Sphere of influence

“ We are compelled to believe that we act, and that we ought to act, in a certain manner; we are compelled to assume a certain sphere for this action; this sphere is the real, actually present world, such as we find it. ”

“ Where we find ourselves, or where we may choose to put ourselves? You may tell me that public life is, in a sense, your sphere—and so it is, I grant you. But when you entered Mary’s little sphere—as you did, something of the suddenest—had you not then to inquire whether that could be made elastic enough to include your own? ”

“ And this is so, whether we are moving in the region of nature, which is the region of God's wonders, or in the region of art, which is the region of man's wonders; and nowhere truer than in this sphere and region of language, which is about to claim us now. Oftentimes here we walk up and down in the midst of intellectual and moral marvels with a vacant eye and a careless mind ”

“ It is our sphere—beautiful, glorious, almost infinite in its possibilities. We accept the work; we only ask for opportunity to perform it. The sphere has enlarged, that is all. There has been a new revelation. ”

“ The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance, — as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, — to heap itself on that ridge, and to solidify and hem in the life. ”

“ The field of influence was great and infinitely varied—once one had conquered a name. ”

“ It is only recently that the working classes have begun to interfere actively in social questions; and, as I have shown in the preceding chapter, it is from their co-operation that the new spiritual power will derive its practical efficiency. Limited originally to the sphere of Feeling, and subsequently extended to the intellectual sphere, it henceforward embraces the sphere of Activity ”

“ And so with the human soul. A, B, and C, being more unfolded at the start than E, F, and G, by reason of better antecedents and conditions, will, for all eternity, widen the distance at first separating them. To return. The human notes, (and those of spheres) , like their correspondents of the musical staff, and of color, are governed by a law of their own. A perfect human society would be perfectly melodious and harmonic, for the reason that every individual would fill his or her proper sphere, and to which they are constitutionally fitted and adapted. ”

“ We must trace the map of the immortal mind, learn the avenues of its circuit, follow it through the regions of revolving thought, become familiar with the passions that influence and control it—learn its natural desires, innate qualities, springs of action—its multifarious combinations. ”

“ In this way they will pass downwards through the hierarchic scale of Positive conceptions, until they come back to the inorganic world, the sphere more immediately connected with their own special avocations. ”

“ It is, rather, the province of that inestimable gift, the mind, to aid nature, to smooth away the difficulties, to assist both the physical and mental man to increase his powers and widen his influence. ”

“ In addition to the changing of the poles of one's own mental states by the operation of the art of Polarization, the phenomena of Mental Influence, in its manifold phases, shows us that the principle may be extended so as to embrace the phenomena of the influence of one mind over that of another, of which so much has been written and taught of late years. ”

“ Their presence round her at this moment, their homage, the emotion visible everywhere, proved that all was different, that she had passed the barrier which once existed between her and the world which knows and thinks, and had been drawn within that circle of individualities which, however undefined, is still the vital circle of any time or society, for it is the circle which represents, more or less brilliantly and efficiently, the intellectual life of a generation. ”

“ To be sure, all progress in methods of observation and comprehension of any one sphere can and will improve our methods and comprehension in others, but it is equally true that within each one of these spheres there are peculiar laws not applying to the others. ”

“ So in the harmony of the spheres, in the varied beauty which clothes the earth and pervades the heavens, in the beauty which addresses itself to eye and ear, and in the beauty which addresses only the inward sense,—the harmonious arrangements of the social world, and the adjustment of domestic, civil, and political relations,—there is an infinite diversity of result, infinitely varied in its effect upon the observer. ”

“ Spheres of influence mean—well, don't you know, they mean some country that's not quite yours, but it's more yours than anybody else's, and if anybody else comes into it, you're allowed to make a protocol of it. ”

“ Yet this incessant movement and progression which all things partake could never become sensible to us but by contrast to some principle of fixture or stability in the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of circles proceeds, the eternal generator abides. That central life is somewhat superior to creation, superior to knowledge and thought, and contains all its circles. For ever it labors to create a life and thought as large and excellent as itself ”

“ This is the centre where all intellectual perceptions unite, and where that intrinsic force resides, which, although excited by sensible representations, develops itself by its own power, makes itself master of these impressions, and converts them, so to speak, by a mysterious assimilation, into its own substance. ”

“ The influence that goes out from an individual or mass of individuals, we mean—that subtle, invisible power that acts from one upon another, and which when aggregated is almost irresistible? You have felt it in a company moved by a single impulse which carried you for a time with the rest, though all your calmer convictions were in opposition to the movement. ”

“ I rather gather around myself, link after link, the chains that connected me with the world; I find among my own thoughts that variety and occupation which you only experience in your intercourse with others; and I make, like the Chinese, my map of the universe consist of a circle in a square—the circle is my own empire and of thought and self; and it is to the scanty corners which it leaves without, that I banish whatever belongs to the remainder of mankind. ”

“ Let us, however, look farther into the modifications of character by which nature conceals the regularity of her first plan; for although all mountains are organized as we have seen, their organization is always modified, and often nearly concealed, by changes wrought upon them by external influence. ”

“ The Widening Horizon.—The reign of authority in intellectual matters lasted for twelve centuries, and then gave way gradually to the reign of observation and reason. Under the influence of the new method we have been moving generation by generation into a state of clearer discernment and into an intellectual atmosphere of wider horizon. ”

“ And we see, it may be with some wonder, that as they become more and more absorbed in their special work, they become more and more centres of influence. Without at all willing it they draw people about them, become centres of influences, arouse interest, become widely known. ”

“ When we pass out of this room, presently, and touch the great outside world once more, what shall we find? How soon will it be generally known that a section of the community—a larger section, maybe, than we conceive possible—has been silently, suddenly, secretly taken from our midst? ”

“ Is it that the notion of the immense space, which separates us, unites with our conception, and impresses us, as it were, with the omnipresence of our own intellectual nature,—when we recognize on scenes so remote and in circumstances of society so different, the same thoughts, and doubts, and errors, which have perplexed, and occupied, and delighted ourselves? ”

“ He states that the thoughts of one class are in the region of ultimate aims, of "the highest ideals of human life," while the thoughts of the other are in the region of the "immediately useful, and practically attainable." ”

“ Thus, under the various streams, now cold, now warm, the surface of society melts and forms that smooth icy rind of form over which the light-foot glides carelessly, unconscious that beneath the thin surface are hidden depths in which the philosopher and psychologist find material enough for the study of a whole life. ”

“ Our studies of character, to change the image, are very much like the surveyor's triangulation of a geographical province. We get a base-line in organization, always; then we get an angle by sighting some distant object to which the passions or aspirations of the subject of our observation are tending ”

“ But, for ideas to have influence, they must have progressively come down from the mobile regions of the conscious into the stable and unconscious regions of the feelings, where our thoughts and the motives of our actions are elaborated. ”

“ Unity, balance, and harmony become manifest as spatial properties - you had been taught to regard them as principles of art. You wonder if art itself may not be merely a matter of right placing - the adjustment of a thing to its environment. You are certain that this is so as each coign and niche offers you its particular insight. ”

“ Every field is a picture, a landscape; every landscape a poem; every flower a tender thought, and every forest a fairy-land. In the country you preserve your identity—your personality. There you are an aggregation of atoms, but in the city you are only an atom of an aggregation. ”

“ In any aggregate "the relations of outside and inside, and of comparative nearness to neighbouring sources of influence, imply the reception of influences that are unlike in quantity, or quality, or both ”

“ Though these divisions give somewhat roughly general group types, humanity shows infinite variety of expression, and individuals may change from time to time according to influence and environment. Each may be developed through her special abilities. ”

“ We should draw them in from the region of things felt to the region of things understood; in a focus burning with beauty and pure with truth we should bind them, for from the thoughts thus gathered in something accrues to the consciousness; on the morrow a change impalpable but real has taken place in our being, we see beauty and truth through everything. ”

“ The groups and single figures on their own bases, abstracted from the general composition, and considered without attention to the plan, frequently exhibit those genuine and unaffected attitudes, those simple graces which Nature and the heart alone can dictate, and only an eye inspired by both, discover. ”

“ All genera and species and families and individuals are so many forms in which the radiant energy of the sun has deposited itself. Playing with its heat and its light upon soil, sea, and sky, the sun has built the myriad organic forms we see. So all objects, interests, and laws embraced within the range of civilization are the forms in which social force, arising through relations, has deposited itself. Human language itself is an embodiment of social force. ”

“ The powers of thought, the vast regions which it can master, the much more vast regions which it can only dimly suggest to imagination, give to those whose minds have traveled beyond the daily round an amazing richness of material, an escape from the triviality and wearisomeness of familiar routine, by which the whole of life is filled with interest, and the prison walls of the commonplace are broken down. ”

“ There is one sphere, however, where they shine, according to their ability to think, Being averse to work they have created a vantage-ground whence they may reap the benefits of the toil of others, of their inventive faculties and executive skill. ”

“ Between the first group and the central one comes a gap, a space typical of that unknown time in history when conjecture alone permits speculation, and the story is taken up again with the first of the central groups, wherein stands a figure of Vanity, glass in hand, symbolizing the compelling motive of so much in human endeavor. ”

“ There are wanting therefore in the mass, as the ruled subject, the resources, adaptabilities, the accommodations, the developments of power which the whole individual possesses through the unity and presence of his total psychical energy. ”

“ The first quality we know in matter is centrality,—we call it gravity,—which holds the universe together, which remains pure and indestructible in each mote, as in masses and planets, and from each atom rays out illimitable influence. To this material essence answers Truth, in the intellectual world,—Truth, whose centre is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere, whose existence we cannot disimagine,—the soundness and health of things, against which no blow can be struck but it recoils on the striker,—Truth, on whose side we always heartily are. ”

“ But the sympathetic observer could see in those debating clubs, and philosophical societies, and literary circles, in which the small towns and villages abounded, the growing processes of people great in intellectual and moral energy. ”

“ Rather we already see within this morning-time of human life deep interests at work, in relation to which the great world itself is but a subordinate realm, the ground and the instrument for bringing into being the higher aims which are present, as a ground and environment, however, over which that harmonious concord, yet withal independence, of both sides of our human world prevails ”

“ The nation may loyally revolve around its centre in a cohesive mass—the attraction to the centre following the analogy of the creative force of nature, while other systems are for the most part centrifugal, the chief symptom of which is disintegration. ”

“ It is, to illustrate, physical, mental, and spiritual, or more elaborately, it is athletic, industrial, political, intellectual, moral, æsthetic, and religious, and in its social life has developed institutions answering to these different phases of itself. It is, again, lawful and lawless, old and young, conservative and radical, sympathetic and selfish. But whatever the mode of analysis or division or dichotomy, the unity of experience embraces all the elements, aspects, or relations that are discovered. ”