Figures

“ I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist’s opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward. ”

“ Great figures are set out as to the magnitude of certain fortunes and the proportionate amount of the national wealth held by a fraction of the population, and eloquent exclamation-points are set against them. If the figures were beyond criticism, what would they prove? Where is the rich man who is oppressing anybody? ”

“ We have but to think a moment of such a matter as the play of representational values, those that make it a part, and an important part, of our taking offered things in that we should take them as aspects and visibilities—take them to the utmost as appearances, images, figures, objects, so many important, so many contributive items of the furniture of the world—in order to feel immediately the effect of such a condition at every turn of our adventure and every point of the representative surface. ”

“ The figures are by one of your own hired servants, by Bishop Fisher, and may save you some trouble in making the calculation for yourself, for mankind are not easily counted—there are always so many of them from home, and so many of them in bed, and so many of them you are apt to mistake for apes and so many for pigs. ”

“ But as the wooden figures became more numerous and as no figure could do more than one task, the ragged man had to make figures for the figures and servants for the servants, for as things went on, there had to be more fruit gatherers, more water carriers, more scavengers, more cooks, because the figures had to eat and drink. Thus it came to pass that before long, instead of their being twenty figures for each man, there were sixty or seventy, with new ones coming from the old man’s knife every day. ”

“ We will find that almost every influential figure appears on the first list, but that many on the first list do not appear on the second. In other words, some great figures may be passed by or ignored by their immediate times and recognized subsequently as isolated peaks of eminence, much appreciated but little imitated. ”

“ Make the outline for an expository biography of one of the large figures of history, including the important events and showing the relations with contemporaries and the effect upon them. Then make a similar outline for the biography of some comparatively humble person of whom you know who has affected a more restricted group of contemporaries. Compare the two with a view to making this statement: As the great man was to his large group, so the lesser man was to his smaller group. What light does this shed on the individual life without regard to station in society? ”

“ What we want is three figures. We'll recognize them by the wording, if they're put in on purpose. I don't see anything there. H'm, 'For Sale,'—go slow now! 'Fixtures.' 'Bargains.' 'Typewriters.' 'Sacrifice,'—well! ”

“ I was at home then in the world of figures, but not in that of values. ”

“ The average mind does not readily grasp the meaning of very large figures. But let us look again, with a little exertion of the imagination, at the enormous totals concerned, and endeavour to realize the political as well as the economic significance of the contrast given. ”

“ Of animal life there was no movement amid the majestic vaulted aisles which stretched from us as we walked, but a constant movement far above our heads told of that multitudinous world of snake and monkey, bird and sloth, which lived in the sunshine, and looked down in wonder at our tiny, dark, stumbling figures in the obscure depths immeasurably below them. ”

“ The dark figures of the horsemen, the grave, earnest bearing of the rustics as they knelt in prayer or leaned upon their rude weapons, the half-cowed, half-sneering expression of the captive dragoons, the line of white pain-drawn faces that peeped over the side of the waggon, and the chorus of groans, cries, and ejaculations which broke in upon the steady earnest voice of the pastor. Above us the brilliant heavens, beneath us the beautiful sloping valley, stretching away in the white moonlight as far as the eye could reach. ”

“ Leigh, sternly, “figures don't speak to the average man, and often not even to the expert. The man behind the figures—that's what counts.”
An icy hand squeezed Tommy's heart. An expert at figures had paid for his education. The only figures that now came into his throbbing mind were: seventeen thousand dollars! And the man behind those figures was his own father!
“You must see Willetts again,” said Mr. Leigh, quietly. “Perhaps I'd better explain the figures to him myself, Thomas.” ”

“ But the glories of the rising and setting sun, the serene majesty of the moon when it crosses the celestial vault, the mild luster of Venus, the splendor of the firmament on a cloudless night, the appearance of a comet with its long tail floating in the skies like a resplendent banner, are spectacles that can charm both the philosopher and the peasant, the mathematician who measures worlds and traces their routes, and the shepherd who sees only their figures. ”

“ Crouching in the darkness, they saw that wild procession pass, the rushing screaming figures, the tossing arms, the bearded, distorted faces, now scarlet and now grey, as the brandished torches waxed or waned. They heard the rush of many feet, the clamour of hoarse voices, the clang of metal upon metal. And then suddenly, above them all, they saw a vision of a monstrous man, a huge bowed back, a savage face, grim hawk eyes, that looked out over the swaying shields. It was seen for an instant in a smoke-fringed circle of fire, and then it had swept on into the night. ”

“ A little practice will enable you to dispense with writing down the figures and the consonants which represent them; but at first pains must be taken in the above way to secure accuracy.
What would be your method of procedure? What must be done in all cases? What will a little practice enable you to do? What must be done to secure accuracy at first? Deal with an original date in the way indicated here. In dealing with the date of the foundation of Yale College, would the phrase “taxes due” express 1701? If not, why? Can you translate into a word or phrase the date of your own birth? ”

“ This action is effected by fixing a catgut thread to the base on which the figures are mounted, in such a manner that contraction of the thread rotates the figures so that the man appears and extension so that the woman appears. ”

“ A proportion—what proportion?—are weeded out, entirely by the voluntary action of the men themselves, and given temporary work, carrying sandwich-boards, addressing envelopes, sorting paper, etc.; but the cause of their social dilapidation remains unaltered. ”

“ Can a class of half a million male adults, whom we may emphatically term all readers, and members of reading families; a class of half a million of the pick of British Artisans; a class of the highest intelligence, and (measured by their wages and numbers) highest in wealth: can we talk of the smallness of the number of readers, and assume to know any thing of this large and influential body? ”

“ What we call obscure condition or vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry is not yet written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as any. In our estimates, let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of hospitality, the connection of families, the impressiveness of death, and a thousand other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will. To make habitually a new estimate, — that is elevation.
What a man does, that he has. ”

“ To form a just estimate of the character of a people, to appreciate fully the effect of the various causes which indirectly influence the progress of political events, it is necessary to study the condition of social life, and the state of the arts and industry of the period. ”

“ Busy men, moreover, are given to detail, and detail fills the eye and ear; men of reflection deal more with principles, and these lie beyond the range of ordinary vision.
The proposition which I here put forward, based on many years of observation and study, is fundamental, and affects, more or less, a wide range of character in every individual. ”

“ Meanest thou that all these divines, all these exponents of learning, with all their authority, their pomp and pageantry, have erred, and failed to distinguish truth from falsehood? Dost thou, and people like thyself, pretend to have comprehended that which they have not understood?” If numbers and excellence of apparel be regarded as the criterions of learning and truth, the peoples of a bygone age, whom those of today have never surpassed in numbers, magnificence and power, should certainly be accounted a superior and worthier people. ”

“ The larger class of persons, however, will require that each particular detail shall be traced out and defined; and the mass of mankind will only understand the subject upon the basis of practical illustration. ”

“ And from our streets and shops and newspapers, from our laboratories and lecture rooms and bureaus of statistics, it is, after all, such a little way to the border-land of mystery, where all minds are on an equality and where the wisest can but dimly guess the riddles that are propounded. ”

“ The masses, in the sense of the common people, the great body of the people, exclusive of the wealthy or privileged, has so entered into popular speech that the expression is now beyond criticism, although exception has been taken to it, on the ground that the subject of the mass should be specifically named. ”

“ It might be expected that the mechanism of observation and of thought, the nature and order of the processes by which, chiefly, wealth, and power, and fame are to be acquired, would be the subjects of an attention corresponding to the degree in which wealth, and power, and fame are prized. ”

“ Admitting these observations to be true, there is, nevertheless, a distinction to be drawn between the materials for a history of action and those for one of feeling; between the labors of men aiming at distinction among their fellow-beings, and the private, familiar sentiments that run into the texture of the social system, without remark or the hope of observation. ”

“ Every class is there; from the prince and peer, to the labouring man and peasant, all have come, attracted by the all-powerful genius who is to address that monster meeting this day. Imbued with the same feeling, impelled by the same curiosity, attracted by the same sentiment, that crowd of mixed denominations and sexes awaits his coming in breathless expectation. ”

“ I now turn to the record of our Society, and when we look at the length of some ten feet which the bound volumes take up on the bookshelf we cannot but feel gratified at the amount which has been accomplished during the past years. ”

“ To the man of large affairs, the average—and many a one above the average—biography or novel about a great man reads like the attempt of a straddle bug to give his fellow straddle bugs an account of an elephant. ”

“ I allude to what may be termed Political Ethology, or the theory of the causes which determine the type of character belonging to a people or to an age. Of all the subordinate branches of the social science, this is the most completely in its infancy. The causes of national character are scarcely at all understood, and the effect of institutions or social arrangements upon the character of the people is generally that portion of their effects which is least attended to, and least comprehended. ”

“ I think your numbers afford a very real and important ground for satisfaction.
6 Not that your great numbers, or indeed great numbers of men anywhere, are likely to be all good, or even to have the majority good. ‘The majority are bad,’ said one of the wise men of Greece ”

“ Personal distinction, success, depend, not on the average bulk of knowledge, power, and skill, but on that margin that extends a little beyond the reach of one’s fellows, a margin gained by some extra devotion, by sacrifice and work, by ideals a little more advanced or more clearly seen. ”

“ Moreover, even could any thing be deduced from this, still the firm parts yet constitute but a certain and perpetually fixed proportion, a single and insignificant link in the chain of countless circumstances, which go to the formation of the human character. ”

“ But there are class distinctions, [Pg 20] among the industrious themselves; tremendous distinctions, which rise and fall to every degree in the infinite thermometer of human pain and of human power—distinctions of high and low, of lost and won, to the whole reach of man's soul and body. ”

“ It is possible, given the physiognomic rhythm, to recover from scattered details of ornament, building, script, or from odd political, economic and religious data, the organic characters of whole centuries of history, and from known elements on the scale of art-expression, to find corresponding elements on the scale of political forms, or from that of mathematical forms to read that of economic. ”

“ Choose, then, the events that all share in common if they are of value in giving a framework for your narrative [Pg 277] presentation, but especially choose those events that in their nature illuminate the personality and complement your analysis.
We think of events as being public. There is also the hero's private life. Often, especially with the more humble heroes, the home life is more important than the public deeds, brings out more clearly the real man than any amount of marching in the market place or discussing in the public square. ”

“ The reader may work out results for himself on other hypotheses as to the percentage of noteworthiness among the generality. A considerably larger proportion would be noteworthy in the higher classes of society, but a far smaller one in the lower; it is to the bulk, say, to three-quarters of them, that the 1 per cent. estimate applies, the extreme variations from it tending to balance one another. ”

“ And this is precisely the situation in which we find ourselves to-day. A very large proportion of the literature that we circulate is in narrative form—how large a proportion I daresay few of us realize. ”

“ The economist, the political scientist, the psychologist, the sociologist, the geographer, the student of literature, of art, of religion—all the allied laborers in the study of society—have contributions to make to the equipment of the historian. ”