Minor premise

“ Such portraitures of human peculiarities, gauged by their moral or social desirability as examples to be followed or avoided, form an attractive compendium for the interpretation of men and their ways. Their consideration, ranging from gossip to philosophy, supplies the common touch of nature that makes the world of every time and clime akin, and presents graphically for our psychological contemplation the outward issues of disposition as shaped by opportunity and circumstance. ”

“ Not only does individuation now have its innings but the distractions from passion, the lust for wealth and power, and in general the struggle for place and fame, have abated and in their stead comes, normally, not only a philosophic calm but a desire to draw from accumulated experience and knowledge the ultimate, and especially the moral, lessons of life—in a word, to sum up in a broader view the net results of all we have learned of the comédie humaine. ”

“ Now scenes and characters will not seem real, unless there is in them the right blend of pleasure and pain, of good and bad; for life is not all either one thing or the other, nor has it ever been so. ”

“ My course of study had led me to believe, that all mental and moral feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a bad kind, were the results of association; that we love one thing, and hate another, take pleasure in one sort of action or contemplation, and pain in another sort, through the clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to those things, from the effect of education or of experience. ”

“ For, as I must repeat, our so-called external experience, that is, our experience taken as other than our meanings, and viewed as what confirms or refutes them here or there, never does more, in any question concerning the truth, than to decide our ideal issues, and to decide them in particular instances, whose character and meaning for us are determined solely by what ideas of our own are in question. ”

“ What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way—nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? ”

“ The object is soon seen to be truth; and the motive is soon felt to be the satisfaction which truth gives to the mind, and the desire to escape, in the practical order, from the wastefulness, and the mischief of error. ”

“ He should question the things he sees—not some things, but everything—stand, as it were, in the center of this whirling storm of contradiction which we know as life, and ask of it its source and its import. ”

“ He felt, how arbitrary was the law of human opinion; how little resorted to were the principles of human nature; how difficult to eradicate those principles impressed on the character without any operation of the reason, received in the first era of existence, expanding with the years, and associating with all the feelings, the passions, and the habits of life. ”

“ Such, and not those which he takes to follow from it, are the consequences which do follow from the Idealist’s supposition that the object of an experience is in reality merely a content or inseparable aspect of that experience. ”

“ And this process of personalization or subjectivization of everything external, phenomenal, or objective, is none other than the vital process of philosophy in the contest of life against reason and of reason against life. ”

“ An idea comes to me, or I to it', she says, airily, 'a scene—a situation—a young man, a young woman, and on that mental hint I begin to build', but the question naturally arises, she must make a beginning? ”

“ In practice these three kinds of arguments, which turn on moral, practical, and aesthetic considerations, tend to be much mingled. The human mind is very complex, and our various interests and preferences are inseparably tangled. ”

“ And indeed this clear perception, in Novels and Plays, of the union of character and action not seen in nature, is the principal defect of such compositions, and what renders them but ill pictures of human life, and wretched guides of conduct. ”

“ Those questions may perhaps then, by the very nature of the case, be unanswerable—though often again, no doubt, the felt vice is but in the quality of the provision made for them: on any showing, my own instinct, even in the service of great adventures, is all for the best terms of things; all for ground on which touches and tricks may be multiplied, the greatest number of questions answered, the greatest appearance of truth conveyed. ”

“ Hence, — and here, indeed, is the conclusion of the whole matter, — the very effort hypothetically to assert that the whole world of experience is a world of fragmentary and finite experience is an effort involving a contradiction. ”

“ I mean by this that the conceiving or theorizing faculty—the mind's middle department—functions exclusively for the sake of ends that do not exist at all in the world of impressions we receive by way of our senses, but are set by our emotional and practical subjectivity altogether. [2] It is a transformer of the world of our impressions into a totally different world,—the world of our conception; and the transformation is effected in the interests of our volitional nature, and for no other purpose whatsoever. ”

“ Now the sort of 'fact of experience' on which in my book I have proposed to compromise, is the so-called 'mental state,' in whose existence not only common men but philosophers have uniformly believed. ”

“ Elements and principles mingle, combine, wed, multiply with each other, to such a point that the material and the moral world are brought eventually to the same clearness. The phenomenon is perpetually returning upon itself. ”

“ What are our experiences, then? Much more what we attribute to them than what they really are. Or should we perhaps say that nothing is contained in them? that experiences in themselves are merely works of fancy? ”

“ Neglect to cultivate the ability to go down to the root of a subject, to observe it in its relations, and to apply it practically, will inevitably lead to superficial consideration of every subject, and even ignorance of the fact that this is superficial consideration. As a practical result, the person will drift through life rudderless, the sport of circumstance. ”

“ And how many of those slighter details, occurrences, projects, or intrigues, that link small matters with great—how many points of manner, conduct, temper, or peculiarity that make up the sum of human character, are thus lost, of which we would gladly be informed! ”

“ Now, suppose by an action of our imagination we step back a few years in our moral history, and re-assume our original characters, what a contrast should we, in that case, exhibit to our present selves! ”

“ When, however, both ends have been gained, experience and history and literature must next be called in, in order to show clearly the confusion into which the maxims based upon pleasure and passion plunge human beings. ”

“ Whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses to be disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate; for example,—to gratify the senses, we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. ”

“ But it is certain that a good or bad character exists only then when its maxims of desire and action express themselves in fact. The emphasis must be on the fact; what is factual may be discovered, and these discoveries may be of use. ”

“ Or suppose, again, that the character is known, and the environment the same as others of which we have had experience, yet even here the question arises, Are you able to generalize laws of the action and reaction of character and circumstances, when character does not mean disposition or temperament (the man is more than these) ? If you can not class characters, so as to deduce particulars from them, then even the premises we have supposed you to possess are useless to you. ”

“ You see, therefore, that the imagination, feelings, virtues, and failings of human nature, are circumscribed within a very narrow compass; and that the same things, with few exceptions and differences, are to be found everywhere. ”

“ This negative character of the universal judgments holds true of them, as we have said, just in so far as you sunder the external and the internal meanings, and just in so far as you view the Real as the Beyond, and as merely the Beyond. If you turn your attention once more to the realm of the ideas viewed as internal meanings, you see, indeed, that they are constantly becoming enriched, in their inner life, by all this process. ”

“ Whether the incidents, or the characters, are copied from life, is of little importance—The only question is, if the circumstances, and situations, are altogether improbable? If not—whether the consequences might not have followed from the circumstances?—This is a grand question, applicable to all the purposes of education, morals, and legislation—and on this I rest my moral—'Do men gather figs of thorns, or grapes of thistles?' asked a moralist and a reformer. ”

“ And the real, though perhaps intrinsically simple problems of life—to make a living, win love, overcome temptation—are precisely the problems which are humanly significant because universally experienced. The story which [204] shows real people struggling with such a problem will have a keener interest for a reader through his familiarity with its matter in personal experience. Such a story appeals to the emotions both through its people and through its theme. ”

“ All of which again may represent the high pitch of one's associated sensibility—there having been occasions of crisis, were they worth recovering, when under its action places, persons, objects animate or not, glimmered alike but through the grand idealising, the generalising, blur. At moments of less fine a strain, it may be added, the sources of interest presented themselves in looser formation. ”

“ A simple moral tale being the groundwork of the piece, the charms of description and all the embellishments of the scene are only subservient to the higher purpose of picturing the manners, or touching the heart. ”

“ In circles highly civilised the great things, the real things, the hard, the cruel and even the tender things, the true elements of any tension and true facts of any crisis, have ever, for the outsider’s, for the critic’s use, to be translated into terms—terms in the distinguished name of which, terms for the right employment of which, more than one situation of the type I glance at had struck me as all irresistibly appealing. ”

“ Hence it has been said,
By Hui Tzŭ. 'The objective emanates from the subjective; the subjective is consequent upon the objective. This is the Alternation Theory.' Nevertheless, when one is born, the other dies. ”

“ It must be, at least, allowed, that this “ruling passion,” antecedent to reason and observation, must have an object independent on human contrivance; for there can be no natural desire of artificial good. ”

“ Fed by every contact and every apprehension, and feeding in turn every motion and every act, wouldn't the light in which it might so cause the whole scene of life to unroll inevitably become as fine a thing as possible to represent? ”

“ One of the most striking facts about our modern literature is the preponderance of the "subjective" over the "objective." The interest in external events, as the subject of imaginative work, quite pales before the interest in analysis of mental and moral impulse. ”

“ The story is a fair and legitimate study of opposite temperaments. It is intensely realistic, and the difficult problem, which is by no means rare in real life, has been handled with dignity and with such restraint as not to offend. ”

“ For those who are conscious of this element in life, look for it and like it, the gap will appear to be immense.{286} It will lead them to say, “No wonder you have a contempt if that is the way you limit the field. No wonder you judge people roughly if that is the way you see them. Your work, on your premisses, remains the admirable thing it is, but is your ‘case’ not adequately explained?” ”

“ The course of external events, in so far as it affects one person, whether as proceeding from or reacting upon him, reveals character, and has meaning as an interpretation of inward life. It is a series outward indeed, but parallel with the states of will, intellect, and emotion which make up the consciousness of the character; and it is interesting humanly only as a mirror of them. ”

“ Underlying many of our romances and tragedies are moral injunctions which are involuntarily absorbed by the observers, yet of so subtle a nature that they are not suspected. We cannot preach except by suggestion, for people go to our picture shows to be amused. ”

“ It would indeed be strange and lamentable if the divorce between feeling and conviction—to adopt a popular classification—was not simply incidental to change, but was also an inexpugnable part of fundamental aspects of human life. ”

“ The doctrines of Uniformity and Determinism are supposed to be based upon experience. But experience includes experience of the actions of human beings; and some of them certainly appear to be of a capricious and undetermined character. ”

“ As the moral ideas realize themselves in ménage and habits, so the ideals will seek to find expression in a literature, and the passive drifting together will pass over into a phase of more or less conscious and intentional organization. ”