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Gentile; pagan; as, a heathen author. "The heathen philosopher." "All in gold, like heathen gods." Shak.

ormed, may prove pernicious. Shak. After the study of philosophy began in Greece, and the philosophers, disagreeing amongst themselves, had started many questions . . . because every man took what opinion he pleased, each several opinion was called a heresy; which signified no more than a private opinion, without refer…

ake gold, considered themselves followers of Hermes, and often called themselves Hermetic philosophers. A. B. Buckley.

A philosopher who treats chiefly of matter; one who adopts or teaches hylism.

ive power; the fancy. The imagination of common language -- the productive imagination of philosophers -- is nothing but the representative process plus the process to which I would give the name of the "comparative." Sir W. Hamilton. The power of the mind to decompose its conceptions, and to recombine the elements of…

; inquiry, esp. patient or thorough inquiry or examination; as, the investigations of the philosopher and the mathematician; the investigations of the judge, the moralist.

mode, supposed to correspond with the modern major scale of C. -- Ionic sect, a sect of philosophers founded by Thales of Miletus, in Ionia. Their distinguishing tenet was, that water is the original principle of all things. -- Ionic type, a kind of heavy-faced type (as that of the following line).

site order. See Composite. -- Italic school, a term given to the Pythagorean and Eleatic philosophers, from the country where their doctrines were first promulgated. -- Italic version. See Itala.

Of or pertaining to Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher; conformed or relating to any or all of the philosophical doctrines of Immanuel Kant.

of birds. I Cor. xv. 39. Diogenes was asked in a kind of scorn: What was the matter that philosophers haunted rich men, and not rich men philosophers Bacon. A kind of, something belonging to the class of; something like to; -- said loosely or slightingly. In kind, in the produce or designated commodity itself, as dist…

atinum sponge; -- named after the German chemist Döbereiner, who invented it. Called also philosopher's lamp. -- Flameless lamp, an aphlogistic lamp. -- Lamp burner, the part of a lamp where the wick is exposed and ignited. Knight. -- Lamp fount, a reservoir for oil, in a lamp. -- Lamp jack. See 2d Jack, n., 4 (l)…

uta, an imaginary flying island described in Gulliver's Travels as the home of chimerical philosophers. Hence, fanciful; preposterous; absurd in science or philosophy. "Laputan ideas." G. Eliot.

A caste of priests, philosophers, and magicians, among the ancient Persians; hence, any holy men or sages of the East. The inspired Magi from the Orient came. Sandys.

Specifically, the philosopher's stone. [Obs.]

things; of or pertaining to mechanics; mechanical; as, the mechanic arts. "These mechanic philosophers." Ray. Mechanic slaves, With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers. Shak.

rn thinkers who follow Kant in his general theory of knowledge, esp. of a group of German philosophers including F. A. Lange, H. Cohen, Paul Natorp, and others.

One of a sect of philosophers in the Middle Ages, who adopted the opinion of Roscelin, that general conceptions, or universals, exist in name only. Reid.

stem of occasional causes; -- a name given to certain theories of the Cartesian school of philosophers, as to the intervention of the First Cause, by which they account for the apparent reciprocal action of the soul and the body.

To play the philosopher; to moralize. [Obs.] Barrow.

A philosophaster; a philosopher. [R.] Carlyle.