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positivists

n. (plural of positivist English)

Usage examples of "positivists".

It remained for the Epicureans--who, though unable, like their modern successors, the Positivists or Developmentists, to believe in a first cause, believed in effects without causes, or that things make or take care of themselves--to assert that men could, by their own unassisted efforts, or by the simple exercise of reason, come out of the primitive state, and institute what in modern times is called civilta, civility, or civilization.

The science that pretends to deduce principles from particular facts, or to rise from the fact by way of reasoning to an order that transcends facts, and in which facts have their origin, is undoubtedly chimerical, and as against that the positivists are unquestionably right.

There is deep philosophy in Christian asceticism, as the Positivists themselves are aware, and even insist.

The Positivists pretend that this asceticism is itself a natural development, but that cannot be a natural development which directs, controls, and restrains natural development.

The Positivists confound nature at one time with the law of nature, and at another the law of nature with nature herself, and take what is called the natural law to be a natural development.

By discouraging what they conceive to be the weakness of their master, the English Positivists have broken the strength of their religion.