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Antecedent   Listen
noun
Antecedent  n.  
1.
That which goes before in time; that which precedes. "The Homeric mythology, as well as the Homeric language, has surely its antecedents."
2.
One who precedes or goes in front. (Obs.) "My antecedent, or my gentleman usher."
3.
pl. The earlier events of one's life; previous principles, conduct, course, history. "If the troops... prove worthy of their antecedents, the victory is surely ours."
4.
(Gram.) The noun to which a relative refers; as, in the sentence "Solomon was the prince who built the temple," prince is the antecedent of who.
5.
(Logic)
(a)
The first or conditional part of a hypothetical proposition; as, If the earth is fixed, the sun must move.
(b)
The first of the two propositions which constitute an enthymeme or contracted syllogism; as, Every man is mortal; therefore the king must die.
6.
(Math.) The first of the two terms of a ratio; the first or third of the four terms of a proportion. In the ratio a:b, a is the antecedent, and b the consequent.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Antecedent" Quotes from Famous Books



... considered, now-a-days, to hold but a mean idea of the spiritual authority of the Church. He had never been known to dispute on its exact bearing with the State—whether it was incorporated with the State, or above the State—whether it was antecedent to the Papacy, or formed from the Papacy, &c., &c. According to his favorite maxim, Quieta non movere (not to disturb things that are quiet), I have no doubt that he would have thought that the less ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... the most attenuate form of matter of which we can conceive, as a condensation of creative energy, yet but a matrix fitted for the reception of a planet seed or soul. We recognize a divine involution as the antecedent and causation of all so-called natural evolution. We see each link in the chain of being, from least to greatest, from the simplest to the most complex; grass, herb, and tree, fish, reptile, bird, and beast, as multiple yet orderly expressions ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... the idea of superintendence and design, we have on the one hand an enormous antecedent improbability, while on the other hand we have only a very small power by which a direction may be given to the course of events, since by the hypothesis in any one generation the change, and consequently the superior ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... sacramentalism then that we must return, not only in religion and its practice, but in philosophy, if we are to establish a firm foundation for that newer society and civilization that are to help us to achieve the "Great Peace." Antecedent systems failed, and subsequent systems have failed; in this alone, the philosophy of Christianity, is there safety, for it alone is consonant with the ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... were ever the farthest from correctness, and there were no man's words they ever heard that they again returned. They were in general ignorant, as acting mechanically; and by not considering the antecedent, and catching the sound, and not the sense, they perverted the sense of the speaker, and made him appear as ignorant as themselves."] it would be unfair to judge of it even from these specimens. A Report, verbatim, of any effective speech must always appear diffuse and ungraceful in the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... antecedent essay to an art of light—of mobile color—an abstract language of thought and emotion which should speak to consciousness through the eye, as music speaks through the ear. This is an art unborn, though quickening in the womb of the ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... matter under discussion, nor the elucidation of the effect of fear,[1] of anger, of all such states of mind as might here have been operative,—it requires the establishment of his unbiased vision of the subject from a period antecedent to these above-mentioned influences. Opinions, valuations, prejudices, superstitions, etc., may here be to a high degree factors of disturbance and confusion. Only when the whole Augean stable is swept out may the man be supposed capable of apperception, may the thing he is to tell ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... cosmical myth, relics of the first stage of the development of the story, so also many of its incidents are probably suggested by the circumstances and details of the Eleusinian ritual. There were religious usages before there were distinct religious conceptions, and these antecedent religious usages shape and determine, at many points, the ultimate religious conception, as the details of the myth interpret or explain the religious custom. The hymn relates the legend of certain holy places, to which various impressive ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... no other than the remarkable antecedent of the "Zincali,"—the translation of St. Luke's Gospel into the Gipsy dialect of Spain.[A] Of the Bible in Spain it is unnecessary to speak; there can be no better evidence of the estimation it is held in than the fact of its having been translated into French and German, while it has run through ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... administration of the "law common to all nations"; and all we know of primitive thought would lead us to conclude that this ideal similarity would do much to encourage the belief in an identity of the two conceptions. But then, while the Jus Gentium had little or no antecedent credit at Rome, the theory of a Law of Nature came in surrounded with all the prestige of philosophical authority, and invested with the charms of association with an elder and more blissful condition of the race. ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... the lively interest of specialists both in Europe and America. It is now offered in a more popular form, that the general public may share with the student the light shed by these untutored melodies upon the history of music; for these songs take us back to a stage of development antecedent to that in which culture music appeared among the ancients, and reveal to us something of the foundations upon which rests the art of music as we know ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher

... past, a condition of the world, essentially similar to that which we now know, came into existence, without any precedent condition from which it could have naturally proceeded. The assumption that successive states of Nature have arisen, each without any relation of natural causation to an antecedent state, is a mere modification ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great, immutable, preexistent law, prior to all our devices, and prior to all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas, and all our sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by which we are knit and connected in the eternal frame of the universe, out of which we ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... succeeding letters. The syllable bits might very naturally, in the mind of honest Aby, be changed into bites. Dates have for certain reasons been omitted; but, from this and other passages, we may perceive that the date of this correspondence is antecedent to the bill for ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... Gratification of our Hunger and Thirst, is not the Cause of these Appetites; they are previous to any such Prospect; and so likewise is the Desire of doing Good; with this Difference, that being seated in the intellectual Part, this last, though Antecedent to Reason, may yet be improved and regulated by it, and, I will add, is no otherwise a Virtue than as it ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the abyss. But under a certain scrutiny one can detect here what we do not detect in our other two elements, and that is that, going on side by side with the processes of dissolution and frequently masked by these, there are other processes by which men, often of the most diverse parentage and antecedent traditions, are being segregated into a multitude of specific new groups which may presently develop ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... corollary from these remarks is, that all causation is an exertion of mind, and is only figuratively applied to matter. It necessarily implies power, will, and action. An efficient cause—we are not speaking now of a mere antecedent—is that which is necessarily followed by the effect, so that, if it were known, the effect might be predicted antecedently to all experience. Cicero describes it with philosophical accuracy. "Causa ea est, quae id efficit, cujus est causa. Non sic causa intelligi debet, ut quod cuique antecedat, ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... nothing more requires to be said. The second [Greek: OI] was safe to be dropped in a collocation of letters like that. It might also have been anticipated, that there would be found copyists to be confused by the antecedent [Greek: KAI]. Accordingly the Peshitto, Lewis, and Curetonian render the place 'et dicentes;' shewing that they mistook [Greek: KAI OI ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... been associated in experience with such results. Let the inference span with its mighty arch a myriad of years, or link together the events of a few minutes, in each case the arch rises from the ground of familiar facts, and reaches an antecedent which is known to be a ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... it is odd, to say the least, to see us cosily ensconced in a private sitting-room of a Dublin hotel, the table laid for three, and not a vestige of a man anywhere to be seen. Where, one might ask, if he knew the antecedent circumstances, are Miss Hamilton's American spouse and Miss ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... foregoing scene to have been only described antecedent to the woman in the outbreak of her gratitude revealing the priest's charity, from which he recoiled,—suppose the mirthfulness of the incidents arising from reading the subscription-list—a mirthfulness ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... office became that of entertainer rather than teacher. But always something of the old tradition was kept alive. And if he has now come to be looked upon merely as the best expresser, the gift of seeing is implied as necessarily antecedent to that, and of seeing very deep, too. If any man would seem to have written without any conscious moral, that man is Shakespeare. But that must be a dull sense, indeed, which does not see through his tragic—yes, and his comic—masks ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... sit and think of these nine years since Berkeley and sorrow first laid hold of me. Berkeley rooted in me the conception of mind as the independent antecedent of all experience, and none of the scientific materialism, which so troubles Anerum that he will ultimately take refuge from it in Catholicism, affects me. But the ethical inadequacy of Berkeley became very soon ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of the superstition, opens with a striking picture of the rapid progress of the scepticism in England. Everywhere, a disbelief in witchcraft was becoming fashionable in the upper classes; but it was a disbelief that arose entirely from a strong sense of its antecedent improbability. All who were opposed to the orthodox faith united in discrediting witchcraft. They laughed at it, as palpably absurd, as involving the most grotesque and ludicrous conceptions, as so essentially incredible that it would be a waste of time to examine ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... analysis will further lead to the conclusion that if ideas of reason are not chronologically antecedent to sensation, they are, at least, the logical antecedents of all cognition. The mere feeling of resistance can not give the notion of without the a priori idea of space. The feeling of movement of change, can not give the cognition of event without the rational idea ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... to the text; yet, methinks, there is something yet wanting. The following words, but take the High'st to witness, even though it be understood as an anticipation or assumption in this sense,—but now suppose that you take the Highest to witness,—has not sufficient relation to the antecedent sentence. I will propose a reading nearer to the surface, and ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... the actual precursors of Darwin in the statement of the principle—Wells, Matthews and Prichard—possess any adequate knowledge of the class of facts above referred to, or sufficient antecedent interest in the problem itself, which were both needed in order to perceive the application of the principle to the mode of development of the varied ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... was the union and discipline of the Christian republic. For the last time the effect figures as the cause. Union and discipline we know are powerful, but we know also that they are the result of deep antecedent forces, and that prudence and policy ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... commentators, chiefly by the acute remarks on many of the characters, and on the conduct of some of the fables, which he has subjoined to the different plays. In other respects he is not superior to the rest; in some, particularly in illustrating his author from antecedent or contemporary writers, he is inferior to them. A German critic of our own days, Schlegel, has surpassed him even in that ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... all eternity in what might be termed, broadly, its present condition. The second hypothesis was that the present condition of things had had only a limited duration, and that, at some period of the past, what we now know came into existence without any relation of natural causation to an antecedent state. The third hypothesis also assumed that the present condition of things had had a limited duration, but it supposed that that condition had been derived by natural processes from an antecedent condition, the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... told to Lady Waverton, no doubt but Harry would have been banished from Tetherdown that night. It is likely, indeed, that the ultimate fates of Alison and Harry would have been the same. But many antecedent adventures must ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... he, she, or it is used it is necessary to think of the sex of its antecedent, though in its use there is no reason why sex should be expressed, say, one time in ten thousand. If one pronoun non-expressive of gender were used instead of the three, with three gender adjectives, then in nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine cases the speaker would ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell

... the idea of moral liberty, by which alone man is considered as the original author of his own resolutions. For, considered within the province of experience, the resolution, as the beginning of action, is not a cause merely, but is also an effect of antecedent motives. It was in this reference to a higher idea, that we previously found the unity and wholeness of Tragedy in the sense of the ancients; namely, its absolute beginning is the assertion of Free-will, and the acknowledgment of Necessity its absolute end. But we consider ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... we say that we know "why" a thing is so and so, we mean that we know its immediate antecedents and connections, and find them familiar to us. I say that the immediate antecedent of, and the phenomenon most closely connected with, heredity is memory. I do not profess to show why anything can remember at all, I only maintain that whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... arrival of the Saxons. But, it may be observed, those passages to which he alludes are not to be found in the earlier MSS. The description of Britain, which forms the introduction, and refers us to a period antecedent to the invasion of Julius Caesar; appears only in three copies of the "Chronicle"; two of which are of so late a date as the Norman Conquest, and both derived from the same source. Whatever relates to the succession ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... Shan't refuse a lady, shall he, Trix?"—and they all wondered at Harry's performance as a trencher-man, in which character the poor boy acquitted himself very remarkably; for the truth is he had had no dinner, nobody thinking of him in the bustle which the house was in, during the preparations antecedent to ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... already made, and short formulae for making more: The major premiss of a syllogism, consequently, is a formula of this description; and the conclusion is not an inference drawn from the formula, but an inference drawn according to the formula: the real logical antecedent, or premisses being the particular facts from which the general proposition was collected by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... antecedent and prehistoric matters of faith about Him, we find here that before He became man He subsisted in possession, lawful and natural, of the manifested reality [Greek: morphe] of Godhead, equal to God [ii. 6.]. His appearance as man was the sequel of His own action of will in ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... have already mentioned, the Colonial Government succeeded the Dutch East India Company in the administration of Java towards the end of the last century. During the period antecedent to the British occupation, the revenue of the Government was derived from two monopolies: (1) that of producing the more valuable crops, and (2) that of trading in all products whatever. Meanwhile the mass of the natives were left entirely ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... in the spiritual world, the Creator of all things effects His purposes by operating according to laws. On this principle St. Paul in Rom. viii. 2 speaks of "the law of sin and death," meaning that sin and death are invariably related to each other as antecedent and consequent. By an irrevocable law {9} death is ordained to be "the wages of sin" (Rom. vi. 23). Of ourselves we can judge that it does not consist with the power and wisdom of an omnipotent and omniscient Creator that ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis

... known. It is sufficient to cover one square mile to the depth of 269 feet; in twenty years it is one cubic mile, or five cubic miles in a century. Turning now to the other aspect of this process, and the antecedent causes which produce these effects, it appears that the area of the Mississippi River basin is 1,147,000 square miles—about one third of the total area of the United States. Knowing this, and the annual waste from its surface, it is easy to demonstrate that it will take 6000 years ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... Pronoun agrees with its antecedent in Gender, Number, and Person, but its case is determined by its construction in the clause in which it ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett

... he held the doctrine in a sense which, if he lead lived in these times, would have infallibly caused him to be classed among the defenders of "spontaneous generation." "Omne vivum ex vivo," "no life without antecedent life," aphoristically sums up Redi's doctrine; but he went no further. It is most remarkable evidence of the philosophic caution and impartiality of his mind, that although he had speculatively anticipated the manner in which ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... and direct proof than we have respecting this solution of the enigma respecting the Catstane. The idea, however, that it was possible for a monument to a historic Saxon leader to be found in Scotland of a date antecedent to the advent of Hengist and Horsa to the shores of Kent, was a notion so repugnant to many minds, that, very naturally, various arguments have been adduced against it, while some high authorities have declared in favour of it. In this ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... now once more to Jason Philip's face, he thought he perceived in it the restlessness of an evil conscience. It seemed to him that this man was not acting from conviction but from an antecedent determination. It seemed to him further that he was faced, not merely by this one man and his rage and its accidental causes, but by a whole world in arms that was pledged to enmity against him. He had no inclination now to await the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... Memiphite sovereigns and the average length of their reigns, the gradual construction of the pyramids would, therefore, it is presumed, extend over a period, in round numbers, of some sixteen hundred years! Imagination is left to conceive the antecedent period required for the slow formation of the alluvial valley of the Nile until it became fit for human habitation, whether it was first peopled by an indigenous race, or by an Asiatic immigration, already bringing with them from their Asiatic ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... with great care for the purpose of concealment. Some parts had been hollowed out by art, though I concluded from the appearance of the roof and sides that there had been originally a cavern there formed by nature. Whether it had been constructed by our brethren the Molokani, or at a period antecedent to the persecutions they had suffered, I could not tell to a certainty, but I thought it very likely that it was of a much more ancient date. As may be supposed, I was not in a condition to consider the subject. The unusual exertion and excitement I had just gone through ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... the contemporary tendencies, the one towards honour, the other towards dishonour? Or who shall discover why derivation becomes degeneration, and where and when and how the bastardy befalls? The decivilised have every grace as the antecedent of their vulgarities, every distinction as the precedent of their mediocrities. No ballad-concert song, feign it sigh, frolic, or laugh, but has the excuse that the feint was suggested, was made easy, by some living sweetness once. Nor are the decivilised to blame as having ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... namesake of his who was the author of a well-known Homily on Palm Sunday,) remarks that "yesterday" had been read the history of the rising of Lazarus.(364) Now S. John xi. 1-45 is the lection for the antecedent ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... me that the propriety of applying the parallel method depends mainly upon the existing and the antecedent circumstances of each case. If a French army should approach from the Rhine by way of Bavaria, and should find allies in force upon the Lech and the Iser, it would be a very delicate operation to throw the whole Austrian army into ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... was not necessary, but if he were right in saying that numbers were leaving Ireland because Ireland was joyless he was right in saying that it was the duty of every Irishman to spend his money in making Ireland a joyful country. He was speaking now in the interests of religion. A country is antecedent to religion. To have religion you must first have a country, and if Ireland was not made joyful Ireland would become a Protestant country in about twenty-five years. In support of this contention he produced figures showing the ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... efforts to effectuate it by any sinister attempt to render us subordinate to, or an appendage of, the army." It would be difficult to cite an apter instance of wresting sound principles to one's own destruction. Whatever the antecedent provocation, this is no temper in which to effect military objects. It is indeed hard to believe that an army so little numerous as that of Brown could have accomplished the ambitious designs confided to it; but that does not affect the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... commonplace as the fall of an apple, or the disturbance of a hanging lamp. Trifles are full of meaning to them, because their minds are already prepared to arrive at certain conclusions by means of antecedent reflections. Simple and familiar incidents, thus accidentally associated with the history of grand discoveries, are the channels through which the accumulating waters at length descend, rather than the rills which feed the swelling of their floods. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various

... satisfaction in it; but a child does not. He loses half his happiness because he does not know that he is happy. If he ever has any consciousness, it is an isolated, momentary thing, with no relation to anything antecedent or subsequent. It lays hold on nothing. Not only have they no perception of themselves, but they have no perception of anything. They never recognize an exigency. They do not salute greatness. Has not the Autocrat told us of some lady who remembered a certain momentous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Certainly we shall not argue that such action involves an "interference" with natural law; and if we have to admit our ignorance as to {210} how such a force would operate and bring results to pass, let us remind ourselves that the ultimate "how?"—the bridge between antecedent and consequent, and why the former should be followed by the latter—always and inevitably escapes us. Why in the thousand and more observed forms of snow-crystals the filaments of ice should always be arranged at angles of 60 degrees ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... feature, little understood, and frequently much dreaded, is that of Antecedent Impressions. When a bitch has been served by a dog not of her own breed it has been proven in extremely rare cases that the subsequent litters by dogs of her own kind, showed traces (or, at least, one or more of the litter did) of the dog she was first lined by. The theory ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell

... equivocations; definition, name, difference; part and parties affected in melancholy, it's affection; matter; species or kinds of melancholy; melancholy an hereditary disease; meats causing it, &c.; antecedent causes; particular parts; symptoms of it; they are passionate above measure; humorous; melancholy, adust symptoms; mixed symptoms of melancholy with other diseases; melancholy, a cause of jealousy; of despair; melancholy men why witty; why so apt to laugh, weep, sweat, blush; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... amongst my intimate friends that I resided in the late Republic of Texas for many years antecedent to my immigration to this State. During the year 1847, whilst but a boy, and residing on the sea-beach some three or four miles from the city of Galveston, Judge Wheeler, at that time Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, paid us a visit, and brought with him a gentleman, whom he had ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes

... give up one's country any more than one gives UP one's grandmother. They're both antecedent to choice—elements of one's composition that are not ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... by Seneca; as he well puts it, we shall be pleased with what we have, if we avoid the self-torture of comparing our own lot with some other and happier one—nostra nos sine comparatione delectent; nunquam erit felix quem torquebit felicior.[2] And again, quum adspexeris quot te antecedent, cogita quot sequantur[3]—if a great many people appear to be better off than yourself, think how many there are in a worse position. It is a fact that if real calamity comes upon us, the most effective consolation—though it springs from ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... remained from the beginning of this world? Our continents seem to have been formed by a preponderance, during many oscillations of level, of the force of elevation; but may not the areas of preponderant movement have changed in the lapse of ages? At a period immeasurably antecedent to the silurian epoch, continents may have existed where oceans are now spread out; and clear and open oceans may have existed where our continents now stand. Nor should we be justified in assuming that if, for instance, the bed of the Pacific Ocean were now converted into a continent, we ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... the exclusion almost of the nineteenth,' and to the method of weaving fiction out of historical materials. We have already remarked upon his practice of opening with a kind of family history, which explains the antecedent connections, relationship, and pedigree of the persons who are coming upon the stage, and marks out the background of his story. In Denis Duval he carries this preamble through two chapters, and arranges all the pieces on his board so carefully that an inattentive ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... (5) and (6) the agreement of the pronoun may also be noted. Pronouns may be introduced into many of the preceding exercises and the pupils led to apply to the agreement of the pronoun with its antecedent what has been learned of the agreement of the verb with its subject. Let the pupils determine why the following connected subjects are ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... assigned for the dissolution of our intimacy antecedent to the war, will afford a better proof of your ingenuity than your integrity; and further, (with respect to your veracity,) if any other instance is necessary, let me add one which happened at camp, (at head-quarters,) in the ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... of this ceremony naturally leads to a digression on the origin and constitution of the English parliament, and its division into the two houses of Lords and Commons. The events leading to these institutions, and the antecedent civil wars between the king and the barons, in the reign of Henry III. and Edward I., are given by the Khan, on the whole, with great accuracy—probably from the information of his English friends since the knowledge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... and it enables us to explain these facts in terms of the classes of causes from which they follow, and the classes of effects which they produce. No explanation, of course, can actually acquaint us directly with the real antecedent or consequent facts themselves: it can only tell us to what classes these facts must belong. The terms of the plan by which we explain the facts, the classes, for instance, daylight and darkness, and their relation of alternation, or the words or symbols which stand for classes ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen

... earlier. Analysis and its correlative synthesis are defined by Pappus: 'in analysis we assume that which is sought as if it were already done, and we inquire what it is from which this results, and again what is the antecedent cause of the latter, and so on, until by so retracing our steps we come upon something already known or belonging to the class of principles. But in synthesis, reversing the process, we take as already done that which was last arrived ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... to wisdom" (R. 91 a). His method was to give the authorities on both sides, but to render no decision. His boldness in raising such questions for debate was new, and his failure to give the students a decision was quite unusual, while his claim that reason was antecedent to faith was startling. Even after being driven from Paris, in part because of this boldness and in part because of a most unfortunate incident which deservedly ruined his career in the Church, students in numbers followed him to his retreat ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... must be drawn between revision and review. Revision implies review as an antecedent step, but review is by no means necessarily followed by revision. The English book was reviewed and revised in 1662; it was reviewed but not revised in 1689. Review is tentative and advisory; revision ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... forms, leaving the images in the mind exactly as they found them; whereas the intuitive power rejects, or assimilates, indefinitely, until they are resolved into the proper perfect form. Now the power which prescribes that form must, of necessity, be antecedent to the presentation of the objects which it thus assimilates, as it could not else give consistence and unity to what was before separate or fragmentary. And every one who has ever realized an idea of the class in which alone we compare the assimilants with ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... communications, recently received from Georgia, which materially change the prospect of affairs in that quarter, and seem to render a war with the Creek Nations more probable than it has been at any antecedent period. While the attention of Congress will be directed to the consideration of measures suited to the exigency, it can not escape their observation that this intelligence brings a fresh proof of the insufficiency of the existing provisions of the laws toward the effectual cultivation and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... as good as his word. With every regard to ceremony and ancient usage, the marriage of Tu and Jasmine was celebrated in the presence of relatives and friends, who, attracted by the novelty of the antecedent circumstances, came from all parts of the country to witness the nuptials. By Tu's especial instructions also a prominence was allowed to Wei, which gratified his vanity and smoothed down the ruffled feathers of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... the breccia, but the phenomena they present seem to indicate more than one change in the physical outline of the adjacent regions, and probably of more distant portions of Australia; at a period antecedent to the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... preterist, preterition, pretermission, preteritive, preterit, aorist, aoristic, retrospect, retrospective, retrospection, antiquary, antiquity, antiquarian, quondam, antecedent, antecedence, antecedents. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... court, and in the Qu[een]'s good graces, not able to endure those growing impositions upon the prince and people, presumed to interpose, and were consequently soon removed and disgraced: However, when a most exorbitant grant was proposed,[6] antecedent to any visible merit, it miscarried in Parliament, for want of being seconded by those who had most credit in the House, and who having always opposed the like excesses in a former reign, thought it their duty to do so still, to shew the world that the dislike was not against persons ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... autumn antecedent to that memorable Spring of the great Italian uprising, when, though for a tragic issue, the people of Italy first felt and acted as a nation, and Charles Albert, called the Sword of Italy, aspired, without comprehension of the passion of patriotism by which it was animated, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the same control, did not offer itself to European investigators. These singular advantages have been well employed by the United States Signal Service within the past five years. Its efforts were materially aided by the antecedent researches of such men as Espy and Maury, the latter of whom led European savants into the recognition of correct theories of both air- and ocean-currents. Daily observations at a hundred stations scattered over the continent, exactly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... move from Bonn to Strassburg, and yet it must be supposed that a set of purely mechanical antecedents could also be found which would account for this transfer of matter from one place to another. Owing to this plurality of causal series antecedent to a given event, the notion of the cause becomes indefinite, and the question of independence becomes correspondingly ambiguous. Thus, instead of asking simply whether A is independent of B, we ought to ask whether there ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... the authors discuss more fully the theoretical bearings of the observations of Fenton and Gostling, the two papers being simultaneously communicated. The paper is mainly devoted to a review of the antecedent evidence, chemical and physiological, and to a general summing up in favour of the view that cellulose is a ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross

... that impulse unwillingly, pitifully, under stress of compulsion and force majeure; for reason, in representing this impulse in the context of life and in relation to every other impulse which, in its operation, it would affect mechanically, rejects and condemns it; but it condemns it not by antecedent hate but by supervening wisdom. The texture of the natural world, the conflict of interests in the soul and in society, all of which cannot be satisfied together, is accordingly the ground for moral restrictions and compromises. Whatever the up-shot of the struggle may be, whatever ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... as a promoter in various ways. Even the nourishing of infants with poor milk, with bread or flour-pap increases the disposition to pulmonary consumption. If this defective nourishment is continued, scrofula will surely follow and this is a stage antecedent to consumption. ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum

... increased in frequency, and usually varies directly with the height of the temperature. Respiration is more active during the progress of an inflammation; and bronchial catarrh is common apart from any antecedent respiratory disease. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... their persons the brand of slaves, cannot die out immediately. Severe trials will still be their portion—the curse of a "taunted race" must be expiated by almost miraculous proofs of advancement; and some of these miracles must be antecedent to the great day of Jubilee. To fight the battle on the bare ground of abstract principles, will fail to give us complete victory. The subterfuges of pro-slavery selfishness must now be dragged to light, and the last weak ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... if good fruits are to be gathered later on. There is indeed much anxiety and painful uncertainty on the part of those who charge themselves with the moral training of children. Labor and birth pains are antecedent to the delivery of a moral being. Then again a child must develop according to what is in him, his nature and peculiar disposition. The processes of growth are within him and the best you can do is to give them scope. He is free and you are bound to minister to his best freedom. The common ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... observation can only hold good so long and in so far as the Law of Causality holds good. We must assume a pre-existing state of affairs which has given rise to the observed effect; we must assume that this observed effect is itself antecedent to a subsequent state of affairs. Science therefore cannot go back to the absolute beginnings of things, or forward to the absolute ends of things. It cannot reason about the way matter and energy came into ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... to be repelled, but rather encouraged to come to it. From the same causes, by natural sequence, came that so-called Arminianism[104:1] which, instead of urging the immediate necessity and duty of conversion, was content with commending a "diligent use of means," which might be the hopeful antecedent of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... conclusions at which I arrived were:—1st. That the extraordinary form of the skull was due to a natural conformation hitherto not known to exist, even in the most barbarous races. 2nd. That these remarkable human remains belonged to a period antecedent to the time of the Celts and Germans, and were in all probability derived from one of the wild races of North-western Europe, spoken of by Latin writers; and which were encountered as autochthones by the German immigrants. And 3rdly. ...
— On Some Fossil Remains of Man • Thomas H. Huxley

... central and all-controlling power of the universe. It does not deny the possibility of liberty; for it recognises its actual existence in the Divine Being. "If the divine will," says Calvin, "has any cause, then there must be something antecedent, on which it depends; which it is impious to suppose." According to Calvin, it is the uncaused divine will which makes the "necessity of all things." He frequently sets forth the doctrine, that, from all eternity, God decreed ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... connected with the Elizabethan period, and on the other to a partial discovery of how much of it had perished. That epoch may be regarded as the true Hegira from which we have to date the modern annals of collecting; the antecedent time was in a sense pre-historic, for the most precious remains of our national literature were unheeded and uncalendared; the means of forming a comprehensive estimate of the printed stores in actual existence were yet latent or unknown, and the ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... before other universities, because he was brought up there, and the best scholar there is one of his own college, and the best scholar there is one of his friends. He is a great favourer of great persons, and his argument is still that which should be antecedent; as,—he is in high place, therefore virtuous;—he is preferred, therefore worthy. Never ask his opinion, for you shall hear but his faction, and he is indifferent in nothing but conscience. Men esteem him for this a zealous affectionate, but they mistake him many ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... far as concerned the tournament, were but a repetition of the antecedent day, and more to be enjoyed by being an active witness than a passive reader of them, we will not dwell on the subject further than to observe, that those of the castle sustained the challenge most gallantly. Although many ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... brutal without being barbarous. Finding life hard, they helped each other with a general kindliness which is impracticable among the complexities of elaborate social organizations. Those who were born on the land, among whom Lincoln belonged, were peculiar in having no reminiscences, no antecedent ideas derived from their own past, whereby to modify the influences of the immediate present. What they should think about men and things they gathered from what they saw and heard around them. Even the modification to be got from reading ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... forgiving and embracing, honouring. So the man blackened the race for him, and the race was excused in the man. But his hatred of bad manners was vehement, and would have extended to a fellow-countryman. His own were of the antecedent century, therefore venerable. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... out anything good about the poor fellow,' said Adela, very glad to have found any topic of interest, and pleased to find that it occupied his thoughts afterwards, when he asked whether she knew the Christian name of this young man, without mentioning any antecedent, as if he had been going on with ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... therefore acknowledge relations of justice antecedent to the positive law by which they are established: as for instance, that if human societies existed it would be right to conform to their laws; if there were intelligent beings that had received a benefit of another being, they ought to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... money, repenting of her frivolous and mercenary deeds (they sometimes do), and becoming puritanically zealous of good works in her old age—all this, however, as might have been expected from her antecedent career, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... various consultations of the Delphic Oracle, the legends of Pythagoras and Numa, of Lake Regillus, and, indeed, the whole story of the Tarquins; the importation of a Greek alphabet, and of several names familiar to Greek legend—Ulysses, Poenus, Catamitus, &c.—all antecedent to the Pyrrhic war. But these are neither numerous enough nor certain enough to afford a sound basis for generalisation. They have therefore been merely touched on in the introductory essays, which simply aim at a compendious registration of the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... everything we see, although not always reason in everything. It is the part of the historian to seek in the archives of a nation the reasons for the facts of common experience and observation, it is the part of the philosopher to moralize upon antecedent causes and present results. Neither of these positions is taken up by the author of this little book. He merely, as a rule, gives the picture of Dutch life now to be seen in the Netherlands, and in all things tries to be scrupulously fair to a people renowned for their kindness and ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... inconsistent with the deity's fixed purpose to make one final and decisive revelation to men. No one who looks upon the vast assemblage of stupendous human circumstances, from the first origin of man upon the earth, as merely the ordained antecedent of what, seen from the long procession of all the ages, figures in so diminutive a consummation as the Catholic Church, is likely to obtain a very effective hold of that broad sequence and many-linked chain of events, to which Bossuet gave a right name, but whose real meaning he ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... were cousins; 2. the offspring of parents who were themselves deaf or members of families in which there are other deaf relatives; and 3. the product of families without either consanguinity or antecedent deafness. Of these three classes the first two only will engage our attention. Of the last, comprising, according to the census, nine-twentieths, or 44.4 per cent, of the congenitally deaf, there is not much that we can say. For a great part of it there no doubt exists ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best

... coming, when even those who shall object to the evidence which sustains the Christian miracles will acknowledge that philosophy requires them to admit that men have no ground whatever to dogmatise on the antecedent impossibility of miracles in general; and that not merely because if theists at all, they will see the absurdity of the assertion, while they admit that the present order of things had a beginning; and, if ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training. From the age of 17 I had never even witnessed the excitement attending a Presidential campaign but twice antecedent to my own candidacy, and at but one of them was I eligible ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant

... the Massachusetts troops in Baltimore, as they were passing through on their way to Washington, on the 19th of April, with the antecedent and attendant circumstances, roused to the highest degree the passions of all who sympathized with the secession movement, and the mob became for the time being the controlling force of that city. So largely in the ascendant was it and so confident were the disunionists in consequence ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell

... pointed out, and when you remember that it is through the force of emotional instincts thus organized that an idea, i e., a sentiment, acquires its driving force which tends to carry the idea to fulfilment, and when you bear in mind that sentiments thus formed are derived from antecedent experiences sometimes dating back to childhood and sometimes persisting through life, we can understand how conflicts arise between antagonistic sentiments and the part which the different instincts, through the force of their impulses, play in ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... Mr. Grabo points out in "The Art of the Short Story," is suggested rather than recorded. The running away of the Judge's son and of his little admirer, the butcher boy, really lies outside the story proper. "With these youthful adventures the story has not directly to do, but the hints of the antecedent action envelop the story with a romantic atmosphere. The reader speculates upon the story suggested, and thereby is the written story enriched and made a ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... much to contend with; above all, an antecedent prejudice against the Cookes, in reality a prejudice against the world, the flesh, and the devil, natural to any quiet community, and of which Mohair and its appurtenances were taken as the outward and visible signs. Older people came to Asquith for simplicity and rest, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... wisdom to presume, that the privileges which satisfied colored people twenty years ago, they will be reconciled with now. That with which the father of the writer may have been satisfied, even up to the present day, the writer cannot be content with; the one lived in times antecedent to the birth of the other; that which answered then, does not answer now: so is it with the whole class of colored people in the United States. Their feelings, tastes, predilections, wants, demands, and sympathies, are identical, and homogeneous ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... pass as ethnological facts, i.e., facts sufficiently true to be not merely admitted with what is called an otiose belief, but to be classed with the most unexceptionable data of history, and to be used as effects from which we may argue backwards—more ethnologico—to their antecedent causes; the appreciation of these requiring a philosophy and an induction ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... Renaissance spirit,—its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that I said of the Central Renaissance in thirty pages of the 'Stones of Venice' put into as many lines, Browning's being also the antecedent work. The worst of it is that this kind of concentrated writing needs so much SOLUTION before the reader can fairly get the good of it, that people's patience fails them, and they give the thing up as insoluble; though, truly, it ought to be to the current of common thought like ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... him seek sources of interest, where alone the serious student of human affairs would care to find them, in the magnitude of events, the changes of the fortunes of states, and the derivation of momentous consequences from long chains of antecedent causes. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley

... At length with an effort I did so; and found, after paying my hotel bills, a balance in my favour of exactly twenty-five dollars! Twenty-five dollars to live upon until I could write home, and receive an answer—a period of three months at the least—for I am talking of a time antecedent to ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... existed in the English-American colonies antecedent to black or African slavery, though at first only intended to be conditional and not to extend to offspring. English, Scotch, and Irish alike, regardless of ancestry or religious faith, were, for political offenses, sold and transported to the dependent American colonies. They ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... yesterday, to meet Emil Devrient, the German actor. He said (Devrient is my antecedent) that Ophelia spoke the snatches of ballads in their German version of "Hamlet," because they didn't know the airs. Tom Taylor said that you had published the airs in your "Shakespeare." I said that if it were so, I knew you would be happy to place them at the German's service. If you have got ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... transgressions in the region of speculative ethics, from any dogmatic point of view. Their nature is tolerably clear. Helvetius looked at man individually, as if each of us came into the world naked of all antecedent predispositions, and independent of the medium around us. Next, he did not see that virtue, justice, and the other great words of moral science denote qualities that are directly related to the fundamental constitution of human character. As Diderot said,[126] he never perceived it ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... character, above the control of the courts of law, they must be subject to the jurisdiction of the house; and as the house, in the exercise of its authority, can be neither directed nor restrained, its own resolutions must be its laws, at least, if there is no antecedent ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... mortals approach Spirit, which is the reality of being. It is not enough to say that matter is the substratum of evil, and that its highest attenuation is mortal mind; for there is, strictly speaking, no mortal mind. Mind is immortal. Death is the consequent of an antecedent false assumption of the realness of something unreal, material, and mortal. If God knows the antecedent, He must produce its consequences. From this logic there is no escape. Matter, or evil, is the absence of Spirit or good. Their nothingness is thus proven; for ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy

... in treatises upon elementary law, of a time antecedent to all law, when men theoretically are said to have met together and surrendered a part of their rights for a more secure enjoyment of the remainder. Hence, we are told, human governments date their origin. This dream of the enthusiast as applied to ages past, in Connecticut ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... if you would see their antecedent qualifications, you find them under two heads—rebellion [and] hypocrisy. Rebellion, in breaking God's command; hypocrisy, in seeking how to hide their faults from God. Expound this by gospel language, and then it shows 'that men are justified from the curse, in the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... success of collective bargaining hinges upon the solidarity and integrity of the union which makes the bargain. A union capable of enforcing an agreement is a necessary antecedent condition to such a contract. With this fact in mind, one can believe that John Mitchell was not unduly sanguine in stating that "the tendency is toward the growth of compulsory membership ... and the time will doubtless come when this compulsion will be as ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... Survey of the two Cases, or Conditions, of the Elect and Non-elect, may serve to set this Matter in a clear Light, God being in himself antecedent to the Existence of all other Beings, infinitely glorious and happy, could have no Occasion for Creatures to add to his Blessedness; all that we call evil, such as Cruelty and Injustice in Man, ever arises from such a vicious and imperfect State of Mind, as cannot, for that Reason, ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch

... is, in fact, in the physical sciences never assumed to express the relation of cause and effect, until the connection between the antecedent and consequent can be set forth abstractly in mathematical formulae. The sequence of the planetary motions was discovered by Kepler, but it was reserved for Newton to prove the theoretical necessity of this motion and establish its mathematical relations. The sequence of sensations ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... only where the Notions and Precepts giv'n, are in themselves such as either in Whole, or in Part, are not True or Rational; but also (oftentimes) where they are altogether conformable to right Reason: In which cases, the want of apparent Reasonableness, proceeds from a defect of such Antecedent Knowledge in those who are design'd to be instructed, as is necessary to the seeing their Reasonableness of the Instructions giv'n them; that is to say, To their discerning the conformity with, or evident deduction ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... the age moved the young, nation to own justice as antecedent and superior to the state, and to found the rights of the citizen on the rights of man. And yet, in regenerating its institutions, it was not guided by any speculative theory or laborious application of metaphysical distinctions. Its form of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various



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