Diffidence

“ Even if you are unsuccessful in your suit they never mortify you in their refusal. It is generally given in so frank and candid a manner as to command your admiration.
Natural Diffidence is the result, as already stated, of certain peculiarities of constitution. There is a want of confidence in one’s self—a shrinking dread of intercourse with strangers, especially those of the opposite sex, and he, or she, can give no reason for this diffident feeling. He may be well educated ”

“ But if we pass over these for the present, it will appear that the self-control practiced by quiet persons had oftentimes better give place to self-abandon, and that many a man is respected for his restraint when he should be pitied for his diffidence. ”

“ The great law of division became clear to him—the separation for a time of the universal agent into two parts, by the separation and reuniting of which comes light and heat and the hidden force of life, and the prime rules of attractive action; all things that are accounted material. ”

“ XXI. Yet this division does not proceed from ignorance; for the soul admits of a twofold division, one of which partakes of reason, the other is without it. When, therefore, we are ordered to give a law to ourselves, the meaning is, that reason should restrain our rashness. ”

“ Where we see or conceive the whole at once we readily note the discriminations and decide the preference: but of two systems, of which neither can be surveyed by any human being in its full compass of magnitude and multiplicity of complication, where is the wonder, that judging of the whole by parts, I am affected by one or the other as either presses on my memory or fancy? ”

“ The other side of “the divide,” evolution had been physical,—body, and body function had been the goal. This side “the divide,” it was spiritual and social, and the goal was the evolution of the man within man. The things which mattered now were love, sacrifice, service, goodwill rather than “tooth and claw.” Before, nature’s goal had been along the line of least resistance. Now, the line of march set straight against instinct and along the line of greatest resistance. There could be advance on [30] this side “the divide,” only as the ideal became clearer and its sway more coercive. ”

“ Should ye attribute a mistake to a person, it will be a cause of offense and grief to him—how much greater would this be if it is attributed to a number of people! How often it hath occurred that a slight difference hath caused a great dissension and hath been made a reason for division. ”

“ In Diversion, as in many other Particulars, the upper Part of Life is distinguished from the Lower. Let the Great therefore answer for the Employment of their Time, to themselves, or to their spiritual Governors. ”

“ Merely to be so close soothed them, and sitting side by side the divisions disappeared, and it seemed as if the world were once more solid and entire, and as if, in some strange way, they had grown larger and stronger. ”

“ What we call a division on a single basis is in reality the compressed result of a scheme of division and subdivision by dichotomy, in which a fresh principle has been introduced at every step. Thus when we divide men, on the basis of colour, into white, black, brown, red and yellow, we may be held to have first divided men into white and not-white, and then to have subdivided the men that are not-white into black and not-black, and so on. ”

“ The division must be accepted as a resolution of human nature into its essential constituents—to wit, bodily organisation and reason. Again, when human beings are divided into male and female, this is a separation of them into kinds; to mistake it for an analysis of mankind into elements would lead to very awkward misapprehensions.
16. So in regard to the analysis of cognition and of existence. ”

“ Come, tell me that!"
"Well," said I, "I suppose there would be a difference according to circumstances in people's action about these matters."
"I should think so, indeed," said he. "At all events, experience shows that it is so. Amongst us, our differences concern matters of business, and passing events as to them, and could not divide men permanently. ”

“ This divergence, viz., estimate of control by a stranger, now as lighter, now as severer, than control by one who is nearer, has certain utilitarian justifications. The stranger is less partisan, the member of the group is more intelligent about its conditions. ”

“ Progress from these forms of organisation to still higher forms is similarly characterized by increase of the aggregative tendency or diminution of the separative, and similarly exhibits the necessary antagonism between the development of the individual and the increase of the race. ”

“ And again, through this divided generation we may see that each of the proceeding natures, is united and at the same time multiplied, is indivisible and divided in its causes, and through diminution is separated from them. ”

“ We commence our present division—and shall follow the like course with the others—with its higher forms, and, proceeding in descending order, shall in each conclude with those humble rudimentary forms in which the rigid divisions of classification are obliterated, and the only differences which can be assigned are, at best, but little more than arbitrary. ”

“ Every too abrupt distinction into classes, political, economical, or intellectual, and all selection, which is the logical and natural consequence of such distinctions, are equally disastrous to mankind, to the elect as well as to the rest of men; "they produce with the latter deficiency, with the former excess of the element which is the principle of the distinction of classes." ”

“ Hordes of primitive men, dividing and subdividing, do, indeed, show us successions of small social aggregates leading like lives, inheriting such low structures as had resulted, and repeating those structures. ”

“ It will be seen, by a glance at the above table, that the three great divisions of society, namely, High Life, Low Life, and Middle Life, are subdivided, or more properly, sub-classed, into the Superior, Transition, and Metamorphic classes. ”

“ If the division is a close one, the question is again put off for further discussion; if the division is a wide one, the minority are asked if they will yield to the more general opinion, which they often, nay, most commonly do. ”

“ The influences tending to create dissimilarity, which, in our day at least, are at work, without a moment's intermission, from the cradle to the grave, are incessantly neutralised in each successive generation. ”

“ Just as we have become acquainted with phenomena of progress, quite independent of divergence, so we shall, on the other hand, very often meet with divergencies which285 are not perfecting, but which are rather the contrary, that is retrogressions or degenerations. ”

“ When the familiarity of the change-process varies, then we get the statements which depend upon varied, i.e., diminished, familiarity: “less real or not real,” “unknown,” “uncertain,” etc.
(3) When the totality of the connexion of the inner change-processes varies, these latter become more active, more differentiated, more articulated. ”

“ We shall make our division on the principle of proceeding from the most general, or those which relate to society in its most extensive sense, to those which are less general, relating to society in its more specific and determinate sense, and finally to those which are the most particular, relating to separate portions and members of society, to the family and to the individual. ”

“ Throughout it was essentially one phase of human organization. When one comes to examine the final result, it is astonishing to remark the small amount of essential change, of positively final and irreparable alteration, in the conditions of the common life. ”

“ Yet wait until the end and you will see that the division has been made with mathematical accuracy—that the measure, the quality of the soil, the slope of the field, the distance from the village—everything in short has been taken into account, that the reckoning has been correctly done and, what is most important, that every one of those present who were interested in the division is certain of the correctness of the division or settlement. The cry, the noise, the racket do not subside until every one is satisfied and no doubter is left. ”

“ Many, I doubt not, failing to recognize the truth that, in proportion as an aggregate is complex, the effects wrought by an incident force become more multitudinous, complicated, and incalculable, and that, therefore, a society is, of all kinds of aggregates, the kind most difficult to affect in an intended way and not in unintended ways—many such will ask evidence of the difficulty. ”

“ Our classification, then, must begin with societies of the first or simplest order.
We cannot in all cases say with precision what constitutes a simple society; for, in common with products of evolution generally, societies present transitional stages which negative sharp divisions. As the multiplying members of a group spread and diverge gradually, it is not always easy to decide when the groups into which they fall become distinct. ”

“ The vastness of the change, its appearance, almost simultaneously, in various ways in different parts of the world, indicate that it proceeds from causes too powerful and too universal to be attributed to any particular individual. ”

“ Differences in the party itself had been growing sharper; differences between the more cautious and the more fearless, between the more steady-going and the more subtle thinkers. The contrast between the familiar and customary, and the new—between the unknown or forgotten, and a mass of knowledge only recently realised—became more pronounced. ”

“ While of the divergent divisions and subdivisions of the human race many have undergone changes not constituting an advance; while in some the type may have degraded; in others it has become decidedly more heterogeneous. ”

“ How sudden a change at any one point, or how great a difference between the two extremes is sufficient to bar identity, is one of the most uncertain things imaginable, and seems to be decided on different grounds in different cases, sometimes very intelligibly, and again at others arbitrarily and capriciously. ”

“ One can be natural, with a difference, which difference means a thought for the other. There is a selection possible in one's words and actions before another—nay, there is a manner of doing and feeling which almost forestalls the necessity of a selection at all. I like the expression employed by a certain sister after nursing her small brother through a difficult illness, "We were always Castilian," she said. ”

“ It is, however, evident that there, as everywhere else, the old parties are in process of disintegration, and that, in a new social state, in presence of new problems, a new distribution of parties is called for. ”

“ Division must not be sought for; it must present itself, and spring out of the subject which you are about to discuss, or the object which you have in view. {124} For instance, you intend to treat on deference to man's opinion. ”

“ Without enumerating the minor differentiations which these three great classes afterwards undergo, we will merely note that throughout, they follow the same general law with the differentiations of an individual organism. In a society, as in a rudimentary animal, we have seen that the most general and broadly contrasted divisions are the first to make their appearance ”

“ The coercive forces by which aggregates keep their units together are at first very slight, and, becoming extreme at a certain stage of social evolution, afterward relax—or, rather, change their forms. ”

“ Surmises and Dislikes are spread; Facts, though void of all Foundation, are alledged and persisted in; the more credulous Part are misled: Thus an honest People are divided; and not only a Province or a Village, but even an House often set at Variance within itself. ”

“ It thus happens that there is, in the third place, a continual process of readjustment and oscillation between the tendency towards unity and that towards variety, which, through opposition and conciliation, produces continuity in nature. ”

“ The truth here chiefly concerning us, however, is that the continued presence of the one or the other set of conditions fosters a character to which either the centralized or the diffused kind of political organization is appropriate. Existence, generation after generation, in a region where despotic control has arisen, produces an adapted type of nature ”

“ The law that the divergence in form always corresponds exactly with the divergence in the conditions of life212 has accordingly received confirmation in all cases where we have been able to pronounce judgment. ”

“ But whereas a part of these associations grows confirmed by frequent repetition, another part is destroyed by contradictory experiences; and the world becomes divided for us into two provinces, one in which we are at home and anticipate with confidence always the same sequences ”

“ In the midst of this loud talk of progress, therefore, in which so many of us at present are agreed to believe, which is, indeed, the common meeting point of all the thousand sects into which we are split, it is with saddened feelings that we see so little of it in so large a matter. ”

“ When he smiled one end of his crooked mouth remained stationary, while the other seemed to jut right up into his cheek. “Why should you be surprised? Tout le monde est contre-révolutionnaire: it is merely a question of whether one is actively or passively so.” ”

“ On the other hand the vast bulk of mankind does fall naturally into three great divisions, each of which again subdivides into three or four principal branches, in regard to whose distinctness there is no serious difference of opinion. ”