Though too it energizes from itself, and contains intelligibles in its essence, yet from its alliance to the discursive nature of soul, and its inclination to that which is divisible, it falls short of the perfection of an intellectual essence and energy profoundly indivisible and united, and the intelligibles which it contains degenerate from the transcendently fulged and self-luminous nature of first intelligibles.

Archer Butler's Lectures are suggestive and able, but discursive and vague.

His style is discursive, his lucid intervals not as electrical as those of some Primitive parsons, but he is a good fellow, and if he had more physical force and more mental condensation be would "go down" better.

Will not the ribbons on her bodice, and the lace around her neck, become the most important and delightful objects of discursive commentary?the very fluttering rosettes which burn upon her little instep, and the pearls which glitter in her powdered hair, be of more interest than the fall of thrones?

In the discovery of and assent to these truths, there is no use of the discursive faculty, NO NEED OF REASONING, but they are known by a superior and higher degree of evidence.

He was distinguished not only for eloquence, but for his historical compositions, which are brilliant and suggestive, but rather prolix and discursive.

If he were less rhetorical and discursive, his books, perhaps, would have more merit.

Adj. reasoning &c v.; rationalistic; argumentative, controversial, dialectic, polemical; discursory^, discursive; disputatious; Aristotelian^, eristic^, eristical^. debatable, controvertible. logical; relevant &c 23.

[Fr.], beat about the bush, perorate, spin a long yarn, protract; spin out, swell out, draw out; battologize^. Adj. diffuse, profuse; wordy, verbose, largiloquent^, copious, exuberant, pleonastic, lengthy; longsome^, long-winded, longspun^, long drawn out; spun out, protracted, prolix, prosing, maundering; circumlocutory, periphrastic, ambagious^, roundabout; digressive; discursive, excursive; loose; rambling episodic; flatulent, frothy.

Adj. conversing &c v.; interlocutory; conversational, conversable^; discursive, discoursive^; chatty &c (sociable) 892; colloquial.

Adj. discursive, discoursive^; disquisitionary^; expository.

Reason and its objects are not things of reflection, association, discursion, discourse in the old sense of the word as opposed to intuition; "discursive or intuitive," as Milton has it.

The discursive faculty then becomes what our Shakspeare with happy precision calls "discourse of reason.

Jack told the waiter that the assemblage was not an autocracy, but a parliament which, with a full quorum present, would enjoy in discursive appreciation selections from the broad range of a bill of fare.

The current of his feelings is deep, but narrow; the range of his understanding is lofty and aspiring rather than discursive.

The truth of geometrical propositions and demonstrations is as unconditionally certain for man as for God, only that man learns them by a discursive process, whereas God's intuitive understanding comprehends them with a glance and knows more of them than man.

It is a work somewhat discursive, and involves some critical points in Indian history and customs.

Miss Goldthwaite was singularly discursive and fragmentary in her conversation this morning, somehow.

The naturalists complained that English fiction lacked construction in the strictest sense; they found in the English novel a remarkable absence of organic wholeness; it did not fulfil their first and broadest canon of subject-matterby which a novel has to deal in the first place with a single and rhythmical series of events; it was too discursive.

Our discursive notice would, probably, contribute but little to this joint-stock production; but as even comparing notes is not always unprofitable, we venture to give our own.

He may be discursive, impatient, rash, perhaps a little shallow; but he has an undying fire of his own.

Intuitive versus discursive thought in temper, and others.

Later on it will be time to note the extent to which he utilized these results of his widely discursive reading, and to examine the legitimacy of the mode in which he used them: here it is enough to say generally that the materials for many a burlesque chapter of Tristram Shandy must have been unconsciously storing themselves in his mind in many an amused hour passed by Sterne in the library of Skelton Castle.

But he was a rapid talker and somewhat discursive, and he was often deflected from his main subject by a question or a discussion.

I have heard Father Payne speak of them with admiration as never being discursive, and I gathered that the Vicar was a great admirer of Newman's sermons.