“It's all right—I've got him. He's tripped over a root.”
“Serve him glad,” said Lord Peter viciously, straightening his back.
One would think “serve him right” would be the phrase…
“I say, I don't think the human frame is very thoughtfully constructed for this sleuth-hound business.
The sleuth hound (from Old Norse 'slóð' - track or trail + 'hound') was a breed of dog. Broadly, it was a Scottish term for what in England was called the bloodhound, although it seems that there were slight differences between them. It was also referred to as a 'slough dog', (or 'slewe dogge'), and a 'slow hound', the first word probably representing a mispronuciation of 'slough' rather than a reference to the speed of the hound.
The sleuth hound first appears in poems about the Scottish patriots Robert the Bruce and William Wallace. These poems depict their heroes tracked by sleuth hounds. Bruce escapes by crossing water, and Wallace by killing one of his party, whom he suspects of treachery, and leaving the corpse to distract the hound. The poems are romances, not histories, but there is no implausibility about the use of sleuth hounds. John Barbour, who wrote The Bruce, was born before his hero died, and the year in which the Bruce was supposedly pursued was 1307. Thus we can be sure that the inclusion of the sleuth hound in the story was no anachronism, hence that the dogs existed in Scotland as early as c.1300, and that their use as man-trailers was fully established.
If one could go on all-fours, or had eyes in one's knees, it would be a lot more practical.”
“There are many difficulties inherent in a teleological view of creation,” said Parker placidly. “Ah! here we are at the park palings.”
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose" (not to be confused with τῆλε, “at a distance, far from”). The adjective "teleological" has a broader usage, for example in discussions where particular ethical theories or types of computer programs are sometimes described as teleological because they involve aiming at goals.
Teleology was explored by Plato and Aristotle, by Saint Anselm around 1000 AD, and later by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment. It was fundamental to the speculative philosophy of Hegel.
A thing, process or action is teleological when it is for the sake of an end, i.e., a telos or final cause. In general it may be said that there are two types of final causes, which may be called intrinsic finality and extrinsic finality.[1]
A thing or action has an extrinsic finality when it is for the sake of something external to itself. In a way, people exhibit extrinsic finality when they seek the happiness of a child. If the external thing had not existed that action would not display finality.
A thing or action has an intrinsic finality when it is for none other than its own sake. For example, one might try to be happy simply for the sake of being happy, and not for the sake of anything outside of that.
In modern science teleological explanations tend to be deliberately avoided since the Novum Organum of Francis Bacon, because whether they are true or false is argued to be beyond the ability of human perception and understanding to judge.
Some disciplines, in particular within evolutionary biology, are still prone to use language that appears teleological when they describe natural tendencies towards certain end conditions; but these arguments can always be rephrased in non-teleological forms.
The word pale means two things. It can refer to one’s skin color – she was pale.
Or it can refer to a picket fence, as in this case. The word pale derives ultimately from the Latin word palus, meaning stake, specifically a stake used to support a fence. From this came the figurative meaning of boundary and eventually the phrase beyond the pale, as something outside the boundary. Also derived from the "boundary" concept was the idea of a pale as an area within which local laws were valid. As well as the Pale in Ireland, the term was applied to various other English colonial settlements. In addition, the term Pale of Settlement was applied to the area in the west of Imperial Russia where Jews were permitted to reside.
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