Contrast

“ All that the facts of contrast show us is that the same real thing may give us quite different sensations when the conditions alter, and that we must therefore be careful which one to select as the thing's truest representative. ”

“ The first thing we perceive, in such a parallel, is the superficial contrast; the second is the innate similitude, so developed that these spirits in opposition are found in reality to represent, in a sort of inimical unison, the whole attitude towards literature of the generation in which they flourished. ”

“ Contrast increases the splendor of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power. ”

“ In our recent dismission of the value of the essential defects of experience, and particularly when we came to associate social character with the habit of contradiction, a contrast of the personal and the social was very plainly implied, and some special attention to this contrast, I feel sure, will help us to comprehend more fully what was said at the time, and will be of great advantage also to our general purpose. ”

“ In literature there are found illustrations of contrast upon every page. There are contrasts of ideas, contrasts of emotions, contrasts of scenes, contrasts of characters, and many others. Under the head of “The Central Idea” will be found numerous examples of the first class. We shall here consider a few illustrations of the other classes, while in later pages will be found illustrations for more extended study.
Contrast of emotion is admirably illustrated in the following scene from The Merchant of Venice, Act iii., Sc. 1:
Shylock. ”

“ To arrive at the general it is necessary that we should be able to contrast it with a number of relatively precise images or words for particular occurrences; so long as all our images and words are vague, we cannot arrive at the contrast by which the general is defined. ”

“ I confess, it strikes me as a self-evident truth that variety or contrast is as essential a principle in art and nature as uniformity, and as necessary to make up the harmony of the universe and the contentment of the mind. ”

“ But to talk about a contrast in degree degrades the reality, for it is no matter of difference of measurement, but it is a matter of difference of kind. And so our Lord goes on to a deeper phase of the contrast, when He pits against one another 'the unrighteous mammon' and 'the true riches.' Now, there is some difficulty in that contrast. ”

“ Remember your own theory that contrast is about the only thing that makes life endurable. ”

“ It is within the bounds of the same occupation that the greatest contrasts, the greatest distance, the greatest gulfs of feeling are to be found. I value an otherwise painful experience because it exhibited that philosophic truth in so vivid and striking a manner. ”

“ I dwell on this before passing on to the poem, because I want to bring before you the remembrance of what a tremendous factor in literature, as in thought and in the whole of life is the principle of comparison, or, as we might put it, the principle of similitude or likeness. We learn about a thing we do not know through its likeness, as a whole or in some parts, to a thing we do know. ”

“ Such portraitures of human peculiarities, gauged by their moral or social desirability as examples to be followed or avoided, form an attractive compendium for the interpretation of men and their ways. Their consideration, ranging from gossip to philosophy, supplies the common touch of nature that makes the world of every time and clime akin, and presents graphically for our psychological contemplation the outward issues of disposition as shaped by opportunity and circumstance. ”

“ Soul, mind, spirit, these old and simple words are the strongest, the profoundest, the surest; age cannot antiquate them, nor science undo them; they last with the rocks, and still go beyond. But, having in view rather the operation than the cause, we find a use also in such alternative phrases as “mode of thinking,” “mode of feeling and thinking,” “habit of thought,” “moral and intellectual character or constitution,” and the like. ”

“ Did you ever think that the desire of distinction was one of the most, perhaps the most, intense purely spiritual emotion of the human soul? Look at the way these people live here, grubbing away at the soil like ants. ”

“ We look on all that in ourselves with which we can discover a resemblance in others; and consider those resemblances as the materials of moral knowledge. It is in the differences that it actually consists. ”

“ So we find it with respect to the Truth of which we speak; its distinctive epithet marking out to us, as its sphere of action, the mysterious intercourse between man and man; whether the medium consist in words or colors, in thought or form, or in any thing else on which the human agent may impress, be it in a sign only, his own marvellous life. ”

“ With the identification of the provinces of Truth and Thought no quarrel arises, and the Will and the Good are, as we shall see, intimately connected, but the attempts to fit Beauty into a neat pigeon-hole with Feeling have led to calamitous distortions. ”

“ I mean by this that the conceiving or theorizing faculty—the mind's middle department—functions exclusively for the sake of ends that do not exist at all in the world of impressions we receive by way of our senses, but are set by our emotional and practical subjectivity altogether. [2] It is a transformer of the world of our impressions into a totally different world,—the world of our conception; and the transformation is effected in the interests of our volitional nature, and for no other purpose whatsoever. ”

“ Judging by my own sensations, however, the difference is not merely of degree, but of kind, for such accounts, with the reflections made upon them, have in them a certain tone and tinting of the mind through which they pass, so that we get, not nature, but man softening her. ”

“ But truly in comparison with the wonderful fact that our thoughts, however different otherwise, can still be of the same, the question whether that same be a single thing, a whole class of things, an abstract quality or something unimaginable, is an insignificant matter of detail. Our meanings are of singulars, particulars, indefinites, problematics, and universals, mixed together in every way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It seems reasonable to me—upon the hypothesis that it is a person using another's mind or brain—that there must be more or less of that other's style or tone incorporated in the message, and that to the unseen personality, i.e., the power which impresses, the thought, the fact, or the philosophy, and not the style or tone, belongs. ”

“ We feel it to be some sort of a product (if such a product only could be calculated) of his inner virtue and his outer place,—neither singly taken, but both conjoined. If the outer differences had no meaning for life, why indeed should all this immense variety of them exist? They must be significant elements of the world as well. ”

“ And that the mind should have the power of reacting in just that duplicate way can only be stated as a harmony between its nature and the nature of the truth outside of it, a harmony whereby it follows that the qualities of both parties match. ”

“ All the secondary qualities, colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat, hardness, everything, in short, which is an affection of sense, may be generalised at one sweep into our mere knowledge of things. But the primary qualities, which are usually restricted to extension and figure, and which constitute, it is said, the objective or real essence of things, and which are entirely independent of us, into what shall they be generalised? ”

“ We should propose to ourselves nobler views, namely, to recreate and exalt the mind with a prospect of the beauty, order, extent, and variety of natural things: hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator," etc., etc., etc. ”

“ What "is" becomes "right" from custom, but with our yearnings for a higher ideal, sentiment slowly yields to the logic of comparison, and, often wiping from our eyes the sorrows over vanishing idols, we behold broader vistas of human powers, possibilities, duties, and destiny. ”

“ Among the chief of these causes is to be reckoned a principle which must be well known to those who have made any of the Arts the object of accurate reflection; namely, the pleasure which the mind derives from the perception of similitude in dissimilitude. This principle is the great spring of the activity of our minds, and their chief feeder. ”

“ You see, therefore, that the imagination, feelings, virtues, and failings of human nature, are circumscribed within a very narrow compass; and that the same things, with few exceptions and differences, are to be found everywhere. ”

“ The quality of our taste, the predominance of our feelings, or even the casualty of circumstance, may produce associations of ideas, confirmed by habit into predilection or enmity. To search for the cause of these varying opinions, to examine the foundation of these attachments and prejudices, and to reduce them all to the rule of equity is the office of the judgment, that most important effort of the reasoning powers. ”

“ In Reality, all Arguments from Experience are founded on the Similarity, which we discover among natural Objects, and by which we are induc'd to expect Effects similar to those, which we have found to follow from such Objects. ”

“ And, as the impressions of reflection, viz. passions, desires, and emotions, which principally deserve our attention, arise mostly from ideas, 'twill be necessary to reverse that method, which at first sight seems most natural; and, in order to explain the nature and principles of the human mind, give a particular account of ideas, before we proceed to impressions. ”

“ Being so far advanced as to observe a difference betwixt the object of the passions and their cause, and to distinguish in the cause the quality, which operates on the passions, from the subject, in which it inheres; we now proceed to examine what determines each of them to be what it is, and assigns such a particular object and quality, and subject to these affections. ”

“ To the three spheres of sentiment, of science, and of practice, conform three classes of character, in whom each respectively predominates. We feel the spirit of the first; we admire the intellect of the second; we deal only with the actions of the third. We turn to the first for inspiration and for influence ”

“ If we pass from the great to the small, from the employment of tremendous forces to the reconstruction of endless, minute relations, the same divergence between superficial appearance and the reality stares us in the face. ”

“ And an imperfect appearance of this character we were compelled, in our last chapter, to recognize in the individual habits of the soul. Further in the beauty which presents us with a realized type, we find another form of the union of fact with principle. ”

“ This was what I meant when I spoke of impressions which invited the intellect, or the reverse—those which are simultaneous with opposite impressions, invite thought; those which are not simultaneous do not. ”

“ And upon the whole, the reader may see, that there are sufficient sources for all those pleasures of imagination, which the beauties of nature excite in different persons; and that the differences which are found in different persons in this respect, are sufficiently analogous to the differences of their situations in life, and of the consequent associations formed in them. ”

“ Instead of thoughts of concrete things patiently following one another in a beaten track of habitual suggestion, we have the most abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another, the most rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most unheard-of combinations of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy ”

“ If, after a series of ordinary images exciting in a moderate degree to the emotion of reverence, or approbation, or beauty, the mind has presented to it an insignificant, or unworthy, or ugly image; the structure which yields the emotion of reverence, or approbation, or beauty, having for the time nothing to do, tends to resume {364} its full power ”

“ Having by these divisions given an order and arrangement to our objects, we may now apply ourselves to consider with the more accuracy their qualities and relations. The first circumstance, that strikes my eye, is the great resemblance betwixt our impressions and ideas in every other particular, except their degree of force and vivacity. ”

“ It is evident, therefore, from this last explanation, that there is a second direction of variation among men: variation in their sense of the truth and value of their own thoughts, and with them of the thoughts of others. ”

“ This negative character of the universal judgments holds true of them, as we have said, just in so far as you sunder the external and the internal meanings, and just in so far as you view the Real as the Beyond, and as merely the Beyond. If you turn your attention once more to the realm of the ideas viewed as internal meanings, you see, indeed, that they are constantly becoming enriched, in their inner life, by all this process. ”

“ In practice these three kinds of arguments, which turn on moral, practical, and aesthetic considerations, tend to be much mingled. The human mind is very complex, and our various interests and preferences are inseparably tangled. ”

“ Why we valiantly and pugnaciously insist upon the verbal truth, that different natures ought to have different pursuits, but we never considered at all what was the meaning of sameness or difference of nature, or why we distinguished them when we assigned different pursuits to different natures and the same to the same natures. ”