Alteration

“ For alteration is the mutation of quality, so that to motion according to quality, will rest according to quality, or change to the contrary of the quality, be opposed; thus becoming white is opposed to becoming black, since a change in quality occurs, there being an alteration of quality into contraries. ”

“ A greater evil arises from the contemplation and investigation rather of the stationary principles of things from which, than of the active by which things themselves are created. For the former only serve for discussion, the latter for practice. Nor is any value to be set on those common differences of motion which are observed in the received system of natural philosophy, as generation, corruption, augmentation, diminution, alteration, and translation. ”

“ A single touch, by introducing into the body some morbid matter, may set up an immensely involved set of functional disturbances and structural alterations. The whole tenor of a life may be changed by a word of advice; or a glance may determine an action which alters thoughts, feelings, and deeds throughout a long series of years. In those still more involved combinations of changes which societies exhibit, this truth is still more conspicuous. ”

“ He, no more than they, seems to have definitely raised the question, How are we to account for, or formulate, the principle of difference or change? What is it that causes things to come into being out of, or recalls them back from being into, the infinite void? ”

“ The change is everywhere, but inward; we localize it here and there, but outwardly; and thus we constitute bodies which are both stable as to their qualities and mobile as to their positions, a mere change of place summing up in itself, to our eyes, the universal transformation. ”

“ Change, he protests, through the power of a true philosophy, shall not be the law of our being; and it is curious to note the way in which, consciously or unconsciously, that philosophic purpose shapes his treatment, even in minute detail, of education, of art, of daily life, his very vocabulary, in which such pleasant or innocent words, as "manifold," "embroidered," "changeful," become the synonyms of what is evil. ”

“ But, my dear father, can a change so important as that which the Scriptures describe, take place in the human soul without affecting all its faculties and passions? The change may be sudden or gradual, according to the sovereign will of the great agent by whom it is produced, but when it does take place, a person cannot be unconscious of it. ”

“ Now the appearance or disappearance of such an accident in a substance undoubtedly involves a real change in the latter, and not merely in our thought; when a body moves, or comes to rest, or alters its form, there is a change in the reality as well as in our thought; and in this sense these accidents are real and intrinsic to their substances. ”

“ The problem of change is given up, and we fall back upon our laws, persisting and appearing in successions of fleeting elements. If so, phenomena seem now to have become temporal illustrations of laws. ”

“ Indeed, what is there which we can discover, in the mere sensation of fragrance, that is itself significant of solidity, extension, or what ever we may regard as essential to the existence of things without? As a mere change in the form of our being, it may suggest to us the necessity of some cause or antecedent of the change. ”

“ Usually a totally opposite character of change is produced, and the effect is to cause the mental operations to be imperfect, unsustained and unequal, while there are present suspicion, doubtfulness, vacillation, and caprice. ”

“ Change lays not her hand upon truth; ”

“ Wherever we see a change in matter, we should infer an act by which it is produced; and thus, through all the changes and modifications of the material universe, we shall behold the sublime manifestations of an ever-present and all-pervading agency of spirit. ”

“ So that when I speak of cause, and efficient cause, I only mean certain affections of the mind, that cause certain changes in the body; or certain powers and properties in bodies, that work a change in the mind. ”

“ A change of judgment is a change of mind—a change of purpose is a change of mind—any change of the general current of feeling, such as that from carelessness and stupidity in to a state of anxiety and earnest inquiry, what shall I do to be saved? is a change of mind.—And such a change of mind indispensably precedes regeneration. ”

“ It is, then, because some substantial loss or gain does truly take place in the changing phenomena of the bodies immediately around us, to which we are accustomed to pay our principal attention, that we learn to regard a change of state in matter as significant of loss of identity, and to feel, therefore, some hesitation in admitting the mental changes of state to be consistent with absolute sameness of substance. ”

“ Thus, each life-habit has its advantages and its disadvantages; and we may conclude from this that a change from a long-lived to a short lived form, or the reverse, may take place in consequence of adaptation to changes in outer circumstances. ”

“ A change in the mere susceptibility of our organs of sense, or of our sentient mind, would be relatively to us, like a change in the whole system of things, communicating, as it were, new properties to every object around us. ”

“ But in such cases we can do little more than speculate on the external influences, the psychological ideas, which may from time to time have caused change, development, decay, or survival of belief or custom. ”

“ Throughout nature we observe innumerable instances in which various forces have thus combined to produce a definite result. This we usually designate by the word “adaptation.” Adaptation implies intelligence and purpose. We are quite as much justified in ascribing this purpose to the power manifested in nature, as any other quality whatever, even the possession of mind. ”

“ The vastness of the change, its appearance, almost simultaneously, in various ways in different parts of the world, indicate that it proceeds from causes too powerful and too universal to be attributed to any particular individual. ”

“ All this change in our manner of existence implies that we have experienced some very profound impression, which will sooner or later betray itself in permanent effects on the minds and bodies of many among us. ”

“ The process, as far as the change of soul state is concerned, is infinitely more to the amelioration of the lowest than to the degradation of the highest. The one, also, is more real, the other more apparent. ”

“ At the outset another distinction might seem to recommend itself more—it is far more conspicuous,—namely, to have in view whether the desire for rigidity, for perpetuation, for being is the cause of the creating, or the desire for destruction, for change, for the new, for the future—for becoming. ”

“ It is a change; there is a visible change in the body, its appearance altered, its actions brought to an end, but a greater change with the soul, which quits the body, and removes to the world of spirits, finishes its state of probation and enters upon that of retribution. ”

“ Every considerable change historically known to us in the condition of any portion of mankind, when not brought about by external force, has been preceded by a change, of proportional extent, in the state of their knowledge, or in their prevalent beliefs. ”

“ But if, e.g., a material change of state can be the cause of a determination in God, the whole basis of the denial that a change in the material order can originate change in another order of reality, is swept away. ”

“ How sudden a change at any one point, or how great a difference between the two extremes is sufficient to bar identity, is one of the most uncertain things imaginable, and seems to be decided on different grounds in different cases, sometimes very intelligibly, and again at others arbitrarily and capriciously. ”

“ Consciousness and change, so far as we can watch them, are as functionally interdependent as mind and matter, or condition and substance, are—for the condition of every substance may be considered as the expression and outcome of its mind. ”

“ The incessant changes, to which every part of it is subject, seem to intimate some such general transformations; though, at the same time, it is observable, that all the changes and corruptions of which we have ever had experience, are but passages from one state of order to another; nor can matter ever rest in total deformity and confusion. ”

“ It therefore follows that his physical construction is more changeable; but in proportion as the body undergoes a change, and adapts itself to the circumstances of its situation, so will the feelings, temper, and mind also undergo some change, and more or less affect the character of the individual. ”

“ But such changes in the material conditions of life do not stand alone; they have been produced by mighty changes in the human mind, as in their turn they themselves give rise to further spiritual changes. ”

“ In proportion as in what she offers us we see life without rearrangement do we feel that we are touching the truth; in proportion as we see it with rearrangement do we feel that we are being put off with a substitute, a compromise and convention. ”

“ Death, change, age, as well as procreation and growth, are in their opinion objections,—even refutations. That which is cannot evolve; that which evolves is not. Now all of them believe, and even with desperation, in Being. ”

“ That mystic, all-pervasive, yet indefinable change, which we associate with the stage of maturity inevitable in the life of the individual and the development of the fruit must, if we would correctly apprehend the utterances of Bahá’u’lláh, have its counterpart in the evolution of the organization of human society. ”

“ They cry aloud that they were made, for they change and vary. ”

“ Therefore, what I would most earnestly advocate, if it were of any importance so to do, would be love of change, for by change have come all the spectacles, all the charms and all{22} the creature comforts of which our consciousness is aware. ”

“ It is the form which changes, not the essence. The few great underlying elements from which character and happiness are evolved are permanent—their mutations are endless. Dull-minded, we take the mutations to mean shifting of principle. ”

“ This will appear plain if we consider that, whatever is immutable cannot be acted upon by any higher power; for the action of such a superior cause supposes a corresponding effect and that effect supposes a change in the object acted upon, in one way or another; and, consequently, any object upon which an effect can be produced, must be a mutable or changeable object. ”

“ Adaptation of means to an end may be produced in two ways that we at present know of; by processes of natural selection, and by the agency of an intelligence in which an image or idea of the end preceded the use of the means. In both cases the existence of the adaptation is accounted for by the necessity or utility of the end. ”

“ Even when these changes are not so profound as to destroy its substantial identity and thus terminate its actuality as an individual being, even when, in other words, they are not substantial, they are none the less real and really affect the substance. ”

“ It struck me, even in the light of my then limited judgment, as an unregenerate wish; and thus early my faith in the possibility of man’s reformation received the first of those many blows that have resulted in shattering it.
Nature, whether human or otherwise, was not made to be reformed. You can develop, you can check, but you cannot alter it. ”

“ The great principles for which the earliest reformers contended,—and which, now that they are clearly developed, seem as natural to man’s mental constitution as the air which he breathes is to his physical existence,—are in this volume elaborately expounded, and the causes which called them into being, and aided their development, carefully and impartially traced. ”

“ It follows from that, that that which does not admit of any change in itself, is imperishable, participates in no respect in the nature of changeable things, and in a word, has its dimensions and forms immutably determined. ”

“ Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it in the act. ”