Worldview

“ We esteem nations important, until we discover that a few individuals much more concern us; then, later, that it is not at last a few individuals, or any sacred heroes, but the lowliness, the outpouring, the large equality to truth, of a single mind,—as if in the narrow walls of a human heart the whole realm of truth, the world of morals, the tribunal by which the universe is judged, found room to exist. ”

“ And the advance of civilizations, with their science and philosophy, brings truer and completer views of man's place and relations. The moral ideas of the human reason are, indeed, essentially identical in all men and all ages, and when human relations are apprehended in the same light, with equal clearness and fulness, the moral judgments substantially agree.174 But the progress of knowledge, throwing increasing light on these relations, leads the onward civilizations up into truer and better application of the principles of right in life. ”

“ What would politics and religion, the two poles round which the whole of human life turns, be without that power of imagination, which on the one side sees mankind uplifted and glory everlasting bestowed, and on the other the firm establishment of society on the basis of truth and justice? Take imagination away, and we are hurled down from the height of bliss to the depth of despair. ”

“ I conceive of it as something that would go into the hands of every man and woman in that coming great civilization which is the dream of our race. Together with the Book of World History and the Book of Law and Righteousness and Wisdom that I have sketched out to you, and another Book of which I shall have something to say later, this canonical literature will constitute the intellectual and moral cement of the World Society, that intellectual and moral cement for the want of which our world falls into political and social confusion and disaster to-day. ”

“ Acceptance of these ideas—the ideas upon which rest art, science, the polity of nations and religion—and self-renunciation for them, are the only sources of truly noble action. “Everything great and good upon which our present existence rests, from which it has proceeded, exists only because noble and powerful men have resigned all the enjoyments of life for the sake of ideas.” ”

“ This constitution is kept under by the feelings which prompt to action, for those feelings depend upon parts of character, or of prejudice, which are peculiar to individuals or to nations; and the pleasure which all men seek is a kind of partial casting away of these more active feelings, to return to the calm and unchanging constitution of mind which is the same in all. We shall, therefore, find that man, in the business of his life, in religion, war, or ambition, is national, but in relaxation he manifests a nature common to every individual of his race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A great life—an entire civilisation—lies just outside the pale of common thought. Cities and countries, inhabitants, intelligences, culture—an entire civilisation. Except by illustrations drawn from familiar things, there is no way of indicating a new idea. ”

“ Our science, our philosophy, and our literature, are rich beyond expression. Our mechanism is akin to magic, and our industry is like the regularity of nature; the stir of many interests is abroad, and the struggle of many principles. The power of fresh life is in the social heart, and the courage of free speech upon the lips. ”

“ Nothing but dulness in the telling could mar the story, for in itself it is the record of the growth of those ideas that have made our race and its civilization what they are; of ideas instinct with human interest, vital with meaning for our race; fundamental in their influence on human development; part and parcel of the mechanism of human thought on the one hand, and of practical civilization on the other. ”

“ For instance, the notion that a human society, acting as a whole, bringing its reason and conscience to bear on its problems, traditions, and institutions, constantly reviewing its inherited faiths, examining its experiments, profiting by its own blunders, reaching out after better judgment and correcting its prejudices, can, in the sweep of time, arrive at the best conclusions as to what is socially true and wise and just, that man can get on earth, is a grand conception, and it is true. ”

“ The conditions of the life of the present-day, the current habits of thought, the social relationships of men, the economic situation of the country, the welfare of family and Church, and the relations of those institutions and groups that make their conflicting claims upon the loyalty and cover so much of the activity of individuals, are rich with problems and anomalies, and situations and combinations of circumstance which are peculiar to the age, and are the source of most of the issues of the novel of the present-day. ”

“ And so we bring to an end what we had to say in praise of culture, and in evidence of its special utility for the circumstances in which we find ourselves, and the confusion which environs us. Through culture seems to lie our way, not only to perfection, but even to safety. ”

“ And in like manner, what is called seeing the world, entering into active life, going into society, travelling, gaining acquaintance with the various classes of the community, coming into contact with the principles and modes of thought of various parties, interests, and races, their views, aims, habits and manners, their religious creeds and forms of worship,—gaining experience how various yet how alike men are, how low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how confident in their opinions ”

“ In a word, our whole civilization, our freedom, our progress, our homes, our religion, rest solidly upon ideals for their foundation. Nothing but an ideal ever endures upon earth. It is therefore impossible to overestimate the practical importance of literature, which preserves these ideals from fathers to sons, while men, cities, governments, civilizations, vanish from the face of the earth. ”

“ We meet every ideal of religion, patriotism, beauty, or brute pleasure with the alternative ideal of progress—that is to say, we meet every proposal of getting something that we know about, with an alternative proposal of getting a great deal more of nobody knows what. ”

“ Problems characterize every age, sum up the complex life of nations and give them their distinctive features. They form that moral atmosphere which makes one period of history responsible and tributary to another. And indeed, in every human problem there is an ethical element. ”

“ For enlightened humanity, acquainted with the past and forecasting the future, developed in intellect and refined in feeling, rich in the possession of arts and sciences, intelligently controlling and directing the forces of nature, socially organized in highly complicated ways, it is natural to act in another way. And to each of the intermediate stages in the evolution of civilization some type of conduct appears to be appropriate and natural. ”

“ When you have a society like this, you have what we roughly call a civilisation, and it leaves its character and canons in all its surroundings and its literature. Its definite ideas lend themselves readily to expression. ”

“ The most celebrated subjects of discussion, and those on which this class of reasoners were most divided, were the reality of universal ideas, considered as extrinsic to the human mind and the freedom of will. ”

“ Let us leave reason, then, to philosophers, and not insist too strongly on its intervention in the governing of men. It is not by reason, but most often in spite of it, that are created those sentiments that are the mainsprings of all civilisation—sentiments such as honour, self- sacrifice, religious faith, patriotism, and the love of glory. ”

“ There had been spread before me the realization—on a small, sample scale of course—of all the ideals for which our civilization has been striving: security, intelligence, humanity, and order; and here was the instinctive hostile reaction, not of the natural man, but of a so-called cultivated man upon such a Utopia. ”

“ You see that from this point of view—which is for me the vividly true and dominating point of view—our individualities, our nations and states and races are but bubbles and clusters of foam upon the great stream of the blood of the species, incidental experiments in the growing knowledge and consciousness of the race. ”

“ All our systems of politics, morals, and metaphysics would be different if we knew exactly how they grew up, and what transformations they have undergone; if we knew, in short, the true history of human ideas.—Cliffe Leslie, Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy, 1879, 149. ”

“ the spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom--they are the pillars of society. ”

“ The opinions and feelings of mankind, doubtless, are not a matter of chance. They are consequences of the fundamental laws of human nature, combined with the existing state of knowledge and experience, and the existing condition of social institutions and intellectual and moral culture. ”

“ She would rise to the loftier table-land of that really great world which governs and admonishes the ruck of mankind by examples of noble deeds and noble thoughts; the world of statesmen, and soldiers, and thinkers, and reformers; the salt wherewithal society is salted. ”

“ In all questions affecting national character and tendency, the development of civilization, public manners, morals, habits, idiosyncrasies, the influence of institutions, of education, of literature, his insight was penetrating, his point of view perfectly original, and his judgment, if not always sound, invariably suggestive. These qualities, among others, gave to such books as Essays in Criticism, Friendship's Garland, and Culture and Anarchy, an interest and a value quite independent of their literary merit. ”

“ The political, the civic, the economic view of them is a study that may be followed, more or less, at a distance; but the way in which they determine and qualify manners, feelings, communications, modes of contact and conceptions of life—this is a revelation that has its full force and its lively interest only on the spot, where, when once caught, it becomes the only clue worth mentioning in the labyrinth. ”

“ They arrived,—though failing, as has been said, to give adequate practical satisfaction to the claims of man's moral side,—at the idea of a comprehensive adjustment of the claims of both the sides in man, the moral as well as the intellectual, of a full estimate of both, and of a reconciliation of both; an idea which is philosophically of the greatest value, and the best of lessons for us moderns. ”

“ If we wish to know for what a nation stands and what are its ideals and by what means it seeks to realise them, we shall do well to know something of the men who lead its people or express their feelings. ”

“ WHEN one passes in review the individual causes that disturb and complicate our social life, by whatever names they are designated, and their list would be long, they all lead back to one general cause, which is this: the confusion of the secondary with the essential. Material comfort, education, liberty, the whole of civilization—these things constitute the frame of the picture ”

“ Suppose that the thought-life of an age or a Nation has diverged from the march of Humanity, and its philosophers cannot agree among themselves which is the path back towards the line of true progress. ”

“ I believe the refinements of modern society, its elegant accomplishments, its intellectual culture, and its conceptions of the beautiful, are glorious evidences of our advancement toward a higher plane of being. ”

“ But the more profound student will take note of the clear indications, that beneath this thin, fair crust, there are smouldering fires of national sentiment, uncontrolled by solid moral principle, and unguided by sound, practical judgment. ”

“ They established the supremacy of the idea, so that it might always renew our lives, our culture, and our polity, and that we might judge everything by it and fear neither revolution, defeat, nor decay. ”

“ Look at the state of the human society at this moment, particularly that portion of it which is governed by the ideas of what is boastfully called "civilization"! Look at the external results of the internal influence of this civilization! ”

“ When he thus has true vision and can really see a country, and when he has acquired the capacity for expressing either in words or in painting what lie has seen, so that he can communicate it to us, then he will have reached the standard which this Society should demand. ”

“ The Most High, that is to say, is to be found, not in the past with its mysteries, its philosophies, and its dignity of phrase or ritual, and not in the future with its vague hopes of an earthly Paradise, but in the present with its hard facts, its scientific methods, its strong individualities, and the growing power of the State. ”