Control

“ You are born to have absolute control over your own dominion, but if you voluntarily hand over this power, even if for a little while, to some one or to some thing else, then you of course, become the creature, the one controlled. ”

“ Whatever power of regulation, change or control we possess over these functions does not belong to the powers themselves, but to the will or the personal capacity of free choice and self-regulation. It is only through our will-power that we can handle and direct our thinking or control the direction and force of our feelings. So, too, the ideas of right and wrong, the perceptions of duty and the sense of obligation come into the presence of the will of necessity. ”

“ THE CHOICE OF IDEALS.—Nor is it too much to bring under the head of willing the attitudes of approval and disapproval taken by man in contemplating certain occurrences, actual or possible, which lie beyond the confines of the field within which he can exercise control. The field of control, direct and indirect, is as we have seen a broad one, but it has its limits, and many of the things he would like to see accomplished or prevented lie without it. ”

“ In all directions our habitual causes of action seem to be losing efficaciousness, credit, and control, both with others and even with ourselves. Everywhere we see the beginnings of confusion, and we want a clue to some sound order and authority. ”

“ This assertion of rational control, implying some sort of plan in life, restraints on conduct, and trust in orderly processes of phenomena, has doubtless been most imperfectly established even in the picked members of the more highly civilised races. ”

“ In the measure that you master self, that you control your mental forces instead of being controlled by them, in just such measure will you master affairs and outward circumstances.
Show me a man under whose touch everything crumbles away, and who cannot retain success even when it is placed in his hands, and I will show you a man who dwells continually in those conditions of mind which are the very negation of power. ”

“ The substitution of action based on knowledge for action based on feeling is made possible in the individual and in society by the development of higher centers of control and the power of choice through inhibition and legislation. ”

“ Even if we insist on doing the whole as a{193} whole, yet it is on each part in turn that we must concentrate our mind and focus our attention. Independent control must, as a general rule, precede the various combinations. ”

“ You can control any situation if you first control yourself.” ”

“ The second of these frames of mind is that of the man with a system or in search of a system, who desires to control, or, if he cannot do that, at least to be taken into the confidence of the controller, or to gain a position from which he can oversee him, and approve or disapprove. ”

“ And let me say, sir, that the modes of control in the resources of this insidious society, notorious for its political arts and intrigues, are more numerous, more powerful, and more various than an unsuspicious people are at all conscious of.... ”

“ And so in our lightest moments the element of control and regulation is not wanting; it is part of the business of education to see that it is there, and its absence, wherever it is seen to be absent, pains us. ”

“ Men mistook the order of their ideas for the order of nature, and hence imagined that the control which they have, or seem to have, over their thoughts, permitted them to exercise a corresponding control over things. ”

“ Then might I exemplify how an influence, beyond our control, lays its strong hand on every deed which we do, and weaves its consequences into an iron tissue of necessity. ”

“ He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision. ”

“ Control.—The public mirror of the press reveals a third characteristic of social life. Activity and association are both under control. Activity would result in exploitation of the weak by the strong, and finally in anarchy, if there were no exercise of control. Under control activities are co-ordinated, individuals and classes are brought to work in co-operation and not in antagonism, and under an enlightened and sanctioned authority life becomes richer, fuller, and more truly free.
Social control begins in the individual mind. Instincts and feelings are held in the leash of rational thought. ”

“ What we are all forced to do is to choose a field of action which for some reason we look upon as specially interesting or important, and exercise 34our choice in that; in other matters protecting ourselves, for the most part, by some sort of mechanical control—some accepted personal authority, some local custom, some professional tradition, or the like. ”

“ Obedience, definite subjection and control, detailed organization is the lesson enforced by the rule of causal necessity in the outer world of space and time in which action takes [31] place. Unlimited freedom, the heightening of consciousness for its own sake, sheer reveling in noble ideals, the law of the inner world. What more can mortal man ask? ”

“ So that the three differentiated forms of control which grow up along with militant organization and action, while enforcing kindred restraints and incentives, also enforce one another; and their separate and joint disciplines have the common character that they involve the sacrifice of immediate special benefits to obtain more distant and general benefits. ”

“ Adherence to rigid order, and unconditional obedience to reasonable demands, and a mild discipline, with strict control, and a regular system by which one was set to watch another, were the means used for arousing to the utmost a spirit of emulation and giving a sharp spur to ambition. ”

“ It is not life that's complicated, it's the struggle to guide and control life. ”

“ It is the dominance of instinctive control and of instinctive activities in existing society, rather than of rational control and rational activities, in other words, which creates many of the problems of our present civilization. ”

“ To these several corollaries—that the various orders of control exercised over men have a common origin and a common function, are called out by co-ordinate necessities and co-exist in like stringency, decline together and decay together—it now only remains to add that they simultaneously become less needful. ”

“ The fact that such a substitution is one of the professed aims both of pedagogy and of sociology gives peculiar interest to the examination of the forms of control which have dominated different types of society, and the determination of the conditions and forces leading from one form of control to another. ”

“ They have escaped from control; they are regulated by assumptions and understandings that every one is to do so and so; that certain uniform and constant motives, aims, and desires will present themselves as long as human society endures; and that men will, therefore, continue to exert themselves in a certain manner for the satisfaction of their wants. ”

“ Of these three words, direction, control, and guidance, the last best conveys the idea of assisting through coöperation the natural capacities of the individuals guided; control conveys rather the notion of an energy brought to bear from without and meeting some resistance from the one controlled; direction is a more neutral term and suggests the fact that the active tendencies of those directed are led in a certain continuous course, instead of dispersing aimlessly. ”

“ The intelligent practice of self-control, quickly leads to a knowledge of one’s interior thought-forces, and, later on, to the acquisition of that power by which they are rightly employed and directed. ”

“ Thus the general doctrine, that all kinds of government exercised over men were at first one government—that the political, the religious, and the ceremonial forms of control are divergent branches of a general and once indivisible control—begins to look tenable. ”

“ Institutions that had seemed to be in the nature of things, and matters that had seemed to happen by the same sort of necessity that brought round the dawn and springtime, were discovered to be artificial, controllable, were they not so perplexingly intricate, and—now that the old routines were abolished and done away with—in urgent need of control. ”

“ Thus it is not the forces and conditions of the existing world alone that govern human affairs and control the fortunes of movements, for these forces and conditions themselves may be modified, re-arranged, and regulated by man so as to give rise to new circumstances and situations. ”

“ In saying that in the second period, the control of the spirit is easy, it is said in respect to our contracted understandings, and in comparison with our operations, and to make the matter intelligible to others. ”

“ In a profession in which there is an unceasing contest with the wild and fickle winds, and in which human efforts are to be manifested in the control of a delicate and fearful machinery on an inconstant element, this governing principle becomes of the last importance. ”

“ Therefore, to control the production of wealth is to control human life itself. ”

“ Hence, in the ratio in which the pure intelligence is unfolded, and feelings of obligation arise, or conscience is developed, and becomes the practical rule of action, the individual acquires the right of self-control, and only in that ratio. ”

“ In seeking to fulfill wants and achieve safety, men have used hundreds of types of control. The main types are usually called political and economic systems, but there are always great quantities of exceptions. The more mature and freer the society, the greater the variety of types of control that can be found in it. ”

“ One, the more tangible, is increased power of control. What cannot be managed directly may be handled indirectly; or we can interpose barriers between us and undesirable consequences; or we may evade them if we cannot overcome them. ”

“ The activity of this mechanism is dependent upon many and complicated conditions, some of which are hopelessly beyond our control, while others are readily accessible, and are capable of being indefinitely modified by our own actions. ”

“ And it is, as far as I have been able to learn, the practice of all countries.' The same will, the same positive action, the same purpose, and, it may be added, the same predicament or position of the actors, must exist in each class of cases. There must be intent and act, prompted by, and tending to, a practicable, or at least a probable result, and not mere endurance or submission to uncontrollable necessity in either case. ”

“ To use the organic figure, we attend to the living body of society rather than to the dead corpse, thereby bringing to light not only the organs but their actual manner of operating. Hitherto the point of departure, in studying regulation, has been the visible agency such as government, press, or theater. The consequence has been that while the specific disciplines have been perceived we have overlooked that great portion of control which does not proceed from definite organizations, and which, by reason of its pervasiveness, supplies the moral groundwork of all the rest. ”

“ They weave themselves, with actions more palpably voluntary and higher in the scale, into those complicated patterns determined by the conscious selection of an end. As long as they serve their purpose, and require no effort, they may remain inconspicuous and unconsidered. But, as soon as a check is met with, attention is directed upon them and they become the subject of conscious voluntary control. ”

“ As to the control which primitive folk exercise over their conduct, this varies enormously among different peoples; but if desired, I could bring many instances of self-control before you which would put to shame the members even of our most civilized communities. ”

“ Such control is personal and infinite in potential, even though it may never actually function owing to the perfection of the function of such co-ordinate and subordinate sources and centers and personalities. ”

“ This directs their action to a common result, and gives an understanding common to the participants. For all mean the same thing, even when performing different acts. This common understanding of the means and ends of action is the essence of social control. ”

“ No government can continue good, but under the control of the people; ”

“ Man’s social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The132 extraneous objective forces, that have hitherto governed history, pass under the control of man himself. ”