Antecedent

“ I have had experience, of a constant series of antecedents and consequents, in the life of man; generation, birth, childhood, and so on; as I have had of pain from putting my finger in the flame. A corresponding association is formed. If the sight of a stranger calls up the idea of his origin and progress to manhood, the ordinary train of antecedents and consequents is called up; nor is it possible for me to prevent it. The association is indissoluble, and is one of the cases classed under the name of Belief. ”

“ From this proposition the historian concludes 'that the actions of men, being determined solely by their antecedents, must, under precisely the same circumstances, always issue in precisely the same results. ”

“ In innumerable cases where the same antecedents had apparently not been followed by the same consequents, thinking men had taken for granted that they must have been mistaken in supposing the antecedents to be the same, and had found that they were right, and that the difference in the antecedents had really been followed by the difference in the consequents. ”

“ What Biography is to Anthropology, History is to Sociology—History, I mean, as commonly conceived. The kind of relation which the sayings and doings, that make up the ordinary account of a man's life, bear to an account of his bodily and mental evolution, structural and functional, is like the kind of relation borne by that narrative of a nation's actions and fortunes its historian gives us, to a description of its institutions, regulative and operative, and the ways in which their structures and functions have gradually established themselves. ”

“ SOCRATES: My answer is, that all things instrumental, remedial, material, are given to us with a view to generation, and that each generation is relative to, or for the sake of, some being or essence, and that the whole of generation is relative to the whole of essence.
PROTARCHUS: Assuredly.
SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, must surely be for the sake of some essence? ”

“ Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should be 'the essence of innumerable Biographies,' will tell us, question it as we like, less than one genuine Biography may do, pleasantly and of its own accord! ”

“ But on the other hand if we find a tale, as for instance this now before us, appearing again and again in more than three hundred records from all ends of the world, and we see how curiously constant the tradition is, then just this wonderful tenacity of tradition gives us the right of regarding the material so reliable that we may venture to build a research on them. Surely we cannot expect a firm decision in all details, but on a large scale we can learn from the traditions the development and the ways of the type. ”

“ Modern investigation proceeding on scientific lines and by means of actual experience and experiment, seems to provide an explanation—mental and moral—for manifestations which our ancestors regarded as physical and material. ”

“ History, chronicle, and philology, of which we have seen the origin, are series of mental forms, which, although distinct from one another, must all of them be looked upon as physiological—that is to say, true and rational. ”

“ RULE IV.
A noun or multitude, that is, one which signifies many, can have a verb or Pronoun to agree with it either in the singular or plural number; according to the import of such noun, as conveying unity or plurality of idea: as, "The nation is humbugged." "The multitude have to pay many taxes." "The city Council are at a loss to know what to do." "The people is a many headed monster."
RULE V.
Pronouns agree with their antecedents, and with the nouns to which they belong, in gender and number: as, "This is the blow which killed Ned." ”

“ If a character of the past were invented, given a real name, all his manners and customs, his feats and follies carefully described, even his father and mother most properly identified, and a statement made of the provisions in his will for those who followed after him, that would still be likely to linger on as a character merely, a possibility of the past but a thing of no account, not an influence. ”

“ Faithful to our own, we here place ourselves at the historical point of view. Convinced that ideas have a history, and are most clearly and surely defined by their very evolution, we shall confine ourselves to following and describing that evolution. ”

“ We have seen what our ancestors were in their habits, pleasures, and pursuits, none of which differed very materially from those that the people of the present generation are or have been in the habit of following. ”

“ I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree. ”

“ On the contrary, the higher, over-individual ends, as they are sometimes called, — politics, industry, science, literature, art — imply a differentiation among men that in spite of its significance would defy classification. ”

“ It is for him to find out what part of recorded experience is properly applicable to his own circumstances and character. The traditions and customs of other people are, to a certain extent, evidence of what their experience has taught them ”

“ But what we must chiefly insist upon in the investigation we are Now undertaking is, that the life of each is manifested by a special physiognomy deeply imprinted in their whole history, which we here call character. ”

“ And we may also derive some suspicious circumstances from nature; for all these questions, whether it is a man or a woman, whether he is of this state or that one, of what ancestors a man is descended, who are his relations, what is his age, what is his disposition, what bodily strength, or figure, or constitution he has, which are all portions of a man's nature, have much influence in leading men to form conjectures. ”

“ The mental and social development of mankind, the history of ideas and of institutions, received fresh and unexpected illumination. It began to be possible to sketch a very different outline of human origins and early history from that which had hitherto remained almost unquestioned. ”

“ The provision, then, which we have here made is no other than Human Nature. Nor do I fear that my sensible reader, though most luxurious in his taste, will start, cavil, or be offended, because I have named but one article. ”

“ Of the form and spirit of their generation, they are the representatives to later ages—throwing light on its history, on the state of its language and cultivation, and in return receiving light from those sources. ”

“ But that which transpires during the period between conception and birth, as the foundation of character in the future man or woman, as an index to their thoughts, feelings, plans, motives, actions, to their virtues and vices, to successes and failures in life’s conflict, has been entirely overlooked by biographers and historians, by poets and novelists, in their efforts to delineate human life as manifested in individuals, or in civil and ecclesiastical combinations. ”

“ Much, therefore, which is now very commonly considered to be the result of experience, will be recognized in the next, or in some succeeding generation, as no such result at all, but as a foregone conclusion, based on some prevalent belief or fashion of the time. ”

“ Tradition, oral and written, is accumulated and condensed observation; and by means of this each new generation can avail itself of the experience of preceding generations, can thus find time to explore fresh departments of knowledge, and so transmit its own traditions to the generations that shall follow. ”

“ And the "weighty experience" and "composure of judgment" with which the study of the ancients no doubt does furnish "those who habitually practise it," may be obtained we believe by the study of the thoughts of all great men of all ages; by the study of life in any age, so that our scope be broad enough. ”

“ If A and B are affirmed to be similar in origin or kind, and if B is affirmed to grow into C—or to differ from both A and B only in degree,—it becomes a contradiction further to affirm that C differs from A in kind. ”

“ Pragmatic reflections, however abstract they be, are thus in reality the present, and vivify the tales of the past with the life of to-day.—Here too a word should specially be given to the moralising and the moral instructions to be gained through history,—for which it was often studied.... Rulers, statesmen, nations, are especially bidden learn from the experience of history. ”

“ The history of a word, by showing the causes which determine its use, is in these cases a better guide to its employment than any definition; for definitions can only show its meaning at the particular time, or at most the series of its successive meanings, but its history may show the law by which the succession was produced. The word gentleman, for instance, to the correct employment of which a dictionary would be no guide, originally meant simply a man born in a certain rank. ”

“ Under these two different forms, therefore doth Tradition reveal to us the primitive world, or in other words, these are the two grand conditions of humanity which fill the records of primitive history. ”

“ That the objects chiefly coveted were of a very trifling description, will be anticipated by whoever has studied the effect which, in an immense majority of minds, hereditary distinctions produce upon personal character. ”

“ He possesses one original, and, almost, supernatural faculty; the faculty of developing a subject by a single glance of his mind, and detecting at once, the very point on which every controversy depends. ”

“ These traits are so intimately interwoven in the woof of the mind, and so firmly interlaced in the structure and tendencies to action of the whole organization of the man, that they can be detected and generalized after long eras of separation, and the most severe mutations of history. ”

“ Some mortals have recently written history, and "Lectures on History," who presume to explain the great scene of human affairs, affecting the same familiarity with the designs of Providence as with the events which they compile from human authorities. ”

“ Whenever, therefore, an exaggerated importance is attached to the function of volition, the conscious intervention of individual personalities in the course of events readily comes to appear as the decisive feature that distinguishes the historical from the prehistorical stages of human development. ”

“ Those who have occupied themselves herein have sought to trace historically the circumstances out of which various proverbs have sprung, and to which they owe their existence; that so by the analogy of these we might realize to ourselves the rise of others whose origins lie out of our vision, obscure and unknown. ”

“ Our Ancestors that gave no names to things, but by a directing prudence, purposing to distinguish the works of Nature and Art, had an especiall regard to the naturall resemblance they had with any thing that was most known to them, and that was already distinguisht by its character, or to any one of their most prevailing properties, or to the principall action that distinguisht them from other beings. ”

“ Many a word, many an event, has so, in the fullest sense, started a career, and set up a sort of paternity and authority over the soul. We are all "under influence," both of the natural and the supernatural kingdom. ”

“ With us the word 'history,' like its equivalents in all modern languages, signifies either a form of literary composition or the appropriate subject or matter of such composition—either a narrative of events, or events which may be narrated. ”

“ See the force of tradition, and the influence that antiquity, example, and great names, have upon men, and how that which seems very difficult will by long usage and custom become easy and in a manner natural. ”

“ And as the different tendencies observable in successive generations depend on the difference in their knowledge, it is evident, that we can only understand the working of the tendencies, by taking a wide view of the amount and character of the knowledge. ”

“ We seek the causes of events, whereas they merely described them. We wish to know the laws, manners, ideas, and prejudices of mankind, whereas our forefathers were exclusively concerned with human passions and actions. ”

“ How can there be two original capabilities for the reception of either moral or physical influences, and the evolution of intellectual phenomena out of them, in different members of a family descended from a single pair? ”

“ Although this fact is historical, and indeed the first of all historical facts, yet as it belongs to all mankind, and recurs in each individual, it may be regarded as a psychological fact and phenomenon of human consciousness. ”

“ I had already grasped the fact that the title of my discourse was the important thing. In the list of the Society's lectures sent to me there was hardly one whose title did not impress the imagination in advance. I must be equally impressive... ”

“ Pray go back and recollect one of the conclusions to which I sought to lead you in my very first lecture. You may remember how I there argued against the notion that the worth of a thing can be decided by its origin. Our spiritual judgment, I said, our opinion of the significance and value of a human event or condition, must be decided on empirical grounds exclusively. If the fruits for life of the state of conversion are good, we ought to idealize and venerate it, even though it be a piece of natural psychology; ”