petitiones

Updated: May 6, 2025

Here have I been staring for years unless that, too, is a dream, which it very probably is at every mountebank "ism" which ever tumbled and capered on the philosophic tight-rope; and they are every one of them dead dolls, wooden, worked with wires, which are petitiones principii.... Each philosopher begs the question in hand, and then marches forward, as brave as a triumph, and prides himself on proving it all afterwards.

Charles Kingsley - Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face

With greater justice, however, we may say, that of such terms as perfection and existence we know too little to speculate. Existence may be an imperfection for all we can tell; we know nothing about the matter. Such arguments are but endless petitiones principii like the self-devouring serpent, resolving themselves into nothing.

James Anthony Froude - Short Studies on Great Subjects