Weakness Sentence Examples

The memory of her weakness for him was all too fresh.

At the first sight of weakness, her cause would be lost.

Weakness in neighbors is regarded as an opportunity for conquest or, at least, coercion.

But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness.

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.

It was difficult to believe that Connie would tell Allen, knowing his weakness for alcohol, but how else would he have known?

Castruccio dominated Tuscany, where the Guelph cause, in the weakness of King Robert, languished.

Your pity is a weakness.

She sensed weakness and dwelled on the instinct for a moment.

Maybe I was more interested in detailing your human weakness than in understanding what your instincts told you.

She'd figure out his weakness and hold onto that knowledge for when she needed it.

A strange feeling of weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get up and go away, but could not do so.

Everyone spoke loudly of the field marshal's great weakness and failing health.

She hung up, sick of him and her weakness.

It showed weakness, but it added nothing to whatever immorality there might be in successively taking two incompatible oaths.

This weakness was the worst blot on Cranmer's character, but it was due in some measure to his painful capacity for seeing both sides of a question at the same time, a temperament fatal to martyrdom.

She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly, loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach to others for any weakness, passion, or temptation--the possibility of which she did not admit.

When the service was over, Kutuzov stepped up to the icon, sank heavily to his knees, bowed to the ground, and for a long time tried vainly to rise, but could not do so on account of his weakness and weight.

He'd seen from burying his brother that a king's greatest weakness was the woman at his side.

He suffered from infancy from great fragility of health, and nearly died in 1858 of gastric fever, which left much constitutional weakness behind it.

Considerations of growth determine to a great extent the hardness or softness, and strength or weakness, of the fibre, and thus, indirectly, whether the cotton is suitable for warp or weft.

When the weakness of his eyes made it necessary for him to depend almost entirely on the service of readers and secretaries, in his eighty-first year he began to write the Weltgeschichte (9 vols., Leipzig, 1883-88).

His weakness as a philosopher is his tendency to base the laws of the universe on the experience-born, thought-produced convictions of one man - himself.

The inherent weakness of the coalition had, however, become apparent.

The weakness of the Mexican Liberals and the necessity of securing aid in the States led the Austin party to abandon their opposition to independence.

In a moment of weakness I got someone to show me how to catch lobsters.

From a purely mechanistic view point our respect for life is a weakness not a strength.

He was afraid of any want of clearness, any weakness, in the Mason's arguments; he dreaded not to be able to believe in him.

Temptations to Pierre's greatest weakness-- the one to which he had confessed when admitted to the Lodge--were so strong that he could not resist them.

Having repeated these words the captain wiped his eyes and gave himself a shake, as if driving away the weakness which assailed him at this touching recollection.

A further source of weakness was the political organization.

The author designates the story of the later empire at Constantinople (after Heraclius) as " a uniform tale of weakness and misery," a judgment which is entirely false; and in accordance with this doctrine, he makes the empire, which is his proper subject, merely a string for connecting great movements which affected it, such as the Saracen conquests, the Crusades, the Mongol invasions, the Turkish conquests.

The weakness of Aragon enabled him to make his superiority effective.

Its small principalities were entirely dominated by the great Powers, whose weakness or acquiescence alone enabled them to rise above dependence or vassalage.

A more intricate social organization caused internal weakness, and Eastern history shows with what rapidity peoples who have become strong by discipline and moderation pass from the height of their glory into extreme corruption and disintegration.'

With the growing weakness of the Persian empire Egypt reasserted its independence for a time.

Meantime hostilities more car less constant continued with England, but, though in 1322 Edward made an incursion as far as Edinburgh, the internal weakness of his government prevented his gaining any real success, while in October of this year Bruce again ravaged Yorkshire, defeated the English near Byland, and almost captured their king.

The effect of these extraordinary changes, then, was the carrying out of Napoleonic satrapies in the north and centre of Italy in a way utterly inconsistent with the treaty of Luneville; and the weakness with which the courts of London and Vienna looked on at these singular events confirmed Bonaparte in the belief that he could do what he would with neighbouring states.

On the 17th of July Napoleon signed at Paris a decree that reduced to subservience the Germanic System, the chaotic weakness of which he had in 1797 foreseen to be highly favourable to France.

Vettor Pisani was placed in command, and by a stroke of naval genius he grasped the weakness of Doria's position.

Venice was soon made to feel the consequences of having become a mainland power, the difficulties entailed by holding possessions which others coveted, and the weakness of a land frontier.

When the weather is not favourable at the fruiting stage, the otherwise hardy cotton plant displays its great weakness in this way.

The sweeping character of his victory was due less to his own personal strength or to the weakness of Cox than to the national reaction against the Democratic party and the popular feeling against President Wilson.

A similar step was taken, in 922, in the case of Robert II., this too marking the increasing irritation felt at the weakness of the Carolingian kings.

Exposed thus to attack, his weakness, if not his venality, was long an article of faith among the liberals.

There was hardly any regular succession to the throne; and Jerusalem, as Stubbs writes, "suffered from the weakness of hereditary right and the jealousies of the elective system" at one and the same time.

Poggio's History of Florence, written in avowed imitation of Livy's manner, requires separate mention, since it exemplifies by its defects the weakness of that merely stylistic treatment which deprived so much of Bruni's, Carlo Aretino's and Bembo's work of historical weight.

The expedition, if it produced no material results, laid bare the weakness of the Italian political system and the country's incapacity for resistance.

His weakness as a writer is the too frequent striving after antithesis and paradox.

Thus the Turks learnt the country of the Greeks and their weakness.

The Peninsular War called for large forces of the old Grande Arsnee and for a brief period Napoleon directed operations in person; and the Austrians took advantage of the dissemination and weakness of the French forces in Germany to push forward their own preparations with renewed energy.

From the very first, however, the inherent weakness of the vast army, and the vicious choice of time for the beginning of the advance, began to make itself felt.

Here, on the 20th, they were attacked, and after a two days' battle dislodged by Napoleon; but the weakness of the French cavalry conditioned both the form of the attack, which was less effective than usual, and the.

Now, however, they began to realize the weakness of their opponent, and perhaps actuated by the fear that Wellington from Toulouse might, after all, reach Paris first, they determined Seinojse

Much motor weakness and cutaneous sensations similar to those above described soon follow.

He nevertheless looked forward to a future meeting, when he promised to complete the autobiographical details which weakness obliged him to interrupt.

Its eminence, however, was so largely based upon dalliance with Roman society, its weakness so great in having only a mythical character, instead of a personality, as an object of adoration, and in excluding women from its privileges, that it fell rapidly before the assaults of Christianity.

He proceeded as far as Aix-la-Chapelle, where he fell sick of a fever, and suffered so much from weakness and poverty, that he made his way on foot to Amsterdam, and came back to Norway.

Abelard's discussion of the problem (which it is right to say is on the whole incidental rather than systematic) is thus marked by an eclecticism which was perhaps the source at once of its strength and its weakness.

But, stimulated by the representations of Pope Innocent XI., who, well aware of the internal weakness of the Turk, was bent upon forming a Holy League to drive them out of Europe, and alarmed, besides, by the danger of Vienna and the hereditary states, Leopold reluctantly contracted an alliance with John III.

In Austria the army was now supreme, and the appointment of Prince Felix Schwarzenberg as head of the government was a guarantee that its power would be used in a reactionary F sense without weakness or scruple.

The king's consciousness of his weakness was combined with a sense of duty, and it was upon these two.

Equally it must be concluded that the weakness and degradation produced by semi-starvation and insanitary conditions of life are only an effect on the individual and cannot affect the stock.

Signs of weakness were now apparent, and as a result Louis Botha, acting with the authority of Schalk Burger, the representative of President Kruger, opened negotiations with Kitchener.

In July there were further evidences of weakness on the part of the Boers, and Botha applied for permission to communicate with Kruger.

The political ineptitude of James is clear; he often showed firmness when conciliation was needful, and weakness when resolution alone could have saved the day.

But the Prussians having studied their allies in the war of 1864 knew the weakness of the Austrian staff and the untrustworthiness of the contingents of some of the Austrian nationalities, and felt fairly confident that against equal numbers they could hold their own.

Further, he had the discernment to see that certain symptoms - such as convulsions and delirium, which were then commonly held always to indicate inflammation - were often really signs of weakness.

No one shows truer courage, not marred by irreverence, in confronting the great problems of human destiny, or greater strength in triumphing over human weakness.

The shape of the hills and ridges is necessarily influenced by the inclination of the strata, by the relative hardness of different rock-beds, and by the presence of folds and fissures and other lines of weakness.

Metternich especially ascribed this mainly to the "weakness" of the ministry, and when in 1819 the political elections still further illustrated this trend, notably by the election of the celebrated Abbe Gregoire, it began to be debated whether the time had not come to put in force the terms of the secret treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

Moreover, he was from the first aware of the probable developments of the Revolution and of the consequences to Prussia of the weakness and vacillations of her policy.

From this time he lived mostly in retirement, finding a congenial home with Lord Weymouth, his friend from college days, at Longleat in Wiltshire; and though pressed to resume his diocese in 1703, upon the death of Bishop Kidder, he declined, partly on the ground of growing weakness, but partly no doubt from his love for the quiet life of devotion which he was able to lead at Longleat.

The weakness of the government becoming every day more apparent, several constitutional changes were made, and many old institutions, such as that of the podesta and capitano del popolo, were abolished; finally in 1502, in order Piero Capponi.

The chief defect of the tower was its weakness against vertical fire; its masonry was further liable to be cut through by breaching batteries.

This, together with the weakness due to military reforms but recently begun, drove him to rely on foreign aid; which, in the actual conditions of Europe, meant the aid of Russia.

The relative weakness of territorial power in the North, after the fall of Henry the Lion of Saxony, diminished without however removing this motive for union, but the comparative immunity from princely aggression on land left the towns freer to combine in a stronger and more permanent union for the defence of their commerce by sea and for the control of the Baltic.

The long Balkan troubles of 1908-12, which originated in Count Aehrenthal's exploitation of Russia's transitory weakness, called for great care, especially during the crisis of 1908-9, which laid bare Russian impotence.

Under the Byzantine dominion Pisa, like many other of the maritime cities of Italy, profited by the weakness of the government at Constantinople to reassert its strength.

Spent with weakness and fatigue he asked leave to rest his head on his companion's lap, and quickly fell into a quiet sleep. As Niccolini tells us, the martyr's face became serene and smiling as a child's.

This mental attitude, combined with a certain lack of initiative and the weakness of his health, probably prevented him from doing full justice to his splendid powers of experimental research.

Prisms are of great value in cases of double vision due to a slight tendency to squinting, caused by weakness or over-action of the muscular apparatus of the eyeball.

In cases of myopia or short-sight owing to weakness of the internal recti muscles, the eyes in looking at a near object, instead of converging, tend to turn outwards, and so double vision results.

Soon after entering his eightyfourth year, however, symptoms of weakness set in, and early in September his condition began to give alarm.

Further divisions followed, and the weakness caused by these partitions was accentuated by a rivalry between the two main branches of the family.

We know him in the intense liveliness of his feeling and the human weakness of his nature more intimately than any other writer of antiquity, except perhaps Cicero.

In controversy he was too fond of mingling personal abuse with legitimate argument, and this weakness mars his letters, which were held in high admiration in the early middle ages, and are valuable for their history of the man and his times.

The new king of Scots, David, who was his brother-in-law, was a mere boy, and the Scottish barons, exiled for their support of Robert Bruce, took advantage of the weakness of his rule to invade Scotland in 1332.

Alvensleben himself, riding on the field track to screen his own weakness by a vigorous attack.

An ordinary commander would have avoided fighting altogether, but Marlborough saw beyond the material conditions and risked all on his estimate of the moral superiority of his army and of the weakness of the French leading.

Subsequently Greek mercenaries became indispensable not only to the king but also to the satraps, who thereby gained the means for attempting successful rebellions, into which they were provoked by the weakness of the king, and by the continuous intrigues between the Persian magnates.

The Dutch admiral, who was hampered rather than helped by his Spanish allies, did his best to make good his weakness by skilful management.

What is most remarkable in it is his concentrated effort to realize the exact political weight of the German nation, and to penetrate the causes of its strength and weakness.

Somewhere, in actual life, the stress of craft and courage acting on the springs of human vice and weakness fails, unless the hero of the comedy or tragedy, Callimaco or Cesare, allows for the revolt of healthier instincts.

In spite of his own wonderful genius the seeds of weakness were sown in his lifetime.

Nevertheless, during the later years of his father's reign the weakness of the king and the declining health of the Black Prince threw the government very much into his hands.

In the 10th century the royal line had been superseded by a dynasty of Falasha Jews, followed by other Christian families; but weakness and disorder continued till the restoration of the "House of Solomon" (c. 1268).

After the annexation of the Punjab the valley was administered by Herbert Edwardes so thoroughly that it became a source of strength instead of weakness during the Mutiny.

Talleyrand, despite the weakness of his own position (he was as yet little more than the chief clerk of his department), soon came to a good understanding with the general, and secretly expressed to him his satisfaction at the terms which the latter dictated at Campo Formio (17th of October 1797).

Of the remainder many were far from enthusiastic in the cause for which they had perforce to take up arms, and might prove a source of weakness should victory incline to the French eagles.

But there were lines of weakness, too, in his army.

The detachment was quickly forced to retire on its supports at the cross-roads, but here Prince Bernard firmly held his position; and by his skilful use of cover and the high standing corn he prevented the French gauging the weakness of the small force that barred their way.

The fear of disclosing to the enemies of England the weakness of the country in fighting-material was one of the main objections offered to the proposal.

Their weakness as a denomination has lain latterly in their very catholicity of sympathy.

Therefore, in response to their repeated complaints of the weakness of the English arising from disunion, Governor Fletcher, in 1694, called another intercolonial conference consisting of delegates from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey, and urged the necessity of more united feelings.

He was elected president of the Convention on the 30th of May 1793, and by his weakness during the crisis of the following day contributed much to the success of the insurrection against the Girondists.

It is of course easy to see that Celsus had no apprehension of the spiritual needs even of his own day which it was the Christian purpose to satisfy, that he could not grasp anything of the new life enjoyed by the poor in spirit, and that he underrated the significance of the Church, regarding it simply as one of a number of warring sections (mostly Gnostic), and so seeing only a mark of weakness.

The mass of Boers in the Free State, deluded by a belief in Great Britain's weakness, paid no heed to his remonstrances.

The reply to this criticism is that Mr Blaine was the choice of the majority of the party, and that while Mr Roosevelt felt free to fight within the party vigorously for reform, he did not feel that the nomination justified a schism like that which occurred in the Democratic party over the free silver issue in 1896 - a schism which remained afterwards a hopeless weakness in that party.

Nevertheless, his selection, in spite of occasional exhibitions of weakness, justified the choice.

The emperor on several occasions sharply rebuked Fesch for what he thought to be weakness and ingratitude.

But the weakness is more than a dogmatic one; it is one of religious experience, as the source of spiritual insight.

Visionary as his educational schemes (chiefly promulgated in Emile) are in parts, they are admirable in others, and his protest against mothers refusing to nurse their children hit a blot in French life which is not removed yet, and has always been a source of weakness to the nation.

Though not a commercial success, the expedition had demonstrated the weakness of the Portuguese.

The weakness of Spain and Portugal and the withdrawal of the British left the Dutch company free to develop its vast colonial and commercial interests.

It was not timidity or weakness which kept Erasmus neutral, but the reasonableness of his nature.

As a temporal ruler John was devoid of the vigour and firmness of his father, and his union of the papal office - which through his scandalous private life he made a byword of reproach - with his civil dignities proved a source of weakness rather than of strength.

The comparative weakness of these kingdoms, together with the disorder caused by the matrimonial troubles of Lothair, afforded a suitable opening for the intrigues of Louis and Charles the Bald, whose interest was increased by the fact that both their nephews were without male issue.

The difference might easily be interpreted either as a sign of sentimental weakness on the part of the moderns or as a proof of the limitation of the ancient sceptics which rendered them more easily satisfied in the absence of truth.

This was owing partly to the evils of an oligarchic government; partly to the weakness resulting from the natural attraction of the Orthodox-Greek element in Lithu ania towards Muscovy, especially after the fall of Constantinople, but chiefly to the administrative superiority of the highly centralized Muscovite government.

This boundless complacency was due to policy, not weakness.

To save himself he hit upon the novel and terrible expedient of uniting the Tatars and the Cossacks Cossack in a determined onslaught upon the Republic, whose Rebellion of inward weakness, despite its brave outward show, 1648.

The extraordinary weakness of the grand duke allowed the rising to gather strength.

The weakness of the Russian governor, General Gorchakov, in 1861 was a repetition of the feebleness of the Grand Duke Constantine in 1830.

Under these circumstances, and also because of their numerical weakness and the rigour of the weather, the Germans advanced but slowly.

The most deplorable weakness of Paul was his nepotism.

Moreover, the treaty which General Desmichels had the weakness to sign with him on the 24th of February 1834 greatly improved his position.

In 1892 he entered the Giolitti cabinet as minister for foreign affairs, accompanying, in that capacity, the king and queen of Italy to Potsdam, but showed weakness towards France on the occasion of the massacre of Italian workmen at Aigues-Mortes.

And coins have long been recognized as one of the great sources of metrology -- valuable for their wide and detailed range of information, though most unsatisfactory on account of the constant temptation to diminish their weight, a weakness which seldom allows us to reckon them as of the full standard.

His father, then prince of Prussia, was out of favour with Frederick the Great and entirely under the influence of his mistress; and the boy, handed over to tutors appointed by the king, lived a solitary and repressed life which tended to increase the innate weakness of his character.

Accordingly, his denunciation of President Andrew Jackson's bank policy added strength to the Jacksonian Democracy, and, later, his Whig connexions were the greatest source of the Whig party's weakness in New Hampshire.

Death is due either to weakness and emaciation (in chronic cases), or to blocking of the cerebral capillaries by the parasites (where these are abundant), or to disorganization of the nervous system (paraplegic and sleepingsickness cases).

This was attributable to the lingering yet potent influence of an unhappy past was held by some; while others attributed the weakness to the viceregal office and the effects of a sham court.

The ordinary triangular form of deltas, due to the smoothing of the delta front by sea action, is here wanting, because of the weakness of sea action in comparison with the strength of the current in each of the four distributaries or passes into which the river divides near its mouth.

With the growing weakness and corruption of the Hasmonaean princes, and the alienation of a large part of the nation from their cause, the hope of a better kingship begins to appear in Judaea also; at first darkly shadowed forth in the Book of Enoch (chap. xc.), where the white steer, the future leader of God's herd after the deliverance from the heathen, stands in a certain contrast to the actual dynasty (the horned lambs); and then much more clearly, and for the first time with use of the name Messiah, in the Psalter of Solomon, the chief document of the protest of Pharisaism against its enemies the later Hasmonaeans.

In view of the weakness of the king's government, to reduce the army would be to expose the excitable elements of the population to the temptation of attacking it.

The work as a whole is a striking example of the weakness of treating economic problems from a purely a priori standpoint by the deductive method.

Christianity and civilization obtained entrance into the land, but the increasing weakness of the Roman empire opened the country to the inroads of the barbarians, and during the period of the great migrations it was ravaged in quick succession by a number of these tribes, prominent among whom were the Huns.

Yet the war, if it revealed the weakness of the Austrian monarchy, revealed also unexpected sources of strength.

As a matter of fact, however, the convention was, in the words of Count Beust, " not a Prussian humiliation, but an Austrian weakness."

That Austria at first took no active part in the war was due, not to any sentimental weakness, but to the refusal of Prussia to go along with her and to the fear of a Sardinian attack on her Italian provinces.

Ten years of economic unity remained during which the Dual Monarchy might grow together or grow asunder, increasing accordingly in strength or in weakness.

This is one reason for the comparative weakness of Austria as compared with Hungary, where the Delegation is elected by each House as a whole; the Bohemian representatives, e.g., meet and choose 10 delegates, the Galicians 7, those from Trieste 1; the Delegation, is, therefore, not representative of the majority of the chamber of deputies, but includes representatives of all the groups which may be opposing the government there, and they can carry on their opposition even in the Delegation.

His life there was quiet and uneventful, but embittered by bodily weakness and chronic sores.

On resigning that office in 1819, on account of weakness of the eyes, he went in 1822 to Rome, where he remained for fifteen years.

In Syria the independent action of the cities greatly increased during the last weakness of the Seleucid monarchy.

Under Rome the process of Hellenization, which the divisions and weakness of the Macedonian kingdoms had checked, went forward.

With the ever-growing weakness of the Seleucid dynasty, the independence and activity of the cities increased, although, if, on the one hand, they were less suppressed by a strong central government, they were less protected against military adventurers and barbarian chieftains.

He emigrated owing to the weakness of Louis XVI., but refused to share in the plans for the invasion of France, and returned to his native country in 1790.

Taking advantage of the temporary weakness of Egypt, the French government formed the project of seizing the Upper Nile valley and uniting her possessions in West Africa with those at the entrance to the Red Sea.

Not until the dissolution of this last parliament, on the 27th of March 1681, did the weakness of Monmouth's cause appear.

The weakness of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms was shown by their sudden and complete overthrow.

His acceptance was construed as a security against the suspicion of weakness abroad which the Liberal party had incurred by their foreign policy during the 'eighties.

Thus for seven ` hundred years the division of the isle of Britain was a constant cause of weakness and public. distress.

He allies himself with Cymric Strathclyde, and by constant raids, and thanks to English weakness caused by Danish invasions, he extends his power over English Lothian.

The anarchic weakness of the reign of Stephen enabled David to secure his hold of northern England to the Till, but the death of his gallant and gentle son Henry, in June 1152, left the succession to his son, Malcolm the Maiden, then a child of ten, and David's death (24th of May 1153) exposed Scotland to the dangers of a royal minority.

Beri-beri is a dietetic deficiency disease which manifests itself by cardiac weakness with shortness of breath, swelling of the legs and peripheral neuritis with numbness of the limbs and weakness.

Luther's weakness brought the second great blot on his career.

At this stage disturbances, now by Aramaean tribes, now by Arabia, combine with the new rise of Egypt and the weakness of Assyria to mark a turning-point in the world's history.

From the description of Sennacherib's invasion it is clear that social and economic conditions must have been seriously, perhaps radically disturbed,' and the quiescence of Judah during the next few decades implies an internal weakness and a submission to Assyrian supremacy.

As an advocate, however, he did not shine; a weakness of voice made continued speaking impossible, and he had neither the ability nor the temperament for oratory.

The king refused to open parliament unless the barricades were removed, and while the moderate elements attempted to bring about conciliation, the ministry acted with great weakness.

To this Augustine opposed the view that Adam's sin is, as its penalty, transmitted to all his descendants, both as guilt and as weakness.

Such was the weakness of the caliph that a notorious robber, named Hamdi, obtained immunity for his depredations by a monthly payment of 25,000 dinars.

It was owing to the essential weakness of this line and its extension northward!

Weakness in artillery was Cadorna's main preoccupation for many days.

In especial it is an outstanding characteristic of the younger rivals to Aristotelianism that as they sprang up suddenly into being to contest the claims of the Aristotelian system in the moment of its triumph, so they reached maturity very suddenly, and thereafter persisted for the most part in a stereotyped tradition, modified only when convicted of indefensible weakness.

Scholasticism embodied what the Christian community had saved from the wreckage of Greek dialectic. Yet with all its effective manipulation of the formal technique of its translated and mutilated Aristotle, Scholasticism would have gone under long before it did through the weakness intrinsic to its divorce of the form and the matter of knowledge, but for two reasons.

In uniting with this the Associationism which he inherited, through his father, from Hume, he revealed at once the strength and weakness of the dual conception of naturalism.

Formal logic of the extremest rigour is nowhere to be found more adequately expressed in all its strength, and it must be added in all its weakness, than in the writings of Mansel.

Carefully educated by his mother and under the direction of Colonel Osio, he outgrew the weakness of his childhood and became expert in horsemanship and military exercises.

The king's bodily weakness limited his real capacity, and his early death on the 25th of December 1406 cut short the promise of his reign.

Between 374 and 377 we read of grievous complaints of injustice and extortion perpetrated under legal forms, the result probably of the recent panic, and pointing to an increasing weakness and timidity at headquarters.

According to a common Indian belief a wealthy man who dies without an heir returns to guard his wealth in the form of a serpent, and Italian superstition supposed that to find a serpent's skin brought good luck (Leland) .2 No singular preference for jewels on the part of serpents will explain the belief, and creatures like the jackdaw which have this weakness do not enjoy this prominence in folk-lore.

Moreover, it is a human weakness to manipulate one's ancestry, and the common claim to be descended from the local godling is not to be confused with the Arunta type of reincarnation.4 Again, in the part taken by women in serpent-lore other problems of primitive society and religion intermingle.

The most noted and the most successful of the native leaders was a Bajau named Mat Saleh (Mahomet Saleh), who for many years defied the company, whose policy in his regard was marked by considerable weakness and vacillation.

Anne was a women of small ability, of dull mind, and of that kind of obstinacy which accompanies weakness of character.

This, in its new organization, conferred on Germany the long-coveted unity and coherence the lack of which had been a source of weakness.

But the real weakness of the situation was due to the enemy's possession of the Tolmino bridgehead.

Despite the weakness of the Sleme - Mrzli line, both dominated and enfiladed, despite the practical certainty that it could not be maintained against a resolute offensive in force, the enemy attack found a large number of Italian guns, including many of medium calibre, stationed well in advance of the Pleca - Selisce line.

All children between the ages of eight and twelve years are required to attend a public school at least twelve weeks in a year (six weeks consecutively) unless excused on account of weakness of mind or body, unless the child can read and write and is attending a private school, or unless the child lives more than two miles from the nearest school and more than one mile from an established public school wagon route.

The further argument that the Nostoi recognized a son of Calypso by Ulysses but no son of Circe, consequently that Circe was unknown to the poet of the Nostoi, rests (in the first place) upon a conjectural alteration of a passage in Eustathius, and, moreover, has all the weakness of an argument from silence, in addition to the uncertainty arising from our very slight knowledge of the author whose silence is in question.

But Modernism soon broadened into a thoroughgoing revolt against the modes of thought and methods characteristic of the latterday Vatican; its motto is that Catholicism is the strength of popery, but popery the weakness of Catholicism.

A letter written to him by Colonel Lewis Nicola, on behalf of this coterie, detailed the weakness of a republican form of government as they had experienced it, their desire for "mixed government," with him at its head, and their belief that "the title of king" would be objectionable to but few and of material advantage to the country.

Although he finally intervened on the side of Flourens, and peace was preserved, his weakness in face of the Boulangist propaganda became a national danger.

In spite of great physical weakness he made several earnest speeches in behalf of these measures to save the Union.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of local finance lies in this direction.

It is, indeed, the cardinal weakness of this form of intuitionism that no satisfactory list can be given and that no moral principles have the "constant and never-failing entity," or the definiteness, of the concepts of geometry.

Manifold errors also result from the weakness of the senses, which affords scope for mere conjecture; from the influence exercised over the understanding by the will and passions; from the restless desire of the mind to penetrate to the ultimate principles of things; and from the belief that " man is the measure of the universe," whereas, in truth, the world is received by us in a distorted and erroneous manner.

The Pale varied considerably, according to the strength or weakness of the English authorities, and in the time of Henry VIII.

From the beginning their history is closely intertwined; and the power of the one is a measure of the weakness of the other.

And this doctrine was generally understood to mean that human thought, limited as it was by its own weakness and acquired habits, could hardly hope to cope successfully with the problem of apprehending the real things.

The bey of Mascara watched his opportunity, and at length, in 1708, the weakness of Spain and the treason of the count of Vera Cruz obliged the city to capitulate.

But lords, ladies and burghers also crowded around his bed, and his colleague and his servant have severally transmitted to us the words in which his weakness daily strove with pain, rising on the day before his death into a solemn exultation - yet characteristically, not so much on his own account as for "the troubled Church of God."

The most important of his writings are historico-political, and derive at once their majesty and their weakness from his theocratic theory of Christianity.

All the more clearly, then was the inner weakness of the empire revealed by the revolts of the satraps.

This tact is the clearest symptom of the inner weakness of Character of their empire and of the small power wielded by the the Parthian king of kings.

It was sprung from a predatory nomad tribe (the Parnian Dahae, Scythians) which had established itself in Khorasan (Parthia), on the borders of civilization, and thence gradually annexed further districts as the political situation or the weakness of its neighbors allowed.

These tendencies taken together explain the radical weakness of the Parthian Empire.

This the weakness of Parthia enabled him to effect without much difficulty.

Taking advantage of the weakness of his ancient enemy in the days of the poor voluptuary Mahommed III., he began rapidly to recover the provinces which Persia had lost in preceding reigns, and continued to reap his advantages in succeeding campaigns under Ahmed I., until under Othman II.

Russia and Turkey, naturally hostile to one another, had taken occasion of the weakness of Persia to forget their mutual quarrels and unite to plunder the tottering kingdom of the Safawid kings.

The wrongs of Hilderic, a Catholic, and with the blood of Theodosius in his veins, afforded to Justinian a long-coveted pretext for overthrowing the Vandal dominion, the latent weakness of which was probably known to the statesmen of Constantinople.

In the civil wars of the 1st century B.C. the Ephesians twice supported the unsuccessful party, giving shelter to, or being made use of by, first, Brutus and Cassius, and afterwards Antony, for which partisanship or weakness they paid very heavily in fines.

Besides these, however, we must consider the protection of the whole body from injury caused by (a) inaction, or (b) overaction, or (c) weakness of any one of its parts.

Although Coleridge had, for many years before his death, almost entirely forsaken poetry, the few fragments of work which remain, written in later years, show little trace of weakness, although they are wanting in the unearthly melody which imparts such a charm to Kubla Khan, Love and Youth and Age.

It would seem that, in the extreme spiritual vicissitudes of his life, conscious alternately of personal weakness and of the largest speculative grasp, he at times threw himself entirely on the consolations of evangelical faith, and at others reconstructed the cosmos for himself in terms of Neo-Platonism and the philosophy of Schelling.

It is true that he finds the most typical examples of lust, cruelty, levity and weakness in the emperors and their wives - in Domitian, Otho, Nero, Claudius and Messalina.

But it is characteristic of his strong nature that, where he does betray any sign of human sympathy or tenderness, it is for those who by their weakness and position are dependent on others for their protection - as for " the peasant boy with the little dog, his playfellow," 1 or for " the home-sick lad from the Sabine highlands, who sighs for his mother whom he has not seen for a long time, and for the little hut and the familiar kids."2 If Juvenal is to be ranked as a great moralist, it is not for his greatness and consistency as a thinker on moral questions.

Yet, in striking contrast to this orthodox tenet is his vivid conception of the weakness and misery of men, the hopelessness of the struggle with evil, whether in society or in the individual.

The beautiful character which rose superior to weakness, poverty and slave's estate is also presented to us in the Discourses of his disciple Arrian as a model of religious resignation, of forbearance and love towards our brethren, that is, towards all men, since God is our common father.

In 1760 Admiral Boscawen had violated Portuguese neutrality by burning four French ships off Lagos; Pombal protested and the British government apologized, but not before the military weakness of Portugal had been demonstrated.

The inherent weakness of the government, the vigour and eloquence of his opposition, and a series of military disasters abroad combined to rouse a public feeling of indignation which could not be withstood, and in December 1756 Pitt, who now sat for Okehampton, became secretary of state, and leader of the Commons under the premiership of the duke of Devonshire.

His personal character was one of mere weakness, bodily and mental.

Of him also nothing is really known except the bare facts of his reign and of his comparative success in consolidating the kingdom known as "of Galicia" or "of Oviedo" during the weakness of the Omayyad princes of Cordova.

Wenceslas on the occasion of these disputes displayed the weakness and irresolution that always characterized him, but Queen Sophia openly favoured the cause of Huss, who for some time was her confessor.

He is constantly admitting that on such and such an occasion he was terribly afraid; he confesses without the least shame that, when one of his followers suggested defiance of the Saracens and voluntary death, he (Joinville) paid not the least attention to him; nor does he attempt to gloss in any way his refusal to accompany St Louis on his unlucky second crusade, or his invincible conviction that it was better to be in mortal sin than to have the leprosy, or his decided preference for wine as little watered as might be, or any other weakness.

The very pettiness of the details in which the good seneschal indulges as to his own weakness only serves to enhance the sublime unworldliness of the king.

It was really suggested by the political weakness of the Byzantine empire and the dread of the approach of the Turks.

The weakness of the East Gothic position in Italy now showed itself.

The death of Ibrahim in November 1848 made Abbas regent of Egypt, and in August following, on the death of Mehemet Ali - who had been deposed in July 1848 on account of mental weakness, - Abbas succeeded to the pashalik.

After the war New Jersey found its commercial existence threatened by New York and Philadelphia, and it was a feeling of weakness from this cause rather than any lack of state pride that caused the state to join in the movements for a closer Federal Union.

Viewed in this light Petrarch anticipated the Italian Renaissance in its weakness - that philosophical superficiality, that tendency to ornate rhetoric, that preoccupation with stylistic trifles, that want of profound conviction and stern sincerity, which stamp its minor literary products with the note of mediocrity.

This mitigated form of appropriation of human beings by their conquerors may be brought about as well by the paucity or comparative weakness of the victors as by the difficulty for them to draw income from pure slaves.

It is humiliating to human strength and consoling to human weakness to find the Titan behaving like the least resolute of mortals, seeking refuge in temporizing, in evasion, in fortuitious circumstance.

One thing which might possibly have been considered an element of weakness in his claim was that it was derived (see the Table) through females - an objection actually brought against it by ChiefJustice Fortescue.

Richard, duke of York, seems to have taken warning by his father's fate; but, after seeking for many years to correct by other means the weakness of Henry VI.'s government, he first took up arms against the ill advisers who were his own personal enemies, and at length claimed the crown in parliament as his right.

There is considerable distortion of the clay, resulting from combined shearing and tensile stress, above each of the steps of rock, and reaching its maximum at and above the highest rise ab, where it has proved sufficient to produce a dangerous line of weakness ac, the tension at a either causing actual rupture, or such increased porosity as to permit of percolation capable of keeping open the wound.

In the middle of the 14th century the weakness of the Delhi sovereigns tempted the governors of provinces to revolt against their distant master, and to form independent kingdoms. In this way the Bahmani kingdom was established in the Deccan, and embraced a part of the Bombay presidency.

With weakness of the voluntary muscles went intermittent spasms which weakened the patient and ultimately led to death by implication of the respiratory muscles.

In 1843, the year in which the British annexed Natal and with it a part of the country hitherto ruled by the Zulus, the Barabuza, under a chief named Swazi, took advantage of the comparative weakness of the Zulu power, 'achieved independence and founded the present state.

The chief of these was a certain weakness which can hardly be described by any word more dignified than "priggishness."

The baronage were angry and suspicious, for many of their customary rights rested on immemorial and unchartered antiquity, while others were usurpations from the weakness of John or Henry III.

He showed none of his fathers weakness and much of his grandfathers capacity.

Irishmen had taken advantage of the weakness of England during the American War to enforce upon the ministry of the day, in 1780 and 1782, an abandonment of all claim on the part of the English government and the English judges to interfere in any way with Irish affairs.

The weakness of the Chinese empire was not appreciated at that time; the unfortunate incident on the Peiho in the previous summer had created an exaggerated impression of the strength of the Chinese arms, and some natural anxiety was felt for the success of the expedition.

The weakness of the British foreign office was emphasized by its consenting, almost at the same moment, to allow the claims of the United States, for the depredations of the Alabama, to be settled under a rule only agreed upon in 1871.

The uprightness and good sense of its leaders did not compensate for the weakness of their political connexions.

The revival of high doctrines of prerogative in the crown was accompanied by a revival of high doctrines of privilege in the House of Commons, and the ministry was so smitten with weakness and confusion as to be unable to resist the current of arbitrary policy, and not many of them were even willing to resist it.

The people, he contended, were no worse off under the old monarchy than they will be in the long run under assemblies that are bound by the necessity of feeding one part of the community at the grievous charge of other parts, as necessitous as those who are so fed; that are obliged to flatter those who have their lives at their disposal by tolerating acts of doubtful influence on commerce and agriculture, and for the sake of precarious relief to sow the seeds of lasting want; that will be driven to be the instruments of the violence of others from a sense of their own weakness, and, by want of authority to assess equal and proportioned charges upon all, will be compelled to lay a strong hand upon the possessions of a part.

C. Ranyard, who says, "He was the kindliest, as well as the most learned of men - benignant to every one who approached him, never forgetting the claims which weakness has on strength."

His constitutional weakness and bad eyesight forced him to abandon medicine, which he had adopted as a career, and in 1855 he returned to King's College as lecturer in English language and literature, a post which he almost immediately quitted for the professorship of modern history.

As the blood gushed out he lapped it up; and instead of suffering the fatal weakness which might have been expected from the haemorrhage, he seems to have done well.

The Shehab family, originally Hira Arabs, which had governed Hauran under the early caliphs of Damascus, and thereafter held power in Hermon, intermarried with the Maan; and in the latter's day of weakness sided with the Kaisi faction and obtained the supreme amirate of the Mountain.

There is more force in the charge that his Hellenic sympathies prevented him from seeing the innate weakness and mutual jealousies of the Greek states of that period, whose only hope of peace and safety lay in submitting to the protectorate of the Roman republic. But if the event proved that the liberation of Greece was a political mistake, it was a noble and generous mistake, and reflects nothing but honour on the name of Flamininus, "the liberator of the Greeks."

After the Séance Royale the municipal authority, conscious of its own weakness, allowed them to meet at the Hotel de Ville, where they proceeded to consider the formation of a civic guard.

On the other hand, he understood the weakness of the Habsburg monarchy.

He despised the weakness and the folly of the émigrés and excluded them from his councils.

The Reign of Terror was the expedient of a party which knew its weakness and unpopularity.

In 1653 the weakness and disorder of Poland, which had just emerged, bleeding at every pore, from the savage Cossack war, encouraged Alexius to attempt to recover from her secular rival the old Russian lands.

The sense of the gap between theory and fact gives to the religious element of Stoicism a new force; the soul, conscious of its weakness, leans on the thought of God, and in the philosopher's attitude towards external events, pious resignation preponderates over self-poised indifference; the old self-reliance of the reason, looking down on man's natural life as a mere field for its exercise, makes room for a positive aversion to the flesh as an alien element imprisoning the spirit; the body has come to be a " corpse which the soul sustains," 1 and life a " sojourn in a strange land "; 2 in short, the ethical idealism of Zeno has begun to borrow from the metaphysical idealism of Plato.

Charles behaved with his usual weakness.

Religion may here be defined as the conception of divine, or at least supernatural powers entertained by men in moments of gratitude or of need and distress, in hours of weakness, when, as Homer says, "all folk yearn after the gods."

The reason for this change lay partly in the fact that the ephors, chosen by popular election from the whole body of citizens, represented a democratic element in the constitution without violating those oligarchical methods which seemed necessary for its satisfactory administration; partly in the weakness of the kingship, the dual character of which inevitably gave rise to jealousy and discord between the two holders of the office, often resulting in a practical deadlock; partly in the loss of prestige suffered by the kingship, especially during the 5th century, owing to these quarrels, to the frequency with which kings ascended the throne as minors and a regency was necessary, and to the many cases in which a king was, rightly or wrongly, suspected of having accepted bribes from the enemies of the state and was condemned and banished.

When Hugh died in 996, he had succeeded in maintaining his liberty mainly, it is true, by diplomacy, not force, despite opposing powers and his own weakness.

The Church has never loved weakness; she has always had a secret sympathy for power, whatever its source, when she could hope to capture it and make it serve her ends.

But the cause of greatest weakness to the French party was still Charles VII.

France, like the Christ, had known all the bitterness and weakness of a Passion.

The incoherent efforts which he made to repair by the secret diplomacy of the comte de Broglie the evils caused by his official policy only aggravated his shortcomings and betrayed his weakness.

Between the two came the Flame, the Marais, the troop of trembling bourgeois, sincerely attached to the Revolution, but very moderate in the defence of their ideas; some seeking a refuge from their timidity in hard-working committees, others partaking in the violence of the Jacobins out of weakness or for reasons of state.

Its internal weakness, between the danger of anarchy and the opposition of the monar chists, was extreme; and it soon became discredited by its own coups detat and by financial impotence in the eyes of a nation sick of revolution, aspiring towards peace and the resumption of economic undertakings.

Then he handed Spain back to the imperial officials, that is to say, to weakness and corruption, and marched with all his people into the Second Aquitaine, the south-west of modern France, which had been assigned to them by Honorius as a home and a reward.

The growing weakness of the Merovingians saved them from serious attack, though not from occasional invasion on the north.

The fundamental difference between the Moslem, who know only the despot and the Koran, and a Christian people who have tievelopmentthle Church, a body of law and a Latin speech, was of the well seen in the contrast between the end of the christian greatness of Mansur, and the end of the weakness Kingdoms, of his Christian contemporaries.

It ought to have been easy for kings whose authority was confessedly so great to have made themselves effectively despotic amid all this division and weakness.

At the beginning of the i9th century they had fallen into such a state of weakness that Napoleon could, with some considerable measure of excuse, look upon their country as a species of no-mans-land into which his troops had only to march on.

Her real weakness, and the incompetence of her Exhaustion government, were shown when open war began with of Spain.

Spain had the misfortune to be saved from timely defeat by the weakness of its neighbors.

Any tendency to listen to liberal counsels was denounced by them as weakness and met by demands for the restoration of the Inquisition and by the organization of absolutist demonstrations, and even revolts, such as that which broke out in Catalonia in 1828, organized by the supreme junta set up at Manresa, with the object of freeing the king from the disguised Liberals who swayed him.

Parties and Conflicts, rgoo191o.--The loss of nearly all that remained of her colonial empire, though in appearance a crowning disaster, in fact relieved Spain of a perennial source Conflicting Tendencles.0f weakness and trouble, and left her free to set her own house in order.

It was from the first in a position of Moret singular weakness, without a homogeneous majority Ministry, in the Cortes, and depending for its very existence 1909-1910.

He has the double purpose in view of exposing the weakness of the pagan view of the universe and of commending the Christian explanation.

He was a man of magnetic personality, with an intense belief in the significance of his own career; and his character may be described as feminine, both in its strength and in its weakness.

Before this event the weakness of Turkey had encouraged the belief that Salonica would ultimately pass under the control of Austria-Hungary or one of the Balkan States, and this belief gave rise to many political intrigues which helped to delay the solution of the Macedonian Question.

Fortunately for the Netherlands the attention of Philip was at their time of greatest weakness riveted upon his contemplated invasion of England, and a respite was afforded which enabled Oldenbarneveldt to supply the lack of any central organized government by gathering into his own hands the control of administrative affairs.

The fact that justice and firmness were succeeded by injustice and weakness tended naturally to the outbreak of revolt, and unfortunately there was a leader ready to head a rebellion - one Mahommed Ahmed, already known for some years as a holy man, who was insulted by an Egyptian official, and retiring with some followers to the island of Abba on the White Nile, proclaimed himself as the mandi, a successor of the prophet.

After 1802, finding himself attacked with a weakness in the limbs attended with frequent fits of falling, he mitigated the Spartan severity of his life, and consented to receive medical advice.

He had a great weakness for female society, and kept several mistresses; one of them, the beautiful Rosa Vercellone, he created Countess Mirafiori e Fontanafredda and married morganatically in 1869; she bore him one son.

Before she could ponder too long on her weakness, she was yanked out of the car by Talon's lackey.

I can't take away the weakness you feel, but your body is healed.

In time, the ability I've shared with you will enable you to determine deception, weakness and threat from others.

To bring people to Hell, I uncover their weakness and I exploit it.

Demons – especially those personally trained by Darkyn – knew how to sense weakness.

Despite Rhyn's fury and occasional diversion from the Immortal Codes, he still believed in them, a weakness Sasha was trying to beat out of him since their eldest brother --the peacemaker and enforcer of the Council That Was Seven --sentenced them both to Hell.

She gritted her teeth, unwilling to leave the sanctuary of his arms and cursing herself for her weakness.

You led him here, Rhyn, a sin made worse by the fact my own weakness made my domain vulnerable.  But, I'm going to remedy this.

He once dreamed her naked torso was horribly disfigured by a giant birthmark but the truth was more likely childlike modesty kept in check by a general arrogance that forbade her to admit anything deemed to be a weakness.

She filed her discovery as the only known weakness of the vamp.

If a female heir is ever born, she will fall to the demon's evil nature, and it will use her weakness to destroy my kingdom.

He had callous indifference for helpless weakness.

There was an inherent weakness in the design.

The college's main area of concern is the relative weakness of its endowment which makes it vulnerable to innumerable vicissitudes.

The pain is often associated with a vague deep ache in the limb, sometimes mild tingling, but rarely numbness or weakness.

In north west winds the secret harbor shows its one weakness - its small entrance lies slightly ajar to the north west.

The most severe form causes weakness of the major blood vessels, which may swell (the swelling is called an aneurysm ).

This can lead to irregular beats of the heart and weakness of some groups of muscles.

The relative weakness of the bond is reflected in the bond enthalpy.

There isn't a weakness in this group as Mini plays a mean bongo and contributes some stunning harmonies.

The only weakness these creatures had was their inability to digest cellulose.

Davies sees a strong compensation for this weakness in the idea of the godly commonwealth.

There are evils which have sported with the weakness and subdued the strength of all human contrivances to vanish them.

They preach against the weakness of democracy and follow a brutal macho military creed.

An additional weakness is the already debilitated capacity of ICT suppliers.

France in 178 9, though its ancient provincial boundaries survived, had long since been welded into a nation conscious of its common interests; Russia remains a vast empire, composed of the most heterogeneous, sometimes even mutually hostile, elements., whose antagonisms were bound to be an element of weakness in any assembly truly representative of all sections of the people.

But the weakness of Orleans was too palpable, and in a famous remark Mirabeau expressed his utter contempt for him.

He had no sooner done so than he bitterly repented his weakness; and acting, as he himself says, on the principle that " to take an oath which never ought to have been taken is to estrange one's self from God, but to retract what one has wrongfully sworn to, is to return back to God," when he got safe again into France he attacked the transubstantiation theory more vehemently than ever.

His last hours were spent, like the rest of his life, in devotion and teaching, his latest work being to dictate, amid ever-increasing bodily weakness, a translation into the vernacular of the Gospel of St John, a work which unhappily has not survived.

But the Austro-Hungarian government, profiting by the weakness of Russia after the war with Japan, and aware that the proclamation of Bulgarian independence was imminent, had already decided to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina, in spite of the pledges given at Berlin, and although the proposal was unpopular in Hungary.

Meanwhile at Mentone in the winter of1873-1874he had grown in mind under the shadow of extreme physical weakness, and in the following spring began to contribute essays of high originality to one or two periodicals, of which the Cornhill, then edited by Sir Leslie Stephen, was at first the most important.

Altogether, since 1896 Hungary has lost about a million of its inhabitants through this cause, a serious source of weakness in a sparsely populated country; in 1907 an attempt was made by the Hungarian parliament to restrict emigration by law.

The weakness and prodigality of the later Arpáds, the depopulation of the realm during the Tatar invasion, the infiltration of western feudalism and, finally, the endless civil discords of the 13th century, brought to the front a powerful and predacious class of barons who ultimately overshadowed the throne.

What had been happening to their Cappadocian province meanwhile we do not yet know; but the presence of Phrygian inscriptions at Euyuk and Tyana, ancient seats of their power, suggests that the client monarchy in the Sangarius valley shook itself free during the early part of the Hittite struggle with Assyria, and in the day of Hatti weakness extended its dominion over the home territory of its former suzerain.

It was in seeking to close up the fissure in his system represented by this dualism that his successors succeeded only in adding weakness to weakness by reducing the principle of sufficient reason to that of formal identity (see Wolff) and representing all thought as in essence analytic. From this it immediately followed that, so far as the connexion of our experiences of the external world does not show itself irreducible to that of formal identity, it must remain unintelligible.

Even if the increasing weakness of the Egyptian Empire did not invite a repetition of the incursion, it could have allowed the survivors to settle down, and about a century later one of the peoples formerly closely allied with the Purasati is found strongly entrenched at Dor, and together with the more northerly port of Byblos treats with scant respect the traditional suzerainty of Egypt.'

Constantinople, was urging his government to take advantage of the palpable weakness of Turkey for bringing about a radical solution of the Eastern question.

It is a weakness of conservative critics to extol interpretation (or exegesis) at the expense of emendation.

This is undoubtedly due to constitutional weakness arising from bad nutrition and the habit of sleeping in closed or badly ventilated apartments.

Gregory XI., though equally distinguished for his erudition and pure morals, his piety, modesty and wisdom, was fated to Gregory Xl., pay dearly for the weakness of his predecessor in 1370-1378.

This weakness was due not to attacks from without - for orthodox Protestantism had long since lost its aggressive force - but to disruptive tendencies within the Church; the Enlightenment of the 18th century had sapped the foundations of the faith among the world of intellect and fashion; the development of Gallicanism and Febronianism threatened to leave the Holy See but a shadowy pre-eminence over a series of national churches, and even to obliterate the frontier line between Catholicism and Protestantism.