Unchangeability

“ Not that such inconsistency is a random flux or a shallow opportunism. We change, and the world changes, in accordance with the underlying organisation, and inconsistency, so conditioned by truth to the whole, becomes the higher consistency of life. ”

“ As times and conditions change, so do opinions, and thus has it been with the writer. Change is the only thing that is constant—strange paradox—and mutability is the one immutable law of the universe. ”

“ Usually a totally opposite character of change is produced, and the effect is to cause the mental operations to be imperfect, unsustained and unequal, while there are present suspicion, doubtfulness, vacillation, and caprice. ”

“ The problem of change is given up, and we fall back upon our laws, persisting and appearing in successions of fleeting elements. If so, phenomena seem now to have become temporal illustrations of laws. ”

“ Thus, each life-habit has its advantages and its disadvantages; and we may conclude from this that a change from a long-lived to a short lived form, or the reverse, may take place in consequence of adaptation to changes in outer circumstances. ”

“ And yet a change of form can be for the better or for the worse, according to our caprices. Strictly speaking, it is a waste when matter is changed for the worse. It is very much like this, I think, with regard to the subject which you were just then discussing. ”

“ If such a change, and it would be a change for most of us, could come about instantly, in a flash of revelation, that would be ideal, but it would not be life. We must return again and again to the‌ old uninspired state wherein we struggle conscientiously with perverse details. I would not minimize the importance and value of this struggle; only the sooner it changes its level the better for every one concerned. ”

“ For in reality the past history of Man and Society, instead of exhibiting them as immovable, unchangeable, incapable of ever presenting new phenomena, shows them, on the contrary, to be, in many most important particulars, not only changeable, but actually undergoing a progressive change. ”

“ It would be difficult indeed to tell you the whole story, perhaps impossible: knowledge, discontent, treachery, disappointment, ruin, misery, despair—those who worked for the change because they could see further than other people went through all these phases of suffering; and doubtless all the time the most of men looked on, not knowing what was doing, thinking it all a matter of course, like the rising and setting of the sun—and indeed it was so. ”

“ And, therefore, inasmuch as not-Being is absolutely excluded from this sphere, and inasmuch as not-Being is essential to constitute change, it follows that all change is necessarily excluded from this sphere. In other words, in the world of Being there is no change, no creation, no becoming; that is, no coming into Being and no going out of Being; there is a mere dead unvarying uniformity. ”

“ In this world of change is there any other change to be compared with that in matter, from the dead to the living?—a change so great that most minds feel compelled to go outside of matter and invoke some super-material force or agent to account for it. ”

“ How sudden a change at any one point, or how great a difference between the two extremes is sufficient to bar identity, is one of the most uncertain things imaginable, and seems to be decided on different grounds in different cases, sometimes very intelligibly, and again at others arbitrarily and capriciously. ”

“ The effort to adapt was complicated by the fad that the conditions themselves were changing with a steadily increasing rapidity. The adaptation, mainly unconscious and almost always unwilling (for man in general hates voluntary change) , has lagged more and more behind the alterations in conditions. ”

“ But change in time, with all its inconsistencies, lies below motion in space; and, if this cannot be defended, motion at once is condemned.
The problem of change underlies that of motion, but the former itself is not fundamental. It points back to the dilemma of the one and the many, the differences and the identity, the adjectives and the thing, the qualities and the relations. How anything can possibly be anything else was a question which defied our efforts. Change is little beyond an instance of this dilemma in principle. ”

“ The vastness of the change, its appearance, almost simultaneously, in various ways in different parts of the world, indicate that it proceeds from causes too powerful and too universal to be attributed to any particular individual. ”

“ He, no more than they, seems to have definitely raised the question, How are we to account for, or formulate, the principle of difference or change? What is it that causes things to come into being out of, or recalls them back from being into, the infinite void? ”

“ The change was so great as to be impracticable in the eyes of most men; he, on the other hand, contended that it was to be of incalculable benefit to humanity, and, therefore, no difficulty, however great, should be allowed to stand in the way. ”

“ The change is everywhere, but inward; we localize it here and there, but outwardly; and thus we constitute bodies which are both stable as to their qualities and mobile as to their positions, a mere change of place summing up in itself, to our eyes, the universal transformation. ”

“ Every thing which is called arising and departing, every change rests therefore only upon the mingling and withdrawing of these eternal and fundamental materials; the inexhaustible manifoldness of being rests upon the different proportions in which these elements are mingled. Every becoming is conceived as such only as a change of place. In this we have a mechanical in opposition to a dynamic explanation of nature.
3. The Two Powers.—Whence now can arise any becoming, if in matter itself there is found no principle to account for the change? ”

“ Even granting, as we must, that the net result of such a change is a loss of actuality or perfection in the subject of change, still there is always a gain which is not accounted for by the loss; there is always a new actual state which, as such, was not in the original state. ”

“ It is dispersive, centrifugal, dissipating. Experience as trying involves change, but change is meaningless transition unless it is consciously connected with the return wave of consequences which flow from it. ”

“ So absolutely has change become the law of our present condition, that it is identified with energy and moral health; to cease to change is to lose place in the great race; and to pass away from off the earth with the same convictions which we found when we entered it, is to have missed the best object for which we now seem to exist. ”

“ In these examples the changes are obtrusive and easily observed, and by meditating on these examples, I think you may bring yourselves to understand something of the doctrine of Being and not-Being, as inseparably united in Becoming. You are not, however, to suppose that in cases where the changes are not thus apparent, no changes are taking place. The process may often be imperceptible; yet I believe that change is continually going on everywhere, and in every particle in the universe. ”

“ But with the wild rush of change in the pace, scope, materials, scale, and possibilities of human life that then occurred, the old boundaries, the old seclusions and separations were violently broken down. All the old settled mental habits and traditions of men found themselves not simply confronted by new conditions, but by constantly renewed and changing new conditions. ”

“ But, my dear father, can a change so important as that which the Scriptures describe, take place in the human soul without affecting all its faculties and passions? The change may be sudden or gradual, according to the sovereign will of the great agent by whom it is produced, but when it does take place, a person cannot be unconscious of it. ”

“ Haven't you seen men suddenly change for no apparent reason to the ordinary observer, drop from all their established habits, begin again upon another plane? I have, and that's the change I am afraid of now. ”

“ Over against this self-contained Trinity, the changing and passing world is a non-ens: as it changes not, neither can it know change: to know [Pg 321] change would be a change in itself—its knowledge is as immutable, as simple as itself. ”

“ But the fuller consideration of that theory of nature which credits progressive change as the usual way of life, shows us that it is no part of evolution to maintain either that living beings must needs undergo continual change, or that they must change and modify at the same rate. ”

“ And again: “It needs must be that what can be thought and spoken of is; for it is possible for it to be, and it is not possible for what is nothing to be.” The impossibility of change follows from this principle ”

“ From the law that every active force produces more than one change, it is an inevitable corollary that through all time there has been an ever-growing complication of things. Starting with the ultimate fact that every cause produces more than one effect, we may readily see that throughout creation there must have gone on, and must still go on, a never-ceasing transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous. ”

“ If we change the conditions of this man, his actions will be changed. Develop his mind, give him new subjects of thought, and you change the man; and the man being Changed, it follows of necessity that his conduct will be different. ”

“ To those who have the protean faculty of adaptability, the novelty of such change may even be a source of pleasure; but to those who happen to be hardened to the ruts in which they were created, the pressure of the altered environment is unbearable, and they chafe in body and in spirit under the new restrictions which they do not understand. ”

“ However, one thing is clear to us now, the kind of thing which never is clear to most people living in such periods—namely, that whatever it was, it could not last, but must change into something else. ”

“ Substantial change is regarded as taking place instantaneously, as soon as the condition brought about by the accidental changes leading up to it becomes naturally incompatible with the essence or nature of the subject. ”

“ Again, a word will travel on by slow and regularly progressive courses of change, itself a faithful index of changes going on in society and in the minds of men, till at length everything is changed about it. ”

“ In considering any proposed change, whether imminent or distant, in practice or in day-dream, it is not fair to take as your standard of reference the most highly-favoured individuals under existing conditions. ”

“ But, as has already been shown in other places, obvious difficulties arise if one and the same system faithfully preserves changes in its elements and still remains fresh and capable of admitting new motives for change. ”

“ The process of change is, of course, not yet completed,—whether or not it ever will be,—but it is already evident that what is taking place is not so much a change in amount or degree of conviction on certain given points as a change in kind,—a change in the current socialistic habit of mind. ”

“ Without change there can be no life. Even the mineral cannot resist change, and the higher we go in the scale of being, the more varied, complex, and wonderful do the changes become. Moreover, in progress and development among creatures of all grades we find two kinds of change—one slow, gradual, often almost imperceptible ”

“ But if, e.g., a material change of state can be the cause of a determination in God, the whole basis of the denial that a change in the material order can originate change in another order of reality, is swept away. ”

“ Change lays not her hand upon truth; ”

“ It follows from that, that that which does not admit of any change in itself, is imperishable, participates in no respect in the nature of changeable things, and in a word, has its dimensions and forms immutably determined. ”

“ The derangements and changes in organized existence, induced by a change of circumstance from the interference of man, affording us {382} proof of the plastic quality of superior life, and the likelihood that circumstances have been very different in the different epochs, though steady in each, tend strongly to heighten the probability of the latter theory. ”

“ It is the form which changes, not the essence. The few great underlying elements from which character and happiness are evolved are permanent—their mutations are endless. Dull-minded, we take the mutations to mean shifting of principle. ”

“ To insist upon change and the new is to insist upon alteration of the old. In denying that the meaning of any genuine case of deliberation can be exhausted by treating it as a mere case of an established classification the value of classification is not denied. ”

“ Nothing has been elongated, shortened or modified, either by external causes or internal volition; all that has been changed has been changed suddenly, and has left nothing but wrecks behind it, to advertise us of its former existence. ”

“ Few men’s minds can at once shake off a familiar and consistent system of doctrines, and adopt a novel and strange set of principles as soon as presented; but all can see that one change produces many, and that change, in itself, is a source of inconvenience and danger. ”