Impersonality

“ In a word, there is something impersonal in us because there is something social in all of us, and since social life embraces at once both representations and practices, this impersonality naturally extends to ideas as well as to acts. ”

“ What will all my self-esteem avail, if the world calls me a simpleton because, under the ban of my passion, I neglected my studies and social interests? If I am pointed at as an incapable man, shall I not sink in my own eyes? ”

“ You must be empty of yourself, or it will not speak to you at all. Its laws are not our laws, and the first thing it does, if you are docile to its magic, is to wash out your personality, and oh, how glad some of us are—or would be—if we only could utterly forget that irritant, insistent factor of existence! ”

“ I wonder why I paint myself in such horrid colours—why have I this morbid pleasure in pretending to those I love that I am a beast and a cynic? I suffer, I suppose, from a lacerated self-esteem, from a painful loneliness, from the consciousness of how ridiculous I have made myself, and that most people if they knew would regard me with loathing and disgust. ”

“ Running over such varieties of character, we may ask whether it is fair to set down the autobiographic impulse as in all cases a manifestation of vanity. Or if we call it vanity, must we not stretch the meaning of the word beyond all bearing? The old psychologists used to maintain that every passion was a special form of self-love; and, if we may take such a license, we may call every man vain who takes an interest in his own affairs, and expects that others may be interested. ”

“ In judging of our own powers we are just as likely to under- as to over-estimate them, and the results are equally painful.
How acute are the sufferings of a diffident, shy, self-distrustful, over-sensitive disposition! Such a temperament is a sad make-weight in the struggle of life. ”

“ One timid, self-distrustful temperament needs frequently to bask in the sunshine of your approval, while another, somewhat predisposed to vanity and self-consciousness, feeds a more bracing moral climate. ”

“ I have been thinking especially clearly of that which I have already said many times; that all the evil in the world comes only from this, that people look upon themselves, upon their own personality, as a worthy object of their conscious life—upon themselves or upon a group of personalities, it is all the same. ”

“ In proportion, therefore, as we realize the immense forces dormant in the Impersonal Soul of Nature, only awaiting the introduction of the Personal Factor to wake them up into activity and direct them to specific purposes, the wider we shall find the scope of the powers within the reach of man; and the more clearly we perceive the Impersonalness of the very Principle of Personality itself, the clearer our own proper position as affording the Differentiating Medium between these two Infinitudes will become to us. ”

“ But, in all ages, and now more, the narrow-minded have no interest in anything but in its relation to their personality. What will help them to be delivered from some burden, eased in some circumstance, flattered or pardoned or enriched; what will help to marry or to divorce them, to prolong or to sweeten life, is sure of their interest; and nothing else. Every form under the whole heaven they behold in this most partial light [153] or darkness of intense selfishness, until we hate their being. And this habit of intellectual selfishness has acquired in our day the fine name of subjectiveness. ”

“ How necessary, in an age of sensation morals and free-love theories, to have self-indulgence occasionally exhibited in all its hideous nastiness, and without any of its fleeting, deceptive, imaginary charms! ”

“ Nature deceives us all with her endless tricks and devices: she makes us a gift of youth, and then, when we are grown up, asserts her mastery and snares us in a web of relations, domestic and public, most of which we are powerless to control; and, though we impart our personal character to our actions, we do not possess our souls in the same degree; the lyric element of personality is weaker, and, with it, our feelings and capacity for enjoyment—all, indeed, is weaker, except intelligence and will.
§6 My cousin’s life was no bed of roses. ”

“ If I agreed, I should hate myself, my life, everything, when the glamour faded and I had time to reflect. I know myself so well. I would rather go on with my dull loveless life than go away with you and lose my self-respect. ”

“ At first sight, and to one who does not yet realize the inner unity of being, these views on the nature of Personality and Individuality may 276 appear strange and even painful. For such a person the thought of the dissociation of his ‘self,’ of its separation into two or more parts—either in life or in death—and the divergence of the two parts from each other, must be grotesque and terrible, and verging even towards madness. ”

“ Which of us is proof against the temptation of making a display of magnanimity, or of playing egoistically with another devoted heart? Which of us, in fact, has the force of character to be superior to petty vanity, to petty fine feelings, sympathy and self-reproach?... ”

“ And all the time he was conscious of a little stab of pain, keen enough to assert itself through the wrapping of self-righteous indignation in which he sought to envelop himself. He told himself that he had been blind, that the girl was worthless. ”

“ Every one has surely felt, some time or other in life, the insufferable annoyance of having his thoughts and reflections interfered with, and broken in upon by the vulgar impertinence and egotism of some “bore,” who, mistaking your abstraction for attention and your despair for delight, inflicts upon you his whole life and adventures, when your own immediate destinies are perhaps vacillating in the scale. ”

“ AGNES. Never from me—never from me. For what am I? Untrue to myself, as you are untrue to yourself; false to others, as you are false to others; passionate, unstable, like yourself; like yourself, a coward. ”

“ What reason demands is that the impulse you feel, or it may chance the109 strongest of a dozen impulses, shall become to you an object of careful scrutiny. You are bound in honesty to scrutinize it; not only because it exists as an incitement felt within yourself, but much, much more because it is felt to be your actual self. It is your character which gave the spring, and lives in the movement to action. Perchance this point of character is a hidden nook, an unknown depth of feeling or desire, undiscovered, unsuspected by your fellow-creatures—a secret of your inner self. ”

“ But upon closer acquaintance one could not fail to detect disappointing lines in his face, and corresponding flaws in his character—a shifty eye, a weak mouth and chin, an indolent, ease-loving temperament, that would shirk every responsibility, and an insatiable desire for personal entertainment, that betrayed excessive selfishness and a lack of principle. ”

“ Such curious vindications of the unchangeableness of character, the identity of being, which suddenly seize upon a man, and whirl him back in a moment, defying all external changes, into his old, his unalterable self, are among the strangest things in humanity. ”

“ One of the first requisites, in order to be thus acceptable, is the neglect, the forgetfulness of self—a readiness to put self in the back-ground. Any obtrusion of self, any appearance of self-love, self-interest, self-conceit, or self-applause, tends to expose a man to dislike, perhaps to contempt. ”

“ You are so modest, so loath to think of yourself, so unselfish in this respect that I must tell you of you and about you.
You have a warm heart that throbs for others' woes and holds sympathy. The great world is cold, selfish, and cares little for others. ”

“ It may seem bitter to us; and between ourselves we may even laugh at the figure which it makes us cut But what does it matter? We have no other kind of self-control left. This is our asceticism, our manner of performing penance." To become personal—the virtues of the "impersonal and objective one." ”

“ Their self-consciousness, diffidence and timidity in the presence of others is very largely the result, first, of a lack of knowledge of themselves and how to make the most of their own good qualities socially ”

“ Seeing all this as I do, and unravelling the web of human life into its various threads of meanness, spite, cowardice, want of feeling, and want of understanding, of indifference towards others and ignorance of ourselves—seeing custom prevail over all excellence, itself giving way to infamy—mistaken as I have been in my public and private hopes, calculating others from myself, and calculating wrong; always disappointed where I placed most reliance; the dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? ”

“ Till now I had imagined that no character was uniform and unmixed, and my theory of the passions did not enable me to account for a propensity gratified merely by evil, and delighting in shrieks and agony for their own sake. ”

“ Then the question is, why should we allow ourselves to be satisfied with an imperfect personality? It only reflects back upon ourselves. Haven't we often heard a man say: "He is all right but...!" Perhaps the personality in question was untidy, or that his walk was that of a laggard, or that he affected an egotistical air of superiority—whatever the impairment it should have been done away with. ”

“ Constantly to scrutinize physical personality, or accuse people of being unduly personal, is like the sick talking sickness. Such errancy betrays a violent and egotistical personality, increases one's sense of corporeality, and begets a fear of the senses and a perpetually egotistical sensibility. ”

“ You will say, you have much to struggle with in your own character, and that nothing can satisfy you while you have to contend with self so continually. But your greatest temptation is to dwell too much upon your internal trials, leading you almost insensibly to that most insidious and deceptive form of self-love, a too constant thought of self even in regard to one's faults. ”

“ At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say,— `Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love." ”

“ Into the house of conduct erected by the superficial self it sends an obsession, which doesn't, owing to a twist that the superficial self, which isn't candid, gives it, seem to bear any relation to the suppressed wish. ”

“ Your attempt to put on any other disposition than your own will infallibly result in your becoming ridiculously gushing and offensively familiar. Be your own natural self, and then you will only be thought to be surly and stupid. ”

“ Or, a timid nature may become more timid, shrinking, weak of will, and despondent concerning life in general; or the subject may show an exaggerated egotism which seeks by sheer intrusion of self to force everything else aside. ”

“ And if you were to be taken from me how terrible it would be to feel that I'd ever had one unkind thought of you, that I'd ever misinterpreted one look or word or action of yours, that I'd ever, in my egoism or my greed, striven to thwart one natural impulse of yours, or to force you into travesty away from simplicity! ”

“ To these impassive natures all displays of the personality are distasteful, and the lighter social arts, seeming both insignificant and [53] histrionic, are learned with difficulty and practised with repugnance. An awkwardness of address, in the uneducated almost bovine, becomes in the cultivated a painful reserve and self-consciousness, reflecting in open physical distress the uneasiness of the man's whole being. ”

“ Weeks ago, in pride and self-confidence, I made the effort, and failed miserably, as might have been expected. Instead of being a gifted and brilliant man, as I supposed, that had been suddenly brought under a cloud as much through misfortune as fault, I have discovered myself to be a weak, commonplace, illiterate fellow, strong only in bad passions and bad habits. ”

“ Another token of the higher life, which indeed is implied in the former, is the habit of taking what is called an objective or Impersonal View of our personal relations. This is especially important as helpful to self-control. ”

“ If they were not so conscious of themselves they would not be obsessed with this idea; they would realize that they are probably not really very interesting, and may never have struck others’ consciousness at all. But no—the perpetual, ever-present perception of self makes them awkward, makes them wonder what effect they are producing, makes them nervous and the prey of every foolishness. ”

“ What is there in the human mind so tremblingly vulnerable, that even the suddenness of blunt sincerity, or the hasty speech of thoughtlessness should wound it like the thorn of unkindness? Those tender and undefinable feelings must often thrill and vibrate to the rude touch, unless they become gradually hardened by the rough intercourse of the world. ”

“ By this excessive analysis you can transform an act of self-sacrifice into an act of narrow egotism, an excuse into a meanness, a certainty into an hypothesis, or a sincere affection into a selfish pretence. ”

“ Being a Distinguished Character, it would be a neglect and a slight if I were left alone for two minutes. And the people seem to think that the most delightful topic of conversation which they can select is—myself. How weary of myself I become! ”

“ My own personality has become a burden to me. I want to escape, to go away, to forget. ”

“ It is an experience which results usually from the interplay of low and selfish motives, and of ignoble or weak passions; it is, too often, the course of brutal appetite, thoughtless or heartless folly, avarice, sensuality, and vice, relieved too seldom by amiable character, sympathy, charity, self-sacrifice, or even by the charm of natural beauty. ”

“ The mind, thus disappointed, preys upon itself, and compares its present lowliness with the imaginary heights for which it fancies itself to have been intended. Under the influence of these reflections, the character grows sullen and reserved, detaches itself from all social enjoyments, and professes to despise the honours for which it secretly pines. ”