Demeanor

“ His thoughts had run slowly and sluggishly; he had lacked keenness of perception and the ability to draw deductions; he had been all the while conscious of a timidity, an indecision, a hesitation, a tendency to rely upon others, against which he strove with but little effect. His actions were dictated by outside suggestion rather than by his own judgment. And with this, too, was a contrasting dignity of demeanour unnatural to him, and all the more annoying in that it was, he knew, superficial and at discord with his temperament. ”

“ The temper has to be held in subjection to the judgment; and the little demons of ill-humor, petulance, and sarcasm, kept resolutely at a distance. If once they find an entrance to the mind, they are apt to return, and to establish for themselves a permanent occupation there. ”

“ For we can only conclude what is in the mind of another by interpreting his expression of his thinking and feeling. We cannot see within his mind. But experience with ourselves and others has taught us that certain attitudes of body, certain shades of countenance, certain gestures, tones of voice, spontaneous or willed actions, represent anger or joy, impatience or irritability, stern control or poise of mind. We realize that the average man has learned to conceal his mental reactions from the casual observer at will. ”

“ Therefore the accuser, when he says that anything has been done in compliance with some impulse, ought to exaggerate that impulse, and any other agitation or affection of the mind, with all the power of language and variety of sentiments of which he is master, and to show how great the power of love is, how great the agitation of mind which arises from anger, or from any one of those causes which he says was that which impelled any one to do anything. ”

“ Had I not, in the wild career of fervent feeling, had sufficient strength of mind to stop short, and to reason calmly, how often, in the bitterness of my spirit, should I have accused you of sporting with my feelings, by involving me in a hopeless maze of conjecture—by leaving me a prey to the constant, oppressive, apprehension of hearing something, which I should not have had the fortitude to support with dignity ”

“ Self-consciousness, eagerness, volubility, petulance in countenance, in gesture, and in voice—which last is too often most harsh and artificial, the breath being sent forth through the closed teeth, and almost entirely at the corners of the mouth—and, with all this, a weariness often about the wrinkling forehead and the drooping lids;—all these, which are growing too common, not among the Demos only, nor only in the towns, are signs, they think, of the unrest of unhealth, physical, intellectual, spiritual. ”

“ Between these extremes lie the instincts that are so called in our ordinary speech, and that you would probably have thought of, if you had been asked to give [207] examples of human instincts: such things as fear, love, rivalry, jealousy, pugnacity, bashfulness, self-assertion, various lines of ‘interest.’ All these names, and many like them, stand for inherited nervous dispositions which are realised or expressed in emotion. They too are differently combined, and exist in varying degree, in different individuals; and they too are common, in some measure, to all humanity. ”

“ When she does she makes use of the occasion to perform what one might describe as a mental spring-cleaning. All loose odds and ends of temper that may be lying about in her mind—any scrap of indignation that has been reposing peacefully, half forgotten, in a corner of her brain, she ferrets out and brushes into the general heap. ”

“ They have taken from their mother foolish vanity, ridiculous prejudices, the art of lying; from their father scepticism and an elastic conscience; perhaps they will preserve their virtue and modesty? The pernicious contacts of the school soon carry them away.
They still have a blush on their face, a down-cast eye, a timid bearing. But their affected timidity is the token of their knowledge of good and evil ”

“ Youth showed itself, however, in a certain childlikeness of demeanour—a mixture of timidity, confidence, embarrassment, and, if one looked in her face for any sign of the emotions she had experienced, or the scenes in which she had played no feeble part, one sought in vain. ”

“ With a temper habitually gloomy and suspicious, and a mind incapable of bending to those inevitable little anxieties and vexations which occur in the most quiet families, you soon discovered your propensity to repel every thing that your jealous and fanciful temper deemed an infringement of your privileges. ”

“ About two years ago he was subject to maniacal fits of outrageous passion, when his manner was proud and stalking, his voice loud and blustering, and his language contemptuous and imperative; calling the house his own; commanding every one of us as his servants, in grand style. The mention of a single fact, out of an immense number, will be sufficient to characterise his spirit and manners. ”

“ Who can tell the countless temptations to evil which flow in from a neglected, disordered, deranged nervous system,—temptations to anger, to irritability, to selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and passion? ”

“ With the moral symptoms of a changing temper there are perceptible changes in appearance. His countenance develops and takes the stamp of his character; the soft and sparse down upon his cheeks becomes darker and stiffer. His voice grows hoarse or rather he loses it altogether. ”

“ The tangles of temper, fear, deception, resentment, will never be unravelled and patiently straightened out. In their wake, are pretty sure to come, sooner or later, scenes with mother and father—hypocritical or defiant, cajoling, whining, or tempestuous—in which harsh and ugly words will sometimes play a part. ”

“ Yet in all that raucous early morning hour together neither man nor girl suffered towards the other the slightest personal sense of contrition or resentment, for each mind was trained equally fairly,—whether reacting on its own case or another's—to differentiate pretty readily between mean nerves and a—mean spirit. ”

“ We are warned, and without being hypnotised, regularly discover that the warning is justified. Certain properties are sure to express themselves: coldness, prudence, hardness, calm consideration, greed, are just as indubitable in the hand as kindness, frankness, gentleness, and honesty. ”

“ I lived in a whirl of self-destroying debauchery, and while I was looked up to by my friends as a leader and the devil of a good fellow, as a cursed witty and spirited drinking companion, my anxious soul was full of apprehension. ”

“ If anybody asserted that they saw symptoms of mental decay, it would be easy to deny the fact, and to support the denial by ready and numerous examples of his force and sagacity in discussion, or in the transaction of business ”

“ People are so accustomed to my pale face, languid indifference and, what M—— calls, my impracticable silence, that after the first glance and introduction, I believe they are scarcely sensible of my presence: so I sit, and look, and listen, secure and harboured in my apparent dullness. The flashes of wit, the attempts at sentiment, the affectation of enthusiasm, the absurdities of folly, and the blunders of ignorance ”

“ If he have an ungovernable temper, for example, he should, in detail, go first into the type of situations which call forth that temper, and secondly, he should revise in detail the recent occasions upon which he has lost his temper, and thirdly, he should attempt to find out the particular moment, the particular words, the particular occasion which first began to stir feelings of temper within him before he actually began to show violent manifestations of it. ”

“ The hysterical temperament is the playground par excellence of this unstable equilibrium. One of these subjects will be filled with what seems the most genuine and settled aversion to a certain line of conduct, and the very next instant follow the stirring of temptation and plunge in it up to the neck. ”

“ But as his abilities to 'do' lie wholly in the line of his natural propensities; as he enjoys reaction with such emotions as fortitude, hope, rapture, admiration, earnestness, and the like; and as he very unwillingly reacts with fear, disgust, despair, or doubt,—a philosophy which should legitimate only emotions of the latter sort would be sure to leave the mind a prey to discontent and craving. ”

“ Pardon me, sir, to some consciences, at once scrupulous and timid, certain confidences, or rather certain confessions, have the same effect as the poisoned shoulder-knot in the play of that name; the aforesaid consciences think only of getting rid of the secret to a neighboring conscience in order to protect themselves from all responsibility. ”

“ The childish innocence and beauty of countenance, the childish frankness and gaiety of heart, the childish quickness and intelligence of understanding, were exchanged for vacant looks, stupid indifference, and that half-cunning expression which is always induced by craven fear. ”

“ And when we consider these emotions as especial conditions of the mind it is indubitable that they are able to cause still greater difficulty because of their elusiveness, their very various intensity, and their confused effect. Once, however, we think of them as functions of the understanding, we have, in its activities, something better known, something rather more disciplined, which offers very many fewer difficulties in the judgment concerning the fixed form in which it acts. ”

“ And those of sanguine temperament, when their spirits are high, find it impossible to give any permanence to evil forebodings or to gloomy thoughts. In an instant the train of association dances off to flowers and sunshine, and images of spring and hope. ”

“ Imaginative forethought of the probable consequences of a proposed act keeps that act from sinking below consciousness into routine habit or whimsical brutality. It preserves the meaning of that act alive, and keeps it growing in depth and refinement of meaning. ”

“ Characteristics which pass as vices, eccentricities, defects of temper, peculiarities of disposition, come when critically examined to be explicable as minor grades of defective mental stability, although, on account of their great frequency, they have been looked upon as normal, or at any rate in the natural order of things. ”

“ But while prudence was a factor in my general settlement, the main factor was, as I have said, conscience. Not the narrow conscientiousness of ordinary men, which is three parts ignorance, two parts cowardice, and five parts envy—for is it not usually roused only when the acts of others are to be judged? ”

“ I thought the rationality of my demeanour and the obvious soundness of all my reasoning powers would suffice in time to satisfy the medical attendant as to my perfect sanity. I felt sure that people could never long mistake a man so clear-headed and collected as myself for a madman. ”

“ Elsewhere temperaments are more evenly balanced; one finds precision, the word exactly fitted to the thing. But farther on—effect of the sun, the air, the wine perhaps—hot blood courses in the veins, tempers are excitable, language is extravagant, and the simplest things are said in the strongest terms. ”

“ In action? By being idle ? — slow or impatient about my work ? Have I not been in evil or dangerous company ? Done any immodest action ? Been too free in my manners ? Been rude, cross, or disobedient towards my parents or superiors ? Been unkind, insolent, malicious, cruel or unjust towards my neighbor ? ”

“ The memory of these consequences of acts remains as a guide for future conduct, not so often in the form of a clearly recognized memory as in a dim realization that the dangerous act must be avoided, a vague pressure against the pull of momentary inclination, or an uncomprehended feeling of impulsion toward the less inviting path. This residuum of the moral experience of the individual is one ingredient in what we call his conscience. ”

“ The latter of these is that decency and gracefulness of looks, voice, words, motions, gestures, and of all the whole outward demeanour, which takes in company, and makes those with whom we may converse, easy and well pleased. ”

“ A confession may be the result of fear, or duress, or expediency, or mother-love, or chivalry, or what the psycho-analysts call the inferiority complex, or delusions, or a mistaken sense of duty, or a perverted egotism, or sheer vanity, or any other of a hundred causes. ”

“ This last duty is the most difficult of all, because it brings the attendant into intimate relations with a class of persons, whose true appreciation of themselves, of their conditions and surroundings, is changed, whose thoughts and desires are unreasonable, whose conduct is unnatural, and who are largely controlled by insane delusions, hallucinations, and illusions. ”

“ The literary instinct, of almost equal disorder with dramatic instinct, and which he had come to despise during the past year, returned with the easy conformity of an undesirable acquaintance—that reportorial sentence-making faculty, strong as death, and as uncentering to the soul of man. ”

“ Making all allowance for their aptitude and their natural preferences, their innate timidity and lack of decision must leave a painful impression upon every impartial mind; but this prominent trait of character seems to have a deep-seated physiological basis. ”

“ Careful investigation would, I am convinced, yield psychological results of permanent value, and establish the fact that the mental attitude which originates or accepts atrocity stories is frequently based on an amazing inter-mixture of credulity, mal-observation, megalomaniac impulses and deception, conscious or unconscious. ”

“ But what dim feeling is it, really, which so excites their wrath, and which certainly must have some weighty ground? It is scarcely to be expected that we shall ever learn it from them; hence we must try to put speech into their mouths. ”

“ Perhaps our conduct may appear pusillanimous to those whose resolution has never been so severely tested. We feel this ourselves, and deplore the cowardly strain in our natures, as we trail meekly and disconsolately upstairs. ”

“ If you find that you have a hastiness in your temper, which unguardedly breaks out into indiscreet sallies, or rough expressions, to either your superiors, your equals, or your inferiors, watch it narrowly, check it carefully, and call the ‘suaviter in modo’ to your assistance: at the first impulse of passion, be silent till you can be soft. ”