Baseness

“ On the same point, or on some other point, every human being was as base as he. Such baseness is the inalienable birth-stain of human life. His poem was no pretty imagining, but the eternal, implacable truth. It were better that human life should cease. ”

“ We must commence to overcome our virtuousness with the certain fear of falling into baseness on the other side. This is certainly true, for virtuousness is always inwardly compensated by a great tendency towards baseness ”

“ You wrong another, know yourself to have acted basely, and are enraged, not against yourself—for no one hates himself—but against the innocent cause of your baseness; reasoning very plausibly, “But for that fellow, I should never have been base ”

“ If the nature of our reals is the diversity found at a stage below relations, how are we to dispose of the mass of relational appearance? For that exists, and existing it must somehow qualify the world, a world the reality of which is discovered only at a level other than its own. ”

“ But the same internal relations found in the objective globe will be preserved in the subjective, and the transcript of the globe that is held in thought will be truth in exact proportion as it corresponds to the material globe that rolls out of the mind. That an objective globe, which is a thing, may become a subjective globe, which is a thought and not a thing, implies that there is something in common between thoughts and things; that is, the mind, by its constitution, is capable of apprehending and taking into itself the constitution and relations of things. ”

“ The outer universal which I have been taught to will as my will, and which I have grown to find myself in, is now presented by me inwardly to myself as the universal which is my true being, and which by my will I must realize, if need be, against my will as this or that man. So this inner universal has the same content as the outer universal, for it is the outer universal in another sphere; it is the inside of the outside. There was the whole system as an objective will, including my station, and realizing itself here and now in my function. ”

“ This is the centre where all intellectual perceptions unite, and where that intrinsic force resides, which, although excited by sensible representations, develops itself by its own power, makes itself master of these impressions, and converts them, so to speak, by a mysterious assimilation, into its own substance. ”

“ It is moreover a name well contrived for the purposes of the class; because it is calculated to keep the real character of the associations out of sight.
6. The aggregate, included under the comprehensive term Mankind, is in so many ways associated with our pains and pleasures, that the interest of each individual appears, in some degree, bound up in the interest of the race. Any act of ours, then, by which the interest of the race can be promoted, is associated in our minds with our own interest; and becomes a motive. ”

“ People have often tried to find a type of life that might serve as a basement type. The philosopher, the saint, the artist, neither of them can be this type; the order of nature itself makes them exceptional. ”

“ And then we are told that the aggregate of the faint is what we call the mind, the subject, the ego; the aggregate of the vivid is what we call the external world, the object, the non-ego. [69] It would seem, then, that the aggregate of vivid subjective affections is the objective world so far as knowable. ”

“ The object of this is, that each one may perceive the whole; the sensation, therefore, must be wholly in only one subject; therefore, at the very time that unity is denied, it is acknowledged to be necessary.
14. These parts, A and B, either are simple or they are not; if they are simple, why persist in advocating materialism, when we must finally return to simple beings? It is a manifest contradiction to say that sensation is an effect of [Pg 258] organization, and yet place it in a simple being, for the simple cannot be organized; there is no organization where there are no parts organized. ”

“ And, passing from this to conscious life, we are called on still for further uses and fresh applications of our standard. In the will of the individual, or of the community, so far as adequately carried out and expressing itself in outward fact, we have a new claim to harmonious and self-included reality. And we have to consider in each case the consistency, together with the range and area, of the principle, and the degree up to which it has mastered and passed into existence. ”

“ But this itself reveals to us, in the genesis of the individual, a haunting of the social form, as if the individual could develop only on the condition that its substance should be split up into elements having themselves an appearance of individuality and united among themselves by an appearance of sociality. There are numerous cases in which nature seems to hesitate between the two forms, and to ask herself if she shall make a society or an individual. ”

“ How much, therefore, in mixed modes, the unity necessary to any essence depends on the mind; and how much the continuation and fixing of that unity depends on the name in common use annexed to it, I leave to be considered by those who look upon essences and species as real established things in nature. ”

“ Now it is this selective character of every rational conscious process, a character as manifest to consciousness as it is ultimately significant for the constitution of all Being, — it is this character, I say, which to my mind is responsible above all for the Individuality which we have already characterized as belonging to the whole of Being, and which we shall now find as equally characistic of every region of finite Being. ”

“ And every unity, every identity, every classification is rightly called fanciful unless it serves some other end than the mere satisfaction, emotion, or inspiration caught by momentarily believing in it. ”

“ Life depended on it. One had been, from the first, dragged hither and thither like a French poodle on a string, following always the strongest pull, between one form of unity or centralization and another. The proof that one had acted wisely because of obeying the primordial habit of nature flattered one's self-esteem. Steady, uniform, unbroken evolution from lower to higher seemed easy. ”

“ In this last case as much as in that of specific difference, we ought to find divergent form the embodiment and organic expression of divergent opinion. Form is mind made manifest in flesh through action: shades of mental difference being expressed in shades of physical difference, while broad fundamental differences of opinion are expressed in broad fundamental differences of bodily shape. ”

“ And as ceteris paribus our tense awareness of active states always throws into insignificance a passive state sandwiched between them; so, bent as we are upon our red and black extensions, and their comparative lengths and directions, we shall treat the uninteresting white extensions as a blank, a gap, as that which separates the objects of our active interest, and takes what existence it has for our mind only from its relation of separating those interesting actively measured and compared lines. ”

“ There was a time when the division of mankind into two classes, a small one of masters and a numerous one of slaves, appeared, even to the most cultivated minds, to be a natural, and the only natural, condition of the human race. ”

“ Thus, far from saving the unity and identity of subject and object, plurality and multiplicity are established in the subject itself; and the unity of consciousness itself, in danger of being broken by the cavils of philosophers, is forced to take refuge in the obscurity of invincible nature. ”

“ It is as 'all' that the universal is in the first instance generally encountered by reflection. The individuals form for reflection the foundation, and it is only our subjective action which collects and describes them as 'all.' So far the universal has the aspect of an external fastening, that holds together a number of independent individuals, which have not the least affinity towards it. This semblance of indifference is however unreal: for the universal is the ground and foundation, the root, and substance of the individual. ”

“ As he passes through all these successive initiations, and breaks out of his sheath, the horizons of life widen around him, and at length he grasps the plan of society with the different human strata of which it is composed. ”

“ Our standard is Reality in the form of self-existence; and this, given plurality and relations, means an individual system. Now we have shown that no perfect system can possibly be finite, because any limitation from the outside infects the inner content with dependence on what is alien. And hence the marks of harmony and expansion are two aspects of one principle. ”

“ Our theory is formed upon the observation of universal facts, universal sentiments, universal calculations and acts. We do nothing more than classify and arrange these, in order to better understand them. It is so little opposed to practice, that it is in fact only practice explained. We look upon the actions of men as prompted by the instinct of self-preservation and of progress. ”

“ On the one side appears a heated brain, a closet-reformer, who talks of overturning an entire system all at once and without any gradual transition; a dreamer, who has never, perhaps, cast his eye on that mass of laws, ordinances, tables, schedules, and statistical details which accompany your report,—in a word, a theorist. ”

“ He can say: ‘My world is One Being, a single, real, but perhaps an internally complex, yes an infinitely wealthy Being, whose various aspects and functions are not logically independent, but are linked in a system, so that fully to define one part or region would be to define something of the essence of all, and so that no portion can indefinitely alter or wholly vanish without some implied change, however minute, in all the other parts. ”

“ If we consider the nature of any coherent purpose or “mental system,” we shall find that, as the coherent embodiment of a purpose, it possesses a degree of individuality of its own. In proportion to the comprehensiveness, and again to the inner harmony or systematic structure of the interest it embodies, it constitutes a genuine self-existing individual whole of the kind which psychologists recognise as a “self.” ”

“ In every system, whether of nature or of art, there must be a variety and subordination of parts. Hence, to object that each part is not perfect in itself, without considering its relations and adaptation to the whole, is little short of madness. ”

“ It is true that with each problem we cannot say how its special discords are harmonized. But is this to deny the reality of diverse contents in the Absolute? Because in detail we cannot tell in what each solution consists, are we therefore driven to assert that all the detail is abolished, and that our Absolute is a flat monotony of emptiness? ”

“ These mixed modes, being also such combinations of simple ideas as are not looked upon to be characteristical marks of any real beings that have a steady existence, but scattered and independent ideas put together by the mind, are thereby distinguished from the complex ideas of substances. ”

“ That the abstract ideas of mixed modes, being men’s voluntary combinations of such a precise collection of simple ideas, and so the essence of each species being made by men alone, whereof we have no other sensible standard existing anywhere but the name itself, or the definition of that name; we having nothing else to refer these our ideas of mixed modes to, as a standard to which we would conform them, but the ideas of those who are thought to use those names in their most proper significations; and, so as our ideas conform or differ from THEM, they pass for true or false. ”

“ Every mixed mode consisting of many distinct simple ideas, it seems reasonable to inquire, Whence it has its unity; and how such a precise multitude comes to make but one idea; since that combination does not always exist together in nature? ”

“ The realm of Ideas is divided into three spheres: that of Instinct, that of Abstractions, that of Specialism.
XIV
The greater part, the weaker part of visible humanity, dwells in the Sphere of Instinct. The Instinctives are born, labor, and die without rising to the second degree of human intelligence, namely, Abstraction. ”

“ If any one will say, that the real essence and internal constitution, on which these properties depend, is not the figure, size, and arrangement or connexion of its solid parts, but something else, called its particular form, I am further from having any idea of its real essence than I was before. ”

“ But if, on the other hand, it be said that our character is not the mere fruit of our antecedents and surroundings, the law of uniformity is clearly broken. A new element has come into the world, namely, my character, which has not come out of the antecedents and surroundings according to any fixed law. ”

“ There are wanting therefore in the mass, as the ruled subject, the resources, adaptabilities, the accommodations, the developments of power which the whole individual possesses through the unity and presence of his total psychical energy. ”

“ The inward sense attests with irresistible certainty the identity of the me. This unity, this identity, is as certain, as evident to the child who begins to feel pleasure or pain, and is sure that he is one and the same that experiences both impressions, as they are to the [Pg 186] philosopher who has spent long years in profoundly investigating the idea of the me and the unity of consciousness. ”

“ Now begin to make universal assertions about the relations amongst these classes. Assert that all the righteous are happy. At once, as we saw in our seventh lecture, this assertion appears as a negative existential assertion, and as the destruction of a possibility. For you can express it by saying that in your universe the sub-class, otherwise possible, of righteous men who are unhappy, has vanished from existence. Your universe has now reduced its realized possibilities to the existence of three sub-classes. ”