Immanent Will and Other Topics

Immanent Will
They did not vary their partners if their inclination
were to stick to previous ones.  Changing partners
simply meant that a satisfactory choice had not as yet
been arrived at by one or other of the pair, and by
this time every couple had been suitable matched.  It
was then that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which
emotion was the matter of the universe, and matter but
an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from
spinning where you wanted to spin. (X, p. 61)

The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find
sweet pleasure somewhere, which pervades all life, from
the meanest to the highest, had at length mastered
Tess.  Being even now only a young woman of twenty, one
who mentally and sentimentally had not finished
growing, it was impossible that any event should have
left upon her an impression that was not in time
capable of transmutation. (XVI, p. 102)

The air of the sleeping-chamber seemed to palpitate
with the hopeless passion of the girls.  They writhed
feverishly under the oppressiveness of an emotion
thrust on them by cruel Nature's law--an emotion which
they had neither expected nor desired.  The incident of
the day had fanned the flame that was burning the
inside of their hearts out, and the torture was almost
more than they could endure.  The differences which
distinguished them as individuals were abstracted by
this passion, and each was but portion of one organism
called sex.  (XXIII, p. 144)

Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Froom
Vale, at a season when the rush of juices could almost
be heard below the hiss of fertilization, it was
impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow
passionate.  The ready bosoms existing there were
impregnated by their surroundings. (XXIV, p. 146)

Latterly he had seen only Life, felt only the
great passionate pulse of existence, unwarped,
uncontorted, untrammelled by those creeds which
futilely attempt to check what wisdom would be content
to regulate. (XXV, p. 155)

 The "appetite for joy" which pervades all creation, that tremendous force
which sways humanity to its purpose, as the tide sways
the helpless weed, was not to be controlled by vague
lucubrations over the social rubric. (XXX, p. 187)

So the two forces were at work here as everywhere, the
inherent will to enjoy, and the circumstantial will
against enjoyment.  (XLIII, p. 281)

Will and Representation

At times her whimsical fancy would intensify
natural processes around her till they seemed a part of
her own story.  Rather they became a part of it; for
the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what
they seemed they were.  The midnight airs and gusts,
moaning amongst the tightly-wrapped buds and bark of
the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach.
A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her
weakness in the mind of some vague ethical being whom
she could not class definitely as the God of her
childhood, and could not comprehend as any other. (XIII, p. 83)


But he had a vague consciousness of one
thing, though it was not clear to him till later; that
his original Tess had spiritually ceased to recognize
the body before him as hers--allowing it to drift, like
a corpse upon the current, in a direction dissociated
from its living will.  (LV, p. 372)

Cycles

The season developed and matured.  Another year's
instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes,
finches, and such ephemeral creatures, took up their
positions where only a year ago others had stood in
their place when these were nothing more than germs and
inorganic particles.  Rays from the sunrise drew forth
the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up
sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out
scents in invisible jets and breathings. (XX, p. 126-27)

Thus the Durbeyfields, once d'Urbervilles, saw
descending upon them the destiny which, no doubt, when
they were among the Olympians of the county, they had
caused to descend many a time, and severely enough,
upon the heads of such landless ones as they themselves
were not.  So do flux and reflux--the rhythm of
change--alternate and persist in everything under the
sky. (L, p. 345)