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Literary notes about Subservient (AI summary)

The term “subservient” is frequently employed across literary works to denote a state of being secondary or obedient to a higher purpose, authority, or natural order. It is used to indicate a relationship in which one element is deliberately rendered subordinate to serve another; for instance, Pascal portrays human blindness as fulfilling a divine design [1], while Hobbes and Gibbon illustrate intellectual or structural elements being bound to immutable truths or the conveniences of spectatorship [2][3]. Additionally, writers like Hamilton stress the dangers of individual impulses becoming excessively subordinate to societal constructs [4], and others extend the term to describe social or emotional dynamics, as when personal affection is depicted as subordinating practical concerns [5]. Across these varied contexts, “subservient” encapsulates the notion of an element folded into a larger, often more elevated, framework.
  1. 576 God has made the blindness of this people subservient to the good of the elect.
    — from Pascal's Pensées by Blaise Pascal
  2. And for Geometry, till of very late times it had no place at all; as being subservient to nothing but rigide Truth.
    — from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
  3. 94 Nothing was omitted, which, in any respect, could be subservient to the convenience and pleasure of the spectators.
    — from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
  4. It is observed that select corps may be formed, composed of the young and ardent, who may be rendered subservient to the views of arbitrary power.
    — from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and James Madison
  5. She attended to all the most trivial details in person, making them all subservient to her love.
    — from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo by Juliette Drouet and Louis Guimbaud

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