Forethought

“ Nothing conduces more to a man’s success in life, and, consequently, to distinguish him amongst his fellows, than forethought. It is the adjunct of a reasoning mind; and as reason distinguishes man from the lower animals, so it distinguishes him amongst his fellow men, and fits him to adorn and benefit society. A man may be possessed of genius, bravery, energy, and a host of other estimable qualities ”

“ Reluctantly and gradually her ardent mind, by nature ever either buoyant in the heaven of assured hope or cast down to the depths of despair, bowed to the middle conclusion, and consented to look through the eyes of wisdom and experience. ”

“ Why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure,—worldly, social, amorous, ambitious, or even avaricious,—does there mingle a certain sense of doubt and sorrow—a fear of what is to come—a doubt of what is—a retrospect to the past, leading to a prognostication of the future? ”

“ And so I entered this world: a being, sliding obscurely in among human beings. But whence, or whither? Those questions belong among the gigantic, terrible ones, insoluble, silent,—the unanswering primeval sphinxes of the mind. We can sit and stare at such questions, and wonder; but staring and wondering are not thought. ”

“ I would beat with the living heart of the world, and understand all the moods, even the fancies or fantasies, of nature. I dare to trust to the interpreting spirit to bring me out all right at last — to establish truth through error. ”

“ I am looking after myself, and keeping away from all mental preoccupations; all, that is, except for one thought, which doth indeed disquiet the mind—and that is, God forbid, that thou shouldst sorrow. ”

“ I endeavored to console myself for all regrets in philosophy, but sometimes feeling triumphed over even that, stoical as I thought myself. Sometimes attributing every thing to fate, sometimes believing in chance, I surrendered myself to the current of life’s troublous stream, and blindly glided on. ”

“ A. You stated a short while ago, that in the former condition it is the presence of the object, and in the latter condition the re-presenting of the object to your mind, which constitutes the true reality of your life, and at present you state that you forget yourself in both. Here, then, we have found the looked for ground of your judgment concerning actuality and non-actuality. The self-forgetting is the characteristic of actuality; and in each condition of life, the focus wherein you throw and forget yourself, and the focus of actuality, are one and the same. ”

“ Is feelingly convinced; nor to be moved
By subtle words, that may perplex the head,
But ne’er persuade the heart. Vain argument,
That with false weapons of Philosophy
Fights against Hope, and Sense, and Nature’s strength! ”

“ The mind makes its spring towards action on that cue, sends for that remedy, and for a day at least believes the danger past. Blame, dread, and hope are thus the great belief-inspiring passions, and cover among them the future, the present, and the past.
These remarks illustrate the earlier heads of the list on page 292. Whichever represented objects give us sensations, especially interesting ones, or incite our motor impulses, or arouse our hate, desire, or fear, are real enough for us. Our requirements in the way of reality terminate in our own acts and emotions, our own pleasures and pains. ”

“ Now what the objects behind you are to their images at the same apparent distance before you, such is Reflection to Fore-thought. As a man without Fore-thought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so Fore-thought without Reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast. ”

“ Melting with pity, or glowing with hope, or redolent with love, benevolence, desire, or emulation, they impart to the countenance those vital fascinations which are the peculiar attributes of man.” “And when the mind is subdued by fear, anxiety or shame, or overwhelmed by sorrow or despair, the eyes, like faithful chroniclers, still tell the truthful story of the mental disquietude. ”

“ But the moment the mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks the great world at once into a mere illustration and fable of this mind. What am I? and What is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched. ”

“ This was the experience, then, of ‘distinct pre-eminence’ in whose recollection his mind was ‘nourished and invisibly repaired.’ It is in such a moment that the soul’s strength is shown; when common objects evoke what he calls the imagination, the reality, of which they are a suggestion. ”

“ Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and the very heart of our human experience. ”

“ And if, when a glowing thought comes into your brain, quick and sudden, you could tell it over as to a second self, to that sweet creature, who is not away, because she loves to be there; and if you could watch the thought catching that girlish mind, illuming that fair brow, sparkling in those pleasantest of eyes—how far better than to feel it slumbering, and going out, heavy, lifeless, and dead, in your own selfish fancy. ”

“ And why, some day, walking in the street with our attention miles away from that quest, does the answer saunter into our minds as carelessly as if it had never been called for—suggested, possibly, by the flowers on the bonnet of the lady in front of us, or possibly by nothing that we can discover?
The truth must be admitted that thought works under strange conditions. Pure 'reason' is only one out of a{255} thousand possibilities in the thinking of each of us. ”

“ Such superhuman experience might in its wholeness at once contain the answer to our questions, and the triumph over — yes, and through — our fragmentary experience. But, as we are, we can only question. ”

“ That thought is, perhaps, the first link in a chain of thoughts and images which will be the torment of your conscience and the bane of your life. That sentiment to which you imprudently pandered is perhaps the source of countless fears, regrets, remorse and sorrows. That imprudent glance is perhaps the first spark of a conflagration which nothing can extinguish, and which will destroy your brightest hopes. ”

“ How often, when smarting under some unforeseen misfortune or disappointment, does a person call to mind some proverb or common saying, familiar to him all his life, the meaning of which, if he had ever before felt it as he does now, would have saved him from the calamity. There are indeed reasons for this, other than the absence of discussion: there are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized, until personal experience has brought it home. ”

“ The exciting question for real scepticism is whether we possess a past life. What is a minute ago, rationalistically considered, except a tradition and a picture? The darkness grew deeper from the road. ”

“ We must answer, it seems to me, ‘Some danger, no doubt, but, granted the ordinary chances of life, not much.’ For, in the first place, that idea which so many critics quietly take for granted—the idea that the gift and the habit of meditative and speculative thought tend to produce irresolution in the affairs of life—would be found by no means easy to verify. ”

“ Is the world so made that only to superficial contemplation or unreflecting consciousness does it appear to be one and without contradiction, but to accurate, earnest thinking, contradictory and illusory? ”

“ And thus, with the singular inconsequence of human life, the explanation was made where it was not needed, and left unspoken where it would have availed much against future misunderstanding, trouble, wrong, and sorrow! ”

“ For life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought. ”

“ Why talk of Being? What Being in itself is, may well remain unknowable. But what is consistent with the existence of facts, you experience whenever you observe just such wretchedly irrational facts as these. Whatever they mean, they involve not fulfilment, but defeat, of purpose. And that is what you yourself experience whenever you lose what is dear, and face the insoluble mysteries of experience. ”

“ Thinking—worse luck!—came into being as response to discomfort, to pain, to uncertainty, to problems, such as could not exist in a world truly made for us; while from time immemorial pure as distinct from human consciousness has been identified with absolute certainty, with self-absorption and self-sufficiency ”

“ But however saddening the reflections occasioned by such contemplations, however much vaster the interests involved in them, they do not affect us with half that wretched sorrow with which we gaze upon the wreck of a human mind. ”

“ It happens sometimes when we look into our own souls that in our impulses, in our feelings, in our ways of thinking, we find something contradictory, something enigmatical, which the most conscientious self-examination does not always suffice to make clear. And now there flashed from the utterances of this clairvoyante gleams of light which solved for me many of those contradictions and riddles. ”

“ And all the solutions which have hitherto been propounded as answers to the problem, may be generalised into these two: either consciousness is able to transcend, or go beyond itself; or else the whole pomp, and pageantry, and magnificence, which we miscall the external universe, are nothing but our mental phantasmagoria, nothing but states of our poor, finite, subjective selves. ”

“ What that sensitive mind, and tender conscience, and loving heart, and religious soul, went through even in a few hours, under a situation so sudden and tremendous, is perhaps beyond the power of words to paint. ”

“ A pessimistic fatalism, depth within depth of impotence and indifference, reason and silliness united, not in a higher synthesis, but in the fact that whichever you choose it is all one,—this is the upshot of a revelation that began so rosy bright. ”

“ Let us now, then, ask, depriving man of consciousness, What is it we actually leave him, and what is it we actually deprive him of? We leave him all that we have said. We leave him existence, and the performance of many operations, the greatest, as well as the most insignificant. ”

“ In the mean time, when a great many persons inquire for, and desire to know more things, than are within the compass of our art, or more than it can explain, I choose rather to act with conscience, than to disgrace, and, as it were, to defile, our sacred Astrology, and to cast a blemish upon it. ”

“ So that the implication of uncertainty has infected the very word appearance. Hence, philosophy, by giving it an extended meaning, leads us to think of all our senses as deceiving us in the same way that the eyes do; and so makes us feel ourselves floating in a world of phantasms. ”

“ Is it not knowledge that doth alone clear the, mind of all perturbations? How many things are there which we imagine not? How many things do we esteem and value otherwise than they are! This ill-proportioned estimation, these vain imaginations, these be the clouds of error that turn into the storms of perturbation. Is there any such happiness as for a man's mind to be raised above the confusion of things ”

“ How shallow and thin a stream of thought, too,—of distinct and expressed thought,—compared with the broad tide of dim emotions, ideas, associations, which were flowing through the haunted regions of imagination, intellect, and sentiment,—sometimes excited by what was around me, sometimes with no perceptible connection with them! When we see how little we can express, it is a wonder that any man ever takes up a pen a second time. ”

“ And by how much the purer the eye of the intention is, by so much the more constantly may one pass these diverse storms.
But in many the eye of pure intention is dark, for we quickly look towards something delightful which comes in our way ”

“ Infinite, indeed, are their attacks, and innumerable the forms that they assume; but of all the shapes of misery, what is to be more dreaded, what is more terrible than thought to a vicious mind? And there he sat in thought, with the morning sunshine streaming around him, calm, and pure, and tranquil. ”

“ But as his abilities to do lie wholly in the line of his natural propensities; as he enjoys reacting with such emotions as fortitude, hope, rapture, admiration, earnestness, and the like; and as he very unwillingly reacts with fear, disgust, despair, or doubt,—a philosophy which should only legitimate emotions of the latter sort would be sure to leave the mind a prey to discontent and craving. ”

“ But, Sir, does your old philosophy never suggest to you the idea that these new discoveries and emotions, with their consequent anticipations, may be referable to the mysterious action of a disturbed imagination, rather than the direct action of a supernatural power—what scepticism designates the flights of fancy? ”

“ O, deluded heart!—ever bartering away substance for shadow!"
I grow philosophic sometimes. Thought will, now and then, take up a passing incident, and extract the moral. But how little the wiser are we for moralizing! we look into the mirror of truth, and see ourselves—then turn away, and forget what manner of men we are. ”

“ For then we learn that our present will demands for its full expression, not merely contents or facts that are yet to be discriminated, but other wills than this present conscious will of ours, other purposes than we as yet observe within the limits of this instant’s consciousness. ”