Missing in action

“ When we read of events in their ordinary train, we pitch ourselves with difficulty into the scenes of action—sometimes wholly omit to do so; and there is a want of life and presence in them accordingly. ”

“ Out of ten thousand conflicting spurs of action comes, in the snapping of a finger, a sinister unity of purpose, which knows not the individual brain that conceived it, nor the logic of its action. Ten thousand clods, jumbled in confusion, are instantly turned into a single straight furrow. ”

“ We set out on a course of action, planned, as we believe, from benevolent motives, — and we push on, in our own strength, determined to overcome every obstacle, and by main force to break down all opposition, and to effect our object at every hazard: — and what is the result? we accomplish nothing: we find ourselves, after all our efforts, farther from the point aimed at than when we set out. ”

“ The decisions of volition and action are not accompanied by the same feeling as under normal conditions, but, for example, by "sentiments d'incomplétude": "The subject feels that the action is not completely finished, that something is lacking." ”

“ 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. ”

“ My experience in thousands of cases shows that failure is often due to the wrong application of these laws—to a misunderstanding of the mental processes necessary to properly focus the thought waves upon some definite desire and the urge of the conscious mind for too hasty action. ”

“ So, at least, I live within compass, keep myself ready for action, and can shoot the gulf, at last, with decency. If there be anything farcical in such a life, the blame is not mine; let it lie at fate’s and nature’s door. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Heaped-up force which in turn expends itself, a continuous process of this sort. The acting, expending is the final thing, and doing this in a certain way, for a certain end, is to his mind the moral. But suppose such action puts one's existence in peril, what then? If persisted in, is life thereby despised? ”

“ It is a confession of failure in the highest function of being, which involves a perpetual self-determination, in full view of all existing circumstances. But habit, you see, is an action in present circumstances from past motives. It is substituting a vis a tergo for the evolution of living force. ”

“ By the consequences I do not mean what the world will think of you, but, rather, the personal results of your action—what you must suffer while you are in the world, and what you must suffer when far beyond the world. ”

“ They miss so much, those others. They miss it so pathetically. One sees them staggering gravewards under a load of self-imposed burdens. A lamentable spectacle, when one thinks of it. Why bear a cross? ”

“ Evidently some mind, full of energy and forethought, had made its appearance late in the history of these failing generations and had begun a fight to reverse failure and turn back the tide of aggression. ”

“ The danger-point in this crisis lies in permitting these newly awakened feelings to be dissipated without decision and action. If this occurs they weaken, the impulse to take the right stand lessens, and irresolution finally becomes the tacit choice of the self-seeking life. ”

“ Forgotten little units in our disdainful world, we pass them scornfully by. Other lives, and perhaps better, do you think? For them the struggle never came which holds us in a fist of brass, and thrashes us up and down the pavement of life. ”

“ But in this actual world of ours, as it is given, a part at least of the activity comes with definite direction; it comes with desire and sense of goal; it comes complicated with resistances which it overcomes or succumbs to, and with the efforts which the feeling of resistance so often provokes; and it is in complex experiences like these that the notions of distinct agents, and of passivity as opposed to activity arise. ”

“ When they begin to act, the disagreeable results they ignored begin to show themselves. They are discouraged, or complain of being thwarted in their good purpose by a hard fate, and shift to some other line of action. ”

“ But he is at his best when the conditions, the whole complex of subdivisible form and pressure, are virtually themselves the situation, the action and the interest, or in other words when these things exhaust themselves, as it were, in expressing the persons we are concerned with, agents and victims alike, and when by such vivified figures, whether victims or agents, they are themselves completely expressed. ”

“ The prohibition of a proposed action arouses all the resentment of thwarted desire and unfulfilled attainment. Such consequences may be avoided by the suggestion of better plans, methods, or acts, concurrent with the reasons why such change is desirable or necessary. The substitution of other activities or another course of conduct fills the void made by denial and satisfies his psychological requirement of being kept busy. ”

“ The idea of failure in the face of the world and that society he had so lately entered and meant to rule, of leaving the chariot of the countess and becoming once more a muddied pedestrian, was more than he could bear. ”

“ To do this seven months after the struggle, in cold blood, to no purpose, as an omission that one repairs, as a duty that one fulfills, is awe-inspiring, it is complete; one has the appearance of acting within one's rights, which perplexes the conscience and makes honest men shudder. ”

“ In this manner he is perpetually occupied; he has a part to act which renders serious thought unnecessary, and silence impossible. If he has been unfortunate, he recounts his distresses, and in doing so, forgets them. ”

“ There comes to every one at times the inquiring thought, of what use is life? What will be the result of all this seemingly useless toil, these states of unrest, these earnest efforts of the soul unappreciated, these best endeavors misunderstood? Such questions flood the reason at times, and we are ready to lay down our life weapons, scarce caring how the busy scene goes on. ”

“ Where the mind is absorbed in some one object of reform, this constant devotion to duty is almost, if not quite, impossible. The mind becomes so warped in one direction that it loses the habit, and almost loses the power, of turning in any other. Hence we rarely hear the word duty from the lips of the reformer. ”

“ All my efforts subside like froth into the one desire to be able just to stay lying there. My limbs are glued to the earth. I make a vain attempt;—they refuse to come away. I press myself down on the earth, I cannot go forward, I make up my mind to stay lying there. ”

“ This rest is won through the man's prior discipline in the toils of strife, in order that when the tumult of disturbance ceases, his mind, through the grace of contemplation, may be translated to gaze upon the face of truth. But since one attains to this rest only through labour and conflict, how can one reach it who has not gone down into the strife? ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ That being so, do those of you who regret it prefer to lose all influence over the outcome? While you are repining over what is beyond recall, events are moving on. If you do not help shape them, others, without your high principle and purity of motive, may. ”

“ Must not our aims and purposes cease to have any interest for us, once we are clear that they are not true ends? And that which, according to the hypothesis, is the true end, the 'dateless and irrevoluble circle' of activity, that, surely, we at least cannot sanction or approve, seeing that it involves and perpetuates the very misery and pain whose destruction was our only motive for acting at all. ”

“ Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything—save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold me. ”

“ They confuse the meaning of agitation and action. It is a terrible confusion, which arose in society principally since the Eighteenth Century. That century began to disturb the springs of our inward life. ”

“ They go through life without any direction, without any guiding idea, without initiative, and without will, incapable of any kind of systematic labor, yet at times ready, under the influence of a temporary affect, to sacrifice everything in order to carry out what later on proves worthless and vain. ”

“ For they leave one with so strange a feeling of incompleteness and dissatisfaction. In order to complete them it seems necessary to do something—to join a society, or, more desperately, to write a cheque. ”

“ And occasionally, from the heart of the mechanical routine, there comes evidence that [54] understanding is there—that understanding is possible: that not grossness or obtuseness or selfishness, as in the first hasty verdict, but the deliberate determination not to face the realities is the real motive power which keeps the system from falling into decay. For if the realities be faced, the bottom falls out of the world; and man, naked, shivering, and alone, is suddenly left defenceless, confronting the fire and the darkness. ”

“ Will you go home and leave all in disorder and confusion—all unsettled—all open? The contentions and agitations of the past will be increased and augmented by the agitations resulting from our neglect to decide them. ”

“ Life, no doubt, this modern city life into which we are plunged, is terribly distracting. Concentration upon a single aim is hard to attain. So we plead in our excuse, but the excuse is a false one and we know it. We know it because we know many people who have achieved the sort of concentration and simplicity of aim that we complain of as so difficult. ”

“ So there was conflict in his mind; but only a disturbing conflict. Reason acted too feebly on the side of these new-coming convictions. A desire to be at once, and to escape daily work and daily troubles, was stronger than any cold judgement of the case. ”

“ We were so apt in this world of struggle and ambition to become centred solely in ourselves, that possibly the wrong done to another,—the wrong that turned our thoughts from ourselves, and kept them bent in agony and despair upon the suffering we had caused another, and knew not how to mitigate—possibly this wrong, nay, certainly this wrong, was good in disguise. ”

“ And yet, after all, how many of us sit with our hands folded, doing nothing, thinking nothing, but just mentally and physically limp, weighed down by empty, useless time, which we try to kill with yawning desperation. ”

“ A contemplation of emergencies that may arise should plainly lead us to avoid their creation, either through a careless disregard of present duty or even an undue stimulation and ill-timed expression of feeling. ”

“ You try one thing after another, floundering desperately in your effort to discover what radical step must be taken to meet this emergency. After a time you seize upon the idea that seems to you the best. ”

“ I trust that my purgations are now being performed, and are almost completed, for things appear to be drawing rapidly towards a crisis. The proverb says, when things are at their worst they must mend; but how bad that worst may be is beyond the reach of human knowledge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For that reason, we urge the publication of these truths, that the struggle may no longer be waged in ignorance and doubt and confusion.”
“Does ‘massed forces of destructive purpose’ imply some combination, or co-operation, or co-ordination, among disintegrating forces?” Mary K. was asked, at another time.
[272]
“Yes, they combine every appealing force, as we do. One man may answer to doubt, fear, cupidity, and envy. Another to malice, doubt, and lust. Any forces that can reach him mass themselves in attack and call on their purposes in him to respond.” ”

“ And are we not, we mortals, so many billiard-balls, launched forth upon our little arena by we know not what force, and rolling we know not whither? It may be a little wider or a trifle narrower, perhaps, the stage on which we play our several parts; but all the same, around it rise the unscalable barriers of human life, the adamantine limitations of human endeavor. ”

“ But how can poor finite man detect so obscure a thing as motive? He must hide his face and acknowledge his feebleness when he stands before this inscrutable, heavy-browed, silent Fate. In this case, two solutions are offered. ”