Possibility Sentence Examples

The possibility has crossed my mind.

No, I suppose the possibility of snakes does pose a bigger threat.

Children had been a possibility after all.

I think that possibility has been eliminated.

It was about the possibility of losing him.

Ahead of him was the possibility of a jail sentence.

Howie and Quinn, and Martha too; they don't know what Julie did so they can't see the possibility of a connection to Julie.

He didn't know what that meant or even if it was a possibility that she would one day trust him enough to tell him what was burdening her.

I'd have to say it's a distinct possibility he's a woman thumper.

And yet, this evening, the possibility was as obvious as it had not been that morning.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed.

The possibility was frightening.

The possibility tonight could be their last together pained him so deeply he shuddered.

The possibility hadn't existed before the trip to the underworld.

The only possibility-- that she might choose to leave-- hadn't crossed his mind.

He anguished over the possibility, fearful he would be so horror-stricken he'd wake and miss the telling information that would lead to a capture.

We'd discussed the possibility of conducting our business at other sites, should the need arise.

The possibility of escape was nil so secure was our twelve foot square cell.

No, he didn't want to consider the possibility that he might be wrong.

To admit the possibility of a future seemed to them to insult his memory.

That served another purpose when the conversation turned to the possibility of another child.

There were some pretty strong reasons for you to think of the possibility he might have skipped.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change.

Now it was no longer a possibility.

It's a one way visit, and that is what you fear most, the possibility you turn into what you hate.

By the time they crossed the arena, her numbed mind began to accept the possibility of death at his hands.

The additional possibility of access to all humans' Digital Echoes, to be studied for a million unnoticed causal correlations, will hasten the demise of disease as well and will increase quality of life and longevity.

Did Howie ask Julie about that possibility?

Fireworks are a distinct possibility.

She hadn't been able to face the possibility he might not want her or worse-- he was dead.

There is one more possibility.

My guess is that you accept the slim possibility that a shark might get you, and swim in the ocean anyway.

He does not discuss the possibility of successful resistance to the Chaldeans; he simply assumes that the attempt is foolish and wicked, and, like other prophets, he identifies his political programme with the will of God.

If nothing happens, we can eliminate one possibility.

The doctor said they could find no reason for him to stay in a coma, except the possibility of brain damage from lack of oxygen or blood loss.

At this point, if you follow my reasoning, we have established at least the possibility of a bright future.

I have had a letter from Mrs. Thaw with regard to the possibility of doing something for these children.

But there was satisfaction in seeing from day to day the evidence of growing mastery and the possibility of final success.

It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and despair, showing the possibility of consolation.

That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of laws, that is, of any science whatever.

Does any section of science consider time travel a possibility?

As much as Dean wanted to press his guest on the possibility that the bones were those of her father, he realized such a question was tasteless and inappropriate.

I can't prove it, but I think it's a real possibility.

In fact, it pretty much removes any possibility.

Cynthia looked at him and began to nod her head, considering the possibility.

I'd hate to think a child his age would try to kill someone, whatever the reason, but I have to admit it's a possibility.

The story that Earl Godwine himself was of churlish birth, whether true or false, marks the possibility of such a rise.

Lotze has shown how the possibility of miracle can be conceived.

Thus was founded, on Christmas day 1 ioo, the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem; and thus was the possibility of a theocracy finally annihilated.

Those who have not seen the animal in life, or who did not believe in the possibility of the valves crossing each other with a slight obliquity, would not consent to appropriating any of its muscles to that purpose, and consequently attributed to all the lateral muscles the simple function of keeping the valves in an opposite position, or holding them adjusted.

Losing a soul was always a possibility.

Deidre wiped her face and forced herself to face another possibility.

She considered the new possibility.

You must consider this a possibility.

He didn't, however, give a quick, stock answer to the possibility.

I guess I considered it as a possibility.

If the court thinks there's any possibility Jeff's alive, I'd have to wait years and years.

There was no way he would admit it, but his personal scenario matched Fred O'Connor's to a tee, even though his practical side was embar­rassed to even consider the possibility.

I'm sure he's thought about that possibility.

Then again, maybe he didn't want her to think about that possibility.

Losing him was no longer a possibility.

William was still struggling to carry out that larger scheme of a union of all the seventeen provinces, which at the time of the " Pacification of Ghent " had seemed a possibility.

By the beginning of February the agitation had spread all over Italy, and the government was faced by the possibility of a strike which would paralyse the whole economic life of the country.

This third possibility in philosophy does not enter at all into Lecky's grouping referred to above; in fact, it is very generally strange to older British thinking,3 t;csm.

The third case gives a colony entirely composed of medusa-individuals, a possibility perhaps realized in the Siphonophora, which will be discussed in dealing with this group.

In the introduction to his work Von der Weltseele, however, he argues in favour of the possibility of a transmutation of species in periods incommensurable with ours.

Professor Takakusu has shown the possibility of several complete books belonging to it being still extant in Chinese translations,' and we may yet hope to recover original fragments in central Asia, Tibet, or Nepal.

Instead of large continuous areas, in which local characteristics sometimes blend, it occupies widely dissevered territories in which specialization, intensified by long se1/2aration, hai mostly effaced the possibility of comparing species hnd even genera and compels us to seek for points of contact in groups of a higher order.

This process is called conceptual synthesis, the possibility of which is a sine qua non for the exchange of information by speech and writing.

In a third tragedy, Love's Sacrifice (acted c. 1630; printed in 1633), he again worked on similar materials; but this time he unfortunately essayed to base the interest of his plot upon an unendurably unnatural possibility - doing homage to virtue after a fashion which is in itself an insult.

The American engineer is more fortunately situated than his English brother with regard to the possibility of a solution, as will be seen from the comparative diagrams of construction gauges, figs.

No possibility of recovery now remained to the diseased Hebrew state.

Jeremiah foresaw that there was now no possibility of recovery.

The cliffs and woods have been so far disfigured by quarries that public feeling was aroused, and in 1904 an "Avon Gorge Committee" was appointed to report to the corporation of Bristol on the possibility of preserving the beauties of the locality.

On the practical side, mysticism maintains the possibility of direct intercourse with this Being of beings - intercourse, not through any external media such as an historical revelation, oracles, answers to prayer, and the like, but by a species of ecstatic transfusion or identification, in which the individual becomes in very truth " partaker of the divine nature."

A comparison of the two records, however, is especially important for its illustration of the later tendency to idealize the figure of David, and the historical critic has to bear in mind the possibility that this tendency had begun long before the Chronicler's time, and that it may be found in the relatively older records preserved in Samuel.

The transcendental deduction, or proof from the possibility of experience in general, which forms the vital centre of the Kantian scheme, is wanting in Reid; or, at all events, if the spirit of the proof is occasionally present, it is nowhere adequately developed.

It seems probable that it is identical with one of the open sacs in which each shell-plate of a Chiton is formed, and the series of plate-like imbrications which are placed behind the single shell-sac on the dorsum of the curious slug, Plectrophorus, suggest the possibility of the formation of a series of shellsacs on the back of that animal similar to those which we find in Chiton.

By reducing the human mind to a series of unrelated atomic sensations, this teaching destroyed the possibility of knowledge, and further, by representing man as a "being who is simply the result of natural forces," it made conduct, or any theory of conduct, unmeaning; for life in any human, intelligible sense implies a personal self which (1) knows what to do, (2) has power to do it.

The death of Eustace, which occurred during the next year, was hailed with general satisfaction as opening the possibility of a peaceful settlement between Stephen and his rival, the young Henry of Anjou.

The city's tax valuation in 1907 was $1,313,471,556 (in 1822, $42,140,200; in 1850, $180,000,500), of which only $242,606,856 represented personalty; although in the judgment of the city board of trade such property cannot by any possibility be inferior in value to realty.

Certainly it is due to this very much more than we commonly think, and the more it is due to this the more do moral therapeutics rise in possibility and importance " (Literature and Dogma, pp. 143-144).

The possibility of miracles is often confidently denied.

Having discussed the possibility and necessity of miracles for the divine revelation, we must now consider i,whether there is sufficient historical evidence for their occurrence.

He does not consider the possibility of deriving enjoyment from wealth by helping the poor or encouraging learning (this latter, indeed, he looks on as vanity), and in general he recognizes no obligation on the part of a man to his fellows.

Increasing attention was paid to the investigation of the properties of substances and of their effects on the human body, and chemistry profited by the fact that it passed into the hands of men who possessed the highest scientific culture of the time, Still, belief in the possibility of transmutation long remained orthodox, even among the most distinguished men of science.

Contrary to the Puritan teaching of the time, they insisted on the possibility, in this life, of complete victory over sin.

Robert Barclay, writing some twenty years later, admits of degrees of perfection, and the possibility of a fall from it (Apology, Prop. viii.).

In modern slavery, on the other hand, where the occupations of both parties were industrial, the existence of a servile class only guaranteed for some of them the possibility of self-indulgent ease, whilst it imposed on others the necessity of indigent idleness.

But we are not to suppose that even he, latitudinarian and innovator as he was, could have conceived the possibility of abolishing an institution so deeply rooted in the social conditions, as well as in the ideas, of his time.

Jewish orthodoxy found itself attacked by the more revolutionary aspects of mysticism and its tendencies to alter established customs. While the medieval scholasticism denied the possibility of knowing anything unattainable by reason, the spirit of the Kabbalah held that the Deity could be realized, and it sought to bridge the gulf.

The Cuban coast was uninterruptedly full of infection, and the danger of an outbreak in each year was never absent, until the work of the United States army in 1901-1902 conclusively proved that this disease, though ineradicable by the most extreme sanitary measures, based on the accepted theory of its origin as a filth-disease, could be eradicated entirely by removing the possibility of inoculation by the Stegomyia mosquito.

The American people had sent food to the reconcentrados; President McKinley, while opposing recognition of the rebels, affirmed the possibility of intervention; Spain resented this attitude; and finally, in February 1898, the United States battleship " Maine " was blown up - by whom will probably never be known - in the harbour of Havana.

In the instructions drawn up, shortly before his death, for his guidance at Verona, Castlereagh had stated the possibility of the necessity for recognizing the Greeks as belligerents if the war continued.

It is within the bounds of possibility that Tornaria actually does indicate a remote affinity on the part of the Enteropneusta to the Echinoderms, not only on account of its external form, but also by reason of the possession of a dorsal water-pore communicating with the anterior body-cavity.

Nelson having destroyed the French fleet at Trafalgar, Napoleon feared the possibility of a British army being landed on the Peninsular coasts, whence in conjunction with Portuguese and Spanish forces it might attack France from the south.

The possibility must be conceded that there were several arks in the course of Hebrew history and that separate tribes or groups of tribes had their own sacred object.

It is possible that in complicated organic substances we might have two kinds of dissociation, electrical and non-electrical, occurring simultaneously, while the possibility of the association of molecules accompanied by the electrical dissociation of some of them into new parts should not be overlooked.

None had anticipated the possibility of such a sudden and brutal attack, and every one knew that the Danish capital was very inadequately fortified and garrisoned.

It may therefore be said that caoutchouc has been already artificially or synthetically prepared, and the possibility of producing synthetic rubber cheaply on a commercial scale remains the only problem.

The coast-line of Siberia is very extensive both on the Arctic Ocean and on the Pacific. The former ocean is ice-bound for at least ten months out of twelve; and, though Nordenskjold and Captain Wiggins demonstrated (1874-1900) the possibility of navigation along its shores, it is exceedingly is s.

The next chapter addresses the possibility of ending war.

He thought too of the possibility (which he feared most of all) that Napoleon might fight him with his own weapon and remain in Moscow awaiting him.

Alex said it was a possibility that she would see their outbuildings as a food source.

Did you consider that possibility?

You know that is a very real possibility.

With each passing day the possibility that Jeffrey Byrne's corpse might not be found became more real­istic.

The one that gnawed at him, blocked out but begging consideration, was the possibility that Cynthia Byrne was somehow involved.

And yet, there was always the possibility of adoption — maybe sometime in the future — maybe.

He could have been married and she had never considered the possibility.

The second case gives a colony partly composed of polyp-individuals, partly of medusa-individuals, a possibility also realized in many colonies of Hydroidea.

The - - study of tidal strain in the earth's crust by Sir George Darwin has led that physicist to indicate the possibility of the triangular form and southerly direction of the continents being a result of the differential or tidal attraction of the sun and moon.

To deny their historical character is to reject them as trustworthy accounts of the age to which they are ascribed, and even those scholars who claim that they are essentially historical already go so far as to concede idealization and the possibility or probability of later revision.

There is no possibility that sperm and ova can escape by these tubes not in company with coelomic fluid.

Thus as life is transcendent and yet immanent in body, and mind in brain, and both utilize their organs, so God, transcendent and immanent, uses the course of nature for His own ends; and the emergence both of life and mind in that course of nature evidences such a divine initiative as is assumed in the recognition of the possibility of miracles.

It was in order to preserve the Israelites from errors and follies of this kind, and to prevent the possibility of such idolatry being established, that the dog was afterwards regarded with utter abhorrence amongst the Jews, and this feeling prevailed during the continuance of the Israelites in Palestine.

The Continental folio editions (Basel, 1563; Cologne, 1612 and 1688) contain many works which cannot by any possibility be Bede's.

The whole of antiquity seemed precious in the eyes of its discoverers; and even a thinker so acute as Pico di Mirandola dreamed of the possibility of extracting the essence of philosophical truth by indiscriminate collation of the most divergent doctrines.

He didn't want to contemplate the possibility of war with Germany.

Although Robert Hooke in 1668 and Ignace Pardies in 1672 had adopted a vibratory hypothesis of light, the conception was a mere floating possibility until Huygens provided it with a sure foundation.

When war broke out Dutch commerce was destroyed, and the Dutch colonies were at the mercy of the English fleet without the possibility of a blow being struck in their defence.

Plato proceeds to explain by his principle of difference both privative and negative predicates, and also the possibility of false predication.

It were better called exclusiva or elimination of the alternative, which Bacon proposes to achieve, and thereby guarantee his conclusion against the possibility of instance to the contrary.

His free use of relating concepts, that of sameness, for instance, bears no impress of his theory of the general notion, and it is possible to put out of sight the fact that, taken in conjunction with his nominalism, it raises the whole issue of the possibility of the equivocal generation of formative principles from the given contents of the individual consciousness, in any manipulation of which they are already implied.

So too, if the canon of the Method of Agreement is never more than approximately satisfied, intermixture of effects will in practice mean that we at least often do not know the cause or antecedent equivalent of a given effect, without the possibility of an alternative.

Or again, within the latter in his admission of a duality of thought and " the given " in knowledge, which within knowledge was apparently irreducible, concurrently with hints as to the possibility, upon a wider view, of the sublation of their disparateness at least hypothetically and speculatively.

This principle (which Boehme often calls the evil in God) illuminates both sides of the antithesis, and thus contains the possibility of their real existence.

This possibility of separation is the possibility of good and evil.

Doubt as to the use of the higher efforts, or as to the possibility of solving the great mysteries of life.

With respect to the origin of this epidemic, the possibility of its having originated on the spot, as in Resht and on the Euphrates in very similar situations, is not to be denied.

This noteworthy result suggests the possibility that what the poem tells of Hygelac's near relatives, and of the events of his reign and that of his successor, is based on historic fact.

It was not only by the formation of ever new endogamous castes and sub-castes that the system gained in extent and intricacy, but even more so by the constant subdivision of the castes into numerous exogamous groups or septs, themselves often involving gradations of social status important enough to seriously affect the possibility of intermarriage, already hampered by various other restrictions.

Then, again, the possibility of legitimization by subsequent marriage tends to raise the rate.

The liability of the insurer was thus made to depend, not upon the character of the loss, but upon the fact or possibility of contribution.

The observations of Spruce are of themselves almost conclusive as to the possibility of Europeans becoming acclimatized in the tropics; and if it is objected that this evidence applies only to the dark-haired southern races, we are fortunately able to point to facts, almost equally well authenticated and conclusive, in the case of one of the typical Germanic races.

The problem is complicated by the possibility that during the ages over which the references can range many changes of fortune could have occurred.

But Spinoza's experience of theological sensitiveness led him to doubt the possibility of keeping on friendly terms with the established religion, if he were placed in a public capacity.

His ethical principle has in it no possibility of development into a system of actual duties; it has no content.

We may waive his other statement that Papias was "a hearer of John," owing to the possibility of a false inference in this case.

This excludes all possibility of innate ideas or any faculty akin to intuitive reason.

Our position forbids the possibility of a final system.

Darwin died some years before the controversy upon the possibility of the hereditary transmission of acquired characters arose over the writings of Weismann, but Wallace has freely accepted the general results of the German zoologist's teaching, and in Darwinism has presented a complete theory of the causes of evolution unmixed with any trace of Lamarck's use or disuse of inheritance, or Buffon's hereditary effect of the direct influence of surroundings.

The coal is present in such vast amount as to offer the possibility of very economical working of the abundant iron ores of Australia.

This constitutes the theory of knowledge in the only tenable sense of the term, and it lays down, in Kantian language, the conditions of the possibility of experience.

But appearing with these thinkers as the problem of perception, epistemology widens its scope and becomes, in Kant's hands, the question of the possibility of experience in general.

But although the possibility of such a philosophy seems implied in the postulated nationality of the universe, many would hold that it remains as yet an unachieved ideal.

But those who, like the positivists, agnostics and sceptics, deny the possibility of metaphysics as a theory of the ultimate nature of things, are still obliged to retain philosophy as a theory of knowledge, in order to justify the asserted limitation or impotence of human reason.

This territorial arrangement eliminated all sectarian distinctions, and also the possibility of committing the different churches as such to any particular policy.

The dimensions of the exterior piers ceased to control the height of the building, which was limited alone by the possibility of securing adequate foundations, and by a consideration of the amount of floor space which could be devoted without too great loss to a system of passenger lifts of sufficient capacity to afford speedy access to all parts of the building.

It is a disadvantage of the system that defects of proportion, material, or workmanship, which would be of less moment in an old-fashioned construction, may become an element of danger in building with the steel cage, while the possibility of securing a permanent protection of all parts of the cage from corrosion is a most serious consideration.

Even Professor Weismann did not deny the possibility of the offspring throwing back to a previous mate.

It is the very lightness of taxation in recent years which has suggested the possibility of comparing the relative burdens of different classes, which would have seemed quite hopeless with a high taxation and an immense variety of high taxes.

The absence of lines of the spectrum of any element from the solar spectrum is no proof that the element is absent from the sun; apart from the possibility that the high temperature and other circumstances may show it transformed into some unknown mode, which is perhaps the explanation of the absence of nitrogen, chlorine and other non-metals; if the element is of high atomic weight we should expect it to be found only in the lowest strata of the sun's atmosphere, where its temperature was nearly equal to that of the central globe, and so any absorption line which it showed would be weak.

Gotama then spoke to the king on the miseries of the world which arise from passion, and on the possibility of release by following the 1 Vinaya Texts, i.

The recent investigations already referred to indicate the desirability of curving dams in plan in order to reduce the possibility of tension and infiltration of water at the upstream face.

The refutation of abiogenesis has no further bearing on this possibility than to make it probable that if protoplasm ultimately be formed in the laboratory, it will be by a series of stages, the earlier steps being the formation of some substance, or substances, now unknown, which are not protoplasm.

The Democrats were successful at the polls, and President Polk in his inaugural address asserted the claim of the United States to all of Oregon in terms suggesting the possibility of war.

Denying the possibility of innate ideas, he asserted that morality comes by revelation, and is therefore not only certain, but the only real certainty.

The God I plead for is neither the deity of Pantheism, nor the absolute unity of the Eleatics, a being divorced from all possibility of creation or plurality, a mere metaphysical abstraction.

The very point to be established is the possibility of reaching being per se or pure being; yet in the Hegelian system this is the very thing assumed as a starting-point.

When once the claims of York had been displayed and stated by his imprudent partisan, Thomas Yonge, in the parliament of 1451, there was no possibility of.

There is a hare possibility that the young adventurer may have been an illegitimate son of Edward IV.; his likeness to the late king was much noticed.

The presence of the British fleet, however, at the Dardanelles suggested to him the possibility of settling another long-standing controversy.

There is the further possibility that creodonts may be directly descended from the carnivorous reptiles; a descent which if proved might introduce some difficulty with regard to the abovementioned theory as to the arboreal ancestry of mammals generally.

Slow in their movements, and feeding on vegetable substances, they are confined to the neighbourhood of rivers, estuaries or coasts, although there is a possibility of accidental transport by currents across considerable distances.

They talked of peace but did not believe in its possibility; others talked of a battle but also disbelieved in the nearness of an engagement.

What has she given you? he continued hurriedly, evidently no longer trying to show the advantages of peace and discuss its possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and power and Alexander's errors and duplicity.

Kutuzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating beyond Moscow without a battle.

Their very numbers and their crowded and swift movement deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to which the French were directing all their energies.

This was his acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view.

When he entered the divinity school he was an orthodox Unitarian; when he left it, he entertained strong doubts about the infallibility of the Bible, the possibility of miracles, and the exclusive claims of Christianity and the Church.

These events precluded the possibility of success attending a second mission of Maret to London in January.

The former as a consequence won large numbers of supporters who were drawn by the possibility it afforded of adopting an attractive faith which did not involve a rupture with the religion of Roman society, and consequently with the state.

The ordinary pelican, the Onocrotalus of the ancients, to whom it was well known, and the Pelecanus onocrotalus of ornithologists, is a very abundant bird in some districts of south-eastern Europe, south-western Asia and north-eastern Africa, occasionally straying, it is believed, into the northern parts of Germany and France; but the possibility of such wanderers having escaped from confinement is always to be regarded,' since few zoological gardens are without examples.

But the further progress of Scholastic thought consisted in a withdrawal of doctrine after doctrine from the possibility of rational proof and their relegation to the sphere of faith.

One of the first of these attacks was made by Berengarius of Tours (999-1088) upon the doctrine of transubstantiation; he denied the possibility of a change of substance in the bread and wine without some corresponding change in the accidents.

Scotus extends the number of theological doctrines which are not, according to him, susceptible of philosophical proof, including in this class the creation of the world out of nothing, the immortality of the human soul, and even the existence of an almighty divine cause of the universe (though he admits the possibility of proving an ultimate cause superior to all else).

To this Scotus opposed an indeterminism of the extremest type, describing the will as the possibility of determining itself motivelessly in either of two opposite senses.

This author questioned the possibility of solving cubics by pure algebra, and biquadratics by geometry.

The Serbian and Bulgarian anthems were sung on the streets, collections were made in every village for the Balkan Red Cross funds, and when Austria-Hungary mobilized, protests were heard on every side against the bare possibility of war with Serbia, which to the Yugosla y s would be a veritable civil war.

The possibility of in the verification established verification as a habit; and the -collecting of things, instead of the accumulating of reports, developed a new faculty of minute observation.

What requires explanation is not the imperfection of actual images so much as the possibility of their being as good as we find them.

The possibility of dark bands depends upon a being positive.

So persistently does the human ear rebel against the division of the tetrachord into two greater tones and a leimma or hemitone, as represented by the fractions 9, 9, 26, that, centuries before the possibility of reconciling the demands of the ear with those of exact science was satisfactorily demonstrated, the Aristoxenian school advocated the use of an empirical scale, sounding pleasant to the sense, in preference to an unpleasing tonality founded upon immutable proportions.

Stas, the purpose of testing Prout's hypothesis, but he remained more disposed than the Belgian chemist to consider the possibility that it may have some degree of validity.

The Boers profoundly despised the military power of Great Britain, and there was no reason why they, any more than Germany or France, should contemplate the possibility of the empire standing together as a whole in such a cause.

But it was by his Nouveaux Dialogues des morts (1683) that Fontenelle established a genuine claim to high literary rank; and that claim was enhanced three years later by the appearance of the Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes (1686), a work which was among the very first to illustrate the possibility of being scientific without being either uninteresting or unintelligible to the ordinary reader.

The state of turmoil caused by these religious and political disputes was increased by the possibility of Albert's early death and the necessity in that event for a regency owing to the youth of his only son, Albert Frederick.

When, for instance, the cause of septic infection had been revealed, the prophylaxis of the disease became a possibility.

The possibility of hoisting and pumping from great depths has been discussed, and it remains now to consider the other conditions which will tend to limit mining operations in depth - namely, increase of temperature and increase of rock pressure.

By most authorities the possibility of an advance in force from the north, even under the most favourable conditions, is considered to be exceedingly small; but the tracks and passes of the Hindu Kush are only impracticable so long as they are left as nature has made them.

The increasing demand for Venetian drinking-glasses suggested the possibility of making similar glass in England, and various attempts were made to introduce Venetian workmen and Venetian methods of manufacture.

That of course does not exclude the possibility of the bulk of the poem having been composed at an earlier period; it only ascribes its completion or perhaps final revision to Nasir's sojourn in Egypt.

The tobacco flower is fortunately perfectly self-fertile, and by enclosing the flowers of selected plants in paper bags, so as to exclude all possibility of hybridization, progeny true to the type of the mother plant can be obtained.

He welcomed the Armenian bishops who came to England in 1713, and corresponded with the Prussian court on the possibility of the Anglican liturgy as a means of reconciliation between Lutherans and Calvinists.

The principal evidence which Humboldt adduced in its support was the possibility of explaining a vast number of the ancient topographical names of Spain, and of other asserted Iberian districts, by the forms and significations of Basque.

There is therefore as yet no ground for regarding any deviation from the law of inverse square as more than a possibility.

He was recalled to Rome, where he lived a life of studied retirement, to avoid the possibility of giving offence to the tyrant.

In the last resort, therefore, Spencer fails to deduce philosophically not only the necessity of progress, but also its compatibility with the evolution-dissolution oscillation, and even the general possibility of conceiving the world as a process.

In this reasoning Spencer appears to have overlooked the possibility of an expansion of the ethical environment.

It has been generally assumed that the ecclesiastical authority was always competent to determine what are the fundamental articles of the Christian faith, and to detect any departures from them; but it is necessary to admit the possibility that the error was in the church, and the truth was with the heresy.

There can be no reasonable doubt that as soon as the Athenians began to recover from the paralysing effect of the victory of Lysander and the internal troubles in which they were involved by the government of the Thirty, their thoughts turned to the possibility of recovering their lost empire.

Although the value of G in any case cannot be found without that of 0, and although the consideration of the properties of the thermodynamic potential cannot in any case lead to results which are not directly deducible from the two fundamental laws, it affords a convenient method of formal expression in abstract thermodynamics for the condition of equilibrium between different phases, or the criterion of the possibility of a transformation.

The imperial patronage had made education and social distinctions a greater possibility for the preacher, and the decline of political eloquence furnished an opening for pulpit oratory.

Whether his conclusion is justified or not, it helps to show how strongly the trend of contemporary research is setting against the theory of Kattenbusch that the Roman Creed when adopted at Antioch became the parent of all Eastern forms. It does not, however, militate against the possibility that the Roman Creed was carried from Rome to Asia Minor and to Palestine in the 2nd century.

But there is always the possibility to be faced that Irenaeus drew his creed from Rome rather than Asia Minor.

In 8 i i Charles made his will, which shows that he contemplated the possibility of abdication.

In order to arrive at the date here implied, we can begin the reckoning from Julius Caesar or Augustus, we can include or exclude Galba, Otho and Vitellius, and, finally, when we have drawn our conclusions from these data, there remains the possibility that the book was after all not written under the sixth emperor, but was really a vaticinium ex eventu.

This plan, though mechanically a very good one, has certain defects, especially in the possibility of danger resulting from the rope slipping sideways, if the grooves in the bed are not perfectly true.

The king, though affectionate, was cold and apathetic, and it was not till seven years after her marriage that there was any possibility of her bearing him an heir.

Only in the sphere of practical reason, where the intelligible nature prescribed to itself its own laws, was there the possibility of systematic deduction from a single principle.

This was the state of opinion when the celebrated arguments against the possibility of motion, of which that of Achilles and the tortoise is a specimen, were propounded by Zeno, and such, apparently, continued to be the state of opinion till Aristotle pointed out that time is divisible without limit, in precisely the same sense that space is.

Boscovich himself, in order to obviate the possibility of two atoms ever being in the same place, asserts that the ultimate force is a repulsion which increases without limit as the distance diminishes without limit, so that two atoms can never coincide.

This result at once disposes of the possibility of all the systems acquiring any common characteristic in the course of their motion through a tendency for their co-ordinates or momenta to concentrate about any particular set, or series of sets, of values.

Franklin, appealed to by the governor, raised a troop sufficient to frighten away the " Paxton boys," and for the moment there seemed a possibility of an understanding between Franklin and the proprietors.

To idealism there can be no ultimate test, but the possibility of giving any fact which claims to be true its place in a coherent system of mutually related truths.

What is thus suggested is not a rash departure from the general point of view of idealism (by its achievements in every field to which it has been applied, " stat mole sua ") but a cautious inquiry into the possibility of reaching a conception of the world ' The most striking statement of this argument is to be found in Boutroux's treatise De la contingence des lois de la nature, first published in 1874 and reprinted without alteration in 1905.

However, the development of electric power, and the possibility of transmitting it for long distances, have worked a noteworthy change in this respect, and a large number of industries have been added in recent years.

In the event of its production being a commercial possibility it should, therefore, form a valuable addition to the liquid-fuel resources of the world (see Fuel) .

Smokeless powder also made rapid firing a possibility and a necessity.

They spent their energy in attacking Plato and Aristotle, and hence earned the opprobrious epithet of Eristic. They used their dialectic subtlety to disprove the possibility of motion and decay; unity is the negation of change, increase and decrease, birth and death.

As already stated, there is a possibility of this latter ruminant being allied both to the takin and the musk-ox.

The Social Democrats were believed not to be averse from Stinnes' vaster scheme, as it corresponded in certain aspects with their own plans, when they were in power, for coordinating all German industries, pending the possibility of socializing them.

The main object to be aimed at, therefore, in the study of elementary mensuration, is that the student should realize the possibility of the numerical expression of areas and volumes.

This elementary conception is of the figure as already existing, rather than of its method of description; the test of circularity being the possibility of rotation within a surrounding figure so as to keep the two boundaries always completely in contact.

He subsequently explained that by this he did not refer to the Roman question, which was permanently settled, but to the possibility of the pope leaving Rome.

In 1787 a company of Boston merchants sent two vessels, the " Columbia " and the " Washington " under John Kendrick and Robert Gray (1755-1806) to investigate the possibility of establishing trading posts.

But there is no doubt that it is very difficult to detect the summation tone by the ear, and many workers have doubted the possibility, notwithstanding the evidence of such an observer as Helmholtz.

More careful investigation, moreover, throws very considerable doubt on the possibility of the derivation of the priest's stole from the ancient neck-cloth (orarium) and of the diaconal stole from a napkin used in the liturgy.

The reign of terror which followed the battle of the White Mountain was intended to remove all possibility of a fresh rising in the future.

In 1818 she addressed a pathetic letter to the powers assembled at the congress of Aix, petitioning for Napoleon's release, on the ground that his mortal illness had removed any possibility of his ever again becoming a menace to the world's peace.

In 1855 he went as member of the international commission to Egypt to report on the possibility of the proposed Suez canal, and by the articles which he wrote he contributed largely to making the project popular in France.

Here too the Arab conquest (641) put an end to the oppression of the native Christians by the Greek minority; but this did not afford the Coptic church any possibility of vigorous development.

But in 865 Louis and Charles meeting near Toul, renewed the peace of Coblenz, and doubtless discussed the possibility of dividing Lothair's kingdom.

Therefore, in general terms, scepticism may be summarily defined as a thorough-going impeachment of man's power to know - a denial of the possibility of objective knowledge.

Accordingly, we find that sceptical thought did not make its appearance till a succession of mutually inconsistent theories as to the nature of the real had suggested the possibility that they might all alike be false.

The Sophists were the first in Greece to dissolve knowledge into individual and momentary opinion (Protagoras), or dialectically to deny the possibility of knowledge (Gorgias).

Moreover, the arguments by which Heraclitus supported this theory of the universal flux are employed by Protagoras to undermine the possibility of objective truth, by dissolving all knowledge into the momentary sensation or persuasion of the individual.

The extreme nominalism of some of the Cynics also, who denied the possibility of any but identical judgments, must be similarly regarded as a solvent of knowledge.

But what he everywhere emphatically denies is the possibility of reaching by the unassisted reason a satisfactory theory of things.

More celebrated than any of the above was Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), whose scepticism lay more in his keen negative criticism of all systems and doctrines which came before him as literary historian than in any theoretic views of his own as to the possibility of knowledge.

All real connexion or relation, therefore, and with it all possibility of an objective system, disappears; it is, in fact, excluded by Hume ab initio, for " the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences."

No arguments can be brought against it, simply because the scepticism rests on nothing more than the empty possibility of doubting.

It may, however, be granted that the possibility of lapse throws us open to the objections, ingenuous or disingenuous, of the sceptic; and we must remain exposed to them so long as we deal with our first principles as so many isolated axioms or intuitions.

And, as a matter of fact, it has been seen that many so-called sceptics were rather critics of the effete systems which they found cumbering the ground than actual doubters of the possibility of knowledge in general.

Hegesias denied the possibility of real pleasure and advocated suicide as ensuring at least the absence of pain.

He himself was an alchemist; and believing the transmutation of metals to be a possibility, he carried out experiments in the hope of effecting it; and he was instrumental in obtaining the repeal, in 1689, of the statute of Henry IV.

The psychological theory of cognition takes for granted the dualism of the mind that knows and the object known; it takes no account of the metaphysical problem as to the possibility of a relation between the ego and the non-ego, but assumes that such a relation does exist.

Some of the earliest documents which we possess are dated by the year in which some noticeable event took place, as in contract-tablets of the age of Sargon of Agade 1 To avoid any possibility of overstating the case, it is necessary to refer here to the fact that Tethmosis (Thothmes) III.

In1615-1617two Dutchmen, Jacob Lemaire and Willem Cornelis Schouten, having in view both the discovery of the southern continent and the possibility of establishing relations with the East Indies from the east, took a course which brought them to the north part of the Paumotu Archipelago, thence to part of the Tonga chain, and ultimately to New Pomerania, after which they reached the East Indies.

The well-established doctrine that the House of Lords could not amend, though it might reject, a money-bill, coupled with the fact that it never had gone so far as to reject a budget, was relied on by the extremists as dictating the obvious party tactics; and before the year 1909 opened, the possibility of the Lords being driven to compel a dissolution by standing on their extreme rights as regards the financial provision for the year was already canvassed in political circles, though it was hardly credited that the government would precipitate a constitutional crisis of such magnitude.

The possibility of embossing the metal beyond a certain point without fracturing the coating of silver was got over by casting or stamping the raised ornament in silver, filling the hollows with.

The highest sphere of knowledge - the supra-rational - as well as the very possibility of knowledge, must depend on divine communications - that is, on revelations.

Among extinct Tertiary mammals we can actually trace the giving off of these radii in all directions, for taking advantage of every possibility to secure food, to escape enemies and to reproduce kind; further, among such well-known quadrupeds as the horses, rhinoceroses and titanotheres, the modifications involved in these radiations can be clearly traced.

She seconded the reforming efforts of Stein and the work of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in reorganizing the army, by which the resurrection of Prussia became a possibility.

He brought in inference to supply the place of discredited tradition, and showed the possibility of writing history in the absence of original records.

Reference has been made above to the possibility that the Roman imago of an ancestor actually embodied his ghost, at least on solemn occasions.

In the succeeding three definitions the centre, diameter and the semicircle are defined, while the third postulate of the same book demands the possibility of describing a circle for every " centre " and " distance."

The great velocity of electrical transmission suggested the possibility of utilizing it for sending messages; and, after many experiments and the practical advice and business-like co-operation of William Fothergill Cooke (1806-1879), a patent for an electric telegraph was taken out in their joint names in 1837.

Its principal, though perhaps least obvious advantage, consists in its being entirely independent of astronomical tables, or indeed of any celestial phenomena whatever; so that all chances of disagreement arising from the inevitable errors of tables, or the uncertainty of observation, are avoided, and Easter determined without the possibility of mistake.

At the same time, the possibility of a confusion between Ninib and Nergal must be admitted, and perhaps we are to see the solution of the problem in the recognition of two diverse schools of theological speculation, the one assigning to Ninib the role of the spring-tide solar deity, the other identifying him with the sun of the summer solstice.

No doubt he was waiting for an opportunity of recovering the portion of Bessarabia which had been ceded by the treaty of Paris, and he perceived in the disturbed state of Eastern Europe a possibility of obtaining the desired rectification of frontier, but he hoped to effect his purpose by diplomatic means in conjunction with Austria.

The restrained sentiments of the council in regard to Hoadly found expression in a war of pamphlets known as the Bangorian Controversy, which, partly from a want of clearness in the statements of Hoadly, partly from the disingenuousness of his opponents and the confusion resulting from exasperated feelings, developed into an intricate and bewildering maze of side discussions in which the main issues of the dispute were concealed almost beyond the possibility of discovery.

When the Dogger Bank incident occurred, the possibility of operations of war being carried on within a few miles of British home ports, and amid the busy traffic of the North Sea, was brought vividly home to British minds.

Government had become aware that a large addition was likely to be made to the number of Russian cruisers employed in this manner, and they had, therefore, to contemplate the possibility that such vessels would shortly be found patrolling the narrow seas which lie on the route from Great Britain to Japan in such a manner as to render it virtually impossible for any neutral vessel to escape their attention.

This result, which, accepting the possibility of having an absolutely opaque enclosure of uniform temperature, was clearly proved by Balfour Stewart for the total radiation, was further extended by Kirchhoff, who applied it (though not with mathematical rigidity as is sometimes supposed) to the separate wave-lengths.

We have further to consider the possibility of sudden changes of phrase during an encounter between two molecules, and we can easily form an estimate of the amount of apparent widening due to this cause.

The spectra experimented on by Paschen were band spectra, but as these split up into fine lines the possibility of homogeneous radiation in pure thermal oscillation may be considered as established.

There are some very fertile regions in the level portions of the county, but in the mountainous districts the soil is poor, the holdings are subdivided beyond the possibility of affording proper sustenance to their occupiers, and, except where fishing is combined with agricultural operations, the circumstances of the peasantry are among the most wretched of any district of Ireland.

This half-success in a subordinate sphere was, however, so far from coinciding with his aspirations that he had again, in the winter of 1821, begun to turn his attention towards missionary labour in the East, when the possibility of fulfilling the dream of his life was suddenly revealed to him by an invitation from the Caledonian church, Hatton Garden, London, to "make trial and proof" of his gifts before the "remnant of the congregation which held together."

He is remembered also for a curious work entitled The Discovery of a World in the Moon (1638, 3rd ed., with an appendix "The possibility of a passage thither," 1640).

He supposes that this evolution does not remain cosmic, but becomes organic. In accordance with Lamarck's hypothesis, he supposes an evolution of organisms by hereditary adaptation to the environment (which he considers necessary to natural selection), and even the possibility of an evolution of life, which, according to him, is the continuous adjustment of internal to external relations.

M ` Taggart, who closes his acute Studies in Hegelian Cosmology (rigor) with " the possibility of finding, above all knowledge and volition, one all-embracing unity, which is only not true, only not good, because all truth and all goodness are but distorted shadows of its absolute perfection- ` das Unbegreifliche, weil es der Begriff selbst ist.'

What Hume called repeated sequence Pearson calls " routine " of perceptions, and, like his master, holds that cause is an antecedent stage in a routine of perceptions; while he also acknowledges that his account of matter leads him very near to John Stuart Mill's definition of matter as " a permanent possibility of sensations."

Just as it is absurd to suppose that man is merely earth-born, so the possibility of his ultimate destruction is inconceivable.

Account must also be taken of the possibility that in early times lighter teams were in general use.

This college by withdrawing it from the turmoils of the Anglo-French War, and bring within the bounds of possibility the much-needed Temporary reformation in ecclesiastical affairs.

Faraday had for a long time kept in view the possibility of using a ray of polarized light as a means of investigating the condition of transparent bodies when acted on by electric and magnetic forces.

The personality of Lazarus in John's account, his relation to Martha and Mary, and the possibility that John reconstructed the story by the aid of inferences from the story of the supper in Luke x.

He attained correct views as to the character of centrifugal force in connexion with Galileo's theory; and, when the fact of the variation of gravity (Galileo's acceleration) in different latitudes first became known from the results of pendulum experiments, he at once perceived the possibility of connecting such a variation with the fact of the earth's diurnal rotation relatively to the stars.

Newton assumed the possibility of choosing a base such that, relatively to it, the motion of any particle would have only such divergence from uniform velocity in a straight line as could be expressed by laws of acceleration dependent on its relation to other bodies.

At the same time he thought of the possibility of terrestrial gravity extending to the moon, and made a calculation with regard to it.

To avoid the possibility of metropolitan domination provision is made that no city or county shall be entitled to more than one-sixth of the total number of senators.

He obtained a commanding influence over the Dalai Lama, impressed upon him the dangers which threatened Tibet from England, and suggested the desirability of securing Russian protection and even the possibility of converting the tsar and his empire to Buddhism.

Experiments on alloys are, in some ways, easier to make than on pairs of non-metallic substances, partly owing to the possibility of polishing sections for microscopic examination, and the investigation of alloys has done much to elucidate the general phenomena of solution, of which metallic solution constitutes a special case.

The possibility of these phenomena should be borne in mind when attempts are made to interpret the structure of crystalline bodies in terms of the theory of equilibrium.

In fact, as mentioned in the article Mouse, there is no possibility of defining the term "rat" when used in a sense other than as relating to the two species above mentioned; while there is also no hard-and-fast limit between the terms "rats" and "mice" when these are likewise employed in their now extended sense, "rats" being merely larger "mice," and vice versa.

The possibility that it had been brought to England by Cabot or some of his successors earlier in the century is not to be overlooked, and reasons will presently be assigned for supposing that one of the breeds of English turkeys may have had a northern origin;' but the of tenquoted distich first given in Baker's Chronicle (p. 298), asserting that turkeys came into England in the same year - and that year by reputation 2524 - as carps, pickerels and other commodities, is wholly untrustworthy, for we know that both these fishes lived in the country long before, if indeed they were not indigenous to it.

Late in the 15th century, in spite of the somewhat greater liberty of that age, we find Stephen Scrope writing nakedly to a familiar correspondent "for very need [of poverty], I was fain to sell a little daughter I have for much less than I should have done by possibility," i.e.

In 1865 De Bary suggested the possibility that such lichens as Collema, Ephebe, &c., arose as a result of the attack of parasitic Ascomycetes upon the algae, Nostoc, Chroococcus, &c. In 1867 the observations of Famintzin and Baranetzky showed that the gonidia, in certain cases, were able to live outside the lichen-thallus, and in the case of Physcia, Evernia and Cladonia were able to form zoospores.

He held fast to eternal punishment, but allowed the possibility of mitigations.

The Rabbis apparently dreaded the possibility of such terms becoming hypostasized into personal entities distinct from God.

In any case, however, the migration of these plants to the Alps must for the most part have taken place via the Arctic. The possibility of any extensive east to west migration having taken place direct from the Altai to the Alps seems excluded by the fact that 50 o ho of the arctico-altaic alpine plants are absent from the Caucasus.

Among gardeners the general opinion is against the possibility of graft-hybridization.

He dissented strongly from the Kantian distinction between matter and form of thought, and urged that philosophy should consider only thought in itself, pure thought, the ground or possibility of being.

About this time various causes brought about a change in the feelings which had hitherto prevented any possibility of peace between Spain and the United Netherlands.

This demonstrates beyond a doubt the possibility of a strongly palatalized n becoming a palatal sibilant or vice versa, between which utterances there is but a very slight tongue movement.

The discussion of these phenomena brings us to another point which precludes the possibility of Sumerian having been merely an artificial system, and that is the undoubted existence in this language of at least two dialects, which have been named, following the inscriptions, the Eme-ku, " the noble or male speech," and the Eme-sal, " the woman's language."

The universal test, therefore, of any supposed philosophical principle is the possibility or impossibility of imagining its contradictory.

This manner of conceiving is absolutely general and distinct, and accordingly affords the possibility of an all-comprehensive and perfect science, the science of discrete quantity.

It is probable that the whole phenomenon of isomerism is due to the possibility that compounds or systems which in reality are unstable yet persist, or so slowly change that practically one can speak of their stability; for instance, such systems as explosives and a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, where the stable form is water, and in which, according to some, a slow but until now undetected change takes place even at ordinary temperatures.

Nevertheless, the theoretical possibility, and its realization in many cases, has brought considerations to the front which have recently become of predominant interest; consequently the possible transformations of isomers and polymers will be considered later under the denomination of reversible or dynamical isomerisms.

There are polymers which have hardly any inter-relations other than identity in composition; on the other hand, there are others which are related by the possibility of mutual transformation; examples of this kind are cyanic acid (Cnoh) and cyanuric acid (Cnoh) 3, the latter being a solid which readily transforms into the former on heating as an easily condensable vapour; the reverse transformation may also be realized; and the polymers methylene oxide (CH 2 O) and trioxymethylene (CH20)3.

Now, in this case, the first definition expresses much better the whole chemical behaviour of ozone, which is that of "energetic" oxygen, while the second only includes the fact of higher vapour-density; but in applying the first definition to organic compounds and calling isobutylene "butylene with somewhat more energy" hardly anything is indicated, and all the advantages of the atomic conception - the possibility of exactly predicting how many isomers a given formula includes and how you may get them - are lost.

The second prediction is the possibility of metamerism, and the number of metamers, in a given case among compounds, which are realizable.

Certain investigations on isomerism which have become especially prominent in recent times bear on the possibility of the mutual transformation of isomers.

By releasing his country from the tyranny of Denmark, Gustavus had made the free independent development of Sweden a possibility.

It was for him to realize that possibility.

In both occurrences, however, there is still the possibility that the eclogite or the basalt is not the original matrix, but may have caught up the already formed diamond from some other matrix.

There has been much discussion concerning the possibility of this stone and the Orloff being both fragments of the Great Mogul.

The effect of either is to destroy the possibility of fermentation by subjecting the leaf, as soon as it is plucked, to a brief period of great heat.

Accordingly the Pensees have always been a favourite exploring ground, not to say a favourite field of battle, to persons who take an interest in their problems. Speaking generally, their tendency is towards the combating of scepticism by a deeper scepticism, or, as Pascal himself calls it, Pyrrhonism, which occasionally goes the length of denying the possibility of any natural theology.

On that side, fortunately, there is no possibility of doubt or difficulty to any competent inquirer.

In order that there might be no possibility of dispute between the princes of a single house, the countries ruled by the four secular electorsBohemia, the Rhenish Palatinate, Saxony and Brandenburgwere declared to be indivisible and to be heritable only by the accepted rules of primogeniture.

As the leaders in these meetings were men like Virchow and Bluntschli, who had been lifelong opponents of Catholicism in every form, the result was disastrous to the Liberal party among the Catholics, for a Liberal Catholic would appear as the ally of the bitterest enemies of the Church; whatever possibility of success the Old Catholic movement might have had was destroyed by the fact that it was supported by those who avowedly wished to destroy the influence of Catholicism.

In one addressed to the chancellor he declared his intention, as emperor, of bettering the lot of the working classes; for this purpose he proposed to call an international congress to consider the possibility of meeting the requirements and wishes of the working men; in the other, which he issued as king of Prussia, he declared that the regulation of the time and conditions of labor was the duty of the state, and the council of state was to be summoned to discuss this and kindred questions.

The possibility of a connexion between the Hyksos and the Israelites is still admitted in some quarters.

He belonged to the right centre, and until the events of 1859 he believed in the possibility of a compromise between the Vatican and the state.

The possibility was obvious of combating the radical and nationalist revolution by means of the army, with its spirit of comradeship in arms and its imperialist tradition.