Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Demonstrable   Listen
adjective
Demonstrable  adj.  
1.
Capable of being demonstrated; that can be proved beyond doubt or question. "The grand articles of our belief are as demonstrable as geometry."
2.
Proved; apparent. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Demonstrable" Quotes from Famous Books



... application to any special branch of human inquiry signifies, in that sense, that the facts and principles relating to the given branch, or constituting it, are no longer subjects of uncertain investigation, but have become accurately and positively known, so as to be demonstrable to all intelligent minds and invariably recognized by them as true when rightly apprehended and understood. In the absence, however, of any clear conception of what constitutes knowledge, of where ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... constant appeal is made to intuitive knowledge. It is said to be impossible to give expression to certain truths; that they are not demonstrable by syllogisms; that they must be learnt intuitively. The politician finds fault with the abstract reasoner, who is without a lively knowledge of actual conditions; the pedagogue insists upon the necessity of developing the intuitive ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... in contemporary government, that the state has a responsibility for conditions which determine the health and welfare of its own members; that it is in the interest of social progress itself that hard-won liberties must be restrained by the demonstrable needs ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... commonly accepted order of things as entirely incorrect. In the realm of life, cause and effect are not so onesidedly fixed as in the realm of mechanical forces. We may therefore admit that a reverse effect of the soil-elements upon the plant does take place. This is plainly demonstrable in the case of phosphorus which, however, by reason of its appearance in the soil in proportions hardly to be called a mere 'trace', represents a borderline case. What may apply within limits to phosphorus is wholly valid for the trace-elements - namely, that ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... It is easily demonstrable, too, that drains at right angles with the mains, and so parallel with each other, are the shortest possible drains in land that needs uniform drainage. They take each a more uniform share of the water, and serve a greater breadth of soil than when ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... second expectation was not realized. The relations between the assumed psychical and the demonstrable anatomical androgyny should never be conceived as being so close. There is frequently found in the inverted a diminution of the sexual impulse (H. Ellis) and a slight anatomical stunting of the organs. This, however, ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... really do not like to think what they would have said. I certainly should not like to have been the officer of Nelson who suddenly discovered his French blood on the eve of Trafalgar. I should not like to have been the Norfolk or Suffolk gentleman who had to expound to Admiral Blake by what demonstrable ties of genealogy he was irrevocably bound to the Dutch. The truth of the whole matter is very simple. Nationality exists, and has nothing in the world to do with race. Nationality is a thing like a church or a secret society; it is a product of the ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... absolutely create wealth; we increase and multiply it. Let aspirants to science well understand, then, that neither the juggler's tricks nor miracles are to be asked of the adept. The Hermetic science, like all the real sciences, is mathematically demonstrable. Its results, even material, are as rigorous as that of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... old Mr. Boddy's death. She knew that it was another hard blow to Lydia, and, as you are aware, in her heart she respected Lydia profoundly. Her sorrow led to that one practical result—no more marmalade and pickles from Mrs. Bower. The Bowers had behaved vilely; from every point of view, that was demonstrable. Under the circumstances, they ought to have done without their rent, if need were, till Doomsday when, as Totty understood, all such arrears are made good to one with the utmost accuracy—nay, with interest to boot. She had not seen any reason for quarrelling with the Bowers on the score ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... example out of a hundred, every philologist knows that s may become r, and that the broad a-sound may dwindle into the closer o-sound; but when you adduce some plausible etymology based on the assumption that r has changed into s, or o into a, apart from the demonstrable influence of some adjacent letter, the philologist will shake ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... safely take its position on Quaker ground. That the possible event may not find us unprepared, we build fortresses and war-ships, and maintain armies and artillery at vast expense. No one but the mere visionary denies the propriety or the necessity of this. Yet it is demonstrable that a nation about to be involved in war will find a well-developed industrial and productive power of more real value than any or than all of the precautionary measures above mentioned; since, without such power, neither forts nor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... to no spot, defined by no [25] dogma, appropriated by no sect. Not more to one than to all, is God demonstrable as divine Life, Truth, and Love; and His people are they that reflect Him—that reflect Love. Again, this infinite Principle, with its uni- versal manifestation, is all that really is or can be; [30] hence God is our Shepherd. He ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... "Spiritual Mediums," who, being flesh and blood, are of course ponderable. Now, if we represent the Medium by A, and the head of any one consulting her by B, there can be no doubt that the latter is an absolute vacuum; but it is demonstrable that nothing like light ever passed from the former to the latter. There is a closer analogy between refracted light and a Brocken spectre than our scientific friend seems willing to admit. For what follows we refer our readers to the remarkable essay of Alderman ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... to ruin Ireland, a kingdom by which it is demonstrable that she gains yearly thirteen or fourteen hundred thousand pounds, she ought to think of giving us some relief'" ("History of St. Patrick's," pp. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... center of my circle of humanity, I have placed nature, or the springs of the intellectual powers, which tend, in a straight line, to its boundary; and, on its boundary, I have placed demonstrable beauty and truth, and the utmost power of rules; and, midway; I have placed common sense and common form, half deriving their existence from pure nature, and half from its highest cultivation, as far as art or rules can teach. A conjunction which would itself be the perfection ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds

... try to propitiate the young ladies. He made himself gentle; he raised the most delicate difficulties. He had, for instance, a very strange compassion for the Saints. "I hold it," he said—with an eye on Miss Fountain—"to be clearly demonstrable that the Invocation of Saints is, of all things, most lamentably ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... violently overwhelmed with the charge of blood forced in upon them, that the flesh is lacerated and the vessels ruptured. Nothing of the kind as an effect of heat, or pain, or the vacuum force, is either credible or demonstrable. ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... to Mens obeying the Law of Nature, by vertue of the meer Light of Nature; which is, that they cannot, in all circumstances, without Revelation, make always a just estimate in reference to their happiness. For, tho' it is demonstrable that the Law of Reason is the Law of God, yet the want of an explicite knowledge of the penalty incur'd by the breach of that Law, makes it not to be evident to all Men that the incuring of this penalty shall (in all cases) make the preference ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... continuation of these movements, in all their forms are due to purely vito-magnetic force, we think demonstrable. Thus, no other can act so instantaneously, none with such varied exhibitions of power, and none ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... 6. Demonstrable justice to all concerned, rather than subsidy which, while doubtless warrantable to secure the public good, affords less precise basis of legislation ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... have mentioned, and then add Cuba to the Union, I shall, if President, be willing to give up the ghost, and let Breckinridge take the government." Thus, even excluding the more problematical chances which lay hidden in filibustering enterprises, there was a possibility, easily demonstrable to the sanguine, that a decade or two might change mere numerical preponderance from the free to the slave-States. Nor could this possibility be waved aside by any affectation of incredulity. Not alone Mr. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... no place. They prove by their works that Blake was right when he said that "a fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees"; and that psychologists, insisting on the selective action of the mind, the fact that our preconceptions govern the character of our universe, do but teach the most demonstrable of truths. Did you take them seriously, as you should, their ardent reports might well disgust you with the dull and narrow ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... make one half of the faction subservient to the destruction of the other. If you judge of the principles of the nation by the success of the Foederalists,* and the superiority of the Convention, you will be extremely deceived; for it is demonstrable, that neither the most zealous partizans of the ancient system, nor those of the abolished constitution, have taken any share in the dispute; and the departments most notoriously aristocratic have all signified their adherence to ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... as contrasted with Phenomena the seen and known; the universe, the creation of the mind; the mind, the product of the universe. All these ideas and many others so widely differing can none of them receive a demonstrable proof;—these contrary statements show how far we are from possessing any real knowledge of what mind is. After all that has been written, elaborated and imagined, do we actually know ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne

... things necessary to warrant us to call a thing made up of a number of parts, one real whole: the parts and the whole must have a reciprocal action upon one another, and the whole, as such, must have a demonstrable action of its own. (Drobisch.) In this sense, "the people" is, unquestionably, a reality, and not alone the individuals who constitute the "people." Besides, it is truly said that all husbandry or ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... race will surely ground in time, and go to pieces. There is the peril of this all-prevailing love of the real. It may become such an infatuation that nothing will appear actual which is not visible or demonstrable, which the hand cannot handle or the intellect weigh and measure. Even to this extreme may the reason run. Its vulnerable point is pride. It is easily encouraged by success, easily incited to conceit, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... closest to its own formulas and ways, it appears to me to be very bad criticism; and that when, as sometimes happens, it is good criticism, its ways and formulas are not perceptibly distinguishable from those of criticism which is not "scientific." For the rest, it is all but demonstrable that "scientific" literary criticism is impossible, unless the word "scientific" is to have its meaning very illegitimately altered. For the essential qualities of literature, as of all art, are communicated ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... would appear to be demonstrable, that, notwithstanding the great change which is exhibited by the animal population of the world as a whole, certain types have persisted comparatively without alteration, and the question arises, What bearing have such facts as these on our notions of the ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley

... body raised to the same temperature. A large iron casting will take days to cool; a small casting will become cold in a few hours. Whatever may have been the original source of heat in our system—a question which we are not now discussing—it seems demonstrable that the different bodies were all originally heated, and have now for ages been gradually cooling. The sun is so vast that he has not yet had time to cool; the earth, of intermediate bulk, has become cold on the outside, while still retaining vast stores of internal heat; while the moon, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... "Demonstrable evidence from many sources is at command to show the progressive change and accumulative power of the lake trade. In 1827, a steamer first visited Green Bay, for government purposes, and the Black Hawk war in 1832 drew two boats to Chicago for the ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... does not tell me," said I, "how much of this seven or nine dollars she pays out for board and washing, fire and lights. If she worked in a good family at two or three dollars a week, it is easily demonstrable, that, at the present cost of these items, she would make as much clear profit as she now does at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... likewise that this rude blustering Mountain has a sense in it of what the Revolution means; which these eloquent Girondins are totally void of. Was the Revolution made, and fought for, against the world, these four weary years, that a Formula might be substantiated; that Society might become methodic, demonstrable by logic; and the old Noblesse with their pretensions vanish? Or ought it not withal to bring some glimmering of light and alleviation to the Twenty-five Millions, who sat in darkness, heavy-laden, till they rose with pikes in their hands? At least and lowest, one would think, it should bring ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... man. Each stage of theistic belief grows out of the preceding stage, and if it can be shown that the beginning of this evolution arose in a huge blunder I quite fail to see how any subsequent development can convert this unmistakable blunder into a demonstrable truth. To take a case in point. When it was shown that so far as witchcraft rested on observed facts these could be explained on grounds other than those of the malevolent activities of certain old women, the belief in witchcraft was not "purified," neither ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... The virgin birth not demonstrable from Scripture.—The virgin birth of Jesus was apparently unknown to the primitive church, for the earliest New Testament writings make no mention of it. Paul's letters do not allude to it, neither does the gospel of St. Mark. "In the fulness of ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... and entirely under her domination. Both might be reckoned staunch, in the old fashion, 'to the name,' which Logan only bore by accident, his grandmother having wedded a kinless Logan who had no demonstrable connection with the house of Restalrig. Any mortal but the marquis would probably have brought Logan up as his heir, for the churlish peer had no nearer connection. But the marquis did more than sympathise with the Roman emperor who quoted 'after me ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... that his theory fits the universe, when he has first clipped the universe to fit his theory. Have I not tried my hand at many a one—starting, too, no one can deny, with the very minimum of clipping,.... for I suppose one cannot begin lower than at simple "I am I".... unless—which is equally demonstrable—at "I am not I." I recollect—or dream—that I offered that sweet dream, Hypatia, to deduce all things in heaven and earth, from the Astronomics of Hipparchus to the number of plumes in an archangel's wing, from that one simple proposition, if she would but write ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... exercise, I could easily demonstrate to be attended with no small train of absurdities. But then, besides that the acknowledging of a creation is safe, and the denial of it dangerous and irreligious, and yet not more, perhaps much less, demonstrable than the affirmative; so, over and above, it gives me this advantage, that, let it seem never so strange, uncouth, and incomprehensible, the nonplus of my reason will yield a ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser

... an evident increase of comfort founded on their demonstrable advantage in being the real thing. I could fancy them shuddering over Miss Churm. She was very droll about them when I went back, for I told her ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James

... go to the bottom in the same locality and be there covered up with the older one on the same general plane. These two vessels, found in such a position, would naturally be classed together as of the same age, and yet it is demonstrable that a very long period may have elapsed between the date of the one and that of the other. Such an association of these canoes, therefore, cannot be regarded as proving synchronous deposition; nor, on the other hand, can we affirm any difference of age from mere ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... besiege the blood of nations in that predicament. All enterprise and spirit of adventure, all heroism and courting of danger for its own attractions, ought naturally to languish in a generation enervated by early habits of personal indulgence. Doubtless they ought; a priori, it seems strictly demonstrable that such consequences should follow. Upon the purest forms of inference in Barbara or Celarent, it can be shown satisfactorily that from all our tainted classes, a fortiori then from our most tainted classes—our men of fashion and of opulent fortunes—no description of animal can ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... idealism a certain number of affirmations which form the basis of the system. None of these affirmations is, strictly speaking, demonstrated or demonstrable; but they offer very different degrees of probability, and it is for this reason ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... from any insuperable difficulty whatever, but our sloth, and want of industry; since wherever these trees will grow and prosper, the silk-worms will do so also; and they were alike averse, and from the very same suggestions, where now that manufacture flourishes in our neighbour countries. It is demonstrable, that mulberries in four or five years may be made to spread all over this land; and when the indigent, and young daughters in proud families are as willing to gain three or four shillings a day for gathering silk, and busying themselves in this ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... between this level of morality and those above. To drink one's self to death is a species of folly that the poorest intelligence can understand; but the folly in meanness, injustice, or impiety is a harder matter. Believing as I do that the folly is equally demonstrable in all of these cases, I propose not to accept your ready assent in the simpler case until its grounds have been made as clear and definite as possible. I feel convinced that prudence is not so simple ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... state-law than the far older burgess- -municipium-, and the advantage doubtless can only have consisted in a municipal constitution approximating to the Latin, such as afterwards belonged to all burgess-colonies and burgess—municipia-. The new organization is first distinctly demonstrable for the revolutionary colony of Capua;(44) and it admits of no doubt that it was first fully applied, when all the hitherto sovereign towns of Italy had to be organized, in consequence of the Social war, as burgess- communities. Whether it was the Julian law, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... undergraduate, in speaking of Homer or Shakespeare. I suppose it is a desirable thing, on the whole, to be able to run faster than other people, though the practical utility of being able to do a hundred yards in a fraction of a second less than other runners is not easily demonstrable. But for all that I cannot help wondering whether such enthusiasm is not thrown away or misapplied. Perhaps the same indictment might be made against all warmly expressed admiration for human performances. The greatest philosopher ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... used to generalize as a perfectly direct and amply demonstrable example of an internal secretion. Metaphors are no less valuable in physiology than in poetry. They declared that the internal secretions appeared to them to be chemical messengers, telegraph boys ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... its continual aggravation. The Opium trade, perhaps beneficially, brought matters to a crisis. It was alleged on behalf of the Emperor, that we were surreptitiously, and from motives of gain, corrupting and destroying his people, by supplying them with opium; but it is easily demonstrable that this was only a pretence for endeavouring to effect a change in the medium of our dealings with them, vastly beneficial to the Emperor, and disadvantageous to us. We might have been permitted to quadruple our supply of opium to his subjects, if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... the Nauplius-stage; being transferred back to a period when it had not to provide for itself, the Nauplius has become degraded into a mere skin; in Ligia (Figures 36 and 37) this larva-skin has lost the last traces of limbs, and in Philoscia (Figure 38) it is scarcely demonstrable. ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller

... all; but on the contrary, an atmosphere of kindliness exuded from him, creating a wonderful effect upon those with whom he came in contact. The wild stories of this turbulent agitator, which everyone seemed to hear, and be acquainted with, made the audience hostile to begin with. It was not a demonstrable hostility; but one felt it was there, ready to break out, and overwhelm this stormy petrel of ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... are as thorough and as reliable as researches by material scientists, but not as easily demonstrable to the general public. Spiritual powers lie dormant within every human being, and when awakened, they compensate for both telescope and microscope, they enable their possessor to investigate, instanter, things beyond the veil ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... implications of the ideas are not apprehended, where thought is not lively and fertile, where meanings and consequences are not grasped, the need for the control of impulse will not be felt. And the demonstrable deficiency of the Negro in intellectual traits may involve the dynamic deficiencies which common opinion claims ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... by true religion the soul is tied or bound, as it were, to God and His service. These things being premised, we shall be justified in proceeding to establish our proposition; namely, that God was the author of the Bible. And we hold this to be demonstrable. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... They have been accustomed to associate under certain conditions and on certain terms; and to alter in any important way those conditions and terms of association without fair notice, full discussion, a demonstrable need and a sufficient consent of public opinion, would be to drive a wedge into the substance of American national cohesion. The American nation, no matter how much (or how little) it may be devoted to democratic political ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... gain, so far is it from fact that there is an infinite distance between them. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain. This is demonstrable; and if men are capable of any truths, this ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... incense, that there appeared to Zachary an angel of the Lord, standing on the right side of the altar of incense. That the nations attached a meaning not only of personal reverence, but also of religious homage, to an offering of incense, is demonstrable from the instance of the Magi, who, having fallen down to adore the new-born Jesus, and recognized his Divinity, presented Him with gold, myrrh and frankincense. The primitive Christians imitated the example of the Jews, and adopted the use of incense at the celebration of the Liturgy. St. ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse

... presently produced. 'I have two or three times,' said I, 'Mr. Turl, intruded upon you, and am come to trouble you once more. I have been writing a pamphlet, and should again be glad to have your opinion. I know before you open it you are inimical to its doctrines, although I think them demonstrable. But perhaps you will find arguments in it which you might not expect: and if not, I still should be glad to have your judgment of it, as a composition. It contains a defence of the thirty-nine articles, and indisputable proofs of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... Greeks drew them with two;—Egyptians drew their deities with cats' heads, but the Greeks drew them with men's; and out of all fallacy, disproportion, and indefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdrawing and exalting themselves into restricted and demonstrable truth. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... regarded as certain that most of the aberrations discoverable in Codexes of the Sacred Text have arisen in the first instance from the merest inadvertency of the scribes. That such was the case in a vast number of cases is in fact demonstrable. [Inaccuracy in the apprehension of the Divine Word, which in the earliest ages was imperfectly understood, and ignorance of Greek in primitive Latin translators, were prolific sources of error. The influence of Lectionaries, in which Holy Scripture was cut up into separate Lections either with ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... OF COLD ARE FROM RELIGION. That the very origin of conjugial love resides in the inmost principles of man, that is, in his soul, is demonstrable to every one from the following considerations alone; that the soul of the offspring is from the father, which is known from the similitude of inclinations and affections, and also from the general character of the countenance derived from the ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... nigh a century we have had a wave theory of light; and a wave theory of light is quite certainly true. It is directly demonstrable that light consists of waves of some kind or other, and that these waves travel at a certain well-known velocity, seven times the circumference of the earth per second, taking eight minutes on the journey from the sun to the earth. This propagation in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... characters with a substance which is now being formed at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and covers an enormous area; other beds of rock are comparable with the sands which are being formed upon sea-shores, packed together, and so on. Thus, omitting rocks of igneous origin, it is demonstrable that all these beds of stone, of which a total of not less than seventy thousand feet is known, have been formed by natural agencies, either out of the waste and washing of the dry land, or else ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... peace with God, and to be able and willing to say, My Father! That the whole of the surging and flaming sun was actually down in my straitened and hampered heart at that idle moment over my paper is scientifically demonstrable; for only that which is in the heart of a man can kindle the passions that are in the heart of that man; and nothing is more sure to me than that the great passions of fear and love, wonder and rapture were at that moment at ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... any candid, well-informed man assert that, at any time between 1776 and 1790, a proposition to surrender the sovereignty of the States and merge them in a central government would have had the least possible chance of adoption? Can any historical fact be more demonstrable than that the States did, both in the Confederation and in the Union, retain their sovereignty and independence as distinct communities, voluntarily consenting to federation, but never becoming the fractional parts of a nation? That such opinions should find adherents in our day, may ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... the influx of an adulterated Judaism into a nascent Christianity, not the reflex of a pure Christianity upon a receptive Judaism. It is important to show this; and it appears from several considerations. In the first place, it is demonstrable, it is unquestioned, that at least the germs and outlines of the dogmas referred to were in actual existence among the Pharisees before the conflict between Christianity and Judaism arose.Secondly, in the Rabbinical writings these dogmas are most fundamental, vital, and pervading, in relation ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... earth's stability; but in his preface he sounds a remarkable warning. He mentions the great mistake into which St. Augustine led the Church regarding the doctrine of the antipodes, and says, "If within a few years or in the next generation it should prove as certain and demonstrable that the earth is moved, as it is now that there are antipodes, those that have been zealous against it, and engaged the Scripture in the controversy, would have the same reason to repent of their forwardness that St. Augustine would now, if he were ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... savage peoples who have developed a definite cult; and in those who, like the natives of Australia, have not even a cult, the belief in, and fear of, ghosts is as strong as anywhere else. The most clearly demonstrable article of the theology of the Israelites in the eleventh and twelfth centuries B.C. is therefore simply the article which is to be found in all primitive theologies, namely, the belief that a man has a soul which continues to exist after death for a longer or shorter time, ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... gratified his own feelings, while he made Horace happy for life, by presenting him with a small estate in the Sabine country—a gift which, we may be sure, he knew well would be of all gifts the most welcome. It is demonstrable that it was not given earlier than B.C. 33, or after upwards of four years of intimate acquaintance. That Horace had longed for such a possession, he tells us himself (Satires, II. 6). He had probably expressed his longing in the hearing of his friend, and to such a friend ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... one's point, have the best of the argument; draw a conclusion &c. (judge) 480. follow, follow of course, follow as a matter of course, follow necessarily; stand to reason; hold good, hold water. convince, persuade (belief) 484. Adj. demonstrating &c. v., demonstrative, demonstrable; probative, unanswerable, conclusive; apodictic[obs3], apodeictic[obs3], apodeictical[obs3]; irresistible, irrefutable, irrefragable; necessary. categorical, decisive, crucial. demonstrated &c. v.; proven; unconfuted[obs3], unanswered, unrefuted[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... added to this we had the action of the sand and gravel carried along by the water, which, on striking the rock, chipped it away like the particles of the sand-Blast. Thus, by solution and mechanical erosion, the great chasm of the Finsteraarschlucht was formed. It is demonstrable that the water which flows at the bottoms of such deep fissures once flowed at the level of their present edges, and tumbled down the lower faces of the barriers. Almost every valley in Switzerland furnishes examples of this ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... evil. Ignorance of the evil in the world is, however, not to be predicated of those who are familiar only with the great masterpieces of literature, for if they are masterpieces, little or great, they exhibit human nature in all its aspects. And, further than this, it ought to be demonstrable, a priori, that a mind fed on the best and not confused by the weak and diluted, or corrupted by images of the essentially vulgar and vile, would be morally healthy and best fitted to cope with the social problems of life. The ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... as well as future; while matter is susceptible of an infinite number of diverse movements, changes, modifications, combinations, etc.,[9] chemically as well as molecularly considered. This, they claim, is not a mere hypothetical judgment, but a mathematically demonstrable proposition. Grant it for the sake of the argument, and then see if the mastodon does not promptly emerge from some one of their "experimental flasks," as they choose ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... his spirit, the range of subject over which it energized was painfully restricted. He looked out upon the world, but, behold, only the Whigs were good. Luther and Loyola, Cromwell and Claverhouse, Carlyle and Newman—they moved him not; their enthusiasms were delusions, and their politics demonstrable errors. Whereas, of Lord Somers and Charles first Earl Grey it is impossible to speak without emotion. But the world does not belong to the Whigs; and a great historian must be capable of sympathizing both with delusions and demonstrable errors. Mr. Gladstone has commented with force upon what ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... helps rats and mice is in no way proven to cause the same result on humans. I agree. Proven with full scientific rigor, no. In fact, at present, the contention is unprovable. Demonstrable as having a high likelihood's of being so, yes! So likely so as to be almost incontrovertible, yes! But provable to the most open-minded, scientific sort—probably not for a long time. However, the Life Extension Foundation is ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... into any speculative or occult theory, upon which there might be a chance of their being led away by sophistical representations, but they were inquiring into the existence of facts only — plain demonstrable facts, which were in their own nature palpable to every observer." ["Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism," p. 27.] M. Dupotet might not unreasonably be asked whether the very same arguments ought not to be applied to the unfavourable report drawn up by the able M. Dubois d'Amiens ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... in the embryonic succession much is wanting that certainly existed in the earlier ancestral succession. If the parallel of the two series were complete, and if this great fundamental law affirming the causal connection between ontogeny and phylogeny in the proper sense of the word were directly demonstrable, we should only have to determine, by means of the microscope and the dissecting knife, the series of forms through which the fertilised ovum passes in its development; we should then have before us a complete picture of the remarkable series of forms which our animal ancestors ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... consider faith and works? The head and the hand too are required to a perfect natural man; counsel and action too, to a perfect civil man; faith and works too, to him that is perfectly spiritual. But because it is easily said, I believe, and because it doth not easily lie in proof, nor is easily demonstrable by any evidence taken from my heart (for who sees that, who searches those rolls?) whether I do believe or no, is it not therefore, O my God, that thou dost so frequently, so earnestly, refer us to the hand, to the observation of actions? There ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... demonstrable, that this could not possibly be accomplished—that neither the means of transport could be found, nor the means of settlement provided; and were these impossibilities removed, it might also be ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... the lofty reason, the fine intuition, the philanthropy and hope, which inspire its pages, we close the book with a sense of something wanting. The author points out the danger there always is of a faith which is intellectually demonstrable becoming, with many, a faith of the intellect merely,—and frankly avows that "there is a cause why Theism, even in warmer and better natures, too often fails to draw out that fervent piety" which is characteristic of narrower ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... maintains this beautiful sentiment, is accustomed to make concessions by which its beauty is marred, and its foundation subverted. For if God could easily cause virtue to exist without any mixture of vice, it is demonstrable that the universe might be rendered more holy and happy than it is, in each and every one of its parts, and consequently in the whole. But if we assume the position, as in truth we may, that a necessary virtue is ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... she said, with a fond smile: "It is your demonstrable privilege. I would not grant it, dear, were my weak hands as clean as yours. Oh, but it is long you have loved me, and it is faithfully you have served Heaven, and my heart too is breaking in my body now ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... for the superficial form. A difference of object and contents supplies an additional ground of distinction. The immediate purpose may be the communication of truths; either of truth absolute and demonstrable, as in works of science; or of facts experienced and recorded, as in history. Pleasure, and that of the highest and most permanent kind, may result from the attainment of the end; but it is not itself the immediate ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... stated, it will appear sufficiently obvious that the dogmas of revealed religion, though based rather on the ground of faith than on that of philosophy and strict criticism, are yet, for an upright man, susceptible of a degree of evidence equal to that of any other demonstrable truth, inasmuch as they have their foundation in human nature itself, and can be rejected but by him who rebels against the noblest impulses of the heart, to give himself up to the sway of passions ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio

... ventricles contract at the same time, this process would impede rather than facilitate such an intra-ventricular passage of blood. But what seemed the most conclusive proof of all was the fact that in the foetus there existed a demonstrable opening between the two ventricles, and yet this is closed in the fully developed heart. Why should Nature, if she intended that blood should pass between the two cavities, choose to close this opening and substitute microscopic openings in place of it? ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... in the hands of merchants, who had got rich by their lawful calling abroad, and the sons of stewards, who had got rich by their lawful calling at home: persons so perfectly versed in the ceremonial of thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands (whose degrees of precedency are plainly demonstrable from the first page of the Complete Accomptant, or Young Man's Best Pocket Companion) that a bow at church from them to such a man as Harley would have made the parson look back into his sermon for some ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... a million pounds by means compared with which those employed to make fortunes by the getters-up of the South Sea Bubble might be called honest dealing, are decidedly not gentle-folks. Now, as it is clearly demonstrable that a person may be perfectly genteel according to some standard or other and yet be no gentleman, so is it demonstrable that a person may have no pretensions to gentility and yet be a gentleman. For example there ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... monotheistic, and consequently the reconciliation between the Aristotelian philosophy and the Christian faith could only be effected by distinguishing between natural and revealed religion. The truths of the former were demonstrable by reason, of which Aristotle was the supreme guide. The truths of the latter were mysteries to be accepted on an equally good though different authority. By such methods these later schoolmen excepted and accepted the doctrines of the Trinity and the ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... entering into the composition of the blood, muscular fibre, or any part which is the seat of the principle of life." Dr. Hammond, in his Tribune Lectures, in which he advocates the use of alcohol in certain cases, says: "It is not demonstrable that alcohol undergoes conversion into tissue." Cameron, in his Manuel of Hygiene, says: "There is nothing in alcohol with which any part of the body can be nourished." Dr. E. Smith, F.R.S., says: "Alcohol is not a true food. It interferes with alimentation." Dr. T.K. Chambers says: ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... course of the next few days a new symptom was added to this group: Exudation, which was demonstrable both by palpation and percussion. It was the natural consequence of inflammation of the peritoneum, and was both of diagnostic value as indicating general peritonitis and of special value in that, more definitely than the pain, it pointed to the original seat of the affection, which, according to ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... do so. Something sure of State, Either from Venice, or some vnhatch'd practise Made demonstrable heere in Cyprus, to him, Hath pudled his cleare Spirit: and in such cases, Mens Natures wrangle with inferiour things, Though great ones are their obiect. 'Tis euen so. For let our finger ake, and it endues Our other healthfull ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... What honour to the other does this imply! When one might challenge the proudest pedant of them all, to say he has been disciplined into greater improvement, than she had made from the mere force of genius and application. But it is demonstrable to all who know how to make observations on their acquaintance of both sexes, arrogant as some are of their superficialities, that a lady at eighteen, take the world through, is more prudent and conversable than a man at twenty-five. I can prove this by nineteen instances out ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... whole body of the people, but we do not take notice of these matters as receding from our former opinion. On the contrary, we still think them the most easy and equal way of taxing a nation, and perhaps it is demonstrable that if we had fallen into this method at the beginning of the war of raising the year's expense within the year by excises, England had not been now indebted so many millions, but what was advisable under such a necessity and danger is not to be pursued in times of peace, especially ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty

... customs and manners are to be judged of not so much by what is known or imagined of the sources of them, as by what is evident or may be discovered of their effects on society. On this principle, it is strictly demonstrable, that in such a state of things as exists in our own country at present, certain appearances and modes of dress adopted by our women, are actually more injurious, and of course more criminal, than the dancing gestures mentioned ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... assertion is true and demonstrable that the ordinary power of seeing does not penetrate as far as the cells, so also is the other assertion which maintains that ordinary knowledge cannot penetrate into supersensible worlds. And yet the proof that the ordinary power of vision has ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... the mind powers that reside in the atoms of matter,—an explanation which does not often occur to the exponents of materialism,—and has the merit of ingenuity. The theory would do very well if it were not demonstrable that life exists only from influx, and that human life and personality survive the body, and become known to every highly organized sensitive, who knows how to investigate ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... sign of melancholy, was also introduced. The character of funeral rites, from Western Europe to Japan, exhibits a similarity which, in my judgment, is to be explained only on the supposition of very early and long continued historical contact,—a contact otherwise demonstrable. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... let me, in a few words, recapitulate the positions which I have laid down. And you must understand that I have not been talking mere theory; I have been speaking of matters which are as plainly demonstrable as the commonest propositions of Euclid—of facts that must form the basis of all speculations and beliefs in Biological science. We have gradually traced down all organic forms, or, in other words, we have analyzed the present condition of animated nature, until we found that ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... Whether it be natural or not in Plays, is a problem which is not demonstrable, of either side. 'Tis enough for me, that he acknowledges that he had rather read good Verse than Prose [p. 575]: for if all the enemies of Verse will confess as much, I shall not need to prove that it is natural. I ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... present themselves at birth, and in all probability the primary veins corresponded in form, number, and distribution with the arterial vessels, and underwent, at the same time, a similar mode of metamorphosis. One point in respect to the original symmetrical character of the primary veins is demonstrable—namely, that in front of the aortic branches the right and left brachio-cephalic veins, after joining by a cross branch, descend separately on either side of the heart, and enter (as two superior ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... Have you ever seen these ballots? They are a yard long and a yard wide. They have a hundred and twenty names on them and the people are expected to make a selection. They are to make a selection of ten out of fifty or one hundred names. Why, it would seem to be mathematically demonstrable that that is absurd. But when some men get into politics and talk about the people, it seems as if they had to abandon ordinary logic. I am just as much in favor of popular government as anybody, but I am in favor of popular government as a means to attain good government, not ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft

... objects conceived by superposing perceptions that exist together. Being formed on different principles these two orders of conception—the logical and the physical—do not coincide, and the attempt to fuse them into one system of demonstrable reality or moral physics is doomed to failure by the very nature of the terms compared. When the Eleatics proved the impossibility—i.e., the inexpressibility—of motion, or when Kant and his followers proved ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... my duty in 1847 to present the law of justice in relation to "The Land and the People," with very little hope that the doctrine presented would ever become in my own lifetime a basis of political action, since other ideas equally true and equally demonstrable have to bide their time. But the toilers who suffer from the lack of employment have furnished an eager audience to the land reformers, and the great land question is destined to agitate the nations for a century to come. The Boston Globe recently called attention to the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... far from fatalists, and the psychic stimulus of being able to tell your patient that he was ordered to "Blighty" was demonstrable on his history chart. One poor fellow whose right arm was infected with gas bacillus was so anxious to save it that we left it on too long and general blood poisoning set in. He was on the dying list. The Government ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... whether his temporary overlord is his racial equal. Only the white man writes volumes to establish on paper the fact of a superiority which is either self-evident and not in need of demonstration, on the one hand, or is not a fact and is not demonstrable, on the other. The really important matter is one about which there need be little dispute—the fact of racial differences. It is the practical question of differences—the fundamental differences of physical appearance, of mental habit and thought, of social customs and religious ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... made him slow to accept marvellous stories and many forms of superstition. Yet, as a man of science, he well knew that just on the verge of the demonstrable facts of physics and physiology there is a nebulous border-land which what is called "common sense" perhaps does wisely not to enter, but which uncommon sense, or the fine apprehension of privileged intelligences, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... beware how they profanely touch—that of theology. Strange, and miserably strange, that while they are modest enough to doubt their powers, and pause at the threshold of sciences where every step is demonstrable and sure, they will plunge headlong, and without one thought of incompetency, into that science in which the greatest men have trembled, and the wisest erred. Strange, that they will complacently and pridefully bind up whatever vice or ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... requirement than a half-surmise That somehow secretly is operant A power all matter feels, mind only tries To comprehend! Once more—no idle vaunt 'Man comprehends the Sun's self!' Mysteries At source why probe into? Enough: display, Make demonstrable, how, by night as day, Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all's informed Equally by Sun's efflux!—source from whence If just one spark I drew, full evidence Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned— Sun's ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... remind you that the unattainableness is by no means so demonstrable as some people seem to think. A very tiny circle may have the same centre as one that reaches beyond the suburbs of the universe, and holds all stars and systems within its great round. And the tiniest circle will have the same geometrical laws applied to it as the greatest. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... there, gossip, and will undertake to show the company"—here he looked around upon us and nodded his head in a confident way—"that there is a grain of sense in what the child has said; for look you, it is of a certainty most true and demonstrable that it is a man's head that is master and supreme ruler over his whole body. Is that granted? Will any deny it?" He glanced around again; everybody indicated assent. "Very well, then; that being the case, no part of the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... psychology of primitive man. Each stage of theistic belief grows out of the proceeding stage, and if it can be shown that the beginning of this evolution arose in a huge blunder, I quite fail to see how any subsequent development can convert this unmistakable blunder into a demonstrable truth." ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... struggle for life. Is it indeed possible for life, life that seeks assurance of survival, to tolerate that a Loisy, a Catholic priest, should affirm that the resurrection of the Saviour is not a fact of the historical order, demonstrable and demonstrated by the testimony of history alone? Read, moreover, the exposition of the central dogma, that of the resurrection of Jesus, in E. Le Roy's excellent work, Dogme et Critique, and tell me if any solid ground is left for our hope to build on. Do not the Modernists see that the question ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... above-named authorities, being probably ignorant of them all. His reasoning upon the point, does not appear to me to be worthy of a detailed answer.[165] That the possessive case of nouns is not an adjective, is demonstrable; because it may have adjectives of various kinds, relating to it: as, "This old man's daughter."—Shak. It may also govern an other possessive; as, "Peter's wife's mother."—Bible. Here the former possessive is governed by the latter; but, if both were adjectives, they ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Theistic Association, also professedly theistic. Polytheism and pantheism alike, the [A]ryas repudiate. For the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, the founder of the [A]ryas declared there was no recognition in the Vedas. Demonstrable or not, that is the [A]rya position. The rejection of pantheism by such a body is noteworthy, for pantheism is identified with India and the Vedanta, the most widely accepted of the six systems of Indian philosophy, and the [A]rya Sam[a]j is nothing if ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... Hebrew, have begun to find their way in (Nehemiah i. 1, ii. 1; Zech. i. 7). The Syrian names are always given along with the numbers in the Book of Esther, and are used to the exclusion of all others in that of Maccabees. It would be absurd to attempt to explain this demonstrable change which took place in the calendar after the exile as a mere incidental effect of the Priestly Code, hitherto in a state of suspended animation, rather than by reference to general causes arising from the circumstances of the time, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... right. Regulation 710.1 says that any orbital debris constituting a demonstrable menace to navigation may be destroyed at the discretion of this office." He brushed his hands together with ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy

... labor unionists also—is that while the proportion of the population that consists of wage earners is everywhere increasing, the share of the national income that goes to wages is everywhere growing less. There is no more striking, easily demonstrable, or generally admitted fact in modern life. The whole purpose of Socialism—in so far as it can be expressed in terms of income, is to reverse this tendency and to keep it reversed until private capital ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... not believe me when I told them I saw nothing. So it came to pass, that I nearly lost my life for the sake of confirming them more strongly than ever in their superstitions. I, who was to have taught them the folly of their fears by practical and demonstrable defiance of the Genii confirmed and sealed the power of the Genii over this Desert. But I must observe, my companions of travel did not adopt the right method of rescuing me from the malignant influence of the Genii. If they had sent a man in each direction from the camp, I should soon have been ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... of exaggeration in this statement. That it is within the exact truth is demonstrable by the testimony of any man—Rebel or Union—who ever saw the inside of the Stockade at Andersonville. I am quite content to have its truth—as well as that of any other statement made in this book—be determined by the evidence of any one, no matter how bitter his hatred of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... you accept the Scriptures upon the authority of unknown men, and upon no other demonstrable ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... meaning from their derivatives in any modern vocabulary, the effort of lifting one's self out of the familiar rut of ideas into so foreign a world, all these things act as a tonic exercise to the brain. And it is a demonstrable fact that students of the classics do actually surpass their unclassical rivals in any field where a fair test can be made. At Princeton, for instance, Professor West has shown this superiority by tables of achievements and grades, which he published in the Educational Review for March, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... credited very much of the success of the turnip-culture, which has within a century revolutionized the agriculture of Kugland; yet again, the magical effects of a thorough system of drainage are nowhere so demonstrable as in a soil constantly wetted, and giving a steady flow, however small, to the discharging tile. Measured by inches, the rain-fall is greater in most parts of America than in Great Britain; but this fall is so capricious with us, often so sudden and violent, that there must be inevitably ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... horizon, floating mistily somewhere on its borders, half real, half fabulous, on the way to Fairyland. We enter more distinctly the inner realm of the spirit, as the outer realm of reality becomes less distinct and demonstrable. The Ciconians were an actual people, the conflict with them also actual, quite the Trojan conflict; but the Lotus-eaters form the transition to the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... of devotion to a single idea be disastrous or otherwise to the devotees, nothing in all history is better proved—nothing in all philosophy is more clearly demonstrable— than the fact that it is a damage to the idea. If I wished to disgust a community with any special idea, I would set a man talking about it and advocating it who would talk of nothing else. If I ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... enabling a new generation to experience the benefits of education and to qualify themselves in other respects for complete self-government. I have now gone through with the administration, or rather mal-administration, of the General Government. It is equally demonstrable that so far as Texas is concerned, there have been equal confusion, insecurity and injustice in the administration of the State governments. Texas, as is known, forms an integral part of the State known by the name ...
— Texas • William H. Wharton

... mid-age or old age of noble women. National decrepitude must be criminal. National death can only be by disease, and yet it is almost impossible, out of the history of the art of nations, to elicit the true conditions relating to its decline in any demonstrable manner. The history of Italian art is that of a struggle between superstition and naturalism on one side, between continence and sensuality on another. So far as naturalism prevailed over superstition, there is always progress; so far as sensuality over ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... book such as 'Modern Painters' ever would or could have been written; for every argument, and every sentiment in that book, was founded on the personal experience of the beauty and blessing of nature, all spring and summer long; and on the then demonstrable fact that over a great portion of the world's surface the air and the earth were fitted to the education of the spirit of man as closely as a school-boy's primer is to his labor, and as gloriously as a lover's mistress ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... into a disease of the ether—a disease of which you and I, all life and all matter, are symptoms? Would you teach that to the child, and explain to him that the wonder of life and growth is no wonder, but a demonstrable result of impeded force, to be evaluated by the ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... of this propriety of length, I should say it consisted in the depth and declivity of the shoulders, and in the length of the quarters and thighs, and the insertion of the muscles thereof. The effect of the different position or attitude of the shoulders in all Horses, is very demonstrable: if we consider the motion of a shoulder, we shall find it limited to a certain degree by the ligamentous and the tendinous parts, which confine it to its proper sphere of acting; so that if the shoulder ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer

... swift and hearty he could be upon occasions. All this left Helen red and confused and unutterably happy. She appreciated Dale's state. His eyes reflected the precious treasure which manifestly he saw, but realization of ownership had not yet become demonstrable. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... impossible is to be preferred to the improbable possible. With all respect, this seems to be a somewhat cumbrous way of stating the fact that plausibility is of more importance on the stage than what may be called demonstrable probability. There is no time, in the rush of a dramatic action, for a mathematical calculation of the chances for and against a given event, or for experimental proof that such and such a thing can or cannot be done. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... the genius of the Jew is entirely religious. I do not think that that is historically a demonstrable proposition. For the dominant motive even in Judaism is not a religious motive. It is an ethical motive. Judaism does not conceive its God as requiring man to be damned for his glory. It conceives its God as an ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... cheapest—namely, from its own soul. This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states, and of present action and grandeur, and of the subjects of poets.—As if it were necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western continent by discovery, and what has transpired since in North and South America, were less than the small theatre of the antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... of the present life; but must, in important points, compare disadvantageously with the beasts that perish. If, like the inferior races, ours attained to a life which should be the full flourish of its demonstrable capacities, while immortality entered not into account, then would fail one argument to prove us destined to an hereafter. If the philosopher, from the examination of the chick eaglet in the shell, knowing naught else of the animal, could make out for it, within its narrow walls, a life ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington

... dreadful night! Witches and warlocks, and a' lang-nebbit things, hae a power and a dominion unspeakable on Hallowe'en. The de'il at other times gi'es, it's said, his agents a mutchkin o' mischief, but on this night it's thought they hae a chappin; and one thing most demonstrable is;—but, sir, the sun's down—the blessed light o' day is ayont the hill, and it's no safe to be subjek to the whisking o' the mildew frae the tails o' the benweed ponies that are saddled for yon awfu' carnavaulings, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... fundamental characteristic should be, the distinctive separation of those departments of thought in which Certainty is now attainable, from those in which only varying degrees of Probability exist, and the clear exhibition of that which is positive and demonstrable knowledge, in the strict sense of the term, as distinguished from that which is liable to be more or less fallible. Although the precise point at which, in some cases, the proofs of Probable Reasoning cease to be as convincing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... well be doubted whether in the whole range of applied electricity there occur such beautiful combinations, so quickly made, broken up, and others reformed, as in the operation of the Edison quadruplex. For example, it is quite demonstrable that during the making of a simple dash of the Morse alphabet by the neutral relay at the home station the distant pole-changer may reverse its battery several times; the home pole-changer may do likewise, and the home transmitter ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... comparatively simple one whether the constitutional provision regarding treason was to be interpreted in the light of the Common Law doctrine that "in treason all are principals." For if it were to be so interpreted and if Burr's connection with the general conspiracy culminating in the assemblage was demonstrable by any sort of legal evidence, then the assemblage was his act, his overt act, proved moreover by thrice the two witnesses constitutionally required! Again it fell to Wirt to represent the prosecution, and he discharged his task most brilliantly. He showed beyond peradventure that the ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... view of human nature must disappear the Utopias of every shade and colour. The great revolutionary party of our day, the International Social-Democracy, is based not upon some "new conception" of human nature, nor upon any abstract principle, but upon a scientifically demonstrable economic necessity. And herein lies the real strength of this party, making it as invincible as the economic ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... increased rather in all the elements of real dignity and stability. Over certain subjects the new constitution gave the States supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power. The range of this supreme state prerogative is, in fact, wider on the whole than that of national. For national action there must be demonstrable constitutional warrant, for that of States this is not necessary. In more technical phrase: to the United States what is not granted is denied, to the State what is not denied is granted. It is a perpetual reminder ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... It becomes an article of faith, a question of voluntary belief; but there is no possibility of holding it in any other way. So as to the nature of salvation. It is a matter of character; a man is saved when he is right. And that he cannot be saved in any other way is demonstrable ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... the extreme red and extreme violet rays, are whole series of colours, demonstrable, but imperceptible to gross human vision. Such writing as this we have quoted renders visible the ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson

... as metaphysics, although it is quite as valid or even as demonstrable as Newton's Law of Gravitation, which law still remains a law, even if not ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... general justice; for wherever any part of a state can be unjust with impunity, the rest are slaves. That to condemn any man unheard is oppressive and unjust, is beyond controversy demonstrable, and that no such power is claimed by your lordships will, I ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... be glad to know if this sum has educated one hundred and thirty-five poor children? I doubt it much. And if it has, they have cost us one thousand dollars a piece for what might have been done with thirty dollars. Supposing the literary revenue to be sixty thousand dollars, I think it demonstrable, that this sum, equally divided between the two objects, would amply suffice for both. One hundred counties, divided into about twelve wards each, on an average, and a school in each ward of perhaps ten children, would be one thousand and two hundred schools, distributed ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... more curious evidence, again, that the process of covering up, or, in other words, the deposit of Globigerina skeletons, did not go on very fast. It is demonstrable that an animal of the cretaceous sea might die, that its skeleton might lie uncovered upon the sea-bottom long enough to lose all its outward coverings and appendages by putrefaction; and that, after this had happened, another animal might attach itself to the dead ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... original.—"To chaff, in vulgar language to rally one, to chatter or talk lightly. From a representation of the inarticulate sounds made by different kinds of animals uttering rapidly repeated cries. Du. keffen, to yap, to bark, also to prattle, chatter, tattle. Halma," etc. We think it demonstrable that chaff is only a variety of chafe, from Fr. ecauffer, retaining the broader sound of the a from the older form chaufe. So gaby, which Mr. Wedgwood (p. 84) would connect with gaewisch, (Fr. gauche,) is derived immediately from O. Fr. gabe, (a laughing-stock, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... circuit is broken at intervals. The U. S. Courts have virtually decided that the telephone operates by the undulatory currents, and not by a make and break current. Many attempts have been made to produce a telephone operating by a demonstrable make and break current, on account of the above distinction, in hopes of producing a telephone outside of the scope of ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... occur periodically and in rare cases survive; but their animal proclivities which are physically demonstrable, and the possession of certain animal attributes (as the furry body of the cynocephalyte, the claws and teeth of the jackal-man, etc.), are physical reflections of a mental process taking place ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... the conclusion that the aggregation of prisoners whether in close bondage or in society, must confirm them in evil. The effect of transportation is to force the free working classes from the island, and to supply their place with prisoners. It appears, therefore, demonstrable that as far as they are the instruments of demoralization, it is inevitable, from their numerical preponderance. Their condition affords no prospect of extensive reformation, and whatever evils they may be supposed to create, are ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... demonstrable, since one diligent man was fully equal to the duties of the two offices, that two diligent men will be equal to the duty of three. The business of the new office, which I shall propose to you to suppress, is by no means too much to be returned to either of the secretaries which remain. If ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... character; the inference, for example, that an electric current of a given direction will deflect a magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases differ in this, that the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem. But the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... lecturers (I have delivered some of them myself), who bore them at a length now forbidden by custom in the established pulpit. Our minds have reacted so violently towards provable logical theorems and demonstrable mechanical or chemical facts that we have become incapable of metaphysical truth, and try to cast out incredible and silly lies by credible and clever ones, calling in Satan to cast out Satan, and getting more into his clutches than ever in the ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... noteworthy phenomenon in a persecuted tribe. "How pure and strong its ethical principles were is shown by its religious poetry as well as by its practical Law. What pervades the poetry as a high ideal, in the application of the Law becomes demonstrable reality. The wrapt enthusiasm in the hymns of Samuel the Pious and other poets is embodied, lives, in the rulings of Yehuda Hakohen, Solomon Yitschaki, and Jacob ben Meir; in the legal opinions of Isaac ben Abraham, Eliezer ha-Levi, Isaac ben Moses, Meir ben Baruch, and their ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... breaking down. With the great mass of the producers receiving bare subsistence wages the impossibility of disposing of the almost miraculously stupendous product of modern machines and processes is mathematically demonstrable. The former paradox of the Socialist agitator, that the Utopian is the man who believes in the possibility of the continuance of the present system, has become a platitude. Nor can many be found to dispute the statement that the centralization of industry in the United ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... and all the Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman harps and lyres which were struck with a quill or plectrum. No product of human ingenuity has been the outcome of a steady and systematic growth from age to age by more demonstrable stages than this most remarkable of musical instruments. As it is not the intention to offer an essay on the piano, but only to make clearer the conditions under which a great school of players began to appear, the antiquities of the topic are not ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... that of the second French Empire. American invention was never more fruitful than when applied to military weapons. Repeating and magazine small arms, breach-loading cannon, and Gatling guns with other repeating artillery, were brought out or improved with wonderful variety of form and of demonstrable excellence. The regular army influence was generally against such innovations. Not once, but frequently, regular army officers argued to me that the old smooth-bore musket with "buck and ball" cartridge was the best weapon our troops could desire. We went ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... about copartnership and the way it works is in the form of ascertainable, communicable, and demonstrable facts. What Frederick Taylor knows and what he has been doing with human beings and with steel and pig iron and with bricks and other real things is in the form of history that has been making for thirty years—and that can be ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... form a judgment, with even approximate accuracy, as to the outward development of power and the comparative resources of the several Latin cantons. It is only in the case of Rome, at the utmost, that we can trace in some degree the extension of its power and of its territory. The earliest demonstrable boundaries of the united Roman community have been already stated;(1) in the landward direction they were on an average just about five miles distant from the capital of the canton, and it was only toward the coast that they extended as far as the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... thus was one side of his passion for veracity. When it was a matter of demonstrable truth, he refused to be intimidated by great names. Already, in his Croonian lecture of 1858, "On the Theory of the Vertebrate Skull," he had challenged, and by direct morphological investigation overthrown, the theory of Oken, adopted and enlarged upon by Owen, that the adult ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... not perceive), some first principles which are true without any mixture of hypothesis, viz. the axioms, as well those which are indemonstrable (e.g. Two straight lines cannot enclose a space) as also the demonstrable ones; and so have all sciences some exactly true general propositions: e.g. Mechanics has the first law of motion. But, generally, the necessity of the conclusions in geometry consists only in their following necessarily from certain hypotheses, for which same reason the ancients styled ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... reads admitted truths into its own dialect, and infers that its own dialect affords the only valid expression. To regard such antitheses as final and insoluble would be to admit complete scepticism. What is true for one man would not therefore be true—or at least its truth would not be demonstrable—to another. We must trust that reconciliation is achievable by showing that the difference is really less vital and corresponds to a difference of methods or of the spheres within which each mode of thought may be ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... States condemned a laundry plant for temporary occupancy, evidence should have been received concerning the diminution in the value of its business due to destruction of its trade routes, and compensation allowed for any demonstrable loss of going-concern value. In United States v. Pewee Coal Co.,[321] involving another temporary seizure by the government, a similarly divided Court sustained the Court of Claims in awarding the company ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin



Words linked to "Demonstrable" :   obvious, incontrovertible, demonstrability



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com