Handle (object)

“ They are always touched or modified by inner lines, more or less suggestive of solid form, and they are lost or accentuated in certain places, not so much in conformity with any explicable law, as in expression of the master's future purpose, or of what he wishes immediately to note in the character of the object. ”

“ They are of one stuff with it; and if it be our common possession, they must be so likewise. For instance, your [Pg 79] hand lays hold of one end of a rope and my hand lays hold of the other end. We pull against each other. Can our two hands be mutual objects in this experience, and the rope not be mutual also? What is true of the rope is true of any other percept. Your objects are over and over again the same as mine. If I ask you where some object of yours is, our old Memorial Hall, for example, you point to my Memorial Hall with your hand which I see. ”

“ To fly off the handle, verb. phr. (American pioneer) .—To lose temper; to fail of a promise; to jilt; to die; also to slip off the handle (q.v.) ; to disappoint in any way. [In pioneer life for an axe to part company with its handle is a serious trial to temper and patience.]
1843–4. Haliburton, The Attaché. You never see such a crotchical old critter as he is. He flies right off the handle for nothing. ”

“ But if we suppose centres of real, that is to say of spontaneous, activity, the rays which reach it, and which interest that activity, instead of passing through those centres, will appear to be reflected and thus to indicate the outlines of the object which emits them. ”

“ To objects of either kind we indifferently attribute the terms high and low, right and left, and suchlike, denoting the position or situation of things: but then we must well observe that the position of any object is determined with respect only to objects of the same sense. ”

“ We assume this ground, and we shall labor to maintain it, that every verb necessarily presupposes an agent or actor, an action, and an object acted upon, or affected by the action.
No action, as such, can be known to exist separate from the thing that acts. We can conceive no idea of action, only by keeping our minds fixed on the acting substance, marking its changes, movements, and tendencies. ”

“ When a subject, who has good control over his mental and muscular movements, keeps the arm connected with the operator perfectly stiff, even though his mind be well concentrated on the hidden object, the operator cannot find either the direction or the locality. ”

“ Behind the wheels is the object which the author had in view when he adjusted them for a determined end. The energies spent in action are regulated by the adjustment—that is to say, by the dominants due to the intellect of the constructor. ”

“ The object is to be doing one thing, and one thing only, becoming fully involved in that single purpose. Start by finding a comfortable position, sitting or lying down. Place a clock or watch where you can see it without having to turn your head. ”

“ For instance, it is argued that when a man observes a watch or a telescope, or any article that has been made to answer a certain purpose, and the mechanism of which is so adjusted as to effect the desired object, it is said that from the marks of design or contrivance observed in the mechanism, he infers that these articles are the products of some human designer. ”

“ Action.—When any one looks into one of the six openings between any two of the columns, the object there will be repeated six times, which will be an extraordinary illusion if the subjects are suitable to the arrangement of the mirrors. ”

“ The person inside can never open the door to see what manner of thing it is which knocks. But he can build up a most cunning symbolism of knocks which shall suffice for all practical purposes. In other words, the object-world, symbolic though it is, which you and I and the rest of us construct at the bidding of something without us (the existence of which I assume) , is amply sufficient for all our practical needs, and constitutes the only practical reality for human-folk. ”

“ But we have still to contemplate the most beautiful piece of mechanism, of nature's plastic hand, in the formation of man, for whose convenience and use, all things else seem created. A careless observer looks upon man, and sees in the general outline a beautiful piece of mechanism, moving in grace and dignity, and standing in an exalted position upon the earth. ”

“ We are immediately struck with the admirable manner in which it is organized, both for the support of the frame and for motion; its flexibility, its power of action, its form, seem all to have been the result of the examination of the most perfect human models. ”

“ I have often watched the means it employed to obtain any small object that happened to be a little beyond its reach; if it could lay its hands upon a little switch, or slender twig of any sort, it would stretch itself out as far as its cord would allow, and continue working at the object till it got it within its reach. ”

“ The preparation of the ideational centres exists, on the other hand, wherever our interest in the object—be it sensible or ideal—is derived from, or in any way connected with, other interests, or the presence of other objects, in the mind. It exists as well when the attention thus derived is classed as passive as when it is classed as voluntary. ”

“ Note that no object not probable, no object which we are not incessantly practised in reproducing, can acquire this vividness in imagination. Objective corners are ever changing their angles to the eyes, spaces their apparent size, lines their distance. But by no transmutation of position in space does an objective straight line appear bent, and only in one position out of an infinity does a broken line look straight. ”

“ The machinery of response by analogy is easily understood by aid of the law of combination. A complex object, presenting a number of parts and characteristics, arouses the response of seeing and perhaps naming the object. This is a unitary response to a collection of stimuli, and each of the parts or characteristics of the object participates in arousing the response, and the linkage of each part with the response is thus strengthened. ”

“ If you examine a separate piece of the watch, and proceed to draw your conclusions according to the well-known laws of mechanics as to the construction of the other necessary parts, in order to give to that one part, which you actually perceive, the whole determinateness which you perceive belongs to it, do you, in this your function of drawing conclusions, actually see and feel, or perceive with your external senses, those other parts? ”

“ Now if you design to raise a Peal of Bells for Changes, you ought to raise them to a Set-Pull, as the most proper for commanding the Notes, and he who is not well skilled to manage his Bell at a Set-Pull, will be apt to drop or overturn it, be in a Wood, and fruitlessly toil and moil himself. ”

“ This account of the operation is just what an observer might give who had looked on with entire ignorance of every thing but what his eyes could see; the moment he puts his hand upon any part of the machinery and tries to stop its motion, he takes as direct cognizance, through his sense of the effort required to resist it, of the force which produces that motion as he does through his eye of the motion itself. ”

“ In our actions, which are systematized movements, what we fix our mind on is the end or meaning of the movement, its design as a whole—in a word, the immobile plan of its execution. That which really moves in action interests us only so far as the whole can be advanced, retarded, or stopped by any incident that may happen on the way. ”

“ First, we have shown that the essentials of properties are their substrates severally; unity is the substrate of number, extension is the substrate of space, speed is the substrate of motion, consciousness is the substrate of judgment.
Second, we have shown that the quantitative properties are the substrates of the categoric properties; number is the substrate of kind, space is the substrate of form, motion is the substrate of force, time is the substrate of causation, and judgment is the substrate of conception. ”

“ If you alter an object in your world, put out a candle, for example, when I am present, my candle ipso facto goes out. It is only as altering my objects that I guess you to exist. If your objects do not coalesce with my objects, if they be not identically where mine are, they must be proved to be positively somewhere else. ”

“ If I or you touch a man or woman with a finger, or clasp their hand, or embrace them more completely, the tendency is at once set up, and the force seeks to flow, and, according to certain conditions, does flow, from one to another, evermore seeking to find a common level,—always, that is, in the direction of the greater need, or the greater capacity. ”

“ But though we are really behind the scenes, and even, in one sense of the word, may be said to be ourselves the movers of the machinery, by which the whole representation is carried on, still the minute parts and arrangements of the complicated mechanism are concealed from our view, almost as completely as from the observation of the distant spectators. ”

“ An object requiring the particular care and attention of the operator is the proper focus. It is not unfrequently the complaint of sitters that their hands are represented as being magnified and greatly out of proportion with the general figure. ”

“ Objects of the first sort are treated as things, in the sense that they do not call out any respect from us or have any intrinsic value. We understand them through and through, manipulate them, consume them, throw them away. We regard them as valuable only with reference to our wants. On the other hand, objects of the second sort take their place in a bi-focal situation. Our attention shifts alternately to their behavior and to our response, or, conversely, from our act to their response. ”

“ Such would be, as if a man possessing a curious and exquisite piece of mechanism were to direct the observers to remark the beauty of the material, the regularity of the movements, and the certainty of the results, and yet to forbid them to examine into the principle of construction and the mode of operation, on which those movements and that certainty depend. ”

“ Now, when we examine a watch, we see that it has marks of design, because the several parts are put together for a purpose. They are so shaped and arranged as to produce motion, and this motion is so regulated as to point out the hour of the day. ”

“ Conduct consists in actions. But not all actions constitute conduct. We speak of the action of a motor-car or a sewing-machine or a type-writer. But we should not dream of talking of their conduct. Mechanical action is not conduct. Nor is all human action conduct. Certain human actions, e.g. reflex actions, are really mechanical. ”

“ In which enumeration, what we have first to notice is, unity of purpose under variety of expedients. Nothing can be more single than the design; more diversified than the means. Pellicles, shells, pulps, pods, husks, skin, scales armed with thorns, are all employed in prosecuting the same intention. ”

“ A sensible object which can be described as a correlation of an ordered series of shapes and colors with an ordered series of muscular and other bodily objects presents a definition of an object, not a psychological datum. ”

“ Generally speaking, the onlooker, with his wider field of vision, regards the ultimate outcome of an activity as what it is more really doing; and the most previous agent ascertainable, being the first source of action, he regards as the most real agent in the field. ”

“ In the lower orders of creatures this condition is fulfilled by means of an apparatus which acts automatically. In the higher orders the actions are partly automatic, partly conscious. And in man they are almost wholly conscious. ”

“ First of all, we shall do well to distinguish the terms ‘movement’ and ‘action.’ Movement is, without question, the wider term. Action, although it is very loosely used in ordinary speech, so that we speak of the action of a horse or a sewing-machine, is the word that we naturally employ in referring to human conduct. ”

“ The extent of this influence is controlled by man’s weight, or his “lifting power,” and the position which he occupies; just as the attraction of the pin for the earth is controlled by weight and position. ”

“ Wolf in his ontology teaches that simple substances are endowed with forces. Every force consists in the continuous tendency to work, to produce change; the essence of simple substances consists in activity. ”

“ Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be borne, the other by which it may not. ”

“ What but experience can possibly inform us that a force applied transversely to a lever will have any tendency to turn the lever on its center? This cannot be, except we suppose in the lever tenacity, rigidity and the like, which are qualities known only by experience. ”

“ If, however, one raises the arm of such a subject it stays in that position, and the whole body can thus be moulded like wax under the hands of the operator, retaining for a considerable time whatever attitude he communicates to it. ”

“ In the case of rational creatures, this great design of Nature is still more distinctly marked,—is intended for more important purposes,—and is carried on by a separate system of internal machinery, part of which at least is peculiar to man. ”

“ Now the eye, by its peculiar construction with apparatus for accommodation to distance and direction, is especially adapted to the reception of sense impressions that imply self-activity, hence it is the primary sense organ for the faculty of ideation. ”

“ Our sense of touch, stimulated by necessity, and developed by long training, enables us to distinguish angles far more accurately than your sense of sight, when unaided by a rule or measure of angles. ”