Consistency

“ On the other hand, there is a true duty of consistency, which regards the spirit rather than the letter, and prompts us not to grasp foolishly at the ideal, like a child crying for the moon, but to push steadily towards the ideal by a faithful adherence to the right line of reform, and by ever keeping in view the just proportion and relative value of all moral actions. ”

“ Consistency is agreement; and when thou sayest, I have done wrong, it is inconsistent with wrong to do right. Consistency is to do wrong, because wrong has been done. Wouldst thou recommend consistency with wrong? ”

“ A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, and philosophers, and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. Speak out what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day. ”

“ Another of the wonders of the world, is consistency. Where is the consistent man? If I, like Diogenes, were to take a lanthern and go out in search of a consistent man, I would see, as I have seen, strange sights. ”

“ Not that such inconsistency is a random flux or a shallow opportunism. We change, and the world changes, in accordance with the underlying organisation, and inconsistency, so conditioned by truth to the whole, becomes the higher consistency of life. ”

“ There is total failure to unite the differences by any consistent principle, and the one discoverable system is the systematic avoidance of consistency. The single fact is viewed alternately from either side, but the sides are not combined into an intelligible whole. ”

“ In theory you cannot indulge with consistency in an ultimate doubt. You are forced, willingly or not, at a certain point to assume infallibility. For, otherwise, how could you proceed to judge at all? ”

“ Governing.—Some people govern because of their passion for governing; others in order that they may not be governed,—the latter choose it as the lesser of two evils.
182. Rough and Ready Consistency.—People say of a man with great respect, “He is a character”—that is, when he exhibits a rough and ready consistency, when it is evident even to the dullest eye. But, whenever a more subtle and profound intellect sets itself up and shows consistency in a higher manner, the spectators deny the existence of any character. ”

“ Truth may be conveniently defined as universal consistency; or that which perfectly conforms to facts, and agrees with the widest experience, when tested by means of all our intellectual powers, the reasoning faculty in particular. The usual modern criterion of it, is consistency with the fundamental axioms of logic, and with all the great principles of nature as established by means of scientific research, such as the universality of causation, the continuity of phenomena, the indestructibility of matter and energy, the convertibility and equivalency of forces, &c. ”

“ Nor is this particular conflict in our ordinary ideas yet before us in all its fatefulness, for—as if to defy the principle of consistency to the very last degree of its forbearance—we are often, if not usually, given not only to unifying our world of things in terms of just one more thing, or of persons in terms of just one more person, but also to thinking of this one more thing, or person as sui generis, as altogether different in nature and substance. ”

“ And in truth consistency, thoroughly carried out in the whole life, steadfast unison of idea and practice—in short, power—immediately enforces our respect and admiration, even though we may not be able to agree with the motive and principles on which it acts, and moreover remark much in the whole line of conduct deserving of blame, when measured by the highest ideal standard of moral justice and perfection. ”

“ I do not belong to that class of great minds who think that the cosmic order will relapse into chaos if they are damaged in their appearance of personal consistency. In my poor opinion, the most important question is, not whether I appear strictly consistent, but the question is, How are we to act in order to render the best service we can to the country? ”

“ Nothing, indeed, is more common than to praise men for their consistency to their principles, whatever those principles are, that is, to praise them on an inference, [pg 039] without thereby implying any assent to the principles themselves. ”

“ That principle is the sense of congruity, coherence, and consistency, which is a real existing principle in man; and it must be gratified. Therefore, having once adopted a style and a measure not found in common discourse, it is required that the sentiments also should be in the same proportion elevated above common nature, from the necessity of there being an agreement of the parts among themselves, that one uniform whole may be produced. ”

“ Consistency is not always the guarantee of truth; but there may be a consistency in a theory so variously tried and exemplified as to lead to belief in it, as reasonably as a witness in a court of law may, after a severe cross-examination, satisfy and assure judge, jury, and the whole court, of his simple veracity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Its system possesses an inner consistency, which is dearly purchased by neglecting much that should enter into a large and true view of the world, but which guarantees to those who have once accepted it an untroubled calm and assurance very acceptable to those who have been tossed upon a sea of doubt. ”

“ Do they think it is enough to cleave to barren and desultory dogmas, derived from the traditions of the elders, who thereunto have set their seals?
Consistency is seen in example more than in precept. Inconsistency is shown by words without deeds, which Scientific consistency. are like clouds without rain. ”

“ Consistency is very well so far, and for the humbler matters of every-day life, but there is a higher and a sacred region where it does not hold; where the principles are to be received all the more readily that they land us in contradictions. ”

“ W. When minds in the body deny revealments, because they are conflicting, they deny the realities of this sphere. When they deny the realities of this sphere, because all minds are not equally developed in wisdom, consistency would allow them to deny the realities of the rudimental state. ”

“ In a free country each definite instinct or tendency represents itself in the general structure of society. When tendencies, as frequently happens, contradict each other, common sense comes in to the rescue, and, on the whole, justice is done, though at the price of consistency. ”

“ But there are others who understood from the first its true meaning and far-reaching issues, and who have perhaps imagined that an unbroken consistency of action, based on an immovable strength of conviction, must at all times have characterised any man or woman destined to take a representative part in it. ”

“ Consistency requires that the services of men and the use of material things be judged by their psychic results, the question whether the service takes on a material or an immaterial form being disregarded. ”

“ Between the coercions of the sensible order and those of the ideal order, our mind is thus wedged tightly. Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration. ”

“ Always, then, acts are called good or bad according as they are well or ill adjusted to ends; and whatever inconsistency there is in our uses of the words arises from inconsistency of the ends. Here, however, the study of conduct in general, and of the evolution of conduct, have prepared us to harmonize these interpretations. ”

“ I have left orders not to admit him.
consistance, n.f., consistency, consistence; firmness; stability; credit, consideration; (jur.) matter. Le temps n’a point de —; the weather is unsettled. C’est un esprit qui n’a point de —; he is a person of no consistency. Cette nouvelle prend de la —; the news is gaining ground. ”

“ In the sacred fact of obligation you touch the immutable, and lay hold, as it were, on the eternities. At the very centre of your being, there is a fixed element, and that of a kind or degree essentially sovereign. A standard is set up in your very thought, by which a great part of your questions are determined, and about which your otherwise random thoughts may settle into order and law. ”

“ And if we reflect upon the distinctive form of unity thus exhibited by each department of being—upon the dominant character pervading the differences within it and their cohesion—we may formulate certain 'Axioms', condensing once more into isolated judgements truth for which the evidence is overwhelming. Such 'truths' are stable, not because they, as judgements, hang together of themselves, but because they are but the concentrated expression of a whole of knowledge. ”

“ If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. ”

“ What, then, shall be, the common standard that shall decide which is the man that thinks with the greatest justice? What the scale by which to measure who has the best regulated imagination? What balance shall be found sufficiently exact to determine whose knowledge is most certain, when he agitates subjects, which experience cannot enable him to examine, that escape all his senses, that have no model, that are above reason? ”

“ In saying this, I mean only to designate the general spirit of human law. Every principle, on its application to practice, must be limited and modified by circumstances; our reason by our common sense. ”

“ There are in the world, in fact, two different laws of conduct each valid on its own plane, the rale principally dependent on external status and the rule independent of status and entirely dependent on the thought and conscience. ”

“ Those who have dispensed with the assumption of such a universal standard, have only been enabled to do so by supposing that a moral sense, or instinct, inherent in our constitution, informs us, both what principles of conduct we are bound to observe, and also in what order these should be subordinated to one another. ”

“ We have for ages formed a society bound together by our peculiar tenets. That we individually differ in conduct, and, therefore, probably in ideas, from our countrymen, they necessarily know; that we form a body apart with laws and tenets of our own, is at least suspected. But our organisation, its powers, its methods, its rules of membership, and its doctrines are, and have always been, a secret, and no man's connection with it is avowed or provable. Our chief distinctive and essential doctrines you hold as strongly as we do—the All-perfect Existence, the immortal human soul. ”

“ To me it appears to be of very little consequence whether we are consistent or not, but it is very important to be right.
“If we have been right hitherto, we should make no change because we have been right; if we have been wrong, it would be unwise to continue so for the sake of being consistent. ”

“ Or, if we look at it from the individual's standpoint, we may say his consciousness awakes to find the world parcelled out under certain rules and divisions, which have objective validity, and govern him with the same absolute authority as do the circumstances of physical nature. Under their influence every rank and individual is alike forced to bow: to each his place and function is assigned by an order or system which claims an inviolable and eternal supremacy. ”

“ And it will be derived from the divisions of honour and usefulness, concerning which we will give rules when we lay down a system of deliberations. And if we compare the definition given by our adversaries with our own definition, and prove our own to be true, and honourable, and useful, and theirs to be entirely different. But we shall seek out things like them in an affair of either greater, or less, or equal importance, from which our description will be proved. ”

“ And thus, by continually contemplating the power which keeps in Order, and contemplating rarely, if at all, the activities that are kept in order, there is produced an extremely one-sided theory of society. ”

“ In passing thus to the province of Psychology, we assume a human means of distinction, and the principle of Authority loses its force. Or if it be said that we should receive this principle of Authority because it answers to a need of our nature, we may ask how we know that the need is one that should be satisfied? ”

“ Knowledge of our circumstances.—We may estimate our forces but not our force. Circumstances do not only conceal it from and show it to us—nay, they even exaggerate and diminish it. We ought to consider ourselves variable quantities whose active power may, under specially favourable circumstances, become equivalent to that of the highest order. We ought, therefore, to weigh the circumstances, and spare no effort in studying them. ”

“ Wonder if our own highest things have not grown up out of equally simple things. The compulsion first—then the sense of duty become habit, automatic, the conviction expanding into knowledge of ethical habit,—then the habit creating conviction,—then relations,—then the capacity for general ideas. ”

“ Consequently, the good work which they take in hand, instead of producing that general concurrence and conviction that it otherwise might, gives rise rather to fresh doubts and objections. The best solution of all such doubts—the most satisfactory answer to all such or similar questions or questioning feelings—lies in the final cause of the present constitution of things, considered as a whole and in general, and judged of from a regard to its triple character and triple destination. ”