Handle

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

“ I had never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could [page 69] have made it, especially if I had had tools; ”

“ Is the hand that rules the world. ”

“ The reiteration in the ears, during every minute of the day, of the command to jump into the river, to plunge a convenient knife into the heart, and so on, day in and day out, is calculated to shake the power of control of the strongest-minded. ”

“ Chief in which sort we note the senses, limbs:
Wherefore, again, 'tis quite beyond thy power
To hold that these could thus have been create
For office of utility.
Likewise,
'Tis nothing strange that all the breathing creatures
Seek, even by nature of their frame, their food. ”

“ The language of gesticulation and signs, by the movement of different parts of the body, is quite a study in this part of the world. The most singular gesticulation, and yet the most significant, is that by which a person begs a thing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Manners first, then conversation. Later, we see that, as life was not in manners, so it is not in talk. Manners are external; talk is occasional: these require certain material conditions, human labor for food, clothes, house, tools, and, in short, plenty and ease,—since only so can certain finer and finest powers appear and expand. ”

“ Whichever groups of sensations within a soul awaken most readily, begin to speak, and give the word of command—these decide as to the general order of rank of its values, and determine ultimately its list of desirable things. ”

“ We have watched operations together, when, to our certain knowledge, the knife has gone a little deeper, has gone a little more to the left or right, in order that some addition might be made to the sum of human knowledge. ”

“ I have often beheld two of those sages, almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us; who, when they met in the street, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave. ”

“ A habit also marks an intellectual disposition. Where there is a habit, there is acquaintance with the materials and equipment to which action is applied. There is a definite way of understanding the situations in which the habit operates. Modes of thought, of observation and reflection, enter as forms of skill and of desire into the habits that make a man an engineer, an architect, a physician, or a merchant. ”

“ But in all your preparation think beyond the special debate you are preparing for. What you are or should be aiming at is habit—the instinctive, spontaneous execution of rules which you have forgotten. When the habit is established you can let all these questions of voice, of attitude, of gesture, drop from your mind, and give your whole attention to the ideas you are developing, and the language in which you shall clothe them. ”

“ Discipline, habit, and character, appear to be activity crystallized in seeking adaptation to our environments. What is the truth that stands out in relief? Clearly, that character, habit, and discipline, are the reflex upon ourselves of activity, moral, mental, or physical. Whence it seems to follow that useless or vicious activity will appear as useless or vicious character and discipline. ”

“ One can hardly imagine turning one's hand to—book-binding, making things in brass, dressing dolls, to take up one's time, occupy one's mind, keep one's hands busy, after having known the practice of a profession like that! ”

“ Lord, in which the objects, or agents, of one class are, without any formal notice, employed in the place of the persons or things of which the passages in which they occur treat; and they are exhibited either as exerting, or as subjected to an agency proper to their nature, in order to represent by analogy, the agency which those persons are to exert, or of which those things are to be the subjects. ”

“ IN interpreting, evaluating and weighing the obligations which the philosophers call καθήκοντα, or “duties,” the question is often asked, when some task has been assigned to you and exactly what was to be done has been defined, whether you ought to do anything contrary to instructions, if by so doing it might seem that the outcome would be more successful and more advantageous to the one who imposed the task upon you. It is a difficult question which has been answered both ways by wise men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We may therefore define character as an expression of the organization of the wishes resulting from temperament and experience, understanding by “organization” the general pattern which the wishes as a whole tend to assume among themselves. ”

“ The general capacities of perception, and desire, and expectation, and voluntary command of certain muscles, which, on every view of the phenomena of attention, we must allow the mind to possess, are, of themselves, sufficient to explain the phenomena, and preclude, therefore, any further reference. ”

“ Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have; and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively. How is it when an alternative is presented to you for choice, and you are uncertain what you ought to do? ”

“ Let a person be stationed near at hand, who, being furnished with an adequate description of his person and dress, shall mark him when he comes, and follow him when he retires, and shall forthwith impart to us the information on that head which he shall be able to collect. ”

“ The hands work and the mind works. Neither can rest and accomplish the needs, and while the hands iron and bake and wash, 65 the mind is occupied on what the hungry mouths demand, and how an old coat or vest or an under garment can be made into an article of service. ”

“ Perfect conduct is a relation between three terms: the actor, the objects for which he acts, and the recipients of the action. In order that conduct should be abstractly perfect, all three terms, intention, execution, and reception, should be suited to one another. ”

“ Again, if a system of marks be used as a stimulus to attention and effort, the good marks should be given for conduct rather than for cleverness--that is, they should be within everybody's reach: every child may get his mark for punctuality, order, attention, diligence, obedience, gentleness ”

“ In the follower's honest, slow brain, the processes which complicate decision in subtler minds are clotted into one--the sense of order, continuity, routine, everything that is implied in a regulation. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The strangest thing, furthermore, was that this might be, in cases, a happy understanding. The worker in one connection was the worked in another; it was as broad as it was long—with the wheels of the system, as might be seen, wonderfully oiled. ”

“ Even in the labors of the field and shop, which are obligatory upon all, we study the inspiration of this temperament, and in the voluntary pursuits we allow it full control. Each, in these, follows his fancy as to what he shall do, and when he shall do it, or whether he shall do anything at all. ”

“ This Task of ordering and distinguishing, which has no Merit, when perform'd with regard to external Bodies, the Objects of our Senses, rises in its Value, when directed towards the Operations of the Mind, in proportion to the Difficulty and Labour, which we meet with in performing it. ”

“ The definition of conduct which emerges is either acts adjusted to ends, or else the adjustment of acts to ends, according as we contemplate the formed body of acts, or think of the form alone. And conduct in its full acceptation must be taken as comprehending all adjustments of acts to ends, from the simplest to the most complex, whatever their special natures and whether considered separately or in their totality. ”

“ When we attempt to trace the chain of connection through the eye, the brain, and the thoughts—through which line of agencies the chain of cause and effect must necessarily run—we are lost and bewildered. ”

“ And, finally, if the desire to please is the aim of good manners, the guide, or test, or norm is common usage or custom, which no less than reason furnishes the laws of courtesy, and which in a sense may be said to be the equivalent in manners of what duty is in morals. ”

“ Such words as 'commanding appearance,' 'prepossessing countenance,' applied to the figures or faces of the males of the human species, have no meaning in my ears: no man commands me, no man prepossesses me, by anything in, on, or about his carcass. ”

“ In a piece of plate what is the best thing, the silver or the art? The substance of the hand is mere flesh, but the important thing is the works of the hand. 25Now duties are of three kinds; first, those that have to do with mere existence, second, those that have to do with existence of a particular sort, and third, the principal duties themselves. ”

“ Such is our reflective account of the process that, in some form, must come to every one under the proper conditions. In this process we see the beginning of the real knowledge of duty to others. The process is one that any child can and does, under proper guidance, occasionally accomplish. ”

“ What this labour is we will proceed to consider, but before we enter upon that part of the subject we will first refer to an objection which is very frequently brought forward with regard to such work, and we will also dispose of the comparatively rare cases in which the agents are either nature-spirits or men who have cast off the physical body. ”

“ These tools of which you speak are sharp, and men like you, unskilled in their use, would [54] cut others with them, and they in turn would take the tools and cut your head off. ¶ Your hands are not as strong as you imagine. The strength of the hands of men is not proven by assertion—it is proven by use. ”

“ But the change in the mental attitude and in the habits of the three hundred or more workmen can be brought about only slowly and through a long series of object-lessons, which finally demonstrates to each man. ”

“ We have several different departments of our systems, I have a vital, a nervous, and a mental system, each of which has actions peculiar to itself—actions which sustain to each other certain relations, either commensurable or incommensurable. ”

“ For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world. ”

“ That peculiar gentleness of disposition, which is their general characteristic, immediately manifested itself in all their looks and actions, and gave full employment to those who made the human heart their study. ”

“ Walking is the most simple of the three kinds of voluntary motion here mentioned, being common to the brute creation with man, whereas handling and speaking are, in a manner, peculiar to him. His superiority in this respect, when compared with the superiority of his mental faculties, agrees well with the hypothesis here advanced concerning handling and speaking, viz. their dependence on ideas, and the power of association. ”