central principle

Seamus Heaney, among many other things, embodied that central principle: his comic sense was gleefully sharp, but it was not mean.

What, then, is this central principle which is at the root of all things?

But in "Moods" the marriage question is not stated strongly; it does not reach down to this central principle.

A like remark applies to David Hume, of whose philosophy the central principle is the denial of the relation of cause and effect.

I have never questioned what I believed to be the central principle of the reform in which you are engaged.

All the details of the system are seen to flow from the one central principle of his thought, the theory of Ideas.