William Hale White

“ What we have to do is to accept the facts and wait. We must take care not to deny beauty and love because we are forced also to admit ugliness and hatred. Let us yield ourselves up utterly to the magnificence and tenderness of the sunrise, though the East End of London lies over the horizon. That very same Power, and it is no other, which blasts a country with the cholera or drives the best of us to madness has put the smile in a child’s face and is the parent of Love. ”

“ In genuine freedom Spinoza rejoices. “The doctrine is of service in so far as it teaches us that we do everything by the will of God alone, and that we are partakers of the divine nature in proportion as our actions become more and more perfect and we more and more understand God. This doctrine, therefore, besides giving repose in every way to the soul, has also this advantage, that it teaches us in what our highest happiness or blessedness consists, namely, in the knowledge of God alone, by which we are drawn to do those things only which love and piety persuade.” ”

“ In these latter days of anarchy and tumult, when there is no gospel of faith or morals, when democracy seems bent on falsifying every prediction of earlier democratic enthusiasts by developing worse dangers to liberty than any which our forefathers had to encounter, and when the misery of cities is so great, it appears absurd, not to say wrong, that we should sit still and read books. I am ashamed when I go into my own little room and open Milton or Shakespeare after looking at a newspaper or walking through the streets of London. ”

“ How can I leave the home to which I was brought as a bride? how can I endure the thought that strangers are in our room, or in that other room where Sophy lay? Mr. Maxwell would think it sacrilege to turn his church into an inn, and it is a worse sacrilege to me to permit the profanation of the sanctuary which has been consecrated by Love and Death. I do not know what might happen to me if I were to leave. I have been what I am through shadowy nothings which other people despise. ”

“ I myself, my dears, have generally found that to resist the devil is not difficult if I am quite certain that the creature before me is the devil, but it does tax my wits sometimes to find out if he is really the enemy or not. When Apollyon met Christian he was not in doubt for an instant, for the monster was hideous to behold: he had scales like a fish, wings like a dragon, feet like a bear, out of his belly came fire and smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a lion. ”

“ He who wishes to avenge injuries by hating in return does indeed live miserably. But he who, on the contrary, strives to drive out hatred by love, fights joyfully and confidently, with equal ease resisting one man or a number of men, and needing scarcely any assistance from fortune. Those whom he conquers yield gladly, not from defect of strength, but from an increase of it.” [45a]
“Joy is the passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection: sorrow, on the other hand, is the passion by which it passes to a less perfection.” ”

“ The Doctor’s countenance showed no surprise, for no news could have had any power over the emotion which mastered him. The long, slow years were fulfilled. Long and slow and the fulfilment late, but the joy it brought was the greater. Youthful passion is sweet, but it is not sweeter than the discovery when we begin to count the years which are left to us, and to fear there will be nothing in them better than in those which preceded them that for us also love is reserved.
Mrs. Leighton was obliged to go back to her work in the afternoon, but she gave notice that night to leave in a week. ”

“ It is health-giving to be dealt with as if we were healthy, and the man who imagines his wits are failing becomes stronger and sounder by being entrusted with a difficult problem than by all the assurances of a doctor.
They are poor creatures who are always craving for pity. If we are sick, let us prefer conversation upon any subject rather than upon ourselves. Let it turn on matters that lie outside the dark chamber, upon the last new discovery, or the last new idea. So shall we seem still to be linked to the living world. By perpetually asking for sympathy an end is put to real friendship. ”

“ I admit the greatness of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but do tell me, my dear godfather, whether in this nineteenth century, when scores of urgent social problems are pressing for solution, our young people ought to give themselves up to a study of ancient legends? What, however, are Horace, Catullus, and Ovid compared with Homer? Much in them is pernicious, and there is hardly anything in them which helps us to live. Besides, we have surely enough in Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, to say nothing of the poets of this century, to satisfy the imagination of anybody. ”

“ To do more is not only to distrust it, but to distrust that in my friend which is my best ally, and will more surely assist me than all my vehemence. Sometimes—nay, often—it is better to say nothing, for there is a constant tendency in Nature towards rectification, and her quiet protest and persuasiveness are hindered by personal interference. If anybody very dear to me were to fall into any heresy of belief or of conduct, I am not sure that I ought to rebuke him, and that he would not sooner be converted by observing my silent respect for him than by preaching to him. ”

“ It is so disappointing in talking to myself or to others to stop short of generalisation and to be obliged to confess that sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. I bless my stars that I am not a politician or a newspaper writer. When I was young these great matters, at least in our village, were not such common property as they are now. A man, even if he was a scholar, thought he had done his duty by living an honest and peaceable life. He was justified if he was kind to his neighbours and amused himself with his bees and flowers. ”

“ God grant I may die suddenly and not linger in imbecility. So much of me is dead that what is left is not worth preserving. Nearly everything I have done all my life has been done for love. I shall now have to act for duty’s sake. It is an entire reconstruction of myself, the insertion of a new motive. I do not much believe in duty, nor, if I read my New Testament aright, did the Apostle Paul. For Jesus he would do anything. ”

“ It is the first south-westerly gale of the autumn. Its violence is increasing every minute, although the rain has ceased for awhile. For weeks sky and sea have been beautiful, but they have been tame. Now for some unknown reason there is a complete change, and all the strength of nature is awake. It is refreshing to be once more brought face to face with her tremendous power, and to be reminded of the mystery of its going and coming. ”

“ Let a man once believe in that God of infinite attributes of which thought and extension are those by which He manifests Himself to us; let him see that the opposition between thought and matter is fictitious; that his mind “is a part of the infinite intellect of God”; that he is not a mere transient, outside interpreter of the universe, but himself the soul or law, which is the universe, and he will feel a relationship with infinity which will emancipate him.
It is not true that in Spinoza’s God there is so little that is positive that it is not worth preserving. ”

“ In that minute he saw her as she had not been seen by anybody in Langborough. To Mrs. Bingham and her friends Mrs. Fairfax was the substratum of a body and skirt, with the inestimable advantage over a substratum of cane and padding that a scandalous history of it could be invented and believed. To Langborough men, married and single, she was a member of “the sex,” as women were called in those days, who possessed in a remarkable degree the power of exciting that quivering and warmth we have already observed. ”

“ The Devil is not an invention of priests for priestly purposes, nor is he merely a hypothesis to account for facts, but he has been forced upon us in order that we may be able to deal with them. Unless we act as though there were an enemy to be resisted and chained, if we fritter away differences of kind into differences of degree, we shall make poor work of life. Spinoza himself assumes that other commands than God’s may be given to us, but that we are unhesitatingly to obey His and His only. ”

“ As the day advances, masses of huge, heavy clouds appear. They are well defined at the edges, and their intricate folds and depths are brilliantly illuminated. The infinitude of the sky is not so impressive when it is quite clear as when it contains and supports great clouds, and large blue spaces are seen between them. On the hillsides the fields here and there are yellow and the corn is in sheaves. The birds are mostly dumb, the glory of the furze and broom has passed, but the heather is in flower. ”

“ The sorrow of life is the rigidity of the material universe in which we are placed. We are bound by physical laws, and there is a constant pressure of matter-of-fact evidence to prove that we are nothing but common and cheap products of the earth to which in a few moments or years we return. Spinoza’s chief aim is to free us from this sorrow, and to free us from it by thinking. The emphasis on this word is important. He continually insists that a thing is not unreal because we cannot imagine it. ”

“ A constant under-running accompaniment is just audible in the hum of innumerable insects and the sharp buzz of flies darting past the ear. Only those who live in the open air and watch the fields and sea from hour to hour and day to day know what they are and what they mean. The chance visitor, or he who looks now and then, never understands them. While I have lain here, the clouds have risen, have become more aërial, and more suffused with light; the horizon has become better defined, and the yellow shingle beach is visible to its extremest point clasping the bay in its arms. ”

“ There has never been any reformation as yet without dogma and supernaturalism. Ordinary people acknowledge no real reasons for virtue except heaven and hell-fire. When heaven and hell-fire cease to persuade, custom for a while is partly efficacious, but its strength soon decays. Some good men, knowing the uselessness of rational means to convert or to sustain their fellows, have clung to dogma with hysterical energy, but without any genuine faith in it. They have failed, for dogma cannot be successful unless it be the inevitable expression of the inward conviction. ”

“ We do not understand how moral it is to yield unreservedly to enthusiasm, to the impression which great objects would fain make upon us, and to embody that impression in worthy language. It is rare to meet now even with young people who will abandon themselves to a heroic emotion, or who, if they really feel it, do not try to belittle it in expression. Byron’s poetry, above most, tempts and almost compels surrender to that which is beyond the commonplace self. ”

“ Possibly it is because religion is now a matter of belief in certain propositions; but, whatever the cause may be, we do not train ourselves day by day to become better as we train ourselves to learn languages or science. To return from this parenthesis, we say that when no applause nor even recognition is expected, to proceed steadily and alone for its own sake in the work of saving the soul is truer heroism than that which leads a martyr cheerfully to the stake.
Faith is at its best when we have to wrestle with despair, not only of ourselves but of the Universe ”

“ Spinoza denies the freedom commonly assigned to the will, or perhaps it is more correct to say he denies that it is intelligible. The will is determined by the intellect. The idea of the triangle involves the affirmation or volition that its three angles are equal to two right angles. If we understand what a triangle is we are not “free” to believe that it contains more or less than two right angles, nor to act as if it contained more or less than two. The only real freedom of the mind is obedience to the reason, and the mind is enslaved when it is under the dominion of the passions. ”

“ I cannot take up a few propositions, bind them into faggots, and say, “This is theology, and that is metaphysics.” There is much “discourse of God” in a May blossom, and my admiration of it is “beyond nature,” but I am not sure upon this latter point, for I do not know in the least what φυσις or Nature is. We love justice and generosity, and hate injustice and meanness, but the origin of virtue, the life of the soul, is as much beyond me as the origin of life in a plant or animal, and I do not bother myself with trying to find it out. ”

“ Fright is often prior to an object; that is to say, the fright comes first and something is invented or discovered to account for it. There are certain states of body and mind which are productive of objectless fright, and the most ridiculous thing in the world is able to provoke it to activity. It is perhaps not too much to say that any calamity the moment it is apprehended by the reason alone loses nearly all its power to disturb and unfix us. The conclusions which are so alarming are not those of the reason, but, to use Spinoza’s words, of the “affects.” ”

“ Langborough was not only greatly moved by this intelligence, but was much perplexed. Miss Tarrant’s estimate of the Doctor was once more reversed. She was decidedly of opinion that the marriage was a scandal. A woman who had consented to link herself with such a reprobate as the convict must have been from the beginning could not herself have possessed any reputation. Living apart, too, was next door to divorce, and who could associate with a creature who had been divorced? No doubt she was physically seductive, and the doctor had fallen a victim to her snares. ”

“ A little way further to the left is Venus, and still further down is Mercury, rare apparition, just perceptible where the deep blue of the night is yielding to the green which foretells the sun. The east grows lighter; the birds begin to stir in the bushes, and the cry of a gull rises from the base of the cliff. The sea becomes responsive, and in a moment is overspread with continually changing colour, partly that of the heavens above it and partly self-contributed. ”

“ True belief is rare and difficult. There is no security that the fictitious beliefs which have been obtained by no genuine mental process, that is to say, are not vitally held, may not be discarded for those which are exactly contrary. We flatter ourselves that we have secured a method and freedom of thought which will not permit us to be the victims of the absurdities of the Middle Ages, but, in fact, there is no solid obstacle to our conversion to some new grotesque religion more miraculous than Roman Catholicism. ”