Level

“ The consciousness is of level 2 when the person appears in an explicit way in relation with other persons. On level 2, the person is integrated in a group; the person knows the aims and the rules of the group and acts accordingly. ”

“ This is evident from the fact that those who stand higher can descend, but not everyone on a lower intellectual level can ascend. The latter sort, therefore, and not the former, determine the level which may be occupied in common. ”

“ Two thousand miles of ceaseless rush and rattle and clatter, by night and by day, and never a weary moment, never a lapse of interest! The first seven hundred miles a level continent, its grassy carpet greener and softer and smoother than any sea and figured with designs fitted to its magnitude—the shadows of the clouds. ”

“ We can roughly judge from the nature of any observed action whether the highest-level centres are directing it, or whether they are for the time inhibited, so that middle-level centres operate uncontrolled. ”

“ That saying about levelling upward, and not downward, may seem very fine to those who cannot see its self-involved absurdity. But the truth is, that, to gain the true level, in some things, we must cut downward ”

“ A truly level surface is a segment of any spherical substance, which is concentric to the globe of the earth. A true line of level is an arch of a great circle which is imagined to be described upon a true level surface. ”

“ The plain is perfectly level, and seems to stretch away and away and away, dimming and softening, to the uttermost bounds of nowhere. What a soaring, strenuous, gushing fountain spray of delicate greenery a bunch of bamboo is! As far as the eye can reach, these grand vegetable geysers grace the view, their spoutings refined to steam by distance. ”

“ But every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself. ”

“ From his high perch, one sees before him and below him, a wall of dreary mountains, shorn of vegetation, glaring fiercely in the sun; it fences in a level desert of yellow sand, smooth as velvet and threaded far away with fine lines that stand for roads, and dotted with creeping mites we know are camel-trains and journeying men; right in the midst of the desert is spread a billowy expanse of green foliage; and nestling in its heart sits the great white city, like an island of pearls and opals gleaming out of a sea of emeralds. ”

“ It is difficult precisely to define the seven levels of human progression, for the reason that these levels are personal; they are variable. for each individual and are apparently determined by the growth capacity of each human being. ”

“ We have come five hundred miles by rail through the heart of France. What a bewitching land it is! What a garden! Surely the leagues of bright green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every day and their grasses trimmed by the barber. Surely the hedges are shaped and measured and their symmetry preserved by the most architectural of gardeners. Surely the long straight rows of stately poplars that divide the beautiful landscape like the squares of a checker-board are set with line and plummet, and their uniform height determined with a spirit level. ”

“ We have a way of discussing the world, when we talk of it at various hierarchies, or levels. Now I do not mean to be very precise, dividing the world into definite levels, but I will indicate, by describing a set of ideas, what I mean by hierarchies of ideas. ”

“ The college man, over whom there came a feeling of desolation on settling down in a small country village with one store, comes eventually to find contentment, sitting on the counter or on a drygoods box, swapping stories with others like himself who have leveled down to a very circumscribed [Pg 155] life and living. Leveling down may be accomplished without effort or thought, but eternal vigilance is the price of leveling up. ”

“ It is necessary to make this digression as to the effects of tidal scour, for we are sometimes told that the various basins, troughs, and channels shown on the charts represent submerged land-valleys, and thus prove enormous changes of sea-level in modern times. How a submerged valley in a narrow sea with sandy bottom, like the English Channel, could remain long without silting up is not clear; the sandbanks on either side should tend to wash into and fill up the hollows. ”

“ A scale might be formed, graduated according to the degrees of a combined ratio of intensity, duration, connexion, periods of recurrence, and utility, which would be the standard, according to which all ideas might be measured, and an uninterrupted chain of nicely shadowed distinctions would be observed, from the faintest impression on the senses, to the most distinct combination of those impressions; from the simplest of those combinations, to that mass of knowledge which, including our own nature, constitutes what we call the universe. ”

“ O, when degree is shak'd, Which is the ladder of all high designs, The enterprise is sick! How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenity and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree, stand in authentic place? ”

“ Oh, it isn't the range! You talk just like father does. Any place is good enough to live in if there's plenty of range—range and water—water and range—those two things are all that make life worth living! ”

“ Sometimes the banks were overhung with thick masses of willows that wholly hid the ground behind; sometimes we had noble hills on one hand, clothed densely with foliage to their tops, and on the other hand open levels blazing with poppies, or clothed in the rich blue of the corn-flower; sometimes we drifted in the shadow of forests, and sometimes along the margin of long stretches of velvety grass, fresh and green and bright, a tireless charm to the eye. ”

“ As we glance at these classes we quickly detect that what may be called their vocations are extremely different; that each class—with the exception, perhaps, of two, the professional and the commercial, with that part of the indefinite class which is composed of persons of rank and property, and which approach each other—are as widely separated in tastes and habits and inclinations as they are in labors and works. Looking at the education of body and mind in these classes as a whole, there is certainly little enough of symmetry. ”

“ If we're acceptable, Cragin, we're established in one grade or another—and will be constantly under the supervision of creatures of the next highest grade—that's the way it's been working so far, with the exception of the little excursion we're taking now. ”

“ Hence, a work absolutely good holds the first rank, a work generically good [that is, judged by its class] , as it were, the middle rank, and a neutral work the lowest rank. Examples of these three are loving God, fasting, and weaving. ”

“ Can a class of half a million male adults, whom we may emphatically term all readers, and members of reading families; a class of half a million of the pick of British Artisans; a class of the highest intelligence, and (measured by their wages and numbers) highest in wealth: can we talk of the smallness of the number of readers, and assume to know any thing of this large and influential body? ”

“ It will be seen, by a glance at the above table, that the three great divisions of society, namely, High Life, Low Life, and Middle Life, are subdivided, or more properly, sub-classed, into the Superior, Transition, and Metamorphic classes. ”

“ We shall do better work, children, teachers, and supervisors, when we have provided for our use more definite standards or scales by which to measure our results. There is no reason why we should not have a scale which would enable us to tell with a fair degree of accuracy just what the standing of this group of children is in writing, in ability to perform the fundamental operations in arithmetic, in spelling, in writing compositions, in discussing the geography of North America, in decorating a cover for a notebook, or in any other subject or aspect of their school work. ”

“ These degrees are opened successively in all who become regenerate: and with the opening of each degree, the individual is introduced or born into a new and higher degree of life. The lowest or natural degree is opened by simple obedience to a low or natural form of truth—the literal sense of the Word. ”

“ Leopard’s Hill Lodge, where I have more especially made arrangements for the purpose of classification, consists of a front, or what may be called the family portion of the house, and galleries behind, with appropriate rooms for patients requiring more restraint.
p. 2To show that these houses are merely for the purposes of classification, I may mention, that there is no sort of difference in the three houses, excepting that in the one generally and latterly inhabited by ourselves, we prefer having those to whom our individual and more immediate attention may be useful. ”

“ We speak of rank among hereditary nobility or military officers; of various orders of the priesthood; by accommodation, we may refer in a general way to the higher ranks, the lower orders of any society. Grade implies some regular scale of valuation, and some inherent qualities for which a person or thing is placed higher or lower in the scale; as, the coarser and finer grades of wool; a man of an inferior grade. ”

“ For purposes of the following explanation, each quality will be distributed into three grades, determined not by value, but by class place—namely, the highest third, the medium third, and the lowest third. In respect to ability, these classes will be called A, B, and C. In respect to environment, the grades will refer to its helpfulness towards the particular success achieved, and the classes will be called E, F, G. It must be clearly understood that the differences between the grades do not profess to be equal, merely that A is higher than B, and B than C ”

“ What is higher has a greater degree (or it has a greater number of degrees) of something definite; what is lower has a less degree or number of degrees. Their quality, as higher and lower, is referable to quantity. ”

“ From the standpoint of the pupil, the kind of subject, the kind of teacher, and the sort of discipline employed will tend to influence the size of class to be called normal, and to make it a sort of variable. ”

“ The second class is made up chiefly of those who are unfamiliar with the soil and its culture—mechanics, professional men, who hope to regain health by coming back to nature, and citizens whose ill-success or instincts suggest country life and labors. From both these classes, and especially from the latter, I receive very many letters, containing all kinds of questions. ”

“ If, on the contrary, I choose a class,—a class being understood to be something chosen by free will, according to the common use of language, if I choose a class, I must first have become subject to Nature before it was possible for me to choose; for to that end different impulses must be awakened within me, different capacities elevated into consciousness ”

“ We must take these successive classes as we find them: we see each class in itself, developing into higher and better types; then, some maintain this improved development, some dwindle away and disappear. ”

“ All qualities and all faculties which are manifested to us in a limited degree, when we conceive of them as unlimited and without degree, become proofs that what exists in a measurable and limited degree may exist without limitation and without degree. ”

“ Degrees are of two kinds, discrete and continuous. Discrete degrees are related to each other as end, cause, and effect. Continuous degrees consist in the gradual increase of some quality of the same discrete degree of substance. The increase of light from the faintest indications to the most intense brightness; the change from cold to intense heat; all the variations of matter from soft to hard, fine to gross, dense to rare, weakness to strength, are examples of continuous degrees. ”

“ In the one case, the child makes the best production he can and measures its quality by comparing it with similar products of known quality on the scale. Composition, handwriting, and drawing scales are good examples of scales for quality of products. In the other case, the scales are placed in the hands of the child at the very beginning, and the magnitude of his achievement is measured by the difficulty or number of tasks accomplished successfully in a given time. Spelling, arithmetic, reading, language, geography, and history tests are examples of scales for quantity of achievement. ”

“ Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the Criminal and Vagabond Classes, there is always a vast superfluity of individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees. ”

“ The moment a quality has been distinguished in a fact that fact has been fitted into a class, the class which consists of all the facts in which that quality can be distinguished. Thus, in our original illustration, when you first distinguished warmth, etc., you were beginning to fit your fact into classes: when you perceived warmth you fitted it into the class of warm objects, and it was the same with the other qualities of roughness, size and smell. ”

“ There is now evolved a penumbral region in the soul more or less beyond the reach of all school methods, a world of glimpses and hints, and the work here is that of the prospector and not of the careful miner. ”

“ Everywhere in his studies the learner finds classification set up as a ladder by means of which he may climb to knowledge. Most students fall to counting the rungs of the ladder, to measuring the spaces between them, to informing themselves carefully who made it. ”

“ Better than any work, avowedly on history, it graphically traces the special features of class-rule as they have succeeded one another from epoch to epoch, together with the special character of the struggle between the contending classes. ”