"Predisposition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... started with a predisposition in favour of Hilda Wade—a pretty girl appeals to most of us—I could see from the beginning that Hilda Wade was by no means enthusiastic for Sebastian, like the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... founding a new province in the dominion of human knowledge; creative genius often is itself the creature of its own age: it is but that reaction of public opinion, which is generally the forerunner of some critical change, or which calls forth some want which sooner or later will be supplied. The predisposition for the various but neglected literature, and the curious but the scattered knowledge of the moderns, which had long been increasing, with the speculative turn of inquiry, prevailed in Europe when Bayle took his pen to give the thing itself a name ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... feverish. She would put a certain amount of passion into everything, I should say, into her friendship, her games, her likes and dislikes; am I not right? Oh yes, this is generally the way with children in whom this organ predominates and who have an unfortunate predisposition to hypertrophy. Tell me now, has she lately had any ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... Mercy Bell, Lydia had been an ordinary young woman. She had no special predisposition to evil. She was a handsome, bold-looking creature, and where she chose to give love, that love was returned. She had loved her pretty little charge, and the child had loved her and died in her arms. Mrs. Bell, too, had loved Lydia, and Lydia was bright and happy, ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... was directly due to the severity of the mental efforts exacted by the regime of the school. But on further inquiry it appeared: first, that the mother of the girl had always been subject to menorrhagia, and it is well known that this often occurs exclusively as the result of hereditary predisposition. Second, that just before the entrance to school, and the disturbance of menstruation, the girl had been living in a malarial district, and had suffered from malarial infection, which is again a frequent cause of menorrhagia. Third, that the studies pursued at school were unusually ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... increased this predisposition in her favor. She must have known that she was very attractive, for few girls reach her age without attaining such knowledge; but her observer, and in a certain sense her critic, could not detect the faintest trace of affectation ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... contagious sickness, for instance, or those of surgery, resulting from accident. And yet even there it does apply, for the condition of the mind may predispose to infection, and to recovery or collapse in the instance of the sufferer from injuries. But these questions of predisposition and consequence are too great to argue here, though even the most rule-of-thumb village practitioner, with a black draught in one hand and a pot of ointment in the other, will agree that they ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... due to causes which come into existence after birth, it cannot be regarded as an hereditary disease. Hereditary predisposition, however, is largely accountable for its appearance. In the first place, the process of evolution in the horse, which is a single-toed animal, descended from a five-toed ancestor, predisposes him to suffer from ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... father had died before Charlie had "hip trouble." Long after we had known Charlie his mother began to fail. She too had consumption. Family parties were planned for 290 families. Weights were taken and careful examination made, the physician explaining that predisposition means defective lung capacity or deficient vitality. Of 379 members, supposedly free from tuberculosis, sixteen were found to have well-marked cases. (Of twenty Boston children whose parents were in a tuberculosis ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... unmated and lose six months than mate her in this way because a suitable stud dog was not at the time available. I believe that this inbreeding is productive of excessive nervousness, weakness in physical form, the impairment of breeding functions, and the predisposition to disease ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... of the Scripture narrative, that they break down of themselves.[52] And, indeed, M. Maury is the first to allow that there is a fundamental opposition between the Biblical tradition and the legend of Brahminical India or of Hesiod. In this last, as he himself remarks, we see "no trace of a predisposition to sin transmitted by inheritance from the first man to his descendants, no ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Class-Day, why is it that a boys' school should be placed beyond the pale of civilization? Do boys take so naturally to the amenities of life, that they can safely dispense with the conditions of amenity? Have boys so strong a predisposition to grace, that society can afford to take them away from home and its influences, and turn them loose with dozens of other boys into a bare and battered boarding-house, with its woodwork dingy, unpainted, gashed, scratched; windows dingy and dim; walls dingy and gray and smoked; ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... needed at home to help mother. Then my poor pa died—an accident down in the docks,"—Aurora, lowering her voice, began to hurry and condense,—"then Ben, then Joe, then—will you believe it?—Charlie, that I loved best. They all had the same delicate constitution as ma, it turned out, and a predisposition to the same trouble. Then finally, after going through with so much, my poor mother went, too, and for that I could only be thankful. And I had taken care of them all. I wasn't twenty-three when I was the last ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... infancy he had in everything shown a most ardent nature. In him mere desire became a guiding force and the motive power of his whole being, the stimulus to his imagination, the reason of his actions. Notwithstanding the pains taken by a clever mother, who was alarmed when she detected this predisposition, Rodolphe wished for things as a poet imagines, as a mathematician calculates, as a painter sketches, as a musician creates melodies. Tender-hearted, like his mother, he dashed with inconceivable violence and impetus of thought after the object of his desires; he annihilated ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... not in this form. But there might be a predisposition. Anyhow, you'll have to stop work ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... human beings, the pure thyroid type is easily distinguished from the pure adrenal type, and both of these from the pure pituitary type. Each is stamped with a significant figure, height, skin, hair, temperament, ambition, social reactions and predisposition ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... affectionate and faithful, and she is usually much cleaner in her habits in the house. If it is intended to breed by her, she should be very carefully chosen and proved to be free from any serious fault or predisposition to disease. Not only should her written pedigree be scrupulously scrutinised, but her own constitution and that of her parents on both sides should ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... uncommon fault to use one arm exclusively, and to give that a uniform movement. Such movement may, sometimes, have become habitual from one's profession or employment; but in learners, also, there is often a predisposition ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... attribute of the divinity; the absolute manifestation of power—the reality of all the possible—and the absolute unity of the manifestation (the necessity of all reality). It cannot be disputed that man bears within himself, in his personality, a predisposition for divinity. The way to divinity—if the word "way" can be applied to what never leads to its end—is open to him in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... certain quantity of contagion, much beyond the proportion of other popular assemblages less uniformly wretched in their composition, was here to be found all day long; and doubtless my excited state, and irritable habit of body, had offered a peculiar predisposition that favoured the rapid development of this contagion. However this might be, the result was, that on the evening of the second day which I spent in haunting the purlieus of the prison (consequently the night preceding the second public ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... pompously set out) Vertue appears founded only upon nice, or subtle Speculations. But some Men there are so far from approving of any Notion or Theorem being advanc'd with respect to Deists whereby, as such, they may be induc'd to the love of Vertue (which is the best predisposition to the entertainment of Christianity) that they are ready to treat as not being themselves Christians if not as Atheists, any one who in the view of gaining thus much upon these Men assert Vertue by any other Arguments than such as they ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... his harangues, commanded the unlimited confidence of his band. He has, most probably, been overrated both for his eloquence and his skill in the battle field. He is no doubt a man of courage, and seems, from early life, to have had a strong predisposition for war. Many of his measures as a leader, have been more influenced by a sense of what was right in the abstract, than expedient in practice. This circumstance has often placed him in situations, inimical to the permanent prosperity of ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... ancestral energies which have been associated by the conjugation of the two procreative germs. In such a case it is comparatively easy to prove that this is a pathological symptom independent of the will of the individual. But a continuous series of degrees in the intensity of a hereditary predisposition to a certain sexual anomaly, or to other anomalies or peculiarities apt to provoke this anomaly, insensibly connects the purely hereditary pathological appetite with that which is simply the effect of acquired vicious habits. In this way a strong ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... more frequent cases in which simple inspection creates a presumption in favor of a proposition; not sufficient for belief, but sufficient to cause the strict principles of a regular induction to be dispensed with, and creating a predisposition to believe it on evidence which would be seen to be insufficient if no such presumption existed. This class, comprehending the whole of what may be termed Natural Prejudices, and which I shall call indiscriminately Fallacies of Simple Inspection or Fallacies ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... affected with the disorder in question during or soon after the time they are thus improperly suckled, they will nevertheless acquire therefrom a predisposition to cephalic disease at some future ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton
... life to Charmian, and expounded the make-up of my constitution. I was no hereditary alcoholic. I had been born with no organic, chemical predisposition toward alcohol. In this matter I was normal in my generation. Alcohol was an acquired taste. It had been painfully acquired. Alcohol had been a dreadfully repugnant thing—more nauseous than any physic. Even now I did not like the taste of it. I drank ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... dependants acted the chaperones part for him and satisfied his conscience upon that score. He heard of her at this social function or at that, and was glad that she should go. Men would say, "There's a catch for you—old Gessner's daughter; he must be worth a million if he's worth a penny." Her culpable predisposition toward that pleasant and smooth-tongued rascal, Willy Forrest, annoyed him for the time being but was soon forgotten. He believed that the man would not dare to carry pursuit farther, and if he did, the remedy ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... remnant of his past acts (to be exhausted by enjoyment or endurance as the case may be), and with the seven (viz., the five senses of knowledge and mind and understanding) purged of all stains in consequence of their predisposition or proneness towards the attribute of Sattwa. At the expiry of that period, such a person has to come to the world of men where he attains to great eminence.[1379] Turning back from the world of men, he departs ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... from hereditary predisposition, as e.g. the impulse to drink, but only through strengthening inhibition can these impulses be controlled,—their ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... system is undernourished, it becomes disorganized and undeveloped. This is apt to be expressed in uncertain emotional states, quick tempers, and a predisposition to convulsions. The heart, if undernourished, lays its foundation for future heart disease, and the whole system ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... This predisposition has another effect upon the character of the legal profession and upon the general course of society. The English and American lawyers investigate what has been done; the French advocate inquires what should have been ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... restrained by his profound piety. Next to his devotion, Glastonbury was remarkable for his taste. The magnificent temples in which the mysteries of the Deity and saints he worshipped were celebrated developed the latent predisposition for the beautiful which became almost the master sentiment of his life. In the inspired and inspiring paintings that crowned the altars of the churches and the cathedrals in which he ministered, Glastonbury first studied art; ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... "alcoholized" to such an extent that they are seldom free from some of the more or less serious consequences. His children are born with organisms which have received a certain bias from which they cannot escape; they are freighted with some heredity, or predisposition to particular forms of degeneration, to some morbid tendency, to an enfeebled constitution, to various defective conditions of mind and body. Let the children of such a man attempt to imitate the drinking habits of the father and they quickly ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... in dispute to a new arbitration, but is yet firmly persuaded that the line described in the treaty of 1783 can be found and traced whenever the Governments of the United States and Great Britain shall proceed to make the requisite investigations with a predisposition to effect that very desirable object. Confidently relying, as the President does, upon the assurances frequently repeated by the British Government of the earnest desire to reach that result if ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... he certainly understood the other fellows to say this; he certainly never heard the teacher forbid that; handsome, reasonable, self-respecting, he won approval on all sides, and because of this mysterious predisposition toward what was right and just, came safely to the years when he was his own master and could live unchallenged by the high moral standard he ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... not been recorded. Enough that half an hour later Mr. Weaver appeared in the courtyard with traces of tears on his foolish face, a broken falsetto voice, and other evidence of mental and moral disturbance. His cordiality and oracular predisposition remained sufficiently to enable him to suggest the magical words "Blue Grass" mysteriously to Concha, with an indication of his hand to the erect figure of her pale mistress in the doorway, who waved to him a silent but half ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... my bench-legged fyce Hed most o' the virtues, an' nary a vice. Some folks called him Sooner, a name that arose From his predisposition to chronic repose; But, rouse his ambition, he couldn't be beat— Yer bet yer he got thar on all his ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... changes, possibly for good, and possibly for ill. The same economic laws might be made to bear very different fruits, but they themselves would remain unchanged. What is true in all these other fields—this should be our predisposition—is not likely to be quite untrue ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... changes, or are correlative with such, and that, since the germ-cells stand in close metabolic relations with the soma, these chemical changes may soak through to the germ-cells and so modify them that a predisposition will appear in the descendants towards similar form-changes.[485] From this point of view the problem of transmission might be merged in the broader problem of the production of form through chemical processes—the central problem ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... Chris, that there is rationality in the very doubt? It may be a very small doubt—oh, so small; but I love you too much to run even that slight risk. Besides, I am a woman, and that should in itself fully account for my predisposition toward superstition. ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... quickly observed this peculiar predisposition to a military life in his subjects, and took advantage of it to fool them to the top of their bent. The victories achieved beneath his banner reflect scarcely less honour on them than on him, and the memory of them associates his name in their hearts by the strongest bonds of sympathy ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... presented to him by instinct, and that end had been much more certainly attained than it ever can be by reason; and should the latter also be bestowed on the favored creature, it must be of use only in contemplating the happy predisposition lodged in instinct, to admire this, to rejoice in it, and be grateful for it to the beneficent Cause; in short, Nature would have prevented reason from any practical use in subduing appetite, etc., ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... actual Mejnour had yet been revealed to set his feet therein. But with this paragraph all indecision soon came to an end. He felt there a clear call, to neglect which would be to have seen the light and not to have followed it, ever for him the most tragic error to be made in life. His natural predisposition towards it was too great for him to do other than trust this new revelation; and now he must gird himself for 'the sacrifice which truth ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... the principles of that system of the Church to which he had always belonged. Since his severance from Mr Newman, no one had had so strong an influence over him as the head of his college. During the time of his expected apostasy, Dr Gwynne had not felt much predisposition in favour of the young fellow. Though a High Churchman himself within moderate limits, Dr Gwynne felt no sympathy with men who could not satisfy their faiths with the Thirty-nine Articles. He regarded the enthusiasm of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... presumed, that there are varieties in the senses, the organs, and the internal structure of the human species, however delicate, and to the touch of the bystander evanescent, which may give to each individual a predisposition to rise to a supreme degree of excellence in some certain art or attainment, over a ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... must now proceed to justify with myth and legend, in order to render intelligible to themselves the deliberate and self-conscious repetition of them. Even so much justification was left to the few, and the great majority continued to seek that good which social usage countenanced and individual predisposition confirmed. So every man of us acts from day to day for love's sake, or wealth's sake, or power's sake, or for the sake of some near and tangible object; reflecting only for the greater ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... disease and doubt this. The ancients were strongly of this opinion, or, as Ranchin expresses it, Omnes Graeci, Arabes, et Latini in eo consentiunt. A long catalogue could be given of all sorts of inherited malformations and of predisposition to various diseases. With gout, fifty per cent of the cases observed in hospital practice are, according to Dr. Garrod, inherited, and a greater percentage in private practice. Every one knows how often insanity runs in families, and some of the cases given by Mr. Sedgwick are awful,—as of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... unite them in one alliance, under the name of Mycetales, in the same manner as the late Dr. Lindley had united allied orders under alliances in his "Vegetable Kingdom;" but, beyond this, there was no predisposition towards the theory since propounded, and which, like all new theories, has collected a small but zealous circle of adherents. It will be necessary briefly to summarize this theory and the arguments by which it is supported and opposed, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... half as likely to compromise his character as one who approximates to shabbiness. Lawrence Sterne used to say that when he felt himself giving way to low spirits and a sense of depression and worthlessness,— a sort of predisposition for all sorts of little meannesses,—he forthwith shaved himself, brushed his wig, donned his best dress and his gold rings, and thus put to flight the azure demons of his unfortunate temperament. There ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... All culture begins with the very opposite of that which is now so highly esteemed as 'academical freedom': with obedience, with subordination, with discipline, with subjection. And as leaders must have followers so also must the followers have a leader—here a certain reciprocal predisposition prevails in the hierarchy of spirits: yea, a kind of pre-established harmony. This eternal hierarchy, towards which all things naturally tend, is always threatened by that pseudo-culture which now sits on the throne of the present. It endeavours either to bring the leaders down ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Even the remorse and regret had long since failed to disturb my peace of mind, causing me no anxiety, much less pain. Sic transit was the epitaph, if any. Acute sensation I had none at all. This, then, plainly argues against the slightest predisposition on my part to imagine that the loving guidance so strangely given owned a personal origin I could recognize. That it involved a "personal ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... death, if not actually more affecting, at least haunts my mind more obstinately and besiegingly in that season. Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident which I omit, might have been the immediate occasions of the following dream, to which, however, a predisposition must always have existed in my mind; but, having been once roused, it never left me, and split into a thousand fantastic variations, which often suddenly recombined, locked back into a startling unity, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... unexpected predisposition which takes me now and then," turning his back upon Shock and solemnly winking at The Kid; "but I recover just as quickly, and when I do I'm as slick as ever, and slicker. These here turns work off a lot ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... disaster could, in that so unformed and unseasoned society, overtake young men who were in the least exposed. Not to have been immediately launched in business of a rigorous sort was to be exposed—in the absence I mean of some fairly abnormal predisposition to virtue; since it was a world so simply constituted that whatever wasn't business, or exactly an office or a "store," places in which people sat close and made money, was just simply pleasure, sought, and sought only, in places in which people got ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... certainly the sheep-dog, and especially if he has the example of an older and expert one, will, almost without the teaching of the master, become everything that can be wished, obedient to every order, even to the slightest motion of the hand. There is a natural predisposition for the office he has to discharge, which it requires little trouble or skill to develop ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... was almost uniform from parent to child through generations: so that, till quite latterly, to have seen one native man and woman was to have seen the whole population of that isolated rock, so nearly cut off from the mainland. His own predisposition and the sense of his early ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... at large in an appendix to the present volume. In this place I will barely remark, that I have sometimes noticed in the unlanguaged prattlings of infants a fondness for alliteration, assonance, and even rhyme, in which natural predisposition we may trace the three degrees through which our Anglo-Saxon verse rose to its culmination in the poetry of Pope. I would not be understood as questioning in these remarks that pious theory which supposes that children, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the case when there is a predisposition to the disease, but our German friend says he has never found ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... incessant and severe the struggle for life generally is, the present volume graphically describes. Few will deny that such influences must have gravely affected the range and the association of individuals and species on the earth's surface. Mr. Darwin thinks that, acting upon an inherent predisposition to vary, they have sufficed even to modify the species themselves and produce the present diversity. Mr. Agassiz believes that they have not even affected the geographical range and the actual association of species, still less ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... doomed. But it is surely wrong to display no more moral indignation in the case of a vigorous person who has perversely indulged some temptation which he might have resisted, than in the case of one who is hampered by inheritance with a violent predisposition to moral evil. Even the most ardent moralist ought to be true to what he knows to be the truth. The method of Christ seems here again to differ from the method of the Christian teacher. Christ reserved his denunciations for the complacency of virtuous people. We do not see ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Incarnacion's implied suspicions that Pedro was concerned in Peyton's death, than of this sentimental possibility. He knew that Pedro had been hated by the others on account of his position; he knew the instinctive jealousies of the race and their predisposition to extravagant misconstruction. From what he had gathered, and particularly from the voices he had overheard on the Fair Plains Road, it seemed to him that Pedro was more capable of mercenary intrigue than physical revenge. He was not aware of the irrevocable affront ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... strong and powerful appeal to the Mother Country, and they also expected great pecuniary assistance from those resident near the establishment, and more directly interested in its prosperity. They would as soon as possible establish a system of collegiate education, and there was a predisposition to engraft upon the College the well-known and respectable Medical Institution now in existence in the city. The door of the building was at length open, and it was the duty of all to proceed with vigour. They might at first complain of a great want of means for such an Institution, ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... angels were endowed with grace according to the measure of their natural perfection,(435) we may well suppose that man receives grace likewise according to his natural constitution (gratia sequitur naturam)—a predisposition or aptitude which God ordained in His infinite wisdom to be the instrument through which His graces should operate either for personal sanctification or ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... Caldwell observes: "Every constitutional quality, whether good or bad, may descend, by inheritance, from parent to child. And a long-continued habit of drunkenness becomes as essentially constitutional as a predisposition to gout or pulmonary consumption. This increases, in a manifold degree, the responsibility of parents in relation to temperance. By habits of intemperance, they not only degrade and ruin themselves, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... certain nasal twang—an asthmatic wheezing—and a sort of disagreeable noise in respiration, which is nearly allied to incipient snoring. Snuff also frequently occasions fleshy excrescences in the nose, which, in some instances, end in polypi. Individuals have oftentimes a predisposition to cancer in little scirrhous intumescencies, which, if kept easy and free from every thing of an irritating character, will continue harmless, but which the use of snuff sometimes frets into incurable ulcers and cancers. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... our case, we've only the little kindling corner to smother, and the New Mexico air is water and blanket—a whole fire department, if need be. The doctor assures me that with mother's good constitution, and the absence of any hereditary predisposition to this sort of thing, we've only to give her the ten or twelve months of rest and reenforcement—the winter in New Mexico, the summer in Colorado—to nip the whole thing in the bud. I believe him, and you must believe him—and me. More than all, you must not show the slightest change of ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... characteristics which Lombroso describes as typical. Manouvrier regards the social life of a person from childhood as being the most important factor in moulding character. He emphatically denies that there is in the embryo a predisposition to crime. Dr Magnan likewise refuses his ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... also add—Take it and make it beautiful physically. For though a hereditary predisposition undoubtedly renders some individuals more susceptible than others to particular diseases, yet when the bodily organization of an infant is complete, and the degree of vitality which nature gives it is sufficient to propel ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... won't say that just yet, Sir James; we must see. And we must guard against any undue predisposition to consider the robberies in a lump. Here we are at the lodge gate again. Is that your gardener—the man who left the ladder by the lawn on the first ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... was thinking a very great deal about love. A dozen shynesses and intellectual barriers were being outflanked or broken down in her mind. All the influences about her worked with her own predisposition and against all the traditions of her home and upbringing to deal with the facts of life in an unabashed manner. Ramage, by a hundred skilful hints had led her to realize that the problem of her own life was inseparably ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... regard to health inflicted in former years, remarks that these have, through the instrumentality of the association, been greatly ameliorated; that as regards consumption,— although the nature of the employment itself, however modified by kindness, has a tendency to develop the disease where the predisposition exists,—he is happy to state that the average number of cases, even in the incipient stage, has not been so great as might, from the circumstances, have been anticipated; that during the last two years, out of about two hundred and fifty cases of sickness, no death has occurred; ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... their veins, Senorita Isolda was a most charmingly ingenuous, unsophisticated girl, frank and open as the day; furthermore, she had been so long accustomed to hear Jack spoken of admiringly by Carlos that she had insensibly acquired a strong predisposition in his favour; and, finally, and quite contrary to rule, when at length she met him in the flesh she instantly decided that this stalwart, handsome young Englishman was all that Carlos had represented him ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... somewhat cantankerous and sinister; but Gaetano compensated for all his horse-driving brethren. To be sure, vettura driving is not like cabbing, and Gaetano was in the habit of getting out often and walking up the hills, thus exercising his liver. But he must have been born with a strong predisposition to goodness, which he ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... eagle winging its slow way overhead, and the sneer on his lips grew. It was a prophecy, perhaps. At least the sight of the bird gave him an opportunity to draw a swift and bitter comparison. He was like the eagle. Both he and the bird he detested were beset with a constitutional predisposition to rend and destroy. There was this difference between them: The bird feasted on carrion, while he spent his life stifling generous impulses and tearing from his heart the noble ideals which his latent manhood persisted ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... what your smile means. I know what you wish to say to me.... I can see myself; you believe without doubt that such has been my former life. No,... no! You are mistaken. I have not been that. There has to be a special predisposition, a certain talent for feigning what I do not feel.... I have tried to sell myself, and I cannot, I cannot avail myself of that. I embitter the life of men when they do not interest me; I am their adversary. I hate them ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... but take note that the mistake can only arise in the first category, that is among the ordinary people (as I perhaps unfortunately called them). In spite of their predisposition to obedience very many of them, through a playfulness of nature, sometimes vouchsafed even to the cow, like to imagine themselves advanced people, 'destroyers,' and to push themselves into the 'new movement,' and this quite sincerely. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the worthlessness of her lover, some enlightenment as to his perfidy, or his unaccountable disappearance alone, may have occasioned its manifestation. But there is great reason to believe that she had a natural predisposition to it. And having never been taught to provide for her own mental sustenance, and so nourish a necessary independence, she had been too ready to squander the wealth of a rich and lovely nature upon an unworthy person, and the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... of temperaments, but without sufficient precision. By temperament of the system should be meant a permanent predisposition to certain classes of diseases: without this definition a temporary predisposition to every distinct malady might be termed a temperament. There are four kinds of constitution, which permanently deviate from good health, and are perhaps sufficiently marked to be distinguished from each other, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... men beget their children, who can affect surprise if they develop licentious tendencies? Are not such parents largely to blame? Are they not criminals in a high degree? Have they not fouled their own nest, and transmitted to their children predisposition to moral evil? ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... others while this case was in progress, whether he went directly from one chamber to others, whether he took any, and what, precautions. It is important to know that several women were exposed to infection derived from the patient, so that allowance may be made for want of predisposition. Now, if of negative facts so sifted there could be accumulated a hundred for every one plain instance of communication here recorded, I trust it need not be said that we are bound to guard and watch over the hundredth tenant of our fold, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... connected with confined air, being among the most frequent causes of the complaint, it is necessary, as far as possible, to counteract them. Should a strong predisposition to cholera be suspected, the best plan will be to send the child into the country during the summer. Both as a preventive and a remedy, country air is decidedly the most effectual, to which we can resort. But in most instances, it would be exceedingly inconvenient, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... predisposition to every species of crime and villainy, they were not likely to be improved or reclaimed by the example of the people with whom they were about to mix; nor was it probable that they would entertain much respect ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... of what is, after all, borne out by "ascertained facts." But it may well be that the latter have not the slightest intention of denying the truth or value of those facts. For instance, they see that a definite mental aptitude or predisposition is "inherited" in a family, and that certain gifts accumulated and combined in one descendant result in a remarkable personality. They are perfectly willing to acquiesce when it is said that the most celebrated name seldom stands at the beginning but at the ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... began to make itself heard. The public mind of England was soon stirred to its inmost depths; and the influence of the new doctrines was soon felt, even in the distant kingdom of Bohemia. In Bohemia, indeed, there had long been a predisposition to heresy. Merchants from the Lower Danube were often seen in the fairs of Prague; and the Lower Danube was peculiarly the seat of the Paulician theology. The Church, torn by schism, and fiercely assailed at once ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... examination of the several cases had begun to read them into a different construction. Yet, on the other hand, in spite of any colorable excuses that may be pleaded for this prejudice, it is pretty plain that, after all, there is in human nature a deep-laid predisposition to an obstinate craze of this nature. Else why is it that, in every age alike, men have asserted or even assumed the downward tendency of the human race in all that regards moral qualities. For the physical degeneration of man there really were some apparent (though erroneous) ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... to make one experience freely available in other experiences. The word "freely" marks the difference between the principle of knowledge and that of habit. Habit means that an individual undergoes a modification through an experience, which modification forms a predisposition to easier and more effective action in a like direction in the future. Thus it also has the function of making one experience available in subsequent experiences. Within certain limits, it performs this ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... Cleopatra, have genius. Others, like Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, are built on the grand scale; and desire, passion, or will attains in them a terrible force. In almost all we observe a marked one-sidedness, a predisposition in some particular direction; a total incapacity, in certain circumstances, of resisting the force which draws in this direction; a fatal tendency to identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit of mind. This, it would seem, is, for Shakespeare, the fundamental ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the all-important moment to direct the child's opening mind to the knowledge of God, and her fresh, pure heart to His love, a grace for which the Venerable Mother returned Him very earnest thanks in after life, remarking that early impressions of religion are a most precious favour, and a strong predisposition to future sanctity. Truly it was a picture to delight the angels, that Christian mother so carefully directing the first feeble steps of her little child along the road that leads to God, and that docile child ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... no symptoms of derangement of mind while I knew him; but he inherited from his grandmother a predisposition to insanity, which I apprehended might become developed by any very strong feelings of excitement; and I urged him to return and settle at Sirdhanah, when he had seen all he wished to ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... the Shechinah, and it would not be respectful so to do anywhere but in the open air. It depends very much upon circumstances when and where the new moon is to be consecrated, and also upon one's own predisposition, for authorities differ. We will close these remarks with the conclusion of the Kitzur Sh'lu on the subject, which, at p. 72, ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... but the reflection of a man's experiences, changing as his experiences change. In the two years following the publication of the first volume, Strindberg's experiences were such as to exercise a decisive influence on his views on the woman question and to transmute his early predisposition to woman-hating from a passive tendency to a positive, active force ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... October, the dread of darkness, nor the cold world could depress the spirits of Charles Stevens, the merry lad of Salem. In fact, he was so merry that, by the straight-laced Puritans, he was thought ungodly. He had a predisposition to whistling and singing, and was of "a light and frivolous carriage." He laughed at the sanctity of some people, and was known to smile even on the Lord's Day. When, in the exuberance of his spirits, his feet kept ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... a slap in the face. With every possible predisposition to look favorably on its teachings, I was unable to find anything in them but the prejudiced judgments of a one-sided thinker, fond of brilliant general propositions which really had nothing serious to rest upon either in fact or reason. The following parody ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... When philosophy reconstructs, it does nothing but project its own idea; when it throws off tradition, it cannot work without a theory: and what is a theory but an imperfect generalisation caught up by a predisposition? What is Comte's great division of the eras but a theory, and facts are but as clay in his hands, which he can mould to illustrate it, as every clever man will find facts to be, let his theory be what it will? Intellect can destroy, but it cannot restore life; call in the creative faculties—call ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... taught the knowledge of God if he be not naturally possessed of a presentiment, or an apperception of a God, as the cause and reason of the universe. "If education be not already preceded by an innate consciousness of God, as an operative predisposition, there would be nothing for education and culture to act upon."[92] A mere verbal revelation can not communicate the knowledge of God, if man have not already the idea of a God in his mind. A name is a mere empty sign, a meaningless ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... harmony, both resolutions were passed.(10) The fragmentary, miscellaneous evidence of newspapers, political meetings, the talk of leaders, local elections, formed a confused clamor which each listener interpreted according to his predisposition. The members of the Cabinet in their relative isolation at Washington found it exceedingly difficult to make up their minds what the people were really saying. Of but one thing they were certain, and that was that ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... intemperance is the most fruitful source of the increase of insanity, even when no other etiological element could be found, and alcohol had to be looked upon as the sole cause of the mental disease. Maudsley laid especial stress upon the observation, that intemperance, without hereditary predisposition, was one of the most powerful agencies in the production of aberration of the mind. Even Beckwith, who could not coincide with others as to the great importance of intemperance as an etiological element, says distinctly, that intemperance was, by far, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... which are treated in his masterpiece in a summary way. In the case of the more independent thinkers like Levi ben Gerson we find the further attempt to carry out more boldly the implications of the philosophical point of view, which, as the latter thought, Maimonides left implicit by reason of his predisposition in favor of tradition. Hasdai Crescas went still farther and entirely repudiated the authority of Aristotle, substituting will and emotion for rationalism and logical inference. Not knowledge of God as logically demonstrated is the highest aim of man, but love of God. But even ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... discretion and discrimination of character, so far as possible. The messenger of the kingdom is not to be mixed up with disreputable people, lest the message should suffer. The principle of his choice of a home is to be, not position, comfort, or the like, but 'worthiness'; that is, predisposition to receive the message. However poor the chamber in the house of such, there is the apostle to settle himself. 'If ye have judged me to be faithful, come into my house,' said Lydia. The less Christ's messengers are at home with Christ's neglecters, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... eighth edition of the Popular Theology, (p. 144,) which has recently left the press, our views on this subject are thus summed up:— "The Augsburg Confession seems to combine, both these views, (i.e. both absence of holiness and predisposition to sin,) and the great body of Lutheran divines has regarded natural, or original, or innate depravity, as that disorder in the mental and bodily constitution of man, which was introduced by the fall ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... constantly revolving the dream in his soul and kept recalling Hamlet's words, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," he did not want to strengthen Mrs. Liebling's superstition, which showed itself in a predisposition for table-tipping and patience-playing. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... it is generally practised. No ordinary shoe, except a few devised for the purpose, such as the Charlier or the tip, allows the frog to come in contact with the ground. This we take to be the main factor in the causation of contracted heels, especially with a predisposition already present in the foot itself. In the words of Lungwitz: 'Regarded from this point of view, there is no greater evil than shoeing. It abolishes the necessary counter-pressure, and thus interferes with expansion. Bars, sole, and frog cannot ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... susceptibility to the action of strychnia or of narcotics, the explanation must of necessity, for the present, be more or less speculative. But how are we to account, even in the way of speculation, for the peculiar immunity, lack of predisposition and hereditary tendencies to disease exhibited by the Hebrew, who, since the history of the world, has been a civilized and rational being,—even for decades of centuries before the civilization of Europe? Living under the same forms of government, climate, and shelter, practically ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino |
