Single-mindedness

“ It comes in the guise of a purification of egoism, a complete renunciation of the limits of individuality—of all the desires and aims that seem to converge in the single personality—and a joyous acceptance of what has generally seemed an immense external Will now first dimly or clearly realized. ”

“ Thus a person can never know how much of things he once learned he really has in him, should he have once forgotten them: they belong not to his actuality or subjectivity as such, but only to his implicit self. And under all the superstructure of specialised and instrumental consciousness that may subsequently be added to it, the individuality always remains this single-souled inner life. ”

“ Strive as we may to conform to the conventional ideal of public opinion, we cannot conform all the time, and our lapses are our undoing—or maybe, our happy emancipation, who knows? We cannot hide the pettiness of our nature, even though we profess the broadest principles. Only one thing can save the ungenerous spirit, and that is to be up against life single-handed and alone. To know suffering, spiritual as well as physical; to know poverty, to know loneliness, sometimes to know disgrace, broadens the heart and mind more than years spent in the study of Greek philosophy. ”

“ But for the acquisition of knowledge it may be of greater importance not to make ourselves thus uniform, but to hearken to the low voice of the different situations in life; these bring their own opinions with them. We thus take an intelligent interest in the life and nature of many persons by not treating ourselves as rigid, persistent single individuals. ”

“ Yet again, because each of us is less than the whole of Reality, or, what is the same thing, because the systematic unity of our inner life is never complete, and our totality of interests relations, and aspirations never a completely self-contained ordered whole, our ideals will always be found to contain aspects which will not fully harmonise, elements which fall outside such a unity of structure as it is possible to effect within the limit of our single personality. ”

“ The human soul and its limits, the range of man's inner experiences hitherto attained, the heights, depths, and distances of these experiences, the entire history of the soul UP TO THE PRESENT TIME, and its still unexhausted possibilities: this is the preordained hunting-domain for a born psychologist and lover of a "big hunt". But how often must he say despairingly to himself: "A single individual! ”

“ But in the case of the average seeker after truth, this refinement and ultimate decomposition of self can be effected only with lentor inexpressible. The phantom-individuality, though enduring only for the space of a single lifetime, shapes out of the sum of its innate qualities, and out of the sum of its own particular acts and thoughts, the new combination which succeeds it,—a fresh individuality, another prison of illusion for the Self-without-selfishness. ”

“ Now again these words about our being unable to understand ourselves “by ourselves alone” contain an element of truth which we may associate with the pragmatist tendency to believe in a socialized (as distinguished from an individualistic) interpretation55 of our common moral life, to believe, that is to say, in a society of persons as the truth (or the reality) of the universe, rather than in an interpretation of the universe as the thinking experience of a single absolute intelligence. ”

“ But that is different, because your desire and your theory have been the common desire and theory—the things that burn themselves out. My theory is not of the body, it is of the mind. I only contend that in all the greater concerns of life I am a being perfectly competent to stand alone. ”

“ And therefore to have no restraint from, no regard to, others in our behaviour, is the speculative absurdity of considering ourselves as single and independent, as having nothing in our nature which has respect to our fellow-creatures, reduced to action and practice. ”

“ On the contrary, it is merely a loosely coördinated aggregation of mental states, forever shifting and changing, so that the self of to-morrow may be vastly different from the self of to-day. To quote Professor Ribot, the famous scientist, and one of the most distinguished exponents of this new view of the self:
“The unity of the ego is not the unity of a single entity diffusing itself among multiple phenomena ”

“ The fractional entities of vitality are embraced in the oneness of the unitary Ego. Life," she added, "is the garnered condensation of objective impressions; and, as the objective is the remote father of the subjective, so must individuality, which is but focused subjectivity, suffer and fade when the sensation lenses, by which the rays of impression are condensed, become destroyed." ”

“ And just as the instinct of self-preservation did away with the isolation of the single moments of the individual life, becoming, thus, the basis of feelings determined by the interests of the life as totality, so the sympathetic instincts do away with the isolation of the single individuals and determine the conditions of the life of the species in the minds of its individuals. ”

“ As what is most universal, it is implicitly thought in general; and thought is the common basis. The man who betakes himself to feeling, to immediate knowledge, to his own ideas or his own thoughts, shuts himself up, as I have already said, in his own particularity, and breaks off any fellowship or community with others—the only way is to leave him alone. ”

“ Averse to the common will and to the law of the land, I decide to proclaim over the boundless expanse of my thought the proud independence of my ego, as a lone, inaccessible summit rising out of the solitude. Up to a certain point this hypothesis is verified constantly by the manner in which my personality freely becomes actual. But even then I do not act as a particular being: it is the universal power that acts through my personal will. ”

“ When we realize that there is but one Mind, the divine law of loving our neighbors as ourselves is unfolded to Golden Rule. us; whereas a belief in many ruling minds hinders man's normal drift towards the one Mind, one God, and leads human thought into opposite channels, where selfishness reigns.
Selfishness tips the beam of human existence towards the side of error, not towards the side of Truth. Denial of the oneness of Mind throws our weight into the scale, not of Spirit, but of matter. ”

“ We have our own special powers of intellect, our own special experience, our own moral conscience, our own moral life to live. So, while it is true that we stand or fall together, it is also true—and it is a deeper truth—that we stand or fall alone.
In this crowded world, with its intercourse and jostling, with its network of relationships, with its mingled web of life, we are each alone. Below the surface there is a deep, and below the deep there is a deeper depth. In the depth of the human heart there is, and there must be, solitude. There is a limit to the possible communion with another. ”

“ Am I so difficult to understand and so easy to misunderstand in all my intentions, plans, and friendships? Ah, we lonely ones and free spirits—it is borne home to us that in some way or other we constantly appear different from what we think. ”

“ If a worldly critic, wondering at your pretensions, asks you how you dare to assert that just you, in your loneliness, can ever win an immediate relation to the final truth of all the universe, can ever find God within your poor self, you reply that just in so far as you have approached the goal most nearly, you, the supposed finite thinker, the private individual, have simply ceased to be known, even to yourself, so that not your private self, but the Absolute, alone, will remain when the goal is reached. ”

“ This explains also why those persons who, when they hear knowledge spoken of as independent life, cannot understand it otherwise than as self-consciousness and can never penetrate, owing to the necessary laws of thinking itself, beyond individuality to the thinking of life in its unity. ”

“ This knowledge is certain to come, sooner or later, to men and women who have lived for themselves and in themselves alone. They are mental hermits, whose opinion of things connected with the lives of others cannot well be of value because they have only studied their own existences. ”

“ In these revelations of self, made without thought of the world outside, is to be found, if anywhere, the clue to that complex and often contradictory mingling of qualities which go to form the oneness of the man's personality. ”

“ It can hardly be foolish, when the thought occurs so naturally: and these great affairs of life lie distinctly under the eye of such as are themselves cut off from them. I am out of the game, and why should not I look upon its chances? I am quite alone; and why should I not watch for others? Every situation has its privileges and its obligations.—What is it to be alone, and to be let alone, as I am? It is to be put into a post of observation on others: but the knowledge so gained is anything but a good if it stops at mere knowledge,—if it does not make me feel and act. ”

“ It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. ”

“ But our misfortunes never, as we think, resemble those of others; and, besides, what consolation can it be to have our sorrows renewed by seeing their image reflected from others? Shall he entrench himself in strength of mind, and in a vain philosophy? But, in solitude, reason soon descends from its pride; we may be philosophers for the public, but we are only men with ourselves. Shall he fly, as a resource, to voluptuousness, and to other infamous pleasures? ”

“ He only who is able to stand alone is qualified for society. And that I understand to be the end for which a soul exists in this world,—to be himself the counterbalance of all falsehood and all wrong. ”

“ Its oneness is shewn by its inability to be simultaneously occupied by several diverse feelings, thoughts, or volitions, and by our incapacity to think of many varied ideas at once; the more ideas also or objects we attempt to perceive at once, the less we realize of each. ”

“ If a man on any topic appeals not to the nature and notion of the thing, or at least to reasons—to the generalities of common sense—but to his feeling, the only thing to do is to let him alone, because by his behaviour he refuses to have any lot or part in common rationality, and shuts himself up in his own isolated subjectivity—his private and particular self. ”

“ This self-centred individualism, each mind self-satisfied, self-contained, with the springs of sympathy and altruism hard frozen, ever revolving on itself, and evolving a maze of mysticism, at length becomes so entangled in its own introspection that other minds and the world outside cease to have any practical existence for it. ”

“ I repeat, by my ideal I learn to know myself as one self, with one contrast that runs through all the endlessly varying contrasts of ego and non-ego. Surely no teacher needs to be reminded that one common name for all these motives that tend towards unity of selfhood and of character in a growing mind is: Whatever tends to give one’s life the unity of a conscious plan. A sane self-consciousness involves a more or less clearly defined ideal of conduct, such as can be central in all the processes that tend to bring the special contrasts between ego and non-ego into sight. ”

“ Solitude, were it for this reason alone, is indispensably necessary to the human character; for when men are enabled to depend on themselves alone, the soul, tossed about by the tempest of life, acquires new vigor; learns to bear with constancy, or avoid with address, those dangerous rocks on which vulgar minds are inevitably wrecked; and discovers continually new resources, by which the mind resists, with stoic courage, the rigors of its fate.
Weak minds always conceive it most safe to adopt the sentiments of the multitude. ”

“ Such is the nature and ground of the illusion of selfishness.
If now our activity of realization were confined to the range of common-sense emotions, there would be no escape from all this. It is our critical reflection that appears on the scene, saying: “O common sense, what thou hast realized cannot be all. We must resolve to recognize more, else will our resolutions never lose their inconsistency and darkness. Be honest, O common sense. Is not thy neighbor after all just a dead fact of nature, an automaton with certain peculiar energies?” ”

“ Voluntary facts alone are marked in the eyes of consciousness with the characters of imputability and personality. The will alone is the person or Me. The me is the centre of the intellectual sphere without which consciousness is impossible. We find ourselves in a strange world, between two orders of phenomena which do not belong to us, which we apprehend only on the condition of our distinguishing ourselves from them. ”

“ Just as the isolated play of reason evokes this result, so the isolated play of self-consciousness evokes yet another result, which we have to recognize as intervening between this ultimate logical unity and the real personal self. ”

“ For we are so constituted by nature, that we are ever prone to compare ourselves with others; and our happiness or misery depends very much on the objects and persons around us. On this account, nothing is more dangerous than solitude: there our imagination, always disposed to rise, taking a new flight on the wings of fancy, pictures to us a chain of beings of whom we seem the most inferior. All things appear greater than they really are, and all seem superior to us. ”