[f. as prec. + -ITY.] The quality of being external.
1. a. The quality of displaying itself in external forms. b. The quality of being ‘all on the outside’; superficiality, hollowness. c. The condition or fact of being outside another object, or of being an outsider. d. The quality of operating or striving to operate from without.
a. 1673. H. More, App. Antid., 23. Worship, in the natural externality thereof.
1836. Hare, Guesses (1859), 72. [In France] the externality of the classical spirit has worn away into mere superficiality.
b. 1684. H. More, Answ. Remarks Exp. Apocal., 243. If that Externality or Superficiality were aimed at.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, vi. 115. There is a prose in certain Englishmen…. There is a knell in the conceit and externality of their voice.
c. 1877. Huxley, Anat. Inv. Anim., viii. 473. In relation to the body of the animal, all ligaments are external, and their internality or externality is in respect of the hinge line, or the line along which the edges of the valves meet.
1881. Echo, 1 July, 1/6. The pleas of ignorance or of externality … cannot possibly be urged against one who has been the very foremost and most trusted champion of the system.
d. 1857. M. Pattison, Ess. (1889), II. 255. Its [the New Lutheran Orthodoxy’s] whole principle, indeed, is that of the externality of the Christian Institute.
2. Metaph. The quality or fact of being external to a perceiving subject; the fact of belonging to the external world, or having an existence in space.
a. 1790. Adam Smith, Ess. Philos. Subjects (1795), 198. Pressure or resistance necessarily supposes externality in the thing which presses or resists.
1846. Mill, Logic, II. vii. § 3. While looking at a solid object they cannot help having the conception, and … the momentary belief of its externality.
1871. Fraser, Life Berkeley, iii. 62. The scientific world was preparing for that reconstruction of its conception of what sensible things and externality mean.
3. a. An external object; an outward feature or characteristic. b. collect. Outward things in general; an outward environment or observance.
1839. J. Rogers, Antipopopr., xviii. § 3. 346. A huge bulk of trifling ceremonial and idle externality.
a. 1853. Robertson, Serm., Ser. IV. xxvi. (1876), 288. The externalities of it may seem to be joy and brightness, but in the deep beneath there is a stern aspect.
1867. J. H. Stirling, in Fortn. Rev., Oct., 385. So uneasy an externality, of which he is himself the powerless and apprehensive centre.
1871. Miss Mulock, Fair France, 13. All these are sensuous externalities.
1874. Carpenter, Ment. Phys., I. i. § 10 (1879), 11. Force being that externality of which we have the most direct … cognizance.
4. Absorption in externals.
1833. Lamb, Elia, Ser. II. Product Mod. Art. Deeply corporealized, and enchained hopelessly in the grovelling fetters of externality, must be the mind, to which [etc.].
1860. Emerson, Cond. Life, Worship, Wks. (Bohn), II. 397. What proof of infidelity like … the externality of churches that once sucked the roots of right and wrong?
