Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

A recalcitrant experience can, I have already urged, bc accommodated by any of various alternative re-evaluations in various alternative quarters of the total system; but, in the cases which we are now imagining, our natural tendency to disturb the total system as little as possible would lead us to focus our revisions upon these specific statements concerning brick houses or centaurs.

So again, if, before the discovery of the magnet, anyone had said that a certain instrument had been invented by means of which the quarters and points of the heavens could be taken and distinguished with exactness, men would have been carried by their imagination to a variety of conjectures concerning the more exquisite construction of astronomical instruments; but that anything could be discovered agreeing so well in its movements with the heavenly bodies, and yet not a heavenly body itself, but simply a substance of metal or stone, would have been judged altogether incredible.

They should therefore be sought and collected from all quarters with diligent care.

Instances of strife, therefore, which point out the predominancies of virtues together with the manner and proportion in which they predominate or give place, should be sought and collected from all quarters with keen and careful diligence.

Meanwhile (to come to our present business), heats of every kind, with their effects, should be diligently collected from all quarters and investigated — the heat of heavenly bodies by their rays direct, reflected, refracted, and united in burning glasses and mirrors; the heat of lightning, of flame, of coal fire; of fire from different materials; of fire close and open, straitened and in full flow, modified in fine by the different structures of furnaces; of fire excited by blowing; of fire quiescent and not excited; of fire removed to a greater or less distance; of fire passing through various media; moist heats, as of a vessel floating in hot water, of dung, of external and internal animal warmth, of confined hay; dry heats, as of ashes, lime, warm sand; in short, heats of all kinds with their degrees.

But, indeed, instances showing the effects and operations of continuance should be carefully collected from all quarters.

This point, if it could be cleared up, would be interesting; if, for instance, it could be shown that the greyhound, bloodhound, terrier, spaniel, and bull-dog, which we all know propagate their kind so truly, were the offspring of any single species, then such facts would have great weight in making us doubt about the immutability of the many very closely allied and natural species—for instance, of the many foxes—inhabiting different quarters of the world.

I have kept every breed which I could purchase or obtain, and have been most kindly favoured with skins from several quarters of the world, more especially by the Honourable W. Elliot from India, and by the Honourable C. Murray from Persia.

They have been domesticated for thousands of years in several quarters of the world; the earliest known record of pigeons is in the fifth Aegyptian dynasty, about 3000 B.

It may be objected that the principle of selection has been reduced to methodical practice for scarcely more than three-quarters of a century; it has certainly been more attended to of late years, and many treatises have been published on the subject; and the result, I may add, has been, in a corresponding degree, rapid and important.