Observer

“ Observe the looks and countenances of those who speak, which is often a surer way of discovering the truth than from what they say. But then keep all those observations to yourself, for your own private use, and rarely communicate them to others. Observe, without being thought an observer, for otherwise people will be upon their guard before you. ”

“ With the observer in the same relative position to the subject, as the light swings round towards a point back of him the contrasts become less, the relations more subtle and difficult of recognition, and naturally the study of them more difficult. ”

“ This capacity is what an observer calls intelligence; docility is the observable half of reason. When an animal winces at a blow and readjusts his pose, we say he feels; and we say he thinks when we see him brooding over his impressions, and find him launching into a new course of action after a silent decoction of his potential impulses. ”

“ For consider what the causal process of perception really is if we trace it from the observed to the observer—if we follow the main strands in the complex lines of communication through which the object seen reveals itself to the man who sees it. ”

“ Its aim is to teach the unscientific observer how to make use of his eye,—'how to look, and what to look at;' and to show him how much of wonder and beauty lies everywhere around him, if he could only recognise it. ”

“ When people throw these kinds of phrases at me -- that there is no observer, or that the observer is the observed -- I give them a hard time and try to make them realize the implications of what they are saying. ”

“ Though apparently surveying the world with a sick and careless eye, he occasionally penetrated into the depths of the human heart, and marked its secrets, with an accuracy that made the practised and systematic observer's survey seem but a superficial glance. ”

“ However, as I quite grant the hypothesis of an observer still fond and yet remarking the lapse of the purple patch of militarism but with a joy unclouded, I limit myself to the merely personal point that the fancy of a particular brooding analyst could so sharply suffer from a vagueness of privation, something like an unseasoned observational diet, and then, rather to his relief, find the mystery cleared up. ”

“ The outside observer, the experimenter, whose senses are alert all the time and who continues fully conscious without special receptivity or any peculiar power of his own, is in a better position to note and judge what is happening,—at least from the normal and scientific point of view. ”

“ Now, ask any common observer of mankind, one who looks on life without reference to prophecy or religion; ask him what he thinks the most remarkable feature in the present aspect of society, and he will tell you the rapid advance of science and increased facility of communication. ”

“ The impartial observer is attracted by all phenomena, and to him nothing appears small, insignificant or unimportant, as soon as he begins to draw conclusions from his observations and to discover laws in the physical as well as the moral world. In the world of reason there exists nothing small, accidental or unimportant. ”

“ Here are multitudes of phenomena which every observer sees and owns; and every one who observes them owns likewise, that "the most unthinking, as well as the most prejudiced, must be struck with the fact, that the period in which we live is extraordinary and momentous;" ”

“ Another observer, a man, confesses to having been at first "put off" by her appearance—to which allusion has already been made—and being caused to forget it by an "impression of a very sensible and even powerful intelligence." ”

“ When you go to Nature, bring us good science or else good literature, and not a mere inventory of what you have seen. One demonstrates, the other interprets.
Observation is selective and detective. A real observation begets warmth and joy in the mind. To see things in detail as they lie about you and enumerate them is not observation; but to see the significant things, to seize the quick movement and gesture, to disentangle the threads of relation, to know the nerves that thrill from the cords that bind, or the typical and vital from the commonplace and mechanical—that is to be an observer. ”

“ The skilled observer, scrutinizing the motives and peering into the history of the person whose traits and trends he is called on to investigate, must see, in imagination, not only a vast host of acts, but also a vast network of intersecting lines of energy of which the casual observer, and even the intimate friend, may be wholly unaware. ”

“ The horizon of perception changes for each person with his peculiarities and culture. Attention is the adjusting of the observer to the object in order to seize it in its unity and diversity. Relatively, the observer allows, for a moment, his relation to all other surroundings to cease, so that he may establish a relation with this one. Without this essentially spontaneous activity, nothing exists for the mind. ”

“ I have not hesitated to amend my text, expressively, wherever it seemed urgently to ask for this, though I have not pretended to add the element of information or the weight of curious and critical insistence to a brief record of light inquiries and conclusions. The fond appeal of the observer concerned is all to aspects and appearances—above all to the interesting face of things as it mainly used to be. ”

“ In this manner, from a series of sensations, observations, and analyses, a successive train of ideas arises, so linked together, that an attentive observer may trace back to a certain point the order and connection of the whole sum of human knowledge. ”

“ An observer of nature takes liking at last to objects that at first offended his senses, when he discovers in them the great adaptation of their organization to design, so that his reason finds food in its contemplation. ”

“ The observer, if he be a cautious man, begins to see if he can disprove his own conclusions; moreover, being human, he is probably somewhat awed, if not appalled, by his own conclusion. Hundreds of thousands of years spent in making that little glen! ”

“ But all great expression, which, on a superficial survey, seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes, after a while, to the faithful observer its own standard by which to appreciate it. ”

“ Hands off: neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. Even prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations. It is enough to ask of each of us that he should be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings, without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field. ”

“ Of the two ways, the first is, even in ordinary times, often the most fruitful. The observer, if he has eyes and an imagination, will be struck first by the superficial dissemblances, and they will give his picture the sharp suggestiveness of a good caricature. ”

“ When he seemed to the superficial observer to be dreaming, he was reasoning, calculating, comparing, analysing, weighing, turning things upside down and inside out, until he satisfied the dictates of his conscience and his sense of moral responsibility. ”

“ Many events and appearances are more or less limited to times and places; and as a relation which does not exist within the environment of an observer, cannot be cognized by him, however common it may be elsewhere or in another age, we have to take account of the surrounding physical circumstances, as well as the state of society, of the arts, and of the sciences—all of which affect the frequency with which certain groups of facts are exposed to observation. ”

“ If an experienced observer could compress into a formula the law of all the simultaneous conditions, he would be able to foresee the contents of any future moment—not, however, to modify them, for his prescience depends on their being in themselves determinate, and on his calculations bracing all the elements of the problem, including the states of his own mind. ”

“ How much goes to sound observing is thus stated by John Stuart Mill,—“The observer is not he who merely sees the thing which is before his eyes, but he who sees what parts the thing is composed of. One person, from inattention, or attending only in the wrong place, overlooks half of what he sees; another sets down much more than he sees, confounding it with what he imagines, or with what he infers ”

“ One may be a most careless observer, while the other [Pg 62] may be a very close observer and able to distinguish many points of interest and importance in the object viewed which are not apparent to the first observer. ”

“ Of medium height, spare of build and spare of feature, without any ferocity whatever marking the outer man, he gives the observer the idea of being a quiet, sedate, and rather retiring business person. ”

“ Anyone Interested May Become an Observer. — A review of the mental equipment needed by a measurer, or observer, will show that much may be done toward training oneself for such a position by practice. Much pleasure as well as profit can be obtained by acquiring the habit of observation, both in the regular working and in the non-working hours. Vocational Guidance Bureaus should see that this habit of observation is cultivated, not only for the æsthetic pleasure which it gives, but also for its permanent usefulness. ”

“ In every other experimental inquiry, without exception, confirmation of the facts of an earlier observer is held to add so greatly to their value, that no one treats them with the same incredulity with which he might have received them the first time they were announced. ”

“ It would be possible to point out what qualities of mind, and modes of mental culture, fit a person for being a good observer: that, however, is a question not of Logic, but of the Theory of Education, in the most enlarged sense of the term. There is not properly an Art of Observing. ”

“ The ordinary observer sees first the peculiarities of a thing. If he is looking at an old gentleman he sees a fly sitting upon the bald spot on his head, a wart on his nose, his collar pulled up behind. ”

“ Each one sees what he expects to see, what appeals to his interests the most intensely. What the unprejudiced observer recognizes as the flimsily disguised form of the medium, the believer transforms into the object of his thoughts and longings. Only let the form be vague enough, the light dim enough, the emotions upon a sufficient strain, and that part of perception in which the external image is deficient will be readily supplied by the subjective tendencies of each individual. ”

“ An observer deeply impressed by any remarkable spectacle, does not suppose, that the traces will soon vanish from his mind, and having commonly no great convenience for writing, defers the description to a time of more leisure, and better accommodation. ”

“ But supposing the Facts to be adequately observed, they can never be combined into any new Truth, except by means of some new Conceptions, clear and appropriate, such as I have endeavoured to characterize. When the observer’s mind is prepared with such instruments, a very few facts, or it may be a single one, may bring the process of discovery into action. ”

“ Once seen and comprehended, however, they work upon the mind of the observer with an ever increasing power; they lead him into a new, strange, and fascinating world, and generously recompense him for any effort he may have made to penetrate thither. ”

“ They are at least honest; and it not be that the first fresh impressions of an unprejudiced and uninfluenced observer are as likely to be natural and correct views as those which are the result of many after-thoughts, long and use, and an experience of multifold fascinations, combined with the original producing cause? ”

“ It is because of his conviction, that an observer is hardly competent to determine what circumstance is trivial, and what is important: many a recorded fact in science has lost half its value from the omission of some attendant circumstance, which the observer either did not notice, or thought irrelevant. ”

“ And if it be assumed that I am quibbling on the words ‘comprehend’ and ‘greater,’ that the observer need be greater only potentially, and not in act; that all the comprehension required of him, is to have in himself the germs of other men’s faculties, without having developed those germs in life ”

“ The casual observer could see little of interest here (in a fishing village on the Maine coast) , the average writer could make little of what he sees, but the acute and sympathetic; observer, the exceptional writer, comes on the scene, looks about, thinks, writes, and, behold! ”

“ Now, the facts stand on the authority of a very accurate observer, and as he adds that they are 'always to be repeated when the attempt is made,' so that they are regarded by him as 'among the very commonest instances of animal sagacity,' we cannot lightly set them aside. ”

“ In any daily paper worth a moment’s consideration the least fancifully inclined observer will discern an individuality apart from and in a degree independent of the dozens or hundreds or thousands of personal values entering at a given time into the composite of its grey pages. ”

“ And this is here the only case where the observation can be free and without any precaution. For one knows well enough that the observer of the objects of nature like celestial movements or the fall of a body wanders from the question soon if he is not rigidly prepared. ”

“ Slade, not of the observer. So, in general it is the medium who determines when a phenomenon shall appear and whether it shall appear. The observers propose experiments, the medium performs them. When a new proposal comes, the spirits answer, "We will try it," and sometimes the attempt succeeds and sometimes not. Occasionally, however, the phenomena desired by the observers are crossed by others entirely unexpected. By this alone the attention is thrown hither and thither in a way most disturbing for exact observations. ”