Ardashir I., moreover, and his successors endeavoured to establish the validity of the royal will by absorbing the vassal states and instituting a firmer organization.
Cromwell's government seemed now established on the firmer footing of law and national approval, he himself obtaining the powers though not the title of a constitutional monarch, with a permanent revenue of £1,300,000 for the ordinary expenses of the administration, the command of the forces, the right to nominate his successor and, subject to the approval of parliament, the members of the council and of the new second chamber now established, while at the same time the freedom of parliament was guaranteed in its elections.
As their tenure of power grew firmer, they advanced dynastic claims, assumed titles, and took the style of petty sovereigns.
We are on firmer ground when simply describing the phenomena of primitive religion than when seeking to account for these in terms of natural law - in whatever sense the conception of natural law be applicable to the facts of the mental life of man.
Erasmus Darwin (Zoonomia, 17 94), though a zealous evolutionist, can hardly be said to have made any real advance on his predecessors; and, notwithstanding the fact that Goethe had the advantage of a wide knowledge of morphological facts, and a true insight into their signification, while he threw all the power of a great poet into the expression of his conceptions, it may be questioned whether he supplied the doctrine of evolution with a firmer scientific basis than it already possessed.