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Elective   Listen
adjective
Elective  adj.  
1.
Exerting the power of choice; selecting; as, an elective act.
2.
Pertaining to, or consisting in, choice, or right of choosing; electoral. "The independent use of their elective franchise."
3.
Bestowed or passing by election; as, an elective office. "Kings of Rome were at first elective;... for such are the conditions of an elective kingdom."
4.
Dependent on choice; that can be refused; as, an elective college course. Opposite of required or mandatory.
Elective affinity or Elective attraction (Chem.), a tendency to unite with certain things; chemism.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Elective" Quotes from Famous Books



... derive from a dissolution of parliament at this crisis. I believe that many of them are not aware of the consequences and of the inconveniences of a dissolution of parliament at any time. But when I knew, as I did know, and as I do know, the state of the elective franchise in Ireland in the course of last summer,—when I knew the consequences which a dissolution would produce on the return to the house of commons, to say nothing of the risk which must have occurred at each election,—of collisions that might ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... your opportunities will have broadened, and you begin to have something similar to the elective system. You can choose more freely how to spend your time. Your development to this point, I have already said, may be called the rounding of the handle; and your education will be normal if you have average application, intelligence, and memory. During college your future course will begin to shape ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"

... the same limitation to the exercise of the elective franchise. Those only should be permitted to exercise this power who are qualified to do so with advantage to the community; and all laws which regulate or limit the possession of this power should have in view, not the equal rights of all men, but solely and exclusively ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... to the necessary convulsions of elective Monarchies, nor to the want of wisdom, fortitude, and virtue, to which hereditary succession is liable. In your hands it will be to perpetuate a prudent, active, and just legislature, and which will never expire until you yourselves lose the virtues ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... citizens of the United States, is plainly declared and firmly fixed by the Constitution. No such person is called upon to present reasons why he should possess this right: that question is foreclosed by the Constitution. The object of the elective franchise is to give representation. So long as the Constitution retains its present form, any State Constitution, or statute, which seeks, by juggling the ballot, to deny the colored race fair representation, is a clear violation of the fundamental ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... the only means of preserving our Constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments; if a love of equal laws, of justice, and humanity in the interior administration; if an inclination to improve agriculture, commerce, and manufactures for necessity, convenience, and defense; if a spirit of equity and humanity toward the aboriginal nations of America, and a disposition ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson

... lost all direct administrative control in the local sense. The intendants, and the provinces, and the generalites were gone; instead of them was a new territorial division into departments, in which local elective self-government was established. Communes and departments were to choose their own governing {127} committees, and the old centralized administration of the Bourbons had for the moment to make way for an opposite conception ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, who have been resident in said State for one year previous to the day of such election, except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion, or for felony at common law; and when such constitution shall provide that the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all such persons as have the qualifications herein stated for electors of delegates; and when such constitution shall be ratified by a majority of the persons voting on the question of ratification who are qualified as electors for delegates, and when ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan

... too absolutely for a child save in his earliest years, but would rather surround him with the best and worthiest books, and let him choose for himself; for there are elective affinities and antipathies here that need not be disregarded,—that are, indeed, certain indications of latent powers, and trustworthy guides ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... was an elective study, it was by no means a favorite in the school, and, it may be, Miss Sausmann was not a popular teacher. Broken English, too great an affection for, and estimation of the grandeur of, the Fatherland, joined with a quick temper, do not ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... 1828), ii. 303.] Sardinia, Spain, declare alliance with Fleury; and not Lorraine only, and the Swabian Provinces, but Italy itself lies at his discretion,—owing to your treatment of the Grandfather of France, and these Polish Elective methods. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... enemy of order is thought to be least dangerous when suffered to preach and arm in peace. And here is nothing between him and his task of supervision—no pampered soldiery to repress his rising, no iron authority to lay him by the heels. The militia is fraternal, the magistracy elective. Europe may hold out a little longer. The Great Powers may make what stage-play they will, but they are not maintaining their incalculable armaments for aggression upon one another, for protection from one another, nor for fun. These vast forces are purely ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... general term of "Music," but gave voice and instrument a vital place in education. Three of our most prominent composers fill the chairs at three of the most important universities. In all these cases, however, music is an elective study, while the rudiments of the art should, I am convinced, be a required study in every college curriculum, and in the ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... the last, those which you have will be of no use.'[46] He maintained that the question of local government had in England become one of pressing importance, and that the administration of county affairs must be put into the hands of elective bodies. He would give those local parliaments very large power—but he most urgently insisted on the importance of one restriction. The new bodies must not be given an unlimited power of mortgaging the future. The gradual ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... qualities of other elements, and experience pleasure or revulsion at contact with them, and execute their respective movements on this ground." He also says: "We may ascribe the feeling of pleasure or pain (satisfaction or dissatisfaction) to all atoms, and thereby ascribe the elective affinities of chemistry to the attraction between living atoms and repulsion between hating atoms." He also says that "the sensations in animal and plant life are connected by a long series of evolutionary stages ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... made his living by comic sketches, and all but lost it again by tragic poems. So he was just the man to be chosen king of the fairies, for in Fairy-land the sovereignty is elective." ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... council were appointed by the convention—under what precise rule is unknown; but their successors came in by a method in which the hereditary and the elective systems were singularly combined, and in which female suffrage had an important place. When a chief died or (as sometimes happened) was deposed for incapacity or misconduct, some member of the same family succeeded him. Rank followed the female line; and this successor might be any descendant ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... but half completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the dignity of the elective franchise,—all alike demand that the still remaining bonds of ignorance shall be unloosed and broken, and the minds as well as the bodies of the emancipated ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... wrote to her that the supreme power was of divine right, and raised high above all these considerations, and warned her against opinions of that kind which were avowed by some near her, and which might lead to the elective principle and become dangerous to herself. This could not fail to have an exactly opposite effect on Elizabeth. She was again threatened through the strict dynastic right that she also enjoyed: she needed some other additional ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... you so shudder at sight of this or that innocent object? You cannot reason it away,—'t is always there; you cannot explain it, nor diagnose its symptoms,—'t is a part of you, governed by the same laws that govern your 'elective affinities' throughout. But note, Monsieur! You and I and man in general are not alone in this: the whole organic world—nay, some say the entire universe, inorganic as well as organic—is subject to these impalpable sympathetic forces. Is the hypothesis altogether fanciful of chemical election ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... injury to one who has formed the fixed purpose to live nobly day by day. I fancy that in some other realm of existence we may look back with some kind interest on this scene of our earlier life, and say to one another,—"Do you remember yonder planet, where once we went to school?" And whether our elective study here lay chiefly in the fields of action or of thought will matter little to us then, when other schools shall have led ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... midst of a grove where spacious grounds could be obtained. The school was usually under charge of a gentleman teacher—some college graduate—and a lady assistant. The course of study, aside from a course designed to fit young men for college, was largely elective. These schools were as perfect educational republics as can be imagined. The young men and the young women met in their classes, on terms of entire equality and respect for each other. There were few rules in the school, and as to government, the pupils were mostly put upon ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... men, since it is composed of all the old men in the ato, no matter how wise or foolish, rich or poor — no matter what the man's social standing may be. Again, it is democratic — the simplest democracy — in that is has no elective organization, no headmen, no superiors or inferiors whose status in the in-tug-tu'-kan is determined by the members of the group. The feature of self-perpetuation displays itself in that it decides when the various men of the ato become am-a'-ma, "old men," and therefore members ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... rate the reign of majorities I prefer it to the one-man power, either elective or dynastic. The scheme of a third term in the presidency for General Grant seemed to me a conspiracy though with many of its leaders I was on terms of affectionate intimacy. I fought and helped to kill in 1896 the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... There is one elective committee that probably will need to be acted on, which is always done at the meeting before, and that's the nominations committee for next ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... from the body.' All Tongan gods are atua (Elohim), but all atua are not 'original gods,' unserved by priests, and unpropitiated by food or libation, like the highest God, Ta-li-y-Tooboo, the Eternal of Tonga. 'He occasionally inspires the How' (elective King), but often a How is not inspired at all by Ta-li-y-Tooboo, any more than Saul, at last, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... which the executive appears to have been entrusted to tribunes,[3] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each of the principal islands. For six hundred years,[4] during which the power of Venice was continually on the increase, her government was an elective monarchy, her King or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its prerogatives, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... resolutions of 1834 there is not a single paragraph or even phrase which can be tortured into showing that the French Canadian agitator and his friends were in favour of responsible government. The key-note of the whole document is an elective legislative council, which would inevitably increase the power of the French Canadians and place the British in a hopeless minority. Mr. Roebuck, the paid agent of the assembly in England, is said to have suggested the idea of ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... too, this is its general acceptation; only with this modification, that—since our States are so large, and there are so many of "the many," the latter (direct action being impossible) should by the indirect method of elective substitution express their concurrence with resolves affecting the common weal—that is, that for legislative purposes generally the people should be represented by deputies. The so-called representative constitution is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... the young woman of love, explaining it according to his beliefs. Goethe had defined it as an "elective affinity," speaking as a man of science and not as a poet, using the term that chemistry gives to the tendency of two substances to unite and form a distinct product. Two beings between whom no affinity existed could meet through false laws of life in perpetual contact, but they ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... bill of the whig ministry, drawn on broad and simple lines, struck at the root of this system. Its twofold basis was a liberal extension of the suffrage with a very large redistribution of seats. The elective franchise in counties, hitherto confined to freeholders, was to be conferred on L10 copyholders and L50 leaseholders; the borough franchise was to exclude "scot and lot" voters, "potwallopers" and most other survivals of antiquated electorates, but to include ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... began his diplomatic career, with an appointment as Minister from Prussia to the late King of Poland. His first act in this post was a treaty signed on the 29th of March, 1790, with the King and Republic of Poland, which changed an elective monarchy into an hereditary one; but, notwithstanding the Cabinet of Berlin had guaranteed this alteration, and the constitution decreed in consequence, in 1791, three years afterwards Russian and Prussian bayonets annihilated both, and selfishness ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... acquaintance, which, I admitted, did me great credit; congenial companions; while as for my education, I was pleased to call it completed. My career at boarding-schools had been of a delightfully varied and elective nature, for I had not deigned to toil with squalid studiousness, or even to sail with politic and inglorious ease through the prescribed course of study at any institution. Any misadventures necessarily following from this course my friends had gilded over with the flattering ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... more practical suggestion. As the right of voting carries with it the right to hold any elective office, a great change must take place in Washington life. Now for some years the divergence of society and politics has been increasing at the capital. With women in both Houses, and on the Supreme Bench, and at the heads of the departments, social and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Roosevelt policies and able to carry them out. Three Republicans of this type were often mentioned for the Presidency in 1908. Elihu Root had been the legal mainstay of three administrations, and had received the public commendation of Roosevelt often and without restraint. His availability for the elective office was, however, weakened by his prominence as a corporation lawyer, which would be urged against him in a campaign. William H. Taft, Secretary of War, had a wider popularity than Root; had, as federal judge, long been identified with the enforcement of law, ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... position living on their estates, with a sprinkling of professional men; the former being, from their want of business training, ill suited, one would suppose, for conducting the business of a nation. The Town Councils were self-elective—hotbeds of corruption; and the members of these Town Councils were intrusted with the power of returning the Members for the boroughs. The people at large were not directly represented, if in ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... on the question of religious toleration is practically unanimous. Pass Home Rule and the Protestants must perforce clear out. As it is, they are entirely excluded from any elective position, their dead are hooted in the streets, their funeral services are mocked and derided by a jeering crowd. The other day a man was fined for insulting the venerable Protestant pastor of Cappawhite, near Tipperary, while the old man was peacefully conducting the burial service of a member ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... is a form of government in which ultimate power or sovereignty resides with the people as a whole rather than with a single individual. Instead of a monarch there is generally an elective president, with varying powers. The republic is a very old form of government, but in the republics of Greece, Rome and Venice the powers of government were exercised by a class composed of a small minority of the people. In modern republics a larger ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... was the temper of the petty nobility in a green tree, what must it have been in the dry. After that the great houses of Saxony and Swabia had been crushed out by the policy of the Papacy, it was to the interest of the electors to keep the Emperor weak; and the fact that the Imperial Crown was elective enabled the electors to sell their votes for extended privileges. At last, against the raids of the petty nobles, whom the Emperor could not control, the cities leagued together, took the matter in hand, attacked the fortresses, levelled them and gave to the ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... governmental system of the Indians made it as difficult to secure a permanent peace with them as it was to negotiate the purchase of the lands. The sachem, or hereditary peace chief, and the elective war chief, who wielded only the influence that he could secure by his personal prowess and his tact, were equally unable to control all of their tribesmen, and were powerless with their confederated nations. If peace was made with the Shawnees, the war was continued by the Miamis; if peace ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... dynasties have reigned; and England has had her Saxon, Danish, and Norman kings, her Plantagenets, her Tudors, her Stuarts, her Nassaus, her Brunswicks. In Germany, and up to the eighteenth century, the Empire, the sole central dignity, was elective and transferable. Spain was for a long while parcelled out into several distinct kingdoms, and since she attained territorial unity the houses of Austria and Bourbon have both occupied her throne. The monarchy and the republic for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... even in Prussia. The safety for order in a State is that, when things go wrong, the Ministry changes, the State remains the same. In Europe, Republican institutions are safer where the chief magistrate is hereditary than where elective.' ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... this way that Aristotle assigns the reason for their connection (Ethic. vi, 13). Because, as stated above (Q. 58, A. 4), no moral virtue can be without prudence; since it is proper to moral virtue to make a right choice, for it is an elective habit. Now right choice requires not only the inclination to a due end, which inclination is the direct outcome of moral virtue, but also correct choice of things conducive to the end, which choice is made by prudence, that counsels, judges, and commands in those things that are directed ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... and well-paid, were on duty at the headquarters of the Ward Soviets day and night, replacing the old Militia. In all quarters of the city small elective Revolutionary Tribunals were set up by the workers and soldiers to ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... capital. "Le National" has said, again and again, placing the name of its old editor by the side of the names of Napoleon and Vauban. What signifies this exhumation of an anti-popular politician? It signifies that Armand Carrel wished to make government an individual and irremovable, but elective, property, and that he wished this property to be elected, not by the people, but by the army. The political system of Carrel was simply a reorganization of the pretorian guards. Carrel also hated the pequins. That which he deplored in the revolution of July was not, they ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... for many years to maintain with reasonable credit. In 1771, he was a grave, elderly man of sixty years, more distinguished than any of his forebears had been, having since the age of twenty-six been honored with every important elective and appointive office in the province, including that of governor, which he had with seeming reluctance just accepted. It may be that Thomas Hutchinson was ambitious; but if he elbowed his way into office by solicitation ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... alive the Dual system; where the Crown has a real authority trial may be made of experiments in the way of local independence, which are impossible in a State where, as in England, the true sovereign is an elective assembly. ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... Tocqueville, who has written incomparably the best work that has ever appeared on the United States, makes the following judicious remarks on this subject: "Where a nation modifies the elective qualification, it may easily be foreseen, that sooner or later that qualification will be abolished. There is no more invariable rule in the history of society. The further electoral rights are extended, the more is felt the need of extending ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... tower of strength to the Massachusetts judiciary. But for him it is not unlikely that the State would have adopted an elective judiciary or a tenure limited to a term of years. But the whole people felt that his great integrity and wisdom gave an added security to every man's life, liberty, and property. So the proposition to limit the judicial tenure, although espoused by the two parties who together made up a large majority ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... unsparingly denounced. The maxim—too frequently heard at that time in the United States—"Our country, right or wrong," he shattered to atoms. Defensive war, however, he justified. He dwelt powerfully on the responsibility connected with the exercise of the elective franchise, and urged the duty of voting, at all times, not blindly and for party purposes, but intelligently, honestly, and piously. Exceptions might perhaps be taken by some to his views on defensive war; otherwise the discourse was excellent and seasonable. At ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... selection as a power or deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planet?" He admits that in the literal sense of the words, natural selection is a false term; but "who ever objected to chemists, speaking of the elective affinities of various elements?—and yet an acid cannot strictly be said to elect the base with which it in preference combines." (p. 93) We have here an affirmation and a negation. It is affirmed that natural selection ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... politicians and caucuses and all the paraphernalia of elective and debating bodies? Well, not quite; still very much curtailing the functions of these bodies and making laws by the direct action of the people themselves and curtailing the interference of professed legislators ... The little volume ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan

... curators of museums, sanitary authorities, police-court interpreters, swimming-bath instructors, contractors, choir-masters, market superintendents, art-school teachers, cathedral vergers, and other local functionaries whose names I will add as they occur to me. All these offices will become elective, and failure to vote at any election falling within her area of residence will involve the female elector in a penalty of L10. Absence, unsupported by an adequate medical certificate, will not be accepted as an excuse. Pass this Bill through the two Houses of Parliament ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... for their elective monarchy, but blames them for choosing the scions of royal houses, instead of seeking out the real kings of men, such as he ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... population, and instinctive patriotism, are all vital elements of American liberty, nationality, and upward and onward progress. Foreign immigration, foreign Catholic influence, and sectional factions nourished by them—and breeding demagogues in the name of Democracy, by a prostitution of the elective franchise—have already corrupted our nationality, degraded our councils, both State and National, weakened the bonds of union, disturbed our country's peace, and awakened apprehensions of insecurity and progressive deterioration, threatening ultimate ruin! To rescue and ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... inhabiting different stations, and naturally living under the most opposite climates, can often be crossed with ease. The difficulty or facility apparently depends exclusively on the sexual constitution of the species which are crossed; or on their sexual elective affinity, i. e. Wahlverwandtschaft of Gaertner. As species rarely or never become modified in one character, without being at the same time modified in many, and as systematic affinity includes all visible resemblances ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... upon his protection; and this unbalanced couple were presently married, as they said, "in deference to anarch custom." The two infants had already proclaimed a rebellion against the institution of marriage, for which they proposed to substitute the doctrine of elective affinity. For two years they wandered about England, Ireland, and Wales, living on a small allowance from Shelley's father, who had disinherited his son because of his ill-considered marriage. The pair soon separated, and two ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... Art may not be born in a land so young? Shall we say that Art may not deal with things uncatalogued, and dare not treat of unaccepted things? Nay, rather let us say that Art, being thought, has this divine right of elective birth. For out of tortures Art had here ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... The Folks' Mote was a Parliament of the People—a rude and tumultuous assembly, no doubt, but a free assembly. When the City grew great such a Parliament became impossible. It therefore became an elective Parliament. The election was—and is still—conducted at the Ward Motes, each Ward returning so many members in proportion to its population, for the Common Council. The Councillors are elected for one year only. If there is a vacancy an Alderman ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... there through the Empire, where an attitude like that would have been distinctly beneficial; planets with elective parliaments, every member of which felt himself obligated to get as many laws enacted during his term ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper

... idea of all subordination, even in the mildest form, with utter scorn. They claim for woman absolute social and political equality with man. And they seek to secure these points by conferring on the whole sex the right of the elective franchise, female suffrage being the first step in the unwieldy revolutions they aim at bringing about. These views are no longer confined to a small sect. They challenge our attention at every turn. We ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... innate power and tendency in each physiological unit, Mr. Darwin's, on the other hand, requires nothing of the kind, but explains the evolution of each individual by purely mechanical conceptions. In fact, however, it is not so. Each gemmule, according to Mr. Darwin, is really the seat of powers, elective affinities, and special tendencies as marked and mysterious as those possessed by the physiological unit of Mr. Spencer, with the single exception that the former has no tendency to build up the whole living, complex organism of which it forms a part. Some may think this an important distinction, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... Relaxation to the Protestants, and to justify the moderate Executions at Thorn, to excite a Nation to quarrel with every Body who are able to fight with no body; to erect the Apostate Race of S——y upon a Throne which they have no Title to, and turn an elective Throne into an hereditary, ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... universities by migration or initiation of their members. The distinction most sought for by ambitious students, the marshalship of the "commencement" ceremonies,—i.e. the conferring of degrees, speech-making, etc., of the graduating class,—was an elective office and voted for by all the members of the class, so that, for this position of a day, scholarship was only of secondary importance, the personal popularity of the candidates determining the election. The societies grouped themselves in two ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... because combustion properly so called cannot take place without disengagement of caloric and light. Before combustion can take place, it is necessary that the base of oxygen gas should have greater affinity to the combustible body than it has to caloric; and this elective attraction, to use Bergman's expression, can only take place at a certain degree of temperature which is different for each combustible substance; hence the necessity of giving the first motion or beginning to every combustion by the approach ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... President, urging him to recognize the freedmen as equal in all respects to the whites. He was the first man, of any authority or station, who ever informed me that the Government of the United States would insist on extending to the former slaves of the South the elective franchise, and he gave as a reason the fact that the slaves, grateful for their freedom, for which they were indebted to the armies and Government of the North, would, by their votes, offset the disaffected and rebel element of the white population of the South. At that time quite a storm ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... honorable friends is heard in vain; they preach in a desert; the vile passions of the wicked weigh heavily in the balance of our destinies. However, all means of safety are not yet lost: the throne of Poland is elective; the reigning monarch is aged; if his successor should be endowed with a great character, if his virtues accord with the elevation of his station, he may yet save the republic and restore it to its ancient preponderance among nations. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... discretionary powers to refuse admission to the bar or to expel and disqualify persons of unsuitable character from it; each Inn possesses considerable property, a dining hall, library, and chapel, and is subject to the jurisdiction of an irresponsible, self-elective body of Benchers, who are usually judges or senior counsel; these societies originated in the 13th century, when the practice of law passed out of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... every cross-road. This, of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way and the easiest way is to make our government entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise,—a right and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass

... thrown out. In its stead the Ministry endeavoured to weaken the means of corrupt influence which the king had unscrupulously used by disqualifying persons holding government contracts from sitting in Parliament, by depriving revenue officers of the elective franchise (a measure which diminished the weight of the Crown in seventy boroughs), and above all by a bill for the reduction of the civil establishment, of the pension list, and of the secret service fund, which was brought in by Burke. These measures ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... slavery in the District of Columbia, in the forts, arsenals, navy-yards, and places under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress; to deny the National Government all power to hinder the transit of slaves through one State to another; to take from persons of the African race the elective franchise, and to purchase territory in South-America, or Africa, and send there, at the expense of the Treasury of the United States, such free negroes as the States may desire removed from their limits. And what does the Senator propose to concede to us of the North? ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... another objection, which, I think, was first raised by the honourable and learned Member for Newport. (Mr Horace Twiss.) He tells us that the elective franchise is property; that to take it away from a man who has not been judicially convicted of malpractices is robbery; that no crime is proved against the voters in the close boroughs; that no crime is even imputed to them in the preamble of the bill; and that therefore to disfranchise them ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... induction from or corollary to the preceding? If it is not Kantian philosophy, it is certainly Goethean. Margaret Fuller was the first American critic, if not the first of all critics, to point out that Goethe in writing "Elective Affinities" designed to show that an evil thought may have consequences as serious and irremediable as an evil action—in addition to the well-known homily that evil thoughts lead to evil actions. In his "Hall of Fantasy" Hawthorne mentions Goethe and ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... is concealed upon the hidden or averted side of the golden arras, known but not felt; or is seen but dimly in the rear, crowding into indistinct proportions. The effect of the music is, to place the mind in a state of elective attraction for every thing in harmony with its own ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... to the election of the deputies, alguacils, and their committees. The cabecerias [i.e., headships], much more ancient in origin than the reductions [i.e., native villages of converts], were doubtless hereditary. At present they are hereditary and elective. When they fall vacant, whether for want of an heir or through the resignation of the regularly appointed incumbent, the substitute is appointed—by the superintendent, in the provinces near the capital; and in those distant from it by the respective subdelegate chief, but at the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various

... with you, as to the propriety of the negro speedily becoming possessed of the elective franchise. In Antigua there is very little more land than is in cultivation for the estates, but here it is widely different; and they are beginning to settle themselves by purchasing small lots very fast. At Sligoville there are nearly fifty new freeholders. The ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... assured. The several actions of the colonial governing bodies lend us that assurance. England can do no more for us than already has been done; and what has been done by the Colonies will be guaranteed by the elective body of the people in the days of independence. I am fearful of the hazards that will accompany this enlistment. Give me leave to address you on this topic that you may understand my troubled state of mind. I appeal to you. Give ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... "Sure, it ain't elective," answered Newton. "But they say that with as many brains as you've got sloshing around loose in the neighborhood, you're a candidate that can break the deadlock in ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... Victorian Englishman did not understand the words "Emperor of the French." The type of title was deliberately chosen to express the idea of an elective and popular origin; as against such a phrase as "the German Emperor," which expresses an almost transcendental tribal patriarchate, or such a phrase as "King of Prussia," which suggests personal ownership of a whole territory. To treat the Coup ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... has received many modifications, and in the autumn of 1875 it was determined to make it a four years course, the same in all respects as the regular course, except that it omits Greek and substitutes instead of it the modern languages and some elective work in science. Previous to 1875 the work of the College was mainly prescribed, with but little opportunity for optional or elective studies. At that time the scope of electives was greatly broadened. There ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... pursuits, must in consequence become indolent and uninformed; but the ecclesiastics, having a career of emulation open before them, are much more enlightened and cultivated than the nobles, and as the papal government admits of no distinction of birth, and is purely elective in the clerical body, it begets a sort of liberality, not in ideas, but in habits, which renders Rome a most agreeable abode for those who have neither the prospect, nor the ambition ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... transferred to the shores of the Mississippi?" To such arguments Congress could not remain wholly indifferent. The outcome was a third act (March 2, 1805) which established the usual form of territorial government, an elective legislature, a delegate in Congress, and a Governor appointed by the President. To a people who had counted on statehood these concessions were small pinchbeck. Their irritation was not allayed, and it continued to focus upon Governor Claiborne, the distrusted ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... mechanical and merely logical tradition of the Eighteenth Century. No end of illustrations could be adduced. In the Socialist party it has been the custom to denounce the "short ballot." Why? Because it reduces the number of elective offices. This is regarded as undemocratic for the reason that democracy has come to mean a series of elections. According to a logic, the more elections the more democratic. But experience has shown that a seven-foot ballot ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... thinking of precedence. But this is to be an Elective Session—new Ministers to replace Prince Havaly, of Defense, deceased, and Count Frask, of Science and Technology, elevated to the Bench. There seems to be some difference of opinion among some of the Ministers and Counselors. It's very possible that the Session may ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper

... perpetual candidate for the United States Senate, wholesale debaucher of American citizenship and all-round corrupter of men—J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, a corporation political trickster, who has done more to hold up American laws, American elective franchises, and American corporations to the scorn of the civilized world than any other man of this or ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... manifestation of his own glory, as to the singular profit of mankind: and withal, that by reason of the will of God himself, revealed in his word, we must not only suffer and be content that those do rule which are set over their own territories, whether by hereditary or by elective right, but also to love them, fear them, and with all reverence and honour embrace them as the ambassadors and ministers of the most high and good God, being in his stead, and preferred for the ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... prove his own freedom by making her free. Let him abandon conventional restriction, as a vestige of that Oriental barbarity which confined Woman to a seraglio. Let him trust her entirely, and give her every privilege already acquired for himself,—elective franchise, tenure of property, liberty to ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... found that local conditions call for the awarding of honors not provided for in the elective list." ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis

... the adjournment closes a session in an assembly which does not meet more frequently than once a year, or when the assembly is an elective body, and this ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert

... love is a kind of movement. But every movement tends towards something else. Therefore it seems that an angel cannot love himself with either natural or elective love. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... a solution, then the socialist government could not long remain elective. It would have to reign by divine right, like the Jesuits in Paraguay. It would have to be a despotism, not only in its policy but in its origin, in fact a monarchy. No intelligent king has any inducement to choose incompetent men as ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... of France. Some towards honour and quick fire-consummation; most towards dishonour; not a few towards massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation: all towards Eternity!—So many heterogeneities cast together into the fermenting-vat; there, with incalculable action, counteraction, elective affinities, explosive developments, to work out healing for a sick moribund System of Society! Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well, that ever met together on our Planet on such an errand. So thousandfold complex a Society, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... discovered. Perhaps he lives at Aleppo; perhaps, like the father of a heroine of comic song, at Jerusalem. Till he is discovered the shaver wins no secure happiness, and in the search for the barber who has an elective affinity for the shaver may be found material for an operetta or an epic. The shaver figures as a sort of Alastor, seeking the ideal setter of razors, as Shelley's Alastor sought ideal beauty in the neighbourhood of Afghanistan, and in the very home of the Central ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... majority, however much we may try to protect the rights and interests of the Mahomedan minority. This is what the Mahomedans know and fear. This is what explains their insistence upon separate electorates wherever the elective principle comes into play in the composition of representative bodies. It is not merely that they have yet to learn the elementary business of electoral organization, in which the Hindus, on the contrary, have shown great proficiency, and that they have consequently fared ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... "As long as judgeships are elective offices, Maragon," he said. "Judges will play politics. Fill me in on this Mary ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett

... of blood; whereupon the Pope ordered the King to remove him from the office, but without much effect. Sharing Richard's councils, he had the same dislike to Constance and her son, and willingly crowned John, making a dangerous and disloyal speech, in which he pronounced the kingdom elective, and to be conferred on the most worthy of the royal family. He accepted the chancellorship from John, and was so fond of boasting of its riches and dignities, that he drew on himself a rebuke from Hugh ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... wished to transform it ultimately into the shape of their darling model, the English government; and in the meantime to familiarize the public mind to the change, by administering it on English principles, and in English forms. The elective interposition of the people had blown all their designs, and they found themselves and their fortresses of power and profit put in a moment in the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... emperor, and named the seven "electors" who were to vote. This simplified matters so far as the repeatedly contested elections went; but it failed to strike to the real difficulty. The Emperor remained elective and therefore weak.[15] ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... acted at various times as sheriffs of their respective counties. They were direct successors of Chaucer's Franklyn, of whom we are told, "A schirreeve had he been." With some exceptions, such as those cities which had their own elective sheriffs, and those pairs of counties which were conjoined under one sheriff, each shire had one sheriff, appointed in the following manner: every year, on November 1, a special meeting of the Privy Council was held at the exchequer, a number of the higher government ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... his party, as the embodiment of the unity of the country,[24] Jackson stamped upon the Presidency the outstanding features of its final character, thereby reviving, in the opinion of Henry Jones Ford, "the oldest political institution of the race, the elective Kingship."[25] The modern theory of Presidential power was the contribution primarily of Alexander Hamilton; the modern conception of the Presidential office was the contribution primarily of Andrew Jackson and ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... national list, alone capable of becoming the agents of executive power in the whole of France. The municipal and departmental administrations were to be chosen by authority from their respective lists. The Conservative Senate, composed of eighty members, self-elective, had the right of appointing the members of the Corps Legislatif, the Tribuneship, and the Court of Cassation. It was besides destined to the honor of choosing the Great Elector. The senators, richly endowed, might exercise no other function. The Corps Legislatif was dumb, and limited to ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... Captain—that is, a Chief not in the direct line of succession, a certain Ian Moidart, or John of Moidart, who took the title of Captain of Clanranald, with all the powers of Chief, and even Glengarry's ancestor recognised them as chiefs de facto if not de jure. The fact is, that this elective power was, in cases of insanity, imbecility, or the like, exercised by the Celtic tribes; and though Ian Moidart was no chief by birth, yet by election he became so, and transmitted his power to his ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... and hostile tribe on the Thames in 1637. Six hundred Indians perished, only two whites were killed. Connecticut was long after that comparatively safe from Indians. In 1639, the people formed themselves into a body politic by a voluntary association. The elective franchise belonged to all the members of the towns who had taken the oath of allegiance to the commonwealth. It was the most perfect democracy which had ever been organized. It rested on free labor. "No jurisdiction of the English monarch was recognized; the laws ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman

... republic, there is reason to believe that the nation would again have been soon distracted with internal divisions, and a perpetual succession of civil wars. The manners of the people were become too dissolute to be restrained by the authority of elective and temporary magistrates; and the Romans were hastening to that fatal period when general and great corruption, with its attendant debility, would render them an easy prey to ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... believe, is unequally applicable to different nations, who have made unequal advances in the establishment of property. Among the Caribbees, and the other natives of the warmer climates in America, the dignity of chieftain is hereditary, or elective, and continued for life: the unequal distribution of property creates a visible subordination. [Footnote: Wafer's Account of the Isthmus of Darien.] But among the Iroquois, and other nations of the temperate zone, the titles of magistrate and subject, of noble and mean, are as little ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... Spencer has well expressed the same idea by the Survival of the Fittest. The term "natural selection" is in some respects a bad one, as it seems to imply conscious choice; but this will be disregarded after a little familiarity. No one objects to chemists speaking of "elective affinity;" and certainly an acid has no more choice in combining with a base, than the conditions of life have in determining whether or not a new form be selected or preserved. The term is so far a good ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... anti-rhetoric The rhythm of style Rhetoric of the minor key The value of my ideas Genius and admiration My literary and artistic inclinations My library On being a gentleman Giving offence Thirst for glory Elective antipathies To a ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... ecclesiastical privilege and influence, were discovering that they had set up King Stork in place of King Log; the exactions of an Augustus were as nothing compared with the lawless pillaging of the new feudalism; and elective sovereigns, ruling by the grace of their chief subjects, were powerless for good as well as harm. The lower ranks of laymen had no better cause to be content with the new order under which the small freeholder was oppressed, the peasant ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... a delegate to represent Cecil county in the Constitutional Convention, his colleagues being Thomas P. Jones, George Earle and the late Joseph B. Pugh. He was assigned to a place upon the Committee on the Elective Franchise and had more to do with originating that section of the Constitution which provided for the passage of a registration law than any other person on the committee—probably more than any other member of the ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... the government by the council, and while the rulers may have been hereditary, the officers of the tribe were probably elective, and could be deposed for cause. We do not mean to assert that this is an exact picture of the state of government of the Mound Builders, because our knowledge on this point is not sufficient to make such a positive statement, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... "Elective affinities" hold their own royally. You shall think and feel deeply, and the first friend you meet shall tell you—quite spontaneously—of his ponderings which tally with your own, never suspecting that they are held to ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... succession has taken so strong a hold of us English in later times that it is necessary constantly to insist that our old English kingship was elective. Alfred's title was based on election; and so little was the idea of usurpation, or of any wrong done to the two infant sons of Ethelred, connected with his accession, that even the lineal descendant of one of those sons, in his chronicle of that eventful ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... dealings from scoundrels, and have ample scope for industrial enterprise, and are free to choose their private pleasures, they resign themselves to the loss of electing their rulers without great unhappiness. There are greater evils in the world than the deprivation of the elective franchise, great and glorious as is this privilege. The arbitrary rule of the emperors was fatal to political aspirations and rights, but the evils of political slavery were qualified and set off by the excellence of the civil code, and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... a number of provinces, each with the usual corps of elective officers. A governor-general appointed by the Crown of Great Britain is the chief ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... attempt to reply to it. But if it comes to naming a representative body capable of selecting the two or three thousand aspirants who have already, in imagination, seen their claims to the distinction recognised by the elective body to which has been entrusted the duty of weighing their respective merits—well then, to use a colloquial phrase, I may confidently say that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various

... first permanent settlement was made by the English at Jamestown, Va., under the charter of the London or Southern Company. This charter contained none of the elements of popular liberty, not one elective franchise, nor one of the rights of self-government; but religion was especially enjoined to be established according to the rites and doctrine of the Church of England. The infant colony suffered greatly for several years from threatened famine, ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... Elective sovereign by origin, the moment the Pope ascends the throne, he becomes absolute. Authority and honors proceed from him as from their legitimate source. Money bears his image and superscription. Monuments are inscribed ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... people undoubtedly is (1) that the public places are common property; (2) that any one may aspire to fill them; and (3) that the elevation to them is properly the direct or nearly direct result of election. The elective principle is democratic. It has been, since the beginning of the government, steadily consuming all other methods of making public officers. In most States the appointing power of the governor, which years ago was usually large, has been stripped to the uttermost. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... Goethe: the horrified squealing of prudes is not yet silent over pages of Wilhelm Meister: that high and chaste book, the Elective Affinities, still pumps up oaths from clergymen. Walpurgis has hardly ceased its uproar over Faust. Out ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler

... freedom." In 1857 he avowed himself "not in favor of" what he improperly called "negro citizenship," for the Constitution discriminates between citizens and electors. Three days before his death he declared his preference that "the elective franchise were now conferred on the very intelligent of the colored men, and on those of them who served our cause as soldiers"; but he wished it done by the States themselves, and he never harbored ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... In this state of things, and with such prospects, many sighed for a change. They lost faith in the republican form of government, as they saw it in its practical workings under the Articles of Confederation, and they earnestly desired something stronger—perhaps an elective or constitutional monarchy. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... of ratiocination really occurs in the annelid; its intelligence goes no farther, probably, than conscious determination. In the beetle, however, conscious determination is merged into intelligent ideation, for its actions in the premises are self-elective and selective. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... in Poland. And had its wisdom been listened to in former years by certain powerful and wildly ambitious lords that once great kingdom would never have exchanged its long line of hereditary native-princes for an elective monarchy—that arena of all political mischiefs.] and several of the principal nobility. The royal Stanislaus's beneficent spirit moved in unison with that of Sobieski, and a constitution was given to Poland to place her in the ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... barons in their own country, and they retained that position in England, but their holdings in both were feudal, not hereditary. When the Crown, originally elective, became hereditary, the barons sought to have their possessions governed by the same rule, to remove them from the class of TERRAREGIS (FOLC-LAND), and to convert them into chartered land. Being gifts from the monarch, he had the right ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher



Words linked to "Elective" :   optional, class, elective course, non-elective, electoral, elected, nonappointive, appointive



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