Again, as soon as any given comparative or superlative is, by a further elevation or intension of the quality, surpassed and exceeded, that particular degree, whatever it was, becomes merely positive; for the positive degree of a quality, though it commonly includes the very lowest measure, and is understood to exceed nothing, may at any time equal the very highest.

But secondly, side by side with this decidedly positive advice, many of us have been brought to accept a practical attitude towards the world which has seemed to us negative and discouraging.

This resource has failed,the indifferentism of Hume could not secure him against his Scotch prejudices, or against gross unfairness when anything disagreeably positive and vehement came in his way.

Who drew Sir Robert in the character of Sir Positive Atall in the "Sullen Lovers;" "a foolish knight, that pretends to understand everything in the world, and will suffer no man to understand anything in his company; so foolishly positive, that he will never be convinced of an error, though never so gross."

The Christian religion was wavering between its own historically positive base and a pure deism, which, grounded on morality, was in its turn to lay the foundation of ethics.

Unlike most men who lead purely intellectual lives, he had not the slightest suggestion of sexlessness; on the contrary, he seemed as strong, as positive physically, as the look of his forehead and eyes showed him to be mentally.

In the present chapter we must take up those aspects of the mastery of words in combination which are primarily positive.

'You're remarkably positive about it,' he said.

Thèod, §153.Leibnitz argued that evil is a negative qualityi.e., the absence of good; and that its active and seemingly positive character is an incidental and not an essential part of its nature.

Although the utilitarian tendencies transmitted by heredity and developed by the precocious rudeness and constant brutalities of the colleges had made the youth of the day strangely crude and as strangely positive and cold, it had none the less preserved, in the back of their heads, an old blue flower, an old ideal of a vague, sour affection.

Valencia's tone was convincingly positive.

So the man whose whole faith rests on the miraculous and on acts of special intervention, regards the strictly positive and scientific thinker as the dupe of a crude and narrow logic.