Unchangeableness

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, no one is so egregiously silly as to ask, “How do you know that a life of unchangeable wisdom is preferable to one of change?” For that very truth about which he asks, how I know it? is unchangeably fixed in the minds of all men, and presented to their common contemplation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He concluded that a change of front is very often not only permissible but creditable. 'A change of mind,' he says, 'is a sign of life. If you are alive, you must change. It is only the dead who remain the same. ”

“ LXXI. The mind tires of variety, but becomes reconciled to uniformity. Change produces a restless habit, a love of farther change: the recurrence of the same objects conduces to repose, and to content. ”

“ Change lays not her hand upon truth; ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our ordinary alterations of character, as we pass from one of our aims to another, are not commonly called transformations, because each of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse direction; but whenever one aim grows so stable as to expel definitively its previous rivals from the individual's life, we tend to speak of the phenomenon, and perhaps to wonder at it, as a 'transformation.'
These alternations are the completest of the ways in which a self may be divided. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ How know we but that a single change, the slightest alteration of a simple law, would go jarring through all the universe, throwing everything into confusion, and bringing utter chaos, where now all is order. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even when these changes are not so profound as to destroy its substantial identity and thus terminate its actuality as an individual being, even when, in other words, they are not substantial, they are none the less real and really affect the substance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The incessant changes, to which every part of it is subject, seem to intimate some such general transformations; though, at the same time, it is observable, that all the changes and corruptions of which we have ever had experience, are but passages from one state of order to another; nor can matter ever rest in total deformity and confusion. ”

“ What is an indispensable condition for an evolution of this sort? It must be the absence of all uneasiness, the growth of a serene confidence and trust, the obliteration of envy, jealousy, and every kind of unreasonableness. ”

“ The divergence is quite sufficient to justify us in asking if there are not many things that are really natural, which really appear early and strong in every normal human being, which are not embodied in any of his after affairs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being; ”

“ It is a question, after all, whether it is the preferable qualities of the new things which they meet that leads them to adopt them, or whether it is a mania simply for what is new. At the best they are in a stage of transition. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I only like a change when it is needful to alter something bad into something good, or something which is good into something better." Those who ask for the change have absolutely failed to prove that they offer us something better than what we possess. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is any man afraid of change? Why, what can take place without change? ”

“ On the other hand, while recognizing that change is a reality and not a subjective mental illusion, and that real change can be grounded only in a plurality of really distinct principles in the finite individual being, we must at the same time hold that this plurality of really distinct principles in the individual does not destroy a real unity, stability, and self-identical continuity of the individual being in the mode of its actuality throughout time. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. ”

“ The change will be recognized by many, who, after a period of happiness, have endeavored to go on with the same kind of life, in the same scene, in spite of the alteration or withdrawal of some principal circumstance. ”

“ 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. ”