Face to face with chaos, one knows not where to begin the work of building up an orderly mind; nor will the self-taught genius brook a hint of possible ignorance, or endure the discussion of dull presuppositions, without much pawing of the ground and champing on the bit: "What I want," he says, "is a plain answer to a plain question."

The whole aesthetic effect is limited by ethical presuppositions; and to outrage these is to defeat the very purpose of tragedy.

German imperialism, then, while it involves the same intellectual presuppositions, the same confusions, the same erroneous arguments, the same short-sighted ambitions, as the imperialism of other countries, exhibits them all in an extreme degree.

The logical presuppositions of Spinoza's philosophy lie in the fundamental ideas of Descartes, which Spinoza accentuates, transforms, and adopts.

In this he is guided by the following metaphysical presupposition: Phenomena, however manifold they may be, are at bottom composed of a few elements, namely, permanent properties, the so-called "simple natures," which form, as it were, the alphabet of nature or the colors on her palette, by the combination of which she produces her varied pictures; e. g., the nature of heat and cold, of a red color, of gravity, and also of age, of death.

"If ye, being evil" that mournful presupposition could be made everywhere.

Berkeley and Leibnitz, from opposite presuppositions, arrive at the same idealistic conclusionthere is no real world of matter, but only spirits and ideas exist.

Much as we may think of the abstract and objective value of the treatise De vera religione, which forms the usual introduction to those cursus theologici whose multiplication of late has been so remarkable, it can hardly be denied that its cogency is much diminished for the large number of those thinkers who repudiate the philosophical presuppositions upon which that treatise rests.