Excise

“ My body is so broken that it can no longer support the intellect. I will eat and drink and strengthen this tortured body that it may still be the servant of the higher in me, no longer complaining of its own griefs and diverting attention from the goal. For it is possible that what I have already learned has prepared the way to Right Ecstasy and that in ecstasy I may behold the beginning of the Wisdom which in all the methods I have tried has been hidden from me. ”

“ But when the kind of cause is the honourable kind, then the exordium may either be passed over altogether, or if it be convenient, we may begin either with a relation of the business in question, or with a statement of the law, or with any other argument which must be brought forward in the course of our speech, and on which we most greatly rely; or if we choose to employ an exordium, then we must avail ourselves of the good-will already existing towards us, in order that that which does exist may be strengthened. ”

“ It was the extreme but logical outcome of this manner of despising the body to subject it to all the penances, and to treat it with all the rigor, of the most rigid asceticism—to neglect it, to starve it, to scourge it, to mortify it in every possible way. One holy ascetic would never wash himself, or cut his toe-nails, or wipe his nose ”

“ Exasperation is physical, the itch inside the thumb, the transient wish for suffering. Like a dog growling, or the Arab stabbing up between the bloody hoofs, we turn the gaze back to savagery, and with a shrug cast off the painted blanket of our civilisation. ”

“ In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God. Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee. Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? ”

“ The urgent necessity which I think now exists for exertion, in all those who are capable of it among us, has again turned my thoughts to these two considerations. My father's property, and all that we might ever have hoped to derive from it, being utterly destroyed in the unfortunate issue of our affairs, his personal exertions are all that remain to him and us to look to. There are circumstances in which reflections that our minds would not admit at other times of necessity force themselves upon our consideration. ”

“ So the face of the exile lightens up at the throbbing of his heart, when, in some foreign land, he suddenly and unexpectedly hears the sound of his own language. So his eyes light up, and his heart beats faster, and even amidst the very longing of his soul after home, the desire after that home is appeased by these its most hallowed associations. ”

“ If it may be conceived to have been possible that their feeble and degraded reason, in the absence of divine light and of sound human discipline, might by earnest exertion have attained in some small degree to judge better that exertion was precluded by indolence, by the immediate wants and unavoidable employments of life, by sensuality, by love of amusement, by subjection, even of the mind, to superiors and national institutions, and by the tendency of human individuals to fall, if we may so express it, in dead conformity and addition to the lump. ”

“ When you come into the presence of some prominent man, remember that Another [1] looks from above on what is taking place, and that you must please Him rather than this man. He, then, who is above asks of you, "In your school what did you call exile and imprisonment and bonds and death and disrepute?" ”

“ While on the other hand we declare that the good which will really fill our souls and satisfy them to the uttermost, is not in us, but without us and above us, in the words which we use to set forth any transcending delight. Take three or four of these words—'transport,' 'rapture,' 'ravishment,' 'ecstasy,'—'transport,' that which carries us, as 'rapture,' or 'ravishment,' that which snatches us out of and above ourselves; and 'ecstasy' is very nearly the same, only drawn from the Greek. ”

“ My plan of vengeance, to one who had seen and observed less of the varieties of human nature than you have done, might seem far-fetched and unnatural; for while the superficial are ready to allow eccentricity as natural in the coolness of ordinary life, they never suppose it can exist in the heat of the passions,—as if, in such moments, anything was ever considered absurd in the means which was favourable to the end. ”

“ The circumstances in which Heaven has cast me, have disciplined my circumstances in which Heaven has cast me, have disciplined my body to obey my mind in all things; and, therefore, when the motives for exertion are strong within me, it is long, very long, before I feel hunger, thirst, or drowsiness. ”

“ When the nerves once break, how breaks the character with them! How many ascetics, withered and soured, do we meet in the world, who but for one shock to the heart and form might have erred on the side of meekness! ”

“ An authority without the means of enforcing itself is a self-contradiction. The means by which nature makes its authority felt is organic excitation. In proportion to its strength, an excitation produces sensation, in case it is not too weak to make itself felt at all. Every excitation has a definite significance and may come from without or within. Pleasant excitations are always, primarily, the feeling of the stilling of pain, though there are pains, such as, for instance, that of a wound, the toothache, headache, an aching corn, which have no corresponding feeling of pleasure. ”

“ You will find out for yourself what are the appropriate qualities or courses of conduct, of which the excess, mean and defect are expressed by the words given above. Fear, for example, is the feeling of which excess is Cowardice and defect is Rashness, while the mean is Courage. Similarly as regards one's own opinion of one's powers, excess is Conceit and defect is Diffidence, while the mean is Modesty. ”

“ When your exertions, my friends, shall have liberated us from the hands which have so long held us down in chains; from the hands which have torn from our arms, our property, our brothers, our children—then will his spirit rejoice, then will his shade be satisfied. ”

“ Do you really apprehend, as you assure me, that what is now eccentricity will hereafter become madness—or are you rather the accomplice in some infernal machination? You alone can answer. In spite of my boasted courage, I confess myself conquered. ”

“ There is also in mental exertion an absolute necessity for re-action: how often do the thoughts, long confined to one subject, crave, as it were, to spring out of themselves, or to run off in any opposite direction! ”

“ This makes clear, to a moment’s reflection, that there can be no such thing as an amorphous slice, and that any waving aside of inquiry as to the sense and value of a chunk of matter has to reckon with the simple truth of its having been born of naught else but measured excision. ”

“ We occasionally see the Exile in better moods, when he listened to the voice of reason, and thought less of the annoyances inseparable from the state to which his ambition, or as he himself always averred, his destiny, had reduced him. ”

“ With the system of exegesis then in vogue, it was not difficult to discover an emphatic command to this effect in John, XV. 6. "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered; and men gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned." ”

“ Exertion was quite needless; man was wedged to man, he who was behind you pressed you against him who was before; I had nothing to do but to work out elbow room that I might not be squeezed to death, and to float on with the tide. ”

“ Or he may have allowed the easy impulse of exaggeration to force a sentence which the mere truth, sensitively and powerfully pausing, would well have become. Exaggeration has played a part of its own in human history. By depreciating our language it has stimulated change, and has kept the circulating word in exercise. Our rejection must be alert and expert to overtake exaggeration and arrest it. It makes us shrewder than we wish to be. And, indeed, the whole endless action of refusal shortens the life we could desire to live. ”

“ An eye is like a chestnut bur; it doesn't open till it is ripe, and up to this time mine has been green in ignorance. Don't call me eccentric. I would rather be called a thief than eccentric. What is eccentricity but a loose joint, a flaw in the machinery? I am not so much out of the common. The trouble is that I show effects more plainly perhaps than other men. ”

“ The pains that foster moral insight, although limited in number and intensity, are numerous, and still imperfectly defined. It would be a useful task to study more in detail than psychologists have yet done, the moralizing power of pain. This is a task for the psychology of the future. In general, of course, we can say that the range of such pains has been much exaggerated by ascetics. ”

“ The extreme excitability, which circumstances have imparted to his moral system, has its dangers and its advantages; it being one of the dangers, that an obdurate scar may supervene upon its very tenderness. ”

“ After every action requiring exertion, it is conscience that saves us, for it supplies us with a thousand good excuses, of which we alone are judges; and these reasons, howsoever excellent in producing sleep, would avail us but very little before a tribunal, when we were tried for our lives. Thus Richard III., for instance, was marvellously served by his conscience after the putting away of the two children of Edward IV. ”

“ As Mill says, whatever has shown itself to be true without exception may be held universal so long as no doubtful exception is presented, and when the case is of such a nature that a real exception could not escape our observation. ”

“ The best known cases are those of religious ecstasy, but religious ideas do not invariably furnish the material for “ecstatic vision.” Philosophers, artists, and others whose habit of mind tends to deepen certain channels of thought, are also liable to such visitations. Any and every object of longing or desire, no matter how trivial, grotesque, or perverse, may become the object of ecstasy.— (P. 38.) ”

“ The question runs up into wider ones--What is the general effect of asceticism on human nature? and, Must there not be a certain proportion between the aspirations of man and his powers?--questions which have been often discussed both by ancient and modern philosophers. ”

“ When events depend upon the will of one man, he may with as much consistency order you back from exile, as he did the plucking your beard and the thrusting you forth from the city. There is a reaction in misfortune which frequently produces increased prosperity. ”

“ But rather than let such an insinuation pass unchallenged we would do anything, make any exertion. Of course, there are only a few people who could understand the detestable suggestion; but the hint that more is to follow fills me with dismay. ”

“ In order to illustrate the nature of evils of this class, I may take two instances—cruelty and lasciviousness. That these are great intrinsic evils, we may, I think, easily assure ourselves, by imagining the state of a man, whose mind is solely occupied by either of these passions, in their worst form. ”

“ Asceticism, the state of an ascetic, or hermit, who flies from society and lives in retirement, or who practises a greater degree of mortification and austerity than others do, or who inflicts extraordinary severities upon himself. ”

“ But let it be granted that exile is, as many say and sing, a grievous thing. So some food is bitter, and sharp, and biting to the taste, yet by an admixture with it of sweet and agreeable food we take away its unpleasantness. There are also some colours unpleasant to look at, that quite confuse and dazzle us by their intensity and excessive force. ”

“ Where the quantity of general painful sensation is too great in the system, inordinate voluntary exertions are produced either of our ideas, as in melancholy and madness, or of our muscles, as in convulsion. ”

“ Short of the incredible, the stranger the story the better the excuse; for an extraordinary event requires an extraordinary excuse. But we shall hardly be reassured if he merely gazes at us in a dreamy and wistful fashion and says, "After all, what is property? ”

“ Before that the teachers of asceticism were more concerned to exhort to chastity and modesty than to direct a deliberate and systematic attack on the whole body; they concentrated their attention rather on spiritual virtues than on physical imperfections. ”

“ Possibly in common perception the mind directly reaches the object perceived, being excited thereto by the antecedent material impressions on our organs, and the sensations which follow. To denote mental phenomena of the kind I am supposing, I propose the term exoneural, (εξω νευζον.) I venture even, following out this idea, to conjecture further, that the Od force may somehow furnish the dynamic bridge along which our exoneural apprehension travels. ”

“ All these facts, and many others which might be brought, establish beyond a doubt the truth of the law I have mentioned, namely, that when the powerful action of the exciting powers ceases for some time, the excitability accumulates, or becomes more capable of receiving their actions. ”

“ In our waking hours a perpetual voluntary exertion, of which we are unconscious, attends all our new trains of ideas, whether those of imagination or of perception; which by comparing them with our former experience preserves the consistency of the former, by rejecting such as are incongruous; and adds to the credibility of the latter, by their analogy to objects of our previous knowledge: and this exertion is attended with pleasurable sensation. ”