Compline

“ Past masters in compromise and self-delusion, we had stripped ourselves of simplicity in every detail of life, and, from the cradle to the grave, seemed willingly to be hedged about with every kind of complexity. ”

“ It smoothes distinction, sweetens conversation, and makes every one in the company pleased with himself. It produces good nature and mutual benevolence, encourages the timorous, soothes the turbulent; humanizes the fierce, and distinguishes a society of civilized persons from a confusion of savages. In a word, complaisance is a virtue that blends all orders of men together in a friendly intercourse of words and actions, and is suited to that equality in human nature which every one ought to consider, so far as is consistent with the order and economy of the world. ”

“ Let our wishes and aims but become simple, and we walk steadily and surely in the light. In the complexity of our desires we were slaves; but in their simplicity we become free. Complexity strives perpetually after reputation, and is always advancing either in the direction of servility or of arrogance, according as self-esteem or the love of admiration predominate in the mind of the individual ”

“ Thus, your whole life, you, above all, who listen to me, and who considered the duplicity of your character as knowledge of the world and of the court, your whole life has been only one train of dissimulation and artifice; even your sincerest and most intimate friends have only in part known you; you were beyond the reach of the world, for you changed character, sentiment, and inclination, according to circumstances and the disposition of those to whom you wished to make yourselves agreeable. ”

“ They are, however, and they will become even more so.—But, before approaching more formidable matters and in the hope of avoiding them altogether, I should like to make an appeal, not to your spirit of conciliation, for there is no conciliation possible with you, but to your reason, to your sense of reality. ”

“ Diffidence and hope would reciprocally balance and excite each other. A continuity would be given to your being, and its progressiveness ensured. All your knowledge otherwise obtained, whether from books or conversation or experience, would find centres round which it would organise itself. And, lastly, the habit of confuting your past self, and detecting the causes and occasions of your having mistaken or overlooked the truth, will give you both a quickness and a winning kindness, resulting from sympathy, in exposing the errors of others, as if you were an alter ego, of his mistake. ”

“ How wrong the world is in connecting so closely as it does the capacity for feeling and the capacity for expression,—in thinking that capacity for the one implies capacity for the other, or incapacity for the one incapacity also for the other ”

“ And that is what I want you to think about once in a while after you get out into the world and begin to be absorbed in whatever is going to absorb you—the sense of proportion, and the idea of interdependence. Avoid the blind spot. Think of the other fellow's point of view. Don't strain at life, for living and all that the term connotes is, after all, a natural, normal process. ”

“ Granted that consistency is a jewel—are there not better things than jewels, especially if it be a man hungers and thirsts? Had they not better—and for the enlarging of their hearts—be mistaken? Yet, I have never heard that one of them ever said, "Am I right, am I wrong?" They persist stubbornly in their opinions. ”

“ And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
And until one and all shall delight us, and we them. ”

“ And how he sets my brain going when he says, because there is imperfection, there must be perfection; completeness must come of incompleteness; failure is an evidence of triumph for the fulness of the days. Yes, discord is, that harmony may be; pain destroys, that health may renew; perhaps I am deaf and blind that others likewise afflicted may see and hear with a more perfect sense! ”

“ Supposing that I had been made a fool of by the compact into which you entered with Miss Craven, who would have been to blame? Was there ever a more shameful compact entered into by a clever man and a clever woman to make a victim of a girl who believed that the world was overflowing with sincerity? ”

“ In speaking of arguments I mentioned a kind of similitude which, as an ornament to a discourse, contributes to make it sublime, florid, pleasing, and admirable. For the more far-fetched a similitude is, the more new and unexpected it will appear. Some may be thought commonplace, yet will avail much for enforcing belief; as, "As a piece of ground becomes better and more fertile by cultivation, so does the mind by good institutions." ”

“ And it is a constant law of human nature, that complex sentiments, such as the one here spoken of possess far more force than belongs to the sum of the elements of which they are composed, when existing apart. ”

“ And by what scale do you measure, so as to form a correct decision—is your standard of your own merit so accurately settled, that you can instantly perceive truth from flattery, appropriating just so much of a compliment as you deserve, and rejecting the rest. ”

“ Relation, then, to our topic or interest is constantly felt in the fringe, and particularly the relation of harmony and discord, of furtherance or hindrance of the topic. When the sense of furtherance is there, we are 'all right;' with the sense of hindrance we are dissatisfied and perplexed, and cast about us for other thoughts. ”

“ In tranquil moods and peaceable times we are quite practical; facts only, and cool common sense, are then in fashion. But let the winds of passion swell, and straightway men begin to generalize, to connect by remotest analogies, to express the most universal positions of reason in the most glowing figures of fancy; in short, to feel particular truths and mere facts as poor, cold, narrow, and incommensurate with their feelings."—Statesman's Manual, p. ”

“ It is essential to anything worth calling character that one should be able to predict in what way it will act under given circumstances—to feel certain, 'This man will do nothing small or mean,' 'That one could never act dishonestly, or speak deceitfully.' But smaller natures are more complex. ”

“ You have been compelled to think; you have been compelled to put more than your bodily strength into what you have been doing. You could not have made the magnificent exhibition of our work which you have made if you had not been compelled to do original thinking and execution. ”

“ In order, therefore, to escape the latter of these alternatives, we will do our best to embrace and comply with the former of them. Such being our reasons, we now nail our colours to the mast, and prepare ourselves for a good deal of polemical discussion on the subject of "the human mind." ”

“ This presupposes that some meaning has been found for the word "cause"—a point to which I shall return later. What I want to make clear at present is that compulsion is a very complex notion, involving thwarted desire. So long as a person does what he wishes to do, there is no compulsion, however much his wishes may be calculable by the help of earlier events. And where desire does not come in, there can be no question of compulsion. Hence it is, in general, misleading to regard the cause as compelling the effect. ”

“ As in such groupings of instances the different components are mutually cancelled to form the abstract idea, so in groupings of the emotions, there takes place a mutual cancelling of diverse components; the common component is made relatively appreciable, and becomes an abstract feeling. That which the moral feelings—the feelings that prompt honesty, truthfulness, etc.—have in common, is complexity and re-representative character. ”

“ He rises, and speaks out all his new mind, to the perplexity of the whole assembly, every man of whom bends to hear every syllable he says; perplexity which gives way to dismay on the one hand and triumph on the other. ”

“ Shall I be so uncivil as to hold back?"
"It might not displease her if you did."
"Her?"
"Your Mrs. Phillips. If I may risk a guess——"
"You may not. Your precious 'psychology' can wait. Don't be in such a damned hurry to use it." ”

“ Moreover, he constantly meets with criticism from many quarters, and even if it is not openly expressed, he can tell what each person thinks by watching the expression and eyes of his hearers, or by a nod, a motion of the hand, a murmur, or dead silence. All these things are tolerably clear indications which enable one to distinguish judgment from complaisance. ”

“ All poetry I ordain and proclaim to be composition in meter; the listeners of which are affected by passionate trepidation and compassionate perturbation and likewise tearful lamentation, since through discourse the soul suffers, as if its own, the felicity and infelicity of property and person of others. ”

“ If you determine to conform yourselves, as far as in you lies, to the model presented for your imitation by Him who said—"Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as I am perfect," you will not disregard the cultivation of a ready sympathy with the sufferings and trials of your fellow beings. ”

“ It may still, indeed, be said with truth, that the different feelings,—the states or affections of mind which we term complex,—are absolutely simple and indivisible, as much as the feelings or affections of mind which we term simple. ”

“ The perplexity, confusion, and uneasiness, which we labour under in abstruse inquiries, philosophical, moral, and religious, ought, perhaps, to be referred to this head. Also the secondary perplexity which arises from our being subject to this perplexity, confusion, and uneasiness. ”

“ It is obvious that in everyday life when by arguments, persuasion, suggestion, punishment, exhortation, or prayer we change the viewpoint of a person, we do so by building up complexes which shall act as settings and give new meanings to his ideas. I 369may add, if we wish to sway him to carry this new viewpoint to fulfilment through action we introduce into the complex an emotion which by the driving force of its impulses shall carry the ideas to practical fruition. ”

“ Tones of the human mind may be different, but they should be Chord and discord concordant in order to blend properly. Unselfish ambition, noble life-motives, and purity, — these constituents of thought, mingling, constitute individually and collectively true happiness, strength, and permanence. ”

“ Then does not the command to love our neighbor make us even responsible for the expressions our faces wear? In relation to the plea for recreation and amusement, it can readily be shown how these may be made subservient to a true and high cultivation of the understanding. While few are slow to admit our accountability in all that relates to the cultivation of the Affections, many seem to suppose, that in what relates to the Understanding we may, without wrong, follow our own inclinations. ”

“ They are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is more or less bald and disjointed. Yet these commonplace people—many of them—bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime prompting to do the painful right ”

“ The actions which are classed under the general appellation of marriage, education, friendship, &c., are perpetually going on, and to a superficial glance, are similar one to the other.
But, if we would see the truth of things, they must be stripped of this fallacious appearance of uniformity. In truth, no one action has, when considered in its whole extent, any essential resemblance with any other. ”

“ Perhaps she had never before seen his face in an hour of weariness and relaxation—when the true character, the dominating and essential trait or traits, shows nakedly upon the surface, making the weak man or woman look pitiful, the strong man or woman formidable. ”

“ I know the kind of life you've mapped out for yourself—as far as women of your class map out anything. It's the only kind of life possible to you. And it's of a kind with which I could, and would, have nothing to do. ”

“ It would indeed be strange and lamentable if the divorce between feeling and conviction—to adopt a popular classification—was not simply incidental to change, but was also an inexpugnable part of fundamental aspects of human life. ”

“ The single thing that was clear in complications was that, whatever happened, one was to behave as a gentleman—to which was added indeed the perhaps slightly less shining truth that complications might sometimes have their tedium beguiled by a study of the question of how a gentleman would behave. ”

“ Further, righteousness, the absolute conformity of character and act to the standard in the will of God, and faithfulness, the inflexible constancy, which makes a character consistent with itself, and so reliable, are represented by a striking figure as being twined together to make the girdle, which holds the vestments in place, and girds up the whole frame for effort. ”

“ Therefore we regard our craving with complacence, we feel the great aching of the Want, and we say, with conviction, “I know I exist, I know I am I, because I feel the divine discontent which is personal to me, and eternal, and present always in me.” ”

“ A girl properly reared will naturally be drawn to a man complementary to her in character—not "opposite," as is so often said. Opposition implies antagonism, which would be the ruin of home life. The term complementary implies similarity in the main elements of character with adaptable differences. ”

“ Thus, entering into sympathy with their situations and states, we reproduce them in ourselves. In our tones, attitudes, gestures, and expressions of countenance, we unconsciously look, act, and seem like them. ”

“ The hardened Big-ender would be impervious to the most imposing suggestions from a Little-endian source, but would accept the saddest nonsense from a journal of his own party. We see here an active desire to accept propositions that accord with a powerful complex, and as complexes become more separated from the influence of reason so this desire increases. ”