Malleability

“ After she was gone he had a moment of repentance in which he regretted this weakness; for it was a weakness, a stupid sentimentalism, unworthy of a sensible man, who should not permit himself to be thus touched and involved. Why should he go and invite danger when he could be quiet, without any one giving him a thought? Was it not folly? The law wanted a criminal. Public curiosity demanded one. Why take away the one that they had? If he succeeded, would they not look for another? It was imprudence, and, to use the true word, madness. ”

“ And whatever pain I have felt or feel, in experiencing human malice, has been, and is, in the fact that human malice should exist at all,—not for its attempted wrong towards myself. For I, personally speaking, have not a moment to waste among the mere shadows of life which are not Life itself. ”

“ But still, intrigue . . .
ALCESTE
No. I won't stir a step. My mind’s made up.
My cause is wrong, or right.
PHILINTE
Don't trust to that.
ALCESTE
I shall not budge.
PHILINTE
Your adversary’s strong,
And may, through his cabal, bear off ...
ALCESTE
No matter.
PHILINTE
You'll find you've made a great mistake.
ALCESTE
So be it.
I want to see how this thing will turn out.
PHILINTE
But ...
ALCESTE
It will be a joy to lose my suit.
PHILINTE
But surely . . .
ALCESTE
By this trial I shall see
If men can be sufficiently perverse,
Rascally, villainous, and impudent
To do me wrong before the universe. ”

“ We shall, therefore, proceed to another subject, respecting which there will be little difference, either as to the facts themselves, or the judgment to be formed of them—we mean that darkest act of his life, which being, as far as we learn, unatoned and unrepented, throws so deep a shadow over all the rest, as almost to make us question his sincerity in any good principle, or his capability of any righteous purpose. ”

“ It would simply substantiate the truth of our contention that in the malingerer we see a type of individual who is far from normal, and in whom malingering as well as frank mental disease is not at all a rare phenomenon. ”

“ Today, far from harboring the notion that malingering and mental disease are mutually exclusive, we are beginning to look upon malingering itself as the expression of an abnormal psychic make-up. Furthermore, far from believing, as of old, that the proverbially insane is supposed to be totally devoid of discretion in his conduct, we know that there may be a good deal of method in madness, and that even the frankly insane malinger mental symptoms when the occasion requires it. ”

“ And if there be any that will proffer me wrong, or say of me wrong or shame behind my back, say it now or never, and here is my body to make it good, body against body. And all they stood still, there was not one that would say one word ”

“ Why do you think anything else is the matter with me? One cannot expend one’s self with impunity; that would be too good. Everything must be paid for in this world.”
She was obliged to believe that he was right and understood his condition; however, she could not help worrying. She knew nothing of medicine; she did not know the meaning of the medical terms he used, but she found that this was not sufficient to explain all—neither his roughness of temper and excess of anger without reason, any more than his sudden tenderness, his weakness and dejection, his preoccupation and absence of mind. ”

“ As we acquire more real insight into the workings of the human mind we are prone to become more tolerant towards the human weaknesses, and in our study of the malingerer it is the type of individual, his mental make-up, which interests us most, rather than the malingered symptoms. It is for this reason that today the number of authorities is indeed small who do not look upon malingering per se as a morbid phenomenon, as an abortive attempt at adjustment by an individual who is quite incapable of adequately coping with the vicissitudes of life. ”

“ The complicated mood resulting from this association of sadistic cruelty with inert malice is perhaps the most powerful engine of evil that exists in the world; although a pure unmitigated condition of unsensualized, unimpassioned, motiveless malice is, in its inmost self, more essentially and profoundly evil. For while the energy of sadism renders the actual destructive power of malice much more formidable, we must remember that what really constitutes the essence of evil is never the energy of destruction but always the malicious inertness of resistance to creation. ”

“ Entreat thou the one true God to sanctify the ears, and the eyes, and the hearts of mankind, and to protect them from the desires of a corrupt inclination. For malice is a grievous malady which depriveth man from recognizing the Great Being, and debarreth him from the splendors of the sun of certitude. ”

“ ORGON
What! Can a soul so base, a heart so false,
Hide neath the semblance of such touching fervour?
I took him in, a vagabond, a beggar! ...
'Tis too much! No more pious folk for me!
I shall abhor them utterly forever,
And henceforth treat them worse than any devil.
CLEANTE
So! There you go again, quite off the handle!
In nothing do you keep an even temper.
You never know what reason is, but always
Jump first to one extreme, and then the other. ”

“ Thou hast said thy message, which is the most insolent and villainous that ever man heard sent to any king: now hear my reply. My beard is yet too young to trim that mantle of thy master's with; yet, young although I be, I owe no homage either to him or any man—nor will ever owe. But, young although I be, I will have thy master's homage upon both his knees before this year be past, or else he shall lose his head, by the faith of my body, for this message is the shamefullest I ever heard speak of. I see well thy king hath never yet met with a worshipful man ”

“ There was a time in the history of psychiatry when malingering was a frequent subject of discussion in psychiatric literature. This was due not so much to any inherent practical importance of the phenomenon of malingering as such as to the faulty conception that this phenomenon was something which by its very existence ruled out the existence of mental disease. More scientific studies of personality which led to a direction of our attention to the malingerer rather than to malingering as an isolated mental phenomenon brought with it a complete change of attitude towards the entire subject. ”

“ Whatever convictions I possess concerning the subject of malingering were gained from a fairly extensive experience with insane delinquents at the Government Hospital for the Insane, and when I assert that I have yet to see a malingerer who, aside from being a malingerer, was likewise normal mentally, I do so with the full consciousness that my experience has been a more or less one-sided one. ”

“ It is just here that the mystery of pain and pleasure helps us to understand the mystery of love and malice, the same insensitiveness in certain souls that prevents their feeling any vivid pain or any vivid pleasure, also prevents their feeling any intense malice. But this insensitiveness which prevents their feeling any intense malice is, more than anything else, the especial evocation of the power of malice. ”

“ Fools are most."
"Why do you think so ?"
"For the same reason that I think oats are numerically more than horses. Don't knaves munch up fools just as horses do oats?"
"A droll, sir; you are a droll. I can appreciate drollery—ha, ha, ha!"
"But I'm in earnest."
"That's the drollery, to deliver droll extravagance with an earnest air—knaves munching up fools as horses oats.—Faith, very droll, indeed, ha, ha, ha! Yes, I think I understand you now, sir. How silly I was to have taken you seriously, in your droll conceits, too, about having no confidence in nature. ”

“ Mental as well as bodily illness may assume all shapes, and be of all degrees: and both reflection and observation lead us to conclude that excessive indulgence of the passions will impair the understanding, as surely as sensual intemperance injures the constitution. ”

“ For let mankind discharge their tongues In venom, till they burst their lungs, Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache; Nor spoil your shape, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place; Nor will you find your fortune sink By what they speak or what they think; Nor can ten hundred thousand lies Make you less virtuous, learn'd, or wise. The most effectual way to balk Their malice, is—to let them talk. ”

“ Where shall we draw the line between the weak but responsible will and the insane will? What degree of opacity between intellect and the world separates the ignorant man from the lunatic? The extremes of sanity and insanity are readily recognisable, but the intermediate degrees are not clear. There is no test to apply to all cases; each must be diagnosed from its peculiar symptoms, but the will of an insane man is always weak. It can not deny or defer the gratification of a desire, nor can it keep up an effort. ”

“ What would you say if some one declared that whoever uses his mallet nine hours of the day must, in the course of time, lose his sense of hearing and sight, that his intellectual power would finally become deadened and petrified, and that his soul would get to be as dusty and muddy as the blouse he wears when he hammers his stones? ”

“ From what has been said thus far it will be seen that the mental processes underlying the mental state of malingering differ in no essential from those operative in the human mind generally; that man in his endeavor to reach a satisfactory compromise between the two underlying principles of his conduct,—i.e., that of pleasure and reality,—frequently resorts to his fantasy ”

“ For as the strength of this vile, animal part of me lessens, far from setting the intellect free, it infects this last with its own increasing degradation. The lower drags the higher down along with it. ”

“ While in their exaltation of the "sub-conscious self"—namely, of those blind movements of instinct and foreboding common to the lower animals and to savage or degenerate man alike—as against the intellect and the reasoned action of the will, he saw a menace to human attainment, to civilisation—in the best meaning of that word—to right reason and noble living, which it would be difficult to overestimate. ”

“ CLI. You made a great mistake; and I assure you that a learned fool is more of a fool than an ignorant one.
TRI. Common sense is against your maxims, since an ignorant man and a fool are synonymous.
CLI. If you cling to the strict uses of words, there is a greater connection between pedant and fool.
TRI. Folly in the one shows itself openly.
CLI. And study adds to nature in the other.
TRI. Knowledge has always its intrinsic value.
CLI. Knowledge in a pedant becomes impertinence.
TRI. Ignorance must have great charms for you, since you so eagerly take up arms in its defence. ”

“ MALVOLIO. Fool, there was never man so notoriously abused; I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art.
CLOWN. But as well? then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in your wits than a fool.
MALVOLIO. They have here propertied me; keep me in darkness, send ministers to me, asses, and do all they can to face me out of my wits.
CLOWN. Advise you what you say: the minister is here.—Malvolio, thy wits the heavens restore! endeavour thyself to sleep, and leave thy vain bibble-babble.
MALVOLIO. Sir Topas,—
CLOWN. Maintain no words with him, good fellow. Who, I, sir? not I, sir. ”

“ And by the white bird might men understand the fiend, and I shall tell you how the swan is white without forth, and black within: it is hypocrisy which is without yellow or pale, and seemeth without forth the servants of Jesu Christ, but they be within so horrible of filth and sin, and beguile the world evil. Also when the fiend appeared to thee in likeness of a man of religion, and blamed thee that thou left thy brother for a lady, so led thee where thou seemed thy brother was slain, but he is yet on live ”

“ That apparently a secondary personality asserts itself,—though not in the sense that there is ever another ego present, another mind or another will,—practically all experts in psychology and nervous diseases are now ready to concede. There are, however, involved in this question a number of important problems of responsibility that have not as yet been entirely worked out, and with regard to which prudent persons are withholding their judgment. ”

“ Yes, said the old man, the child told you truth, and more would he have told you an ye would have suffered him; but ye have done a thing late that God is displeased with you, for ye have lain by your sister, and on her ye have gotten a child that shall destroy you and all the knights of your realm. ”

“ If I had beaten them they would be frightened creatures; fear paralyzes the intelligence. Besides, if I gave way to temper I should not be what I am; I could not have acquired this patience which has won their confidence. ”

“ If there is cruelty in the sea, and terror in high places, and malice lurking in profound darkness, there is no one of these qualities in the wind, but only power. Here is strength too full for such negations as cruelty, as malice, or as fear ”

“ In God we live and move and have our being. Malice is envious. God giveth us richly all things to enjoy. Malice is false and calumnious. God sent His Son into the world to give light to them that sit in darkness. Malice is resentful and vindictive, impatient of offence, and intemperate in requiring satisfaction. God is love.
III. Let us turn for a further motive to the character and conduct of the Son of God.—He has given us an example of the most profound humility, a temper in which malice has no portion, and which cannot exist independently of lovingkindness and tenderness of heart. ”