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Mutation   /mjutˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Mutation

noun
1.
(biology) an organism that has characteristics resulting from chromosomal alteration.  Synonyms: mutant, sport, variation.
2.
(genetics) any event that changes genetic structure; any alteration in the inherited nucleic acid sequence of the genotype of an organism.  Synonyms: chromosomal mutation, genetic mutation.
3.
A change or alteration in form or qualities.



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"Mutation" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the University of Strasburg, who insists that species are only relatively stable, admits that they remain persistent as long as they exist under the same external conditions. Time is, therefore, not a factor in the mutation of species. Nor are environing conditions factors, except as a failure of conditions results in the disappearance of species, as the presence of conditions results ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... and so, as in many another phrase, declared to be exempt from decay, and therefore vigorous with unchanging youth. How that comes we cannot tell. Whether because that body of glory has no proclivity to mutation and decay, or whether the perpetual volition and power of God counteract such tendency and give, as the Book of Revelation says,' to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God'—matters not at all. The truth of the promise ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... the prince, allow two hours to your dinner, and two hours in the projecting where to get one, you have still a fair time to yourself, and one half hour in a week, without question, to tell me that you are alive, and that in this dismal time of mutation, you are so far from change, that you continue even the ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... shall expect less than a strange catastrophe of human affairs in the commonwealth, monarchy, and kingdom of England? There will then, either in or about these times, or near that year, appear in this kingdom so strange a revolution of fate, so grand a catastrophe and great mutation unto this monarchy and government, as never yet appeared; of which, as the time now stands, I have no liberty or encouragement to deliver my opinion—only, it will be ominous to London, unto her merchants at sea, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... a couple of explanations that I would rather explore first, before dragging in an alien life form. There may have been a mutation or an inherited disease that has deformed ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... be of short duration. Even now that we have acquired some idea of the lapse of time, men are too apt to assume without proof that the geological record is so perfect that it would have afforded plain evidence of the mutation of species if they had really undergone mutation. The chief cause, however, of the once-prevalent unwillingness to admit that one species has given birth to other and distinct species is the fact that men are slow to admit great changes of which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... the new school is the botanist Hugo De Vries of Amsterdam. The "first-steps" in the origin of new species according to De Vries are not fluctuating individual variations, but mutations, i.e., definite and permanent modifications. According to the mutation theory a new species arises from the parent species, not gradually but suddenly. It appears suddenly "without visible preparation and without transitional steps." The wide acceptance with which this theory is ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... mutually extinctive; and ruin, 'twilight' sinking into darkness, swallows the created Universe. The old Universe with its Gods is sunk; but it is not final death: there is to be a new Heaven and a new Earth; a higher supreme God, and Justice to reign among men. Curious: this law of mutation, which also is a law written in man's inmost thought, had been deciphered by these old earnest Thinkers in their rude style; and how, though all dies, and even gods die, yet all death is but a phoenix fire-death, and new-birth into the Greater and the Better! ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... theory of mutations is modifying Darwinism profoundly on this point. It asserts that at a given moment, after a long period, the entire species is beset with a tendency to change. The tendency to change, therefore, is not accidental. True, the change itself would be accidental, since the mutation works, according to De Vries, in different directions in the different representatives of the species. But, first we must see if the theory is confirmed by many other vegetable species (De Vries has verified it only by the OEnothera Lamarckiana),[49] ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... and brought to birth A grander firmament, and more luxuriant earth. What wonder seized my soul when first I view'd How motionless the restless racer stood, Whose flying feet, with winged speed before, Still mark'd with sad mutation sea and shore. No more he sway'd the future and the past, But on the moveless present fix'd at last; As at a goal reposing from his toils, Like earth unclothed of all its vernal foils. Unvaried scene! where neither change nor ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... ships of imperial Rome, a petty incident; and a huge migration of peoples between Europe and Western Asia and America was in Progress, and—nobody seems to have realised that something new had come into human life, a strange swirl different altogether from any previous circling and mutation, a swirl like the swirl when at last the lock gates begin to open after a long phase of accumulating ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... factors in evolution appear at first sight to be very diverse: selection, mutation, climatological, physical and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... overruling spirits should after death ascend to that sphere which influences and governs everything below, or that the proper abode of beings at once so illustrious and permanent should be in that part of Nature in which they had always observed the greatest splendor and the least mutation. But on ordinary occasions it was natural some should imagine that the dead retired into a remote country, separated from the living by seas or mountains. It was natural that some should follow their imagination with a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... know. Follow the world and in that hour when you have obeyed its dictates and learned its wants—its taste will change and leave you nothing. That which the many have chosen is of the many. The voice of the many is not the voice of God—it is the voice of the temporal and its destiny is swift mutation. ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... that this is a true statement of what happened in the fruitful 'nineties. McClure's was not, speaking biologically, a new species at all; it was only a mutation in which the recessive traits of the old magazine became dominant while the invaluable type was preserved. To speak more plainly, the literary magazine, as America knew it, had always printed news, matured news, often stale news, but still journalism. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... at every change, And each mutation makes me wince, I am not shut to all things strange— I'm rather easy to convince. But hereunto I set my seal, My nerves awry, askew, abristling: I'll never change the way I feel Upon the question ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams

... of arts or of sciences or of literature or even of nations. It is the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in the European races. It is no mere political mutation, no new fashion of art, no restoration of classical standards of taste. The arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on the shores of the dead sea ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... succeeds, To perish likewise.—Meanwhile Nature smiles— The seasons run their round—The Sun fulfils His annual course—and heaven and earth remain Still changing, yet unchanged—still doom'd to feel Endless mutation in perpetual rest. Where are conceal'd the days which have elapsed? Hid in the mighty cavern of the past, They rise upon us only to appall, By indistinct and half-glimpsed images, Misty, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... and at each successive period between the extinct and still older species, why is not every geological formation charged with such links? Why does not every collection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the gradation and mutation of the forms of life? Although geological research has undoubtedly revealed the former existence of many links, bringing numerous forms of life much closer together, it does not yield the infinitely many fine gradations ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... suspicions that this device produced a new type of beam ray. We took sightings from the cave, found them to be in a direct, unbroken line with the Circle T. We set up the device again and using a very small model, tried it out on some chick embryos. Sure enough, we got a mutation. ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael

... and created a new territory for his new people. A chancellor of England, the high administrator of the laws of property, could then amuse his leisure with constructing a Utopia, where property, with all its laws, would undergo strange mutation. How would he have started from his woolsack if any one had told him that his design would be improved upon in boldness, and that such men as his own carpenter and mason would set about the veritable realization of it! At the present time nothing is more common or familiar than the project ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... the constitution of a mans Body, is in continuall mutation; it is impossible that all the same things should alwayes cause in him the same Appetites, and aversions: much lesse can all men consent, in the Desire of almost any ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... his hand from the beads. Through the years the Astran colonists had come to recognize the virtues of patience. Perhaps the mutation had begun before they left their native world. Or perhaps the change in temperament and nature had occurred in the minds and bodies of that determined handful of refugees as they rested in the frozen cold sleep while their ship bore them through the wide, uncharted reaches of ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... unchanged stem contains the vowel e, this is changed in the 2d and 3d singular to i (ie): cwean to say, stem cwi-; beran to bear, stem bier-. But this mutation[3] had taken place long before the period of O.E., and belongs to the Germanic languages in general. It is best, however, to class the change of e to i or ie with the changes due to umlaut, since it occurs consistently in the 2d and 3d ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... us to realize ourselves and all life as of the Soul; that, as we dwell, not in past, present or future, but in the Eternal, we become more at one with the Eternal; that, as we view all organization, preservation, mutation as the work of the Divine One, we shall come more into harmony with the One, and thus remove the barrier' in ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston

... by the Cynics and the later Stoics. Even the comprehensive knowledge and the penetrating intellect of Aristotle failed to suggest to him that in holding the eternity of the world, within its present range of mutation, he was making a retrogressive step. The scientific heritage of Heracleitus passed into the hands neither of Plato nor of Aristotle, but into those of Democritus. But the world was not yet ready to receive the great conceptions of the philosopher of Abdera. It was reserved for the ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... fatal consequences than any other scheme having no relation to the personal rights of the citizens that has ever been devised. If any single scheme could produce the effect of arresting at once that mutation of condition by which thousands of our most indigent fellow-citizens by their industry and enterprise are raised to the possession of wealth, that is the one. If there is one measure better calculated than another to produce that state of things ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson

... strange that we do not find more mutations than we do. Perhaps we do not look carefully enough; perhaps we shall find them a little later. Just at present it seems premature to believe that all evolution is by mutation, although quite possibly some of it is. The main apparent advantage of mutation is that it hastens the time in which a ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... are stage managers, scenic artists, stage hands, costumers, modern mutation of the Greek chorus, stays and props for the weak and timid, brakes for the overbold—in fact, we are around to do any work that nobody ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope

... that, under no circumstances, should a boy or girl be taught to sing before the age of puberty, before the voice has mutated. Those who believe that singing can be taught in childhood and safely continued even during the critical period of mutation, point out that the muscles of the voice-producing organs are most flexible and adapt themselves most easily to the task in hand during childhood and that the process of training them had best begin then, and that, with proper care, the lessons can be continued ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... a roof of thatch; and a staircase, Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft. There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates Murmuring ever of love; while above in the variant breezes Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Royalist or of a steady Republican. One who, in such an age, is determined to attain civil greatness must renounce all thoughts of consistency. Instead of affecting immutability in the midst of endless mutation, he must be always on the watch for the indications of a coming reaction. He must seize the exact moment for deserting a falling cause. Having gone all lengths with a faction while it was uppermost, he must suddenly extricate himself ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... function is strong so these misbehaving cells are destroyed as fast as they appear. Mutated, freely-multiplying cells are caused by peroxidized fats, by free radicals in the body, by radiation (there has always been background radiation on Earth), by chance mutation. There are naturally occurring highly carcinogenic substances in ordinary foods that are unavoidable. In fact some of these naturally occurring substances are far more dangerous than the toxic residues of pesticides in our foods. The body is supposed to deal with all these things; they are all called ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... contemptuous severity of the profligacy of politicians from the Restoration to the accession of the House of Hanover. "One who in such an age is determined to attain civil greatness must renounce all thought of consistency. Instead of affecting immutability in the midst of mutation, he must always be on the watch for the indications of a coming reaction. He must seize the exact moment for deserting a falling cause. He has seen so many institutions from which much had been expected produce mere disappointment, ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... of mutation, of which Hugo de Vries, of Holland, is the chief expounder, does not antagonize Darwin, but simply gives more weight in the process of evolution to the factor of sudden changes commonly called sports. Let us illustrate: In the ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... who also discoursed of his business, as others did. Whitelocke told him of his long being here without any answer. The Prince said, the Queen's designs to introduce a mutation might cause it. Whitelocke said he believed that the amity of England deserved so much regard as to be embraced; and that it would be all one whether the treaty should be agreed upon by the Queen or by her successor, for it concerned the people and State ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... like his father. It was not until "Young Ed" had reached his full manhood that his defects had become recognizable evil tendencies, that his infirmity had developed into a disease. Like sleeping cancers, the Austin vices had lain dormant in him during boyhood; it had required the mutation from youth to manhood, and the alterative effect of marriage, to rouse them; but, once awakened, their ravages had been swift and destructive. Ed's marriage to Alaire had been inevitable. They had been ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... ENERGY, the doctrine that, however it may be transformed or dissipated, no fraction of energy is ever lost, that the amount of force, as of matter, in the universe, under all mutation remains ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... CHANGE % 140. [Difference at different times.] Change. — N. change, alteration, mutation, permutation, variation, modification, modulation, inflexion, mood, qualification, innovation, metastasis, deviation, turn, evolution, revolution; diversion; break. transformation, transfiguration; metamorphosis; transmutation; deoxidization[Chem]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... are of several sorts, and some still exist in the earlier stages of mutation from the fishermen's and farmers' houses which formed their germ. But these are now mostly let as lodgings to bachelors and other single or semi-detached folks who go for their meals to the neighboring hotels or boarding-houses. The hotels are each the centre of this sort of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... your hints about terms of "mutation," etc.; I had some suspicions that it was not quite correct, and yet I do not see my way to arrive at any better terms. It will be years before I publish, so that I shall have plenty of time to think of better words. Development would perhaps do, only it is applied ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... making prize of all that he condemns, With our expenditure defrays his own. Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour. We have run Through every change that fancy, at the loom Exhausted, has had genius to supply, And, studious of mutation still, discard A real elegance, a little used, For monstrous novelty and strange disguise. We sacrifice to dress, till household joys And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry, And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires, And introduces ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... triangle fashion, Some circular, some ovall in translation, Some perpendicular in longitude, Some like a thicket for their crassitude, That heights, depths, bredths, triforme, square, ovall, round, And rules Ge'metricall in beards are found. Besides the upper lip's strange variation, Corrected from mutation to mutation; As 'twere from tithing unto tithing sent, Pride gives to Pride continuall punishment. Some (spite their teeth) like thatch'd eves downeward grows, And some growes upwards in despite their nose. Some their mustatioes of such length doe ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... the passion throbbing through the music fraught with pain: Then, with feminine mutation, comes a soft and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various

... meanings as there are speakers of them. All things are in revolution; in change from moment to moment, which becomes sensible from epoch to epoch: in this Time-World of ours there is properly nothing else but revolution and mutation, and even nothing else conceivable. Revolution, you answer, means speedier change. Whereupon one has still to ask: How speedy? At what degree of speed; in what particular points of this variable course, which varies in velocity, but can never stop till Time itself stops, does revolution begin ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... representation," Gerd said. "You know, that line's so sharp I'd be tempted to think of sapience as a result of mutation, except that I can't quite buy the same mutation happening in the same way on so many ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... to men than a new symbol. They assimilate themselves to it, deal with it in all ways, and it will last a hundred years. Then comes a new genius and brings another.' Our ideas of God and the soul are obviously subject to this symbolic mutation. They are not now what they were a century ago. They will not be a century hence what they are now. Such ideas constitute a kind of central energy in the human mind, capable, like the energy of the physical universe, of assuming various shapes and undergoing various ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... eosin eye color no such process as that postulated by Darwin to account for the differences between the sexes was involved; for the single mutation that brought about the change also brought ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan

... tradition and modifies the customs and habits of the mass. Whether he be statesman, inventor, philosopher, scientist, discoverer, or military leader, he usually receives credit for the great progressive mutation which he has originated. There can be little progress without these few fertile brains, just as there could be little progress unless they were supported by the laborers who carry out the plans of the genius. While the "unknown man" is less conspicuous in the progress of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... door next morning in time to sit down with the family to breakfast. More than three years had intervened—almost without mutation in that stationary household—since I had sat there first, a young American freshman, bewildered among unfamiliar dainties (Finnan haddock, kippered salmon, baps, and mutton-ham), and had wearied my mind in vain to guess what should be under the tea-cosy. If there were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of evolutionists has within the past twenty years arisen which holds that the changes in the organizations of plants and animals do not come by slow growth of favorable characteristics, but arise suddenly. Such is the "Mutation" theory of Hugo de Vries. But science has failed to receive this and similar theories with the same acclaim which once greeted Darwin's "Origin of Species." Naturalists have become cautious. They remember the inglorious collapse of the Darwinian regime and they are ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... firesides merry and glad; or they travelled, and came back after long years with many wondrous tales. More rarely, perhaps, a Dalesman changed his dwelling. But to all households more change came than to Yew Nook. There the seasons came round with monotonous sameness; or, if they brought mutation, it was of a slow, and decaying, and depressing kind. Old Peggy died. Her silent sympathy, concealed under much roughness, was a loss to Susan Dixon. Susan was not yet thirty when this happened, but she looked a middle-aged, not to say an elderly woman. People affirmed that ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell

... on a plain night-dress, and her face and shoulders rising out of this had the austerity of marble—exempt not from ruin, but exempt from lesser mutation. She looked down at her wrists once and made a little instinctive movement with her fingers as if to hide ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... more intimate conversations, how they accounted for so much divergence without cross-fertilization, they attributed it partly to the careful education, which followed each slight tendency to differ, and partly to the law of mutation. This they had found in their work with plants, and fully ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... modified. The same words in the same form are repeated from generation to generation, so that lexic and grammatic elements have a life that changes very slowly. This is especially true where the habitat of the tribe is unchanged. Migration introduces a potent agency of mutation, but a new environment impresses its characteristics upon a language more by a change in the semantic content or meaning of words than by change in their forms. There is another agency of change of profound influence, namely, association with other tongues. When peoples ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell

... innovation, and poured a fresh European infusion into its Anglo-Indian society; steam navigation and an overland communication between England and her Eastern empire were bringing into operation new elements of mutation, and the domestic historian of India (as Miss Roberts may be appropriately termed) felt a natural curiosity to observe the progress of these changes, and to compare the British India of 1830 with that of 1840. With a view of enlarging the sphere of her knowledge ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... right. My luck is in. Now I'm going to sleep—sweet sleep that knits the ravelled sleeve of care—Shakespeare, old man, you had a phrase for everything! I love you. I love everything. I even feel sorry for that poor plant ... of guilt. It couldn't help the fact that my jets set up a mutation. And being intelligent it had to be curious. Of course, no one would believe me if I started talking about intelligent algae. But what's so odd about that? Even the most complex life forms are just aggregations of individual ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone

... my twofold nature find content In vain conceits of airy blandishment? 40 Ask I no more? Since yesterday I task My storm-strewn thoughts to tell me what I ask: Faint premenitions of mutation strange Steal o'er my perfect orb, and, with the change, Myself am changed; the shadow of my earth Darkens the disk of that celestial worth Which only yesterday could still suffice Upwards to waft my ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... growths which will in the course of time be preserved as coal for the races destined to inhabit this planet. This vegetal growth is a flora that knows not bloom or seed, but is propagated by root and spores, a flora most primitive in type, but which will in time evolve through the law of mutation and adaptation into a diversified and useful vegetal kingdom for the races yet to come on ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... great moat, and do as I have bid thee. But if thou hearest from the Castle wall the hooting of an owl thrice repeated like this" — and the girl put her hands to her mouth, and gave forth so exact an mutation of an owl's note that Gaston started to hear it — "thrice times thrice, so that there can be no mistake, then tarry here on this side; stir not till I come again. It will be a danger signal to tell that all ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... the Mammalia, fossil and recent, cannot furnish a species which has had a wider geographical distribution, and passed through a longer term of time, and through more extreme changes of climatal conditions, than the mammoth. If species are so unstable, and so susceptible of mutation through such influences, why does that extinct form stand out so signally a monument of stability? By his admirable researches and earnest writings, Darwin has, beyond all his contemporaries, given an impulse to the philosophical investigation of the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... over without influence to me, produced a great revolution among my fellow-prisoners. I lived long enough in the jail to witness a general mutation of its inhabitants. One of the housebreakers (the rival of the Duke of Bedford), and the coiner, were hanged. Two more were cast for transportation, and the rest acquitted. The transports remained with us; and, though the prison was thus lightened of nine of its inhabitants, there were, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... winding and unwinding on its twin rollers with slow, equable motion. It needs an effort of attention and will to discern the movement, and it is worth while to make the effort, for that clear and poignant sense of the constant flux and mutation of all things around us, and of the ebbing away of our own lives, is fundamental to all elevation of thought, to all nobleness of deed, to all worthy conception of duty and of joy. Everything that is, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... years later appeared the first volume of de Vries' remarkable book on The Mutation Theory. From a prolonged study of the evening primrose (Oenothera) de Vries concluded that new varieties suddenly arose from older ones by sudden sharp steps or mutations, and not by any process involving the gradual accumulation ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett

... world arises from the instability and mutation of human affairs, as well as from the comparative insignificance of all its best enjoyments. We say, "What a large estate does that distinguished personage possess!"—vain word and false—he is only a tenant for a day—to-morrow he will ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... an establishment made by Mr. Hastings. So confident was he in his own opinion of the expediency of them, that he transmitted to the Court of Directors a draught of an act of Parliament to confirm them. By this act it was his intention to place them beyond the possibility of mutation. Whatever opinion others might entertain of their weakness, inefficacy, or other defects, Mr. Hastings found no such things in them. He had declared in the beginning that he considered them as a sort of experiment, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... executors, and administrators for ever, or until His Majesty's pleasure is further known, for and in consideration of the possessor's paying liege homage to His Majesty, his heirs and successors, at his castle of St. Lewis in Quebec on each mutation of property, and, by way of acknowledgment, a piece of gold of the value of ten shillings, with one year's rent of the domain reserved, as customary in this country, together with the woods and rivers, or other appurtenances within the said extent, right of fishing or fowling ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... concerned about a formally competent analysis of the recorded legal powers. The material circumstances from which these institutions once took their beginning, and the exigencies which have governed the rate and direction of their later growth and mutation, as well as the de facto bearing of the institutional scheme on the material welfare or the cultural fortunes of the given community,—while all these matters of fact may be germane to the speculations of Political Theory, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... many writers: and among others by Gale. [497]First as to the name (says this learned man) Vossius, de Idolat. l. 1. c. 36, shews us, that Vulcanus is the same as Tubalcainus, only by a wonted, and easy mutation of B into V, and casting away a syllable. And he afterwards affects to prove from Diodorus Siculus, that the art and office of Vulcan exactly corresponded to the character of Tubalcain, [498]who was an instructor ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... deliberately made; and this, because it is dictated by the present frame of my spirit, and is therefore that in which the powers my nature has entailed upon me may be most fully manifested. In addition to which we are to consider, that a certain variety and mutation of employments is best adapted to humanity. When my mind or my body seems to be overwrought by one species of occupation, the substitution of another will often impart to me new life, and make me feel as ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... off your guard. I was sure, in your calm way, you would be prepared for sudden mutation. I always think you stand in the world like a solitary but watchful, thoughtful archer in a wood. And the quiver on your shoulder holds more arrows than one; your bow is provided with a second string. Such too is your brother's wont. You two might ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... sentences to some purpose and not in vaine, giuing them ornament or efficacie by many maner of alterations in shape, in sounde, and also in sence, sometime by way of surplusage, sometime by defect, sometime by disorder, or mutation, & also by putting into our speaches more pithe and substance, subtilitie, quicknesse, efficacie or moderation, in this or that sort tuning and tempring them, by amplification, abridgement, opening, closing, enforcing, meekening, or otherwise disposing them to the best ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... tower near the River Arno, finding in certain ancient memorials that he had been elected as their tutelar deity under such astral influences that if he were broken, or otherwise treated with indignity, the city would suffer great damage and mutation. But in the fifteenth century that discreet regard to the feelings of the Man-destroyer had long vanished: the god of the spear and shield had ceased to frown by the side of the Arno, and the defences of the Republic were held to lie in its craft and its coffers. ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... music had become ordinary accessories of the stage, it seemed to theatrical managers almost a point of honour to fit Shakespearean drama to the new conditions. To abandon him altogether was sacrilege. Yet the mutation of public taste offered, as the only alternative to his abandonment, the obligation of bestowing on his work every mechanical advantage, every tawdry ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... and habits are usually factors of retardation in such changes of equilibrium. New information, however acquired, plays an accelerating part in the changes; and the slow mutation of our instincts and propensities, under the "unimaginable touch of time" has an enormous influence. Moreover, all these influences may work subconsciously or half unconsciously.[99] And when you get a Subject in ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... must suppose did, namely, a Copperhead mob which gathered under his windows at Washington. The Secretary of State addressed a meeting in New York, assembled in a hall which is the very symbol of mutation. Some collectors and postmasters have, we believe, been kind enough to take upon themselves the trouble of calling similar legislative assemblies in their respective cities; and Keokuk, it is well known, has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... backwater; the triumphant party hardly cared to notice that a Liberal candidate had scored an unprecedented proportion of votes. Welwyn-Baker sat on, stolidly oblivious of the change that was affecting his constituency, denying indeed the possibility of mutation in human things. Yet even now the Literary Institute was passing into the hands of people who aimed at making it something more than a place where retired tradesmen could play draughts and doze over Good Words; already had offensive volumes found ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... the universe of things is a contradiction; for if the whole comes from and is governed by an intelligent being, it is impossible to conceive anything in it which tends to the evil or destruction of the whole (viii. 55; x. 6). Everything is in constant mutation, and yet the whole subsists; we might imagine the solar system resolved into its elemental parts, and yet the whole would still ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... immediately converted into stones, to the admiration of many, the honor of God, the veneration of himself, and the confusion of the poisoners. And unto this day remain these stones in the place where the miracle was done, and show the virtue of Patrick, though mute, because they underwent mutation. Then did these poisoners, seeing that their machinations redounded to the glory of the saint and to the shame of themselves, gather together fifty armed men to spill the blood of this just one. ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... which both parents possess, than with one that only one parent possesses. "Among the traits which have been said to occur in some such direct hereditary way," H. L. Hollingworth[164] observes, "or as the result of unexplained mutation or deviation from type, are: mathematical aptitude, ability in drawing,[165] musical composition,[166] singing, poetic reaction, military strategy, chess playing. Pitch discrimination seems to depend on structural factors which are not ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... in a state of nature, it alone will be able to survive and reproduce its kind. All the variations of species current are, therefore, examples of this continuous process of descent with adaptive modifications. The origin of the human species came about through just such a variation or mutation from one of the higher mammals (we have reason to believe, a species similar to that of the anthrapoid ape). Man's ancestry, it seems, from the scientific evidence which has been marshaled, may be traced back biologically, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... country, from whose bourne no extradition treaty forces the traveler to return—sunny Spain. You said you could not tell my rendition of your signature from your own. Neither could the bank cashier. My exact mutation of your signature has enabled me to withdraw L10,000 from your bank account. Half the profits, you know. You can send future accumulations, for the book will continue to sell, to the address of "ADAM ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr

... How would my heart bleed, were I not cured of that prejudice which makes happiness consist in the personal possession of wealth! But the system of tyranny would be more firm and durable even than it is, did not this mutation of property daily exist; and were not the old and honourable families, as they call themselves, brought to ruin by their foolish and ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... happened to Alice? There was no clue in the memory unearthed by Dr. Martin. Was her condition merely the result of some freak heredity or gene mutation? ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones

... agitations both of members and voices does it inspire us with! Does it not seem that this individual man has false visions amid the crowd of others with whom he has to do, or that he is possessed with some internal demon that persecutes him? Inquire of yourself where is the object of this mutation? is there anything but us in nature which inanity sustains, over which it has power? Cambyses, from having dreamt that his brother should be one day king of Persia, put him to death: a beloved brother, and one in whom he had always confided. Aristodemus, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... a few moments?" he soberly inquired. He took care to delete every vestige of animation from his tone and manner, and so radical a change did this effect that his step-uncle blinked. A man as keen as John M. Hurd could not be blind to a mutation so great. He looked Mr. Wilkinson over with more care than he had ever employed before, for he recognized at once that this was ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... material or spiritual elements, yet of orderly intelligible relationships, like the harmony of musical notes, wrought out in and through the series of their mutations—ordinances of the divine reason, maintained throughout the changes of the phenomenal world; and this harmony in their mutation and opposition, was, after all, a principle of sanity, of reality, there. But it happened, that, of all this, the first, merely sceptical or negative step, that easiest step on the threshold, had alone remained in general memory; and the "doctrine of motion" seemed ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... and the ravages of the worm." Very little need be said to combat these. Seasons are mutable, and the same heaven that frowns this year on the labors of the husbandman, may smile the next; while a remedy for the "ravages of the worm" may be found in the mutation of the soil, the destruction of the grub, or the rotation of crops,—accessories to success which seem not to have entered into the vocabularies of the twenty pseudo indigo-growers, "many of them men ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... abroad: the domino, which serves for mere concealment, is almost the only dress assumed, and the real disguise is therefore thrown from necessity upon the talents, whatever they be, of the wearer. It is no longer a question of a beard or a spangled mantle, a Polish dress or a pasteboard nose; the mutation of voice, the assumption of a different manner, walk, gesture, and mode of expression, are all necessary, and no small tact is required ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... Infinite was the not-finite; the Absolute was precisely what the contingent was not. The perfect was free of every mark of imperfection. Behind all manifestations was the essential Substance which made the manifestations. The completely Real was above all mutation and process. "For one to assign," therefore, "to God any human attributes," as Spinoza, the supreme apostle of this negative way has said, "is to reveal that he has no true idea of God." It has taken all the philosophical and spiritual ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... at whose doors your nobility attendeth. Consider in whose chambers your council must sit, and to whom for resolutions they must resort; and let these things determine both what was the purpose indeed, and hidden intention of that change of religion, and who hath gathered the benefits of that mutation: that is to say, whether for your Q., for your realms, or for their own sakes, the same at first was taken in hand, and since pursued as you have seen. For according to the principal effects of every action must the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin



Words linked to "Mutation" :   lusus naturae, monstrosity, biological science, reversion, monster, mutagenesis, being, mutate, inversion, deletion, modification, variation, biology, change, genetic science, transposition, organism, freak, alteration, genetics, saltation, sport



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