"Pre-existing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my opinion, Dante, and even Tasso, have been much more successful in their portraiture of daemons than Milton. Whether the age of Shakspeare still believed in ghosts and witches, is a matter of perfect indifference for the justification of the use which in Hamlet and Macbeth he has made of pre-existing traditions. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... as it is opposed to the general analogy of nature. If, on the other hand, we view "Persistent Types" in relation to that hypothesis which supposes the species living at any time to be the result of the gradual modification of pre-existing species, a hypothesis which, though unproven, and sadly damaged by some of its supporters, is yet the only one to which physiology lends any countenance; their existence would seem to show that the amount of modification which living beings have undergone during geological ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... seem to be open to us—either each species of crocodile has been specially created, or it has arisen out of some pre-existing form by the operation ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... humid as this, and which enjoys so little sunshine that even wheat ripens only occasionally. It is asserted that in Sweden, which any one would have thought a more favourable climate, the rabbit cannot live out of doors. The first few pairs, moreover, had here to contend against pre-existing enemies, in the fox and some large hawks. The French naturalists have considered the black variety a distinct species, and called it Lepus Magellanicus. (9/5. Lesson's "Zoology of the Voyage of the Coquille" tome 1 page 168. All the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... metaphysical inquiry. It is contained, at least in a negative form, in that famous maxim of ancient philosophy, "De nihilo nihil"—"Adynaton ginestai ti ek medenos prouparxontos." "It is impossible for a real entity to be made or generated from nothing pre-existing;" or in other words, "nothing can be made or produced without an efficient cause."[569] This principle is also distinctly announced by Plato: "Whatever is generated, is necessarily generated from a certain aitian"—ground, reason, or cause; ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... his report Seymour was careful to sustain the pledges of the act of 1842, and to condemn the pre-existing policy of creating additional debts for the purpose of constructing new canals or enlarging the Erie. With gentle and cunning skill he commended Azariah C. Flagg's policy, adopted in 1835, of using only the surplus revenue of the canals for ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... knowledge of pre-existing cases which serves me so well. There was a parallel instance in Aberdeen some years back, and something on very much the same lines at Munich the year after the Franco-Prussian War. It is one of these cases—but, hullo, here is Lestrade! ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... written a great many learned works against every pre-existing method of instruction; that which had made the greatest noise was upon the infamous fiction of Spelling-Books: "A more lying, roundabout, puzzle-headed delusion than that by which we Confuse the clear instincts of truth in our accursed systems of spelling, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is no more a fixed and immutable entity than the stock whence it sprang; variations arise among its members, and as these variations are transmitted like any others, new races may be developed out of the pre-existing one ad infinitum, or, at least, within any limit at present determined. Given sufficient time and sufficiently careful selection, and the multitude of races which may arise from a common stock is as astonishing as are the extreme structural differences which they may present. A remarkable ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... nature of the affinities which connect together whole groups of organisms, their geographical distribution, and their geological succession. But adopting the high antiquity of man as demonstrated, he considered in detail the evidence as to man's descent from some pre-existing form, the manner of his development, and the value of the differences between the so-called races of man. No originality is claimed for the theory or for the facts advanced; but it may safely be affirmed that the master's acuteness, his moderation, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... with visions of Jesus or of the Christian heaven in their dying moments. Millions of Jews and Mohammedans have lived and died without any such experience—the very persons to whom, from an evidential point of view—such visions would be most useful. The spiritual experience is determined by the pre-existing religious belief. When belief in a personal devil was general, visions of Satan were common. The evidence for personal conflicts with Satan is of precisely the same nature and strength as is the evidence for intercourse ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... French from an adherence to the 1st of Vendemiaire, or 23d of September of the Gregorian calendar, as the first day of the year. The weather, after the autumnal equinox, is generally settled, in consequence of the air having been purified by the pre-existing gales, the ordinary forerunners of that period: and the Parisians would not be obliged to brave the rain, the wind, the cold, the frost, the snow, &c. in going to wish a happy new year to their fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, cousins, and ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... that of the chief Irish romances, and may well have been suggested by them; whilst the variety of the rhythm and the elaborate laws of the earliest French poetry, which, both in its Northern and Southern form, dates from the first half of the twelfth century, almost imply a pre-existing model; and such a model is more easily traced in Irish than in any other vernacular literature that was then available. It is indeed nearly as hard to suppose that the beautiful literature of Ireland had absolutely no influence upon ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... the simple reception of the faithful imprint of that fact; it is invariably interpreted, systematised, and placed in pre-existing forms which constitute veritable theoretical frames. That is why the child has to learn to perceive. There is an education of the senses which he acquires by long training. One day, which aid of habit, he will almost cease to see things: a few lines, ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... spring into being and the principles on which they are formed are remarkably simple. They grow naturally with time out of pre-existing elements. Where one tribe had divided into several, and these subdivisions occupied independent but contiguous territories, the confederacy reintegrated them in a higher organization on the basis of the common gentes they possessed and ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... law of combination. Evidently a stimulus could not take part in arousing a response unless there were some pre-existing linkage between it and the response. This linkage may however be extremely loose and feeble, and wholly incapable by itself of arousing the response. The assumption of pre-existing loose linkage between almost ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... for ever beyond doubt, say the modern psychologists, that every perception received by the mind is determined by certain general laws which govern the mind; is moulded, so to speak, in certain types pre-existing in our understanding, and which constitutes its original condition. Hence, say they, if the mind has no innate IDEAS, it has at least innate FORMS. Thus, for example, every phenomenon is of necessity conceived by us as happening in TIME and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... inhabitants of either quarter of the globe could have rightful original claims of dominion over the inhabitants of the other, or over the lands they occupied; or that the discovery of either by the other should give the discoverer, rights in the country discovered, which annulled the pre-existing rights ...
— Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, at January Term, 1832, Delivered by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in the Case of Samuel A. Worcester, Plaintiff in Error, versus the State of Georgia • John Marshall
... out of sight. The vast majority of the fathers were explicit on this point. Tertullian especially was very severe against those who took any other view than that generally accepted as orthodox: he declared that, if there had been any pre-existing matter out of which the world was formed, Scripture would have mentioned it; that by not mentioning it God has given us a clear proof that there was no such thing; and, after a manner not unknown in other theological controversies, he threatens Hermogenes, who takes the opposite ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... would have been, and its power in the moment of success may have been far less abused; but still it gave a strength to the arm of the sovereign, which was incompatible with the maintenance of the pre-existing civil and social institutions or condition of the country, and especially of the relative positions of the sovereign and the noble. In the measures we adopted to establish the authority of Shah Shoojah, we attempted to carry out a system of government ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... medicine-man, or even as a beast or bird. In my opinion the higher belief may very well be the earlier. While I can discern the processes by which the lower myths were evolved, and were attached to a worthier pre-existing creed, I cannot see how, if the lower faiths came first, the higher faith was ever evolved out of them by ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... at a time when history still consisted in the reproduction of pre-existing narratives, did not see how to apply methodical doubt to the subject; he therefore refused to allow it a ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... a terrible grievance. Hitherto since the Union of the Crowns all Scottish efforts to found trading companies, as in England, had been wrecked on English jealousy: there had always been, and to this new East India Company there was, a rival, a pre-existing English company. Scottish Acts for protection of home industries were met by English retaliation in a war of tariffs. Scotland had prohibited the exportation of her raw materials, such as wool, but was cut off from English and ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... of the State systems of finance might now and then not exactly coincide, and might require reciprocal forbearances. It is not, however a mere possibility of inconvenience in the exercise of powers, but an immediate constitutional repugnancy that can by implication alienate and extinguish a pre-existing right of sovereignty. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... not merely that her actual possessions should remain intact, but that no other Great Power shall, by acquiring colonies and spreading its people and institutions into neighbouring regions, thereby possibly affect the fuller development of those pre-existing British States. For, with England equality is an offence and the Power that arrives at a degree of success approximating to her own and one capable of being expanded into conditions of fair rivalry, has already committed the unpardonable sin. As Curran put it in his defence ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... courts is to be found in section 16 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which provided that no equity suit should be maintained where there was a full and adequate remedy at law. Although this provision did no more than declare a pre-existing rule long applied in chancery courts,[62] it did assert the power of Congress to regulate the equity powers of the federal courts. The act of March 2, 1793,[63] prohibited the issuance of any injunction by any court of the United States to stay proceedings ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... exercised by the existing government of those Provinces an adequate number of officers, as was presumed, were appointed, and ordered to their respective stations. Both Provinces were formed into one Territory, and a governor appointed for it; but in consideration of the pre-existing division and of the distance and difficulty of communication between Pensacola, the residence of the governor of West Florida, and St. Augustine, that of the governor of East Florida, at which places the inconsiderable ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson |
