Difference

“ When we say what we "think," we mean that we exercise the faculties whereby we compare and contrast certain things with other things, observing and noting their points of difference and agreement, then classifying them in accordance with these observed agreements and differences. ”

“ At bottom the process is one of conception, and is everywhere, even in the sphere of simple sensible qualities, the same as that by which we are usually understood to attain to the notions of abstract goodness, perfect felicity, absolute power, and the like: the direct perception of a difference between compounds, and the imaginary prolongation of the direction of the difference to an ideal terminus, the notion of which we fix and keep as one of our permanent subjects of discourse. ”

“ There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education. ”

“ Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine [1] ; ”

“ The difference among the perceptive acts of different individuals consists, not in the different kinds of intellectual exercise, but in differences among the materials with which the perceptive faculty deals. ”

“ They are these: The first is based upon the differences in animals; the second upon the differences in men; the third upon the difference in the constitution of the organs of sense; the fourth upon circumstances; the fifth upon position, distance, and place; the sixth upon mixtures; the seventh upon the quantity and constitution of objects; the eighth upon relation; the 37 ninth upon frequency or rarity of occurences; the tenth upon systems, customs, laws, mythical beliefs, and dogmatic opinions. We make this order ourselves. ”

“ Still the fact is duly recognized by modern Science that there are differences not only of kind but also of degree in everything—ideas, feelings, desires, actions, objects and attributes of objects—with which we are concerned. Although you may not have a word expressive of degree in every case, yet you can practically ascertain the extremes and the mean in all cases without exception, and can so order71 your conduct as to avoid the one and adopt the other in all cases. ”

“ We have passed by, and no doubt still are passing by, unnoticed differences which appear slight and unimportant, but which when properly understood will give us more information than the rough and crude distinctions which have struck us at first. ”

“ Instead of this, we know that the world consists of bodies distinguishable from each other by definite differences, capable of being classified and named, and of having general propositions asserted concerning them. ”

“ But, admitting this, it is also true that every one of these parts is different, and that the aggregate of all the differences mounts up to an enormous sum-total, more especially in relation to habits and to capacities for action. ”

“ In examining the phenomena which fall under the senses, we find between them grave differences upon which it is useless here to insist, and which establish the distinction of primary qualities and of secondary qualities. ”

“ It appears necessary, however, that we attend to the universal qualities of our nature, before we regard its varieties, or attempt to explain differences consisting in the unequal possession or application of dispositions and powers that are in some measure common to all mankind. ”

“ The differences which come under the first head are those which Nature herself has set between man and man; ”

“ How natural the transition from the theory which assigns 'to the one the supremacy of the head, to the other that of the heart'—to that further division which attributes to the one Reason, to the other Faith. ”

“ If objects are compared in reference to the succession {107} of our conceptions or perceptions, we gain the ideas of such relations as are expressed by the terms firstly, secondly, and thirdly. If objects are compared in reference to the degree of any quality, we gain an idea of such relations as are expressed by the terms brighter, sweeter, harder, louder. If objects are compared in reference to proportion, we gain ideas of such relations as are expressed by the terms an eighth, a half. ”

“ It remains to note that such phrases as 'Being and Nothing are the same,' or 'The unity of Being and Nothing'—like all other such unities, that of subject and object, and others—give rise to reasonable objection. ”

“ You assign certain boundaries of all the elements and the heavenly bodies, and these, you say, meet in some without hurt, as in marriages; but in others they are hurtfully united, as in adulteries. And you say that some things are general to all, but other things do not belong to all, and are not general. But not to make a long discussion, I shall speak briefly of the matter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet we understand one another when we speak of the shape of a human body; so likewise we do when we speak of the heart and inward principles, how far soever the standard is from being exact or precisely fixed. ”

“ Such an abstract general statement of the results of our definition of what it is to be, may well be illustrated, however, through an approach to the whole matter of the unity of Being from another side, namely, from the more empirical side. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Preserve the integrity of the relationship, choose your individual embodiment of one of its terms, and you are still free to choose one of several, often of many, — in some cases an infinite number of individual embodiments of the other terms. ”

“ The one fuses or crystallizes external objects and circumstances in the medium of human feeling and passion; the other is concerned with the relations of objects and circumstances among themselves, including in them all the facts of human consciousness, and with the discovery and classification of these relations. ”

“ When two men are discussing anything it is the conception and not the varying individual presentations of it that they aim at. The conception, then, is the standard of value for the individual presentations. ”

“ The second proof is derived from the nature of the soul: seeing that the individual soul, like the State, has been divided by us into three principles, the division may, I think, furnish a new demonstration. ”

“ Our very theory insists that your internal meanings, your ideas viewed as internally significant, your selections and expressions, are typical instances of facts, and of precisely the facts of whose unity the world consists. ”

“ Connected with the distinction just made between ‘object’ in the sense of the qualities actually before the mind and ‘object’ in the sense of the whole thing which possesses the qualities actually before the mind, is another distinction of the utmost importance for a correct analysis of the constituents necessary to a valuable whole. ”

“ We shall be better able to understand the reason and necessity of this intermediate state, if we consider how much of the external, which we exhibit to each other while in this world, is merely assumed for the sake of appearance. ”

“ Now the sort of 'fact of experience' on which in my book I have proposed to compromise, is the so-called 'mental state,' in whose existence not only common men but philosophers have uniformly believed. ”

“ The combination of the two elements, the subjective or ideal, and the objective or observed, is necessary, in order to give us any insight into the laws of nature. But different persons, according to their mental habits and constitution, may be inclined to dwell by preference upon the one or the other of these two elements. ”

“ What classes of things have a greater share of pure existence, in your judgment—those of which food and drink and condiments and all kinds of sustenance are examples, or the class which contains true opinion and knowledge and mind and all the different kinds of virtue? ”

“ These different ideas we gain by the aid of the different senses. Of course, our conceptions are combinations of different qualities in an object which the mind considers as one, and as distinct from other objects. ”

“ Concrete Terms; General vs. Specific Terms>
Abstract terms convey ideas; concrete terms call up pictures. If we say "Honesty is the best policy," we speak abstractly. Nobody can see or hear or touch the thing honesty or the thing policy; the apprehension of them must be purely intellectual. But if we say "The rat began to gnaw the rope," we speak concretely. Rat, gnaw, and rope are tangible, perceptible things; the words bring to us visions of particular objects and actions. ”

“ In short, this postulate is among the inspired revelations of the Common Sense that are contained in our share of Divine Reason. We may speak of understanding as 'human,' with its often discordant generalisations; but there can be no merely 'human' Reason. ”

“ Further, the qualities of one thing are interconnected, as we have already seen, by various special laws or modes of relation, which exhibit the changes in the behaviour of the thing corresponding to changes in the surrounding circumstances. ”

“ Now when we engage in explanations and discussions of principles, theories, broad social topics, and the like—when we expound, moralize, or philosophize,—our subject matter is general. We approach our readers or hearers on the thinking, the rational side of their natures. ”

“ Hence men, even in the infancy of society, observe a certain order in their words and actions, distinct from that of the objects and the impressions represented by them, all expression being subject to the laws of that from which it proceeds. ”

“ All these expressions point to a distinction which has divided the world, and the adjustment and explanation of which has occupied the attention of philosophers, both speculative and practical, from the earliest times. ”

“ And therefore all the manifold relations of life,—the home, the market, the city, the state; all the multiform activities of life,—labour and speech and art and literature and {114} law; all the sentiments of life,—friendship and love and reverence and courage and hope,—all these are parts of a knowable whole; they are expressions of law; they are Reason realising itself through individuals, and in the same process realising them. ”

“ And what would you say of the many beautiful—whether men or horses or garments or any other things which are named by the same names and may be called equal or beautiful,—are they all unchanging and the same always, or quite the reverse? May they not rather be described as almost always changing and hardly ever the same, either with themselves or with one another? ”

“ The differentia or rather that differentia which characteristically marks off the fetich from the god is the nature of the desires which each exists to promote; the function which each exists to fulfil, the end which is there for each to subserve. ”

“ There is an universal order and gradation thro' the whole visible world, of the sensible and mental faculties, which causes the subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to man, whose reason alone countervails all the other faculties. ”

“ These are the physical and the mental, or, as they are sometimes called, the moral sciences. The proper subjects of the first are the properties of matter; those of the second are the sensations, faculties, and habits of the human mind. ”

“ As applied to books, it is a general term for a treatise which includes maxims, pithy sayings, and didactic stories, intended as a guide to such matters of everyday life as form the character of an individual and influence him in his relations to his fellow-men. ”