Sensible quality

“ For I, who draw my opinions from a careful observation of the world, am satisfied with knowing what is abundantly sufficient for practice; that if it be not a virtue, it is, at least, a quality which can seldom exist without some virtues, and without which few virtues can exist. ”

“ And because we can never point out any one quality in the outside world and say “This is purity, and all of purity; this is goodness; or this good plus this good plus this makes all of goodness”; because of this impossibility we speak of these concepts as having reality somewhere. They are absolutes, universals, abstract quality concepts—the unfound all of which the things we call pure and good are but the part. ”

“ Now what is common to all these three instances? It is obvious that the only thing that can be common to them all is the quality of order, the quality which is the result and creation of the ordering power of man. ”

“ From the crudest impressions of the boy to the ripest convictions of the man, one common quality informs and harmonizes every stage of thought, every phase of feeling, every change of spiritual outlook, which has left its mark on the writings of which that collection is composed; the quality of a pure, a perfect, an intense and burning sincerity. ”

“ Under current conditions the only authentic standard must be based, not upon the social influence of the work, but upon its quality; and a standard of this kind, while it falls short of being complete, must always persist as one indispensable condition of final excellence. ”

“ But how very striking is the moral to be drawn from such a state of affairs. It is that, considering the excellence of the work performed by these men, there must be a most exalted standard of quality among them. ”

“ To great powers of argument and illustration, and delightful transparency of diction and style, he adds a higher quality still—and a very rare quality it is—an evident and intense honesty of purpose, an absorbing desire to arrive at the exact truth, and to state it with perfect fairness and with the just limitations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But what analysis can we adopt which shall prove universally satisfactory? If we rank men according to mental, moral or spiritual attributes, one quality is sure to contradict or affect the other, and it is hard to decide which trait is paramount. ”

“ If there is one quality which more than another marks the demand of the present day it is the requirement of novelty. In every direction the question which is asked is not, "Is this fresh thing good? Is it appropriate to, and well-fitted for, its intended uses?" ”

“ Talking abstractly, the quality 'true' may thus be said to grow absolutely precious, and the quality 'untrue' absolutely damnable: the one may be called good, the other bad, unconditionally. We ought to think the true, we ought to shun the false, imperatively. ”

“ Our method of acquiring "knowledge" is limited to a process of establishing quantities, but we can by no means help feeling the difference of quantity as differences of quality. Quality is merely a relative truth for us ”

“ In considering or designing any kind of work the first and most essential condition is the quality of material that has to be used. "You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." And what is true materially is true also mentally; the character of a people is the essential basis of all their institutions and government. ”

“ The seventh, and final, "quality" is body or figure, by which he means the fundamental tendency or energy toward expression in actuality and concrete form. The final goal of intelligent purpose is the realization of wisdom, of idea, in actual Nature-forms and life-forms—the incarnation of the spirit. ”

“ It is, however, in many cases apparent, that this quality is merely relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful because they have something which we agree, for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find it in other things of the same kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge increases, and appropriate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view. ”

“ But you may answer or think, 'Is the liking for outside ornaments,—for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or architecture,—a moral quality?' Yes, most surely, if a rightly set liking. Taste for any pictures or statues is not a moral quality, but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have to define the word 'good.' I don't mean by 'good,' clever—or learned—or difficult in the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their dice: it is an entirely clever picture; so clever that nothing in its kind has ever been done equal to it ”

“ It has been made a question whether the denotation of an abstract term may itself be the subject of qualities. Apparently 'weight' may be greater or less, 'government' good or bad, 'vitality' intense or dull. But if every subject is modified by a quality, a quality is also modified by making it the subject of another ”

“ Let us strive to realize that we influence more by what we are than by what we do or what we say; and that what we say and do derives its quality from our quality. And quality is felt in toto, while of quantity a census and appraisal must needs be made. ”

“ Anything that is somewhat at all may be said to be or to have a quality. But on the other hand we may prefer to use quality specially of those diversities which are developed when wholes are analyzed into terms and relations. And, when we ask if there can be qualities without relations, this distinction becomes important. ”

“ But every subject at some phase of its development should possess, what is for the individual concerned with it, an aesthetic quality. ”

“ It is invariably found in men of good sound sense, and is, indeed, their most shining quality, giving value as it does to all the rest, sets them to work in their proper time and places, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed of them. ”

“ The SECOND quality, which I discover in these passions, and which I likewise consider an an original quality, is their sensations, or the peculiar emotions they excite in the soul, and which constitute their very being and essence. ”

“ The truth is that we do not and need not strive to bring into [Pg 280] connection with appearance the idea of any quality which we conceive of as unlimited. What we derive from the phenomenal manifestations of human power and goodness is a consciousness of the qualities of power and goodness. ”

“ The objective mind, it will therefore be seen, is potentially selective, that is to say, the measure of its quality is its capacity to select at will intellectual nourishment from the whole range of humanity and nature, free from the oppression of its psychic environment. ”

“ And the remedy for this is always to recur to the original nature of Being as altogether Good, and then to speak to ourselves thus: "My thought must continually externalise something, for that is its inherent quality, which nothing can ever alter. ”

“ And always it has maintained a standard—which, in fact, it created amongst us—of material high quality, of intellectual respectability and of religious solidity, the more worthy of grateful appreciation because not everywhere fully appreciated. ”

“ But what quality should be predicated of that Being of which man knew as yet nothing but its existence? Language possessed as yet no auxiliary verbs. The very idea of being without the attributes of quality or action, had never entered into the human mind. ”

“ The one is a perception, the other a quality, and to mistake the quality, not merely for a perception, but for the very perception to which the quality gives rise; and to infer thence that the quality must likewise be in the mind, is an instance as glaring as can well be imagined of that most heinous of logical offences, the confounding of cause with effect. ”

“ I shall therefore put together some Thoughts on this Subject, which I have not met with in other Writers: and shall set them down as they have occurred to me, without being at the Pains to Connect or Methodise them.
All Superiority and Preeminence that one Man can have over another, may be reduced to the Notion of Quality, which, considered at large, is either that of Fortune, Body, or Mind. The first is that which consists in Birth, Title, or Riches, and is the most foreign to our Natures, and what we can the least call our own of any of the three Kinds of Quality. ”

“ The quality appears, in nature, as a modification of the substance, and as it is thus expressed, in language, by a modification of the noun substantive, which denotes that substance, the quality and the subject are, in this case, blended together, if I may say so, in the expression, in the same manner as they appear to be in the object and in the idea. ”

“ The perfect fitness of means to end, without defect and without excess, constituted its beauty; and its beauty was perceived aesthetically, as a quality inherent in the form, a quality which apart from the practical serviceableness of the contrivance was capable of communicating pleasure. So in general, when the inherent needs of the work give shape to the structure or contrivance, the resulting form is in so far forth beautiful. ”

“ Starting from the contemplation of sensible objects, he propounds the question whether the goodness in all good things, although known by different names, such as justice in a man, strength or swiftness in a horse, and so on, comes from one source or divers. All varieties of excellence, by whatever name they may be called, are resolvable at last into a few simple elements—the good, the beautiful, the great, the useful. ”

“ For of what use is the restorative and refreshing power, this quality called beauty, if the quality itself cannot be recognised save after previous training? And what moral dignity, nay, what decent innocence, can there be in a kind of relaxation from which lack of initiation excludes the vast majority of men, the majority which really labours, and therefore has a real claim to relaxation and refreshment? ”

“ The quality is equally and indifferently displayed in the spirit of the fighting, the tenderness of the pathos, the startling vigour and strangeness of the incidents, the natural strain of the conversations, and the humanity and charm of the characters. ”

“ In the same manner, therefore, as a quality is an attribute grounded on the fact that a certain sensation or sensations are produced in us by the object, so an attribute grounded on some fact into which the object enters jointly with another object, is a relation between it and that other object. ”

“ It is not, in fact, the quality itself, but the modification of the quality, which is masculine or feminine: and on the manner or degree in which these are balanced and combined in the individual, depends the perfection of that individual character—its approximation to that of Christ. ”

“ As his faculties unfold she adds quality after quality to his list: progressing from hardness and softness to roughness and smoothness, from colour to polish, from simple bodies to composite ones—thus constantly complicating the problem as he gains competence, constantly taxing his attention and memory to a greater extent, constantly maintaining his interest by supplying him with new impressions such as his mind can assimilate, and constantly gratifying him by conquests over such small difficulties as he can master. ”

“ That was a mechanical and stagnant period, and men have brought over from it to the more active days of the present ideals formed then. Precision of statement goes with figures, with etiquette, with military matters; but descriptions of the quality of persons must be stated in the round. ”

“ He may possess a well-balanced organization as to temperament and cerebral development, but without the element of delicate quality he will be utterly incapable of those mental processes requiring delicate shades of thought.
Sol Smith Russell—Quality Responsive.
The individual who unites the elements of strong and delicate quality will exhibit both power and fineness. He will be able to display more versatility of talent than the individual possessing the element of strength or delicacy alone. ”

“ And the very same standard of excellence which declares that the treasures of a cultivated intellect, of a pure mind, of a lofty purpose, are higher than the utmost of material good, and that 'wisdom is better than rubies,' the very same standard, when applied in another direction, declares that above the treasures of the intellect and the taste are to be ranked all the mystical and great blessings which are summoned up in that mighty word salvation. ”

“ This proposition must hold strictly true, with regard to every quality, that is determin'd merely by sentiment. In what sense we can talk either of a right or a wrong taste in morals, eloquence, or beauty, shall be considerd afterwards. In the mean time, it may be observ'd, that there is such an uniformity in the GENERAL sentiments of mankind, as to render such questions of but small importance. ”

“ A question will, however, immediately arise as to the nature of this desirable individual excellence. It is all very well to say that a man should do his work competently, faithfully, and fearlessly, but how are we to define the standard of excellence? ”

“ Taking, as our limits necessarily oblige us to take, a broad survey of the principle, and the results of the principle disclosed by experience, we cheerfully pronounce both to be positively and undeniably good. ”

“ Thus, in conduct, actions are judged 'good' or 'evil' and 'right' or 'wrong'; in thinking, ideas are 'true' or 'false,' and 'relevant' or 'irrelevant'; for art, objects are 'beautiful' or 'ugly,' and so forth, for the modes of valuation in life are innumerable. Any one of these adjectives either denotes value or censures lack of worth, and each gets its meaning by reference to the specific purpose, moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, it appeals to. The summum bonum, or supreme good, will then be the ideal of the harmonious satisfaction of all purposes. ”