No doubt there is an irreducible minimum of convention in all drama; but how strange is the logic which leaps from that postulate to the assertion that, if we admit a minimum, we cannot, or ought not to, exclude a maximum!

I do not agree that any organised society has ever subsisted upon either of those principles, or that brutality is always present as a fundamental postulate in the relations between rulers and ruled.

Moreover, to the 'real world which our choice has built out of the chaos of 'appearances' we may hypothetically add 'infernal' and 'heavenly' regions.[B] Both are transformations of 'the given' by the will, but, like the postulate of causal series, experience may confirm them.

For though a postulate proceeds from us, and is meant to guide thought in anticipating facts, it yet allows the facts to test and mould it; so that its working modifies, expands, or restricts its demands, and fits it to meet the exigencies of experience, and permits, also, a certain reinterpretation of the previous 'facts' in order to conform them to the postulate.

For though a postulate proceeds from us, and is meant to guide thought in anticipating facts, it yet allows the facts to test and mould it; so that its working modifies, expands, or restricts its demands, and fits it to meet the exigencies of experience, and permits, also, a certain reinterpretation of the previous 'facts' in order to conform them to the postulate.

A postulate thus fully meets the demands of apriorism.

Yet a postulate can never be accused of being a mere sophistication, or a bar to the progress of knowledge, because it is always willing to submit to verification in the course of fresh experience, and can always be reconstructed or abandoned, should it cease to edify.

A long and successful course of service raises a postulate to the dignity of an 'axiom'i.e., a principle which it is incredible anyone should think worth disputingwhereas repeated failure in application degrades it to the position of a prejudicei.e., an a priori opinion which is always belied by its consequences.

A 'postulate' thus differs essentially from the 'a priori truth' by its dependence upon the will, by its being the product of a free choice.

The postulate once formulated, we seek in the flux for confirmations of it, and thus construct a system of 'facts' which are relative to it; that is how the postulate reacts upon experience.

The postulate once formulated, we seek in the flux for confirmations of it, and thus construct a system of 'facts' which are relative to it; that is how the postulate reacts upon experience.

If, on the other hand, this process of selection is unfruitful, and the confirmations of our rule turn out infinitesimal, we alter the rule; and thus the 'facts' in the case reject the postulate.

The fitness of a postulate to survive is being continually tested.

If it fails, the formation of fresh ideals and fresh hypotheses is demanded; but that which causes one postulate to prevail over another is always the satisfaction which, if successful, it promises to some need or desire.

We postulate conformity between Nature and one of our ideals.

We therefore postulate a right to dissect the flux, to fit together selected series without reference to the rest.

Moreover, it is to be noted that to this postulate there is no alternative.

Again, it is impossible to concede any meaning even to the central 'law of thought' itselfthe Law of Identity ('A is A')except as a postulate.

Hence, when we assert either the 'identity' of 'A' in two contexts, or that of 'A' and 'B,' in 'A is B,' we are clearly ignoring differences which really existi.e., we postulate that in spite of these differences A and B will for our purposes behave as if they were one ('identical').

And we should realize that this postulate is of our making, and involves a risk.

To assert the 'correspondence' must become a groundless postulate about something which is defined to transcend all knowledge.

There are doubtless saving interpretations, but it is difficult to follow them; and they cannot cancel the initial postulate of one eternal process, consisting in the relations of infinite subject, object and reunion.

This is the dogmatic ideal, the postulate, uncriticised, undoubted, and unchallenged, of all rationalizers in philosophy.

Mr. Shadworth Hodgson showed long ago that there is literally no such object as the present moment except as an unreal postulate of abstract thought.

Psychologically, it seems to me that Fechner's God is a lazy postulate of his, rather than a part of his system positively thought out.