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More "Categorical" Quotes from Famous Books



... the Atlantic as to the stellar composition of some conspicuous objects of this class (notably the Orion and "Dumb-bell" nebulae) was delusive; but the spectroscope alone was capable of meeting it with a categorical denial. Meanwhile there seemed good ground for the persuasion, which now, for the last time, gained the upper hand, that nebulae are, without exception, true "island-universes," or assemblages ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... senior; but I was so pleased with this phrase that I repeated it lovingly. 'I stand to you, dear, in loco parentis. Now, I can't let you endanger your precious health by returning to town and Miss Latimer this winter. Let us be categorical. I go to Florence; ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... unnatural that some thoughtful intuitionists, dissatisfied with a considerable number of independent moral principles, should aim at a further simplification. Such a simplification Kant finds in the Categorical Imperative, or unconditional command of the Practical Reason: "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law." [Footnote: Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Sec 2.] And Henry Sidgwick, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... unwilling to believe," he wrote, "that her Majesty's government will press for a categorical answer upon what appears to him to be only a partial record, in the making up of which he has been allowed no part. He is reluctant to volunteer his view of the case, with no assurance that her Majesty's government will consent to hear him; ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... categorical answers to a few of the multitude of questions to which Mr. Birnes had been seeking answers. The tense expression about Mr. Czenki's eyes was dissipated, and he sighed ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle

... hands. With an anxious presentiment on my mind of the upshot of the whole inquiry, which it was almost impossible for me to conceal from men who saw me day by day, who heard my familiar conversation, who came perhaps for the express purpose of pumping me, and having a categorical yes or no to their questions,—how could I expect to say any thing about my actual, positive, present belief, which would be sustaining or consoling to such persons as were haunted already by doubts of their ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... witnesses. Nothing was written or read. The conversation, although earnest and free, was calm and courteous and kind on both sides. The Richmond party approached the subject rather indirectly, and at no time did they either make categorical demands or tender formal stipulations or absolute refusals. Nevertheless, during the conference, which lasted four hours, the several points at issue between the Government and the insurgents were distinctly raised ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... too far afield; moreover, since the most glaring differences of opinion usually crop up precisely on this subject, I could not avoid the dangerous ground on which, according to Goethe's profound saying, the categorical imperative and the authority of the man who pronounces it, form the last court of appeal. Or if some one, with a liking for gaudy paint and iridescent rags, should prefer a puppet show to the living figures of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... strange inmate of his house, Miss Carmichael, "Poll is a stupid slut. I had some hopes of her at first: but when I talked to her tightly and closely I could make nothing of her; she was wiggle waggle, and I could never persuade her to be categorical." He was the very antipodes of a retailer of other men's thoughts in other men's words: {170} every chapter of Boswell brings its evidence of Johnsonian eloquence, of Johnsonian quaintness, raciness, and abundance, of the surprising flights of ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... the experience of any object whatsoever. They may be said to condition the object in general. Their principles condition the process of making something out of the manifold of sensation. But similarly, every moral experience recognizes what Kant calls the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative is the law of reasonableness or impartiality in conduct, requiring the individual to act on a maxim which he can "will to be law universal." No state of desire or situation calling for action means anything ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... opened the debate, and proposed that the question be met in a categorical form, thus:—Were the laws of the different states which make gambling a Penitentiary offence unjust and impolitic? Were they formed in ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... Englishmen familiar with them. He acquired at this time a knowledge of French and Italian literature too; but the philosophy of Kant and the writings of Goethe and Schiller roused him to greater enthusiasm. From Kant he learnt that the guiding principle of conduct was not happiness, but the 'categorical imperative' of duty; from Goethe he drew such hopefulness as gleams occasionally through his despondent utterances on the progress of the human race. He translated Goethe's novel, Wilhelm Meister, in 1823, and followed it up with the Life of Schiller. There ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... the future exercise of their religion. They addressed this demand, which was moreover couched in threatening language, to the Duke of Bavaria, as the head of the Roman Catholics, and they insisted on an immediate and categorical answer. Maximilian might decide for or against them, still their point was gained; his concession, if he yielded, would deprive the Roman Catholic party of its most powerful protector; his refusal would arm the whole Protestant party, and render inevitable a war ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... the alien toff take his pick. When the Dollar dictates shall mere patriots kick? Our hills and our forests? If Oil-kings appear, And want them—for cash—as preserves for their deer. Down, down with mere pride—so they're down with the dust! Mammon's word is the great categorical Must! The Dollar's Almighty, the Millionnaire's King! Sell, sell anyone who'll bid high—anything. What offers for—London? Who bids for—the Thames? Cracks go, Cliveden follows. What Briton condemns? Cash rules. For the Dollar-King ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various

... addresses of the ship's matron and of other persons who had been engaged on board at the date. To these Alwyn went in the course of time. A categorical description of the clothes of the dead truant, the colour of her hair, and other things, extinguished for ever all hope ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for mankind, and therefore with the categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a degraded, servile, neglected, contemptible being, conditions which cannot be better described than by the exclamation of a Frenchman on the occasion of a projected ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... whatever that may be, does not exist in Nature, teste the farmyard and the fowl-run; and again, whatever force is connoted by those words must have been set agoing—by what? By Nature? Oh, most emphatically No! Nature has no law against immorality; there is no Categorical Imperative in Nature commanding us to be chaste or kindly or considerate or even just. We must go elsewhere if we are to look for teaching in the virtues. That is the fact that we must keep clearly before our minds when endeavouring to estimate at their proper value the nostrums ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... evening of July 23d, Austria sent an ultimatum to Serbia, presenting eleven demands and stipulating that categorical replies must be delivered before six o'clock on the evening of July 25th. Although the language in which the ultimatum was couched was humiliating to Serbia, the answer was duly delivered ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... other, Mr. Goose would have answered him, as far as he could, in the same formal, argumentative manner. But Mr. Allgood was getting jaded; the stretch of attention required by the reasoning of Mr. Goose was telling upon his patience; so he slided away to talk with one who spoke in less categorical style: not so propositional, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... no.—Although not may be considered to be an adverb, nor a conjunction, and none a noun, these two words, the direct categorical affirmative, and the direct categorical negative, are referable to none of the current parts of speech. Accurate grammar places them in a class ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... teachings, but this agreement is restricted to some principles of vital significance in their doctrine, which have reference almost exclusively to a definite practice; probably to a complete setting to work of the consciousness of duty, which is what Kant claims to do with his categorical imperative: "An unreasoning, though not unreasonable, obedience to an experienced, imperious sense of duty, leaving the result to God; and this I am ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... for her part, knew still more than that. With the swift intuition she inherited from her long line of Oriental ancestry, she said to herself at once, in categorical terms, "It was that man that did it. I know it was he. And he sees I know it. And he knows I'm right. And he's afraid of me accordingly." But an intuition, however valuable to its possessor, is not yet admitted as evidence in English courts. Elma also knew it was no ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... not a categorical answer," I remarked. "Come, Emily, tell me, is there no one for whom you have more regard than for those unhappy gentlemen whom you refused?" I saw a gentle blush rise to her cheek. "Well," I said, "I shall ask Oliver Farwell to come and stay here. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... judgments; it says to all visible objects: since you needs must be, you shall be in this manner, and not in that other. The desire for beauty, with its more potent negative, the aversion to ugliness, has, like the sense of right and wrong, the force of a categorical imperative. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... to him, and by the exercise of every little persuasive art incident to your calling, he is inevitably led into taking "sides." He is surrounded by circumstances that are to him entirely strange. He is more or less annoyed and flurried by his surroundings, and then comes the necessity of making a categorical answer to questions that are put to him more especially upon the cross-examination, which cannot be correctly answered categorically. Unfortunately in a profession like ours, in a science of art like ours, it often is absolutely impossible to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... Cenis on New Year's Day 1714, complained that he was "put out of humour by the most horrible precipices." There is huge comfort to be drawn from Stephen's pages descriptive of the "simple-minded abhorrence of mountains," and from his categorical declaration that love of the sublime shapes of the Alps springs from "a delicate and cultivated taste." But we are puzzled by the presence outside the pale of some who cannot rightly be called "pachydermatous." I am turning over the pages ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... had or to make another dollar to keep it warm. Jeff went home sore at heart; but when he had plucked up hope again out of his sense of the ironies of things, he went back and saw the same men and hammered at them. He explained, with a categorical clearness, that he knew the West couldn't throw over the East now she'd taken it aboard. Perhaps we'd got to learn our lesson from it. Just as it might be it could learn something from us; and since it was here in our precincts, it had got to learn. We couldn't do ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... 1917, the Neue Freie Presse acknowledged that Austria provoked the war with the intention of crushing Serbia. It is a formal and categorical confession. And it obliges us to consider seriously the thesis put forward by Jules Chopin in Le Complot de Sarajevo (Paris, 1918), according to which the plot was hatched at Konopi[vs]t[ve] between the German Kaiser and the man to whom the plot proved fatal. Monsieur Chopin, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... pulse in matters literary. It is in regard to the second and more important factor that failure waits most insistently on the librarian. What are the public's needs, as distinguished from its desires? What ought it to read? Here steps in the "categorical imperative" with a vengeance. The librarian, when he thinks of his duty along this line, begins to shudder as he realizes his responsibility as an educator, as a mentor, as a trainer of literary taste. Probably in some instances he takes himself too seriously. But, no matter how lightly ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... request you, Sir, to go again to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and formally to intimate to his Excellency my just expectation that the Council will not delay to cause to be delivered to me through him a categorical answer, and, as I hope, a satisfactory answer to the demand of a Government sincerely friendly to the Porte. You will leave with him a copy of this instruction, and you will concert as to the time of its delivery with the Interpreter of the French Embassy, who ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various

... goodness to request the electors of your arrondissement to await the issue of to-morrow's paper, in which I shall furnish categorical explanations of the most distinct character. The article to-day is the result ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... did not ask you for a categorical explanation of your movements, Mr. Lorimer," she says lightly—"I'm sure I hope ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... and division commanders against an early advance, the logic and the facts pressed upon him by his chief of staff evidently took strong hold of his active intellect, so that when Halleck on the 16th asked for a categorical answer whether he would make an immediate movement forward, he replied, "If it means to-night or to-morrow, no. If it means as soon as all things are ready, say five days, yes." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. i. pp. 8-10.] No doubt ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... escape of Arsene Lupin was not doubted by anyone. He announced it himself, in categorical terms, in a reply to Mon. Bouvier on the day following his attempted escape. The judge having made a jest about the affair, Arsene was annoyed, and, firmly eyeing the ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... all that had gone before, Medenham was unprepared for this categorical answer. Were he in full possession of his faculties he must have seen the trap into which he was being decoyed. Unhappily, Vanrenen's letter had helped to complete the lure, and he was no longer amenable to the dictates of ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... least, Elizaveta Petrovna improved upon the Scripture parable; when an insufficient number of spectators presented themselves at the French comedy, she forthwith dispatched mounted messengers to numerous persons of rank and distinction, with a categorical demand to know why they had absented themselves, and a warning that henceforth a fine of fifty rubles would be exacted for such dereliction ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... Cathedral of Notre Dame itself, is to prepare oneself for a consideration in some measure of a combination of the charms of both, woven into one fabric. Nowhere, at least in no provincial town of France, are to be found such a categorical display of ecclesiastical architectural ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... however continued to enforce the Book of Confutation demanding an unqualified adoption in every point, per omnia. When the jurist Matthew Wesenbecius declined to accept the book in this categorical way, he was not permitted to serve as sponsor at a baptism. John Frederick was dissatisfied with this procedure and action of the ministers; and when they persisted in their demands, the autocratic Duke deprived ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... mildly and impartially, and sent a telegraphic dispatch to the viceroy at Milan to inquire what was to be done with Andreas Hofer, inasmuch as the sentence of the court-martial had not been passed unanimously. An answer was returned very soon. It contained the categorical order that Andreas Hofer should ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... All the passages which they say are not what they ought to be, I would call pathological passages; for he wrote them on those days when he had not strength to find the right and true motives. I have every respect for the categorical imperative. I know how much good may proceed from it; but one must not carry it too far, for then this idea of ideal freedom certainly leads to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... commissioners, who were insisting upon guarantees, "is the word of a king not sufficient?"—"No, madam," replied one of them, "by Saint Bartholomew, no!" Count Louis told Schomberg roundly, and repeated it many times, that he must have in a very few days a categorical response, "not to consist in words alone, but in deeds, and that he could not, and would not, risk for ever the honor of his brother, nor the property; blood, and life of those poor ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... so-called spurious books; had he written them or not? He said that they were all genuine: so I now knew what to think of the critics Zenodotus and Aristarchus and all their lucubrations. Having got a categorical answer on that point, I tried him next on his reason for starting the "Iliad" with the wrath of Achilles. He said he had no exquisite reason; it just came into his ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... in the general conversation, it was evident that Mr Percy Marvale, by dint of downright categorical questions, had acquired an intimate knowledge of poor old Harry Lambert's and Williams's domestic affairs; and it is useless to say he had bound himself in the most solemn manner to visit both them and Mr Smith, though neither of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... has but now, thanks to the humanists, added a new page, is it destined in very truth to be born anew, and become once more the language of the national culture of the whole of the Jewish people? It would be rash to reply with a categorical affirmative. ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... finds only an expression of the decay, the last collapse of life, the Chinese spirit of Koenigsberg. Quite the contrary is demanded by the most profound laws of self-preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man find his own virtue, his own categorical imperative. A nation goes to pieces when it confounds its duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing works a more complete and penetrating disaster than every "impersonal" duty, every sacrifice before ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... subsequently to his contemplated action. Hence there is no obligatory force in this ethic. Prudential motives, suggestions of expediency, abundance of counsel, if you will; but we miss the note of authority, the commanding voice, the categorical imperative, the solemn injunction, "Thou canst, therefore thou must". Indeed, it seems difficult to see how one could convince a man on hedonistic or utilitarian grounds that a course of conduct on which he was bent, and ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... most likely an European war), and which will arise very probably when we shall be at Balmoral and Lord John in another part of Scotland? The Queen expects from your foresight that you have contemplated this possibility, and requires a categorical answer as to what you would do in the event supposed." Strangely enough, to this pointblank question, the Foreign Secretary appeared to be unable to reply. The whole matter, he said, was extremely complicated, and the contingencies ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... inconvenience. I have forgotten or lost my spectacles. Now, in this twilight, with the very poor eyesight that years of labor have left me, it will be absolutely impossible for me to read this most important letter—and an immediate answer is expected—most simple and categorical—a yes or a no. Times presses; it is really most annoying. If," added Rodin, laying great stress on his words, without looking at Djalma, but so as the prince might remark it; "if only some one would render me the service to read it for ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... that they conceive affability as a concession. At any rate, it is not unusual to find a hostess busying herself with attempts to agree with all that is said, with the idea that she is thereby doing homage to the effeminate categorical imperative of etiquette, when in reality nothing becomes more quickly tiresome than incessant affirmatives, no matter how pleasantly they are modulated. Nor can one avoid one of two conclusions when one's talk is thus negligently ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... interests of all concerned, and soon afterward I made my first appearance in Pianura. My success was greater than we had foreseen; for I threw myself into the part with such zest that every one was taken in, and even Don Serafino required the most categorical demonstration to convince him that I was not my own brother. The illusion I produced was, however, not without its inconveniences; for, among the ladies who thronged to see the young Mirandolino, were several who desired a closer acquaintance with him; and one of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... To what extent has Edison added to the wealth of the world by his inventions and his energy and perseverance? It will be noted from the foregoing that no categorical answer can be offered to such a question, but sufficient material can be gathered from a statistical review of the commercial arts directly influenced to afford an approximate idea of the increase in national wealth that has been affected ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... up the case against the accused man, classifying the points of evidence against him in categorical order for the benefit of the jury. The most important witness for the prosecution was a man known as James Hill, who had been in Sir Horace Fewbanks's employ as a butler. Hill's connection with the prisoner was in some ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... Mr. Wallace that the chief difference between man and the lower animals is that of kind and not of degree—that man is possessed of an intelligent will that appoints its own ends, of a conscience that imposes upon him a "categorical imperative," of spiritual faculties that apprehend and worship the invisible—yet we must admit that his lower animal nature, which forms, as it, were, the platform of the spiritual, is built up ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... are engaged, I thank you. I thank you, sir, in the name of the Watertoast Sympathisers; and I thank you, sir, in the name of the Watertoast Gazette; and I thank you, sir, in the name of the star-spangled banner of the Great United States, for your eloquent and categorical exposition. And if, sir,' said the speaker, poking Martin with the handle of his umbrella to bespeak his attention, for he was listening to a whisper from Mark; 'if, sir, in such a place, and at such a time, I might venture to con-clude with a sentiment, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... answered the lady, "is this language to a clergyman? Mr Supple is a man of sense, and gives you the best advice; and the whole world, I believe, will concur in his opinion; but I must tell you I expect an immediate answer to my categorical proposals. Either cede your daughter to my disposal, or take her wholly to your own surprizing discretion, and then I here, before Mr Supple, evacuate the garrison, and renounce you and your ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... set of names is preferable. 'Categorical' properly means 'predicable' and 'hypothetical' is a mere ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... neither did I ever conduct a public performance in Zurich again. The members of this society could not at first be brought to believe that I was in earnest, and I was obliged to bring it home to them by a categorical explanation, in which I dwelt on their slackness and their disregard of my urgent proposals for the establishment of a decent orchestra. The excuse I invariably received was, that although there was money enough among the musical public, yet every one fought shy of heading the subscription ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... an efficient cause, i.e., merely in reference to the effect and the means of attaining it; or they determine the will only, whether it is adequate to the effect or not. The former would be hypothetical imperatives, and contain mere precepts of skill; the latter, on the contrary, would be categorical, and would alone be practical laws. Thus maxims are principles, but not imperatives. Imperatives themselves, however, when they are conditional (i.e., do not determine the will simply as will, but only in respect to a desired effect, that is, when they are hypothetical imperatives), are ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant

... Russians, and proceed to Prussia. But General York had not yet made up his mind. Toward nightfall another messenger from General Diebitsch arrived at his headquarters. This messenger was Lieutenant-Colonel Clausewitz, whom Diebitsch had sent to insist again on a categorical reply. York received him sullenly, and said to him: 'Keep aloof from me. I do not wish to have any thing to do with you. Your accursed Cossacks have allowed a messenger from Macdonald to pass through your lines, and he has brought me orders ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... have been great; he could not understand these dilatory measures, these expressions of affection which never led to a categorical approbation. It seemed to him that he had said all that he had to say. For new arguments he ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... an hour: King turned directly upon business; wishes to have 'Categorical Answers' as to Three Points already submitted to his Britannic Majesty's consideration. Clear footing indispensable between us. What you want of me? say it, and be plain. What I want of you ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... upon the inhospitable shores of the Red Sea an army sufficiently large to meet the Negus. In fact, this was almost categorically the collective demand of the three Powers which reached Eden Vale the same day. As categorical, however, was the rejection of the proposal, accompanied by the declaration that the Eden Vale government intended to carry on alone the war with Abyssinia which now seemed inevitable. Moreover, the allies were told that their ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... is very transparent! "cries Bath." From any other man it would be an affront with the strongest emphasis, but from one of the doctor's cloth it demands a categorical answer." ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... him personally as a gentleman. I have, therefore, to inquire whether you declined to receive his communication on the ground of any personal exception to him as a gentleman or a man of honor." Mr. Cilley declining to give the categorical answer demanded, was immediately challenged by Graves. The challenge was borne by Mr. Wise, a Representative from Virginia. On the same evening, Mr. Jones—then a delegate and later a Senator from Iowa—as the second of Cilley, handed the note of acceptance of the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... book is to be sought in the point of view of the writer rather than in a sequence of chapters developing a single theme and arriving at categorical conclusions. Literature in a civilization like ours, which is trying to be both sophisticated and democratic at the same moment of time, has so many sources and so many manifestations, is so much involved with our social background, and is so much a question of life as well as ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... that the present government would probably be overturned by the ballot. In answer to this, the Federation's organ said, "Mrs. Stokes is a woman of intelligence and doubtless knows that States are not overturned by ballots." Here is a categorical denial on the part of an organ representing the most powerful privileged element in the country, of the possibility of peaceful political revolution, which can only mean that if a majority desires such a peaceful revolutionary ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... on without remarking to you how direct this Empire literature is, going to the point without any details, a characteristic, as it seems to me, of a primitive time. The literature of that period holds a place between the summaries of chapters in Telemaque and the categorical reports of a public office. It had ideas, but refrained from expressing them, it was so scornful! It was observant, but would not communicate its observations to any one, it was so miserly! Nobody but Fouche ever mentioned what he had observed. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... or consequence of the same. This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me;—in other words, a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative;—that the maxim ('regula maxima' or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... who desires us to send him six numbers of the KNICKERBOCKER containing his article, inquires 'which kind of his writing we should prefer, prose or poetry?' We hardly know what to say, in answer to this categorical query. It will not perhaps be amiss, however, to adopt the in medio tutissimus ibis style of the traveller, who, upon calling for a cup of tea at breakfast, handed it back to the servant, after tasting it, with ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... student of Wells' writings can afford to overlook First and Last Things, I would warn him against the danger of concluding that in that book he will find at last the ultimate expression of character and belief, set out in the form of a categorical creed. Again I find a spirit and overlook the letter. I choose to take as representative such a passage as the following, with all its splendid vagueness and lack of dogma, rather than a definite expression of belief that Mr ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford

... partner. General Twiggs resented this, but the merchant again affirmed it, and gave names. As soon as General Twiggs reached his office, he instructed his adjutant-general, Colonel Bliss—who told me this—to address a categorical note of inquiry to Major Waggaman. The major very frankly stated the facts as they had arisen, and insisted that the firm of Perry Seawell & Co. had enjoyed a large patronage, but deserved it richly by reason of their promptness, fairness, and fidelity. The correspondence ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... in consequence of all this, following the Palestinian Exemplar, he had from accurate copies furnished his own work with the Twelve Verses in dispute;—which is a categorical refutation of the statement frequently met with that the work of Victor of Antioch is ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... enters marriage unprepared for the realities of conjugal life, and hence incapable of understanding either herself or her husband. When pregnancy comes to such a wife, the old seclusion taboos fall upon her like a categorical imperative. She is overwhelmed with embarrassment at a normal and natural biological process which can hardly be classified as "romantic." Such an attitude is neither conducive to the eugenic choice of a male nor to the proper care of the child either before ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... sudden critical interest, missing an emanation from him. It was his enthusiasm. A cheerfulness had come upon him instead. Also what he said had something categorical in it, something crisp and arranged. He himself received benefit from the consideration of it, and she was aware that if this result followed, her own "conversion" was ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... success. On looking to the other side of the road, I observed a mason at work repairing the opposite wall with some very suspicious-looking stones, and I immediately crossed over, and commenced a categorical examination of the supposed delinquent. I inquired whether he could explain to me the cause of the removal of the ancient cross, which used to be in the field exactly opposite to where we were then standing; but he said that, although he was an old residenter ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... Kant when he devised the Categorical Imperative. You have thrown aside a creed, but you have preserved the ethic which was based upon it. To all intents you are a Christian still, and if there is a God in Heaven you will undoubtedly receive your reward. The ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... fully aware, from a very early age, of his feelings, and could not but be continuously conscious that we were under the eye of a father governed by the loftiest and purest motives, and devoting himself without stint to what he regarded as his duty. He was a living 'categorical imperative.' 'Did you ever know your father do a thing because it was pleasant?' was a question put to my brother, when he was a small boy, by his mother. She has apparently recorded it for the sake of the childish answer: 'Yes, once—when he married you.' But we ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... very model of a modern Major-General, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical; I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical, About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news, With many cheerful facts about the square of ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... demanded a categorical answer from the States-General to the proposition made them on behalf of the United States. The Dutch Secretary here informs me, that his letter was well received. The Dutch Minister at this Court has invited me to his house, since the presentation of the above mentioned demand. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... and utility were uniform and clear, and that all that was wanted was to show them the means by which their ends could be reached." ("English literature and society in the eighteenth century", London, 1904, page 187.) And Kant supposed that every man would find the "categorical imperative" in his consciousness, when he came to sober reflexion, and that all would have the same qualifications to follow it. But if continual variations, great or small, are going on in human nature, it is the duty of ethics to make allowance for them, both in making claims, and in ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... [Greek: Eisagogae] of Porphyry, and the whole of Aristotle's Organon. He wrote a double commentary on the [Greek: Eisagogae] and commentaries on the Categories and the De Interpretatione of Aristotle, and on the Topica of Cicero. He also composed original treatises on the categorical and hypothetical syllogism, on Division and on Topical Differences. He adapted the arithmetic of Nicomachus, and his textbook on music, founded on various Greek authorities, was in use at Oxford and Cambridge until modern times. His five ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... first time against the restoration of an aristocratic and priestly Poland, and against the establishment of a unitary government in Italy, created for him a multitude of enemies. Most of his friends, disconcerted by his categorical affirmation of a right of force, notified him that they decidedly disapproved of his new publication. "You see," triumphantly cried those whom he had always combated, "this man ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... make a categorical list of the things that existed or were made for our amusement in Palestine, it would, I think, consist of no more than four items, viz.: sea-bathing, military sports, sight-seeing, and concert parties; and I am ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... oppose obstacles by perseverance and patience, and my recall should rather be the result of cool policy than of resentment. I am somewhat inclined to think, that it may become politic to suspend it on the reply of the Court to a demand of a categorical answer. Unless the Minister's system should change, (for they still give me hopes) it might perhaps also be proper for me to consult with Dr Franklin and Mr Adams on the subject, and send Congress the result. For this purpose, I submit to Congress the propriety ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... basis in the mind of man. Ideas concerning morality have generally been nobler than can be accounted for by environment, and by the subjective life of the individual. Why this ultimate consistency in the moral aspirations of the ages, why a categorical imperative, and why does conscience exist in the human being?—these facts cannot be accounted for if there is no deeper basis for life than the life of humanity at ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones

... he sometimes avenged himself by wondering if his wife was still sorry that they had not called her Muriel. Jane was not ugly; she developed, indeed, a kind of categorical prettiness that might have been a projection of her mind. She had a creditable collection of features, but one had to take an inventory of them to find out that she was good-looking. The fusing ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... grow more and more bewildered. Your observations are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way? At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would it not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statements of fact unencumbered with obstructing accumulations ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... proposition and then to say not "And now, will you buy?"—this was not the way—oh, no!—the way was to state one's proposition and then, having reduced one's adversary to a state of exhaustion, to deliver oneself of the categorical imperative: "Now see here! You've taken up my time explaining this matter to you. You've admitted my points—all I want to ask is how many do ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... tobacco, and then I saw a chap who'd got his motor stuck, and helped him, and then ..." Here Miles looked down at his aunt, who looked up at him apprehensively. "I caught up with Miss Morton and the children, and walked back to Wren's End with them. There, Aunt Mary, that's a categorical history of my time ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... painter will describe them as well as a pencil may describe—the harness of the horses he must know and understand; through dealing with so much novelty it becomes obligatory for the travelling painter to become explanatory and categorical. And as the attraction of the unknown corresponds in most people to the immoral instinct of curiosity, the painter will find himself forced to attempt to do with paint and canvas what he could do much better in a written account. His public will demand pictures ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... couple with a categorical answer to a question, if in truth she can be induced to give one at all, a statement of damaging character to ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... objectively as possible, avoiding metaphysical cobwebs and giving the ego and non-ego a wide berth. I shall content myself in most cases with merely pointing out the doctrine apparently preached by Goethe (reminding you now and then that even his own seemingly categorical dogmas were to him merely temporary forms of thought) and shall prefer to let much justify its existence as an integral part of the living whole rather than to expel the life by dissection and to examine the dead parts through the ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... master has managed for years and years to cultivate the farm of La Haye and to bring up my godson in the fear of the Lord and the practice of land surveying is a proof that the late Mr. Matthew Arnold was hopelessly wrong in his categorical declaration that ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... Malone was snapping out his words with categorical crispness. "Do you realize the perilous scope of his dream? His overvaulting ambition looks to a one-man power of finance; a power vested solely in himself. We are rearing a Frankenstein, gentlemen. To overlook ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... this so true as to be almost intolerable—and yet so beautiful? The characters have art necessities. Schiller said Art has its categorical Imperatives—its must, and Shakespeare's characters fulfil them. We feel how inevitable is their fate. They make their own tragedy. The Poet compresses a Life Tragedy into a few pages of manuscript. He, with the great sense ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne

... that the Delegate of the United States, Commander SAMPSON, puts a question which seems to be somewhat categorical. ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various

... presented no insoluble riddle to Leigh's mind. On the contrary, he had met his type before and knew it well; but with Miss Wycliffe the case was different. He recognized now the reason of Cardington's inability to describe her, for a categorical account of her features, or of what is commonly called her "good points," would have left the essential quality untouched. Yet this quality was the woman herself, and had fired Leigh's blood with a fever of longing that made him reckless of his judgment. In fact, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... immediate. The problem, therefore, exclusively regards the intuitive perception of the qualities of matter. Now, says Hamilton, "if we interrogate consciousness concerning the point in question, the response is categorical and clear. In the simplest act of perception I am conscious of myself as a perceiving subject, and of an external reality as the object perceived; and I am conscious of both existences in the same indivisible amount ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... the galleons, nor destroyed the Spanish fleet. Nor have they enslaved Portugal, nor you made a triumphant entry into Naples. My dear sir, you see how lucky you were not to go thither; you don't envy Sir James Grey, do you? Pray don't make any categorical demands to Marshal Botta,[1] and be obliged to retire to Leghorn, because they are not answered. We want allies; preserve us our friend the Great Duke of Tuscany. I like your answer to Botta exceedingly, but I fear the Court of Vienna ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... collected what he wanted grain by grain from bushels of chaff. The whole sum of his new knowledge could have been expressed in a paragraph, took him a week to get, but was just what he wanted. If he had asked categorical questions, he would have received lies. If he had attempted to hurry matters, he would ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... notified the Upper House that no exemplification of the categorical plebiscitum will be ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various

... Critique of Practical Reason carefully and without blinkers will see that, in strict fact, the existence of God is therein deduced from the immortality of the soul, and not the immortality of the soul from the existence of God. The categorical imperative leads us to a moral postulate which necessitates in its turn, in the teleological or rather eschatological order, the immortality of the soul, and in order to sustain this immortality God is introduced. All the rest is the jugglery of the ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... under certain conditions, to announce to Mrs. Prettyman her coming ejection from the cottage at Wittisham, was unprofessional enough, as he himself felt; but it was final and categorical. Conveying as it did a sort of tacit remonstrance, this refusal had an unfortunate effect, for it only served to rouse Mrs. de Tracy's formidable obstinacy. She had seized upon one point only in their numberless and wearisome discussions of the matter: ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... excursions, any infraction of the national integrity or any abatement of the national prestige has come to figure as an insufferable infringement on his personal liberty and on those principles of humanity that make up the categorical articles of the secular creed of Christendom. The fact may be patent on reflection that the common man's substantial interest in the national integrity is slight and elusive, and that in sober common sense ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... von Rosen. "O, much to say! Much to say that I would rather not, and much to leave unsaid that I would rather say. For I am like St. Paul, your Highness, and always wish to do the things I should not. Well! to be categorical—that is the word?—I took the Prince your order. He could not credit his senses. 'Ah,' he cried, 'dear Madame von Rosen, it is not possible—it cannot be—I must hear it from your lips. My wife is a poor girl misled, she is only silly, she is not cruel.' 'Mon Prince,' said I, 'a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... majesty the King of Prussia in an autograph letter to accept my resignation," said Mueller, evasively; "I want, above all, a categorical reply whether ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... asked if Chinese is, or is not, a difficult language to learn. To this question it is quite impossible to give a categorical answer, for the simple reason that Chinese consists of at least two languages, one colloquial and the other written, which for all practical purposes are about as distinct ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles

... for several days with all the energy of an independent artist, and which for some time systematized his celibacy, again oppressed him. He thought it time to put between "folly" and him the irreparability of his categorical resolution. So he replied to his little friend with his habitual gentleness, but in a tone of firmness, which already announced ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... words, Christian Science begins—and, for the matter of that, ends—with the categorical statement that the one and only Reality is Mind, Goodness, God, all three of which terms it uses synonymously and interchangeably. So much being granted, the rest follows "in a concatenation according"; the {125} possible permutations are many—the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... fire in the Temple of Vesta was looked upon as a categorical warning that the behavior of the Romans or of some part of them or the conduct of the government was so displeasing to the gods that the Empire would come to a sudden end unless matters were at once corrected. All Romans believed that as implicitly as they believed that food would keep them alive ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... the value of categorical assertions of this kind in presence of the fragments of pottery found at different levels in Kent's Hole? One of these fragments was so rotten that when placed in water it formed a black liquid mud as ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... for Foreign Affairs, made categorical reply, directly traversing all the points in the indictment. When he resumed his seat Mr. O'Donnell rose in his usual deliberate manner, captured his eye-glass, and having fixed it to his satisfaction, remarked in his drawling voice that it was "perfectly ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... the vocal parts entirely to your care. I would merely remind you that my two compatriots Bignio and Fraulein Rabatinsky (now in Vienna) sang splendidly in the parts of the Landgrave Ludwig and the spiteful Landgravine Sophie, at the first performances of the Oratorio in Pest. Hence, if no categorical objections are raised against them by the worthy theatrical potentates, it would seem advisable and well to secure these singers for parts for which they have already ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... understood by Hartley and Condillac: and then what Hume had demonstratively deduced from this concession concerning cause and effect, will apply with equal and crushing force to all the other eleven categorical forms [27], and the logical functions corresponding to them. How can we make bricks without straw;—or build without cement? We learn all things indeed by occasion of experience; but the very facts so learned force us ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... "conveyance" of incidents occasional and insignificant. Much, too, was imported into the play (e.g. almost the whole of the fourth act), of which there is neither hint nor suggestion in the story. Maginn's categorical statement (see "O'Doherty on Werner," Miscellanies, 1885, i. 189) that "here Lord Byron has invented nothing—absolutely, positively, undeniably NOTHING;" that "there is not one incident in his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... sufficient authority to form, even in my inmost conscience, a categorical judgment on so complex a phenomenon as the French Revolution. To-day I find it even more difficult to form a brief judgement. Causes, facts, and consequences seem to me to be still extremely ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same. This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me; in other words a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative; that the maxim (regula maxima, or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be the law of all ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... these events, by Pitt, who took Byng's side; but that Hawke, being a member of the House, denied some of Pitt's allegations as to the inadequacy of Byng's fleet, on the strength of his own personal observation after taking over the command. Thereupon, so the account says, the categorical test question, the argumentum ad hominem, was put to him whether with Byng's means he could have beat the enemy; and the manner of the first Pitt, in thus dealing with an opponent in debate, can be imagined from what we know of him otherwise. Whether ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... have described the exact sort of intolerant piety, which tempts one to admire brilliant wickedness. You can't accept another's belief unless it's your own. That is one of Life's categorical rules. It's not ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... religious beliefs; were invalid. The theists protested vehemently, and showed their superiority by calling their dogs "Immanuel Kant." In his "Critique of Practical Reason," however, he went on to restore the credit of religion through the moral sense, the "Categorical Imperative," and, as certain commentators have stated, after having excluded God from the cosmos, he attempted to find Him again in ethics. Holding that the moral sense is innate and not derived from experience, he reduced the truth of religion ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... counters, merely for the sake of simple telling, and not to figures, whose power is to arise from their place in the table. The elements of their own metaphysics might have taught them better lessons. The troll of their categorical table might have informed them that there was something else in the intellectual world besides substance and quantity. They might learn from the catechism of metaphysics that there were eight heads more,[123] in every complex deliberation, which they have never thought of; though ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... and the Divinity of Christ." "Destroy these and they think the world will become vulgar and materialized, losing not only the surest sanction of morals, but ... the spiritual aspiration and tendencies," &c. [7] "To these gloomy forebodings I venture to return a positive and categorical denial ... Scepticism has been the great sweetener of modern life." [8] How he justifies his denial by maintaining that morality can hold its own when reduced to a physical science; that the "result of advancing civilization" ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... elected representatives, firmly convinced of the ultimate success of its highest ideals of full independence and liberty. Our silenced and oppressed nation has no other answer to all attempts at a change of the constitution than a cool and categorical refusal, because we know that these attempts are nothing except products of an ever-increasing strain, helplessness and ruin. We do not believe to-day in any more promises given and not kept, for experience has taught us to judge them ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... assertion "Either (1) or (3) is true" is equivalent to "Some xy are not-z"; and the assertion "(4) is true" is equivalent to "No xy exist." Hence the Contradictory to "All xy are z" may be expressed as the Alternative Proposition "Either some xy are not-z, or no xy exist," but not as the Categorical Proposition ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll

... belt. (In Mrs Pengelly's shop you may purchase trousers that have as many as four pockets. They cost anything from eleven-and-sixpence to fifteen shillings, and you ask Mrs Pengelly for them under the categorical name of "non-plush unmentionables"—"non-plush" being short for Non ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... to the usual onslaught from the strong-minded. A small but formidable committee entered my office one morning and demanded a categorical declaration of my principles. What my views on the subject were, I knew very well; they were clear and decided; and yet, I hesitated to declare them! It wasn't a temptation of Saint Anthony—that is, turned the other way—and ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... thought an ignorant duffer—and I have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear, simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative (having explained beforehand the meaning of the words), she would have said, "The Sermon on ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... than it addressed itself resolutely to the seemingly hopeless task of forcing Dr. Mather to settle in Cambridge or resign his office. On the 10th of July, 1700, they voted him two hundred and twenty pounds a year, and they appointed a committee to obtain from him a categorical answer. This time he thought it prudent to feign compliance; and after a "suitable place... for the reception and entertainment of the president" had been prepared at the public expense, he moved out of town and stayed till the 17th of October, when he went back ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... and three days later the Foreign Minister, Pokrovsky, visited the Duma and announced that Russia would reject the offer. The Duma immediately passed a resolution declaring that "the Duma unanimously favors a categorical refusal by the Allied governments to enter, under present conditions, into any peace negotiations whatever." On the 19th a similar resolution was adopted by the Imperial Council, which continued to follow ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... taken the trouble to report officially to the Governor when he heard it, was the only incident with which Baudin was connected that gave King any cause to doubt his perfect good faith; and Baudin's categorical denial of the allegation is fully confirmed by his diary and correspondence—now available for study—which contain no particle of evidence to suggest that the planting of a settlement, or the choice of a site for one, was a purpose of ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... with the fourth edition. This was the most categorical claim to the theory of descent with modification in the "Origin of Species." The "my" here is the only one that was taken out before 1869. I suppose Mr. Darwin thought that with the removal of this "my" he had ceased ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... opposite each other, trying to talk. Suddenly he besought her not to throw him over.... She had to refuse to kiss him, and that was convincing, he said. Once a woman was not greedy for kisses, the end was near. And his questions were to the point, and irritatingly categorical. Had she ever been unfaithful to him? Did she love Ulick Dean? Not content with a simple denial, he took her by both hands, and looking her straight in the face, asked her to give him her word of honour that Ulick Dean was not her lover, that she had never kissed him, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... young lady, who was "not categorical, but all wiggle-waggle",' added Uncle Laurie, enjoying the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE, Kant's name for the self-derived moral law, "universal and binding on every rational will, a commandment of the autonomous, one and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... to this day the question who is the chief discoverer of the law of the conservation of energy is not susceptible of a categorical answer that would satisfy all philosophers. It is generally held that the first choice lies between Joule and Mayer. Professor Tyndall has expressed the belief that in future each of these men will ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... reconciled, in appearance, to a Church whose truth, once acknowledged by him, convicted him of sacrilege and of dishonour. This ticklish job could best be performed, not by a staid priest of the old Gallican school, who might have insisted upon a categorical retractation of errors, upon his making amends and upon his doing penance; not by a young Ultramontane of the new school, against whom M. de Talleyrand would at once have been very prejudiced, but by a priest who was ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... a non-evacuation policy, and offered a good price for it. Mr. Schnadhorst wanted 10,000 for his party, and wanted it badly. Accordingly he wrote a letter to Mr. Rhodes, assuring him that the party would not evacuate Egypt. The letter would not do for Mr. Rhodes. He wanted a categorical pledge from Mr. Gladstone. This he only obtained indirectly, and ultimately I believe that only about 5,000 ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... built up the case against the accused man, classifying the points of evidence against him in categorical order for the benefit of the jury. The most important witness for the prosecution was a man known as James Hill, who had been in Sir Horace Fewbanks's employ as a butler. Hill's connection with the prisoner was in some aspects unfortunate, ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... not given to analytic excursions, any infraction of the national integrity or any abatement of the national prestige has come to figure as an insufferable infringement on his personal liberty and on those principles of humanity that make up the categorical articles of the secular creed of Christendom. The fact may be patent on reflection that the common man's substantial interest in the national integrity is slight and elusive, and that in sober common sense the national prestige ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... motor stuck, and helped him, and then ..." Here Miles looked down at his aunt, who looked up at him apprehensively. "I caught up with Miss Morton and the children, and walked back to Wren's End with them. There, Aunt Mary, that's a categorical history of my ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should triumphe againe on the Stage, and have his bones newe embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at severall times) who, in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding!' There is no categorical record of the production of a second piece in continuation of the theme, but such a play quickly followed; for a third piece, treating of the concluding incidents of Henry VI's reign, attracted much attention on the stage ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... crisis, do not demand more than your training gives you a right to expect. Often, instead of the direct categorical question as to guilt, we must gradually draw out a narrative of the events in question; we must patiently help the child to state the facts and to see the values of exactitudes. Without preaching or posing we must bring the events into the light of larger ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... celebrated pianoforte maker, Erard). Spontini generally listened deferentially to what the others had to say, his attitude being that of a man who expected to be asked for his opinion. When he did speak in the end it was with a sort of rhetorical solemnity, in sharp and precise sentences, categorical and well accentuated, which forbade contradiction from the outset. Herr Ferdinand Hiller was among the invited guests, and he began to speak about Liszt. After some time Spontini gave his opinion in his characteristic fashion, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... besotted Teutonic ass who said that women weren't beautiful), for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer—and I have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear, simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative (having explained beforehand the meaning of the words), she would have said, "The Sermon ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... reach the inner core of reality; nor can we pierce the veil of appearances by means of intellectual intuitions, mystical visions, feeling, or faith, i.e., through the emotional and instinctive parts of our nature. It is the presence of the moral law or categorical imperative within us that points to a spiritual world beyond the phenomenal causal order and assures us of our freedom, immortality, and God. It is because we possess this deeper source of truth in practical reason that freedom and an ideal kingdom in which purpose ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions. Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heard to the categorical question which is ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... mother and wondered if her intercession would avail aught with the old autocrat. But he had not yet ventured upon this. There was nothing certain about Mrs. Mivane but her uncertainty. She never gave a positive opinion. Her attitude of mind was only to be divined by inference. She never gave a categorical answer. And indeed he would not have been encouraged to learn that Richard Mivane himself had already consulted his daughter-in-law, as in this highhanded evasion of any decision he felt the need of support. For once the old gentleman was not displeased with her reply, comprehensive, although glancing ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... Carstairs." Anstice took advantage of a momentary pause. "May I not just suggest that a categorical denial was unnecessary? Surely to anyone who knew her, Mrs. Carstairs' silence must have been sufficient ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... you before this company, and I trust you will give me a categorical answer, Are you, or are you not about to write a book upon this country?" I hardly need observe to the English reader, that, under such circumstances, the restraint, became mutual; I declined all farther invitations, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... the lady, "is this language to a clergyman? Mr Supple is a man of sense, and gives you the best advice; and the whole world, I believe, will concur in his opinion; but I must tell you I expect an immediate answer to my categorical proposals. Either cede your daughter to my disposal, or take her wholly to your own surprizing discretion, and then I here, before Mr Supple, evacuate the garrison, and renounce you ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... utility, but it has taken a higher and more absolute basis in the mind of man. Ideas concerning morality have generally been nobler than can be accounted for by environment, and by the subjective life of the individual. Why this ultimate consistency in the moral aspirations of the ages, why a categorical imperative, and why does conscience exist in the human being?—these facts cannot be accounted for if there is no deeper basis for life than the life of humanity at any definite period ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones

... Christian Science begins—and, for the matter of that, ends—with the categorical statement that the one and only Reality is Mind, Goodness, God, all three of which terms it uses synonymously and interchangeably. So much being granted, the rest follows "in a concatenation according"; the {125} possible permutations are many—the result is always one. God ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... searched for precedents, and the council to report upon the petition. The case was too plain for argument or dogmatism, but the attempt was made to take refuge in obscurity. The answer of the council was hesitating and equivocal. The Duchess insisted upon a distinct and categorical answer to the four cities. Thus pressed, the council of Brabant declared roundly that no inquisition of any kind had ever existed, in the provinces. It was impossible that any other answer could be given, but Viglius, with his associates in the privy council, were extremely ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... insisting upon guarantees, "is the word of a king not sufficient?"—"No, madam," replied one of them, "by Saint Bartholomew, no!" Count Louis told Schomberg roundly, and repeated it many times, that he must have in a very few days a categorical response, "not to consist in words alone, but in deeds, and that he could not, and would not, risk for ever the honor of his brother, nor the property; blood, and life of those poor people ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... witnesses are those called the Apostolic Fathers, the disciples of the Apostles; but very little of their writings, and that disputed, remains. Not being written controversially, the statements are not as categorical as those of the later writers. Their letters are for the encouragement of the believers. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, and fellow-disciple with Ignatius of S. John,[93] expresses a hope that his correspondents are "well versed in the sacred Scriptures and that nothing is ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... either hypothetically or categorically. The former represent the practical necessity of a possible action as means to something else that is willed (or at least which one might possibly will). The categorical imperative would be that which represented an action as necessary of itself without reference to another end, i.e., ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant

... sure you are not shirking? Cannot you give a categorical answer—something that will really help some younger writer to take the place which you are now more or less fraudulently holding? The younger writers will cheerfully allow that the trouble is absence of mind, but what line of reading ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... already remarked, I think, that she was three years my senior; but I was so pleased with this phrase that I repeated it lovingly. 'I stand to you, dear, in loco parentis. Now, I can't let you endanger your precious health by returning to town and Miss Latimer this winter. Let us be categorical. I go to Florence; ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... must prevail. What? Who said it is not so? Come out you counter-revolutionary, you monarchist, you royal carrion,—come out and say it to my face, don't hide, you...." Nobody came out. This categorical imperative could surpass the Kant's.... Kaganitzky's face, smiling, and with moving flappy ears, was in accord with this understanding, and when Khokhriakov barked ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... Spanish-American Republics, in spite of their republican constitutions. The destinies of peoples are determined by their character and not by their government. I have endeavoured to establish this view in my previous volume by setting forth categorical examples. ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... forgotten or lost my spectacles. Now, in this twilight, with the very poor eyesight that years of labor have left me, it will be absolutely impossible for me to read this most important letter—and an immediate answer is expected—most simple and categorical—a yes or a no. Times presses; it is really most annoying. If," added Rodin, laying great stress on his words, without looking at Djalma, but so as the prince might remark it; "if only some one would render me the service to read it for me; but ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... experience. So that while no student of Wells' writings can afford to overlook First and Last Things, I would warn him against the danger of concluding that in that book he will find at last the ultimate expression of character and belief, set out in the form of a categorical creed. Again I find a spirit and overlook the letter. I choose to take as representative such a passage as the following, with all its splendid vagueness and lack of dogma, rather than a definite expression of belief that Mr Wells does not believe ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford

... entertained that the success of Don Carlos would lead to the re-assertion of clerical preponderance, would destroy liberty of conscience as understood in most European nations, and would set up a political priesthood. The manifesto of Don Carlos does not deal with those points in the full and categorical manner desirable. I was told there were two parties in the Carlist camp, the clerical and—for want of a better name, let it be called—the non-clerical The former, the Basques, and those who gave Carlism its great primary impulsion, were as zealously Roman Catholic ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... She was of a wistful type, with eager blue eyes, and lips which were habitually parted slightly—lips of a delicate fulness and color. Her hair was soft and brown, and her cheeks were of a faint, pearly rosiness. You would never have thought of her as what people of strictly categorical minds would call a bad woman. I think a wholly normal man must have looked upon her as a child looks at a heather-bell—gladly and gratefully, and with a pleased amazement. She was small and slight. Women of the majordomo type must have regarded her as still a child. Her breasts were ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... however, to make a categorical statement, that the perforated apex is a chimney to admit the air required for breathing. Every pupa breathes in its shell, however compact this may be, even as the unhatched bird breathes inside the egg. The thousands of pores with which the ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... 'Well,' says Goodhue, 'I repeat, that I would rather the old ship should go down, if we are to be always kept pumping so.' 'Mr. Hillhouse,' says Baldwin, 'you remember when we were learning logic together at school, there was the case categorical and the case hypothetical. Mr. Goodhue stated it to me first as the case categorical. I am glad to see that he now changes it to the case hypothetical, by adding, 'if we are always to be kept pumping so.' Baldwin went on ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... of all this, following the Palestinian Exemplar, he had from accurate copies furnished his own work with the Twelve Verses in dispute;—which is a categorical refutation of the statement frequently met with that the work of Victor of Antioch ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... the missionary's daily life. Shall he conform to the ordinary habits of life practiced by the people among whom he lives? In other words, shall the missionary from the West conform to native customs in food and dress? It is not possible to give a categorical reply to this question. A country should be studied and the ideals of the people thoroughly investigated by the missionary before he decides upon any course of action in this matter. There are countries where such conformity would be desirable ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... assure; clinch, make sure; determine, decide, set at rest, " make assurance double sure " [Macbeth]; know &c. (believe) 484. dogmatize, lay down the law. Adj. certain, sure, assured &c. v.; solid, well-founded. unqualified, absolute, positive, determinate, definite, clear, unequivocal, categorical, unmistakable, decisive, decided, ascertained. inevitable, unavoidable, avoidless[obs3]; ineluctable. unerring, infallible; unchangeable &c. 150; to be depended on, trustworthy, reliable, bound. unimpeachable, undeniable, unquestionable; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... translated the [Greek: Eisagogae] of Porphyry, and the whole of Aristotle's Organon. He wrote a double commentary on the [Greek: Eisagogae] and commentaries on the Categories and the De Interpretatione of Aristotle, and on the Topica of Cicero. He also composed original treatises on the categorical and hypothetical syllogism, on Division and on Topical Differences. He adapted the arithmetic of Nicomachus, and his textbook on music, founded on various Greek authorities, was in use at Oxford and Cambridge ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... BISMARCK has notified the Upper House that no exemplification of the categorical plebiscitum will ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various

... grievances, and full security for the future exercise of their religion. They addressed this demand, which was moreover couched in threatening language, to the Duke of Bavaria, as the head of the Roman Catholics, and they insisted on an immediate and categorical answer. Maximilian might decide for or against them, still their point was gained; his concession, if he yielded, would deprive the Roman Catholic party of its most powerful protector; his refusal would arm the whole Protestant party, and render inevitable a war ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... is the value of categorical assertions of this kind in presence of the fragments of pottery found at different levels in Kent's Hole? One of these fragments was so rotten that when placed in water it formed a black liquid ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... that some thoughtful intuitionists, dissatisfied with a considerable number of independent moral principles, should aim at a further simplification. Such a simplification Kant finds in the Categorical Imperative, or unconditional command of the Practical Reason: "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law." [Footnote: Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Sec 2.] And Henry Sidgwick, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... Suddenly he besought her not to throw him over.... She had to refuse to kiss him, and that was convincing, he said. Once a woman was not greedy for kisses, the end was near. And his questions were to the point, and irritatingly categorical. Had she ever been unfaithful to him? Did she love Ulick Dean? Not content with a simple denial, he took her by both hands, and looking her straight in the face, asked her to give him her word of honour that Ulick Dean was not her lover, that she had never kissed him, that she ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... giving a categorical answer occurred, as I have been assured, in regard to a more profound question. A party travelling on a railway got into deep discussion on theological questions. Like Milton's ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... Wilson's note lies in the last half dozen words and proceeds. It remains to be seen what answer will be made to this categorical demand. The general opinion in the United States appears to be that it will not be a refusal. Germany, it is thought, will begin by making concessions enough to prevent the abrupt conclusion of conversations, and will ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... I do not care for dogs. Besides, I do not often walk so far as this; but I felt the valley stifling to-day," answered Leam, in her matter-of-fact, categorical way. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... In making a categorical reply to the question which forms the title of his paper, Mr. Taylor replies—"No"—and gives various "surmises" to account for recognisable likenesses having been obtained. At the end of his ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett

... the sacred fire in the Temple of Vesta was looked upon as a categorical warning that the behavior of the Romans or of some part of them or the conduct of the government was so displeasing to the gods that the Empire would come to a sudden end unless matters were at once corrected. All ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... picked himself up, he wondered vaguely whether his pipe would be refreshing; but his wonder stopped, impotent to lead his dangling hand in the direction of his pocket. Then his mind took up its interrupted story, its record of brief, categorical facts. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... significance in their doctrine, which have reference almost exclusively to a definite practice; probably to a complete setting to work of the consciousness of duty, which is what Kant claims to do with his categorical imperative: "An unreasoning, though not unreasonable, obedience to an experienced, imperious sense of duty, leaving the result to God; and this I am disposed to call ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... subjected to the usual onslaught from the strong-minded. A small but formidable committee entered my office one morning and demanded a categorical declaration of my principles. What my views on the subject were, I knew very well; they were clear and decided; and yet, I hesitated to declare them! It wasn't a temptation of Saint Anthony—that is, turned the other ...
— Who Was She? - From "The Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1874 • Bayard Taylor

... representatives, firmly convinced of the ultimate success of its highest ideals of full independence and liberty. Our silenced and oppressed nation has no other answer to all attempts at a change of the constitution than a cool and categorical refusal, because we know that these attempts are nothing except products of an ever-increasing strain, helplessness and ruin. We do not believe to-day in any more promises given and not kept, for experience has taught us to judge them on their merits. The most ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... shows in detail the difficulties involved in attempting to state in categorical terms the cost of wool production and the great differences in cost as between different regions and different types of wool. It is found, however, that, taking all varieties in account, the average cost of production ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft

... might co-exist on the point of a needle? That the Earth is to be burned by fire, is, if true, as large a fact as that huge monsters once played amid its depths; that Antichrist is to come, is as categorical a heading to a chapter of history, as that Nero or Julian was Emperor of Rome; that a divine influence moves the will, is a subject of thought not more mysterious than the result of volition on our muscles, which we admit as a fact ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... somewhere on the West Coast; the only species, so far as I know, which is not white. It bears the name of M. Du Chaillu, who found it—he has forgotten where, unhappily. I took that famous traveller to St. Albans in the hope of quickening his recollection, and I fear I bored him afterwards with categorical inquiries. But all was vain. M. Du Chaillu can only recall that once on a time, when just starting for Europe, it occurred to him to run into the bush and strip the trees indiscriminately. Mr. Sander was prepared to send a man expressly for this Angraecum. ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... had deceived me, but with as little success. On looking to the other side of the road, I observed a mason at work repairing the opposite wall with some very suspicious-looking stones, and I immediately crossed over, and commenced a categorical examination of the supposed delinquent. I inquired whether he could explain to me the cause of the removal of the ancient cross, which used to be in the field exactly opposite to where we were then standing; but he said that, although ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... the Greeks, that name clung to him. Another of my questions was about the so-called spurious books; had he written them or not? He said that they were all genuine: so I now knew what to think of the critics Zenodotus and Aristarchus and all their lucubrations. Having got a categorical answer on that point, I tried him next on his reason for starting the "Iliad" with the wrath of Achilles. He said he had no exquisite reason; it just came into ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... It is now certain that the evidence furnished on both sides of the Atlantic as to the stellar composition of some conspicuous objects of this class (notably the Orion and "Dumb-bell" nebulae) was delusive; but the spectroscope alone was capable of meeting it with a categorical denial. Meanwhile there seemed good ground for the persuasion, which now, for the last time, gained the upper hand, that nebulae are, without exception, true "island-universes," or ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... on till the 12th August. On the previous day he had been instructed to demand his passport on the ground that Austrian troops were being employed against France. This point was not fully cleared up when I left Vienna. On the 9th August, M. Dumaine had received from Count Berchtold the categorical declaration that no Austrian troops were being moved to Alsace. The next day this statement was supplemented by a further one, in writing, giving Count Berchtold's assurance that not only had no Austrian troops been moved actually to the French frontier, ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... concluding the conversation: "Whoever violates our neutrality will force us to become the allies of his enemy." There could be nothing more categorical. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... in the public mind as to whether there really are dark cells in the Atlanta Penitentiary, or, if there be, whether their use has not been long discontinued. I never heard any categorical statement in denial of it from any of the officials, though I have read something to that effect in local newspapers. Visitors never see them, and I know of no prison inspectors who have done so; they are shown instead the light cells ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... now, a word then; promises came to him in single phrases lost in empty gossip. He collected what he wanted grain by grain from bushels of chaff. The whole sum of his new knowledge could have been expressed in a paragraph, took him a week to get, but was just what he wanted. If he had asked categorical questions, he would have received lies. If he had attempted to hurry matters, he would have ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... and women. She enters marriage unprepared for the realities of conjugal life, and hence incapable of understanding either herself or her husband. When pregnancy comes to such a wife, the old seclusion taboos fall upon her like a categorical imperative. She is overwhelmed with embarrassment at a normal and natural biological process which can hardly be classified as "romantic." Such an attitude is neither conducive to the eugenic choice of a male nor to the proper care of the child either ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... the Entente Powers "most categorical assurances of a steady determination to carry on the policy of neutrality in the form of most sincere benevolence towards them. The new Ministry," he added, "adopts M. Zaimis's repeated declarations of Greece's friendly attitude towards the ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... formal practical principle of the pure reason insists that the mere form of a universal legislation must constitute the ultimate determining principle of the will. Here is the only possible practical principle which is sufficient to furnish categorical imperatives, that is, practical laws which ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... and the king, and to noble ladies and inoffensive pilgrims. It is one of a list of many questions which, my vow accomplished, I will not fail to put to him; ay, and expecting an answer, as they say, prompt and categorical." ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... direct question, put in a very categorical way, caused the questioned to blush, if it did not induce her to smile. The first she did in a very pretty and engaging manner, though I thought she hesitated about indulging in ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... Rosen. "O, much to say! Much to say that I would rather not, and much to leave unsaid that I would rather say. For I am like St. Paul, your Highness, and always wish to do the things I should not. Well! to be categorical—that is the word?—I took the Prince your order. He could not credit his senses. 'Ah,' he cried, 'dear Madame von Rosen, it is not possible—it cannot be—I must hear it from your lips. My wife is a poor girl misled, she is only silly, she is not cruel.' 'Mon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from what Greek stock the Etruscans in the first instance received their art-models, a categorical answer cannot be given; yet relations of a remarkable kind subsist between the Etruscan and the oldest Attic art. The three forms of art, which were practised in Etruria at least in after times very extensively, but in Greece ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... are not-z"; and the assertion "(4) is true" is equivalent to "No xy exist." Hence the Contradictory to "All xy are z" may be expressed as the Alternative Proposition "Either some xy are not-z, or no xy exist," but not as the Categorical Proposition ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll

... meadows, not pretermitting phatie-fields in full blossom—a part of rural landscape which, to my utter astonishment, has escaped the pen of poet, and the brush of painter; although I will risk my reputation as a man of pure and categorical taste, if a finer ingredient in the composition of a landscape could be found than a field of Cork-fed phaties or Moroky blacks in full bloom, allowing a man to judge by the pleasure they confer ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... sometimes concentrated. But this would lead me too far afield; moreover, since the most glaring differences of opinion usually crop up precisely on this subject, I could not avoid the dangerous ground on which, according to Goethe's profound saying, the categorical imperative and the authority of the man who pronounces it, form the last court of appeal. Or if some one, with a liking for gaudy paint and iridescent rags, should prefer a puppet show to the living figures of the piece, vital to their very finger tips, but, to be sure, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... and Matthias Judex however continued to enforce the Book of Confutation demanding an unqualified adoption in every point, per omnia. When the jurist Matthew Wesenbecius declined to accept the book in this categorical way, he was not permitted to serve as sponsor at a baptism. John Frederick was dissatisfied with this procedure and action of the ministers; and when they persisted in their demands, the autocratic Duke deprived them of the right to excommunicate, vesting this power in a consistory ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... often pagans incompetent to decide in these questions, that it was they who really belonged to the only orthodox Church. Something must be done to end this equivocal position, and to bring about once for all a categorical condemnation of the schism. Augustin, acting in concert with the primate Aurelius, was the ruling spirit ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... Suckfist in manner as followeth. My lord, and you my masters, if the iniquity of men were as easily seen in categorical judgment as we can discern flies in a milkpot, the world's four oxen had not been so eaten up with rats, nor had so many ears upon the earth been nibbled away so scurvily. For although all that my adversary hath spoken ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... consequence of the same. This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me; in other words a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative; that the maxim (regula maxima, or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings. This, I say, is ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... it would be absolutely impossible to collect upon the inhospitable shores of the Red Sea an army sufficiently large to meet the Negus. In fact, this was almost categorically the collective demand of the three Powers which reached Eden Vale the same day. As categorical, however, was the rejection of the proposal, accompanied by the declaration that the Eden Vale government intended to carry on alone the war with Abyssinia which now seemed inevitable. Moreover, the allies were told that their armies could not be brought ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... up, he sometimes avenged himself by wondering if his wife was still sorry that they had not called her Muriel. Jane was not ugly; she developed, indeed, a kind of categorical prettiness that might have been a projection of her mind. She had a creditable collection of features, but one had to take an inventory of them to find out that she was good-looking. The fusing grace had ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... on my mind of the upshot of the whole inquiry, which it was almost impossible for me to conceal from men who saw me day by day, who heard my familiar conversation, who came perhaps for the express purpose of pumping me, and having a categorical yes or no to their questions,—how could I expect to say any thing about my actual, positive, present belief, which would be sustaining or consoling to such persons as were haunted already by doubts of their own? Nay, how could I, with satisfaction to myself, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... a categorical answer," I remarked. "Come, Emily, tell me, is there no one for whom you have more regard than for those unhappy gentlemen whom you refused?" I saw a gentle blush rise to her cheek. "Well," I said, "I shall ask Oliver Farwell ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... remarking to you how direct this Empire literature is, going to the point without any details, a characteristic, as it seems to me, of a primitive time. The literature of that period holds a place between the summaries of chapters in Telemaque and the categorical reports of a public office. It had ideas, but refrained from expressing them, it was so scornful! It was observant, but would not communicate its observations to any one, it was so miserly! Nobody but Fouche ever mentioned ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... as possible, avoiding metaphysical cobwebs and giving the ego and non-ego a wide berth. I shall content myself in most cases with merely pointing out the doctrine apparently preached by Goethe (reminding you now and then that even his own seemingly categorical dogmas were to him merely temporary forms of thought) and shall prefer to let much justify its existence as an integral part of the living whole rather than to expel the life by dissection and to examine the dead parts through ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... before us is, To what extent has Edison added to the wealth of the world by his inventions and his energy and perseverance? It will be noted from the foregoing that no categorical answer can be offered to such a question, but sufficient material can be gathered from a statistical review of the commercial arts directly influenced to afford an approximate idea of the increase in national wealth that has been affected by ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... and bowed himself out, after another word or two, looking more gloomy and careworn than usual. The interview had not been altogether to his mind. He wished now that he had spoken more roundly to Mr. Stafford; perhaps even asked for a categorical denial of the charge. But the Minister's manner had overawed him. He had found it impossible to put the question. And then the pitiful degrading confession he had had to make for Lord Pilgrimstone! That had put the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... position was understood by Hartley and Condillac: and then what Hume had demonstratively deduced from this concession concerning cause and effect, will apply with equal and crushing force to all the other eleven categorical forms [27], and the logical functions corresponding to them. How can we make bricks without straw;—or build without cement? We learn all things indeed by occasion of experience; but the very facts so learned force us inward on ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... had thrown no light upon the future movements of Gallia, and Rosette was disposed apparently to evade, or at least to postpone, the subject. When, therefore, Lieutenant Procope was about to press his inquiries in a more categorical form, Servadac, thinking it advisable not prematurely to press the little savant too far, interrupted him by asking the professor how he accounted for the earth having suffered so little from such ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... momentous question I do not profess to give a categorical answer. If it be true, even in ordinary times, that "of all forms of human folly, prediction is the most gratuitous," it is especially true at a moment like the present, when we are constantly reminded of the French proverb that there is nothing certain but the unforeseen. All I can hope ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... in 1866 with the fourth edition. This was the most categorical claim to the theory of descent with modification in the "Origin of Species." The "my" here is the only one that was taken out before 1869. I suppose Mr. Darwin thought that with the removal of this "my" he had ceased to claim the theory of descent with modification. Nothing, however, could be ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... of this there is room for an infinite variety of "categorical imperatives." The conscience of one personality is able to accept as its "good" the very same thing that another personality is compelled to regard as its "evil." Indeed it is conceivable that a moment might arise in the history ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... a vivid and somewhat categorical account of his predilections, which were "gambling, duels, politics, writing pamphlets, the conception of colossal canal, railway, and commercial undertakings that never got far beyond the initial and rocky mental stage." He was one of the chief ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... number of incoherent republics. They reduce men to loose counters, merely for the sake of simple telling, and not to figures, whose power is to arise from their place in the table. The elements of their own metaphysics might have taught them better lessons. The troll of their categorical table might have informed them that there was something else in the intellectual world besides substance and quantity. They might learn from the catechism of metaphysics that there were eight ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... familiar with them. He acquired at this time a knowledge of French and Italian literature too; but the philosophy of Kant and the writings of Goethe and Schiller roused him to greater enthusiasm. From Kant he learnt that the guiding principle of conduct was not happiness, but the 'categorical imperative' of duty; from Goethe he drew such hopefulness as gleams occasionally through his despondent utterances on the progress of the human race. He translated Goethe's novel, Wilhelm Meister, in 1823, and followed it up with the Life of Schiller. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... performances, and on one occasion at least, Elizaveta Petrovna improved upon the Scripture parable; when an insufficient number of spectators presented themselves at the French comedy, she forthwith dispatched mounted messengers to numerous persons of rank and distinction, with a categorical demand to know why they had absented themselves, and a warning that henceforth a fine of fifty rubles would be exacted ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... the paper published the famous letter, so precise and categorical in its conclusions, in which Arsene Lupin furnished the solution of the problem. ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... interesting book he has left behind him, is certainly the most clumsy and chaotic from a literary point of view. The chapters for the most part begin with his early years, and end with some detail as to his life in Rome, each one being a categorical survey of a certain side of his life; but remarks as to his personal peculiarities are scattered about from beginning to end. He tells how he could always see the moon in broad daylight;[249] of his passion for wandering ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... Madame. But since you ask the question and require a categorical answer, I will make my confession. I have never been loved. But you will observe, as an extenuating circumstance, that I am young. I do not give ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... shortly after these events, by Pitt, who took Byng's side; but that Hawke, being a member of the House, denied some of Pitt's allegations as to the inadequacy of Byng's fleet, on the strength of his own personal observation after taking over the command. Thereupon, so the account says, the categorical test question, the argumentum ad hominem, was put to him whether with Byng's means he could have beat the enemy; and the manner of the first Pitt, in thus dealing with an opponent in debate, can be imagined from ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... part, knew still more than that. With the swift intuition she inherited from her long line of Oriental ancestry, she said to herself at once, in categorical terms, "It was that man that did it. I know it was he. And he sees I know it. And he knows I'm right. And he's afraid of me accordingly." But an intuition, however valuable to its possessor, is not yet admitted as evidence in English courts. Elma also knew it was no use in the world for ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... has to be stowed somewhere below the belt. (In Mrs Pengelly's shop you may purchase trousers that have as many as four pockets. They cost anything from eleven-and-sixpence to fifteen shillings, and you ask Mrs Pengelly for them under the categorical name of "non-plush unmentionables"—"non-plush" being short ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... Boy's aspiring brain For Study still there lies a craving, And what is won against the grain Is never really worth the having; This boasted Categorical Imperative is clearly vicious,— Pastors and masters, one and all, Must ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... believe," he wrote, "that her Majesty's government will press for a categorical answer upon what appears to him to be only a partial record, in the making up of which he has been allowed no part. He is reluctant to volunteer his view of the case, with no assurance that her Majesty's government ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... give his opinions of men and books, faithfully, whether they agree with my own, or not. I do admit, that there always appeared to me something of affectation in Mr Harris's manner of writing; something of a habit of clothing plain thoughts in analytick and categorical formality. But all his writings are imbued with learning; and all breathe that philanthropy and amiable disposition, which distinguished him as a man. [Footnote: This gentleman, though devoted to the study of grammar and dialecticks, was not so absorbed in it as to be without a sense of pleasantry, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... a large proportion of the Assistant Inquisitors were inclined to jib at the word "responsible"; but the young Captain insisted upon each man giving a categorical reply to the question; and in the end, stimulated further by the stern looks of the Grand Inquisitor, they ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... at him with sudden critical interest, missing an emanation from him. It was his enthusiasm. A cheerfulness had come upon him instead. Also what he said had something categorical in it, something crisp and arranged. He himself received benefit from the consideration of it, and she was aware that if this result followed, her own "conversion" was of ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... would have answered him, as far as he could, in the same formal, argumentative manner. But Mr. Allgood was getting jaded; the stretch of attention required by the reasoning of Mr. Goose was telling upon his patience; so he slided away to talk with one who spoke in less categorical style: not so ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... their towns, but were met on the way by a deputation from the Prophet's Town. This deputation declared that the followers of the Prophet had taken up the tomahawk against the United States, "and that they would lay it down only with their lives." They were confident of victory and required a categorical answer from the Delawares to the question of whether they would or would not join them in the coming war. Conner and the four chiefs were immediately sent to report to Harrison, and another party ordered ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... argument two systems of incompatible notations, idealism and realism, that we succeed in enunciating the parallelist thesis. This reasoning went home, all the more as it was adapted to the usual form of discussions between philosophers. But a more positive and more categorical proof is to be found all through "Matter and Memory". From the precise example of recollection analysed to its lowest depths, Mr Bergson completely grasps and measures the divergence between soul and body, between mind and matter. Then, putting into practice what he said ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... really some apprehension of treachery from thee; which made me so miserably evade; for else, I could as safely have sworn to the truth of this, as to that of the former: but she pressing me still for a categorical answer, I ventured plumb; and swore to it, [lover's oaths, Jack!] that they were really and truly Lady Betty ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... compatriots Bignio and Fraulein Rabatinsky (now in Vienna) sang splendidly in the parts of the Landgrave Ludwig and the spiteful Landgravine Sophie, at the first performances of the Oratorio in Pest. Hence, if no categorical objections are raised against them by the worthy theatrical potentates, it would seem advisable and well to secure these singers for parts for which they have already proved ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... hour: King turned directly upon business; wishes to have 'Categorical Answers' as to Three Points already submitted to his Britannic Majesty's consideration. Clear footing indispensable between us. What you want of me? say it, and be plain. What I want of you is, These ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle









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