Perfect fourth

“ I heard the nature of the Fourth Dimension—heard that it was an inhabited plane—invisible to our eyes, but omnipresent; heard that I had seen it when Bell Harry had reeled before my eyes. I heard the Dimensionists described: a race clear-sighted, eminently practical, incredible; with no ideals, prejudices, or remorse; with no feeling for art and no reverence for life; free from any ethical tradition; callous to pain, weakness, suffering and death, as if they had been invulnerable and immortal. ”

“ Triple, therefore, is thy task, for thou dost possess the gift of poetry, and must study to acquire the science of words. Triple is thy task:—by direct methods to conduct thy being to attain the perfect integrity of the Latin type; to concentrate the purest essence of thy spirit, and to reproduce in a single and supreme work of art thy deepest vision of the universe ”

“ However, those who aim carefully at the mark itself, will unquestionably come nearer it, than those who from despair, negligence, or indolence, leave to chance the work of skill. This maxim holds equally true in common life; those who aim at perfection will come infinitely nearer it than those desponding or indolent spirits, who foolishly say to themselves: Nobody is perfect; perfection is unattainable ”

“ Now with regard to the ultimate unity and consequent harmony of all this variety, our Fourth Conception has given us indeed a general formula. The Many must, despite their variety, win harmony and perfection by their cooperation. But this principle, so far, gives us no limit either to the empirical variety of will, or of interest and of experience in the absolute, nor any limit to the relative independence which the uniqueness of the individual elements makes possible. ”

“ Four is strange enough without encouraging him to think like a martyr. It's out of the question. If that's the only way we can leave this planet, we'll stay here until Four has a beard as white as Grampa's! ”

“ It would be very profitable for all professors of that perfect love which casteth out all tormenting fear, to apply unflinchingly these touch-stones to themselves. They may find the word "perfection" taking on a meaning deeper, broader and higher than they had ever before conceived. ”

“ But have you noticed that this idea of perfection is contradictory, and therefore chimerical? Under the category of quantity or of extension there could be no real perfection either for the individual or for the species. No sooner is anything that can be counted or measured conceived than the mind instantly conceives something greater. There is no such thing as perfect number. Here therefore it is needful to make an essential distinction. We must distinguish between the quantity and the quality, or rather, the intensity, of being. ”

“ The ideas of the Impassible and of Perfection are contradictions.... This seems to be the very meaning of the word ‘perfect’—‘made through’—made perfect through suffering—completed—working out; and even the only idea we can form of the Perfect Perfect ... ‘God in us,’ ‘grieving the Holy Spirit of God,’ ‘My Father worketh and I work’—these seem all indications of this truth.... We cannot explain or conceive of Perfection except as having worked through Imperfection or sin.... The Eternal Perfect almost pre-supposes the Eternal Imperfect. ”

“ I please myself, too, with remembering some ardent souls among [pg 256] the American youth, who I trust will yet expand, and help to give soul to the huge, over-fed, too hastily grown-up body. May they be constant! "Were man but constant, he were perfect," it has been said; and it is true that he who could be constant to those moments in which he has been truly human, not brutal, not mechanical, is on the sure path to his perfection, and to effectual service of the universe. ”

“ But in the crowning song of all the great three cycles every need and every instinct of the spirit may find the perfect exaltation of content. The vast and profound sense of ultimate and inevitable equity which animates every line of it is as firm and clear as the solid and massive splendor of its articulate expression. ”

“ Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast following event; in which curiosity finds endless scope, and there are interests at stake, enough to rivet the attention of all men, simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitude lift up their voices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high; in rhyme and prose announcement, more than plentiful, that now the New Era, and long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has come. Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroic barricades ”

“ With regard to make and shape, he should be as near perfection as possible, for without perfect symmetry no pace can be at the height of excellence, but as perfect conformation is seldom met with, its nearest approach must be sought for. ”

“ The Perfect Should Not Have Grown.—With regard to everything that is perfect we are accustomed to omit the question as to how perfection has been acquired, and we only rejoice in the present as if it had sprung out of the ground by magic. ”

“ The greatest example of this is perhaps the Divine Comedy, where each of the hundred cantos and each line of each canto is perfect in workmanship and packed with significance. There is, of course, a limit to this elaboration of the parts, set by the demands for unity and wholeness. The individuality of the elements must not be so great that we rest in them severally, caring little or nothing for their relations to one another and to the whole. The contribution of this principle is richness. Unity in variety gives wholeness; dominance, order; equilibrium, wealth, interest, vitality. ”

“ In the scale of finite beings we discover a gradation, by which they are interlinked; the less perfect, as they are perfected, go on approaching the perfect; and there are, preserving the limits of each one's nature, points of comparison by which we may measure their respective distances. ”

“ I know that the imperfect in its struggle toward perfection is the nobler matter. I know that America is, for him who can see all things, a more interesting land than Spain. Yes, I know this, but I find it hard to feel it. My strong temptation 161 is to lie and dream in romance, in ideal perfection. By what means may I discipline myself out of this degraded habit and bring myself into the higher life, so that I shall always be interested in progress, in the future rather than in the past, in the on-going rather than in the completed life? ”

“ The fourth principle, however, by its contact with the third in physical life, has gathered round itself some of its essence. But this essence is like the smell of a rose, which lingers only for a time after the rose has been destroyed. Hence it is that the so-called astral body is seen at a distance by the friends or relatives of a dying man. The concentrated thought, an intense desire to see a friend, &c., clothes itself in the fourth principle, which, by the essence of the third gathered around itself, makes itself objective to the distant friend. ”

“ In finite beings perfection is relative; a very perfect barn would be a very imperfect church; a painting may be an ornament in a gallery which would be a profanation if placed in the sanctuary. Perfection seems to consist in a property being conducive to its end. ”

“ A fourth class, of immovable temper and self-reliant, fall into what seems, superficially, indifference, but which xxxviiimeans, deeply, the soul of earnestness. These do always the best thing at the time, and, when it is done to their own satisfaction, put it forward, with no anxiety whatever as to what may be said of it, with no intention of entering into any defence of it, and with no intention of doing anything less than themselves correct all such errors in it as after knowledge may indicate, or commit it to the flames, if destruction be its best fate. ”

“ Three, or the triad, is the image of the attributes of God.191 Four, or the tetrad, is the most perfect of numbers and the root of all things. It is holy by nature. Five, or the pentad, is everything; it stops the power of poisons, and is dreaded by evil spirits. ”

“ The first is particular to God, the second to angels and saints in heaven, and the third is possessed by good men on earth.—How unfounded all claims to the second sort of perfection, that is, sinless holiness, are, we have largely considered. The third or last kind of perfection, usually termed relative or moral, is a gracious sincerity. ”

“ If we call these variations from a common type in the features imperfections, as it is usual to do, it would seem to be the imperfections of perfection that charm and stir us; and that perfection without these so-called imperfections is a cold, dead abstraction, devoid of life: that unity without variety is lifeless and incapable of touching us. ”

“ There's a curious increase of interest in the question of a Fourth Dimension. It's a strange age, and it's going to be stranger still—or merely beautifully simple and homecoming, I don't know which. Science and mysticism are fairly within hailing distance of each other. ”

“ So the sincere, noble utterance was but the expression of impulse and emotion which lifted Peter for a moment, and did him good, but which likewise, running through him, left him dry, and all the weaker because of the gush of feeling which had foamed itself away in empty words. For let us never forget that however high, noble, or divinely inspired emotion may be, in its nature it is transient and is sure to be followed by reaction. ”

“ Here our general concept of Being gives us our test of truth, but our experience shows us special ways in which facts not only can be unified, but are unified. These ways, as far as they go, are for us valid guides. Thus, then, our general and relatively a priori proof of the unity of Being, in the early part of this lecture, has itself been brought into unity with the empirical view of our real world. We see then how the world of our Fourth Conception must be One. ”

“ In truth, the character of George the Fourth never can be thoroughly understood unless we are able to see how much of the artistic, in a certain sense, there was in his temperament. He had that peculiar gift which has lately come to be called "artistic"—sincerely by some critics, satirically by others—the gift which enables a man to throw his whole soul and spirit into any part which the occasion calls on him to act. ”

“ If we had now the intuition of an infinite object, we should see its perfections as they are, with their true marks; or rather, we should see how all the perfections dispersed among limited beings, are united in one infinite perfection. ”

“ One grows tired of endless chatter concerning the march of Progress towards Perfection, and of the assumption underlying it that Perfection—as usually defined—is a quality which any one need desire in anything. ”

“ If George the Fourth was pleased to bring ruin upon himself and his creditors, how should his friends and associates do less? Looking backward at the spurious glitter, the mock splendour, the hollow delight of that wonderful age which is so near us in point of time, so far away from us by reason of the wide differences which divide to-day from that foolish yesterday, we can of course afford to be very wise, and can clearly see what a very witch’s sabbath was that long revelry in which the fourth George of England led the dance. ”

“ So long, however, as we fail to see this truth we necessarily limit the Creative Power by the material it works in, and in practise we do this by referring to past experience as the only standard of judgment. We are measuring the Fifth Kingdom by the standard of the Fourth, as though we should say that an intellectual man, a being of the Fourth Kingdom, was to be limited by the conditions which obtain in the First or Mineral Kingdom--to use Scriptural language we are seeking the Living among the dead. ”

“ On another day that side of life is made all radiant and glorious by a vision, clear and definite, that beckons on to future achievement. Sometimes it comes suddenly, like Peter’s vision when he was upon the housetop in Joppa; and sometimes it dawns gradually, and little by little paints itself in beautiful colors upon the sky of one’s inner consciousness. ”

“ The perfect plan includes health, wealth, love and perfect self-expression. This is the square of life, which brings perfect happiness. ”

“ This is not to say that art is undesirable; it is highly desirable, is, in fact, almost as necessary to our souls as a fourth dimension is to the mathematician. The fourth dimension is a spiritual necessity to the mathematician ”

“ And so it is for that night long ago when Mary Elizabeth and I stood by the tree and tried to think of something to say, that after all these years I have made the story of Peter.
Long years ago, when the world was just beginning to be, there was a kingdom which was not yet finished. Of course when a world has just stopped being nothing and is beginning to be something, it takes a great while to set all the kingdoms going. And this one wasn’t done.
For example, in the palace garden where little Peter used to play, the strangest things were to be met. ”

“ The conclusions about a fourth dimension follow, not from the fact that we have thought of one, but from the conception about it which we have framed. Neither generalization nor free construction can reveal the operations of thought in transcendental independence. ”

“ Yet we prize the theory of Fourier no less than the profound suggestion of Goethe. Both are educating the age to a clearer consciousness of what Man needs, what Man can be; and better life must ensue. ”

“ Some complicate the question by predicating the existence of a fourth dimension in that world, but the term is an absurdity, as are all terms which find no corresponding impression in the human brain. We have mysteries enough to solve without gratuitously introducing fresh ones. ”