"Hypothetical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yet. It's a hypothetical question—yes, hypothetical. I'm sure that's what I want to say. Hypo—hypothetical question. Question; yes, that's right. Now, suppose you'd been a pretty wild young shark, and had kept your mother anxious and miserable, and had drifted into ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... be discovered, I shall still continue to believe that it is more safe to trust what we have already tried; and cannot but think bread a product of too much importance to be made the sport of subtilty, and the topick of hypothetical disputation. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... original of Marco Polo to render intelligible. We can suppose a tribe of Indians or Blacks not far from Gombroon, to have been under the rule of a mussel man Sultan, and conquered or subverted by a Tartar expedition from Touran, or the north of Persia: But this remains a mere hypothetical explanation.—E. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... party, when the necessity of seeming impartial procures for the opposite arguments a much more fair statement than that which he affords it in tacit meditation. Having finished what he had to say, David thought himself obliged to be more explicit in point of fact, and to explain that this was no hypothetical case, but one on which (by his own influence and that of the Duke of Argyle) Reuben Butler would soon ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... may not be improper to record, nevertheless, that the confessions of two persons, (one of them the Madame Deluc of the narrative) made, at different periods, long subsequent to the publication, confirmed, in full, not only the general conclusion, but absolutely all the chief hypothetical details by which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... philosophy of nature that the natural history of this earth is to be studied; and we must not allow ourselves ever to reason without proper data, or to fabricate a system of apparent wisdom in the folly of a hypothetical delusion. ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... is no such necessity for a continental origin; indeed at the first view, the probabilities are in favour of its having originated in Britain. It cannot be found on the continent; and, such being the case, its continental origin is hypothetical. One thing, however, is certain, viz., that if the Gaelic were once the only language of the British Isles, the conquests and encroachments of the Britons who displaced it, must have been enormous. In the whole of South Britain it must certainly have been superseded, and in half ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... other words, the obvious deduction is to set the turbine relief valve to blow off at a higher pressure than the condenser relief valve, even when considering the question with respect to condensing conditions only. In this second hypothetical case, then, with a closed and disabled atmospheric valve, the exhaust must take place through the condenser, until the turbine can be shut down, or the circulating water regained without the ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... overblocking or precision is measured by the proportion of the things a classification system assigns to a certain category that are appropriately classified. The plaintiffs' expert, Dr. Nunberg, provided the hypothetical example of a classification system that is asked to pick out pictures of dogs from a database consisting of 1000 pictures of animals, of which 80 were actually dogs. If it returned 100 hits, of which ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... the ascent to the idea of good, to which she fastens them, and then again descends, walking firmly in the region of ideas, and of ideas only, in her ascent as well as descent, and finally resting in them. 'I partly understand,' he replied; 'you mean that the ideas of science are superior to the hypothetical, metaphorical conceptions of geometry and the other arts or sciences, whichever is to be the name of them; and the latter conceptions you refuse to make subjects of pure intellect, because they have no first principle, although when resting on a first principle, they pass into ...
— The Republic • Plato
... peace-loving Northern white men and Negro opportunists that the political power of the Negro having long ago been suppressed by unlawful means, his right to vote is a mere paper right, of no real value, and therefore to be lightly yielded for the sake of a hypothetical harmony, is fatally short-sighted. It is precisely the attitude and essentially the argument which would have surrendered to the South in the sixties, and would have left this country to rot in slavery for another generation. White men do not thus ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... from the center of the Circle; from the crux of creation; and he finds the X, which is the hypothetical base of algebraical science—the unknown quantity of which sex is the symbol. Reasoning from effect back to cause and from cause forward to effect the mystic finds the equation complete, perfect, and likewise simple; but it is simple only after we have deciphered it. Like the prize ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... one of the most striking and ingenious scientific romances that we have ever read. The writer of it is a bold man; he has undertaken to give a hypothetical history of creation, beginning, as the title-pages say, at the earliest period, and coming down to the present day. It is not quite so authentic as that of Moses, nor is it written with such an air of simplicity ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... contradictions, and such strange hypothetical adjustments and re-adjustments of the data and calculations, entirely upset the groundless and extraordinary theory of the base of the pyramid being a standard of linear measurement; or a segment of any ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... mysteries of the cosmos, the most phenomenal is light. Unlike sound-waves, whose transmission requires air or other material media, light-waves pass freely through the vacuum of interstellar space. Even the hypothetical ether, held as the interplanetary medium of light in the undulatory theory, can be discarded on the Einsteinian grounds that the geometrical properties of space render the theory of ether unnecessary. Under either hypothesis, light remains the most subtle, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... is a large one." He smiled amusedly at the thought of this hypothetical collection, and the grandiloquent tone in which he referred to it. "I can not say, offhand, just what varieties ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... be. But so far we have only hypothetical suppositions, or rather certainties which are personal to myself. We shall never intercept the guillotine with those. Ah, if we could only find the bank-notes! Given the bank-notes, M. Dudouis would act. Without them, he will ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... prevalence rate of 2.7%, which represents the cumulative result of the past incarceration experiences of the living adult population, the lifetime likelihood is a hypothetical projection of the future if a birth cohort were to experience a fixed set of rates of first incarceration and mortality over ...
— Prevalence of Imprisonment in the U.S. Population, 1974-2001 • Thomas P. Bonczar
... with simple lesions of known origin, but with the effects of disease and degeneration, of the essential character of which the Hippocratic writers could in the nature of the case know very little. Rigidly guarding themselves from any attempt to explain disease by more immediate and hypothetical causes and thus diverting the reader's energies in the medically useless direction of vague speculation—the prevalent mental vice of the Greeks—the best of these physicians are content if they can put forward generalized conclusions from actually observed ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... commences with a drawing on a blackboard of a "regulation workhouse, a board school, a free library, a lamp post, a water-cart, a dustman, a policeman, a steam roller, a navvy or two, and a long-handled shovel stuck in a heap of soil." A hypothetical payer of rates, "Mrs Smith," is revealed as getting a great deal ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... To take a hypothetical case, suppose that misfortune visits the home of John H. Jones, who lives at 79 Liberty Street. A defective flue sets his house on fire and it burns to the ground. By inquiry we find that the house is worth about ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... suggest that after the people of the Mediterranean regions had become well civilized and after those of America were also sufficiently civilized to assimilate new ideas, a stray ship or two was blown by the trade-winds across the Atlantic. That hypothetical voyage was the precursor of the great journey of Columbus. Without the tradewinds this historic discoverer never could have found the West Indies. Suppose that a strong west wind had blown him backward on his course when his men ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... court; he is surrounded with sheets of foolscap folio paper, tied up with a red string; he has more books than one could read in a year, or comprehend in seven; he walks slowly, speaks hesitatingly, and receives fees from those who visit him, for giving "hypothetical answers" ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... church, not the pulpit only, but the secrets of the study, were explored for proofs of opposition to the power then predominant; when the private desk and drawers of the poor obscure country clergyman were ransacked, and his half-formed studies of sermons, his rude sketches and hypothetical notes of sermons yet to be—which might or might not be—put down for private purposes perhaps, and never intended to be preached—were produced by Government as an excuse for subjecting him to indignities and cruelties to which those practised upon the Duke of Kent and the Duke of Gloster, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... distraction—even windows. Visual motion was, however, provided by a giant clock. The only concessions to Ev were a special little hutch for the super-mongoose; and a bar, carefully regulated to make certain he never completely blotted out the hypothetical brainwave "network." ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... not to be behindhand, composed more elaborate pieces in proof of their wit; and that, finally, Goldsmith resolved to bind these fugitive lines of his together in a poem, which he left unfinished, and which, under the name of Retaliation, was published after his death. This hypothetical account receives some confirmation from the fact that the scheme of the poem and its component parts do not fit together well; the introduction looks like an after-thought; and has not the freedom ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... of hay, in excess of the amount required to keep up the animal heat and sustain the vital functions, gives us 200 lbs. of cheese. The point I wish to illustrate by these figures, which are of course hypothetical, is, that it is exceedingly desirable to get animals that will eat, digest, and assimilate a large amount of food, over and above that required to keep up the heat of the body and sustain the vital ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... resurrection body. Belief in a resurrection of the physical body, despite St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, had been incorporated into the formula evolved during the early Christian centuries and known as the Apostles' Creed, and was held throughout Christendom, "always, everywhere, and by all." This hypothetical bone was therefore held in great veneration, and many anatomists sought to discover it; but Vesalius, revealing so much else, did not find it. He contented himself with saying that he left the question regarding the existence of such a bone to the theologians. He could ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... that a very far-reaching instance, in which, in the debatable question whether there really was an authoritative revision of the so-called Syrian text at about A.D. 350, Dr. Hort speaks of this Syrian revision as a vera causa, as opposed to a hypothetical possibility. This tendency in a subject so complicated as that of textual criticism must be taken note of by the student, and must introduce some element of hesitation in the acceptance of confidently expressed decisions when the subject-matter may ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... them to her." "O lady, beware! At this moment, around me I search everywhere For a clew to your words"— "You mistake them," she said, Half fearing, indeed, the effect they had made. "I was putting a mere hypothetical case." With a long look of trouble he gazed in her face. "Woe to him,..." he exclaim'd... "woe to him that shall feel Such a hope! for I swear, if he did but reveal One glimpse,—it should be the last hope of his life!" The clench'd hand ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... much thought as any aspect of the arrangements. The trouble is that however honest you are—and your honesty has been tested repeatedly—and however strong your imagination—about half of your training has been devoted to developing it—you can't possibly be sure, answering a hypothetical question, that you are giving the answer you would choose if you knew it was asked ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... the changing seasons, and the anatomy of the human body were the chief subjects of study. The human cadaver was never dissected, but a knowledge of anatomy was obtained from diagrams which were wholly hypothetical. In early times medical officers were appointed to experiment with medicines upon monkeys, and also to dissect the bodies of monkeys. From these dissections, as well as from the printed diagrams of Chinese books the imperfect knowledge which they had reached was ...
— Japan • David Murray
... parallel to that one connecting the Asses' Ears, Lot's Wife, and probably Lot. The number of these masses of injected rock is a remarkable feature in the geology of St. Helena. Besides those just mentioned, and the hypothetical one beneath Flagstaff Hill, there is Little Stony-top and others, as I have reason to believe, at the Man-and-Horse, and at High Hill. Most of these masses, if not all of them, have been injected subsequently to the last volcanic eruptions ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... universe. Being dependent for our vocabulary on images, if an altogether new and foreign set of Laws existed in the Spiritual World, they could never take shape as definite ideas from mere want of words. The hypothetical new Laws which may remain to be discovered in the domain of Natural or Mental Science may afford some index of these hypothetical higher Laws, but this would of course mean that the latter were no longer ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... astronomer commences afresh with an amended orbit. At last after many trials, Le Verrier ascertained that, by assuming a certain size, shape, and position for the unknown Planet's orbit, and a certain value for the mass of the hypothetical body, it would be possible to account for the observed disturbances of Uranus. Gradually it became clear to the perception of this consummate mathematician, not only that the difficulties in the movements of Uranus could be thus explained, but that no other explanation need be sought for. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... proximate compounds, more or less stable, from organic structures. It has invented others which form the basis of long series of well-known composite substances. In fact, we are perhaps becoming overburdened with our list of proximate principles, demonstrated and hypothetical. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to becoming a tree. That would be to carry over into the tree's existence notions borrowed from an alien sphere. Indeed, to assert that there has been any genuine development from the seed up to the finished tree is to use terms in an accommodated, metaphoric, and hypothetical way. Development there certainly has been as estimated by an outsider, an onlooker, but not as perceived by the tree itself. It has not known where it was going. Out of the unknown earth the seed ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... phylogeny. From the facts of development of the individual, from the comparison of fossils in successive strata, they set to work at the construction of pedigrees, and strove to bring into line the principles of classification with the more or less hypothetical "stemtrees." Driesch considered this futile, since we never could reconstruct from such evidence anything certain in the history of the past. He therefore asserted that a more complete knowledge of ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... conception of human nature constructed in all good faith by certain eighteenth-century philosophers, which is now no longer exactly believed in, but which, because nothing else has taken its place, still exercises a kind of shadowy authority in a hypothetical universe. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... for the funds. Opportunely enough, a small theatre on the boulevard happened to be for sale, as a result of the failure of its manager. Delobelle mentioned it to Risler, at first very vaguely, in a wholly hypothetical form—"There would be a good chance to make a fine stroke." Risler listened with his usual phlegm, saying, "Indeed, it would be a good thing for you." And to a more direct suggestion, not daring ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... itself. I think of something which I may perhaps best describe as being off the stage or out of court, or as the Void without Implications, or as Nothingness, or as Outer Darkness. This is a sort of hypothetical Beyond to the visible world of human thought, and thither I think all negative terms reach at last, and merge and become nothing. Whatever positive class you make, whatever boundary you draw, straight away from ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... D'Apres achieved for the French, Alexander Dalrymple accomplished for the English. His views, however, bordered on the hypothetical, and he believed in the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... they complained, was created in seven days, and why should so fine a ship take longer to cross a comparatively small ocean? Urbanely, over coffee and petite fours, Gissing argued with them. They were well on their way, he protested; and then, as a hypothetical case, he asked why one destination was more worth visiting than another? He even quoted Shakespeare on this point—something about "ports and happy havens"—and succeeded in turning the tide of conversation for a while. The mention of Shakespeare suggested to some of the ladies that it would be ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... central fire; indeed, their existence offers, I think, an argument for believing that the interior of the globe is fluid." The stranger answered: "I beg you to consider the views I have been developing as merely hypothetical, one of the many resting places that may be taken by the imagination in considering this subject. There are, however, distinct facts in favour of the idea that the interior of the globe has a higher temperature than the surface; the heat increasing in ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... activities in every possible way, and to make little private temporary islands of light and refinement amidst the general disorder and decay. All collectivist schemes, all rational Socialism, if only Socialists would realise it, all hope for humanity, indeed, are dependent ultimately upon the hypothetical possibility of a better system of government than ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... exaggerated presentations of notorious facts. That they were largely founded upon facts Judge Willis probably knew from common hearsay. But while sitting on the bench he had nothing to do with common hearsay. A fortiori, he was not justified, upon the mere assumption of a hypothetical case,[102] in admonishing the Attorney-General in the presence of his accuser, and in humiliating him in the presence of the bar of which he was the rightful head. An English judge would be considered as ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... branches of the gentes may have corresponded to the distinction between the Kshatriyas and Vaishyas, though as practically nothing is known of the constitution of the original Kshatriyas, this can only be hypothetical. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... which underlie the most practical of the sciences; so is every forecast of genius by virtue of which knowledge is extended; so is every principle of knowledge not completely worked out. To say that philosophy is hypothetical implies no charge, other than that which can be levelled, in the same sense, against the most solid body of scientific knowledge in the world. The fruitful question in each case alike is, how far, if at all, does the hypothesis enable us ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... tweedledee reminds me of Heidelberg days, when a few of us roamed about the Odenwald, chopping off flowers with our canes and discussing philosophy. Rare jargon we made of it; talking of cosmothetie idealism or hypothetical dualism, of noetic and dianoetic principles, of hylozoism and hypostasis, and demonstrating the most undemonstrable propositions by appeals to the law of contradiction or of excluded middle. I fancied then that I was growing very learned—wondered ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... earlier than any attempts at declension in nouns. No one who has read Curtius' arguments in support of this chronological arrangement would deny their extreme plausibility; but there are grave difficulties which made me hesitate in adopting this hypothetical framework of linguistic chronology. Ishall only mention one, which seemed to me insurmountable. We know that during what we called the First Radical Period the sway of phonetic laws was already so firmly established, that, from that period onward to ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... cannot allow you to read the alleged statements of a hypothetical witness who is acknowledged to have been dead for nearly two thousand years. I cannot admit the alleged letters of ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... alias Van Busch, otherwise the man who had come in through the enemy's lines as a runner from Diamond Town, bringing the letter from a hypothetical Mrs. Casey to a Mr. Casey who did not exist. His light eyes, that were set flat in their shallow orbits like an adder's, looked about and all around the place, as he stroked the dense brake of black-brown ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... if one proceeds steadily in his investigations from this historic point, then a stop is put, once and for all, to the demand for final solutions and for eternal truths; one is firmly conscious of the necessary limitations of all acquired knowledge, of its hypothetical nature, owing to the circumstances under which it has been gained. One cannot be imposed upon any longer by the inflated insubstantial antitheses of the older metaphysics of true and false, good and evil, identical and differentiated, necessary and accidental; one knows ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... the 'Fiji Times,' corresponded exactly with the description published by Mr. Basil Thomson, himself a witness. The interesting point, historically, is the combination in Home of all the repertoire of the possessed men in Iamblichus. We certainly cannot get rid of the fire-trick by aid of a hypothetical 'non-conducting substance.' Till the 'substance' is tested experimentally it is not a vera causa. We might as well say 'spirits' at once. Both that 'substance' and those 'spirits' are equally 'in the air.' ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... presents very considerable difficulties, as many circumstances, which are likely to modify the result, may escape notice during the experiments. It has been said, that as water is most dense at from 37 to 39 Fahrenheit, this may be presumed to be the mean temperature at the bottom of the sea; but such hypothetical deductions are, perhaps, entitled to little confidence. It may however be safely enough presumed, that the temperature of the sea is kept tolerably uniform on the well-known principle of statics, that the heavier columns ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... and obliged the officials to accept the actual penny stamp for the fourpenny stamp you meant to put, and we paid just nothing for the terrible letter! Take heart, therefore, in future, before all hypothetical misfortunes. That's the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... primary task of the anthropologist, it is evident that the logical methods of the science will attain a complexity far exceeding those hitherto in vogue. I believe that the only logical process which will in general be found possible will be the formulation of hypothetical working schemes into which the facts can be fitted, and that the test of such schemes will be their capacity to fit in with themselves, or, as we generally express it, "explain" new facts as they come to our knowledge. This is the method of other ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... question were formed into the first proposition of an hypothetical syllogism, I defy the man born in Ireland, who is now in the fairest way of getting a collectorship, or a cornet's post, to give a good reason for ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... sect of Epicurus, whose principles concerning the eternity of matter, the materiality of the soul, and the non-existence of a future state of rewards and punishments, he affects to maintain with a certainty equal to that of mathematical demonstration. Strongly prepossessed with the hypothetical doctrines of his master, and ignorant of the physical system of the universe, he endeavours to deduce from the phenomena of the material world conclusions not only unsupported by legitimate theory, but repugnant ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... for years, and that subsequently the Attorney General may conclude that it was a violation of the statute, and that which was supposed by the combiners to be innocent then turns out to be a combination in violation of the statute. The answer to this hypothetical case is that when men attempt to amass such stupendous capital as will enable them to suppress competition, control prices and establish a monopoly, they know the purpose of their acts. Men do not do such a thing without having it clearly in mind. If what they do is merely for the purpose ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Now that hypothetical reader will say, "Why didn't that silly old fool, Allan, think of all these things? Why didn't he remember that he was commanding a pack of savages with whom he had no real acquaintance, among whom there were sure to be ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... his law in the orderly-room, where the qualifications to practise are an irritable temper and a loud voice. However, the practical point is, inspector, that the warrant is irregular. You can't arrest people for hypothetical crimes." ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... during the ages of this retrospect, have been realized by an incomparably less exhausting series of exertion, an exertion, indeed, continually renovating its own resources. Imagined good, we said;—alas! the evil stands in long and awful display on the ground of history; the hypothetical good presents itself as a dream; with this circumstance only of difference from a dream, that there is resting on the conscience of beings somewhere still existing, a fearful accountableness for its ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... inconclusive, because, as it is speculatively certain that the substance of mind must be unknowable, it seems a priori probable that, whatever is the cause of the unknowable reality, this cause should be more difficult to render into thought in that relation than would some other hypothetical substance which is imagined as more akin to mind. And if it is said that the more conceivable cause is the more probable cause, we have seen that it is in this case impossible to estimate the validity of the remark. Lastly, the statement that the cause must ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... illustrate, too, at the very outset of naval history, the vital truth that the man counts more than the machine. In these later days, when the tendency is to measure naval power merely by counting dreadnoughts, and to settle all hypothetical combats by the proportion of strength at a given point on the game board, it is well to remember that the most overwhelming victories have been won by the skill and audacity of a great leader, which overcame odds that would be reckoned by ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... lowermost next the Earth, will be to the extension of the next below the uppermost, as 1. to 999. for as the pressure sustained by the 999. is to the pressure sustain'd by the first, so is the extension of the first to the extension of the 999. so that, from this hypothetical calculation, we shall find the Air to be indefinitely extended: For if we suppose the whole thickness of the Air to be divided, as I just now instanced, into a thousand parts, and each of those under ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... poem is omitted. Instead, the final page compresses the last two pages (one full page plus seven lines of text and a four-line footnote) of the 1851 edition into one, using a noticeably smaller font. 1870? New York, Leavitt & Allen. The date is hypothetical, based on librarian's notation. The book is probably a reprint of the 1836 Boston edition, which has the same page count (significantly different from other known editions); 1836 is also a plausible date ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... spare Wilton as much as possible, but, as neither of them felt satisfied to do this on their own authority, they sought Power's advice and, as he too felt very doubtful on the matter, he suggested that they should put it to Dr Lane, without mentioning any names, as a hypothetical case, and be finally guided by ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Church ever since. But of the intermediate period between the close of the first century and the close of the second, the notices are sparse, the literature is scanty and fragmentary. Hence modern criticism has busied itself with hypothetical reconstructions of Christian history during this interval. It has been maintained that the greater part of the writings of our Canon were unknown and unwritten at the beginning of this period. It has been supposed that there was a complete discontinuity in the career ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... that there was sin, error, or mistake, but requests forgiveness for whatsoever there may have been. The character of Rebecca Nurse, and the outrageous treatment she had received from that church, in the method arranged for her excommunication, demanded something more than these hypothetical expressions, with ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... but admire Joan's splendid detachment in speaking of Alec's hypothetical wife. His thin lips creased in a satirical grin. "Is that it," said he, "the everlasting religious difficulty? No, my belle, tell that to the marines, or, at any rate, to some guileless person not versed in Kosnovian history! There never yet was bloodstained ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... critics, so different from each other as Dr. Johnson and Mr. Matthew Arnold. As the alleged Paganism of some of Herrick's sacred poems exists only in the imagination of readers, so the alleged insincerity is equally hypothetical, and can only be supported by the argument (notoriously false to history and to human nature) that a man who could write the looser Hesperides could not sincerely write the Noble Numbers. Every student ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the fictitious Mrs. Chump on sea and Mr. Pole, dyspeptic, in his armchair. Arabella took the doctor aside to ask him, if in a hypothetical instance, it would really be dangerous to thwart or irritate her father. She asked the curate if he deemed it wicked to speak falsely to an invalid for the invalid's benefit. The spiritual and bodily doctors agreed that occasion altered and necessity ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sustained and fed in divers places. It is now sufficiently known by experience of what things they are the causes in the State; how indiscriminately they bring forth fruit, of which good men and wise rightly do repent. If there should be in any place a State, either actual or hypothetical, that wantonly and tyrannically wages war upon the Christian name, and it have conferred upon it that character of which we have spoken, it is possible that this may be considered more tolerable; yet the principles upon which it rests are absolutely such that, of themselves they ought to ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... illusory, supposed, unreal, fabulous, fictitious, imaginary, supposititious, untrue, fanciful, hypothetical, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... In Cas. 815 ff. Chalinus enters disguised as the blushing bride. In Men. 828 ff. Menaechmus Sosicles pretends madness in a clever scene of uproarious humor. In the Mil. (411 ff.) Philocomasium needs only to change clothing to appear in the role of her own hypothetical twin sister, and in 874 ff. and 1216 ff. the meretrix plays matrona. Sagaristio and the daughter of the leno impersonate Persians (Per. 549 ff.), Collabiscus becomes a Spartan (Poen. 578 ff.), ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... chimerical and without foundation. Every link of the chain would in that case hang upon another; but there would not be any thing fixed to one end of it, capable of sustaining the whole; and consequently there would be no belief nor evidence. And this actually is the case with all hypothetical arguments, or reasonings upon a supposition; there being in them, neither any present impression, nor ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... about the state of the country—about the desire for change and the general restlessness that prevails. We discussed the different members of the Government, and he agreed that John Russell had acted unwarrantably in making the speech he did the other day at Torquay about the Ballot, which, though hypothetical, was nothing but an invitation to the advocates of Ballot to agitate for it; this, too, from a Cabinet Minister! Then comes an awkward sort of explanation, that what he said was in his individual capacity, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... fail him: a few days after his arrival in town he received the post of superintendent of government warehouses, a profitable and even honourable position, which did not call for conspicuous abilities: the warehouses themselves had only a hypothetical existence and indeed it was not very precisely known with what they were to be filled—but they had been invented with ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... will furnish as vivid a picture as it is possible to give of the state of contemporary belief upon the subject of possession. It is impossible not to notice that nearly all the allusions in the play refer to the performance of the youth Richard Mainy. Even Edgar's hypothetical account of his moral failings in the past seems to have been an accurate reproduction of Mainy's conduct in some particulars, as the quotation below will prove;[1] and there appears to be so little necessity for these remarks of Edgar's, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... hypothetical competition. The just rate is felt to be that which in the long run would be just sufficient to afford "normal" incomes to labor and to capital, to call forth the necessary effort, skill, judgment, and forethought, if competition were at work, as it is not.[10] Only this rule of hypothetical competition redeems these public rates from ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... this hypothetical case to show the extreme difficulty of reaching anything more than hypotheses by a priori reasoning. We have a certain number of fairly well established general principles in secondary education. Perhaps those most ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... no wonder, I used to think, that Pinkerton was called to council with such Titans; for the creature's quickness and resource were beyond praise. In the early days when he consulted me without reserve, pacing the room, projecting, ciphering, extending hypothetical interests, trebling imaginary capital, his "engine" (to renew an excellent old word) labouring full steam ahead, I could never decide whether my sense of respect or entertainment were the stronger. But these good hours were destined ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of some of its shadows? It were rash to affirm it too loudly; but meanwhile, in the realms where we suppose it to reign, everything happens as though it did exist. Do away with it and you are obliged to people the world and burden your life with a host of hypothetical and imaginary beings: gods, demigods, angels, demons, saints, spirits, shells, elementals, etherial entities, interplanetary intelligences and so on; except it and all those phantoms, without disappearing, for they may very well continue to live in its shadow, become superfluous ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... appreciation of the great works of architecture, sculpture, and painting in Europe which he will recognize as landmarks of history in their potent influence on the civilization of mankind. Let us suppose that our hypothetical student has marked out on these lines his college course of four years, and his graduate course of three. At the age of twenty-five he will then have received an excellent college education. The university with its learned ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... powerful force; she had found it the greatest, grandest, sweetest thing in the world. Tryon had said that he loved her; he had said scarcely anything else for several weeks, surely nothing else worth remembering. She would test his love by a hypothetical question. ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Homer but recited the traditions of his countrymen. The nautical and geographical proofs, by which portions of the North Atlantic shores have been identified by the bold spirit of northern research, are certainly inexact and to some extent hypothetical. In extending the heretofore admitted points of discovery and temporary settlement, south to Massachusetts and Rhode Island, they carry with them sufficient general plausibility, as being of an early and adventurous age, to secure assent. And they only cease to inspire a high degree of ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... far as to declare that, let the Governor do as he would (in the inconceivable case of his being so foolish as to do anything of the kind), she at least would not receive Mr. Medland. Having launched this hypothetical thunderbolt, she asked Alicia Derosne to give her another cup of tea. Alicia poured out the tea, handed it to ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... may be discerned in various parts of the heavens by the aid of the telescope, or even, in some cases, by the naked eye. It assumed a more definite form in the hands of La Place, although even by him it was offered, not as an ascertained discovery of science, but simply as a hypothetical explanation of the way in which the production of the planets and their satellites might possibly be accounted for by the operation of the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... innumerable details of that life from Edvar, and occasionally Selda would add some fact. They are not important now. It is the narrative which I must tell, not the details of a social system which, as I would discover later, was purely hypothetical. ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... to say it now!" Sue replied, her voice changing to its softest note of severity. Then their eyes met, and they shook hands like cronies in a tavern, and Jude saw the absurdity of quarrelling on such a hypothetical subject, and she the silliness of crying about what was written in an ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... whole, the several sorts of documents emanating from the Old South have a character of true depiction inversely proportioned to their abundance and accessibility. The statutes, copious and easily available, describe a hypothetical regime, not an actual one. The court records are on the one hand plentiful only for the higher tribunals, whither questions of human adjustments rarely penetrated, and on the other hand the decisions were themselves ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... to the creed of spiritualism. The question, in fact, to which I and the many who think with me pause for a reply, is:—Allowing, as we do, some of the phenomena—but considering the pneumatological explanation hypothetical only—and therefore any identification of communicating intelligence impossible—are we (for I am sincerely tired of that first person singular, and glad to take refuge in a community), are we, or are ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Archbishop Whately and others, the disjunctive form is resolvable into the conditional; every disjunctive proposition being equivalent to two or more conditional ones. "Either A is B or C is D," means, "if A is not B, C is D; and if C is not D, A is B." All hypothetical propositions, therefore, though disjunctive in form, are conditional in meaning; and the words hypothetical and conditional may be, as indeed they generally are, used synonymously. Propositions in which the assertion is not dependent on a condition, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... much from the result of this reasoning from probability, must, with whatever regret, be confessed by all who take a careful and impartial survey of the actual situation of things among us. But our hypothetical delineation, if just, will have approved itself to the reader's conviction, as we have gone along, by suggesting its archetypes; and we may therefore be spared the painful and invidious task of pointing out, in detail, the several particulars wherein our statements are justified by facts. ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... now before us is strongly characteristic of the New Testament way of dealing with sin. In the first place, there is no lack of urgent and explicit warning. The moral and spiritual evil is labelled unmistakably. It is pointed out as a danger not hypothetical but actual; not floating in the air, but embodied in lives and influences: "Many persons walk whom I tell you of with tears as the enemies of the cross of Christ." And of these persons, as such, it is unflinchingly ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... still, it is far from exhausting the subject. The author, for instance, entirely overlooks the observations made by day. I also find, that the hypothetical part of the discussion is not perhaps so distinctly separated from the rigorous part as it might be; that disputable numbers, though given with a degree of precision down to the smallest decimals, do not look ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... the latter sense, for in speaking of it he made use of the very informal adjective "absurd." No one, indeed, could seriously believe that Bulgaria would be induced to co-operate, or even to remain neutral, by the hypothetical and partial promises which Sir Edward Grey indicated; and with a potentially hostile Bulgaria in her flank Greece could not march to Servia's aid. So M. Venizelos, under the impulse of ambition, set his energetic brain to work, and within ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... not be satisfied to have even the Most High think of him as being perfectly right when he knows he falls far short of it. He would rather be the faltering pursuer of actual rightness than the possessor of a hypothetical, ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... eight years ago, you made a remark—this may show you that if we "jeer" at your remarks, we remember them. The remark applied to the hypothetical young lady with whom I should fall in love and took the form of saying "If she is good, I shan't mind who she is." I don't know how many times I have said that over to myself in the last two or three days in which I have decided on ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... only a few minutes for Kennedy, in his most engaging and plausible manner, to state the hypothetical reason of our call. Though it was perfectly self-evident from the start that Mrs. Martin would throw cold water on anything requiring an outlay of money Craig accomplished his full purpose of securing an ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... eternity. Even his youthful thoughts and imaginations adjusted themselves to the scope of the Westminster Confession, abhorring any horizon unillumined by the gray light which flowed in mathematical exactitude from a hypothetical heart in ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... matter, it will be conceded at once that the chief factor in the purification is the nitrification produced by the bacteria in the upper layers of the sand. On the other hand, the purification by sand filters of a hypothetical water containing no organic matter, but only finely-divided mineral matter in suspension, could take place only by the physical deposition of the particles upon the sand grains. Between these two extremes lie all classes of water. In all problems of water ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy
... while women do best what must be done rapidly? A woman's brain is sooner fatigued, sooner exhausted; but given the degree of exhaustion, we should expect to find that it would recover itself sooner. I repeat that this speculation is entirely hypothetical; it pretends to no more than to suggest a line of enquiry. I have before repudiated the notion of its being yet certainly known that there is any natural difference at all in the average strength or direction of the mental capacities of the two sexes, ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... (when the upshot had come); and the Secret Bohemian Article NOT then made public, nor ever afterwards,—much the contrary; though it was true enough, but inconvenient to confess, especially as it came to nothing. "A hypothetical thing, that," says Friedrich carelessly; "wages moderate enough, and proper to be settled beforehand, though the work was never done." To reach down quite over the Mountains, and have the Elbe for Silesian Frontier: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Instead of one catastrophic cause, once in universal action, as supposed by Werner—instead of one general continuous cause, antagonized at long intervals by a catastrophic cause, as taught by Hutton; we now recognize several causes, all more or less general and continuous. We no longer resort to hypothetical agencies to explain the phenomena displayed by the Earth's crust; but we are day by day more clearly perceiving that these phenomena have arisen from forces like those now at work, which have acted in all varieties of combination, through immeasurable ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... like this. God knows I don't want to make any trouble. But I'll put a hypothetical case. Suppose that a man when drunk commits a crime and then disappears; suppose he leaves behind him a bad record and an enormous fortune; suppose then he reforms and becomes a useful citizen, and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... are found in the history of science are not mere hypothetical constituents of a crowd, to be reasoned upon only in masses. We recognise them as men like ourselves, and their actions and thoughts, being more free from the influence of passion, and recorded more accurately than those of other ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... Mine's quite a hypothetical point, though," began Mr Bickers, airily. "I just wanted to ask, supposing one of us becomes aware of a riot in a neighbouring house, during the absence of the master of that house, and ascertains, moreover, that the prefects on duty, so far from making any attempt to control the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... man of indecision is so called from the hypothetical ass of Buridan, the Greek sophist. Buridan maintained that "if an ass could be placed between two hay-stacks in such a way that its choice was evenly balanced between them, it would starve to death, for there ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... of the phenomena of nature; and the true conclusion to which it leads is this—that to inquire what the Deity might have done, could have done, or, as we even sometimes presume to speak, ought to have done, or, in hypothetical cases, would have done; and to build any propositions upon such inquiries against evidence of facts, is wholly unwarrantable. It is a mode of reasoning which will not do in natural history, which will not do in natural religion, which cannot ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... did not venture to decline to answer; gravely played up to his lead. Opposition laughed and cheered; saw their opening, and have since diligently filled it. Scarcely day passed since that questions on hypothetical cases, addressed to ATTORNEY-GENERAL, have not appeared on Orders. As they are moulded on HOWORTH's, which he answered fully, even genially, difficult to refuse reply. But there must be a limit to this kind of thing; reached to-day when caustic CAUSTON comes forward with request for gratuitous ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... difficult thing to begin, because people do not like to let their money out of their sight, especially do not like to let it out of sight without securitystill more, cannot all at once agree on any single person to whom they are content to trust it unseen and unsecured. Hypothetical history, which explains the past by. what is simplest and commonest in the present, is in banking, as in most ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... Biography by his cousin, Mr. Balfour; readers of his essays, and of his novels, must see that he was keenly interested in cases of conscience; in the right course to steer in an apparent conflict of duties. To say that his theory of the right course, in a hypothetical instance, was always the same as my own would be to abuse the confidence of the reader. As Preston-grange observes: "I would never charge myself with Mr. David's conscience; and if you could cast some part of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... indeed right, and what she, Nature, wished. Also this same persistent Nature seemed to suggest to him that Isobel was her most willing and obedient pupil, and that perhaps if he could look into her heart he would find that she did care, and very much more than for the wealth and the hypothetical lord. ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... to the plane of its orbit; consequently its seasons must be very similar to ours, the extremes of heat and cold being somewhat greater. "In Jupiter we have an illustration of a planet whose axis is almost at right angles to the plane of its orbit, being inclined but about a degree and a half. The hypothetical inhabitants of this majestic planet must therefore have perpetual summer at the equator, eternal winter at the poles, and in the temperate regions everlasting spring. On account of the straightness of the axis, however, even the polar inhabitants—if ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... principle of selection is not hypothetical. It is certain that several of our eminent breeders have, even within a single lifetime, modified to a large extent their breeds of cattle and sheep. What English breeders have actually effected is proved by the enormous prices given for animals with a good ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... over there to see the county attorney," said he. "He's from Kansas, and a pretty straight sort of chap, it seemed to me from what I saw of him. I'm going to put this situation of ours before him, citing a hypothetical case, and get his advice. I don't believe that there's a shred of a case against you, and I doubt whether Boyle can bluff the government officials into making a move in it, even ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... the act of love on earth as a completed thing of grace, with whatever delirium of delight, with whatever ingenious preciosity, we go through its process. Only as an image of beauty mated in some strange hermaphroditic ecstasy is that possible. I mean only as a dream projected into a hypothetical, a real heaven. But on earth we cannot complete the cycle in consciousness that would give us the freedom of an image in which two identities mysteriously realize their separate unities by the absorption of ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... lurched heavily to the other side, oscillated critically for a few moments, and muttered: "Brdgtpnd—." It was too much for him; he went down into his pocket, fumbled feebly round, and finally drawing out a paper of purely hypothetical tobacco, conveyed it to his mouth and bit off about two-thirds of it, which he masticated with much apparent benefit to his understanding, offering what was left to me. He then resumed the conversation with the easy familiarity ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... deftness with which this able detective explained every detail of this crime by means of a theory necessarily hypothetical if the discoveries I had made in the matter were true, and for the moment subjected to the overwhelming influence of his enthusiasm, I sat in a maze, asking myself if all the seemingly irrefutable evidence upon which men had been convicted in times gone ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... thus admitted, that one mind influencing two bodies, would only involve a diversity of operations, but in reality be one in essence; or otherwise as an hypothetical argument, illustrative of truth, if one preeminent mind, or spiritual subsistence, unconnected with matter, possessed an undivided and sovereign dominion over two or more disembodied minds, so as to become the exclusive source of all their subtlest volitions and ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... truth of experience is only a hypothetical truth. If the suppositions which underlie all the intimations of experience—subject, object, time, space and causality—were removed, none of those intimations would contain a word of truth. In other words, experience is only a phenomenon; ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... between the Poles and Czechs is of vital interest to both peoples concerned, and to Europe as a whole. It is by no means hypothetical, considering that geographically the Poles and Czechs are neighbours, that they speak almost the same language, and that their national spirit, history and traditions bear a close resemblance. The history of Poland offers many strange parallels to that of Bohemia. It is specially interesting ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... money in full amount, in answer to a challenge for the same till then deemed slightly hypothetical had a great effect upon the spectators. Their eyes became riveted upon the faces of the chief actors, and then upon the notes as they lay, weighted by the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... phenomena of one single set of forces, and depend on transverse vibrations of the ether. Light itself—whatever else it be—is always and everywhere an electrical phenomenon. The ether itself is no longer hypothetical; its existence can at any moment be demonstrated by electrical and optical experiment. We know the length of the light wave and the electric wave. Indeed, some physicists believe that they can even determine ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... to make economy a branch of applied mathematics. According to him political economy is a mixed science, its field being partly mental, partly physical. It may be called a positive science, because its premises are facts, but it is hypothetical in so far as the laws it lays down are only approximately true, i.e. are only valid in the absence of counteracting agencies. From this view of the nature of the science, it follows at once that the method to be pursued must be that called by Mill the physical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... thought fast. Presenting the case to O'Connor was impossible; it was too complicated, and it might violate governmental secrecy somewhere along the line. He decided to wrap it up in a hypothetical situation. "Doctor," he said, "I know that all the various manifestations of the psi powers were investigated and named long before responsible scientists became interested ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in mind that these two forces are also north of the passes: that of Von Bojna being stationed at the elbow where the Germanic line turned from the Carpathians almost due north along the Dunajec-Biala front, or across the neck of our hypothetical jar. The Dukla and Lupkow passes were still in Russian hands; these were the only two that the Germanic offensives of January, February, and March, 1915, had failed to capture; all the others, from ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... of the way in which the law works Lamarck takes the hypothetical case of a gastropod mollusc, which as it creeps along experiences dimly the need to feel the objects in front of it. It makes an effort (unconscious, be it noted) to touch these objects with the anterior portions of its head, and sends forward continually to these parts a great volume of nervous ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... Violence and inertia are found only among the poor and the aristocratic. And in that lies the philosophy of political economy, the mystery of human brotherhood. Hic est sapientia. Let us pass from the hypothetical state of pure Nature ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... hypothetical murder of an equally hypothetical spouse, she groped vainly for adequate words. Before she ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... granted—it must be probable that they take pleasure in what is best and most nearly related to themselves (and that must be the reason), and that they reward those who love and honour this most highly," etc. The passage is typical both of the hypothetical way of speaking, and of the twist in the direction of Aristotle's own conception of the deity (whose essence is reason); also of the Socratic manner of ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... fixed across its centre, while the shaft requires to accommodate itself to the working of the ship, might, it was thought, be the occasion of such a strain upon the trunnions as would either break them or bend the piston rod. It is a sufficient reply to these objections to say that they are all hypothetical, and that none of them in practice have been found to exist—to such an extent at least as to occasion any inconvenience; but it is not difficult to show that they are altogether unsubstantial, even without a recourse to the disproofs ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... Vote then, growls indignant Patriotism:—this vote, and who knows what other votes, and adjournments of voting; and the whole matter still hovering hypothetical! And at every new vote those Jesuit Girondins, even they who voted for Death, would so fain find a loophole! Patriotism must watch and rage. Tyrannical adjournments there have been; one, and now another at midnight on plea of fatigue,—all Friday wasted in hesitation and higgling; in re-counting ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... to Spain. The courtiers, as the supporters of the Ministry were then called, to distinguish them from the country party—that is to say, the Opposition—endeavored to qualify and make light of the expressions used in the late King's letter, to show that they were merely hypothetical and conditional, and insisted that effectual care had since been taken in every way to maintain the right of England to Gibraltar. The country party moved that words be added to the Lords' resolution requiring "that all pretensions on the part of the Crown ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... each and all of them desirous to oppose it, and to assert a will and a policy of their own distinct from that of the German Government, it is very doubtful whether their strength is sufficient to justify them in an armed conflict, especially as their hypothetical adversaries have a central position with all its advantages. From a military point of view the strength of the central position consists in the power which it gives to its holder to keep one opponent in check with a part of his forces while he throws the bulk ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... along the beach as we had witnessed, pursued by their victorious enemies,— that in the meantime, their captives had been left, (perhaps unguarded), at the encampment or landing-place of the natives. Morton was as minute and detailed in stating this hypothetical case, as if he had either actually seen or dreamed the whole. He proposed that as soon as the moon rose, some of us should set off for the shore, and proceed along the beach, in the direction from which we had seen the natives come, by pursuing which course, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... determining the defendant's condition, while their opinion would not be conclusive upon the jury, it would at least do away with the present lamentable necessity of learned men answering "yes" or "no" to a hypothetical question fifty thousand words long, when the most superficial personal examination of the accused would settle the matter definitely in their minds. Such a procedure is in general use in Germany and other continental countries, and is likewise substantially followed in Massachusetts, ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... he tells us, "falls naturally into five divisions, or five fundamental sciences, whose order of succession is determined by the necessary or invariable subordination (estimated according to no hypothetical opinions) of their several phenomena; these are, astronomy, mechanics, (la physique,) chemistry, physiology, and lastly, social physics. The first regards the phenomena the most general, the most abstract, the most remote from humanity; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... of water having such a uniform forward velocity as will produce the same effect as the actual wake on the thrust of the screw. It is then readily seen that the real slip is the sum of the apparent slip and the speed of the hypothetical wake. To make this clear, let V be the speed of the ship, Vs the speed of the screw, i.e., revolutions x pitch, and V the speed of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... eccentric to the ear, and the subject (the factory miseries) is scarcely an agreeable one to the fancy. Perhaps altogether you had better not see it, because I know you think me to be deteriorating, and I don't want you to have further hypothetical evidence of so false an opinion. Humbled as I am, I say 'so false an opinion.' Frankly, if not humbly, I believe myself to have gained power since the time of the publication of the 'Seraphim,' and lost nothing except ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... account, for a subject who is practically determinable by reason, necessary, all imperatives are formulae determining an action which is necessary according to the principle of a will good in some respects. If now the action is good only as a means TO SOMETHING ELSE, then the imperative is HYPOTHETICAL; if it is conceived as good IN ITSELF and consequently as being necessarily the principle of a will which of itself conforms to reason, then it ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... before the intellectual conviction that the Ego as one is a fiction of selfishness. But the composite nature of Self must at last be acknowledged, though its mystery remain. Science postulates a hypothetical psychological unit as well as a hypothetical physiological unit; but either postulated entity defies the uttermost power of mathematical estimate,—seems to resolve itself into pure ghostliness. The chemist, for working purposes, must imagine an ultimate atom; but the fact of which ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... subjects are a trifle hypothetical," Herr Freudenberg muttered. "We had the utmost difficulty in persuading an ex-convict ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "And I think," he said, "that I should inform this purely hypothetical friend of mine that the Italian and his patron had their heads mighty ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... tense, as well as of the person and number, of the verb. They are not applicable to a future uncertainty, or to any mere supposition in which we would leave the time indefinite and make the action hypothetical; because they are commonly understood to fix the time of the verb to the present or the past, and to assume the action as either doing or done. For this reason, our best writers have always omitted those terminations, when ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... RINGGOLD is the Genial Artist, whose velvet coat suggests that he has recently managed a Starr opera bouffe enterprise; and Mr. STODDART is happy in the congenial character of a Clumsy Trumpeter. If any speculative manager pretends that he has a better hypothetical cast in his eye than the present cast of the Lancers, let him be given to the surgical tormentors to be operated ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... in connection with taste, which he has developed to a high degree. Whether or not sight preceded hearing in order of development, it is difficult, in conjecturing the first attempts of man or his hypothetical ancestor at the expression either of percepts or concepts, to connect vocal sounds with any large number of objects, but it is readily conceivable that the characteristics of their forms and movements should have been suggested ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... for the carver, and bowed low to the right and left, picked up an imaginary bouquet, and threw three kisses to hypothetical "gods." ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... ["A Hypothetical Proposition is one which asserts not absolutely, but under an hypothesis indicated by a conjunction. An hypothetical syllogism is one on which the reasoning depends on such a proposition."—Whately's ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... condition of heredity; and yet they are, of all instincts, the most complex and mysterious. Indeed, it seems more scientific to ascribe other instincts to the same known and indubitable, if mysterious, cause, than to seek explanation in causes less known and more hypothetical. In the case of many instincts, it would seem that the craving for the object precedes the distinct cognition of it; that the object is only ascertained when, after various tentative gropings, it is stumbled upon, almost, it might seem, by chance. And this seems true, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... telegram from Lord Dufferin, No. 86, received late on the previous night, in which the Sultan asked our advice as to offers of alliance in the event of immediate general war, which had probably been made him by both sides. We replied to it after the Cabinet (No. 68): "We cannot enter into hypothetical engagements or make arrangements in contemplation of war between friendly Powers now at peace. The Sultan must be aware that Germany is the most powerful military nation on the Continent, and that she has no ambitious ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the nature of single, mutually unrelated parts. Whatever may unite these parts into an objective whole within the world itself can never enter my consciousness; and any such unifying factor entertained by my thought can be only a self-constructed, hypothetical picture. Hume summed up his view in two axioms which he himself described as the alpha and omega of his whole philosophy. The first runs: 'All our distinct perceptions are distinct existences.' The other: 'The Mind never perceives any real connexions between distinct ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... the details of every specific experiment. Without this, he may be an excellent professor of abstract science; for a person may be of great use who points out correctly what effects will follow from certain combinations of possible circumstances, in whatever tract of the extensive region of hypothetical cases those combinations may be found. He stands in the same relation to the legislator, as the mere geographer to the practical navigator; telling him the latitude and longitude of all sorts of places, but not how to find whereabouts he himself is sailing. If, however, he does no more than this, ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... Vignolles!). He was, as men go, a decent sort. He had always known where to draw the line (de Vignolles didn't). And he wasn't ugly, like de Vignolles. On the contrary, he was, as men go, distinctly good looking; he knew he was; the glances of the beautiful and hypothetical stranger assured him of it, and he had looked in the glass not half an hour ago to reassure himself. Solid he was, and well built, and he had decorative points that pleased: a fresh color, eyes that ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle, strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a prima facie and natural hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and worthy of the metaphysical traditions of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... thought anything incredible if we had been told that the ancient Persians, who had no idea of any but a monarchical government, had supposed Aristocratia to be a queen of Sparta? But we need not confine ourselves to hypothetical cases; it is positively stated that the Hindoos at this day believe "the honourable East India Company" to be a venerable old lady of high dignity, residing in this country. The Germans, again, of the present day derive their name from a ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... and to straighten out any irregularities that might arise afterward. His position was almost academic. The matters he fought and decided were so detached from actuality, as far as he was concerned, that they might have been hypothetical cases. When Dick wanted anything specific, Keith instructed Patsy Corrigan to see that the proper officials awarded the contract. If the matter ever came to the courts, Keith furnished the brains and Patsy somehow "saw" the sheriff and whoever was necessary from the mysterious underworld. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... briefly described, Newton deduced that ingenious, though hypothetical, property of light called its "fits of easy reflection and transmission." This property consists in supposing that every particle of light from its first discharge from a luminous body possesses, at equally distant intervals, dispositions ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... it in the shape of a 'suppose that,' not because there is any doubt, but in order to alleviate the pain of the impression which He desires to make. He says, 'If the world hates,' not 'if the world hate'; and the tense of the original shows that, whilst the form of the statement is hypothetical, the substance ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren |
