Thirty-Nine Articles

“ The respect for the Sixties was an article of faith, a dogma of dogmas in the Nineties. If the now younger generation write articles and books about the Nineties—those amazing documents in which I scarcely recognise an age I thought I knew by heart—we were still more zealous in writing books about the Sixties. ”

“ Hence it is, that when any one amongst them has dreamed of a certain number, commonly a good many, twenty, thirty, or perhaps a thousand, that they can conjure when they please. For these, like the guardian genii in the fables, keep always near them, and protect them from too much injury from the evil machinations of some of the mischievous ones. ”

“ In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was—What sort of man shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks oneself this question; at thirty-nine we say, “I wish Fate hadn’t made me this sort of man.” ”

“ I have often thought that what some people call the 'philosophy of the nineteenth century,' is nothing after all but the unconscious application of transcendental analysis to the everyday affairs of life. ”

“ We believe certain things at twenty, others at thirty, others at forty, and so on. The beliefs of twenty are true at twenty, we must not try them by the tests of thirty, nor must we try those of thirty by the tests of forty or fifty. ”

“ I want to know what men thought and did in the thirteenth century, not out of any dilettante or idle antiquarian's curiosity, but because the thirteenth century is at the root of what men think and do in the nineteenth. ”

“ Now who will hesitate to ascribe this entire authority to the soul, from the name of which the whole man has received his own designation in common phraseology? How many souls, says the rich man, do I maintain? ”

“ To him nowhere in nature was there any serene and directive and thoughtful conception which brought about, and was still bringing about continually, all the marvels of structure and form and movement that so arrest and startle our intelligence at every turn. ”

“ It is the century of strength of will, as also that of strong passion. The eighteenth century is dominated by woman, it is gushing, spiritual, and flat; but with intellect at the service of aspirations and of the heart, it is a libertine in the pleasures of intellect, undermining all authorities ”

“ The principle of the Third Age,—that Age which we have undertaken to describe,—is now sufficiently apparent:—this, namely,—to accept nothing whatever but that which it understands. The Comprehensible is its highest Idea;—it is thus Scientific in its form ”

“ But we do not forget that this good fortune we owe to our weakness, and that the natural superiority remains with our adversaries. And some day, perhaps, the nature of God may be as well known as the nature of a cone or a triangle ”

“ In spite of these differences, however, we discover fundamental similarities in human nature, some impulses being common to all mankind, and observe, under like conditions, a regularity of action. And this is all that is meant by embracing phenomena under general terms, and referring to the uniformity of nature. When the writer denies the reign of law in the universe, and in the same breath speaks of the inexorable law of personality, it is difficult to know whether to take him seriously or not. ”

“ Although this was not a world in which society as yet deigned to move, it was entirely conceivable that at a later period it might, and betimes it was crowded with people smart enough and more agreeable in the main than the hardy, strident members of the so-called really inner circles. ”

“ It is, however, very probably the last thing that we would think of attributing to these generations of the Thirteenth Century, who are usually said very frankly to have been wrapped up in their own notions, to have been only too ready to accept things on authority rather than by their own powers of observation and judgment, and to have been clingers to the past rather than lookers to the present and the future. ”

“ The motto of the present-day world is, ‘What will people think?’ People!” snorted Trix wrathfully, warming to her theme, “what people? And is their opinion worth twopence halfpenny? Fancy them associating with St. ”

“ If the number of the Trinity also offends you, as if it were not connected in the simple Unity, I ask you how it is possible for a Being who is merely and absolutely One and Singular, to speak in plural phrase, saying, “Let us make man in our own image, and after our own likeness;” ”

“ The moment it takes an original turn, that is to say from the end of the thirteenth century, it furnishes ample testimony to the practical, civic and bourgeois spirit, with abundant evidences of pious fervor ”

“ To most people it will appear at once that if the most important chapter of Thirteenth Century accomplishment is to be found in the Book of its Deeds and the deeds are to be judged according to the standard just given of education and liberty, then there will be no need to seek further, since these are words for which it is supposed that there is no actual equivalent in human life and history for at least several centuries after the close of the Thirteenth. ”

“ Neither do we discover in Dr Thirlwall the faculty, existing at least in any eminent degree, of realising to himself, or vividly representing to others, the intellectual condition of a nascent people, far removed from ourselves in habits of thought, and trained under quite different institutions, religious and political. ”

“ Yes, the sheer grace of the seeking male, his shallow and heartless courtesy, the lustre of his eye and skin, a certain something of shabby-grand manner, such as she had never known in the particularly narrow world in which she moved, was sufficient to arrest and fix her interest. ”

“ Now symbolical numbers rest on the symbolical notion of multitude. Symbolically we may, therefore, speak of numbers whose actual ideation transcends the limits of human powers. Signs or names are employed to designate groups that can be collectively combined. ”

“ He believed that millions of men, especially those about him were doing the best they could under the very severe conditions which life offered. He objected to the idle, the too dull the swindlers and thieves as well as the officiously puritanic or dogmatic. ”

“ A forty-niner's a forty-niner, and a man that came in fifty—well, he might as well have come in sixty or seventy, or even in the twentieth century. It's the forty-niner that counts in this community." He drew himself up proudly. Then plunging his hand deep into his pocket, drew out a nugget. ”

“ To him the most noteworthy characteristic of the human race was that it was strangely chemic, being anything or nothing, as the hour and the condition afforded. In his leisure moments—those free from practical calculation, which were not many—he often speculated as to what life really was. ”

“ In any case, there are those of us who in the vortical change of the social order through which we are whirling, feel a desire to orient ourselves through an objective interest in letters among the embattled purposes and policies which are now gripped in a final test of strength. ”

“ It has also seemed to me that in an age of transition in opinions, there may be somewhat both of interest and of benefit in noting the successive phases of any mind which was always pressing forward, equally ready to learn and to unlearn either from its own thoughts or from those of others. ”

“ It has been one of my commonest experiences, and one of the most interesting to me, to note that nearly all of my keenest experiences intellectually, my most gorgeous rapprochements and swiftest developments mentally, have been by, to, and through men, not women, although there have been several exceptions to this. ”

“ Big minds were ruling little ones, big thoughts superseding little ones. The will to power was in all individuals above the grade of amœba, and even there. All of us were mouthing one set of ideas and acting according to a set of instincts entirely opposed to our so called ideas. ”

“ He knew that I had been thrown among great men all my life, and that, owing to my high social position and fine education, I would be peculiarly fitted to write you in a way that would not call forth disagreeable remarks, and so he has given me the points and I have arranged them for you. ”

“ Whichever groups of sensations within a soul awaken most readily, begin to speak, and give the word of command—these decide as to the general order of rank of its values, and determine ultimately its list of desirable things. ”

“ Personally I have found it not only possible, but by a curious and entirely fortuitous combination of circumstances almost affectionately unavoidable, to hold three, four—even as many as five and six—women in regard or the emotional compass of myself, at one and the same time, not all to the same degree, perhaps, or in the same way, but each for certain qualities which the others do not possess. ”

“ I am the centre of the world," springs up with full force when we are suddenly overtaken by same. We feel dazed and, as it were, standing in the midst of a surge, dazzled by one great piercing eye, which from all sides gazes down upon us and looks straight through and through us. ”

“ Such an existence may perhaps require a philosophical glorification and justification more than any other: pleasurable feelings must be valued by some sort of infallible tribunal, as altogether of inferior rank ”

“ Thyrsis had now tried all varieties of the great and successful of the earth—the publishers and editors and authors, the college professors and clergymen, the statesmen and capitalists and philanthropists. ”

“ I prided myself on knowing the world, and its shams. But no woman, I've concluded, can be sure of any man's character until she's seen and studied him for half a lifetime, and then, like the poor old philosopher in Pisgah Sights, the light of wisdom dawns on her only when they start lettering her tombstone.
"I'm trying to make you understand," explained Big Ben, in his grim and ponderous meekness. ”

“ Thérèse had not reached the age of thirty-five without learning that life presents many insurmountable obstacles which must be accepted, whether with the callousness of philosophy, the revolt of weakness or the dignity of self-respect. ”

“ The reason for the presence of so many people rather above than under the average in intellect lay, as I came to believe later, in their ability or that of some one connected with them to sincerely appreciate or to at least be amused and benefited by the somewhat different theory of physical repair which the lord of the manor had invented, or for which at least he had become famous. ”

“ A little historical and philological schooling, together with an inborn and delicate sense regarding psychological questions, changed my problem in a very short time into that other one: under what circumstances and conditions did man invent the valuations good and evil? ”

“ All so-called good men were not necessarily good, I was beginning to suspect, and all bad men not hopelessly bad. There were things in cities and towns which, as I was coming to see, did not accord with the theories of the particular realm from which I had sprung and seemed to indicate another kind of human being, different from the type among which I had been raised. ”

“ But the absence of passion, since it checks enthusiasm in the reader, is a fatal want in any historian. The case before us is a remarkable instance. Both the learning and fairness of Thirlwall are conspicuous. It is difficult for any competent reader to avoid wondering at his caution in receiving doubtful evidence, and his acuteness in modestly suggesting solutions which have since been proved by further evidence. ”

“ The assumption of a single subject is perhaps not necessary, it may be equally permissible to assume a plurality of subjects, whose interaction and struggle lie at the bottom of our thought and our consciousness in general. ”

“ In that early period I gave, as I have said, the first public expression to those theories of origin to which these essays are devoted, but with a clumsiness which I was the last to conceal from myself, for I was as yet cramped, being still without a special language for these special subjects, still frequently liable to relapse and to vacillation. To go into details, compare what I say in Human, all-too-Human, part i., about the parallel early history of Good and Evil, Aph. 45 (namely, their origin from the castes of the aristocrats and the slaves) ”

“ Accomplishments of the highest significance were necessarily bound up with opportunities for self-expression, so tempting and so complete, as those provided for the generations of the Thirteenth Century. The books of the Words as well as of the Arts of the Thirteenth Century will be found eminently interesting, and no period has ever furnished so many examples of wondrous initiative, followed almost immediately by just as marvelous progress and eventual approach to as near perfection as it is perhaps possible to come in things human. ”

“ Qualities are our insurmountable barriers; we cannot possibly help feeling mere differences of quantity as something fundamentally different from quantity—that is to say, as qualities, which we [Pg 70] can no longer reduce to terms of quantity. ”

“ The first part of the work deals with psychological questions connected with the concepts, plurality (Vielheit) , unity (Einheit) , and sum (Anzahl) , while the second treats of the symbolical ideas of plurality and sum, and shows how the fact that we are restricted to symbolical number-concepts in arithmetic, determines its character. The author rejects the logical method, which is so strongly advocated by many writers. For him number is the result of psychical processes (p. 130) . Notions like unity and plurality cannot be logically defined, but rest upon ultimate psychical data. ”

“ It is clearly apparent that the best thought in America today calls for an adequate preparation [Pg 197] for purposes of defence, and calls for a recognition of facts as they are. It also clearly sees the danger of certain types of mind and certain interests combining to carry the matter much farther than is at all called for. The question is—How shall we then strike that happy balance that is the secret of all successful living in the lives of either individuals or in the lives of nations? ”