In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked that she was, and forgot that the defective can more than the entire.

...the figure near at hand suffers on such occasions, because it shows up its sorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honored, in that their distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire.

I forgot the defective can be more than the whole

If there is something more in a living being than a pure mechanism, Descartes is bound in advance to miss it.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

aggressively. In the case of the G21, he might have neglected it as

She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought.

To have misapprehended the matter is to have confessed that
one has not looked far enough.

She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly - the thought of the world's concern at her situation - was founded on illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides, Tess was only a passing thought.

To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.

COINCIDENCE You weren’t paying attention to the other half of what was going on.

The issues Miss Quested had raised were so much more important than she was herself that people inevitably forgot her.

The extraordinary ability of a woman to forget is not the same as the talent of a lady not to be able to remember.

This night the woman of his belittling deprecations was thinking how great and good her husband was. But over them both there hung a deeper shade than the shade which Angel Clare perceived, namely, the shade of his own limitations. With all his attempted independence of judgment this advanced and well-meaning young man, a sample product of the last five-and-twenty years, was yet the slave to custom and conventionality when surprised back into his early teachings. No prophet had told him, and he was not prophet enough to tell himself, that essentially this young wife of his was as deserving of the praise of King Lemuel as any other woman endowed with the same dislike of evil, her moral value having to be reckoned not by achievement but by tendency. Moreover, the figure near at hand suffers on such occasions, because it shows up its sorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honoured, in that their distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire.