Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
This, being analysed, consists of two propositions; the one an assumption with respect to a matter of fact, the other a genuine definition. “A figure may exist, having all the points in the line which bounds it equally distant from a single point within it:” “Any figure possessing this property is called a circle.” Let us look at one of the demonstrations which are said to depend on this definition, and observe to which of the two propositions contained in it the demonstration really appeals. “About the centre A, describe the circle BCD.” Here is an assumption, that a figure, such as the definition expresses, may be described; which is no other than the postulate, or covert assumption, involved in the so-called definition.
The first postulate in all military problems is that, other things being equal, numbers are the decisive factor in war. This does not mean that absolute superiority of numbers decides a campaign necessarily in favour of the superior power.
In the same way does science view development, denoting it natural because it is an ordinary everyday matter. And we are under no more obligation to postulate supernatural control for the changing forms in the life-history of a chick or a cat than we need to assume that gravitation and the radiation of light demand immediate supernatural direction.
The changes imposed on us from without are thorough and have been surprisingly many, but the changes taking place within our own souls are deeper and likely to surprise us more in the end. Everything has been found untenable. Theories and systems are shaken by the great upheaval. Civilization has become a question instead of a postulate. All human thought is undergoing a process of retrospection, drawn by a desire to find a new and stable beginning. Take down Spencer and Comte or Lecky and Kidd from your bookshelf and try to settle down to a contented contemplation of the sociological tenets of the past. You will fail, for you will feel that this is a new world with burning problems and compelling facts which cannot be covered by the old systems. Take down the old books of religious comfort Thomas
It is impossible, for no such postulate as inability or faithlessness can be laid against the Son of God. By His own immortality as the first-fruits of them that slept, as the ordained forerunner and sample of all those whom He has redeemed He is, and in the nature of things, under bonds to give immortality to each, to raise the dead and transfigure the living in His likeness.
That M. Quatrefages should maintain such a postulate, his patriotism if not his scientific reputation might lead us to expect; but that Obermüller should be so eager to trace German origin back to the first murderer is rather more suprising. Obermüller's work embraces in its general scope the origin of all European nations, but the most striking part is that relating to Germany.
We shall at some future time show that the moral laws not merely presuppose the existence of a Supreme Being, but also, as themselves absolutely necessary in a different relation, demand or postulate it although only from a practical point of view. The discussion of this argument we postpone for the present.
But if you enlarge the problem till it covers the moral fellowship of nations, and if you postulate that as a safeguard of future peace and neighborliness in the world, then the outcome of the Treaty takes on a different coloring. Between France and Germany it creates a sea of bitterness which no rapturous exultation over the new ethical ordering can sweeten.
No doubt there is an irreducible minimum of convention in all drama; but how strange is the logic which leaps from that postulate to the assertion that, if we admit a minimum, we cannot, or ought not to, exclude a maximum! There are plays which do not, and there are plays which do, set forth to give as nearly as possible an exact reproduction of the visual and auditory realities of life.
Science is the destroyer of materialism: it has proven matter incomprehensible; and it confesses the mystery of mind insoluble, even while obliged to postulate an ultimate unit of sensation. Out of the units of simple sensation, older than we by millions of years, have undoubtedly been built up all the emotions and faculties of man.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking