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They wish to be nothing if not “exact,” and yet they reckon Goethe and Bruno among the greatest apostles of their faith, and set their verses and sayings as a credo and motto over their own opinions. In this way there arises a “world conception” so indiarubber-like and Protean that it is as difficult as it is unsatisfactory to attempt to come to an understanding with it.
The snatcher, here below, is ubiquitous and eternal as ubiquitous, as eternal, as the force of gravitation. He is likewise protean. Banish him he takes half a minute to change his visible form, and returns au galop.
In like manner, that divine Presence is Protean in its forms, and takes all shapes, according to the moment's necessities of the Christian trusting heart. When we are to brace ourselves for the march it condenses itself into an upright and moving guide.
The power, indeed, is in the witch, and not conferred by him; but this versipellous or Protean impostor these are his words will not suffer her to know that it is of her own natural endowment, though for the present charmed into somnolent inactivity by the narcotic of primitive sin.
These birds are one with the sea, knowing no fear of that protean monster which, since earth's beginning, has always, with its unfathomable mystery, its insatiable cruelty, its tremendous strength, been a source of terror to the land animals that dwell in sight of it.
That touch of grace, whose help once in life is the privilege of the most undeserving, flung open for him the portals of beyond, and in contemplating there the certitude immaterial and precious he forgot all the meaningless accidents of existence: the bliss of getting, the delight of enjoying; all the protean and enticing forms of the cupidity that rules a material world of foolish joys, of contemptible sorrows.
The strangest thing of all is that these Protean creatures, which seem fitted only for an aquatic existence, should be so much at home on land, so ably using their queer wings as substitutes for legs that they can run up or down high and precipitous slopes with the swiftness of a hare. From the experience of yesterday, Ned and Harry might anticipate attack by the penguins.
A conversation between Falstaff, Mercutio, and Sir Toby would have taxed even the resources of a Shakspere, and would have been intolerably excellent.... Cordelia, the daughter of King Lear, whose sincerity and tenderness combined make her one of the greatest women in the history of poetry.... Protean, something that constantly assumes different forms.
It would be tedious to the reader, and useless for our present purpose, to detail the history and describe the protean shapes of her sufferings. With the exception of small breasts, the reproductive system was well developed. Repeated and careful examinations failed to detect any derangement of the uterine mechanism. Her symptoms all pointed to the nervous system as the fons et origo mali.
Most of us, by the Protean quality of man, can talk to some degree with all; but the true talk that strikes out all the slumbering best of us comes only with the peculiar brethren of our spirits.... And hence, I suppose, it is that good talk most commonly arises among friends. Talk is, indeed, both the scene and the instrument of friendship."
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