Rigor

“ If considered as a mere receptacle for Latin and Greek, Mathematics and Metaphysics, Science and Literature, we may, without moral turpitude or virtue, abstractly considered, follow our own inclinations; but the Understanding will all the time be growing either stronger or weaker, wiser or more foolish, whether we study them or whether we let them alone. This action of the Understanding cannot go on without influencing the Affections. ”

“ Experiment and observation, contact with facts and laws independent of our subjectivity, and marked by all the features of a commanding reality, are calculated to correct this one-sidedness, to awaken deeper convictions with regard to the absoluteness of truth and with this strengthened love of truth and reverence for truth to help forward the development of the moral and higher side of man's intellectual life. ”

“ So that if you would form a just judgment of what is of infinite importance to you not to be misled in,—namely, in what degree of real merit you stand either as an honest man, an useful citizen, a faithful subject to your king, or a good servant to your God,—call in religion and morality.—Look,—What is written in the law of God?—How readest thou?— Consult calm reason and the unchangeable obligations of justice and truth;- -what say they? ”

“ It is by doing, that we learn to do; by overcoming, that we learn to overcome; and every right act which we cause to spring out of pure principles, whether by authority, precept, or example, will have a greater weight in the formation of character than all the theory in the world. ”

“ For instance, I read among other things this golden rule on such an ordinary printed paper stuck against a room door, "Make no comparisons;" and if you consider how many quarrels, and how much mischief arise in the world from odious comparisons of the merits of one with the merits of another, the most delightful lessons of morality are contained in the few words of the above-mentioned rule. ”

“ Which faculties do most naturally ripen early in life, and which late in life?
According to my own observation, the latest of the human powers in maturing, as it is the most consummate, is the Judgment. Next in the order of maturity, and next also in majesty and excellence, is the Reasoning power. Reason is minister to the judgment, furnishing to the latter materials for its action, as all the other powers, memory, fancy, imagination, and so forth, are ministers to reason, and supply it with its materials. ”

“ Knowledge of facts, knowledge of nature, knowledge of the true aspects of the world we live in,—these seem to us of first importance. After that, we prize next reasonable and reasoning goodness; for mere rule-of-thumb goodness, which comes by rote, and might so easily degenerate into formalism or superstition, has no honour among us, but rather the contrary. ”

“ These rules will enable you to have a free and sound judgment; since good judgment is born of clear understanding, and a clear understanding comes of reasons derived from sound rules, and sound rules are the issue of sound experience—the common mother of all the sciences and arts. Hence, bearing in mind the precepts of my rules, you will be able, merely by your amended judgment, to criticise and recognise every thing that is out of proportion in a work, whether in the perspective or in the figures or any thing else. ”

“ It strikes at the Root of Principle draws off the Inclinations from Virtue and spoils good Education, ’tis the most effectual means to baffle the Force of Discipline, to emasculate people’s Spirits and Debauch their Manners. ”

“ Our deeds, judged in the light of a reasonable survey of life--a survey of life such as that to which, when we form our opinions, and when we act on our opinions, we intend to appeal--are, for a determinate purpose, either hits or misses. If the issues of life in question when we act are definite enough, our deeds, under the rules of the game of life, cannot avoid this character of being the right deeds or the wrong deeds for the purpose in question and in view of their actual place in real life. ”

“ Let us spring forth when the word is given to perform any and every duty we are called upon to perform. Let us present a firm and unbroken phalanx of strength against evil of every description, and be united in frowning it down. ”

“ Though necessarily dealing with great masses of detail, general principles are wisely and impressively emphasised ; though constantly concerned with abstractions and tendencies, it has rightly been pronounced to be ’marvellously concrete.' Self-suppression, impartiality, accuracy, sympathy, sobriety of judgment, and sense of proportion stand out in every part of the great book. ”

“ As then we bring those things which reason hunts after, to sense, and by it judge what kind of things they are, whether the things spoken be true or false, and then sit in judgment no longer, giving full credit to its decision; so also we refer all that is said regarding men and the world to the truth, and by it judge whether it be worthless or no. ”

“ The preliminary training necessary may be summed up by the admonition: Live a correct moral life, according to our own highest standard (a standard, by the way, which should never be fixed, but always moving onward to still greater excellence) and to strive to think clearly and to form accurate conceptions of ideas, to express conceptions of ideas, to express conceptions with exactness, and to follow Truth, wherever she leads, and whatever your previous convictions upon any given subject. ”

“ For all other intellectual efforts, however, either of the understanding or the fancy, and requiring a thorough knowledge either of man's strength or his weakness, we apprehend them to be, in all respects, as well qualified as their perceptions of grace, propriety, ridicule—their power of detecting artifice, hypocrisy, and affectation—the force and promptitude of their sympathy, and their capacity of noble and devoted attachment, and of the efforts and sacrifices it may require, they are, beyond all doubt, our superiors. ”

“ The ordinary text-books of formal logic do not seem to meet the special aim which I am now trying to impress as desirable—namely, the habit of valuing, not merely speculative nor scientific truth, but the truth of practical life; a practising of the intellect in forming and expressing the opinions and judgments that form the staple of our daily discourse. ”

“ It places you under the guidance of your own judgment and discretion by comparison with the best efforts of others; it enables you 'to criticise, compare, and rank their works in your own estimation, as they approach to, or recede from, the standard of perfection which you have formed in your own mind—but which those masters themselves have taught you to make, and which you will cease to make with correctness when you cease to study them. ”

“ The quality of our taste, the predominance of our feelings, or even the casualty of circumstance, may produce associations of ideas, confirmed by habit into predilection or enmity. To search for the cause of these varying opinions, to examine the foundation of these attachments and prejudices, and to reduce them all to the rule of equity is the office of the judgment, that most important effort of the reasoning powers. ”

“ These themes are all-comprehensive: every truth and every error which any intellect can harbour, must find a place under one or other of these heads; and these, accordingly, are the departments into which philosophy is divided, inasmuch as these are the provinces where error has to be uprooted, and truth planted. ”

“ He had apparently such rectitude of judgement as secured him from every thing that approached to the ridiculous or absurd; but as laws operate in civil agency not to the excitement of virtue, but the repression of wickedness, so judgment in the operations of intellect can hinder faults, but not produce excellence. Prior is never low, nor very often sublime. ”

“ Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first object is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. ”

“ In the subsequent essay, divided under ten several heads into ten several notes, on 'the difference of wits,' or the diversity of accomplishments and understandings, there is much worth study for its soundness of judgment, its accuracy of definition, and its felicity of expression, It would be well if educational and professional formalists would bear in mind the truth that 'there is no doctrine will do good, where nature is wanting' ”

“ Any one who can introduce a little order into this chaos by establishing in any quarter a single sound rule of criticism, a single rule which clearly marks what is right as right, and what is wrong as wrong, does a good deed ”

“ If in the vigorous intellectual stretch of the reasoning powers of some of the more gifted of the savages the hideous doctrine was really brought within the grasp of the understanding, the ability to ponder it would be likely to be accompanied by some keen speculation as to its reasonableness, truthfulness, and authority. ”

“ All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.—I observe a truly wise practice on every hand, in education, in religion, and the morals of society, enough embodied wisdom to have set up many an ancient philosopher. ”

“ XXI. In controversies which depend most upon skill in the languages, philosophy, or other parts of common learning, prefer the judgment of a few that are the most learned in those matters, before the judgment of the most ancient, or the most godly, or of the greatest numbers, even whole churches, that are unlearned. ”

“ Discipline—still a synonym for decency, for civilisation, for religion, in the average parent's mind—was enforced, not pitilessly, as aforetime, but with firmness, and as a rule in moderate and reasonable ways. ”

“ Art and Religion both signify effort to comply with an ideal standard—indeed, the height of the standard is the test of each—and what makes for innocence or for faultiness in the one, makes for innocence or faultiness in the other. ”

“ TRUTH, the law of Speech in connexion with its purpose; PURITY, the control of the Bodily Appetites; and ORDER (obedience to the Laws) , which engages the Reason in the consideration of Rules and Laws for defining Virtue and Vice. Thus the five leading branches of virtue have a certain parallelism to the five chief classes of motives—Bodily Appetites, Mental Desires, Love and its opposite, the need of a Mutual Understanding, and Reason. ”

“ Since to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being. ”

“ Theories, opinions, men, and things, are examined into and sifted until all can understand their truth and error. The argument of antiquity or authority is exploded and ridiculed, and the men who seek to sustain antiquated error on the foundation of effete tradition are compelled to prove it by scripture or reason. ”

“ They arrived,—though failing, as has been said, to give adequate practical satisfaction to the claims of man's moral side,—at the idea of a comprehensive adjustment of the claims of both the sides in man, the moral as well as the intellectual, of a full estimate of both, and of a reconciliation of both; an idea which is philosophically of the greatest value, and the best of lessons for us moderns. ”

“ He who has marked the differences between truth and error, good and evil, made them discoverable, and formed human minds susceptible of their impressions, thereby discovers his will that we should attend to them, and has made it our duty to do so. ”

“ Admitting, for a moment, the possibility of such physical prodigies being true, what do we gain by them,—do they either confer additional authority on moral truth, or prove it false? Can they make right wrong, or wrong right? ”

“ This consideration alone is sufficient to justify the measure we have prescribed for our intellectual conduct, that we ought to prosecute knowledge no farther than as it conduces to virtue: and consequently, that whenever we study to any other purpose, or in any other degree than this, we are unaccountably, impertinently, I may add, sinfully imployed. ”

“ Writing about ethics has tended to take one of two directions. On the one hand we have description of conduct in terms of psychology, or anthropology. On the other a study of the concepts right and wrong, good and bad, duty and freedom. If we follow the first line we may attempt to explain conduct psychologically by showing the simple ideas or feelings and the causal connections or laws of habit and association out of which actions arise. ”

“ Bad example by recognized authority leads thoughtless folk to evil ways in speech, as elsewhere. Also exemplars of virtue are sure to have their followers. This is true in linguistics. ‘The rule is general, and it is broad and big enough perhaps to excuse an occasional book of this kind. ”

“ And we learn nothing from being told that our conscience or sense of duty, our sentiments in regard to right and wrong, our obligation to pursue one course of conduct and to avoid another course, are ultimate principles which admit of no further analysis or explanation. ”

“ Knowlege in a proper and restricted Sense and as appropriated to Science, signifies that clear Perception which is follow’d by a firm assent to Conclusions rightly drawn from Premises of which we have clear and distinct Ideas. Which Premises or Principles must be so clear and Evident, that supposing us reasonable Creatures, and free from Prejudices and Passions, (which for 77 the time they predominate as good as deprive us of our Reason) we cannot withhold our assent from them without manifest violence to our Reason. ”