The suggestion we are to examine is that such: beliefs have some recognizable quality which secures their truth, and the truth of whatever is deduced from them according to
self-evident principles of inference.
Why, he said, we think that you are lazy, and mean to cheat us out of a whole chapter which is a very important part of the story; and you fancy that we shall not notice your airy way of proceeding; as if it were
self-evident to everybody, that in the matter of women and children `friends have all things in common.'
What influence ill-treatment and profit have for this purpose, and how they may be the causes of sedition, is almost
self-evident; for when the magistrates are haughty and endeavour to make greater profits than their office gives them, they not only occasion seditions amongst each other, but against the state also who gave them their power; and this their avarice has two objects, either private property or the property of the state.
We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
His pleasing manners and good sense were
self-evident recommendations; and having never heard evil of him, it was not their way to suppose any evil could be told.
But in its construction the Convention immediately perceived that they must retrace their steps, and fall back from a league of friendship between sovereign States to the constituent sovereignty of the people; from power to right--from the irresponsible despotism of State sovereignty to the
self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence.
History seems to assume that this force is
self-evident and known to everyone.
Emily not convinced, even by this
self-evident view of the case.
Indeed this is
self-evident: for if a man knows that some particular thing is relative, assuming that we call that a relative in the case of which relation to something is a necessary condition of existence, he knows that also to which it is related.
Dashwood, not less watchful of what passed than her daughter, but with a mind very differently influenced, and therefore watching to very different effect, saw nothing in the Colonel's behaviour but what arose from the most simple and
self-evident sensations, while in the actions and words of Marianne she persuaded herself to think that something more than gratitude already dawned.
Conceive the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever were
self-evident except one, which was to become
self-evident at the close of a summer's day, but in the meantime might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate.
I gave the
self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity, which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic meeting.
