the draughtsmen of the Act, waxing exceeding bold, employed the word "election," and implicitly justified all precedented steps towards the kingship according with the "customs of Samoa." I am not asking what was intended by the gentlemen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my hypothesis, I followed the unknown up to the bedroom, and saw him setting about his work. And it was with a catch in my own breath that I thought of the hideous shock with which he must have heard the sound of all others he was dreading ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... To the old metaphysical hypothesis of evolution Mr. Darwin gave a scientific basis. It had always been admitted that species were capable of slight variation and that this divergence might become hereditary and thus perhaps give rise to a variety ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... subject; but it is in the "Scienza Nuova" of Battista Vico, that we first meet with the germ of the theory, subsequently defended by Wolf with so much learning and acuteness. Indeed, it is with the Wolfian theory that we have chiefly to deal, and with the following bold hypothesis, which we will detail in ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... by this strange romance can only, I think be explained by this hypothesis. She was "dazed and bewildered," say some of the historians, evidently not knowing how to interpret so strange an interruption to her narrative; but there is no other sign of bewilderment; her mind was always clear and her intelligence complete. Granting that the whole story was boldly ironical, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... coadjutors had evidently still a lingering hope that the election might by some unforeseen contingency result in the choice of Breckinridge. On no other hypothesis can we account for the fact that on the 6th of November, when Northern ballots were falling in such an ample shower for Lincoln, the South Carolina Legislature, with due decorum and statute regularity, appointed Presidential electors for the State, and formally instructed ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember especially that for the efficient management of your common interests in a country so extensive as ours a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... the denier of persons, the democratizer—is banished because it jars too much on the desire for communion. Now, it is the very enjoyment of this element that throws many men upon the materialistic or agnostic hypothesis, as a polemic reaction against the contrary extreme. They sicken at a life wholly constituted of intimacy. There is an overpowering desire at moments to escape personality, to revel in the action of forces that have no respect for our ego, to let the tides flow, even ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... a gleam of light. Chupin had not thought of the only hypothesis that could explain what seemed inexplicable to him. However, he knew how to conceal his satisfaction, and so with an air of disappointment, he remarked: "That's too bad! I shall be obliged to ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... occasioned by the Revolution of France, before Europe can recover its long-lost order and repose. Had the subjects of Austria been as disaffected as they are loyal, the world might have witnessed such a terrible event, and been enabled to judge whether the hypothesis was the production of an ingenious schemer or of a profound statesman. Our armies under Bonaparte have never before penetrated into the heart of a country where subversion was not prepared, and where subversion did ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... intellectually, physically and morally. It has been claimed that the admixture of the Negro with the Caucasian has given us a resulting mulatto, weaker physically than either of the parent stock, but this statement is based upon hypothesis, and is not borne out by the facts in the case. It is true, however, that a resulting lowering of vitality has followed the admixture of "kindred blood," which was almost unavoidable during the days of slavery as the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... paragraph as it stood in the first edition, because it shows how near the true position of Caindu these unaided deductions from our author's data had carried me. That paragraph was followed by an erroneous hypothesis as to the intermediate part of that journey, but, thanks to the new light shed by Baron Richthofen, we are enabled now to lay down the whole itinerary from Ch'eng-tu fu to Yun-nan fu with ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... is the principal article in the theological creed of the Egyptians, Persians, Japanese, etc.; from whence it clearly follows, that some general revolution took place among these nations at that time. The chronology of five or six thousand years in Genesis is little agreeable to this hypothesis; but as the book of Genesis cannot claim to be considered as a history farther back than Abraham, we are at liberty to make what arrangements we please in the eternity that preceded. See on this subject the analysis of Genesis, in the first volume of New Researches ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... authoritative guidance. Into the business of forming literary taste faith enters. You probably will not specially care for a particular classic at first. If you did care for it at first, your taste, so far as that classic is concerned, would be formed, and our hypothesis is that your taste is not formed. How are you to arrive at the stage of caring for it? Chiefly, of course, by examining it and honestly trying to understand it. But this process is materially helped by an act of faith, ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... her because he blew her hypothesis to smithereens on his first appearance; for he was an Eton man, yet clearly he did not come within any of the ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Adams Enquiries, was not only proper for the Moral Reason which the Poet assigns, but because it would have been highly absurd to have given the Sanction of an Archangel to any particular System of Philosophy. The chief Points in the Ptolemaick and Copernican Hypothesis are described with great Conciseness and Perspicuity, and at the same time dressed in very ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Leadership.—As a working hypothesis, it may be averred that ability to influence environment betokens leadership. With such a measuring-rod in hand we may go out into the community and determine, with some degree of accuracy, who are leaders ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... feet high. But Professor Pavari says in recent correspondence (July 15, 1947) "Referring to Spanish chestnuts, after we have been assured that the fungus we have found and observed on Castanea crenata in Spain is really Endothia parasitica, we must admit that our hypothesis may be exact that Castanea vesca [sativa] presents in Spain races or types resistant to the disease." He goes on to say that the fact that the chestnut blight is so widespread at Naples and Avellino is at variance with my theory that cold winters are the predisposing cause, for in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... he has told us expressly that Ghosts 'preaches nothing at all.' This pursuit of truth to its most secret hiding-place is not a sermon against sin; it sets a scientific dogma visibly to work, and watches the effect of the hypothesis. As the dogma is terrible and plausible, and the logic of its working-out faultless, we get one of the deeper thrills that modern art has to give us. I would take A Doll's House, Ghosts, and The ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... intelligence may have attained. Let it not be supposed that I mean to dogmatise upon a subject, concerning which all men are equally ignorant, or that I think the Gordian knot of the origin of evil can be disentangled by that or any similar assertions. The received hypothesis of a Being resembling men in the moral attributes of His nature, having called us out of non-existence, and after inflicting on us the misery of the commission of error, should superadd that of the punishment and the privations ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... reproved or hindered than the winds. The poet's supremacy brought us to a wrong conclusion. The philosopher we assumed to be balanced, the poet to be unbalanced. Shelley, and Poe, and Heine, and Byron, and Burns elucidate this erroneous hypothesis of the poet. We pass lightly their misrule of themselves with a tacit assumption of their genius having shaken and shocked their moral faculties as ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... to discuss with such familiarity the tenets of these cloudy dreamers. Malwida loved them in a bland and childlike fashion. She would take one of their dicta as a starting-point—establish herself, so to speak, within this or that nebular hypothesis—and argue thence in academic fashion for the sake of intellectual exercise and the joy of seeing where, after a thousand twists and turnings, you were finally deposited. A friend of ours—some American—had lately published a Socratic dialogue entitled "The ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... "Ferguson,' in honor of Sir George Ferguson Bowen, Governor of Queensland, but there is little doubt that it is the Staaten of the Dutch navigators, or at least its southern branch. Should a northern branch eventually be discovered, which the delta and numerous ana-branches make a probable hypothesis, the stream explored by the brothers might with propriety retain the name they gave it. At eight miles from the start the character of the country changed from the prevailing flats, to a kind of barren sandstone and spenifex ridges. On pitching the camp the fishing-lines were put into requisition, ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... experiences of his life he had abundant material to furnish forth the facts of such a voyage, and in the weariness and lassitude that should follow a day's walking equally after a two years' voyage and two years' imprisonment, he had as much physical proof in favor of one hypothesis as the other. It was doubtless true, also, as he said, that he had gone to his house at dawn, and sat down on the threshold of his ruined home; and perhaps he felt the desire he had expressed to see his daughter, with a purpose of beginning life anew; ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Dene's spirits seemed lightened by the scene with Heyton; perhaps he had found that peculiar satisfaction which comes to all of us when we have relieved our minds by telling a man who has behaved badly and injured us what we think of him. But this hypothesis does not altogether account for the uplifting of Dene's mind. He had been going to commit suicide, because he was assured that everybody would regard him as one of the meanest of creatures, a forger and passer of ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... the modifications which can be brought about by altering the conditions of the experiments. The authors possess the great scientific virtue of never dogmatising. In the entire book not a single law is laid down, not a single hypothesis is advanced, which is not reached by the most approved inductive processes. A great service of the book lies in its enunciation of new and trustworthy methods for studying the physiology of the brain in health and disease, while it brings into the realm of physical experiment vexed ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... been considered greatly inferior to his other prose and poetical works; their modern editor is even of opinion that they were meant as parodies and satires on the vitiated taste of the time: but to find this hypothesis ridiculous, we have only to read them without any such prepossession. Had Cervantes entertained such a design, he would certainly have accomplished it in a very different way in one piece, and also in a manner ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... was honoured in N. America before the arrival of the Spaniards, and Sir R. Manley (Turk. Spy, vol. viii.) states that they found crucifixes also. Unfortunately for this hypothesis, it has been shown, by G. Becanus (Hierogl., see Index), Olaus Wormius (De Danicis Monumentis, see Index), M. Ficinus (De Vita coelitus Propaganda, l. iii. c. 18.), and Kircherus (Prodromus Coptus, p. 163.), that in various countries the cross was, ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... miserable. To his friends and acquaintances, who were unused to such finely wrought and even fantastic sorrows, his trouble seemed so exaggerated that they could only account for it on the ground of insanity. But there is no necessity of accepting this crude hypothesis; the coolest and most judicious of his friends deny that his depression ever went to such an extremity. Orville H. Browning, who was constantly in his company, says that his worst attack lasted only about a week; that during this time he was incoherent and distraught; but that in the course ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... that, since direct knowledge cannot spring from texts, Nescience is not terminated by the comprehension of the meaning of texts, disposes at the same time of the hypothesis of the so-called 'Release in this life' (jvanmukti). For what definition, we ask, can be given of this 'Release in this life'?—'Release of a soul while yet joined to a body'!—You might as well say, we reply, that ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... is described in a figure only as past or future. This is one of the great thoughts of early philosophy, which are still as difficult to our minds as they were to the early thinkers; or perhaps more difficult, because we more distinctly see the consequences which are involved in such an hypothesis. All the objections which may be urged against Kant's doctrine of the ideality of space and time at once press upon us. If time is unreal, then all which is contained in time is unreal—the succession of human thoughts as well ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... we are speaking of the dog, may I be allowed to present an extraordinarily profound hypothesis of my own? Is there not something highly characteristic of our national character in the fact that it is we who have produced this noble breed of dogs—the celebrated, pure Danish hounds? This strong, broad-chested animal with the heavy paws, the black ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... of person likely to trust his liberty, his life even, to the keeping of any other human being. I start from the hypothesis that he alone planned and carried out the crime, so I do not lift my hand and cry 'Impossible,' but I ask myself, 'How was it done?' Well, there are several methods worthy of consideration—clockwork, electricity, even a time fuse attached to the proper mechanism. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... enough, provided only he could get a few more men like himself: and indeed if the collection of just such a company of conspirators were practicable, no doubt the impossible might become possible enough. But the hypothesis is fatal, for the McCafferty strain is a rare one indeed, so that his project never got further than an idea. I think, however, that I cannot be accused of exaggeration in saying that if he had been successful in carrying out his idea, his achievement ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... time, although we may not accept the hypothesis that the cell is derived from a dolmen, Sir Arthur Evans may still be right in supposing the worship to have originated in a cult of the dead. But he was almost certainly wrong, as recent excavation has shown, in supposing that the cells ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... she was that one thing, which was probably the reason why in his mind's eye she was the only woman in the world, for Marian was ever present before Jingleberry's mental optic. He had also examined as thoroughly as he could in hypothesis the heart of this "only woman," and he had—or thought he had, which amounts to the same thing—reason to believe that she reciprocated his affection. She certainly seemed glad always when he was about; she called him by his first name, and sometimes quarrelled ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... acquaintance of many of the foremost scientific investigators, became a student in university lecture rooms and laboratories, an interested hearer in scientific conventions, and a correspondent of leading men of science at home and abroad. As a result, he came to the conclusion that the hypothesis of evolution is the only one which explains various leading facts in natural science. This he taught, and he also taught that such a view is not incompatible with a true view of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... gipsy face, and Evelyn Howard's warnings, but wisely decided to hold my peace, whilst Cynthia exhausted every possible hypothesis, and cheerfully hoped, "Aunt Emily will send him away, and will never ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... The inadequacy of the State to regulative tasks is agreed upon, as a matter of fact, by all. Why, then, bring State regulation into the discussion simply in order to throw it out again? The whole subject ought to be discussed and settled aside from the hypothesis of State regulation. ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... it clearer to the reader, Climate is a Hypothesis and Weather is a Reductio ad Absurdum. This explains why it invariably snows for the first time in years whenever one goes ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... them as early as the time of Justin. But they were refuted by Jerome, who showed that Hezekiah must, at that time, have already been at least nine years old. Kimchi and Abarbanel then resorted to the hypothesis of a ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... hen took charge of a nest of kittens, and resolutely maintained it against the parent cat. Here the case was different. The hen had become a trespasser. She had no business with kittens. There was no hypothesis by which she could claim them as her own. Kittens are not hereditary in the family of fowls, and she knew it. It was an usurpation without any pretext of justification. What would become of us if such a precedent could be extended to the genus Mammalia? ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... while the third star revolves with the other two, around a center common to all three, in a period of six or seven hundred years. But the movements of the third star are erratic, and inexplicable except upon the hypothesis advanced by Seeliger, that there is an invisible, or dark, star near it by whose attraction its motion ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... started for Cuba—the Spanish Admiral Cervera left the Cape Verde Islands. His force was a considerable one; his goal was unknown, although naturally believed to be some point in the Spanish West Indies. On the assumption that this hypothesis was a correct one, Sampson patrolled the northern coast of Cuba, extending his movement as far as Porto Rico, and scouts were placed out beyond Guadeloupe and Martinique. The entire nation anxiously awaited the outcome ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... in view Dodge made an experiment to test the hypothesis of anaesthesia. He proceeded as follows (ibid., p. 458): "A disc of black cardboard thirteen inches in diameter, in which a circle of one-eighth inch round holes, one half inch apart, had been punched close ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... opposite did not pay much attention, I think, to this hypothesis of mine. But while I was speaking about the sense of smell he nestled about in his seat, and presently succeeded in getting out a large red bandanna handkerchief. Then he lurched a little to the other side, and after much tribulation at last extricated an ample ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mistakes, by the hypothesis, themselves punish him who made them, without any resentment whatsoever, or Nemesis of the Gods being required ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... mankind began with the Homo Alalus, speechless, dumb man, an hypothesis now looked npon by the best authorities as untenable; and the folk have imagined that, were not certain procedures gone through with upon the new-born child, it would remain dumb through life, and, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... his contemporaries with scorn, they triumphed over this publication, and imitated him to expose him. Many wretched burlesque prints came out to ridicule his system. There was a better answer to it in one of the two prints that he gave to illustrate his hypothesis. In "The Ball," had he confined himself to such outlines as compose awkwardness and deformity, he would have proved half his assertion; but he has added two samples of grace in a young lord and lady that are strikingly stiff and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... consider the effect on my mind and subsequent movements, of the information, thus reliably obtained, that the battle was won. What inducement could I have had to march away from or linger on the road to a victory? Upon the hypothesis that the good news was true, how could I have imagined, (had there been so much as a doubt as to the intent of the order received,) a necessity for ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... proof of it, after the first effect of these events had left me I began to question my first impressions and feel tolerably ashamed of my past credulity. Though the phenomenon we had observed could not to all appearance be explained by any natural hypothesis; though I had seen, and my wife had seen, a strange woman suddenly become visible in a room which a moment before had held no one but ourselves, and into which no live woman could have entered without our knowledge, something—was it my natural good sense?—recoiled ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... work of induction, and cannot stand against experience, or stand on anything but experience. But this maxim, or definition, or whatever else it may be, sets facts at defiance. If you go back to antiquity, you will obtain no countenance for this hypothesis; and if you look at home you will gain still less. I have read that Sparta, and Rome, and Athens, and many others of the ancient family, were republics. They were so in form undoubtedly—the last approaching nearer to a perfect democracy than any other government which has ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... triangular recesses in the bricks, of nearly similar shape, and it seems equally strange that all the marbles should have fallen from it, or that it should have been originally destitute of them. The reader may choose his hypothesis; but there is quite enough left to interest us in the lower band, which is fortunately left in its original state, as is sufficiently proved by the curious niceties in the arrangement of its colors, which are assuredly to be attributed to the care of the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... sufficiently detailed the theory in speaking of Hipparchus. It should be explained, however, that, with both Hipparchus and Ptolemy, the theory of epicycles would appear to have been held rather as a working hypothesis than as a certainty, so far as the actuality of the minor spheres or epicycles is concerned. That is to say, these astronomers probably did not conceive either the epicycles or the greater spheres as constituting actual solid substances. Subsequent generations, however, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... that ancestral spirits are the centre of the badnjak observances, we may regard the libations upon the fire as intended for their benefit. On the sun and vegetation hypothesis, however, the libations would be meant to secure, by homoeopathic magic, that sunshine should alternate with the rain necessary for the welfare of plants.[99]{8} The fertilizing powers possessed by the sparks and ashes of the Christmas log appear frequently ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... that it is lighter than ordinary air, it might be believed that the phlogiston united with this air makes it lighter, as appears to be known already from other experiments. But since phlogiston is a substance, which always presupposes some weight, I much doubt whether such hypothesis has any foundation.... ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... excite this disturbance, very perverse must be the disposition of that people amongst whom such a disturbance can be excited by such means. It is besides no small aggravation of the public misfortune that the disease, on this hypothesis, appears to be without remedy. If the wealth of the nation be the cause of its turbulence, I imagine it is not proposed to introduce poverty as a constable to keep the peace. If our dominions abroad are the roots which feed all ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... alleviated by the good sense of their commentator Barbeyrac. Locke's Treatise of Government instructed me in the knowledge of Whig principles, which are rather founded in reason than experience; but my delight was in the frequent perusal of Montesquieu, whose energy of style, and boldness of hypothesis, were powerful to awaken and stimulate the genius of the age. The logic of De Crousaz had prepared me to engage with his master Locke and his antagonist Bayle; of whom the former may be used as a bridle, and the latter applied as a spur, to the curiosity ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... be understood, at the outset, that every proved theory of science is to be accepted. Only the most intense prejudice and the maddest folly would lead any one to reject the proved conclusions of science. Moreover, we should examine any new hypothesis with open minds, to see if it has in it anything truthful, helpful or advantageous. It should neither be accepted nor rejected simply because it is new. But if a theory is evidently or probably untrue, or pernicious, or at all harmful, it is ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... America—that is, all white men—are "free and equal;" and every thing that has been done in her political world for the last half century has gone to illustrate and carry out this somewhat intractable hypothesis. Upon this principle, the vote of John Jacob Astor, with his twenty-five millions of dollars, is neutralized by that of the Irish pauper just cast upon its shores. The millionaire counts one, and so does the dingy unit of Erin, though the former counts for himself, and the latter for his demagogue ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... and exhaustive study, to have accounted for the rich variety of life without the supposition of a special creation for each form. But the time was ripe and longing for what he supplied and his hypothesis was quickly taken and applied in almost every field of thought. Nor does it greatly matter that Darwinism has been and may be still greatly modified. We have come under the spell of evolution. Our universe is no longer a static thing; it is growing and changing. Our imaginations are impressed by ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... selection of cases would have to be arbitrary, and would be at the mercy of any objection. To any one who should say, But this is not beautiful, and should not be included in your inventory, answer could be made only by showing that it had such and such qualities, the very, by hypothesis, unknown qualities that were to be sought. Moreover, the field of beauty contains so many and so heterogeneous objects , that the retreat to their only common ground, aesthetic feeling, appears inevitable. ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... imaginations are not treated as fact, or even theory, but only as working hypotheses,—a kind of hypotheses which, properly treated, is essential to the progress of every scientific man. Let us imagine, then, as a working hypothesis, that our subliminal self—the other, the greater part of us—is in touch with another order of existence, and that it is occasionally able to communicate, or somehow, perhaps unconsciously, transmit ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... imitation of an action deserving of pity, and, therefore, tragic imitation is opposed to historic imitation. It would only be a historic imitation if it proposed a historic end, if its principal object were to teach us that a thing has taken place, and how it took place. On this hypothesis it ought to keep rigorously to historic accuracy, for it would only attain its end by representing faithfully that which really took place. But tragedy has a poetic end, that is to say, it represents an action to move us, and to charm our souls by the medium ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... He worked out the hypothesis of the matrimonial offer as he would have reasoned out the probabilities in a law case ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of the ultra-gaseous state of matter is advanced merely as a working hypothesis, which, in the present state of our knowledge, may be regarded as a necessary help to be retained only so long as it proves useful. In experimental research early hypotheses have necessarily to be modified, or adjusted, or perhaps entirely abandoned, in deference to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... absolute zero. Decide, O Queen; poor Louis can decide nothing: execute this Flight-project, or at least abandon it. Correspondence with Bouille there has been enough; what profits consulting, and hypothesis, while all around is in fierce activity of practice? The Rustic sits waiting till the river run dry: alas with you it is not a common river, but a Nile Inundation; snow melting in the unseen mountains; till all, and you where you sit, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Pietro Aretino will confirm this statement, in its first premise, and the experiences of Sir Richard Burton in the India of Napier, and Harry Franck's, in Spain, in the present century, and those of any intelligent observer in the Orient, today, will but bear out this hypothesis. The native population of Manila contains more than its proportion of catamites, who seek their sponsors in the Botanical Gardens and on the Luneta. The native quarters of the Chinese cities have their "houses" where boys are kept, just as the Egyptian ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... that he could n't fix his mind on the newspaper whilst his own literary product was under scrutiny. The latter unfolded itself as a unique example of pure deduction, aided by utter lack of discrimination in the value of evidence. It was all synthesis, and no analysis. A certain hypothesis had to be established, and it was established. The style was directly antithetical to that curt, blunt, and simple pronouncement aimed at by innocents who deceive no one by denouncing Socialism, Trades-Unionism, &c., over the signature of "A Working Man." But the Essay. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... in her tones that was almost solemn, and as the lawyer looked into her clear, young face his former vague hypothesis that his ward was being blackmailed faded forever from his mind. Whatever the situation confronting her might be, she was the prime mover and the initiative was hers. What strange motive could lurk behind her calm surety and ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... natural condition, its return to that condition being declared by the current observed at breaking the circuit. He called this hypothetical state of the wire the electro-tonic state: he afterwards abandoned this hypothesis, but seemed to return to it in after life. The term electro-tonic is also preserved by Professor Du Bois Reymond to express a certain electric condition of the nerves, and Professor Clerk Maxwell has ably defined and illustrated ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... said my father, in great admiration, "you ask just the question which it is most difficult to answer. An ingenious speculator on races contends that the Danes, whose descendants make the chief part of our northern population, (and indeed if his hypothesis could be correct, we must suppose all the ancient worshipers of Odin,) are of the same origin as the Etrurians. And why, Kitty, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Hypothesis complicating thought, it simplifies by synthesis and co-ordination in a manner analogous to that by which plane geometry is simplified when solid geometry becomes a subject of study. By immersing the mind in the idea of many dimensions, we emancipate it from the idea of dimensionality. But the ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... No hypothesis has yet been formulated which will account for the structure of the corona, or for its variation in shape. The great difficulty with regard to theorising upon this subject, is the fact that we see so much of the corona under ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... represents, and gives ingenious reasons to prove, that those gospels are Compilations from pre-existing documents, written by nobody knows who. So that the pieces from which the three first gospels were composed were, according to this Hypothesis, anonymous, and the gospels themselves written by we do not know what authors; and yet, you know sir, that these patch-work narratives of miracles have passed not only ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... Davis], Sumter will have been evacuated." The commissioners who received those communications conclude they have been abused and overreached. The Montgomery Government hold the same opinion. The commissioners have supposed that my communications were with you, and upon the [that] hypothesis were prepared to arraign you before the country, in connection with the President. I placed a peremptory prohibition upon this, as being contrary to the terms of my communications with them. I pledged myself to them to communicate information, upon what I considered as the best authority, and they ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... reenforced by much experience among miners, the probabilities of extension are somewhat in proportion to the length and width of each ore-body. For instance, in the A mine, with an ore-shoot 1000 feet long and 10 feet wide, on its bottom level, the minimum extension under this hypothesis would be a wedge-shaped ore-body with its deepest point 500 feet below the lowest level, or a minimum of say 200,000 tons. Similarly, the B mine with five ore-bodies, each 300 hundred feet long and 10 feet wide, exposed on its lowest level, would have a minimum of five wedges 100 feet deep ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... should not two equally big brain activities sometimes occur at the same moment, and attention thus be divided? The only promising hypothesis that has been offered to explain the absence of divided attention is that of "neurone drainage", according to which one or the other of two neurone groups, simultaneously aroused to activity, drains off the energy from the other, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Archipelago to the marginal waters off the portion of the coast of Siberia lying east of the New Siberian Islands. But De Long's party observed tides at Bennett Island in 1881. From these observations it is seen that the diurnal tide has a much smaller range than would be permissible under the hypothesis of deep water in the portion of the Arctic Basin just referred to. The diurnal tides at Pitlekaj, Point Barrow, and Flaxman Island are, as noted below, also too small to permit of this hypothesis. The smallness of the diurnal tide in the cases cited can probably be explained on no other assumption ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... made that at first he set himself to commenting on the Talmud, and then on the Bible, because at the end of his life he expressed the wish that he might begin the Biblical commentary all over again. But this hypothesis is not justified. The unfinished state of both commentaries, especially the one on the Talmud, shows that he worked on them at the same time. But they were not written without interruption, not "in one spurt," as the ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... Vardaman] from public life. Why? Because he refused at all times to obey the commands which were issued for his direction. The junior Senator from Georgia [Mr. Hardwick] suffered the same fate. How do you hope to escape? . . . My Democratic friends are either proceeding upon the hypothesis that the President is insincere or that they may be able to secure an immunity from him that these other unfortunate aspirants for office failed ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens |
