Diversity

“ And there never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains: their most universal quality is diversity. ”

“ You have admitted an apparently capricious element of individuality: a power on the part of the half-breeds of differing from one another to an extent quite impossible in the two original homogeneous societies. In one word, you have made possible the future existence of diversity in character. ”

“ We burn incense and we wear Geneva gowns. This diversity is not to be condemned. What is to be deprecated is the feeling among some of us that the diversity should give place to uniformity—to uniformity of their own kind, of course. ”

“ Yet after a little study the diversity of their lives is seen to be, if not a dominating fact, at least one of surprising importance. Side by side with this diversity there runs a corresponding diversity of relations to their physical environment. ”

“ Backward and forward along peninsular Europe, men communicated to one another their emotional and objective experiences. The result has been a culture amazing only in its diversity,—amazing because, with contact and interchange of racial experiences, the coursing and recoursing of the same blood, stirred and dissolved, it is amazing that such diversity should persist. ”

“ Particularly marked in representations of the rainbow nation circulated for purposes of tourism and advertising, are depictions of cultural diversity reduced to superficial representations of difference that fail to do justice to the richness or complexity of cultures, or to the real material differences in people's lives. ”

“ For, by the same reason that two particles of matter may be in one place, all bodies may be in one place : which, when it can be supposed, takes away the distinction of identity and diversity of one and more, and renders it ridiculous. But it being a contradiction that two or more should be one, identity and diversity are relations and ways of comparing well founded, and of use to the understanding. ”

“ In material culture also there are striking similarities, though here the variations are more definite and obvious, and the apparent uniformity is probably due to the attention given to the customs of chiefs, overlooking the culture of the ordinary people where more diversity is discoverable. ”

“ Of those nations, which in the highest degree enjoy its influences, it is not too much to affirm, that the differences public and private, physical, moral and intellectual, are only less than what might be expected from a diversity in species. ”

“ In considering racial or native homogeneity, we touch upon one aspect of a much disputed question, the influence of race on national character and history, in regard to which the greatest diversity of opinion has prevailed and still prevails. ”

“ Diversity has, like Identity, been transformed into a maxim: 'Everything is various or different': or,'There are no two things completely like each other.' Here Everything is put under a predicate, which is the reverse of the identity attributed to it in the first maxim ”

“ The group in relation must be the object of our study if that study is to be fruitful for politics. The pluralists have pointed out diversity but no pluralist has yet answered satisfactorily the question to which we must find an answer—What is to be done with this diversity? ”

“ Every civilization at one or another stage in its development has subordinated unity to the increasingly insistent demands of diversity.
For at least six thousand years one civilization after another has sought to achieve centralization and universality. In every instance of which history provides a legible record, centralized, universalized institutions and practices have fragmented into diversity and stubborn localism. ”

“ The aggregate of all the causes of diversity, heterogeneity, and innovation, which in man act in opposition to the principles of simplicity, homogeneity, and conservation, we may designate by one name, viz., evolution or progress. ”

“ I resist any thing better than my own diversity, Breathe the air but leave plenty after me, And am not stuck up, and am in my place. ”

“ Then we have the deeper inbred differences of language and ancestry among us, our population being made up of the lineage of all nations. Our industrial pursuits, also, are various; and, with a great natural diversity of soil and climate, they must always continue to be so. ”

“ Again,—as among people of different races, the Malay and the American, the African and the Caucasian,—the diversity is very wide. And these people are just as different in their mental characteristics as in their physical constitution. ”

“ Seventh—All the diversities in nature are the legitimate effect of the power of God, operating through and upon different elements, and different proportions of different elements, contained in nature, the diversity being infinite, because the material and producing power are infinite.
Eighth—Man, collectively, being the representative of all the material and spiritual elements, the individual diversities observed in him are the legitimate result of the different relative proportions of these elements contained in his organization. ”

“ Another occasion the mind often takes of comparing, is the very being of things, when, considering anything as existing at any determined time and place, we compare it with itself existing at another time, and thereon form the ideas of identity and diversity. ”

“ Everybody who tries to reform the world, tries to make it uniform, but what we want is the most [Pg 220] complete diversity that's obtainable. It's the variations from type that make type bearable!... ”

“ The diversity is particularly marked among the civilised peoples, and perhaps in a peculiar degree among the peoples of Europe and her colonies. The extreme diversity of native character, both physical and spiritual, noticeable in these communities is in all probability due to their being made up of a mixture of racial stocks. ”

“ In fact there is one historic stream of human thought, aspiration, and progress; it is practically continuous, and with all its diversity of local color and movement it is a unit. If you are in it, you move ”

“ But the way is a very narrow and restricted one, and all savages of the same race walk in it exactly alike. Cunning they have, skill they have, instinct they have, to a most marvellous degree; but of spontaneity, originality, initiative, variability, not a single spark. Know one savage of a tribe and you know them all. Their cleverness is not the cleverness of the individual man: it is the inherited and garnered intelligence or instinct of the entire race.
How, then, do originality, diversity, individuality, genius, begin to come in? ”

“ However, in its general sense of experience, being underlies the ideas of individuality and perfection. And these, at least so far, must be positive.
2. And, in the second place, each of them is positively determined by what it excludes. The aspect of diversity belongs to the essence of the individual, and is affirmatively contained in it. The unity excludes what is diverse, so far only as that attempts to be anything by itself, and to maintain isolation. And the individual is the return of this apparent opposite with all its wealth into a richer whole. ”

“ And could we see into all the Conveniencies of things, how well they are fitted to each other, and the common Purposes of all, we shou'd find that the Diversity is as usefull as it is agreeable.
It is the same also with the World of Mankind. If all had a like Turn or Cast of Mind, and all were bent upon one Business or way of Living, it would spoil much of the present Harmony of the World, and be a manifest Inconvenience to the Publick. Perhaps one Part of Learning, or Method of Business, would be throughly cultivated and improved; but how many others must be neglected, or remain defective? ”

“ How can there be freedom of action for the development of the individual powers without social expansion? Truly, the social and the individual life are complementary elements of progress.
Diversity Is Necessary to Progress.—If progress is an essential characteristic of modern civilization, it may be said that diversity is essential to progress. There is much said about equality and fraternity. It depends on what is meant by the terms as to whether these are good sayings or not. If equality means uniformity, by it man is easily reduced to a state of stagnation. ”

“ All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the [Pg 202] ”

“ Such radical differences and such concomitant radical diversity of interests exist among the various races of men that the task of harmonizing their interests, aims, and activities will be about as great as would be that of bleaching their skins to a uniform color. ”

“ Our rich texture of racial, religious and political diversity will be a Godsend in the 21st century. Great rewards will come to those who can live together, learn together, work together, forge new ties that bind together. ”

“ We do not discuss the anatomical, physiological, and mental characteristics of man considered as an individual; but we are interested in the diversity of these traits in groups of men found in different geographical areas and in different social classes. ”

“ And this, diversity is so important, this contribution of diverse elements is so necessary to the complex strength and prosperity of the whole, that one must view with alarm all federal interference and tendency to greater centralization.
And not less to be dreaded than monotony from the governmental point of view, is the obliteration of variety in social life and in literary development. It is not enough for a nation to be great and strong, it must be interesting, and interesting it cannot be without cultivation of local variety. ”

“ So, let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal. ”

“ I make use at almost every moment of a term comprising in its extensive signification a collection of ideas which it is important to define accurately: civilization. The greater or less degree in which this term is applicable to the social condition of various nations, is my only standard for the comparative merit of races. I also speak of a European civilization, in contradistinction to others of a different character. ”

“ It is somewhat singular, however, that while most writers have ceased to explain the physical diversities of races by external causes, such as climate, food, etc., yet many still persist in maintaining the absolute equality of all in other respects, referring such differences in character as are undeniable, solely to circumstances, education, mode of life, etc. ”

“ For, if we assume that the infinite intellectual diversities of individuals are owing solely to external influences, it is self-evident that the same diversities in nations, which are but aggregations of individuals, must result from the same causes. But are we prepared to grant this first position—to assert that man is but an automaton, whose wheelwork is entirely without—the mere buffet and plaything of accident and circumstances? ”

“ In this essay I have endeavored to set forth the principles: that the various elements, the aggregation of which constitutes a civilization—especially institutions, creeds, and arts—are the expression of certain modes of thinking and feeling special to each race, and inevitably suffer transformation in passing from one race to another; that they rarely undergo a parallel development among different races. With some, institutions—with others, literature, industry, or art—prevail. ”

“ A nobler race should reach their fruitful clime;
Or, if a common source all nations claim,
Their lineage, form and faculties the same,
What sovereign secret cause, yet undisplay'd,
This wondrous change in nature's work has made;
Why various powers of soul and tints of face
In different lands diversify the race;
To whom the Guide: Unnumbered causes lie,
In earth and sea, in climate, soil and sky,
That fire the soul, or damp the genial flame,
And work their wonders on the human frame. ”

“ By a geographical or racial arrangement the general culture of each distinct race is made the prominent feature of the collection, and it is therefore more strictly ethnological, whereas in the arrangement which I have adopted, the development of specific ideas and their transmission from one people to another, or from one locality to another, is made more apparent, and it is therefore of greater sociological value. ”

“ SIMILAR EXPERIENCES BEGET SIMILAR IDEAS. The average of the experiences of a community, or a class, a nation, or a race begets the central idea of that community, or class, or nation, or race; therefore, in attempting to explain the tendency of any such community, class, nation, or race to gyrate about some central idea, or concertedly move towards some definite goal, we must discover those similarities of experience which furnish the common ground for similarity of thought and unity of action. ”

“ But in spite of this appearance of spiritlessness, the race is the root of the social life sphere, just as the cosmic bodies were the soil out of which the organisms grew.
Social life is, first of all, a product of the life of definite races, composed of different folk-tribes, each of which has formed its life course in a typical way, In the course of historical development, the typical views of life of the various races came in conflict with one another. ”