Constraint

“ Inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding AND the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually commence immediately after the act of will ”

“ Gabas is a hamlet in a barren plain. The torrent here rumbles underneath glaciers and among shattered tree-trunks; it descends, lost at the bottom of the declivity, between colonnades of pines, the mute inhabitants of the gorge. The silence and constraint contrast with the desperate leaps of the snowy water. It is cold here, and everything is sad; only, on the horizon may be seen the Pic du Midi in its splendor, lifting its two jagged piles of tawny gray into the serene light. ”

“ Constrain refers almost exclusively to moral force, restrain frequently to physical force, as when we speak of putting one under restraint. To restrain an action is to hold it partially or wholly in check, so that it is under pressure even while it acts; to restrict an action is to fix a limit or boundary which it may not pass, but within which it is free. To repress, literally to press back, is to hold in check, and perhaps only temporarily, that which is still very active; it is a feebler word than restrain; to suppress is finally and effectually to put down ”

“ And the chief thing demanded by these intricacies of civilisation was control, restraint--a poise of self that was as delicate as the fluttering of gossamer wings and at the same time as rigid as steel. ”

“ This contravention of the natural order has produced, as such contravention always must produce, a certain confusion and false movement, of which we are now beginning to feel, in almost every direction, the inconvenience. In all directions our habitual causes of action seem to be losing efficaciousness, credit, and control, both with others and even with ourselves. Everywhere we see the beginnings of confusion, and we want a clue to some sound order and authority. ”

“ And if all restraint is removed, it is as certain as fate that their condition will be far worse than it ever was before. It will be the old system, with all its mitigations rescinded and all its horrors intensified. ”

“ There'll be talk—oh, I know human nature, and that it's impossible for things to be otherwise—but at least I may count upon you for stemming the tide a little, until the way is rather clearer. Believe me, there will be a crisis—a solution of some sort will come. I know that the present state of tension can't last. ”

“ We have on one hand a difficulty, an obstacle, a violation effected through something human life has carried out in action. We have on the other a violation of interests and forces intrinsically just and right. ”

“ What painful restraint—what constant effort to struggle against the strongest impulses are habitually practiced elsewhere, and by other classes? And they must be practiced, unless greater evils would be encountered. ”

“ Wherever thought is wholly wanting, or the power to act or forbear according to the direction of thought, there necessity takes place. This, in an agent capable of volition, when the beginning or continuation of any action is contrary to that preference of his mind, is called compulsion; when the hindering or stopping any action is contrary to his volition, it is called restraint. ”

“ Knowledge of our circumstances.—We may estimate our forces but not our force. Circumstances do not only conceal it from and show it to us—nay, they even exaggerate and diminish it. We ought to consider ourselves variable quantities whose active power may, under specially favourable circumstances, become equivalent to that of the highest order. We ought, therefore, to weigh the circumstances, and spare no effort in studying them. ”

“ When the balance is broken, whether by the negligence, folly, or weakness of the hand that held it, or by mighty weights fallen into either scale, the power will never continue long in equal division between the two remaining parties, but, till the balance is fixed anew, will run entirely into one. ”

“ It is sometimes expedient to use restraint even in good desires, lest through unseasonable effort thou art distracted of mind; lest by thy want of self-government thou beget a scandal unto others; or again, being thwarted by others and resisted, thou become suddenly confounded, and so fall. ”

“ And if restraints, however named, and through whatever apparatus of means exercised, are one in their action upon men, it must happen that those who are patient under one kind of restraint, are likely to be patient under another ”

“ What a difficulty do I see before me! A difficulty all the greater because it depends less on actual facts than on the cowardice of those who dare not look the difficulty in the face. Let us at least venture to state our problem. ”

“ How seldom do human wishes flow smoothly towards their object; for a while they may steal imperceptibly on, unstopped, though often checked; winding round, or perseveringly surmounting impediments. Or obstacles still more mighty present themselves, and then our wishes gather power;—they swell, and dash down all impediments, and take an impetuous course. ”

“ If, indeed, the complication of the process could remove any difficulty which truly exists, or even any difficulty which is supposed to exist, the system might be more readily adopted by that human weakness, to which the removal of a single difficulty is of so much value. ”

“ In some people the state of equilibrium thus attained is of considerable stability, they have what is popularly called a reserve of mental and moral force with which they can meet disappointments, difficulties, and emergencies of various kinds in life, which means in practice that their capacity for readjustment to radically new situations is fairly elastic. ”

“ When compelled to yield, it should be by the force of reason, and never by the power of agitation. Its measures should be actuated by a sense of what is right, and not what is expedient, for to concede is to recede—to recede is to evince weakness—and to betray weakness is to invite attack. ”

“ When we no longer call obstacles obstacles or difficulties difficulties, we shall not be disturbed by obstacles or difficulties any more. Whatever we meet will be turned to good account and will call forth more and more of the greater power that is within us. ”

“ The now unclogged mind grasps with vigor any subject presented to it, the spirits are exuberant and the physical frame buoyant. But, is the trouble cured, is it permanently eradicated from the system? ”

“ But, still, we prefer to think of THE ALL as acting entirely FREE from any influence, internal as well as external. That is the problem which lies at the root of difficulty—and the difficulty that lies at the root of the problem. ”

“ For, stiff and blank as you may determine to be, circumstances will overpower you. Under their influences you will not be able to avoid becoming softer and more redundant. But you will resist the process, I see, and you will make it as painful as you can. ”

“ The difficulty of course lies in ascertaining the laws which are binding on all intelligence—the points which reason, considered simply as reason, and not as this or that particular reason—has in common. ”

“ That ceremonial restraint, preceding other forms of restraint, continues ever to be the most widely-diffused form of restraint, we are shown by such facts as that in all intercourse between societies, civilized, semi-civilized, or barbarous, as well as in all intercourse between members of each society, the decisively governmental actions are usually prefaced by this government of observances. ”

“ As experience of the social effects of action ripens, and as the social conscience is awakened, the conception of injury is widened and insight into its causes is deepened. The area of restraint is therefore increased. ”

“ Circumstances are compulsory, from the absence of a power to resist or control them: and if the absence likewise be the effect of circumstances.... the evil derives from the circumstances.... and such evil is not sin."* Do you say that you are independent of all circumstances, that you can control them, that you have a free will? ”

“ The appearance of new interests and complaints means disarrangement and confusion to the older equilibrium. It is, of course, the inevitable preliminary step to that larger equilibrium in which the interests of no human soul will be neglected. ”

“ To me, indeed, one thing alone seems to embrace the question of all that relates to the perturbations of the mind—the fact, namely, that all perturbations are in our own power; that they are taken up upon opinion, and are voluntary. ”

“ Anticipating, therefore, that many existing forms of restraint will have become obsolete because unnecessary, we may very fairly ask ourselves whether, in an improved moral and intellectual atmosphere, it will not have been found advisable to abolish other restraints and requisitions as a directly remedial measure. ”

“ Such again was a note of these high existences—that made one content to ask of them no whit of other consistency than that of carrying off the particular occasion, whatever it might be, in a dazzle of amiability and felicity and leaving that as a sufficient trace of their passage. Sought and achieved consistency was but an angular, a secondary motion; compared with the air of complete freedom it might have an effect of deformity. ”

“ It is frequently observed, that the complete discharge of the obligations pressing upon us as moral agents is attended with conflict and difficulty. Frequently, therefore, we address ourselves to the discharge of these obligations with some measure of resistance, perhaps with obstinacy, and I may add, indeed, with unwillingness. ”

“ Do the advantages more than compensate for the disadvantages, or vice versa? You perceive? Sometimes there seems to be a complete balance of forces—an equilibrium—the scale will not incline either way. ”

“ You say you are chained by circumstances; you cry out for better opportunities, for a wider scope, for improved physical conditions, and perhaps you inwardly curse the fate that binds you hand and foot. ”

“ Let the Stoic insist, not mainly but exclusively, on the limit, the restraint, as that which should be encouraged and enforced, and you obtain a system of thoroughgoing asceticism, a system of penance and mortification of the flesh. ”

“ Conventional restraint often, no doubt, produces dwarfed and defective human nature. I suppose that if souls could be put under a microscope, the undeveloped rudiments of almost everything would be discovered. ”

“ Before we arrive at this conclusion, however, we often seriously worry because of the great difficulties we experience in guessing what the consequences are likely to be, and in seeing them in their full importance, without exception—and, after all this, we must reckon up any fortuitous elements that are likely to arise. Then comes the chief difficulty: all the consequences which we have with such difficulty determined one by one must be weighed on some scales against each other ”

“ Their will had no direct power except over their own actions. They made us what they did make us, by willing, not the end, but the requisite means; and we, when our habits are not too inveterate, can, by similarly willing the requisite means, make ourselves different. ”

“ In such a crisis, two facts are prominent: the unusual range of activity offered to the individual—may he not traverse the whole scale of experience?—and the dependence of the individual upon himself. ”

“ Men mistook the order of their ideas for the order of nature, and hence imagined that the control which they have, or seem to have, over their thoughts, permitted them to exercise a corresponding control over things. ”

“ Lack of restraint is failure to construct a properly-working hierarchy. That is a very simple example. Less easy to analyse but equally vicious, are the innumerable cases in which some sort of equilibrium is only attained not by a free interaction of dominant and subordinate parts, but by repression. Conflicts arise, which persist, either in an open form or in the subterranean regions of the unconscious. ”

“ He then spoke of the danger menacing, in more or less these words:—“The tendencies prevalent in the life of the present day will continue to gather strength, until they end by annihilating themselves. ”

“ When we realise how many and how different may be the tendencies awakened by a situation, and what scope there is for conflict, suppression and interplay—all contributing something to our experience—it will not appear surprising that the classification and analysis of attitudes is not yet far advanced. A thousand tendencies to actions, which do not overtly take place, may well occur in complicated adjustments. ”

“ It is remarkable, how persons of the most delicate constitutions will sometimes bear up under the severest toil, and encounter the most trying privations, and yet not fail, but really appear to gain some degree of strength under the ordeal that it seemed, to all human calculation, must destroy them. ”