Backwardness

“ But the same frequent divorce of inner aim and observable outward expression is also in part due to the confusedness of our inward purposes themselves, or to the fragmentariness with which we hold to these purposes, — in brief, to our powerlessness to retain before us the inner vision itself. ”

“ The appearance of a certain person in my life has always been heralded by a number of hunchbacks who came forward, passed—sometimes touching my elbow—and frequently looking at me in a solemn manner, as though some subconscious force, of which they were the tool, were saying to me, “See, here is the sign.” ”

“ Do you believe, then, that by some subtle influence, whose nature is unknown to us, we may have a strange consciousness of the presence or the approach of some people, conveyed to us by neither the hearing nor the sight, but rather as if we felt that they were near? ”

“ If thus to look behind is all in vain, And all in vain to look to left or right, Why face we not our future once again, Launching with hardier hearts across the main, Straining dim eyes to catch the invisible sight, And strong to bear ourselves in patient pain? ”

“ It is enduring, a course of action, a process including memory, observation and foresight, a pressure forward, a glance backward and a look outward. It is of moral moment because it marks a transition in the direction of breadth and clarity of action or in that of triviality and confusion. Progress is present reconstruction adding fullness and distinctness of meaning, and retrogression is a present slipping away of significance, determinations, grasp. ”

“ That might make one ask by what strange law one had lived in the other time, with gaps, to that number, in one’s experience, in one’s consciousness, with so many muffled spots in one’s general vibration—and the answer indeed to such a question might carry with it an infinite penetration of retrospect, a penetration productive of ghostly echoes as sharp sometimes as aches or pangs. ”

“ We are puzzled now to comprehend how that which was independent has been induced to leave its path. We begin to seek the cause which forces it to exert and to suffer influence; and, with this, we are well on the road to false theory and ruinous error. ”

“ Now — there he was, bent, frail, and thin, with restless eyes and deep discontent in voice and manner; the curved shoulder and the head grown suddenly old; the only thing, speaking of the past, the graceful hand, filled with the illusory courage of a declining vitality. ”

“ On the arrival of strangers so different in complexion and appearance to ourselves, having power to transplant themselves over, and even living upon, an element which to us was impossible, the first sensation would probably be terror, and the first movement flight. ”

“ As though character were like the fingers of a clock to be moved at will backwards and forwards, independently of the wheels and springs, balances and escapements, that regulate its daily action and make it what it is. The grievous failings and frantic inconsistencies and dire lapses of human nature are only too familiar. ”

“ The problem calls upon us to answer how these aspects and respects are consistently united in the one thing, either outside of our minds or inside—that makes no difference. And if we fail, as we shall, to bring these features together, we have left the problem unsolved. And, if it is unsolved, then change and motion are incompatible internally, and are set down to be appearance. ”

“ There are passions and dispositions so unequivocally bad, that even indifference itself is roused to oppose them; but when the current of nature and the course of duty seem to run parallel, we suffer ourselves to be borne away by the stream, and are seldom sufficiently watchful to ascertain whether the parallelism be alike exact in every stage of our progress. ”

“ But once more, at a coigne of vantage on the opposite side of the gorge, and the experience can be utilized in differentiating the elements that go to make up the weird presentment of a human countenance. ”

“ We need not fall back for conviction upon the hard shock of change. The whole movement of the mind implies disengagement from the mere “this”; and to assert the content of the latter as reality at once involves us in contradictions. ”

“ You immediately look at the worst side when endless possibilities are open to you. Do you wonder that the future looks black to you in such circumstances? But the most annoying part is that you demoralise those around you. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Was he professing to her in any degree the possession of an aftersense that wasn't real? How in the world could he, when his aftersense, day by day, was his greatest reality? That was at bottom all that there was between them, and two or three times over it made the hour pass. ”

“ We see heads that turn on the pivot of the spine,—no more; and we see heads that seem to turn on a pivot as deep as the axle of the world,—so slow, and lazily, and great, they move. We see on the lip of our companion the presence or absence of the great masters of thought and poetry to his mind. ”

“ After all, if the old order crumbled, was it not because of its own weakness? Was not the fact of its decay the sign of some secret disintegration, of rottenness at the core? And if the new spirit could destroy, perhaps it could build as well. ”

“ Changing the form of one’s mission’s almost as difficult as changing the shape of one’s nose: there they are, each, in the middle of one’s face and one’s character—one has to begin too far back. ”

“ The common pressure being absent in some one direction, the being grows out in that direction, and the mind and character exhibit more or less deformity to the eyes of all but the individual most concerned. ”

“ This is true of what we call a bizarre mixture of incongruent elements in mode of attire or in manners; for it is experience and the habits of social life which dispose our minds to regard them as foreign one to the other. Much of our mirthful gratification at exhibitions of the incongruous arises through a perception of the intrusion of something foreign into a situation. ”

“ But, as themselves and as they come to us, they are no less certainly appearance. So far as we know them, they are but inconsistent constructions; and, beyond our knowledge, they are forthwith beyond themselves. ”

“ Quite apart from the difficulty of finding anything merely given, and the impossibility of always using actual present sensation as a test of truth—without noticing the strange prejudice that outward sensations are never false, and the dull blindness which fails to realize that the “inward” is a fact just as solid as the “outward”—we may dismiss the whole objection. ”

“ The whole fabric seems to have tumbled to pieces; it lies in a horrible chaos. I can make no order within myself. Have I lied to myself? have I acted and postured the Great Man to persuade myself that I am one? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then, again, to be pursued by others, he might be seen suddenly changing to the back and heel-forward movement, offering them his hand, and, at the same time, eluding their grasp by his dexterous and instantaneous deviations to the right and left, leaving them to their hard work of striking out after him with all their might and main. ”

“ They regret—fancy!—that they cannot at once walk backward and forward, to the right and to the left. Let them have their will and they will cover the earth with their traces, not leaving a patch: and still they would seek more. ”

“ And now that he would fain give himself up to the new oracle in his bosom, and to the inspirations of nature, all his old habits, all his previous connections, are unpropitious. He is bound by a thousand chains which press on him so as to leave no moment free. ”

“ Where do you come from, O man, and where do you keep yourself, that we know not your features nor hear your voice? Have you wife or mother who awaits your return? Or children who set your torch in the corner and climb to your lap and embrace your neck? ”

“ Those who are subject to the state called reverie, feel as if their nature were dissolved into the surrounding universe, or as if the surrounding universe were absorbed into their being. They are conscious of no distinction. And these are states which precede, or accompany, or follow an unusually intense and vivid apprehension of life. As men grow up this power commonly decays, and they become mechanical and habitual agents. Thus feelings and then reasonings are the combined result of a multitude of entangled thoughts, and of a series of what are called impressions, planted by reiteration. ”

“ Then, as the tension is sharpened, what happens? Under the artificial conditions of weakened nerves, of blank surroundings, the self-background drops. The feeling of transition disappears with the absence of related terms; and the remaining, the positive pole of consciousness, is an undifferentiated Unity, with which the person must feel himself one. The feeling of personality is gone with that on which it rests, and its loss is joined with an overwhelming sense of union with the One, the Absolute, God! ”

“ We shall find that all the facts of rivalry and substitution that have so struck us, all the shiftings and expansions and contractions of the sphere of what shall be considered me and mine, are but results of the fact that certain things appeal to primitive and instinctive impulses of our nature, and that we follow their destinies with an excitement that owes nothing to a reflective source. These objects our consciousness treats as the primordial constituents of its Me. ”

“ To glance backward over a century is to feel that life constantly reiterates this situation. We all of us are roughly divided—very roughly, sometimes—into the two groups: the people in the cars and the people in the doorways. ”

“ People who can pass on behind any one they see gazing earnestly and intently toward some unknown object without feeling an impulse to stop, to follow the direction of the other’s eyes, to discover what odd thing he may be looking at? ”

“ They seem to move as we change our position, and to be without fixed or certain character. But some, again, are so clear and unmistakable, so immeasurably above criticism or objection, that like the furthest of the stars they have no parallax: whatever position we take, their light is steadfast. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore, in looking forward and upward, we follow Nature. An ancient adventurer, escaping from the realms of Death, looked behind, and he failed. We, too, shall fail, if we look behind. Forward, not backward, is the word,—firmly, courageously, faithfully. There must be no false sentiment or cowardice, no fear of “irritating” Rebels. ”

“ Was I the same when I got up this morning? But if I'm not the same, the next question is, 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!" ”

“ But the blanks did not fill and though behind them he could not look, yet the subconscious self that registers and retains everything we do and hear and say prompted him dumbly that behind the blanks there lurked the dismal and, perhaps, the dire. ”

“ The stranger rules us, the shackles are on our wrists;—what can we do?" Then would follow a shrug of the shoulders, a wink of the eye, and a hasty return to the sort of manner which a careless observer might easily mistake for the external proof of content, but which is, in fact, a disguise put on to hide feelings directly the reverse. ”

“ In perception does the outward reality actually appear, extended as it really is, without any unextended medium interposed, exactly as the internal reality of a pain or a pleasure appears without a medium, when I am conscious of being pained or pleased? ”

“ And every time there proceeds from these altered conditions, especially from the sense-disturbances, an alteration in the sense of the reality of the outer world, and a parallel change in self-consciousness. ”

“ “No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see—what I don’t fear!” ”

“ He runs backwards and forwards, up and down the room, while she follows him with her large, suffering eyes, which have an unnatural look in them, follows him backwards and forwards in unutterable surprise,—a surprise which seems to have fallen from heaven, and which changes little by little into an unutterable, inconceivable disappointment, and that again into an indescribably bitter, sickening contempt. ”

“ Thus the true conceived outwardness of body to body—an outwardness which thought, as the source of relations, can alone constitute—becomes first an imaginary felt outwardness of body to the organs of touch, and then, by a further fallacy—these organs being confused with the mind—an outwardness of body to mind, which we need only kick a stone to be sure of. ”

“ Moreover, entrance and exit, descent and ascent, are characteristics of bodies and not of spirits—that is to say, sensible realities enter and come forth, but intellectual subtleties and mental realities, such as intelligence, love, knowledge, imagination and thought, do not enter, nor come forth, nor descend, but rather they have direct connection. ”