Imperfection

“ So there is in the pair a consciousness of imperfection, a vision of perfection, and a desperate yearning to be more perfect and to make the world more perfect. Deep and strong as the creative impulse itself is the impulse to improvement. ”

“ This consciousness of perfect outer pureness—that to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection—how it radiates on thee, with cunning symbolic influences to thy very soul! thou hast an increased tendency towards all good things whatsoever. ”

“ How much the imperfection of accurately discriminating ideas one from another lies either in the dulness or faults of the organs of sense, or want of acuteness, exercise, or attention in the understanding, or hastiness and precipitancy natural to some tempers, I will not here examine: it suffices to take notice that this is one of the operations that the mind may reflect on and observe in itself. ”

“ But the profane sceptic may, in his impious wisdom, ask, "If Omniscience directs the universe, why does imperfection appear!" But as it invariably costs a man more effort to be vicious than to be good, the answer does not require as much labour as the question. Our ideas of organic perfection are merely relative. ”

“ Sorely as I have struggled, I have yet to encounter that common myth of weak men, an insurmountable barrier. The imperfection of our lives— what is it but the imperfection of our planning and doing? Shattered ideals—what hand shatters them but one's own? ”

“ For everything which is called imperfect is spoken of as imperfect by reason of the privation of some perfection; so it comes to pass that, whenever imperfection is found in any particular, there must necessarily be a perfection in respect of that particular also. ”

“ But this, after all, only shifts the mystery one step farther. Instead of the mystery of pain we have the mystery of imperfection. Yet to image perfection is always to image something incapable of growth or further development. ”

“ That is to say, accepting the weaknesses, faults, and wrongnesses in all things that it sees, it so places and harmonizes them that they form a noble whole, in which the imperfection of each several part is not only harmless, but absolutely essential, and yet in which whatever is good in each several part shall be completely displayed. ”

“ All ideas of perfection and imperfection, beauty and ugliness, like the final causes which we ascribe to nature, are not necessarily appropriate, but merely ascribed to her by us, for we give things relations which they do not possess. ”

“ My experience had not been sufficient, nor was my philosophy subtle enough, to enable me to see that while there is much in the conduct of men that is imperfect, such imperfection is at least as great among those who narrate and comment as among those who do the work of the world. ”

“ All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyse vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. ”

“ But is it certain, on the other hand, that the mere intellect can be self-satisfied, if other elements of our nature remain not contented? Or must we not think rather that indirectly any partial discontent will bring unrest and imperfection into the intellect itself? If this is so, then to suppose any imperfection in the Absolute is inadmissible. ”

“ Why should he reproduce her imperfections in an imperfect form, when he has the ability to change that imperfection into perfection? If you think of this assertion as changed into an elemental feeling you will understand why I feel a sense of distress towards much that you call art. ”

“ If Perfection is that which is most beautiful and desirable to us, then it is something of which an essential part is Imperfection.
That is clearly so in relation to physical beauty. A person who is without demonstrable defect of beauty—some exaggeration of proportion, some visible flaw—leaves us cold and indifferent. The flaw or the defect may need to be of some special kind or quality to touch us individually, but still it is needed. The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw. ”

“ When, therefore, we reflect on the divine nature, we are so used and accustomed to this imperfection in ourselves, that we cannot forbear in some measure ascribing it to him in whom there is no shadow of imperfection. ”

“ And thus one imperfection is sufficient to lead to another; and these lead to yet more; wherefore you will hardly ever see a soul that is negligent in conquering one desire, and that has not many more arising from the same weakness and imperfection that this desire causes. ”

“ And since perfect and imperfect are opposite to one another, it is impossible for perfection and imperfection to affect the same thing at the same time.
Now we must take note that sometimes imperfection belongs to a thing's very nature, and belongs to its species: even as lack of reason belongs to the very specific nature of a horse and an ox. ”

“ What imperfection exists in visible things. How in a sort by imagination removable.things and the beings around us upon earth. Now among all those things whose beauty we have hitherto examined, there has been a measure of imperfection. Either inferiority of kind, as the beauty of the lower animals, or resulting from degradation, as in man himself ”

“ The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect ”

“ That I have chiefly dwelt on perfection and imperfection as respectively the attributes of God and of the non-divine minds, without entering into the subtle distinction between kinds of perfection, is indeed a fact, but it should be regarded as a rhetorical rather than a philosophical procedure. ”

“ If we call these variations from a common type in the features imperfections, as it is usual to do, it would seem to be the imperfections of perfection that charm and stir us; and that perfection without these so-called imperfections is a cold, dead abstraction, devoid of life: that unity without variety is lifeless and incapable of touching us. ”

“ Perfection seems to be the ground-work both of common sense and of common form; and, what prevents each from being perfect, is the adventitious blemishes, the additions to, and the diminutions from, what is perfect, making the too little and the too large. But, these defects being distributed in, small portions throughout the general common form and common mind, they constitute an object, whether visible or intellectual, between perfection and imperfection, namely, that of mediocrity, neither exciting admiration nor disgust. ”

“ Truth said, and said from the beginning, “Let us [Spirit] make man perfect;” and there is no other Maker: a perfect man would not desire to make himself imperfect, and God is not chargeable with imperfection. ”

“ For, although it is true that that which is there spoken of is spiritual and interior, there is reference likewise to the spirit of imperfection according to sensual and exterior things, as may be seen by the two roads which are on either side of the path of perfection. ”

“ In this way all truly human knowledge is imperfect, and “in part;” and although, on the contrary, the false conceited wisdom may parade itself from the very first as fully ripe and complete, yet in a very brief space indeed will its imperfection and rottenness appear. ”

“ You should attack not only those gross and manifest defects which disfigure the soul, but also those imperfections which are slight in appearance, but which, if left alone, will in time become pernicious inclinations. ”

“ There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in science. ”

“ The infinite being must have all being which involves no imperfection. This is very true, but there still remain serious difficulties to be solved. What is perfection? What is imperfection? These are questions which it is not easy to answer, and yet we cannot advance a step until we have determined their meaning.
115. The idea of perfection implies being: nothing cannot be perfect, a perfect not-being is a manifest contradiction.
116. Not all being is absolute perfection; for there are modes of being which involve imperfection: what is perfection for one being is imperfection for another. ”

“ And it is evident that it is not less repugnant that falsity or imperfection, in so far as it is imperfection, should proceed from God, than that truth or perfection should proceed from nothing. ”

“ Imperfection sits in judgment on incompleteness, and the natural consequence is that criticism, in whatever field of demonstration, is little more than a record of notions which assume to array themselves against other notions, which may be better or worse than those that oppose them. ”

“ Those that know most in this state of imperfection cannot but be most sensible of their own weakness and short-sightedness, and that after all their researches, and all their attainments in those researches, while they are here they cannot order their speech by reason of darkness. ”

“ Distinction may be joined with imperfection, as ignorance, or forgetfulness; and so it is in men:—and if this be called separation by a metaphor from bodies, then the conclusion would be that in the Supreme Mind there is distinction without imperfection; and then the question is, whence comes plurality of Persons? ”

“ For inasmuch as its characteristic difference is by each spirit thought against the Ideal who is absolute Perfection, the Unity of all possible perfections, all difference from this must include some degree of imperfection, self-posited in the very being of each self-definer. ”

“ The next step was to call pain an imperfection, which suggests a serious logical deficiency in the optimist; for, although in certain circumstances the production of pain argues imperfection in the operator, we are not entitled to argue that wherever there is pain there must be imperfection. ”

“ From the imperfection and limitation of our senses comes not only a succession of experiences which are incomplete, but a general concept with regard to external matters, which must be of necessity misleading. ”

“ These habitual imperfections belong to all those who have not passed beyond this state of the proficient; they cannot coexist, as we say, with the perfect state of union through love.
3. To actual imperfections all are not liable in the same way. Some, whose spiritual good is so superficial and so readily affected by sense, fall into greater difficulties and dangers, which we described at the beginning of this treatise. ”

“ IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more Perfection, the cause of Man’s error and misery. The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice of His dispensations, v.109, etc. ”

“ Now, since sounds have no natural connexion with our ideas, but have all their signification from the arbitrary imposition of men, the doubtfulness and uncertainty of their signification, which is the imperfection we here are speaking of, has its cause more in the ideas they stand for than in any incapacity there is in one sound more than in another to signify any idea: for in that regard they are all equally perfect. ”

“ When there is real profundity, — when the living core of things is most firmly grasped, — there will accordingly be a felt inadequacy of expression, and an appeal to the observer to piece out our imperfections with his thoughts. ”

“ But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. ”

“ Are all these desires and activities mere illusions of ours, or worse than illusions, errors and even vices, impious misapprehensions of the absolutely Good, frivolous attempts to adapt the Perfect to our own imperfections? ”

“ It is because finite existence and perfection are incompatible. A being, short of the Whole, but existing within it, is essentially related to that which is not-itself. Its inmost being is, and must be, infected by the external. Within its content there are relations which do not terminate inside. And it is clear at once that, in such a case, the ideal and the real can never be atone. But their disunion is precisely what we mean by imperfection. And thus incompleteness, and unrest, and unsatisfied ideality, are the lot of the finite. ”

“ Under that word, as I am well aware, many varieties of opinion in detail may be found. And again, few who hold opinions commonly called perfectionist like the word "perfectionism." But I speak with practical accuracy when I give that title to such views as on the whole affirm the attainableness here below of a spiritual condition in which man needs no longer confess himself as now a sinner, and in which his attention tends to be drawn more to his perfectness than to his imperfections of condition. ”

“ The attention of such persons, however, being always principally directed, not to the standard of ideal, but to that of ordinary perfection, they have little sense of their own weaknesses and imperfections ”

“ This vision is never quite clear, nor always complete or correct, for even such exceptionable powers are in all cases more or less subject to the imperfections of our nature; habitual notions, an ill-executed imagination, and often a disordered state of the system, all interfere with its perfect success. ”