Just man

“ Then he looked into himself, his own conscious life, met its failure, and his first thought was of his own terrible pettiness. In the face of these countless worlds revolving in the far heaven, "what is man?" And then there came another thought to him: "And yet how great is man!" ”

“ Are not the Things for the Man?” Then the roar of the great city rose up about me, like a flood, swallowed my senses in itself, numbed and overbore me, swooned my soul in itself, and said: “No, the things are not for the man. The man is for the things.” ”

“ But one message at least he had to proclaim to the world,—the ancient imperishable truth that man lives, not by surrender of himself to his kind, but by following the stern call of duty to his own soul. ”

“ I know that I do not know the world, but out of my little corner of time and space I have watched in it,—watched men and truths struggling in it, and in the struggle it has seemed to me I have seen three kinds of men. I have seen the man who feels that he is being made, and the man who feels that he is making himself. ”

“ He sees himself in all he sees. And this self that a man sees crystallized in all his world of sense, of society, and of philosophy, is simply his own fashion of conduct, his busy world-building temperament. ”

“ I saw now that a man alone is but a being that may become a man—that he is but a need, and therefore a possibility. ”

“ And, at the end, man is reaped—the product, not of good alone, but of evil; not of joy alone, but of sorrow—perhaps mellowed and ripened, perhaps stricken and withered and sour. How, then, shall we judge any one?”
Can we not judge a man by his will? Does not such an instrument reflect his character, his nature, and his eccentricities? ”

“ You have always been interesting, from the very first—more so than many men—more than most men. And now you admit to me what kind of a man you really are. If I believe it, what am I to think of myself? ”

“ The sum of all these impressions is the man himself, the ego, the form through which the general life is individualised. The outer man is but a mask; the real self dwells behind the veil of the Unconscious. ”

“ Repudiate forever that doctrine so paralyzing, so degrading, and yet so general, “Man is the creature of circumstances.” Rather adopt that other sentiment, more inspiring to yourselves, more honorable to your nature, more consonant with truth, Man the architect of his own fortune. ”

“ But a word breaks the spell, intelligence gleams in his face, and what, so far, has seemed a strange being, belonging rather to the lower animals than to human-kind, shows himself a man, and becomes equal to ourselves. ”

“ So that between the man and his true life there grows a dense and impenetrable hedge; and, what with the cares and anxieties connected with his earth-body and all its skins, he soon loses the knowledge that he is a Man at all; his true self slumbers in a deep and agelong swoon. ”

“ At a place where there were no houses he stopped for a moment and lifted his tiny hands to the skies. “I'm a man. I tell you what, I'm a man. Whatever any one says, I tell you what, I'm a man,” he shouted into the void. ”

“ We have still to show, more clearly than we have yet done, how this act, breaking up the great natural unities of sensation and of passion, at once displaces the various modifications of man's given existence, and, by a necessary consequence, places the being which was not given, namely, the "I" of humanity—the true and proper being of every man "who cometh into the world." ”

“ But however we may understand the accessory conditions by which the one man rules the many, and controls, and fashions them to his purposes, and transforms them into his likeness—multiplying as it were himself—there remains at the bottom of it all a mystery—a reaction between body and soul that we cannot explain. ”

“ It is an old-fashioned word, all but tabooed in modern polite society, but where will be found another which so well expresses the complete transformation in the life and character of a man who awakes from the sleep of selfish worldliness, to the better and higher principles of spiritual life? ”

“ But, at the same time, I was in readiness for it because of my disposition for generally human feeling and thinking,—I mean: a feeling and thinking in human terms,—a disposition which was not only the product of my individual time and stage of life, but that of the time at large and in general, of OUR time, of the historic convulsions, adventures and tribulations, by which the question of man, the very problem of humanity was presented to us as an indivisible whole, and imposed upon our conscience as hardly ever to a generation before us. ”

“ The whole individual life that expresses and presents the meaning of any single idea. But you will still properly be dissatisfied. You will say: “Are not the individuals as various as are all our various ideas? And how are these individuals of which you have so far spoken to be related to what we mean when we talk of individual men, of souls, of moral personalities, or of one man as different from any other man?” ”

“ It is because you are a man—because you have power and a great future. I want you to rouse yourself—I want you to make a stir in the world. This is what I have come to say to you—to preach a very simple doctrine. ”

“ We acknowledge the mystery that overhangs the union and connection of all men with the first man. We know that this corruption of man's nature, and this sinfulness of his heart, does indeed, appear at the very beginning of his individual life. ”

“ The human soul and its limits, the range of man's inner experiences hitherto attained, the heights, depths, and distances of these experiences, the entire history of the soul UP TO THE PRESENT TIME, and its still unexhausted possibilities: this is the preordained hunting-domain for a born psychologist and lover of a "big hunt". But how often must he say despairingly to himself: "A single individual! ”

“ Where did it get its power to go to the hidden man of the heart, that subliminal self with which modern speculation has been so busy, and shift him from off his age-long base? It is commonly said that, whatever our personal vicissitudes, human nature remains the same ”

“ That a man's individuality should swing round from pole to pole, and yet that one life should contain these two contradictory personalities--is it not a wondrous thing?
I ask myself, where is the man, the very, very inmost essence of the man? ”

“ It excluded nothing of humanity except what baseness its melody might make impossible. The strangeness and looseness of its framework allowed each man to see himself therein, or some incident or dream in his life, or something possible to a self which he desired to be or imagined himself to be, or perhaps believed himself once to have been. ”

“ And thus it is, and must be with every mere natural man, whatever appearances he may put on, he may, if he pleases, know himself to be the slave, and machine of his own corrupt tempers and inclinations; to be enlightened, inspired, quickened and animated by self-love, self-esteem, and self-seeking, which is the only life, and spirit of the mere natural man, whether he be Heathen, Jew or Christian. ”

“ Why have only two or three ways of life, and not thousands? Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much. ”

“ The real man is reserved, secretive, inscrutable.’ His face to me gives the same warning. At first blush it pleases, but upon closer scrutiny lines are seen which suggest that he would toss the settled things of life about as the wind scatters dried leaves. ”

“ And in the same way, when we deal with Man, — with the concrete issues of his daily life, — with the problems of private passion or of public policy, we have to do, primarily, with human nature as it is, and with all the unconquerable naïveté of our desires, of our imperfections, and even of our virtues. ”

“ Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. ”

“ Every man is where he is by the law of his being; ”

“ Lastly, there is in the heart of all men a working principle, ­ call it ambition, or vanity, or desire of distinction, the inseparable adjunct of our individuality and personal nature, and flowing from the same source as language ­ the instinct and necessity in each man of declaring his particular existence, and thus of singling or singularizing himself. ”

“ I speak up for myself in this book. Anybody can see it. If every man will confine himself in the same way, and will stake off himself and attend to himself at the end of this book and say what he wants—we will all get what we want. ”

“ Each man for himself in that desert of egoism which is called life." ”

“ then we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in the soul. ”

“ Not exactly in novels, tales, and philosophical treatises,—they are the work of exceptional individuals,—rather in the judgments on public events and personalities ; but above all there is a lack of the art of psychological analysis and summing-up in every rank of society, in which a great deal is talked about men, but nothing about man. ”

“ After laboring long on the subject, he straightened himself up—he was a fine looking man—and said he, "My brethren and sisters, I must come to the conclusion that the soul of man is an immaterial substance. ”

“ but I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one’s own personality every man sets up for himself secretly. ”

“ It is in this way that an individual conceals himself behind the universality of the generic term [pg 033] “man” or “society,” or adapts and attaches himself to princes, castes, political parties, current opinions of the time, or his surroundings: and we may easily find the animal equivalent of all those subtle means of making ourselves happy, thankful, powerful, and fascinating. ”

“ It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. ”

“ Into the hands of every individual is given a marvellous power for good or for evil,--the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what a man really is, not what he pretends to be. ”

“ Therefore in the pursuit of perfection as an individual lies my highest, and indeed my only duty, the "I" being duly blended with the "We." I object to be a "self-less man," which to me denotes an inverted moral sense. ”

“ Yet while the separate self and the conjunct self lodge in the same being, the degree and kind of attention accorded to the latter marks the stage of moral maturity at which man or nation has arrived. ”

“ If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, of joys, of base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own, which he thinks so peculiarly isolated from the web of life, how much kinder, how much gentler he would be! ”

“ and the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man. ”

“ And by recommending, and still more by himself exemplifying in his own practice, by showing active in himself, with the most prepossessing pureness, clearness, and beauty, the two qualities by which our ordinary self is indeed most essentially counteracted, self-renouncement and mildness, he made his followers feel that in these qualities lay the secret of their best self; that to attain them was in the highest degree requisite and natural, and that a man's whole happiness depended upon it. ”

“ In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was—What sort of man shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks oneself this question; at thirty-nine we say, “I wish Fate hadn’t made me this sort of man.” ”

“ If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. ”