Miscegenation

“ Alas! we so dearly love to be lamented in our misfortunes: indifference alone irritates and wounds us: here not only shall all hearts be shut to our misfortunes, but all beholders shall insult our shame, and the only portion left to the sinner shall be his confusion, his despair, and his crimes. ”

“ Thus in a word, to avoid a long detail, those suspicious attachments, loose conversations, ridiculous compliances, and desires of pleasing, too much attended, have filled you with dispositions so nearly allied to guilt and debauchery, that you are no longer capable of resistance against any of their attacks; the corruption prepared by the whole train of your past actions, will be lighted up in an instant; your weakness will overcome your reflection; your heart will go against glory, duty, and yourself. ”

“ The pain which it produces is a pain of apprehension: a pain grounded on the apprehension of suffering such mischiefs or inconveniences, whatever they may be, as it is the nature of the primary mischief to produce. It may be styled, in one word, the alarm. The danger is the chance, whatever it may be, which the multitude it concerns may in consequence of the primary mischief stand exposed to, of suffering such mischiefs or inconveniences. For danger is nothing but the chance of pain, or, what comes to the same thing, of loss of pleasure. ”

“ In his anguish he utters words, interrupted by sobs, which are unintelligible, and to which they know not whether repentance or despair gives birth. He is seized with convulsions which they are ignorant whether to ascribe to the actual dissolution of his body, or to the soul which feels the approach of its Judge. He deeply sighs, and they know not whether the remembrance of his past crimes, or the despair of quitting life, forces from him such groans of anguish. ”

“ Forsake Him not for any other that is wicked, unclean, base, and defiled, with whom you shall have more distress than joy. For if that other is good-looking, you will be afraid of his unfaithfulness; if deformed, of ennui; if drunken or bad-tempered or of other evil habits, of a devil's life. If offspring be granted to you, there will be misery during pregnancy and in the birth and in the training of the child. ”

“ Thus, the second disorder of her sin having been the criminal and almost universal abuse of all creatures; the second reparation of her penitence, is the rigorously abstaining from all those things which she had abused in her errors. Her hair, her perfumes, the gifts of body and of nature, had been the instruments of her pleasures; for none is ignorant of the use to which a deplorable passion can apply them ”

“ We may rather suppose that in the case of one endowed with a congenital predisposition to the excitement of the sexual impulse by the sight of cruelty, the particular cruel act which will prove the determinant in a particular case, must depend upon the chance circumstances of the individual's life. ”

“ We have frequently seen sinners, who, through despair and disgust at the world, have fled to opposite extremes; lose rest, health, reason, and life; fall into states of horror, and the blackest melancholy, and no longer regard life but as the greatest torment. But where are the righteous, whom the disgusts which accompany virtue have thrown into such dreadful extremities? They sometimes complain of their sorrows; but they still prefer them to the pleasures of the passions: virtue, it is true, may sometimes appear melancholy and unpleasing to them ”

“ Have you never employed them in corrupting hearts, or in nourishing the corruption of your own? What! your entire life has perhaps been one continued and deplorable chain of passions and evils; you have abused every thing around you, and have made them instrumental to your irregular appetites; you have called them all in aid to that unfortunate tendency of your heart; your intentions have even exceeded your evil; your eye hath never been single, and you would willingly never have had that of others to have been so with regard to you; all your cares for your person have been crimes ”

“ When the deterioration of personal moral life and social instincts is well under way, degeneration of other functions sets in,―the patient gives himself over to excesses, to all kinds of debauches, and indulges in the different forms of abnormal sexual practices. ”

“ You, likewise, unfaithful soul, whom a sex more jealous of honour had rendered still more attentive to conceal your weaknesses from the eyes of men, you were so artful in saving yourself from a discovery, you took from so far, and so surely, your measures to deceive the eyes of the husband, the vigilance of a mother, and, perhaps, the probity of a confessor: you would not have survived the accident which had therein betrayed your precautions and artifices. ”

“ The dire determination of mischief, mistaken for justice, which existed in more than a hundred breasts, seemed gathered into one fierce, dark power, hurrying headlong and irresistibly to its work of desolation, if not of death. ”

“ But must we inevitably draw the conclusion psychoanalysis draws? Because we discover in the unconscious the repressed body of our incest-craving, and because 23the recognition of desire, the making a mental objective of a certain desire causes the introduction of the sin motive, the desire in itself being beyond criticism or moral judgment, must we therefore accept the incest-craving as part of our natural desire and proceed to put it into practice, as being at any rate a lesser evil than neurosis and insanity? ”

“ In the first place, I should make you observe, that the world, familiarized with guilt, and accustomed to see the most heinous vices now become the vices of the multitude, is no longer shocked at them; denominates light, defamations which turn upon the most criminal and shameful weaknesses: suspicions of infidelity, in the sacred bond of marriage, are no longer a marked discredit or an essential stain, — they are sources of derision and pleasantry: to accuse a courtier of insincerity and double-dealing, is no attack upon his honour ”

“ So many shameful desires, which were scarcely formed before we endeavoured to conceal them from ourselves; so many absurd projects of fortune and elevation, sweet delusions, up to which our seduced heart continually gave itself; so many secret and mean jealousies which were the invisible principle of all our conduct, yet, nevertheless, which we dissembled through pride; so many criminal dispositions which had a thousand times induced us ardently to wish that either the pleasures of the senses were eternal, or that, at least, they should remain unpunished ”

“ In the same manner, in proportion as sin degenerates into habit, the light of God retires, darkness gains, and the profound night of total blindness at last arrives.
And then all becomes occasion of error to the criminal soul; all changes its aspect to his eyes; the most shameful passions no longer appear but as weaknesses; the most criminal attachments but sympathies brought with us into the world and inherent to our hearts; the excesses of the table but innocent pleasures of society ”

“ The consequences, then, to the poor sufferer, whose offence is, at most, but an error of judgment or a weakness of the heart, are the same as if her imprudence were indeed a crime of the blackest dye. ”

“ There are some miscarriages in war, my lords, which every reasonable man imputes to chance, or to causes of which the influence could not be foreseen; there are others that may justly be termed the consequences of misconduct, but of misconduct involuntary and pardonable, of a disregard, perhaps, of some circumstances of an affair produced by too close an attention to others. But there are miscarriages, too, for which candour itself can find no excuses, and of which no other causes can be assigned than cowardice or treachery. ”

“ Your view that, in most cases, the phenomenon in question has to be ascribed to congenital morbidity, offers perhaps the easiest way of overcoming popular prejudices, and awakening sympathy instead of horror and contempt for us poor 'afflicted' creatures. ”

“ An experienced physician [33] writes: ‘The earliest and most frequent cause of disorder of the generative apparatus is the practice of self-abuse, the tendency to which is strongest about the age of puberty.... Excitement is increased by the conversation and thoughts which are indulged in, and it is apt to be unchecked by the moral control which has not yet acquired its proper influence. Moreover, lads are often induced to the pernicious practice by their companions, who may be as ignorant as themselves of the wrong and mischief they are doing. ”

“ You can repress, and God knows how many boys and young men, how many young women and girls have struggled to do so, and are trying to do so to-day, with a sense always of guilt and shame in their minds, laying up mental difficulties for themselves, the psychologists tell us, by this repression. You know the type; you know the kind of person who becomes hard and narrow and uncomprehending. ”

“ Let those that make mischief, by slandering, tale-bearing, misrepresenting their neighbours, and spreading ill-natured characters and stories, dread the consequence of it, and think how sad their condition will be when all the mischief they have been accessory to shall be made to return upon themselves. ”

“ The moment the solemn hereditary mask covering up an abuse is brusquely and adroitly torn aside, we feel a curious spasm, the corners of our mouth stretching apart and our breast heaving violently, as at a kind of sudden relief, an unexpected deliverance, experiencing a sense of our recovered superiority, of our revenge being gratified and of an act of justice having been performed. ”

“ We were both victims to the same overshadowing evil—she, as mistress, I, as slave. ”

“ The sentiments of voluptuousness, sorrow and pity, which psychology has studied, appear to betray sometimes a veritable perversion, and to contain as elements the love of sorrow for sorrow itself.... Often one has to do with people who desire their own weal primarily, and then the woe of others. One or other of these psychical states is visible in many cases of wickedness; for example, in the fact of a rich manufacturer falsely accusing a young man, who is going to marry, of being affected by a venereal disease, and maintaining his assertion for the pleasure of doing so ... ”

“ But, when the misconduct of the descendant can be traced to neglect, or to a vicious instruction, then, indeed, even the pang of a wounded conscience may be added to the sufferings of those who have gone before. ”

“ Where are the protecting ears of the husband, the father, the mother, the sisters, or the friends? Where is the barrier interposed between this sinful, weak, tempted, and often depraved man and his victim? ”

“ IT is never without very melancholy reflections, that we can observe the misconduct, or miscarriage, of those men, who seem by the force of understanding, or extent of knowledge, exempted from the general frailties of human nature, and privileged from the common infelicities of life. ”

“ As the lines of one and the other constituent of this composite picture blend, the momentary feeling of impatience and disgust vanishes in a wave of compassion as the irresistible earnestness and the pitiless logic of those days press, for recognition, and we realize the awful sufferings of many an ignorant or sensitive soul. ”

“ What affects us the most is, that after having made the confession, this poor creature, so very gentle, and so very good, sacrificed her own feelings, and became nurse to her who was the object of her jealousy, and then attacked by a dreadful malady. ”

“ Primitive races fear a punishment for the violation of a taboo, usually a serious disease or death. This punishment threatens only him who has been guilty of the violation. It is different with the compulsion neurosis. ”

“ Not that it is difficult to account for the deception itself. No instinct is more fundamental and irresistible than that of concealment. The primary fear of molestation or harm in which it originates becomes, in a social state of sophistication and artifice, fear of exposure. With increased development, such complex and opposing factors as pride and shame, avarice and generosity, ostentation and modesty, lead us to hide things. We hide all sorts of things, good and bad; faults, virtues, deficiencies, accomplishments, hoardings, and charities. We hide from ourselves as well as from others. ”

“ March 13.—With the returning day commenced the same round of insult and irritation—the boys assembled to beat the hog, and the men and women to plague the Christian. It is impossible for me to describe the behaviour of a people who study mischief as a science, and exult in the miseries and misfortunes of their fellow-creatures. ”

“ The effects, in fact, are slower in development, but the same in kind. The victim finally succumbs to some acute or chronic disorder, and his epitaph may be written, "Therefore the Lord slew him because he did a detestable thing." ”

“ Many physiologists attribute the evil exclusively to the combination and consequent increase of morbid tendencies common to both parents: that this is an active source of mischief there can be no doubt. ”

“ Having settled ourselves into this infidelity, our skill is expended to procure alleviations, diversion, opiates. We adorn the victim with manual skill, his tongue with languages, his body with inoffensive and comely manners. ”

“ Thus, after indicating frankly the aching malady under which the social slate is laboring, we have sought for the causes in the imperfection of the laws, in the irrational condition of our manners, in the incapacity of our minds, and in the contradictions which characterize our habits. A single point still claims our observation, and that is the first onslaught of the evil we are confronting. ”