Atavism

“ What wonder that here atavism finds its richest field, and plays its strangest and most fearful pranks, sending men into the world with the tastes, desires, and habits of women, and women with all the mental hibitudes of men! ”

“ We two are already a little affected as all men are, more or less. Our lapses of memory, the difficulties we have in our work now, these things in the last days are the result of this world atavism in us, just as the crimes and accidents filling earth are. ”

“ But this process which is transforming us from savages into civilized men is a very slow one; and now and then there occur cases of what physiologists call atavism, or reversion to an ancestral type of character.... Now and then persons are born possessed of the bestial appetite and cravings of primitive man, his fiendish cruelty, and his liking for human flesh. ”

“ Thine own conduct in this life determines which of these extremes thou wilt become in the next. Atavism and heredity intensify 171these tendencies; so does the influence of the planets. But neither the one nor the other can produce them. Thou must do this by the exercise of will power. The union of desire and mind forms the personality. ”

“ Still with lowered eyes she went on, steadily enough: "My instinct was to escape—I don't know exactly [Pg 413] how to tell this to you, dear,—but the impulse to escape possessed me—and I felt that I must rise from the lower planes and free myself from a—a lesser passion—slip from the menace of its control—become clean again of everything that is not of the spirit.... Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"So I rose and knelt down and said my prayers.... And asked to be instructed because of my inexperience with—with these new and deep—emotions. ”

“ Clavering twitched his shoulders impatiently.
"Let them go on their screaming picnic," he said. "We stay here. Did you mean that, Mary?"
"Yes, I meant it. We will not go to Europe at all—except to visit my Dolomites some day. When you are writing I'll come up here."
"I don't know that I shall ask that sacrifice of you. A part of your brain is asleep now, but it is a very active and insistent part when awake. In time you might revert—and resentment is a fatal canker; but let's leave it open. It is generally a mistake to settle things off-hand. Let them alone and they settle themselves." ”

“ Again she experienced that disintegration of will which once had left her at the mercy of that instinct for destruction which is one of the essential particles of the ego.
Her brain was almost torpid. The want of exhilarating exercise, the long dearth of companionship, the terrible monotony of her life, the restless nights, the dank gloomy atmosphere in which she had her perpetual being, were, she told herself dully, doing their work. And she did not care. But if her brain was sodden, her nerves felt as if on the verge of explosion. ”

“ I confess, with self-abasement, that I once loved you, and with deep humiliation, amounting to agony, that that love was the cause of my ruin. The vail is now torn from my eyes, and I behold you as you are, a corrupted, debased, unfeeling demon, in the human form; and I would not even touch you with my finger's end, so deep is my detestation and abhorrence of your depravity! ”

“ She had heard and read references to his increasing dissipation, caused by an unhappy love affair, but his work, instead of degenerating with his morals, showed increasing power and beauty. The fire burned at times with so intense a radiance that it would seem to have consumed his early voluptuousness while decimating neither his human nor his spiritual passion. ”

“ And the—perhaps unconscious?—flattery of this woman of all women, of whose coldness those nearest to her complained, seemed to rise like a rosy mist to his brain. He swept it back, however; there was too much at stake. Although he did not hate her as much as she imagined, for he was philosophical where women were concerned, he had recognized in her a powerful individuality, a violent will, which, if given its head, might deprive himself of the sweets of existence. ”

“ For the moment he was quite happy, as he always was when his mind was abnormally quickened, and he dismissed women and their infernal whims to limbo.
When he awoke at two o'clock in the afternoon his brain felt like the ashes of a bonfire and his spirits were a leaden weight. He knew what was to be expected of reaction, however, and after his punch bag and showers he felt better. He'd see her today and force some sort of understanding. ”

“ The inevitable fruit of negation is apathy. Indeed apathy might be defined as negation of the soul, a spiritual inhibition. This fancy swiftly crossed my mind as I looked at Mrs. Willkit, followed by the thought that possibly a change might be a good thing for her. ”

“ For all the long-defeated, disturbed, perverted instincts had found their natural channel from the centre of consciousness to the organ which throbs in response to every profound emotion. As his health gradually returned, Euthymia could not help perceiving a flush in his cheek, a glitter in his eyes, a something in the tone of his voice, which altogether were a warning to the young maiden that the highway of friendly intercourse was fast narrowing to a lane, at the head of which her woman's eye could read plainly enough, “Dangerous passing.” ”

“ Among all the persons that I touched, there was but one who stood the test of my wand; and after many repetitions of the stroke, stuck to his form, and remained steady and fixed in his first appearance. This was a young man who boasted of foul distempers, wild debauches, insults upon holy men, and affronts to religion.
My heart was extremely troubled at this vision: the [Pg 214] contemplation of the whole species, so entirely sunk in corruption, filled my mind with a melancholy that is inexpressible, and my discoveries still added to my affliction. ”

“ He did, but instead of the face of Athalia, he saw that of a common street-walker—a young harridan—and he rushed from the room with the full weight of a burning conscience for his folly, with a feeling of self-degradation at being victimized a second time by the same deceitful woman; hating himself and everybody else; dreading to meet any one [238] he knew, and, finally, encountering in the basement hall, striving to get out in the same sly way, the very man whom he had first taken to task for visiting this den of infamy. ”

“ We think how late we shall be, how the duties of the day will suffer; we say, 'I must get up, this is ignominious,' etc.; but still the warm couch feels too delicious, the cold outside too cruel, and resolution faints away and postpones itself again and again just as it seemed on the verge of bursting the resistance and passing over into the decisive act. Now how do we ever get up under such circumstances? If I may generalize from my own experience, we more often than not get up without any struggle or decision at all. We suddenly find that we have to get up. ”

“ Like the stiff joints of a wearied pedestrian, who allows himself rest at an inopportune time, your mind refuses to rise again to its task. You find out that Ootacamund is no place for study; that the houses are dark, the rooms cold, and the air so exciting that it is all but impossible to sit down quietly for an hour. ”

“ It appeared that I had become the airy similitude of my former self, my material substance having wasted away without a corresponding impairment of strength. [Pg 146] I pinched my flesh to be assured that all was not a dream, and then endeavored to convince myself that I was the victim of delirium; but in vain. Too sternly my self-existence confronted me as a reality, a cruel reality. A species of intoxication possessed me once more, and I now hoped for the end, whatever it might be. ”

“ Many times he had described, with the most searching analysis, that sensation of fear during moments of imminent detection--even that subtle thrill along the nerves--but he was in search of an emotion that should shake his passions loose, and he ran lightly up the stairs, dismissing even the agreeable idea that he was also to experience the sensation of being his own housebreaker, so to speak. ”

“ Here and there under the palms sat small groups of men, leaning forward, talking in low earnest tones, their faces, whether of the keen, narrow, nervous, or of the fleshy, heavy, square-jawed, unimaginative, aggressive, ruthless type, equally expressing that intense concentration of mind which later would make their luncheon a living torment. ”

“ I might take her instead of this little girl,” pointing to Atwa, “who will never do for me, and whom I will not have. She is worthless,” he repeated, “worthless.” Poor little Atwa stood listening, but I think with stolid indifference, for I watched her countenance, and could not detect even a passing shade of regret or disappointment. ”

“ Unable to bear the sneers of ignorance or the attacks of envy, not having strength of mind enough to buckle himself together like a porcupine, and present nothing but his prickles to his enemies, he began to despond, flew to dissipation as a relief which, after a temporary elevation of spirits, plunged him into deeper despondency than ever. ”

“ Removing Unfavorable Suggestions.—The general experience with those suffering from locomotor ataxia has been that the depression consequent upon the announcement that they have the disease and the stigma that is supposed to attach to it in our day leads them to a great extent to avoid going out into the air. ”

“ He thought of all in his own depths that he could give to no man, and forbore to press him too closely; but his abnormally acute brain suspected something in that deliberate reserve which concerned himself, and he had accepted the proposal of the lonely sail in the hope of an impulsive confidence. ”

“ Why should I any longer be the slave of a foolish fancy that has grown into a half insane habit of mind? I was familiarly acquainted with all the stories of the strange antipathies and invincible repugnances to which others, some of them famous men, had been subject. I said to myself, Why should not I overcome this dread of woman as Peter the Great fought down his dread of wheels rolling over a bridge? ”

“ Although the spirits may be intensely anxious to demonstrate their power, they are sometimes repelled from those whom they seek to approach by the bristling and discordant conditions of mind that prevail among the sitters, who disperse with a feeling of dissatisfaction and disappointment. If the sitters only knew it, the so-called failure was directly traceable to the destructive thought-atmosphere with which they surround themselves and the medium. ”

“ While he had believed himself to be in the throes of a second fever caught from a beautiful woman’s concordant magnetism, he had felt merely disgusted at his weakness, not in the least disloyal to his closest friend, whom he knew no woman could tempt him to betray. ”

“ I used to feel an inclination to turn my head away with an actual physical gesture when concentration was imperative. I thought that my condition was psychological, that I had lived too much and too hard, that my memory was over-burdened and my sense of the futility and meaninglessness of life too overwhelming. But I know now that the condition was physical, the result of the degeneration of certain cells.
"I spent the summer alone on my estate in Hungary, and when it was over I determined to close the palace in Vienna and remain in the country. ”

“ I was held in the grip of a miserable dread of death, a double fear, first, that I myself should die in my sins and go straight to that fiery Hell which was never mentioned at home, but which I had heard all about from other children, and, second, that my father—representing the entire adult world which I had basely deceived—should himself die before I had time to tell him. ”

“ These ladies, where their companions are so imprudent as to take their speeches for any other than exercises of [Pg 116] their own lungs, and their husband's patience, gain by the force of being resisted, and flame with open fury, which is no way to be opposed but by being neglected: though at the same time human frailty makes it very hard to relish the philosophy of contemning even frivolous reproach. There is a very pretty instance of this infirmity in the man of the best sense that ever was, no less a person than Adam himself. ”

“ Whether this intimate knowledge of myself will save me, God knows; but when some maddening provocation comes, after reaction has run its course, I rage more hotly than ever, and only a sense of personal dignity keeps me from using my fists. I am two-thirds passion, and I am afraid that in the end it will consume me. ”

“ After dinner she approved the sundial beds with a mock-judicial gravity, and then she went at the trellis, working with a kind of impersonal nervous intensity that troubled me, I didn’t quite know why. She said, with a brief laugh, it was because she had suggested the structure, and she could never rest till any job she had undertaken was completed.
“You live too hard,” said I. “That’s the trouble with most of us nowadays. We are over-civilized. ”

“ The influence of the sitters in moulding the conditions is too little realized. If they introduce an atmosphere of suspicion, doubt, distrust, 192or detraction, they break the continuity of the flow of psychic energy that has to be employed. By thus severing the current and dissipating the power, they mar the conditions essential to success; and, as all such disturbances of necessity center upon and injuriously affect the sensitive medium, they render soul-satisfying and uplifting communion impossible. ”

“ Other habits which I once abandoned have come back to me, but in such a way that I merely substitute moderation for abstinence, which perhaps is a still more difficult task; since there are some things which it is easier for the mind to cut away altogether than to enjoy in moderation. Attalus used to recommend a hard couch in which the body could not sink ”