Narrow-mindedness

“ The contagion of narrow-mindedness and meanness affects the noblest natures; and in such ways as these, men born to be great, and women who would have been charming if they had fallen under the forming influence of greater minds, are balked of their lives. ”

“ Our conduct must be limited and to a certain extent regulated by the narrow-mindedness, the scruples, the prejudices, the weakness in short, of others. We cannot say, I see my way to do so-and-so, let my friend think what he pleases ”

“ Now, what we understand by a narrow [84] mind is simply a mind which refuses to take in and be governed by the whole truth of God. A mind governed by human opinions, human reasonings, worldly maxims, selfish interests, self-will—this we unhesitatingly pronounce to be a narrow mind. ”

“ A person with a grand intellect lies as open to the thoughts of others as the placid lake to the stars which it nightly reflects. Narrow minds will entertain only those thoughts which come to them through some channel in favor of which they maintain a prejudice. ”

“ Don't sneer at Knowles. Your own clear, tolerant brain, that reflects all men and creeds alike, like colourless water, drawing the truth from all, is very different, doubtless, from this narrow, solitary soul, who thought the world waited for him to fight down his one evil before it went on its slow way. ”

“ Such a majority of this type will not become virtuous, but on average choose the most narrow-minded and the most worldly-wise. Regarding the most narrow-minded, I see them as those for whom mediocrity has become second nature. ”

“ I merely saw in it the venting of the spleen of an egotistical and narrow mind. How paltry that class of men must be which speaks with disparagement of all others who do not happen to be within its own narrow circle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have a certain case in mind in which a man of remarkable intellect and independent spirit became a narrow, craven specialist and a grumpy old crank, simply owing to a lack of subtlety in his instinct for climate. And I myself might have been an example of the same thing, if illness had not compelled me to reason, and to reflect upon reason realistically. ”

“ There seem to be, speaking roughly and as far as my own observation of psychology goes, six main ways in which the average man is fooled about himself and needs to change his mind about himself.
He is possessed with loco-mindedness or spotty-mindedness, sees things as they look to one kind or group of people—sees things in spotlights of personality, of place or time—all the rest black. ”

“ She was far from that vain haughtiness that is the common characteristic of narrow and superficial minds, and which, too often, displays itself in persons of cultivated intellect, where there is not a corresponding goodness of heart. ”

“ But it is idle and shallow to confuse the real narrowness which springs from a harsh temper or a cramped and self-sufficient intellect, and which is quite compatible with the widest theoretical latitude, and the inevitable appearance of narrowness and severity which must always be one side which a man of strong convictions and earnest purpose turns to those whose strong convictions and earnest purpose are opposite to his. ”

“ Yet in practice they are often found as close companions and appear at the summons of prejudice, ignorance, inertia, and of that weakness of judgment and vacillation of standards of belief that flourish, weed-like, when the scientific habit of mind is not assiduously cultivated. ”

“ All thoughts that peer outside this narrow world cannot be else than dim and shapeless. The thoughts that we can clearly grasp are very little thoughts—­that two and two make four-that when we are hungry it is pleasant to eat—­that honesty is the best policy; all greater thoughts are undefined and vast to our poor childish brains. ”

“ O, deluded heart!—ever bartering away substance for shadow!"
I grow philosophic sometimes. Thought will, now and then, take up a passing incident, and extract the moral. But how little the wiser are we for moralizing! we look into the mirror of truth, and see ourselves—then turn away, and forget what manner of men we are. ”

“ The men who do produce them are rendered capable of doing so, not by the width of their minds, but by the exceptional narrowness. The intellectual stream flows strongly because it is confined in a narrow channel, and thus what to the superficial observer seems a sign of their inferiority, is really, so far as the results are concerned, one of the chief causes of their greatness. ”

“ But now for other Objections, That a Blind man would be able to discourse of Colours, if there were any Innate ideas in his Soul, I say, it does not at all follow; because these Ideas that I contend to be in the Soul, are not Sensible, but Intellectual, such as are those many Logical, Metaphysical, Mathematical, and some Moral Notions. All which we imploy as our own Modes of considering sensible Objects, but are not the sensible Objects themselves, of which we have no Idea, but onely a capacity, by reason of the Organs of our Body, to be affected by them. ”

“ But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities that create severity,—strength of will, conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great power of self-control, and a disposition to exert control over others,—prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which we call truth. ”

“ Narrowness is ignorance, and it petrifies the Conscience into a perverted direction. Everyone is morally bound to endeavour to the utmost of his power and opportunities to lay aside error, and to rectify his Conscience. ”

“ Next to low-mindedness amongst the foes of unity comes ambition: “Walk with all lowliness of mind and meekness,” he continues. Between the low-minded and the lowly-minded there is a total difference. The man of lowly mind habitually feels his dependence as a creature and his unworthiness as a sinner before God. ”

“ And I tell you that if you, or I, or any man, want to let our thoughts play freely round questions, and so escape from the tendency to become bigoted and narrow-minded which there is in every human being, then we must acquire something of that inductive habit of mind which the study of Natural Science gives. ”

“ Where experience is contradictory, then, there is movement, whether for that which is known or for him that has the knowledge. In your character or mine, so like a lover's unselfish selfishness in its apparent inconsistencies, in our double views about reality or unity or law, in a subjective-objective science, in an agnostic philosophy, in all these the contradictions are only the marks of essential unrest, of necessary movement, that make the picture possible. For a world of opposites there can be no peace. ”

“ If, for any reason, passion should create confusion of ideas, clearness of understanding would be seriously compromised and firmness of judgment, by deteriorating, would cast aside the manifestation of common sense. ”

“ Here, what I want is known to me by virtue of its contrast with what another wants, and this contrast, rendering relatively clear my consciousness of my own intent, tends, by its very existence, and by reason of the blindness of my passion, to inflame the opposition. In a more benign, but also, as I judge, in even a more primitive form, appears the simple contrast of ego and non-ego in all my imitative, or explicitly plastic and socially submissive, states of consciousness. ”

“ When, therefore, the ‘I’ is spoken of, which is to have the right to dispose of itself, only the conscious ‘Ego’ can be meant, the pondering, remembering, observing, comparing intellect, not, however, the sub-’Egos’—unconnected, and for the most part at strife with each other—which are included in subconsciousness. ”

“ If the new knowledge you bring him is evidently a matter of fact, if his brain rationally perceives that he was wrong about this thing, and you are right, he removes his incorrect idea and establishes the correct one, with no more disagreeable sensation than a little sense of shame:—not that, if he was wise enough to admit ignorance gracefully. ”

“ He fears to see any thing decisive, lest it should compel him to favor an opinion. He dreads an object that suggests a definite idea, lest it should draw him perforce to support some tangible theory. He stumbles blindfold over palpable facts, and clearly defined analogies, and converses only with shadows. His philosophy consists in leaning to whatever embarrasses a conclusion, and following only those contradictory lights, which perplex the judgment, and prevent it from arriving at a precise and positive inference. ”

“ The prejudices which seemed so foolish, so false, are interwoven, blended with life itself. We, here, call them instincts, holding us apart from the lower order of man, and my education only fostered, developed them to the utmost in me. ”

“ But if we established ourselves in the minds of your normal people, we'd be without will. As mere observers, we'd become assimilated in time, and thus extinguished as a separate race. That, of course, we could not permit. And if we settled in the minds most suitable to receive us, we would be in the minds of those who by your standards are insane—whose destiny is controlled by the others. ”

“ But as mind conforms to matter, [Pg 3] or matter to mind, mentalities are as diversified as are the shades and colors of human skins. The exterior is but an index of the interior, or life within; consequently, as exteriors differ, so do interiors, and as gradation rises, so do equalities disappear, as the sage, and all intermediate ascendencies, rise above the fool. ”

“ Such minds are in a position to exploit the association of ideas in the best possible way, to impart the greatest sharpness and clearness to all representations which through them are called into consciousness; to suppress them firmly and rapidly if they are not compatible with the rest; to procure new sense-impressions, if these are necessary in order to make the presentations and judgments predominant at the time in their minds still more vivid and distinct ”

“ An impression fixed by long habit of mind, especially where that habit has been transmitted through many generations, ends by assuming the form of instinctive knowledge, too clear to admit of discussion, still less to require demonstration. If such impression is originally based on facts accepted by reason, we call it common sense; if, on the other hand, it springs from error in matter of fact or is the result of distorted reasoning, we call it prejudice. ”

“ But that the Ego can cease to exist, while the world lives on, is an idea which can not enter upon our field of thought, bounded as it is, on all sides by the limitations of the Ego. We can be swept off our feet by a torrent of technical words and phrases, we can compose all sorts of philosophical formulas and definitions, and argue ourselves into a state of apparent conviction that we are conveying the ideas clearly and forcibly to our brains by constantly repeating certain definitions and axioms. ”

“ Every word and every movement of this personality become therefore absorbed with that over-attention which leads at once from a mere perceiving and grasping to a complete sinking into the suggested idea with the suppression of all opposites, and thus to a blind acceptance and belief. ”

“ There are strong minds wrapt in a limited, dried-up consciousness, or a clear, healthy consciousness harnessed in inherited prejudices or acquired preconceptions. And everywhere is a dislike, a contempt for change. ”

“ These men, therefore, have no suspicion of what constitutes ‘psychophysics,’ they do not suspect that it is the exact contrary of ancient psychology, which dealt with ‘intuition’ and introspection, i.e., ‘listening to one’s self’ and ‘spying out one’s self’ ”

“ The fact that they are retained in consciousness simultaneously, and at about the same intensity, combines them (in conformity with the laws of conscious activity) into a thought which is necessarily absurd, and cannot express the true relations of phenomena.
Weakness or want of attention, produces, then, in the first place, false judgments respecting the objective universe, respecting the qualities of things and their relations to each other. Consciousness acquires a distorted and blurred view of the external world. ”

“ When, however, we began to speak of our point of view, he quickly caught hold of his companion, turned sharply round, and cried to us in bitter tones: "People should not have points of view, but thoughts!" ”

“ Now in the matter of intellectual standards, we must bear in mind that it is unfair, where we find narrowness of mind, always to impute it as a vice to the individual, for in religious and theological matters he probably absorbs his narrowness from his generation. ”

“ And the feeling and the perception of how superficial and unreal, how oppressively confined, how intolerably fixed and ultimate, how arrogant and cold and fruitless, such persistent neglect of the Data of Sense had somehow, at last, rendered philosophy, gave now polemical edge to men’s zealous study and discovery of this world. ”

“ They are simply the outcome of an impulse to unburden an extraordinarily imaginative and versatile brain of its cargo of opinions, views, prejudices, beliefs; to pour, as it were, into the listening ear of an intelligent and sympathetic friend the confessions of his own intellectual struggles, his doubts and despairs. ”