subtile

Recent scientific discoveries have conferred upon man new powers of investigation, whereby nature has been made to reveal secrets so subtile that they never had been dreamt of before in philosophy.

From Scientific American ● Jan. 13, 2013

At Paris the Universe is seen, compos’d of Vortices of subtile Matter; but nothing like it is seen in London.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

The subtile philosophy of the Greeks was now brought into contact with the sublime but corrupted theology of the Persians, and the mysticism of India secretly mingled itself with the mass of knowledge.

From Secret Societies of the Middle Ages by Thomas Keightley

Man's daintiest care, & caution cannot spy The subtile point of his coy destiny, Wch way it threats.

From The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume I (of 2) by Richard Crashaw

Whence comes this man with his new poetry, which confounds the critics? and that man with his subtile wit borrowed from no school?

From A Breeze from the Woods, 2nd Ed. by William Chauncey Bartlett

Gradually he wove a drama round it; line by line it took shape for a book that was to be subtiler, finer and more sincere than anything that he had ever written.

From The Education of Eric Lane by Stephen McKenna

That cause of motion he makes the Materia Subtilis; and the finer or subtiler that is, the better and fitter he conceives it to be to preserve Motion.

From Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 Giving some Accompt of the present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many considerable parts of the World by Henry Oldenburg

Something keener than philosophy, subtiler than Epicurus, pricked Fred, as Minnie vanished into the cloud of snowflakes.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 18, April, 1859 by Various

Is not the Heat of the warm Room convey'd through the Vacuum by the Vibrations of a much subtiler Medium than Air, which after the Air was drawn out remained in the Vacuum?

From Opticks or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Sir Isaac Newton

What if, through communication with subtiler organisms than my own, I could reach at a single bound the goal, which perhaps a life of agonizing mental toil would never enable me to attain?

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 03, January, 1858 by Various

As for me, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now only the subtilest imaginable essences, which would not stain the morning sky.

From A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Henry David Thoreau

Of the most noysom poyson that euer was mingled with the subtilest druggs that euer were.

From The Palace of Pleasure Volume 3 by William Painter

She took yellow honeysuckles from a vase of massed amethyst and began to weave them in her yellow hair,—humming a tune, the while, that was full of the subtilest curves of sound.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 67, May, 1863 by Various

This is a truth that takes all the sting out of Lord Bacon's observation that "against Atheists the very savages take part with the very subtilest philosophers."

From Flowers of Freethought (Second Series) by G. W. (George William) Foote

The notion of nonentity may thus be called the parent of the philosophic craving in its subtilest and profoundest sense.

From The Will to Believe : and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James